Comments (20)

ICBM says:
“Some of us are not at all interested in "making friends" with the Arabs or those (who) love them”

I used to hear people from the Middle East often ask: “Why the Americans dislike us while we very much like them, and never had raised a hand against them?”
After the 9-11 incident you do not hear them wonder like that anymore.

Thanks, Michael O, excellent comment.

It does seem strange to me when people spout the same untruths over and over again while contradictory evedence sits right in front of their eyes. I used to believe that there was a link between poverty and extremism - after all, everyone said so. Then I saw the evidence and i said "oh, guess we have to look elsewhere for the cause".

But folks are blinded by the needs of their ideologies, so they make themselves ignore contradictory evidence. See, it's rude to tell someone that their religion is the problem. But that's the case here. Islamic terrorism is the natural result of Islamic fundamentalism which is the natural outgrowth from ordinary Islam. Every religion has a percentage of adherents who take it way too seriously. And when you take Islam way too seriously, you are likely to go out and kill people. Simple as that. The reason terrorists are disproportionately NOT poor is because extremism generally requires that one be well-educated in one's religion, which in the Muslim world generally requires money.

ONCE MORE, THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT ISLAM – ON THE POST”S EDITORIAL PAGE

Faithful readers of this blog will know that I frequently post five questions about Islam that get to the core of whether Islam is compatible with modern liberal democracy and ask what the most authoritative voices of Islam would give as their answers. I pose the questions when I read another of those touchy-feely commentaries by “experts” like Jack Fairweather about “moderate” Muslims or about how we Americans have a distorted view of Islam. I always predict no Muslim will dare answer the questions. None have. You will also see that I suggest as an alternative to posing these questions to “most authoritative voices of Islam,” the question should be asked: What do Islamic textbooks teach in response to these questions?

Well, we have the answer to the latter question, but you will never see it discussed here. The answer is found in today’s column by Post columnist Ann Applebaum. She’s talking about a recent new edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence.” This is the edition, mind you, that was created as the REVISED and improved version of the one that had aroused such censure and condemnation. Ms. Applebaum examines the book’s correct answer to a question in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God. The answer to the question of what constitutes true belief is: (c) “A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers."

In other words, says Ms. Applebaum: “According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough to simply worship God or just to love other believers; it is important to hate unbelievers, too. By the same token, (b) is wrong as well: Even a man who worships God cannot be said to have ‘true belief’ if he also loves unbelievers. ‘Unbelievers,’ in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who attends Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught outright that ‘Jews and Christians are enemies of believers.’ They will also be taught that Jews conspire to ‘gain sole control over the world,’ that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day ‘the rocks or the trees’ will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.”

She goes on to point out that: “…now the beginning of the 2008-09 school year is nearly upon us,(and) the only textbook revisions have been superficial and the most disturbing part of the books' message -- that faithful Muslims should hate Jews and Christians -- remains.”

She continues: “Saudi schoolbooks, however, are a special case. They are written and produced by the Saudi government and are distributed, free, to Saudi-sponsored Muslim schools as far afield as Lagos and Buenos Aires…” It would be nice if we could see “…a unified response from the rest of the world's Muslims, the vast majority of whom do not share Saudi views and occasionally say so. It would be useful, for us but especially for them, if they would say so more often and more loudly…Make sure that children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and in Islamic schools all around the world have decent fourth-grade textbooks. Help persuade the Muslim world to write and distribute them. It might save a lot of trouble a few years later on.”

But do not hold your breath expecting any discussion of this issue on these pages. Oh, no. As I have also pointed out before, the moral and intellectual cowardice of self-proclaimed “moderate” Muslims is highlighted by their refusal to engage the readers of this blog in any semblance of dialogue. They just like to post their one-sided viewpoints about misunderstood Muslims suffering at the hands of misinformed Americans. They will be untroubled by the brutal reality revealed by the latest Saudi textbooks. The voices of “moderate” Islam will therefore be increasingly identified with moral and intellectual cowardice. A pluperfect example of how egotism, smugness, and a surfeit of the “preach to the choir” syndrome can be counterproductive to spreading whatever good might be said about Islam.

Fairweather wrote:
The King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz city on the outskirts of old Zarqa will ultimately house 500,000 residents.....

It is worth mentioning that the new city is named for the sitting king of Saudi. It is also worth noting that the Arab money is funneled to support development in another Arab country.

I congratulate the king of Saudi for develping Jordan.

