[W]e have to get some shit straight.
If you are an atheist then the Koran is fiction, if you are Christian it’s either fiction or worse, the work of Satan, if Jewish well I don’t know, you probably think something like the Christian, and if Muslim, ….oh yeah I don’t have Muslim friends…. Well whatever you believe, unless you are Muslim the Koran is NOT holy or sacred, it is a FALSE book, about a FALSE religion, by a FALSE prophet of a FALSE god. Everybody have that straight?
We publicly fund shit like “Piss Christ” and the same Americans who protest to protect it are mad about a fucking Koran?
Today should officially be “go buy a Koran, put it on the barbecue, and cook some fucking pork chops and bacon with it” day.
It’s called a fucking war, if you don’t like it feel free to castrate yourself and all the males in your genetic line, convert to Islam, and let the savages breed with your women.
Oh, one more thing, unless you are a follower of Islam quit calling that boy-buggering pedophile Mohammad a damn prophet! Whether you are atheist, Christian or Jewish he CAN’T be a prophet. He is either a wack-job like L.Ron who made some shit up or he is the minion of the Devil.
Greg Hamilton
February 27, 2012
Facebook Post (with some minor typos fixed).
[Greg is very good at succinctly expressing a complex topic in such a way that you realize the topic perhaps isn’t as complex as you thought it was. See also all my other quotes by and references to him.
The one thing not directly addressed in his rant above is about respecting other religions. If we are to respect the First Amendment don’t we have to respect all religions? To that I would say the First Amendment is about mutual respect. Read Osama bin Laden’s letter to America and tell me how we can have peace with people like that and still have a First Amendment, a Bill of Rights, or even a constitution other than something that is subordinate to the Koran. He literally says:
What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
…
You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.
Our options are: 1) Dispose of our Constitution and accept Islam as our one and only state approved religion; 2) Be at war with them—forever; 3) Convince them by any means possible that portions of their religion have to be permanently abandoned.
Respecting their religion is only an option if it is your intent to completely submit to their religion. If that is your intent then as Hamilton says, “…feel free to castrate yourself and all the males in your genetic line, convert to Islam, and let the savages breed with your women.”—Joe]
So is Greg saying government agencies shouldn’t fund things like Piss Christ? Or that we should fund it and also fund matching Islamic denigration. I am for the first, but not the second.
Joe, you are wondering about respecting other religions. The number of violent Muslim fanatics out there is small, and the number of plain, ordinary people just trying to live their lives is huge.
Facebook is a funny thing. I have friends who are constantly posting whatever hateful new meme is coming down the pipeline about the “other guy”. For some of them (conservative Christians) the other guy is this Muslim conspiracy to destroy religious America. For others (the liberal atheists) the big enemy seems to be a Christian conspiracy to destroy secular America. In reality, both of these “conspiracies” are the result of a few deranged individuals or groups and does not encompass the universal fellowship they seem to imply. It got so bad I blocked updates from the worst to keep from having to read it.
Do people protest Piss Christ? Yes and they are welcome to do so. Do people protest burning the Koran? Yes and they are welcome to do so.
If a group of fanatics kills a NATO solider in retaliation for burning the Koran, it is still okay for other rational people to protest the burning of the Koran if it contradicts their faith.
Did we mean/intend to burn these copies of the Koran? It doesn’t sound like it. Therefore, logically it would be okay to apologize for doing it. These guys running the incinerator at the military base messed up! An apology doesn’t magically make it right that those NATO soldiers got shot. And I don’t think anyone is saying that, except for these yahoos on facebook.
A call to respect Islam is not a call to respect Al-Qaeda.
I personally don’t like Greg or anybody else telling me what I believe. His shit is anything but straight.
Did we mean/intend to burn these copies of the Koran? It doesn’t sound like it.
Yes, we did. They had been defaced (by the prisoners themselves) and burning them is the proper way to dispose of a defaced Koran. Not that that matters, apparently.
Sorry, Zeke, but the adherents of fundamentalist Islam want us all under Sharia law and are acting to put us there. Their “moderate” co-religionists are enabling them.
I’m tired of hearing how Muslims riot and kill people every time they hear about someone burning a Koran. Do you know what’s sacred to me? Innocent human life. Apparently to these people, Korans are more sacred than human life.
