tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post4162320744446925308..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Utterly Baffling Hammer Attack on Nine in Vancouver, Canada.truepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-11363801050432216592008-09-10T12:43:00.000-07:002008-09-10T12:43:00.000-07:00For those visiting, I think Pastorius at IBA has a...For those visiting, I think Pastorius at IBA has a good <A HREF="http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2008/09/subway-clawhammer-attack-is-jihad.html" REL="nofollow">analysis</A> of the Philly attack, noting the number of bearded men standing around. This one may not be SJS, but perhaps a planned attack. Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but watching the video a few times, it seems plausible. It seems at least the little boy knew he was there to witness something...truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-23855756057065683112008-09-09T14:37:00.000-07:002008-09-09T14:37:00.000-07:00I'll include a link from Jihad Watch to today's ha...I'll include a link from Jihad Watch to today's hammer attack on a Philadelphia subway train as soon as I get a chance. Sorry for the delay.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-26745223986908579122008-09-09T14:34:00.000-07:002008-09-09T14:34:00.000-07:00To a jihadi with a hammer, every infidel is a nail...To a jihadi with a hammer, every infidel is a nail.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-91162689871863602662008-08-10T03:57:00.000-07:002008-08-10T03:57:00.000-07:00"that all people are the same regardless of cultur..."that all people are the same regardless of culture or personality or attributes;"<BR/><BR/>Then stop lying.<BR/><BR/>Homosexuality is less than equal to heterosexuality as defined by reproduction.<BR/><BR/>Discrimination is how we choose between unequal things.<BR/><BR/>Don't tell me or mine not to discriminate against homosexuality<BR/>or any other destructive behavior unless you wish to be in conflict.Rob Misekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15302768489050327563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-90904920143363851692008-08-09T22:00:00.000-07:002008-08-09T22:00:00.000-07:00I'm not seriously arguing one way or another wheth...I'm not seriously arguing one way or another whether one or any or all of the 50 or so cases of Muslims above attacking people at random is/are motivated by so-called Sudden Jihad Syndrome. I have no idea. It seems completely ludicrous to brush off case after case as "mental illness" as if it means something. I repeat that to me it's on a level with crying "Witch!" at Salem. It has nothing to do with anything so far as I can see. But I don't know. All I can do is look at the pattern, that being the one that isn't supposed to show up when looked at.<BR/><BR/>Having belaboured that point, what I do think I see is a terrified response by the average Western society at large in the face of anything that could serve possibly as evidence that the prevailing norms of political discourse are not absolutely or at least certainly unquestionably true: that all people are the same regardless of culture or personality or attributes; that all exhibitions and acting out of person, i.e. behaviour, is nurture, conditioning, and automatic reflection of social environment; that only the state and its ordained experts have the right by qualification to pass any "judgment" or non-judgmental pronouncement on behaviour. When an obvious pattern, empirical and falsifiable, as it were, arises that befuddles the normative discourse, then one must lie and lie and lie regardless of the obvious stupidity of the lie and of its obvious blatancy. Lie! <BR/><BR/>Nine people are hurt directly from hammer blows; but the worst of it is our civilizations are hammered to the ground by these repeated blows to our common laws and our common sense. Every lie is a further blow against democracy and Human decency. We all suffer from this corruption of society at the hands of our intelligentsia; and worse, we are part of that destructive hammering down of the gates of decency by our own complacency. <BR/><BR/>If people cannot walk the streets without fear of, for example, a mad jihadi swinging a hammer, then we live in a madhouse rather than in a civil society. And we deserve it if we don't care for our own sane response enough to make our own lives secure to the best of our own lawful abilities. So long as we live like semi-domesticated rabbits at Watership Down, raised in relative ease for the sake of the farmer who eats us sparingly; so long as we passively accept the rules of disorder for the sake of not having to work to maintain a common civility; so long as we hope it'll be "her, do it to her. Not me!" then the world of 1984 will slowly if ever so slowly encroach till life is sheer Hell for us all.<BR/><BR/>But the worst fear of all is that we will do nothing to restore sanity to our societies, that we will remain silent as we endure the repeated and endless obvious lies of the intelligentsia and their mindless cheerleaders charging the masses with outrageous slanders rather than addressing the issues at hand. The worst: that there will come a time of mass vigilance that will create in the West the very conditions of Jugoslavia's recent past, an hysterical madness of revenge and hatred of all eccentricities, however mundane, however innocuous. I fear the time when I hear someone in the crowd scream out: "There's one. Let's get him!"