Category Archives: Media

'Taqiyya' to the Sounds of 'Tequila'

Ancient History, Islam, Media

The Greek philosophers believed that to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

How would they have characterized the rampaging Muslim mobs, who’ve been acting as terrorists to protest that their prophet Muhammad was depicted as a terrorist.

If that isn’t the ultimate performative contradiction, I don’t know what is. To embody a contradiction is indeed a lowly state of being.

Here is the story of the deception to the sounds of a familiar ditty. It all began with a scheming Imam and ended in the riots that rive the Muslim world as I write. It errs in blaming the one for the sins of the many, but is otherwise quite neat.
A doff of the hat to David Conway of CIVITAS for sending the thing along.

Update: It turns out that raging Muslims are more coherent than I gave them credit for; their deeds are in keeping with Muhammad, peace be upon him (it’s now mandatory to offer praise each time the prophet is mentioned). But let historian Srdja Trifkovic do the explaining.
Muslims the world over have demanded that “respect for Muhammad [be] restored.” “We want him to be described as the man he really was in history,” a Danish leader enjoined. So “in the spirit of multicultural tolerance and interfaith dialogue,” Trifkovic has obliged. Read his crash course on Muhammad’s monumental life’s work.

The Cartoons and the Camel in the Room

Media, The West, The Zeitgeist

The commentariat’s response to the Danish cartoons that mocked Muhammad reminds me of the iconic scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Challenged to a duel by a scimitar-wielding enemy, Indiana Jones draws a pistol and dispatches the swordsman without further ado.
In my analogy, Indiana Jones, however, is the Muslim world. His showy opponent is the West, which has unleashed its penmen on rampaging Muslim mobs to convolute about the values of freedom of expression, enquiry, and conscience.
How have Muslims responded to these lofty disquisitions? As Indiana Jones did, lethally; by calling for the heads of the offenders. From Indonesia to Egypt they’ve kidnapped, killed, and set fire to embassies and missions, promising to visit a “holocaust” on those who pictorially depict or misspeak about Muhammad…

The complete column, The Cartoons and the Camel in the Room, is here. Comments are welcome.

Buchanan (and Libertarians?) Sides with “Deadly Serious Religion”

Islam, Media

At View from the Right, Lawrence Auster observes that “Patrick Buchanan comes out 100 percent against the European papers that published the cartoons of Muhammad, seeing the act as an anti-religious provocation by secular modernists.” Auster notes that Buchanan’s piece was published by “the anarchist libertarian website lewrockwell.com.”

This is not to say that the website endorses Buchanan’s view, but it’s important to note that lewrockwell.com is highly selective about content, usually posting perspectives—and people—that comport with its mission. “Patrick J. Buchanan on tweaking the Muslims” is how the column was billed on the site, clearly saddling the “tweakers” with the blame.

Libertarians are supposed to be committed to absolute freedom of speech on private property: newspapers. In fact, some libertarians will even defend speech that incites murder, which is a far more congruent position than countenancing the aggressive, murderous, uncivilized assailants of innocent Danes.

Auster, who obviously doesn’t expect much from libertarians, told me he thinks the incongruity is a further example of a phenomenon he’s long noted on the activist Left: “the various left factions—feminists, blacks, labor, homosexualists—will quickly give up their supposed ideals for some other, overriding purpose that they all have in common. What is that overriding purpose? The destruction of the West. Once people are motivated primarily by resentment and hate, all the positions are only taken because they advance that agenda of resentment.”

If this is true, it must be occurring on a subconscious, cock-a-snook-at-the-Empire level, since libertarians who find Buchanan’s piece valid can’t have thought through what the West’s dhimitude would mean to their endeavor. (Do libertarian homosexuals for Islam believe they’ll be spared a stoning?) Yet Auster has a point: these particular libertarians do invariably come out on the side of the Noble Savage, however savage his actions. Since condemning the invasion of Iraq doesn’t preclude castigating Muslim reaction to the cartoons, I’m not sure how to explain their unvarying, single-minded commitment to The Barbarians.

Buchanan (and Libertarians?) Sides with "Deadly Serious Religion"

Islam, Media

At View from the Right, Lawrence Auster observes that “Patrick Buchanan comes out 100 percent against the European papers that published the cartoons of Muhammad, seeing the act as an anti-religious provocation by secular modernists.” Auster notes that Buchanan’s piece was published by “the anarchist libertarian website lewrockwell.com.”

This is not to say that the website endorses Buchanan’s view, but it’s important to note that lewrockwell.com is highly selective about content, usually posting perspectives—and people—that comport with its mission. “Patrick J. Buchanan on tweaking the Muslims” is how the column was billed on the site, clearly saddling the “tweakers” with the blame.

Libertarians are supposed to be committed to absolute freedom of speech on private property: newspapers. In fact, some libertarians will even defend speech that incites murder, which is a far more congruent position than countenancing the aggressive, murderous, uncivilized assailants of innocent Danes.

Auster, who obviously doesn’t expect much from libertarians, told me he thinks the incongruity is a further example of a phenomenon he’s long noted on the activist Left: “the various left factions—feminists, blacks, labor, homosexualists—will quickly give up their supposed ideals for some other, overriding purpose that they all have in common. What is that overriding purpose? The destruction of the West. Once people are motivated primarily by resentment and hate, all the positions are only taken because they advance that agenda of resentment.”

If this is true, it must be occurring on a subconscious, cock-a-snook-at-the-Empire level, since libertarians who find Buchanan’s piece valid can’t have thought through what the West’s dhimitude would mean to their endeavor. (Do libertarian homosexuals for Islam believe they’ll be spared a stoning?) Yet Auster has a point: these particular libertarians do invariably come out on the side of the Noble Savage, however savage his actions. Since condemning the invasion of Iraq doesn’t preclude castigating Muslim reaction to the cartoons, I’m not sure how to explain their unvarying, single-minded commitment to The Barbarians.