What does Zarqawi do? In "retaliation" for the Abu Ghraib imagery, he = stages a singularly nauseating "execution" of a private American citizen who = has been wandering around Iraq. The probable effect is to offer many = Americans an exit from their own moral horror.=20
Mind you, Zarqawi's ghouls in this video don't merely "behead" Berg, as = most accounts indicate. "Beheading" suggests a quick severing and a quick = death. What Zarqawi and his friends do is butcher Berg-there's no other word = for it. They don't use a sword or an axe; they use a knife. You can hear Nicholas Berg screaming as Zarqawi's gang hacks at his neck and then = pulls at his head until it comes off his body. They then hold his bleeding = head in front of the camera. The tape is appalling not only for its utter bloodthirstiness, but also for the total absence of simple human = empathy. Elemental empathy-for example, an unwillingness to rip a victim's head = from his body-is a primary measure of civilization. (The shame Americans felt = at the Abu Ghraib images is, after all, rooted in such empathy.) Even in = the dehumanizing context of warfare, which strains the empathy of all its participants, this is savagery.
</q>
Judging by accounts I have read, Berg was not just beheaded; it seems to = me that he was halalled. His throat was ritually cut and he was slaughtered = in the manner of an animal. (They could quite easily have shot him = instead.)
Why? I don't know if it is the same elsewhere, but in SA much of the = media has favoured the pictures from Abu Ghraib that featured a woman, one Englund, humiliating prisoners, including leading a naked man around on = a lead like a dog, and jeering at male genitalia. The fact that she is a woman is crucial I think. In an Islamic society this could be regarded = as going well beyond abuse and could be regarded as actual blasphemy.
So, what we perceive as savagery may have been perceived a religious necessity according another world-view.=20
Please note that this is not an attempt at justification of this deed, = just an attempt to understand it. I would be interested if someone could = point me to a translation of the videotape.
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #2 on: 2004-05-12 22:18:16 »
[rhinoceros] Yes, the public decapitation of Nick Berg was a deeply disturbing action. CNN's account does not resolve all the mysteries. We hear of a man roaming Iraq alone for 3 months, looking for rebuilding contracts while being discouraged by the US authorities, then arrested by the Iraqi quisling police and left with them by the US authorities, then released, then hitting the road againg until his fatal encounter...
And then we have this disturbing video which was released by this unnamed site "with links to Al Qaeda", and we see the hooded men and we hear that al-Zarqawi -- another ex "freedom fighter" against the Russians in Afghanistan -- claimed responsibility for the atrocity, except some say that it was not al-Zarqawi's voice, others say that Al-Zarqawi is "bigger" than Bin Laden, and still others say that he is a rival of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. And the Baghdad street, people who never happened to pass the psychological threshhold by cutting someone's throat, express shame and other very familiar feelings.
The undisputed fact is the decapitation with all its gory details and its videotaping. It was not as impersonal as dropping a bomb from a plane, or placing a bomb in a disco, or even blowing up oneself while among the enemies. We see a face and a real person who is trying to do an ordinary tech job, and there is the video of a deliberate act of decapitation, something which only someone who has gone over the edge can do. (Or not? I'll come back to this later.)
[Blunderov] I have a horror of executions and the execution of Berg was an appalling act.
[rhinoceros] Yes, it seems hard to digest. I just said that someone must have gone over the edge but then again there have always been professional executioners hired by the state, and I guess these people have families and friends and they don't have an urge to kill people on the street. Probably they shut down their mechanism of empathy by making the killing a kind of "ritual".
<q> What does Zarqawi do? In "retaliation" for the Abu Ghraib imagery, he stages a singularly nauseating "execution" of a private American citizen who has been wandering around Iraq. The probable effect is to offer many Americans an exit from their own moral horror.