<BR/><BR/>And he will be-- me.<BR/><BR/>And he will be--You.<BR/><BR/>Time to stop now. Time to bring back honesty in place of lies and the phantasies of the intelligentsia's Gnostic visions of perfectible Mankind by the ruses of social engineering. Time now before people are enraged and just kill some crazy bastard on the street cause he looks like he might be bad. We deserve our own decency. We have a right to live in our ordinary privacies without having been driven to violence and shamefulness out of despair and fear. We must demand an end to the lies. We must demand and we must act for truth. To let the lies continue is what I would call "mental illness" on a society-wide scale. You'd have to be crazy to allow that.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-16677622752332935152008-08-09T14:34:00.000-07:002008-08-09T14:34:00.000-07:00What galls me about the term 'mantal illness' in r...What galls me about the term 'mantal illness' in respect to Mr. Hammerhead is that it is being used as a red herrring to divert people away from the possibility if this savage attack being a hate crime. Legally,mental illlness can be used as a defence to a crime,but it should not be used to deteermine what ,if any,charges are laid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-68190548281601859472008-08-09T03:50:00.000-07:002008-08-09T03:50:00.000-07:00Dag,It was intentional misinformation (lies) and p...Dag,<BR/><BR/>It was intentional misinformation (lies) and political pressure during a cycle of extreme moral depravity that coerced the scientific community to remove the mental illness classification of homosexuality. <BR/><BR/>Research Evelyn Hooker and the criticism of her poor to absent scientific method.<BR/><BR/>The mystic of life is truth.<BR/><BR/>True,<BR/><BR/>You seem to be playing both sides of the field.<BR/><BR/>Let's add some truth and honesty to clarify the issue. <BR/><BR/>Provide one example where politics has influenced the determination proof or truth.<BR/><BR/>It is the truth that will re-classify homosexuality as a mental illness, or a physical illness if a responsible gene is found.Rob Misekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15302768489050327563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-36042811826330011002008-08-08T20:04:00.000-07:002008-08-08T20:04:00.000-07:00hahahahahahatruepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-22515594876622463292008-08-08T20:01:00.000-07:002008-08-08T20:01:00.000-07:00You type faster than anyone else on Earth. I'm blo...You type faster than anyone else on Earth. I'm blown away. But your answer seems directed more at Rob than me. Still, anyone who can open the mail, read my comment, think about it, and then type a comment in one minute is incredible, even if my point got lost as you were thinking about Rob. WOW.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-14056654214885887482008-08-08T20:00:00.000-07:002008-08-08T20:00:00.000-07:00Sound a tad too fatalistic for me, Dag.Sound a tad too fatalistic for me, Dag.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-4979171479501225302008-08-08T19:57:00.000-07:002008-08-08T19:57:00.000-07:00Well, two points:1)there is a fundamental differen...Well, two points:<BR/><BR/>1)there is a fundamental difference between the human sciences and the natural sciences; in the human sciences all observations will have political import.<BR/><BR/>2)this is not to say that the human sciences are "determined" by politics; indeed they have to have some independence in the early stages of the production of knowledge; but this independence is not in some static time warp; it comes to an end as the never-complete knowledge of the human sciences enters the political and economic marketplaces. If this weren't so, we wouldn't have to argue about homosexuality; everyone would just know the scientific truth already.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-73690157372159057132008-08-08T19:56:00.000-07:002008-08-08T19:56:00.000-07:00I haven't got any idea what genes are. I do have s...I haven't got any idea what genes are. I do have some idea about Nature's Mystic. Take any group of character monotypes and isolate them, in no time at all one will find a variety of types emergent that will mirror the universe, Nature inveigling the latent in those it needs the latent from for its own teleological end. Life is always forever the same in Man. No point and no good in doing anything at all about homosexuals even if it were the "right" thing to do. The Mystic makes what must be for the needs of Nature.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-68361376586358830792008-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:002008-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:00Science is the quest for proof, truth.Neither are ...Science is the quest for proof, truth.