Posted on 10/07/2001 12:42:40 PM PDT by Coyote
Just to keep it all in perspective:
In our own ethnocentric spasm, we probably shouldn't allow ourselves to forget that Arabic culture has provided the West with significant scientific and cultural tools. Damascus steel, for one, which for nearly a mellinium was considered the best in the world. The word California for another. Then there's the system of Arabic numerals we take for granted, and sweet things like the cultivated orange. And through India, they brought us the concept of zero as a mathematical number, providing us with the decimal system of accounting. They even provided the Arabic alphabet I'm using right now.
But there are a few more gifts we have to thank them for. Like the notion of adamantely determined, political driven assasination. And given our circumstances, for our own survival, let's hope we were excellent students.
| Assassin | [usas'in] Pronunciation Key |
Assassin [Arab.,=user of hashish], European name for the member of a secret order of the Ismaili sect of Islam. They are known as Nizaris after Nizar ibn al-Mustansir, whom they supported as caliph. The members of the order were distinguished by their blind obedience to their spiritual leader and by their use of murder to eliminate foes. The order was founded by Hasan ibn al-Sabbah when he gained control (c.1090) of the mountain fortress of Alamut, located S of the Caspian Sea. The order spread over Persia and Syria, gaining control of many strongholds, and it soon inspired terror throughout the Muslim world. Members were organized into strict classes, according to degree of initiation into the secrets of the order. The most important of the classes were the devotees, who sought martyrdom and were the instruments of assassination. Hasan and the grand masters who ruled the order after him wielded great political power until the coming of the Mongols. Hulagu Khan attacked and destroyed (1256) their fortresses and massacred most of the Persian branch of the sect. The Syrian branch, with which the Crusaders came in contact, suffered a similar fate at the hands of Baybars, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. Only scattered groups of the order survived; they are said to persist today, particularly in N Syria. Tales of the Crusaders and the writings of Marco Polo brought the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain into European folklore. The term assassin came into English and is used today to mean murderer and particularly one who kills for political motives.
See B. Lewis, The Assassins (1967); E. Franzius, History of the Order of Assassins (1969).
When they talk about a good old fashioned religious tent revival over there, I suspect they have something very different in mind than we do here in the West.
Secret societies have largely died out in the West, unless you include the notable Fraterniites, but in the Middle East, it may well be that blood oaths, violent initiation rights, and difficult to penetrate secrecy, are on the rise. That may be Osama's notion of an 'ace up his sleeve'.
Doesn't look like the Arabic alphabet to me. Ours and the Arabic have a common distant ancester, but ours is not a direct descendent of the Arabic.
Folly. Even metaphorically.
When two bulls fight for spoils, with which one does God side? When a lion takes on a zebra, sometimes the lion wins, sometimes the zebra. Which side is God with? If God is the author of the bull, the lion, and the zebra, He's on all sides.
As far as the outcome in human terms, maybe the spoils go to the side that prays to Him the most for repentance, determination, and resolve. That may even be true for those that see this as purely a psychological phenomenon. So although I know which side I'M on, as I'm a direct descendant of one who fought in the American Revolutionary War, I'll still take no bets. Rather I'll let Him decide.
IMHO, however, we all answer to Him in the end. It's not a matter of whether, just when. We'll just have to wait and see, and pray for our cause, won't we.
It's vitally important to understand the mindset of the people we are going to be killing in fairly large numbers pretty soon. They don't think the same way we do.
We have stood by while at least two generations of arab children have grown up being taught to hate us. They teach their kids in school that it is glorious to strap a bomb to yourself and blow up women and kids eating pizza.
How does one reason with such people?
The rather obvious answer is that you can't.
There is only one thing to do when confronted with such an enemy and that is to destroy them utterly.
We must make it so that their great, great, great grandchildren wet their pants when they look into the sky and see an American warplane.
L
Also, the so called Arabic numerical system originated in India and not in an Arabic country.
God doesn't have a dog in this fight I am afraid.
