Muslim Immigration

About time we had some good news right?  Seems our friends in France have managed to beat back the always unpleasant Le Pen clan and reaffirm their commitment not only to all things French as they certainly should but also to Europe and even more expansively the world.  After the UK packed it in and the USA abruptly took leave of its senses and joined the circus I really wondered if the Europeans would follow suit and go on holiday as well.  Thankfully that does not appear to have been the case despite our good frenemies the Russians trying to pull a Trump on them at the last moment.  Got to love the French.  Tougher than they seem sometimes.  Not all brie and a nice bottle of wine that’s for sure.  Anyway, I thought this might be a good excuse to take one more shot at the whole immigration issue as it appears to be a pretty big deal overseas.  Well, here too I suppose but not really the same thing.  Folks in Europe are a lot closer to all the mayhem going on in the Middle East right now, have done a lot more to help the refugees from that benighted region of the world, and have been trying to assimilate people a lot more foreign and sometimes dangerously anti-social than the occasional bad hombre arriving in the USA from our long suffering neighbor to the south.  So let me say a few more words this week about immigration with Muslim immigration as the specific example.

First let me just say this issue I feel has nothing or should have nothing really to do with how one personally feels about the religion of Islam... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Problematic Sexuality (and Violence Too)

Welcome friends!

I suppose you read about the latest outrage perpetrated by a self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist here in the USA?  Yes, seems a local fellow of Afghan descent, Omar Mateen, managed to force his way into a nightclub in sunny and fun loving Orlando Florida armed with an assault rifle and pistol and cowardly and in cold blood murder forty-nine innocent unarmed young people and maim an additional fifty-three.  According to reports he was laughing as he killed his victims.  The cops eventually put some bullets in his head and he wasn’t laughing so much after that.  Such an irritating story on so many different levels.  Seems Omar had been praising Islamic terrorist groups and mocking their victims as far back as the attacks of 9/11 when he was still in high school.  A fellow employee at the security firm where he worked described him as a violent nut who spewed hatred toward all manner of people and talked enthusiastically about mass murder.  Apparently this behavior made no impression at all on his school system, his employers, the local Imam, or his father, who characterized Omar after the murder spree as a good son.  Indeed according to his dad Omar erred only in forgetting “God will punish homosexuals.”  Such a fine line isn’t it?  One minute you’re helping God do his / her / its work and the next minute you’re one of the worst mass murderers the USA has ever seen.

I’m not sure but I think British-born Islamic cleric Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshafar may be able to help us with subtle distinctions of this sort.  He now resides in Iran but for some reason was lecturing somewhere near Orlando last April.  Hey, don’t ask me; I just live here.  In 2013 he gave a lecture at the University of Michigan in which he explained Muslims have a religious duty to kill gay people.  In his words, “Death is the sentence.  There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this.  Death is the sentence.”  Anyway, he seems quite the expert on fine distinctions relating to Islam and murder.  For example, he rejects the way Islamic State terrorists have been murdering gay people and notes with disdain they belong to the Sunni sect of Islam.  He belongs to the rival Shia sect.  He thinks Muslims should kill gay people in an official judicial context.  Pretty funny isn’t it?  I’m certainly no expert on the issue but I think many Muslims here in the USA and other modern democracies don’t really believe they have a religious duty to kill gay people in either an official or unofficial capacity.  Anyway I hope that’s the case.  Not really sure which sect they belong to.  How many are there anyway?  Does anyone even know?  And how the hell does one tell them apart?  Well, doesn’t matter much to me.  Not really my cup of tea.  In my opinion if a Muslim of any sect manages to come up with some rationale for not murdering people or exhorting other people to murder people then I’m satisfied.  I don’t need to know the details.  Can’t ask for too much in this world you know.  Anyway, Mr. Sekaleshafar is currently a guest of the Imam Husain Islamic Centre in Sydney Australia but local authorities are trying to help him back across the border so he may not be there much longer.  I can’t imagine he would want to return to Iran.  Who would?  I suppose he’ll probably be on a plane back to the USA to give us another lecture on Islam.  So much ignorance in the world don’t you think?  Hey, maybe we can ask his opinion on the morality of mass murder.  I’m not joking.  I’d like to know what he thinks.  We’re not going to start killing gay people in a judicial context in this country because we don’t live in a Stone Age hellhole and we know a little something about human sexuality and believe in personal freedom and so on and so forth.  In that context I wonder if the holy man sees any ethical merit in mass murder as a sort of fall back position.  Perhaps not perfect according to his belief system but better than doing nothing at all?

