KILLING “UNBELIEVERS” IS PROFITABLE TO SOME.
Abstract: A religion is any set of ideas that again (re) binds (ligare) people together. Secularism, nationalism, superstitions form religions.
Some religions call for more blood than our civilization can give. The world has shrunk, we are all neighbors, mass destruction lurks in our midst.
Carthage was a superior, extremely innovative civilization. Carthage was annihilated because it indulged in too primitive a religion. Same for the Aztecs. If Carthage had not burned children, while playing music to cover their screams, Carthage would have survived, as Marseilles did.
550 BCE. Carthage, Magna Graecia & Massilia share the Western Med. Rome is an Etruscan dot. Celts all over the north.
Carthage, in red, has, by far, the largest empire. Not shown are her trading colonies, some several thousand kilometers off the map, down the African coast, or in Britain. Greek city states are in blue. Massilia, with her large empire along the north west Mediterranean coast, would be in conflict with Carthage for centuries. It resisted, helped by good relationships with the Celts.
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This perspective on religion from the point of view of survivability has direct applications to life threatening practices brandishing Fundamentalist Islam. In light of the ever easier access to weapons of mass destruction.
Contrarily to the mentally insipid and counterfactual legend, among all too numerous intellectual cowards in the West, who howl their simplicity in unison; the Qur’an is a book that, read literally, ORDERS to kill people on the basis of beliefs that are purely spiritual.
Let say that you insinuate that an analphabet dead 13 centuries ago was deluded, or that god is dog, spelled the wrong way. Millions of so called Muslims will tell everybody that it’s their sacred religious duty to kill you. Can we tolerate this? Can we not denigrate this? Can we afford, not to denigrate this? Who can deny that denigration of such behavior is needed? Denial is at the limit insane: we have the quotes below, and a more extensive version.
Intellectuals cowards don’t need to read. Emoting is their reasoning, howling is their calling, a sort of religion of their own. The way out of the Islamist threat is absolute rigor, putting such people in jail, at every turn, because what they say is that jokes give them a right, a moral duty, to kill, flaunted for all to see. All they say is that joking, or just thinking differently are the worse imaginable acts, worthy of the death penalty. Respecting such terrorists and would be murderers is accepting to submit to their terror. It is to violate the fundamental nature of man, the only hope of man, that is, to think differently.
Around 400 CE, Christianism had transformed the Roman empire into a fascist homicidal theocracy (only the Jews survived, and barely so). Catholic god madness brought military disasters, and the near total military collapse of civilization (Rome was sacked, and the Frankish army on the Rhine could not hold the Vandals, Alans and their allies, with catastrophic consequences for the provisioning of Italy).
So tyrannical Christianism led to the swift destruction of the world’s richest polity. Yet, the fact that Christianism inspired Islam is no excuse. Tyrannical Christianism lasted a bit more than a century (from 363 CE, killing of Julian, until the imperium of the Franks, in 486 CE).
The vilipended movie “The Innocence of Muslims” charges that a professional Christian, the cousin of Muhammad’s wife, created Islam… This enrages Muslims to no end, but it is closer to official Muslim doctrine than to the opposite! Muslims in the streets were just ignorant of that fact. They should read more than just one book.
By 460 CE, the bishops of Gauls had understood that they were not military men, and that they needed military men to fight the Goths. They accepted that the last Roman army left, that of the Pagan Franks, would take over.
After the Franks took control in 486 CE, with the full back up of the imperial government in Constantinople, Christianism became little more than a façade. The Franks extolled the good sides of Christianism, made plenty of little fables with local saints to illustrate the new philosophy of altruism and care, and ignored the rest, the Dark Side of Christianism (although they resurrected it to beat into submission the Anglo-Saxons of northern Germany).
In the following three centuries, the Franks domesticated the Popes in Rome, and brought them back to a sustainable civilization, the effort crowned with the Pope crowning Carlus Magnus as Roman emperor… with the furious accord of Roman authorities in Constantinople, then in a regency!
By 800 CE Jews and Muslims had rights equal to those of Christians and Pagans in the Carolingian empire. The tolerance of Republican Rome was back, reinforced, and extended. Notice that this notion of religious tolerance, most Muslims, in their superstitious monomania, cannot yet get. They do not understand that they are the first victims of their quasi universal lack of tolerance for people, ideas and feelings.
Now, of course, the fundamental truth about the Franks was that they were secularists. They lived in their age, not inside a book of fables. (We know this from all the details; say, when the Viking showed up, the Franks, by then milder, negotiated settlements with them, driving the church crazy, as the church just wanted to exterminate the heathens right away; similarly, the Franks established a tradition of negotiation and co-existence with Muslim settlers.)
