Eight years later, Tiny Minority of Extremists still ain't tiny: support for jihad/martyrdom bombings and Osama still high among some Muslims

This is disgusting... absolutely disgraceful...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32783056/ns/us_news-911_eight_years_later

I am sick of the fallacy that is the "Muslim Victim" in a post 9/11 world. I've not read any OFFICIAL reports of mosques being bombed on US soil, nor Muslims being verbally abused in US streets. No, in fact, I've heard nothing but the contrary, coupled with Muslims ranting on about how Western ideals are born from infidels and that said infidels need to succumb to the demands of Shari'a. The self defeatism, and self deprecation of the citizens within this nation has GOT to come to a screeching halt.

9/11 Changed my life forever. It gave me a new perspective on the world, and as cliche as it sounds, value on humanity and the American Spirit. Without those two elements, this world is doomed. The foundation of America, and the liberties that MOST strive to protect are unique in a modern day that would see other great nations lay down their freedoms and rights at the feet of their transgressors and worship in the church of the politically correct. In a world such as this, Americans can NEVER take for granted what we've since become benefactors of, nor can we turn away from the responsibility to protect ours and future generations. I say a Christian prayer today for the fallen, and those who are overseas, that they continue to maintain strength and awareness and that they return to us safely. Also, I thank Robert Spencer and all the other JW contributors and posters for all of the tireless effort that has contributed to keeping those who would choose to have their eyes open abreast of the TRUE nature of the beast of Islamic Jihad.

"The self defeatism, and self deprecation of the citizens within this nation has GOT to come to a screeching halt."

I feel your frustration and raise it to fury. However, I don't think it's going to come to a screeching halt. It's like a gigantic steamship barrelling in all its pompous gravity stubbornly and self-righteously and grandly forward in the wrong direction, and it will only very slowly slow down and turn around. I'm afraid the most likely scenario is that it will take a few decades, at least. And this goes for the entire West, not just America. The inertia against waking up is so broad, deep and complex, there's no way it will just come to a halt, let alone a screeching one.

And it's not just the "elites" who are the problem. I wish to God it were only "elites", because then, in free Western democracies, change could much more easily be effected. In this hypothetical stratification of society, with "Elites" over there, and "All us normal folk" over here, what percentage do "Elites" constitute? 5% at best? In modern Western democracies, there is no way that 5% of the population could control the other 95%, and the right-leaning types who are in the anti-Jihad movement who believe this quasi-conspiracy crap are doing the movement a disservice, because they have lost faith in the West, apparently believing it is some kind of crypto-tyranny ruled by a secret cabal, and therefore expecting a Civil War re-enactment in the near future, perhaps followed soon thereafter by a Rapture...? No, the much more likely situation we are in is that the pleasant disease of the mind called Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism (PC MC) is mainstream and has been mainstream for decades, and has come to affect not only elites, but also multitudes of ordinary people on all sides of the political spectrum, on all places of economic class, and reflecting all types of religious belief whether atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish, New Age, wiccans, whatever. A sea change in worldview throughout the West has occurred over the past 50-odd years to bring this silent but influential sociopolitical revolution about.

While it continues to remain an infuriating and frustrating hurdle for us valiant few canaries in the coalmine trying to wake up our fellow citizens, there is hope in the fact that the West remains free and democratic, and there is hope, paradoxically, in the fact that this sea change in worldview came about in the first place -- for, if a sea change in one direction can come about in a mere 50 years, a sea change to reverse course can happen too. And it will. But not immediately. We are going to have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Muslims -- and the insult added to that injury from our PC-MC-addled fellow citizens -- another few decades, I'm afraid.

Heidi J in the comments for the MSNBC article you linked, there is virtually no support for it at all.

The question Pew asked about suicide bombing was this:

"Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?"

Here are the percentages that answered either "often" or "sometimes justified":

Palestine: 68
Nigeria: 43
Lebanon 38
Egypt: 15
Indonesia: 13
Jordan: 12
Israel: 7
Pakistan: 5
Turkey: 4

http://pewglobal.org/database/?indicator=19&survey=10&response=Often/sometimes%20justified&mode=table

Here are a couple more data points for comparison. The following question was asked of people in the following countries. Unlike the above survey, this question was posed to random citizens, not Muslims only:

“Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?”

Here are the percentages that answered either "often" or "sometimes justified":

US: 24
Iran: 11

Let's put them all together to see the final rankings:

Palestine: 68
Nigeria: 43
Lebanon 38
US: 24
Egypt: 15
Indonesia: 13
Jordan: 12
Iran: 11
Israel: 7
Pakistan: 5
Turkey: 4

The US almost makes the top third.

Let's add some countries from the Pew poll from previous years so we can expand the list. Again, the number from all the countries except the US and Iran are asked of Muslims only:

Palestine: 68
Nigeria: 43
Mali: 39
Lebanon 38
Uganda: 30
Malaysia: 26
US: 24
Kuwait: 21
Bangladesh: 20
Senegal: 18
Ethiopia: 18
Egypt: 15
Indonesia: 13
Jordan: 12
Tanzania: 12
Morrocco: 11
Iran: 11
Israel: 7
Uzbekistan: 7
Pakistan: 5
Turkey: 4

Here, the US does make the top third!