<BR/><BR/>Neither are determined politically.Rob Misekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15302768489050327563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-73765731234983585202008-08-08T15:28:00.000-07:002008-08-08T15:28:00.000-07:00Well, I think the human sciences are inevitably po...Well, I think the human sciences are inevitably political. It's not that a student of the human can't be disinterested, at times, but being disinterested is a kind of deferral of definite political answers in order to open up new knowledge whose implications aren't clear. But, in time, that knowledge will become politicized.<BR/><BR/>Today, I doubt there is very much new that we can learn about homosexuality, other than to discover what kind of tolerance/suppression will prove sustainable in the long run. If that's right, the discussion is inevitably politicized in large part.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-57212020210983890232008-08-08T13:45:00.000-07:002008-08-08T13:45:00.000-07:00Actually it was nostalgic for the time when scient...Actually it was nostalgic for the time when scientific method determined mental illness, not politics.<BR/><BR/>Those men who hump each other in the absence of women are irresponsibly promiscuous, not homosexual.Rob Misekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15302768489050327563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-28252943410084495672008-08-08T13:38:00.000-07:002008-08-08T13:38:00.000-07:00The point, or one of them, that I was trying to ma...The point, or one of them, that I was trying to make about "mental illness" is that it is largely what the mainstream of a culture says it is. THere cannot be some objective, univeral, definition of "mental illness" that is true in every time and place. TO say, today, that homosexuality is a "mental illness" is to display nostalgia for the first half of the twentieth century when Western medicine so declared.<BR/><BR/>But today, holding the view that homosexuality is a mental illness is likely to get one labelled mentally ill. It's a cruel world....<BR/><BR/>My own view is that homosexuality is something that, like all desires, can be learned from others. There are far too many societies and sub-groups, historically and today, where homosexual practise is much too widespread for it to be considered either genetic or a form of mental illness. What's more, the argument that homosexuality, because it does not lead to reproduction, weakens a society, is the kind of thing that is perhaps sure only to one who is born into a world that takes for granted that "gay marriage" (i.e. the permanency of the homosexual bond) is a norm to live up to. In many parts of the world, homosexuality among young men is common because access to women is more or less impossible for many (due to polygamy or strict laws on premarital heterosexual sex). THis doesn't stop them from marrying women when and if they can. Such societies may have many drawbacks, but they are today among the most reproductive on earth.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-77058317255445313852008-08-08T12:34:00.000-07:002008-08-08T12:34:00.000-07:00Homosexuals have a problem on the horizon: if it i...Homosexuals have a problem on the horizon: if it is genetic, which is a term beyond my understanding, then it is possible that in future, prospective parents shopping for a designer baby could stipulate that they want a baby who has no "gay genes." Would parents opt for a gay baby over a happy baby who isn't gay? One would be hard pressed to think of anyone who who choose a gay baby. Could happen. Not too likely, though. There would have to be other benefits to the child, such as X or Y that come with being gay. Even then, I suspect most parents would want a bay that reproduces. "Bi-babies"? It's not that real, is it? It seems more to me to be a matter of current fashion, something our time will have to ride out in hope of some correction by times later.<BR/><BR/>But Islam as a choice is a choice, even if one is seemingly born into it like an Indian beggar family, tortured and twisted from birth into a freak. That, sir, is something the world can address at this time effectively. No genes involved. It's a matter of Will.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-66141606461720023502008-08-08T12:16:00.000-07:002008-08-08T12:16:00.000-07:00When we misrepresent or change definitions of our ...When we misrepresent or change definitions of our values we inhibit communication and undermine civilization.<BR/><BR/>When bad is defined by some as good do we need wonder why we become in conflict?<BR/><BR/>I suspect most homosexuals support the theory of evolution.<BR/><BR/>In many species, inferior individuals are targetted with violence to maintain the strength of the group.<BR/><BR/>We use discrimination to choose between unequal things.<BR/><BR/>Homosexuality is a mental illness that precludes reproduction.<BR/><BR/>When homosexuals parade around flaunting their irresponsible sexual promiscuity they should expect social criticism.<BR/><BR/>Nobody should be subjected to physical violence though.