Do you respect the Aztecs’ religion? No. Because that religion, that system of thought, called to kill adults. 10,000 religions have been outlawed and extinguished. It’s called progress, it represents civilization advancing. Why? Because those religions were too primitive, too lethal, too tied up with predatory elites. Here is an order from a religion which ought to outlawed:“slay the idolaters wherever you find them...”
Those to be assassinated include small children, who were deliberately targeted in Nice, France, July 2016, after they watched fireworks. (By the way, raw footage shown on French TV live was later censored, including on social networks, worldwide; I see such censorship as a collaboration with terrorism. Why to hide the atrocious assassination of toddlers? By love of the religion which ordered them killed? It is the same mindset as hiding Auschwitz.)
To this day, in 2016, university professors of that ideology declare that such orders to kill should be taken literally (and they are employed to say that). Indeed that religion has engaged in thousands of deadly attacks, worldwide, by following the mood that “idolaters” should be killed. In 2015, ‘Radical’ Islam killed, officially, 28,000 people (a few years earlier it was only an average of 3,000 a year).
This Is Not Even 1% Of The Worst Violence In Islamist “Holy” Texts. Imposing That Violence Is The Greatest Success Of Islam. Enjoy. Idiots Claim They Don’t See The Connection Between These Orders, And the Blight Islam Visits On the World For 13 Centuries.
A Religion Is Most Significant In What It Says Is Most Significant. What’s Most Significant Than Killing People? Especially For No Good Reason?
How could any activity presenting such statements as orders from a Deity to be rigorously obeyed, as it is basically the universe itself, be viewed any differently from a hate crime of the maximally hating and lethal type?
Any religion ordering to kill other people on the ground not of what they did, but of who they were at birth, is clearly a religion ordering and inducing human sacrifices.
Not to think so is not just an ethical failure, it is a logical failure.
The Romans, during Republican times, outlawed all religions requiring, or inducing, human sacrifices.
The Truck Was Finally Stopped By Police. Truck Was Rented 3 Days Prior. Bodies Everywhere: Everything To Do With Islam: The Martyr Will Go To the Right Of Allah, For Killing All The Little Children Of Idolaters
How could any activity presenting such statements as orders from a Deity to be rigorously obeyed, as it is basically the universe itself, be viewed any differently from a hate crime of the maximally hating and lethal type?
Not to think so is not just an ethical failure, it is a logical failure.
So say it is racist to view such orders to kill for what they are, orders to kill. Once again, such people obviously suffered previously major mental dysfunction..
I was brought up in countries where forms of very modern Islams were practiced. Some, such as types of Sufism long practiced in Senegal, viewed some of the founders as more important than Muhammad, the initial prophet of Islam. This is a statement of fact, and a historical fact well-known for generations. However, nowadays, just saying that would get you killed in many parts.
These forms of very advanced Islam have been annihilated by Literal, Salafist Islam. And you know what?
This replacement of advanced Islam by backwards, literal Islam, was, is OK, with the so-called “leaders of the West”. Here by leadership I mean more than the corrupt politicians, who are intrinsically corrupt, per the way they get where they are, and the prerogatives they are endowed with, and consider natural and moral to have (it’s not).
Laws of peace are not sufficient to deal with a State of war. Clearly, the secret services and police should be given full latitude, as they would be given when fighting Nazism. Actually Hitler was heavily inspired by Islam, he said it himself, so here, in Islam, we are confronted with the mothership.
Donald Trump suggested to block any new Muslim entering the USA. This will not help with the 10,000 (or so) Frenchmen who have embraced Islam full metal jacket. What to do with them? The idea had been to watch them. But one needs four of five times that number to watch them. So? Round them up. Put them in concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in Deutsch).
When Nazism was destroyed, millions of soldiers Nazism gave orders to, where imprisoned. In camps. For years. There they could meditate, and see the error of their ways. In the URSS, most of them did not come back.
Maybe it is time to realize we are in a world war, the West is, against hard-core Islam, for more than 13 centuries. It’s time to finish it, because it is increasingly easier to find weapons of mass destruction. Trump is upset that Obama refuses to use the term “radical Islam terror” (radical, as in “root”).
***
The bottom line is that hard-core Islam got support from the leaders of the West since the 1930’s:
First the American oil men, used Islam as an instrument… to become richer and more powerful: we give you money, you put it back on Wall Street, you enforce terror with Literal (Salafist) Islam. This was enshrined by the government of the USA in 1945, in the Great Bitter Lake conspiracy.
World War Two had made the USA, and its oilmen, much more powerful. That’s where the money was. So “philosophers” such as De Beauvoir and Sartre who had just ingratiated themselves with the Nazis (Beauvoir was literally employed by them), fell in love with all things Islamist. When the FNL in Algeria (supposedly fighting for “liberation” whatever that meant) fought the “French”, it ordered its soldiers to torture to death little French children, especially little girls.
When the depressed Muslim charged with his truck, for two kilometers through the celebrating crowd full of small children who had watched the fireworks, it was more of the same. The despicable Sartre thought that this sort of behavior was great… As long as it happened far away, for example Algeria.
Sartre followed a tradition of bloody violence launched by Karl Marx, and very different from that of the French Member of Parliament Proudhon (Proudhon is famous for his youthful, amusing tweet: “La propriete’ c’est le vol!”, property is theft). Proudhon confronted Marx to his face. Proudhon thought that philosophical precision is of the essence.
It is. Islam is at war with democracy and the West, ever since the early Seventh Century. Muhammad himself said so.
