Main Edition
US
FR
Armed Palestinian members of Hamas. (MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
We live in an apocalyptic moment, when something truly hideous, long hidden just beneath the surface of everyday life, is breaking forth from the ground. The torture, rape, massacre, and kidnapping of roughly 1,200 Israelis on October 7 was only the beginning of this revelation. In the West, Hamas’s butchery has unleashed eruptions of antisemitism and massive, increasingly violent displays of support for the terrorists. Like some mythical monster that periodically emerges from hibernation to slaughter far and wide, the rough beast, it seems, is just stretching its legs. And we are only beginning to take its measure.
It’s important to understand the sheer evil that now threatens us. Hamas has been called “barbaric”, but that is hardly a sufficient description of its primitive savagery. The Greeks called non-Greeks barbaroi because their words sounded like babble to their ears: “bar bar bar.” Barbarians ranged from the slavish inhabitants of large, sophisticated, highly stratified societies (Persians, Egyptians) to fiercely spirited, independent tribes (the forest-dwelling Northerners that the Romans called Germani). None of these peoples based their identity on the struggle against a hated Other whose total elimination, to be achieved at any cost, was their sole reason for existence. None embraced the complete destruction of body and spirit — including their own as well — that the Nazis called Vernichtung: “negation”. None, in other words, were pure enemies of civilisation.
But jihadis are. Civilisation is the sum of cultural and social conditions that make for flourishing lives and communities. Jihadism is a death cult. In a recent podcast, Sam Harris reminds us of the Taliban jihadists who, in 2014, murdered 132 Muslim children at a school in Peshawar and burned a teacher alive in front of her students. A supporter of the Pakistani Taliban said of the dead children: “We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise…. They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. After all, we also martyr ourselves with them.”
These words are themselves apocalyptic. From the perspective of Islamic fundamentalism, there is no human being who does not deserve to die. Muslims will go to Paradise; non-Muslims will burn in Hell. Death is a blessing for true believers, divine justice for apostates and infidels. Choosing a martyr’s moral and physical self-destruction thus legitimises the deaths of everyone one can possibly kill. Murder-suicide on this grand scale is the ultimate form of religious totalitarianism, the complete control of the lives of others.
This mentality explains a lot, including the abject misery of the Gazans — a people who, pressed beneath the heavy machinery of organised death-worship, are twisted with moral scoliosis. Is it any wonder that Hamas has stolen tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid for military purposes? Or that it hides weapons and hostages in hospitals using sick and injured Gazans and new-born babies as human shields? Or that it blocked evacuation routes and confiscated the car keys of civilians who wanted to cross the Wadi Gaza, as the IDF urged them to do, in order to flee Israeli military action in the northern part of the territory?
Hamas’s strategy is to maximise civilian deaths in order to stimulate worldwide opprobrium of Israel, and, if possible, open up more military fronts of Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Syria. As Harris says, Hamas is “eager to martyr all Palestinians for the pleasure of killing Jews”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt would instructive to hear Islamic voices provide an alternative view of their religion that shows its compassion and humanity. Christianity has the precept of “turn the other cheek” and “love thy neighbour”. These are peaceful philosophies. Are there any Islamic equivalents?
According to them there are. But it’s the same with most Holy Texts of whatever faith. You can pick and choose the bits that advise what you already want to do
Like him, or not, Jesus is a very different figure to Muhammad. It’s hard to think of Jesus followers boasting of his sexual or martial prowess. Or even his cunning.
Obviously christians have not always lived up to the ideals of their founder – who could, or even should? – but the image that each religion has of its founder must make a difference. And both portray their founder as some sort of ideal that one should at least try to live up to.
Stalin’s Soviets supressed the Church and sought to dismantle all Christian institutions, be they physical or moral, through legislation and fear. Hitler only courted the Church to appeal to the German electorate, as National Socialism came to view Christianity as emboldening the weak.
In the struggle against Islamism, Christians should be brave and bold enough to say that Christianity is the religion of the civilised world.
Yes I know all that BUT the point is NONE of them was a Muslim, not born a muslim, nor raised as a Muslim, nor influenced in any way by the prophet Mohammad or the Qu’ran! Whatever religious influences those degenerates had (big or small) were Christian.. no getting away from that. Trying to demonise Islam just doesn’t stack up.
Throughout history, the best friends Jews ever had, ever, were Muslims.. the worst enemies the Jews ever had were Christian..
So how many Jews live in Muslim majority countries then? How many in Christian?
Assad in Syria ?
Assad… what?
So Muhammad isn’t responsible, it’s a case of “blame the angel”!!
Not even the angel’s fault.. blame the twisted interpretation of the Qu’ran just like we should blame the twisted interpretation of the OT..
For every (out of context) exhortation to violence in the Qu’ran you’ll find a similar one in the OT.. Personally, I confine myself to the NT and Buddhism..
Maybe so – but you still have a distorted view of the world if you think those you list are war criminals. Try Putin, Assad, the Houtis, the Iranian Regime. The worst enemies the Muslims have are other Muslims – by a country mile. Context, context, context my friend
The 26 muslim invasions of India, death toll probably 88M ( K S Lal ) including Timur the Lame. “Remember Khaybar” as Hamas supporters chanted in London.
Churchill was not a war criminal he fought a war to stop the Nazis.
I’m trying to confine the discussion to modern times.. if you go back into ancient times there is no end to savagery all round!
Churchill is of course a war criminals as he was responsible for the South African concentration camps, the Indian famine and the bombing of Dresden.. three clear war crimes..
No they didn’t – just cos Allison Pearson said they did. She wasn’t even there.
Churchill a war criminal? That’s just Fenian nonsense intended to get a rise. The concept of war crimes didn’t exist in Churchill’s day, just as they didn’t during Mohammed’s day.
Fenian? Surely you’re not reduced to that are you?
Dresden was a war crime – civillians were targeted with the aim to flatten the infrastructure (as in Gaza). Churchill was a war criminal in that he could have prevented the war having had 8 opportunities to do so. Thatcher didn’t have to go ahead with the Falklands but it won her the next election and 500,000 people would still be alive today had Boris not messed with the Kremlin-Kiev peace deal which had diddly to do with the UK. Wars make money. And taxpayers pay for them. Cha-ching.
Hmmm – I wonder what the Irish did to combat Nazi Germany…? Oh yes – I remember now – absolutely nothing! Naming as war criminals those who stood against Nazism at huge cost in lives and suffering so that Liam can enjoy his freedoms today (including the freedom to write the sort of tripe he does) is little short of sick
You make the key point.
What some human beings have done in the name of Jesus has been utterly horrific – equally as nasty as anything done in the name of Mohammed, whatever the real men were like.
What ? When ?
But 1000 years have passed since then. Islam is still practicing the old barbarity.
To
Not if you’re muslim you can’t.
Yep, Christian America, according to American university study, has killed 8 million and counting in its, bombings, coups, murder of democratically elected leaders, toppling of democratically elected governments, full scale invasions and economic sanctions. How’s that for terrorism?
Madeline Albright, US state terrorist said the killing of a million Iraqis including 500,000 children :was worth it”! How’s that for terrorism?
Now we have Netanyahu quoting his holy bible saying God commanded the Israelites to annihilate every man, woman, child and animal in a Palestinian town 2,000 odd years ago and he’s determined to do the same with Gaza.. How’s that for terrorism.
Well, firstly Netanyahu is a Jew, so he’s very unlikely to be ‘quoting his holy bible’, unless something truly staggering has happened.
And secondly there is no such thing as ‘Christian America’. The country is a capitalist republic, not a theocracy. It’s imperialist foreign policy continues whatever the faith, or none, of its leaders.
Well well a new low for Unherd. Not only has my uptick registerd the opposite of my intention this time I’ve been told that I have alredy voted…hmm.
Yes, but what are their “peaceful philosophies”, do you know of any, Jane?
At the very least look up the Ahmadiyyas: https://www.alislam.org/ahmadiyya-muslim-community/
And try to talk to some actual Muslims. They are human beings just like you. It doesn’t matter which demographic group you belong to, here will be some in the group who think and act for healthy values and some who think and act destructively. The labelling of people and seeing them only through their group belonging is exactly what the woke ideologies do, that are so despised here on Unherd. I think we should be extremely careful not to fall into that trap to and dehumanise the other while extolling our own virtues.
Ahmadiyya Muslims are ruthlessly persecuted in their native land, Pakistan, where the majority Sunnis consider them heretics. They are hard-working peaceful Muslims who try hard to integrate with whichever host country has given them refuge. Notoriously refugee-averse Japan has accepted hundreds of Ahmadiyyas.
Absolutely spot on. I would add the Bohras as another example of moderate Islam who have mostly been well integrated without taking recourse to extra- territorial religious loyalties running counter to nations they stay in.
They are a peaceful business oriented community in Western India, and contrary to the reductionist polemics of Western MSM a support base for Prime Minister Modi’s India first policies.
Are you aware of the Bangladesh War of Independence? Muslim West Pakistanis were happy to murder East Pakistani Muslims.
Bangladesh Liberation War – Wikipedia
Bangladesh genocide – Wikipedia
Pakistan’s imams declared Bengali Hindu women to be “war booty”;[6][7] and Pakistani fatwa were issued legitimizing Bengali Hindu women as spoils of war.[7][8] Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.[9]
Terrible crimes continue to be committed by remnants of pro Pakistani elements in Bangladesh till today against Hindus and Buddhists. Destruction of temples, loot and plunder of their habitats, rapes of women. I hardly see any coverage in Western MSM otherwise obsessed with ” minority” rights.
These reformist minded schools of thought existed a thousand years ago, heavily influenced by Aristotle. That was during Islam’s golden age. Needless to say, they did not survive the end of the Baghdad caliphate.
In the late 11th century Omar Khayyam wrote of his dread of the joy sucking spread of religious zealotry.
I think the fifth commandment of Islam is to help the poor. As far as pacifist Christianity is concerned, its historical record is pretty dreadful, just taking WWII.
Why is Hamas, the very model of ideal muslims, keeping Palestinians poor?
Because in their eyes, the commandment of jihad is even more important.
Which is why they teach their children to want to die while killing Jews and other non-believers and see also https://tinyurl.com/2x23pewk
Because if the Palestinians received the aid that was sent to them they would be content . And the last thing Hamas wants is contentment.
Do you really believe that Palestinians will be content to have their land stolen, to be evicted from their homes, and to be driven further and further into the desert? Cop on.
Muslims have stolen land from every cultures in the old world! The whole of North Africa and Western Asia is stolen by Muslims and Arabised! But, oh, as soon as an acre of Muslim land is claimed back, the whole of Muslim world suffers from a diarrhoea. You need a good flushing.
No such thing as “stolen land” anywhere in the world. Every habitable square inch of land on earth has been taken, and taken again and again and again and again. Also, nobody’s driving anybody “further and further into the desert.”
You are right about that. The two country solution is not the answer. Israel controls the productive land and the Palestinians are never going to be content with the dregs.
The only solution is for the total land mass – that includes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – to be one country with equal rights to all the citizens.
Israel would never agree to that but perhaps economic and diplomatic world pressure should be brought to bear in order to avoid escalation.
Please show in the Hadith and Quran where Islam allows full and equal rights for all people. Without full and equal rights there can be no freedom, justice and demoracy for all. Please show a modern Islamic country which is democratic, free and allows full and equal rights for all. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sunni persecute Shia.
Tunisia. Modern, secular, and abolished polygamy in order to bring women’s status up.
List of terrorist incidents in Tunisia – Wikipedia
2015 Sousse attacks – Wikipedia
Does everyone, including Jewish people have equal rights ? Can a Muslim change their religion and marry a non- Muslim? What about blasphemy?
Your solution is to integrate Hamas into a civilised society where they have equal rights? I think you need to gain some perspective of how people in non-Western countries think.
Israeli lands were awful unproductive lands. But they “made the desert bloom”. Then Arabs wanted to move back to share in the prosperity……
I presume you know there was never any such thing as a Palestinian state? There was never a political entity that was “Palestine”, any more than there was a state called The Levant, or The Middle East. It was a name for a region, not a country.
I say “I presume you know …”, yet you seem to deny the history, so here goes …..
Palestine was the disparaging name given to the region surrounding what had previously been Judea by the Romans when they expelled the Jews from the area. Palestine was a corruption of the word Philistine – who colonised the land having arrived from Crete. The Arabs didn’t settle the land until after the C8th, from the Muslim conquest that brought Arabs from Arabia. The Hebrews were the indigenous people, the Jews.
Judea means “Land of the Jews”. Many Jews didn’t leave. There has always been a Jewish presence there since that time. The last ‘owner’ of the land was the Ottoman Empire. As the empire was falling at the end of WWI, it ceded legal authority over the whole region to the League of Nations, (the precursor to the UN) who gave it to Britain, as part of the Mandate for Palestine.
The Mandate for Palestine was a specific directive to the British to create a Jewish national home in the land of what is today, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The British immediately gave the whole eastern part to the Arabs. And that became Trans Jordan, then Jordan. But they set aside the rest for the Jewish national home. So what does that mean? ‘Israel is the Jewish national home’? The only country in the world that actually has a legal claim to the land of Gaza, is Israel.
The Israelis have tried co-existence, the Israelis have agreed to a “Two state solution” multiple times. Each time the Arabs – who only started calling themselves “Palestinians” in the 1960s – destroyed any hope of a deal, because they refused to agree to Israels right to exist.
You’ve claimed in previous posts that you abhor the violence of Hams, yet seem to strain every sinew to justify them. I don’t think I’m misrepresenting the tone of your comments when I tell you that I’ve seen far too much comment from people like you over the last few weeks who wrap their anti-semitism in the language of compassion for Palestinians, as though there is an equivalence.
I’ve no wish to be uncharitable but claims of anti-Zionism usually seems to be a tissue-thin cover for anti-semitism.
The old canard of “we were here 3000 years ago.” Indigenous tribes should take over all of North America.
I wasnt stolen.It was voted by a resolution of the United Nations by a large majority.
Also prior to that much land was bough by Jewish settlers from rich Arab landlords enjoying themselves in the fleshpots of Beirut, casablanca etc. The problem was they “forgot” to tell their tenants
So how come Israel has disregarded so many UN resolutions?
Maybe because so many of those resolutions have been unjust, biased and promoted by an Islamist majority?
I guess they prefer to have their land stolen, to be evicted from their homes, and to be driven further into the desert, and have Hamas keep all the money sent to Gaza.
The Jews were there first. They established a kingdom centuries before Arab colonists forceably removed them.
Returning them in the 20th century was reparations.
But Wokes mindlessly equate White with bad and colonist, and non-White with good and eternal victim.
I hope you can break free from your programming one day.
If Ukraine had usefully used the $100B aid that was sent to them (instead of blowing it on weapons) they would likely be content too. But that’s the last thing the USA wants.
Are you criticising the Christians who have failed Christ’s teachings? Or the teachings?
What do you make of Islamic expansionism and imperialism? Do you believe that once established it maintains its hegemony with a velvet glove or an iron fist?
Just thinking of those islamic states today where religious minorities – including those that predated the arrival of islam – are systematically persecuted, where apostasy is forbidden and any rebellion against the status quo ruthlessly suppressed.
The koran speaks of how the caliphate will be achieved and what will be the fate of the unbeliever.
Israel has the largest number of Christians in the Middle East; they are persecuted in muslim countries
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tensions-rise-old-city-jerusalem-settlers-target-armenians-5fv5xvbzn
I worked in two Muslim countries and found no persecution whatsoever, indeed quite the opposite. You listen to too much propaganda and lies and fakery in government directed MSM.
I suspect your experiences would have been a little less pleasant without the protection of Western citizenship.
This report details what you would have faced https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/59786a0040f0b65dcb00000a/042-Persecution-of-Christians-in-the-Middle-East.pdf
I spent over a decade in the Middle East. No persecution, well perhaps, but you were never a full citizen and would never, ever be no matter your contributions there. Infidels are routinely made examples of in even the most free Muslim countries for transgressing against Islam. This never touched me personally but I absolutely observed all the rules. Expats thrown in prison for things like, sex outside of marriage, gasp , did not happen routinely but just enough to keep the non-believers in check. My co-worker wouldn’t let me come within several feet of her desk with a Quran on it if I was menstruating.
You are tolerated, but just barely. The tax-free salary blinds many to how repressive, racist, and corrupt those places are.
Hamas was not doing too well before the massacre at helping the poor of Gaza was it? It sold UN food aid, meant to be issued for free, to Palestinians.
Lies, propaganda.. try not to be so naïve.
Ok so Hamas are humanists doing great and good stuff , unaffected by the corruption manifest elsewhere in the Middle East . Satisfied ? Do you live in Ireland ? I wonder sometimes if the pro – Palestinian attitudes current in Ireland is somehow related to the dearth of actual Muslim immigrants who have moved there. About a quarter or less of the proportion of the population of the U.K. who are Muslim . The same figures more or less as those of Scotland , surprise ,surprise
Hitler was not a Christian. He believed in a mythical German religion. Stalin was an atheist.
