What I didn’t realize earlier was that the “Free Fouad” campaign was launched by another Saudi blogger who was also sufficiently brave to use her own name, Hadeel Alhodaif. Now, in the 19 May 2008 issue of Times Online, Michael Theodoulou reports:
The Saudi blogosphere is in mourning after the sudden death of a young female web-diarist and author who battled for a freer media in the restrictive kingdom.More information about Hadeel is available in a story at the English-language Saudi daily, Arab News.
Hadeel Alhodaif died last Friday after failing to emerge from a coma she fell unexpectedly into last month, just two days after her 25th birthday.
Hadeel’s “unexpected coma” and untimely end seem extremely odd. If Saudi authorities would like to remove suspicion that their Secret Police were involved in her murder, then I’d strongly recommend that they quickly invite a team of internationally respected coroners, toxicologists, and pathologists to thoroughly investigate and fully report on the cause of her death.
2. Regular readers might also remember my “Open Letter to the King of Saudi Arabia”, stimulated by his call for “dialogue [among] representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith and sincerity to all religions… so we can agree on something that guarantees the preservation of humanity against those who tamper with ethics, family systems, and honesty… to [combat] the disintegration of the family and the rise of atheism in the world.” As a follow-up, the following information is from a report by Abdul Ghafour in the 22 May 2008 issue of Arab News:
JEDDAH, 22 May 2008 — A three-day international Islamic conference will begin at the Muslim World League (MWL) headquarters in Makkah on May 31 in preparation for the interfaith dialogue called for by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah.The planned conference seems quite odd. If the end sought by Islamic clerics were dialogue with other “divine religions”, then doesn’t it thwart that end (destroying the spirit of ‘dialogue’) to first meet to decide on what they’ll mean by ‘dialogue’? Won’t the result be just another muzzled Muslim monologue?
Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki, secretary-general of the MWL, said the conference would discuss the basis for dialogue with other faiths in the light of the Qur’an and Sunnah. “It will also review past experiences in the field to make use of them,” he added.
The conference, to be attended by leading Islamic scholars from around the world, will focus on four pivotal topics, such as the basis of dialogue in Islam, the methodology and principles of dialogue, parties involved in dialogue, and areas of dialogue…
More generally, if the end sought by Islamic clerics were to help their societies rather than themselves, I’d strongly recommend that they abandon plans for their clerical get-together to define their dialogue strategy and, instead, get together with people even in their own societies who see that the clerics are ruining their societies. For example, they’d be well advised to have a dialogue with the brave Saudi anthropologist Sa’d Al-Sowayan.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the following exchange as given at the excellent MEMRI website during an interview with Sa’d Al-Sowayan, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on 25 April 2008.
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “Our education institutions are very deficient in various respects. First of all, critical philosophical thought hardly exists, and is almost completely forbidden. You are not meant to think, but to memorize and repeat by rote...”Yet, if you consider the ends that the Muslim clerics actually pursue, it really isn’t odd that they reject secularism: it’s not the people that they want to help, it’s themselves; it’s not the people they want to protect, it’s their own turf; their goal, stipulated in their “holy book” (the Koran), is to rule the world.
Interviewer: “To spread the prevalent views.”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “Exactly. Secondly, anthropology...”
Interviewer: “Scientifically, speaking, what’s wrong with spreading the prevalent views?”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “First, you are not being innovative, and second, the prevalent views may have been acceptable in the past, but as life changes, everything must change accordingly. It is inconceivable that everything around you changes, yet your ideology remains static. The universe is not static. Change is the law of the universe, the law of life. Since everything is subject to change, ideas must also change, in order to be compatible with the changes in life.”
Interviewer: “Does this include the basic principles [of religion]?”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “I believe that the basic principles remain as they are, but the way we interpret them changes. In fact, there is no such thing as basic principles. There is the understanding of people... Ultimately, everything happens in your mind, as a human being.”
Interviewer: “The Koran and the Sunna do not constitute basic principles?”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “The text is static, but the way people interpret it is not. You can interpret the text in a way that corresponds with the age in which you live.”
