Mohammedanism and a dose of Keilholtzian Ecumenical Dialog (Sit still, there, Infidel, I am dialoging to you!)

There seems to be something in the air among our permascowlers. Certainly one of the recent whiners came from a recent article in the Contra Costa Times, but one stumbled by here a few days ago.

You can go read their comments here, but I will address some of them here.

First, it seems that I need to explain once again why I call the religion Mohammedanism and the followers Mohammedans.

The various professionally thenthitive sorts like to point out, "actually, the followers of Islam call themselves Muslims... blah blah blah." They generally conclude that I am ignorant of this fact and often suggest that I get to know a Mohammedan personally.

So, let's dismiss this one. I have. Very personally. I have even maintained friendships over the years with several of them. And yes, they know what I think of Mohammed, and they know that I know what they think of "men of the book." We don't trivialize each others' views by pretending that they are inconsequential (because, unlike the worthless screeds of the followers of Matthew Fox or Starhawk (boy I do seem to be picking on one local "Catholic" institution, don't I?), we have no doubt that we hold beliefs that we take extremely seriously, to the point of life and death decisions based on them. Doesn't mean that we have to go about killing each other over them, just yet). That is what the liberals and other Endarkenment types do when they prattle on about a marketplace of ideas. If all ideas are equal, or weighted only by popularity in a free market, then none of them are worth a hill of beans, and you might as well shut up and let me turn old useless Grandma into soap, because your truth is not my truth.

Did someone talk about the "dictatorship of relativism" or something of that sort recently? Or did I just dream it?

I fully realize that these Mohammedans call their faith "Islam" which basically boils down to "submission [to the will of God]." I submit that "Islam" when used properly means the Holy Catholic Church of Rome. The real "Muslims", the ones who REALLY submit to the will of God, rejoiced when their Cardinals elected His Most Emminent and Reverend Lord, Lord Joseph Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church Ratzinger to the See of Peter.

So, why give up an important linguistic point? If you want to be opposed to "submission to the will of God," then so be it. I would rather be opposed to submission to the misunderstanding of the will of God promoted by one Mohammed.

"Ah," but the thenthitive will say, "Mohammedan implies, like Christian, that the follower worships Mohammed, who they don't, they see him as simply another prophet." [three to one odds that it is about this point that they start mentioning that, "actually [they do love that "actually", especially when it is used to preface some superficially understood balderdash], the Muslims revere Jesus, too."]

Fine, then what does that say about the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Swedenbourgians, the Marxists, the Confuxianists, etc.? Let us be serious here. No one assumes that the Lutherans worship Luther. They have a whole bunch of goofy ideas (and stop before you begin with the "you should really get to know a Lutheran before you..." because I will have you know that I used to go to a Lutheran church every Sunday to take my grandfather (followed by a Catholic Mass with my grandmother, and, yes, Virginia, the Novus Ordo is similar to the Lutheran worship service, which does NOT render it defective, you ninnies) There you have it, pissing off the Left and the Right, in one fine post. Sheesh, get this boy to a bullfight before he starts tearing a new one into Abe Lincoln and Apple Pie).

OK. Maybe Marxists do worship Marx, but they are really bad (once again, don't tell me to get to know one. I was one), and I might argue that some Protestants worship the Protesting more than anything, but again, it is different.

But the point is that in the languages of the West, we identify a set of creeds with the founder, particularly when they share a root with other creeds. So we can distinguish patriarchal monotheists who revere Jesus by the creeds of their founder (you really could see this one coming, couldn't you?):

Christians follow a Church (that has four marks) built by Christ.
Lutherans follow a creed cooked up by Luther.
Calvinists follow a dismal religion hatched in the darker recesses of Calvin's brain.
Mohammedans follow a creed cobbled together from a variety of Eastern heresies by Mohammed.
And Baptists don't recognize each other at the liquor store...oh wait, that is another punchline.

For Mohammedans to insist that the mechanics of our languages be set aside so that they can gloat that "even the infidel calls our faith 'submission to the will of God'" is laughable.

To call Mohammedanism "Islam" is blasphemy. It is saying that God has no Son. No Catholic ought to do it. I am not saying that a Catholic who uses the term "Islam" casually believes that the Koran is anything more than an interesting bit of Classical Arabic poetry, but it gives the wrong impression.

Now, on to the second point, which is the feeble whining about censorship.

Erik's Rants and Recipes is a benevolent dictatorship. It is (ah, my Marxist roots are showing) the Organ of the Central Committee of Keilholtz, under the direction of Chairman Keilholtz, the Secretary General of the Keilholtz Party.

I am a surprisingly tolerant dictator. There are no concentration camps in the land of Keilholtz. OK, we might have the occassional hard labor experiential reeducation facility here and there, and we might exile Joe d'Hippolito (and the funny thing is that one of the few things that Joe and I agree about is the danger of Mohammedanism. Unfortunately Joe thinks that the cure is mass slaughter, which is really horrid) until he shows up in sack cloth and ashes, but dissent is allowed, to some degree.

What is not allowed is to use this Organ of Keilholtz to spread unauthorized propoganda. I don't care if you are spreading the word of Mohammed or the sale of penile enlargement devices. Normally, spam comments are deleted. If anything I was being gentle in only deleting the url reference in the young lady's comments (which were, by and large, written in that irritating professionally thenthitive tone that you so often find among Ethnic Studies grad students- I think I have figured out who the writer is, by the way).

I am not trying to protect my readers. I cannot do that even if I wanted to. I am certainly not trying to argue via deletion (you will notice that I did not even respond to the young Mohammedan's comment), rather I am simply refusing to be a party to this sort of propoganda.

Finally (for now), let us discuss the notions of being "racist" as Miss Jones (who in a private email assures me that she is older than 19, and not a special needs person, which was a petty dig, I admit) suggests, when she writes:

What you are encouraging here is a narrow, stereotyped, frankly uneducated view of Islam, and it is downright racist.

First, I will bet you anything that Miss Jones has not studied Mohammedanism as much as I have. I can't guarantee it, but I just have a hunch. So, we will leave the uneducated view of Islam bit for now.

Racist, however, is a scream. Which "race" do the Mohammedans belong to? Let's see, if I dig around some old physical anthropology books I find that there are only three races: caucasoid, negroid, and mongloid. But then it tries to convince me that the Australian aborigines are caucasoids with melanin. OK, the archaic taxonomies are being a bit useless here.

So I go and look for linguistic groupings, which is a lot more fun. So, I can lump Arabs (but not all Mohammedans, certainly) as Semites. Where does this leave Cat Stevens or Richard Thompson? Did they get kicked out of whatever race they were before when they converted to Mohammedanism? It would seem that the racists here would be those who wish to see followers of a creed as part of a distinct race.

Ah, but Miss Jones will probably never read this, as she has told me in a private email, "I will not be stumbling into the world of Erik's rants and recipes again, I
prefer proper, reasonable debate." Preferably the sort where all ideas are considered equally true, even if they are in direct opposition, and that one gets to pat oneself on the head for thinking that all ideas are true. Meanwhile Grandma gets made into soap and the local Church is turned into a mosque.

I used to belong to these circles, where "nuance" and "open mindedness" are so highly valued that no other truth can come in their way. They are tiresome and, dare I say it, flat out wrong.

Posted by erik at April 23, 2005 4:20 PM | TrackBack