[rhinoceros] True. Another probable effect is to make Iraqi people feel that they do not stand on high ground any more. Some animals put up quite a fight to chase their enemy out of their territory but their resolution is gone when they realize that they have trespassed in the enemy's territory, as if they sense that they are not standing on moral high ground any more. But this effect can only work if the Iraqis have to identify themselves with this atrocity.
[reason.com article] Mind you, Zarqawi's ghouls in this video don't merely "behead" Berg, as most accounts indicate. "Beheading" suggests a quick severing and a quick death. What Zarqawi and his friends do is butcher Berg-there's no other word for it. They don't use a sword or an axe; they use a knife. You can hear Nicholas Berg screaming as Zarqawi's gang hacks at his neck and then pulls at his head until it comes off his body. They then hold his bleeding head in front of the camera. The tape is appalling not only for its utter bloodthirstiness, but also for the total absence of simple human empathy.
Elemental empathy-for example, an unwillingness to rip a victim's head from his body-is a primary measure of civilization. (The shame Americans felt at the Abu Ghraib images is, after all, rooted in such empathy.) Even in the dehumanizing context of warfare, which strains the empathy of all its participants, this is savagery. </q>
[rhinoceros] Apparently, whoever did that did not see Berg as human at that instance and at the same time they had sufficient understanding of empathy to think that others would be appalled by the sight.
[Blunderov] Judging by accounts I have read, Berg was not just beheaded; it seems to me that he was halalled. His throat was ritually cut and he was slaughtered in the manner of an animal. (They could quite easily have shot him instead.)
[rhinoceros] My "theory" about professional excutioners may have something to do with this; that is, that they see their work as a ritual, a sequence of moves disjoint from human interaction.
[Blunderov] Why? I don't know if it is the same elsewhere, but in SA much of the media has favoured the pictures from Abu Ghraib that featured a woman, one Englund, humiliating prisoners, including leading a naked man around on a lead like a dog, and jeering at male genitalia.
[rhinoceros] I think it was the same everywhere. The media wouldn't let go of something containing (a) women are (b) the unusual (see man bites dog).
[Blunderov] The fact that she is a woman is crucial I think. In an Islamic society this could be regarded as going well beyond abuse and could be regarded as actual blasphemy. So, what we perceive as savagery may have been perceived a religious necessity according another world-view.
[rhinoceros] Maybe this is more true in Iraq than what it would have been in, say, Sweden, but I wouldn't call Iraq an Islamic society... just yet. Millions of those people were bombed out of their living rooms while watching TV.
[Blunderov] Please note that this is not an attempt at justification of this deed, just an attempt to understand it. I would be interested if someone could point me to a translation of the videotape.
[rhinoceros] Ditto. For the time being, I found the following article very interesting. It refers to the Stanford Prison Experiment and another newer prison experiment in the light of the current news. Especially see the parts about power vacuum and leadership.
============================
Why not everyone is a torturer by Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam, Psychologists May 10, 2004
So groups of people in positions of unaccountable power naturally resort to violence, do they? Not according to research conducted in a BBC experiment.
The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison showing Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners make us recoil and lead us to distance ourselves from their horror and brutality. Surely those who commit such acts are not like us? Surely the perpetrators must be twisted or disturbed in some way? They must be monsters. We ourselves would never condone or contribute to such events.
Sadly, 50 years of social psychological research indicates that such comforting thoughts are deluded. A series of major studies have shown that even well-adjusted people, when divided into groups and placed in competition against each other, can become abusive and violent.
OTHER RESEARCH Stanley Milgram at Yale instructed experimenters to give electric shocks to another They did so, despite person's cries of pain
Most notoriously, the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo and colleagues, seemingly showed that young students who were assigned to the role of guard quickly became sadistically abusive to the students assigned to the role of prisoners.
Combined with lessons from history, the disturbing implication of such research is that evil is not the preserve of a small minority of exceptional individuals. We all have the capacity to behave in evil ways. This idea was famously developed by Hannah Arendt whose observations of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, led her to remark that what was most frightening was just how mild and ordinary he looked. His evil was disarmingly banal.
