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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Dupe entry: 'Various Quotes |
| 2006-09-25 |
| I received this by email. I cannot attribute it to anyone but the quoters are given appropriate credit. ICHTHUS IMPRIMIS “Forced belief does not persuade people to love God with their hearts, any more than a forced marriage creates love for another human being. God and relationships must be freely chosen to be meaningful and herein lies the fundamental difference in world views. One sees their God as an angry enforcer who needs goon squads to whip people into line. The other sees God giving humanity free will with blessings and consequences for each choice, but with ultimate judgment reserved for Himself.” —Cal Thomas CULTURE “There are many millions of decent and kind Muslims in the world. But there are also at least a hundred million Muslims (i.e., 10 percent) who support killing innocents in the name of Allah and Islam. And there are more than that who believe in the ideal of using force to spread Islam throughout the world. So the question is this: How many kind and decent Muslims are kind and decent because of Islam, and how many evil Muslims are evil because of Islam? I do not claim to have an answer. I only claim that the question is a legitimate one that all the decent Muslims need to answer. The evil ones repeatedly tell us how Islam is the source of their support for murder and torture. We need to know from the good ones how Islam has made them good. So far we have only heard from one side.” —Dennis Prager LIBERTY “[N]othing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it’s time that it should... [I]f stray comments by Western leaders—not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values—are going to inspire regular violence, I don’t feel that it’s asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don’t see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.” —Anne Applebaum OPINION IN BRIEF “Whether it’s the pope’s comments or some Danish cartoons, self-appointed spokesmen for the Islamic street say, ‘You have offended a billion Muslims,’ which really means, ‘There are so many of us, you should watch out.’ And if you didn’t get the message, just look around for the burning embassies and murdered infidels. They’re not hard to find. In response, the West apologizes and apologizes. Radical Muslims, who are not stupid, take note and become emboldened by these displays of weakness and capitulation. And the next time, they demand two pounds of flesh. Meanwhile, the entire global conversation starts from the assumption that the West is doing something wrong by tolerating freedom of speech, among other things. This week, French President Jacques Chirac explained that everyone in the West must avoid everything that sparks tensions. In other words, we must forever be held hostage by the tactical outrage of a global mob.” —Jonah Goldberg THE LAST WORD “If you mock Islam with a drawing or a novel, you get riots and dead people. News of mishandled holy books yields riots and dead people. Insufficiently reverent short films by a Dutchman yields a dead person, specifically the Dutchman. Now we add this detail: Quoting medieval religious colloquies is a reasonable justification for burning churches, shooting a nun and holding up signs demanding that the pope convert to Islam or saw off his own head... Since it’s difficult to predict what else will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with unusual deference, like a 3-year-old child with anger management problems. But it’s not what we say that truly offends. It’s what we are. The West’s lack of interest in joining the Ummah is an affront in itself, and we broadcast our sins in High Infidelity. If you believed that the West’s apostasy was an affront to God, you’d spend your leisure hours torching straw popes too. Progressives at home and abroad seem oddly unconcerned. ‘Islamophobia,’ after all, is just a product of the BushCo junta’s relentless fearmongering, and Benedict is the Nazi pope who personally swipes the condoms from people’s bedroom drawers. But it’s an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase, when the ranters show up with vibrating uvulas demanding the pope’s assassination... Thus the most enlightened and well-intentioned beneficiaries of the human civilization excuse or wish away the words of their most implacable opponents. It’ll take something drastic to change their minds. A dirty bomb? Maybe. A demonstration in Pakistan in favor of Wal-Mart? That would certainly reorder some opinions. In the meantime, we will learn to say less and less about more and more. As the grim clichè has it: If you say Islam isn’t always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn’t make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.” —James Lileks |
| Posted by:BrerRabbit |
| #1 As the grim clichè has it: If you say Islam isn’t always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn’t make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.” —James Lileks Ziiiiing! |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-09-25 17:50 |