Ya gotta hand it to the man: A far-Left Australian Jew claims to understand Islam better than Islamic scholars do



As it is enormously long-winded, in a typical Leftist style, I won't try to reproduce Michael Brull's article here.  Below, however, are a couple of his opening sentences.  He is discussing the Orlando massacre:

"Right-wing politicians and commentators have hurried to link the attack to Islam and Muslims generally, using the massacre to promote goals like banning Muslim immigration.

While others have responded with critiques of the overt racism of some of these voices, in this article, I want to explain why these claims about the responsibility of Islam for this massacre are substantively wrong"

Brull's basic point is that both in the past and today, many Muslims condone homosexuality -- which is true.   With the exception of a few Western Imams, however, Islamic scholars today universally condemn homosexuality.

So what do the Koran and the Hadiths say?  The Koran re-tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which teaches divine vengeance upon homosexuality.  But the Koran is not specific about how faithful Muslims should treat homosexuals.  For that, we have to go to the Hadiths, which are treated by all Muslim scholars as the authentic teachings of Mohammed.  And in the Hadiths we find not only an instruction to kill homosexuals but precise instructions about how:  They are to be thrown off the top of a tall building, which is exactly what the devout Muslims of ISIS do regularly.

So how come many Muslims condone or have condoned homosexuality?  How come the Orlando shooter himself appears to have been homosexual?  Easy:  Homosexuality is rife among Muslims.  Their religion makes their relationship with women very difficult to start with and the toleration of polygamy creates an even bigger stress.  Under polygamy, the rich old men get most of the women, leaving lots of young men high and dry.

So sexual frustration among Muslim young men is HUGE and tends to break out in all directions.  It's why they clothe their sisters in Burkas, Niqabs and the like.  And why many Muslim societies restrict the movements of women -- with some going to the extreme of requiring women to go out only in the company of a male family member.  It's all to protect their female family members from other Muslim young men.  Their women have to be made as untempting to Muslim young men as possible. Otherwise the women would be sexually harassed.  In more liberal Muslim countries such as Lebanon, Muslim women are very frequently harassed and assaulted by Muslim men.

But if women are not available, what is the next best thing?  Homosexuality and pedophilia.  And in some countries, such as Afghanistan, that's institutionalized -- as with the Afghan "dancing boys".  They do more than dance.

So there is HUGE tension between the Muslim religion and what Muslims do.  And that dissonance can sometimes be resolved by various sorts of tolerance of homosexuality -- usually silent tolerance.

Brull makes much of some times in the distant past when Muslim societies have tolerated homosexuality fairly openly, but we have to relate that to something that he himself stresses:  The diversity in Islam.  Muslims are notorious for their sectarian wars.  Islam is not unlike Christianity in that it has within it many sects which all think they are right and the other sects are wrong.  There was a time when Anglican bishops were burnt at the stake for their beliefs -- a rather hilarious thought when we contemplate Anglican spinelessness today.

The important point is, however, that Christians no longer attack one-another physically, whereas Muslims still do.  Religions change and evolve over time and Islam has done some of that too.  So what some Muslims have done in the past is no guide to what Islam is today. The past roasting of Anglican bishops is no guide to modern Christianity and nor are episodes of liberalism among some Muslims of the past any guide to Islam today.  Islam today treads an enormously difficult path of sexual inhibition, made more difficult by an awareness that infidels have a lot more fun.

As I said, Brull makes much of the fact that Islam is not a monolithic entity.  It is split into a large number of mutually hostile sects.  He seems to think that the divisiveness of Islam makes it unreasonable to talk of a single monolithic entity called "Islam".  But that is only trivially true. There is much more that unites Muslims than there are things that divide them.  And open hostility to homosexuality is something virtually all of them have in common.  Homophobia is Muslim.

Some Muslim organizations in the West did condemn the Orlando massacre but that is a type of deceptive PR allowed by the Koran: "taqiyya".  In some Muslim countries, such as Turkey, the massacre was celebrated  -- JR

After Orlando, The Danger Of Pauline Hanson Becomes Apparent

So says  Max Chalmers, without offering any comment on the problems she is addressing.  His whole diatribe (large excerpt below) could be reduced to the old chestnut that most Muslims are not terrorists so we can do nothing about Muslim terror.  He certainly suggests nothing we could do.  Just let them go on murdering is his apparent preference. 

