Our "Reliance" on the Traveler (again)

I wrote about this before -- generally speaking here, and more specifically here and here. 

In that last "here" I zeroed in on Hugh Fitzgerald, lionized in the Counter-Jihad as a perfect analyst who can never make a mistake; but I've noticed an unsettling tendency he has to be what I used to call "asymptotic" -- a curious condition whereby the Counter-Jihadist seems in his rhetoric to come perilously close to a full-blown opposition to Islam, but then for various reasons at some point seems to encounter an invisible force field that causes him to recoil from going all the way.

These days, since Hugh returned to Jihad Watch, every time I read one of his essays, I encounter some annoying nougat plump in the middle of otherwise robustly anti-Islamic prose.

So, his recent Reliance upon the Traveler missive was delivered on my doorstep, and the very opening sentence offends:

Mohamad Tawhidi, the well-known “Imam of Peace” who smites the Islamist enemy hip and thigh, has compiled a useful list of Islamic groups engaged in terrorism. 

Mohamad Tawhidi is the latest flavor of Better Cop Muslim "reformer", whom Hugh evidently admires and relies upon (and thus trusts).  I've had occasion to mention him before, as with this old Hesperado posting (in which Robert Spencer also shows the wrong instinct.)  For this is a curious way to introduce the handy list Tawhidi came up with.  How about saying, "Mohamad Tawhidi, the self-styled “Imam of Peace” who puts on a show of opposing 'Islamists' , has compiled a list of Islamic groups engaged in terrorism which we can find useful, even if we suspect his motivations, so long as he reveres the biggest Islamist of them all, Mohammed.".

But no, Hugh can't bear to put it this way, apparently.

Part Deux?

I realize that in my previous posting about the Notre Dame fire I promised a "to be continued" but I don't know if I have any wind in my sails for that.  My friend (I'd like to call her that) Maureen Mullarkey wrote a grievingly incisive essay on it recently. And there have been many bits and pieces of information that indicate that an "electrical accident" is not -- pace the mainstream -- the most reasonable truth we should all settle on (particularly absent any investigation findings we can sink our teeth into).

Anyway, the jihad goes on, as (cough, cough) with Sri Lanka, at least 359 mass murdered and hundreds wounded in a series of coordinated paramilitary attacks by a commando unit of Muslims, most of the victims Christian, with a useful analysis by Ben Shapiro of what I have called "the problem of the problem".

Notre Dame hit a nerve in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream

Admittedly, I'm measuring the "Counter-Jihad Mainstream" by the comments fields at Jihad Watch; but I'd like to know a better, more representative pool from which to take its temperature.

So, we all know by now this week's big story: the great Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, in flames from the top, at the part most cherished in our history (pop and otherwise), the structure which climaxes in the belltower.

A crucial part of the story, for the facet I'm examining here today, is the fact that government authorities (from Macron down) and mainstream news sources have assured the public this is not an attack of any kind (let alone terrorist) and that it is most likely due to a construction accident (as the church has been under process of being worked on for weeks, perhaps months).

Important related facts are that just a day or so before the Notre Dame fire, the French government arrested three Muslim women for a plot some years earlier to car-bomb the same Notre Dame cathedral; and that France has been experiencing an escalating spate of vandalism of different degrees (none as horrific as the Notre Dame destruction) of churches all over the country (the vast majority without any published evidence the culprits have been Muslim).

Then we have the material fact of the response by the "Counter-Jihad Mainstream": Last night when I saw the story appear and remain at the top of the Jihad Watch list for a few hours (I've noticed as the time of day goes into evening, factoring in the 3-hour time difference from coast to coast, Jihad Watch doesn't add many (if any) new stories, and the successive addition of stories only starts again early the next morning), there were already over 180 comments.  It's rare on Jihad Watch for there to be over 100 comments on most stories (unlike many other website discussion forums, I've noticed); it's pretty much unprecedented for the top story to have garnered over 180 within an hour or two of its posting, as the single Notre Dame report did.  Whenever a posting garners over 100 comments, it has taken a day or two (at least) to create that snowball.  This time, as I said, there were over 180 within a couple of hours, and when I woke up this morning, while the story had been pushed down by about a dozen other stories (but still on the main page), it had increased by another 100, to 283.

