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28700. Jenerator - 11/1/2006 12:40:50 AM When did Jexster become anti-Semitic? or has he always been and I just didn't pay attention? 28701. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:41:39 AM I think its despicable, piss ignorant and very embarrasing 28702. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:42:01 AM But at least Berman knows his Judaica 28703. Jenerator - 11/1/2006 12:42:27 AM You're a piece of work, Jexster. 28704. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:42:43 AM 
28705. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:43:30 AM Call me whatever you like
I don't give a rat's ass 28706. Jenerator - 11/1/2006 12:45:48 AM Contradictions within the Koran.
On the one hand, Jexster's homosexuality would be an abomination before God, yet there are verses that (sort of) promise him male virgins.
No wonder he defends Islam! 28707. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:50:13 AM I'd defend any religious belief even an atheist against racist slurs
Now back the source of Jen/Concerned's effluent - the Judd Suss, Daniel Pipes...
Cole
One of the first books about the Khomeini fatwa was written by far rightwing commentator and Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, who is linked to the most militant sections of the Likud Party and to the pro-settler Gamla group. Pipes clearly had to hold his nose in defending Rushdie, a leftist anti-imperialist who thought well of the Sandinistas’ social programs for the poor in Nicaragua. Yet, he found the opportunity to lambaste Muslims too good to pass up.
Pipes’s book is shot through with essentialism and questionable generalizations. “Not only,” he solemnly tells us, “ are Muslims very touchy about perceived disparagements of their religion, but they tend to look at fictional works in a singularly literal way.” (107). Really? Muslims alone among human beings are touchy about their sacred cows, so to speak? Over a billion persons, crippled with a fiction deficit disorder that would stump even Oliver Sacks? But then, pray tell, how did such a community produce a Rushdie in the first place? Not to mention A Thousand and One Nights or Nobel prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz?
But Pipes has not finished characterizing the Muslims. He had already begun worrying about the immigration of these congenital, unrelenting realists to Europe and the United States. He complained (and remember he does so ostensibly in defense of Rushdie): “Unfortunately, the presence of Muslims in the West encourages the worst in each camp: ugly nativistic reactions from those who resent the growing numbers of dark-skinned, poor foreigners with strange eating habits and less-developed notions of hygiene; and arrogant fundamentalist Islamic ambitions among emigrants culturally unprepared for immersion in an alien civilization and therefore prone to insist on the most dogmatic version of their faith.” (245). Even if we allow that Pipes was in these characterizations adopting the “voice” of each of the two rival bands of extremists, his diction can only be seen as racist in its effect. All the blame for ugly nativism is put on the presumptuous presence of Muslims in the West. His diction is a recipe for the expulsion from the West of anyone who makes white racists upset. And, one would never know from such a passage that South Asian Muslim immigrants to the US are among the wealthiest and best educated groups in the country; or that pious Muslims wash five times a day and if anything are too worried about hygiene; or that large numbers of urban Britishers would starve to death were all those Indian restaurants serving what he calls “strange” food suddenly to close their doors.
Pipes’s are thus precisely the sort of anti-Muslim sentiments that The Satanic Verses was written to protest. In the subsequent decade he began taking an anti-immigration line redolent of French racist Jean Marie Le Pen. Not only should they be carefully caged in Africa and Asia, but, Pipes has now told the Jerusalem Post, Muslims must be kept under constant surveillance when not in their natural habitat. He writes, “There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues and temples. Muslim schools require increased oversight to ascertain what is being taught to children… “ (JP 1/22/03). From defending Rushdie’s right to freedom of speech, Pipes has gone to implicitly calling for him, like others of Muslim background, to be watched by the FBI for signs he might be a terrorist.
I should declare my interest and reveal that Pipes, in a bizarre twist, has even issued a fatwa of his own against me, calling for Juan Cole to be placed under constant surveillance by the people of Ann Arbor, who should report to him on me so that he can keep a file. (I hope you are all taking good notes). This tactic recalls Khomeini’s boast that he had 37 million spies in Iran. Apparently even studying Muslims can give you the new disease of surveillance-itis. I told you it was autobiographical. Way too much seeping.
