That Muslim Brotherhood strategy document

Lynn, you're responding to a comment I've just deleted. It was by a poster who identifies himself as ~tv, and who was banned some time ago from this site because of his frequent use of profanity and his generally obnoxious troll-like behavior.

It's funny: ~tv is gay, but likes these Islamic fundamentalists who believe people like him should be murdered because they are feared by Christians. Makes you kind of wonder what kind of issues he's dealing with in his head.

"and basically institutionalizes the second class status of non-muslims and women" I'm sorry but can you be specific ?"

As for non-muslims, shariah generally 1). forbids proselytizing and ‘too-public’ worship on the part of non-muslims, 2). places restrictions on building and/or repairing non-muslim holy places, 3). limits marriage rights for non-muslims and muslimas, while giving muslim men unrestricted right of access to ALL women 4). forces Islamic norms relating to dress and gender aparteid on muslim and non-muslim alike, 5). persecutes (or kills) muslim apostates and converts to non-muslim religions; and 6). punishes statements and actions which are seen to "defame” or criticise Islam, Mohammad or the Quran. It also generally excludes non-muslims from important policy positions within the government, often denies non-muslims the equal protection of the police and courts when the opposing party is a muslim, and not infrequently limits their economic opportunites and/or grants greater opportunities to muslims.

As for women, the Qur’an gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience. It plainly says that husbands are “a degree above” wives. The Hadith says that women are intellectually inferior. Under Islamic law, a man may divorce his wife at the drop of a hat (triple talaq), while it's much harder for a woman to obtain a divorce. The husband automatically gets the kids once they reach a specific age and there's no right of alimony even if they've been married for, like, 50 years. Muslim women are not free to marry whomever they please, as are Muslim men. Their husband may bring other wives into the marriage bed, often without even obtaining her permission first. Under strict shariah, Muslim women do not inherit property in equal portions to males. Their testimony in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s. And, unlike a man, she must cover her head and often her face. Finally, if a woman wants to prove that she was raped, then there must be four male witnesses to corroborate her account. Otherwise she will be jailed or stoned to death for confessing to “adultery.”

Given all of this, it is quite a stretch to say that men and women have “equality under Islam.”

very similar to the old testament laws eh

" . . .very similar to the old testament laws eh . . "

Hence the seperation of church and state.

rz, if you want to find where a husband was allowed to beat his wife in the OT I would be happy to know. I would also like to know where women were described as feeble minded. I could go on but your attempt at moral equivalence is a tired trope of those who don't want to face what Islam is.

For anyone's edification, the Muslim Brotherhood has its roots in a hateful little man named Sayyid Qutb, a bitter and bookish Egyptian who sported a Hitler mustache and thought conservative 1950s Colorado residents were too decadent. Qutb -- just like many Islamists today -- blamed the Crusades for degrading Islam's supposed capacity for brilliance.

And he resented what he saw as the West's theft of Islamic achievements. Isn't this air of superiority combined with resentments piled on resentments from the Muslim world getting a bit tiresome to anyone else in America?

In particular, Qutb hated Americans. He was a racist and a misogynist. And he was above all a utopian not unlike Lenin or Hitler, believing that society could perfect humans, in this case through the imposition of Islamic law. He also exhorted his readers to take jihad and martyrdom literally.

I assume by Usama's "Crescent Power" radical chic rhetoric involving the "Reviving Resurgence" that he takes these things in a similar literal fashion.

And why should anyone be surprised?

Poll after poll has shown us the real world view of the vast majority of those who live under Islamic cultural domination (Did we really need surveys to tell us? Rod should have taken a cue from the New York convenience store proprietor who was jolly and laughing about the towers on fire on 9/11. And the rest of us should have thought a little bit more about the women ululating with joy in the streets of Palestine, which we were comically told was because they were simply ignorant peasants. But I digress).

The results of opinion surveys of the Islamic world have repeatedly been disturbing (as well as dissonant from the "religion of peace" rhetoric we have been fed here in America).