And what she says is of course "racist" according to young Max. I will bypass the usual retort that Musims are a religion not a race and point to the real issue that he ignores.  It is neither a religion nor a race that is being objected to but mass murder.  Not that mass murder has ever bothered Leftists, of course. Think Stalin, Mao, Castro etc.

Muslims never stop murderinjg.   Mostly, as in Syria, they murder one another but their murderous tendencies do sometimes come out in Western countries too.  Islam is clearly a religion that encourages murder and as long as we accomodate hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Australia, some Muslims will act out their murderous tendencies and attack us.

So it is the Muslim community that is the problem.  As long as we have that community in our countries we will be subjected to repeated acts of terrorism.  So, as Pauline rightly sees, the only way of protecting ourselves from the Muslim fanatics is to cease hosting that community.  The first step is obviously to block any further additions to that community and the time may also come when we ask the whole of that community to avail themselves of the Muslim obligation of hospitality in one of the 30 or so Muslim countries in the world.  There are a couple of large ones just to the North of us. 

It is NOT racist to object to terrorism and to look towards the source of it.


Late yesterday evening, the former MP released a video that serves as a warning for what is at stake should that campaign succeed. It’s hardly a revelation that Pauline Hanson is running as a racist, but the manner in which she is doing so is cause for alarm, both because of what it says about the levels of racism still acceptable in mainstream Australian politics, and the broad threat it poses to Australian Muslims, as well as democratic and liberal ideals.

It starts with Hanson standing in a driveway, a microphone pinned to her rose coloured blazer.

“Let’s have a serious chat about the latest terrorist attack that’s happened in America,” she says, looking directly down the barrel of the camera.

In the next two minutes, Hanson delivers a typically meandering dialogue which tries to reap political capital from the horrible massacre in Orlando, something other conservative candidates have also attempted to do. Insidiously, she refuses to acknowledge the fact the attack targeted LGBTI people, and offers not a single word of solidarity for a global community in mourning.

Bigotry and opportunism are no surprise coming from Hanson, the women whose anti-Asian migration stance has had its absurdity exposed the passage of time. But there is something particularly chilling about this video, an extremity of racism that goes beyond even the rhetoric of Reclaim Australia.

At one point she pauses dramatically, and then delivers the most important line of the video and, perhaps, of her campaign.

“We have to take a strong stance against Muslims,” she says.

Hanson mentions Islam next, but the reducing of ‘Muslims’ to a single cohesive entity – a group of 1.6 billion people who are Sunni and Shi’a, Pakistani and American, radical and moderate, men, women, white, black, brown, gay, straight, and otherwise – helps explain the more obviously shocking statements that follow.

All pretence of ideological criticism or religious critique have been dropped. Being Muslim is adjudicated as a crime in and of itself. Regardless of their actual views, convictions, or actions, Muslims are demonised as inherently bad people.

Except to Hanson, they’re actually less than that. Muslims are nothing more than dangerous animals.

On the tails of the ‘strong stance’ comment, Hanson goes on to compare these 1.6 billion people to dogs. We don’t let Pit Bull Terriers into the country, or certain dangerous toys, she says. The obvious, odious punchline follows: Muslims, like pit-bulls, are dangerous. They must not be allowed to exist here either.

Whether Hanson, Smith, and co end up involved in the Senate balance of power or not, a position in parliament will allow them to open new ground for major party players to tread. The radicalism of their racism will stretch political possibility, emboldening the likes of Bernardi and Abbott while making them appear more moderate in comparison.

These are the kind of shifts that don’t just nudge individual pieces of legislation over the line: they can fundamentally rebalance a nation.

