• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
    • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Alpha by Author
    • Dicks and Spooks – Political Spychology
    • Judaism and Jewish Culture and Life
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact
  • X of Interest
    • A-Z Links
    • Alpha – Zulu
      • Associated Articles of Governance – United States of America
      • Daniel L. Everett – Reading Highly Recommended
      • Khamenei and Iran – Assorted Reference
      • Lee Smith’s Comment on ‘Media Warfare’ in the Middle East
      • Lies are Told for Only Two Reasons
      • On Being a War Journalist — Francesca Borri in Syria – 7/1/2013
      • Putin and Russia — Assorted Reference

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: Muslims

FTAC: A Short Note on “Returning” Jerusalem to Muslims

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Philology, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Muslims

Jerusalem is not even Israel’s to “return” to anyone but the Hebrews who created her 5,778 years ago. It cannot be returned to the Canaanites who melded with the Hebrews; it cannot be returned to the Romans who burned and sacked it early in the Common Era; it cannot be returned to the Nazis or the Ottomans who no longer exist but in the fantasies of a few bigoted Germans and Turks; and it cannot be returned to an “Ummah” that did not even think to exist until the 7th Century and that today finds itself bullied, controlled, slaughtered by its own zealots.


In the medieval mode, the evil demands property . . . just because.

Jerusalem-GMap-180912-1014v1-900x

Screen capture – Jerusalem-GMap-180912-1014v1-900x.

–33–

Attitudes Toward Islam – Litmus – Maryland’s New ‘Megamosque’

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

attitudes, beliefs, development, Islam, Lanham, Maryland, mosque, Muslims

Location: 9704 Good Luck Road, Lanham, Maryland.

Plan acreage reported in planning document: 14.6 for mixed institutional and residential (10 units) development.

Announcement Source: “‘A Symbol of Friendship’: Turkish PM Lays Stone for $100M Masjid Complex in Maryland.”  The Muslim Link, May 17, 2013.

* * *

It has been about four years since the “Ground Zero Mosque” brouhaha and about three years since documentary filmmaker Eric Allen Bell went through something like a spiritual sea change during the course of his investigation of bigotry surrounding the construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee — Bell went in for it, but baffled by the scale of it, came out against it.

* * *

Probably, my fellow Marylanders will consider the construction of twin minarets potential visual competition for the gleaming Disneyesque towers of the Mormon Temple farther north on the Capitol Beltway.

800px-Washdctemplehighsmithabove-480x

Carol M. Highsmith’s photograph shows not only those towers but a sense of the site’s proximity to the Beltway, which is about 1,000-ft.  The mosque complex under construction today will be about twice that distance (judging from the Google map).

About that visual impression off what is called the “outer loop of the beltway”, we shall see, literally.

mega-mosque-in-lanham-maryland-480x

* * *

Here is my question at the moment: how do Americans who are not Muslim feel about Islam today?

* * *

While the news gets around the terrorism-inspired “anti-Jihad” and “Islamophobe” communities, it also provides a moment for very loose social science measurement.

Judicial Watch reports:

“It will be a place that will help counter an epidemic of “Islamophobia” in the United States, according to Turkish government officials who recently visited the construction site. The delegation was led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose goals include increasing Islamist influence in America.”

Now The End Begins sets off its note on the project with this: “The Muslim call to prayer is one of the prettiest sounds on earth” — Barack Hussein Obama.”

Do I detect a hint of contempt in that framing?

From The Clarion Project:

“The leaders of two U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities in attendance included Naeem Baig, is the president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lists ICNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The memo says its “work in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” The memo even refers to meetings with ICNA where there was talk about a merger.”

From YouTube poster “Joseph Rudyard Kipling” whose attitude (with what sounds like the music from Platoon) needs no interpretation of the fine points:

From the Turkish perspective as promoted by the Anadolu Agency:

“This monument will be a symbol of our understanding of culture and civilization,” Erdogan said.

The center will be a good way to show how wrong Islamophobia is by giving messages of Islam’s brotherhood and tolerance, Erdogan noted.

With the completion of the center, the state of Maryland will have a different richness, Erdogan said.

“With its multi functional character, the center would be a source of pride for the Turkish nation,” Erdogan indicated.

The Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center would be an expression of co-existence based on love and tolerance, Erdogan also said.

On the other hand, a blog titled “Stop Turkey” has a page devoted to remarks made by the state sponsor of the Turkish Culture and Civilization Center, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — “Favourite Erdogan Quotes” — and those are not so friendly.