Usama, Americans may be ignorant of the sophisticated history about which you seem so familiar -- though, to be frank, much of your commentary sounds like so much of rhetoric coming out of the group identity grievance "studies" departments in universities these days: lots of "critical theory" doublespeak with plenty of spicy "imperialist" and "tyranny" prounouncements and revisionist history meant to paint the West as always the oppressor and the Rest as always the victims.

Yeah man, tell us about it. Groovy, I can dig it.

Still, many of us are not naive about the sympathies of most in the Islamic sphere; it's just that so many of our fellow countrymen are sunk in postmodern deconstructionist funk (hey, that rhymes) and willfully refuse to understand the dangers we face.

also the execution of apostates/heretics by the catholic church

RZ. Are you referring to witch hunts and the inquisition? On the first, i challenge you to study (it doesn't take long) the place of witches across cultures and religions. If you are honest you have to come to the conclusion that whitch hunts are the response of a culture under stress to that stress. Basically people look for scape goats to blame for the confusing times they live in. Christian Europe was not exceptional in this respect and laying this at the feet of the church simply ignores all the whitch hunts and executions that have happened(and sometimes still happened0 in non christian cultures. It isn't so much a religion thing as a human thing. It is a phenomena that is not limited to non-modern cultures. If you think about it, what else were the holocaust, the gulags, or Mao's cultural revolution than witch hunts.
For your second point. Thats why the seperation of church and state is a good thing.Where their is no seperation, heresy and apostacy can become treason and treason is, in pretty much any state, a capital crime.

"Brad,

I'm sorry I have to say this but only ignorance about things like Christian Identity would allow you to equate it with the Muslim Brotherhood. Christian Identity is the province of a small number of extremists, such as the whackos who inhabit the strange and very small isolationist backwoods compound called Elohim City. The Muslim Brotherhood is far more widespread and sophisticated. Your "don't make me turn this car around" analogy may be cute, but it is horribly inaccurate and ill-informed."

Not at all. The point eludes you entirely.

There's not the slightest interest in comparing apples to apples involved in this; that's your province in getting all bogged down in precisely evaluating and declaring "Their religious sect is WAY more meaner than our religious sect, Dad!"

Ours is in simply tossing out the bad little apple and the bad huge orange alike, when any one of the fruits in the market goes bad.

First this (quoted by Lynn): "No matter how much you or anyone else wants to get all tizzy-fied about this, there is absolutely no law against outbreeding your religious oppnents, nor is there any law against out-converting them."

Then this from Rod: "Lynn, you're responding to a comment I've just deleted. It was by a poster who identifies himself as ~tv, and who was banned some time ago from this site because of his frequent use of profanity and his generally obnoxious troll-like behavior."

I'm late to this thread, but I had to note that ~tv, on another thread, was advocating total state control over who could "breed" and when. He (?) was looking forward to the day when chemical technology provided for temporary sterilizaton of the masses.

This is another example of ~tv's conflicted world view which ultimately (imo) lead to his over the top vitriol.

Sad.

>>>
Brad: You secularists ain't doing diddly about Islam except inviting more of its adherents into our midst. Posted by: Scott in PA | September 15, 2007 3:43 PM
>>>>

Scott, what exactly should a free society do about Islam?

Scott in PA expresses sentiments similar to the old common sense aphorism, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." I would add that neither is the New Testament.

John E.:

I can imagine a scenario in which enclaves within the United States are not free - where Islamic law is imposed in an extra-judicial fashion within certain cities and neighborhoods . . . Particularly for me, as a female.

"Well, so much for...to its eternal discredit.
September 15, 2007 3:08 PM"

What?

You're perfectly welcome to gallop merrily off in circles into the distance on your own argument pony.

You realize you've only merely expanded your own fascist argument to include everyone, not just Islam, and merely ranked them in order of which group you think should be thought-policed by historical actions first.

But that's not the argument I was making above.

