Muslim "Local Grievances" Spread to Pakistan

Yet more material for the "Religion of Peace"™ apologists to work on.

SUKKUR, Pakistan (AFX) - Police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled a tense southern Pakistani city after a mob torched a Christian church and ransacked another over the alleged desecration of a Koran, officials said.

Troops guarded churches and other installations belonging to the minority Christian community in the city of Sukkur while authorities beefed up security in Christian-dominated areas, officials said.

[...]

The violence erupted late yesterday when some 500 youths armed with clubs and bamboo sticks attacked the Saint Savior's and Saint Mary's churches after claims that a Christian man tore pages from a Koran and set them on fire.

No one was injured but the crowd set fire to St Savior's, torched two vehicles outside the church and damaged a nearby school run by nuns. St Mary's Church was damaged.

The mob also destroyed copies of the Bible and pictures in the churches.

Officials said the violence erupted after a Christian, named as Irfan Gill desecrated the Koran then tried to blame it on his father-in-law because of a property dispute.

Irfan has been charged with blasphemy, which carries the death penalty under Pakistan's tough religious laws, senior police officer Akbar Arian told Agence France-Presse.

Hmm, for a "local grievance" this sure has an eerie similarity to previous events which occurred halfway around the globe ... Could it be that these "local grievances" aren't borne of "ancient hatreds", "class resentment" or any other such guff, but of the poisonous notions of superiority and entitlement which a certain Religion of Peace™ fills its believers' minds with? No, of course not, there's nothing to see here - "it's just a flesh wound!", as the Black Knight said ...

Meanwhile, in another manifestation of the "fringe" nature of the savagery we've been witnessing for the last few weeks over a bunch of f***ing cartoons, a minister in the government of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is doing his bit to promote the peaceful image of Islam around the world.

A minister in India’s Uttar Pradesh state government has offered a reward of $11.5 million to anyone who would kill any of the cartoonists who drew the images of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

Muhammad Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of state for Haj and Minorities Welfare in the Uttar Pradesh government, told a rally in Meerut, 65 km east of New Delhi, after Friday prayers that he would give “the avenger” 510 million rupees ($11.5 million) and his weight in gold.

“Drawing a cartoon of the Prophet is blasphemous and Muslims will not tolerate this insult,” he said in a speech that was broadcast by Indian television stations. “The money will be paid by the people of Meerut,” said Yaqoob.

We feel certain that the Moderate Muslim Majority™ of Uttar Pradesh will someday punish this "fringe" politician heavily in the polls ... don't we? Surely there's nothing he could possibly know about his electoral base that we don't from such a far remove? Presumably the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was aware of voter anger at Mr. Yaqoob's statements in deciding to take no action against him? Oh well, at least there's consolation to be had in knowing that Uttar Pradesh is a lightly populated province of a mere 176 million souls ...

PS: Dear apologists, I know it's hard work for you to keep up with so many events all across the globe, but do keep in mind that you can always blame American neocons should imagination fail you!

Comments

[dsquared]

If you find that the term "apologists" gets tedious, perhaps you could try varying it a bit by alternating "dhimmis". If you're talking about the Democratic Party in the USA, you could even use the delightful play on words "dhimmicrats".

[Abiola]

Yet more profound insights from the mighty Dsquared ...

Spare me the red-herrings, why don't you? People being murdered over a bunch of cartoons is no laughing matter, and right now I'm thoroughly pissed off: either stay on topic or watch your comments get deleted.

[MSC]

Mr Lapite,
Given the recent focus of your blog on the problems with the Muslim faith, I thought I might take this opportunity to recommend that you take a look at 'The End of Faith' by Sam Harris. As a modern anti-religious polemicist Mr Harris is as good as anyone I have come across.

Though I doubt that you will find much in the book that you don't already know, I didn't, I nonetheless feel it to be well worth reading as an encapsulation of the problems inherent in religious faith, particularly in light of the technological means of mass murder available in the modern world.

Keep up the excellent work Sir, your blog is an oasis of reason in a desert of irrationality.

[dsquared]

[either stay on topic or watch your comments get deleted]

If you are going to specifically ask questions from people while calling them "apologists", then surely it is not offtopic for someone to take issue with that.

[Abiola]

1 - I have not called you an "apologist"; that you chose to apply that label to yourself is not my problem.