Interviewer: “So you have no problem with people interpreting the text differently in each age?”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “As long as it is compatible with the spirit of the text.”
Interviewer: “In other words, the spirit of the text remains, and in each age, there is an adaptation [of the text].”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “For example, I do not think – and I might be going off on a tangent here – that it is in the best interest of the Islamic religion that we insist on continuing to live as if we were in the historical age of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. Everything has changed, and I believe that we must inevitably understand this change and respond to it. Otherwise, the physical existence of Muslims as Muslims will ultimately be jeopardized. Isn’t it important for Muslims to continue to exist as a strong nation, which influences the world in which we live? How can this happen if we relate to things as if we were living 1,400 years ago?” [...]
Interviewer: “You are openly calling for secularism?”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “Secularism is not as dangerous as people think. They [the clerics] have instilled... They reduce you to that single word, so that they can classify you more easily.”
Interviewer: “So you are saying that the term ‘secularism’ has been distorted by a group of people.”
Sa’d Al-Sowayan: “The interpretation given to this term is incorrect. For example, the Messenger consulted with other people about worldly issues. In my view, this is secular behavior. In religious matters related to divine revelation, the Prophet was the ultimate authority. But with regard to worldly matters, he turned to the relevant experts.” [...]
3. Still another odd report out of Saudi Arabia is in an article in
Arab News entitled “Identify Causes of Decline, Scholar Tells Muslim”. The report by Ebtihal Mubarak starts:
Dr. M. Umer Chapra, an eminent economist, social scientist and the winner of the King Faisal International Prize, has urged Muslims to identify the reasons for their decline. After making vitally important contributions to civilization for several centuries, the Muslim world went into decline and Chapra would like for the lost glory to become a reality once again… Chapra emphasized the need for material as well as spiritual progress for a balanced development of humanity. He said only Islam can present such an equation. [Italics added]It’s odd that this “eminent… scholar”, Chapra, would come to the conclusion that “only Islam can present such an equation”, when obviously the “lost glory” is relative to societies free of Islam!
It’s also odd that the “eminent… scholar”, Chapra, doesn’t heed advice even of fellow Muslims, such as the “Syrian philosopher” Sadik Jalal Al-’Azm. MEMRI provides excerpts from an interview with Al-’Azm that was published in the Qatari Al-Raya daily. All of his remarks are worth reading; here, I’ll quote just some of them:
In [my] book Critique of Religious Thought I described the thought in those days [between 1969 and 1970] as impoverished. The title of the first essay in the book is “The Scientific Culture and the Impoverishment of Religious Thought.” Now I see that this impoverishment [in the Muslim world] has deepened and grown worse.In the future, by the way, if ever I get around to updating my list of brave Muslims who are trying to drag Islam out of its clerically-imposed Dark Ages, challenging the backward Islamic clerics at substantial risks to themselves, I’ll add the names of Fouad al-Farhan, Matrook al-Faleh, Hadeel Alhodaif, Sa’d Al-Sowayan and Sadik Jalal Al-’Azm. So long as such heroes have the courage to speak up, I have some hope for the poor Muslim people (especially the children) hamstrung by their horribly ignorant clerics.
In that period… there was [at least] an attempt by Islamic thinkers to deal with the problems and questions of modern science. They tended to base their discussion and argument on reason, reality, and the course of events. Now, I find that the religious thought that has emerged on Islam is in an even deeper state of impoverishment…
In that period, when I discussed the impoverishment of religious thought, I dealt with a number of Islamic thinkers and clerics, such as the Mufti of Tripoli Nadim Al-Jasser, Musa Al-Sadr, and others. At that time I saw that they wanted to deal with modern science, the scientific revolution, and applied science; however, unfortunately, they were ignorant of everything related to modern science: What is the meaning of science? What are the ways of scientific inquiry? Often their only knowledge of physics, chemistry, or anatomy since finishing elementary school came from reading the newspapers. They wanted to oppose the societal influence of scientific development and technological achievements while at the same time acting with an almost complete ignorance in these matters.
