Oh, those wacky religious Muslim terrorists are at it again going all murder happy on people who dare to make fun of their religion.
This event is completely ludicrous and, in 2015, should not be happening, some reasons off the top of my head:
1. Mohammad, Jebus, Krishna, Sif – pick your imaginary friend – they all don’t fucking exist.
2. If they did exist wouldn’t there be some godly smiting going on, like all the time? Being immortal and all powerful and all that shite, you would think that they could take care of business without the help of mere mortals.
3. How can you, a mere mortal, even think that you can contemplate what your Godhead wants, never mind what she’s offended by?
4. How does killing Western journalists advance your cause by even one micrometer? Not all journalists are card carrying lackeys of empire yet, but with doing shit-for-brains (shit for brains is my new term for “stupid” because I’ve been informed by certain elements that “stupid” is ablest slur) wankery like mass murder how is the non-wanking western media supposed to put forward the case for Islam not being full of yahoos ready to kill people for shit-for-brains reasons?
If you think this is going to be all about bashing the religious and the Muslims, you’d be wrong. Let’s get a little context on the situation from Ziauddin Sardar:
“I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar.
And Mr. Sardar continued:
“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”
Of course our hands are dirty on this one most of the terrible shit going on in the world can be directly or indirectly attributed to putting our state interests (see colonialism, empire, and name your flavour of exceptionalism et al.) ahead of the needs of other people who happen to be living in their own countries.
Andre Vltchek continues:
“From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey is has been!
The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.
It is misunderstood by the outsiders, and often even by its own people who are frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world.
What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion.
Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests.
As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures.
What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality.
It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving.
Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed.
The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown.”
[Source]
Picture is unrelated. I need some awesome in this post, because otherwise it is too damn depressing.
You’ll see the word “stability” crop up when you begin to examine the officially accepted version of history we all know and love. Stability used in the geopolitical exceptional context is anti-democratic and anti-nationalist – pretty much the exact opposite of the flowery boilerplate about human rights and democracy promotion that is exuded from ‘top government’ officials.
It is usually about here I get painted as a part of the I hate america/canada crowd – but that shit can frack-off before it starts. I am not about hating my country, I’m about this country looking at our history without the friendly blinders on and owning up and taking responsibility for the horrible shit we have done/continue to do in the name of the ‘national interest’.
So ya, wanna fix the terrorism problem? Lets start at home ,with us, like this:
“If we seriously want to end the plague of terrorism, we know how to do it. First, end our own role as perpetrators. That alone will have a substantial effect. Second, attend to the grievances that are typically in the background, and if they are legitimate, do something about them. Third, if an act of terror occurs, deal with it as a criminal act: identify and apprehend the suspects and carry out an honest judicial process. That actually works. In contrast, the techniques that are employed enhance the threat of terror. The evidence is fairly strong, and falls together which much else. ”
Thank you Mr.Chomsky for that gem of a quote. Thank you dear readers for taking the time to listen to me rant.
Arbourist out.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
13 comments
January 11, 2015 at 6:32 am
Deb
An excellent rant, and well worth the time it takes to read it.
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January 11, 2015 at 7:56 am
The Arbourist
@Deb
Thanks Deb. :)
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January 11, 2015 at 8:22 am
tildeb
Sorry Arb: you’ve gone off the rails on this one.
The muslim apologist Sardar is doing to history what American evangelicals keep trying to do: rewriting it to privilege religion and pretend it is first misunderstood and second the victim of nefarious ‘forces’. It’s not just tedious but disappointing that someone like you could fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the umbrella term ‘Western Colonialism’ did not bring about Islam and it’s not this same colonialism that radicalized it. It’s not this same colonialism that continues to empower Islam and its not the same colonialism that is being targeted by Islam. All of these claims for the positive are unmitigated and unadulterated bullshit. And you seem to be quite willing to buy into the Western Colonialism as the central cause for whatever negative effect anywhere on the globe you can point to. It grows tedious because it’s factually wrong and utterly fails to account for how much is going right. Why you wish to continue to promote this kind of apologetic one-sided negative bullshit in order to maintain some Western blame game and groupthink guilt we supposedly inherit upon birth is bizarre.