Why has the Christian West undergone scientific development since 1260 ?
Churchill refused Hitler’s offer of a peace treaty. Why? Look at the death and destruction that followed as a result. Priests were asking for God’s help in defeating each other. I can see no evidence of humans wanting to live in peace.
Because Hitler was an antisemitic monster. exactly why Hamas need to be destroyed, preferably by Palestinians, now.
I shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for Palestinians to rise up against Hamas. They can’t even prevent them from sacrificing their children, who’re taught at school and summer camps to want to die while killing Jews. No they are the embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome if one wants to be kind…
the hitler youth training did a good job in germany – pretty much the same really !
You’re confused.. that kind of indoctrination is delivered by Israelis in their schools, “Birthright camps” and kibbutzen.. if you look on line you’ll find several decent, moral young Jewish people who have escaped their hateful indoctrination.
You’re deluded . There is no equivalent of the concept of Jihad in Judaism or Christianity . Muhammed set in motion 1000 years of vicious Islamic conquest and aggression .And it only stopped ( at least against the west) because the west became economically and therefore militarily superior .
Alan, you’re spot on, but my suggestion is to not engage with the previous poster. He appears to be the forum’s resident troll and agitator. I have a strict policy to not feed trolls.
@alan osband: Do you think Crusade is not equivalent to Jihad? Personally I see two differences
1) Islam had been imposed on previously Christian lands by force – this invalidates Islamist claims
2) Despite a good deal of self interest and corruption in the actual waging of the crusades, there was an underlying agenda to restore and spread Christian civilisation, and the values that Jesus taught have been of immense benefit to modern secular civilisation.
The biblical story of the Fall encapsulates an uncomfortable truth – we are all imperfect creatures and too often betray the standards by which we profess to live.
Up to about 950 AD Christains were allowed to go on pilgramage to Jerusalem. Control by the Seljuk Turks stopped this, hence Crusades. For Islam, The Mongols were a far bigger problem. The Crusades were an irritant. The Mongols sacked Baghdad, destroying The House of Wisdom resulting in the doors of ijtihad closing. There was little technical development in Islam from 1258, whereas in England in about 1260 Roger Bacon said Faith and Reason were separate. Bacon could said to start modern Western scientific thought.
Yes I thought about citing the supposed counter example of the Crusades ( much cited by leftists in the west) and making much the same points you , and Charles Hedges below , make .
Because Hitler had proven to be untrustworthy with regard to treaties, and Germany could not invade Britain let alone defeat the British Empire.
There was no reason to entertain a peace treaty; the whole Cabinet agreed that.
Because the terms of peace included Hitler running Europe and murdering people ?
a ‘peace treaty’ with Hitler would not have prevented the Holocaust or an attempt to subjugate the rest of Europe, the UK would have become party to the genocide not the preventer. Churchill saw the long term consequences rather than the myopic ‘here and now’ wish fulfilling claims of appeasers. Never has a war been stopped, let alone won, by appeasement. A peace treaty with Hitler or Hamas is to appease and extend the war by years. Defeating Hitler and Hamas is question of ‘if not now, when’.
Hitler needed to be destroyed. We did not negotiate with Isis and we should not tolerate the existence of Hamas. The terrorist apologists in this country should be stripped of their acquired citizenship and deported.
Sad but true.. however it is largely the elite degenerates who drive the hatred, and the wars and the divisions.. to suit their own evil ends.. People in general are opposed to these things but being gullible, easily led and suckers for propaganda a great many fall into the trap.
My experience is that people, worldwide, of every colour, creed and nationality are almost all good people or would be if they weren’t led astray by evil, twisted, greedy, selfish megalomaniacs!
Which is why Leftism doesn’t work. It either misunderstands or misrepresents human nature.
Lefties believe that people are puppets of influential others and, in a perfect world, there would be no baddies.
Naive, insulting and infantile, but also evil at heart – because it betrays a fundamental disrespect for the individual (and promotes authoritarianism).
10% of all populations are personality disordered and 1% are psychopaths. Even good people prioritise themselves and their families over others. All human beings are capable of evil.
Civilised regimes/countries recognise human failings and design laws and democratic systems to guard against our worst instincts.
Tyrannical regimes debase their populations who have to abandon their virtues to survive. Like any criminal enterprise, the most degenerate thrive and the innocent are victimised.
Hamas have behaved as savages but savagery has a long history and somehow we understand what it is. What we have not ever come to terms with is what the German regime did in the 1940s . We simply have no mechanism for doing so as they went far beyond our experience into a world that we have no access to at all. How could we ? Because of this our culture has lost it’s confidence. How could it fail to do otherwise? We cannot even measure our actions and the actions of others against what they did then. There is just no way for us to do so. We can defeat the savagery of Hamas and the like but to defeat the evil that came in to our world in those days of the war is a task for angels not for men. All we can do now is to try our best and refuse to take part in any action or event that in any way mirrors that evil. Because evil is the only word that fits.
I hope you are not confusing Catholicism with Christianity.
I’m afraid I would like to point out that humans come in two sexes. The women, whose sons and husbands and brothers die in war, want to live in peace. The men………
Read the Qu’ran, you’ll get the feel quite quickly
That’s the problem, no one reads these texts. The same with the Bible. Too many simply rely on others opinions rather than just understanding what lies right in front of their own faces. Too busy with their iPhones, football, over indulgence, etc. etc.
When an entity, in this case islam,forbids questioning lest the questioner be dissatisfied with the answer, (per one of the hadiths) because it would cause people to be uneasy at least, and promotes submission to the will of whoever shouts the loudest or is the most violent then the enslaved populace can have no opinion but the ones foisted on them.
Indeed – all fanaticism is shouted down doubt.
exactly – see my comment above re civilisation sliding backwards due to a dearth of real “classical’ education ie 101 learning how to think first vs too lazy and easier to imbibe something pre digested by another blind person. Socrates 700bc RIP
It is not texts, but the interpretation of texts. Muslim preachers know how to turn any text the way the want in order to brainwash the crowd
.
I have. It has no Golden Rule,unlike all other religions as well as humanism.
Dr Ali Sina’s “Understanding Muhammad” also points up that the muslims’ prophet used to hold cursing competitions against his enemies….
There would be — there are texts in the Qu’ran and some Hadiths that support compassion and humanity — but for one thing: the standard Islamic hermeneutic principle for resolving conflicts in meaning between passages in the Qu’ran is “naskh” or abrogation. The “later revealed” passages of the Qu’ran written after Mohammed became as successful warlord, which include all the bits about striking at the necks of unbelievers, screeds of Jew-hatred and the command to execute apostates, are held to abrogate conflicting passages written earlier with mild sentiments like “to kill one man is the same as killing all humanity” and commands to treat “people of the Book” — Jews and Christians — well. Unfortuately every fiqh of Islamic sharia, both Sunni and Shia, use naskh.
I find these hermeneutical details to be fascinating, something I know nothing about but would like to know more. Thanks for posting this.
Precisely! On top of that, the Quran is prescriptive rather than descriptive. The Bible, with a few notable exceptions including the Ten Commandments which are prescriptive, is descriptive; hence, there is no comparison between the violence recorded in the Old Testament, which is not meant to be emulated, and Quranic suras ordering the killing of infidels.
‘ Unfortuately every fiqh of Islamic sharia, both Sunni and Shia, use naskh.’
Yes, somewhat similar happens in Israel where the hawks come out on top again and again. And not just in Israel BTW.
Some years ago a friend pointed out that of the three Abrahamic religions only Islam is devoid of miracles. There’s also no chance of redemption and no conversation with God. Just obedience.
In my reading I’ve kept an eye out for anything to contradict this. And, early on, there were hints of a more humanistic approach. Almost always quashed by bitter, violent fundamentalists.
It has been many hundreds of years since Islam lost any connection to philosophy and turned to cultish worship. It’s frightening.
Islam fundamentalists want to chop your head off. Islam moderates want the fundamentalists to chop your head off.
Right on!
There are many miracles in the Quran. One example: the prophet Solomon had the ability to understand animals, and could hear an ant warning the other ants to get out of the way or risk being trampled by him and his army. another: the Prophet Muhammed’s night journey to Paradise, from the masjid of Al-Aqsa (which is in part why the Dome of the Rock is so important to Muslims).
The so-called miracles are only mentioned in the Hadiths. The Quran does not mention them or if there is a rare reference, there is no description why the event was miraculous!
The journey of the prophet to paradise is not mentioned in the Quran, you’re right (oops) but the miracle of Suleiman (Solomon) and the ant is. There’s also a miracle involving the queen of Sheba (also in the same chapter about Solomon, who had a lot of miraculous powers). The story of Jonah (Yunus) being trapped in the whale is also in the Quran. Sorry, my bad about the error.
Great example of Islam stealing Jewish narratives and figures. That was Mohammed’s sales pitch to the Jews of 7th century Arabia: “look how similar it is to your religion.” Of course we all know the outcome – the Jews rejected Mohammed so he slaughtered them.
I was thinking more of the “healing the sick” or “reattaching severed heads” kind of miracles. Or even the “weeping statues”; my favorites. Services for the faithful rank and file.
Yes we cannot compete with raising the dead (Lazarus) or the resurrection (although we believe Christ will come back to earth to fight the Dajjal, or something close to your concept of the Anti-Christ). But the way in which the Queen of Sheba was transported to Jerusalem is pretty neat. A bit like the Star Trek teleportation device, she is brought over, throne and all, in the blink of an eye.
Excellent point. I had never really considered the lack of miracles, but now that you mention it, I realise that this absence of miracles, which are glimpses of divine redemption, foreshadowing the greatest miracle of all, the resurrection of Christ, is indeed telling. Although I am not observant, I was raised Catholic with hints of Anglicanism (my dad was Anglican and my grandmother was a regular churchgoer), and I absorbed enough Christian theology to have a good foundation. My knowledge of Islam has been acquired through academic research and study, but I can unequivocally state that the differences between Christianity and Islam are fundamental. Superficial similarities come from early contact with Christians, some of whom were non-Trinitarian, and of course, Jewish scripture.
There is also an interesting theory that Muhammad never existed, as inscriptions indicate that the name was used as a title for Christ. The desire for an Arab prophet led to the title becoming separated from Jesus, and to be filled with new meaning which included a fictitious figure and an invented biography.
The muslims’ prophet instructed them to fight those who didn’t believe in him or his Allah. They are also never allowed to alter any aspect of their prophet’s message so any who preach peaceful coexistence in the way you might wish are likely to be under threat. Also when you believe that peace can exist only between muslim and muslim (honoured, it seems, as much in the breach as in the observance) then fighting “non-believers” to the death seems to tie in.
It would also be useful to put all this in a historic context. Right now we have an extreme form of Islam to the fore, arguably to an extent supported by Saudi money, and in reaction to the failure of Ba’athism and Pan Arabism of times past. Christianity hasn’t always been so benign and Islam hasn’t always been so intolerant.
They are not equal. Stop that stupid moral equivocation.
Calling something stupid isn’t an argument. Now say something that isn’t vacuous bluster.
No way to legitimately merge on the one hand, the teachings of Jesus plus the New Testament, on the other, with episodes like “the Crusades” and call that “Christianity”. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” There is no Christian equivalent of the Islamic state, because Christianity by very definition is a religion of the willing. “He who wills, let him come.” “Here I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus says. It’s an invitation to a personal relationship. Christian warfare vocabulary is entirely spiritual: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities in the heavenly realms”
Hence phrases like “Christian militia” are an oxymoron.
St. Paul 1 Corinthians 12: ‘We were all baptised so as to form one body…if one part suffers, every part suffers with it…’ We can’t so easily pick and choose who we call fellow Christians. As for ‘my kingdom is not of this world,’ it may not be but we are in the world and have to take the world seriously, as Paul said many times in the New Testament. I wouldn’t be so quick to call Christianity a religion of the willing and Islam one of the unwilling.
Stop that wishful Western way of thinking. You mean the Islamists who want to lie about their religionists pasts? There is no more violent religion in history that is as widespread as Islam.
Yes of course there are.. and better still (applying the maxim Jesus suggested: ” by their works shall ye know them) why not check the actual figures on lack of humanity perpetrated by each side against the other:
3,000 (mainly white Christan) Americans killed in 911 by Egyptian and Saudi terrorists. The US response? (with UK vassal in tow) was to wage a murderous war and sanctions against the wholly innocent Iraqi people, kill rate 1,000,000+ that terrorism was 333 times worse by the West.
Similar pictures for Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc Christian (state) terrorism v Islamic “terrorists” (defending their own land, at home!) another 333 to 1, give or take!
And now Israeli state terrorism (aided and abetted by USUK) v Islamic freedom fighter terrorism, 27 to 1 since 1948..
Comparing Western/Christian (my arse) terrorism to Islamic terrorism is a no contest!
I worked in two Muslim countries, Türkiye and Malaysia ..kindest, gentlest people on the planet but sure, if you torture a gentle dog don’t be surprised if he turns on you with great ferocity!
Incidentally, my contact in (93% Muslim) Türkiye was Jewish, and my contacts in (67% Muslim) Malaysia were Hindu and Christian.. all got on with each in complete harmony! Go figure as the Yanks say!
Neither of those countries are in Arabia. I worked in Kuwait and Iraq. The people were generally pleasant and welcoming to a white western woman but quite snobbish and racist towards their black Sudanese co-religionists, virulently anti-semitic (despite never having met any Jews), virulently homophobic (despite a lot of secret homosexual activity) and not remotely feminist. The double standard was breathtaking. Women had to be virgins on their wedding night but men were expected to sow their wild oats – usually with the high number of prostitutes available – many of whom were very young and very poor. Servants from Sudan and Ethiopia were often treated with great cruelty.
I was hard pressed to find anyone who had not been brainwashed by their Islamic teachers and was capable of free thinking rational debate. Those few rational atheists I did know had to be very careful.
The Kuwaitis were less depressed than the Iraqis because their dictatorship was more generous and much less bloodthirsty.
But everyone lived under a regime that stifled intellectual enquiry and many were desperate to get out.
I saw no evidence of anything positive in Islam – to be a Muslim is to be a slave.
The warmth and hospitality I experienced in the Muslim world I also experienced in all other non-Muslim countries. I think Islam is a curse for all Muslims robbing them of freedom and agency and filling their heads with backward ideas and superstitions.
Completely spot on. My experience exactly.
I would, as a Muslim, be willing to show you the many hundreds if not thousands of instances where Islamic religious scholars, political leaders, and other figures of authority have condemned extremist violence committed by terrorists claiming to act under the banner of Islam. Sadly, those voices are almost always ignored, not by the people of the countries in which they lead, but by people in Western countries. The APS attack referenced here, which happened in my country, managed to end any sympathy people might have had for the Pakistani Taliban, and it was the beginning of the end of their rampage across the country. (I live in Pakistan and that particular attack was apocalyptic, even though we thought we’d become inured to political and religious-inspired violence)
Islam has specific and humanitarian rules for conduct in warfare. It outlaws killing innocent civilians, especially women and children. There were provisions for captured women, who were meant to be treated with kindness and married legitimately, never raped or assaulted or even forced into concubinage. This is not to say that warriors always obeyed those rules. In fact, the extremists twisted and distorted a lot of them to suit their own designs.
I don’t expect anybody to take me at my word (why should you?) But there are many, many Muslim voices calling for peace and interfaith harmony, acting in accordance with the Islam they know and practice. As Reza Aslan once said in an interview, you get out of Islam what you yourself bring to it — if you value and espouse peace, you’ll find peace, if you espouse violence, you’ll practice the religion in a violent and abhorrent manner.
What about Calcutta and Punjab in 1947, Biafra late 1960s, East Pakistan when it arose against West Pakistan 1970,Khomeini post 1979, Muslim Brotherhood- killed Sadat, honour killings, grooming gangs in the UK, Slavery existed in Muslim countries into the 1960s , if not 1970s- Mauritania for example. Assad senior, S Hussein and Gaddafi all Muslims who killed fellow Muslims, Algerian Civil War of 1990s.
How many Muslim countries are democratic and where religious minorities including Muslim ones, such as Shia are not persecuted? The slaughter between Sunni and Shia in Iraq was immense.
Equal rights for all people under Islamic rule, including in courts of law including marriage between people of different faiths including leaving the faith of their birth.
I would suggest the ability to keave the faith of one’s birth, marry and convert to another faith, is the ultimate test of religious tolerance and freedom.
You’ve referenced the Partition, which didn’t involve just Muslims but Hindus and Sikhs as well. As for Biafra, I’m not sure what that particular war has to do with Islam. As for the rest, are you actually suggesting that all these egregious examples of war and wholescale slaughter are condoned by Islam? I’m here to tell you they are not.