So now that I've got the prefatory details out of the way, what is the tenor of the comments?  As far as we know still, this was not a Muslim terror attack, so what could all these Jihad Watchers be so concerned to be commenting about, with relation to the Notre Dame fire?  I think it's safe to say that this remarkably high number of comments in this context is a symptom of an amorphous, somewhat incoherent anxiety and frustration amongst the Readership of the Counter-Jihad, which I diagnosed in my 10-part series on my former blog (The Hesperado), "Taking the Temperature of the Counter-Jihad".

In the 10th installment, for example, I made the following obversations:

They [the Readership or Civilians of the Counter-Jihad, as opposed to the Leadership] need some direction, but their fellow Counter-Jihadists, and the unofficial leadership, aren't really providing any, other than a vague climate of inspiration that doesn't seem to be going anywhere as we sit back, feeling helpless on this Titanic course on which our West continues blithely to float adrift. 

...the Counter-Jihad basically straggles along flinging heaps of Too Much Information left and right like a Zamboni machine flings crushed ice, or before it like a bulldozer piles fresh hills of dirt amounting to veritable mountains of horrifying data, in hopes that the mere quantity of data, shoveled and dumped over time, will somehow have the qualitative effect of changing minds. 

 One does get the sense that the West is sort of floating in a state of Denial, in the eerie calm during an eye of a hurricane, hoping Muslims won't strike worse than 911, and apparently ill-prepared if they do so. And the Counter-Jihad, as canaries in the coalmine, sense this more acutely. And in their frustration & impotence at the dereliction of civic duty of their own West, they cannot help but feel there lurks & looms the foreboding of the eventuality that we won't really rouse ourselves from our pleasantly sleepwalking PC MC until after a series of horrific attacks on our soil, not just in America but also throughout various parts of the West. 

 We, the Counter-Jihad would like to avert such a protracted train wreck of a catastrophe, of course; but we remain too confused, it seems -- both in strategy and ideology -- to do much about it. 

To be continued...

Wow, it's been nearly ten days since I last posted. One of the reasons I created this blog was to have a place to post every day, without worrying about making elaborate posts (since that would become too much daily work).

On the other hand, I don't want to feel obligated to post on some kind of relentless schedule, either.

Anywho, today's post concerns one of the many submemes of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream (and/or the tertiary "Problem of the Problem of the Problem") -- namely, the stubborn inability to arrive at the conclusion of what I have called rational prejudice.  And what is this conclusion, Pepe, you might ask...?  It is the conclusion that we cannot trust any Muslim, under any circumstance; and though there might well be localized circumstances for the time being where it doesn't matter whether or not we decide to trust a given Muslim, the principle should be borne in mind and cultivated for the macro level of protecting our society in the long-term from the stealth jihad.

Or as our old friend "The Big W" put it recently in a Jihad Watch comments field with his characteristically brutal succinctness:

Why is it so freaking hard to TRUST NO MUSLIM NO MATTER WHAT?

Big W's entire comment (of which the above was the punch line) was in response to one of the Jihad Watch comments veterans from way back, one "Wellington" (with whom I've had many a run-in over the years).  Wellington just couldn't control himself and had to lodge a comment in which he expressed his cautious trust of a major Muslim, the "senior member of the world’s biggest Muslim organisation" of Indonesia, named Yahya Cholil Staquf.  The reason Wellington felt moved to generously accord this particular Muslim with his grudging trust was because this particular Muslim, Yahya, said things like:

“The truth, we recognise, is that jihadist doctrine, goals and strategy can be traced to specific tenets of orthodox, authoritative Islam and its historic practice.”

And also this particular Muslim, Yahya, stated that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims was wrong to link the word “Islamophobia” to racism...