How has such a bloodthirsty book, obsessed by burning people, been in control of the minds of the multitude for so long? Well, just contemplate the dictators and theocrats where Islam reign. Where there is a profit, there is a way, such is the ambition of men. In the Middle East, that way to the profit of some was Islam. It fit well with meta traditions of subservience inherited from centuries of hydraulic dictatorships, made ever fiercer, as the area desiccated dramatically.
Some of the Dark operators in the USA believed that Islam could be made into a tool to get oil. It worked. So far. Yet, this is an entirely different subject. Plutocracy knows that theocracy is its most elegant tool. 9/11 was just a warning that such a policy brings drawbacks. Even to the USA.
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THE WEST AS THE BROADEST RELIGION:
When the Gauls were told their religion was outlawed, they shrugged. To the Gauls the Gallic shrug was a higher calling, a more important religion than the Celtic religion. Celtic civilization, with its many superior technologies, kept on going, unfazed.
This illustrates several important points:
1) civilization should not be identified with religion. “Civilization” allows the life of a city. Religion is any mental system interlaced with an emotional system tying (ligare) people together again (re). A religion can be anything, such as a mental scaffolding enabling cannibalism and mental sacrifices (the case of most passed religions). A civilization is much more constrained, because a city is a more complex machine than a cannibal band.
2) there are religions within religions. The Celtic religion was within greater themes which tied up the Gauls together, such as the Gallic shrug, and other characteristic behaviors that riled the Romans up (sometimes with admiration). The very word, “Gaul” comes from the Romans trying their best to ridicule the Celts by comparing them to roosters (Gallus Gallus), who are particularly noisy, colored and self assured volatile (Gallia). it’s fascinating that those traits traversed 30 centuries of history, and are still found in today’s French (who are glorifying in self mockery, as the rooster stays the French national symbol, a bit as if the Muslims took for symbol Muhammad with a bomb in his turban!).
The Roman civilization was a melting pot civilization. So was that of the Gauls. Together they united, making an even bigger melting pot, soon joined by a self conscious third melting pot, that of the Frankish confederation, a German melting pot.
The Franks themselves had proclaimed that they had a civilizational hyperlink to Troy.
The Catholic (“Universal” in Greek) religion was itself a melting pot (no choice, if it wanted to thrive under the roman umbrella).
Thus, by the time the Franks proclaimed the “Renovation” of the Roman empire, half a dozen melting pots were mixed together in a mighty brew. Inside that brew, ideas and emotions everywhere: let the best win!
Human lives used to be brutish and short. They were put together by religions which were brutish and gross. Now lives are longer, sweeter and more complex. We have little choice: thermonuclear bombs, and other Damocles’ swords, keep us honest enough to not be at each others’ throat. Better being honest than dead.
Our religion is now secularism, truly listening to the gods within and the world outside. So what of yesterday’s fables? If they are brutish and gross, they have got to go. 99% of yesteryear’s religion had to go, because, typically, they called to kill people too readily (they also called to not kill them too much, be it only because one needs people to kill people.
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ASTOUNDING CARTHAGE, AHEAD, IN SOME WAYS, BY 20 CENTURIES:
The Thera monster volcano exploded, flooding, burning and ruining the Minoan civilization centered on Crete. New civilizations arose to replace it. Foremost among them, the Phoenicians, based in Tyre. The Phoenicians put the efforts of Mesopotamians and Egyptians together, abstracting and simplifying them. The Phoenicians invented the alphabet. Variants (Tifinagh, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Arabic, Indic alphabets) constitute most scripts in use today. A Phoenician expedition commissioned by a Pharaoh to send an expedition around Africa (in 3 years, circa 650 BCE). Herodotus, who relates the fact, expresses some doubt, because he says that it is impossible that the sun would have been on the right of the Phoenicians ships… Little did the Greek historian understand that such was the case between Port Elizabeth and Cape town, when rounding Africa…
Tyre founded a colony, Carthage. In some ways, Carthage was the new Crete, in other ways, it was terribly flawed, and died from it. An expedition led by Hanno, of no less than 60 ships, carrying 30,000 souls, passed an erupting Mount Cameron, and captured gorillas, further south. Africans exchanged gold, and other rare products, but also salted fish, against Carthaginian trinkets. Other expeditions went north.