<BR/><BR/>Muslims should be taught to use their words, not their hands.Rob Misekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15302768489050327563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-73217861793558474832008-08-06T21:43:00.000-07:002008-08-06T21:43:00.000-07:00It's a good point Dag. Still, it's but one importa...It's a good point Dag. Still, it's but one important angle for trying to figure what Islam in Western modernity really is. And how many Muslims here would share it?<BR/><BR/>Let's speculate that this guy in Vancouver was in his own mind performing some kind of jihadi act (and not just going loco after listening to too many <A HREF="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Maxwell's-Silver-Hammer-lyrics-The-Beatles/56DAD20650BD09FC48256BC200159C60" REL="nofollow">Beatles' tunes</A>. Doesn't he still need other Muslims to sign off on his act in order to know he's not nuts? And how many here will embrace him, in any quarter? I doubt very many will... If so, then maybe he is nuts...<BR/><BR/>And shouldn't we want this conclusion to happen, from a pragmatic political perspective, as defenders of Western modernity? Are we really better off if this kind of thing gets labelled "jihad", so validated, instead of "mentally ill"? Whatever the pragmatic realities to which "mentally ill" points, it is also a politically useful term. If you're right about the bicameral mind, do we too not have to choose which room to validate? And are we really nuts if we choose the one with which we're at home?<BR/><BR/>Sure, on some level we have to try to know the dangers that are out there, know the other guy's mind. But no single perspective will define a right and true course. Our way forward will be ultimately pragmatic and require us to divide and differentiate the good and bad in bicameral minds and cultures.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-32485421283963033972008-08-06T15:59:00.000-07:002008-08-06T15:59:00.000-07:00As alway, there is a needed book-length response l...As alway, there is a needed book-length response lingering in the aether. <BR/><BR/>To look at just this will exhaust me, no doubt:<BR/><BR/>[W]hy not admit that there can be a recurring pattern to uprooted, lost, Muslims acting out in modern societies and also to allow that it is a form of "mental illness"? Why grant that Islam has [not?] yet satisfactorily adapted to modernity? Why not recognize that given this lack of adaption, many Muslims in the West will suffer forms of mental illness, just as millions of Canadians suffer depression and other conditions due, ultimately, to failures in their "religious" or spiritual sensibilities to come to terms with free market-driven modernity? Would you take issue with a claim that many Marxist academics show some signs of mental illness? I would defend such a claim, though admit it alone didn`t explain much.<BR/><BR/>Here's part of what I hope to address: <BR/><BR/>"Why not recognize that given this lack of adaption, many Muslims in the West will suffer forms of mental illness...."<BR/><BR/>I think we have a misunderstanding of Islamic actors as those with a teleological moral. We see them act, and then justify the means as necessary for the good of the cause, thinking that in so speaking they are ends-driven.<BR/><BR/>I think not, for several reasons, one being that they appear to be deontologically focussed on orthopraxy. What mental illness? There is, to use Julien Jaynes' concept, seemingly a bi-cameral mind at work here. <BR/><BR/>The Muslim is potentially perfect in his own mind, his perfection deriving from his perfect religion, and his perfection being in conformity to his right ritual practice, his orthopraxy. But even as the worst Muslim in history, still he is incomparably better in all ways than a non-Muslim, by canonical Muslim measure. The problem of theodicy is solved even living in the corrupt Western Modernity by jihdadi orthopraxy. All personal evil is expunged from the being by right jihad in the name of Allah. It's our particular hubris to assume this as "mental illness." It's normal for the Muslim who is living concurrently in two conflicting emotional/intellectual worlds, i.e. in a bi-cameral mind.<BR/><BR/>He lives with secret guilt enjoying hedonistic Modernity, and then saves himself by jihadi orthopraxy. That's not teleological at all. Rather, it is a moral imperative, inconsequential, as it were. It's not "mental illness," it's perfectly normal to do the right thing, especially if it's also prudential. <BR/><BR/>At bet, one can have limited sympathy for the tormented and guilt ridden Muslim who likes life more than he loves death, but there comes a time when we have to accept that the man with a divided mind has to choose his true being and true moral. When he chooses his own salvation over what is to most a vile existence of hedonism, we can't just pretend it's "mental illness" writ purple and crimson. It's real and right. <BR/><BR/>Too bad for us, mired as we seem to be in a moral idiocy. Who is really crazy then?Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-58911351869144427952008-08-06T12:54:00.000-07:002008-08-06T12:54:00.000-07:00I agree with you Dag, I think, though I emphasize ...I agree with you Dag, I think, though I emphasize things a little differently.