 So, like a rube who's been unduly impressed by the slick soap oil of a smarmily seedy used car salesman, Wellington wrote about this particular Muslim, Yahya:

“This guy seems to be stating matters without any deception.”

The full response to this from Big W follows:

“This guy seems to be stating matters without any deception. ” Only problem is, Yahya ain’t explained how he can still be a Muslim without all that stuff (“orthodoxy” lol) that he’s supposedly saying is bad. And seems we should know by now that he CAN’T explain it. At least I know it fro criminy’s sake. Yahya don’t look like an idiot. What he’s got up his sleeve I’d bet is to fool people like Wellington. And looks like it worked. 

Patti Labelle up above [referring to a commenter named "lebel" who frequently pesters Jihad Watchers about their supposed paranoia about Muslims] is daring y’all to say what I just said, and y’all’s too chicken. Why is it so freaking hard to TRUST NO MUSLIM NO MATTER WHAT?

Now, if Wellington were to counter that he only said that this particular Muslim, Yahya, seems to be stating matters without any deception; the problem with that is that it would tend to demonstrate Wellington's unsophisticated grasp of the various levels and facets of the jihad, including of course taqiyya deception, and the phenomenon of what I have called the "Better Cop" Muslim (also see this Google page).  The "Better Cop" Muslim's whole schtick is to seem to be criticizing his own Islam and to be "feeling our pain" about the whole problem far more daringly than most Muslims; and the primary purpose of this schtick is not to fool the broader Western Mainstream (already readily fooled by the standard-issue garden-variety "Islam is a religion of peace! We are against terrorism! We love Coca-Cola!" Muslims of the "Good Cop" persuasion) -- but rather, precisely, to fool the still minuscule, but growing (albeit at a snail's pace) Counter-Jihad.

To fool them into what, one may ask?  To fool them -- or, rather, to lull them -- into reinforcing their already existing, semi-consciously anxious disinclination to cultivate a ruthlessly rational prejudice against all Muslims.  As long as that disinclination can be regularly massaged and reinforced, the stealth jihadists have a chance to forestall the development of sufficient distrust of Muslims, in the one area of the West where it has the greatest chance of developing (i.e., the "Counter-Jihad", such as it is), which would be perhaps the only way that the ultimate desideratum of Muslims following their Islam (viz., that the entire Earth submit to Allah and His Prophet either by converting to Islam or by submitting to the supreme rule of Muslims) would be frustrated, if not defeated.

The two Mainstreams still talking past each other...

Today, Robert Spencer quoted a Muslim cleric:

“Allah has ordered Muslims to take up weapons and has ordered the use of weapons against unbelievers” 

Then Robert opined, showing he just doesn't get the Problem of the Problem:

In the West, we’re constantly told that only greasy Islamophobes believe that Allah has issued any such order. Has Khabeebur Rehman Qazi been listening to greasy Islamophobes? How is it that he came to misunderstand his peaceful religion so drastically?

The “Problem of the Problem” I refer to is the problem not of Islam, but of the Western Mainstream’s inability to grapple with the problem of Islam. A good deal of that inability is the Western Mainstream’s habits of demonizing critics of Islam.   

So what Robert doesn’t get here is that the Western Mainstream has more arrows of red herrings up their sleeve (to mix metaphors) than merely the one Robert cited.  For example, the Western Mainstream would likely retort that this particular Muslim cleric only represented the Tiny Minority of Extremists who don't reflect the Islam of the vast majority of Muslims Who Just Wanna Have a Sandwich.  And the reason why the Western Mainstream tends to deploy this particular red herring arrow from its quiver is due to its concern that the vast majority of Muslims not be “tarred with one brush”. 

