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Sunday, September 05, 2004
Custardheads
[UPDATE: To those visiting from Dean Esmay’s site, please go here after finishing this article.]
A certain “Joe” (feel free to E-mail him at ), who took issue with this tirade, inferred from it that I wanted to herd Muslims into crematoria, and suggested further that, if I were a Christian, I must have missed the part about loving my enemies.
Joe is typical of a particular species: the custardhead, who wills away that which must be done because it grates on his tender sensibilities. To a custardhead, the unpleasantness involved in shunning those who intend the rest of us harm is too disturbing to be borne. He’d much rather close his eyes and hope things will get better all by themselves.
When a militant movement that believes it has the right to rule all others is on the march, things will not “get better” by themselves. Only persons of low mentality could fail to see that.
If ostracizing those who believe vile and demented things is too unpleasant to contemplate, then what of the step that would be necessary after they’ve grown numerous enough and strong enough to act on their beliefs?
Too much for your refined nature to bear, Joe? Perhaps you’d like to lie down with a cold cloth over your forehead until it all goes away.
This is not a matter of doctrinal differences among religions. It’s about the nature of religion itself, and when it shades over into something less benign.
Every religion comprises a mythos and an ethos. The mythos is the supernatural story that delineates the nature of God and the history of His interactions with Man. The ethos is the code of prescriptions and proscriptions the religion imposes on its adherents: the mandatory code of conduct to which the believer must cleave to gain God’s good opinion and admission to a pleasant afterlife.
In the ultimate sense, a religion’s mythos is irrelevant to this world. How could it be otherwise? Being a story of supernatural powers and the deeds of Beings infinitely above Man, one must “take it on faith” or dismiss it on the same basis. Consider as an example the Christian assertion that Jesus of Nazareth is / was the Son of God. Can this be either proved or disproved by any exertion of human effort? What powers and attributes would Smith the skeptic have to possess to be able to prove or disprove it? If he possessed them, would he be a man?
The religion’s ethos is where the rubber meets the road. Since it commands certain behaviors and forbids others, the consequences of those things as Kantian categorical imperatives will determine whether the religion will flourish in this world. The ethos will also determine the religion’s competitive status in relation to other religions, or to other philosophical guides to right action and proper conduct.
A religion’s ethos is tolerable exactly insofar as it is voluntary. Voluntarism is the line of demarcation between religious belief and political power. True religion must be voluntary, for God would award no man His favor on the basis of something he’d bowed to under threat of punishment.
Islam’s ethos is a violent, barbaric, life-denying code that sprang directly from the desire of its founder for temporal conquests and aggrandizement. It transgresses the proper boundaries of a religion by claiming the right to impose itself on others against their will. No true religion would do such a thing.
I’ve tabulated Islam’s many villainies too many times already, but for Joe and his ilk, one can never repeat oneself too often:
- Islam commands its believers to convert the entire world to Islam by any means expedient, including force and subterfuge. This worldwide jihad will end only when all men everywhere are subject to the authority of the Islamic Khalifah or Caliph, and when the shari’a, the Islamic law code, is the only law code recognized for all humanity.
- Islam does not recognize any source of authority apart from itself. It regards secular governments as inherently illegitimate. Thus, there can be no separation of Church from State in Islam’s view.
- Islam demands that a Muslim who abandons the faith be put to death. Islam also demands the death of anyone who criticizes Islam or Muhammad.
- Islam demands that all “infidels”—i.e., non-Muslims—be subjugated into dhimmi status. Dhimmis must pay a special tax, must show subservience before all Muslims, are forbidden to build places of worship, and must wear special clothes to exhibit their second-class status.
- Islam sanctifies the killing of prisoners, whether enemy soldiers or unfortunate civilians, taken in jihad.
- Islam sanctifies the taking of slaves. Indeed, the Islamic world is the last place on Earth where slavery is still practiced.
- Islam considers women to be the chattels of men. A woman in Islamic society is forbidden to leave her home without a male relative as chaperon, and is never permitted to be in the company of a male non-relative unless similarly chaperoned.
- Islam gives women no rights over the marital bond. A Muslim man can divorce his wife at will, whereas a woman cannot free herself of her Muslim husband without his cooperation.
- Islam sets women’s rights of inheritance and their acceptability as witnesses in court at far less than those of men.
