Posts by Angus Robertson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Emma Hart,
No, Emma I am being very specific about one small, extremely select part of the Muslim world that is trying to change the Islamic religion to its own purposes. They are trying to change the religion, they have done it in their country to their own great perosnal benefit and now it is up and exporting.
I have taken pains to specifically acknowledge the wide diversity of the Muslim world and rather than take a general attitude of "extremists just happen" tried to find out why. And you know what - my conclusion is that it is all about the money, which (depressingly) means they are so just like us.
-
With the dehumanising implication that they're allowing themselves to be fucked over.
That is not dehumanising, we all do that.
NZ supports an American occupation that drops hellfire missile after hellfire missile on the tribal areas. We do so because America is big and powerful and we want its favour. We do not do it because it is the right thing to do.
We make the Dalai Lama wait outside, because we let our values get fucked over.
We've sent live sheep to suffer slowly, in an elongated killing process, because it makes us more money.
They are just like us, not better, not worse. Just like us.
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Emma Hart,
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I personally know muslims who would laugh hysterically at this argument.
If you can find a Muslim cleric who does that I'll buy him a beer.
You are failing to realise that the vast majority of people who are muslim are just ordinary people who live ordinary happy lives and would be, and are, horrified by the actions of the extremists.
No, that is what I base why contentions on.
All I do is take the step identifying salafists whose great leap backwards to true unidolterated Islam as the extremist root cause and find they are financed by Gulf Arab princes. Its hardly the first time the vast majority of any people get fucked over by the actions of a rich, powerful, fanatical (or all of the above) few.
The good news from all this is that I believe, the actions of the extremists will tail off in about 2070 (when the oil runs out).
-
It's also how a non-trivial number of religious folks (even Muslims, Angus) live in a non-theocratic civil society.
True. And in theocratic societies different rules appply.
I don’t have a tone sheriff badge around here, but I think over a billion Muslims who exist in a complex webs of theological, social and political contexts across the face of the planet deserve the same civility and simple intellectual honesty I not only expect – but demand – as a Catholic.
I contend that some Arabian princes should spend less time worrying about where to spend their next $100billion and a little more about the welfare of their subjects well-being. I suggest that their Operation "set-up-a-batshit-crazy-religion-so-we-can-go-on-partying-and-drinking-ourselves-to-death-plus-infinity" Project might be just a little detrimental to every Muslim on the planet (plus a few other folks).
I started with the premise that the are just like us deserving the same respect and I got to here. I think they are being fucked with by a bunch of greedy, power mad, self absorbed a-hole, mega-rich princes.
Whyelse for instance in the last 2 generations has Pakistan developed a fetish with overblown religiousity, complete with blasphemy laws?
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Russell Brown,
That’s a horrible argument. Mainstream Christian churches around the world have no trouble whatsoever in “disputing” fundamentalist readings of scripture.
The Christians new testement is written word of people who are not prophets of G*d. The Muslim koran is the prophetic word of G*d. One is a known interpretation and is easier to dispute than the other that is the definitive word of G*d.
The fundamentalist Christians a bunch of backward poor arse mostly American hicks. The salafist Muslims are the richest (most cashed up) people on the planet. When you dispute the veracity of fundamentalist Christianity you stand to lose literally hundreds of dollars of donations, if you dispute the veracity salafist Islam you lose billions of dollars.
These differences make a difference.
-
doesn't that rely on distinguishing it from more broadly being Muslim?
Sort of.
Islam is a fundamentalist religion. What the prophet says is fundamentally correct. The prophet laid down a lot of sayings about how society should function so Islam has a very political function built in. And a lot of what the prophet said was harsh.
Fortunately for everybody, the prophet said lots of things - things that can be interpreted to contradict each other - and more importantly said these things a very long time ago. In the long intervening period interpretations have evolved to facilitate Muslim societies that work - do all the things that societies do (feed, clothe, house, protect, enhance the lives of the citizenery). This is where most Muslims sit.
Unfortunately there is a lot of oil in Arabia. To the rulers of large parts of Arabia this means they are way better off repressing the urges of their citizens to seek enhancement (ask for a bigger share of the revenues). They've done the good old opiate of the people thing and fostered an ultra-pious Islamic religion that takes most the interpretative work of the intervening 1400 years and calls it idoltorous bullshit. This works for the rulers real well and even though the society it produces doesn't really work...so what, it doesn't matter because there is enough oil money to paper over the cracks.
Then doubly unfortunately the Arabians export their newly found oldly pious Islamism by setting up schools to teach the literalist pure words of the prophet and by tearing down the idolatory that distracts from the prophetic teaching. This takes hold in places where there is no gushing fountain of money and when it doesn't work there - society collapses. The Muslims who follow the salafist branch are relatively few and most other Muslims don't like them (because societal collapse = bad).
However Islam is a fundamentalist religion and what the prophet said is fundamentally correct to every Muslim - otherwise you aren't a Muslim. The salafists by quoting the prophet almost uncut (and controlling Mecca) lay claim to being purely Islamic and this is a claim the wider Muslim world has difficulty disputing (unless they are Shia - whole other story). And if Muslims have difficulty disputing the salafist claims it becomes very difficult for you, me or opinion writers at the Times to dispute it.
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I'm pretty comfortable saying it's you. I recognise the rhetorical trope of singling out a minority as an insidious menace bent on control of society, and that rhetoric not infrequently inspires violence against minorities. This is exactly the kind of crap that Breivik was collecting before he went on his rampage. The people who say it and the people who publish it and the people who believe free speech is a right that trumps all other rights rather than being balanced with them all bear that responsibility, including you.
By the same metric whatever was "exactly the kind of crap that" Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar ascribed to before going on their own killing sprees would also be suppressed.
Irony alert - suppressing that "kind of crap" is core to the texts Brevik likes.
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Russell Brown,
This tosh being printed is most likely an editorial failure. Someone really should have said "this is bullshit -- write a proper column". The editor himself may now decide along those lines -- that's his right.
How would they know?
The columnist has written an opinion piece on the attempted murder of a Pakistani school girl. The columnist has shown demonstratable research and with quotations and everything. That the editorial staff of the Waikato Times apparently doesn't contain sufficient expertise on the internal politics of the Swat Valley to dispute the research - this is not surprising.
Could this even surprise you?
Silence breeds ignorance. If it is inherently wrong (as you seem to suggest) to have a debate about political Islam, then ignorance of NZers will continue.
-
Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Adam Gifford,
Taseer's explanation of the rise of madrassa - are these not charter schools?
They are schools where they teach salafist Islam and almost nothing else. They have successfully changed the culture within two generationsm, as Taseer notes in her very good essay.