Fundmentalist Fear and Loathing
More proof that fundamentalist Muslims detest the notion of westernized education and any sort of social progress. It scares the hell out of them, because once you educate people, they don't buy into the religious bullshit anymore and start thinking for themselves.
Quote:
From the NYT
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 ? Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after.
A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer.
In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class.
"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from ? and in some ways more insidious than ? the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges.
From the NYT
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 ? Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after.
A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer.
In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class.
"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from ? and in some ways more insidious than ? the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges.
Comments
All religions have this idiocy.
"Get rid of evolution in our schools!" etc, etc, etc.
In a militaristic and violence-torn area it's easier to just kill them off.
Edit: Added citation for verse.
Originally posted by segovius
exactly - it's just not socially accpetable in the west anymore otherwise we'd be hearing a different melody.
We saw how the Church behaved when it was socially acceptable so let's not be under any illusions - nothing has changed in the mental make-up, western society moved on, not the Church.
They'd be firing up the auto da fe before you could say "die heretic !" given half a chance...and whatever body-count these Islamic nutters can chalk up it won't reach 1% of the Church's record: we're talking 60 million in the Inquisition alone. And that's before you get anywhere near the Crusades, Cortez, the Cathars.....
Yeah . . . old story . . and obvious too
but the real issue in this thread is that what we have happening, for what ever reason, is a kind of murder of culture, much like in Cambodia: it reveals the proto-fascist nature of Islamism (if that is the source) in that they wish to wipe culture clean of anything beyong thier ideal . . . if let to run its course unobstructed millions would have to be 'cleansed' because reality simply does not conform to fantasies . . .
as far as Islamic intolerance . . . once again you can blame the Mongols: after they destroyed Baghdad they tried to take Egypt but came across the Mamluks (warriors/slaves become princes that were refugees from earlier Mongol wars north of Persia area) they then claimed the lands that the Mongols had destroyed (as well as Christian lands (um . . . killing many -tit for tat back then) and supplanting their brand of strict intolerant Islam for what was the most civilized and advanced culture at the time (the Islam of Baghdad)
The Mamluk brand of Islam was austere and anti-cultural progress: Islam sank and never recovered its past glory of intellectual and cultural leadership.
(been reading about the Mongols . . . if you haven't noticed from this and other recent posts
I'm not sure the problems in Iraq are Islam related so much as they are a political power struggle. If we pull religion from the equation I think we'll see that people are acting like they always do. The Germans did this exact same thing in Poland, Saddam did it in Iraq long before he went semi-Islamic, it's how politics often work. I don't know my Russian history very well, but I believe it's part of how the U.S.S.R. was formed.
The intellectual class is usually the source of unrest and eventually uprising.
The states were different but the Center of Baghdad was the cultural and Intellectual center nonetheless . . Spain was part of that generally advanced form of Islam at the time and the sole area of that level to survive both the Mongols and the Mamluks
and yes the Mongols empires split into seperate Il-Khanates and some became Islamic, they were tolerant of religious difference and had many cultural advances . . . but they also lived in a feudalistic militarist culture.
But the point about them is that when they left a region they generally left destruction which stopped many cultures in their place and stunted their growth