Then, in that context, the Western Mainstream will pull out another red herring and rhetorically ask the critics of Islam why they insist on reducing Islam to the twisted version of these Tiny Minority of Extremists.  When the critics of Islam respond that they are not twisting Islam, but actually showing how mainstream Islam accurately reflects what these so-called “Extremists” are preaching, the Western Mainstream will double down on their concern for the majority of Muslims, that they not be tarred with the one brush of extremism.  Of course, the Western Mainstream isn't coherent on this point, because it can't really disprove the fact that mainstream Islam accurately reflects the Islam of the so-called Extremists (al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, etc.). Nevertheless, what they are implicitly falling back on is the apparent, and massive, fact that most Muslims aren't ostensibly doing or saying anything bad, and seem to be a diverse collective of largely unobjectionable peoples.  For the Counter-Jihad Mainstream to engage the Western Mainstream at this level would mean to join a conversation that faces the Problem of Muslims (which of course presupposes that any “Problem of Islam” is only a problem to the extent that Muslims put it into practice).

And what does the Counter-Jihad Mainstream have to respond to this concern?  In my experience over the years, I have seen them either avoid the question, or actually agree that they are “not against Muslims, only the ideology Islam” (i.e., that there is no Problem of Muslims per se).  As long as the Counter-Jihad Mainstream avoids engaging the Problem of Muslims head on, it will be contributing to the lack of contact with the broader Western Mainstream; and as long as that contact is put off, our war of ideas on this most exigent issue will never gain traction.

Further Reading:

Essays on the two Mainstreams

Let's see Hugh and Big W arm-wrestle!

I noticed our old friend Big W weigh in on a recent Hugh Fitzgerald post on Jihad Watch where Hugh, characteristically, implies there are some Muslims we can trust and use as allies.

Hugh in his article is critiquing a Muslima who is pushing the line of the hijab being a positive thing. That's all well and good; but then Hugh has to indulge this odd habit of his to invoke "Reliance upon the Traveler" (see for example this old essay of mine in this regard) and quote a slew of Muslims who seem to be critical of the hijab.

Leave it to Big W to refocus us back on track:

thebigW says 
Mar 24, 2019 at 4:34 pm 

the Muzzlimas who don’t wear the veil are wearing a better disguise that fools the counter-jihad into thinking they ain’t doing taqiyya. 

And leave it to the hall monitor of the Rabbit Pack, one "gravenimage" to "help" with a comment that shows she still doesn't get it:

gravenimage says 
Mar 24, 2019 at 5:27 pm 

They are a mixed bag–certainly, some Muslimahs who eschew the Hijab are still stealth Jihadists. 

Um, no gravenimage, not "some".  All.

ISIS now "WASWAS"...?

Occasionally in the past year as ISIS has seemed to have gone through its death throes, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream pronounces various pieces of its obituary.

For example, last week, Jihad Watch posted an article with this headline:

The Islamic State’s caliphate has officially ended as its last stronghold is liberated 

The broader Western Mainstream, of course, follows suit, and more or less agrees (as it does, despite a lot of superficial animosity between it and the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, about many aspects of the Problem of Islam).

My take on this is different, as I've written before here (see my 4-part series on it).  I theorize that the primary objective of the ISIS Muslims was not to conquer the West by establishing a Caliphate (since the Caliphate's raison d'être is to conquer the Earth for Allah) -- not because they didn't want to do that, but because they realized they could not do that, given the spectacular superiority of their enemy, the West, relative to their current abilities. Their primary objective was to unleash unprecedented geopolitical destabilization which would in turn trigger a mass exodus of Muslims from the Muslim world into the West.

As I described what I've called the "Jihad of the Feet" in an older essay of mine (The Multifarious Strategy of Jihad):

... at first [in the 1950s and 60s] it was a slow trickle, then in the 80s and 90s it began to pick up; then after 911, the West didn't do the normal thing and shut off the water, but rather paradoxically & perversely turned the spigot way over to allow a gush of immigration, and kept it going for years as though it were running a nice big, long bubble bath. Then, after the logical devolution of the Arab Spring into the metastasizing train wreck of ISIS, it's like the West took a sledgehammer to the water pipes, or backed up a van to knock over the fire hydrant, or actively pitched in to topple levees to help this Mohammedan Katrina devastate our societies. 