Carthage set up colonies, all the way down the African coast. This trade organization lasted centuries, and influenced, no doubt, both west Black Africa, and the Mediterranean. Some democratic habits in West Africa may be traced to those mind opening times, in my opinion (such as the “Sufi” religion of Senegal, with its similarity to Carthaginian practice). Then the Carthaginians sold the goods throughout the Mediterranean. British and African tin, then a very important metal, was imported to the Med, allowing to make bronze (by mixing it with copper). The Carthaginian bred dogs in the Canary islands.
Rome would never fill such an extensive global role in Africa (although Rome traded with China). One had to wait after 1500 CE for enterprising Europeans to fill Carthage’s sails, using this time, Celtic ocean going technology.
Carthaginian ship technology was superb, the world’s best. Although the Celts had ocean going ships, the Carthaginian ships were much faster. Some Carthaginian coins struck in 350 BCE represents the entire Mediterranean, with a large land mass, far to the West in the Atlantic: America?
We know little about Carthage, because it shrouded its trading routes in secrecy and disinformation. But, mostly, we know little about Carthage, because her tormentor and assassin, Rome, did its best to even destroy her memory (memory destruction being a Roman specialty).
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“CARTHAGO DELENDA EST“ [Carthage Is To Be Destroyed!]:
The plutocratic party in Rome finished its discourses, for years, about anything whatsoever with: ‘Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse’ (“Furthermore, (moreover) I consider that Carthage must be destroyed”). It went hand in hand with the nationalistic movement. Still, it does not explain the immense breach of ethics committed with Carthage. That was furnished by Carthage herself. In turn, the crime committed together, the holocaust of Carthage, annihilated by the fire she used to kill the innocent with, tied the Roman together again, in a sort of satanic religion, the triumph of the Dark Side, that devoured Rome itself.
Thus there is lots of morality and philosophy hidden in the sad story.
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WHY & HOW DID ROME DESTROY CARTHAGE?
Carthage, like Rome, had a mixed constitution. Yet Carthage was destroyed by Rome.
Why, and how did that happen? Well, the traditional story is that the Romans were geniuses of engineering, and they copied Carthaginian tech massively and quasi-instantaneously (after they captured a Carthaginian ship, the Romans copied 120 ships in 2 months). In the end, the Romans won at sea, after losing several fleets with dozens of thousands on board of each.
But, mostly, the main reason for Carthage’s destruction was that Rome did not behave well with Carthage. The Romans hated Carthage. That hatred against Carthage was directed to no others, among the many nations Rome conquered.
The Romans stole from the Punic city Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The latter two in direct violation of a peace treaty. Such a breach of honor and treaty was rare with Rome. In their next act the Romans declared war, again, because they just did not like Carthage’s empire in Spain.
In the end, Rome made a holocaust (general burning), of Carthage (146 BCE). Destroying entirely an extremely advanced civilization, all the way down to one book, which the Romans preserved, because that solitary book was an agricultural treaty on how to grow food in Africa. That book fed Rome for six centuries. This is what one reads in history books: a litany of war and destruction.
Why so much hatred on Rome’s part? And how could Rome destroy the senior civilization?
There was a third power left in the Western Mediterranean when this drama started. Massilia. Marseilles, had her own (Greek) mini empire, and, although incorporated by Caesar, Massilia was not destroyed. Rome tolerated other big cities. An example is Alexandria, with its hundreds of thousands of Jews (let alone Greeks and Egyptians): it was pretty much left alone.
Why was Carthage annihilated?
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CARTHAGE LOST BECAUSE ITS RELIGION HAD BEEN TOO BLOODTHIRSTY:
Carthage was much older than Rome, and a great power when Rome was nothing. Carthage drove the Greeks out of the Western Mediterranean (except for it enemy Massilia). Carthage was the head civilization of Africa, its trade network, with colonies extended along much of the west coast of Africa, probably to the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast. The relationships from Morocco to Senegal were extensive.
On the other side of Africa, the Phoenicians’ commerce reached beyond Somalia. However the giant fascist Persian empire more or less enslaved the Phoenicians (as it did the Ionian Greeks). At the battle of Salamis, most of the “Persian” fleet was actually Ionian and Phoenician. This led to some bad blood with the Greeks and gave a pretext for Alexander later to mistreat Tyre (crucifying 2,000, selling 30,000 women and children survivors into slavery).
Carthage lost because of its religion, such is my thesis. The religion gave a pretext and excuse for Rome’s hatred, and it made Carthaginian allies undependable (coerced by Carthaginian cruelty in peacetime, they bolted at the first occasion given by a less bloodthirsty Rome).
The religion of Carthage was so bloodthirsty, that Carthage lost the most important high ground, the moral high ground. So bloodthirsty that, later, many came to doubt the descriptions the victors, the Romans and their associates, made about Carthage’s bloodthirstiness.