By your own argument--that select religions themselves should be precluded from the U.S. because of the criminal or political actions of some of their adherents--the Catholic Church should be shut down, precluded from U.S. life, its assets confiscated, its adherents deported, because an ugly number of its priests have an irremediable fondness for sodomizing little boys. Erin won't like that.

But your argument still remains simpleminded and un-American from this standpoint: what if you do seal the border and allow no Muslim-thinking person in? Are you going to deport all the black Muslims in the 'hood already here than can continue to seed the spread of Islam? Are you going to try to seal the U.S. off from the Internet a la China, so no Muslim thought percolates in to infect others?

The U.S. isn't about--though it certainly could become--about thought policing, nor about speech policing other than in extreme situations, it's about action policing, imminently and pre-imminently. It's not about preemptively solving The Muslim Problem, or The Atheist Problem, or The Catholic Problem, or The Muppet Problem.

If Muslims in the U.S. want to try to peacefully change the U.S. to Sharia law peacefully using U.S. political structures and means, just as if Hispanics want to install Mexican Spanish as the de facto second language of the U.S., more power to them. If we can't prevent either, using the peaceful Constitutional means we live under, we lose, they win, and things change.

But that's the beauty of our pluralistic polity: by not stacking the deck in the way you advocate, nobody can get their hands on enough chips to do so.

Careful with that "simpleminded" stuff, Brad. That's violating Rod's "beer and pizza" rule. I suppose I could say that either I don't appreciate Brad's genius, or you're being deliberately obtuse.

You laid out a poorly-constructed analogy involving cranky parents and and argumentative kids and road trips and rotten fruit and apples-to-unapples comparisons and goodness knows what else.

In the context of that analogy, it was clear you as a "secularist" were putting yourself as the daddy above all the little squabbling silly magical-thinking religions.

So in pointing out the bloody track record of atheism (far more bloody than any other thought system) I simply pointed out the plank in the eye of the "secularists" -- that your way, which is essentially the atheist way, has a little splaining to do.

Now, how you went off the rails and used your Klingon dictionary to translate that little argument into "that select religions themselves should be precluded from the U.S. because of the criminal or political actions of some of their adherents" I'm not sure, but that clearly is not what I was laying down. Can you dig?

You are rz and others have been trying to raise various versions of the "moral equivalency" of Christianity to Islam argument (or, in your case, hwo fabulous the superiority of the Stoic wisdom of the mighty secularists is -- and it's a stinky argument and definitely worn out.

Lynn, I have to agree with [Posted by: Daniel | September 15, 2007 6:32 PM] on this:

>>>You are much more likely to have your right to contraceptives stripped away by orthodox and fundamentalist Christians then you are to have a burqa forced on you by Muslims in the U.S.

Posted by: John E. | September 15, 200

>>>You are much more likely to have your right to contraceptives stripped away by orthodox and fundamentalist Christians then you are to have a burqa forced on you by Muslims in the U.S.

As an aside, I'll disagree here. The reason this claim gets made is because of Christian opposition to the morning after pill. Planned Parenthood, et al, label it as contraception and not an abortion pill. There is not significant movement to deny contraception to anyone. Let's be honest.

Islam either doesn't inherently and necessarily foment political and criminal subjugation and violence--because moderate, or simply Sharia-dismissive or permanently Sharia-slacking/lapsed Muslims actually do exist in large and meaningfully controlling (if even only inertially) numbers,

Where in large numbers do these moderate Muslims control the radicals? It hasn't happened in Britain where over half the mosques are now controlled by the radicals. Turkey relies on a highly secular military and severe restrictions to control Islam. Everywhere else, the radicals are either in control or a dictatorship is required to maintain control.

The point most of us make is that as the number of Muslims reaches a certain critical mass, the radicals start to take over and cow the moderates. It's simply because the radicals can easily point to the straight forward sayings and historical interpretations of Islam to make their case. The moderates can't get any traction because there is not interpretation that is going to make sense to a common person looking at the same text.

or that empirical fact is simply irrelevant

We on the other side can easily say that empirical facts are irrelevant to you. And the worse things get, the more you will claim that we are somehow causing the behavior which is inherent to Islam.