It would be a case of shortsightedness, stuck in the conventional box, to insist on seeing ISIS as merely a gang that, with respect to ultimate goal of conquest, was trying to do it through the front door.  Rather, it is reasonable to surmise, they sought to effect sufficient geopolitical trauma through a widespread "strategy of  sidération" (a useful French word difficult to translate with just one English word; which may be rendered as "a state of shock, disarray and paralysis").

Meanwhile, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream has been reporting stories that afford a glimpse of the effects I'm talking about -- for example, this week:

Hungary: Muslim “refugee” discovered to have beheaded 20 people for the Islamic State 

-- with Robert Spencer's apposite explication:

He was ordered expelled from Hungary after being caught with forged documents on December 30, but he was detained on Friday, so clearly he didn’t leave after he was expelled. Also he seems to have moved freely around Europe for quite some time. His story is evidence that European authorities are overwhelmed and cannot deal adequately with the Muslim migrant crisis they have inflicted upon themselves.

But of course, it's not just a matter of triggering mass immigration into the West in order for individual Muslims to perpetrate terror attacks now or in the near future; but also, and more importantly, to lay the demographic seeds for a much longer-term goal of jihad in the distant future (I estimate approximately 100 years from now, give or take a generation or two).

Now if only Spencer and his acolytes can put together and connect these various dots he has been reporting...

Lessons of the New Zealand mosque attack

Reams have been written and broadcast about this, both in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream and throughout the broader Western Mainstream. Rather than spending time repeating stuff, I'd rather point out two important points characteristically glossed over (if not blithely ignored) by both Mainstreams.

The first point to notice is that the broader Western Mainstream operates in their anxious whitewashing of Islam with an implicit logical principle (in the logic of their mass neurosis):

The New Zealand attack is horrible and heinous; therefore there is no systemic danger from the global revival of Islam.

The first part is true; but that logical nexus to the second clause is the problem.

The second point concerns the other Mainstream, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream.  One gets a palpable sense that they are still scratching their heads in exasperated bafflement (when they're not conspiracy theorist Real-Problemers) at how the broader Western Mainstream magnifies this one attack while mostly minimizing the hundreds (if not thousands) of attacks by Muslims over the years in Europe, the UK, Russia, Australia, USA, Canada (not to mention the Middle East, Africa, central Asia, and SE Asia).  The main reason for this irrational disparity, I have argued many times, is that the broader Western Mainstream's main concern is to protect the majority of Muslims from being "tarred with a broad brush" -- the broad brush of "they're all terrorists".  The response of  the Counter-Jihad Mainstream to this is to deny they are doing that.  But the force of their message, backed up with mountains of data and oceans of dots to be connected, is that indeed we cannot so easily draw a hard line between the Jihadists over here, and the Ordinary Sandwich Muslims over there. Why the Counter-Jihad Mainstream is so shy about pointing this out is due, I think, to their asymptotic fear of violating PC MC on that account.

The Better Mo is only "better" relative to those he fools

And to repeat myself for the umpeenth time, the main people the Better Mo is trying to fool are NOT the clueless mainstream Westerners hip-deep in De Nile, but rather the Counter-Jihad.

So this recent comments thread at Jihad Watch had various Counter-Jihad veterans (who are oh-so tough against "extremist" Muslims) failing to condemn one of the slyest, oilest of Better Mos, Maajid Nawaz.

Well, except for one, someone named "martin" (surprise, surprise, not a regular commenter there):

martin says
Mar 2, 2019 at 3:06 pm

Nawaz is just another deceitfull muslim snake.

Amen, martin.  And wouldn't you know it, our old friend "the Big W" was there to put a succinct bow to it:

thebigW says 
Mar 4, 2019 at 12:30 pm 

Yep, what martin said. What’s weird is that 100% of y’all here in the counter-jihad don’t just say what martin said. 