However, recent, incontrovertible archeological discoveries, reveal sinister machines. Therein, partially burned remnants of children, up to four year old. The inscriptions below were unequivocal. Yes, Carthage’s religions sacrificed young children.
A wantonly bloody religion loses the high moral ground. Rare are the armies which can lose the high moral ground, real, or perceived, and still win. Even the Mongols, when they built their giant empire, were careful to occupy (what they perceived as) the high moral ground.
Bloody religions have diverse gradations. They are more or less bloody. The Aztecs were more bloody than any other religion of the Americas (there too, there were nuances; the Aztecs were horrified by Spanish torture; however North American Indians held torture in high esteem!).
How does one lose because of a superstitious religion? Three ways contribute:
a) Lost of prestige. In the Bible the Jewish god fulminates that Carthaginians are killing children, but, he acts equivocally “I never asked them to do that!“. Good to know, goddie boy. Killing children did not look good, 23 centuries ago. So Carthage did not look good.
Equivalently, in today’s world, when Muslim sects kill children of other Muslim sects children, a form of human sacrifice, they also lose prestige (see Syria for illustration). Would one want them for neighbors? So why would one help them?
b) Reputation for cruelty. A religion who ask to kill innocent people, just because they are determined to “not believe” is obviously cruel. That is why Christianism was enslaved, fettered, domesticated in Occident. Both the Bible and the Qur’an have calls to kill unbelievers. That sure helped Charlemagne in empire building, and was central to Islam building the greatest empire ever, in a few years.
c) Loss of allies. During Hannibal’s long invasion of Italy, the Latium allies of Rome did not defect. They were satisfied of their contract with Rome. But the Spanish allies of Carthage did defect. In truth what Rome and the Latium had was a secular religion in common, republicanism.
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EPITAPH FOR CARTHAGE:
In the end Carthage reformed, and became more democratic than Rome. Carthage was not militarily dangerous; it controlled nearly nothing anymore, the might of Roma was absolute, and extended from Portugal to Asia. Carthage had just become an idea, and a city full of history, and thus wisdom. And thus an even deadlier enemy of Roman plutocracy.
The Roman Senate fabricated reasons to attack Carthage a third and final time, with the official aim of destroying it. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote is in Obama’s office: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
And it’s not true.
The arc of the moral universe is long, and, sometimes, with great efforts, it can be bent towards justice, and often, it’s too little, too late.
The crimes of Rome vis-à-vis Carthage started early on, when Rome grabbed Sardinia and Corsica, in violation of a Peace treaty. They had to be bent back, but the moral universe has no more soul than the real one. all the soul it has, human beings put it there.
Those Roman crimes exacted a lethal price on Rome: they corrupted her soul, made her believe that Carthage was the problem, when the first problem of Rome was institutionalized inequality (plutocracy). That corruption, in the long run, led to the plutocratic phenomenon running amok, entangled in a fight with the headless military, soon to be appeased by the brainlessness of rabid theocracy.
Carthage’s bloodthirsty, child torturing religion gave Rome the excuse it needed to foster its Dark Side. Suppose a Pakistani made thermonuclear nuke exploded in New York’s harbor. What would happen to “democracy in America”? Dimwits would say:”What?” But, although Carthage existed for centuries before Rome was more than a village, ten miles south of the mighty Etruscan city of Veii, Pakistan, complete with nukes, and rabid Islamism, is pretty much an American creation, and the question is why?
And part of the answer is that assemblies of human minds have more mind that one can think.
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WHEN SECULARISM OVERWHELMS RELIGION FOR ALL TO SEE:
The Spanish held in high esteem both torture and execution. Both concepts are united by the crucifix adorned with the squirming sadomasochist Jesus. Aztecs philosophers pointed out the contradiction: Christ’s was supposedly a religion of love, and human sacrifices were bad, and then the Spaniards brandished torture to death during a human sacrifice, as if they were good things. Spaniards could see the points, so they removed their squirming monkey and its nails, from the crucifix. Thereafter Christian crosses were bare in the New World.
Semites tend to be fanatical about religion, it’s a meta cultural trait (or maybe it’s due to the desert sun, as Camus had it, and a most recent scientific study asserts).
In any case, we see meta cultural Semitic fanaticism appear, when compared to others, say the Celts, and the ancient Greeks, Etruscans and republican Romans. The Romans did sacrifice four prisoners after the enormous defeat at Cannae (87,000 Roman elite soldiers, officers, senators, proconsuls and consuls killed). They were ashamed of that human sacrifice later. Yet, in less desperate times, if Romans did not like what their superstitions told them, they would rough the silliness up.