In my estimation this has grown even worse today. There is greater ignorance. There are opinions, especially in fundamentalist Islam, that completely reject modern science, the West, and all that it produces. If you take their thinking to its logical conclusion, they will become [like] the Taliban on this issue.
They relate to problems with complete stupidity. For example, I read some of Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini’s fatwas. In one of them, he presents the matter of a Muslim going into space in a space capsule. He discussed how he should pray, and how he should figure out in which direction to pray in outer space… The problem is that Khomeini is not familiar with any of the achievements, the attainments, the sciences, or the technological knowledge relating to space. All that interests him is how a Muslim should bow and pray, and how he should fast when he stays there for a long period of time. After this discussion, Khomeini arrives at the conclusion to permit a Muslim to pray in any of the four directions. Obviously, this way of thinking betrays [his] complete ignorance, as the directions are a matter of convention; there are no four directions in nature...
They are opposed to matters like test-tube babies, or innovations, for example, in the area of the genetic code (DNA) and genetic reproduction as well as other scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. They have no knowledge of the nature of these sciences, how the scientists arrived at them, and what were the experiments that preceded them. They are not in possession of a culture of science and they are radical in this matter. This is regarding the Shi’ites, but [there are examples] also among the Sunnis, [like] Sheikh ‘Abd Al-’Aziz ibn Baz, the senior religious scholar in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia…
In Ibn Baz’s book, published in 1985, he completely rejected the idea that the earth is round. He discussed the question on the basis that the earth is flat. He completely rejected the idea that the earth orbits the sun. I own the book and you can verify what I am saying.
And so, the earth does not orbit the sun, rather it is the sun that goes around the earth. He brought [us] back to ancient astronomy, to the pre-Copernican period. Of course, in this book Ibn Baz declares that all those who say that the earth is round and orbits the sun are apostates. At any rate, he is free to think what he wants. But the great disaster is that not one of the religious scholars or institutions in the Muslim world, from the East to the West, from Al-Azhar to Al-Zaytouna, from Al-Qaradhawi to Al-Turabi and [Sheikh Ahmad] Kaftaro, and the departments for shari’a study – no one dared to tell Ibn Baz what nonsense he clings to in the name of the Islamic religion…
The fact that you tell me that this is a sensitive matter – this means that I cannot reply to the words of Ibn Baz when he says that the Earth is flat and does not go around the sun, but rises and sets, in the ancient manner. This is a disaster. The greatest disaster is that we cannot even answer them…
The official religious institutions, first and foremost Al-Azhar, the faculties of shari’a, the departments of religious rulings, and so on are in a state of complete intellectual barrenness. They produce nothing but rulings like adult breastfeeding, the hadith of the fly, blessing oneself with the Prophet’s urine, and flogging journalists. The field has been abandoned to the jihadist-fundamentalist ideology, as it is the only one that raises thoughts that are worthy of being discussed and rejected. This is because of the barrenness of the major official institutions which are considered to be exemplary.
They are filled with repetitiveness, ossification, regression, protecting [particular] interests, perpetuating the status quo, and submission to the ruling authority. If the state is socialist, the Mufti becomes a socialist; if the rulers are at war, the clerics are pro-war; if the governments pursue peace, the [religious authorities] follow them. This is part of the barrenness of these institutions. This [forms a] vacuum in religious thought that is filled by the [intellectual] descendants and followers of Sayyid Qutb, for example, and that type of violent fundamentalist Islam…
There is no doubt that in Muslim countries the slogan “Islam is the solution” is attractive and brings people in. However I believe that this enlistment is superficial and sentimental, since when people deeply examine the substance of these slogans and the platforms it includes, they will begin to examine and discuss it anew.
Likewise, they will raise pressing questions, for example: Is the meaning of “Islam is the solution” the reestablishment of the Caliphate? And is the reestablishment of the Caliphate a realistic program? And so on.