Then, in another thread, we had the great "Wellington" (we've encountered him before) of the Jihad Watch Readership weigh in with his considerable ballast on Zuhdi Jasser -- not, of course, to condemn him, but rather to prevaricate with squishy nougat:

Wellington says

Mar 4, 2019 at 7:21 pm

Well, CRUSADER, while I think Zuhdi Jasser is a decent human being, I also think he is a very confused human being...

And sure, enough, there was Big W, saying what needs to be said:

thebigW says 

Mar 5, 2019 at 12:56 am 

the only confusion when it comes to Zuhdi Jasser is with the people who think he ain’t doing taqiyya 

God bless  you, Big W!  Flo, get my friend here a cuppa joe -- BETTER Joe for those who've woken up to Islam -- and a plate of your finest glazed donuts!!!

Under the bus without a plan

The "under the bus" phenomenon -- throwing blacks, or women, or gays, etc., under the bus in favor of Muslims -- I've been noticing for years now (see The new totem pole as well as The Multi-Culturalist Caste System).  It's been only recently that I've seen a recognition in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream of this important factor.

One older essay of mine from September of 2013 laid out the general framework that situates this problem -- a general framework that, alas, reflects the infirm state of "the Counter-Jihad" in terms of its ability to prevail in the most important phase of this war we are in (waged against us by Muslims): the War of Ideas to try to wake up our fellow Westerners to that Longest War, that has lasted for over 1,400 years, only put on hold temporarily when Muslims were unable.

That old essay -- titled The Counter-Jihad: Still A.I.M.less -- speaks to the need for us to have a digital "Anti-Islam Manual" (A.I.M.).  It was a dire need in 2013, unaddressed by the Counter-Jihad Mainstream Leadership (and all but unnoticed by the Readership) -- and it remains not even a low priority, but no priority at all.

Indeed, I was calling for such a Manual as far back as 2008 ("Fitna is good propaganda, but we still need an Anti-Islam Manual") and continued to pen appeals over the years (as these two from 2011 --"The aim of the A.I.M. should be an A.I.M." and "Why we need an Anti-Islam Manual").  Nobody was listening to me then, and still, to this day, nobody seems to care as we slouch toward 2020 with no adequate hindsight in sight.

Getting back to our title today, I noted in that old essay how our opposition -- the Islamopologists (whether Muslim or PC MC) -- is at an advantage for various reasons, including that they seem to have a guiding "memo" which they all seem to have been reading; whereas the Counter-Jihad continues to flounder in ill organization, inadequate verification of claims, and TMI (too much information that only serves to cause the "glazed over eyes" syndrome in our audience).

Thus I wrote:

The Islamopologists already have an extant template -- the PC MC template -- and this template, furthermore has been dominant and mainstream for at least 50 years throughout the West.  Its main mechanisms of Reverse Racism (and the flip side of that well-worn coin Excessive Self-Criticism of the West) turn out to fit Muslims perfectly like a glove; and so we must acquit, all day long (until some day, we must submit).  Hand over fist it's hand in glove, insofar as Muslims are treated by the PC MC mainstream as an Ethnic People (or better yet, a wonderful "tapestry" or "mosaic" or "rainbow" of Ethnic Peoples) -- indeed, Muslims have become designated the #1 Ethnic People in the world where, if we must make a choice between them and other Ethnic Peoples, we must throw the latter under the bus.

So, better late than never (perhaps), Robert Spencer -- in a recent story about a young black novelist who had to withdraw his latest novel because of a Twitterstorm of rage directed at him, all due to the fact that he dared to have a Muslim villain in his plot -- has lately been showing signs of noticing what I've been harping on for over a decade:

Novelist pulls book before publication after Twitter mob outrage over its featuring a Muslim villain

Because in the Left’s fantasy world, Muslims are not and can never be villains; they are always and in every case victims of hateful, “Islamophobic” Western Christians. Step out of line, even if you’re a trendy, black, gay “sensitivity reader,” and the mob will get you. Even the New York Times is shocked in this case, and laments of Kosoko Jackson’s withdrawn book that “it should have failed or succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. But it was never given the chance. The mob got to it first.”

