“We don’t only want to be Muslim and eradicate anything before or after,” stated the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Arabic Language and Culture Program Director Amel Mili about the historical Muslim conquest of her native Tunisia. She and a fellow Tunisian offered a refreshing rebuttal of the hackneyed Islamic supremacist dogmas dominating Middle East studies at a conference in Washington, DC earlier this month.
Mili addressed a small breakout panel at the Policy Studies Organization’s Middle East Dialogue 2017. Her lecture examining a 1982 Tunisian court decision denying a woman her inheritance on the basis of sharia law shed light on the difficulty of reinterpreting Islamic scriptures for the modern world.
At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.
I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.
Since January, the surge has transformed into a slow, incessant march of deleting datasets, webpages and policies about the Arctic. I now come to expect a weekly email request to replace invalid citations, hoping that someone had the foresight to download statistics about Arctic permafrost thaw or renewable energy in advance of the purge.
BackChannels may have hit this general topic area — i.e., the relationship between the promotion of anti-Semitism and the experience of fascistic and feudal political cultures. Nonetheless, if one may get a complex of thoughts into a very small box, well all the better in our harried Internet Age.
Discrimination has been part of Islam — and in some ways defines Islam — since Muhammad chose to divide the world in the black-and-white differentiation between believers and unbelievers with Christians and Jews made to occupy a lesser but middle space, just one up from infidels (I’m really an amateur at this, so please forgive any over-simplifications nonetheless suited for discussion. That ability to smear competition has long been part of the medieval mentality and may well define it considering the “enthusiasm” for religious warfare not so long ago.
It may interest Muslims reading this thread to know that in Christian states, well, at least Hungary, 12th Century, laws designed to discriminate against Jews were upon activation applied equally to Muslims.
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I think Edward Said published _Orientalism_ in 1972, and the same has become a staple in higher education representing politics on the Left / Far Left / Far Out Left.
I have it “on deck” today in my own library, so I’ll reserve comment on it but to convey two related URLs:
The Russian Soviet Era effort to “pick up” difficult undeveloped states and exploit them by way of a “liberation theology” — as with the Palestinians — that produced sweet promises — as with the contemplated destruction of Israel, or the elimination of whites from states like Zimbabwe (now Zuma in South Africa is using the same ploy) — that would in fact install dictatorship (absolute power) and exploit The People has been accompanied in “Active Measures” fashion by way of inserting the poison into the intellectual assets of foreign states.
I write long enough as is, but any reading may pick up on the questions that develop from my assertions.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
Senator Robert Menendez
Ambassador Nikki Hayley
Vice President Mike Pence
Tomorrow
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Quote from Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer: “We’re all on the same team, Americans and Israelis, Democrats and Republicans, Likud and other parties across the political spectrum . . . .”
Of course AIPAC has its own YouTube channel supporting the above suite of videos (BackChannels has no relationship with it), so the blog may stop here with at least today’s “pass along” of the recent footage.
Order: reverse chronological or most recently encountered material toward the top, a flexible guide.
People protesting in St. Petersburg's Palace Square in 1917 and today, chanting "Down with the Tsar!" pic.twitter.com/hGj5EwO40S
— THEY/THEMARS 🇺🇦 #ArmUkraineNow (@Mortis_Banned) March 26, 2017
The Guardian’s latest:
Hundreds of protesters have been detained by riot police in cities across Russia, as some of the largest anti-government protests in years swept the country.
The call to protest came from the opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who was himself detained at the Moscow demonstration. A monitoring group said at least 700 people were detained in Moscow alone, while the news agency Tass gave a figure of 500.
The post may exist only to get the Sunday reader started on the “All Russia Protests Against Corruption” (the title is BackChannel’s interpretation of the Russian billing for the event).
Note: many of today’s gatherings across Russia in protest of the Putin regime’s feudal indulgence in theft and corruption (reference: Gary Kasparov’s Winter is Coming and Karen Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy) have not been permitted by state officials, so all who have responded to the call for protest risk arrest and other methods of political repression known to those who have challenged similar regimes in the past.
Add the supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny now organize such actions in dozens of Russian cities. In many places, authorities have not agreed on the meetings under various pretexts, and some are already there have been reports of detentions.
“The Italian Minister of the residence and you pay for it” (machine translated); posted to YouTube March 16, 2017. English subtitles available using the “cc” (caption) control.
Premise: my conversational partner had shared with me a video: “2016 NPS Finals – San Diego – “Islamophobia” – and it was a perfect piece suited to interpretation as old Soviet “Active Measures”.
The argument in the above video is disingenuous in many regards.
For starters, Dylan Roof has been condemned as a white supremacist nutcake whose targets also believed in Jesus.
Next: in conflict and military terms, absolutely yes, the White Supremacist movements are absolutely a threat to America’s “domestic tranquility” and the same are tracked by the FBI and followed by a number of anti-hate organizations, from the ADL to the SPLC.
Adam Lanza (I don’t wish to look up the spelling) was an autistic rule-based child whose mother had told him something that he had misconstrued in line with his disability or alternative way of formulating his social reality. The poets have in fact used a mildly afflicted child as an emblem for their political cause.
You know my theory: Moscow promotes chaos for various reasons, including that of making itself look strong against . . . Islamic Jihad. It would work if western analysts and perhaps an increasing number of journalist were not so aware of “Active Measures“, false-flag operations (“Moscow Apartment Bombings“), “Reflexive Control“, and other concepts associated with KGB and Russian State behavior.
Do you see democracy, freedom, peace, and prosperity in the above video?
I don’t.
I see vultures who have figured out how to make a lot of money for themselves by creating and exploiting conflict.
The KKK has been asked to remove their robes, and they have been deeply marginalized in America’s political culture to about this day. This day seems to be a little different as the New Nationalism appears to appeal to the white supremacist community (by the way, the KKK was no friendlier toward Jews than it was African Americans).
The three poets are lying by way of the misrepresentation of political history — and you’re helping them.
Regarding Islam and Islam in America, it really doesn’t take much energy to locate anti-American / anti-State rhetoric in the mosque and the conflation of submission to God with obedience to the guidance of the imam.
“Stop letting the fear . . . .”?
Again: Moscow, Moscow-Tehran. They have got a good thing going with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIL, and so many others.
Political Absolutism and Totalitarianism vs Open Democracy and Checked Power
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideology of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). We stand firmly for universal human rights – including gender equality, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech and expression. Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD envisions a future wherein Muslims never feel a conflict between their personal faith and their commitment to individual liberty and freedom. Rather, we work to empower Muslims to be primary advocates for liberty and freedom.
We are being called to tolerate, accommodate, and include people who believe it is compassionate to murder gay people; from Imams trained in moderate Saudi Arabia to moderate Iran. We see gays from these countries murdered before our eyes: gays hanging from cranes in the city squares or thrown off tall buildings. Think about that. Close your eyes and picture someone blindfolded, hands tied behind their back and flung over a building. Imagine the horror of that death. Yet we say nothing and invite Islam into our western countries-to preach and proselytize in the name of freedom of religion and freedom of speech-yet without question against our laws.
We tend to forget that Islam is far more than a religion. It, like democracy, is an ideology, but at odds with democracy.
Islam is inherently, innately, systemically, and endemically homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic and virulently anti-Jewish. Islam opposes the ethic that the Jewish people brought into the world 3500 years ago and brought to these shores by Christians. We know this because we hear their calls “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” “Death to the Jews.”
@ naganoff_ru
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