"I will bet you anything that those commentators who think there is no link between extreme poverty and fundamentalism, have never themselves been really poor, and have no idea about the despair that extreme poverty brings."

That may be the case. By the same token, people who have never been brainwashed by murderous Islamic ideology, cannot comprehend how it can drive a person into an act of suicide bombing, regardless of that person's socio-economic background.

The connection between poverty and fundamentalism is not supported by facts. On the one hand, the majority of the poor around the world are not "fundamentalists". Just look at China, India, Africa, Latin America and most other countries where poverty exists on a large scale. On the other hand, most fundamentalists in the U.S., for instance, are not poor and are not desperate.

Second, even among those who are both poor and fundamentalist, no one resorts to terror, unless they are also Muslim. Got any good theory to explain that?

And third, even among Muslims, the majority of the poor do not become terrorists, and the majority of terrorists do not come from a background of poverty, as has been pointed out ad nauseam.

The problem with people like Fairweather and many others, is their inability to think out of the box. As Mark Twain once observed: "To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". We are the West, we are rich, let's pour more money into "development projects" and the problem will be fixed. And if the problem is not fixed, the only possible explanation is that we have not poured enough money there, so let's pour even more.

"No, we should not be doing more for the Muslims. We should be bombing their major cities, airports, highways, and gov't buildings so they will have to rebuild them and stop bothering us with their garbage."

The USA bombed Iraq back to the stone age, doing so did not seem to solve the problem except to p**s the already poor people off even more.
Do you have another brilliant solution to really bad USA foreign policy?

News videos show Afghanese complaining our troops don't do enough. What with the rubble it's hard to get the soldiers to take the dry cleaning anymore. No, we should not be doing more for the Muslims. We should be bombing their major cities, airports, highways, and gov't buildings so they will have to rebuild them and stop bothering us with their garbage.

I will bet you anything that those commentators who think there is no link between extreme poverty and fundamentalism, have never themselves been really poor, and have no idea about the despair that extreme poverty brings. And it is this despair that has people look to all sorts of extreme belief systems in order to alleviate their despair. The fact that all the 9/11 hijackers were all well-educated does not preclude extremism among the extremely poor and poorly educated.
It is important to give young people hope of leading a reasonably decent existence, enough food, housing,education, the opportunity to get married, and children. Otherwise,in despair they easily turn to extremism and/or crime, because they have no stake in the system. Is this that hard to understand?

Without passing judgment on the merits of this specific project, why in the world would a supposedly first-class newspaper turn any of its pages over to someone who perpetuates the by now totally discredited thesis that there is some direct link between poverty and Islamic extremism? As others have already pointed out, this is, simply, a purblind lie. It's like reading a article that begins with the assumption that the earth is the center of the solar system, or that evil spirits cause disease.

Fairweather is the pluperfect example of the vitimization whiner. Why is it that virtually no Arab country--and few Islamic countries--without oil even have a modern economy at all? Could the core problem be the lack of respect for modern education or personal enterprise? Could it be generation upon generation of youngsters getting no education at all, and those who do learning nothing more than how to sit in a classroom bobbing their heads up and down and reciting Koranic verses over and over? Add to this the religious requirements that condemn one-half the population--known as women--to permanent second-class citizenship, and you have the perfect blueprint for permanent poverty and backwardness.

Why in the world am I having to write such well-known truths about Muslim countries? I ask again--why does the Washington Post allow the publication of such ill-informed, sophomoric drivel?

The only solution to this seemingly hopeless situation of Arab/Muslim extremism is economic expansion that provides jobs and, more importantly, hope for millions of young, disenfranchised Arab men (and women, but that's probably going to take longer to happen).

The Arabs, and the Western know-nothings who parrot the Arab party line, need to realize that even if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the condition of the Arab nations would not improve one iota. In fact, lacking a common enemy, we would probably witness a dangerous increase in internecine strife among Muslim countries. Egypt vs. Sudan, Syria vs. Iraq, Saudi Arabia vs. Oman, etc. There are plenty of historical grudges among the various tribes that constitute these states, enough to fuel quite a few new wars.

How to encourage economic development? Well, for starters, they might try emulating Israel, which has concentrated on education and technology to fuel its own economy. Arabs are not stupid people, historically speaking at least. At one time, Arab civilization was far more advanced than its Christian rivals at the time of the late Byzantine Empire and the Dark Ages, well into the late Middle Ages. They invented mathematical concepts, had great cities that produced great works of art and books of science and poetry.

