Useful Reference

This piece from Andrew Bostom on PJ Media is a useful reference for the history of Islam and also for earlier writing on the subject.

Worth highlighting:

The great Orientalist David S. Margoliouth’s very balanced 1905 biography of Islam’s prophet recognized Muhammad as “ . . . a great man, who solved a political problem of appalling difficulty — the construction of a state and empire out of the Arab tribes.” Margoliouth recounted this accomplishment without “apology” or “indictment,” summarizing faithfully the images of Muhammad that emerge in the earliest and most authoritative pious Muslim biography of the Muslim prophet by Ibn Ishaq (d. 761/767), as follows:

In order to gain his ends he recoils from no expedient, and he approves of similar unscrupulousness on the part of his adherents, when exercised in his interest. He profits to the utmost from the chivalry of the Meccans, but rarely requites it with the like. He organizes assassinations and wholesale massacres.

His career as tyrant of Medina is that of a robber chief, whose political economy consists in securing and dividing plunder . . . He is himself an unbridled libertine and encourages the same passion in his followers. For whatever he does he is prepared to plead the express authorization of the deity. It is, however, impossible to find any doctrine which he is not prepared to abandon in order to secure a political end…This is a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion, and it cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy…

The entire piece underscores the real, unsentimental and unspun story of Islam - that it is a totalitarian political system in religious clothing and its founder cynically preached peace only as long as it took him to gather enough followers to declare war.

Bostom notes:

The modern Muslim scholar Ali Dashti’s biography of Muhammad, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad, has also chronicled Muhammad’s “changed course” at Medina, where the Muslim prophet begins to “issue orders for war” in multiple and repeated Koranic revelations (Sura [chapter] 9 being composed almost entirely of such war proclamations — permanent injunctions against pagans, Jews, and Christians). Prior to describing some of the numerous assassinations Muhammad ordered, Ali Dashti observes

…Islam was gradually transformed from a purely spiritual mission into a militant and punitive organization whose progress depended on booty from raids and [tax] revenue….The Prophet’s steps in the decade after the hejra [emigration from Mecca to Medina] were directed to the end of establishing and consolidating a religion-based state. Some of the deeds done on his command [were] killings of prisoners and political assassinations…

and finally makes the point:

If we are silent and ignore the reality of Muhammad’s “beautiful example of conduct,” in lieu of defiantly upholding the irrefragable evidence briefly adduced herein, we are tacitly condemning Professor Margoliouth, posthumously, and all who presently understand and expound the proven wisdom of his judgments, and submissively acquiescing to the establishment of universal Islamic blasphemy law.

-- Nick

Speechless

You are.

Comments are now disabled for everything and all past comments have been deleted rather than wade through and try to decide what to keep and what to wipe. It seemed quicker and fairer to all and less vomit inducing for us considering some of the comments.

It was also dismaying to realise - naively and belatedly - that the comment string on some posts was providing a life support system for tribe warfare.

If it seems unfair, get your own blog.

-- Nick

Michael Loser

Movie director and celebrity bon vivant Michael Winner has been given 18 months to live and claims to have been researching European suicide 'clinics'.

"People should have the right to terminate their own life. I’m very happy to snuff it. I’ve had enough time on Earth. I’d be happy if someone gave me the plug to pull."

Then why don't you, Michael? You're perfectly capable of ending your own life by any number of means if you wish to do so. You are wealthy and mobile. Go to a country where guns are allowed and shoot yourself. Or just stay home and stick your head in the oven.

What's at the heart of assisted suicide for the majority of people who support it is selfishness and cowardice. Not with respect to any pain they might be going to face (though this plays a part) but with their own lack of balls enough to get on with it while they're still able to wash down a bottle of sleeping pills themselves, and an unwillingness to get while the going's good because they're not in sufficient pain yet.

No. Winner, rather than having the courage of his professed convictions and giving up a few months at the end of 76 years, wants to cling to life until it's unbearable then have some other person end it for him so he only has to sacrifice a few weeks that he wouldn't have enjoyed anyway.

Suck it up, Mike, and stop asking other people to do your dirty work for you.

-- Nick

For Appearances Sake

In Australia, the 'men of no appearance' - those not described by left-wing media outlets because they don't fit the 'correct' racial narrative - are usually 'of Middle Eastern appearance' according to the police media releases that are censored by the media. In the US, they have an additional group of 'no appearance', reported here under the headline 'Media Conceal True Nature of “Flash Mob” Racial Violence':

Relying on documents made available exclusively through a Freedom of Information Act request, we can add another face to the growing picture of racial “flash mob” violence in America. It is a face that the media have concealed from public view. This writer was forced to use the local Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ascertain the facts about the racial identity of one of the victims of these attacks. The media concealed the identity of the white victim apparently because of misguided racial sensitivity.

An earlier (2011) article by African-American teacher Jerry Walker points out that some in the community are speaking out:

On the evening of Friday, July 29, 2011, in a district similar to the Plaza called Center City located in Philadelphia, a ‘wilding mob’ descended and brutally assaulted and robbed numerous Caucasian patrons. According to the Washington Times, “the worse injury was a man kicked in the head so savagely that he was hospitalized with a fractured skull”. According to the Times, there were four arrests including an eleven-year-old juvenile. Michael Nutter, an African American and the Mayor of Philadelphia, was outraged. According to the Associated Press while addressing the congregation of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church one week after the attacks, he stated that he was speaking as a “proud black man”. He then chided black parents for abrogating their responsibility for “doing a better job raising their children”. Addressing the young thugs he said, “You’ve damaged yourself, you’ve damaged another person, you’ve damaged your peers and, quite honestly, you’ve damaged your own race”. He continued, “Let me speak plainer. That’s part of the problem in the black community… We have too many men making too many babies they don’t want to take care of and then we end up dealing with your children.” Later in an interview with the Associated Press Mayor Nutter reiterated the point that he spoke as “a proud black man in this country”. He went on to say, “It was a message that needed to be said. It needed to be said at this time… people have had enough of this nonsense, black and white”. “This is about personal responsibility “, he concluded, “We have to be straightforward.” Mayor Nutter had many detractors within the black community disparaging his remarks. These critics, almost without exception, invariably blamed the “white man” for the existence of the ‘wilding mobs’. However there were those who supported him.

The author also predicted:

Note also that these “wilding mobs” incidents in 2010 and 2011 took place during the months April through August, warmer months when school is not in session. Be assured if a more direct, confrontational and preemptive approach is not taken by law enforcement, we will witness these violent, horrendous events again during the summer of 2012, only on a wider more destructive scale.

And he appears to have been right.  

-- Nick