Once sacred chicken refused to eat before a sea battle with Carthage. A very bad omen. The commanding admiral said: “if they will not eat, let them drink!” He ordered to throw the sacred volatiles overboard, in the sea. There were many such incidents, depicting a Roman pattern of scoffing at religion. Soon Rome was open to nearly all cults (compare with Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Pakistan).
After Rome took control of Gaul, the Celtic religion was purely, and simply, outlawed. An excellent occasion for the Gauls to flaunt a more important religious gesture, the bottom line of a deeper religion: the Gallic shrug. There was never a Celtic cult rebellion. Simply, after the Franks took military control of Gallia and Germania, all Pagan habits were declared to be everlasting Catholic traditions. (Even poor Jesus saw his birthday displaced six months to become part of the Winter Solstice feast, with their cut evergreens, and the Saturnials, with their gift exchange.)
By contrast, the Jews are still anal about their dubious fantasies (although Judaism was derivative, from Mesopotamian and Greek stories and more recent than the Celtic cult).
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REALITIES OF CHRISTIANISM & RELATED ISLAMISM:
Thought crimes occur when texts presenting themselves as real, order to kill others for activities secular law does not recognize as criminal. (The notion of secular law is many millennia old, it goes back to antique Mesopotamia; more recently, it was made explicit by emperor Justinian when he ordered the refurbishing of Roman law, separating clearly the secular from the Christian considerations.)
Christ famously started the demand of killing unbelievers: ” Luke 19:27: “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”
Islamism was invented as a war machine against Rome, and was heavily influenced by Coptic Christianity, at the time in quasi-war with Constantinople (that is, “Rome”).
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WAS MUHAMMAD MORAL BY WESTERN STANDARDS?
Six centuries later an analphabet prone to epilepsy had some hallucinations in the desert, and He asked is a relative what that could mean. The relative was a professional Christian, a monk. The cousin of Muhammad’s wife. The cousin revealed to Muhammad that it was Archangel Gabriel who had been speaking to Muhammad. Thus Islam was born.
I have mentioned this episode, many times, years ago. All learned Muslim should know it. It is recounted in the trailer of the film “Innocence of the Muslims“. Then that movie is depicted as “Islamophobic”, meaning Islamic history, as taught by Muslim scholars, is Islamophobic.
That movie has caused great fury. The film has been presented, to great indignation, as portraying Muhammad as a rapist of little girls, an homosexual, and an assassin.
This maybe allusions to facts known by learned Muslims, among them:
When an assassination attempt was conducted against Muhammad, his relative, and son in law, Ali, got dressed as if he were Muhammad, and laid in Muhammad’s bed (as a decoy).
Muhammad married the daughter of his associate Bakr, Aisha, when she was 6. The marriage was “consummated” when she was 9 years old (9, as in, less than 10).
Thus we can say for the child (pedo) love (philia) Muhammad went all the way. If that drives Muslims crazy, no wonder. They feel, intuitively, that it is hard to justify by modern, that means, secularist, standards.
Muhammad annihilated, among others, an entire Jewish tribe, and was a warrior and raider. He was directly involved in the death of well above 1,000 individuals, sword in hand. Once again, any seriously knowledgeable Muslim has a command of these facts.
The ambassador of the USA, a young and enthusiastic Arab (and French) speaking friend of Libya, was killed by Muslims, for, they claim religious reason. You see, someone else had made a movie. Let me explain the logic therein with two quotes of the Qur’an, two of many, which may be viewed as relevant, even by the dimwitted:
“2:39. But they who disbelieve, and deny Our revelations, such are rightful Companions to the Fire. They will abide therein.” [Qur'an Sura 2, The Cow, Verse 39]
(The quote was copied from the most prominent Muslim website.) Statements such as these are all over the Qur’an, a very short book. Here is another verse, and a few are pasted later, so that readers can penetrate themselves with how much they should respect the Qur’an and those who abide by it.
“4: 89. Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” [Qur'an S4: v89]
Now Bernard Henry Levy, the billionaire “New philosopher“, knew the US ambassador, and called the assassins “imbeciles”.
Two questions:
a) Are people acting according to the Qur’an, “imbeciles“? It seems to be what BHL is saying. The Qur’an is clearly saying that those who disbelieve and deny Islamist Revelations should be put in a fire. The ambassador of the USA may have been judged to be denying the Revelations, and so was put in a fire. What is wrong with that?
b) is it imbecilitic to kill people to become the boss? Are mafiosi imbeciles? Were Stalin, and countless successful tyrants throughout history imbeciles? Was Alexander the Great an imbecile, because he annihilated Thebes and Tyre?