I know you love the Chomsky and you like to quote him ad nauseum as if he were some kind of expert outside of neuroscience but really… just think for a moment, will you please?
The Chomsky doesn’t even mention the role of religion in general and Islam specifically in the above quote about the cause of religious terrorism. And yet that absence didn’t even raise a red flag in your mind nor tweak your spidey senses that maybe he’s not quite got both oars in the water when it comes to extracting meaning from actions undertaken for well articulated religious reasons by the religious perpetrators themselves towards obtaining religious results. But these obvious clues are too obscure for the likes of the Chomsky and his cheering section always and predictably seeking Western blame for everything negative int he world while just making shit up to relate such specific terrorist actions to be a Western cause in order to writhe in self-immolating guilt.
That’s simply not rational, Arb.
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January 11, 2015 at 9:16 am
john zande
You could have just stopped at #1 then posted that superhero cat :) I want to worship that kitty!
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January 11, 2015 at 10:08 am
robert browning
Arb, your entire bit is so well done. Only by ignoring the history of colonalism, oppression and special interests’ framing the debate can sheep like tlldeb believe a rambling redundant quantity of BS will replace facts.
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January 11, 2015 at 10:40 am
The Arbourist
@Tildeb
When I twinge the antenna of American exceptionalists, it is a fair indicator that discussing this alternate historical narrative has some merit.
This same ‘apologist’ :
“After leaving London Weekend Television, Sardar wrote and presented a number of programmes for the BBC and Channel 4. He conceived and presented ‘Encounters With Islam’ for the BBC in 1983, and two years later his 13-half-hour interview series ‘Faces of Islam’ was broadcast on TV3 (Malaysia) and other channels in Asia. In 1990, he wrote and presented a programme on ‘Islamic science’ for BBC’s ‘Antenna’ and his six-part ‘Islamic Conversations’ was broadcast on Channel 4 early in 1995. He wrote and presented the highly acclaimed ‘Battle for Islam’, a 90-minute film for BBC2 in 2005. And followed that with ‘Between the Mullahs and the Military’, 50-muniute documentary on Pakistan for Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ series. Most recently he wrote the three-part one hour documentary ‘The Life of Muhammad’ for BBC2, broadcast in July 2011.
Further from Wikipedia:
“A believing Muslim, Sardar is one of the strongest internal critics of Islam. He believes that the tendency to fall back comfortably on age-old interpretations is now dangerously obsolete. Islam’s relationship and attitude to women, minorities, and notions of exclusivity and exclusive truth need to change fundamentally. In his work, Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals, Sardar states that: “Muslims have been on the verge of physical, cultural and intellectual extinction simply because they have allowed parochialism and traditionalism to rule their minds.” He adds: “We must break free from the ghetto mentality.”[9]
His CV certainly looks impressive, and from the very brief survey I conducted of his articles at the Newstatesmen I’m seeing a offering of a different point of view regarding the historical and cultural narratives we are accustomed to. To be featured repeatedly on the BBC across several formats would point to him being a reasonable voice to the topics to which he speaks.
Of course, him being a believer, may out of hand triggered some negative connotations on your behalf. That, if the case, is to your detriment when understanding what he’s talking about.
History is constantly being rewritten and revised. Is the notion that our official version is somehow better and less adulterated that the one that Sardar offers?
Jesus-frack. That is some rather binary thinking going on there. Either I’m on the right side of history or I’m not? Engaging in with and exploring multiple narratives – especially ones that disagree with acceptable standard – to see what they bring to the table is part of the very essence of critical thought and the understanding the complex nature of history.
But I’m almost certain you know this, I’ve read many of your posts and have found them both thoughtful and illuminating.
Nothing like alternate historical analysis to bring the standard bearers of empire out of the woodwork. The works of Edward Said, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Zinn, (etc.) say otherwise, regarding your claim. I’ve read much of their scholarship and will have to lend my preferences to the evidence they offer.
Acknowledging the less than sunny aspects of our history is of the first order of importance for responsible citizens. I’m sorry if the picture included did not adequately fill your requirement of fun-time rainbows, sunshine and unicorns.
Quoting one of the most forward and brilliant minds of our time is something I won’t apologize for.
Agreed. But my post sort of changed gears and therefore it fits toward the second theme of that we here in the West need to take responsibility for our part in creating the morass we currently inhabit. To do less is morally and socially bankrupt.