2 - The topic is the decidedly *non-local* nature of all these "local grievances" Muslims supposedly have, not what I may or may not call those who spend time cooking up excuses for them. It's clear you have no real answer to the evidence on display in my post here, which is why you're trying to lead things off on an irrelevant tangent, and I simply won't stand for it. The topic is Islam's propensity for violence, and nothing else.

[dsquared]

I disagree. I think that this could be an example of "Islam's propensity for violence" or it could be an example of something else. I think a lot of the stories you've put up in this series could be described as examples of "Nigerians' propensity for violence" (I see that oil was up $1.50 a barrel overnight due to the actions of the MEND and Ijaw Youth Council, both of them usually associated with "I Can't Believe It's Not The Religion Of Peace TM") or on the other hand, all of them could be examples of "poor and ignorant people being really easy to stir up to violence".

At present, your argument for why there is something especially dangerous about Muslims appears to rely very heavily indeed on the logical device of throwing insults at people who don't agree with you. It might not be a coincidence that the poorest and ignorantest people in the world seem to be over-represented with Muslims, but you really aren't making much of a case.

As you might be aware, we have fought two wars against Islamic states in the last five years and are currently threatening another one. You personally have regularly posted your opinion that because Ahmadinejad says violent things about Israel, he needs to be killed with airstrikes and you aren't particularly worried by the collateral damage. If there were an Islamic version of you (and I'm sure there is, at an internet cafe in Kandahar or somewhere), he would not exactly be short of parallel examples of violent outbursts from "The Culture Of Enlightenment (tm)", and guess what? The Islamic version of me is probably telling him to get off his high horse too. Of course, he is probably responding with threats of evisceration rather than delting posts, but autre pays, autre mores.

[Chuckles]

[... see that oil was up $1.50 a barrel overnight due to the actions of the MEND and Ijaw Youth Council, both of them usually associated with "I Can't Believe It's Not The Religion Of Peace TM...]

Mr. Squared obviously cant differetiate between groups fighting for self determination against physical aggressors in their own territories - who have endured 50 years of gradual communal degradation due to the activities of outsiders - whom they have tried to engage and dialogue with on countless occasions: Mr. Squared cannot differentiate between groups such as this and a bunch of ignorant, indolent, shiftless Muslims - who, having suffered no physical aggresion, no threats to them, no outsiders coming in to rob them blind and pollute their communities, decide to burn and kill the innocent over a bunch of cartoons.

Obviously Mr. Squared knows that some people might see a difference between the two groups - but he explains this away with an appeal to relativism:

[...autre pays, autre mores...]

Touche!

[Frank McGahon]

[It might not be a coincidence that the poorest and ignorantest people in the world seem to be over-represented with Muslims, but you really aren't making much of a case]

You see this is exactly the type of bland assumption of yours which undermines your effort to encourage us to shrug our shoulders and conclude that there's nothing to see here folks, one side's as bad as the other and as any fule kno Poverty and Ignorance breeds Violence. Except for the fact that the "poorest and ignorantest" people in the world, no matter how it might "seem" to you, are *not* over-represented with Muslims (best estimate about 20% of the global population the majority of which remains "poor and ignorant") and yet the "violentest" of those poor and ignorant folk, along with their prosperous and educated brethren, turn out to be over-represented with Muslims. You'd almost think poverty and ignorance have nothing to do with violence.

[Jim]

I don't know about Qureshi's electoral base, but even if they back him fanatically, this is still a pretty stupid thing for a Muslim in India to say. A Muslim politican should be the last one paying for assasinations and inciting riots; Gujarat is right next door.

Today or yesterday Andrew Sullivan quoted a letter from a Hindu guy who made the point that to him 9-11 was not some world-changing event but just another outrage completely typical of 1400 years of Islamic expansionism, something that people in India were very, very familiar with. He also made the point that he was tired of people defelecting balme for backwardness and violence from Islam onto the "culture" He pointed out that Pakistanis and north Indians are culturally nearly identical (so, please, no what-abouts concerning Tamils)and that even so Pakistan is always in the verge of a takeover by extremists, or has extremists making government policy - ISI, for instance - while India manages to maintain its bumbling and corrupt demoocracy mostly democratic. His point is that culture isn't the differnec ebetween the two countries.

