Thursday, February 09, 2006

Recommended Reading

A hat tip to reader Steve M., for steering me to this Saudi blog, The Religious Policeman. Blogger Alhamedi is a superb writer and does a terrific job highlighting the hypocrisy of Islamic fanatics who have fanned the cartoon "crisis." Meanwhile, Steve raises a very good question: why haven't western governments--including our own--been more critical of the Saudi role in this controversy? Something about the free flow of oil at market prices, I suppose?

3 comments:

Steve M said...

So it seems that the flames were fanned by a number of Middle Eastern governments.

"It's a win/win situation for the Islamists, and a losing proposition for the west." - Spook86

But the cartoon wars paint a picture of an Islam that is fragile, weak and psychotic. Why would the Islamists want to do that - it's hardly a great marketing strategy to draw converts? Do they really believe that they can spread Islam by the sword? I don't understand the motives here.

SecretAgent said...

Recommended Reading? You certainly are. Consider yourself linked.

As for Steve's comment, and I believe his brush isn't quite this broad but still, I can't bring myself to believe that the majority of Muslims in the world are this nutty. Just where the governments are nutty are we seeing the "outrage". Have we heard anything violent coming from Indonesia? Malaysia? I haven't checked the faceofmohammed blog today.

http://face-of-muhammed.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

The fanatics believe they can spread Islam through violence and coercion, as long as Muslim "moderates" and the west fail to oppose it.

It's easy for the west to laugh at fanatics who riot over the insult of a cartoon, but across the Islamic world (with the possible exception of Turkey) the intellectual and political elites tremble at the threat of Islamofacism. And the west provides indirect support for this movement by refusing to sharply criticize the crazies, let alone take any sort of decisive action. Lest we forget, the invasion of Afghanistan was preceded by dire warnings that our incursion would "incite" the entire Arab world. Obviously, that didn't happen, but every time we refuse to stand up to the Islamofacists, they use that as prima facie evidence that we are weak and they are winning.

From a Judeo-Christian western perspective, this approach makes no sense. But from an Islamofacist point-of-view, it makes perfect sense, and we play into their hands by falling back on PC statements, and saying that we "understand" their anger.