Writes my son John, linking to the Krauthammer article "The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism" (Weekly Standard). From that article, dated October 22, 2001:
The distinguished Indian writer and now Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul, who has chronicled the Islamic world in two books ("Among the Believers" and "Beyond Belief"), recently warned (in a public talk in Melbourne before the World Trade Center attack), "We are within reach of great nihilistic forces that have undone civilization." In places like Afghanistan, "religion has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture . . . to be pure. They are enraged about the world and they wish to pull it down." This kind of fury and fanaticism is unappeasable. It knows no social, economic, or political solution. "You cannot converge with this [position] because it holds that your life is worthless and your beliefs are criminal and should be extirpated."...
This worship of death and destruction is a nihilism of a ferocity unlike any since the Nazis burned books, then art, then whole peoples. Goebbels would have marvelled at the recruitment tape for al Qaeda, a two-hour orgy of blood and death: image after image of brutalized Muslims shown in various poses of victimization, followed by glorious images of desecration of the infidel--mutilated American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of the USS Cole, mangled bodies at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout, the soundtrack endlessly repeats the refrain "with blood, with blood, with blood." Bin Laden appears on the tape to counsel that "the love of this world is wrong. You should love the other world... die in the right cause and go to the other world."...
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In places like Afghanistan, "religion has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture . . . to be pure. They are enraged about the world and they wish to pull it down.”
Real Islam has never been tried!
"The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism"
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem is Islam, and has always been since Islams inception.
Yes, the problem is Islam.
The solution is Christianity. Perhaps Orthodox Judaism, too.
It's not an accident that feminist ideology preaches a return to paganism and allies itself with Islam.
What is more nihilistic and destructive than feminism? Islam is the only candidate.
Feminism teaches us to despise the love of men for women and women for men. It is as insane and nihilistic as Islam.
It's difficult to choose between the insane religion of Islam in the East and the insane paganism of feminism in the West. Flip a coin.
There is something about Islam that lends itself to that nihilism. Maybe it is the fatalism inherent in the religion, that maybe jihad is the one place that a good Muslim can overcome this fatalism. In any case, apparently 25-30% of Muslims worldwide, better than a quarter of a billion people, claim to be easy to die for their religion. And only fools consider it to be a religion of peace - it was only through armed resistance that Christianity has managed to survive against the armed onslaught of Islam. We had a thousand years of fighting for the survival of our religion and way of life, seemingly finally stopping their tide of armed advancement a mere 400 years ago - except that western Europe forgot about that millennium of fighting for their very survival, and, instead, in a fit of ill conceived political correctness, invited hundreds of thousands of soldiers of Islam into their ranks.
It's not an accident that feminist ideology preaches a return to paganism and allies itself with Islam.
Just because you say something doesn't mean it is true. Perhaps there is a shred of validity to the first statement but the second is simply bullshit.
I say amen to Bruce's post.
apparently 25-30% of Muslims worldwide, better than a quarter of a billion people, claim to be easy to die for their religion.
Can you provide any evidence for this assertion?
Too bad the Harvard-educated Barack Obama never read Krauthammer.
I was discussing Dr. K with a person recently. She had never heard of him. I was dumbfounded and astounded.
FF
Have you heard of Google?
Even if the number is only half right, that’s still millions of people. The website The Religion of Peace chronicles the daily insanity of Islam in shithole countries around the world. Shitty, failed countries mostly run by despots and friends of the Clintons.
Today, in the wake of subsequent events, Krauthammer's piece seems no more than a blinding glipse of the obvious. But Naipaul's warning still has the power that comes from prediction rather than reaction.
I'm more interested in how John was influenced. What about John either changed or was oonfirmed by reading this?
FF:
Below is from TROP website. Islam is full of reasonable people just like you!
“Saudi Arabia has detained a hotel worker who filmed himself eating breakfast with a female colleague, the country’s labour ministry has said.
The owner of the hotel has also been summoned for questioning, according to the ministry.
The footage, which has been shared widely on social media, shows a woman dressed in a burqa eating breakfast with a man and, at one point, feeding him some food.”
Islam wants a better next world. They plan ahead.
@FF - not off the top of my head. Have seen reports of the poll several times - it apparently was a poll published of several large Muslim majority countries, including, I think, Egypt and Indonesia. Countries that appear more modern to us than places like Afghanistan, where pedestry and fucking the domestic animals are still considered Islamic and mainstream.
Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, dude, at least its an ethos.
The below are only some of the unalterable-perpetual and mandatory commands of Islam.
Listed below are a few passages from the Quran that clearly compel Muslims to violence.
Quran 2:191 “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.
”Quran 3:28 “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends
”Quran 3:85 “Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.
”Quran 5:33 “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam.
”Quran 8:12 “Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Quran.
”Quran 8:60 “Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.
”Quran 8:65 “The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.
”Quran 9:50 “When opportunity arises kill the infidels where you find them.
”Quran 9:30 "The Jews and Christians are perverts, fight them.
"Quran 9:123 “Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.
”Quran 22:19 “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies.
Quran 47:4 “Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.
Replacing 'religion' with 'politics':
"politics has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture . . . to be pure."
And you have a pretty good description of the "Progressive" behavior towards Western civilization...
IOW, radical Islam is the problem.
Real Islam has never been tried!
Good one, Tim.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The problem is Islam, and has always been since Islams inception.
Yes.
Bruce Hayden:
Absolutely correct.
Real Islam has never been tried!
Unfortunately, it has.
It’s Now Possible To Telepathically Communicate with a Drone Swarm
Embrace Life.
I discovered yesterday that Althouse hails from Wayne, NJ. She's a 1%er and has been her entire life. She's a poor little rich kid.
For those of you who don't know this suburb, it's one of the wealthiest in the world. It is next door to Pompton Lakes, which is a palatial second home community for Manhattan executives. I did contract job in the huge corporate campuses in that area.
You have to consider the utter madness of feminism in light of Althouse's 50 years of bitching. She's one of the wealthiest, most privileged people on earth and she has been since birth.
Somehow, women like Althouse tacked their bitching onto the 60s civil rights agenda, claiming that they were "oppressed just like blacks under Jim Crow."
Althouse is The Man. She is the oppressor. Has been her entire life. You see how crazy and destructive feminism is? Her bio is, in general, the bio of all the staunch feminists.
I've been studying the Suez Crisis of the '50s and it sure sounds like the problem is and always has been dishonest white folks, but, I understand if you disagree.
Bob Dylan is a poor little rich kid, too.
His rambling gambling poor Woody Guthrie kid bit in the 60s was a complete fabrication. His father was a well to do shopkeeper in Hibbing, MN.
Posing as the oppressed poor kid seems to be a hobby for spoiled brat rich kids.
Actually, Crack, you might want to look at the con game Althouse has been playing all her life.
She stole the money and attention that was supposed to go to poor blacks for her own self-aggrandizement.
Instead of taking care of an abused kid like you, we've spent the past 50 years trying to find ever more profuse ways to kiss the asses of rich white girls like Althouse.
The people of Germany have a fetish for Alsace, France (something I've seen with my own eyes) so some of those French people went to Algiers and when the Algerians got sick of their shit and kicked them out, those Alsacian/Algerian French people hatched the Suez plan with Israel and Britain - because Britain had lied to the Arabs, by telling them they were going to help them set up a homeland but did it for the Jews instead, and this was a way to get the UK out of that deal as well.
White people been lying' all over the place.
Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
religion has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture
Sounds a lot like Progressivism.
White people been lying' all over the place.
No, Crack, we've been winning.
The truth has nothing to do with politics or wealth. Look at Althouse. She's got everybody weeping over her sexist persecution and she was born to wealth and privilege.
I see Unknown beat me to it.
No. Islamists don't want nothing. They want something. Real Islam, all over the world. Which justifies the destruction of everything in its path.
It's hard not to be nihilistic in The Age of Unreason, because so few have even an inclination towards common sense or compassion, now, it does seem hopeless - so how can I not hate them?
I say we should use logic and the crazy want to know "Whose?" I say let's settle the race issue with reparations - whites act like they always have and think that's cool. It never ends becausehere's no neutral corner with someone who's always gunning for you - so you kill 'em - or, at least, don't mind seeing them dead. I told you: I've stopped crying. I've stopped interacting with people. I keep the TV on, with the sound down. I just can't stand to hear one more lie, because that's all everyone else seems to be into. Fuck 'em.
I don't know what John will do with this life, but whatever it is, it's just this to me. If he wants to change it, then change it - I've identified the culprits said how and others are starting to agree now - but, if he chooses not, it figures:
I like steak, too, Kid.