[Abiola]

I see others have already said what needs to be said: confusing secessionist struggles with attacks on totally innocent bystanders spurred on by *cartoons*, making spurious arguments about poverty and terror despite Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Kuwait and a lot of the rest of the Middle East being far better off than most of non-Muslim Africa, ignoring the historical reality that Muslims were the ones who were on top of the heap until not so long ago (indicating that Islam just *might* be a causal factor in the "poverty" so often used to "explain" its adherents' violent traits), even bending over backwards to ignore evidence that Muslim politicians and leaders everywhere across the "ummah" are actively playing up these cartoons *precisely* because they know doing so is a cheap and cost-free way to win a few points with the Muslim masses - there seems to be no excuse too flimsy to wheel out to avoid facing up to the reality that Islam fosters violence in those who adhere to it in a way no other major religion does in the modern era.

It's truly amazing to see the logical contortions you put yourself through to avoid facing up to something so many Muslims and former Muslims like Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have said loud and clear over and over again, and which is being proven in riots and angry demonstrations throughout the globe right this very moment: that the creed of Islam is one which brooks no dissent, no criticism be it internal or external, no division between the state and religion, no recognition of equality between men and women let alone Muslims and "infidels", no acceptance of the sanctity of the lives of said "infidels", and which clearly advocates that those who breach its strictures in any way or even dare to renounce it must have violence visited upon them, even death; heck, even a cursory look around online is enough to show that an authority as widely regarded by Muslims as Yussuf al-Qaradawi endorses barbarisms you're still jumping through all sorts of hoops to deny to be peculiar to Islam.

http://tinyurl.com/s9fwc

Here's another article for you to digest, one written by a Muslim woman, no less:

http://tinyurl.com/jyr5c

You're more than welcome to twist yourself into pretzels explaining how she's got her religion all wrong ...

[dsquared]

gosh, quite a lot here.

Frank: No you're wrong. The violentest people in the world are also richest and most intelligent. They're us, the Culture of Enlightenment (tm). We've started two wars in the last three years and are planning a third. We've killed tens of thousands, by violence. It happens to have been state-organised violence, but it is still violence. Poor and ignorant people are easy to stir up to violent protest, because they tend to have spare time, not much to lose and to be easy to convince, which is why they are susceptible to moral panics and rioting, but they are pikers as far as real violence is concerned.

There is a lot that is screwed up about the Islamic world (most of it, anyway; of course Malaysia is at least as culturally similar to Indonesia as Northern India is to Pakistan), and the historical development of the Islamic religion has a lot to do with it. (Of course, this is a complicated and multicausal historic process, and everyone involved regards themselves as having legitimate grievances; the phrase "50 years of gradual communal degradation due to the activities of outsiders" would certainly be a familiar one to the Palestinians). Paul Berman's book, "Terror and Liberalism" is quite good on this subject.

But that's not the case that Abiola is arguing; not here, and not in the post where he suggested rounding up all the Muslims in Britain and shipping them back home to Bangladesh. The case you guys appear to be trying to make is that if a guy says with his mouth and accepts in his heart that there is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet, then he becomes an intrinsically violent, subversive threat to Western values and needs to be shipped home (or if he's unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place, bombed). And you're attempting to support that case with "third world is violent place shock horror" stories. I notice as well that the "muslim savages riot because of cartoons" angle is wearing a bit thin as you are now having to attribute the motive to people who didn't actually cite that as their main motive.

There are huge currents of Islamic tradition which aren't fundie and do in fact have room for dissent and something similar to civil society. They tended to have a hard time historically, in a period which (I am sure coincidentally) seemed to kick off at more or less the same time that we in the Culture of Enlightenment [tm] realised that their sand was on top of our oil.

[Frank McGahon]

[The violentest people in the world are also richest and most intelligent. They're us, the Culture of Enlightenment]

That's right. I forgot all about the islamophobic pogroms that swept the enlightenment-ummah in the aftermath of 9/11, how remiss of me to elide the sickening violence meted out to innocent muslim children in the UK, Denmark, Sweden and especially France by extremist enlightenment-advocates in retaliation for one regrettable action by their nominal co-religionists. How could I have forgotten the heartbreaking pictures of a London bus torn apart by an enlightenment-advocate suicide bomber in Bow, the scorched hijabs fluttering in the wind?

By the way, if you think totting up the numbers of dead is the best measure of "violentestness", go and have a look at this list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_toll

I know, I know, Wikipedia and all that, but no amount of creative accounting is going to push Iraq plus Afghanistan plus any future action against Iran anywhere near the top. As it happens I don't think adding up the numbers *is* a useful measure of violentness. A better measure is whether any violence that is employed is proportionate to whatever it is this violence is supposed to address and it is patently the case that there is one religion whose adherents have a tendency to react with disproportionate and indiscriminate violence to the merest of slights perceived to a vastly greater extent than all other religions.