Returning to our story, can you believe the incompetence of our security forces?  We’ve got a creature who celebrated terrorist attacks and whose dad praised the Taliban terrorist organization on his local access TV show and yet he slithers into a gun shop in Florida and buys an assault rifle, which is something no one but a terrorist or criminal really needs in this country.  He tried to buy military grade body armor as well and was unsuccessful only because he went to the wrong shop.  When did the Three Stooges take over at FBI?  Do you know?  I missed it.  Omar: “I’ve proclaimed my love and admiration for terrorists and murderers for years.  I’ve come to the attention of the FBI on two different occasions on suspicion of supporting international terrorism.  My dad supports the Taliban terrorist group on local TV.  Can I please have an assault rifle right away?  I need it for … something.”  Florida and FBI in unison: “Why soitanly!  Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”  Omar: “I also need some military grade body armor.  I’m talking about the good stuff.  It must be able to take a high power sniper round and allow me to keep on shooting.”  Florida: “Sorry fresh out but maybe you can get some at the shop around the corner.”  FBI: “Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo!”  I mean really.  It’s embarrassing.  Can we pick up our game a bit here?  The incompetence and ineffectiveness of our security people in this case is just mind boggling.  It’s a problem but old hat I suppose.  Violent bigoted conservatives have been murdering innocent people for years all around the globe and of course in recent years Islamic extremists have all but cornered the market.  That’s not really news.  Indeed, it would be news if a day went by and Islamic extremists didn’t murder some random young person.  Can’t do a blog post on that.

Fortunately, I saw another article that got the old brain working again.  This article told a rather disturbing tale about a relatively young man (39 years old) named Sebastien who is currently trying to end his own life through Belgium’s legal euthanasia system on the grounds of extreme psychological suffering due to what he characterized as being gay.  WTH?  Whenever I try to stop talking about sexual orientation there it is all over the news again.  Did I mention the nightclub where our domestic Islamic terrorist Omar murdered all those people had a mostly gay clientele?  Yes, seems Omar was hanging out with gay people for quite some time before he started murdering them.  Trolling for victims or casing the joint are possibilities I suppose.  Of course I did read he had been going to that particular nightclub for about three years prior to his murder spree.  Seems quite a long time to be casing a joint.  Must have had one hell of a complicated set up.  Like breaking into Fort Knox.  And when it came to it he didn’t seem very particular about his victims.  He was also apparently active on gay dating apps for some time.  Not really sure how that helped.  Doing research I suppose.  Of course, there are other explanations.  I’ve been reading a lot of speculation that maybe we’re talking about a gay person who was so mentally and emotionally screwed up by his religion he was driven to murder those tempting him down the path of unrighteousness with all their dancing and kissing and loving and friendship and other fiendish devices.  Usually in cases like this we’re talking about deranged straight people imbued with religious fervor killing the wanton women they believe are enticing them into the unnecessary sexual activity Middle Eastern religions find so distressing but I guess the gay version works as well.  What is it about sex that sets conservatives so on edge anyway?  Honestly, I feel sometimes I’m living in Crazy Town.  Can we get some top psychiatrists working on it?  Maybe they can develop some sort of medication to help conservatives dial down their sexual anxieties a few notches.

Anyway, to get back to Sebastien, my initial reaction was to lash out at the sort of internalized homophobia or really hatred of gay people that would make a conflicted gay person want to kill himself, which I suppose would be pretty similar to whatever might cause a conflicted gay person to want to kill other gay people.  I was going to blab on about how incredulous I was that something like that could take place in a more or less modern country like Belgium (as opposed to the sort of overseas pisspot one assumes Omar would have found appealing) but really there’s not much interesting to say there either.  We get it.  Once one gives up one’s reason and humanity funny things start to happen.  Can’t write a blog post on that.  Thank goodness after thinking about it a bit more I now suspect something a bit more interesting might be going on at least in Sebastien’s case.  Yes!  A possible blog post at last!  (This must be a personal record.  I’ve been talking for five paragraphs and I’ve just now gotten to what I hope is the point.  I salute anyone who has managed to stay with me this week.)

