The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt - By Oriana Fallaci.

[kojikun]

and ofcourse you just happened to forget that european muslims are actively reforming and dissociating themselves from such things..

[Darth Wong]

It's about culture, not religion. That's why the chador and the burqa are disturbing signs. They're clothing of repression.

Hmmmm, in this thread, you said:

To be honest I think you should wear appropriately decent clothing in public. Private property is different - If it's your's, do whatever you want there, and if it's someone else's, whatever the owner lets you - But in public there should be standards of decency common to society and especially considering there may be young children about.

And when this attitude was equated to that of Islam, you said:

Oh, no doubt I could get along well with some conservative Islamic clerics. Inherently we share a similiar worldview on some things, despite vastly different conceptualizations on others - Just, really, not on this one. The clothing of the women in the Islamic world enforces a psychological concept of servitude; here, I merely desire both genders to avoid overt displays which would be... Crass.

Very finely split hairs there. In your subjective opinion, the burqha is a symbol of servitude, but forcing women to dress in a manner that you think is "decent" is completely fair.

Just like the Swastika is banned in Germany, so should be the chador and the burqa - They're all symbols of the same sort of repressive hate, of cultures that engage in a sort of brutality which is intolerable to us.

I could say the same thing about floor-length dresses and the traditional clothing of the Amish. Neither is the clothing of womens' equality.

Those women may wear it voluntarily but only because they are mired in a culture of oppression.

See above.

Germany willingly executed Hitler's slaughter, for that matter - Some Jews served in the Wehrmacht, never getting discovered and yet never doing anything, the entire time.

Jews hiding in plain sight is smart, and germans aiding in Hitler's slaughter were not as reluctant as you would make it seem. A lot of Germans went along wholeheartedly with it because they shared his feelings.

The culture of the Mid-East is a 7th century culture, kept that way thanks to the Sheriat Law.

Go visit any house of fundies in America to see the same thing.

If Islam wants to survive in the modern world it must abandon the Sheriat Law. Otherwise Islam and the modern world will fight and either Islam will win and destroy the modern world or else we'll win and rip the Sheriat basis for this oppressive culture out of Islam.

Replace "Islam" with "Christian" and "Sheriat" with "Old Testament" and the logic is the same.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Hmmmm, in this thread, you said:

To be honest I think you should wear appropriately decent clothing in public. Private property is different - If it's your's, do whatever you want there, and if it's someone else's, whatever the owner lets you - But in public there should be standards of decency common to society and especially considering there may be young children about.

And when this attitude was equated to that of Islam, you said:

Oh, no doubt I could get along well with some conservative Islamic clerics. Inherently we share a similiar worldview on some things, despite vastly different conceptualizations on others - Just, really, not on this one. The clothing of the women in the Islamic world enforces a psychological concept of servitude; here, I merely desire both genders to avoid overt displays which would be... Crass.

Very finely split hairs there. In your subjective opinion, the burqha is a symbol of servitude, but forcing women to dress in a manner that you think is "decent" is completely fair.

Yes, I did. Some clothing is necessary, one might reasonably argue, to prevent extremes of behaviour in tightly packed urban areas. To require an excession beyond this for certain parts of the populace is to direct the societal morals towards repression.

I could say the same thing about floor-length dresses and the traditional clothing of the Amish. Neither is the clothing of womens' equality.

I'd say it depends on the type. Western European clothing for women was pretty brutal during the middle ages, one cannot deny. Improvements were seen by the Victorian Era - If corsets were just stupid. (Men, however, sometimes wore them as well, and lower class women often did not.)

Jews hiding in plain sight is smart, and germans aiding in Hitler's slaughter were not as reluctant as you would make it seem. A lot of Germans went along wholeheartedly with it because they shared his feelings.

My apologies; I thought I was imply exactly that, primarily because I do agree with that - The Germans went along wholeheartedly with Hitler. It was because their culture had created that situation, however.

The culture of the Mid-East is a 7th century culture, kept that way thanks to the Sheriat Law.

Go visit any house of fundies in America to see the same thing.

I have friends and acquaintances whom you'd consider to be fundies and I can only name one who fits into the category you'd like to think of when defining as "any". For the most part they genuinely believe that freedom of religion is necessary in a society, and even mandated by God. That's courtesy of the Age of Enlightenment providing them sense the hard way. We have to do the same thing to Islam now.

Replace "Islam" with "Christian" and "Sheriat" with "Old Testament" and the logic is the same.

Oh, granted - But it already happened!

[Warspite]

(Snip revivalistic history lesson)

(Snip rant... totally unnecessary.)


They are also in Europe.

(Oh, boy, here we go...)


They are in Paris where the mellifluous Jacques Chirac does not give a damn for peace but plans to satisfy his vanity with the Nobel Peace Prize.

(We all know, Paris is the most important city of Europe, and Chirac it's leader.)

Where there is no wish to remove Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein means the oil that the French companies pump from Iraqi wells.

(And the US would forfeit this prize, huh? In the name of Freedom, they would return the wells to the Iraqui people, to be exploited by Iraqui owned corporations, right?)

And where (forgetting a little flaw named Petain) France chases its Napoleonic desire to dominate the European Union, to establish its hegemony over it.