[dsquared]

[That's right. I forgot all about the islamophobic pogroms that swept the enlightenment-ummah in the aftermath of 9/11, how remiss of me to elide the sickening violence meted out to innocent muslim children in the UK, Denmark, Sweden and especially France by extremist enlightenment-advocates in retaliation for one regrettable action by their nominal co-religionists. How could I have forgotten the heartbreaking pictures of a London bus torn apart by an enlightenment-advocate suicide bomber in Bow, the scorched hijabs fluttering in the wind?]

Actually I was referring to the Iraq War, rather surprised you didn't pick up the reference. You know we did actually retaliate for the 9/11 attacks, by the way, and it did involve bombing, and we did hit some buses, and we did kill some children and presumably there would have been some scorched hijabs which fluttered in the wind. Children don't have to live in France, Denmark or Sweden to be innocent, you know.

[it is patently the case that there is one religion whose adherents have a tendency to react with disproportionate and indiscriminate violence to the merest of slights perceived to a vastly greater extent than all other religions.]

We are not very far away from making threats of nuclear annihilation against Iran. Stop patting yourself on the back just because nobody's kicked your arse recently.

[dsquared]

(by the way it really is not so very long ago that Irish Catholics used to riot and just because they saw a few men in bowler hats walking past playing drums and flutes, so double triple give it a rest with your "there is one religion with a tendency to disproportionate reaction" bollix)

[Frank McGahon]

[ just because they saw a few men in bowler hats walking past playing drums and flutes]

That's right, because of course there's an obvious equivalence between loyalists marching down a street occupied mostly by "catholics" (almost none of whom could tell you what transubstantiation actually means) banging drums, getting pissed, urinating on the street, blocking access for residents and chanting about being up to one's neck in fenian blood and merely drawing a picture of Mohammed. Not that I have any interest in defending any rioting or violent protest but the rioting you refer to would seem to fall under the proportionality rule and again, is not about any fine point of religious doctrine and has nothing at all to do with religion except in so far as it is a handy marker for ethnic/political affiliation.

[Actually I was referring to the Iraq War, rather surprised you didn't pick up the reference.]

Rather surprised you didn't pick up that I picked up the reference. I refer you to my comment again where I invited you to see how your metric of killing-the-most people undermined your assertion that "we" are the violentest with specific reference to the Iraq war.

You're really going to have to do more than simply assert an equivalence between the spontaneous violent reactions of muslims all across the ummah to any kind of slights real or imaginary and any kind of war. It's fairly clear that a Muslim lynch mob in Nigeria who set fire to an entire family of children have the intention of burning those children alive which in their calculus goes some way to adressing the perceived slight of their religion. It's not at all clear to me that those who were in favour of deposing Saddam eagerly awaited news of horrific deaths of children to slake some sort of bloodthirst but then perhaps I'm not gifted with your powers of interpretation.

[Chuckles]

[...They\'re us, the Culture of Enlightenment (tm). We\'ve started two wars in the last three years and are planning a third. We\'ve killed tens of thousands, by violence...]

A fine line indeed. Interestingly enough; the trope of collective responsibility seems to fly out of the window whenever Western countries can be made the culprit. Yup! \"We\" are the violentest - Not the rampaging Muslims in Darfur, Northern Nigeria, Indonesia, or anywhere else, who havent basically taken a rest from 1400 years of rampage! Yup! The intrinsicality of violence is a credibly proposition only when the subject is the West! So much for a love of assigning blame to whom blame is due. \"We\" are violent because \"The States\" of which we are citizens organized wars: \"They\" arent as violent, even though \"they\" are the ones on the streets burning and killing people - a never ending 1400 year hobby.

[...but they are pikers as far as real violence is concerned...]

Well, no one has ever been killed by a piker so this makes perfect sense. Even if they have screw them: We got better things to worry about like all the folks dem sharks out there are killing.

[...the phrase \"50 years of gradual communal degradation due to the activities of outsiders\" would certainly be a familiar one to the Palestinians...]

I wonder who your outsiders in this analogy are? They wouldnt happen to be Jews would they? Youre about as dishonest as they come. Yeah - I am sure Ijaw seccesionism compares very well to the Palestinian issue.

[...he becomes an intrinsically violent, subversive threat to Western values and needs to be shipped home...]