In order to explain events in Iraq, one might go further and conclude that the torturers were victims of circumstances, that they lost their moral compass in the group and did things they would normally abhor. Indeed, using Zimbardo's findings as evidence, this is precisely what some people do conclude. But this is bad psychology and it is bad ethics.
It is bad psychology because it suggests we can explain human behaviour without needing to scrutinize the wider culture in which it is located. It is bad ethics because it absolves everyone from any responsibility for events - the perpetrators, ourselves as constituents of the wider society, and the leaders of that society.
In the situation of Abu Ghraib, some reports have indicated that the guards were following orders from intelligence officers and interrogators in order to soften up the prisoners for interrogation.
If that is true, then clearly the culture in which these soldiers were immersed was one in which they were encouraged to see and treat Iraqis as subhuman. Other army units almost certainly had a very different culture and this provides a second explanation of why some people in some units may have tortured, but others did not.
Grotesque fun
Perhaps the best evidence that such factors were at play is the fact that the pictures were taken at all. Reminiscent of the postcards that lynch mobs circulated to advertise their activities, the torture was done proudly and with a grotesque sense of fun.
Those in the photos wanted others to know what they had done, presumably believing that the audience would approve. This sense of approval is very important, since there is ample evidence that people are more likely to act on any inclinations to behave in obnoxious ways when they sense - correctly or incorrectly - that they have broader support.
So where did the soldiers in Iraq get that sense from? This takes us to a critical influence on group behaviour: leadership. In the studies, leadership - the way in which experimenters either overtly or tacitly endorsed particular forms of action - was crucial to the way participants behaved.
Many guards in our experiment did not wish to act - or be seen to act - as bullies or oppressors Thus one reason why the guards in our own research for the BBC did not behave as brutally as those in the Stanford study, was that we did not instruct them to behave in this way.
Zimbardo, in contrast, told his participants: "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me - and they'll have no privacy.... In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness".
Officers' messages
In light of this point it is interesting to ask what messages were being provided by fellow and, more critically, senior officers in the units where torture took place? Did those who didn't approve fail to speak out for fear of being seen as weak or disloyal? Did senior officers who knew what was going on turn a blind eye or else simply file away reports of misbehaviour?
All these things happened after the My Lai massacre, and in many ways the responses to an atrocity tell us most about how it can happen in the first place. They tell us how murderers and torturers can begin to believe that they will not be held to account for what they do, or even that their actions are something praiseworthy. The more they perceive that torture has the thumbs up, the more they will give it a thumbs up themselves.
So how do we prevent these kinds of episodes? One answer is to ensure that people are always made aware of their other moral commitments and their accountability to others. Whatever the pressures within their military group, their ties to others must never be broken. Total and secret institutions, where people are isolated from contact with all others are breeding grounds for atrocity. Similarly, there are great dangers in contracting out security functions to private contractors which lack fully developed structures of public accountability.
Power vacuum
Another answer is to look at the culture of our institutions and the role of leaders in framing that culture. Bad leadership can permit torture in two ways. Sometimes leaders can actively promote oppressive values. This is akin to what happened in Zimbardo's study and may be the case in certain military intelligence units. But sometimes leaders can simply fail to promote anything and hence create a vacuum of power.
'Inmates' in The Experiment in their cells Our own findings indicated that where such a vacuum exists, people are more likely to accept any clear line of action which is vigorously proposed. Often, then, tyranny follows from powerlessness rather than power. In either case, the failure of leaders to champion clear humane and democratic values is part of the problem.
But it is not enough to consider leadership in the military. One must look more widely at the messages and the values provided in the community at large. That means that we must address the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in our society. A culture where we have got used to pictures of Iraqi prisoners semi-naked, chained and humiliated can create a climate in which torturers see themselves as heroes rather than villains.
