PUNK ROCK REPUBLICAN

All of the world’s major religions have started within specific cultures and spread out from them. Confusing a religion with a culture can charitably be described as misguided

In 1788 Edward Gibbon, writing from primary historical sources, in ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ wrote of Arab culture BEFORE Mohammad and the rise of Islam:

“In the study of nations and men we may observe the causes that render them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge, to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe, and practice to the present hour.

They pretend that, in the division of the earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ishmael might recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived. According to the remarks of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise: the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their rapacious spirit.

If a Bedouin discovers from afar a solitary traveler, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, ‘Undress thyself, my wife is without a garment.’ A ready submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in legitimate defense.

A single robber, or a few associates, are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine, murder, and revenge.

In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen. The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of language and manners; and in each community the jurisdiction of the magistrate was mute and impotent.

Of the time of ignorance which preceded Mohammad, seventeen hundred battles are recorded by tradition: hostility was embittered with the rancor of civil faction: and the recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes. In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of its own cause.

The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their beards, is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity for revenge.”

In other words Edward Gibbon describes hillbillies pissed off that they got stuck living in a desert.

But just as every American is not a hillbilly every Arab isn’t one either. But regardless we’re not fighting a religion. We’re fighting the culture of have-not Arab hillbillies of who, through the incompetence of their own governments, can ONLY gain access to any of wealth of their nations, their Beverly Hillbillies’ oil fortunes, through the waging of war on the West.

Drunk, womanless Major Nadal Malik Hasan is most certainly a terrorist. He might very well have convinced himself that he is a Muslim terrorist. But in reality he’s only a misguided hillbilly wannabee terrorist – jealous of trash culture’s fun times while hoping desperately to revel in its past glory.

Religion is used to justify culture all the time. But if the culture was there first isn’t it the other way around?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Alec. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.