John E. and Daniel- I am not concerned, particularly, about being forced into burqa, though it's a very real possiblility for many girls and women within certain families. I AM troubled by the fact that many critics and apostates from Islam continue to require armed guards and "secure, undisclosed locations" from which to conduct their work, even here, in the United States for fear of Islam's self appointed guardians - and yes, this certainly constitutes the "extra-judicial" application of Shariah in the United States.

I'm also concerned about the liberal application and interpretation of certain hate speech laws and other such legislation, that might result in, say, being charged with a felony for tossing a Qur'an into a toilet within some unknown proximity of a muslim? . . . However fantastical and remote as such a state of affairs may seem to you, I assure you, to me it seems quite imminent.

No hurt feelings, Brad, we just disagree. I was hoping we could do so in a civil fashion, so it doesn't hurt to cool things down by reminding everyone of the ground rules. Still, I think we know which one of us is more than a little touchy, touchy by the incessant use of html code to BOLD EVERY 10 WORDS YOU WRITE in order TO MAKE YOUR POINT seem MORE RELEVANT. I think it might do you a bit of good to reread the thread. I never asserted that the border should be sealed to Islamic believers; Scott A made that assertion. Perhaps you are confusing me with him?

In any case, here is your original remark:

"... While American's are perfectly happy to let Christians, Muslims, or the whole menagerie from Sesame Street, for that matter, scream and argue, or scribble furiously in your school notebooks about which one is God's Favorite Religion, even how you're gonna pull their dolls' heads off or boil their pet frogs in Hell, once any one of you starts punching anyone in this car, even pulling back to swing on them--Muslim Brotherhood, Christian Identity, we're a watchin' you in the rear view mirror--Daddy's gonna pull the car over and administer some secular whup-ass until you won't be able to sit down for a week. 'Now you kids settle down and behave yourselves, and look out the window over there. Ever see a landscape like that before?'"

1. The particular statement, "Muslim Brotherhood, Christian Identity, we're a watchin' you in the rear view mirror" does not require one to be simpleminded to interpret that as a moral equivalency statement, i.e. "Hey, Islam's got it's whackos ,and Christianity has it's share of whackos, too. As far as our secular democracy is concerned, we're keeping a close eye on the whole magical-thinking crowd of nincompoops." I interpreted that line -- in which you placed Muslim Brotherhood side-by-side with "Christian Identity" as trying to argue that the two were equally dangerous. However, Christian Identity nutballs do not have anything approaching the organizational capacity or capabilities the Muslim Brotherhood does, and they are a much smaller group of extremists, so I felt that setting the record straight with accurate information about Christian Identity versus the Muslim Brotherhood was in order. If a side-by-side comparison between the two was not what you intended, perhaps your prose could have been more lucid.

2. You have self-identified as a secularist on more than one occasion, if memory serves (and perhaps it doesn't). Thus, I felt more than justified in pointing out the sorry and bloody track record of the world view from which your outlook stems.

3. I think my statement that the "parents and the road trip" analogy was a poorly-designed and poorly-considered analogy on your part does not require much further explanation. It's not a particularly clever analogy, and has a rather hallucinogenic quality to it. It was also clearly meant to be derisive in tone, so please, enough with the asinine denials.

4. There does seem to be a pattern among secularist and left-of-center folks on this board of ascribing motives or making a leap to fourth and fifth iterations of various nightmare appellations (i.e. accusing one of being in favor of mass deportation or genocide or fascism -- the perennial favorite -- or proto-fascists or retro-fascists or witch hunters, or take your pick) without any clear logical pathway for making such bizarre assertions.