Let me give a related example. In a Crusade, which overall, lasted around a century, the Catholic religion annihilated the Cathars, and all their works. One million dead. To this day, the word “Heresy” is used to qualify Catharism. (Heresy means:’to choose’; for the Catholic religion, Salafist version, to ‘choose’ was a capital crime. Just as in Salafist Islam today.)
However, Catharism was completely innocuous. Cathars lived minimally. Catholicism, at the time was immensely powerful and fanatically cruel, trying its best to bury civilization, and replace it by itself. In the end, Catholicism did not bury civilization, because the states were more powerful:
***
I was asked the following question by a PhD armed lawyer:
How Did We Get Rid Of Rabid Christianism?
Answer: In one sentence: Christianism was always subordinated to the Roman State, and its descendant states. When the State had no more use for Christianism, it smothered it. It is a long tale, spread over 20 centuries. It started with the mythical Jesus separating Church and State, and Nero conveniently accusing the Christians to have burned Rome. A recent milepost was the definitive nationalization of all Judeo–Christian Temples-Churches by the French state in 1905 (they lease them back).
***
Whereas Islam was the religion of a caravan raider, who then founded a state:
This is the history of the first prophet of Islam, in a nutshell. Thus, in Islam, the religion is the state. It is a completely different situation from Chrisitianism, then, pointed out my PhD lawyer. Indeed. And the solution is where it was left when the huge Roman army got annihilated in Syria by the tiny Arab army. It can only be a military solution. That’s always how bandits were dealt with.
***
Why do nuts balls embrace Islam and go kill people?
Because people who are really very upset want to kill other people, any other people. The sacred writings of Islam say that, as long as these people are not believers, killing them will bring the “martyr” (that’s the killer), to the “right of Allah”. Then the killers and Allah will have a party until Judgment Day (that’s after killing all the Jews). The martyrs/assassins will not be judged, but go straight to Paradise.
***
Islam Derangement Syndrome:
Anybody taking apparently seriously the writings of Islam should be viewed with IDS, Islam Derangement Syndrome, and be put in a psychiatric hospital. OK, right, there are a lot of them, hence the idea of concentration camps. Evaluations are that as many as half a million violent Jihadists with IDS exist. Yes, 500,000.
***
Use The Military To Re-Establish SECULAR LAW:
Too much Islam means too much of a fascist, dictatorial approach to all of society, only resolvable through even stronger military solution. Therefore I approve somewhat the attempted coup in Turkey. Erdogan has been chopping down secularism as much as he could get away with.
We have a precedent: the military coup which did not happen against Hitler. Unfortunately. (And of this attempted coup, I have talked a lot, in many essays.).
Fascists like Erdogan, or Hitler, could use democracy against itself. Only military means allow to get out of such a vicious spiral. Erdogan, Turkish Islamizing president, has been using Islam to increase his power. It came back to bite him, and others, in more ways than one.
Arguably, Islam is more into human sacrifices than the Aztec religion.
Need I say more?
Disrespecting yesterday’s religions is how humanity grows up. Time to grow up, people, and get rid of the same old same old, blood bath.
The Aztecs had a serious protein problem (caused by their location, singularly deprived in protein source). There was their excuse. It is regrettable they were dispatched so fast. They had much to say, which the all too Catholic Conquistadores deliberately annihilated.
The excuses for Islam are many. Some small, some big, some bad, some good. But the bottom line is that Islam is neither compatible with democracy or civilization, looking forward, at least if interpreted literally. So it should be made completely unlawful, in its literal form. To launch the outlawing process, philosophers have to start with pointing out that, globally, literal Islam is not a system of thought worth our respect. Actually, quite the opposite. Although some points can be saved (I don’t drink alcohol, at all), overall, the most significant parts have to be jettisoned. ASAP.
Patrice Ayme’
Tags: Aztecs, Human Sacrifices, Islamism, Qur'an, Systems of Thought, Turkey Coup
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
July 16, 2016 at 2:28 am |
Your post did not cover the horrible failure/incompetence of the French.There is no excuse this time.
First step is to recognize/accept one’s failure/mediocrity. The last couple years the French handled it very poorly.
Now the French PM even suggesting France has to “live” with terrorism. Give up / white flag ? F*ing pussie culture.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 2:53 am |
France is the nation with the greatest military experience on Earth, so I can understand your rage. In 1996, six Islamist terrorists tried to crash a jumbo jet on Paris, instead they all ended up dead, all passengers safe. Still the US was very surprised when the same trick was used five years later in the USA.
Attacks by vehicles have proven hard to prevent, even in Israel, where there have been several. The pussy culture is of course rather on this side of the Atlantic, as the French Republic, not the USA, declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939. The USA were too busy collaborating with Hitler to notice? Not really: the USA took sanctions against Britain and France for attacking Hitler. On December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war TO the USA. I hope you know how to spell: ignominy, and that you are familiar with the concept.
The US exists only because of France. Do you regret that? Is it a raw wound for you? Would you have preferred to keep on kneeling for King George III? Sounds like it!
😉
In case you did not notice, the essay was NOT about security measures….
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 4:26 am |
Free yourself from the hate, pussycat! Or is it pussyscat?
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 3:14 pm |
Not everybody is as hateful and stupid as you seem to be. From the Wall Street Journal:
Texas Man, Young Son Killed in Attacks in Nice
After Attack in Nice, Police in U.S. Cities Are on Alert
New York City police commissioner says ‘no specific, credible threat’
New York police officers with the antiterrorism unit stand guard outside the French consulate.
By PERVAIZ SHALLWANI and THOMAS MACMILLAN
Updated July 15, 2016 4:57 p.m. ET
Many police agencies around the U.S. moved into a heightened alert mode Friday, deploying officers to crowded areas that could be prime targets and combing through the details of Thursday’s attack in Nice, France, to prepare for the possibility of similar threats.