Pauline Hanson has been radicalised. A seat in parliament would allow her to radicalise many more.


https://newmatilda.com/2016/06/14/after-orlando-the-danger-of-pauline-hanson-becomes-apparent/

Academic suspended for criticising Australian flag

What do you think of the heading above?  Sounds outrageous, does it not?  It is on the header of the latest mailout from "New Matilda".  And, knowing the underlying story concerned, it did give me a laugh.  I was even more entertained when the opening sentence of  the story described the suspended one, Roz Ward, as a "respected Melbourne academic".  Respected by whom?  Other Far-Leftists, no doubt.

But the heading is deceptive in the usual Leftist way.  The woman did not just criticize the flag.  Harold Scruby has been doing that for decades without incident. Having the Union Jack quartered in the Australian flag has long steamed up some Leftists.  Ms Ward actually denigrated the flag and what it stood for, which is a more serious matter



The story below is fairly factual, quite devoid of the huffing and puffing one usually gets in Leftist writing.  So it leaves the reader in a position to make up their own minds about the matter.  I would note two additional points only:

1). Universities these days are very sensitive about speech, "hate" speech, particularly.  So LaTrobe would have risked great cries of hypocrisy if they had let Ms Ward's quite blatant hate speech go uncontested.  An accusation of "racism" is pretty toxic these days.  And directing such an accusation at the university's source of funding just could not be risked.  Funding is the thing that universities most passionately believe in these days.

2). The flag is a symbol of the nation so it was Australia as a whole that Ms Ward was denigrating. And Australians are a pretty patriotic lot in a quiet way so there is no doubt that the utterance concerned would have cause widespread offence -- particularly as it came from a source well deserving of opprobrium: A Communist.  Glass houses and all that.  Just the woman's obvious self-satisfaction was offensive enough, considering the horrors she stands for.  So the whole thing was just bad PR for the university.  And universities spend a lot on PR these days

No doubt Ms Ward will be reinstated after a suitable interval.  She will be found to have uttered "free speech".  Marxism is respectable in the universities these days


Roz Ward – a respected Melbourne academic and one of the co-founders of the Safe Schools program – has been suspended from her job at La Trobe University this afternoon, over a private Facebook post which criticised the Australian flag as “racist”.

Ms Ward, who has been at the centre of a News Corporation engineered media storm this week, was notified in writing this afternoon of her immediate suspension (with pay) from the university.

Fiona Reed, the Executive Director of Human Resources at LaTrobe accuses Ms Ward of breaching her employment conditions by embarrassing the university, causing the Victorian Government – a major funder of LaTrobe – to divert resources to defending Safe Schools, and of putting her colleagues at risk by creating an ‘unsafe’ environment.

Last week, under a photograph of the gay and lesbian flag flying above Victorian parliament, Ms Ward joked with a friend on Facebook: “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of state parliament and get a red one up there and my work is done.”

The ‘red’ is a reference to the Marxist flag – in addition to her work with Safe Schools, Ms Ward is a prominent figure in Melbourne’s Marxist political movement.

The post was leaked to The Australian newspaper, which began a campaign last week to remove Ms Ward from her position with Safe Schools Victoria Coalition, which is funded by the Victorian government and auspiced by LaTrobe.

By early this week, former Liberal Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett – the Chairman of charity beyondblue, which has been a major funder of LaTrobe – had joined the attacks, telling media that if Ms Ward remained in her role with Safe Schools, he would personally argue against any further funding to the university’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, which administers the Safe Schools program on behalf of LaTrobe.

This afternoon, Ms Ward was handed a letter by LaTrobe University, immediately suspending her from her job Specifically, La Trobe claims Ms Ward’s conduct:

“a. … Undermined public confidence in the Safe Schools program by undermining public confidence in you as a researcher and as a person associated with the Safe Schools program.”

“b. … Damages the reputation of the Safe Schools program and aligns the Safe Schools program with views which have nothing to do with the program and its message and content.”

“c. … Has required members of the Victorian Government to take up their time in defending the Safe Schools program, rather than be positive advocates for the Safe Schools program.”

“d. … Has required senior staff at the University to take up their time in defending the Safe Schools program, rather than be positive advocates for the Safe Schools program or undertake other duties they have.”

“e. … drawn (your colleagues) into the negative publicity around Safe Schools and this has impacted on their ability to continue with their research in a safe environment.”

SOURCE