"How to Influence Muslim Minds and Capture the Arab Hearts" is the title of this piece by Ibtissam Al-Bassam in Arab News (thanks to Skeetstreet), but a better title might be "How to Flatter Muslim Minds and Cater to Arab Hearts." Dina Powell is going to the Middle East, and when she's there, she better not criticize anything:
Since Arabs have little tolerance for people who criticize their faith or disparage their culture, Mrs. Powell should refrain from any criticism of the way Arab and Muslim men women and children eat, live, think or dress. She should avoid stating, or insinuating that Western values are superior to Muslim and Arab values. She should never recommend that they exchange their cherished identity for a Western one.
Smile and play the dhimmi, Ms. Powell, and you will be beloved all over the Arab world.
Since Arabs have little tolerance for people who criticize their faith or disparage their culture
In other words, Arabs are an intolerant people. Nothing that we hadn't figured out by now, but it is always pleasant to read this from an Arab.
Everyone should link to this post whenever some PeeCee idiot screams "Islamophobia" or "Racism against Muslims" (!!!).
The short paragraph from the article above says implies much more than it states.
Arab muslims are so imbued by the "cherished identity" created for them by Muhammad that they have completely purged their own pre-Islamic history and culture.
The article uses the words, Arab and Muslim, interchangeably in a crude attempt to convince the reader that both are one and the same.
The disregard for those Arabs who are not muslim and those muslims who are not Arabs is the prototypical model of Muslim Arab superiority which Muhammad successfully enjoined.
The majority of Arab minds have been washed to accept this ridiculous proposition and their bent is to convince the rest of the world of its veracity.
"Since Arabs have little tolerance for people who criticize their faith or disparage their culture, Mrs. Powell should refrain from any criticism of the way Arab and Muslim men women and children eat, live, think or dress."
This should be put on a bumpersticker, or on websites everywhere -- with credit, of course, given to Ibtissam al-Bassam of Arab News.
No, not just the excerpt above -- the whole thing.
One still does not understand why the American government thinks it has to explain itself to Arabs and Muslims. It is the Arabs and Muslims who have a lot of explaining to do -- for passages in the Qur'an, stories in the Hadith, and biographical details in the Sira of Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil. It is Arabs, and Muslims, who have to explain 1350 years of conquest of non-Muslim lands and peoples, and of present-day mistreatment, ranging from legal disablities, including a diguised jizyah, to mass murder, which non-Muslims must endure almost everywhere that Muslim rule is established.
It is a bad idea even to make the Arabs think that we think we owe them an explanation. What explanation do we need? They should be put constantly, and everywhere, on the defensive -- forced to explain, or attempt to anyway, what Islam is all about.
The contemptuous passage above should be held up, by all Infidels, for contempt.
Print out the Arab News article above. Put in on your refrigerator. Distribute it to your friends. Make them think about it.
"Arabs have little tolerance for people who criticize their faith or disparage their culture, Mrs. Powell should refrain from any criticism of the way Arab and Muslim men women and children eat, live, think or dress. She should avoid stating, or insinuating that Western values are superior to Muslim and Arab values. She should never recommend that they exchange their cherished identity for a Western one....
(This is what they forgot to state)
...even though Muslims as superior beings have the natural right to not only criticize all other religions but to dicriminate against and even kill those in the name of their bloody god.
Dear Mrs Powell, never confuse the rights of ordinary, lowly dhimmi to the supremacy and rights of Muslims who inhabit the highest rungs of the human ladder.
(they wash their kootch after every use, you know)
Well we:
(1) do not want Arabs and Muslims using their language with the sole purpose of disparaging Western values and Western ideas. Neither do we abide the use of physical force to institute Arab/Islamic worldview/governance upon us.
(2)We Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians, etc. have little tolerance for Arabs and Muslims who criticize our faiths, including no faith, or disparage our culture, and they should refrain from any criticism of the way American, European, Canadian, Australian, etc men, women and children eat, live, think or dress. They should avoid stating, believing, or insinuating that Western values, religions, etc are inferior to Muslim and Arab values. They should never recommend that we exchange our cherished identities for a Islamic/Arab one.
Are your questions rhetorical or simply wimpish Hugh.
The American Government is George W. Bush,Dick Cheney, Grover Nordquist and Karl Rove,in synch with the bought and paid for (mostly Republican) Congress.
The American Government not only curries Muslim votes and good will, but are economic dhimmis to the Saudis and OPEC.
Thou doesn't need a brick falling on they head my friend, most certainly thou doest know all of which I speak.
Eve anne gelical has a point, and made it.
Take such statements and reverse them, look at the flack and rationalization I and others get when I eschew and denounce Christian self righteousness, theocratic urgings and condemnation of the other.
Pots have no business calling the kettle black, he who lives in glass houses should not throw stones.
Yada, yada, yada.
And this is not play tu quoque either. It's painful to watch self righteous Christians and Jews condemn Muslims for the same attitudes and behaviors of which they are guilty.