Again, for such a culture to thrive it is not necessary for everyone to embrace such sentiments, it is sufficient simply for those who would oppose them to feel muted and out-of-step with societal norms.
Leaders' language
And we must also look at political leadership. When administration officials talk about cleaning out "rats' nests" of Iraqi dissidents, it likens Iraqis to vermin. Note, for example, that just before the Rwandan genocide, Hutu extremists started referring to Tutsi's as "cockroaches".
Such use of language again creates a climate in which perpetrators of atrocity can maintain the illusion that they are nobly doing what others know must be done. The torturers in Iraq may or may not have been following direct orders from their leaders, but they were almost certainly allowed to feel that they were behaving as good followers.
So if we want to understand why torture occurs, it is important to consider the psychology of individuals, of groups, and of society. Groups do indeed affect the behaviour of individuals and can lead them to do things they never anticipated. But how any given group affects our behaviour depends upon the norms and values of that specific group.
Evil can become banal, but so can humanism. The choice is not denied to us by human nature but rests in our own hands. Hence, we need a psychological analysis that addresses the values and beliefs that we, our institutions, and our leaders promote. These create the conditions in which would-be torturers feel either emboldened or unable to act.
We need an analysis that makes us accept rather than avoid our responsibilities. Above all, we need a psychology which does not distance us from torture but which requires us to look closely at the ways in which we and those who lead us are implicated in a society which makes barbarity possible.
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #5 on: 2004-05-13 01:15:30 »
....i heard a radio talk-show today that stated that US govt officials were in the process of looking over all the rest of the american prison abuse photos which were far too nasty to make in on the air. it was supposedly leaked to him that they included photos of sodomy and rape...male on male(us soldier raping iraqi) and male on female...among other things. we'll wait to see if these claims come true, but one cant help but wonder why the savage beheading was televised so brazenly. wouldnt they have assumed it would fuel the fires that much more? i saw the whole thing on an internet site www.conjuctionjunction.com - these people seem to have a thing with cutting things off. i used to have another vid of pakistanis(?) cutting off the hands and one foot of a convicted theif and helping him hop into the back of a truck...quite casual in their activities really.
btw...im heading to nome, alaska on june 20th - king crab season i guess. why not, eh?
Did you ever wonder what kind of person wants to be a public executioner-the prison employee who carries out the death sentence? Ivan Solotaroff wanted to know. He talked to several of them and wrote about their reasons in The Last Face You'll Ever See (Harper Collins, 2001). In the 1960s, Stanley Milgrim conducted a now-famous laboratory experiment in order to study obedience. After recruiting male volunteers, he set up a task in which someone called a "teacher" would administer electric shocks to a "learner" in order, ostensibly, to help them learn a list of words. When a "learner" missed a word, the "teacher" would administer an electric shock. An experimenter was in the booth with the "teacher," and would encourage the "teacher" to push the volt-delivering button when the "teacher" expressed reluctance. In fact, the experimenters would tell the "teachers" that they had no choice but to deliver the shocks.
In Milgrim's experiment, no shocks were actually delivered. The "learners" were confederates of the experimenter. But the "teachers" thought that they were delivering shocks. And more than 65 % of the teachers were willing to administer the maximum voltage, in spite of the cries of pain and screams for mercy.
The death penalty, the ultimate form of punishment for crimes, is alive and well in the United States today. Even though it is under attack on several fronts for the unfairness in its administration and its effect (virtually all, with the noted exception of Timothy McVeigh, who receive the death penalty were poor and had poorly performing court-appointed attorneys who gave their clients an inadequate defense), 65 % of the country (like 65 % of Migram's "teachers") believe in the death penalty.
Whether or not they would want to be the person who pushes the button (in states where electrocution is used) or inserting the lethal cocktail into the arm of the condemned person (in most states, lethal injection is the preferred form of execution), is another matter. But some people are willing-some gleeful-to be the executioner.
