ADDED: More about Jennifer Williams here:
Williams is a Brookings Institute researcher who spent years studying religious extremism and the Middle East before finally realizing that she’d never actually read the Quran. So she took the plunge and unexpectedly found answers to the questions about morality and belief that she’d had since childhood. She converted to Islam three years ago and is now finding that she constantly has to defend her faith from the extremists who twist it to justify violence.
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Here's a question. Do you think if she went to Syria to do humanitarian work that any of those ISIS types following her would have any compunction about kidnapping and killing her because she's an American, not withstanding that she's a muslim?
I have made it a point this summer to do extensive reading on the origins and evolution of the Muslim religion. Still no expert and never will be but it's clear that both the origins and schism have a bloody history. That is not all that different from Christianity, but it's also clear that slaughter and mayhem are neither new nor unusual components of the Muslim world. Indeed such moments are common and are seen as seminal moments in their history, both by the victims and perpetrators of the various horrors. The Muslims have never had much difficulty justifying violence as a means of propagation of their views.
The blonde white American girl in question - Jennifer Williams, a researcher for the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy
Oh Brookings, we should have guessed. If you took a shot every time NPR used someone from Brookings in a story you would definitely be an alcoholic pretty quickly. Double points for introducing them as "so-and-so from the Brookings Institution" and contrasting that with "so-and-so from the far right Heritage Foundation" or "the libertarian Cato Institute" or some such.
I'm tempted to call her a useful idiot for these extremists but at least she seems aware that being ISIS' poster girl is a problem.
Those thousands with ISIS Black Flags?
Those are the moderates
Drill SGT has the right of it.
Now for the slower thinking in the audience, take those thousands of young men willing to pose with swords and the flag... and consider that they were raised on such beliefs along with mother's milk. There sisters will raise four,five,six more - all who either actively agree with the sword-bearing brother or will defer to him. Half of that brood will be girls, who will in turn bring about the next generation, and the other half will join their uncle with swords and banner.
Then there are the old men who don't show up because they're not on twitter.
For every twitter jihadist, there are magnitudes more who provide the support system that allows for his very existence.
Or as our friend in Turkey (that bastion of secular, pro-western, and moderate Islam!), prime minister Erdogan so eloquently stated:
"These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it."
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a harem, go!
kcom said...
Here's a question. Do you think if she went to Syria to do humanitarian work that any of those ISIS types following her would have any compunction about kidnapping and killing her because she's an American, not withstanding that she's a muslim?
Yes, they would. Her blog post stated that quite a few of the tweets she received were marriage proposals. I don't think she'd have to worry about being killed at the start.
The original Lawfare post has been deleted. Cached version is here.
"Yes, they would. Her blog post stated that quite a few of the tweets she received were marriage proposals. I don't think she'd have to worry about being killed at the start."
No, they would kill her because it would be terrible and gain them a lot of attention. I do not think the people offering to marry her would be the ones doing the killing, though. There are people out there who are beyond morality and humanity.
I seem to recall Bush 43 reading the Quran shortly after 9/11. It didn't seemed to have had the effect on him that it had on this woman.
Unless Bush is a secret Muslim convert... (I read that on a Naomi Wolf FB post ;)
The Althouse blog has a theme today... awaiting the story of the dis-invitation of George Will to speak at a conservative institution of learning. yea
At the beginning of Christianity there were prominent Romans that were secret Christians.
Fun Fact?
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
Cached version is here.
Where's her funny hat?
The "extremists high jacked Islam" propaganda is really tiresome excuse making. Islam is a supremacist and violent creed by demonstration and practice. Denying it shows how gullible you are.
Literary interpretation is tricky business
I wonder how she spends her Fridays.
Williams shouldn't be surprised. ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda are textualists. They ignore centuries of tradition in favor of reinterpreting scripture in a way convenient for them.
Which I suspect is what Jennifer Williams is doing.
The best guide to a religion is how adherents live their lives, not what is written down.
Isn't it strange that one person can pick up a Koran cold and then claim to speak for the faith?
How Protestant! How American!