Ramp it up, as may The Thinking Mom — “Imagine a $100 million facility devoted to Nazi-ism on American soil with the complicity of the American government. The Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center is every bit as dangerous as that” — or wind it down as so many of decent and good conscience — and without reference to race, creed, color, or religion — may try, that mosque is under construction in my backyard.

If it were a synagogue of similar scale with some houses planted around it, no one would bat an eyelash.

* * *

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.”

I repeatedly drag in Quran 9:29 for its being unambiguous and sticky, at least, and may be representative of the conversation that it will take great courage to have as regards the goodness and validity of an Islamic civilization clinging to the above and other off-putting and seemingly explicit instructions.

Here’s David Wood marching up to and through the talking points in relation to the recent beheading in Woolwich, UK:

When are we going to have this conversation?

My Muslim friends all over the world may approach this line in a different way, all of them well noting the persecuting character of the Taliban, Al-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda group in Syria today) and others around the fringes of their own lives and, tragically, sometimes in close and direct.

In the more central areas of the Islamic Small Wars, events like the “Boston Marathon Bombing” — an insult to all civilized hearts globally — hit the newspapers on a daily to weekly basis, and the same are similarly repudiated en masse, and yet  . . . the text remains embraced, even if passively.

Here is Yusuf Ali’s translation of the same passage:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Ali preferred the term “subdued” to merely “humbled”.

May one of the “People of the Book” or other “kafir” ask why not “conquered”, “enslaved”, or “subjugated”?

May an insider, a believer, ask, “Why attack the autonomy and dignity of another on the basis of faith at all?”

* * *

Maryland has a reputation as a deeply liberal and moderate state, one in which Catholics and Protestants learned to get along right quick, and so I have no doubt the citizenry will welcome the new mosque and regard it as a good sign of the power of development and investment in keeping life around the Capitol Beltway ever affluent, hopeful, and pleasant.

# # #

FTAC – Hamas, Iran, Iranian Jews, Etc.

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Allah, friendship, God, history, Iran, Islam, Israel, Jewish culture, Jews, Muslim, Muslims, Persia, Quran, warfare

“Allah says these jews n christians will not let u live in peace unless u enter thier faith n whoever do tht will enter hell.”

He did not say that to Christians or Jews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Jews

Should the figures be 100,000 rather than 300,000 Persian Jews prior to the establishment of the State of Israel?

I don’t know.

By any count, it seems fewer than 10,000 have chosen to remain in Iran.

Iran itself trots out the Neturei Karta — http://www.adl.org/extremism/karta/ — a cult, a fringe, at best, in the Jewish community both in Israel and the Diaspora.

[Responding to how I feel about five Israel deaths or 100 Palestinian deaths]:

“What bothers me most is not that Arabs kill our children, but that they force us to kill theirs.” Golda Meir, National Press Club, Washington, D.C., 1957.

The Jews I know have never felt differently.

Don’t you think it’s time to stop lobbing rockets at Israel? At the Jews?

Contemplating the destruction of the Jews?

Demonizing the Jews?

Hamas, heavily taxing its constituents, including “tunnel millionaires”, moving goods inbound and outbound with the cooperation of the IDF, purchasing electricity from Israel, ferrying its sick to Israeli hospitals when necessary, etc., nonetheless launched more than 1000 rockets, some supplied by Iran with a range of 45 miles, into Israel in 2012. Targets: any Israeli: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, adult or child, man or woman.

And then by design, Hamas has kept their own in harm’s way, launching within 1/2 block of residences, gasoline stations, schools, mosques, etc.

Hamas and Israel have entered a ceasefire at this time.

We’ll see how it holds up.

Trust the Jews, at least, for having the integrity to keep their side of the bargain (as they did ejecting their own from Gaza in 2005, a bid to “trade land for peace,” leaving Gaza Judenfrei).

Another reference to the Jews of Persia:

http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/light-and-shadows-story-iranian-jews

Dissemination: Political Psychology: Focus on Narcissism

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

autocrats, dictators, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, fbps, Islam, malignant narcissism, Muslim, Muslims, narcissism, narcissistic sociopaths, Pakistan, political psychology, political science, politics

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself.”

Those who remember, know the band well and true name of the music: Yes and “I’ve Seen All Good People”.

Theirs was a part of the ethos of the English-borne 1970s.