So how about we do this? For every life taken in these protests, or taken because someone chose not to believe in Islam (either as a convert, or as a Christian or Athiest or Jew in another country), we burn a Koran.
If these people really respect their Scripture, then this will hopefully induce a respect for human life, and for freedom of conscience.
Zeke – you misunderstand Greg. He’s not primarily addressing government policy. Look at the third paragraph. He’s saying that the same people who protest in support of “piss Christ” as free expression also protest some handling of the Koran as being insensitive to that religion, and they are hypocrites for doing so. The non-Muslims who do this are effectively giving aid and support (via creating propaganda material) to the Muslim jihadists who would destroy American freedoms.
FWIW, the burning WAS intentional. As I understand it, it is claimed that (a) that had communications between detainees written into them, and (b) the “proper” way to dispose of a damaged Koran is to burn it. It is sort of like a worn out national flag – proper disposal is burning, in a respectful manner. The protesting Muslims are claiming it was done is a way that was insufficiently reverential, or something along those lines. So, in response to a perceived lack of reverence for THEIR holy book, they are killing people (among other things).
Yes, the number of Muslim jihadists who want to destroy American freedoms because it offends their religious sensibilities is but a small fraction of the total number of Muslims, but they still number in the tens of millions world-wide, and they DO kill those that disagree with them every day. That is a rather different proposition to Christian fundamentalists (who, BTW, I don’t agree with much either).
Recognizing that they (Muslim fundamentalist jihadists) are at war with us (the west, meaning a non-theocratic, relatively liberal, rule-of-law sort of place where facts have weight), and want to destroy our nations, our freedoms, our tolerance, our lifestyles, and our very lives if necessary, is a REALLY good thing to understand. If you don’t recognize that fundamental fact, then you cannot learn how to deal with them properly, and your proposed solutions won’t work.
Excellent response, Rolf. I just want to respond to this;
“…the same people who protest in support of “piss Christ” as free expression also protest some handling of the Koran as being insensitive to that religion, and they are hypocrites for doing so.”
They are hypocrites if you believe them. I don’t believe them when they claim to protect free expression and I don’t believe them when they claim to respect other cultures or religions. I see their motivation as having nothing do with free expression regarding PissChrist, and nothing to do with respect for other people’s religious beliefs regarding the handling of the Koran. I see their motivation as being anti American (anti liberty, anti constitution, anti strength, anti stability, etc.) and in that regard they are being perfectly consistent when they both advocate PissChrist and seek to protect (or deny the existence of) jihad.
Also, when the left pretends to preach to us about “painting a broad brush” regarding Islam, and they simultaneously use the rare and isolated crimes that involve guns to smear the entire right to keep and bear arms, they are also being perfectly consistent. Though it would seem on the surface to be blatant hypocrisy, it is, again, consistently anti American, anti liberty, anti strength, etc., all the time, every time.
I suspect that much of the Left’s support for America’s enemies is a calculated desire to weaken the US so as to invite a terrorist attack, which would serve as a pretext for gun confiscation or something close to it.
Interesting. One of the side-bar adverts is for muslima dot com, for “international Muslim matrimonials.”
That was worth a giggle.
Furthermore regarding the “painting Islam with a broad brush” meme; no one, that I’ve heard or read, ever, has called for banning or otherwise persecuting all Muslims. So until you can identify some serious push to that, shut the F up about it. It’s a straw man. A fake argument. It’s what I refer to as the left constantly ignoring the issue at hand and attempting to redirect the conversation (“Ignore And Redirect, or IAR– I came up with an acronym because it’s so common). When I criticize the Jim Jones socialist movement in Guyana that all killed each other (claimed to be Christian IIRC), or the racist Richard Butler “Church of Jesus Christ Christian Nations” that tried to establish itself in Idaho, you don’t criticize me for “painting Christians with a broad brush” or claim that I’m speaking out against Christianity in general, because I’m not, and you know damned well I’m not. So again; shut the F up. I’m on to you.