A woman converting to Islam is like a lamb joining a wolfpack.
"She converted to Islam three years ago and is now finding that she constantly has to defend her faith from the extremists who twist it to justify violence."
The company you keep.
Atheism is so much easier,...
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Nothing that is hostile to middle class values is foreign to her. Marxism, AGW, Islam--they're all worthy of study and respect.......Islamic fanatics are just like other religious fanatics except more so..
I guess she hasn't really read any major religious teachings, since most religions answer many moral questions and usually in fairly similar ways.
Crack, the company you keep killed over 100M last century alone.
She converted to Islam three years ago and is now finding that she constantly has to defend her faith from the extremists who twist it to justify violence.
...
Are we sure she actually read the Koran?
I mean, yes, Islam need not be violent in practice, and a whole lot of the world's billion-odd Muslims are decently peaceful folk.
But the idea that you need to "twist" Islam to justify violence is ludicrous on its face; that facet has always been there since the beginning and is plain in the text, and the commentaries, and the rulings of the Mullahs to this day.
I think Jefferson and Adams had this covered with the Turkish ambassador.
Show of hands - anyone at all surprised to find out that Crack makes his life choices based on what's easiest?
damikesc,
"Crack, the company you keep killed over 100M last century alone."
Sorry, no atheist can go along with messianic cults, which Stalin and the others started.
You don't understand atheism,...
Crack wrote;
"You don't understand atheism,..."
You don't understand the 20th century.
Just how the hell do you become any kind of academic or think tank expert on the Middle East for nine years and never get around to reading the Koran? The Hadiths?
Hell, I had her beat years ago. But I'm not the proper kind of bootlicking libtard, so I have no career in academia.
Sorry, no atheist can go along with messianic cults, which Stalin and the others started.
Can a true Scotsman be an atheist? Puzzling.
You don't understand atheism,...
And Jennifer Williams doesn't understand Islam, and you don't understand theism...golly there's a lot people don't understand.
Sorry, no atheist can go along with messianic cults, which Stalin and the others started.
Of course. Going along with an idiotic personality cult, which all atheists have done in history, is "proof" that they aren't atheists.
As mentioned, the "No true scotsman" fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy.
You don't understand atheism,...
Better than YOU understand it, clearly.
eric,
"You don't understand the 20th century."
No, I understand it very well - and I'm an atheist.
They're now calling NewAgers atheists, so I understand the problem you're having.
You're stupid,....
'Your stupid'.
The clearly displayed sophistication of the Crack.
They're now calling NewAgers atheists, so I understand the problem you're having.
...and the people vehemently opposed to organized religion?
They're NOT atheists, even though they fit the definition of "atheist" pretty much to a tee?
How would YOU describe somebody opposed to religion?
...and, note, that you'd have few qualms about slaughtering whites if given the chance, so the myth of the "peaceful atheist" is still alive.
Maybe those who are suggesting that Islam is violent are not twisting anything and she's doing the twisting to make the violent religion come across like an offshoot of her western humanism.
For those who want an education read the Hadiths from beginning to end. You can see the progression of Islam from the time Mohammad was weak until he was the prophet. All the way here is plenty of bloodshed. It's shocking that the Hadiths are supposed to honor rh prophet as opposed to make him look like an arch villain. But that's becaue I'm looking at them from the stand point of one raised on western values. If you think those are decadent or crap then my objections are probably not yours.
"Sorry, no atheist can go along with messianic cults, which Stalin and the others started."
Wow is that naive. leave it to the atheist to assure us hit shit doesn't stink when we're smelling it across the room. Atheists can be just as brainwashed as religious people.
The American hostage ISIS is threatening to behead next had converted to Islam.
Countdown till she's caught participating in a terrorist plot: 5 years.
Ha ha ha! And the worst thing is that those damned conservatives will be posting this to make points!
She obviously did not read the same translation of the Koran that I read. I put a yellow sticky on every page that said something about fighting and killing Christians and Jews. I used up a stack of stickys. There is even a chapter about why it is OK to lie to your wives about having sex with servant girls.
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