Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Islamism

  • Trump has Made News Great Again

    Politics in hyperdrive. Who can keep up? And to what extent should one keep up? Here are a couple of articles that caught my eye: The Islamic Republic's New Lease on Life. Mercifully brief, and very interesting.  In Foreign Affairs, by one Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar.  I'd be interested in Caiati's and Soriano's comments.  Elon Musk…

  • William Kilpatrick’s Turning Point Project

    Mission: The Turning Point Project is dedicated to educating Catholics and other Americans about the threat from Islam by arming them with the information and analysis necessary to meet the challenge. As I have argued many times, Islam and Leftism, especially in synergy, pose a major threat to us. This from December 2017: The Leftist-Islamist…

  • Trump’s Gaza Proposal

      Donald Trump seems incapable of qualifying his statements, a fault that may be connected with his tendency to exaggerate.  And so he needlessly inflames his enemies, who, given their biases, naturally took him to be advocating ethnic cleansing with his talk of "taking over" Gaza.   Anthony Flood here skillfully rebuts the suggestion.   I…

  • Why Israel Deserves Our Support

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  • Why the Collapse of Philosophical Studies in the Islamic World?

    Leo Strauss sketches an answer in his "How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy" in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. T. L. Pangle, University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 221-222, bolding added: For the Jew and the Moslem, religion is primarily not, as it is for the Christian, a faith formulated in dogmas, but a…

  • Do You Pass the Israel Test?

    Under five minutes. I have long believed that a major cause of Jew hatred is envy.

  • The Intifada Comes to America

    Well, what did you expect? Intifada refers specifically to two separate uprisings of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over the past four decades, but more broadly, it pertains to the continued resistance of the Palestinians to the existence of Israel. When they shout “Death to Israel,” they mean it. It should be a…

  • Biden Chases ‘Death to America’ Vote

    David Harsanyi: Biden, it should be noted, is a vacuous political zombie who has never met a position he hasn’t dropped for a vote. Today, he is surrounded by Obama-era advisers and Hamas sympathizers . . . who have long wanted the U.S. to be aligned with mullahs of Iran, as a counterbalance to colonialist Western…

  • Richard Dawkins on Christianity and Islam

    Here (HT: Catacomb Joe): Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I…

  • Taqiyya

    Gaza's Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed. That many? Could be. But the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya gives one a reason to be skeptical. I have…

  • Are Most Muslims Terrorists?

    And what is a terrorist? Top o' the Stack. Long but good. I go out on some limbs. Saw 'em off if you can. 

  • Jewish Disproportionality!

    Not even the Hamas sexual atrocities recounted on the basis of a NYT report by Alex Berenson justify Jewish disproportionality: On Thursday, The New York Times recounted in awful detail the sexual atrocities the men of Gaza committed during Hamas’s October 7 raid into Israel. I know Jeffrey Gettleman, who had the piece’s lead byline. He is…

  • The Psychology of the Pollyanna and the Political Ponerology of Leftism

    We all know pollyannas. They are more often women than men and the charm of these lovable ladies is in no small measure due to their openness to the positive in people and things and their seeming incapacity to discern the negative and evil. A most extreme example has come to my attention, one .…

  • Is the Enlightenment the Problem?

    This is a redacted repost from 21 June 2015. In the subsequent eight years, we in the West are 'infinitely' worse off than before.  Time to re-visit the topic and re-assess. Mournful was the tocsin Malcolm Pollack sounded in 2015; what must its sound be today? ……………………….. Malcolm laments via e-mail: Don't things seem to…

  • Political Polarization: the Radical Cure

    Political polarization is deep and wide. We are 'siloed' into our positions and things threaten to go 'thermonuclear.'  The usual cures cannot be dismissed out of hand, but are mostly blather served up by squishy, bien-pensant 'liberals' for their own insipid and clueless ilk. No doubt we should listen to others respectfully, but how many…