ReadabilityAn Army of Barbaras Dr. Who, The Aztecs and Radical Islam
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
and so we return to the present day. What were the lessons of that episode?
Barbara’s expertise on the Aztecs was in the classroom, when she said:
BARBARA: Ah, well, that was one of my specialties, Susan.
what she knew about the Aztecs came from her studies and while she was aware of the violent and bloodthirsty side of them, her civilized upbringing making it difficult to visualize the more brutal aspects of Aztec cultures (Considering her age and proximity to WW 2 that’s actually odd. That she meets an exceptional man (Autloc) makes it all the more difficult for her to see the Aztecs as they are, yet even she doesn’t catch that while he is willing to consider her words he doesn’t reflexively reject their ways:
BARBARA: To say there shall be no more human sacrifice?
AUTLOC: I shall not oppose the gods if it is their will that such sacrifices cease.
Note the phraseology I shall not oppose, not: “I believe it’s wrong,” or “I see what you mean.” He is willing to reject human sacrifice because he sees it as the command of a god, not because it is inhumanity to his fellow-man.
And while Barbara doesn’t see the Aztec world as it is. Ian who would have been of age for national service does and has been outside the temple does:
IAN: … If only you could stand away from this thing, you’d see it clearly. Autloc’s the extraordinary man here. He’s the reasonable one, the civilized one, the one that’s prepared to listen to advice. But he’s one man, Barbara. One man.
While the Dr. Who special notes the implications of history, the real story here is the difference between an abstract academic knowledge of a culture and practical experience living within it…
…and that neatly summarizes the educated and diplomatic left and the young fools they teach when it comes to Islam in general and Radical Islam in particular.
Islam has certain set of teachings, and they do not change. Consider the recent case of a female Islamic Teacher who taught in school that homosexuals should be incinerated:
The Islamic Religious Community presumes that after having spent a whole year near Mecca, she has lost sense of what one can say in a Western society.”
Note what the community doesn’t say: “Incinerating Homosexuals is wrong”, “We don’t believe in incinerating homosexuals” they say “she has lost the sense of what one can say in a Western Society”.
Let’s note that these are members of the Islamic community IN THE WEST, not in the Middle east.
Or consider the stoning in Dearborn here is a comment from the group that was stoned:
This is a police officer in uniform cheering the crowd on as they throw us out. Now, let me explain something. We preach to a lot of venues. We go to Mardi Gras, spring break, the Academy Awards, baseball games, plus we preach to a lot of religious people as well. Such as Salt Lake City, when the Pope comes to America, we have signs for him and we follow him in the city that he is in; some of the Evangelicals that are on TV that are nothing more than money hungry devils, we preach to them too.
Nobody gets violent except the Muslims. Yet they are under the umbrella of the ‘Religion of Peace.’ They are nothing more than people just waiting to attack us and because the sheriff’s department did nothing to those little kids throwing debris at us, all that did was fuel fire for these kids because they feel invincible. They throw things at us for an hour and a half, they got away with it, they screamed and hollered and we got kicked out of the event. They just fueled a monster that one day is going to strap a bomb on themselves and blow themselves up for their god and this sheriff’s department actually fueled that monster.
Again this is in an American City where this takes place, with Muslims who live in America, not in Iran or Egypt.
The bottom line is this: diplomats, academics and celebrities tend to encounter a sanitized version of Islam if they actually encounter it at all. They are an army of Barbaras who see only what they’ve read and been told. Granted some of them do understand and don’t care for reasons I describe here, but most will never encounter Muslims as they are in their own land (as Lara Logan did) or in their own language as translated by MEMRI.
Let me give a personal example:
I will be having the Imam of the Fitchburg Mosque on my show next month (Feb 23rd 1 pm. I’ve interviewed him before and talked to him. He’s a pretty nice guy and the local Muslims have never been anything but friendly, but they are also in a Muslim sect called the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
In many ways the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is what academic west dreams Islam to be: they eschew violence and advocate Islam through argument and persuasion “Jihad of the tongue” per their founder.
He (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad) advocated a peaceful propagation of Islam and emphatically argued against the necessity of Jihad in its military form in the present age.
They believe Ahmad to be the messiah and like Autloc, obey said messiah.
Whenever radical Islamists or CAIR need an example of peaceful Islam the Ahmadiyya Muslims are pushed to the forefront however outside of the US in Muslim lands Ahmadiyya Muslims are a tiny sect considered non-believers by almost all mainstream Muslims and widely and at times violently persecuted outside of the west.
Yet these facts are ignored by the Army of Barbaras in the west. The fact that they are non-representative of Islam both in the US and internationally would shatter the image of Islam that they carry and they simply don’t want to accept it.
The time will come when their Ian will come along and acquaint them with the reality. Whether that Ian will be in the form of an argument such as the one I’ve made today or of an action that can’t be denied remains to be seen.
Hopefully said action will not be as fatal as the sacrifices made by the Aztecs.
