Posts Tagged islamists

5 results.
Mar24

Islamists, Network Solutions, and Free Speech

by tdaxp on March 24, 2008 at 5:20 am
Posted In: Faith

As reported on Slashdot and elsewhere, Network Solutions has yanked Fitna The Movie from the web. “Fitna” is a sort of spiritual sequel to Submission, whose director was killed for the trouble.

Domain temporarily unavailable
This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site’s content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation. For more information about Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy visit the following URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/aup.jsp

What’s disturbing about this is the quasi-governmental aspect of the censorship. Network Solutions domain hosting biz is of course their business, and if they submit to Sharia that’s their business. However, the company is also one of the very few “domain name reigstrars.” Wikipedia reports that the company earns 90% of their income from participation in that quasi-governmental oligopoly, which decides what websiteaddress.com, .net, or .org can be registered.

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Feb09

Islam Without Irony, Part II: The Producers

by tdaxp on February 9, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Faith, Humor

Thanks to the generosity of a fellow officer in my dorm’s government, Lady of tdaxp and I enjoyed free tickets to The Producers. Lady of tdaxp and I loved it. Much funnier than the 2005 film version (or even the original Mel Brooks movie), the play is a brilliant combination of physical, situational, political, and general humor. No wonder it’s the most award winning play in history.

The political message of the play can be summed up in a line of dialog from the second act

“You made a fool of the Fuerher!”
“He didn’t need our help!”

Yet Mel Brooks’ vicious, satirical attack on the Nazi Party and German ultranationalism was not condemned by Nebraska’s sizeable German community. The reason is obvious: American Germans do not see Nazis as part of their community, American Germans are not sympathetic to Nazi Party ideals or methods, and very few American Germans would view the American government as partially or largely at fault for World War II.


Goose steps are the new steps for me

American Germans do not “respect” Nazis and Americans do not “respect” the Nazi Party.

As for more contemporary enemies…

Long Island University has fired five students from their positions as resident assistants at the C.W. post campus after they posted a fake hostage video on the Internet with the pretend hostage takers speaking in Middle Eastern accents.

“This is not an issue of free speech, but rather an issue of respect for others and insensitively to acts of violence,” university Provost Joseph Shenker said in a statement obtained by FOXNews.com

In the video, five figures in ski masks speak in crude Middle Eastern accents as they threaten a ‘captive’ — a rubber duck named ‘Pete’ that serves as the mascot of a residence hall at the campus, Newsday first reported. The video was posted on the Web sites Google and YouTube, but it has since been removed, according to the newspaper.

A search of those two sites on Thursday also failed to recover the video, which Shenker said was reported by residence life staff to administrators on Jan. 30.

Rabiah Ahmed of The Council on American-Islamic Relations told FOXNews.com that based on what was reported about the video, “it does stereotype Muslims in a negative way.”

Previously on Islam withoout Irony… The Case of Robert Redeker.

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Jan18

Tom Friedman on Iraq

by tdaxp on January 18, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Iraq, Thomas Friedman

“Ballots and Boycotts,” by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/opinion/13friedman.html, 13 January 2005.

Tom Friedman is a genius. Author of both From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his take is always fascinating. He so understands and explains the world than even people who disagree with him, or don’t even care about his beliefs, end up using his terminology.

This week he has a more practical piece in Nyt calling for the elections to be held as scheduled

It is on the basis of these rules that I totally disagree with those who argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed. Their main argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the seeds of civil war.

That is probably true – but we are already in a civil war in Iraq. That civil war was started by the Sunni Baathists, and their Islamist fascist allies from around the region, the minute the U.S. toppled Saddam. And they started that war not because they felt the Iraqi elections were going to be rigged, but because they knew they weren’t going to be rigged.

They started the war not to get their fair share of Iraqi power, but in hopes of retaining their unfair share. Under Saddam, Iraq’s Sunni minority, with only 20 percent of the population, ruled everyone. These fascist insurgents have never given politics a chance to work in Iraq because they don’t want it to work. That’s why they have never issued a list of demands. They don’t want people to see what they are really after, which is continued minority rule, Saddamism without Saddam. If that was my politics, I’d be wearing a ski mask over my head, too.

Amen.