The nihilism meme helped start the PC whitewash.
Where is Charles the Hammer when you need him ?
Robert Frost saw all this coming, too, back in 1947:
A Case for Jefferson
Harrison loves my country too,
But wants it made all over new.
He's Freudian Viennese by night.
By day he's Marxian Muscovite.
It isn't because he's Russian Jew.
He's Puritan Yankee through and through.
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens:
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it all made over new.
Robert Frost, 1947
“What the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same coins minted around 1967. All the ideas we call countercultural barged onto the cultural main stage in the 1960s and ’70s, it’s true, but what we don’t really register is that so did extreme Christianity, full-blown conspiracism, libertarianism, unembarrassed greed, and more.”
- Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland
I like how libertarianism is in there - really puts their particular lunacy in perspective.
Shouting Thomas said...
"It's difficult to choose between the insane religion of Islam in the East and the insane paganism of feminism in the West. Flip a coin."
No coin is needed, because no choice is required. They have the same goal, just different methods.
But let's get real. The problem is not the stupid Muzzies, or the dim-bulb pussy-hatted feminists. The problem is the vermin who pretend to be on our side, but make common cause with our mortal enemies.
"It's difficult to choose between the insane racial politics of the Republicans on the Right and the insane paganism of Democrats on the Left. Flip a coin."
No coin is needed, because no choice is required. They have the same goal, just different methods.
In case y'all wonder why I hate all of you.
In the West (formerly "Christendom"), we have not only adopted the nihilism implicit in Islam, but we have married it to our extreme narcissism. Et voila!, we have postmodernist leftism with its nihilist belief in violently imposed utopia. Forty virgins for every advocate of single-payer climate control!
P.S. to Crack: consider the possibility that the belief that anybody cares about why you "hate" anybody is narcissism in the extreme.
No Nasser had been supplying and training the Algerian rebels, along with some of his German friends. That was the urgency of suez.
The nihilism problem has been powerfully articulated by Jordan Peterson, first in his Maps of Meaning, published in 1999, and now in 12 Rules for Life and his many speeches and YouTube videos. That same nihilism “inspires” Nazis, marxists, postmoderns and school shooters.
narciso:
Nassar proved very reluctant to aid the FLN; he talked a big game about supporting the Algerian rebels but his follow-up. Most the aid Egypt provided came after Suez. France's motives for taking part in the Suez operation were disconnected from the war in Algeria. In fact French army commanders in Algeria were considerably less than thrilled about Suez, because it interrupted their own efforts to suppress the FLN.
See especially in this regard Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace."
... his follow-up was lacking.
It's both. Islam is a faith, a moral philosophy, and set of traditions, that is historically wedded to left-wing ideology and spread by the scalpel.
Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.
-- wikipedia
Case in point: Pro-Choice/abortion, Pro-Choice/diversity, etc.
Marty Keller said...
"P.S. to Crack: consider the possibility that the belief that anybody cares about why you "hate" anybody is narcissism in the extreme."
To anyone attempting to knock me down a peg here: I get enough attention on this blog - just for existing - that any charge I'm a narcissist is going to be immediately ignored for the obviously deliberate act of jealousy it is. If you want people to call out your name, often enough that even I care about YOU, come hang out with blacks and talk YOUR bullshit there and I swear to GOD I'll be the first to bring you to the rest's attention as someone with a problem.
"The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism."
I'll join the others in saying - wrong.
I will accord Islam only second place in the annals of truly destructive and nihilist faiths. 1st place must go to the Aztecs, who embraced barbarism with a fury that would make even Mohammed blush, I think. In an all out war between Islam and the Aztecs, without disease interfering, I may well put my money on the Aztecs. Most Muslims don't want to eat their conquered opponents, after all.
Cortez did a fine thing for the world in conquering the Aztecs. Before they had gotten firearms and ocean-crossing vessels.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"In the 20th century, nihilism encompassed a variety of philosophical and aesthetic stances that, in one sense or another, denied the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejected the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserted the ultimate meaninglessness or purposelessness of life or of the universe."
A Moslem would strongly disagree that his faith fit within that description. He would be right.
The claim that "The Enemy Is Not Islam. It Is Nihilism" is simply another way to divert blame from those who must not be blamed.
"I think. In an all out war between Islam and the Aztecs, without disease interfering, I may well put my money on the Aztecs."
