The Guardian, For One, Welcomes Our New Islamist Masters (Plus: Karen Anderson Our New Most Hateful Journalist. Today)
Full court press at the Guardian this morning. This is like an overflowing cornucopia of self-caricaturing, terrorist-appeasing, incoherent, root causes stupidity. It's like the Guardian is doing a drill today, where everybody is practicing what it will be like when Sharia law is finally imposed. Except women are still writing, so they can't be that serious about it. Also, in an earlier article they were allowed to admit that the Holocaust happened - can somebody say 'death by hanging for being a Zionist spy'? It's nice to see that the Guardian management is always thinking about the day after the day after. So we've got two wonderful articles for you, but really it's a giant waste of time because there's no way that anybody is going to vote for the first one. The second one - Karen Anderson - is going to win every prize for dumbest terrorist appeasing garbage for like the next year. It's going to be like Jeopardy, where we'll have to retire her after a while. And the depressing thing? We linked to the first article earlier this morning and implied that it was the best example of terrorist appeasing incoherence and doublethink that anyone would ever read. So that lasted like 2 minutes.
Do you think this article...
Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." It was a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence, a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events (a fact that still eludes too many westerners). Even more bewildering is the fact that his choice of quotation from Manuel II Paleologos, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was so insulting of the Prophet. Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable. What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad. Given the scale of the offence, the carefully worded apology, actually, gives little ground; he recognises that Muslims have been offended and that he was only quoting, but there is no regret at using such an inappropriate comment or the deep historic resonances it stirs up.
... is better because it says at that top that there is no basis in current events (none (!!)) for believing that the Islamic street is more violent than, say, the Quaker street - but then at the bottom it says not to offend Muslims because they'll kill you? Or do you think that the top prize goes to Karen Anderson who - by coincidence - works for the Guardian and came up with the exact same editorial spin as the Guardian:
In a state of unhealthy denial, Christians were projecting subterranean disquiet about their activities on to the victims of the Crusades, creating fantastic enemies in their own image and likeness. This habit has persisted. The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the Pope's denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust.
Go back and read that again. Seriously. The reason that they shot a nun four times is because we haven't stopped victimizing them in our heads, ever since... the CRUSADES!! We've always thought that the Palestinians were a little unreasonable for still being pissed off about their refugee status five generations out. But these people are burning churches because Christians are projecting disquiet on them and they're a little jumpy because they were victims of the CRUSADES!! Best. Root. Cause. Ever.
Seriously, how does this stuff get printed? Not editorially. Like physically. The universe has laws. It has regularity. It even, according to some philosophers, has a certain telos tending toward sensibility. How does this happen? How does an adult of sufficient physical dexterity and mental acumen to type out the sounds her head... how does this happen? Shouldn't the brain shut down as a self-defense mechanism long before it ever gets to this point? OK, this is all we've got left for you. It's 4:46am, and we've pushed off drinking during the last 15 minutes to prove to ourselves that it's we who control the alcohol, and not the other way around.
At a time when European social order was deeply hierarchical, despite the egalitarian message of the gospel, Islam was condemned for giving too much respect to women and other menials.
Well, that settles that then. Islam and Christianity have the exact same problems with women, because 1,000 years ago the Christians were not providing women with respect (what does that even mean?) and today Muslims kill women for touching men. You know what, screw the sarcasm. This is obscene.
If you tried to treat a farm animal in Catholic Europe the way that women in the Muslim world are treated every single day, you would get hauled up before a court of some kind and tried. And during that trial, you would still get a more impartial and fair hearing than a 13 year old Pakistani girl who was married off at 10 to her 45 year old half-uncle and now is about to be stoned for adultery because she just got raped by her 18 year old cousin. But at least we've got Karen Anderson, moralist extraordinaire, explaining to us that the little girl needs to have rocks thrown at her head because "the habit" of Christians "projecting subterranean disquiet" on to poor and innocent Muslims "has persisted" since the Crusades. It's not much help, since this hypothetical little girl is being stoned to death for getting raped - but hey, at least we know that it's our fault and that it has nothing to do with anything in Islam.
Do you think this article...
Quoting Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." It was a gratuitous reawakening of the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence, a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events (a fact that still eludes too many westerners). Even more bewildering is the fact that his choice of quotation from Manuel II Paleologos, the 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was so insulting of the Prophet. Even the most cursory knowledge of dialogue with Islam teaches - and as a Vatican Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI would have learned this long ago - that reverence for the Prophet is a non-negotiable. What unites all Muslims is a passionate devotion and commitment to protecting the honour of Muhammad. Given the scale of the offence, the carefully worded apology, actually, gives little ground; he recognises that Muslims have been offended and that he was only quoting, but there is no regret at using such an inappropriate comment or the deep historic resonances it stirs up.
... is better because it says at that top that there is no basis in current events (none (!!)) for believing that the Islamic street is more violent than, say, the Quaker street - but then at the bottom it says not to offend Muslims because they'll kill you? Or do you think that the top prize goes to Karen Anderson who - by coincidence - works for the Guardian and came up with the exact same editorial spin as the Guardian:
In a state of unhealthy denial, Christians were projecting subterranean disquiet about their activities on to the victims of the Crusades, creating fantastic enemies in their own image and likeness. This habit has persisted. The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the Pope's denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust.
Go back and read that again. Seriously. The reason that they shot a nun four times is because we haven't stopped victimizing them in our heads, ever since... the CRUSADES!! We've always thought that the Palestinians were a little unreasonable for still being pissed off about their refugee status five generations out. But these people are burning churches because Christians are projecting disquiet on them and they're a little jumpy because they were victims of the CRUSADES!! Best. Root. Cause. Ever.
Seriously, how does this stuff get printed? Not editorially. Like physically. The universe has laws. It has regularity. It even, according to some philosophers, has a certain telos tending toward sensibility. How does this happen? How does an adult of sufficient physical dexterity and mental acumen to type out the sounds her head... how does this happen? Shouldn't the brain shut down as a self-defense mechanism long before it ever gets to this point? OK, this is all we've got left for you. It's 4:46am, and we've pushed off drinking during the last 15 minutes to prove to ourselves that it's we who control the alcohol, and not the other way around.
At a time when European social order was deeply hierarchical, despite the egalitarian message of the gospel, Islam was condemned for giving too much respect to women and other menials.
Well, that settles that then. Islam and Christianity have the exact same problems with women, because 1,000 years ago the Christians were not providing women with respect (what does that even mean?) and today Muslims kill women for touching men. You know what, screw the sarcasm. This is obscene.
If you tried to treat a farm animal in Catholic Europe the way that women in the Muslim world are treated every single day, you would get hauled up before a court of some kind and tried. And during that trial, you would still get a more impartial and fair hearing than a 13 year old Pakistani girl who was married off at 10 to her 45 year old half-uncle and now is about to be stoned for adultery because she just got raped by her 18 year old cousin. But at least we've got Karen Anderson, moralist extraordinaire, explaining to us that the little girl needs to have rocks thrown at her head because "the habit" of Christians "projecting subterranean disquiet" on to poor and innocent Muslims "has persisted" since the Crusades. It's not much help, since this hypothetical little girl is being stoned to death for getting raped - but hey, at least we know that it's our fault and that it has nothing to do with anything in Islam.
