The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> drowning in Hitchens

drowning in Hitchens
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, November 29 2014, 17:10:22 (UTC)
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...I can't get enough....he fascinates me as the prime example of the smart/stupid man. I cringe for him, I turn away when he embarrasses himself and his nobler ideals...gradually (I've watched his debate with Galloway at least ten times)I've come to the conclusion that the spate of debates and worldwide travel refuting all religions is merely a dodge....a disguise, even a "conspiracy" if you must. What's really at work here is a veiled attack on one religion only:Islam....but, rather than appear to be ganging up on one, Christianity and Judaism are dragged in to make it look universal....and Dawkins and Harris do the same.

I was watching yet another display of Hitchens' wit and wisdom, where religion is concerned, and actually heard him articulate it...an audience member asked Hitchens that if he believed god didn't exist, why didn't he stay home and stop bothering about it...why make it "your life's work".

And Hitchens said that while it isn't all he does or cares about, certainly in the last eight years or so, it has become a "major preoccupation"....and then he added..."ever since the attack of 9/11". In the guise of discussing all religions and criticizing them all, what really pushed his buttons was to mount an attack against Islam, which he believes the worst or certainly the most dangerous.

And that's just what I've been feeling about him, and Dawkins etc....that this isn't really an expose of all religions...it's an attack against one: Islam. Islam is presented as the most dangerous religion ever, when that honor belongs to Christianity.

What Hitchens and the rest want is for us to focus on Islam as the REASON we are killing and making war against Muslims and their homelands and also the REASON Muslims are fighting to defend themselves(as if all would be quiet and to our liking if only Muhammad had never existed)....Hitchens represents two of the most dangerous and violent countries/empires ever to exist and BOTH of them are Christian nations i.e The US and Britain.

Just in the last few hundred years: The Hundred Years War...the Thirty Years War....the Seven Years War....The Napoleonic Wars....The Franco/Prussian War....the Boer War....World War One....World War Two....Korean War....Vietnam War....Iraq War...Afghan War...and that's not even counting all the wars the United States supported and waged in Latin America with Death Squads and the School For the Americas etc. The tally from these Christian vs Christian wars has been in the hundreds of millions killed and maimed and orphaned and widowed...Christians killing Christians and ranging round the world to do it...70 million in WW I alone and so forth.

In that same period of time what Muslim wars have been brought to the world? Name them. Not even the so-called "universal enmity" between Shia and Sunni comes anywhere near....where is this Muslim violence? Where are the wars of Islam against fellow Muslims? Where are they? How is Islam so "dangerous"

The "danger" is to the people PERSECUTING Muslims...just as all the fear was on the Christian side, Jews were responsible for NONE of it....the fear AND the hatred and violence....and yet Christians said it was Judaism which made it necessary for them to "fight back"...as they now say it is all the fault of Islam, when in reality it wouldn't matter WHAT religion the people of that region believed in...they would STILL be fighting back at what we have been doing all these years.....it isn't "their religion"..it isn't even OUR religion...it's what we DO TO PEOPLE that earns us their anger and causes them to fight back.

Christians did this with Jews too...they condemned Judaism as the REASON why Christians just HAD to persecute and kill Jews down through the centuries...it was THEIR fault decent Christians had to kill them...and specifically; it was the fault of JUDAISM....as it is now supposed to be the fault of Islam.

Christians around the world are again being encouraged and driven to hate yet another religion and its people...it once was Judiasm, now it's Islam.

It was Judaism which made Jews "dirty"...or "greedy"...or "secretive" or "clannish", sticking "together". It had NOTHING to do with the injustice Christians visited on Jews and how Jews had to ADAPT to Christian violence and prejudice.

Jews were considered dirty...were they? Jews need two sets of dishes to eat from because it is "unclean" to mix dairy and meat. But Jews may well have been afraid to go to the common well very often...why? Could it have been because Christians regularly blamed Jews for poisoning wells whenever an epidemic appeared? And why would Jews poison the very water their own children drank from? The actual explanation was that if anyone lived in filth, with pigs, it was Christians, not Jews...but they found it suited them better to blame Jews.

The same case can be made for every other slander aimed at Jews: these were simply the best adaptations Jews could make to the conditions of life they were forced to endure by CHRISTIANS.

And so it is now with Muslims....after decades of abuse and attacks, Muslims have barely begun to fight back....and why do they fight back? According to Christians it has NOTHING to do with the way Christians deal with THEM...it has only to do with their "violent" religion...and here we go again.

THIS is what Hitchens is up, or was....he lends his significant genius to yet another deplorable act of violence and injustice against a people who are merely doing what ANYONE would do who has been attacked and treated in these ways...and that is the reason Galloway says of Hitchens "you USED to speak with the voice of angels, but now you're on the side of the Devil and damn you and all your works".



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