But we see religion being used on every level to justify killing, from Israel to China to Myanmar in the last century alone. Never mind the Crusades of the last millennium. Or the religiously-inspired invasions and colonizations of South and Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia in the 18th to 20th centuries.
Nobody’s innocent here, which is why I can understand atheists. What I don’t understand is atheists who support a claim that God gave the land to a particular group of people following a particular faith and that the proof of that is in a book of scripture.
And your last sentence, about religious freedom — I’m completely in agreement. “there is no compulsion in religion” and “to you your faith, and to me, mine” are my two favorite quotes from the Quran.
There are the Surahs of the Sword.The Cow ” Kill them whereve you find them. Figthing is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. ” Hamas supporters shouting remember Khaybar is threatening to Jewish people.
The murder of 30,000 Christians by Mulsims starts the Biafran War.
The Fatwa issued by Khomeini to kill Salman Rushdie, laws enabling states to kill people for blasphemy and apostasy shows there is compulsion in religion.
Woman sentenced to death in Pakistan over ‘blasphemous’ WhatsApp activity | Pakistan | The Guardian
It was a Muslim Pakistani who told me that if Arab land owners had not sold land to Jewish settlers from the 19th century up to 1940s, there would have been no Jewish settlements outside of the homes owned by Jewish people who had lived in Jerusalem in for centuries. By the 1930s British official were trying to stop Arab land owners selling their land to Jewish settlers but they were obtaining up to 10 times it’s value.
Even today the persecution of Hindus and other minorities continues unabated in Pakistan. No outrage at the temples which are UNESCO world sites demolished yesterday from any Western MSM.
Some comments here are perhaps unaware that Hindus were massacred in Noakhali and Calcutta in 1946 by “Sufi” mobs and a sitting Chief Minister HS Suhrawardy. They need to be better read.
I can’t argue with your point that there are moderate and humane Muslims , having met such people . People tend to cherry pick from religious texts and ignore what doesn’t concur with their own values .However some here have made the point that the more moderate , universalist parts of the Koran are from the time before the prophet became a successful warlord and are supposedly abrogated when they conflict with later parts , which if true is unfortunate .
Hi Alan, I saw that particular comment about abrogation, but the commenter didn’t really have the technicalities correct. One example I can give you is of how alcohol came to be banned: at first the instruction was to not get intoxicated so as to lose your senses. then the next instruction was not to come to your prayers while intoxicated, and so on until the final “don’t drink at all” came about. So in this case the final rule means the earlier instructions were abrogated. Such is the case for other instances of this as well, but it would require going through a lot of jurisprudence to be able to know them all. Slavery was also abolished gradually, rather than all at once. Hope this helps clarify things a little
Slavery is alive and flourishing in the most fundamental Islamic countries. The Gulf countries were built upon it and continue unabated today.
Slavery was abolished gradually . In Mauritania it was in 1981 and my have lasted until 2010.
Slavery in Mauritania – Wikipedia
One aspect of assessing any religion is the degree of freedom it allows, to think and act provided others peoples freedom is not reduced.
As Orwell pointed out, as soon as censors one part of one’s mind it affects all others. If we examine locations where innovation has taken place, say Florence from 1380 to 1550, London under Elizabeth(the writers Shakespeare, Marlowe , Jonson) and Britain 1666( Newton ) to say 1850, the freedom to think and act is vital. France was larger and wealthier than Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries but did not innovate to the same extent because it lacked the freedom.
As an atheist, I’m not aware that any atheist would make a claim about what’s in the Bible. Speaking for myself I’ve never read it. I don’t have time for any religion, but I find Muslims particularly annoying.
You’re entitled to your opinion.
Indeed I am.
That’s a typical shallow understanding of Jews, who are first and foremost a people, and secondly who have their own religion (like First Nations in N.America). Most Jews in Israel are secular (and most Jews in general are not particularly religious) so Israel’s actions are not based on religious ideology but rather survival. Simply, the Jews are the only people who have had a continuous presence in Israel since their ethnogenesis there 3500 years ago. The only sovereign nation there, ever. Nothing to do with scripture.
That’s not much reassurance to the rest of us!
I have read the Quran & what it says about “Jews.”
Which moral principles may be ‘best’ is very uncertain. Nothing makes ‘compassion and humanity’ intrinsically ‘better’ than other possible moral codes. Communism isn’t obviously ‘better’ than Capitalism, which is very cruel at a personal level. Christianity isn’t obviously ‘better’ than Islam.
What Christianity did with Roger Bacon is to separate Faith and Reason and with the development of perspective by Brunelleschi is to expand our mind, the ability to represent 3 dimensions on two. The development of printing allowed mass production of knowledge. The Translation of the Bible from Latin into local languages created mass literacy. The discovery of the telescope in 1608 further opened up the Christian mind. The Pope sent a telescope to the Sultan of Turkey, The Mughal and Chinese Emperors who did little with it. Using the telescope, Newton developed the fundemental laws of the Universe and gave us the modern world.
Many of the founders of the Industrial Revolution, including Faraday were Christians.
The Duke of Wellington said Britain’s greatest assset was her honesty which was the product of her religion. The laws of the universe do not lie. They remain hidden until discovered by honest, invariably hard, work.
Are the secrets to civilisation honesty, freedom and hard work?
Yes of course there are: almost identical.. the odd one out is not Islam but Judaism with its eye for and eye philosophy.. except today that’s 27 Palestinian eyes for one Israeli eye. Like the Americans they suffer from the cardinal sin of pride (as Satan does: hence the similarities) it’s called Exceptionalism (US) and God’s Chosen by those who murdered their own Messiah.
But there are those who espouse not the precepts of their faiths but the direct opposite such as so-called Christian Joe Biden who does pretty much the opposite of every one of Jesus’s teachings.
“By their works shall ye know them” – Jesus.
I worked in two Muslim countries.. nicest, gentlest people you ever met.. nothing like brutal, violent so-called drunken Christians!
Joe Biden is Catholic, hardly a Christian if you examine his fruit.
Really, Liam, you know nothing about Jews. We don’t subscribe to exceptionalism and don’t force our ideas on others. Interesting that you don’t mention Muslims, who suffer from being prideful – to the point where killing your gay son is justified in the name of restoring “family honour”. Quite frankly, IMO this is the cause of ME conflict – the Arabs are so ashamed of losing their genocidal wars against the Jews multiple times that they will fight until eternity to restore their honour. That’s why Hamas fighters posted all their atrocities online. A twisted sense of honour for sure. At least some Arab countries are now starting to become reasonable.
Of course. Alastair Crooke’s RESISTANCE: The Essence of the Islamic Revolution is a good one. Beautifully written – looks into the spirituality of the East and how they view us in the West.
That’s a startlingly true passage from a profound and sobering article. One of my personal disappointments here is how the BBC, UK political parties, and lots of supposedly well-educated and superficially benign people are part of that ignorant mob.
Earlier I was listening to an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4, featuring a very articulate and intelligent spokesman for the Israeli government, explaining how recent finds and video evidence proved incontrovertibly that the Al Shifa hospital had been used as a terrorist base. I strongly recommend it. He was more than a match for his weaselly interviewer. But it was a matter of some shame to me that our national broadcaster should attempt to discredit him by means of a broadcaster with the surname Husain. Tone deaf, or gaslighting?
Gaslighting.
Both.
Our national broadcaster sadly gets it wrong on just about every major issue. Its a propaganda feed for the ignorant mob.
The fact that Hamas uses the hospital for military purposes is a “dog bites man” story. Few people care. Terrorists are ALLOWED to do this because they are “oppressed.” I see no solution to this problem. So called progressives only care about ideology. They refuse to let facts contradict their world view.
I am so fed up with with the blatant Islamaphobia/racist sentiments expressed here and on other articles.
As for the bunker and tunnels under the Al Shifa Hospital, the Israelis should know because they built it. Not only built it but according to them destroyed it substantially in 2021. If anybody is gaslighting it’s the Israelis.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-build-bunker-under-al-shifa-hospital
I get fed up with the anti Arab and anti Muslim racism on this site too. Clearly there are Editors here who consider it important to comission content like this article that, behind
a veneer of intellectual analysis, seems to serve mainly to dehumanise Palestinians and further terrify readers (who seem already terrified of Islam and respond to content that will reinforce their fears/views). I am not denying the obvious facts that Hamas conduct terror attacks as their MO and have an unpleasant ideology including a (laughably unrealistic) objective to re-conquer historic Palestine and destryoy Israel. But for the vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, at least, the conflict with Israel has never been about religion. It is about occupation and disposession from their homeland. Most Gazans are already refugees and descendents of, and have never been allowed to return to their villages in what is now Israel. By chance, the people who have taken their homeland over happen to be Jewish and happen to have formed a Jewish state (giving special rights to migrate there to Jews only). But whoever had done this to them, Palestinians would still be trying to gain equality and freedom and the right to return to their former villages. I also want to point out there have been many Christian suicide bombers and terrorists. Look up the Al Asqa Martyrs brigades which is secular. And Muslim and Christian Palestinians have almost zero conflict among themselves (and Israel has never succeeded in dividing them). The idea that this conflict is some apocalyptic battle between Islam and the West is nonsense. Despite what some pro-Israel voices (and perhaps also Iran?) would have us all believe.
‘Electronic intifada’. Ok. I believe it.
I know, right? What a credible and unbiased source! I almost snorted tea out of my nose when I saw that…
I see evidence daily that Islam is Stone Age. I find no redeeming outward manifestations it embraces the West, other than its desire to locate in the West & take advantage of its superior living systems. Health, transport, etc. While at the same time living a parallel existence with Westerners but not integrating with them. I see no good coming from more of Islam within Europe. The opposite in fact, I only see evidence of ongoing conflict.
That is why the West must proactively remove all the radical mullahs and their sympathisers living in it. Because the moderate western Muslims are sure not going to do it!
Sensible advice on the face of it but how to deal with the swarms of angry killer-bee-like muslim reaction to that?
There are no “moderate” Muslims. They are probably closeted atheists putting on a show for their Muslim friends and family so they don’t get killed as apostates.
Too much intellectualising and contextualising of Hamas’s terror campaign on Israel is actually excusing ordinary Muslims from their urgent responsibility of modernising their religion.
Yes – I thought that. The reduction of specific horrors carried out by specific people to part of the eternal human condition.
But our very own governments and institutions have been complicit in snuffing out any hope of ‘modernising’ islam. Blair took it on himself to elevate only the ultra conservative Muslim community leaders as spokesmen. The MCB springs to mind. Liberal muslims who came to this country hoping to escape the paralysing strictures of sharia for example were shocked to find that Britain was prepared to look the other way and tolerate its application here. Clerics from the most hardline elements of that faith were sent into prisons to preach and convert there. I’m sure many Muslims were very confused by ‘the war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan while mosques and imans preaching the very message of jihad were encouraged here.
That’s a western wet dream. Islam is what it is. You can’t change the actual words of God. Get rid of all the believers is how you will falsify it.
The great difficulty (as expressed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently and in her books) is that Western democracies need to ban Muslim madrassas that teach Islam as a death cult, but free speech laws won’t allow it.
Society can only tolerate a moderate Islam. The question is, “How moderate?”
No honor killings? No jihad? If you try to make Islam like Christianity or Judaism, (i.e. “safe for society”), then it becomes a personal system of discipline only, like a monastic movement. Is that possible in a Western setting? Only Muslims can do this to their own faith. It’s an existential problem for the West.
Now whoa there, just a moment. This piece starts with ‘apocalyptic’, and goes on in that vein. Do the facts justify it? In the West, the antisemitic attacks are pinpricks (although they don’t seem like it to the victims), where the aim is to destabilise and demoralise us.
In the Muslim world, it’s far more serious. Islamists kill far more Muslims than they do Jews or Christians. We forget that. But Islamists have a fatal weakness: they are much better at destroying than building. That’s why the rickety caliphate of ISIS lasted only three years. Muslims did not rush to join ISIS en masse.
In the West, we can defeat them if we keep our heads. So ignore any journalistic article with the word ‘apocalyptic’ in it. It’s not helpful.
Great comment.
I appreciate the tone of your comment but how do we “keep our heads” when so many seem to be losing their minds? Revelatory articles like this are a helpful countermeasure to the ‘apocalypse’ already unfolding in the streets.
Dumb. Just another way to say, “Nothing to see hear. Move along.” Another somnambulant, delusional Westerner. The caliphate was destroyed by external powers, it did not collapse on its own. You really are delusional and wishful. People like you don’t deserve to live in civilization, you help to destroy it.
Lived 7 years in the Muslim world and a decade married to a Muslim and I can confirm that tribal enmity is far more virulent within the Arab Muslim world than any hatred of Christians or Jews. The hatred of Jews tends to be very abstract as most Muslims in the Arab world have never met any. Some Old Testament prophets are buried in Iraq and their graves are places of pilgrimage among the local Muslim population.
My ex-husband recently stated in his local mosque that he actually likes and admires Jews after living in this country 33 years and working alongside some of them. The response was mild embarrassment from his fellow Muslims and then in the car park afterwards some came up to him and whispered their agreement.
Yes they unanimously dislike those they refer to as Zionists but believe that ordinary Israelis are basically decent people who could live in peace with their neighbours if given a chance.
But they also believe that October 7th was deliberately engineered by Netanyahu so that he could justify destroying Gaza and that 9/11 was perpetrated by the CIA! Whenever evil is perpetrated by Muslims they always assume that America has had a hand in it. It is a real blind spot.
In any society where there is an absence of free and open discussion; there is extensive corruption and nepotism, the conspiracy theories flourish.
Unfortunately they are now flourishing in free countries thanks to the Internet. The whole Qanon madness being a case in point. Western education systems have failed to teach critical thinking.
It did when education was based upon Greek, Latin and Maths. Marxists and leftwingers have removed Classics from the education system.
Up to 1920 one needed to pass a paper in Greek to matriculate to Oxford.
C Northcote Parkinson said a a don in the mid 19th century would have had a degree in Classics, probaly maths as well and read three to four European languages. Divines would have had Hebrew as well. Gladstone and Peel had double firsts in Greats and Maths.
Gotta admit, I’ve been thinking about October 7th a lot… and I never once thought about Beowulf.
Me neither, but what i think the author is trying to demonstrate with such examples is that there’s a strand in human nature which stretches back into pre-history, and which we’re witnessing being played out again in the terrain of the Middle East (the “Holy Land”) and on the streets of our cities.
He should not be castigated for doing so, or misunderstood. At last, the fundamental issues of human civilisation are laid before us. The advance of technology allows it, to be brought to a screen each minute of every day.
This is what we need to understand – to finally start to come to terms with: ourselves.
I’ve been arguing this very thing in these Comments sections for some time now. We do need to defend our civilisation, but can only do so by rebuilding it on the basis of our common humanity, and not on myths, and especially not on “my myth is better than your myth”.
How do you decide what “common humanity” is? Who aren’t the untermensch?
Mere semantics. It’s understood by all humans what’s common to us, rather than what separates us.
Thanks to God.
I understand it perfectly well without, although those who need such intercession may struggle with that.
Does Hamas understand “what’s common to all humans rather than what separates us”?
Our desire for universal explanations always seems to stumble in the particulars.
I rather think the whole point of the notion of common humanity is that in truth there are neither untermenschen nor übermenschen, however some twisted ideology may want to separate us.
Who says we should be able to live together? We all have two legs, two arms, two eyes, etc. and walk upright. Where is it written that everyone should be friends. Some groups of people are an existential threat to civilization. How can we live with them?
And how would you establish that your belief that everyone else’s beliefs were just myths, was not itself a myth?
Whatever it is you believe is the ultimate purpose of your life, whatever it is you believe gives your life significance… your beliefs have premises which do not arise from some ‘scientific’ process. You seem to have clear and strong views on the human condition… but what ‘objective’ argument do you give to someone who denies the meaningfulness of (for example) ‘common humanity’?
There is no experiment to determine the real nature of the human condition. What marks our current age is people confusedly thinking they are unique in the history of mankind, enlightened beyond all previous humans, with their special insights obtained from the laboratory – but in fact those special insights are the same blindness of all peoples through all time, just in a modern guise. Many people today reject ‘religion’ as it has been practiced historically – but all humans are ‘religious’ in the real sense. We all have value commitments about human existence that are held by faith.
The key question for all of us, is why do we hold the commitments we do, and on what basis should we argue that others should hold ours?
I’m afraid you’re missing the point, possibly due to an obsession with semantics around “belief” and “religion”. The latter is a man-made concept, although it’s given expression to our spirituality which goes back far beyond anything resembling organised religion. There are other options which don’t result in conflict and bloodshed.
Think of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” – without being too specific, they’re pretty much common to all human beings who survive into adulthood. Base society around them, with mutuality at the core. No need for a deity, or the conflict that arises from the “my god is better than yours” variety. I used the word “myth” instead of “god” to try to bypass the usual knee-jerk reactions invoked by it, and lo and behold, you’ve fallen into that trap anyway.