U-S-A!

Woops:
Here's the poll containing the US and Iran:

http://worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jan07/Iran_Jan07_rpt.pdf

"In modern Western democracies, there is no way that 5% of the population could control the other 95%"

I have a document where I keep the funniest quotes I've ever seen on blogs. This made it. Very funny.

Such subtle sarcasm, Mr. Spencer. Most excellent, Dude!

jcb

Memo to any non-Muslim person but newly arrived on this site, either now (September 2009 or at any subsequent time in the future) who may be reading the comments in this thread:

Know that the poster who goes by the name of 'dave742' is a known Mohammedan spin-doctor, most probably an Iranian Muslim. While we were using Intensedebate for this forum, under which regime posters had the option of representing themselves by a pictorial avatar, his choice of 'avatar' was the Hezb-allah (lit. 'party of allah') flag, with its Kalashnikov machine gun.

*Anything* he posts should be read with extreme caution.

dumbledoresarmy, or dave could be a Leftist who hates American Marines and their "meddling" in the Middle East.

P.S.: Another American who hated American Marines (and the entire U.S. Military), by the way, was Timothy McVeigh. (Cf. Jayna Davis.)

Nah, Hesperado. He's a Muslim. I've read all of his postings since he first turned up here. He claims to be a westerner - he has quite an elaborate cover story - but he's a Muslim in a mask, I swear it.

It's a subliminal impression built up over a long time.

But he gives off a weird vibe that I get from all the known Muslim posters: a sense of disconnect, of their words and arguments (except when those words dissolve into a spew of pure hate pouring volcano-like straight from the corrupted id) being somehow merely instrumental, and separate from, external to, whatever it is they actually are. Or perhaps, that the words are there, but there *is* no person, in the sense that we think of a person.

I don't get that vibe from non-Muslim posters, whatever their allegiance and no matter how misguided or downright stupid their assertions.

It's possible I may be picking up on something that Ayaan Hirsi Ali notes in 'Infidel' - that few Mohammedans (and she includes the males in this as well as the females, though it is more pronounced in the females) develop what she calls 'a clear individual will'. And the more pious they are, the less there will be of the person, or of what might, in a different culture, have *become* the person; the more there will be of what I call 'the islam'. The whole aim and object of Islam is for the 'you' or the 'I' to disappear altogether; for body and mind to become a passive vehicle for The Program. Hence, perhaps, the sense one gets from their postings, of psychic 'flatness', the near-absence of Person, automatically presenting predictable taqiyya and tu quoque, etc, and then - when one scratches off the surface veneer and encounters the raw Programming - The Islam, in all its chaotic violence.

It's very hard to articulate this properly. But I've read every posting by every person who's ever posted here - I've read the entire jihadwatch archive - and so I've read mountains of postings by avowed Muslims, as well as by their western apologists/ defenders.

All I can say is that there's a difference, however hard it is to properly define, between Muslim and non-Muslim posters.

dave742 sounds to me like a Muslim.

Davieboy742 we already went through this a long time ago when I spanked you about a year ago. All this poll proves is that people in the Islamic world tent to see things in black and white, yes and no. People in the west tend to see these issues as nuanced. For example: if there is an airliner filled with civilians, which has been hijacked by Muslims bent upon flying it into some building it may be, "sometimes justified" to shoot the jet down. Most Americans will consider these things in detail, those in totalitarian Islamic societies tend to just answer as simply as possible. We went over this long ago.

dumbledoresarmy,

The thing is, there are multitudes of non-Muslim Westerners who would say all the things dave says, and/or would certainly agree with him. The apologetic template that Muslims use on Westerners is virtually the same as the template that self-hating Westerners follow, independently of Islam. And self-hating Westerners include many Westerners who continue to enjoy the fruits of the same West they are comfortably hating.

Hesperado

it's not *what* he says. It's the *way* that he says it.

PEW and others continue to ask Muslims about support for "suicide" bombings. There are many hard-line Muslims who would support various kinds of terrorist attacks against strictly non-Muslim populations, but who would reject the technique of "suicide" bombings in particular. Lots of Islamic terrorist groups don't use suicidal attacks. The question is unnecessarily limited to a particular method, and as such, underestimates the percentage of respondents who would approve of killing non-Muslims "in defense of Islam." There are indeed so many different circumstances in which Islam requires that non-Muslims be put to death that, obviously, PEW and others ought to be asking a much broader question, and a wider variety of questions.

The recent PEW survey in Pakistan, which showed that roughly 80% of Pakistanis want the death penalty for apostasy, is one of the few useful surveys of Muslims conducted by PEW since 9/11. For now, the most informative large-scale surveys I'm aware of are the World Public Opinion surveys showing that most Muslims want strict sharia.

Muslims are not interested in bringing faiths together. They want to be the only one. Osama Obama's running logo. ''A change you can believe in'' ? Since then, his dogma has been one of pushing Islam so you can believe in it. Using His right to taqiyya as he acts like a Christian to set up Islam in America, being supported by the strength and wealth of that faith while He destroys American's faith in its own foundations and constitution.
Islam is a Trojan horse filled with boa constrictors. Americans are asleep in the light. How soon we forgot what we said we would never forget.