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| Source: BBC World |
The first problem with this article is the way MacDonlad redefined the term "Islam" in the article's title and throughout this article. In the world outside of PCG's information bubble "Islam" simply refers to the Islamic religion in general. Just like Christianity there is much diversity of opinion among those who define themselves as followers of the Islamic religion.
Often it is said that there are over a billion Muslims. This is true as far as it goes but those one billion people are not a unified political force. There are many differences among these one billion people. But in this article MacDonald talks of Islam as some kind of unified political force.
As shocking and sad as it is, the massacre in downtown Paris last night was inevitable. The question now is, how will Europe respond? Many Europeans will undoubtedly connect this attack to the refugee crisis and the mass migration of millions of Muslims into Europe. Fear and tensions will intensify, and pressure will mount on Europe’s governments to act to prevent further attacks. There is no quick and easy solution, and no hope that this brooding conflict will be diffused. A massive clash is brewing.There is no attempt to assess whether linking these terrorist attacks with the current refugee crisis is correct or not. There is no mention of the fact that many of those refugees are fleeing precisely this sort of extremist violence that ISIL have inflicted upon the people of Iraq and Syria.
And how terrible it is to insist that there is "no hope" that the various crises concerning ISIL terrorism will ever be resolved.
There are cities and suburbs in France, Germany, Britain and other European countries that look, sound and smell more like Riyadh or Damascus. Islamic communities are expanding across Europe that are choosing not to integrate, and instead are establishing Muslim culture in their host nations.It is called freedom of religion. It seems like such a foreign concept to PCG.
And how does MacDonald know how Riyadh or Damascus "look, sound and smell" like? Has he ever been there to assess such a thing for himself?
In some cities, minarets are as common as steeples. In some communities, the law is sharia. More than a few cities in Western Europe have “no-go” neighborhoods that are simply too dangerous for native Europeans to venture into.Careful MacDonald. Recently one person asserted that Birmingham had no go areas and was widely ridiculed for making this false assertion.
Curiously MacDonald says "More than a few cities in Western Europe have “no-go” neighborhoods" and yet he cannot be bothered to name even one such neighborhood.
Within Europe’s Muslim communities exist pockets of radicalized Islamists. Generally male, young and unemployed, these men are easy targets for foreign and sometimes local terrorist organizations and radical preachers. Fed a steady diet of hatred and vitriol for America, Israel and the West, these thousands and thousands of young men are a terrorist army waiting for a job.What an unhelpful way to respond to this catastrophe. Instead of encouraging people to inform the authorities if they know anything MacDonald tells people to be scared of Muslims who live among them, their neighbors, and even accuse them of being "a terrorist army" in waiting. What blatant scare mongering. No good can come from this.
The terrorists want us to be alienated from Muslims. The terrorists are trying to divide us. The terrorists say there is a "war against Islam". This is nonsense. But making people fearful and alienated from Muslims makes this delusion seem real. The terrorists are trying to breathe life into their extremist worldview. We must not fall into their trap. This terrorist attack was a criminal conspiracy. We must be careful to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.
Instead of speculating as to why the perpetrators today were somehow persuaded to commit their monstrous deeds MacDonald choose to look back to a battle that occurred back in A.D. 732.
By the late seventh century, under the Umayyad Caliphate, the armies of Islam had conquered large parts of Spain and Portugal. But Spain was merely a pit stop. The goal of the caliphate was to cross the Pyrenees, defeat the Franks, and take mainland Europe. Why? Because Islam’s goal always has been—and still is—to convert everyone in the world, kill them, or die trying.How is that any different to PCG boasting that glorified PCG members will rule the entire world after Christ's return?
Also this is a stereotyping of Muslims. While it is certainly true that some Muslims try to convert others, many do not. It is most inaccurate to falsely stereotype all Muslims as behaving in this way.
By the third decade of the eighth century, Muslim ambition—hot, focused, menacing, and with decades of momentum behind it—was ready to make its move. Invading Muslim armies streamed from Spain into France to conquer the region of Aquitaine, then use it as a launching pad into the rest of Europe.MacDonald fails to make distinctions among those Muslims. He insists on trying to view Muslims as some kind of unified political force when in actual fact there were many factions and divisions among those early Muslims.
MacDonald complains that people are not sufficiently aware of the Battle of Tours. He asserts in a paranoid manner that information about that battle has been maliciously suppressed.
You don’t hear much about the Battle of Tours-Poitiers anymore. It has largely been buried under masses of revisionist, politically correct, multicultural gibberish. Muslim imperialism is a taboo subject because of fear of being ostracized, prosecuted, stabbed or bombed—or igniting a global wave of riots on the Muslim street. This spirit of appeasement, plus a willing ignorance of history, prevents Westerners from considering where the obvious Muslim-European rift might end.People are busy living their lives. It should be no surprise that knowledge about a battle in A.D. 732 would be not so important to most people. Without question it was a historically significant moment but the memory of it should not be used to inspire xenophobic fears of neighbors who happen to be Muslim. We are in 2015, not 732. Many things are different now.
But the truth is, Islam today, much like it was under the Umayyads, is an imperialist entity.It is quite revealing how MacDonald here writes of Islam in a singular tense ("Islam today ... is an imperialist entity").