Ten children and adolescents were among 84 people killed on the waterfront in Nice, when a Tunisian who lived there intentionally drove a heavy truck through crowds of people until he was shot dead by police.
In response, New York police put their counterterrorism apparatus into motion moments after the attack, deploying units of officers to protect key sites out of an abundance of caution. A detective who is assigned to liaise with Interpol, an organization that coordinates information sharing among police forces around the world, was dispatched to the crime scene in Nice, officials said.
“We are continuing to significantly try to ramp up our first line of defense…which is intelligence gathering,” New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton said. Mr. Bratton said the city has “no specific, credible threat,” but officers were deployed to guard key sites, including buildings housing French institutions, such as the French consulate, as well as Times Square.
Police train for vehicle attacks and plan for them at events, including rallies and parades, officials said. “Certainly this type of assault has been factored” in how police prepare for possible threats to New York, Mr. Bratton said. “There will be a heightened sense of awareness of this,” he added, noting his grim outlook about the possibility of future attacks. “There is a reality of our lives today,” he said. “There’s no ability to prevent everything…because any place is a potential target for the form of terrorism that we’re seeing.”
Across the region, officials stepped up police presence. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he had “directed state law-enforcement officials to step up security at high-profile locations around the state, including our airports, bridges, tunnels and mass-transit systems.”
A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said airports, including John F. Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International, have been on heightened alert since the attack in Istanbul in June.
In Boston, the police department tweeted that the office is “steadily monitoring the unfolding situation” in Nice. A spokeswoman said the department has increased the visibility of officers patrolling the city, “making sure they’re in the community and seen.”
In Chicago, officers are in a state of heightened security, including mandatory two-officer cars, extra patrols and all officers in uniform, the city’s police department said in a statement, noting it was reacting to recent events in both Nice and Dallas, where a gunman ambushed officers last week, killing five of them during a march downtown against police brutality.
“We’ve been in communication with federal partners, and there is no current threat or intelligence against Chicago,” the statement said.
A Miami Police Department spokeswoman said … Officers will remain on alert in the wake of the Nice attack, she said. A spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department said there have been no articulated threats against Baltimore, but that the city will remain vigilant in the wake of the Nice attack.
“Once something like this happens, we’ll get information on how it went down and what tactics were used, and assess whether we are vulnerable and how we can adjust,” said Rob Pedregon, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Airport Police, which patrols the Los Angeles International Airport and two other airports in the area. “We are constantly assessing information that is coming to us,” he said, adding that the airport police aren’t on heightened alert…
New York City in the past year has added to its antiterror forces, designating more than 1,800 officers to a unit specifically equipped and trained to deal with attacks. The unit was created in response to the January 2015 attacks in Paris, after two brothers claiming allegiance to the terrorist organization al Qaeda gunned down 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The NYPD learned of the Nice attack around 5:13 p.m. Thursday, and began taking steps to determine if it was a terror attack, according to John Miller, the head of counterterrorism and intelligence.
By 5:37, police had determined that it was likely an act of terrorism and immediately contacted police stationed overseas in Europe and also started looking at what Bastille Day celebrations were going on in the city, deploying units to those sites along with key locations, he said.
“We have been looking at and considering the use of vehicles as a weapon for some time,” Mr. Miller said, adding that an issue of al Qaeda’s English-language magazine Inspire had a large feature showing a pickup truck “under the headline ‘The Ultimate Mowing Machine.’”
“The NYPD owns tons and tons of concrete block that we will assemble to block vehicles from charging at any particular event,” he said.
Police have developed plans to use its fleet of vehicles to create a makeshift blockade comprised of its own cars and possibly other city vehicles, including sanitation trucks, Mr. Miller said.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 2:43 am |
It is bizarre that so many are in denial about the simple facts.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 2:44 am |
As I explained it, it’s cause by greed. First greed of the US oilmen and others who were anxious to control oil, from Algeria, to Arabia, to Iran, and even Indonesia.
Second the greed of generations of philosophers, sociologists, economists, political “scientists”, and other university types who were anxious to please oilmen, Wall Street, potentates and the puppet politicians they paid. This is true even, and especially for, French “philosophers” of the 1950’s such as Vichy De Beauvoir, more or less Nazi Sartre (depending upon the predominant wind) etc.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 4:24 am |
Great essay, great ideas. How can all this preaching of death and menace be tolerated? It baffles the mind. Why can’t anti hate laws be enforced? What’s wrong with us?
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 11:22 am |
Patrice,
It seems much of human actions are the effects of what they believe, so simply reacting to the effect doesn’t really solve the deeper issues.
Our minds are reductionistic and so we do like the simple, straightforward solution and answer, not the larger context and so to go directly to the heart of the fallacy, the conceptual flaw of monotheism is an absolute is not an ideal.
While they are both very distilled concepts, the absolute would be the raw essence from which reality rises. While an ideal would be the epitome of desire and perfection.
So what people desire an absolute, it isn’t the perfect society, but a return tot he most elemental state.
Having raised the issues before, I’ll leave that at that, so just pointing out that confronting violence with violence, the most committed tend to have an advantage. The advantage of the west is its diversity and adaptability, not its ability to inspire violence. Obsession with violence requires extreme deprivation to really bring forth.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 1:16 pm |
In the orders to kill of the Qur’an, “monotheism” is not the problem. The orders to kill are. Specifics are. There are plenty of people who got inspired in the most admirable fashion to do good, and higher… from monotheism.
