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Knowing your enemy

By Laury Silvers - Posted on August 5th, 2006
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I get daily e-mail notifications from the rag "Daily Muslims."  It is the NY Post for Muslims.  You know how the Post is.  There are some decent articles in there, there are some valid views, but in the end it is irredeemably infected with hatred, racism, and blind paranoia.  Everytime I go to delete my e-mail subscription of Daily Muslims, I stop.  I say to myself, you have to know the enemy in your community.  The ideas expressed in it terrify me.  These ideas are my enemy.  Maybe you all might want to take a look at it if you haven't seen it already.

Haha! They have Yvonne
Submitted by Natalia on Sat, 2006-08-05 18:40.

Haha! They have Yvonne Ridley as a columnist! Ha ha ha!

I didn't actually see anything too inflammatory though, I just browsed. 

Oh, this is what the bitch
Submitted by Natalia on Sat, 2006-08-05 18:45.

Oh, this is what the bitch said about Russians,

"I know that the need for visas were set aside when I lived in the tiny state which sticks out of the gut of Saudi Arabia. As a result we had every sort of mafia, pimp, drug-dealer and prostitute plying their trade across Doha within weeks."

Fucking hypocrite. Blah blah, "I am for women's empowerment." Blah blah, "as long as these women don't belong to a country whose foreign policy I don't agree with."

Er, Natalia: I do agree that
Submitted by Fashion Mujahid on Sat, 2006-08-05 20:09.

Er, Natalia:
I do agree that Yvonne Ridley is a nasty piece of work, but could you refrain from the obscenities, please? I know it's difficult when dealing with... persons... like her, but it's not the done thing.
Her latest piece nauseated me, and I'm not exaggerating.

Yeah, she is awful. But she
Submitted by Laury Silvers on Sat, 2006-08-05 20:17.

Yeah, she is awful. But she knows she is awful. She plays it. You know what tipped me over the edge recently? A piece of how Mel "of the Jesus Snuff Film" Gibson got it right on the Jews. Like I said, the New York Post.

OK, it's her columns that
Submitted by Fashion Mujahid on Sat, 2006-08-05 20:44.

OK, it's her columns that should have an X rating. If I had to choose whether kids should have access to nude pics, or her column, I'd happily give them the pics. Part of me wishes the Taliban hadn't been so nice to Herself.
Ooh, an idea!
Instead of using physical force to subdue the fighting, the UN could threaten to have Ridley's columns read aloud, over a PA system throughout Israel and Lebanon until the fighting stops. Mass vomiting would ensue, but I bet they'd stop fighting.

Well Laury, I browsed the
Submitted by Muslim Hedonist on Sun, 2006-08-06 00:36.

Well Laury, I browsed the site, and didn't find anything too shocking. Just in-your-face sexism, anti-Semitism (of course), and the usual myopic stuff. Nothing I haven't seen ad nauseam in the last 23 years.

This sort of thing is just a reflection of some of the sorts of people who are being drawn to Islam nowadays in North America. Let's face it, Islam does have a reputation for being anti-modern, sexist, anti-Semitic, and theologically shallow. So how is it surprising that some North Americans who are troubled by certain aspects of modernity would be drawn to Islam, and that if they convert, they would continue to express such unfortunate beliefs?

Let's face it, Islam does
Submitted by center (not verified) on Sun, 2006-08-06 00:43.

Let's face it, Islam does have a reputation for being anti-modern, sexist, anti-Semitic, and theologically shallow.mh

you are not helping by spewing such incorrect(?) feed into the anti-muslim mill.

center, I'm happy for you if
Submitted by Omar Gatto on Sun, 2006-08-06 01:21.

center, I'm happy for you if you don't see that we have problems; I remember a time in my path when unawareness of our faults was certainly blissful. However, the anti-Muslim mill exists; sweeping our social and cultural faults under the rug only gives the problems time to fester and will make it difficult, if not impossible to fix some of them in the future. Yesteryear, it was the Byzantines, then the Austrians, then the Rajputs, and today its Ann Coulter. Surely, tomorrow there will be yet another reason to not address our problems. What will help tremendously is for us to come together, analyze our problems, diagnose them, and start proposing solutions. Why keep running from the fire, when we can put it out by starving it of fuel? Ya know?

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

Center, I've encountered
Submitted by Muslim Hedonist on Sun, 2006-08-06 02:01.

