The Saker
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian 
Many of pointed out that apparently the French and most westerners seem to be much more upset when 12 people die in Paris then when hundreds, thousand and tens of thousands die elsewhere. It appears that the 1980s slogan "don't touch my pal" which was originally supposed to denounce racism now has been "re-worked" into a, if not racist, then at least a chauvinistic mode: don't kill French leftists no matter how offensive their discourse is. I won't make that case again here, but because by now anybody still capable of critical thought "got it", but I will look at another, much less noticed case of double standards: the one about the issue of moral pain.
Here is what the official doxa tells us: Muslims have no right to whine about their Prophet being insulted, this is part of free speech. It is disingenuous for them to claim that they have been hurt by these caricatures, in reality they have not been hurt, they just had their feathers ruffled by a bit of disrespectful speech. How can you possibly compared such ruffled feathers with issues of life and death?
So is there such thing as moral pain and can it be compared to physical pain?
Let's look at the record as it stands in the West:
Any psychologist will explain to you that not only does moral pain exist, but it can be worse then physical pain. This is why some people confess to crimes (whether real or not) when they are told that their family members will be tortured next even though they themselves had found the internal courage not to yield to torture inflicted upon them. An idea can hurt more then physical pain.
The Geneva conventions specifically forbid mock executions even though all they inflict is fear (a form of moral pain).
In France, it is currently illegal to even question the official version of the so-called "Holocaust" precisely because doing so would cause moral pain to the very few actual "Holocaust survivors" still alive. This protection from moral pain even extends to the relatives and descendants of "Holocaust survivors" who were born already after the war and how never suffered from any ill-treatment themselves.
At the famous Nurenberg trial Julius Streicher was sentenced to death even though he never committed any other crime then "infecting the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism". He was, by the way, also viciously tortured before his execution. His crime? He was the founder and editor of a newspaper, Der Stürmer, a nasty racist propaganda paper whose name can be roughly translated as "The attacked" or "The stormer". Apparently, hate speech can even get you the death penalty in the West.
The 8th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" especially if it "degrading to human dignity". Apparently, for the Founding Fathers human dignity was an extremely valuable and real thing which deserved to be protected.
Even in GITMO (hardly a bastion of civilization and human rights!) following the 2005 scandals about the desacration of the Quran, it was decided that the rules about the manipulation of the Quran (which had already existed in the past) would be strictly implemented. So even in waterboarding GITMO insulting the Prophet is considered beyond the norms of civilized behavior. Apparently not in Paris.
What about law defending against slander? Are they not here to protect people from the pain resulting from somebody else's speech? Do we not care if somebody dear to us is insulted or ridiculed?
So who are we kidding here? Do I need to bring further examples to make my point everybody in the West already knows that caricatures like the one published by Charlie Hebdo really bring on real pain to Muslims. We are not talking about ruffled feathers or irritation, we are talking about real moral and psychological distress here, the kind which normally western civilizational and legal norms try to protect people form.
The truth which others dare not speak but which I will spell out for you here is simple: western elites have the same attitude towards Muslims as Victoria Nuland has for the EU: f**k them! That is the real message not only Charlie Hebdo but the entire teary circus around the Paris massacre sends to Muslims worldwide: bleep you, your religion and your Prophet, bleep you and your victims - thousands and even millions of your dead Muslims (Iraq anybody?!) are not worth 12 of our guys, and we get to limit your speech, but don't you dare limit ours!
And if a Muslim dares to object, he is instantly reminded about "his" stonings, burkas, terrorist attacks, etc. with the inevitable punch line: Islam is in no position to give lessons to the civilized West. Sadly, Islam is vulnerable to such attack because of its support for the death penalty and its use of various frankly inhuman execution methods, but that is far from being the full picture.
First, until recently the West ALSO had plenty of execution methods which are infinitely worse then those legal in Islam (anybody doubting this better read the Wikipedia entry under Robert-Francois Damiens or remember that the French abolished the guillotine only in 1981 and against the popular will). Second, at least Islam is honest about its punishments. Compare that with the USA were people are officially sentenced to prison terms like in other civilized countries, but where it is well known, understood and accepted that your chances of being brutally assaulted or anally raped are very high, especially if you are weak, and where people are held in supermax isolation units which the UN correctly defines as torture.