Author Ivan Solotaroff, who has studied many aspects of executions, decided to study the executioner. In The Last Face You'll Ever See, he does not delve into the controversy of whether the death penalty is right or wrong. He simply wants to know why individual executioners want the job.
He found several different motives. Some say that they do it because they like the machinery of death, especially the electric chair. They take pride in their work and are disturbed when the machine malfunctions and they must make another effort to end a prisoner's life. These people deny have any emotional attachment to the death process either way-to them, they are just operating a machine. Robert Elliott, an executioner at Sing Sing, has assisted in killing, or killed, more than 500 people. He admits to liking the power that is associated with the chair and he says he is doing no more than what society has asked him to do.
Thomas Berry Bruce, an executioner for the state of Mississippi, is a perfectionist. He does not like to see his victims burned; he wants them to "look good" when they are buried. But he is also distanced from the process. It may come as a surprise to many Americans that when the coroner fills out the death certificate of an executed person, the cause of death is listed as "homicide." Bruce, whose wife did not know for many years that he was an executioner (she thought he marketed fruit and vegetables to grocery stores) <!>( Bl.), says that the term "homicide" has no more emotional significance to him than the words "pesticide" or "herbicide."
Readers will likely--and probably rightly-suggest that Elliot and Bruce are employing the defense mechanisms of denial and rationalization and engaging in emotional distancing. These men would deny any such psychological processes.
But another Mississippi executioner, Donald Hocutt, does not particularly enjoy his work. He wishes that society would execute people in public, as was long the custom. He says the secrecy of it makes him feel like it is "dirty." <!>(Bl.) Hocutt's comments suggest that he feels like society's "shame" of the execution process (his explanation for why it is not carried out in public) is transferred to him.
Solotaroff also interviewed condemned men. Inmates at Louisiana's Angola State Prison came up with a mythical-religious explanation of the execution process, in which the executioner is merely doing what society wishes it could do-kill the condemned man himself. They said that American society wants the death penalty because it wants to kill undesirable people. The executioner kills in their names. The inmates said that treating the prisoner kindly on his last day and preparing whatever foods he wants for a last meal is like, in Biblical terms, fattening the sacrificial animal for slaughter. <!>(Bl.)
It appears that these condemned men have engaged in psychological distancing from and rationalization about the process in which they will be victims. By also seeing themselves as players in a larger drama, they also enhance their role in the process, much as Robert Elliott does, who see himself as carrying out the will of the state. The prisoners see themselves as being sacrificed in the name of the state.
Solotaroff interviewed only one executioner who gave up the job. Don Cabana, also from Mississippi, quit after it took 15 minutes for one man to die from death by lethal injection. Now he travels around the country speaking out against the death penalty.
Examination of the personality characteristics of participants in Milgram's experiments did not indicate that they were maladjusted antisocial individuals. They were otherwise decent people who were willing to engage in hurtful behavior in order to obey authority. People who like to identify with authority are often said to have the personality trait of authoritarianism. People in law enforcement and corrections typically score high on personality scales that assess authoritarianism. The executioners may also be internalizing authoritarianism. Except for Cabana, they were happy to be identified with the execution process, in which society carries out the ultimate power against one of its citizens.
Psychology studies human behavior and thinking within social and political contexts. And even though the subject matter is grim, psychology students reading The Last Face You'll Ever See can learn not just about the men who carry out executions, but something about themselves as well. Individual responses to the men's stories allows us into our own feelings about the death penalty, one of the most controversial social and political issues of our time.
Elaine Cassel, Marymount University and Lord Fairfax Community College </q>
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #7 on: 2004-05-13 07:20:35 »
....you know, i cant help but look at the israeli x palestinian situation and without thinking about who's right and wrong, realize that there has been pretty much non-stop bloodshed and fear on both sides for, well, just about the entire existence of israel. Therefore........
...i say lesson learned....
