Yes, there are some people who abuse anonymity on the internet.
Then there are others who eschew it – they believe that attaching their real-life name to an online communication will add weight and respect to it. This is, to some degree, true: if their real-life name has some earned public credibility, attaching it to their online persona will add credibility to the online persona.
BUT!!!
Name is just a label.
If a person has built up his or her credibility using an online persona – truly built up credibility – by time and time again providing solid, verifiable, quality information, then their real-life name is really quite irrelevant.
To the contrary: it is a very useful shield!
Journalists who publish in traditional media have an organization that stands behind them and offers them at least a modicum of protection should they become threatened by those who wish to silence them.
Online communicators do not have this luxury!!!
But ‘online’ is not the beginning of ‘anonymous protest speech’!
No, nowhere near… Even the most basic bit of research into the history of anonymous protest speech demonstrates brings us to Colonial North America. Printing presses were used to print anonymous pamphlets which were distributed and which informed the public of facts that the government did not want known and which fostered the atmosphere necessary for the fight for independence.
In fact, most of the works by America’s Founding Fathers were originally published as anonymous pamphlets!
So, let’s not go down the role of silly posturing: anonymity is essential for free speech!
(Sorry if I am not particularly coherent in this post – I am so angry as I write this, I can hardly keep myself calm enough to type!)
To hear that Thunderf00t’s real-life name has been ‘outed’ by an Islamist group (which claims to be made up of ‘moderate Muslims’), that his job has been threatened, that his address has been published – and now, that his family members are being threatened with physical violence…THAT IS AN OUTRAGE!!!!
I guess all we can do is spread the word…
…and hope for the best. Because I am at a loss for what else to do to help him.
P.S.: It took me a second viewing to pick up pn it, but it does seem that the online Islamists just may have attracted the attention of ‘Anonymous’. THAT would be interesting, to say the least!
For those who are not frequent users of YouTube or are simply unaware of this particular issue, Thunderf00t is one of the most prominent members of the informal YouTube atheist community. As a scientist, he has consistently criticized theocratic dogma, dispelling their claims with science and reason.
Not surprisingly, there has been some friction between him (and other YouTube-active atheists) and theocrats, usually of the monolatric bend. Usually, this friction has been limited to exchanges of videos and comments – which is really quite entertaining, regardless of where one falls opinion-wise: it’s like a fine boxing match, but fought with ideas and words. Ray Comfort, a prominent Christian theist, has even hosted long one-on-one debates with Thunderf00t which both of them then posted on YouTube.
What I am trying to say is that yes, there is an ongoing battling of ideas – and while tempers may rise, both sides are capable of civilized discourse.
Or, rather, most members of both sides…
…because there are people who are using the DMCA to make claims that are intended to force YouTube to shut down channels of people whose views they disagree with. This is a sort of a mini-SLAPP suit…
While our southern neighbours keep wondering if their votes count as they think they count, here, in Ontario, it is getting harder and harder to figure out where to park one’s vote in the quickly upcoming election.
The Liberals are corrupt and Dalton McGuinty will only say something that’s true by accident.
The Conservatives seem hell bent on bringing in publicly funded faith-based schools (that means religious apartheid in schools, in case you missed it) – the very issue on which the Conservatives crashed and burned during the last election.
The NDP wants to finish the job of bankrupting Ontario that McGuinty has so effectively started: on a per capita basis, Ontario – the one-time industrial engine of Canada – is now worse off than California. The NDP’s cure – spend more!!!
The Pirate Party – despite its drawbacks, a party which would push for a balance in consumer electronic rights – is not in the race.
The Family Coalition Party wants to legislate morality – not a sound principle, even were you to agree with their morals completely.
The role for Libertarians is to be a voice of reason – not to govern.
The Greens – yeah, pull the other one. People naive enough to get suckered in by the ACC hysteria are not stable enough to deserve anyone’s vote.