And if you’re a Muslim that gets all offended when I criticize the jihad/caliphate movement, well, methinks thou doth protest too much. See? You don’t want to be accociated with them, then don’t admonish me for criticizing them or I’ll assume that you support their cause. It’s clear and simple. If you can’t recognize the existence of jihad, and recognize that it’s evil, then you’re either an idiot, in which case I don’t want to talk with you, or you’re one of them, in which case you’d better get the hell out of here, motherfucker. We can debate over the best way to deal with jihad, and I’ll respect you, but we can’t debate on whether or not it exists or whether or not it’s evil and dangerous.
As I understand the Constitution, I do NOT have to “respect” your religion, all I have to respect is that you have the right to freely practice it within the other conventions of a polite society. You may NOT sacrifice my cat on your altar, you may NOT lie with my daughters without gaining their permission (and getting out of boomerhoot-long rifle range). In general, you may worship as you see fit as long as your worship does not illegally impact others.
BTW, that pretty much leaves out hard-core Islam, doesn’t it? When are we going to wise up here and actually DEFINE what is illegal “religious” conduct? It makes it SOOOO much easier to define the oh-noes first, and not have to argue about them afterwards when the damages have been done.
Authentic Islam is incompatible with a democratic representative government like our constitutional republic. Choose one…
I always find these religious arguments myopic.
Beverly Hills (California) has a very large population of Jews and Muslims. Do you see fights there? The people you are talking about are extremists, not ordinary people.
I’d have to agree with Zeke.
I think Ann Coulter had it right.
@ubu52 – The people You are talking about who live in Beverley Hills are nominally Jewish and nominally Muslim, but are in fact mostly crass, status seeking, valueless scum who have no real religious beliefs (otherwise they wouldn’t live in BH). They don’t fight each other because they are too busy putting together the next great anti-American propaganda film to bomb at the box office. Go Act of Valor!
As a lapsed Roman Catholic, I have religious conversations with friends and acquaintances about the wonderful diversity of beliefs among the religions of the world that usually end when I point out that as a Catholic I can tolerate the existence of other religions, but that I am very sad the practitioners will all go to Hell when they die.
If that was as far as the Islamofascists went, I don’t think anyone would care, much less mind.
It is the demand for sharia law and dhimmitude that gets annoying. Too bad all the Muslims will go to Hell when they die.
Mikee, the Islamofascists go further than you think. They don’t only think that your (and Ubu52’s) mistaken non-belief in their religion will send you to hell, they think that your mistaken non-belief in their religion will send them to hell if they don’t change that belief through force and fear. THAT’S the key to understanding Jihad. Unlike every other religion, YOUR conversion is necessary for them to get to heaven, and their religion permits argumentative (both reasoned and emotional), political, economic, military and criminal methods to arrive at that end.
It is amazing to me that so many leftists are more threatened by a religion that “tsk-tsks” or looks disapprovingly at those it disagrees with, yet finds no threat or concern with one that chops the heads off of dissenters.
I have seen it argued that the terrorists we are fighting are the true, unedited, face of Islam, and in that, I agree.
The history of their “religion” is 1400 years of bloody conquest, of which Europe last staved off in 1693 outside the gates of Vienna.
Until Islam has a Reformation similar to the one Christianity experienced, I want nothing to do with them, for their beliefs (and thereby their culture) cannot co-exist peacefully with mine.
“Apparently to these people, Korans are more sacred than human life.” – Alpheus
Yeah, pretty much so. And that misunderstanding on the part of western culture is one of the reasons some leaders and the “can’t we all just get along” crowd don’t understand why we can’t negotiate a peaceful co-existence. Are there sects of Islam that will be tolerant of non-believers and live well with others? Most of “the West” would like to think so. Western culture has seen wars on the basis of religion (though religion may not have been the only or prime reason for the participation by some) that are still ongoing. Between Catholics & Protestants, Christians & Pagans*. Perhaps in another hundred or two years we’ll find the same kind of peace between followers of Islam and non-followers that most Catholics and Protestants have reached.
*Note: I know & hope that others realize that just like using the term Christian, there are many variations on what it means to be Pagan, some of whom, just like Christians, don’t get along well with each other.
The first amendment forbids government established religion, and forbids government regulation of free speech.
Nothing else.
In this country, I have the right to burn anyone’s religious books, put anyone’s religious icons in urine, pork, or whatever, and make fun of any belief.
I also have the right to not do these things.
Anyone who has a problem with this and is unwilling to do the work to get a new Constitution amendment needs violent correction.