He is not talking about Muslims in the real world in which we live in who are divided in many ways along religious and political lines. He is not even talking about ISIL terrorists. He is talking about a straw man view of his which views Muslims as a collective, unified political force. This is a dangerous delusion expressed in coded language. He talks of "Islam" but he is not talking about people who happen to be Muslim in the real world or describing the real state of affairs regarding Muslims today. He is talking about this sinister, dehumanizing straw man.
We often say there are a billion Muslims. In the sense that they identity themselves as Muslims this is true. But they not unified either religiously or politically. They do not act as one. Even in one's own family there will be diversity of opinions in regards to politics, religion and anything one can imagine. But MacDonald insists on portraying Islam as a unified political force. In fact they are not united in the way he portrays them. Most Muslims are disgusted and appalled at the criminal conspiracy that was unleashed on Paris.
More than 3,000 terrorists have returned to Europe after traveling to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State. European police have arrested dozens of returning fighters, in many instances only after foiling a terrorist attack. In February, Islamic State documents were discovered that revealed that organization’s desire to use Libya as a launching pad into southern Europe, where it would conduct attacks in European cities and attack maritime shipping.So in the paragraph above MacDonald is clearly talking about Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's lackeys, ISIL, a terrorist organization based in Iraq and Syria that have inflicted death and destruction upon thousands of people there since 2003. Most of their victims have been Muslims. It was formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Right after that discussion of ISIL MacDonald then fear mongers about his straw man portrayal of Islam incorrectly presented as a unified political force.
The armies of Islam are on the march! The forces that made the Battle of Tours-Poitiers inevitable have returned. The same ideology and religious motivations that underpinned Arab imperialism in A.D. 732 are again flourishing. Islam and its doctrines are thriving globally...Like a magician's slight of hand MacDonald at one moment talks about ISIL terrorists then he talks about his straw man of Islam incorrectly presented as a unified political force. This is confusing. It is morally repugnant (not to mention inaccurate) for MacDonald to insist that all Muslims are alike or that it is proper to view them as acting together in concert. It is also disrespectful to the many victims of ISIL who happened to be Muslim.
The demographic incursion of Muslims into Europe makes the forces at play worse for Europe than at the time of Poitiers: In A. D. 732, Muslims lacked a meaningful presence in the heart of Europe, which meant they had little demographic and military infrastructure to draw upon during their northward incursion. Today, the armies of Islam can count on support, or at least sympathy, from millions of devoted, disgruntled and alienated Muslims living in free, open, vulnerable cities across the Continent!Such words sow fear, loathing and division against not the terrorists, but our neighbors who happen to be Muslim.
What "armies of Islam" is MacDonald talking about? ISIL hates Muslims who are not controlled by them. Most of their victims in Iraq and Syria were Muslims. ISIL has wickedly redefined Muslim to mean those who follow ISIL while denigrating all others as not real Muslims.
And so this reading of MacDonald's article comes to an end. MacDonald's article is so terrible in so many ways. He confuses the terrorists with his made up straw man of "Islam" falsely portrayed as a unified, political force.
To end this post here is a tweet from a man who exposes the fact that this sort of terrorist attack is purposely designed to stir up a xenophobic backlash against ethnic minorities. Such a backlash must be avoided because it adds injustice upon injustice and it is what the terrorists want.
This is the most well-rounded analysis I've come across re #ParisAttacks pic.twitter.com/f9yZBRcDoT
— Zaitoon Malik (@Zaitoonmalik) November 14, 2015
We have been told that there is an ongoing war that is different from conventional war in that it is not being waged by an aggressor nation, but by an ideoolgy. In this way, it is even different from the cold war of decades past in which a communist superpower gradually enslaved satellite nations, bringing them into their evil axis. During the cold war, the FBI, and other groups dedicated to preserving the American Way acknowledged freedom of thought and speech with regard to communism, but went about reigning in the Bolshevist bombers in the early part of the twentieth century, and diffusing the communists who were attempting to establish bases of power within our culture, from which revolutions could be fomented.
ReplyDeleteBecause the current acts of terrorism are being perpetrated by an extreme ideology, not a nation, it is easy to see the ISIS militants as being the army for the Muslim religion, even as the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines are the military for the USA.
What is the truth of the matter? Many of the immigrants streaming into Europe are refugees from the terrorism and oppression of ISIS. I suspect that a number of Arabs who are emigrating may even be Christians seeking freedom from oppression at the hands of Islam. The problems in identification are rooted in the late 1970s and the Iranian Revolution, with the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been in exile in Paris.
So, what is to be done by humane and humanitarian nations in the face of confused identification and objectives? What about communities where even the peaceful Muslims cluster into a majority, and override the Constitution with Sharia law? Supposedly, in the areas around Detroit, this is actually happening, with Muslims having recently become the majority on one city council.
There is confusion right now, which I suspect will eventually be sorted out, clarified, and dealt with. My problem with the ACOGs is that generally, the fear mongering is rooted in the companion teaching that there is nothing that can be done, because every bad or evil thing is a sign of the end times, so all an individual can do is to give up on life and join their groups, and wait for the return of Jesus. They also constantly modify their basic prophecy mold so as to incorporate things that were not anticipated into the prophecies, giving them a certain amount of appeal. It is deceptive, and geared towards exploiting the most simplistic view of any events or processes to amplify their own recruitment drives.
I can't imagine what PCG's victim/members think about the Arabic cousins of the Jews, when they envision an entire race of US citizens whose ancestry has been present since the 1600s as virtual enemy combatants.
BB