For that matter, Muhammad himself killed well above 1,000 people as he became the Prophet, does that make him an “imbecile”, according to BHL?
Pseudo sophisticated people, and the USA State Department have widely condemned “inflammatory content on the Internet” about Islam, the religion of (eternal) peace. It is a testimony to the powers of ideas, that the State department would complain about virtual flames on the Internet, a few hours after its ambassador in Libya was set aflame by real Muslims firing real rocket propelled grenades. Or is just the government of the USA terrified of enraged Muslims? Many are afraid, so they want to agree desperately with those who terrorize them. They call that wise.
In the eighteenth Century Voltaire, wrote a play “Fanaticism, Or Mahomet the Prophet“. The play was forbidden in Switzerland in 1993, more than two centuries after it was played there. Thus, in a sense religious fundamentalist terror reigns over Switzerland more in the Twenty-First Century than it did, even well before the French revolution.
And so it is, all over.
As to why the world may feel like denigrating the Qur’an, readers are welcome to read it. You read, you judge. You don’t read, you don’t judge. I have read the Qur’an, cover to cover, many times. And in my goodness, in an argument with Muslim Fundamentalists, I complied the violent orders in the Qur’an. They can be consulted at:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/
That essay contains 7,300 words of verses calling to violence, much of it, lethal. And these 7,300 words are revered by Fundamentalist Muslims of the Wahabi type, as orders from god.
Some will say:”Well, that’s racist, you can’t just discriminate on the basis of what’s in a book.” Well, if it were truly a book, it could be burned, no? Truly, it is an embodied superstition.
Secondly criticizing a superstition is not racist. I have no racism against Mexicans, and celebrate the Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayas, and their great achievements. But civilized people, nowadays despise their religion… Although some understand its origins. Similarly, I adore Isfahan, a religious city of incomparable beauty.
We can condemn, on the basis of a book, the beliefs attached to that book. Anybody reasonably literate should. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a book that enabled the killing of 80 millions, although it’s nowhere as explicitly violent as the Qur’an. In “Mein Kampf” Adolf mostly claim that all the problems of Germany come from the French and the Jews. And that the end, unified Germany, justifies the means. If it were,
The Mufti of Jerusalem, a sort of Muslim pope, was violently anti-Jewish, and pro-Nazi. Not only did he meet with Hitler, he gave him troops. Thousands were incorporated in the SS.
The Qur’an, with its unending violent ranting against the Jews, is clearly full of hate crime, and that’s a fact, not an opinion. I complied 7,300 words of hate quotes in the Qur’an, that’s about 10% of the entire book. And the hatred is not just about Jews and Christians. Here is a sample towards the end of it:
Those who consider the Qur’an to be “mere fables” will be branded on the nose. [Qur'an sura 68:verse 15-16.]
Those who do not believe in Allah will be chained up and cast into hell-fire where they will eat filth. 69:30-35
“Lo! it is the fire of hell Eager to roast.” 70:15
Doom is about to fall on all disbelievers. Only worshippers (Muslims) and those who preserve their chastity (except with their wives and slave girls) will be spared from “the fires of hell” that are “eager to roast.” 70:1-30
“Lo! the doom of their Lord is that before which none can feel secure” (except for maybe those who are fearful of it). 70:27-28
Disbelievers will enter hell with frantic with fear, knowing they will be tortured forever by Allah. 70:36, 44
Allah sent Noah to warn people about the painful doom he was planning to send. (It didn’t work out well; Allah sent it anyway.) 71:1
Those that Allah drowned in Noah’s flood were then tortured forever in the Fire. 71:25
Noah asked Allah to drown all the disbelievers. 71:26
The fires of hell will be fueled with the bodies of idolators and unbelievers. They will experience an ever-greater torment. 72:15-17
Those who disobey Allah and his messenger will dwell forever in the fire of hell. 72:23
Allah will take care of the deniers. He will tie them up, burn them in a raging fire, and feed them food that chokes them. 73:11-13
The last day will be a day of anguish for disbelievers. 74:9-10
Those who are stubborn to Allah’s revelations will face a fearful doom. 74:16-17
The fire of hell shrivels humans and spares nothing. 74:27-29
Allah has appointed angels to tend the Fire and has prepared stumbling blocks for those who disbelieve. He sends some people (whoever he wants) astray. 74:31
Those who pay attention to this life and ignore the Hereafter will suffer forever in hell. 75:20-29
The doom is coming soon. 75:35
Allah has prepared chains, manacles, and a raging fire for the disbelievers. 76:4
Non-Muslim who pretend to believe (so they won’t be killed by Muslims) are unclean and will go to hell. 9:95.