I wouldn't put money on the Aztecs. They had cruelty and ferocity, but had great strategic disadvantages.
For one, Islam is a proselytizing faith. It reproduces by conversion.
You had to be born an Aztec to be an Aztec.
Second, the Aztecs treated their enemies as a sort of human farm - they did not expunge them, when they could, they kept them around in order to harvest victims. This was not the Muslim way.
You can have a non-nihilistic Islam.
Indeed, Islam is not usually nihilistic at all.
The real problem is its essential nature as an aggressively expansive religion with no space in it to keep the foreign nature of its conquered peoples, or a reliable modus vivendi with foreigners. That's why Islam has bloody borders, not nihilism.
Naipaul covers this very well. Islam doesn't just replace religions, but cultures.
Islamic aggression is also episodic at micro and macro levels, the first coming from, I think, the Bedouin raiding ethic it supports (think Vikings), giving cultural license to opportunistic murder and robbery, the second is the license for freelance jihad - there is always a risk of some mad mullah or mahdi, and then you have a fanatical Muslim wave coming at you.
Nihilists self identify via the popular bumper sticker: notw (not of this world and the "t" is a christian cross)
The anti-nihilists identify themselves with the coexist bumper sticker.
The best discussion of the failures of Islam are in the book, "For the Glory of God," by Rodney Stark.
He points out that Islam has a a basic precept that Allah knows all and it is not permitted to question anything in the Quran.
In the process, he explains why Christian and Islamic images of God yielded such different cultural results, leading Christians but not Muslims to foster science, burn "witches," and denounce slavery.
Christian are allowed to interpret God while Muslims must accept every word as the only answer.
The anti-nihilists identify themselves as suckers with the coexist bumper sticker.
FIFY
"COEXIST" is missing many notable letters from the ideological spectrum. It is a simple deception along with #NoJudgmentSelective, #NoLabelsTooMany, and "=" (u.e. selective exclusion) or political congruence.
Christians recognize a separation of logical domains. Then there are the secular faiths, including Twilight, that conflate logical domains, and secular religions/moral philosophies that are wedded to left-wing ideology and spread through the scalpel, which trample human and civil rights with unprecedented alacrity.
the umbrella tribe, I mentioned in the earlier thread, are just those sorts of raiders, one member of that crew, was the assistant to the mahdi, of the great siege, who himself was of the uteibi clan, which has numerous subtribe,
the opposite of nihilism:
https://babalublog.com/2018/09/11/de-santis-kicks-off-his-campaign-for-florida-gov-at-where-else-the-bay-of-pigs-museum-surrounded-by-freedom-fighters-and-their-families/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
Wow. I'd never read that Krauthammer article before, so thanks for drawing my attention to it. Powerful stuff.
This makes me think of a parallel between those Muslim nihilists and the extreme environmentalists who want to stop the growth of humans, to stop and put the geni back into the bottle. Many seem to think we can go back to not using oil and gas, but stay as advanced as we are. That is an impossibility. The geni is out of the bottle and to put it back is to go back to an age that is not nearly as pleasant for most of us.
We have nihilists in the Academy teaching it as a major, it seems. And none of the so called 'sane' academics will call them on their bullshit.
Krauthammer made a baby step in his analysis.
Nihilism is a value which can be taught. No kid is 'born' a terrorist or a school shooter, or an Antifa piece of shit. No parent sends a rioter to college: they are made in college.
So the question Krauthammer hesitated to ask is 'can nihilism be surgically removed from Islam, and even if possible, will Muslims make the necessary changes?
This may be an pair of impolite questions, but as a 'heathen dog' that some of their adherents wish to decapitate, it seems important to ask.
Having spent quite a bit of time studying Islam and jihad, I would respectfully suggest that Krauthammer was not accurate in his understanding of Islam. Nihilism is fundamental to Islam and to ignore that basic principle is foolish. You might feel better about yourself for believing good things about Islam, and maybe that's being proposed as a cure for the problem. Positive affirmations/placebo effect? Or it's a fear of being racist or seen as racist.
That doesn't mean I am suggesting fearing or hating all Muslims, or think they are all covert jihadis. Many Muslims are completely ignorant about Islam or are culturally Muslim only. But not all. My friends who have never read the Qur'an become highly insulting at the suggestion they should, as if they can know about Islam without having to bother.
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