From: kharin (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 07:11:37 MDT
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DA01.htm
These pretentious ambitions are fuelled by the fact that people refuse to challenge them. At the demo, there was a revealing interrogation of Al-Muhajiroun's Omar Brooks by an American in sunglasses. Twenty-seven-year-old Brooks said that we should all live our lives according to the truth revealed in the Koran: practising homosexuals should be killed, women who commit adultery should be killed.
We should renounce free choice, said Brooks - after all, 'you can't believe in some bits of the book and put aside the bits you don't like'. We should renounce reason as a way of deciding what is the best way to organise society - 'I don't try to rationalise [the laws]… 'The one who made me knows best; I don't know best'. The 'fundamental evil' is 'manmade laws', laws made by men for themselves rather than by Allah.
The American was clearly furious; his jaw muscles were clenched, his voice tight. But rather than take Brooks on, and say that it was better to live our lives through reason rather than superstition; that knowledge discovered through an investigation of the world was solid while revealed knowledge was flimsy; that the fruits of Enlightenment thought were all around, from the medicines Brooks took to the right to free speech he enjoyed….
Instead, the American tried to criticise Brooks for his wrongful interpretation of Islam. 'Many Muslims want a more tolerant interpretation of Islam', he said - 'many Muslims' want to preserve the 'great and wise elements' of the Islamic tradition, rather than becoming extremist.
'You are not a Muslim', Brooks replied. He had a point.
Since 11 September, non-Muslims have constantly tried to criticise Islamic fundamentalism by assuming the stance of moderate Muslims - from UK prime minister Tony Blair downwards. The battle is lost from the start; it looks feeble and dishonest, and it just doesn't wash. Why should a Muslim care about what a non-Muslim thinks about Islam? Brooks wiped the floor with this guy.
There is something wrong when a twenty-first century Westernised society finds it so difficult to criticise Islam. Our society is built upon rational-secularism - this has been the most productive mode of thought in human history, and it continues to take forward our understanding of and ability to control the world. While scientists in Europe and the USA are exploring the interactions of genes that cause cancer, and studying the planets of our Solar System, a nuclear scientist in Pakistan recently proposed to solve Pakistan's energy problems by harnessing the power of genies (on the basis of the Islamic belief that God created man from clay, and angels and genies from fire) (2).
The refusal to challenge Islam fuels Bakri's world-historic ambitions, and allows him to assume blown-up proportions. This is one balloon that we would do well to pop.
---- This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=26300>
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