03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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fascism, honor, Islam, political, politics, religion, resistance

It’s about shame.

The more militarily defeated they feel, the more determined in defiance they may become because that defines their heroism, “resistance” (of course, it’s resistance to economic development, education, employment, etc., but they’re on a civilizational mission for Islam, and that mission sense needs to be redefined and channeled elsewhere). Lowa Kay’s thought adheres to the simple notion that “if they’re enemy, they should be treated like enemy” and indeed conquered and eliminated.

Although we (Jews, others similar in outlook) prefer to “do conquest” with language and policy, it hard missing the fighting bands and legions of what appears to be traditional Islam (in my new vocabulary, I hereby declare the compassionate, moderate, reasoning, and reforming the “radicals”). Barack Obama — I know how he’s viewed in conservative circles — has tried to integrate Brotherhood members into the Federal mixing bowl; Europe has promoted multicultural accommodation, and has reached its limit (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/02/Europe-Takes-One-More-Step-Toward-Eliminating-the-Burqa); in the Middle East, Iraqis and Syrians have taken a beating between combinations of fascist and tribal military and political powers, and the pride-goeth-before-a-fall appearance of the “Islamic State” tells how even Islam in its majority cannot tolerate what Islam — by way of hundreds of _conservative_ inventions — has in mind for the humanity of humanity.

We’re waiting for _radical Muslims_ (compassionate, moderate, reasoning, reforming) to a) understand what has been or is being done to them, and b) find the courage in themselves to combat the forces that would enslave them — and, so sorry, those forces are not Jewish or Christian or anything else: those forces are of a dark portion of their own and of themselves.

Coming to their feet on that basis would be honorable, for the rest has been really shameful.

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Obama’s trying to wriggle out of it while trying to get the Muslim targets and victims of “Islamist” aggression to stand up on their own! Unfortunately, deep divisions within the community have weakened it for the onslaughts brought by the Islamic State, which might be a good thing: everyone can see it for what it is, what it represents, and what it intends to do with humanity, including its own.

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The Awesome Conversation moves along swiftly as the tempo of events promotes greater engagement at a faster pace.

I don’t know what to do with my part of the commentary other than as swiftly post some part here for greater permanence (and even that’s uncertain).

The Islamic Slaughter (IS) operating in Iraq and Syria displays itself well.

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Who’s New? Everybody.

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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First One Through

Many items in the Middle East are subject to positioning and posturing. People point to paragraphs in the papers and argue whether the piece has an Israeli or Palestinian perspective. Rarely does the news provide analysis or education for its readers. Instead, it rehashes the political leanings of its editorial board and applies it to the story of the day. How often does a reader put down a paper and say: “Who knew?”

Here is a review of “Who’s New” and the misrepresentation of the facts in the media. Note that statistics, while often easily distorted, can still say a lot. In an area like the Middle East, it is amazing that they are rarely discussed.

A common narrative (which has merit) is that Jews came to Israel en masse after the English took control of the entire region of Palestine (which includes today’s Jordan). That statement, however…

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Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Middle East, Religion

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ISIS, Islam, Jordan, religion

Loud and hysterical shouts of “Allah akbar”, “To Jihad”, “there is none save Allah and the Shiites are his foes”, “He who fights for Jihad is loved by Allah”, “The Sunnis are Allah’s beloved”, “Allah is our god and not theirs (the Shiites’)”, “The Shiite god is Satan”, “Death is better than humiliation”, “With blood and spirit will we redeem you, Islam”, “Jihad is our way”, “Jihad state forever”, “O Shiite rulers, we are coming for you”, were heard at the demonstration and to serve as proof of its serious intentions, shots were fired in the air.

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17392/next-goal-isis-jordan/#4LD4DctJ2PeE2CAj.99 – 7/1/2014.

Related: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17298/isis-one-step-closer-israel-jihadist-threat-looms/#BpZ7re2ZeZcegetz.97 6/29/2014.

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02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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It’s not about physical territory. It’s about spiritual territory. It’s not about nationalism. It’s about Islamism. It’s not about the “Occupation”. It’s about Islam.

“I raised my children on the knees of the (Islamic) religion, they are religious guys, honest and clean-handed, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam,” the mother of one of the Hamas killers said. Not a Palestinian nation. Not a Two State Solution. Not forty percent of this and sixty percent of that. The victory of Islam.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/07/its-not-occupation-its-islam.html – 7/2/2014.

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Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Islam, politics, religion

Assertion

“They will scream about their loss of freedoms.”

Response

And they will be told by a central power — ayatollah, caliph, king, or president-for-life — to shut up.

In many systems — not all! — unquestioning obedience to God (which is not sealed in the Jewish ethos) has been already conflated with obedience to a human claiming to represent the Almighty.