<BR/><BR/>Those of us who have suffered mental turmoil know that it is something real enough. We also may know it need not be permanent or recurring, despite what some of the shrinks teach (e.g. "a depressive person can never be completely free of depression forever", which is a lie, though I don't know how often or rarely the lie is proved). <BR/><BR/>The problem with the term "mental illness" is not that it doesn't point to something real, or to a relative diversity of conditions that share enough in common to allow for a general label, among others, but that it doesn't really explain in any detail what it is we are pointing to when we say "mental illness". Now of course the psychiatric profession has their involved explanations and categories, which we will find more and less convincing.<BR/><BR/>In any case, why not admit that there can be a recurring pattern to uprooted, lost, Muslims acting out in modern societies and also to allow that it is a form of "mental illness"? Why grant that Islam has yet satisfactorily adapted to modernity? Why not recognize that given this lack of adaption, many Muslims in the West will suffer forms of mental illness, just as millions of Canadians suffer depression and other conditions due, ultimately, to failures in their "religious" or spiritual sensibilities to come to terms with free market-driven modernity? Would you take issue with a claim that many Marxist academics show some signs of mental illness? I would defend such a claim, though admit it alone didn`t explain much. <BR/><BR/>It's when we think we have to make a choice between labels, as if the choice of word - "illness", "jihad", "Marxist" - were itself the key to understanding that we get into Gnostic foolery.<BR/><BR/>Mental illness refers to a pragmatic reality suffered by millions: an inability, for any sustained length of time, to live with any kind of serenity or peace of mind in a given social or cultural order, an inability to order one's own mind in relation to the shared and transcendent culture on which all minds depend. <BR/><BR/>In other words, we need to know why Muslims and many others in modern Western societies may be so out of sorts with the culture in which they live. Saying that many are mentally ill is not a scandal if it is the starting point of a discussion and not an attempt to close discussion off. So what we rightly protest is the effort of our authorities to say "nothing to see here folks, move along..." Bullshit! It concerns us all and is not to be hidden away for study only under the formulations of shrinks.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-62591997280178198372008-08-06T11:11:00.000-07:002008-08-06T11:11:00.000-07:00I'm not at all convinced of SJS as anything more t...I'm not at all convinced of SJS as anything more than a convenience of speech and thought. To my mind, it seems as automatically applied to aggressive Muslims as is "mental illness." How can one pick 50 cases of Muslims attacking, and each and every one of them is not anything other than "mental illness"? It borders on the Medieval peasant level of of critique. "Wind blows from the East? Must be devils." The nonsense tag of "mental illness" is so glaringly stupid that one cannnot suffer it silently. It's no better used among ours than the Marxist condemnation of "bourgeois tendencies." By "explaining all, it explains nothing but a solid refusal to confront the truth. It is,in my mind, nothing better than a press release from a politician who knows that a release in needed, no matter what it might say, so one might as well lie than commit the ultimate sin of releasing nothing at all. Whatever gibberish it is will give some committed ideologues the little they need to cling to, no matter how stupid it it. But this? This same idiot line over and over? "Mental illness"? It doesn't even work as a sop for ideologues.<BR/><BR/>Our intelligentsia lie to us, brazenly, too obviously, with no concern for the shamefulness of the lie. It shows complete contempt for the people. There is not even a pretense of credibility. They say X, and we, docile and supposedly stupid, sit smiling and accept the lies over and over. But no, we don't, and the intelligentsia have such seeming hatred of us they just don't care. Fifty cases above all "mental illness"? The intelligentsia don't even seem to care if we hate them for lying so obviously. They just keep on lying and not caring how offensive it is. Hubris? There's got to be some word in Greek that outperforms that. Beyond hubris. Olympian hubris.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-89207292762627335512008-08-06T10:26:00.000-07:002008-08-06T10:26:00.000-07:00It's not hard, after reading the Koran, to imagine...It's not hard, after reading the Koran, to imagine how someone could interpret it as a license to do violence to the unbeliever. The opposition between believer and unbeliever is made so frequently and heatedly in that book. Yet there is a kind of sacrificial violence that can plausibly lead to some kind of order (at least in the pre-modern world where sacrificial violence does work to build more or less orderly societies) and a kind that is inherently disorderly. <BR/><BR/>And when violence is inherently disorderly, can we see it as anything other than a failure of religion? Why should we see SJS as a realization of Islam, unless we see Islam as something destined to produce nutters instead of, say, disciplined Jihadis acting in the name of a realistic cause (and I would argue that today's Jihadis of the bin Laden type don't have a realistic cause but are inherently deluded by Utopian visions of a new Caliphate)?