The only way out of the swamp is to secularize and disassociate.
Admittedly hard for me to do considering that I confess to being a Western Supremacist, as opposed to say an Eastern (Muslim or any other) Supremacist.
Let the West stay secular west, and confine the Muslims and Arabs and those who resist assimilation to their own barren wastelands.
Giaour~ like kj, you have just proved to be a secularist *uck.
I am Polish/German. Even if I Was Jewish, your baseless assumptions would piss me off. Don't pay any attention to what a person actually Says, just assume, distort, demean, demonize, put words into their mouths and then lie about that, as well.
You have just renewed my resolve to make sure the Left Loses the next few votes, '06 and '08 at the very least.
I shall also continue to post the links to those Leftists the Entire American Public needs to be made aware of, in Academia as well as the MSM and Political pundits.
By the time islam is no longer a threat, your goals will set back by decades.
Of course I'm a secularist Gary, so what is the need to act like and Islamist and use derogatories like "uck"
Go ahead and make sure the "left" loses the next 20 elections, I really don't care, because I'm not left, nor a Democrat in fact I see the Democrats as Tweedle dum to the Republican Tweedle Dee.
The Democrats, disgust me as much as the Republicans, both parties are run by and full of prostitutes.
Politics is a cesspool and we all know what rises to the top in a cesspool, the bigger the cesspool (Washington) the more that floats on the top, I long ago started referring to the Outhouse vs the Ex Whitehouse.
Post whatever links of criticism you have to the left, be my guest, but at least be intellectually honest enough to place blame and criticize the Right and Republicans like that dhimmi President George and his dhimmi advisors Norquist and Rove, and that dhimmi Cheney and that crypto Muslim Mueller head of the FBI.
Do as you need to do, but take off your ideological blinders and see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be. It's your future not mine dude. I'm an old fart and my tour on this planet is coming to an end, not much drastic will happen between now and my exit, you on the other hand will have to swallow the toxic medicine you are brewing up.
Of course she want Robert, after all there is the bottomless barrel of Saudi money and the influence that money buys.
Oh gary, my gary you said: "By the time islam is no longer a threat, your goals will set back by decades.".
How childish, Islam will always be a threat, and what goals do I have anyway. Are you suddenly a mindreader.
My goals are simple, civil rights, liberty, freedom for those that respect the civil rights, liberty and freedom of others.
I'm glad that you will be glad to see those "goals" set back by decades. But decades from now my ashes will have fertilized a rose bush. So it ain't my problem dude, but it certainly is yours.
Enjoy the miserable future of your own creation.
BTW Gary, the last time I registered to vote was as a Republican, and the last time I voted was for Goldwater. In fact after Kennedy's assassination, when the rest of the right crawled into their holes in shook in fear (before Reagan resurrected the right) I proudly pronounced that I was a Right Wing Extremist and proud of it - on hand made bumper sticker yet.
But like Goldwater, who matured and changed, I too matured and changed. I voted for Nixon against Kennedy, considered Kennedy a commie. I know better now, and I know now that I was unduly influenced by rabid voices on the right and from the pulpit.
I mourn the passing of both Kennedy and Goldwater now. Despite their human flaws, both were great Americans. Even LBJ managed to do good, but honestly can't say the same for Reagan, Ford, Clinton or both Bush's, and as a footnote I am absolutely delighted that neither Gore or Kerry won the election, as powers and influences beyond our kein or reach would have changed nothing, and neither exhibited moral character or leadership qualities (your President certainly doesn't but his banality and stupidity is self evident, Gore and Kerry could at least (as Clinton did) cover up their self serving banality).
Except perhaps for Israel, as Gore and Kerry were more Israel friendly than Bush, then again maybe not..Saudi arms and money has a long reach
My goals are simple, civil rights, liberty, freedom for those that respect the civil rights, liberty and freedom of others.'
giaour~ unimpressed by your 'record' and don't believe your claims as to your goals, anyway. You are a Lying *uck and your responses to the links I post and to other people on this site only serve to point up the arrogance of your thinking. The only people who's rights you believe in are elitists like yourself, who mouth platitudes about civil rights and liberties, but whom trod upon the very people you claim you want to have them, any time those people start thinking for themselves.
I will continue to post links to articles about the leftist teachers you admire, whom are so hot to support terrorists and hate the US / West. The fact that you even need to speak out against those articles, as you have done on several occasions, only means I am striking a nerve. I plan to help dig that nerve out with a blunt knife. You will Not silence me, nor will your compatriots on campuses across the US be able to silence people who are standing up for themselves.
Leftist Academia loves Jihad:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/mc20050325.shtml
btw, Giaour~ I'd gotten very tired of arguing Jihad with people on the chatboard on one site I post my artwork at. I was fed up with attitudes very much like yours. I was so sick of the demeaning, demonizing, denigrating, derogatory, arrogant attitudes, I was going to leave things go here, also.