Then I saw these TV ads:
Perhaps I’m going to look at this Freedom Party a little closer.
This just goes to show that no adult that claims to represent or carry authority from God should ever, EVER be let near children!
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We should not act continuously surprised that the people who actually believe they represent the most absolutest power possible (and may be even more absolute, as some believe) are necessarily the most absolutely corrupt human beings!
Most people who pray do so privately or in ‘houses of worship’. This is just fine. (I may consider ‘prayer’ to be immoral, but I would never condone a government legislating morality.)
For many years, Muslims have blocked the streets of Paris by praying in the streets during Friday prayers. It has been widely reported that people drive from far and wide to intentionally choke up Paris as a form of bullying: we can stop your city whenever we want to – so we will. Muslim leaders simply assert that there are insufficient houses of worship for them, so they are forced to pray in the streets…
Today, there just may be a solution.
The French authorities have offered the Muslim community a large place to pray – and followed up this ‘carrot’ with a stout ‘stick: they have passed a new law which forbids Muslims from blocking the streets by praying. This is being done in the name of protecting the principle of secularism.
Of course, it raises a lot of questions – most of them very uncomfortable.
While I understand the peoblem of aggressive, in-you-face-praying (and, let’s face it: all the ‘faiths’, religious and secular, are guilty of this in different circumstances), I am not certain if the French solutuion is the correct way to go.
Certainly, France is not the only place where Muslim communities are using ‘in-your-face praying’ to intimidate non-Muslim citizens and bully political authorities by closing streets during Friday prayers.
Certainly, this practice must not be tolerated.
But solving it by providing government buildings to be used as houses of prayer seems to me to be a cure which does more harm than good!
Sure, the ‘problem’ is ‘out of sight’. Commerce can go on and the populace is not directly intimidated.
But at what cost?
Neatly and quickly, the burden of providing a ‘house of prayer’ for Muslims has been shifted from Muslims to The State!
What happened to that principle of secularism?
With the French State buildings becoming Mosques, where is the secular principle of separation of State and Mosque?
Perhaps I am simply unaware of the details of the deal – there might be some provisions for temporary use, like the types of permits for Santa Claus parades. If so, I am happy to be wrong.
However, I do think that accepting – even on a temporary basis – the responsibility for housing praying members of any religion in order to get them to obey the laws of the land is an unreasonable accommodation and a serious error of principles.
The law states that blocking streets is illegal. It is the government’s obligation to apply the laws equally and consistently – without regard to the lawbreakers’ religion, ethnicity or ‘culture’. The laws must be blind to these particulars: that is what equality before the law means!
Therefore, the laws should have been applied, fully and equally, from the beginning.
Instead, local streets had been permitted to be closed, often using private security guards from the Mosques to intimidate non-Muslims out of the area occupied by the in-your-face worshippers. That should never have been permitted.
[If I were the ruler of the universe, I’d start by fining the lawbreakrs, then, if necessary, escalate to other measures:
playing loud music in the streets to encourage people who wish to pray to raise the money to build themselves their own house of worship (to pray on their own dime and not the public one)
deploying canine units to patrol the streets and ensuring that the sidewalks adjacent to the Mosque and all other buildings in the area are clear for obvious safety reasons (the presence of the dogs would invalidate the prayers of those outside, so they would truly have no reason to clog the streets)
and if that failed, the rules that apply to any other unruly and illegal public gathering would be put into action.]
(Aside – I have definite ideas about how much governments should be permitted to regulate public gatherings and I am not changing thses views. All I am asserting is that whatever the rules are, they must be applied equally to all. If the rules are bad, we should change them. Until then…)
Of course, France is not the only country with this particular method of in-your-face prayer is disrupting public peace and order. However flawed their approach and however bad its longterm results may be, at least in France, they have the guts to name the problem and are trying to do something to solve it.
This lunatic is, unfortunately, a voice of influence in parts of the Arab world. Here, he claims – with a straight face – that America’s founding fathers tried to introduce an article to the US Constitution to ban Jews from US land.