Rubbish. You dont have a citation for this from anywhere in the post, or in any of the comments. You seem to think you are being pretty defy here - conflating Islam as a belief system, with Muslims as biological individuals: Then latching criticsms of Islam to criticisms of biological individuals - all to make way for a claim of \"Racism\" and the accompanying Huzzah. Rubbish. You dont have a citation for any where Lapite even suggested that Muslims are intrinsically violent - and you dont have a citation for anywhere in the comments thread this is implied either.

[...And you\'re attempting to support that case with \"third world is violent place shock horror\" stories...]

Another rank piece of dishonest - revealing more of your own state of mind about how you view Muslims: Tell me, since when did Dar-Al-Islam become equivalent to the \"Third World\", as you have so quaintly put it?

[...I notice as well that the \"muslim savages riot because of cartoons\" angle is wearing a bit thin as you are now having to attribute the motive to people who didn\'t actually cite that as their main motive...]

Oh, all those fine upstanding Muslims never cited cartoons as their reason for rioting. Dem evil capitalist conservative Western reporters must be at work again - attributing false motives to rioting Muslims in their numerous reports.

[...They tended to have a hard time historically, in a period which (I am sure coincidentally) seemed to kick off at more or less the same time that we in the Culture of Enlightenment [tm] realised that their sand was on top of our oil...]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Yes their \"hard period\" started when dem evil Oil grubbing Texicans started allying with violent Islamic depots. Nonsense. You would think that 1400 years of Islamic expansionism and repression of dissent and destruction of opposing viewpoints would constitute one long history of \"hard times\" for any \"civil society\" analog in Dar Al Islam - but no. The hard times for their versions of Hume and Kant and Mill started with Oil. What a load of bullcrap. What tolerance did Islamic expansionists have for opposing viewpoints when they swept across North Africa?

[...by the way it really is not so very long ago that Irish Catholics used to riot and just because they saw a few men in bowler hats walking past playing drums and flutes...]

More relativism from the King of It! It only serves to underscore the point anyway: Some people change and some either dont, dont wanna, wont. But then again, what exactly do Irish Catholics have to do with Islamic aggression on Western soil?

[Abiola]

To expect a sane, honest answer from Dsquared on anything which violates the "Muslims are no worse than anyone else" dogma is as sensible as expecting a pig to fly: even when confronted by direct evidence from the pens of actual Muslim authorities he'll still be ready to toss out red herrings about long-past atrocities of a European medieval Christianity which no longer exists, accusations of entirely imaginary racism, nonsensical tropes about how the West has killed more people (as if it would in any way refute the assertion that Muslims are more prone to violence at perceived slights to their faith than adherents of other religions, even if it were true), how lynching random Christians for cartoons is just like Northern Ireland, how Muslims who openly and fervently say for the benefit of the news cameras that they're rioting over the cartoons are actually doing no such thing (and anyone who claims they are is just indulging in a "\"muslim savages riot because of cartoons\" angle"!), yada yada yada.

Some people simply aren't worth taking seriously, and Dsquared is clearly one of them - in his world nothing qualifies as the behavior of savages, not chanting "Freedom go to hell!/Europe you will pay, Bin Laden is on his way!", torching embassies, issuing death fatwas, offering million dollar rewards for murder, burning down scores of churches and killing innocent children because of - *ahem* - CARTOONS in DENMARK. If even such aberrations don't count as savagery in his book, how can we expect him to look upon the execution of apostates, the stoning of women convicted of adultery and the amputation of the hands of petty thieves - all sanctioned by orthodox, mainstream "moderate" Islam - as anything other than the mark of high civilization? Dsquared being a Muslim scholar par excellence, whose schooling in the four schools of fiqh surpasses even the learned ulemma of Al-Azhar, can brook no contradiction about the true nature of Islam from wannabe "Muslims" like Rushdie or Hirsi Ali, let alone silly little women like this Azam Kamguian of the Committee to Defend Women's Rights in the Middle East (who ought to be at home anyway, tending to her husband's every whim like a good Muslimah, instead of acting the sharmouta on the internet by provoking male lust with her writing!) Who are all these nontentities to say Islam isn't cute and cuddly if Dsquared, with his profound scholarship and lifetime of experience as a devout Muslim, insists otherwise - these evil, ignorant racist islamophobes!

[dsquared]

[because of course there's an obvious equivalence ]

Frank, this is special pleading. Things that Irish Catholics seem rational and proportionate to you because you can understand the context. Things that non-Irish Muslims do don't because you don't.