Thanks to you, I'm back. You should be pleased. By the way, where can we see your writings? I'm sure there's a number of people here who would be very interested to see what you think of things, outside what you post here.
Where do all of the kowtow-ers to Islamic intolerance, from Bush on down, throughout all of Congress, and in every government agency supposed to be protecting us, think they are going to be able to enjoy their 'spoils' once everything is spoiled? By the Islamic tyranny that they abet and its invasion of the West they now ignore?
Those who did not oppose the Nazis and fascists and communists in the 1930's could at least think
there would be some quiet place in Argentina or Chile where they could flee to build a mock-Swiss chalet and grow transplanted Gerwurtztraminer vines.
But, with intercontinental terrorist jihadists, what spot would be safe? From bio WMD's or other cheap, easy-to-transport methodologies of doom?
The battle must be faced, here. The enemy of freedom must be named, now.
For Bush, and all below him, a clue:
It is the Koranic invocation to subdue the world that is the enemy.
Unless Bush, on down, are planning to surrender their lands to a second-class 'people of the book' serfdom within a planetary gulag of the Restored Caliphate, I truly do not understand what the delay in putting it plainly is.
THE PROBLEM IS THE DESPOTIC TENETS OF ISLAM.
Crippler of the eternal feminine.
Killer of freedom of thought.
Crusher of the expanding human consciousness.
Are all those now in power in the West really THAT greedy? THAT cowardly? THAT goddamned stupid?
As the old song lyric put it:
"Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?"
But then, they seem have the historical sense of an Alzheimer's patient.
And the moral code of a trapdoor spider.
I do not forgive them.
And I doubt the people of the West will after the next major mass-murder attack kills more than just an easily-forgetable 3,000.
Meanwhile-
Let's cut the ribbon for a new mosque opening in Washington, D.C. and make nice.
(I feel white hot blood starting to fill my eyeballs in apoplectic rage, and should stop now and send an email to the whitehouse... and at least give the computer geeks in the basement a little fun...)
Or an even better title: "How to Roll Over and Die".
Nobody can influence an Arab's mind - it's filled to the brim with rubbish from the Dark Ages. Do this, do that, step this way, not that way, use this hand for this, that hand for that, Satan lives in your nose, bums in the air 5 times a day, face that way, say this, don't do that, don't fart during prayer, avoid filthy pigs, dogs and kafirs, wash all the time, don't do anything without referring to the imam first, always know what's haram and makrooh (lots of those), etc. No room for anything else. They'd have to remove at least some of that Islamic detritus first, for any chance of influence or enlightenment. Good luck to that!
Capture an Arab heart? Yeah, but you wouldn't respect yourself afterwards.
Well, I've lived in a number of other cultures, and can sympathize with those who are trying to instruct Ms. Powell on what to do when visiting the Arab world. KJ and Giaour already know I can get feisty when you attack my religion--although I'm not into stoning or beheading people. Also, most of you know that I'm praying for the mass conversions of Iranian, Turkic, Hui, Arab, Sahel African, South Asian, and Malay peoples (etc.) to Christianity--it's the least I can do in these perilous times when I'm too old and in too poor health to be much use on the front lines.
BTW, in friendly, accommodating Buddhist Thailand [and I'm not being facetious--it's a country I appreciate and respect, and of which I cherish a number of fond memories], you can get serious jail time for light-heartedly climbing into the lap of a large Buddha-image for photographs; where women aren't allowed to use seats reserved for the Sangha (and Thai women are NOT necessarily slaves); and it would be a serious insult to people in that country if you put your feet on their tables or otherwise show them the soles of your feet.
I also think it was a good thing that my parents sternly forbade us to use certain ethnic epithets. And, back in the dark ages when speaking somebody else's language could get you invited into the durndest places for a cup of tea, I took off my shoes when invited into a mosque--and I'd do it again, no matter how much I'd like to see OBL die on an American prison gurney with a needle in his arm (if kidney failure, disgruntled followers, or a daisy cutter haven't sent him to Jahannum yet).
Look, I agree that Muslims, especially Gulf Arabs, are often overbearing these days. I've even known a very orthodox Muslim Malay proud of his knowledge of the Arabic Qur'an who nonetheless scorned the Arabs as a "rude" people (warning: ALL Austronesian peoples from the south end of Burma and the hills of Viet Nam all the way to NZ and Rapa Nui have elaborate codes of etiquette, of which even peoples whom North Americans might find overly decorous might run afoul). Yet it never hurts to show people a little respect. Who knows? In these days when even the Turks are getting alarmed at Evangelical inroads and there's widespread questioning of Islam among Iranians and Berbers, being respectful, even while disagreeing, might be a subtle way of prying a few more people loose from a dangerous and destructive cult.
Mr. Spencer, you're of Middle Eastern Christian heritage, aren't you? Don't you think I have a point?