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
and so we return to the present day. What were the lessons of that episode?
Barbara’s expertise on the Aztecs was in the classroom, when she said:
BARBARA: Ah, well, that was one of my specialties, Susan.
what she knew about the Aztecs came from her studies and while she was aware of the violent and bloodthirsty side of them, her civilized upbringing making it difficult to visualize the more brutal aspects of Aztec cultures (Considering her age and proximity to WW 2 that’s actually odd. That she meets an exceptional man (Autloc) makes it all the more difficult for her to see the Aztecs as they are, yet even she doesn’t catch that while he is willing to consider her words he doesn’t reflexively reject their ways:
BARBARA: To say there shall be no more human sacrifice?
AUTLOC: I shall not oppose the gods if it is their will that such sacrifices cease.
Note the phraseology I shall not oppose, not: “I believe it’s wrong,” or “I see what you mean.” He is willing to reject human sacrifice because he sees it as the command of a god, not because it is inhumanity to his fellow-man.
And while Barbara doesn’t see the Aztec world as it is. Ian who would have been of age for national service does and has been outside the temple does:
IAN: … If only you could stand away from this thing, you’d see it clearly. Autloc’s the extraordinary man here. He’s the reasonable one, the civilized one, the one that’s prepared to listen to advice. But he’s one man, Barbara. One man.
While the Dr. Who special notes the implications of history, the real story here is the difference between an abstract academic knowledge of a culture and practical experience living within it…
…and that neatly summarizes the educated and diplomatic left and the young fools they teach when it comes to Islam in general and Radical Islam in particular.
Islam has certain set of teachings, and they do not change. Consider the recent case of a female Islamic Teacher who taught in school that homosexuals should be incinerated:
The Islamic Religious Community presumes that after having spent a whole year near Mecca, she has lost sense of what one can say in a Western society.”
Note what the community doesn’t say: “Incinerating Homosexuals is wrong“, “We don’t believe in incinerating homosexuals” they say “she has lost the sense of what one can say in a Western Society“.
Let’s note that these are members of the Islamic community IN THE WEST, not in the Middle east.
Or consider the stoning in Dearborn here is a comment from the group that was stoned:
This is a police officer in uniform cheering the crowd on as they throw us out. Now, let me explain something. We preach to a lot of venues. We go to Mardi Gras, spring break, the Academy Awards, baseball games, plus we preach to a lot of religious people as well. Such as Salt Lake City, when the Pope comes to America, we have signs for him and we follow him in the city that he is in; some of the Evangelicals that are on TV that are nothing more than money hungry devils, we preach to them too.
Nobody gets violent except the Muslims. Yet they are under the umbrella of the ‘Religion of Peace.’ They are nothing more than people just waiting to attack us and because the sheriff’s department did nothing to those little kids throwing debris at us, all that did was fuel fire for these kids because they feel invincible. They throw things at us for an hour and a half, they got away with it, they screamed and hollered and we got kicked out of the event. They just fueled a monster that one day is going to strap a bomb on themselves and blow themselves up for their god and this sheriff’s department actually fueled that monster.
Again this is in an American City where this takes place, with Muslims who live in America, not in Iran or Egypt.
The bottom line is this: diplomats, academics and celebrities tend to encounter a sanitized version of Islam if they actually encounter it at all. They are an army of Barbaras who see only what they’ve read and been told. Granted some of them do understand and don’t care for reasons I describe here, but most will never encounter Muslims as they are in their own land (as Lara Logan did) or in their own language as translated by MEMRI.
Let me give a personal example:
I will be having the Imam of the Fitchburg Mosque on my show next month (Feb 23rd 1 pm. I’ve interviewed him before and talked to him. He’s a pretty nice guy and the local Muslims have never been anything but friendly, but they are also in a Muslim sect called the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
In many ways the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is what academic west dreams Islam to be: they eschew violence and advocate Islam through argument and persuasion “Jihad of the tongue” per their founder.
He (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad) advocated a peaceful propagation of Islam and emphatically argued against the necessity of Jihad in its military form in the present age.
They believe Ahmad to be the messiah and like Autloc, obey said messiah.
Whenever radical Islamists or CAIR need an example of peaceful Islam the Ahmadiyya Muslims are pushed to the forefront however outside of the US in Muslim lands Ahmadiyya Muslims are a tiny sect considered non-believers by almost all mainstream Muslims and widely and at times violently persecuted outside of the west.
Yet these facts are ignored by the Army of Barbaras in the west. The fact that they are non-representative of Islam both in the US and internationally would shatter the image of Islam that they carry and they simply don’t want to accept it.
The time will come when their Ian will come along and acquaint them with the reality. Whether that Ian will be in the form of an argument such as the one I’ve made today or of an action that can’t be denied remains to be seen.
Hopefully said action will not be as fatal as the sacrifices made by the Aztecs.
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
[...] Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 [...]