The specifics is that what is now a long tradition (at least 150 years old) has claimed the specific orders to kill could be swept under the rug, whereas they are the very forefront of the violence. For example, the following essay, made of a compendium of the Qur’an is censored by many search engines:
That sort of censorship is what has fed the Islamist blight.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 4:47 pm |
Keep in mind the great split in Islam, between Sunnis and Shiites, is simply whether authority is hereditary, or institutional. A theology based on the absolute can’t even deal with that basic of a dichotomy. So there are any number of ways it is profoundly irrational, but to simply focus on the resulting violence and insist that violence is the only effective response, is to fall to the most barbaric level yourself.
You are not going to kill it that way. You have to show why it does open the gates of hell, not just rush through them yourself.
The problem for knowledge is it expands and this creates diversity and divergence. Whereas, if you want convergence of the broader society, you have to go to more basic common denominators. This can lead to tribes, families, nationalisms, religions and other cultural forms.
So to simply say another religion is violent and illiterate is simply to attack someone else’s culture, rather than deeply analyzing why it is the way it is. One may as well say Italians are all two steps from the mafia, or Germans are only one or two generations from Nazis, or Englishmen are all crude colonizers. You might have a point, but does it actually create a better situation?
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:05 am |
Just look at the quotes. I am quoting the Qur’an, learn to read, instead of going into weird interpretations. The Qur’an is common to Shiites and Sunis.
Where do I go through the gates of hell? Stupid stuff.
Culture and superstition are different notions. Hahaha… Learn. By quoting the Qur’an I am NOT attacking Muslims.
Just the opposite. The racists are those who say Islam, and its murderous Qur’an, are good for Muslims. And that it is all the culture they have. Believe me, I have lived in 6 Muslim countries, and the cultures, although very strong have less to do with Islam than meet the eye.
You have no idea how ridiculous you sound. Turns out that today I spent 6 hours with PRACTICING Muslim FRIENDS. Male and female. And no one else, no Christian, no Atheist, nobody to tell me I was through the gates of hell, and a barbarian, as you just did. Only Muslim friends, get it? And I did not lie a second. I said it as it is. Actually they are much more careful about Islam than they used to be. Something in the air, I guess.
But my Muslim friends know I don’t BS them in any way, and that I am zero racist, big time.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 11:19 am
Patrice,
I’m not going to start a fight over it, I’m just making the observation that monotheism conflates two very distinct concepts, the absolute and the ideal. Since it seems like trying to explain why this is an explosive mix doesn’t seem to register, I’ll drop the subject.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 11:58 am
The explosive confrontation of the “ideal” with the “absolute” was answered separately, after I finished half dying from inextinguishable laughter…
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:42 am |
To say Patrice did not analyze deeply what’s going on with Islam is beyond grotesque. It shows that you belong to the 70% who only read the headlines.
It’ s also condescending to Muslims, a form of racism, as Patrice said. Look at it that way: suppose someone say they don’t like liberty equality fraternity. Is that sayin the French are the mafia? But that’s just how you mix it up.
This sort of racism against Muslims is exactly what Patrice has condemned
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Indeed. Unrestrained admiration for “”””Islam”””” (meaning de facto Wahhabism and Salafism) is clearly very effective racism.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 1:37 pm |
Picard578
July 16, 2016 at 7:28 am
Agreed. Military can serve as useful insurance against crazies coming into power. Which means that Islamists will also try to Islamize military, so that it helps them take over the West.
Apparently the coup has failed…
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 1:50 pm |
July 16, 2016 at 12:52 pm
“Use The Military To Re-Establish SECULAR LAW:
Too much Islam means too much of a fascist, dictatorial approach to all of society, only resolvable through even stronger military solution. Therefore I approve 100% of the attempted coup in Turkey.”
-100% agree. Egypt managed to survive fundamentalism that way. Now Al Sissi is the only leader from the ‘Islamic crescent’ who really fight against Islam fundamentalism (not against Islam as a faith but as a political, legal, cultural, economical, educational institution).
“Apparently the coup has failed…”
-Sadly, it did. It has to be noted that Erdogan was aware of the situation and was planning a purge inside the army, as he had done in the medias and other strategic institutions (including his own government). So the planned coup probably came both too late and too soon, i.e not yet prepared enough and with enough backing, but in a situation where it would not be able to happen later.
Erdogan has suddenly taken a 90° turn recently (apologies to Russie, revived relationship toward Israel, communication of Turkey’s will of normalised relationship with Syria and Irak…), it’s pretty obvious something was on the verge of happening and he knew it. Rebels on their side felt they had to act now or never.
The worst thing in this failure is now the dictator appears as the defender of democracy, even though he’s consistently trying to remove it, which he argue is legitimate because of his democratic power… Again it reminds of the Egyptian scenario with muslim brotherhood, and it underlines once again democracy’s paradox, as an ideology intrinsically allowing it’s own removal.
“Military can serve as useful insurance against crazies coming into power. Which means that Islamists will also try to Islamize military, so that it helps them take over the West.”
-True. And not only in Arab countries. Foreign armies are one of the priority targets of islam colonisation. Some strong and well organised cells have already been observed, especially in Germany, but also in Belgium, France, Spain and UK at least.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 1:51 pm |
Vyse: True, posing as a victim is one of Erdogan’s specialties. The dictator had cleaned the army, Stalin style, earlier. In the case of Stalin, it worked very well. Even when the military and its head, marshal Georgy Zhukov, had immense power in 1945, they did not dare make a coup.
I have no problem with Sissi. It was that, or letting the Muslim Brotherhood in increasing control, with gigantic consequences of the nefarious type, all over. The problem is that Islam as a faith is not tolerable, as is. At least as is, Wahhabi, Salafist, Literal, historical style.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 6:13 pm |
“Do you respect the Aztecs’ religion? No. Because that religion, that system of thought, called to kill adults.”