Here’s a western academic not once acknowledging the occupation of Palestinian lands. No context whatsoever. Just Othering, from a Provost no less.
Hamas is about jihad, not occupation. The secular PLO cares about Palestinians and occupation. For Hamas, all of Israel is dar al-harb that needs to be made dar al-Islam and death in jihad to achieve that is glorious.
The Arabs invaded Palestine from the Hejaz in 629, about 1300 years ago whereas the Jews were living in Palestine 4000 years ago.
It was the Arabs who stole the land from the Jews.
Exactly. And the Orthodox Christians would like Constantinople back from the oppressing, occupying Turks.
Indeed. Though I’d settle for the Turkish Republic returning to secularism, allowing the Halki Seminary to reopen and giving us back the Hagia Sophia to use as the patriarchal cathedral in place of that wretched little church in the Phanar.
Who owned the land before the Jews then in this journey back through time?
Nobody who is around today to claim it.
The Canaanites.
QED.
Hang on , assuming they weren’t all massacred by Jews , are they not likely form part of the ancestry of the Palestinians , and indeed of the Jews themselves .
Yes, part of the ancestry of lots of people in the region.
The United Nations set up Israel.
Yes… and is a busted flush now, isn’t it?
Seems like you are Othering the Western academic author of this essay. A Provost no less.
Nope. That’s just a lazy contrarian response. I have used under 25 words to critique. He’s used hundreds to generate sophistry in a lousy attempt to Otherize an entire civilization. Something your other responses would indicate you understand.
Judging by the choice of articles and votes this forum has its share of Islamophobes.
No, I think “Otherize” is empty, pseudo-academic rhetoric – the elevation of ideological theory over historical fact and universal features of the human condition.
This is preponderant in academic discourse now. I am a rich, white, educated, Protestant male – and yet despite that, when I am in a room with other similar people, I often feel alienated, lonely, wonder if I am wanted, eager to leave.
If I were a black woman or gay or Jewish or whatever, I would ascribe my feelings to my “otherness” – but in fact “otherness” is the existential condition, a universal feature of human experience. Only now some have re-characterized this experience for ideological and political gain.
This attempt to divide humans by their demographic identities, rather than unite them via their common humanity, is tearing apart our societies, weakening our economies, making us personally anxious and unhappy. It’s just terrible.
PS. And that’s a totally different question from whether we should be scared of Islam or not.
W. B Yeats said it best – “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity… And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
I was thinking of that very poem, “The Second Coming.” Looks like we’re getting the answer as to the nature of that “rough beast.” Would that it were not so.
IMO, the events post-Oct 7 indicate the seemingly improbable unity of Islamist extremist tribalism and western neo-socialism under a common banner of Equity of Outcome. “Inequality is Injustice”.
These strange bedfellows are in agreement: Jews (Israel) are a problem and must be cancelled. Extremist Islam is easy because Beliefs are everything and require little thought. Secular liberal democracy is hard because it requires a balance between Values developed over centuries of the Enlightenment and Beliefs. That requires continual thought and endless questions.
Equity of Outcome has been offered up to westerners as an easy way out of the hard work and a short cut to easing one’s conscience. You don’t have to think about or question why some folks don’t do well even though the historical barriers of race,gender and religion were removed long ago. You don’t have to ask or answer awkward questions that perhaps some people are the author of their own misfortune. Regarding the current issue at hand, you don’t have to ask why 2M Palestinians in Gaza aren’t revolting against Hamas, which has brought them nothing but misery. You can yell “Occupier” all day long if you don’t have to think about the fact that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. You can carry a sign saying “Q**rs for Palestine” when you don’t have to think about the state of Gay rights in the ME.
I remember once reading an article by a journalist who was kidnapped in Beirut by some Islamic group or other [ can’t remember the details] and eventually managed to escape. He thought he had got a solid friendship with an Arab Muslim and had shared meals with the Arab and his family. It was the Arab ‘friend’ who abducted him and sold him for cash to Islamist gangsters. During his time in captivity he had plenty of time to reflect that there is no such thing as friendship between an Arab Muslim and a western Christian or ‘infidel’. He also remarked that Arabs bear grudges towards those they believe have harmed them, and they pass those grudges on down the generations ad infinitum – and it’s the duty of members of the clan to pursue the blood feud at every possible opportunity.
Hamas are amoral criminals who use Palestinian freedom and Islam as justifications for their actions. The belief in a cause seems to be used as a front to steal aid money as well as torture and kill in pursuit of a propaganda coup. Even Putin seems relatively harmless by comparison. God help us if they get hold of nuclear weapons as I fear that – unlike the current owners of nuclear arms – they would not hesitate to use them. The concept of mutual assured destruction would mean nothing to them as members of a death cult.
Yes, they can be very amicable, but beware, they are practicing taqiyya.
Yes, a vital point always worth remembering — Muslims are allowed, even encouraged, to lie in defence (or furtherance) of their religion.
Well, we can wipe out their populations in an afternoon. There will be several nuclear wars this century and most of them will involve Muslims.
After the promise, this essay fails for me in its location of evil. It’s not out there in the dark. I am Abel. I am Cain.
Yes,every time a “monstrous serial killer” was unmasked,back in the days before life got way more scary,it was never the Neanderthal Boris Karloff image person the media had been hyping up. “The Face of a Monster” the headline would proclaim,and the photo would show a perfectly pleasant looking person,not a hint of anything sinister,someone you might chat to at the bus stop or in the pub,and all the neighbours would say ” he(less often she) was a good neighbour,so polite and helpful,and his/her friends would say,”we never guessed he/she was quiet and hard working “. We want it to be THE OTHER but it is,or could be,US.
But it isn’t, is it Jane? That central moral truth is why our civilisation should be defended, and jihadism should be stamped on. Because it’s not us.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get up this morning, kneel on a mat and simper in Arabic to a god whose prophet beheaded hundreds of Jews who wouldn’t convert, before having my morning coffee and heading out to murder some more.
It’s not us Jane.
Our “civilization” burned at the stake,beheaded and tortured millions of Jews for 2000 years.
I can’t hold your rootin tootin sure as hell A team philosophy with John Wayne as my Jesus avatar because the society I live in is more nuanced than that. It sounds to me that you live in a redeemed redoubt in Idaho ready to Gatling gun all who come after your maize crop.
I don’t.
Well, I love a spirited reply, Jane! Fairplay to you. The downvotes aren’t from me.
I’m afraid your first sentence is so hyperbolic and inaccurate it barely merits a response, but it’s worth pointing out at least that Jews exist in the (post)Christian West, and have done for 2 millennia despite often being treated very cruelly. They don’t exist at all in Muslim countries. I wonder why?
I’ve never been to Idaho, I’m a Brit from the Home Counties. But it’s interesting that while you are willing to drip contempt on people who would never hurt you (unless you tried to nick their maize, presumably), you appear to be struggling to define evil promptly when it is represented by people with openly published religious manifestos calling for mass murder. If ‘the society you live in’ feels the need to fish around in the sewer to find some nuance to explain this, then it seems I’d probably be more at home in Idaho.
Anyway, please do let us know how you plan to combat Islamic terrorism by discussing the potential for evil in all of us. I’ll be back shortly, I need to crawl more ammo out to the Gatling.
It’s debatable how Christian Hitler and the NAZI government were but it’s a fact that millions of Jews have been murdered, over 2,000 years, in Christian countries, while Jews lived relatively peacefully in Muslim countries. That is not to say the recent antisemitic Islamic cults like Hamas do not need destroying.
Is Christianity passed down via the bloodstream? Absolutely not!
Haven’t about 600,000 Jews been expelled from Muslim countries in the last century??? I haven’t checked but it seems to make sense. Living in Israel now.
Depends upon country and which period- be specific.
Not Jane, you or I am called upon to ‘combat Islamic terrorism’ as you (Greg) put it. Instead each of us is called upon to locate, enter, live, thereby integrate the darkness within instead of projecting it onto ‘the sons of Cain’ (quoting the subheading to this essay). That would be a start.
But there are good reasons, Greg, for seeing, as Jane does, that the potential for violence exists in us (in me certainly); I have known few people in my life of 80 years that were innocents.
Here are two reasons….
To fight, as we must, an enemy motivated by hatred and the destructive force it is useful to be able to a limited extent to enter his mind.
To know one’s own propensity for violence is helpful in holding back from frenzied revenge.
The IDF, I think, will know this.
Too bad, for you. How about a visit?
I don’t see how existing in a tiny little intellectual black box furthers this discussion. The fact is, that the barbaric torture and slaughter of civilians must be opposed if we are to live in a civilized world. The emotionally manipulative hamas apologists do not alter the facts on the ground. The innocent need protecting. Israel is at least trying to minimize civilian suffering. Not so hamas.
“Israel at least trying to minimize civilian suffering”. Who told you that? I suggest you listen to what the UN agencies are saying about the unprecedented suffering of the people of Gaza.
Not only content with the slaughter on an industrial scale and the etnic cleansing ongoing with the latest command that the people crammed into Khan Yunis go south…to where?
Yawn. Reality denied will out. Let’s face it now rather than whining in 80 or 90 years that “we didn’t know!!!” My first employer would say to you. “Think!Think!Think!” Imagine a place where humanitarian aid won’t be stolen to buy weapons and luxurious lifestyles for creepy old men, and help make a future for Palestinian children rather than training them for a life of depravity.
We did it too is not an argument. Our ancestors also were cannibals at times, so we should excuse everything about our enemies.
Nope, you’re Hendrik. And unless you’re in a jihadist cult, the location of evil ought not to be too complicated for you.
The location of evil is in the human ego,ie in all of us
No, I don’t think it is. I’m subject to the normal human failings, including anger, and I’m not particularly good person. I can imagine getting into physical confrontations if circumstances prevailed. But there are – by dint of adequate parenting, good kamma, or the grace of God – certain acts that I could never commit. Most of us, I hope, are like that.
Exactly.
And if we are merely just another animal in the animal kingdom, I wonder where that inclination to never commit certain acts comes from?
We’re more evolved than just another animal in the animal kingdom, however, even primates for the most part don’t go around slaughtering for pleasure.
Simon, the ‘certain acts (you) could never commit’ are committed on your (and my) behalf. I wouldn’t call that ‘good karma’ or ‘the grace of God’.
No. People might rationalise their evil, but I am indeed fortunate to have become incapable of committing it.
Spot on. Doubtless we all have dark thoughts sometimes. The difference (is it moral, cognitive, empathy or just self awareness) is that most of us do not act on them, or even come close.
If you think there are ‘certain acts I could never commit’ then I think you are just reflecting the incredible prosperity and stability of the society that was gifted to you by your forebears.
What distinguishes me from Hamas isn’t something inside me, but something outside me. This is why flourishing societies depend upon a recognition that there are no such things as ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’ (as if our job were to sort the wheat from the chaff), but in fact none are righteous – not one. And the path forward for flourishing societies are guard rails which direct and encourage people into productive and healthy choices – this runs the gamut from criminal law to banking regulation to community expectations re: ‘anti-social behavior’ after a night at the pub.
As soon as you start thinking that on some fundamental level you are better than Hamas, you are giving in to the very way of thinking that inspires and justifies Hamas.
Yes, I think I made it clear that there are causal factors behind my inability to commit certain acts of depravity. Moral luck, as Bernard Williams termed it, is absolutely central to what we are. What goodness I have (and it’s not a lot!) is not an innate unchanging substance. But I can be as certain that I am not going to commit depraved atrocities as I am that I am not going to start enjoying mathematics or gout.
Please, speak for yourself.
The location of evil is in the human ego,ie in all of us.
Indeed, human nature is flawed, and pride is the root of all evil.
Civilization is the attempt to improve human nature.
I thought money was the root of all evil.
Oh, I see, we are all potentially monsters, so best not to pass judgement on the precious “Others.”
The actual monsters are more authentic, apparently.
Greg, my point is that ‘Civilisation will never escape the descendants of Cain’ (quoting the sub) not because Hamas or Israel are evil but because the ‘monsters’ (referencing the heading to this essay) are us. I am Hamas. I am Israel. And as Hendrik, I am called upon to deal with this fact as best I can. Projecting my unresolved shadow on to Hamas or Israel is not the way, I believe. All that does is make me feel I’ve done my virtuous bit for humanity so I can return to my life. Undisturbed.
Cop-out. Choose.
Choosing and then projecting rather than integrating my darkness onto others is the cop out.
Today is the forty eighth anniversary of the death of Francisco FRANCO Bahamonte; Caudillo de España, por la Gracia de Dios.
His triumph in the Spanish Civil War meant that Spain did not descend into the cesspit of communism and the mass slaughter that would undoubtedly have entailed. Nor did Spain construct an Auschwitz or Treblinka as the communist propaganda expected and no doubt wished for, if only to further their own vile ends.
Thanks to the Soviet victory of 1945 and incessant communist bile ever since, Spain and Franco’s achievement are often overlooked, if not reviled, when they should be revered as a remarkable exercise in moderation.A credit to Europe in fact.
You could argue a similar case for General Pinochet in Chile. But I still wouldn’t be convinced that this was the only or necessary way to avoid communism in these countries or that it can ever justify the crimes of Franco and Pincochet.
Spanish citizens (regime opponents) did die in German concentration camps. The fact that the camps were outside Spain is neither here nor there and does not absolve Franco’s regime of responsibility.
The only good thing I can think of to say about Franco is that he kept Spain out of WWII. Though it would have probably been an even greater burden on the Axis than Italy had he joined in.
No you cannot argue a similar case for General Augusto Pinochet. The only commonality they had between them was that they both spoke Spanish.
The one inestimable benefit that the Pinochet ‘Trial’ brought to the UK was the well deserved destruction of the career of one Leonard Hoffman* aka ‘leg- over Lennie’.
I disagree that communism could have been stooped in Spain by ’something’ else. Military victory was the only solution.
Franco did allow Spanish ‘volunteers’ to fight on the Eastern Front with the Wehrmacht*. They performed very well, in marked contrast to the Italians who only seem to have obeyed the executive order “run away”.
(* Where far more died than in any “German Concentration Camps”.)
(*Baron Hoffman.)
Spain did not construct an Auschwitz?
What Franco did was pretty close. One of the most vindictive dictators that we have ever seen. Not satisfied with winning the war, he persecuted 10s of thousands who were no longer a threat, and even went to the extent of retrospectively criminalising those that had fought against him for what was at the time the legally constituted government of Spain.
You’ve obviously never been to Auschwitz to make such a crass remark.
Well there’s an interesting take on the Spanish Civil War.
My understanding was right wing general stages coup against elected leftwing government with moral and material support of both Mussolini and Hitler.
Orwell at least was pretty clear that the Soviets and Stalinists were neither numerous not dominant within the Repulican coalition opposed to Franco – at least at the start – but that, when Britain and France turned their backs on the elected Government, the Republicans felt that they had little choice but to appeal to Stalin.
Who eventually reneged on his obligations and ended up keeping Spain’s gold reserves.
That doesn’t quite amount to Franco as anti-Stalinist hero in my book. What am I missing?
What would HE have to have done to make him “an anti- Stalinist hero” in your book precisely?
Two things: first, he’d have had to be fighting against a threat from Stalin which predated his own coup.
As I said in my post, my understanding is that Stalin only got a toe-hold in Spain because a) Franco overthrew the Government b) France and Britain declared themselves neutral rather than coming to the defense of their fellow democracy and c) the Republicans therefore had nowhere else to turn for external support. In that sense, Franco therefore created the very problem that you credit him with confronting.
And, second, he’d have had to be a hero. I don’t admire people who overthrow democratic governments, plunge their countries into civil war, and violently repress their political opponents.
That remark just illustrates how deeply the pernicious cult of communism has permeated the very lifeblood of the West, with simply appalling results.
As an aside, presumably you are not a fan of one Gaius Julius Caesar?
ps. WHO seriously denies this?
LOL.
So deeply that I’m genuinely struggling to follow your argument.
I infer that you consider Franco’s coup to have been a response to a pre-existing Stalinist threat so grave that it justified the violent overthrow of a democratically elected Government. I think you’re saying that I don’t know about this because I have reds not so much under my bed as in my very bloodsteam. I’m inviting you to set me straight/blow my appalling pinko mind.
As to Caesar, I don’t think fandom quite describes my thoughts on the man. But you’re surely not suggesting that the late republic was a democracy in any meaningful sense?
Then again, perhaps you’re not a fan of democracies. (Messy business)
Absolute balderdash. There was mass slaughter of those opposed to Franco unlike in most of ‘communist’ central Europe, and Spaniards rightfully threw out fascism in the 1970s. Spain in the 1950s and 1960s was backward.
