Michael L.
This is beauty.
And I am so tired of looking into the face of hatred.
Am I wrong or was not Little Walter a genius?
I think that he was.
I will chime-in on these other weighty matters soon.
I guess... but I am still going fishing.
Consider this an open thread... or whatever you will.
The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - Michael Lumish, PhD, proprietor. (mike.lumish@gmail.com)
Yes, he's great.
ReplyDeleteThat high note goes right up my spine.
DeleteThe blues has always worked for me!
ReplyDeleteKate and I have been talking off-line and she makes so many important points that I want to share the discussion.
ReplyDeleteThis is a continuation of the Pamela Geller thing that Volleyboy1 has been kind enough to join us in.
Kate - who goes by the rather minimalist k here - says this about my friend Pamela Geller:
"From what I know, her opposition to radical Islam has been wrapped up, so to speak, in a broader more aggressive campaign which has involved making claims about Islam as a religion that suggest only secular Muslims can be seen as 'moderate'."
This is among the reasons that I call myself a "reluctant supporter."
It goes to the question of Islam versus political Islam.
We cannot be at war with Islam, as a whole. In fact, I do not even understand what such a thing would look like... and how I would explain such a thing to my Muslim friends and acquaintances is beyond me. Whatever it would look like it would mean an awful lot of chaos and murder. Wecan, however, and we certainly should, stand against the movement for political Islam because it is a movement that is highly denigrating toward Jewish people, Christian people, Gay people, women, and liberals.
Plus they are chopping off heads in the Middle East, for chrissake.
I do not know Geller's material so well as to know the extent to which she conflates what I call "political Islam" with Islam, as a whole, or Muslims, in general. I am reasonably certain that she does not conflate political Islam with Muslims as individuals. In fact, I know she does not.
Kate writes:
I think there is a real and very difficult debate to be had over how much a very ' conservative' form of Islam is compatible with western liberal democratic values.
I think that I disagree here.
"Conservative" Islam - or maybe we should say traditional Islam? - is not in any manner compatible with western liberal democratic values.
In fact, that is the very definition of the problem.
I know, of course, that there are academics out there who would point to small Arab-Muslim experiments in voting within Arab-Muslim countries, but no such arguments can really hold water when you look at the Arab-Muslim countries as a group. If anything the region, with the lone, sole exception of Israel, is becoming more violent, more chaotic, more savage, and less liberal than anytime within living memory.
In any case, Kate has much more to say... but I have to pack!
In fact, Kate, you should just edit those emails and post them here.
There is a lot of food for thought in what you wrote.
The SPLC ain't what it used to be. Labeling cartoonist Bosh Faustin (?) a hate group is ridiculous gesture. Is this how they keep the checks rolling in these days? Maybe they should stick to going after groups that want to violate civil liberties rather than lapsed Muslims. Perhaps SPLC could turn its attention to making American college campuses safe for Jews.
DeleteI have to say, School, we are put into a tough spot when our friends argue that the problem is not political Islam, but just Islam.
DeleteIt's just too big.
We cannot contend with all of Islam and, again, I do not even know what it would like to try?
I will say this, tho:
The Big Stinky Three of the Levant are either universal and / or political... today.
Judaism, for the most part, is neither universal nor political. That is, the dominant trends within world Jewry do not insist that non-Jews must become Jews in order to fulfill their spiritual obligations. Nor do the dominant trends insist that the Torah be the source of jurisprudence, neither in Israel nor anywhere else.
What used to be called Christendom is universal, because according to the faith one can only go to heaven via Jesus, but with the exception of a minority of American Christian Evangelicals, Christians have no interest in living under Christian political law like, for one example, the Puritans did.
Islam, however, is both universal and political. It is universal because, as with Christianity, the only possible way to have a relationship with the deity is via the founder of the faith. In this case, of course, that Muhammad fellow. (Peace be unto him.) It is political because it did not go through a European-style liberal Enlightenment and, thus, has no division between Mosque and State.
That's the problem in my view. But we cannot fix it.
The answer must come from Cairo and Riyadh and Tehran.
Until it does, however, we will be in a death-embrace because Islam, politicized, is highly aggressive.