I think we’ve wasted enough time on the preliminaries so let’s just dive right in.  As I was saying I  thought at first Sebastien might be someone so indoctrinated with hatred for gay people he just can’t handle the fact he is gay himself.  (One hears stories like that from time to time.  Pretty strange if sexual orientation is a choice as some conservatives believe, right?  Maybe after we consult Islamic religious scholar Sheikh Sekaleshafar on the ethics of mass murder we can consult conservative windbag Ben Carson on the mystery of why Sebastien doesn’t just choose a different sexual orientation.)  What makes me suspect this might indeed be all we’re talking about is that Sebastien made reference to a “strict Catholic ethos” existing in his household as he was growing up.  I feel anytime anyone is subject in his or her youth to any strict form of any religion but particularly any religion with any connection at all to the Middle East then that person’s mental health in later life is likely to become a major concern.  If that is the case then it would be sad and a little ironic because of course the age of religious ignorance and intolerance is passing in the USA and other modern countries (although surely still going strong in the more backward regions of the world) and it’s disheartening to think of anyone in a generally modern country like Belgium killing himself or herself for this reason at this point in history.  Rather like dying on the last day of a war.  (If you’re not following me on this point and have trouble imagining what happens when human sexuality collides with religiosity inside someone’s head check out the reference below on internalized homophobia.  Take a look in particular at the account of the young Muslim fellow who explains how he was driven to increasingly extreme religious behavior in a vain attempt to compensate for the self hatred he experienced after realizing he was gay but committed to a religion that presents being gay as a fatal moral failing.)

However, I then noticed Sebastien added he was attracted specifically to “young men and adolescent boys.”  Oh.  Wait a minute.  Adolescent boys?  Is that what we’re talking about?  Is the issue not so much he’s gay but he’s sexually attracted to underaged kids?  To me that’s a rather different issue and certainly not specific to gay people.  Lolita ring a bell?  Anyway, if that’s the case then that seems to me a rather more interesting sort of question.  I’m sure I’ve commented before that current research suggests sexual attraction and orientation are of uncertain origin, established very early in life, buried pretty deeply in one’s psyche, and considered by mental health professionals to be basically impossible to change.  So what is one to do?  Well, I’m not a trained psychologist but off the top of my head I suppose there are two main ways to go: The first is an all out assault on one’s brain to eradicate unacceptable sexual thoughts.  That approach doesn’t seem to me very likely to work.  Sounds quite similar to trying to change one’s sexuality, which I’ve already noted most knowledgeable people now think is impossible.  I suspect if one tries that approach a bit too strenuously one might just end up doing oneself a mischief.  The second is the rather more modest approach of accepting one’s lot but taking steps to manage the problem.  That sounds to me more like something that might actually work.  As far as that goes I have to wonder if Sebastien has tried the traditional home remedy for managing funny sexual urges: porn.

