Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
What
does this mean? All is forgiven ... by whom ... Muslims ... Mohammad ... rather presumptuous, no? What is the "all" that is forgiven ... the Paris butchery ... the original slight against Islam ... the fact that President Obama stayed home to watch football? The magazine/newspaper Charlie Hebdo is printing three million copies of this assumedly defiant issue when it normally sells 60,000 copies. Suddenly the slaughter of those 12 innocents has increased its circulation 50-fold and it's first run of 500,000 is already sold-out .. see: ABC News Story or Wall Street Journal Story or Fox News Story or CNN Story. (It is interesting to note that in none of these links is the actual full cover shown ... is that what is to be forgiven?)
This kerfuffle reminds me a bit of the "Bring Back Our Girls" Twitter hashtag campaign over those African kidnappings by Boko Haram ... a victory of symbolism over substance.
And the Obama administration can't even bring itself to utter the words "Islamic extremism" ...
Thursday, January 08, 2015
A Modern Crusade
The brutal attack on the staff of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, yesterday in Paris has
raised higher the spectre of a real religious war between Islam and
the rest of the world. It seems that the appeasers (like you know who) are still
stuck with their heads in the sand maintaining that Muslims are a peaceful lot and
that it is just extremists of some unspecified religious persuasion who are
grabbing headlines around the world with all these unspeakable butcheries.
George W. Bush was tut-tutted when he opined that the
horrors of 9/11 necessitated an extended “crusade” against such Islamic
extremism. This word evoked the thought of how those medieval evils were
eventually neutered by Christendom’s crusades and Islamic infighting. However,
fate has a way of keeping mankind’s next Pax
Romana at bay … in that so much of the world’s oil has been found to lie
under the sands of Araby and petroleum has become the life blood of our modern
society.
As a result of these sea changes, very many in the Muslim
world began feeling their oats and decided that they now had the capital wherewithal to
convert the rest of us to their backward thinking. And so, oil-funded Islamic
proselytizing became the norm which then evoked more and more extremist
thinking and actions in a religion unfortunately founded not on love but on
butchery. The history of Islam, much like the history of early Christianity, is
replete with mayhem and murder. The difference is that Christianity and most of
the other world’s religions have evolved out of such insanity. Islam has not … as we continue to experience on almost a daily basis.
Fortunately, there are some Muslims who have recognized this
flaw of faith. The current president of Egypt, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has
called for Islam to abandon its extremism and growing militancy because it is corrosive
and ultimately futile … see: Fox News Story. (How many U.S. media outlets have carried this item? Has the Obama
administration reacted favorably to this ray of hope?) And in the 1920’s Kemal
Ataturk in Turkey also recognized this Islamic failing and tried to modernize
his country into a secular state. However much of the progress he made is
now being rolled back by Turkey’s current fundamentalist president, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
I suppose that the conclusion of this short overview is that things are very likely to get worse as ancient Muslim beliefs continue
to scrape against modern societies. And, yes, if things maintain their
current path, the non-Muslim world (including Russia, India and China) probably
is in for a very long and bloody crusade to modernize these zealots of Mohammed’s
teachings. That is, unless the likes of Sissi or a neo-Ataturk can bring
about a Muslim religious reformation. This, I believe, should clearly be the basis of
any foreign-policy push back from the United States’ government against Islamic
terrorism.
But all I have witnessed here at home is exactly the opposite.
Afterward: For a slightly more frank view ... see: The Diplomad's Thoughts.
After Afterward: George Will thinks that Sissi should get the next Nobel Peace Prize for this stance. I agree. However, President Obamais, once again, is coming down on the side of the Muslim extremists ... see: Daily Caller Story.
Afterward: For a slightly more frank view ... see: The Diplomad's Thoughts.
After Afterward: George Will thinks that Sissi should get the next Nobel Peace Prize for this stance. I agree. However, President Obamais, once again, is coming down on the side of the Muslim extremists ... see: Daily Caller Story.
Labels:
A Modern Crusade,
Ataturk,
Charlie Hebdo,
Egypt,
Erdogan,
France,
modern society,
Muslim extremism,
Obama administration,
oil,
Paris,
Sissi,
turkey
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