[he'll still be ready to toss out red herrings about long-past atrocities of a European medieval Christianity which no longer exists]

Since the example I gave was of the Northern Irish marching tradition, which still does exist and has certainly caused riots within the last ten years, I think that this is a bit much.

[how Muslims who openly and fervently say for the benefit of the news cameras that they're rioting over the cartoons are actually doing no such thing ]

Your news story at the start of this article (the one that begins "SUKKUR, Pakistan (AFX)") does not contain any such Muslims and you do, in fact, infer this motive to them when they say something different.

Your second paragraph is really quite impressive, containing by my count at least fifteen attributions of claims to me which I haven't made. But not impressive in a good way. Stripped of the rhetoric, insults and sarcasm, it simply says "Dsquared is unconvinced that the evidence I have presented supports a claim that the current rioting in the Islamic world is due to some intrinsic quality of Islam rather than specific historical conditions of the Islamic world". Which is true, it doesn't. But the rhetoric, insults and sarcasm don't really add anything. I reiterate a point I often make on this comments section; for a man who screams blue murder when anyone puts words in his mouth, you don't half do it a lot to other people.

I'm not insecure enough to be worried that anyone thinks I'm "Not worth being taken seriously" - I am, and you don't really believe I'm not. But it would help a lot if you would actually address the points made rather than taking the low road of just abusing me. I am not in the habit of calling poor and ignorant people "savages" because it is unpleasant and racist language, but if it helps things along I will happily confirm that rioting over cartoons and killing people is the behaviour of savages, and make my apologies later. For your part, will you accept that the behaviour of Nigerians in Nigeria, or Pakistanis in Pakistan, does not really have much bearing on whether we need to deport British Muslims living in Britain, or for that matter to bomb Iran?

[Frank McGahon]

[Frank, this is special pleading.]

Not at all. I made clear that I had no interest in defending rioting. I'm merely demonstrating that the equivalance you asserted evaporates on closer examination. You might also like to note that proportionate and defensible aren't coterminous. Tit for tat killing is by definition proportionate, that doesn't make it defensible or reasonable per se.

[Things that Irish Catholics seem rational and proportionate to you because you can understand the context. Things that non-Irish Muslims do don't because you don't]

As it happens I do, (probably because I'm at least prepared to take people at their word instead of imputing unspoken motives that are more congenial to my worldview) although it appears you don't. The laughable thing is that you keep boasting of this special understanding to which you are privy and which eludes all us deluded enlightenment-advocates but it seems to boil down to a handful of wellworn tropes ('We" are the most violent, It's all "our" fault, Poverty and Ignorance breeds Violence, etc.), the veracity or applicability of which you seem congenitally disinclined to doubt no matter what evidence is proffered in contradiction.

[dsquared]

[ I'm merely demonstrating that the equivalance you asserted evaporates on closer examination. ]

No, you're saying it, and what "evaporates on closer examination" is the inexplicability of the behaviour. You know that the demands of the Lodges to march down streets in Catholic areas have to be seen in the context of the history of Northern Ireland and the behaviour of the Loyalists with respect to the Republicans. You don't, on the other hand, have anything like the same sort of detailed knowledge about what went on in Sukkur, Pakistan. I'm sure that they could make exactly the same sorts of excuses that you made for the Irish Catholics above, and from their point of view it would be them acting proportionately and the other lot getting upset over nothing. Irish Catholics have also rioted over murals and flags (or at least that's what they claimed at the time; thank heavens, the authorities took a more sensible view of the underlying causes). I'm just asking you to extend the same kind of good faith to foreign people you have no connection with that it would be reasonable to extend to people you know more about.

And also, could you, as well as Abiola, try to play the ball and not the man once in a while. Let's look at that second paragraph of yours shall we?

[I'm at least prepared to take people at their word]

No you're not; this is an article about Muslims rioting because (according to them, according to AFX) a Christian intentionally provoked them by defacing a Koran, and you're going along with the view that it's really about the cartoons.

[instead of imputing unspoken motives that are more congenial to my worldview]

I haven't actually done this; if I have, perhaps you'd care to say what they were? In fact I don't believe that most of the people who have rioted over the last months have any motives at all; they've been caught up in mob hysteria which is hardly an unknown phenomenon or one unique to the Muslim world.