Really.
Of course, there are other voices, too – they just get drowned out much of the time.
Which is a shame – these following people do make sense:
And there are Imams who do condemn violence in their sermons – yet they do not always find a receptive audience. This makes it so much more important that we speak up about them and help their voices be heard.
While catching up on some of the videos by MEMRI (Middle Eastern Media Research Institute), I came upon this most interesting one: a discussion between an Arab and Berber (Amazigh) Muslim from Morocco regarding a proposed Berber-Jewish Friendship centre.
This discussion shows a few separate things I would like to bring to your attention.
There is something that several different Muslims have called my attention to: there is a big gulf between ‘Arab Muslims and non-Arab Muslims’. I am not sure if I understand all the nuances of the situation – and there does appear to be a lot of complexity to it, especially when there is also a racial component – but I am confident that I understand the ‘bones’ of the issue. Or, at least, a few of the bones…
‘Arab Maghreb‘ refers to non-negro, non-Arab areas of Africa (in the North-West) concquered by the Arab-Muslims. Some of the population of the ‘Maghreb’ prior to the Arab invasion was descended from the Phoenicians (who, some anthropologists argue, were (or were closely related to) the proto-Slavs), the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Prior to their conquest during the spread of Islam, this area had strong ‘Mediterranean’ European cultural influences. Arab culture was foregn to them.
The prophet Muhammad was an Arab – and, for some reason, the Muslim scriptures go to great lenght to affirm that his skin was ‘ white’. This is not just a descriptive – it is a direct and itegral part of the Muslim faith! (This may be connected to the same root as the fact that the Arabic word for ‘negro’ or ‘black man’ is the same as the word ‘slave’)
The teachings of Islam state that all races and nationalities are equal to each other – except for Arabs, who are superior (‘more perfected’), which is demonstrated by the fact that Allah chose his messenger from among Arabs (their language is also superior (‘more perfected’) to other languages, ‘which is why’ the Koran was dictated to Muhammad in Arabic).
All Arabs are equal – except the tribe from which the prophet Muahammad came, which is superior, as demonstrated by the fact that Allah chose his messenger from among them.
This teaching is at the root the strict Sharia marriage rules (adherence to these rules, even in our times, confirms their existence and current validity under Sharia):
A Muslima may not marry a non-Muslim, because she would be ‘marrying down’ (by having to obey a man/husband who is not a Muslim and is therefore ‘below’ her) while no such prohibition exists for a Muslim man (if he marries a woman who is not a Muslima, she has to look up to him and obey him – a Muslim – anyway, so she is ‘marrying up’ and there is no ‘conflict’).
An Arab woman must marry a Muslim who is also an Arab, because to marry a non-Arab Muslim, she would be ‘marrying below her status’.
Similarly, a Quraishi (from Muhammad’s tribe) woman is not permitted to marry outside her tribe, because that would be ‘marrying below her status’. (This is often expressed as ‘a woman with a lineage’ may not marry a man of ‘a lesser lineage’.)
This is known as the principle of ‘kafa’ah’ – suitability: a woman’s guardian is responsible for finding her a ‘kuff’ (‘suitable’) husband. (In Muslim countries, women have occasionally successfully legally challenged their arranged marriages on the grounds of ‘kafa’ah’. )
The Jurists have stated that among Arabs, a non-Quraishi male is not a match (Kuf) for a Quraishi woman, nor can any person of non-Arab descent be a match for a woman of Arab descent. For example, the Sayyids, whether Siddique or Farooque, Uthmaani or Alawi, or belonging to some other branch can never be matched by any person not sharing their lineage, no matter his profession and family status. The Sayyids are suitable matches for one another, since they share descent from the Quraishi tribe. Thus, marriages between themselves are correct and permitted without any condition as appearing in Durrul Mukhtar:
“And Kafaah in lineage. Thus the Quraysh are suitable matches for one another as are the (other) Arabs suitable matches for one another.”
