Sam Harris: “Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks”
Posted by Richard on June 13, 2016
With Orlando’s hospitals and morgue filled with the victims of jihad, an Obama/Bernie supporting SJW declared that “the real victims … are Muslims,” the Planned Parenthood Black Community organization blamed the violence on “toxic masculinity” and “imperialist homophobia,” and ACLU lawyers blamed the “Christian right.” I could cite a dozen more examples along those lines, and that’s without even touching on the thousands blaming the NRA and guns for the slaughter.
Last night, best-selling thriller author Brad Thor tweeted the following, and he couldn’t be more correct:
We begin to defeat Islamic jihad when every American reads this article and admits that it is 100% correct: https://t.co/6ehQQwf0Xx
— Brad Thor (@BradThor) June 13, 2016
The article is by Sam Harris and appeared at the Huffington Post about three weeks ago. It’s a bit long, but a compelling and quick read. Here’s a taste:
The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.
There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for “racism” and “Islamophobia.”
But don’t stop there. Read the whole thing.
Richard Shultz said
Sam Harris’s article was absolutely fascinating and absolutely correct. Fear and political correctness will allow Islam to destroy our freedom, and it has to stop. I will re-state for the benefit of any Muslims who might read this blog exactly how I feel about Islam. It is the most illogical and violent religion, if it can even be called a religion, that has ever appeared on this planet. It is the greatest threat to western civilization that has ever presented itself in it’s entire history and it must be destroyed for the sake of world peace. There is NO SUCH THING AS A MODERATE MUSLIM. Mr. Harris is absolutely right in saying that if you scratch the surface of a so-called moderate Muslim you will find a dangerous fanatic just under it. And they will NEVER police their fanatics but will simply continue to blame the victims of their violence. In my one and only attempt to read the Quran to try to determine if there was ANY possibility of somehow co-existing with them, I gave up after the number of verses that advocated the killing of unbelievers, apostates, and others that they consider to be unworthy of continuing to live passed 100. I simply decided that the only way to fight them is to destroy them all. In that pursuit, I completely support highly disproportionate response to their continuing crimes against the rest of humanity. We should KILL 1000 of them for every 1 innocent person they murder, and I fully support the use of low yield tactical nuclear weapons to accomplish this. Since our military, despite it’s partial deterioration is still the most powerful in the world and since they do NOT have nuclear weapons, they CANNOT stop us and, at some point they will either decide that pushing their demonic religion on the rest of us will cost them so much territory and population that they will either HAVE to stop their violence or simply all die. This solution has been criticized by many people and it may be that you will decide not to allow this comment either out of complete disagreement with my opinion concerning what should be done, or possibly out of concern for my safety. What I HOPE is that you will allow it and, if you disagree, then publish a rebuttal and do not worry about what Muslims might choose to try to do to me as I have the weaponry to defend myself and the wherewithal to USE IT, and I am completely unafraid of the bastards.
Richard said
Rick, you’re wrong about no moderate Muslims. True, as Harris suggests, most of the people who describe themselves as moderate Muslims (and who are touted as such by our government and intelligentsia) are “moderate” only in the sense that they wouldn’t wield a knife, gun, or bomb themselves, but they share the same goals as their violent brethren and secretly cheer them.
But there are those who are working to reform Islam, much as Christianity was reformed (remember, the Spanish Inquisition, to pick one example, also took a “convert or die” approach to non-believers).
I’ve praised on this blog Dr. Zudhi Jasser, a former Naval officer and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; for instance, this post about his response to the Ft. Hood massacre. In fact, I make a small donation to AIFD every year.
Last December, Jasser and a number of other brave Muslims (I’m sure they all now have targets on their backs) from the US, Canada, and Europe founded the Muslim Reform Movement. Please read their declaration here. It is excellent. The task they’re undertaking is daunting (it took hundreds of years for European Christians to go from savagery to the Enlightenment). But it must be done, and it must be led by brave Muslims such as these.