I’m not kidding.  I’ve been doing a little research of my own the past several years and I’ve discovered one can find porn relating to all manner of things.  Did you know?  I infer there’s quite a bit of variation out there in what people find titillating.  I know some people feel differently but it seems to me a pretty harmless way to manage these sorts of issues.  Read a story.  Look at a drawing or a photo or a video and then use your imagination.  (And when I say a photo or a video I mean one that either isn’t pornographic or one that is but legal and aboveboard.  Looking at a photo or a video of someone else abusing an underaged kid or doing something else similarly reprehensible would defeat the whole purpose.)  Get it all out.  Then get on with life.  You know, if one is mature and sane one usually knows full well what one should do but if one imagines doing something else from time to time I guess it’s not the end of the world.  I’m a firm believer it’s what one actually does that matters in this life not what random thoughts might pass through one’s head.  Anyway, I suspect for most people porn therapy works because that’s how sexuality usually works.  One gets a bit horny for some reason and spends a few moments sorting it and it goes away.  I get that one might argue viewing porn or some types of porn anyway is giving in to the ugliness of the human condition and it would be superior to resist such unpleasantness.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  But I suspect it’s a heck of a lot healthier than pretending it doesn’t exist.  Monsters grow in darkness and secrecy.  Better to get things out in the open where you can deal with them.  Get the odd sexual fantasy out of the way and get on with the business of life including the important life task of developing meaningful emotional relationships with other people.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s great if one manages the semi-mythical perfect union of sex and love but let’s not make a fetish out of it.  Doesn’t always work that way nor should one expect it to.  You might love your wife very much but maybe she just isn’t into dressing up like Princess Leia and licking your balls all night long.  (Pardon the vulgarity but I am doing a post on porn after all.)  Life goes on.  Go rest your head in your bedroom for a few minutes and come back when you feel better.  I think similar reasoning might apply to Sebastien.  If he has sexual feelings for underaged boys he can’t shake off then he’s probably better off trying to manage it in a positive way rather than obsessing about it.  Find a way to deal with it that doesn’t harm anyone.  If one is sincerely attracted to boys one should know as an adult one has a moral responsibility to put their interests first. That is the essence of true love after all don’t you think?  Find some way to get the funny sexual feelings out of the way and perhaps one can enjoy the beauty of boys and interact with them in a caring and supportive way as one ought to do.

Of course I suppose porn therapy probably isn’t advisable in every case.  If one has obsessive tendencies it may be the more porn one reads the more one thinks about inappropriate sexual behavior.  Or again I suppose it wouldn’t be advisable for people with a tenuous grip on reality.  The whole approach is predicated on the ability to maintain a distinction between the no holds barred private world of the imagination and the real world where one has ethical responsibilities one cannot ignore.  If one is apt to lose track of which world one is in porn therapy sounds like trouble waiting to happen.  And of course some people who have inappropriate urges might not have much in the imagination department.  They may feel they have no choice but to actually carry through on their funny thoughts.  I suppose porn wouldn’t do much for them.  What to do in these sorts of cases?  Well, I think now we’re starting to talk about some serious mental illness.  We all have responsibilities toward our fellow humans so if one knows one has an illness that puts other people at risk one has a responsibility to deal with it.  See a doctor.  Take medications.  Check yourself into an institution.   Do what you have to do.  And if those things also don’t work?  If one has done everything one can think of and is still beset with obsessive and nearly uncontrollable urges to do something reprehensible like rape little girls or what have you?  Well, I’m sorry to say so but in that case perhaps the honorable thing to do is what Sebastien has a mind to do.

A lot of talk to very little effect, right?  I just don’t have enough information to really know what to make of our fellow traveler Sebastien.  I certainly hope he’s not just a conflicted gay man terminally disabled by religious brainwashing.  Maybe it’s the humanist in me talking but I don’t see much wrong with consenting adults having a bit of how do you do now and again.  Hate to think of someone killing himself or herself over something like that.  If he’s struggling with inappropriate sexual thoughts relating to kids I hope he’s tried everything to treat it including porn therapy.  If he fears he may succumb to uncontrollable urges to harm kids and has tried every remedy and nothing is working and he wants to take the honorable path of removing himself from this world to protect others then perhaps the man deserves our respect.  I guess in some ways we all must play the hand we’re dealt but if one really tries one might exit this world with one’s humanity intact.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

References

Police: 50 killed in Florida nightclub terror attack.  Ashley Fantz, Faith Karimi, and Eliott McLaughlin.  June 12, 2016.  CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/us/orlando-nightclub-shooting/index.html

Shooter Omar Mateen’s father says he’s saddened by massacre, calls gunman ‘a good son’.  Tim Craig, Max Bearak, Lee Powel.  June 13, 2016.  Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-orlando-shooters-afghan-roots/2016/06/13/d89a8cd0-30e4-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_flaafghan-503am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory.

On 9/11, Omar Mateen’s classmates mourned.  Some say he celebrated.  William Wan, Brian Murphy.  June 13, 2016.   Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/13/on-911-omar-mateens-classmates-mourned-some-say-he-celebrated/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_mateen_pn_1115am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.23587772c4c4.