[The laughable thing is that you keep boasting of this special understanding]

No I don't. I keep insisting that people don't adopt different standards for interpreting behaviour of poor and ignorant people overseas from the ones they use for interpreting the behaviour of poor and ignorant people closer to home. I keep insisting that people should not pretend that every leaf that falls in the Islamic world is evidence for their own pet theory about the intrinsic evilness of Islam.

[to which you are privy and which eludes all us deluded enlightenment-advocates ]

I've never called anyone "deluded"; I think that this theory of yours about Islam is mistaken and ahistorical, but you're not "deluded" about it, and it's got nothing to do with the Enlightenment.

[but it seems to boil down to a handful of wellworn tropes]

To be frank, Frank, it might seem that way because you might not really be looking at the argument; it seems to me that you're just looking for things which look like "well-worn tropes" so that you can trot out canned responses of your own to them.

['We" are the most violent]

Where "we" means "white Europeans", this is simply a historical fact.

[It's all "our" fault]

I never said that. I think a lot of it is the result of our actions (specifically, our actions in creating a lot of nonviable postcolonial states in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, which happen to be the places where nearly all the world's Muslims live). But I am not in the habit of saying "all" because I don't believe in simple or monocausal explanations of history. Which is, of course, why I don't believe in you and Abiola's simple, monocausal theory that everything bad is the result of Islam.

[Poverty and Ignorance breeds Violence]

No, I said that poor and ignorant people are easy to stir up to riot. That's a different claim because I don't think it's inevitable or causal; it's just a statement that if you want to raise up a mob, you will in general have better luck in a poor quarter than in the Senior Common Room at Trinity Hall.

[the veracity or applicability of which ]

... is of course irrelevant because I didn't claim any of them

[you seem congenitally disinclined to doubt no matter what evidence is proffered in contradiction.]

Well, that "evidence" appears to be the results of a google news search for "violent+muslim+blame" so I don't think we have to resort to biological explanations just yet. I am aware that the Muslim world is in a hell of a state. I am not yet convinced that it makes sense to attribute this to the single factor of religion, or even to say that religion is a more important cause than economics or history. I would have to go a long, long way from there to believe that the Islamic religion is so devilishly dangerous that we have to round up all the Muslims in Britain and deport them.

If there's anything "congenital" about that, it's that it is probably true to say that I am congenitally inclined to demand a very high burden of proof indeed from anyone who claims that we should make an exception to the general rule that it is a bad idea to demonise local ethnic minorities on the basis of things happening in other parts of the world. I can't think of a single instance in which this has not turned out to be a very wrong policy, usually with disastrous consequences.

[Frank McGahon]

[You know that the demands of the Lodges to march down streets in Catholic areas have to be seen in the context of the history of Northern Ireland and the behaviour of the Loyalists with respect to the Republicans. ]

All of which is entirely beside the point and not necessary to determine whether the reaction by one side to the other is *proportionate* which was the original pretext under which you drew this red herring into the discussion. You don't need to know anything about the history of Northern Ireland (remember we're not bothering with whether grievances are justified or even explicable) to decide that burning an empty car is, let's just say, less disproportionate to the intimidation associated with a contested march than, say, burning an entire schoolbus full of christian children because of a throway remark by the Nigerian equivalent of Maureen Dowd about what the prophet might have thought of a beauty contest.

[No, I said that poor and ignorant people are easy to stir up to riot. That's a different claim because I don't think it's inevitable or causal; it's just a statement that if you want to raise up a mob, you will in general have better luck in a poor quarter than in the Senior Common Room at Trinity Hall.]

This is exactly the sort of trope to which I refer. As it happens I'd love to believe that with prosperity came peace. It would be most congenial to my worldview that the world could just trade its way out of conflict but this widespread intuition doesn't seem to accord with the facts. The people of former Yugoslavia were by global standards fairly prosperous, at least no poorer than their neighbours further along the Danube. And yet, there was no problem stirring up the mob to go a killin and a rapin. And it's not just poor and ignorant Muslims who are on the rampage or calling for cartoonists and infidels generally to be beheaded. There are plenty of rich and intelligent Muslims who are just as enraged. This is pretty well attested. And you're going to have a hard time producing poor and ignorant adherents of other religions who react violently to a perceived insult to their *religion* (note: inter-ethnic conflicts don't count).

By the way the "evidence" I had in mind was that which contradicted your assertion that "we" are the most violent because of Afghanistan and Iraq and yet you still trot this out again.

