re: "Islam’s sterilizing homogeneity."

Col. B. Bunny at Eternity Road examines history and culture.

Money quote(s):

"The Golden Age of Islam. Puhleez. More like the Gold Age of Plunder plus living off the doomed remnants of local Persian and Egyptian scholars and artists who had a chance at independent thinking before the Islamic Curtain of Intellectual Darkness descended."

Yeah, that's kind of the under-mentioned part of the PC "cultural and scientific contributions of Islam" riff. And they're off to a great start doing it to Europe, btw.

"As we all know by now, outright rejection of Muslim doctrine is apostasy and it and its country cousins are a green light to the murder of the apostate by the do-it-yourselfers perpetually on duty in Muslim lands for housecleaning of this type. A fatwa by some imamical jackass in the Hindu Kush seems to be sufficient authorization for DIY teams (aka mobs) in Morocco to dispatch too-independent thinkers, though I get the impression that a “boys will be boys” approach will be taken in the case of too much local initiative, too much zeal in the service of Allah. There’s no shortage of Islamic zeal anywhere in the world and what’s one more dead infidel in a crowded world anyway?"

This is one of those under-mentioned downsides to Sharia. Next slide please.

"Also good for anyone in Muslim lands to avoid is blasphemy, an exceedingly elastic concept, that encompasses, for example, Christians who get into neighborhood, land, water, or business disputes with Muslims. After reading about several cases, I gather that it is a common practice for Christians in disputes with Muslims to try to gain a psychological advantage over their Muslim opponents by insulting to Mohammed or Islam. An example of this might be, “Sir, kindly permit me to say that I think your idea of the boundary line between our two properties is in error. Let us obtain an actual plat of the properties and see where the line lies.” Naturally, blasphemy charges (with death penalty) are brought when Christians insist on such reckless and insulting ways of settling disputes."

In a seminar-type setting today, a colleague made an ignorant comment about how the U.S. tries to implement U.S.-style democracy in other countries. She was referring, I believe, to Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

Hello? In neither case have we done anything like establishing a U.S.-style representative democracy. In both cases we've helped establish European-style parliamentary democracies, which are not the same things at all.

(Don't believe me? Tell me who America's prime minister is?)

re: "Ground Zero Imam: Islam is a Religion of Peaceful People Who Fly Off the Handle Over Mere Speech"

Aaron Worthing at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") is watching the pre-game before the King hearings.

Money quote(s):

"Mind you, they haven’t actually happened yet, but for some reason the mere fact he going to have some kind of hearings justifies shutting it down. Why? Because his utterly peaceful co-religionists might go all terrorist over this."

What's that cliche from the first few months after 9/11? Something like: if you shut down the hearings then the terrorists win.

"I have long identified this as freeloading on terrorism, where a supposed “moderate” Muslim tells those of us in the West, don’t draw cartoons of Mohammed (pedophilia be upon him), don’t criticize his faith and so on. Because, you know, if you do, one of us Muslims are going to go and commit terrorism.

In short, don’t actually exercise and enjoy your freedom. Live your lives limited by intimidation. And then we will get along famously."

Nice little Bill of Rights you've got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.

"(I)nstead of trying to talk us out of exercising our freedom, if you really think your co-religionists can’t be expected to control themselves, why don’t you work on that instead? That seems like the bigger problem to me.

It comes down to this. Either Islam is compatible with freedom or it is not."

That is the key question. We already know that the Judeo-Christian West is compatible with freedom, because they essentially invented it. And they're not exactly stingy about franchising either.

"(I)f you can’t expect Muslims to deal with criticism, blasphemy, etc. without going on a killing spree, then Islam is not compatible with American freedom. And I don’t think you want to see where that road takes us.

But I know for a fact this isn’t true. I know of and work with Muslims every day who would never resort to violence over that kind of thing. They rightly consider statements like Imam Feisel’s as a betrayal of those millions of good Muslims who believe in freedom and Allah.

But it is hypocritical, Imam Feisel, to try to reap the benefits of terrorism without admitting responsibility for terrorism. It is hypocritical to pretend to denounce terrorism while simultaneously enabling it. And It is hypocritical to say that your people will murder over mere words, but to simultaneously pretend that Islam is not a problem in America."

One of the strengths of Western Civilization is its reverence for reason, for working things out, and for being unwilling to overlong tolerate the holding of mutually exclusive ideas and ideals. It took nearly a century and then the bloodiest of civil wars but the United States worked out the slavery vs. all-men-are-created-equal inconsistency. (It only took another century to get to the Civil Rights Act that took that logical contradiction another lap closer to resolution.)

So given our history, Americans aren't all that likely to be unendingly patient with this sort of cognitive dissonance.