The secular westernised system of thought has killed millions of adults. Should we respect that? A system of thought that depends on continued expansion and exploitation to feed it’s rich and destroys any species that gets in its way.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 9:31 pm |
I think Patrice makes a strong distinction between secularism and superstition. Superstition is twisted, secularism is a sort of physics.
Physics is no ideology.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:10 am |
Secularism is the common denominator of reality.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 3:59 pm |
Secular is separate/distinct. Its purpose is an antidote to the monolithic intent of monotheism.
The insight of monotheism is that everything is connected, but it naturally mutates into the assumption that everything is one entity. Especially when translated by a priesthood/elite seeking to validate their political authority.
It is understanding such basic distinctions as between bottom up interconnections and top down singular units is why religion is long overdue for the sort of conceptual overview that philosophy should provide, but fails.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 1:56 am |
I know what “secular” is, not what “Westernized” is. Most of the basics of the “West”, in the last 17 centuries, was invented by the Franks, or thereabout. Including most of British Parliamentary democracy… “Secular” is the opposite of “superstitious”. OK, in Europe the distinction used to be between “Church” and “secular arm” (see latest essay, today). “Secular” means up to date common sense, firmly grounded, nothing superstitious about it.
Feeding the rich? Was not that much the case when America, say, got started. The Roman Republic had an absolute limit on wealth, so we can imitate this now. Limiting wealth absolutely was implemented by several “western” regimes, sometimes for centuries. Sparta used iron bars, refusing gold deliberately.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 12:56 pm |
Presumably you agree that climate change is the biggest threat to not just human species, but life on earth in general? And which society is using the most fossil fuels, the most energy ,destroying the most other species?
Looking at it from a planetary point of view, a tribe of 7th century medievalist humans is far better for the earth as a whole than 21st century Westerners, isn’t it? Not that I’m suggesting Islamists care for the environment of course, just that I believe we are part of a larger system and many of our humanist ideals are as unreal as angels and demons.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 6:24 pm |
Well, using the word “Muslims” is inappropriate for an Atheist, because the concept of “Muslim” is a matter of ISLAMIST debate. Thus, using “Muslim” (then, implicitly, who is, who is not, who was, and is not anymore, so should be killed, etc.) is to convert, philosophically to the core debate in Islam.
I have known plenty, and do know plenty of very nice Muslims (some even partisans of Erdogan!) And I am most amused by the Qur’an. However, that precisely enable me to observe it is a hate book, unfriendly to civilization.
The achievements of “Muslims” during the Middle Ages are neither here, nor there, as Islam had just acquired control of the world’s largest empire. Anybody living in (most of the) richest part of the world had to be a Muslim (many of the great scholars were either Judeo-Christian, or recently converted, ran into very heavy trouble for lack of faith, and got killed, etc. I don’t know of any who were Arabs…) Moreover, some of said achievements were transmitted through the Islamist empire, and were made somewhere else. Example: “Arabic” numerals, which were truly (Greco-)Indian…
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 6:25 pm |
Picard578 said
July 16, 2016 at 4:15 pm
Actually, most “Arab” or “Muslim” achievements were either made by non-Muslims, recent converts to Islam, or were transmitted via Muslim countries from one non-Muslim area to another. Islam by its nature is against science – if it is contrary to Muslim holy texts, it should be destroyed. Concept of zero and “Arabic numerals” were taken from India, as were algebra and geometry (both Hindu advances). When an astronomer Taqi ad-Din constructed a great observatory in the freshly consquered Istanbul in 1577., Muslim clerics convinced the sultan do demolish it in 1580. Islam is inherently anti-intellectual, totalitarian ideology.
And “I have known plenty, and do know plenty of very nice Muslims” has little relation to question about Islam itself. Humans are hugely adaptable, and minority will typically adapt to majority. If those same people were in Muslim-majority area, it is possible they would be too busy cutting off heads to make friends. Among my own friends, I had neonazis, communists, liberals, anarchists… all of them genuinely nice people.
LikeLike
July 16, 2016 at 6:30 pm |
Indeed. People are people, Abrahamism, Judeo-Christianism, Islam are systems of thought. People and systems of ideas are completely different notions. This is that meta-notion which seems to completely elude those who equate racism and criticizing systems of thought. Lower intelligence is characterized by less capability to go meta.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 3:08 am |
Quandary of the day: I quote the Qur’an. Does that make me a racist? According to idiots, it does.
LikeLike
July 23, 2016 at 4:30 pm |
“I quote the Qur’an. Does that make me a racist? ”
No, of course not. However, don’t expect the Qur’an to have any real answers to the tragedies unfolding in the world today. Instead, try some of the many books and articles that clearly show the increase in mental health issues that accompanies the rise of neo-liberalism. Or how those who live in a foreign culture always suffer worse mental health. Globalisation is stirring up the hornets nest. Local problemc become global.
Or even Freuds “Civilisation And Its Discontents”. The benefits of civilization are not spread evenly, all civilisations have some leading miserable lives to provide the surplus for a few to live in luxury, free from having to do any work at all. Rising inequality, looming environmental disaster, it’s not just religious fanatics who are very disatisfied with the outlook for world.