And here, 2012, far from those halcyon days, their art for the ears continues to resonate.

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself” — I should take the advice and perhaps others should take it for themselves as well.

My interest in the narcissistic dimension of political psychology started off with the direct and real space experience of personalities exhibiting mild to severe bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder while in cyberspace I happened to be surfing conflicts  and discovering for myself any number of autocratic regimes and the mess and misery they were able to bring to their hapless constituents.

My two-plus-two equaled the invention of a convenient catch-all: “Facsimile Bipolar Narcissistic Sociopathy (FBPS)“, which section exists on the Typepad hosted old site.

(For this blog, the “Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology” category should suffice, as I hope the whole production will not be so all over the place as the other, which I had created to showcase some other things I could do).

With the FBPS concept articulated, a networked opportunity to post an op-ed in the  Daily Times (Pakistan)  — “Beware the Malignant Narcissist” — and Facebook-enabled international activity, I found online another personality engaged on a similar track, Pakistani scholar Mobarak Haider, the author of Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg.

(In science, it is generally taken as a good thing to arrive at similar observations and insights by way of separate tracks — remember: theories stand until disproved, always, but they may be strengthened too by the arrival of new data — and that appears to be what has happened).

To move on: politics draw a variety of social competitors — advisers, leaders, warriors — and among the same, some may carry within themselves the over-the-top, unconstrained, boundary-confused, and often sadistic egotism of the malignant narcissist, and these too full of themselves no one needs.

As I type this, the intelligence of the world moves quickly in tens upon tens of thousands of communications per hour, and so it is I happen to participate in the Facebook presence of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (the organizational site has been listed to the left).  One of my Facebook buddies, Lakhkar Khan Hoti,  posted there a statement by President Obama extolling the contributions made by Islam to humanity, which I interpret as part of the President’s promise to “extend the hand of peace” to Islam, and requested comment.

As professionals in a social-networking community may do, the original poster was asked to cite his source.

I had a source to something similar (having commented recently on Obama’s behavior in relation to Islam at Oppenheim Arts & Letters) and shared it this way:

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html

There are some things humans — individually, in aggregate, without regard to legacy — may wish to entertain as twined language, technology, and trade capacities continue to contract and integrate lives and lifestyles across our ever gregarious species. Start with the meaning and significance of self-concept in relation to others and whether certain degrees of glorious narcissistic self-aggrandizement have a place in anyone’s better future, not least of all Pakistan’s.

My interest in political psychology and the dimension referred to as “narcissism” was inspired by encountering in my web-borne travels so many tawdry dictatorships — the junta in Burma; Robert Mugabe (thank him for reintroducing cholera to his people) in Zimbabwe; Paul Biya whose French connections and chateau keep him comfy while his people starve in Cameroon; etc. Copy and paste “African Dictator” into your browser, and you should come up with a blog titled and devoted to just that subject, quite colorful. And awful.

One might suggest there’s some difference too between overt religiosity and deep and rightly cherished spirituality.

There may be a good track in humanity enforced by our natural and overwhelming propensity to enjoy one another despite whatever hardships we may be enduring.

Where conditions have become untenable, whether by the hand of Pharaoh or through the failure of ambition as represented by the will to war — other ideas and policies proving bankrupt beneath the hands of lost autocrats and warmongers both — most people resign themselves to suffering or leave for what they hope will prove a healthier situation.

A bully anywhere — schoolyard, saloon, state, tribe, region — drives humanity away, and one may suggest that even God’s love goes with those who leave.

Time and again, and without understanding the sources of their own ruin, time reduces the malignant and all they have done to rags and relics, not to mention the diminishing of their reputation down into the class of assorted “bad examples” in lessons to new generations.

That day always comes.

  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • Munich Security Conference: Pence’s Silent Moment; Brief Nod to Russian and Norwegian Energy Sourcing
  • Two American Military Intelligence Officers: One Dies A Hero; One Defects to the Islamofascist Devolution of Iran
  • Sudan Protests: Bashir’s Sadistic Dictatorship Paints Its Own Picture
  • Venezuela’s Turkish Connection and Other Notes on Dictatorships Surrounding EU / NATO
  • Responding to Tulsi Gabbard’s Tweet ” . . . No to Nuclear War . . . No to Regime Change Wars”
  • Venezuela: Military Mafia-Borne Political Absolutism v Democratic Distribution of Power and Rule-of-Law

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Hungary
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"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."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

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."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Blog at WordPress.com.