Witness: Orlando shooter laughed during rampage.  Madison Park and Ray Sanchez.  June 14, 2016.  CNN.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/us/orlando-shooting-as-it-happened/index.html.

Australia may expel gay-hate preacher linked to Orlando.  June 14, 2016.  BBC.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36524747.

Man seeks euthanasia to end his sexuality struggle.  Jonathan Blake.  BBC.  June 9, 2016.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090.

Did internalised homophobia spark Orlando nightclub attack?  Jasmine Taylor-Coleman.  BBC.  June 15, 2016.   http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36534693.

Beauty Queen Injures the Majesty of the Sultan of Turkey

Welcome friends!

So difficult to avoid talking about Trumpo the Clown every week isn’t it?  I don’t think we’ve ever had a presidential candidate like him before in the history of the US.  I don’t mean that in a good way.  Did you catch the recent story about one of his business ventures, “Trump University,” being the subject of some sort of court case?  Past employees have been in the papers calling it nothing but a big money making scam.  I guess his billions just isn’t enough for him.  Well, he has needs I guess; like anyone else but more so.  Conservatives crack me up sometimes.  Hey, we found a scheming money grubbing fast talking con man!  That’s who we want to be President of the US!  He’s one of us!  But they’re not alone.  I thought they might be but no the North Korean government was just in the news writing an opinion piece characterizing Mr. Trump as “wise” and “far-sighted.”  Ha ha ha!  How’s that for a funny image?  American conservatives marching arm in arm with Kim Jong Un and his minions to elect Donald Trump President of the USA.  It’s a funny world sometimes isn’t it?  But you know I said last time I wasn’t going to be pulled into Trump’s “all eyes on me” media strategy so I’m determined not to take the bait.  Instead I thought I’d talk about some funny stories I’ve been reading recently about the Sultan of Turkey Recep Erdogan.  Wait a minute.  Did I use the correct title?  I have a vague memory of someone trying to make Turkey a modern secular democracy early in the last century.  I think it was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk wasn’t it?  Maybe I’d better look up the correct title before I go any further.  Hey, what do you know?  The correct term is actually president.  President of Turkey.  That’s funny, right?  Just like the USA.  Not!  Anyway, seems President Erdogan has been running about charging all manner of people with “insulting” him, which as one might imagine is no laughing matter in Turkey.

Yes, Turkey is one of the handful of countries that still have what they call lèse majesté laws... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Chopping for God

Welcome friends!

I wanted to get back to the near enemy of American conservatives and their evil clown act this week but then I noticed a peculiar story about some of our far away enemies, the horde of religious fanatics / violent jerks that inhabit the so-called Third World, so I thought maybe I should take another swipe at them.  I know many Americans will dismiss this as shooting fish in a barrel.  We get it.  These people are from another world.  They don’t share our values.  What they think is just and proper is offensive to the good people of our own world.  (And when I say “they” I obviously don’t mean everyone residing in these benighted regions; I mean the religious fanatics / violent jerks that are the focus of this post.)  But trust me; the story I’m talking about had a little twist.  It wasn’t your run of the mill account of Islamic terrorists beheading little kids out in some sweltering desert far far away.  No, the story I’m talking about involved a teenaged boy who was led by a noxious combination of religion, peer pressure, and probably implicit threats of violence to cut off his own hand.  What a world we live in, right?  Really a rather disgusting place if one thinks about it.  And the funny thing is we’ve had millennia to fix it up.  Oh well, I guess just keep trying.  No one ever said it would be easy.  Or is this perhaps the best we can do?  I sure hope not.

The story came out of Pakistan although I suppose it could equally well have involved any of the other countries in that part of the world... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

GOP Joins ISIS To Foment Discord

Welcome friends!