Perhaps humanity is a failed, flawed species heading for extinction. The “glories” of civilisations are self-referential, circular arguments. Nothing else in the universe cares about any of it, dots on a page splashes on a canvas, documenting how ill at ease we are.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 11:55 am |
Brodix: You use your own undefined metaphysics, the “absolute and the ideal” in the world’s simplest concrete situation: religious books (Qur’an, Hadith, etc.) which order to kill unbelievers. That’s the simplest situation of deadly threat, which both repel potential victims, and attract potential murderers, by legitimizing them. In particular, further incitements are that those who kill in the name of Allah will “sit on His right”, and enjoy 72 virgins, “fresh boys”, “wine, milk, honey and flowing streams”…. while awaiting Final Judgment, which they won’t be submitted to, as they will go to Paradise, direct.
So you, and millions of the clueless, including French and US “authorities” are trying to turn into a metaphysical issue, what is even more simple than Nazism. Namely the tribal will to kill, excused by the mass delusion of a crowd about what makes the universe tick.
And the fact you can’t handle “explosive mix” makes me sneer: I was actually bombed once, an IED was thrown on me, by European fascists (the sort of people you expect to be bombing… Muslims). It destroyed a gentleman, a guitar player a foot in front of me.
A philosophy which can’t take explosions is not worth having.
Final point: you implicitly equate Abrahamism with “monotheism”. Many experts on other religions would disagree with that self serving West European perspective. Many Indians, in particular, would insist that their religions is monotheistic too. While Muslims sneer at the three gods of the Trinity…
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 12:59 pm |
Patrice, those words have always been in the Koran, yes? They were there 30 years ago, 50 years ago. Can you explain to this ignorant fool why the world was not seeing the incidents of Islamist terrorism it is seeing today?
It seems simple logic to me, that if A causes B directly and solely, then as A changes, so will B.If the words of the Koran are the sole cause of Muslim terrorism, (A), then B would be constant through history. It clearly isn’t, so there must be some other factors involved. What are those factors?
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:20 pm |
hazxan,
For its first 700 years, Islam was one of the most successful political and social movements in history. Why? Logically because it had such singular focus and a very effective carrot and stick to offer to what were still largely tribal peoples; Join us in the worship of the one and only God, or die.
Though as the Greeks used to say, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, first they make lucky.”
Once the Islamic wave crested, it coasted along for the next 700 hundred years, as the diversity of the west gradually evolved more dynamic, cooperative/competitive systems, not based on top down absolutisms.
So now that Islam is failed to keep up, its only resort is to fall back to the glory days and the methods that worked a 1000 years ago.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 3:39 pm |
Patrice said the Arab Caliphate was destroyed in 750 CE, when replaced by the Iranians with Arab figurehead. So that means 100 years of military expansion, and not even that.
Invasions then became much harder, they had to try several times for Indonesia and we’re progressively pushed out of ‘Muslim lake Mediterranean’ by the French, and then out of rest of Spain by Spaniards
Success of Islam is that of a war religion, that’ s why Turks adopted it to conquer Turkey
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 3:29 pm |
@ Hazxan: Patrice mentioned time and time again that the modern resurgence of Islam was a conspiracy of US oil men, and other US plutocrats
She calls that the Great Bitter Lake Conspiracy, after the place where it was made official. She has written about this for years. And the CIA coup in Iran Obama presented excuses about. The CIA used Khomeini for that.
I think the Nazis, another US tool, were also involved, and helped with Egypt Muslim Brotherhood. Certainly Hitler got help from them and Grand Mufti.
Then she said all this was rewritten, covered-up as a mighty anticolonial struggle by professional anticolianist ‘pseudo philosophers’ like Sartre. Actually operating as agents of US imperialism.
LikeLike
July 19, 2016 at 9:27 pm |
Hazxan,
Wouldn’t it make more sense to assume some dynamic process, like an emotional gravitational attraction, which pulls certain sorts of people, say those more motivated by raw power than social inclusion and connection, into the same sorts of political vortices?
And as such, much deeper and more powerful than any human based conspiracy.
Yet balancing that are the light radiating back out and filling the void being cleared of civil structures, as they collapse into these self fulfilling holes.
People are linear, but nature is cyclical.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 7:47 am
Human character is NOT linear. It is prone to obsessions, panic and explosions. Each ot them logical in their own way.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 8:58 am
Which is why emotions are so much deeper than reason.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 9:52 pm
Reason leads to emotions reason itself did not foresee.
LikeLike
July 21, 2016 at 1:58 am
Reason is a small boat on a sea of emotion. Some just don’t look outside of it.
It is like a picture taken of a sunset. Seemingly clear, but only the smallest fraction of the reality.
LikeLike
July 23, 2016 at 4:37 pm
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to assume some dynamic process, like an emotional gravitational attraction”
Lets hope so! Even though what you’re describing, a higher level of ordering than our species, up there, sounds a bit like that “God” fellow..
I believe human’s need a meaning (well, most humans…decades of observing lead me to believe that we are not all similarly conscious) – and the abandonment of trraditional “Gods” has just made a void that is filled with other things…political idols, work as virtue, economic systems, greed and selfishness etc.
LikeLike
July 23, 2016 at 5:06 pm
hazxan,
A reply below, as the thread gets too compressed.
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 2:19 am |
“A philosophy which can’t take explosions is not worth having.’
A religion which worships the absolute is worshipping the abyss. Maybe it makes me a weakling to point this out, but at least I’m not the idiot doing it and thinking it makes me holy.
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 1:17 pm |
What makes religious superstitions absolute, is their denial, and overruling of reality. Hence the concept of “super-stition”.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:08 pm |
Patrice,
An absolute would be a pure, unadulterated state, while an ideal would be an epitome of form.
An absolute state would be a raw essence, without any distinctions that would be impurities. Such as absolute zero.
If you chose as your ideal/epitome of form, an absolute state, it can have none of the diversity and distinction that is essential to complex life forms.
