We all know how Israel is a country full of boring patriarchal white Europeans, while the Arabs of the Middle East are exciting indigenous brown people who have a beautiful civilization. Of course any negative aspects of Arab culture, such as occasionally treating women as less than equals, here and there celebrating people who strap on bombs and blow up children, and maybe once in a while flogging or killing someone suspected of being gay, must be due to Western colonialism and the indignity of having to live with Jews in their midst.
Nothing highlights this more than the recent controversy regarding Lebanese Winter Olympic Athlete Jacky Chamoun. The ruckus erupted because Chamoun simply wanted to express her Indigenous liberated womanhood with some tasteful swimsuit photos. Unfortunately, the orientalist men that run Lebanon are misinterpreting Islam, Christianity, and Arab culture as something that would frown on this.
First, some pictures of the lovely Ms. Chamoun:
First of all, let's marvel at how brown (tm) and totally non-white (tm) she totally is!! I mean look at that red hair, light eyes, and pale skin! No wonder those white Khazar Jews engage in apartheid (tm).
More importantly though, an adult woman doing something that is totally within her right and unrelated to her Olympic performance would only trigger an investigation in a country if that country had been the victim of Western colonialism and had to suffer the indignity of having Israel next door. I mean how can a country be expected to treat its women and gays nicely when just over the border lousy Jews have transformed a desert and built a remarkable society at the forefront of science and technology?
If it wasn't for Israel and Jews, Jacky Chamoun, the brown indigenous brown person, would live in a country full of feminist indigenous brown people and be able to ski and pose for photographs in peace. Alas, Israel ruins everything.
I continue to be amazed at the ability of people, including those people who fancy themselves to be part of the "reality based" end of the political spectrum, to continue to deny the obvious in favor of twisted non-logic.
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Let's do a simple thought experiment: If I was thinking about threats to my health, which one of these should I worry about and take steps to mitigate: 1) Smallpox or 2) Cancer? Or are they both an equal threat?
If you said that they are both an equal threat, then you are unquestionably a moron because Smallpox has been eradicated from the Earth for over 20 years, while Cancer is a real contemporary threat. It is true that in the past Smallpox killed millions, but this is irrelevant to the question of whether it is a threat now.
Happily very few people would say that Smallpox and Cancer are an equal threat. Yet some people have trouble employing the same simple logic when it comes to extremist religions and the threat they pose.
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If I am a person who doesn't want to be the victim of religiously-inspired violence or terrorism - today, here in the contemporary real world - are all religious ideologies equal threats?
Obviously not. There is one religious ideology that absolutely dominates the religiously inspired violence in the world today, and that religion is Islam. Whether it's riots about cartoons, murders over movies, suicide terrorism, or just plain regular terrorism if religiously motivated, it is almost exclusively coming out of Islam.
When we are evaluating the world today, including the situation we are in and what should or should not be done about it, it doesn't matter what happened 800 years ago with the Crusades, or even 200 years ago. It just doesn't. It matters what is happening now.
And now, in the world today, neither Christians nor Jews nor Hindus, Buddhists, or Zoroastrians are rioting and killing people over cartoons, issuing Fatwas against authors and film makers, or strapping on suicide vests. Nowhere are those ideologies motivating people to throw acid on girls for
going to school, or to stone people for having sex, or to keep women out
of sporting events. And with very few exceptions are adherents of these groups planting religiously-inspired bombs anywhere.
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A leading champion for the failure to grasp the obvious and insistence on obfuscating is columnist Glenn Greenwald. On yesterday's "Real Time with Bill Maher" TV program, Greenwald again employed the 'Oh, but what about the Crusades' canard when Maher pointed out that Islam is the more dangerous religious ideology today when it comes to real threats to life, safety, and secularism.
This is essentially the same debate that Greenwald has been having with Sam Harris. Greenwald's largely intentional divorce from reality has been taken down by Harris so thoroughly that it does not need to be repeated here.
I will just point out that Greenwald has still not responded to Harris' central 'put your money where your mouth is' challenge, in which Greenwald would publish a cartoon mocking Islam and Harris would publish a cartoon mocking any other religion of Greenwald's choice, and they would see what happens. Obviously, only Greenwald's cartoon would lead to widespread violence, riots, and death threats. The fact that Greenwald cannot respond at all to this challenge leads me to think that he really doesn't even believe his own rhetoric.
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The reluctance of people to accept the simple fact that today, in the world, the overwhelming source of religiously motivated threats and violence is Islam and not any other religion, is simply insane. I attribute it to two causes, which are closely related. The first is cultural relativism, in which some people (mostly liberals) are very uncomfortable with anything that finds fault with something that is perceived as another culture. The other is purely ideological - admitting that there is a real, actual problem in the world with Islamist violence means agreeing with Repuiblicans about something, which some liberals simply cannot bring themselves to do. This gets back to the idea that if Republicans said that the Earth is round, some liberals would have to insist that is flat. But in the end, of course, the inability of people to get past their narrow ideological blinders and simply acknowledge the obvious is a perennial problem on a variety of issues.
If you are one of those who are spinning in circles trying to deny the obvious, I encourage you to simply stop it and acknowledge that the Earth is round, even if Republicans think so too. Acknowledge that today, in the contemporary real world, it is not Christianity, Mormonism, Judiasm, or Hinduism that is motivating people to engage in widespread religiously motivated killings, terrorism, threats, honor murders, and riots. Those ideologies are not motivating people to throw acid on girls for going to school, or to stone people for having sex, or to keep women out of sporting events. Anyone can make a cartoon or write a book critical of any of these religions - and in fact people do all the time, and they do not have to live in fear. However, in today's world, Islam is simply in a class by itself. Among religions, it is by far more of a threat when it comes to violence, terrorism.