I actually had something else lined up for today but unfortunately events intervened once again and I decided to instead say something relating to our many Parisian comrades who were gunned down a few days ago in the latest CMA (i.e. crazy Muslim attack).  Before anyone gets unduly annoyed and starts running after me with the cutlery let me just clarify that the correct way to parse that phrase in my opinion is “crazy Muslim” attacks; not crazy “Muslim attacks.”  Yes, it makes a difference, which I’ll discuss shortly.  Of course, my blog is mostly about ideas so it wasn’t entirely clear to me what I should say.  I started out well enough, “murder bad,” but then found myself at a bit of an impasse.  You know me.  I need something to unravel or work through or clear up or confront or rebut.  Fortunately the group commonly known here in the US as the Stupid Party, the by now mind numbingly conservative Republican Party, managed to get it twisted and start talking about refusing Syrian refugees, closing mosques, conflicts between civilizations, etc.  Not exactly a fitting tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters in my opinion.  A bit irritating really.  Hey, now we’re getting somewhere!

Let me start out by acknowledging the small kernel of truth in the conservative argument, which is that Islam (by which I mean the Islamic religion as opposed to the collection of people living in various Middle Eastern countries) seems to be having a bit of a problem with violent interpretations... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Texas Ain’t So Bad Sometimes

Welcome friends!

Looks like I missed a week there.  Sorry, but life happens.  Anyway, I hate to keep harping on the same things over and over again but since freedom of speech and freedom of conscience are such important concepts for the liberal ethos and the American way of life I feel I really should say something about the relatively recent attempt by Muslim extremists (from a few weeks ago now) to undermine those values and the ensuing funny response in the US media.  I’m talking about that case in Texas where two domestic Islamic terrorists arrived at a cartoonist’s convention (obviously) with bloody murder on their minds only to be promptly bumped off at the front gate by a cop working as a security guard.  

Before I get into my usual quasi-philosophical musings let me just first express my admiration for the aforementioned cop... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Anti-Islamization or Something

Welcome friends!

The recent murder spree by Muslim religious fanatics in Paris (as well as the efforts of a Muslim hostage to help some non-Muslim hostages escape the aforementioned murderous fanatics) got me thinking a bit more about those so-called “anti-Islamization” demonstrations in Germany and the amusing variety of reactions in the media.  So much confusion and most of it about words as usual.  I wonder; could we all please try to be a little more careful about how we say things so we can spend a little more time discussing the issues that divide us and a little less time talking past one another and getting unnecessarily annoyed?  Is that really too much to ask? ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Social Conservatism Muslim Style

Welcome friends!

I was just thinking the other day how everything is relative.  Take conservatism for example.  I’m always railing against the two headed monster of conservatism that dwells here in the US.  But each head of our domestic monster has a corresponding foreign head that’s twice as ugly and twice as mean.  Of course, maybe it’s not an appropriate comparison.  I’m living here so I’m mostly concerned with the monster in my backyard.  People in other countries can do whatever they want as far as I’m concerned if only they remember to stay far, far away and not try to fly a plane into my house.  But maybe that’s unrealistic.  Trade, transportation, and communications have evolved to such an extent that I suppose in some ways we’re all basically living in the same great global village.  There’s a scary thought.  Maybe I do have to keep an eye on the two headed monster of foreign conservatism as well.  But I don’t like it.  No siree; I don’t like it one little bit.

Well, let’s take social conservatism first.  Now when I think of social conservatism run amok I tend to think mostly of conservatives in those predominantly Muslim countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East because they seem to me to exemplify a certain particularly virulent form of social conservatism that doesn’t mince words when it comes to opposing the liberal ethos that underlies our American way of life and the ways of life of many of our liberal comrades around the globe as well.  (The corresponding locus of foreign economic conservatism must be the authoritarian market state that China has become, but let’s do one thing at a time, shall we?)  If you think American conservatives are at odds with the liberal ethos you should check out an article I read the other day about the results of a survey someone took a few years ago of attitudes in the Muslim world.  A clash of civilizations you say?  Well, I don’t know anything about that.  It seems to me we’ve got plenty of conservatives right here who think along the same general lines as our bearded foreign friends.  And there are plenty of Muslims both here and abroad who don’t subscribe to the sort of rabid social conservatism that is the subject of my post today.  If you think my beef is with Islam you’re barking up the wrong tree buddy.  I’m talking about the historical struggle between liberals and humanists on one side and social conservatives on the other.   