[dsquared]

[And it's not just poor and ignorant Muslims who are on the rampage or calling for cartoonists and infidels generally to be beheaded. There are plenty of rich and intelligent Muslims who are just as enraged.]

there are three behaviours you are talking about here as if they were the same thing:

1. Being enraged
2. Calling for people to be beheaded
3. Being on the rampage.

The first is everyone's democratic right. The second is a borderline free speech issue; depending on context and risk.
The third is something which it is not at all "well attested" that rich and intelligent Muslims have been doing. Maybe a rich and intelligent Muslim has written in his newspaper that the Danish cartoonists should be slaughtered like dogs. So what; we are currently posting on a weblog that has said that all Muslims in Britain should be rounded up and deported. You are not seeing riots of people who are not poor and ignorant. (I don't accept the analysis that calls Bosnian Serbs, and presumably the residents of the Falls Road "fairly prosperous by global standards", by the way; the relevant standards for judging whether a bunch of rioters are poor and ignorant are surely those of the community they actually live in)

I also question your assertion that the behaviour of the Northern Irish stopped at "burning empty cars". I seem to remember not so long ago that the Protestant Northern Irish (a distinction I don't propose to make; they're both branches of the I Can't Believe It's Not The Religion Of Peace(tm)) decided to form a baying, stone-throwing mob outside a Catholic school. The fact that they didn't manage to kill any children is simply a reflection of better policing, certainly not any innate Christian gentleness. Unless you can convince me that Northern Ireland is the scene of an "inter-ethnic" conflict, I would invite you to consider the historical provenance of the phrase "F**k the Pope" and reconsider whether the violent reactions of Muslims to religious insults might not have a historical element to it.

[By the way the "evidence" I had in mind was that which contradicted your assertion that "we" are the most violent because of Afghanistan and Iraq]

I confess I don't know what you're referring to here; this is why I think it's more helpful to clearly refer to specific points rather than throw out a wave of personal insults. Tell me what you thought was evidence against this point and I'll have a look at whether I considered it properly.

[Frank McGahon]

[ Unless you can convince me that Northern Ireland is the scene of an "inter-ethnic" conflict, ]

Well that's precisely what it is, although I have a feeling it would be a futile task to try and convince you of it. Religion is merely a marker (similar to the choice of a Celtic or Rangers jersey) and most of the participants are not otherwise exercised by fine points of religious doctrine. Or perhaps you fancy that the dispute between Croats and Serbs relates principally to the filioque clause?

[I confess I don't know what you're referring to here]

It was your suggestion that because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and what you take to be the possibility of an attack on Iran that "we" (by which I take it you mean the US and those countries which do not actively oppose it) were the most violent of all. The strong implication of this (as in most violent) was that the particular conflicts were the bloodiest. But a quick look at that list at Wikipedia would remind you that the death toll in, say, Congo, exceeds the sum of both by a degree.

[dsquared]

[Religion is merely a marker (similar to the choice of a Celtic or Rangers jersey) and most of the participants are not otherwise exercised by fine points of religious doctrine.]

I see we have now moved away somewhat from the principle of "taking people at their word", for which thanks.

I didn't understand what you meant by that Wikipedia link and I still don't. Are you trying to say that more than 100k people have been killed by violence in Congo since September 2001? This might be so, but the link doesn't prove it. Even if so, you'll note that the Congo civil war did not have much to do with Islam, so the ranking would now go: Southwest Africans, White Christians (this is what I usually mean by "we", sorry that was unclear), Muslims. My point was to argue against your contention that Muslims were far and away the most violent people in the world, so I think I can live with this.

[J.Cassian]

So let's get this straight. The world is divided into two ethnic groups:
1. The Whites (or "We" - possibly a tribute to the novel by Zamyatin). The violentest, murderingest, no-good-son-of-a-bitches ever. Their/Our actions, enlightened or unenlightened, are responsible for all the world's ills.
2. The Non-Whites. Permanently mired in poverty and ignorance exclusively as a result of White oppression, Non-Whites - like children or mental patients - are never to be held responsible for their actions. Non-Whites may have run empires, but their imperialism was wholly beneficient, with no long-term adverse consequences. For instance, the poverty and corruption in today's Middle East is solely the result of European influence in the twentieth century and not three hundred years of Ottoman rule before that. The most important Non-White subgroup is the Muslim race, a race made up of Arabs, Asians, Africans, Indonesians and...er...white Europeans. (Plus, apparently, all recent violent deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan have been caused by White Christians).