Comment on the Belmont Club: "Faith in Cynicism"

It is interesting to me that the addiction to hate fear and violence that underlays political-religious fanaticism seems less fixed than is the sexually based violence that is the basis of the child abuse and murder we discussed in the thread In the garden of bad and evil. While I have always suspected that there was a strong element of sexual addiction in Islamism this indicates that the condition is more complex. It may be necessary for whiskey to polish some of his thesis. It may be however that the attachment to a cause is of the same order as a sexual obsession but that the object of the fixation can change. If either is true then it has implications for how we fight them.

This reinforces the case for the Bush Doctrine. If we need to both hit them hard and then work to change their ideology and conduct then both military confrontation and engagement are needed. The Left paradoxically believes that the government can positively change human behavior domestically but that it can not be done in the case of Islamic culture. Personally I always felt that we needed to push harder on the levers to change their culture. That would include supporting minority groups in the region, such as Christians, Zoroastrians, Baha'i and Jews, and promoting missionary activity. Nothing would be better than a wave of Buddhism sweeping over the Middle East.

It is also is possible that in the case of Mosab we have someone who's claims can be accepted at face value. Perhaps he simply was a young man who hadn't been abused by his father and was psychologically healthy and therefor had not entered into the cycle of fear hate and degradation that underlays Islamism. If that is so then it seems unusual in that his father is that most unusual character, a fanatic steeped in violence and abuse who did not transmit the disease to a child in his care. Either that or his father is the even rarer case, the true believing leader of a cause who is personally more decent and honorable in his inner life than are his followers but who is so absorbed in his faith that he has divided humanity into two classes, those inside his shield he treated as fellow souls, that is family, and those outside of his inner circle who he disposes of as inhuman objects. Islam is particularly suited to promoting this view of the world. Whether that is a pathology or simply a path that leads to inefficiency stasis and failure in a society is a question.

James,
Regarding Christian Scripture, the KJV is not the oldest translation of the Bible in the English language and it is certainly not the most accurate. It is however among the finest examples of poetry available in English with phrases that can speak to the heart. Like Shakespeare, and a Quiller-Couch edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse, it belongs on the shelf in every English speaking home. On that shelf I would also recommend the original Book of Common Prayer. That and the KJV belie the general rule that nothing good ever came out of a government committee.

wretchard,
Barack Obama might not represent the future but instead the last gasp of ancien regime

That is a point that needs constant repetition to the public.

Thomas Drew,
faith in a God who is and remains free

The god of Islam is curiously unfree and incapable compared to the god of Judaism or Christianity. He needs humans to act on his behalf and is capable of being frozen into inaction or neglect by physical manifestations, such as disfigurement.

May I implore my fellow commentators to resist what seems to this non-Christian to be a most unchristian urge to post long passages from the Bible onto the thread?