I think that the Caliphate could return when the Bourbons or Louis XVI return to rule in France, or the czars return to rule in Russia. In Russia there is a Czarist party that wants to establish constitutional czarist rule. If it succeeds, then perhaps the Islamists will succeed in reestablishing the Caliphate.
As for these movements’ understanding of implementation of the shari’a, it could be summed up in the penal code, that is, flogging, stoning, cutting off hands, feet, heads, and so on. But what would happen if [one of the Islamists], for example, or his son or relative, was sentenced to flogging, to having his hands cut off, or whatever? In this situation he would reject this penal code. Perhaps they would agree to a fine, jail, or some other punishment, but he would not agree to flogging, stoning, or the cutting off of a hand. Therein lies the problem.
When the Islamists reach power, as they did in Sudan, for example, they are wary of implementing these punishments. When you carefully examine the slogan “Islam is the solution”, you discover that the people are already apprehensive and have second thoughts about implementation of this slogan…
I believe that the Islamists’ conception of implementing the Muslim shari’a is [really] martial law. When military officers take over the government they declare a state of emergency and martial law. When Islamists come to power they declare the implementation of the shari’a – and in this way they are no different from each other. In my opinion, their most important role is to terrorize people…
I am pessimistic about Arab culture in general… Culture is not the primary mover [that determines] the life of society or what policies are followed. It is not the primary mover in the historic orientation of one Arab country or another. There are those who think this, but there are crises on another level [that are only] reflected in the prevailing culture in [these] societies… It may be that there is a crisis of the rulers, or the economy, or a crisis of the elites, or some other type of crisis. But one cannot say that it is because of our culture that we suffer from all these problems… there are many impediments [to progress] to be found in [various] peoples’ cultures and traditions. At the same time – especially in the current period – there is a reluctance to investigate these impediments, define them, examine them closely, and criticize them in order to overcome them and remove them. The tendency to do so has grown weaker at present, and there is a kind of obsequiousness and deference to traditions and customs, whether they are backward or not.
When we simply look at the Arab world, we see that it consumes everything but that it produces nothing apart from raw materials. What can we expect from the Arabs? Look at the Arab world from one end to the other; there is no true added value to anything. There is a structure that seems not to encourage production and to not be for it. What do we produce? What do we export?
[This is true] whether you are talking about material, economic, scientific, or intellectual production, or any other kind. Look at oil production, for example. What is the Arabs’ relation to the oil industry? They own the oil, but they have nothing to do with its extraction, refinement, marketing, or transport. Look at the huge installations for prospecting oil, extracting it, and refining it. Look at the Arab satellite: what in it is Arab? I doubt the ability of the Arabs to produce a telephone without importing the parts and the technologies it requires, and perhaps even the technicians…
We need to take as our starting point the fact that no society is fundamentally endowed with a natural readiness for democracy. Democracy is a cumulative historical process. It would be a mistake to adopt the opinion that [this is] impossible, and that since we are tribal and sectarian we need to do away entirely with the idea of democracy, say that it is not appropriate for us, and close the door before it. In China they say a thousand-mile journey starts with a single step.
I am in favor of attempts and experiments. There are previous experiences from which we can benefit. I do not despair or throw my up my hands, despite being aware of the difficulty of this issue and the complications it entails. No [society] had a structure that was fundamentally appropriate and fit for democracy.
We, like other people, can learn, and accomplish 20 percent, then 30 percent, then 40, 50, and more. It is a cumulative process that depends on the steps taken to educate people in schools and educational institutions and train them gradually for the practice of democracy.
If we don’t do this, we will be governed by the saying: as you are, so will you be ruled. If you are tribal, you will be ruled by tribes; if you are backward, you will be ruled by the backward; if you are clannish, you will be ruled by clans; and if you are sectarian, you will be ruled by sects, and so on. This is to fall into a cycle from which there is no escape.
Or else there is [another] Arabic saying that would apply to us: the people are of the religion of their rulers. If the ruler is democratic, all of us will become democratic, and if the leader is a dictator, all of us become pro-dictatorship. As though we are condemning ourselves to a position of quiescence from which there is no escape. I reject this…
It is difficult for the Arab mentality in its current structure to produce democracy, but I do not believe that this mentality is an eternal fixed [attribute]. I [would] accept a model that is 30 percent successful, though up to now we have not been able to accomplish this.