Second, it is artificial to compare two (or more) civilizations by only comparing their penal codes. Why not compare other forms of violence such as warfare or genocides. Here, even the worst of the worst Muslims (the Ottomans) compare very favorably with the Europeans, I am sorry if I offend the latter, but that is a fact. Though, of course, there have been plenty of examples of Muslim atrocities (by the Ottomans and the Persians in particular), but compared to what the West did to entire continents (African, North and South America) these are truly minor incidents. Of course, folks in the West are not too knowledgeable about all this, and the comforting narrative is that Europe was civilized, a heir to the Greek and Roman civilizations (a lie - post Frankish Europe re-discovered antiquity thanks to Muslims and Jews!) whereas the Muslims are just goat herders from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Comforting narrative for sure, but factually wrong. Muslims, however, are very much aware of this history and don't like to be looked down by the very westerners which they see as rather brutish and always bloodthirsty.
Third, there is a feature of modern western civilization which does set it apart from pretty much all others. The quasi-total absence of the sacred. For a modern, secular and educated person in the West there is very little which is truly sacred. In the past, wives and mothers still used to be sacred, and telling an Italian or Spaniard "cornuto" or "hijo de puta" could get you knifed. Nowadays a French rap group proudly calls itself "Nique Ta Mère". Some will say this is progress, I suppose. In the USA, the flag is sacred. At least to some. And, apparently, for millions of people in France - free speech, including deliberately offending free speech, is sacred. Except when it is directed a Jews, in which case it can land you in jail. For most Muslims, the prophets are so sacred that every time they mention their name they add "sallallahu alayhi wasallam" (peace be upon him). Now, you don't have to be a Muslim yourself or to approve of the Prophet to be capable of understanding that the Prophet Mohammed is truly dear and even sacred to Muslims. The fact that there is nothing sacred left in the West does not mean that the rest of the world has slouched down to a similar degree of degeneracy or that those who hold nothing for sacred have a license to impose their lack of anything sacred or their indifference on everybody else and offend them to their (sick) heart's content.
The most disgusting kind of westerner is the kind that actually takes pride in offending the feelings of those who still do have things which are sacred to them. This is what Charlie Hebdo was all about. Theirs was not a "discourse", it was an endless quest to become the most offensive, vulgar and crude newspaper in Europe. And, by the way, before the latest Charlie Hebdo psyop, this disgusting and stupid paper printed 60'000 copies for a country of 66'000'000 people. But then, apparently, some French matter more then others (what else is new?). Double standards again.
When considering any aspects of the Charlie Hebdo psyop you will inevitably find that double standards and logical fallacies are everywhere. That some speech is freer then other, that some victims matter more then others, that some atrocities are more atrocious then others and that some pain gets more respect then other. But the worst for me is this sickening solidarity with those who made insulting others into some kind of noble feat, these "heroes" are lionized for their "courage" to generate real moral pain in others. I see nothing noble in that at all and the fact that they were brutally and viciously murdered by, apparently, a gang of Takfiri freaks does not make then anyway more respectful.
One more thing: some of you have expressed outrage at the fact that Sheikh Imran Hosein said that the biggest evil the world has ever seen will rule from Jerusalem. Clearly, the good Sheikh is a vicious anti-Semite, right?
(Sigh)
I wish that those who speak about the "Christian West" actually knew a little something of Christianity, especially of Christian eschatology. What the Sheikh was saying is in no way different from what the Church Fathers said, including that the Antichrist would rule over the world from Jerusalem. A 5min search on the Internet gave me these pretty decent sources:
http://biblelight.net/fathers-on-antichrist.htm
http://www.unitypublishing.com/prophecy/AntichristbySaints.htm
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hippolytus-christ.html
Islamic eschatology is, by the way, remarkably similar to the traditional Christian one. A quick search under the term "Dajjal" yielded these sources:
http://www.islaam.org/al_mahdi/dajjaal.htm
http://islamqa.info/en/8806
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60F84B368D3270FF
As for Sheikh Imran Hosein's advice to the Muslims of France to leave while they can, it is fully in line with this admonition of Christ Himself who told his apostles "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city." (Matt 10:14-15). One does not have to agree with what the Sheikh says, but that is hardly a reason to call him crazy or anti-Semitic.