...pull out of iraq, saudi arabia, all countries with government supported islamic groups, apologise for attacking them, and issue a total boycott of these nations and their nationals. give a moratorium as of July 2004 and say that after that anyone NEW coming from these countries, or with a NEW stamp in their passports be turned away from entering the country. eliminate oil dependancy(get it from venezuela and others), initiate govt programs for serious streamlining of fossil fuel burning(hybrids, alcohol, whatever)....and just get out and stay out until the region is done fighting(200 yrs from now).
...i know it sounds silly and is likely impossible, but it's fun to think about =)
DrSebby. "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
_________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Reactions to the grotesque jihadist decapitation of yet another "infidel Jew," Mr. Berg, make clear that our intelligentsia are either dangerously uninformed, or simply unwilling to come to terms with this ugly reality: such murders are consistent with sacred jihad practices, as well as Islamic attitudes towards all non-Muslim infidels, in particular, Jews, which date back to the 7th century, and the Prophet Muhammad's own example. According to Muhammads sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe. He appointed an "arbiter" who soon rendered this concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. Muhammad ratified this judgment stating that it was a decree of God pronounced from above the Seven Heavens. Thus some 600 to 900 men from the Qurayza were lead on Muhammads order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug and the men were beheaded, and their decapitated corpses buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched in attendance. Women and children were sold into slavery, a number of them being distributed as gifts among Muhammads companions, and Muhammad chose one of the Qurayza women (Rayhana) for himself. The Qurayzas property and other possessions (including weapons) were also divided up as additional "booty" among the Muslims, to support further jihad campaigns. The classical Muslim jurist al-Mawardi (a Shafiite jurist, d. 1058) from Baghdad was a seminal, prolific scholar who lived during the so-called Islamic "Golden Age" of the Abbasid-Baghdadian Caliphate. He wrote the following, based on widely accepted interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunna (i.e., the recorded words and deeds of Muhammad), regarding infidel prisoners of jihad campaigns: As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)....Abul-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah." [The Laws of Islamic Governance, trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192. Emphasis added.] Indeed such odious rules were iterated by all four classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence, across the vast Muslim empire. For centuries, from the Iberian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent, jihad campaigns waged by Muslim armies against infidel Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus, were punctuated by massacres, including mass throat slittings and beheadings. During the period of enlightened Muslim rule, the Christians of Iberian Toledo, who had first submitted to their Arab Muslim invaders in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. In the harsh Muslim reprisal that ensued, Toledo was pillaged, and all the Christian notables had their throats cut. On the Indian subcontinent, Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Mughal Empire, who is revered as a paragon of Muslim tolerance by modern revisionist historians, recorded the following in his autobiographical Baburnama, about infidel prisoners of a jihad campaign: "Those who were brought in alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower of skulls was erected in the camp." [The Baburnama -Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor, translated and edited by Wheeler M. Thacktson, Oxford University Press,1996, p. 188. Emphasis added.] Recent jihad-inspired decapitations of infidels by Muslims have occurred across the globe- Christians in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria; Hindu priests and "unveiled" Hindu women in Kashmir; Wall Street Journal reporter, and Jew, Daniel Pearl. We should not be surprised that these contemporary paroxysms of jihad violence are accompanied by ritualized beheadings. Such gruesome acts are in fact sanctioned by core Islamic sacred texts, and classical Muslim jurisprudence. Empty claims that jihad decapitations are somehow "alien to true Islam," however well-intentioned, undermine serious efforts to reform and desacralize Islamic doctrine. This process will only begin with frank discussion, both between non-Muslims and Muslims, and within the Muslim community.
[rhinoceros] Things like witch burnings, holy inquisition, the crusades and slavery endorsed by the bible-holding American southerners until the last century would cast Christianity under the same light as Islam here. The catch is that all these atrocities have more to do with the times than with any particular religious doctrines.