The ruling relevant to non-Arabs is as follows: ‘An Ajmi (non-Arab) cannot be a match for a woman of Arab descent, no matter that he be an Aalim (religious scholar) or even a Sultan (ruling authority). (Raddul Muhtar p.209 v.4)
This whole discourse appears to be a bit of a tangent, but am trying to demostrate something integral to this issue: Arab Muslims consider themselves to be ‘more perfected’ than other Muslims are – and demand that they and their culture are held as superior to all others. After all, the old adage about definingracism/prejudice is not ‘would you sit and talk with ‘insert name of discriminated-against group’, but would you permit your daughter to marry one.
Clearly, the ‘rule’ – as established by Sharia and as enforced everywhere where Sharia contols civil laws, the Quraishi are not permitted to marry their daughters outside their tribe Arab Muslims are not permitted marry their daughters to non-Arab Muslims, and Muslims are not permitted to marry their daughters to non-Muslims. In other words, there is a ‘lineage-based’ (meaning ‘race’ as well as ‘culture’, ‘wealth’ and ‘religion’ based) class order established and enforced by Sharia, with Arabs ‘above’ and at the top and the Quraishi at the pinnacle…
This has been a sore point with many non-Arab Muslims, because marriage law is not the only aspect of life where the Arabs claim their ways are ‘more perfected’ and therefore that should replace the local customs and culture. Many non-Arab Muslims are vocal opponents of the ‘Arabization’ of their cultures and the devastating effects this has on their youth.
These Muslims have no difficulty in distinguishing between ‘cultural’ and ‘religious’ practices: they accept Islam as their religion, but they will be damned if the accept ‘Arabic’ culture as superior (and thus preferable) to their own!
One Muslim I spoke with referred to this as Arab supremacism and said that Imams intent on radicalizing non-Arab Muslim youth are capitalizing on this. To paraphraze him (as I do not recall the exact wording he used) these Imams tell the non-Arab Muslim youths that no matter how devout they are, they can never become as ‘perfected’ and thus beloved of Allah) as the lowliest Arabs – unless, of course, they martyr themselves in the cause of jihad.
In no uncertain terms, young and vulnerable people are being targetted by some unscrupulous Imams and told that because they are of Pakistani or other non-white descent, they cannot ever become first class Muslims and the ONLY way they can become perfected enough to enter paradise is by becoming suicide bombers.
This is important for us all to know and understand!
But, back to the video above…
You can see from the body language – as well as the discourse between them – that the two men (aside from the mediator) come from very different points of view. The Arab’s (Yahya Abu Zakariya) body language is aggressive and presumptive of dominance. The Berber’s (Ahmed Adghirni) body language is much more interesting…
(Disclosure – I may be reading more to this than there is… A few decades ago, while I was taking a University course on Arab history, I had a neighbour who was a Berber and who loved to fill me in on the ‘Berber perception of life’ – including that of Arabs. Right or wrong, the Berber perspective (according to my Berber neighbour) regards the Arabs as invaders who used to raid the peaceful Berbers in order to steal their women – the Berber wome were famed for their beauty and piercing blue eyes. He said that it was considered a status-symbol among the Arab colonists to have blue-eyed children… Eventually, the Berbers came to regard the Arabs as the usurper colonists – much as the Arab in the debate regards the French…)
In the Berber’s perception – and I think this s born out by Ahmed Adghirni’s body language, the Arabs are unwelcome colonists… a point completely lost on Yahya Abu Zakaruya, who seems compleely incapable of getting the idea that not everyone regards Arab culture as the pinnacle to aspire to, and does not seem aware that not everyone sees the world from the Arab perspective.
This video shows that there is serious animosity to the increasing Arabization of culture in Islamic countries. Nor is anti-semitism as universal in Muslim countries as the Arabic lenz makes it appear.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 