Frankly, what I see taking place is mostly a lashing out against Islam and against Muslims which is first and foremost based on crass ignorance. I personally am not a Muslim and I vehemently disagree with some teachings and practices of Islam. And I am on record saying that I fully support what I call "Putin's ultimatum" to the Takfiri freaks: stop or we will exterminate you. And, when needed, Putin did exactly that: since 2000 Russia has literally executed every single leader of the Chechen insurgency, every single one. Some were killed in Russia, others in Chechnia, others even elsewhere, but they are all dead. And the Wahabi "Icherkian" insurgency has been literally exterminated too. Not only that, but Putin has fully backed Assad, the other man who has not hesitated to physically exterminate as many Takfiri freaks as possible (and Assad did such a good job of it that they had to retreat to Iraq). And I am on record supporting Assad too. And, finally, I have always fully supported Hezbollah and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, not only in their war of national liberation against Israel, but also in their struggle against the so-called "Syrian opposition" (where the freaks who murdered the Charlie Hebdo people came from!). I don't think that anybody even minimally honest can accuse me of having any sympathies for the Takfiri/Wahabi terrorists or for their actions in Paris.
But to those of you who take issue with my statement that the "West" cannot win against the Muslim world I say this: take the example of Russia and realize that the Russians can kill Wahabis, but they cannot kill Wahabism. It took a Muslim man like Akhmad Kadyrov and his son to defeat the Wahabi ideology in Chechnia. The same goes for the West: no matter how many ISIS or al-Qaeda terrorist the western security services kill (or, pretend to kill!), the ideology of Takfirism will only be defeated by other Muslims (who, by the way, are always the first and main victims of the Takfiri freaks!).
Just take one look at Hollande, Merkel or Obama and tell me that they have anything at all to say other then vapid platitudes and insipid lies? Do you really believe that they have anything to oppose to the ideas of Osama bin-Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or even Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab or Taqi ad-Din Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah?
Methinks that the western leaders are both too arrogant and too ignorant to face this reality and that they think that they can outsmart the devil on their own - hence the unleash the Takfiri demon against Muslim world and the Nazi demon against the Donbass. I say that with leaders like that the West has exactly *zero* chance to prevail. And considering that with each passing year the western leaders become even dumber, more arrogant, more pathetic and more clueless, I see no reason to believe that the West will win the "clash of civilizations" it itself created.
Now please don't shoot the messenger.
The Saker
Here is what the official doxa tells us: Muslims have no right to whine about their Prophet being insulted, this is part of free speech. It is disingenuous for them to claim that they have been hurt by these caricatures, in reality they have not been hurt, they just had their feathers ruffled by a bit of disrespectful speech. How can you possibly compared such ruffled feathers with issues of life and death?
So is there such thing as moral pain and can it be compared to physical pain?
Let's look at the record as it stands in the West:
Any psychologist will explain to you that not only does moral pain exist, but it can be worse then physical pain. This is why some people confess to crimes (whether real or not) when they are told that their family members will be tortured next even though they themselves had found the internal courage not to yield to torture inflicted upon them. An idea can hurt more then physical pain.
The Geneva conventions specifically forbid mock executions even though all they inflict is fear (a form of moral pain).
In France, it is currently illegal to even question the official version of the so-called "Holocaust" precisely because doing so would cause moral pain to the very few actual "Holocaust survivors" still alive. This protection from moral pain even extends to the relatives and descendants of "Holocaust survivors" who were born already after the war and how never suffered from any ill-treatment themselves.
At the famous Nurenberg trial Julius Streicher was sentenced to death even though he never committed any other crime then "infecting the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism". He was, by the way, also viciously tortured before his execution. His crime? He was the founder and editor of a newspaper, Der Stürmer, a nasty racist propaganda paper whose name can be roughly translated as "The attacked" or "The stormer". Apparently, hate speech can even get you the death penalty in the West.
The 8th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" especially if it "degrading to human dignity". Apparently, for the Founding Fathers human dignity was an extremely valuable and real thing which deserved to be protected.
Even in GITMO (hardly a bastion of civilization and human rights!) following the 2005 scandals about the desacration of the Quran, it was decided that the rules about the manipulation of the Quran (which had already existed in the past) would be strictly implemented. So even in waterboarding GITMO insulting the Prophet is considered beyond the norms of civilized behavior. Apparently not in Paris.