Muhammed was a kind of a warlord. You can easily find on the net that the quote from the Quran, sura 47, verse 4, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks" had a context which was ommitted from the article posted by Joe Dees. Here is an Islamic apologist site which does better than the author of the article in this respect:
<quote> Sura 47.4 "When you encounter the unbelievers, Strike off their heads. Untill you have made a wide slaughter among them tie up the remaining captives."
<snip>
Sura 47 was revealed during the first year of Hijrah when the Muslims were under *threat of extinction* by invasion from Makkah. <end quote>
What is outrageous with the article posted here is this: When Muslims come out and claim that that excerpt was context-specific and that bigotry and hatred is not "the true Islam" (whatever that means) a westerner comes out and says "No, look, this applies to all Islam, this is what you are, you just don't realize it".
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #11 on: 2004-05-13 15:00:52 »
[Blunderov] Some Islamic rap. Very strange - fundamentalist lyrics and gang rythyms. They seem a bit upset about the existence of different countries in the world of Islam. Given the factional nature of most religions, they seem a bit optimistic about their Ummah, which doesn't seem to include the West or non Islamic lands as far as I can tell. Except Israel. Best Regards
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:8KGKbzwUVi8J:www.muslimstudio.com/lyric s/imaginarywalls.pdf+islam+halall&hl=en <q> Soldiers of Allah Keeping it real with tight rhymes Insh-Allah one day We wouldn't have to rap about Sad times Islamic state will be implemented Right-right There will be no gap between Me & my brothers Side by side just like our pray lines No more imaginary walls Brothers greeting each other worldwide Our only bond will be Islam Haram and Halal will be Our only guidelines Waking up from this coma I see a rise of Muslim pride A generation of Muslim youth Who know the truth Let's us be the ones Who bring this Ummah back to life Putting Islam back into the lime light No divisions in this Ummah Erasing all kufuristic border lines Leaving all man-made systems With nothing But just a flat line___________ </q>
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
Re: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #12 on: 2004-05-13 18:00:34 »
The more I think about Sebby's solution here, the more I like it.........
Walter
Dr Sebby wrote:
> ....you know, i cant help but look at the israeli x palestinian situation > and without thinking about who's right and wrong, realize that there has > been pretty much non-stop bloodshed and fear on both sides for, well, just > about the entire existence of israel. Therefore........ > > ...i say lesson learned.... > > ...pull out of iraq, saudi arabia, all countries with government supported > islamic groups, apologise for attacking them, and issue a total boycott of > these nations and their nationals. give a moratorium as of July 2004 and > say that after that anyone NEW coming from these countries, or with a NEW > stamp in their passports be turned away from entering the country. > eliminate oil dependancy(get it from venezuela and others), initiate govt > programs for serious streamlining of fossil fuel burning(hybrids, alcohol, > whatever)....and just get out and stay out until the region is done > fighting(200 yrs from now). > > ...i know it sounds silly and is likely impossible, but it's fun to think > about =) > > DrSebby. > "Courage...and shuffle the cards". > > _________________________________________________________________ > The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
--
Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love" --Kupferberg--
RE: virus: The Berg Execution
« Reply #14 on: 2004-05-13 19:07:12 »
Walter Watts Sent: 14 May 2004 12:01 AM
The more I think about Sebby's solution here, the more I like it.........
Walter
[Blunderov] I know I mentioned this before but with a little development my idea might have some merit. Or not.
1 USA hands over to an Islamic Council to be agreed (!)
2 At the site of 9/11, A monumental World Centre of Religious Learning and Tolerance is constructed. A sort of United Nations of Religions. (Some might think a Disneyland of delusion.)
All who come to New York can worship or study a religion of whatever species. Festivals are held. Ecumenical activities are strongly encouraged. A world class library of religious texts and materials is maintained and made available to all pilgrims. America becomes a land under all gods.
By this gesture and in this manner perhaps the moral high ground can be regained, or at least some of it. The xtremists will look more extreme and become marginalized.
Maybe this is the way to win the war? Takers? Best Regards
Author
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