As for your proposed response, I sympathize with how you feel. I too am disgusted by the dhimmitude of the PC Western elites — that’s why I posted about Harris’ excellent essay. But I reject your solution. Would you nuke Syria/Iraq? What about the Yazidi sex slaves and the Kurds who fought for a democratic Iraq and are now bravely fighting ISIS? Would you nuke Mecca? What about the many slaves (they call them “servants”) the Saudis hold? In any Muslim country, what about the women, who might as well be slaves since they were the property of their father until married off (often before or barely into their teens) and are now the property of their husbands? What about the pro-democracy, pro-liberty reformers working underground in those countries? There really were quite a few of those driving the Arab Spring movement before the Muslim Brotherhood and other Wahabbi groups took over and suppressed them.
War, unfortunately, always involves some “collateral damage.” (And we are at war with the Islamofascists, whether my fellow libertarians like it or not; it takes two sides to make peace, but only one side to make war.) But you’re suggesting killing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of innocents simply to intimidate the enemy, and that’s just beyond the pale. Kill as many actual jihadis as you like, though — I won’t shed a tear. 🙂
I don’t have a better solution. I read Sharansky and supported GWB’s plan to create a democratic Iraq as an example that would help transform the Middle East, but I did so acknowledging that it was a long shot. Would it eventually have succeeded if we hadn’t left? I don’t know; things didn’t look good. Is there some other alternative that doesn’t involve nuking innocents that might make a positive difference there? I don’t know, but I’ve long wished we would stop treating the Saudis (the prime promoters of Wahabbism) as friends.
Meanwhile, I’m with Harris: “we need more criticism of Islam, not less.” That can only help the Muslim Reform Movement, and I’m cheering for them.
Richard Shultz said
“Rick, you’re wrong about no moderate Muslims. True, as Harris suggests, most of the people who describe themselves as moderate Muslims (and who are touted as such by our government and intelligentsia) are “moderate” only in the sense that they wouldn’t wield a knife, gun, or bomb themselves, but they share the same goals as their violent brethren and secretly cheer them.”
In response to this I can only ask the following question.
How can one call them moderate if they share the same violent goals as the radicals and will not only refuse to help police them but will help them to escape or stay hidden from the authorities?
Yes, of course there are a few very brave individuals such as Dr. Jasser, who are doing the very best they can to reform Islam. And far be it from me to belittle their efforts. But can a religion that does not even admit of the need for reform, and which will not tolerate even the mildest criticism from it’s OWN CLERICS be reformed? The only thing I can compare the power of these individuals to accomplish anything like reform to is having a few 37mm antitank guns to try to take out a vastly superior number of enemy tanks. You may destroy a few of your enemy’s most valuable assets, but sooner or later you run out of precious ammunition that cannot be replaced.
And as to my proposed response, as drastic as it may be, it may be the
only response that will yield the desired result. Please don’t think that I take the destruction of innocent lives lightly, because I do not! I would take every step that I could possibly conceive to avoid killing innocent people, but I would do it because I too cannot think of another solution that stands a chance of actually working. Yes, the idea of destroying Yazidi and Kurdish lives is horrifying, as is the destruction of Mecca. But as you said, war involves collateral damage; sometimes a great deal of it. The firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities resulted in many times the number of deaths that were caused by the two nuclear weapons that were used, and contributed a great deal more to the Japanese decision to finally accept the Potsdam Proclaimation than the atomic attacks. So yes, I would accept the deaths of the Yazidi and the Kurds, and the nuclear destruction of Mecca, for sake of the greater good that I feel it has a chance of accomplishing. And I would feel a huge sense of guilt for the rest of my days, but I would still feel better than I feel NOW about what is happening and will continue to happen if something is not done to stop it.
Richard said
You state your case well, Rick, but not well enough to persuade me. We’ll just have to disagree.
Richard Shultz said
As you say, I suppose we must agree to disagree. I take some comfort in the fact that this concept is NOT foreign to either one of us as it is in some places. Maybe someday those places will change. We can still hope that happens.