Aged coffee

Now and again I trip down memory lane to old essays I wrote years ago on my erstwhile blog, The Hesperado (which at times contain even older links that lead me into my former life as a commenter on Jihad Watch back in the mists of time); and while doing so I find lots of stuff I wrote that's good (to toot my own horn), occasionally I find an essay that rises even above that. At the same time, I marvel at how "evolved" I was even nearly a decade ago -- evolved that is, in terms of the problem of Islam.

One such essay, from 2013, I reproduce here:

The dreaded "A" word

That word my title refers to is "All" -- as in "all Muslims".

Even back then, I see I had made the connection between the problem of Islam and the problem of all Muslims, and proceeded to delve in detail into a complex of related points. And what really surprised me was that in that essay, I linked to an old Jihad Watch comments field from 2010, where even then I was on my mark as I fended off a robust Counter-Jihadist's underlying nougat of softness.

The essay should be read in its entirety, including that older link, which I denoted as my "scintillating rebuttal" of that Ol' Softy.

"Money can't buy me Jihad..."

It's been years since Hugh Fitzgerald has trotted out his "Esdrujula Elves".  Years ago, Hugh articulated a supposed explanation for why Westerners would either defend Islam, or even jump ship altogether by converting to Islam -- and for each reason, he came up with a handy label, each word following the obscure syntactical rule known as esdrújulo, which means a word with 3 or more syllables is to be accented on the penultimate syllable.

Thus, if the reader thinks or, or better yet speaks out, words such as Timidity, Cupidity, or Stupidity, he will see that the accent falls on the second to last syllable.  Anyway, Hugh just used that device to make his framework more mnemonic and alliterative. The important thing, of course, is the meaning of those words.

Over the years, I have written a few essays on the problem with Hugh's Esdrújulo Explanation, and the reader can consult those for deeper analysis.  But the flaw in the ointment here is not really all that complicated.  Hugh purports to be explaining why it is that Westerners either defend Islam or even convert to it by adverting to motivations like "he did it for the money" (Cupidity), or "he does it out of fear" (Timidity -- either the fear of violating political correctness or the more subconscious fear of Muslims exploding); or "he does it because he's ignorant of Islam and generally dumb" (Stupidity). 

As my essays linked above argue in detail, these are not really explanations; they function more as superficial characteristics that end up begging the question, when you think about them for more than a few seconds.  The main reason for this deficiency is two-fold:

1) the abysmal culture of ethics of Islam

2) the relative superiority of the culture of Western ethics.

Thus, unless the Westerner in question is a criminal sociopath slash (pun intended) psychopath, he or she would never defend Islam much less convert to it for money or sex -- knowingly -- unless he or she hates the West and wants to see Islam replace it.

With Stupidity and Timidity, there's a little more leeway; but the former quickly becomes complicated by innumerable Westerners one could cite who are reasonably (if not, at times, remarkably) intelligent, yet still defend Islam (or even convert to it), while the latter -- when it concerns the rational fear of Muslims -- is just a matter of the sometimes reasonable response of someone scared for their life. While we can say it would be laudable for the timid Westerner to go boldly forward regardless of the threat of death and/or torture, it would be imprudent to castigate the person for being afraid.

In Hugh's latest esdrújulo spasm, he quite clearly, even bluntly, conjectures that what motivated two recent Western converts to Islam -- two relatively intelligent men who had been part of sorta kinda anti-Islam movements in the Netherlands -- was likely sex and or money (both I suppose would fall under "Cupidity").  That can't be the real reason; since it is reasonable to suppose that when a Westerner knows how evil, dangerous and anti-Western Islam is, then he or she would not join it for sex or money (or any other reason). The real reason why these Westerners did so was because they hate their own West and have been profoundly detached from their own West as a consequence -- psychically and spiritually. Along comes Islam, which also hates the West, and has a rich, complex, diverse culture of its own complete with an absolute explanation of life and a social network of comraderie -- the perfect vehicle for the self-hating Westerner (whether extreme Left or extreme Right) to realize his full potential for self-hatred, by turning his Western Self into a hated Other, from the vantage point of having submitted to being adopted by the Mother of All Others, Islam.