L
One of the main reasons for the Europeans to start exploring the East was to break the Arab monopoly on the spice trade and seek out Prester John. The Silk Road on land took time and there was a lot of waste and numerous middlemen and countries which jacked up the price of imported Eastern goods. The Arabs through the sea grabbed the monopoly of the spice trade.
Thus seafaring adventurers and explorers from Europe began looking for a new route around the time when Western Civilization was still a backwater to the East in the around the 15th centuries. Vasco da Gama found an Indian pilot on the East coast of Africa who piloted the Portugese to the Malabar Coast of India and thus the route to India was now known to the Europeans and eventually the rest of Europe. The Arab monoply was broken on the Spice Trade and the Silk Road (through Kandahar, Samarkand, etc.) went into decline. Columbus had a go at it to find India the other way and we ended up with the USA with the original residents mistakenly called Indians. Anyway this is a condensed version of what could be a long essay elaborating on the points made. The Islamic Arabs when they conquered the non-Islamic cultures which still had people who were not constrained by Islam or converted yet. They had conquered the Sinbad civilizations of the East which still had its magic and esoterisms of the Mystic East. So initially there was a creative phase which usually comes after a destructive phase. But once the Arabic Islam grew its roots, creativity was constrained, and those cultures imploded into pure hate machines as we see in the Middle East today. It is not right to claim that Arabs contributed anything original like the attributing to them the Indian numerical system used worldwide for instance.
But as they've choosen to take on all the powers of the modern world at once, although probably using some ancient and very effective secretive initiation methods, they've put what's left of their entire culture on the line, as well as ours.
So I imagine it'll be a long and tough battle, like it was with the Japanese. Probably much worse. Now as much as I'd like to be smug about the outcome, I think it's NEVER a good idea to underestimate an enemy. They've declared war on us, maybe even for reasons they feel are just, but war it is, nonetheless. And as it escalates, I suspect that both sides are going to find a few surprises.
In the end though, I also suspect it's going to be perceived by almost every heavyweight player, from China to Russia, from American to the UA, in their best iterest to get this radical movement under control. So although the Islamic Radicals have already proven formidable, and are probably more firmly entrenched than we had previously thought, they're also going to have a hell of a battle coming up for their cause.
Do they really imagine that the US and the UK (let alone the Nato Block who would suffer greatly if we lost), are going to go down without the most monumental battle ever fought? Right or wrong, good or bad, they've bitten off a big one, IMHO. If this escalates, they're going to have a fight on their hands, to be sure.
Do you suppose they really thought they could just hit the Pentagon at will? And do you suppose that they imagine that we and all of OUR nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons will simply fade into history with nothing more than a whimper? If THEY can imagine releasing a biological onto us, don't they even consider that some 'neutral' political agent might just 'happen' to introduce a genetic disaster into, perhaps their FOOD productions cycles? At least long before the West dissappears from the earth, or even from the ME, as they hope. They've show that they know how to play the game and win the hit-and-run battle here and there. Let's see if they're prepared to loose a few as well.
No, sadly, this battle will either resolve to an agreement for another decade or so, or they'll bring on an oblivion much greater than the average person on either side imagines.
I doubt they have studied much of the history of this country. It's for damn sure they didn't study the last World War and the lenghts we went to in order to end that one.
I do think you are right however. These people will hit us again if they can.
My wife and I were discussing it before she left for work this afternoon. I won't go into it in detail, but it's not too hard to imagine the kind of terrorism we have seen in Israel start to happen here.
Things are going to get worse before they get better I think.
Take care my friend.
L
Thanks for refining my own misguided "Politically Correct" notions about Arab contributions. As I stand corrected --and to the poster who noted it, also corrected toward the idea of using an 'arabic' alphabet as well -- do you suppose we can still attribute the invention, or at least the popular dissemination, of political assassination to them, as noted in the encyclopedic tract at the heart of this thread?
But they forgot how to make it! It took a Westerner to rediscover the secret. Did I mention they laughed at the first Westerners who offered to buy their oil? Dumb bast*ards thought we wanted to put it on our salads.
Hey, let's face it, they're stuck in the Dark Ages by choice -- and we should make doubly sure they stay there.
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