The Arabs need a catalyst to propel themselves into the new century and channel their tremendous energies into improving the world rather than destroying it.

The only solution to this seemingly hopeless situation of Arab/Muslim extremism is economic expansion that provides jobs and, more importantly, hope for millions of young, disenfranchised Arab men (and women, but that's probably going to take longer to happen).

The Arabs, and the Western know-nothings who parrot the Arab party line, need to realize that even if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the condition of the Arab nations would not improve one iota. In fact, lacking a common enemy, we would probably witness a dangerous increase in internecine strife among Muslim countries. Egypt vs. Sudan, Syria vs. Iraq, Saudi Arabia vs. Oman, etc. There are plenty of historical grudges among the various tribes that constitute these states, enough to fuel quite a few new wars.

How to encourage economic development? Well, for starters, they might try emulating Israel, which has concentrated on education and technology to fuel its own economy. Arabs are not stupid people, historically speaking at least. At one time, Arab civilization was far more advanced than its Christian rivals at the time of the late Byzantine Empire and the Dark Ages, well into the late Middle Ages. They invented mathematical concepts, had great cities that produced great works of art and books of science and poetry.

The Arabs need a catalyst to propel themselves into the new century and channel their tremendous energies into improving the world rather than destroying it.

World Guardian:

Are you aware that this insane act of IDF brutality involved the soldier shooting the prisoner in the toe with a rubber bullet? The prisoners toe was then immediately attended to by IDF doctors.

I don't remember Arab suicide bombers using fake rubber bombs filled with rubber shrapnel aimed at Israeli shoes.

Many have suggested that part of the problem leading to Islamic extremism is the sexual repression present in much of Islam and exaggerated in the more fundamentalist strains. It is unlikely that increased economic development will solve this problem. Qut'b (sp) himself, one of the main ideological originators of fundamentalist Islamic anti Americanism, was taken aback by the sexual freedom he found during his stay in America. He wrote about it in his tirades against the West. It is only by healing the problems within Islam itself
will things improve. Economic development on its owm will not improve anything. The 9/11 murderer/terrorists were all middle class or upper middle class, enjoying the fruits of all that money can buy in the West.

"If the West wants to make friends in the Arab world, it must stop this Israeli INSANITY."

Some of us are not at all interested in "making friends" with the Arabs or those love them.

So how many suicide bombers can the Palestinians send before a couple of Israelis lose it?

I'd feel better about the hijack of this post if World Guardian had ever posted about any Arab atrocity against Israelis or even against fellow Muslims.

The video and more information is now available here:

http://www.btselem.org/english/Press_Releases/20080720.asp

That is what will have a terrible impact
on each and every human being!

BREAKING NEWS
ISRAELI TROOPS SHOOT BOUND PALESTINIAN AT SHORT RANGE

Haaretz reported a couple of hours ago that B'tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organisation, received a VIDEO showing a soldier shooting a bound Palestinian from 6 FEET. The Palestinian was hand-cuffed and blind-folded. He was held by an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel who bound his limbs.

The video shows two soldiers detaining demonstrator Ashraf Abu-Rahama, 27, and holding him for an hour bound and blindfolded.

The Video was shot in the Occupied West Bank village of Naalin, where demonstrations against the APARTHEID WALL takes place.

The video and the story from HAARETZ
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003717.html

In the meantime some Right wing Zionist Hackers eliminated the video from the website, and the Hebrew website was filled with fascist comments.

If the West wants to make friends in the Arab world, it must stop this Israeli INSANITY.

Yet another typical Western journalist peddling the old cliches about the root causes of Islamic extremism, unencumbered by the thought process. You would think that after 7 years and thousands of articles and books written on the subject, some of these do-goodniks would stop and think twice, but no.

Idiots of the world, wake up. If the true causes of terror were poverty, hunger, oppression and hopelessness, then all the terrorists would be African women.

I don't see why urban development should have any impact on Islamic radicalism. Weren't the leaders of the 9/11 plot all upper-middle-class college graduates?

Isllamic radicalism is the fault of Islamic radicals and their ideology of hatred. Rich or poor, they would still hate us.

Economic development is a good thing in its own right though, no need to justify it by connecting it to the issue of the day. It looks more like an effort to conduct business as usual while pretending to do something about Islamic radicalism.

Surely the building of a new Western style city on the doorstep of the the old, rundown city will increase rather than diminish extremism amongst the "havenots" and "getnots" of Zarqa.