28708. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:53:12 AM Don't let Jen and TD Jew You!
Also, "irrationality" of Islam is a generic Orientalist stereotype, Edward Said discussed this issue in length. Everybody familiar with Said-Lewis debate, will instantly recognize on whose side the proponent of "irrational" Islam must be, of course, he must share the Lewis-Pipes model of the Muslim world. This perfectly explains the fierce rejection of Pope's remarks by even the most moderate Muslims. Of course, they don't want to have anything in common with Lewis and Pipes!
To make things even worse, this unfortunate text does not include any explicit assessment of the Crusades, but Crusader rhetoric of Manuel II is reproduced as is. The problem is, this is exactly what hyper-radical Qutbist Islamists are talking about - "fighting the Crusaders" is well known to be their main ideological objective. So, the Pope gave both them and the hard neocons exactly what they wanted - confirmation that Catholic Church is not that far from direct endorsement of the neoconservative course in the ME.
Now we can remember the vicious anti-Catholic campaign that came from NYT and GU columnists in the end of John Paul II era, since 2003 - all the "pedophilia", "sexism" and "opposition to condoms" hype. Looking backwards, it is hard to avoid the sad conclusion that liberals acted as useful idiots for the neocons whose real goal was to bully Vatican into submission.
Considering the US electoral politics, the unfortunate Manuel II debate appears to be a perfect gift for the GOP, they desperately need something like second stage of Muhammad cartoons scandal to compensate the negative impact of disaster in Iraq on their poll numbers. Republicans never neglect symbolic moves this, that's their typical mode of operation.
Gurdian's Giles Fraser gives wonderfully clear description of Pope's position - that's Christian triumphalism. Sure, it is! Knowing actual situation of Manuel II, it makes sense to add that this triumphalism is 100% fake, so there is a deep irony in Pope's decision to use this particular example to make his point
Cole 28709. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:54:00 AM From the same bloody fools who having lost their demon Saddam are like sheep without a shepherd 28710. concerned - 11/1/2006 12:54:08 AM jexster - Speak for yourself - you're the only one here who indulges in racial slurs. 28711. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:54:37 AM Gotta have somebody to hate, to demonize...hallmark of a fascist. 28712. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:57:37 AM George Bush has killed 1/2 million people in 3 years - more than Saddam did in 25.
But unlike Saddam - who really was a fascist - he did so in the Name of God.
The war on Iraq would be a defeat for humanity. ...
Blessed John Paul II 28713. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:58:16 AM I don't like right wing Zionist jew assholes TD.
You say jews are a "race"? 28714. concerned - 11/1/2006 12:58:22 AM You should know - you seem to be kissing up to every hater of the US in the world. 28715. jexster - 11/1/2006 12:59:12 AM America has been jewed, screwed, tattoo'ed blue in the nude by Israeli right wing Jew fascists and TD is but their little toady 28716. jexster - 11/1/2006 1:01:23 AM I just hate Bushevik murderers who wrap their sorry crimes in Old Glory
If that means I hate the USA, as you say...
You know what that makes you?
Among the Muslims there is NO CULT of OSAMA
28717. jexster - 11/1/2006 1:09:50 AM Dr. Tariq Ramadan with A radical idea:
How Muslims can be European, too
Pretty sorry when you think about it. Slandering the second largest religion on the planet, a religion with 1500 years of tradition and deep belief, and all because some people are so insecure in their own spirituality and sense of self that they cannot survive without an "other" to hate 28718. concerned - 11/1/2006 1:33:18 AM Give me a break with your precious Islam.
Lefties love to slander Christianity - you slander Jews every chance you get, jexster. 28719. concerned - 11/1/2006 1:35:40 AM So what, jexster? Nazis also had 'deep belief' and god knows how much 'Aryan tradition'. That, and their disregard for human rights which they shared with Muslims, is what made them so bad for the world.
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