Yes, Islam would sneer at the trinity, because that is an instinctive effort to give this conceptual black hole some form. Even if it is just an allegory for past, present and future.
Islam is the most doctrinaire and pure form of monotheism, as the Judaic deity is still a tribal god with ego issues.
Consequently Islam has no organic form to stop it spiraling into a paternalistic absolutism.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 2:24 pm |
Swirling around a conceptual black hole…
Like hajis circling that black rock.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 5:42 pm |
Islam is anti lots of things, such as representative art. Why?
I’m sure Patrice could fill in a lot of the details, but if there were a “meta” explanation, an absolute deity as ultimate ideal would logically be adverse to exploring the possibilities of nature and reality. Diversity is impure.
Consider that “absolute zero” amounts to total negation. Which is the implicit ideal of a religion based on the absolute as its deity.
Given Gods are representative of the mind and the mind is reductionistic, the ultimate reductionism is to distill everything to nothing.
Even today, theoretical physics talks about the nothing from which everything rises.
The reality we perceive though, is a function of contrasts, not absolutes. Like absolute zero, we have only have “something” with which to compare to “nothing.”
Thus we have something, not nothing.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 5:59 pm |
Art is art. Islam is not art. Islam is a system of thought. I absolutely love domed Russian churches (inspired by Greco-Roman art), and some mosques are among humanity’s greatest works of art. The art commanditated by Islamist potentates, itself has an immense past, many times as old as Islam.
Physics can talk as it wishes: it is only tentative, rife with contradiction. Quantum Field Theory is both the most accurate theory ever, and the most false, ever. It’s all indeed about relative topological filtration processes.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 6:49 pm |
Patrice,
I said representative art. Doesn’t Islam tend to frown on illustration, so it art tends more toward the abstract?
Physics is tentative and does try to peel away the layers of reality to find what is underneath, but then so does religion try to see the beyond. Both of which are admirable and necessary efforts, even if religion has a more sociological focus and science a more naturalist focus.
As it is, Islam, as well as the other monotheistic religions, appeals to a deity that is both formless and all-powerful.
While physics tends toward the very small, very large and very abstract, because that is where order seems most evident and chaos seems most controlled.
Don’t you think there might be something being overlooked in these approaches?
For instance, formlessness would seem to be nebulousness defined, not all powerful, yet physics observes the most powerful force in nature is a black hole. Would we make a black hole a deity to worship, or would we steer around it, as the abyss?
Life is neither here, nor there, but it is somewhere in the middle. Not too hot, not too cold. Not to compressed, but not too diffuse. If we built a religion around this muddle in the middle, it would more resemble Taoism, than Islam.
Yet as a political force, Islam is much more powerful because it makes everyone into a single movement and that ability to project has significant short term advantages.
Though, on the other hand, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Consequently, in the long term, there is also serious blowback, not to mention losing the strength of diversity, etc.
It is for reasons like this that I think a more conceptual debate might be productive. Yes, it is natural to react to the political climate, but if we truly want to change it, first we need to better understand how it works.
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 8:54 pm |
First truth of Islam: “Islams”, not “Islam”.
It’s supposed to be hubris to try to represent Allah’s creations.
Iranian Islam, prior the extermination by the Mongols, not only represented human figures, but also women with see through clothing… I have old essays on this. Search Google by “Patrice Ayme Islam See Through Clothing Iran” and look under “Images”.
Bing’s Gates censors much of my Islam essays, so don’t use this PC thief…
LikeLike
July 17, 2016 at 9:01 pm |
Patrice Ayme Islam Iran Mongols gave the picture therein this:
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 2:12 am |
Patrice,
“On the largest philosophical scale, it is easy to see what happened: as the craddle of civilization dessicated, it went increasingly in a fascist mode. (That’s a way to look at Fernand Braudel’s “hydraulic dictatorship” thesis).
Yet, present technological advances present with an opportunity of getting out of this vicious circle, as long as superstition can be relegated to a secondary role below secularism supreme.”
Consider the relationship of radiation to mass as a convection cycle, in that radiation expands outward, as mass condenses and falls inward.
So then consider it politically, since life evolved in a thermodynamic environment and expresses it elementally.
When structure becomes more form than energy, it does increasingly condense around its most stable elements, but this then opens gaps between them and so they fall together, creating more heat and pressure.
Conservatism is like structure, form and the past. It is knowable, factual and determined. Liberalism is like energy. It is always pushing onward to a formless future and often decries the consolidation of any form as a surrender to conservatism. So politics and business tend to be conservative, as they need civil forms, yet they need to control the energies of the future as long as they can, or they will fade into the past.
The main energy of Wahabism is simply the hundreds of billions in oil money they used to set up fundamentalism Islamic schools all over the world.
People always want to expand outward and grow, like children. They don’t want stable maturity, because people think too much and know it is just a prelude to growing old, which they fear, because they only see themselves and their death as the end.
So people are mostly happy when they see the future expanding out before them and cannot abide interference. So a religion which insists on the absolute is preferable than one which says there are many ambiguities and multiple views.
So yes, when the fragile structure of civil order, balanced on the energy of a healthy and reasonably compliant society starts to crumble and that yawning gravitational vortex of ever compressing mass opens up, there is little civil structure to stop it and one can only hope it will be a passing and not all consuming storm.
Maybe, one day, we will understand thermodynamics is more powerful than even time and learn to ride around the storms and deprive them of the energy to grow larger than the culture.
Nature does tend to press the reset button though and grind onto the next.
Sorry if this post runs on, but it does try to spin around an elemental concept, without becoming a total book, so you can take it for what it is, or just sneer at it.