(Why, we all want to speak French! I think Germany would have something to say about it... Let's not forget that Napoleonic dreams died a a few centuries ago. Since, then France has most of the times been the first to suffer...)

They are in Berlin, where the party of the mediocre Gerhard Schröder won the elections by comparing Mr. Bush to Hitler, where American flags are soiled with the swastika, and where, in the dream of playing the masters again, Germans go arm-in-arm with the French.

(At least Schroder is better then some extreme right-wing political figure, no? And why shouldn't he be more concerned with it's own people? If the boot fits...
Why is this rant about a France-Germany axis? He's she jealous of the power of both countries? Does she whish Italy should be on a equal footing as these two nations? Does she live in the same century as we do?)

They are in Rome where the communists left by the door and re-entered through the window like the birds of the Hitchcock movie. And where, pestering the world with his ecumenism, his pietism, his Thirdworldism, Pope Wojtyla receives Tariq Aziz as a dove or a martyr who is about to be eaten by lions. (Then he sends him to Assisi where the friars escort him to the tomb of St. Francis.)

(No comments... Really, no comments, I don't have the faintest idea what she's talking about.)

In the other European countries, it is more or less the same.

(Oh, yes, it's so good to generalize... )

In Europe your enemies are everywhere, Mr. Bush. What you quietly call "differences of opinion" are in reality pure hate. Because in Europe pacifism is synonymous with anti-Americanism, sir, and accompanied by the most sinister revival of anti-Semitism the anti-Americanism triumphs as much as in the Islamic world.

(???? Just because people don't support US policy, doesn't mean they're against the US.
We just want a more clear justification for war, instead of loosely supported evidence.
Pacifism would be synonimous of anti-US sentiment, if the US went more imperialistic (than already is...). Perhaps, because we have suffered so much from war, we can understand war better, but I guess she forgot that. (And before anyone jumps on this, I mean the civillian population.)

Haven't your ambassadors informed you? Europe is no longer Europe.

(Of course not, Europe is now the European Union, a colection of 15 countries, working towards a commom goal... And we're expanding our business!)

It is a province of Islam, as Spain and Portugal were at the time of the Moors.

(Generalization, besides being a poor comparasion, since the culture-rich Moors introduced a plethora of new technologies. (Does she live in the same planet as the rest of us?) And we're walking, and we're walking...)

It hosts almost 16 million Muslim immigrants and teems with mullahs, imams, mosques, burqas, chadors. It lodges thousands of Islamic terrorists whom governments don't know how to identify and control. People are afraid, and in waving the flag of pacifism--pacifism synonymous with anti-Americanism--they feel protected.

(Yes, we're terrified by the 16 million, since each and everyone is a terrorist, whose sole purpose is to tople 15 governments and create the Islamic European Union.
We can't even leave our houses and go to work, that's why we're being invaded by Eastern Europeans, they do all the work for us, and we can safely spend the rest of our days in safety.
Last I heard, Europe is still a free place, people can do whatever they want (inside the law, of course) and freedom of religion is respected, if we start with the Muslims, why not the Jews? They are used to it, after all...)

Besides, Europe does not care for the 221,484 Americans who died for her in the Second World War. Rather than gratitude, their cemeteries give rise to resentment.

(Anyone who has read History knows, and respects, the American contribute to both WW's. (Once again, does she live on this planet?)... Move along people, nothing to see here.)


(Snip attack against Mr. Berlusconni)
(Snip attack against Mr. Tony Blair)


All wars, even just ones, are death and destruction and atrocities and tears.

(Finally, something good to come out of all this rant.)


And this is not a liberation war, a war like the Second World War.
(And why not? Aren't the Kurdish people a good enough reason? Isn't gassing people worth it?)

(By the way: neither is it an "oil war," as the pacifists who never yell against Saddam or bin Laden maintain in their rallies. Americans do not need Iraqi oil.)

(Of course, the American Industry can live with the Alaskan, Mexican Gulf and North Sea oil, only. Nobody is saying the US is the prime importer of Persian Gulf oil, noooo, far from it. )

It is a political war.

(Another good one to come out of this.)


(Snip long winded rant.)

Frankly, nothing interesting to come out of this, that hasn't already been adressed on other ocasions. Just one more person raving madly against war.

BTW:
Europe is NOT under threat of Islamism fundamentalism.
Pursecuting muslims, closing their places of worhsip, and regulating their costumes, is going against EVERY law found on ANY country of Europe.

PS: Sorry to come in so late on this thread.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Warspite, Oriana Fallaci is pro-war. I admit it is like a rant, but everyone else seemed to understand this.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Warspite, Oriana Fallaci is pro-war. I admit it is like a rant, but everyone else seemed to understand this.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Warspite, Oriana Fallaci is pro-war. I admit it is like a rant, but everyone else seemed to understand this.

[Warspite]

Warspite, Oriana Fallaci is pro-war. I admit it is like a rant, but everyone else seemed to understand this.

I wasn't stating anything about her position for/against war. I'm claiming she's using cultural excuses (of an endagered Europe) for war, when that is hardly the case.


*Edit* Corrected spelling mistake.