5. "...any ostensible "moral equivalence" or not is utterly irrelevant and unimportant; you, and only you introduced it" - Now this is a particularly inaccurate statement by you. Several other commenters introduced the hoary moral equivalency gambit between Islam and Christianity into this thread. For example, "rz" tried to equate Islam's edicts on the treatment of women to the Old Testament. He also raised medieval persecution of those suspected of being witches - clearly implying that because Christian Europe had its share of blood on its hands, no room for a critique of Islam and its modern-day adherents was allowed. "Daniel" told Lynn" that "I'd argue as a female you probably need to worry about the Megachurch down the block than the mosque on the corner" and that was a particularly chortle-inducing line. So I certainly did not introduce the moral equivalency nonsense, nor did I begin the comparisons between American Christianity and global Islam; others did. And others on this thread clearly have been watching too many viewings of "Jesus camp" and have bought into some leftist mythology about American Christians.

6. "Any ostensible moral equivalence" is not "utterly irrelevant or unimportant" to this discussion. I'm not getting "bogged down" in anything. Comparing the Judeo-Christian outlook to the Islamic world view is highly relevant to the discussion about the Muslim Brotherhood's intentions (i.e. "What the Muslim Brotherhood Means for the U.S." ... " The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood – whose Palestinian division is Hamas – operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations – including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society – are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.") and whether this speaks to the larger Islamic cultural imperative.

7. You raised the U.S. Constitution - as I'm sure you're aware, the Constitution has its roots in highly-developed political philosophy that stemmed from Judeo-Christian ethics and Scripture. Trust me, this is not some attempt to make the United States into a "Christian nation." It's simply historical fact, as is the fact that Western civilization is a Judeo-Christian one (likely now in the last throes of its life cycle as a result of postmodern nihilism and other ills). There are clear and valid connections between discussions about the Judeo Christian world view and the Islamic world view and a discussion about the Muslim Brotherhood and wider-ranging ongoing conversation about our nation's future and the dangers we face. So these are clear and valid connections I chose to discuss. In attempting to skirt these connections or to be dismissive of them, it seems to me you are being too cute by half and a bit of a turkey. If your point is that the Constitution creates a social compact that allows many diverse points of view and beliefs within one free nation, then I grant it. Good for you. You get a gold star for the civics lesson.

7. In his column Rod writes: "Look, no rational person believes America is going to exchange the Constitution for a caliphate." While this has the tone of whistling past the graveyard at night, I would agree with a caveat, and that is: Our Constitution won't matter much if the jihadists succeed in crippling us through other means. I can't imagine it will make many more 9/11's to ruin our economy, and with peak oil on the horizon there's little margin for error. The danger is vast and great -- too great for silly moral equivalency, or silly arguments that Christian "theocrats" present a graver danger to our republic (precisely the argument that so many left-of-center Americans make every day).

Now, I'm signing off for the evening before we head off into "son of a motherless goat" insult territory.

Thanks, Brad, I guess that means the rest of my points stand. Have a great evening.

>>>You are much more likely to have your right to contraceptives stripped away by orthodox and fundamentalist Christians then you are to have a burqa forced on you by Muslims in the U.S.

As an aside, I'll disagree here. The reason this claim gets made is because of Christian opposition to the morning after pill. Planned Parenthood, et al, label it as contraception and not an abortion pill. There is not significant movement to deny contraception to anyone. Let's be honest.
>>>

Ortho Nuvum can prevent the attachment of an egg to the uterus. Does that make it an abortion pill?

If you would say this is true, would the same Christian opposition to the morning after pill also apply to Ortho Novum and other birth control pills?

If so, and given that the majority of women who are trying to prevent preganancy use birth control pills, is it really not honest to say that if the logic of life-begins-at-conception is followed to its logical conclusion, Christian opposition would lead to banning birth control pills?

Brad, that's cop out. And it's a cop out everyone reading this thread sees. Simply asserting "your points suck so I'm not going to discuss them" is the weakest form of argument I've ever seen. Actually it's not an argument at all. The points stand.

"I just have to laugh at the desperate psychological need some liberals have to invent Christian Taliban. The only church that teaches unequivocally that contraception is immoral is the Roman Catholic church, and over 90 percent of its adherents disobey that teaching (alas)."