There is sectarian democracy in Lebanon, it is a regime of quotas, and not a democracy based on citizenship. The political regime in Lebanon prevents a dictatorship through sectarian balances, but [it] has not achieved true democracy based on citizenship. Likewise, Iraq is going in the same direction…
In my opinion, if the Iraqis want to maintain the unity of their country and avoid a grinding civil war, they must learn historical lessons from what they are going through today. The Shi’ite majority cannot say that the meaning of democracy is majority rule and that’s the end of it. They must say that it means majority rule with protection for the rights of minorities, and by this I mean political minorities, and not necessarily numerical, ethnic, or religious minorities.
They say, We are the majority and therefore we will rule, and democracy is majority rule. But this is to stray from the truth. Democracy is rule by the majority with the protection of minority rights. Otherwise the state will face division, civil war, and ruin.
This is an issue that the Arab mind needs to study: that it must accept the other, and it must accept the possibility of the minority reaching [power] if its alliances make it into the majority – [but this] without [the minority] discriminating against the majority or taking revenge on it after reaching power.
In Iraq there are also many Islamic parties and movements from various schools [of jurisprudence]. Are they capable of implementing the shari’a in accordance with Sunni or Shi’ite belief? Not unless they are prepared to sink into a grinding civil war. What can you learn from this if you are not interested in a civil war or the disintegration of the state? You learn to be wise and build neither a Shi’ite nor Sunni state, but rather a state based on citizenship, truth, law, and social justice.
This belief comes as a result of historical lessons, but there are those who learn quickly and others who never learn. In Lebanon, for example, they didn’t learn, and they experienced a grinding 16-year civil war; but considering what is happening there now, one feels they learned nothing from it, especially regarding the sectarian issue.
Question: “Are you really an atheist or a ‘Damascene heretic’ as some people have described you?”
Answer: (laughs) “Can you imagine a serious, learned intellectual in our Arab countries not being seduced by ideas like a critical attitude towards traditional religious beliefs, doubt and non-determinism, and the idea of using a scientific approach to understand religious phenomena? From the time of Qasim Amin to the present, there have been those who promulgate and publicize their reactions to subjects like these. Naturally the religious institutions and clerics look at this matter in terms of atheism, heresy, and so on. But at the end of the day, there remains something that is a matter of the conscience, and this is part of the freedom of conscience of every man.
But I must admit that my hopes for progress in the Muslim world are held very tenuously: Islamic clerics have brainwashed the people so thoroughly, manipulating them with Muhammad’s oxymoronic madness about life after death, that they may be immune from even considering the liberating ideas of intellectuals such as Al-Sowayan and Al-‘Azm. A similar horrible dynamic is rampant in the West: parents infected with the god meme pass their degeneracy on to their children, who are then immune from critical thinking. In the Epilogue to his brilliant 2004 book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris beautifully summarized both the problem and the needed solution:
This world is simply ablaze with bad ideas. There are still places where people are put to death for imaginary crimes – like blasphemy – and where the totality of a child’s education consists of his learning to recite from an ancient book of religious fiction. There are countries where women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed. And yet, these same societies are quickly acquiring terrifying arsenals of advanced weaponry. If we cannot inspire the developing world, and the Muslim world in particular, to pursue ends that are compatible with a global civilization, then a dark future awaits all of us…Elsewhere, I’m in the process of posting descriptions of how we may be able to make progress toward the goals described by Harris; I’ll probably review such ideas in future posts; here, I’ll just outline my recommended four-phase plan (the same plan that kids use to “handle” other kids who are “real brats”): 1) Ridicule the theists, 2) Set a better example (viz., scientific humanism), 3) Explain to the theists what they’re doing wrong (i.e., holding beliefs more strongly than relevant evidence warrants), and 4) If they fail to smarten up, then exclude them from cooperative activities (e.g., exclude Muslims from immigrating to Western countries).
