The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Sam Harris is still mad about ‘liberals who followed Noam Chomsky...

Re: Sam Harris is still mad about ‘liberals who followed Noam Chomsky...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, October 16 2015, 16:15:11 (UTC)
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Harris's views have a precedent...70 years ago (and 600 years ago) we were hearing the same thing about Judaism....this belief that Muslims (or Jews) pose an inherent danger to "us" is the same then as it is now.

Back then there was no real evidence that Jews did any of the things they were accused of...there was never any evidence that they poisoned wells...why on earth would they? They had to drink the same water and who do you suppose the Christians WOULD blame? What would be the benefit to them?

There was no evidence that they killed Christian children to use their blood in Jewish ritual....again, why would they be so foolish, surrounded as they were in Europe by Christians who repeatedly showed they were always ready to murder Jews on the slightest pretext?

Even the accusation that they were hoarders and usurers and made money by gouging and high interest rates was unfounded. If they hoarded it was because at any time any debt owed to a Jew could be cancelled by a Christian king or other ruler, with no recourse...the Christians would just renege on the debt and that was that...at the time these accusations were made Christians didn't loan money at interest, it was forbidden them...so Jews were the first to do it and caught all the blame...but, as Christians were forced to borrow from Jews, because no Christian could loan at interest, they resented having to pay the money back and called Jews all sorts of names just because the Jew expected to be paid back, expected a Christian to honor his pledge and keep his word.

When finally Christians saw how much money could be made, they started loaning at interest as well and no one was ever condemned again for usury, and the biggest money lender of them all was the Fugger family of Germany...Christians, not Jews.

Just to hurt Jewish bankers a law was passed in Venice that Jews had to charge less interest than Christians...this was meant to ruin them financially and give the advantage to the Christian bankers....but the same Christians who'd demanded the law came back a year later to have it rescinded because the Jews were making MORE money because they charged LESS interest.

And the reason Jews were so heavily represented in finance was because it was left to them as a dirty business forbidden to Christians...lending money was FORCED on Jews as the only way out of poverty, because it was then considered sinful for Christians to do so...the first Jews to be able to lend money made their capital from rags and junk and everything the Christians left to them because they didn't want to do it...when they saw Jews turn that lemon into such powerful lemonade, they became even angrier because THEY had forced Jews to enter the field where they prospered so much they could hold their heads up.

Jews were forbidden to own land, to farm, to open new businesses, which is the reason they dealt in junk and pawn shops...they could go to university, they could enter medicine, they could practice law, they could not, they could not, they could not....and they took on a sinister cast in the eyes of Christians because despite all that Christians did to degrade them and keep them impoverished, the Jews, or some few, actually prospered and became among the wealthiest....THAT was totally unacceptable....they were supposed to die, not outstrip their Christian "betters"...so the anger against them grew even more.

In his volume on religions Will Durant has a lucid and heartbreaking introduction to what life for Jews of Europe was really like...if they "stuck together" it was because they were put in ghettos...and also never felt secure or comfortable in the company of Christians, for good reason.

If some or many were "dirty" it was because a trip to the common well to draw water could lead to accusations of poisoning. It wasn't their choice, and we know that because of the tedious dietary laws which mandated two sets of dishes for foods and a lot of extra washing up...so they were if anything very clean, but uneasy about getting water.

And as Christians slept with their livestock in their homes and shit in the streets, diseases were rampant and the best the Christians could come up with was that the Jews MUST have done it, must have poisoned the wells...rather than looking to their own filthy habits...and it goes on and on.

The point is that all of the negative traits Christians ascribed to "Jewishness" were all survival behaviors forced onto the Jews by their treatment at the hands of the Christians.

Back then Sam Harris would have said, "liberals want to say it is all OUR fault"....well, yes, it WAS all your fault! The Jews of Spain and the Ottoman Empire lived clean lives among the clean Muslims...the Jews of Europe could NOT lead clean lives among the filthy Christians elsewhere.

It's the same today with Muslims....the Christian West has been abusing those people and countries for a few centuries now and the "violence" and "terrorism" we wish to make a "part of Islam" is in reality the reaction of people (who just happen to be Muslim), to what WE have done to them...it is the natural response of an angered and abused and persecuted and murdered people...it is NATURAL and not religious at all.

Sam Harris would have argued the Nazi point of view if he had lived in the 13th century...Jews were a DANGER and must be periodically beaten down if not eliminated entirely but at all costs we must see them and recognize then for the danger they are, because of their dangerous religion....he is making that argument today against Muslims...same lack of evidence and same ignorance and prejudice...only the objects of hatred have changed...the ignorance and bigotry and racism are all alive and well and he is the best example of Medieval thinking on this matter that we have. We know exactly which side he would have been on 600 years ago and with the same lack of empirical evidence as existed back then...they didn't need such evidence then, and he doesn't need the evidence today to "believe" as he does.

I have yet to hear him deal with the simple fact of when the retaliation against the West started...he too doesn't want to address the issue that while this violent Muslim religion has been around for centuries, why now? Why Muslims begun fighting back now? It was always a violent religion, wasn't it? Those Hadiths and calls to jihad and violence were always there in a Quran that was also there for a long long time weren't they? Can the "scientific" Harris give us an explanation as to why now and not for hundreds of years before (the same time frame when Christians were plundering the world and its peoples).

The best Hitchens could say to this, the best evidence he could pull from his arse was to say Islam had been at war against us since almost the day the Revolutionary War ended...and his example, his proof of this was the time when Algerian pirates enslaved American sailors they found in their waters...this is his evidence that Islam was ALWAYS at war with us.....he doesn't mention, of course, that for decades if not centuries before that our sailors had been kidnapping people from Africa to sell into slavery...weren't we at war with THEM, or the people, for centuries? You mean they couldn't retaliate? Is that the position once again...that America is exceptional and commit all the crimes it wants but no may dare defend him or herself or worse, fight back? Is that the position? We may steal millions of slaves but Muslims can't enslave a SINGLE American?

Yes, it is.



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