What about law defending against slander? Are they not here to protect people from the pain resulting from somebody else's speech? Do we not care if somebody dear to us is insulted or ridiculed?
So who are we kidding here? Do I need to bring further examples to make my point everybody in the West already knows that caricatures like the one published by Charlie Hebdo really bring on real pain to Muslims. We are not talking about ruffled feathers or irritation, we are talking about real moral and psychological distress here, the kind which normally western civilizational and legal norms try to protect people form.
The truth which others dare not speak but which I will spell out for you here is simple: western elites have the same attitude towards Muslims as Victoria Nuland has for the EU: f**k them! That is the real message not only Charlie Hebdo but the entire teary circus around the Paris massacre sends to Muslims worldwide: bleep you, your religion and your Prophet, bleep you and your victims - thousands and even millions of your dead Muslims (Iraq anybody?!) are not worth 12 of our guys, and we get to limit your speech, but don't you dare limit ours!
And if a Muslim dares to object, he is instantly reminded about "his" stonings, burkas, terrorist attacks, etc. with the inevitable punch line: Islam is in no position to give lessons to the civilized West. Sadly, Islam is vulnerable to such attack because of its support for the death penalty and its use of various frankly inhuman execution methods, but that is far from being the full picture.
First, until recently the West ALSO had plenty of execution methods which are infinitely worse then those legal in Islam (anybody doubting this better read the Wikipedia entry under Robert-Francois Damiens or remember that the French abolished the guillotine only in 1981 and against the popular will). Second, at least Islam is honest about its punishments. Compare that with the USA were people are officially sentenced to prison terms like in other civilized countries, but where it is well known, understood and accepted that your chances of being brutally assaulted or anally raped are very high, especially if you are weak, and where people are held in supermax isolation units which the UN correctly defines as torture.
Second, it is artificial to compare two (or more) civilizations by only comparing their penal codes. Why not compare other forms of violence such as warfare or genocides. Here, even the worst of the worst Muslims (the Ottomans) compare very favorably with the Europeans, I am sorry if I offend the latter, but that is a fact. Though, of course, there have been plenty of examples of Muslim atrocities (by the Ottomans and the Persians in particular), but compared to what the West did to entire continents (African, North and South America) these are truly minor incidents. Of course, folks in the West are not too knowledgeable about all this, and the comforting narrative is that Europe was civilized, a heir to the Greek and Roman civilizations (a lie - post Frankish Europe re-discovered antiquity thanks to Muslims and Jews!) whereas the Muslims are just goat herders from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Comforting narrative for sure, but factually wrong. Muslims, however, are very much aware of this history and don't like to be looked down by the very westerners which they see as rather brutish and always bloodthirsty.
Third, there is a feature of modern western civilization which does set it apart from pretty much all others. The quasi-total absence of the sacred. For a modern, secular and educated person in the West there is very little which is truly sacred. In the past, wives and mothers still used to be sacred, and telling an Italian or Spaniard "cornuto" or "hijo de puta" could get you knifed. Nowadays a French rap group proudly calls itself "Nique Ta Mère". Some will say this is progress, I suppose. In the USA, the flag is sacred. At least to some. And, apparently, for millions of people in France - free speech, including deliberately offending free speech, is sacred. Except when it is directed a Jews, in which case it can land you in jail. For most Muslims, the prophets are so sacred that every time they mention their name they add "sallallahu alayhi wasallam" (peace be upon him). Now, you don't have to be a Muslim yourself or to approve of the Prophet to be capable of understanding that the Prophet Mohammed is truly dear and even sacred to Muslims. The fact that there is nothing sacred left in the West does not mean that the rest of the world has slouched down to a similar degree of degeneracy or that those who hold nothing for sacred have a license to impose their lack of anything sacred or their indifference on everybody else and offend them to their (sick) heart's content.
The most disgusting kind of westerner is the kind that actually takes pride in offending the feelings of those who still do have things which are sacred to them. This is what Charlie Hebdo was all about. Theirs was not a "discourse", it was an endless quest to become the most offensive, vulgar and crude newspaper in Europe. And, by the way, before the latest Charlie Hebdo psyop, this disgusting and stupid paper printed 60'000 copies for a country of 66'000'000 people. But then, apparently, some French matter more then others (what else is new?). Double standards again.