My point wasn't that this is likely, but instead that even if it is remote, the suggestion women will be harmed by the imposition of sharia in the U.S is even more remote. Since Christians make up about 75-80% of the U.S. population and have even more power when it comes to the levers of control, then oppression by radical Christians is statistically much more likely than oppression by Muslims.

But the fact that Lynn believes it could happen, even remotely, shows the power not of Jihadists, but instead the terrorists who have convinced her that it could possibly happen. The fact that she even has this anxiety--not just of a terrorist attack but the imposition of sharia law--demonstrates she is being terrorized by those in our society who have created hysteics about the Mulsim menace in the U.S.

The US is a de facto Christian hegemony. Complaints, no matter how valid, that Christian "control" (of any sort, including the constraints of morality) is weakening is ridiculous. By all means, debate amongst yourselves the in-and-out path of sin you all seem to be traveling. Your internal consistency is intact, at least from this observer's POV.

But don't think you can get away with claiming that the Christian hold on US society is going to be replaced by sharia.

Today, there are non-Christians all over the country who feel it necessary to keep their faiths to themselves, to worship not just in private but in secret, because they fear their Christian neighbors. Don't tell me they have no reason to feel that way. Tell me what you (collective) are doing to convince them that they are wrong. They, like the oppressive non-Christian governments of any stripe who react violently to Christian missionaries, see a consistent message: we (Christians) have the one and only truth. That, absent any contemporary actions, in conjunction with the history of Christian expansion, is enough to make them fear.

And it's not like there are no contemporary actions. There was those two women in Taliban-regime Afghanistan. There was the Koreans recently. You and I, in our safe, Bill of Rights haven, can rationally condemn both the incursion and the violent reaction. But in the end, it's the fear that drives it all.

So long as one insists on saying that their fear is wrong, and leaving it at that, it is precisely what Red Dirt accuses Brad of doing: their conclusions suck, and you're not going to address them.

First, don't confuse the EU and the UK with the U.S. i know this is a favorite approach of the Islamopanics, but our laws are so dramatically different that there's not really room for comparison. The state of Islam in Europe is exaggerated by the Islamopanics, but even at its worst there is no evidence that Islam and Muslims in the U.S are at a similar place.

Secondly, I suggest if you are closely monitoring websites like jihadwatch that you should do yourself a favor and reason some more objective, non-hysterical sites. Jihadwacth and other similar website are alarmist--and arguably guilty of a subtle terrorism--and need to be viewed through very very critical eyes. Free speech is not under threat in the U.S., at least in terms of being able to criticize and question Muslims.

I think your post even more clearly illustrates my point about the terrorism of the Islamopanic. I worry about our country and public policy if we allow the jihadwatchers and their ilk create panic and terror.

He never will, Lynn. People like that, if they were to be put up against the wall by jihadis and asked to give their final words before being executed, would find some way to blame their murder on Jerry Falwell.

Can someone, please, tell me why the invasion of Afghanistan, the violent overthrow of its government, and the destruction of the al-Qaeda training camps and death and dispersion of their members was not enough of a response to 9/11?

At least one liberal poised to blame Jerry Falwell would like to know.

I know you didn't mean it that way, Will, but I am compelled to clarify your post: while it is true that I am asserting that the US is a de facto Christian hegemony, I have not expressed the stated opinion about Rod.

I believe you are being too harsh on Rod, but that's just my view.

Does anyone intend to (try to) answer the question in my 11:48 AM post?

"Can someone, please, tell me why the invasion of Afghanistan, the violent overthrow of its government, and the destruction of the al-Qaeda training camps and death and dispersion of their members was not enough of a response to 9/11?"

What you describe would have been an appropriate response from an adminstration that was not influenced by fringy neo-conservative ideologues. 9/11 was used by the Bush administration as a fulcrum to launch the US into a pre-planned New American Century, the permanent US occupation of the Middle East. Our oil-based economy cannot tolerate the instability to oil prices that al-Qaeda and extreme Islam represents, so we police the area in the guise of a Global War on Terror.

Bush has already told us that he intends for this occupation to extend past his presidency. I'm afraid it will extend far past his presidency.