Center, I've encountered more than a few openly anti-Semitic (white) Western converts. I often meet with absurdly sexist views from converts, dressed up as "Islam". It's not unusual to hear converts say that they found Islam attractive because (according to them) it has simple, clear, straightforward answers to absolutely everything.

You mean it doesn't?!
Submitted by Willow on Sun, 2006-08-06 02:26.

You mean it doesn't?! But...but...

Center, I think it's helpful to distinguish between the religion and its implementation, reputation, and current following. Meshing all these different aspects into one gumball will just drive you nuts.

Wow.. yeah, that's pretty
Submitted by Gideon (not verified) on Sun, 2006-08-06 02:43.

Wow.. yeah, that's pretty bad. I see what you're saying, however, there are nuggets amidst the rubbish. I made a post about this myself recently.

Just a bit of it, copied for convenience:
"I have to try to look for wisdom and places for dialog among people who may be advocating a world view I think of as hateful and terribly destructive. And they see the same of me. The difference, I think, comes in that I am seeing a dialog and they seek only my conversion."

It's a tricky thing. And it's exactly that, and I even used the term "enemy" myself. I read a lot of religious news every day, and in particular, some of the more Orthodox Jewish sites (not all, obviously) that can be very distressing to any semblance of reason I see in the world.

We are in a world filled with mad men. I wish it was not so, but we are. I think all we can do is try to keep the dialogue going, hoping they eventually stop and listen.

Hey Gideon, The ideas are
Submitted by Laury Silvers on Sun, 2006-08-06 09:27.

Hey Gideon,

The ideas are my enemies not the people.

You are absolutely right about keeping the dialogue open. Dialogue is give and take. But not everything. Some ethical matters I will not budge on. Those are the matters that are my enemies. That leaves plenty of room to talk.

Maybe Jawad Anwar will read this site and see these posts and wonder at his choice to be the New York Post of Muslim dailies. I've read his op-eds and it is sincerely hard for me to grasp why he publishes such sexist, racist, hateful claptrap.

I remember there was a point after 9/11 when some editors of Arab newspapers posted op-eds acknowledging that their yellow journalism had played a part in creating the violent environments around them. When will Anwar sort that out?

Peace

I wrote an obscenity-free
Submitted by Natalia on Sun, 2006-08-06 12:50.

I wrote an obscenity-free e-mail to the editors about Ridley's racism, but I doubt it will catch their eye.

As for the "done thing," I
Submitted by Natalia on Sun, 2006-08-06 12:52.

As for the "done thing," I firmly believe that there are people in this world who understand only this kind of language. Unfortunately, Arabic is much more creative when it comes to this sort of thing.

Natalia- Is it racism
Submitted by ginanrauf (not verified) on Sun, 2006-08-06 14:05.

Natalia- Is it racism mostly
against Slavs, Russians mixed with anti-Semitism? what's her problem?

Haha, Ridley wrote me back!
Submitted by Natalia on Mon, 2006-08-07 08:20.

Haha, Ridley wrote me back! She's full of it.

The tragedy is compounded
Submitted by SC&A (not verified) on Mon, 2006-08-07 08:38.

The tragedy is compounded with the reality that dysfunctional Arab regimes have created dysfunctional Arab socities.

I'm more sanguine, in a way, because in fact, the Arab world has no idea what a healthy and functioning society looks like.

On the other hand, Arabs (ansd Muslims) in this country and other western democracies do know what a healthy society looks like. To continue to support the dysfunction and the bigotry is an outrage- and a sad testimony to Islamic values that have been corrupted and coopted by tyrannical regimes.

Thanks for sharing your
Submitted by GustavoMustafa on Mon, 2006-08-07 09:56.

Thanks for sharing your opinions troll, but this is not Robert Spencer's JihadWatch!

Can you post your letter and
Submitted by Laury Silvers on Mon, 2006-08-07 11:05.

Can you post your letter and Ridley's response? You still have contributor/author priviledges on the site.

*cough* The original e-mail
Submitted by Natalia on Mon, 2006-08-07 23:44.

*cough*

The original e-mail was lost to cyberspace. So there's no context anymore. :(

Ridley used to write for the
Submitted by thabet_ (not verified) on Wed, 2006-08-09 05:07.

Ridley used to write for the Daily Mail, a middle-England, populist, right-wing tabloid. That explains a few things