The difference between Muslims and Christians ain't like coffee vs. tea...

I saw this amusing and interesting quote, from a site that reproduced an old newspaper article about the Beatles circa 1966.

...Lennon’s earlier remarks referencing Jesus [specifically, he said that the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus"] drew waves of criticism from Americans including some of the group’s fan base. 

A similar response from local newspaper subscribers was inevitable. “The Christian right of Oak Harbor responded quite strongly,” Funk recalls. “One woman addressed a letter to City Hall saying, ‘Let Mr. Funk know I cancelled my subscription’.” 

Compare that reaction to Muslims rioting all over the world and killing people over Mohammed t-shirts, not even a half century ago, but in the 21st freaking century.

Muslim Roulette

Some (maybe most, possibly all) of my readers may wonder why I pick on Robert Spencer so much.

This old essay of mine I published nearly 8 years ago on my former blog, The Hesperado, is one of literally dozens I wrote -- and one of the better ones, if I don't say so myself -- analyzing the reasons why:

I guess it's not so dire a dilemma after all, eh Bob...?

Note that it is essentially the second part of a 2-part essay; and needless to say, part 1 should also be read -- not to mention all the internal links in both parts should be followed up by my diligent readers (that is, if they want to fully appreciate my actual position -- as opposed to a straw man of my position -- on this and related matters).

"Hey, Flo, this coffee smells a little hinky...!"

Over the years, and increasingly (it seems) recently, Jihad Watch has had quite a few guest columns from irregulars.  Sometimes (like for example with a Joshua Winston or Nicolai Sennels) they contribute many articles from time to time; other authors only seem to contribute once.

Like this one:

"From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist" by Rami Dabbas.

Sounds good so far (though one must keep one's guard up).

But wouldn't you know it, he has to type stuff in his first paragraph that sound fishy:

My name is Rami Dabbas. I was born in 1989 in what is now the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, to a non-practicing Muslim Arab father and a Russian mother. When I was three years old, we moved to Jordan, and I was raised in a non-religious home.

A "non-practicing Muslim" father in Kazakhstan?  Sure, there may well exist those; but we need to know more to explain this, which of course Rami doesn't provide.  And raised in Jordan "in a non-religious home"?  Ditto. (And he even throws in a mention of a "Buddhist center" in Amman, Jordan).

What's being subtly telegraphed here is how there supposedly exists a vaguely amorphous demographic of effectively non-Muslim Muslims.

But is there such a demographic on a large enough scale to make a difference to the metastasizing problem of Islam around the world?

Another depressing shot...

 

About an "ex"-al Qaeda operative -- recently granted asylum (naturally) by Great Britain -- who claims that al Qaeda is un-Islamic, Robert Spencer opines:

...now he says that al-Qaeda’s jihad is un-Islamic, without explaining with reference to the Qur’an and the Sunnah why exactly that is so — which is what would need to be done if he hopes to dissuade young Muslims from joining the group.

Which raises the screamingly reasonable question: Who gives a flying fitna what "needs to be done" to "dissuade" "young Muslims" from joining Al Qaeda, and what this Mohammedan "hopes" to do? That's the least significant aspect we should be digesting about this Muslim operative. What we should be doing is working to wake up our fellow Westerners to the long-term danger of mainstream Islam. Not to mention that we -- "in the Counter-Jihad" -- should have reasonably concluded long ago that such a "need" is a pipe dream. And not only a pipe dream, but positively deleterious to what (one would think) is the Prime Directive of the Counter-Jihad: Again, to wake up the majority of our fellow Westerners still pleasantly sleep-walking through this protracted catastrophe of a global revival of Islam.

Talk about the eye off the ball...  One would grievingly expect a pundit of the broader Western Mainstream to spout such retrograde stuff, not a Leader of the Counter-Jihad (though as it is really a Counter-Jihad Mainstream, one should no longer be surprised...).