Get the habits going in behavior and language, keep the cruelty in punishment high for dissent, and it’s all over.

I have vacillated a long time about the nature of Islam, as have many within the Ummah and many would-be dhimmi and kaifir, but what we are seeing suggests that al-Qaeda to ISIS represents an “Old Islam” — a how to scrape up the criminal and dispossessed, bring in the powerful to become more powerful, and expand the enterprise while growing more powerful and wealthy on plunder. It’s been there in the Banu Qurayza legend, which some among the revolutionary — the real radicals are the moderates — try to dispossess, and it’s at play in Iraq with the internecine warfare culminating in the want of a unified system beneath a single authority.

Ambivalence within the communities mentioned may stem from consideration of the possibility that such as ISIS works (as a tip of the spear) and that as long as one is Sunni, one is safe, and, therefore, why be upset about the gung-ho armed with Qurans, Kalashnikovs, and great glorious dreams of empire?

An anti-Jihad friend from elsewhere provided the quoted material for this post: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/07/01/a-correspondents-observation-regarding-the-difference-between-real-and-radical-islam/

On both the true radical and Shiite angles, I would welcome Abbas Zaidi’s or Dean Mousavi’s comments.

Obama seems to want to leave this kind of warfare alone — consign it to the Middle East and North Africa (and the more Goons of the Dictator and Fanatics of Islam killed in Syria, the better, but, gosh, too bad about the people) — but I think most of humanity, and on this we too should be +95 percent want to see this evil and the excuses for its license with everyone else quelled and in any which way that works. The suffering is too much — and in the end, in displaced persons, in crime, in political anarchy, in disruption, the whole world pays the price for this deeply barbaric and medieval nonsense.

And the beat goes on.

So it goes.

Any old cliche will do for these days and issues that go on and on and on without substantial address nor an inch of change.

Also from the same conversation, my part preceding the above passage: “The silent may believe they will benefit ultimately from the political program in a system of expansion that strikes me as deeply bigoted, coercive, deceptive, and egregious on general terms.”

Related Reference

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2014/07/02/growing-concern-in-muslim-world-about-islamist-militancy-pew-survey/ – 7/2/2014.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/07/its-not-occupation-its-islam.html – 7/2/2014: “I raised my children on the knees of the (Islamic) religion, they are religious guys, honest and clean-handed, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam,” the mother of one of the Hamas killers said. Not a Palestinian nation. Not a Two State Solution. Not forty percent of this and sixty percent of that. The victory of Islam.”

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Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Religion

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I invest in the idea that contemporary Jewish ethics are reinforced by two fundamental statements by Hillel the Elder, the family man 🙂 who lived ten years into the Common Era: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another” (“That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study”). and “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, WHAT am I?” If not now, when?” Whether or not any Jewish action, conversation, or thought traces back to those statements directly, both would seem part of the Jewish spirit, and both would seem evidenced in the long, long history of Jewish social activism.

We do not know what we are dealing with?

Yes we do.

We’ve had a lot of experience since Pharaoh.

We’re getting better at comprehending the psychology involved with “monsters” who are, all said and done with every dictator ever vanquished and the worst among the same living, merely human after all. We may not be able to see what has set a “malignant narcissist” on his course, but we can label the type and take a hard look at how they work with language and how we (humans) are culturally programmed in relation to language behavior and content.

With the Haggadah with which I grew up, we cried, symbolically, for the Egyptian lives lost in the exodus and would go on to note that “with every generation, a little more freedom is won.” Lo these many years and laden with inexpressible costs and sorrows, we find those words still true.

From the sidebar of my blog:

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: “The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing.”

Indees, we are still “singing and dancing” and we will go on singing and dancing, but we are mindful of our neighbor’s suffering too, and however we might feel about it for a moment — say from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq — we’ll help them to greater freedom and greater lives too.

“If I am not for others, what am I?”

That’s what we’re about.

We can travel into the uptake of Jewish thought after Hillel into Christian and Muslim communities and related paths taken by Constantine and Muhammad, but “the base” — the authentic — has been and will be eternally Jewish. Perhaps the same in human thought needs to be dis-embedded from ethnic rivalry.

Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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And just a moment on the murder of an Arab teen in the vicinity of Jerusalem, an abhorrent act some — not only some Muslims, Jews as well — have skidded into calling an act of revenge far in advance of investigation. My response elsewhere to that:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/riots-in-east-jerusalem-after-body-of-arab-teen-found/ with some events, passions overrule reason — and due process of law. However, so the second part of the headline screams, “Netanyahu calls for swift probe into ‘abominable murder’ of Arab 16-year-old . . . .”

This is the argument against all vigilantism: First, make good law; then let the forces upholding that law do their work.

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Assertion

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