Yesterday, we got the news that there is a group bringing court cases against the Koran, to prosecute it as hate speech. Initially, this seemed like a good idea to me. After all, the Koran does incite violence against Christians and Jews, and it is used as justification for violence and terrorism against those who are not Muslim.
After having given the issue more thought, I am now questioning whether these prosecutions are a good idea.
Dag has some thoughts:
The Baghavad Gita is a work full of blood and destruction and death, a religious text filled with madness and war. So what? Are Hindus likely to read it as the direct word of God, and from that decide to kill every non-Hindu on the face of the Earth? Don't think so. Neither do any Hindus I've ever met, heard from or read about. I could be wrong about Hindus. There might be some nutter out there who lost their tinfoil caps and are starkers.
The Qur'an is a work full of blood and destruction and death, a religious text filled with madness and war. So what? Are Muslims likely to read it as the direct word of God, and from that decide to kill every non-Muslim on the face of the Earth? I kind of think so. So do many Muslims I've met, heard from and read about. I could be wrong about some Muslims. There might be some moderates out there who lost their tinfoil caps and are starkers.
Yes, there are some people in the world who read about Jack the Rippers, and from there they come unglued at the seams and commit crimes against small animals. These loonies might even think they get their ideas straight from God. So what? We don't ban books because of nutters.
Or do we?
At a glance it seems to me that banning books is a typical European belittlement of people. Those who can't distinguish between fact and fantasy are generally mentally ill, and that's not the domain of the state unless such people commit actual crimes. Then we ban the person, not the book. Europeans favor book-banning, being the determinists we elsewhere usually are not.
But what about the Qur'an, it being used as a hate-manual from the start and seemingly having no other purpose? The book, to the democratically minded person, is still just a book. The Qur'an is creepy and Satanic, but it's still paper and ink.
We might want to demand a ban the Qur'an not because it is or isn't hate literature, that being irrelavant, but to piss-off the Muslims really badly.
Or we can be a little smarter than the average European politician, not that hard really, and we can demand that the Qur'an not be banned in Europe. We could turn this to our advantage by demanding that hate speach be allowed, the Qur'an desrving protection.
We could quote it, print it, shout it everywhere, and demand that it be allowed in public regardless. We might well expose the Qur'an as hate speech by demanding that it be protected as hate speech.
We might, as democrats, come to the defence of Muslims and the Qur'an by demanding that Europeans not prosecute this vile rubbish. Muslims can't win this one no matter what they do.
Yes, I think I agree with Dag. I am, after all, the guy who is always doing the "Sometimes You Just Gotta Love Your Enemies" posts, the point of which is, that we are fortunate that our crazy Muslim enemies are always telling us the truth.
If we ban the Koran, then we can not expect the truth to be told about it.
Instead, we ought to be shouting the truth from the rooftops.
In fact, I have had something on my mind recently. See what you guys think of this. I want to create a line of bumperstickers that say things like the following:
I (heart) Radical Islam
I (heart) Burqas
"Slay the Infidels and Jews wherever you find them."
"Stone gays, apostates, and adulterers to death today."
A Slain Infidel
What do you guys think?
I think that seeing the ugly truth of Islam proclaimed on the bumper sticker of the ordinary looking American sitting in the car next to you on the freeway on the Monday morning commute may just wake a few people out of their stupor about the dangers we face.
12 comments:
I still say go after the shahada itself. "There is no god but allah and muhammad is his prophet" is the clearest call for "establishment of religion" as well as an insult to every other religion on the planet. This is the clearest example of incitement and threat to me from islam, especially the use of it in protests as a chant. Remember the ITS video from NYC? The shahada was one of the few bits of Arabic that they used in their protest, and they chanted it repeatedly. They are not the only ones. It is, after all, one of the "pillars" of the faith, as it were. Maybe a new sticker is in order for Cafe Press. Hahaha.
Roger Shattuck died recently, an historian well-known for stating that there are some things people should not know. The idea is at least as old as Sophocles' tragedies. We need the reminder lest we stumble upon those things we should not know because we were too ignorant to know better than to find out.
I have no need to know massacre. I have no need to know nearly every reprehensible crime man can commit. What I know is of my own choosing not to avoid. I deserve my knowledge. No one forces me to know those things better left unknown.
But who forces the rest to know the horror? You do not deserve that punishment.
We have no need to know the horror that is Islam. And yet now we must. We are forced to look and to know. It is a crime against us. making us confront yet more human evil when we should not have to, that is a crime that we must then try to spare others.
It exists, and we must suffer from dealing with it. Our dealings don't make us better people. Our sufferings make us less than we would be otherwise. But to do nothing is to diminish ourselves to emptiness and shame.