Steady on chap, I would have thought it was obvious that I was referring to the slaughter of the Ukrainian peasants in the 30’s, conterminous with Franco in fact and NOT to Central Europe in the 50’s.
The Spanish did NOT “throw out fascism” as you so emotionally put it. Franco died and his regime with him.
Spain was certainly poor in the 50’s and 60* but that doesn’t mean backward, unless you judge everything on material wealth as you probably do?
Spain is now rich, thanks to ‘other peoples money’ eg: the EU/Fatherland.
… “unlike in most of communist Central Europe”. You must be ignorant of the places of torture and death in Eastern Europe. In East Germany one was called Berlin- Hohenschönhausen, and you can read plenty of eye-witness reports what took place in these “facilities” …
Spain has been backward since the 1600s. In many ways Spain obtaining vast riches from South America stopped technical development helped by the Inquisition. From 1500 a very rigid aristocracy developed and with the wealth from South America minimal technical development took place.
Spain did not create a middle class who pioneered the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions as in Britain.
The result is that from the late 19th century the political pendulum swings between left and right wing governments who are prepared to use violence. The murder of priests in 1934 increases tension. The extensive murder of clergy and rape of nuns post 1936 by Reds creates a conflict where there is little mercy.
If one looks at the battles in N Africa in WW2 figthing is intense but there is hardly any murder of prisoners, women or children-it is a clean war.
Spain was poor in 1931, even more so in 1936 and by 1939 was extremely poor. Extensive hunger produce stunted deformed people. The Civil War finished 83 years ago and still Spanish wish to remember it. Without EU money where would Spain be today?
Owell pointed out that in Britain, political change occurred with comparatively little violence; not many peoples appear to be able to achieve change without slaughter.
The modern view of Franco is certainly more nuanced than the traditional view that he was a little Hitler, but I think you’re overstating his virtue. He was a son-of-a-b***h but he was not an insane mass murderer. That’s a low bar.
“We live in an apocalyptic moment when something truly hideous, long hidden just beneath the surface of everyday life, is breaking forth from the ground”. What a great opening sentence! I was all in, It sounded like my kind of read, but it gradually began to go over my head. As one who has never read the bible and for whom myth is, well, myth it was, sad to say, like Greek to me.
For sure I get what Hamas is all about, but I doubt they understand their motivation much more than good/bad, right/wrong, us/them, as far as reasons for their hatred of Jews. As an atheist, I see, yet again, the horror that is done in the name of God.
The greatest murderers of the 20th century (and probably of all human history) didn’t act in the name of a god, but rather sought to eradicate God in the name of race or progress. Mass murder is pre-god and a far more basic human mindset. There will always be a reason for death and mass-murderer. I think that this is what this article is trying to explain.
There’s been quite a lot of mass murder committed by people dedicated to eradicating religion. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot just for starters. I wouldn’t get too smug about how humane atheists are.
They were trying to turn themselves into gods, so they needed to destroy other gods first.
I don’t think you can link their acts with atheism. Besides, Hitler never renounced his religion and received birthday greetings from the Vatican until his death; German troops had Gott Mit Uns on their beltbuckles. You may as well say that the holocaust derived from Hitler being a vegetarian. If he had eaten properly, as my mother would say, he wouldn’t have been so daft.
I deliberately didn’t mention atheism, because Nazism was more complex than that. They sought to eradicate the corrupt “Judeo-Christian ethic” from the world in the name of some ancient Teutono-Christian god.
Just as the Taliban tried to obliterate religions and cultures which came before it. Islam’s topsy-turvy “best is last” reasoning resulted in two Korans – the first meant to appeal to mohammad’s Jewish neighbours, wealthy merchants, whose money he needed. When those Jews would not believe in him in the way he believed in himself, he would attack their caravans, but form faux-allegiances with them which he broke as soon as was convenient.
Eventually he was driven out of Mecca to Medina, (the origin of hijrah, the migration which spreads islam and exists today), where he rewrote the koran from the heavily plagiarised Old Testament version, to the blood-thirsty one which obtains today, full of “smiting the necks of unbelievers” and such-like. This he did and when strong enough marched on Mecca and took it for his new cult.
The last, bloodthirsty koran is the one taught today.
The late 19th century saw an increase in the interest in demonic and pagan powers in Germany. Ludendorff became a member of the Thule Society post WW1. Himmler and Hitler created their own pagan religion and had a respect for islam. The Cardinal of Cologne was one of those who opposed the Nazis.
Not really ! Hitler cynically realised the Christian religion was too ingrained in Germany to attack head on and made it organisationally subservient to the Nazi party .
Hitler changed his religious belief system over time. After the age of 18 he never attended church anymore and later in his life, he thought that Christianity was a slave religion. The Nazis came up with a kind of State Protestantism and Hitler agreed to a “Reich Concordat” with the Vatican. But they also developed their own religious myth, which was based on ancient Germanic Tales.
He knew that so many Germans had been brought up as Christians , whether protestant or Catholic , he couldn’t attack it head on , at least initially .Apparently there was a lot of propaganda about all the poor old German women persecuted and murdered by the Church as witches .
I’m not being smug, just factual.
I would argue, that this is what the Christians call Original Sin (recently mentioned in another article) It is the human capacity of committing the most unspeakable crimes. The Cain and Abel myth taking place right in our hearts as these unleashed human forces cannot be explained rationally. Reading CG Jung’s books on human behaviour is a big eye opener and so are Jordan Peterson’s great lectures on the Old Testament.
I prefer the late Erich Fromm”s works. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness and The Fear of Freedom to name but two.
God was last seen holding a placard: “Not in my name!”
God is still seen holding a placard: “You are broken. But I can help… if you’ll let me.”
The only good thing about GOD is that is DOG spelled backwards, and who can really deny that Dogs are Gods?
The Dogs of God by James Reston is a great read on the Spanish Inquisition. You may not have expected this.
Interesting.
Thank you.
“who can really deny that Dogs are Gods?”
Cats.
I would make an exception for GROWLTIGER!
Good one, John.
I once heard a wag (pun quite intended) say that he had left off with God and taken up with dog: The first one never shows up; the second never leaves you.
OK, I admit it. I made it up.
Bravo Sir!
You really made it up? It’s a good one for t-shirts and the like.
Why do you have -23 in red as your score, I wonder? I upticked because it’s funny.
Evil can perpetrated or justified in the name of any formal or informal religion. Hamas is pure evil, but the shocking element is the response from the West’s over-educated, illiberal elite. For once I can understand how the educated, civilized elite in Germany could fall under the spell of the Nazi Party.
So true.
Hicks explains the ideological birth of the Nazis. The group with the largest support for the Nazis were Elementary School teachers.
“Philosophers and the birth of National Socialism” – meeting with Professor Stephen Hicks – YouTube
I’m normally a bit slow on the uptake but I thought this a well thought out, well written article that put across deep and complex ideas clearly. I think I got it…unless I missed something.
And in the meantime, we are still waiting for the sadistic murderous rapist Grendel to return home 240 hostages including over 30 children.
Yes, and god only knows what state they will be in if any survived. There is a fate worse than death.
Quote Einstein
Having studied the World’s great religions
I have come to the firm conclusion that the only hope for Humanity is to adopt
The Philosophy of Buddhism
Incredible your comment was downvoted. I have corrected that, for now at least.
Why? People aren’t allowed to dislike Buddhism?
Of course they are allowed to! But why would someone go to the trouble?
Really Simon there was only a zero there.
Fascinating. According to Edward Gibbon Genghis Khan selected Tibetan Buddhism from out of of all the religions of the world for the devotions of his personal household.
I suppose that might give one pause for thought, if not exactly in the way Einstein intended.
Buddism gave us some useful tips on how to live like “be here now” and “this too shall pass”. Reincarnation not so much.
Not being a Buddhist or being much read in Buddhist texts I shouldn’t really comment except to say that I have in the past been given to understand that a certain amount of the more violent manifestations of Japanese nationalism have been underpinned and energised by a form of Zen Buddhism known as ‘Nichirenshugai’.
Could be. I just find some of the philosophical sayings useful.
It defies belief that Middle class English youth is supporting Hamas . Murderers and rapists of the most awful kind.
Why ?
The thirst for blood of Hamas raises primordial concepts, the author is right in his attempt to look for explanations coming from the first search of civilization which humanity began to look for. Hence blood is primordial.
I’m not at all on the side of the Keffiyeh’d cretins chanting on our streets, but this is not a balanced piece.
If a man with a gun is holding a child in front of him as a shield, and another man shoots him through the child, who is responsible for the child’s death?
The more you think about it the harder it is to answer. Abraham and Isaac aren’t much help.
If the person holding the child as a shield has just killed five other kids and intends to kill five more then the answer to your question is quite easy. A previous Unherd article tried to explain the difference between violence with a purpose and violence with no purpose ………
It’s not a t all hard to answer. The man using the child as a shield is 100% responsible (assuming he is engaged in violence, which is the only reason he needs a shield). That’s what the Geneva Convention rules of war say, as well.
Jews has traditionally been accused of letting human blood for dark religious purposes. It’s a well known so called blood libel often used by muslims together with the usual tedious antisemitic slurs like jews secretly ruling the world or starting all wars.
It’s all if course the fantasies of a desert tribe who has to have someone to blame for their own failiures. But as nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles supposedly said: always accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty (or something close to that). Islamists does just that, cheered on by a large part of the muslim community it seems, they perpetrate the most henious pogroms and then blame jews for being ten times worse.
Antisemitism, lying, slaughtering, raping – the Quran incite and backs all this, leaving the Christian Bible far behind when it comes to blood thirsty commands. Hamas sacrifice innocent babies in the name of Allah and his followers around the world rejoice and scream for more.
All this make me wonder what kind of god Allah is. He leaves instructions that says its ok to basically kill everyone, even your own, in his name as long as the last man standing is a muslim.
That kind of god sounds biblical, allright. But more like the Babylonian idol Molok. Or, if we are unlucky, someone much much worse.
Apocalyptic times, indeed.
There is a correlation between religions that deny sexual relations to men and those men’s choice of violence.
Well spotted: one of the biggest elephants in the room … except in evolutionary psychology.
Well that’s food for thought.
islamic militants are living in what is , essentially , a primitive state of nature. Beggars the imagination as to why this is so hard for people to grasp ?? I guess ‘classical’ ie real education is well and truly deceased along with much real wisdom. i wonder if the corollary effect is that the rest of the world is being incrementally drawn backwards towards that primitive state of nature – a good case could be made – the barbarians are at the door and being feted and invited in for what will turn out to be a very messy dinner !! SAD
Jews has traditionally been accused of letting human blood for dark religious purposes. It’s a well known so called blood libel often used by muslims together with the usual tedious antisemitic slurs like jews secretly ruling the world or starting all wars.
It’s all if course the fantasies of a desert tribe who has to have someone to blame for their own failiures. But as nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles supposedly said: always accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty (or something close to that). Islamists does just that, cheered on by a large part of the muslim community it seems, they perpetrate the most henious pogroms and then blame jews for being ten times worse.
Antisemitism, lying, slaughtering, raping – the Quran incite and backs all this, leaving the Christian Bible far behind when it comes to blood thirsty commands. Hamas sacrifice innocent babies in the mame of Allah and his followers around the world rejoice and scream for more.
All this make me wonder what kind of god Allah is. He leaves instructions that says its ok to basically kill everyone, even your own, in his name as long as the last man standing is a muslim.
That kind of god sounds biblical, allright. But more like the Babylonian idol Molok. Or, if we are unlucky, someone much much worse.
Apocalyptic times, indeed.
Such is the wisdom of life seen through the rear view mirror. Who cares what these people, Jesus or Mohammed said, if they even existed? Who cares what the Harolds, Macmillan or Wilson, Stalin or Churchill said? There’s a crazed youth coming to my house with a gun. Hold on, I’ll consult a historical text? No, you check the magazine, take the safety off and shoot him dead. Then preempt any repercussions by removing his cohorts from the equation.
I don’t want to sound t*t-for-tatish here but early Christian fundamentalism similarly brutal to all who would not convert. They tried but mercifully failed to eradicate all Greek thought. But that was close to 2 thousand years ago while this is now.
Islam proscribes killing in a number of well-known texts, for example:
The believers are those who do not call upon another god alongside Allah or kill the soul which Allah has made sacred except by right of justice.
Surat al-Furqan 25:68
And:
The killer is not a believer while he is killing.
Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6809
Any person/group who ignores the commandment, Thou shalt not kill (Talmud, 6th, Catholic 5th) is outside of the mainstream of the Abrahamic faiths, deserves to be treated as an enemy of civilisation, and may legitimately be killed in self defence including pre-emptory defence if necessary in the circumstances.
Islamists embarrass Islam as the KKK embarrass Christianity and should never be confused for their respective latter.
“Why does Islam remain fertile ground for such insanity? The Bible suggests that fraternal conflict is at the root of the problem.”
It seems that Unherd has chosen a side in a religious war. From the US, it doesnt really help hearing essentialist explanations of how the other side’s religion is evil and the Bible proves it. Here are a couple of articles by rabbis in the NYT explaining how transgender ideology is part of Judaism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/opinion/is-god-transgender.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/opinion/trans-teen-suicide-judaism.html
Religious narrative can be used to support anything.
Everyone has to pick a side. Are you with Western civilization, or are you with a primitive death cult?
Are you calling Islam a primitive death cult?
A primitive cult? With the whiff of death about it?
Your opinion? I’d say something similar about the sex change for kids cult.
Nasty as that is, it doesn’t involved violent rape with knives, beheading, baking babies heads in an oven and hiding grenades underneath the Tavistock clinic.
You realize that Islam has 1.8 Billion adherents? Are you calling them baby murderers?
You are using the atrocities of Hamas to denigrate a major religion.
Then where are these “moderate” Muslims? I don’t hear anyone from the Muslim side lol condemning them and plenty of them joining the hate marches. How can England forget so easily the Islamic terror that has been unleashed on our streets so many times: London Bridge, the Manchester Arena, 7.7.2005.
Lots of Muslims condemn terror attacks. Every time one occurs they have to deal with the backlash. 9-11 was very hard on American Muslims and very few were supportive.
Islam does not belong in the West. Period. Neither does Marxism.
We didn’t hear them condemn what happened. Had they done so there may not have been a backlash.
Why not if the awful acts are supported by the faith ?
That is exactly what the majority of the comments imply.
If said religion advocates for, or tacitly approves of the philosophy and tactics of Hamas, and said adherents can’t bring themselves to condemn their actions, it must be assumed that they personally agree. When people actually state their genocidal plans, it’s probably not wise to make up excuses for them.
A few people on here have advocated for genocide.
So what?
Not all Islam is a death cult. The Islamic fundamentalism of Hamas, Da’esh and Al-Qaida is a death cult.
I quote Osama Bin Laden (in his “Letter to America” that gained recent popularity):
“Jihad against the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion, and killing us means a high status with our Lord. Thanks to God, we have been waging jihad for 30 years, against the Russians and then against you”.
Osama bin Laden was a warlord. You are talking about militants. Most extremists use religious cant as inspiration. If you are using this to denigrate one of the world’s major religions. Bad strategy. Even GW Bush knew better than to attack religion.
I am not denigrating “one of the world’s major religions”. I am just pointing to one of its major precepts that has been turned by twisted people into a death cult. Islam needs to free itself of these people as much as we do.
Ok, I see your distinction. But it’s pretty slight. Blaming a religion for what its most extreme military groups do can be done against every religion. All militaries could easily be called death cults. Israel has already killed far more children than Hamas, for example. Shock and Awe is the American style of killing, but I wouldnt call it Christian bombing.
NYT and Wapo call my mother’s people White Christian nationalists because they heard there are some racists in the South who go to evangelical churches and vote Trump, but they have no clue what the evangelical churches are really like.
A group that can write the following text that can form the concept “We love death more than you love life” (identical quotes from Hamas TV and from ISIS), is a death cult not just an “extreme military group”. Most religions don’t give rise to death cults. Most militaries love their own lives and seek to end those of their enemies. Jihadis wish to die sanctifying Allah’s name and go to Paradise while sending as many infidels as they can to Hell. That is the difference.
i
I could quote you some really ugly statements from Israeli generals, but I wont. War propaganda is high emotion and often savage.
They are not “extremists” they are terrorists as barbarous as any savage tribe in history. Only the Japanese in modern history matched them for fanaticism and malignant delight taken in sadistic cruelty.
The ” Not All” agrument has always been a bad one. For an example: when discussing rape it’s deployed as a diversion, “Not all men rape.” then the arguamnt closes down. Same here, “Not All Muslims”. Yes but, what we are concerned with are those Muslims who follow fundamental Islam which the writer has suggested is fundamentally coruped by a revengeful death wish.
No “not all” evasion. The basis of Jihadism is embedded in Islam. The conclusion apparently not inevitable, or else all serious Muslims would be Jihadists. Islam needs to free itself of Jihadism as much as we do. And we do. Now. Even if they aren’t interested in joining.