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Jan17

Anti-Arab Violence

by tdaxp on January 17, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Faith, Iraq

“Major Fighting in Ramadi, Mosul, Kut: Son of Sistani Aide Killed, al-Khafaji Targeted,” by Juan Cole, Informed Consent,

“Al-Abbudi: Sistani Endorses the United Iraqi Alliance,” by Juan Cole, Informed Consent, http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/al-abbudi-sistani-endorses-united.html, 17 January 2005.

“Archbishop abducted in Iraq,” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4182629.stm, 17 January 2005.

The actions of our enemies over the last few weeks have been brutal, calculating, and instructive

They killed the son of an aid to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani

Ali al-Khatib, son of Sheikh Habib al-Khatib (the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Wasit) was shot down in an internet cafe in Naaman on Sunday. His father had survived an assassination attempt two months ago.

They attacked an associate of Muqtada al-Sadr

Al-Zaman reports that the nephew of Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr of Kadhimayn was wounded and one of his chiefs of security–Jasim Muhammad al-Saadi– was killed on Saturday. Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr is the uncle of Muqtada al-Sadr but is pro-American and relatively liberal, unlike the populist, radical Muqtada. Hussein al-Sadr is supporting the list of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and his bodyguards and nephew were out putting up posters for his “Iraqiyyah” slate (Allawi’s party was the Iraqi National Accord, but not all the Iraqiyyah candidates are INA). Then they were attacked.

They abducted a Syrian Catholic Archbishop

A Catholic archbishop in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has been kidnapped by insurgents, the Vatican says.

Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, was abducted from outside his church in the east of the city.

Our enemies of not honorable. They are neither soldiers nor warriors. The Salafists-Ba’athists are using the clan structures of the Sunni Arab minority to fight a tribal war. The civil war in Iraq is a terrorist tribal war.

Why have we disarmed ourselves?

They attack male relatives of Iraqi leaders. They abduct peaceful religious leaders. Why do we not respond in kind? Why do we not immediately arrest for the duration of the tribal unrest all male relatives of every known or suspected Sunni Arab insurgent? Why do we allow friendly religious leaders to be kidnapped, but suffer enemy mosques to exist? Why not give every Sunni mosque seized to Shia leaders, for them to oversee as they wish?

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Jan17

The Tipping Point

by tdaxp on January 17, 2005 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Iraq

“Mass Resignations Before Iraq Vote,” Associated Press, http://www.sierratimes.com/05/01/16/mass_resignations.htm, 17 January 2005 (from Democratic Underground).

In the past year, the enemy has achieved a tipping point. They have managed to shift the insurgency into a general anti-Americanism into the tribal anti-Iraqi war. The Salafists and the Ba’athists have coopted the tribal structure and removed a functioning government from substantial parts of the country.

In Iraqi’s third cities the process has been helped by the violent reKurdization of the city

(AP) U.S. and Iraqi officials are scrambling to recruit new police and election workers in Mosul after thousands of them resigned in the face of rebel intimidation. A new police chief was appointed a week ago to command a force of barely 1,000 police. Last November the city had 5,000 police.

Not that the Salafists-Ba’athists need the help

Similar mass resignations are believed to have occurred in other Sunni Muslim areas of northern, central and western Iraq.

An uberhawk Pentagon official describes the violence as “extraordinary”

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that the security threat to the Jan. 30 election was worse than in last October’s nationwide balloting in Afghanistan and that it was impossible to guarantee “absolute security” against the “extraordinary intimidation that the enemy is undertaking.”

The Salafists-Ba’athists are worse than the Taliban

“I would underscore that there was intimidation in Afghanistan — the Taliban threatened all kinds of violence against people who registered or people who voted,” Wolfowitz told reporters Sunday in Jakarta, Indonesia. “But I don’t believe they ever got around to shooting election workers in the street or kidnapping the children of political candidates.”

How Secretary of State designate Condoleeza Rice “dual-track” military-political policy effected this will be left to history. Did not storming Fallujah in April cement the Salafist-Ba’athist tribal links, or safely limit the insurgency only to Arab Sunnis? Maybe both?

What will happen to the Sunni Arab lands? Will they become Iraq’s “West Bank,” ignored and suppressed for decades while the rest of the state progresses? Will it it become a haven for Salafist attackes on Saudi Arabia and Syria (not necessarily a bad thing) or a new Talibanistan for international terrorists (a very bad thing)? Will American-Kurdish-Shia death squads liquidate the insurgency, or will the Salafist-Ba’athists liquidate the free Iraqi government?

The end of a functioning police force in Iraq is an insurgent victory. The election will be an insurgent defeat. What next?

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