I happen to like some of what I do. Some of what I do might be of some benefit to others, but it does me no credit. Those who would not but by duty, those are heroic. Being heroic isn't necessarily some good thing. It is required, and some of you must act.
Knowledge might tarnish us forever; but ignorance will destroy everyone. Sometimes you have to go forward and take the fall for the sake of those who will be redeemed later.
Someone's calling.
Banning the Koran is a thorny issue. As a teacher, I usually, on principle, don't like banning books.
But I say this: Expose the hate-filled verses therein. And if those verses advocate the overthrow of the government and/or the slaughter of those who are not Muslims, a ban is necessary. Islamic centers, schools, and mosques should not be allowed to promote murder and anarchy with impunity.
Perhaps court cases can expose what is in the Koran. Of course, it is essential to explain the differences between the Meccan and the Medinan verses--and how those differences came about.
AOW,
I'm with you; the only way to expose Islam is by letting it hoist itself on its on petard. Pitard? Oh, well, you catch my drift.
In the realm of ideas, free and open competition will ultimately let the best ones float to the top. Islam's are so frickin' invalid that even 70% of our knowledge-deprived population senses that not all is well.
Think of how much better it would be if we were explicitly taught about the competing ideas of Islam and its foe, the Enlightenment!
Dag,
I just can't agree with anyone, including a historian, who considers knowledge to be a problem. No knowledge is better left unknown. As the old saying goes, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
The "duty" thing is straight out of Kant, who is one of the Three Stooges of Philosophy (the others being Hegel and Marx). They gave birth to the modern version of every kind of collectivism that you can find - Fascists, Nazis, Communists, Liberals, Socialists and, upon superficial examination, Islam - you name it, they loved it.
Kant's particular gimmick was to TALK a big game, to SOUND as if he were pro-individual and pro-reason, but he actually rejected both at every turn.
Personally, I think that as with everything else that we learn, learning it by every possible pathway is the best; the more sensory modalities that are used to teach something, the greater the likelihood that we will be able to assess it correctly and fully.
I wish that we could expose our people to every aspect of Islam that makes it evil, from pictures to sounds to smells to words and everything in between.
I may have misunderstood what you meant by your comment; if so, I apologize for being critical.
Hey - love the blue scarf idea, though; maybe we could all make small blue lapel ribbons, like the ones for cancer survivors and soldiers overseas.
Oh, Patorius,
Sorry; I got distracted. I love all the ideas. A little while ago, I even made myself a "Kafir on Board" sign for the inside of my car window, modeled after the "Baby on Board" signs. All it took was a piece of yellow construction paper and a black Sharpie.. .
Hi Cubed, I hope I'm not too late in the thread to catch up with you.
In reference to Shattuck's idea of knowledge one need not know, look to Auschwitz as and example: many people found out that they could survive it by delving into their own souls for the resources required to do so. And when the ordeal was over they committed suicide because having known what they could do they also knew what they had done; and we too know what happened, and that knowledge is shameful to all. Worse it sthat some have been plunged into sickness by the evil hands of others and have lived with that sickness till it was the final vision before they died. Is there a benefit to knowing the depths of the heart of darkness first hand? I fail to see how that is true for any but the minutest war tourists and sadists and psychopaths.
There is the Aristotlean concept of tragedy, the cathartic benefit to the audience, audio being key, actors speaking to living beings who have an intellectual and critical distance from which they can feel and analyse their expreience. Compare that to the Roman theatre in which there is no distance between the actors and the lions, the distance between the viewers and the actors being so remote that the play, as it were, is bathos.
There some things we do not need to know. I do not need to know that people are capable of murdering women for the crime of showing up at a concentration camp in a state of pregnancy. I know it happened, but I need not know it simply because it need not be part of our existence. We need not know the evils of Man because those evils need not exist. Yes, those evils do exist, but we need not know them personally. We need not have known that Muslims can happily crash loaded passenger jets into occupied office towers. These are things specialists can study, but we need not know these things as private individuals; and to force us to see these acts and to experience this atrocity is a crime against Humanity. Just because something is theoretically possible does not mean we must now it in its vivid details. We have a right to know nothing about the evils of Man.
This is not to say that we should not look at reality and accet and understand the nature of Man. To think so is to miss Shattuck's point. To know is to chooseto know; to be forced to know the evils of Man because they are committed against us is a crime against us that we can understand without experience.
I won't go into Kant till we have a chance to sit and discuss face to face our opposing ideas and understandings of Kant.