<BR/><BR/>So I'm not sure I can believe that there is some simple correlation between Islam and SJS. If "SJS" refers to a real, recurring phenomenon, and it seems to (Dag's list is impressive; though "SJS" remains, I think, one of those issues that reveals more of what we want to believe, religiously, than what we can know for sure) it would seem to me more a sign of the failure of a religion to hold its people together, in face of modern societies, than any kind of logical and clear-headed working out of a text. No one, whatever he believes, is simply guided through life like some robot living up, word for word, to some dogma. That's just not how religion ever works, even Islam. (The serious dogmatist is seriously deluded, which is not to deny that deluded people act out in all kinds of ways.) No, real religion must be interpreted, adapted, and serious religion seriously so.<BR/><BR/>What's more, who wants a religion that encourages one to lose control and to act in a way that will be quickly labelled "mentally ill", if not SJS? I mean, people look to religion to create order in their worlds and their lives. So could anyone follow a religion that told them to engage in mindless and fruitless "martyrdom" that almost everyone else, even Muslims, will call mental illness? Could anyone sane seriously believe that the Koran really wants him to run around Davie St. banging people on the head with a hammer?<BR/><BR/>So I think for me, "SJS" is a sign of very confused or "mentally ill" persons; but that is not to deny that what is likely behind a lot of it is a corroding religion that once created order in the mind (but no longer does it well) by imagining a world divided into believers and kaffirs. SJS is a sign of an Islam that has failed to adapt its followers to the modern world. It is a sign of an impossibility, of the frustration of all desires, of the nowhere man. So I don't see how we can say this is the way Islam is meant to be. The true believer cannot be a believer if he believes his religion is meant to failure.<BR/><BR/>In other words, I think it's a mistake to see the SJS phenomenon as demanding intepretation either as mental illness OR as exemplification of Koranic imperatives. It's to some degree a question of the SJS sufferer being both and neither. The mental torment and confusion I imagine does not fit neatly into categories because it is caused by a sense that one is losing reliable categories with which to understand the world; and hence, the impulsive, irrational, lonely desire to re-establish boundaries with acts of sacrificial violence. But since this kind of thing can't possibly work to accomplish anything, what is it really? How do we categorize mindless lashing out, however much we know the lashing out is a product of a failed culture failing to adapt to modernity? Most Muslims in Vancouver will disown the failure, for obvious reasons. SJS only reveals people who need seriously to adapt their religion to modernity by doing some intellectual and cultural heavy lifting, or to find a new and better religion/culture that can make them adaptable to modernity.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-21508712848073111422008-08-06T06:15:00.000-07:002008-08-06T06:15:00.000-07:00Good work, Dag, Excellent job.SJS is on the rise a...Good work, Dag, Excellent job.<BR/>SJS is on the rise and is REAL and becoming a daily danger to the public. Examine any Western country with muslim infiltrators. The stories are always the same, as is the rise in so-called honor killings. (Fox News actually did a special on that that aired over several days.) In my state we have a Conceal-and Carry permit for just such contingencies. I would not hesitate to blow out the brains of a would-be jihadi, neither would many I know.<BR/>SJS: allah says to kill infidels, so you do what you can. allah appreciates each effort, or so says the Terror manual, the qur'an.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-84870259518971116702008-08-06T00:17:00.000-07:002008-08-06T00:17:00.000-07:00When "mental illness" is an automatic excuse for e...When "mental illness" is an automatic excuse for each and seemingly every lunatic, moon-driven violent mood disorder, and it's applied automatically to Muslims rather than to anything else, no matter what else it could be, then we live a blatant, public, obvious lie. There's a danger in that, if only this: that people will get sick of it and not care a damn for anything at all, devolving into cynicism and violence and nihilism. <BR/><BR/>The harms done to the individual are bad enough, but the roughshod rape of sense and decency we endure are maddening beyond measure. The genuine outrage of all of this lying by the dhimmi elitists is that there are certainly Muslims who have no part in the outrages of the few, and who will give a damn?<BR/><BR/>No, I'm not really almost baffled at all. I'm disgusted by the lies.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.com