Lampooning an appropriate subject is fair game
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Cartoons depict Muslim faith for what it is
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I was prompted to post this because of two anonymous opinions expressed (scroll down past my post) to comments I made about the wonderfully funny cartoons by the Danish artist who lampooned the Muslim religion, for being violent, cruel and nasty and how those cartoons were vindicated by the nasty, violent,cruel and murderous reaction to them across the Muslim world.
Surely the threat of murder on someone who disagrees with what you have to say about them is reprehensible and therefore the religion that supports such threats is a violent, cruel, filthy and inhuman one that should be condemned at every opportunity.?
One cartoonists reaction to the violent outbursts across the Muslim world
to the original Dutch cartoons.
To have an idea of where I am coming from, I recommend a book By Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as we know it (see book review below), a brilliant book that outlines the threat the Muslim faith is to a civilised Western world.
Product Description
In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Books
- Published on: 2006-09-16
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 214 pages
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
It's the end of the world as we know it…
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.
And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"—while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.
If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn—the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world—shows to devastating effect in this, his first and eagerly awaited new book on American and global politics.
The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West—wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion—is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.
Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America alone—with maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope.
Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread America's influence around the world—for our own sake as well as theirs.
Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny—but it will also change the way you look at the world. It is sure to be the most talked-about book of the year.
About the Author
Mark Steyn's writing on war, politics, the arts, and culture can be read around the world from the Atlantic Monthly to The Australian. In the United States his column appears in the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Sun, the Washington Times, the Orange County Register, and other newspapers. He is also National Review's "Happy Warrior," a columnist for the New Criterion, and resident obituarist for the Atlantic Monthly. In Canada, he is senior columnist for the country's newest political magazine, the Western Standard, and literary correspondent for the country's biggest-selling general interest magazine, Maclean's. In addition, he appears in many other publications, from the Jerusalem Post to Hawke's Bay Today in New Zealand. Born in Toronto, he lives in New Hampshire.
Customer Reviews
One of the best I've read
After a couple pages of reading, I grabbed a highlighter and marked large chunks of each page, then passed the book on to my son. It's so important to understand the demographics involved in the current world situation and Mark Steyn makes it so enjoyable a read.
Repetative but insightful
By the time I was half way through the book, I was getting tired of it. The information is insightful and thought-provoking but very repetative. I felt like the book should have been a short story length but someone decided to make it novel length instead.
While it is possible to verify most of the information the author cites in the book, it would have been nice if he had included some of his source material for further research.
Overall very good information but not the best writing style for me.
Americans are the only intelligent, strong people in the world?
It is an interesting read and Mark Steyn is a very good writer.
I enjoy his newspaper columns and pretty much agreed with everything he wrote until he went down this Neo Conservative path to support the foolish second war against Iraq, then when virtually the entire world opposed the US - go it alone war against the people in Iraq, Steyn falls into this defensive line of reasoning that the entire world is wrong, especially weak, dying Old Western Europe and America, implied led by the wise Neo Conservatives are right and must face the evils of the world alone.
Yes, Mark Steyn is on target when he shows idiot PC multi culturalist in the West as... idiot, PC multi culturalists who really don't know much about the real world, haven't studied true history, know nothing about Islam, the brutalities of the Third World and fall into reflex PC responses that "THE WEST" and AMERICA are to blame for all the problems in the world and if certain Muslims groups, Muslim nations do horrible brutalities, no one in the West can blame them, we must blame ourselves.
Mark Steyn is of course right when he warns the West, especially Western Europeans that they have to resist mass Muslim immigration and giving in to the demands of Muslims within their borders. There are no making deals with Islam when it senses weakness and looks to take over schools, neighborhoods, countries, continents.
The main problem with Mark Steyn's America Alone, is a problem that I see with most Jewish Neo Conservatives:
They put out the lie that they - and only they alone are fighting the terrorists, opposing the Islamic extremists and they use brutal smears to attack anyone that doesn't accept their whole program including the foolish Iraq war - Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 - it wasn't an Islamic extremist state. There were no WOMD.
Steyn and most Jewish Neo Conservatives simply ignore all the populist, nationalist and true Conservatives in Europe, the West who have been resisting the Muslim invasions, Islamic extremism in their countries for a long time - the Front National in France, Swiss People's Party, the British National Party, Pym Fortuyn, Pat Buchanan, the Rockford Institute, these patriots get no mention or support from Mark Steyn and the Neo Conservatives because they do not support Israel unconditionally - worse, these patriots are smeared as NAZIs.
But, this is just one point.
America Alone is a well written book and Steyn does a very good job of showing the stupidity of those in the West who aid and abet the Islamic invasion and terror against Westerners in the West.
Related Political Animal reading
Cartoons depict Muslim faith for what it is
Jihad and Understanding
Having a multiple MuslimC Political Animal 2008
