Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Islamism

  • Salman Rushdie, the Left, and Free Speech

    Last week's Sunday CBS Morning Show featured a segment on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, who was recently attacked in an apparent assassination attempt by a Muslim living in New Jersey.  You may recall that the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie in 1989 in which the ayatollah called for Rushdie's…

  • A Christian Koan for Christmas Eve

    From my Facebook page, three years ago, today. My writing is uneven in quality. But the Muse was with me below. …………………………..   Man is godlike and therefore proud. He becomes even more godlike when he humbles himself. The central thought of Christianity, true or not, is one so repellent to the natural human pride…

  • What does Populism Threaten?

    First posted on my Facebook page on this date three years ago.   ………………………………   POPULISM is a threat to a leftist internationalism that rejects national borders and denies to nations the right to preserve their cultures, the right to stop illegal immigration, and the right to select those immigrants who are most likely to…

  • What is Islam?

    A religion like the other great religions?  A Christian heresy? A totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion? A hybrid political-religious ideology? Islam is Government.

  • On Transcending Tribalism

    Jonathan Haidt: Humans are tribal, but tribalism can be transcended. It exists in tension with our extraordinary ability to develop bonds with other human beings. Romeo and Juliet fell in love. French, British and German soldiers came out of their trenches in World War I to exchange food, cigarettes and Christmas greetings. The key, as…

  • Islam and Civilization

    The following just over the transom. I thought I was being appropriately critical of what is undoubtedly the worst of the great religions, "the saddest and poorest form of theism" (Schopenhauer), but apparently I haven't gone far enough for one of my  readers.   Balanced and reasonable positions don't have much of a chance in this age…

  • Christianity has Civilized Us. But Islam?

    Has Islam played any role in the civilizing of the peoples in the lands where it has held sway? Yes, of course. But when we consider Islamic penology, it is positively barbaric compared to that of the West.  Of the five great religions, Islam seems to have had the least civilizing effect.  Here: Iran’s judicial…

  • Reader Considers Converting to Islam. Would Christian Unitarianism Satisfy his Scruples?

    Here is the beginning of the letter he sent me: I've been considering converting to Islam.You've had a big part in this, though I know it won't please you to hear it. Your arguments against the coherency of the Incarnation are hard to get past. My arguments against the Chalcedonian, 'two-natures-one-person' theology of the Incarnation…

  • Hatred of Apostates

    This is another similarity between leftists and radical Muslims.

  • Kevin Kim on John Pepple on Sweden as Europe’s Sacrificial Lamb

    A tip of the hat to Bill Keezer, and greetings to fellow bloggers Kim and Pepple. The titles of their blogs do not, however, earn the coveted MavPhil transparency of content award. Feed: BigHominid's Hairy ChasmsPosted on: Thursday, September 5, 2019 1:22 AMAuthor: Kevin KimSubject: Pepple on Sweden Is Sweden Europe's sacrificial lamb, to be…

  • Christianity has civilized us . . .

    . . . but it has also weakened us.  Our virtues, which once were strengths, are now weaknesses.  Some of our virtues have come to vitiate as much as some of our vices.  We in the West no longer crucify malefactors or break them on the wheel. We now wring our hands, absurdly, over whether…

  • Stealth-Jihad and the Hijab

    William Kilpatrick: After all the years that have passed since 9/11, many American still misunderstand the nature of the Islamic threat. The main way that Islamic power advances in the West is not through terror attacks, but through stealth-jihad—the slow-motion co-option of our cultural and political institutions. [. . .] Cultural battles are won—or lost—by…

  • Prager, the Left, and ‘Easter Worshippers’

    Why Hillary and Obama Tweeted About ‘Easter Worshippers’ amgreatness.com/2019/04/23/why-hillary-and-obama-tweeted-about-easter-worshippers/   Dennis PragerApril 24, 2019 Sometimes, a few sentences tell you more about a person—and, more importantly, an ideology—than a learned thesis. That is the case with tweets from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in response to the mass murder of more than 300 Christians and…

  • Banning Guns and Banning Muslims

    Conservatives are not opposed to gun control, but they strenuously oppose gun confiscation and proposals to ban civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons. These include semi-auto handguns of .22 caliber,  semi-auto rifles such as the AR-15, and semi-auto shotguns. Most of these same conservatives, however, support a reduction of, or moratorium on, Muslim immigration, either across…

  • More on the Left’s Toleration of Militant Islam

    Just over the transom from Kai Frederik Lorentzen: The French writer Pascal Bruckner, adding a historical dimension, traces the issue back not only to the Iranian revolution of 1979 but even to early Bolshevism: " … And here is where the strangest factor in the whole Islamophobia controversy emerges: the enlistment of a part of…