The Muslims I know believe that every terrorist goes straight to Hell for eternal torment because they are nothing more than murderers.
They are the “not all” Muslims. Precisely my point that not all Muslims are bloodthirsty Jihadists.
background see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_heritage_sites_in_Saudi_Arabia
95% of the historical structures that had been preserved all of this time are gone. It’s heartbreaking for anyone who has a love of history, so I cannot imagine the additional anguish that I would feel if Islam were my religion.
If the Muslim world could not band together to put a stop to the wholesale destruction ofsome of their holiest religious sites — by co-religionists who think that the sense of historical and holy awe felt by people who visited these places was a blasphemy against Islam, then there is no way they can launch a ‘no more jihads’ campaign.
The Wahhabi who are now in charge of Mecca are real, interior-of-the-desert religious reformers who want a ‘pure’ Islam which is stripped of its historical context, and which explicitly rejects Islamic civilisation, all of it, as morally corrupt. If that is not barbarism, and an explicit revert to the primitive I don’t know what is.
Do you know anything about the Chinese cultural revolution? They were desperately poor and being overrun by wealthy western countries. Mao et al. realized that their confucian culture made them vulnerable to the imperialism of the West so they attempted to eradicate their old culture and start over. Bashing people’s religions because they dont do as we do is just plain old bad sociology. Islam is ancient and huge, much bigger than Judaism.
I am from South of US. The NYT and Wapo has been consistently calling my mother’s evangelical Christian religion racist. i am so sick of it.
That’s the main problem. You are reading opinions about issues rather than going to the source, which is readily available to all. Read the Quran and the Bible and then come back with your pontifications. See for yourself!
Mark as Laura illustrates with Wahhabism and Mao, Hitler tried the same. Distraught because of the restrictions placed on Germany after the 1stWW, and so like the history of Israel, there is background because Hamas didn’t come from nowhere, and so Hitler began to build a new Germany. As any good socialist might (many Islamic cells are also socialist e.g.the Hizb ut Tarrir ( SP?) he brought the people together, purifying them into caucasians and getting rid of ethnic impurities. Great man Hitler, just like Hamas and its godfather Iran. Furthermore, like silent Muslims, the German people were silent too.
Silence kills.
Yes
There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. Second biggest religion after Christianity. Takes a real big hatred to call that a death cult.
Well yes, if one converts under the threat of the sword!
Quit defending religion. It’s just a wish, recognize that. Don’t try to impose it on me. Marxism is a religion too, but the State is god. That has no place in the West.
I am defending religion and trying to impose it on you? Religion is a wish?
Was Bernie Sanders the socialist trying to impose Marxism on the US? Is the transgender cult a religion? Count me in the resistance to religion then.
I just know that attacking a major world religion is Culture War and doesnt lead to anything good. You think you are just going after certain militants but you end up insulting far more people than you know.
Do you believe in anything except yourself?
Perhaps “kill them all” and save our grandchildren the trouble? There is NO other solution.
Wow. Am I misreading your comment somehow? Are you serious? Are you really suggesting kill all the Muslims? Like a genocide?
Yes he is. A slip of the mask perhaps.
It’s either that or they do it to us.
Interesting how many on here are advocating for genocide. And how many are claiming it’s the other side that does that.
I suggest removing your head from your a**l cavity Mark.
When hundreds of thousands of Muslims start marching in Western and Islamic cities demanding an end to Jihadism and permanently disavow the murder of Jews in the name of Islam, I’ll stop calling it a death cult.
Well, I would.
I hope he is, because that’s a fact we ought not to be ignoring.
No, I’m calling the Islamists a primitive death cult. However, lots of Muslims support the Islamists. At least 25%, maybe a majority. It varies a lot by region and country.
So, it’s not all Muslims, but it’s also no “just a few bad apples.” The latest poll shows 75% of Palestinians supporting Hamas.
Exactly and why aren’t the “moderate” Muslims out in the streets protesting against Hamas? Because they’re terrified of other Muslims!!
But can you trust those results when those under Palestinian rule have zero freedom including freedom of speech?
Simple: Western civilization
This kind of non-response is becoming so common and so frustrating. Across the globe the people carrying out terrible acts of violence against civilians – random strangers – are overwhelmingly motivated by a form of Islamic belief.
I’m happy to admit there are many Muslims who reject it, and believe in another version of Islam which they believe is better. But in that case those latter Muslims bear the primary responsibility for articulating why their co-religionists are mischaracterizing Islam, and then both persuading them to change their views and to help everyone else defend themselves against the violence.
It’s a version of the old idea that no one can beat up my brother but me. The corollary is, when my brother needs a beating, I’m the one to do it.
Instead we get moral equivocation and what-about-ism.
“Across the globe the people carrying out terrible acts of violence against civilians – random strangers – are overwhelmingly motivated by a form of Islamic belief”
Need data and sources on that. Remember, the US has killed alot of civilians. Are you really sure they are motivated by their religious belief and not politics and desperation? Can you really tease all that apart? There has been a conflation here between Hamas and Islam.
The tactics of terror and suicide attacks are a poor people’s approach to war. Al Queda showed that it works. America took the bait and started killing people in Baghdad, mostly random strangers. Shock and Awe. It didnt work, either in Afghanistan or Iraq. Now we are a weaker country.
“Kill them all. God will know his own.”
A famous quote by someone who definitely wasn’t a Muslim.
But then, in the 21st century it seems to be an inescapable fact that all the people who think like this are Muslims.
Osama bin Laden and his group were not poor, but they were very religious.
They were war militants, not priests. That was religion co-opted by war politics. Nothing new. Just like you and all these people here calling Tslam violent and primitive- an emotional war reaction not thought out at all.
Charles Stanhope up above just suggested that all the Muslims should be killed. “There is no other solution.” Not all people who think like this are Muslim.
Is being religious and belonging to a cult the same thing? I’m thinking that religion requires personal responsibility. Islam in the context of Hamas advocates for immoral acts that for some inexplicable reason will be rewarded by God. Is the problem with Islam that it was set up in a secular tribalism which requires its members to tacitly approve acts of barbarism or face exclusion? If adherents to Islam can’t maintain a society that can respect the lives and safety of all, why do they bother? I hate to imagine that 1.5 billion people actually plan to exterminate the rest of the world’s population if they won’t join the cult. Or are they simply cowards?
Clearly someone who wants to kill all Muslims has never met any or he would not be able to dehumanise them. He certainly would not be able to carry out his wish unless he is a psychopath.
You ‘need sources and data’? Really? Why are you keen to give the benefit of the doubt to people who would slaughter you without a second thought and r*pe and enslave your family members? Read the history of Islam, the caliphates and the empires. No one who is not already a Muslim is filled with anything other than sickening fear at hearing the cry “Allah hu Akbar”.
Collating ‘cost of war’ civilian deaths with the victims of Islamic jihad may work in some academic exercise in the algebra of death, but in reality it is morally repugnant: If you can’t tell the difference between the accidental killing of a child by munitions aimed at jihadists, and the intentional murder of a child (and intentional dismemberment, decapitation, or burning) by willing jihadists, then you are part of the problem.
Again, you are conflating Hamas and Islam. Bad strategy.
“Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, with over 1.8 billion people practicing the religion – which accounts for nearly 24% of the global population.” from internet
You just told 1.8 billion people that their religion is evil.
And exactly WHY is that a problem for you? Some of the basic tenets of Islam – jihad – are evil. Or are you air-brushing that out of Islam?
And it isn’t?
Yeah well, the pundits at NYT and Wapo have been saying my mother’s Christian religion is White Christian nationalism. Basiclly calling them all racists. Christians elected Trump because of that arrogant mentality out of the Manhattan elite.
You are not going to get anywhere calling Islam evil.
It is evil, just like Marxism. You are pathetic.
Why do you think I am pathetic?
Perhaps they need to know.
I hate to state the obvious, but if a Christian group raised their children to perpetuate unspeakable violence against non-combatants in the name of Christ, it would without a doubt provoke a strong negative reaction. Each act has consequences. Each person has worth. If the Muslim community can’t help with this appalling lack of respect for human life, they clearly have made their choice. If Muslim can’t bring themselves to condemn the tactics and actions of Hamas, let the blame rest on their heads.
As Mark Carpenter, would you rather be captured by Hamas or the IDF?
Totally irrelevant to the question of religion blaming is my point. You are using the difference between desperate, trapped Gazans and American supported, under the Iron Dome, Israeli defense forces.
Answer the question why don’t you?
This person displays a frightening ignorance of history and reality and a contemptuous reverence for propaganda.
Apples and oranges. Two peoples in entirely different situations. It’s a dumb set-up question. Israel has a modern state. Gazans dont.
Like saying would I rather have a late-night car break down in a wealthy White suburb or a Black ghetto. If I say White then it means I think Black people are inherently violent thieves.
With all the aid, Gazans could have built a beautiful and prosperous country, but groomed from birth, their raison d’etre is to annihilate the Jewish people. They have become a two and a half million death cult. As an aside, they have the highest birthrate (or close to it) in the world. I wonder why.
Easy to say. Dysfunction is extremely hard to escape when you’re in it. We’ve had generations of ghettos here in the US and I have heard similar expressions many times by well-off people about those people in the ghetto.
The Gazans are the brainwashed victims of an evil cult by Hamas but many Gazans hate Hamas and cannot say so because they would be killed in the same horrific ways as the victims of October 7th. The people of Gaza are not free – Hamas are their jailors and persecutors.
S
Equating a terror regime which walks a suicide bomber into a crowded restaurant without warning to kill families at dinner, with a law-governed state actor which uses the best means available to target its military actions to avoid civilian deaths, is beyond wrong – it takes a hard-fought willful blindness, a ideological commitment to ignoring reality and plain facts.
“What is Hamas motivated by?” Why do people on the Left accuse everyone else of denying Palestinians’ agency… but then ignore what Palestinians say is their motivation. Hamas is very clear that they are motivated by the religious beliefs. Why do you paternalistically deny that?
The tactics of terror and suicide attacks are indeed a poor people’s approach to war. Whether or not it works, does not justify if. This is like saying the desperate man losing his wife to her lover has no choice at that point but to kill the lover. Your poverty does not give you warrant to kill my baby.
Do you really expect poor countries to fight the same way as rich countries.. That is utterly naive view of warfare.
“Paternalistically” Where did you get that?
But if there is a possible Hamas terrorist in a tunnel under your house then of course it’s ok to drop a bomb on your house and kill your baby.
At least you will have the chance to vote Trump please don’t waste it.
They find living in their native Muslim ruled countries so nasty and oppressive that they risk death to come here,I mean the West in general,then when they get to Europe,Britain or even USA and find out that their social and financial status is going to be lower than a dogs t**d on the pavement they turn to the oppressive religion they were brought up in and sought to escape for a comforting sense of internal superiority. Many of them,young men in a hurry,can’t wait 30 years of humble,patient and diligent work (if they could even get it) to earn the respect of their host society and some of them dont even want to be “just like us”. I still think the October 7th bloodbath was planned and enabled by the CIA and I still think the funnelling of the Palestinians into one place then encircling them is a USA/Israel strategy for complete annihilated but that doesn’t make me a “supporter of Terrorism ‘ or “pro-Hamas”. In all the decades of my life that this conflict has played out I’ve always thought how dumb the Palestinians are. Not all of them,like all communities there is a range. But right from the start they’ve always rejected the good deal and ended up by default with the bad deal. None of them seem to have the nous and slightly disturbing quick wittedness of the Jews. And over 80 years of opposition consists mostly of getting their ill mannered brats to throw stones,a bit of cowardly knifing in the shadows and a lot of inneffectual firing of rockets. And far from that trope of “if women ran the world we’d all have peace and love” it is their Mother’s who instill into their baby boys from birth the ambition to be a killer hero. I get that once that huge oil reserves was found off Gaza,that the Jews wanted it back and I get that the Jews with their international high level influence put a stop on any oil company working with the Palestinian authority (how unjust and dishonest is that) but maybe if the Pallies hadn’t proved themselves over 80 odd years to be dumb as f**k this situation would never have developed.
A Plague on Both your Houses.
I love your writing style, Jane, but not what you have to say.
Nihil.
What does that mean, Charles?
NOTHING.
when they get to Europe,Britain or even USA and find out that their social and financial status is going to be lower than a dogs t**d on the pavement
Haha! You believe the BBC, NYT, and WaPo propaganda. You might notice that Jews are 50X more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than Muslims in the West. And look at the hundreds of thousands who are willing, anxious to stand up for them even when they are allied with the butchers of Gaza? Muslims are playing the identity politics victim game, and playing it far better than any other group.
Aren’t you a good little Marxist? You are so sympathetic to people that want to destroy you. Another brain-dead analysis by a self-loathing westerner.
There are “Jews against violence”, why aren’t there “Muslims against violence?”
Because they’re not.
Exactly.
Because they ‘missed’ the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, in a nutshell everything. Thus they are the ultimate LOSERS!
Tough, but there it is, and they will NEVER catch up.
The largest Islamic nation in the world, Indonesia, has few if any of these extreme jihadist tendencies. All across the Muslim world jihadism is only found in isolated pockets, not warranting this apocalyptic analysis. Any analysis needs context.
Any serious observer of terrorism can name half a dozen jihadist attacks in Indonesia since 2000 (Bali, Australian embassy, multiple hotel bombings, etc) and a short list of jihadist groups operating in the country. The Indonesian province of Aceh is a fundamentalist stronghold that applies islamic criminal law.
Islam in Indonesia is syncretic, with strong influences from traditional (pre-Abrahamic) religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism. There are constitutional guarantees of freedom for six religions (those three plus Catholicism, Protestantism, and Confucianism). Jews also live freely in Indonesia although without specific legal protections.
It’s a whole different world than North Africa and the Middle East. Indonesia has developed along the Southeast Asian model and has one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, although starting from a low base.
So Jihadism doesn’t have much of a chance of taking hold there.
And, I would add, truth from lies.
We have unleashed much, on top of which, technology that can, does and will distort what is already grotesque.
Hamas has certainly unleashed terror. That was their evil strategy.
But as the writer also says, they want Israel to overreact, and thus lose all support. The IDF seems to be doing just that.
It’s nice to think that other people whom we loathe are our opposites. But if we’re alluding to holy texts, the New Testament doesn’t make distinctions. It claims we are all guilty, and can’t avoid doing evil without outside aid.
So we had better try and avoid becoming what Hamas wants us to be. That can actually happen all too easily.
People in Germany in the last century were NOT jihadists. But they still outdid them in quite a few areas…
The political program of the Islamists (Hamaz, Fatah, ISIS, etc., etc.) is basically the same as the Nazis: worldwide empire, and annihilation of the Jews. They just substitute an Islamic ideology for a racialist/pagan one. The Communists were also basically the same, seeking a global Communist state paired with the physicial annihilation of the bourgeoise.
Well, it’s all about power that’s for sure and power is addictive. Hamas must be feeling very powerful right now to see how they have managed to provoke thousands of people all over the world to stand up for them.
All wankers.
Er, i think you’ll find the people pulling Hamas’ levers are descendents of Marx and Lenin rather than Cain. Cain (and Abel and their father Adam) are just frail humans prone to error. Leftists see themselves as wiser and better than us mere humans who’s lives are for them to take if they wish. In their conceit, like the very similar national socialists they mark themselves as lower than the standards of normal, but frail humanity. Even if we succeed against them at war we should seek a judicial process against the survivors to deter others, punish some and maybe even re-habilitate a few.
Hamas probably launched the raids into Israel in order to prevent a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. At some point Israel will have to decide that it has weakened Hamas sufficiently and return to asking Saudi Arabia what is the price for peace. The alternative is permanent war and the knowledge that Israel need only lose one war and the Jews will be massacred.
This is a very dangerous article because it would have us believe that jihadists are something unique. They are not. The author would do well to think on Solzhenitsyn’s writing that the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart.
Other than the performative and small-scale, personal aspects of modern jihad, where, exactly, is the difference for the targets between Hamas’ leaders and “Bomber” Harris or “Bombs Away” LeMay, except in the technical means at their disposal? We in the US, UK and most of NATO have just wrecked Ukraine at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars of damage and millions of refugees, out of some vague intent to “weaken” Russia.
