Islamic civilization is a rotten house. Constant outside pressure either will collapse it, or force its miserable occupants to begin a serious effort at reforming and rebuilding it. Islam holds sway among some of the world's potentially richest and most advanced countries, but that, in fact, are among the poorest and most retrograde on the planet. Islam as practiced is a failed ideology: it leads to slavery, stupidity, and poverty on a mass scale. The greatest victims of Islam are the Muslims forced to live under its tyrannical, mind-numbing, and brutal rule.
Islamic civilization produces nothing. Yes, yes, what about algebra? Ok, Ok, it hasn't produced anything in modern times besides ignorance, death, despair, and poverty. It is the MSNBC of religious faiths, but, admittedly, with higher ratings.
I have lived and worked in many Muslim countries over the course of my long career, and have never failed to be amazed by the damage Islam does to its practitioners or, better said, to its victims. It makes people stupid, intolerant, and violent. I found repeatedly that there was an inherent contradiction between being a good Muslim and being a good person. I met lots of good Muslims, and lots of good persons: there was VERY little intersection between the two groups. Islam requires breaking a person down and making him or her into a robot; it discourages and openly represses independent thought; and fosters a constant feeling of paranoia of and hatred for the outside world: non-Muslims should be allowed to exist only to the extent that they can be taken advantage of, and then converted or discarded.
Islamic civilization, ironically, can only be saved by constant and sharp defeat at the hands of the hated infidels. The Islamists must be defeated in their war against Israel; their war against India; their war against Russia; and, of course, their war against the West and our friends. We must understand their totalitarian ideology and defeat it again, and again, and again. As long as we do not see our belief in freedom and liberty as requiring our suicide, we can and will defeat them, just as the SEALs did in Abbottabad. Only then will it be possible for "good" Muslims who also want to be "good" people, assuming they exist, to stand up and tell the Jihadis to take a hike.
Islam needs a major reformation and enlightenment, and if its practitioners are not willing or able to do it, then the SEALs will do it for them. That's the choice facing Muslims. That's the choice so starkly shown by events in Abbottabad.
Is the Raid on Abbotabad the right level of deterence, or is The Grave of the Hundred Dead?
ReplyDeleteActually, the Muslims only transmitted algebra from India.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Islam is reformable. Take out all the objectionable parts --the aggression, the Jew-hatred, the misogyny, &c.-- and there's not much left. It seems the only way to help people trapped under Islam is to break it.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
ReplyDelete"...an inherent contradiction between being a good Muslim and being a good person."
ReplyDeleteThat sir, is a monumental statement in so few words. Brilliant!
The contributions of Islamic civilisations to the general knowledge and culture are manifold. Every educated person could until recently recite one or another of Omar Khayyam's quatrains; most of the stars that have common names have Arabic names, thanks to Arab astronomers and navigators; the Arabic and Persian architectures are great; and so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteBut to what point? Have these cultures done anything (excepting Oriental rugs) since the 14th Century? Have not the Salafists, the Islamic fundamentalists, turned against everything good which Islam has produced? As Mark Steyn has said, Islam has gone through a revolution and it has not been a good one.
Osama bin Laden's home in Abbottabad is the epitome and symbol of the moral decay of modern fundamentalist Islam. Here you have a rich and powerful man living in filth in a pigsty which would embarrass a Detroit druggie.