Indeed. Because the radicalization of Islam is unrelated to what the West does in the world. We’re just bringing peace and democracy (and drone strikes) to them and they are failing to understand our benevolence.
Or, perhaps we were naive and misguided in our attempts to bring stability and justice to the middle east/world, as our goals have only been human rights and prosperity for all…
Chomsky certainly does ‘make up’ well documented, thoroughly annotated and referenced shit though, doesn’t he?
We are very far apart on our interpretations of how the geo-politcal world works. I disagree with categorizing what you believe to be wrong as ‘not rational’ as there exists a fair amount of evidence for the particular world view put forth in the blog post and linked articles.
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January 11, 2015 at 10:45 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
I know eh? But I’m a completionist, and I couldn’t just have a list of one thing. :)
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January 11, 2015 at 10:55 am
tildeb
I’ve been called many things… but sheep is a new one.
As for the reference to ‘the debate’ I have no clue what this supposed ‘debate’ might be in this particular circumstance… other than there is only some imaginary ‘debate’ in the minds of some Westerners who insist that, regarding the causes of the CH mass murder, these guys weren’t really the cause: they were the effect of Western Colonialism! Who cares that these guys insisted the cause they killed for was motivated and mandated by their religious beliefs. Not a shred of colonialism made an appearance in their minds, but hey, what do they know, right?
No, Robert, you know better. And you’re not a conspiracy wing nut sifting through historical data and find the wispy trail of colonialism hard at work all by your lonesome. Naturally, The Chom, Sadar, Vltchek and many millions of faitheist droolers and/or misguided tolerant liberals know better than the perps themselves, and they know it cannot possibly be religion teaching its followers to implement their central faith through action – especially violence coming from the religion of peace – but, really, you know better. You know they were just the byproduct of our own historical foolishness.
What you’re really saying that I find so distasteful is that we here in the West must accept the brunt of these effects (but deal with them in criminal courts, of course) and use these events as reminders why we need more self-flagellation for our inherited sin here in the West for causing this recent religious</i form of ‘Western Imperialism’: Islam.
Good grief. Perhaps putting your collective head in a paint shaker and leaving it on for a few minutes might help but I doubt it. After all, you know The Truth (TM).
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January 11, 2015 at 11:28 am
tildeb
As I said in my comment to Robert, the disturbing aspect is that you – by the order in which you did your post – are suggesting that we in the West deserve this kind of event, that we have prepared the ground through colonialism for this kind of ‘response’, that we have sown the whirlwind, yada, yada, yada, – and that through colonialism we are the real cause of it.
That’s the bullshit I’m talking about.
Islam is the cause of this event. Islam is the motivator of this event. The perpetrators announced their cause and enunciated their motivations and here you are pretending under the guise academic rigor to tell them that they’re wrong, that we are really to blame, that they weren’t instigators but pawns in some geopolitical colonial current of our own making. That is what I call irrational because it flies in the face of facts.
And speaking of facts, I too, read the Wiki entries about these guys you quoted. Let me borrow a phrase from Jerry Coyne this day to describe the Sardars of this world: Such are the accolades that accrue to those who coddle faith, defanging it for public petting. That’s what these guys are doing, by pretending the cause of Islamic violence carried out in the West today lies with the West. That’s the bullshit no matter how much or how well you want to dress it up.
Responsibility for Islamic violence lies with the central tenets of a religion that is incompatible with Western liberal secular values – values such as freedom of expression. That incompatibility – and not western colonialism – is the cause of Islamic violence done in the name of ‘protecting’ Islam. I can’t believe I have to spell that out.
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January 11, 2015 at 12:06 pm
The Arbourist
@Tildeb
Radical Islam doesn’t *just* happen. The contextual factors that contribute to the horrible events that happened in France cannot be ignored.
This is big picture analysis and looking for patterns in the history that can be used to bring more insight into events that happen today.
Absolutely. But this stated reason is not the endpoint on the matter.
As I said in the post, this is not about hating the West, but looking at some of the ways, through our less than benevolent foreign policy, that foments some of the anger toward our nations and our values. Is it the only reason? Of course not, but to ignore the larger context is dangerous and irresponsible.