This kind of hatred of enemies goes back as far as we can tell… read the correspondence of the last king of Ugarit as the Bronze Age collapsed (find in the “Ugarit” entry of Wikipedia). Consider what the Assyrians did to those they conquered, and not merely the Ten Tribes of Israel. What does it mean to go “Full Roman” on somebody?Consider the Mongols, the Huns, Tamerlane’s Tower of Skulls, the Siege of Magdeburg, the Taiping Rebellion, the Rape of Nanking, the German colonial war against the Herero. Alexander’s Macedonians when Tyre fell. The Einsatzgruppen, the death camps at Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, Birkenau. The German treatment of Soviet POWs. Generalplan Ost, fortunately not implemented, but not for lack of trying or will. The Bataan Death March. Katyn Forest. The Belgian rule of the Congo, and the wars that have wracked that land for 60+ years. The Rwanda genocide of 1994. The Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915. American GI’s in the South Pacific boiling the flesh off the heads of dead Japanese soldiers and sending the skulls home to their families and girlfriends as souvenirs–until Nimitz ordered it stopped. Stalin deporting whole nationalities to Siberia with no food and no shelter, to die where the train left them. The Biblical story of the Amalekites, which still resonates today. Cortez at Tenochtitlan.
Barely scratching the surface.
No, this is old ways coming back to our Western world after having been kept out of our cognition for a few generations. And Hamas is not unique or even new, it is an old evil crawling back to the surface. It must be defeated, but it is too much to think the spirit can be eradicated.
You forgot to mention the Isreali genocide of the Palestinians.
Only because there is no such thing. 500,000 Palestinians in 1948 becoming 7+ million in 2023 is not genocide.
If you want to talk about apartheid policies or threats of ethnic cleansing, that is a discussion we could have.
We, the West have our Hamas too. Backed by the US.
Hamas = Irish terrorists in Northern Ireland UK. Identical sick ideology.
Hamas = kill Israelis
Irish terrorists = kill Brits
Hamas = occupying Israelis
Irish terrorists= occupying Brits
Hamas = Oct 7
Irish terrorists = LaMon disco firebomb, Omagh village bomb in shopping area, Enniskillen Remberence day massacre…… Etc.
Hamas = Palestinian human shields
Irish terrorists = Catholic civilian human shields
Hamas = hospital command and control
Irish terrorists = Catholic Churches weapons storage
Hamas = won’t accept a proposed 2 state solution
Irish terrorists = were given a 2 state solution (Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland) and are determined to destroy Northern Ireland, thus not accepting the 2 state solution.
And today, the Sinn Fein political front pretends it is law abiding and legitimate, whilst trying to rewrite their murderous history and pushing their propaganda and lies to the younger generations ….. Who are happy to commit hate crimes such as singing “up the IRA”.
Nowhere in the civilised world would a terrorist organisation be allowed to name children’s play parks after murderers who slaughtered innocent civilians and those going about their daily jobs.
We have the history in Northern Ireland to see the sick ideology of terrorists, identical to Hamas.
And, thanks to the EU who have forced upon NI their foreign EU laws via the NI Protocol and Windsor Framework, it is reigniting serious issues once again.
NI is now an EU colony without any say on EU laws forced upon it …… The story of future conflict is just beginning, with the EU with blood on its hands.
Well the Israelis are doing a fine job of taking the Old Testament passage “an eye for an eye” quite literally. Or more accurately, 10 – 100 eyes for an eye”
The only real answer is Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. They are clear cut, comprehensive but impossible for humans to follow fully. They were seen as so dangerous to the status quo in the first century AD that he had to be killed. In any situation, an enlightening question is to ask yourself what wouldJesus Christ say or do in this situation
Pre monotheism gods represented all sorts of human traits as well as the elements. Along came Christ and then there were two camps. Good and bad. And as we know, the stronger the light, the darker the shadow. Jung had this idea that we what we could not accept as part of ourselves, we projected onto the “other”. Much in the same way that the woke ascribe the non woke as evil fascists. Seems to me that Hamas et al are one hellova projection.
The largest Muslim populations, by far, are in Indonesia and India. They are largely peaceful and moderate. Indonesia’s constitution recognizes five religions, more than Israel, and India’s Muslims have mainly been victims of Hindu jingoism.
I think that Westerners have more in common with Grendel than Jesus. The chiefs that Clovis slew to become King of the Franks claimed descent from the pagan gods who had so often demanded human sacrifice. We’re not much different on the scale of bloodthirst, when you take off the restraints.
In the First World War, the CEF distinguished itself by mounting more trench raids than the rest of the allies combined. Our professional soldiers had already died in the first days, and there was nobody to hold us back. Our raids were planned spontaneously on a local level, and carried out by volunteers – in other words, we did them because they were fun.
In Alberta, during the Second World War, we were testing anthrax bombs. Peaceful Canada’s backup plan was to kill everyone in Germany.
That was back when most Westerners were Christians, who believed in God, and were fighting a similar foe. As it was, we firebombed Dresden, and nuked two Japanese cities. That was us when we were *restrained.*
I wonder what we would be like now, if we went unreservedly to war with an enemy who we believed had no regard for the rules of war?
For the Arabs’ sake, I hope that we do not have cause to find out.
I get it. First rule in war: dehumanize the enemy. The Palestinians are hardly even people, they are monsters so there’s no use in giving them justice they’ll still be monsters. Kill them all. Right?
In one of his sermons, Saudi sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam and preacher at the Al-Haraam mosque – the most important mosque in Mecca – beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews. He also urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.”You were saying?
I was saying that in order to dehumanize the enemy one digs up quotes from the very worst of them. One ignores the innocent and those who wish for peace. Yes! Islam is full of monsters, Islam is the religion of jihad. But this does not justify injustice on our part.
How did you remember that name!!
The atrocities perpetrated on Israelis on October 7th were committed by absolute monsters, and those who defend their actions have a monstrous sense of right and wrong.
It’s not about what a group of people is, but what specific people have done.
Sure but you do not address my point. Yes, Hamas are monsters, but what about the ordinary Palestinian? Are they not victims of Hamas too? Israel uses Hamas as a smokescreen for it’s own crimes.
You may have to if you want to live. How many Englishmen would Hitler have allowed to live if he conquered Britain? People in the West are too weak and self-loathing to support their civilization.
Probably all of them. Hitler made it very clear that he had no race-hate for the English. But I agree with your final point. Problem is that IMHO we need moral clarity here, and so long as Israel is engaged in a criminal occupation of other people’s land, that clarity is not there. There are flies in the ointment. A little leaven ferments the whole lump. I want Israel to have the moral high ground — really have it, not just pretend to have it.
You’ve certainly got the Hamas mindset about dehumanizing the Jews.
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Vengeance going down through the generations, and down through the centuries. This has been going on for millennia.
And now Israel seems hellbent on some kind of Final Solution to the problem of Palestine.
And apparently hostages being held in a hospital makes it somehow more acceptable to attack the hospital they are in.
For someone who posts so many comments on Israel, you seem remarkably badly educated as to what is going on now.
Israel is not seeking to exact vengeance from Gaza, though I admit that the public mood certainly seeks that. Israel is fighting in order to finally destroy Hamas as a fighting organization. That is the only “final” thing going on. If Israel was seeking a “Final Solution” then the army would not be calling for civilians to evacuate the war zone and providing them with humanitarian corridors to do so. Now that Hamas control of Gaza City and Jabaliya is weakened, most of them have been able to take advantage of this.
After numerous rounds of skirmishes over the last decade or two with no decisive outcome, the time has come to destroy this evil organization of gangsters murderers and rapists in the name of Allah. The same as beating the Nazis involved destroying Europe and beating Da’esh involved razing Mosul, Rakah and several other cities. Jihadist fighters have a penchant for embedding themselves in civilian populations, and infrastructure and preventing those said civilians from fleeing when the good guys come to root them out. Unfortunately a lot of people get killed, but the alternative is to stand again helpless in the face of the threat of Jihadist genocide, for fear of hurting civilians. Those same civilians who many of them danced in the street, and joined in the orgy of violence against the innocent hostages and mutilated and defiled dead bodies of Israeli that were paraded in the streets on 7th October.
Exactly all true.
You have replied to the very first comment I have ever posted on here assuming I am someone else.
I hadn’t picked a user name, so I got the default one. You seem to be too stupid to realise this was even a possibility.
Unfortunately, some other people have done the same. So you are mixing us up.
Your reply doesn’t even work as a reply to What I Actually Wrote.
Sorry for mis-identifying you. So skip the first nine words in my answer. I stand by every word in the rest.
Final solutions work. Genocide works. Get over it. Reality does not care about your feelings. If the enemy is completely exterminated, you will never have to fight them again and they will be forgotten.
An eye for an eye etc. was to LIMIT retribution to the exact measure of what was lost. It was a mark of justice! From Maureen Newman England.
Fine if you both agree on the rules!
In practice, tends to be an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye…down through history.
Where do you get your news? That’s totally wrong.
Hamas have carried their cause to an extreme level. But that error does not invalidate the cause itself. Their cause is described in bin Laden’s 2002 “letter to America”, still repressed in US media.
Very interesting article, but you forgot to mention the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine in accordance with a deal made with the British government, who had no right to cut such a deal, and their never-ending occupation of the land, with one set of rules for Jewish inhabitants and another for non-Jewish. Do you think that that could have made a difference?
The arrival of Zionists in Palestine began in 1881, forty years or so before the British Mandate or the Balfour Declaration.
At the time of the Balfour Declaration the British Government made it clear that the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine was not to prejudice the rights of others already living there. We should remember that many Jews continued to live in Palestine continuously from 77 AD to the present day, although certainly the balance was shifted by Zionists returning home (as they saw it). The toast “next year in Jerusalem” was widely used in Jewish communities throughout Europe, also the saying “If I forget thee o Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning”. So Jews never saw themselves as invaders.
The League of Nations (forerunner of the United Nations) laid on Britain a specific obligation to create a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Our authority as the occupying power in Palestine was not based on conquest but on an international legal order.
Of course it was not easy to reconcile the conflicting demands and obligations, and the British foreign office came to be increasingly split between pro-Arab and anti-Arab factions. Things were not helped by the adoption of terrorist methods by one faction within Zionism (Irgun). Britons as well as Arabs fell victim to Irgun’s terrorist attacks.
Nevertheless I think that (1) Britain played a largely honourable role and could if anything have been accused of bias against Zionism, not as favouring it (2) given that the last independent state in Palestine (the Jewish kingdom established by the Hasmoneans and continued by Herod) had been destroyed by Rome nearly two millenia ago, it was not unreasonable for the Zionists to expect to be regarded as returning exiles and not as colonists.
A Palestinian might in principle point to the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem as a possible exception to my account of why Palestine has never been a country – but this would scarcely be consistent with the Islamists’ general besmirching of the Crusades nor with the very limited territorial extent of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem itself.
History did not start on Saturday 7th October 2023 for Palestinians. Nor did it begin with the founding of Hamas. Hamas did not appear out of thin air, or because Palestinian Muslims started reading the Koran looking for a cause to fight and martyr themselves for.
The oppression, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homelands began in 1948, when violent Zionist paramilitaries attacked and expelled 750,000 from their towns and villages. It has carried on for 75 years, with continued illegal settlement of Palestinian lands by Israelis, and the establishment of an Apartheid regime of Jewish colonial domination over Arabs in Israel and Palestine.
Now we see the full scale of Israeli barbarism unleashed in the War Crimes of bombing civilians in their homes, schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, bakeries, and refugee camps; slaughtering over 13,000 Palestinians, including at least 4,500 children, with thousands more missing in the rubble. We see it in the War Crime of Collective Punishment of all Gazans by the cutting off of supplies of water, electricity, food, and medicines.
This barbarism was announced and ‘justified’ in religious fundamentalist terms, by no less than Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” (B.Netanyahu, 28/10/23)
As has been pointed out online by the magazine, Mother Jones:
There are more than 23,000 verses in the Old Testament. The ones Netanyahu turned to, as Israeli forces launched their ground invasion in Gaza, are among its most violent—and have a long history of being used by Jews on the far right to justify killing Palestinians.
As others quickly pointed out, God commands King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. “This is what the Lord Almighty says,” the prophet Samuel tells Saul. “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” (Mother Jones, 3/11/23)
It seems that Islamic fundamentalists do not have a monopoly on quoting religious ‘justification’ for mass slaughter and genocide. So much for your supposedly ‘civilised world’.
I up ticked yr comment but the system registered it as a down vote.
It does that, it’s totally screwed. We need to revolt to get a simple up-down vote that everyone can understand.
Nice one-sided rant….speak up for the Jews expelled from Arab lands too…why was UN resolution 181 only followed by Zionists who were then attacked too? The Old Testament is not prescriptive (as in DO THIS today, but descriptive in my opinion and that is a BIG difference…). Would you not expect the leader of a people to express outrage at deeds done to innocent citizens, particularly as it was ideological. Hamas are not basing their ideas and actions on injustice from 1948 but on a theology of islamic domination – why is that so hard to admit?
That’s a feeble and disgusting attempt to defend the indefensible. Shame on you. Even if what you say is true and doesn’t omit any vital details (such as the history of Jews in Israel, the Jews removed from Arab countries, the attempts by Israel to offer a two state solution, the fact that many so-called Paletinians are of Syrian descent), it does not justify the sadistic and sexual violence of 7 October. Your argument appears to be that an oppressed people can use any means necessary to throw off their oppressors, including rape, torture and infanticide. How grubby.
It a rare that you read a n essay as hate filled, twisted, warped and one sided as this. Firstly there is no such thing as Gazans. They are Muslim Arabs, or Palestinians, who have been coralled into an open air prison in the historic land of Gaza. It is clear that the author views all Palestinians as a sub human species and the Israeli govt as their masters and superiors who can do no I’m
.
To the extent that this article is true, Netanyahu has a lot to answer for, every way you look at it.
Disgusting racism. Behind this nauseating rhetoric is the fact that Israel continues to steal Palestinian land, continues to drive Palestinians from their homes )on the West Bank as well as in Gaza) and ocntinues to bomb children, civilians, doctors, nurses, UN workers and everyone else they can find. What appalling immorality, but so reminiscent of that perpatrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe.
Vile, biased, warped and hate filled dogma. Firstly there is no such things as Gazans. These people are Muslim arabs, or Palestinians, or human beings. It is clear that the author views them as a sub human species to be destroyed or eradicated. How can this publication justify giving him the oxygen of publicity? Isn’t it time Unherd published some unbiased essays?
Why are there Palestinians but not Gazans? Palestinians are simply people living in Palestine just as Gazans are people living in Gaza. The PLO charter refers to Palestinian Arabs to distinguish them from Palestinian Jews. There is no Palestinian people; there are Arabs and there are Jews.
Don’t be ridiculous. Before 1948 there was only Palestine in that immediate region and no Isreal.
This is not a civilisation conflict but a colonial war
“Why does Islam prove such fertile ground for such insanity?”
Here’s a little fun quiz for you – guess how much Terrorist Attacks have increased in Africa since the US took it’s ‘War On Terror’ there?
A. -100% (there a now none)
B. -50%
C. No change.
D. +50%
E. + 100% (Doubled)
F. 500%
G. None of the above.
[All numbers from the Pentagon’s own reports.]
Well done to anyone who said G.
The actual answer is 75,000 – that’s seventy five thousand percent.
https://tomdispatch.com/the-pentagon-proclaims-failure-in-its-war-on-terror-in-africa/
And every time there’s an atrocity the West will look up with great big, weepy incredulous eyes and ask how could they do this to us? What makes them so evil, so hateful? And every time the clock will be reset on the savagery, the barbarity as beyond all belief.
But we’ll carry on exporting it, fermenting it and crying with anguish when some if it comes home. You don’t need Biblical fables or Viking sagas to explain this – some of us do understand what is good and what is evil nowadays.
I’m not sure this is quite right from a historical perspective, if you’ll permit me to unravel it.
The depredations of Mohammedan Africans on their Christian and Pagan neighbours, as well as on fellow Muslims deemed insufficiently zealous, are historically well attested going back to the very earliest days of the Islamic Conquest of the Maghreb.
The ‘terror’ tactics of Islamic insurgents in Sub-Saharan African are scrupulously documented in the clear light of the historical record, notably in the annals of the Umarian Jihad, The Mauritanian Jihad and the multiple Fula Jihads of the 18th and 19th Centuries.
There are also the initmate biographies of individuals who were enslaved and terrorised such as Bishop Samuel Adjay Crowther. His father was murdered by Jihadis and he was enslaved along with his mother and sister before being liberated by the Royal Navy. He later became an Anglican Bishop.
Islamic powers in West Africa, such as the Sokoto Caliphate were established and augmented by what we would clearly recognise as ‘terror’. Besides this, the Islamic Trans-Saharan Slave Trade lasted more than 13 centuries and was sustained by the most terrible violence.
The current West African Jihad seems to me to be an emulation of the Jihad of Usman dan Fodio, who rebelled against the Hausa Kings of Northern Nigeria in the name of a ‘purer’ Islamic State governed by Shariah. The Sokoto Caliphate was established on the back of the subsequent terror insurgency.
If the rule of terror fell into abeyance between the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 21st I’m afraid we have the Pax Britannica and Sir Frederick Lugard to thank for it. He ended the Sokoto Caliphate in 1901 and freed the 1.2 million chattel slaves held there by the Jihadis. Boko Haram are active in precisely the region that Lugard pacified for the Empire.