After agreeing to send down a table of food from heaven, Jesus warns his disciples that will catch holy hell if they ever stop believing. 5:115
Christians will be burned in the Fire. 5:72
Christians are wrong about the Trinity. For that they will have a painful doom. 5:73
Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 4:89
“Disbelievers will be burned with fire.” [Koran, S. 2:39, v. 90]
“Jews are the greediest of all humankind. They’d like to live 1000 years. But they are going to hell.” [Koran, s. 2: v.96]
“Allah will leave the disbelievers alone for a while, but then he will compel them to the doom of Fire.” [Koran, s. 2:v. 126]
“Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. (But if they desist in their unbelief, then don’t kill them.) [Qur'an s.2:v. 191-2]
So you see, unbelievers, if you die, that’s your fault, you did not “desist“.
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Conclusions and recommendations:
MADNESS, IN GODS AND DOGS ALIKE, HAS NO TREATMENT, BUT ERADICATION:
“I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths,” said Obama, September 15, 2012. Well, maybe the USA does, but the civilization does not. 99.99% of faiths have been annihilated, as understanding progressed. Who wants yesterday’s papers? Only people in the desert their minds try to inhabit. A desert of knowledge, perspectives, wisdom.
Faith can become not just suicidal, but as murderous as imaginable (hundreds of thousands of Nazis prefered deaths to life in a non Nazi world, the most famous example being Goebbels, who assassinated her 6 children; yes, Nazism was a religion!)
Group selection between tribes has driven evolution. Man is unique, becasuse he killed all species that ressembled him. Fascism is an instinct, that makes the tribe as one. And it’s driven by the activity that fascism provides to pleasure centers, in a mechanism honed by 50 million years.
Eradication of a religion, evolution of a civilization. That one treatment, was used so many times before, it’s how civilizations breathe. Christianism in Europe is arguably more alive today with its best values than in the Middle Ages. But the abject terror exerted by the Crucified during the times of the inquisition, and the Crusades, is now not just gone, but viewed as the highest crime.
It’s not because a particular job was not finished, that it can never be finished. Maybe the Middle East could finally imitate what Europe did. That’s what Ataturk did, in turkey, and also Pahlavi, in Iran (the father of the Pahlavi who became a CIA instrument).
Or, for that matter, Peter the Great in Russia. Peter the Great decided to decapitate the obscurantist, funadmentalist church that blocked his reforms and tried coups. Decapitation being too nice, he tore with pincers, and broke on wheels, some of the haughty men of god, pitching in some effort, as one of the excutioneers. Peter heard their pleas to let them live, even after they were all broken up. Sweet music to Peter’s ears. Funny how men of god, given the occasion to duplicate their Lord’s suffering and ascent, are not that keen… Is it all hogwash, even to them?
A few years later, having modernized Russia extensively, Peter the Great pulverized the Swedish army at the battle of Poltava. he marched out of the fortified camp and led the crucial part of the combat himself.
If we want to survive the catastrophes we are heading towards imminently, men of such immense courage and determination s Peter the Great, battling in the name of progress, men who are not afraid of yesterday’s faiths will be needed.
Whether some enjoy murder as they make a fortune that way, be they plutocrats, or theocrats, is irrelevant. The law ought to set society right, by force. Force for the good, is why law exists. law, secular law, ought to apply to theocrats, just as it ought to apply for plutocrats, and other mayhem obsessed sadists. That it does not apply to them too much of the problem nowadays. if larry elison, a californioa plutocrat decideds to save himself a few million of dollars in taxes, he gets away with it. If a local boy steals a pizza slice, he goes to the slammer, for life. And then some are surprised that there is a Greater Depression? Similarly, crazies of god can be seen on TV, threatening to kill people because, well, you read the quotes. Why are they not arrested? Or, at least, fined? Is not threatening to kill someone for no good reason a crime?
Secularism is the default religion. The word “superstition” should be used systematically for those religions which rest on obvious fables.
In the times of weapons of mass destruction, while the biosphere totters on the verge of mass evaporation, from other human activities, God madness ought to be treated more resolutely than madness in dogs. After all, Gods have nukes, dogs don’t.
The preceding ought not to be construed as Islamophobia. There is no fear, no phobia, of Islam, and the main criticism against Islam is made of materials found in the Qur’an. Those who have Islamophobia are those who are afraid to say there are ideas which are not kosher in the Qur’an. And those who are afraid that discussing a book of Islam is racist, as if discussing the dubious fables in the Bible was racist.