To approach him as a proto-fascist is again to miss the point. There is nothing fascistic about moral duty, nothing conceivably sinsister with knowledge gained a priori, and I do not for the life of me understand how anyone can find a fault in the moral imperative of doing to others as one would have done to oneself barring madness that requires one do self-harm. But let's wait till we meet so we can compare texts line by line rather than sling generalities on the Internet.
I guess the ideas I offered in this post weren't worthy of being discussed in the elevated air of this comments thread.
(he said pissily)
:)
But seriously, I think I have a good idea here which deserves consideration, and I don't think that it has gotten any discussion going here, or in any other comments thread on which I have offered it up.
Is the idea stupid for some reason which I do not understand?
I am asking in all earnestness.
Pastorius,
Sorry; I did get distracted. You said,
"If we ban the Koran, then we can not expect the truth to be told about it.
Instead, we ought to be shouting the truth from the rooftops."
Yea! Yes! Absolutely! That's why I (respectfully) disagree with Dag's "no need to know" idea.
We need to have the Koran, because it is the primary source of evidence for the evil policies of Islam, and the fact that the behaviors we see around the world are a religious obligation.
All the scriptural documents of other religious are, indeed, full of really nasty stuff, but in no case, are they considered the direct word of God (or gods) which must be obeyed.
Other scriptures are recognized as having been written by the hand of man, and include stories about heros, geneologies, conflicts with the enemy, customs of the tribe, tribal and intertribal politics etc., along with advice on how to live a proper life.
None of them, unlike the Koran, say: "God here; go forth and kill everyone from this point on who doesn't worship me in the way I describe here in this book."
The Koran isn't an advice column, it's a war manual. It needs to be widely circulated, widely read, and widely understood for just that reason.
Our failure, up to including the President of the United States, to understand the Koran and Islam, is what has put us in the path of danger.
Ignorance is NEVER bliss - sorry, Dag, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Still love your blue idea.
Maybe one of my bumper stickers should read, "I'm a Proud Aristotelian" or something. My others, so far, include: "It's the Borders, Stupid!" and "It's the Ports, Stupid!"
I wish I could remember where I expressed my wish that there could be a gallery of photos that pictured (vision being a major sensory modality and source of KNOWLEDGE) the gross things that Muslims do as part of their religious obligation.
While I don't think that people should be forced to look at them, it should be available to them.
Three cheers for KNOWLEDGE and its rapid spread! It's only through knowledge that can we effect change.
Real good points are raised here.
Banning and burning books is never a solution, but looking at the message from a legal perspective seems like a good idea, especially when more than a billion of souls are odered to live by the book! The Koran appears to be the law ruling in all Islamic dictatorships, and this one is above all laws, ours included when Muslims cross the borders. If denying the Holocaust and hate speech can get us in trouble, it would be well worth looking at the Koran within the frame work of anti-hate laws in some of our democracies.
I like the bumpers stickers idea, if you don't mind having you tires stabbed, your window washer ripped a part and your gas tank filled with sugar!
What would the insurance companies say, when we do our claims? I am too chicken, not putting a sticker on my bike! ;-)
In India, people might not go by bloody texts, but women get showered with acid and kerosene on a regular base. All this is worrisome, no doubt.
Pastorius,
If you have a chance, could you let us know what is the story behind the picture of the little girl? (I'd like to use it at Difficult Images.)
Thanks for your great post.
I don't know the story of that little girl. I actually found it on a site called awitness.org. The point of the article it was contained in was that the Christian Bible was the inspiration of the violence in the Koran.
:)
The site is very anti-Western, anti-capitalism.
But, the girl appears to be Malaysian or Indonesian to me, and she was beheaded, so I am assuming she is a dirty Jew, and the Muslims had to kill her.
d.c.,
I used to volunteer at a place that was in a location where there was a heavy infestation of Muslims (until they moved due to problems created by local Muslims), and I really was afraid of vandalism to my car, too.
So far, though, about the only thing that ever happened was when I first put up a nullification symbol with the words "sharia, dhimmitude, jihad" inside it was that a car full of Muslims behind us apparently got our phone number from our license plate. We got a call from a guy with a heavy Arab accent from something like the "verification agency" wanting to "verify" our address.
I told him to go sit on it, and to date, there has been no other problem.
I will confess to updating my weapons skills at the local NRA range though, and as soon as we can afford it, we'll also upgrade our weapons to the blow-your-stupid-head off kind.
Yeah, the acid and gasoline is definitely a problem for those ladies. Perhaps you can tell me. . .is that some sort of religious obligation, or is it more of a social convention?
Let me clarify: the organization moved, not the Muslims...
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