- Islam requires a woman who has been raped to produce four male Muslim witnesses to the act if she wants to prosecute it. If she cannot but complains of it anyway, she may be put to death for fornication on the strength of her complaint itself.
- A Muslim woman who marries an “infidel” is considered to have committed apostasy, and must be put to death. However, a Muslim man may marry an “infidel” woman without penalty.
- Islam regards Arabs as the Master Race, and all other peoples as their inferiors.
- Islam specifically identifies the Jews as the enemies of God, who must all be killed in the final stages of the worldwide ascendancy of the Caliphate.
- Islam teaches that Muslims have no duty of fidelity toward any “infidel.” It is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim to deceive, defraud, betray or brutalize an “infidel” if it serves the interests of Islam or Muslims. By corollary, in any dispute between a Muslim and an “infidel,” it is obligatory for all other Muslims to take the Muslim’s side, regardless of the merits.
- Islam encourages its members to seek death in jihad, fighting for the extension of Dar al-Islam—the “House of Islam”—by promising such “martyrs” an afterlife of orgiastic pleasures.
- Islam’s shari’a law code punishes homosexuality, adultery, fornication, blasphemy, heresy, and several other “offenses” with death. Islam punishes lesser crimes, such as murdering a female relative who has “dishonored her family,” with a slap on the wrist.
- Speaking of wrists, shari’a punishes several offenses with the amputation of a hand or a foot.
Need I go further? Is it not clear that if Islam’s tenets were widely known, if it were not to present itself to the world as a “religion,” it would receive exactly the same reception as Nazism did? Is it not clear that it would deserve that reception? Is it not clear that anyone, regardless of his upbringing or his station in life, who accepts the above as a proper set of rules for men to live by is either evil, mentally subnormal, or seriously disturbed?
If Islam’s effects could be confined solely to those who voluntarily imposed it on themselves, perhaps we could avoid what is now forced upon us. But reality has not been kind to those cultures that have adopted this postulate.
We cannot truly know what awaits us in the next world. It is possible that all religions are false, though, as a Roman Catholic, I believe otherwise. It doesn’t matter. We the living must share this world—and given its strictures, the most acceptance we can grant to those who have adopted a creed such as Islam is not to kill them until they first raise their hands to us.
Sorry, Joe. Enjoy the company of your fellow custardheads. I’ll have none of that here.
Comments
Custardeads fall into 2 categories; the dumb and the daft.
Posted by robin on 09/05/2004 at 06:28 PMMmmmm… Custard.
Posted by on 09/05/2004 at 11:05 PMWhoa! As my teen would say, “shut DOWN!” Custardheads flee before the wrath of Francis.
Posted by on 09/06/2004 at 12:34 AMFrom the UK’s Sunday Mirror, a very upsetting story on Beslan http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/tm_objectid=14605550&method;=full&siteid;=106694&page;=1&headline;=they-knifed-babies--they-raped-girls-name_page.html
Posted by Fausta on 09/06/2004 at 09:13 AMExcellent post. I would find it helpful in arguing with custardheads and other moonbats if such a bullet list was cited with footnotes. It would be an intellectual curiosity to know which items on that list are directly derived from the koran and which items were conjured by the mullahs in some twisted intrepretation of the koran.
In the long run the sources of the points of law do not matter. Islam as it exists today is an irrational psychopathic culture that must be stopped. Appeasement or live and let live negotiations only provides time for this cancer to spread and grow stronger.
Posted by on 09/06/2004 at 03:23 PMThe kicker is this.... you point out all the above about islam, the instant response is that “that isn’t mainstream islam” or “that’s only a small minority.”
How do you hammer into thick skulls that peaceful muslims are the minority, and they are peaceful because they are DISOBEYING their own religion, not because they are practicing it?
Posted by RHJunior on 02/17/2006 at 03:00 PMThe update link appears to be broken.
Yours,
WincePosted by Wince and Nod on 03/06/2006 at 10:05 PMYou very correctly point out that it’s the ethos, not the mythos, that really matters. And I’ll add (in violent agreement) that actions are more important than words. So far, the actions of Islam should serve as a warning to anyone who values the enlightened tenets of Western civilization.
Posted by Elisson on 03/07/2006 at 12:44 AM
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