The article in question covered so many interesting results; where to begin?  Well, here’s a funny one.  Many of those who responded to this survey supported the adoption of sharia (i.e. Islamic religious law).  At the same time many also claimed to support political democracy at least over the alternative of relying on a strong leader... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Jesus Loves You

Welcome friends!

I’ll bet you thought I was going to talk about the Republican Party and the latest economic crisis they’ve managed to concoct, which if history is any guide I suppose will start to create havoc with the stock market any time now.  (I was just checking my records and I see the last time the Republicans used the threat of a debt default to terrorize people into doing their bidding in August 2011 the stock market crashed eleven percent.  Ouch!  Do they know I’d like to retire some day?  And I don’t even know the ripple effects on the economy at large but I’d bet they were also substantial.)  What a bunch of scoundrels.  Just every bad stereotype of an old time politician rolled into one.  You know, they don’t like a law passed by Congress and signed by the President so what’s their response?  Hey, we can screw up the budget process and take down the economy!  Take back that law or we’ll mess you up America, we’ll mess you up real bad!  Did you know our Constitution even allowed weird minority groups in Congress to sabotage the government and economy to get their way?  I didn’t.  I guess we just never had any elected officials with sufficient contempt for the institutions and people of the US to resort to these sorts of political machinations before, but I guess we do now.  You know, our system has worked pretty well in general over the past couple of hundred years but the Republican Party has apparently put their heads together and managed to come up with a way to screw it up.  Sorry for venting but it’s just frustrating as all hell to me that we have to allow this unscrupulous pack of over privileged ingrates continually threaten our livelihoods, investments, and retirements this way, but what choice do we have?  Advise the President and Congress to roll over and enter into hostage negotiations with them?  Throw democracy out the window?  I wouldn’t recommend it; I really wouldn’t.  Might patch things up in the short run but it’s no solution for the long run.  No, to put things in a nutshell for the common man and woman: we’re screwed.  Well, anyway, I hope the President’s legal team and the Justice Department and the Supreme Court and whoever else might have a say are taking a hard and sober look at what’s going on right now because at some point I think something will have to change.  We just can’t afford to allow the Republican Party to force us all to lurch from political crisis to political crises like some banana republic forever teetering on the brink of economic chaos and ruin.  But no, I’m not going to write about that.  You can find all the commentary and analysis you like in any newspaper.  Knock yourself out.  Instead I thought I’d just wrap up my little religion kick I’ve been on recently with one additional thought on spiritual matters that crossed my mind the other day.

So I was attending a village church fair recently... no, really ... I was visiting some people and we ended up at the local church fair.  Hey, life happens you know.  Anyway, as I was saying, I was attending a village church fair the other day and the priest or pastor or whoever it was got on the public address system to give his little sermon and I have to say it really caught my attention.  It wasn’t so much any particular thing he said as much as the whole tenor of his little monologue, which involved repeated references to Jesus wanting to have a “long term committed personal relationship” with people... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Islam and Murder

Welcome friends!

I wonder if we could talk a little bit this time about a rather awkward issue that I think is threatening to become something of an elephant in the room of Western public discourse.  Yes, I’m sorry to bring it up, but this time out I thought I might say a few words about the relationship between murder and Islam.  What got me thinking about this issue was a recent story I read in the papers about OFCOM, the UK regulatory agency responsible for media and communications, fining an Islamic TV channel, Noor TV, the equivalent of about one hundred and thirty thousand dollars for inciting violence during one of their television broadcasts.  Yes, it turns out the presenter for this particular program, some bloke with the rather impressive moniker Allama Muhummad Farooq Nizami, told his viewers that it was perfectly acceptable and even the duty of Muslims to kill people who disrespect the Prophet Mohammed.  Yes indeed.  According to Mr. Nizami’s understanding of the issue it wasn’t even close.  He explained on TV that “there is no disagreement about this” and “there is absolutely no doubt about it that the punishment for the person who shows disrespect for the Prophet is death.”  As if to illustrate his point he then went on to laud the Indian bodyguard who murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer in 2011 because Mr. Taseer had been advocating amending the country’s blasphemy law to allow for a modicum of free speech on religious matters.  So why did the owners of the program in question, Al Ehya Digital TV operating out of Birmingham England, employ such an extremist hot head to serve as host for this program?  (You weren’t expecting Birmingham, were you?  Oh, you were?)  Was the management of Al Ehya Digital TV on the murder bandwagon as well?  No, no.  According to their account Mr. Nizami’s comments were “totally unforeseen and could not be anticipated.” Apparently they thought he was just your average run of the mill Muslim for the five years he had been working there until one fine day he started spouting off about murdering people.  Scary.  Oh, and by the way, in case you thought this was a one off, I suppose I should mention OFCOM had previously levied a similarly sized fine against a different local TV channel, DM Digital operating out of Manchester England and calling itself on its website “one of the largest Asian television networks in the UK.”  (I bet you weren’t expecting ... oh never mind.)  Yes, this fine was for a different broadcast in which someone else, in this case a person described by the BBC article as an “Islamic scholar,” similarly explained on air that Muslims had a duty to kill people who insulted Mohammed.  Oh my gosh.  Seems we’ve got people advocating murder all over the place these days, don’t we?  Did you know?  Well, it got me thinking once again about the thorny issue of the relationship of religion and the liberal ethos and more specifically about the problem of Islam and the West... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Balk Like An Egyptian