Leaving the solution at simply ‘Islam is violent and incompatible with Western ideals’ leaves out much that can be learned from history, and we do so at our own peril.
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January 11, 2015 at 1:52 pm
tildeb
Sardar: “Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam…” He attributes to Islam that knowledge (scientific and mathematical) which existed prior to it. Granted, there was lots of comparatively advanced knowledge from Arabic populations but to attribute all of this knowledge to Islam, for fuck’s sake, is more ludicrous than dishonest.
Sardar: “…which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’…
This too is without doubt more bullshit. The basis of the Enlightenment was not from Islam, for crying out loud. The basis was the switching of political authority away from some god, away from some god-appointed king or god-appointed priest or ruling class, and towards individual rights (after much evolution through self-serving nobility avoiding taxation and imprisonment). Nowhere in Islam can Sardar show where this same principle of individual autonomy is anything but CONTRARY to its central teachings. This claim Sardar makes here is simply bullshit
Sardar: “…and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself.” Yes, the reason why more books are translated into Spanish every year, year after year, for fuck’s sake, than are written in the entire muslim world is because of colonialism. This is so stupid it isn’t even wrong.
Sardar’s mewling pablum of complaints and blame against the West as it relates to TODAY’S terrorist acts by TODAY’S Islamic religious moderates-who-act-on-their-supposedly-moderate-and-peace-loving-religious-beliefs is so patently absurd and pathetic and accommodationist that I marvel at its boldness to lie outright. I cannot understand anyone with two neurons to rub together who takes this kind of bullshit, misrepresentation, blaming, and lying entirely without any criticism or complaint on merit, swallows it whole, and then posts the menu hoping others will swallow it, too… as a sign of tolerance and cultural respect. It’s neither, of course: it’s just really poor thinking to accept it as if true rationalized with nice words. But it still stinks for anyone with a nose to smell and eyes to read and a brain to critically think… as intolerant and disrespectful those abilities are made out to be when justifiably applied to Islam and finds it wanting.
Islam as a set of principles is anti-enlightenment. It is violent if acted upon. It is misogynist when put into practice. It is a religion of conquest and submission throughout its history. It directly supports the basis of sharia law. The 109 verses of violence it advocates in the Koran as the Perfect Word of God was not written by ‘Western colonialism’, was not promoted by some ‘prophet’ imported from ‘Western colonialism’, was not taught to children on orders from ‘Western colonialism’. Islam is the product of those who believe it to be true. And that has fuck-all to do with being ’caused’ by and therefore blamed on ‘Western colonialism’.
Blaming the inherent problems of Islam in a world with institutionalized Enlightenment values on Western colonialism is a non sequitur.
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January 11, 2015 at 2:00 pm
tnt666
Context is excellent, but this is not 9-11 or embassy bombings, it is Salman Rushdie, it is Theo Van Gogh, it is George Tiller (and all other murdered abortionists), it is all the little girls with acid thrown to their faces, it is the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. These attacks are not the consequence of Imperialism, the 77 killed by Breivik, it is Raif Badawi, in Soudi Arabia, jailed and 1000 lashes for blogging about the stupidity of his compatriots, IT IS religion
Charlie Hebdo have been specifically threated and attacked for 20 yeas. They’ve also been attacked for supporting women’s right to choice.
RATHER DIE STANDING THAN LIVE ON MY KNEES, catering to religious special snowflakes.
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January 13, 2015 at 9:10 am
The Arbourist
@tnt666
And this religion, has grown this way in a vacuum. It is evil, because it is evil.
Attempting to understand how the world works with limited attention to the environment and contextual factors that empower religions, radical and otherwise, leads us further down the road of misunderstanding and violence.
I am not advocating that we cater to religious radicals. I am advocating understanding how and why they do the things they do. I am not content with the simplistic reduction of ‘Islam = Evil’ because it offers no solutions and no predictions and reinforces that idea that our way of life is somehow more worthy and deserving that others (see imperialism et al).
Eradicating Islam is a pipe dream of neo-cons, exceptionalists and those high on their own imperial fantasies. See Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc – for the utopias we’ve created.
Not recognizing that we and our foreign policy are, to some degree, part of the problem will only continue the cycle of terrorism and response we see now.
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