Any dispassionate reading of the historical record will show the current batch of Jihads active in Africa are a continuation of events which preceded the peace established under British Imperial rule and long preceded the ephemeral energies of the ‘War on Terror’.
Just as in Helmand where Operation Enduring Freedom was fought almost on the field of the Battle of Maiwand, those who are ignorant of (quite recent) history seemed doomed to repeat it. And look a bit silly in the process.
Thank you William. I take your historical points. You’ll probably have guessed that I am ‘of the left’, but I am not of the opinion that all aspects of the British Empire were necessarily bad or that Islam is necessarily blameless.
What I do think is unarguable is the real-world effectiveness of recent-decade Western approaches to problems in predominantly Islamic countries. Post pax-Britanica there were pots of ‘historic’ conflicts & resentments that were clearly ready to be rewarmed. I’d argue that it was the West’s decisions to take this global – from Operation Cyclone onwards that really turned the heat up here – and subsequent nationa decapitations in Iraq and Libya – and by a hairs-breath averted in Syria that are more salient than the 200 year previous circumstances.
I stand to be corrected, but I’m assuming that none of the various jihads you fermention involved the kind of fermenting, training, arming & redirecting around the globe of jihadis as has been demonstrated by the US & UK from the 70s onwards.
Most significantly though, if it is some thing about Islam that renders them especially susceptible to react with savagery and barbarism then we might like to consider some controls – what of the Khmer Rouge, or the beligerants in the Civil Wars in Yugoslavia or Sri Lanka for instance? What was it about them I wonder?
You make a very pertinent observation.
The historic British/Imperial method of control in her dependencies does seem to have been predicated on adopting and enhancing (all while de-fanging) existing tribal, social and religious structures. The idea of ‘legitimacy’ being central to British constitutional history in a way it may not be in the United States. The Sultan of Sokoto and his council, for instance, were retained in British Northern Nigeria. Indeed they remain to this day. There was no ‘De-Baathification’ of the Sokoto Caliphate.
The American method of arming insurrectionists, toppling leaders and abolishing or replacing already existing governing structures does seem to encourage and legitimise a spiral of violence.
But then the American political culture has always understood the opposite of ‘opression’ to be ‘freedom’. Whereas a student of English history is more keenly aware that its opposite is more often, at least in the medium term, ‘anarchy’.
What a lively irony is revealed in these (excellent) posts.
We learn in school today that American foreign policy in the 19th and early 20th century was paternalistic, denying the essential agency of the ‘lesser countries’ they came to control.
When today instead America insists that the people in these ‘lesser countries’ are ready for full-on Western social systems – you know, free elections, campaigning politicians, impartial enforcement of the law, anti-nepotism laws, etc. – they are instead accused of ignoring ‘local customs’ and ‘traditional folkways’ and such.
So we are left with a strange conclusion – these people do have full agency and must be respected for that, and their agency is to choose closed social forms that (for example) might not have sexual equality, might not not have flourishing markets, might have inherently self-interested government forms that suppress development, etc.
Hmm, quite the conundrum for all us open-hearted Western do-gooders, ‘citizens of the world’ and philanthropists.
A friend’s uncle was a DC in Northern Nigeria in the 1940s to 1950s. Basically he kept the peace by bribery and once a year mustering a few soldiers. Pay the Chiefs a retainer and withdraw it if they cause problems. Tell the Chief who is causing problems that his neighbour is paid more because he does not cause problems. Also add the promise of an award.
There is is an Indian saying ” What could have been stopped by 300 men in the morning could not be stopped by 3000 in the afternoon.” When it came to Persia EIC/ICS would give Indian Shia pilgrims gold to give to their Ayatollahs. If the Ayatollah said or did anything against British interests, the pilgrims would tell them that as loyal subjects of Victoria, Edward, George etc, they could not give them any gold.
This requires DCs /ICS to be fluent in the languages, the nature of the religions, clan loyaties, water and pasture rights, etc so as to know when to withdraw support or apply pressure.
It is cheaper to keep the peace than make war.
The Tran Saharan slave trade involved castration of men hence low survival rate.
One change the British insisted upon in Northern Nigeria was the end of slavery.
Modern day Jihadism starts with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s rejecting Western culture which is enhanced by Sayyid Qutb writing Milestones;defeat in the Yom Kippur War; Saudi Arabia refusing Bin Laden’s offer of assistance in the 1990 Iraq/Kuwait war; Civil War between war lords in Afghanistan post 1989 and the creation of the Taleban by Pakistan ISI post 1989. The arrival of many Muslims who fought in Afghanistan and then returned to the home countries fomented Jihadism, such as in the case of Algeria.
The most effective of the Mujahadeen fighting the USSR from 1979 to 1989 in Afghanistan were largely Abdul Haq, the Pashtun in the South and Shah Massoud, The Tajikh in the North who were not Salaafis. In fact in 1985 Abdul Haq in 1985 warned The West of the danger of Arab Salaafis/Jihadis.
The real fault by the USA was losing interest in Afghanistan post 1989 and allowing war lordism to tear the country apart. Like in Iraq post 2003, the USA is hopeless at nation building which causes intense hatred. Robert Baer ex CIA said in 2001, the CIA had only one Pashtun speaker. Jihadism is partly formed by the failure of socialism in Arabic/ Muslim countries with the leaders of these countries being pro West but incompetent and corrupt. In Nigeria, the economically successful are the southern Christian regions hence conflict and rise of Boko Harm .
I would suggest the most stable countries are monarchies where adult males over a certain age have right of audience. This means all geographic areas, classes and family groups are able to voice their opinions. Decisions may be slow but everyone in the country knows their group has been consulted.
That’s what happens when we use the euphemism War on Terror in order not to upset certain ethnic groups who’d rather not be profiled as ‘the enemy’. As we all know by now ‘Terror’ is a military tactic not an actual enemy. How do you make war on a military tactic, pray tell?
We need to clearly define the enemy against whom we are waging war and spend less time examining our own precious conscience (an indulgence for the intellectual classes). The enemy in this case is Islamic Revolutionary Iran. Only when the ability of that troublesome theocracy to wage its covert wars has been thoroughly crushed will we see anything resembling peace in that region.
Anyway, I won’t detain you – I’m sure you’re busy gearing up for your next Free Palestine protest. Your patronising ‘blame the West’ tone is a bit of a giveaway.
Those ‘thorough crushing’ attempts have been underway by proxy for decades now. First by arming & supporting Sadam Hussein’s Iraq to fight them in the 80s, then in Syria. See Operation Timber Sycamore & the wikieleaked US diplomatic cables directly discussing destabilising Syria by fermenting religious extremism there in the 2000s.
But Iran are probably stronger now then they’ve ever been – you can tell this by noting where the US have sent their carrier battle groups – safely out of range of Iran’s missiles.
Nonsense! The Ohio class subs will turn Iran into ‘toast’ within minutes, as you well know.
I well know that in 2018 after the (bogus) Douma chemical weapons attack in Syria that the US fired over 100 missiles at the Syrians & only about a dozen got through. The Iranians (with their Chinese & RF liasons) have got a much superior AD system to the Syrians.
Well said Sir, I shall propose you for membership of the elite/secret ‘Cynics Club’ at its next meeting.
Please stop talking about Islam! What is going on is a huge massacre of Palestinians (Muslims as well as Christians). You may claim they are indirect victims of Hamas, but who drops the bombs ? The IDF, whose rhetoric is the Dahiya doctrine, by General Gadi Eizenkot, who promoted disproportionate power inflicting maximum damage. Such doctrine of violence has been called state terrorism.
In the current war the damage is the destruction of a huge number of buildings, among which schools, hospitals and dwellings, a number of deaths as many as ten times the victims of October 7th. With the starvation to come of hundreds of thousands… How can one be so blind to such horror happening right before our very eyes!
So how would you go about rendering Hamas more toothless?
Seems like Israel’s problem. Can they solve it? We hope so. America failed in our last few wars. So far Israel has not solved the problem of the occupied territories.
And the problemof the occupied territories is?
October 7th
Don’t be blinded by the Hamas propaganda. All the data coming out of Gaza is, is virtually never second-sourced and when it is, the numbers are found to be significantly inflated. It seems that the majority of the western Press merely pass on to their readers, Hamas issued reports.
Not according to the NYT. They say the numbers are cross checked and probably close to correct.
You are gullible! You believe the New York Times?
They would say that wouldn’t they?
What about the images of destroyed buildings? reports from UN personnel, or western journalists? easy to call that propaganda, in the end it will be impossible to hide the facts.
Those journalists and medics are themselves targets – or collateral damage?
Possibly because the food and supplies provided by citizens of the world are being leveraged to purchase munitions and luxurious lifestyles for the very visible leaders of Hamas. Please try to follow reality. Couple that with a dose of compassion. Add a dash of humility and try to help. People are suffering.
For a Humanities academic, Mr Howland shows a glaring lack of understanding of the political causes of militant Islam. In the midst of a genocide he has the audacity to use coded language and sophistry to trash 1.6 billion people. So much for the search for the truth and the love of wisdom.
I wouldn’t choose some of the same language, think that right now “ethnic cleansing” better fits the statements of some Israeli officials and, apparently, the facts on the ground in the West Bank as well as Gaza. But I do agree with your overall point about the trashing of a major tradition, which after all has produced great civilizations, from Persia to Andalusia. It’s analogous to the common dismissal of the equally vast and complex Christian tradition as a narrow, ignorant, Bible-thumping, and often murderous, set of beliefs. Yet when I tried to upvote your comment, a down vote was added. Surely one should have been subtracted?
Persia was a great civilisation before the arrival of Islam.
If the Israelis are committing genocide, they’re really, really bad at it. The population of Gaza and the West Bank has grown from ~1 million to ~5 million since Israel occupied the lands in 1967.
Muslims are into having as many babies as Allah wills. A chilling prospect.
It’s hard to read this essay because the author has not properly filtered out Israeli/Zionist propaganda or searched for objective first principles. For example, “None of these peoples based their identity on the struggle against a hated Other whose total elimination, to be achieved at any cost, was their sole reason for existence.”
“Based their identity…” Talking points from far-right Israelis. We don’t know what the non-Greeks would have said had they a PR department. The author doesn’t realize it, but all he’s done is repeated the same tropes I’ve been hearing for years. I learned nothing new here. Try again.
Talking points? Have you read their holy books? Apparently not.
Protect the innocent. It’s not a trope. It’s what we’re here for. Please Man Up (or Woman Up as the case may be).
This is a strange perspective given that what we are witnessing is a genocide being committed by Israel. And given that Islamism was born from Western violence in Islamic countries perpetrated during the period of colonialism and, importantly, neo-colonialism where all modernist non-Islamic opposition to Western domination was destroyed for being too socialist…. Your analysis has all the weight on a Greek and Nazi definition of the Other, a eugenic, xenophobic genocidal definition. Not only were the Nazis inspired by Rome, who inherited this Greek descriptive, but so too has every Western empire since Charlemagne. And points to the fact that genocide underpins contemporary Western civilisation in general. Islamism and Islam’s hatred and desire for the destruction of the other only appears after colonialism as its pathological mirror, a consequence of brutal colonisation. Thanks to the actions of Western countries since the second world war in its scramble to maintain oil interests at colonial levels WE created a monster and frustrated a democratic and modernist middle East in the name of (The Holy -white and European – Roman) Empire.
I think you managed to tick every one of the critical theory boxes, so well done, award yourself the Grand Order of the Useful Idiot. Then look up the Banu Quraysa, or Timur the Great, the Sword of Islam. The Kharijites, perhaps. Or Aurangzeb. What Ign al-Khaldun had to say about sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps. Strangely, all pre-dated the white Western colonialism you seem so obsessed about. None is pretty.
Perhaps you need a refresher on the actual definition of genocide. There’s an open and shut case against Hamas under the actual definition, given both their actions and the content of their charter. It takes a bit of lawyering to gin up a case against Israel, particularly in light of the fact 2 million Palestinian Arabs are citizens of Israel and are not being rounded up for slaughter. Also look at the definitions of distinction, proportionality and military necessity as used in international law. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is being conducted within those parameters. The large numbers of civilian casualties are not a result of an attempt at genocide, but of the perfidy (another term in international law) committed by Hamas in colocating its military assets with civilians and civilian infrastructure. You did hear that the tunnel entrance in the al-Shifa hospital has been found didn’t you? You do know that Hamas launches rocket attacks on Israel from tower blocks and school playgrounds, don’t you?
Hardly. The population of Gaza from 250,00 to 2,500,000.
Look, there are lots of unacceptable things that Israel has done, in particular the active encouragement of illegal settlements on the West Bank, but how can we describe the attempt to eliminate Hamas as genocide? This would be like blaming the British and Americans for genocide on the basis that they bombed German cities. Israel’s action against Hamas is well within the laws of war. It is proportionate in that it does nothing that is unnecessary for achievement of legal military objectives. (See recent essays and talks by Douglas Murray).
(Note: I do however think that some of the allies’ bombing raids infringed the laws of war, particularly the Dresden raid.)
Yet another anti-Muslim rant. When will Unherd stop promoting the racist creed of the Israeli Zionists? And begin to show and to condemn the sheer human horror and collective punishment (a war crime) and genocide that Israel is visiting on people in Gaza, which is repellent to many Jews and Israelis including victims of Oct 7 and remaining Holocaust survivors and their families?
Yet another antisemite! There are just too many of them protesting in rallies around the world.
So the Jews who are in those rallies or making their voices heard in protest at this genocide are anti-semite?
I’ve long been interested in the phenomenon of Marxist Jews. Observationally there seems to be quite a significant number. Why?, given the volume of antisemitism in Marxist communities. Is it the defined set of rules? The lost sensation of belonging which can be restored if no rules are transgressed? Clearly the 20th century has provided ample examples of the indiscriminate slaughter of millions of precious human lives for no other reason than the acquisition of power associated with Marxism.
Is antisemitic sort of like being transphobic? Like if you question anything about their tribe you are automatically a bigot. Here in the US we arent allowed to ask or say anything about Jewish tribal power without being called an antisemitic conspiracy theorist. I dont think its good for anyone living in that kind of Bubble.
No, antisemitism is more like “I can define you as “the other “ and can proceed with impunity to persecute you , just because I can “.
And where were the Palestinian Muslims, or any Muslims anywhere saying the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7th was brutal, unprovoked mass murder of innocents?
What utter garbage! If Hamas crimes were wicked (they were) then IDF crimes are 10 times more wicked simply because they are 10 times greater in scale..
There is NO moral difference whatsoever between Hamas beheading babies with knives (which NEVER happened at all btw) and IDF pilots beheading babies from the air or using shells or missiles to do so. There is simply no nice way to blow a baby or child to pieces despite Israeli non-logic, non-humanitarian, non-legal (indeed Satanic evil) idiotic claims to the contrary.
We need no lessons on Islamist evil when we have Zionist barbarism that is 10 times worse.
I’m amazed thinking, moral, right thinking people with even a modicum of Christian beliefs see the situation any differently.
We also need to note:
1. Stories of beheading babies were lies like most of the filthy lies spewed from Netanyahu and his demons are lies.
2. Up to half if the innocent Israelis killed on Oct 7th were killed by the IDF applying the Hannibal directived killing attackers and hostages alike!
3. The other half killed by Hamas were largely military, ie legitimate targets under International Law!
4. Hamas’s pramary objective was to kidnap, not to kill Israelis so that Gazans and West Bank Palestinians, illegally imprisoned without trial, INCLUDING 1000+ CHILDREN!! could be freed in a trade off.
We have these facts from impartial observers including freed hostages and the Jewish, Israeli journalists of Ha’aretz.. On the other (lying) side we have the degenerate Netanyahu government and the utterly discredited USUK propaganda machine and disgraced Western MSM!
Well well an up tick got you 6 down votes jist like that.
That’s a load of rubbish.
You’ll be saying next that Irish SFIRA terrorists did not kill innocent civilians in Enniskillen, Omagh and LaMon disco…… bombings. Same sick ideology as Hamas killing innocent Israeli’s….
The Christians too were a murder/suicide cult with a marked leaning to martyrdom. Even the Romans were shocked. Two millenia of talking up the ‘peace’n’love’ side cannot disguise it’s bloody origins.
I wouldn’t call, two millennia of witch burning, crusades, inquisitions, blood libels, incitement to murder Jews and theological justification of black slavery “talking up the ‘peace’n’love’ side”.
No question many ancient Christian leaders were bloodthirsty madmen. But Christianity evolved and matured. Whence Islam?
Labelling them as “ancient” and “madmen” is false and evading Christianity’s (even recent) bloody history. But true, Christianity has made great steps forward, while Islam appears to have made steps in the opposite direction.
Exactly!!!
‘They’ still are sadly.
And today? The “whataboutism” has no relevance to the current war.