Welcome friends!

I know I said before that I would finish up my thoughts on what I was calling conservative hyper-egotism but I feel I just can’t put off saying a few words about Egypt, so let me just do that this time.  The article that set me off this week was about how large swaths of the Egyptian population on both sides of the political spectrum were taking time off from their rioting, shooting of one another, and throwing of teenaged kids off rooftops, to vent their anger against the US, which the author of the article attributed in part to US inconsistency on the issue of who should rightfully be running the place.  Yeah, I know, as the kids say, WTF?  To me that’s just screaming for a blog post rebuttal, so let’s get to it, shall we?  (In all fairness I suppose I should mention the author of the article in question also made some other points relating to general Arabian dissatisfaction with the US I find a little less perplexing and annoying, such as that the US is arguably not doing all it can to rein in Israeli land grabbing and general obnoxiousness and thus to resolve the long festering Palestinian issue, a point I agree with and have written about previously, and that the US has a bad habit of turning a blind eye to human rights violations on the part of its “allies” in the region, which I feel is also absolutely correct but on the other hand I suppose everyone needs a friend and unfortunately we just don’t have a lot to choose from in that part of the world, but let me just go with the bits of the article that really got my argumentative juices flowing, OK?)

Well, let me just start out with my usual blather and say for the record I personally have always rather liked Egypt... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

A Fatal Case Of Religion

Welcome friends!

I was just thinking about that recent incident involving those two Russian immigrants to the US, Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, who killed and maimed some random people at a recent Boston Marathon.  Sad and pointless stuff.  Anyway, it got me thinking again about what I see as the problem of religion, so I suppose I might as well say a few more words about that... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Burning Books

Welcome friends!

Did you see the news stories about the recent mayhem in Afghanistan that was ostensibly a reaction to the pastor of some small US Christian church burning a copy of the Quran?  In an article I read on April 5th the toll was twenty-one dead with an additional seventy-three people injured.  Pretty barbaric stuff, but it got me thinking about two themes that I think are important for liberals and secular humanists everywhere: religion and free speech.

Well, actually, I guess it didn’t say that much about religion that we don’t all already know perfectly well...  Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

The Problem of Islam

Welcome friends!

I guess I’ve been on a liberal kick the last few posts and have been neglecting the humanist side, so maybe this time we can talk a little bit about the problem of Islam.  Oh, don’t get me wrong now.  I’m no expert on theology, but as a liberal humanist atheist, I personally doubt there’s anything wrong with Islam that isn’t equally wrong with any of the other religions that have come out of the Middle East.  So I suppose I should really be talking about the problem of Middle Eastern religions in general.  It’s just that Islam seems to have all the typical problems of these religions in spades so I think it’s reasonable to take it up as a sort of special example.  (It may well be that religions from other regions of the world are just as prone to these problems as religions from the Middle East but I’m less familiar with them so I’d like to just set them aside for now.  In the following if I speak about religion in the abstract I mean the major world religions that have originated in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.) ... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!