Saint Augustine (whom I detest) was aware of some of the critique above, the craziness, the bloodthirstiness in Christianism. Thus Saint Augustine said, wrote for the title of his Book III, Chapter 5 of his City of God: “— It Is A Wretched Slavery Which Takes The Figurative Expressions of Scripture in A Literal Sense. “
Thus, according to Augustine, writing 250 years before the invention of Islam, by some generals and dictators, the hysterical characters we see screaming on TV that they are going to save a prophet and his dog from insult, are living in “A Wretched Slavery”.
In other words, don’t take the sacred texts too seriously. Many Muslim thinkers have followed the same logical drift (but they are less followed, because they are not connected to oil and Wall $treet plutocracy).
The Qur’an was written decades after Muhammad’s death, when written Arabic was not even a complete language (so there is ambiguity about what was exactly meant, all too often). A fanatical war between some in the Prophet’s family and others started just then about whether the Qur’an faithfully respected what Muhammad believed. Aisha, whom Muhammad married at six years of age, and Ali, cousin and son in law, violently disagreed, and went to war. They sort-of-lost. But the hot war is still going on: look at, Syria, Bahrain…
Following the drift of Saint Augustine, many parts of the middle East and Africa “Sufi” variants of Islam were created, precisely to circumvent the fanaticism in the dominant Sunni cult, and the explicit contradictions of Islam with secularism. The Alawites, the Druze, the Assassins, the Ishmaelites, are examples (there are dozens of others). For their own safety most have historically refused to say what they exactly believed in… As the Qur’an has it that unbelievers ought to be killed. This is why one has to be very careful with the situation in Syria. Assad is no doubt terrible, just as there is no doubt much worse waiting in the wings. Just look at what’s in the book they brandish (see above).
The largest Sufi movement comprises the one created in Senegal, somewhat tweaked by the French Republic (after the French secularists and their military realized that those Muslims were precious for their side against racial fascism, the religion embraced by the Prussians). It has now much more than ten million followers, and I approve of it.
So here we are. Some reasonable and influential people, say in Israel, know much of what was written above, for the simple reason that it is the truth. At some point, if Iran persists in the same collision course, Israel will have to try to decapitate the nuclear bomb effort in Iran (as it did in Iraq, the French having had the great idea of embarking in the building a Plutonium reactor there!). It will not be easy, but it is inevitable. And Pakistan is next. That, too, is inevitable. Pakistan actually engaged in a mini war against India recently, while boasting that India would not globalize the conflict as India was afraid of Pakistani nukes (a dumb strategy is there ever was one!)
9/11 was a prick on an elephant, and the elephant got so furious, it gored Iraq, which was, actually… a secularist friend. If and when the tremendous light of man-made thermonuclear fusion is lighted in the name of whom the sacred texts tell us was a mass homicidal pedophile, billions will be enlightened; yes, some religions are not made to share the planet with survival, let alone, progress.
24 centuries ago, the Cynics funded a philosophical movement that assimilated humans to dogs. They would have been amazed by fanatics who claimed to know so much that they spend all the time, killing in the name of god, as if god needed defending, and protecting a long gone analphabetic epileptic (it is known lots of sun has an effect on such people, and that has been traced to genes). Want a better slogan?
There is no dog but dog, and stupidity is its prophet.
This being said dogs, when hungry, and in a pack, are very dangerous. Fighting in Tunisia started after the price of wheat, driven by Goldman Sachs (main instigator), Barclays, JP Morgan and the like, became unaffordable. Such trading, as it is presently done, trades hunger against extreme profits of the few. (There are ways to fix it, starting with lowering leverage and showing the names… As in the past.)
Inside all of us are simple primates who want simple things we need. Around those simple notions we should bind together again: re-ligare. As we can, today, in this age. Such is the wisdom of the ages. Secularism. Secularism: what even baboons understand. Per Omnia Secula Seculorum: for all ages of ages.
I was brought up in the desert, in a sacred city. My first memories are of the local oasis. The beauty of the sparkling stars in the desert as the red dusk sinks in the bluest night still seize my heart. I can never wait to go back.
The important traditions of the desert are deeper, older, and much more respectable than Islam. They do not normalize deviance (to use a NASA concept). Some are congealed into proverbs. Here is a famous one, that rocked my childhood: “Dogs bark, the caravan passes on through.” The crazed men of god are nothing more, and ought to be treated as nothing more, than barking dogs. Except when they bite. Of course. Then they should be disposed off. It seems Obama does this very well. Yet, dogs are not a case where the Dark Side is required. So don’t bomb the children, whatever you do. make no mistake: roasting the children, when there clearly was another way, is what did Carthage in.
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Patrice Ayme