When considering any aspects of the Charlie Hebdo psyop you will inevitably find that double standards and logical fallacies are everywhere. That some speech is freer then other, that some victims matter more then others, that some atrocities are more atrocious then others and that some pain gets more respect then other. But the worst for me is this sickening solidarity with those who made insulting others into some kind of noble feat, these "heroes" are lionized for their "courage" to generate real moral pain in others. I see nothing noble in that at all and the fact that they were brutally and viciously murdered by, apparently, a gang of Takfiri freaks does not make then anyway more respectful.
One more thing: some of you have expressed outrage at the fact that Sheikh Imran Hosein said that the biggest evil the world has ever seen will rule from Jerusalem. Clearly, the good Sheikh is a vicious anti-Semite, right?
(Sigh)
I wish that those who speak about the "Christian West" actually knew a little something of Christianity, especially of Christian eschatology. What the Sheikh was saying is in no way different from what the Church Fathers said, including that the Antichrist would rule over the world from Jerusalem. A 5min search on the Internet gave me these pretty decent sources:
http://biblelight.net/fathers-on-antichrist.htm
http://www.unitypublishing.com/prophecy/AntichristbySaints.htm
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hippolytus-christ.html
Islamic eschatology is, by the way, remarkably similar to the traditional Christian one. A quick search under the term "Dajjal" yielded these sources:
http://www.islaam.org/al_mahdi/dajjaal.htm
http://islamqa.info/en/8806
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60F84B368D3270FF
As for Sheikh Imran Hosein's advice to the Muslims of France to leave while they can, it is fully in line with this admonition of Christ Himself who told his apostles "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city." (Matt 10:14-15). One does not have to agree with what the Sheikh says, but that is hardly a reason to call him crazy or anti-Semitic.
Frankly, what I see taking place is mostly a lashing out against Islam and against Muslims which is first and foremost based on crass ignorance. I personally am not a Muslim and I vehemently disagree with some teachings and practices of Islam. And I am on record saying that I fully support what I call "Putin's ultimatum" to the Takfiri freaks: stop or we will exterminate you. And, when needed, Putin did exactly that: since 2000 Russia has literally executed every single leader of the Chechen insurgency, every single one. Some were killed in Russia, others in Chechnia, others even elsewhere, but they are all dead. And the Wahabi "Icherkian" insurgency has been literally exterminated too. Not only that, but Putin has fully backed Assad, the other man who has not hesitated to physically exterminate as many Takfiri freaks as possible (and Assad did such a good job of it that they had to retreat to Iraq). And I am on record supporting Assad too. And, finally, I have always fully supported Hezbollah and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, not only in their war of national liberation against Israel, but also in their struggle against the so-called "Syrian opposition" (where the freaks who murdered the Charlie Hebdo people came from!). I don't think that anybody even minimally honest can accuse me of having any sympathies for the Takfiri/Wahabi terrorists or for their actions in Paris.
But to those of you who take issue with my statement that the "West" cannot win against the Muslim world I say this: take the example of Russia and realize that the Russians can kill Wahabis, but they cannot kill Wahabism. It took a Muslim man like Akhmad Kadyrov and his son to defeat the Wahabi ideology in Chechnia. The same goes for the West: no matter how many ISIS or al-Qaeda terrorist the western security services kill (or, pretend to kill!), the ideology of Takfirism will only be defeated by other Muslims (who, by the way, are always the first and main victims of the Takfiri freaks!).
Just take one look at Hollande, Merkel or Obama and tell me that they have anything at all to say other then vapid platitudes and insipid lies? Do you really believe that they have anything to oppose to the ideas of Osama bin-Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or even Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab or Taqi ad-Din Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah?
Methinks that the western leaders are both too arrogant and too ignorant to face this reality and that they think that they can outsmart the devil on their own - hence the unleash the Takfiri demon against Muslim world and the Nazi demon against the Donbass. I say that with leaders like that the West has exactly *zero* chance to prevail. And considering that with each passing year the western leaders become even dumber, more arrogant, more pathetic and more clueless, I see no reason to believe that the West will win the "clash of civilizations" it itself created.
Now please don't shoot the messenger.
The Saker
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian 
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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