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 1:24 pm |
Superstitions (Abrahamism, etc.) rests on “belief”, believing precisely the un-believable. The absolute absurdity which binds (ligare) again.
And the more stupid, the greater the fascist effect.
Happy you heard about Braudel. He taught in Algeria, and was my aunt’s professor…
Then have a look at the latest essay, where Pirenne (less broad a thinker as Braudel) is rolled over (much of my work on the period is rolling over Pirenne, although I accept SOME of his ideas…)
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 4:37 pm |
Patrice,
I see religion and science as starting off as two sides of the same coin, to both describe and explain nature.
The problem is that the explanations would take on a life their own, irrespective of whether further observations and explanations support them.
For instance, 3000 years ago, animism would be logically reasonable. For all our scientific superiority today, we still can’t quite pin down where organic begins, so to consider all of nature as being alive made far more sense than trying to specify what wasn’t.
Then when astrology proved unreliable and mechanics much more orderly, we went with epicycles and a clockwork universe.
Now we have math as the foundation of the universe, with “the fabric of spacetime.” If one were to question whether it is physically real today, one would be branded the modern version of a heretic, aka, a crackpot. And ostracized.
For instance, when I’ve made the argument for time as an effect of action, I’ve had people unwilling to agree that “tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns,” because they realize it invalidates the premise of block time and being a member of the club is far more important than mere logical consistency.
So right, or wrong, the same instinctive tribalism still guides our beliefs and actions.
As for religions holding onto irrational beliefs, it is entirely rational, in that it separates the true believers from the potentially skeptical, aka, the religiously impure.
Think of it in terms of an enormous speculative bubble. It doesn’t matter if there is no there there, it only matters if people think other people think there is there. Such as with the Emperor’s New Clothes.
What is the sense of being right, if no one is willing to support you? Your only validation is logic.
People don’t want logic, they want answers. That is why there are so many priests and politicians.
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 4:47 pm |
Agreed. Much of this I have broached on in the past. And now to prove my devious nature further, I will take a big plane around the globe… (To visit family, not just tour…)
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 7:40 pm |
Hopefully the terrorists have not put an incendiary device inside York jet, as they seem to have done with that Egypt air plane (personal opinion, I am an airplane buff)
LikeLike
July 18, 2016 at 7:42 pm |
YOUR jet. There was never such a fire, that fast in such a jet
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 1:32 am
Yes, in more than 4,000 jets of this type (A320).
LikeLike
July 19, 2016 at 1:53 am |
Safe journey.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 1:33 am |
Thanks rather than tanks…
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 2:06 am
Life is a journey. Travel lightly.
The more you have, the more you have to worry about.
LikeLike
July 19, 2016 at 6:32 pm |
Click to access probing-islam.pdf
Whenever someone says that Islam is a coherent, logical system of thought, just give them the above link.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 7:58 am |
It seems very interesting. No time to read it now though. I was struck by 2 facts: the ex-Muslim stops being a Muslim AFTER reading the Qur’an. Most Muslims have NOT read the Qur’an in its entirety. They just know a few verses. Also he proceeds to say it’s not “the true religions”. All religions are true as systems of thought. They make their own logic.
For example the Qur’an is endowed with a chronology and an abrogation principle. So Sura 9, verse 5 (Verse of the Sword) abrogates “Islam is a religion of peace”….
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 8:11 am |
I’m currently at page 127, I’m reading it for the purposes of my article about Islam, and it is rather interesting read. He discusses things with actual Islamic scholars, who are definetly not your typical ignorant rabble, and takes apart their arguments.
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 3:57 pm |
One of my themes: logic can be anything (this is a precise technical point in modern logic of recent decades!) The logical system of Islam is very interesting. It is also unknown to 99% of Muslims (although serious Muslim scholars know it, and thus know that Islam is COMPLETELY incompatible with Romano-Western law equipped with standard logic!!!!)
A reminder, my seven year old:
A Muslim scholar had debated me and a (peacenik!) Israeli friend, the mathematician Yossi Farjoun. So I wrote that essay, a compendium of violent quotes in the Qur’an. He never contacted us again…
LikeLike
July 20, 2016 at 3:08 pm |
BTW, that document is one of sources I am using for my analysis of Islam, so if you don’t have time to read it, you can wait until I’m finished with my work. Albeit, at the rate it is going, it might not be any shorter.
LikeLike
July 23, 2016 at 5:23 pm |
hazxan,
As someone who works outside, it occurs to me that many people don’t give full credence to the fact that we not only live in, but evolved in a thermodynamic environment and that convection cycles, circulation systems, heat/cold, pressure, etc. not only go a long way to describe and explain the complexities of life, but are intimately foundational to it. Everything from our bodies and relationships, to politics and beliefs. For us, it would be like asking a fish to be objective about water.
We are pushed by high pressure systems, aka causality, while we are guided by low pressure systems; ruts, niches, freedom, growth, etc.
Think about what it is people do desire and while the more material revolve around the focus on particular objects and triumphs, while the more open minded might think in terms of peace and happiness, consider the mechanics of how these are ways to channel ones energies in satisfying ways.
Then there is the inevitable feedback of consequences and further goals, in an overall dynamic. Even though we, individually, might get tired and settle down, like silt settling in a stream.
We are like molecules bouncing around our medium. We are not going to escape it, so we may as well learn it.
Even galaxies are cosmic convection cycles of radiant energy pushing out, as structured mass settles inward.
LikeLike
December 9, 2016 at 11:28 pm |
[…] start by refusing its Trojan horses. I have called to outlaw Literal Islam completely: anybody preaching it, or defending it, should be condemned under anti-hatred […]
LikeLike