Religious violence is still with us because our religions are intrinsically hostile to one another. Where they appear otherwise, it is because secular knowledge and secular interests are restraining the most lethal improprieties of faith. It is time we acknowledged that no real foundation exists within the canons of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any of our other faiths for religious tolerance and religious diversity.
If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the very basis of human cooperation. [Italics added] Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another. People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. [Italics added]
But instead of pursuing such a plan, consider what the West is doing. During the previous century, Westerners struggled, fought, and died to defeat both fascist and communist ideologies. For example, Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihad Watch points out that in 70 years of its propaganda campaign against the West, “the Soviet Union spent between eight and nine billion dollars.” In contrast,
The total amount spent by just one Muslim country (admittedly the richest), Saudi Arabia, in furthering the cause of Islam over the past three decades, is close to 100 billion dollars. Think of all the mosques built and maintained, all the imams on the payroll, all the missionaries conducting Da’wa in American and British prisons, all the Western hirelings, in the capital of every Western country, whose full-time job is to explain away the Al-Saud, and the mutawwa of Saudi Arabia, and Islam itself, its texts, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics.Why are Western governments permitting such propaganda campaigns by a foreign power, which is intent on having their ignorant Wahhabi clerics rule the world?
The ignorance of Muslim clerics is well illustrated by the fatwa mentioned in the above quotation from Al-’Azm and issued in 1993 by the presiding cleric, ‘Abd al-’Aziz Bin (or Ibn Baz), of the Saudi Permanent Committee for Scientific Research (by which they seem to mean, “research” into the craziness of the Koran):
The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished.What’s the matter? You think it odd that anyone would suggest that people are atheists (and therefore, according to the Koran, they should be killed) if they accept the evidence that the Earth is more like a sphere than a flat plate?
And if you think it’s odd that we permit the Islamists to promote their stupid propaganda in the West, then perhaps you’ll agree that Westerners better smarten up: wake up, smell the manure, read the Koran. Islam isn’t a “religion of peace”; Islam was never just a religion; since the time of the megalomaniac Muhammad, Islam has been a political movement, complete with its own (barbaric) law code, their shari’a – which includes “almost 70 rules about how to urinate and defecate”, as described by the mentally-challenged Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid. He adds:
In contrast, how do those beasts in the West answer the call of nature? They stand in front of other people, in toilets at airports and other public places. They do not care about covering their private parts. Even their underwear is colored and not white, so it can conceal all that filth. We are a nation that has long known the meaning of cleanliness, what to do when nature calls, and what the rules of hygiene are. The others [i.e., Westerners], to this day, live like beasts.Again, Islam is an all-encompassing way of life, an ideology, just as were Nazism and Communism, and similar to Nazism and Communism, Islam’s goal (stated clearly in the Koran) is to rule the world. For example, in the same speech the Saudi cleric Al-Munajid stated:
This is a nation of monotheism, and this is the Islam that Allah wants to spread throughout the world, and to rule the land it its entirety. Allah wants this. He sent down the Koran and the hadith for that purpose.And such craziness isn’t confined to the Sunnis (e.g., the Wahhabis); thus, speaking to a group of his Shi’ite religious students, the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said:
We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups, and nations… We don’t shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world.The major difference between Islam and Nazism or Communism is that the end desired by Islamic supremacists is a theocracy – not with any god ruling (of course), but ruled by the most ignorant of people, namely, clerics.
We in the West beat the Christian, fascist, and communist supremacists, but now we’re permitting infiltration by Saudi Wahhabis who want to rule the entire, flat-plate world, complete with 70 rules for how to urinate and defecate. Permitting such craziness is not only extremely odd; it’s extremely foolish. In fact, permitting Saudi propaganda to continue to pollute the West is not only odd and foolish; it’s treason against humanity. It must end.
To end it, since most of our politicians seem to have been bought-off by the Saudis (using money gouged from us via their oil-cartel), then “we the people” will probably need to stop the Muslim madness by ourselves. Maybe someday we’ll be able to elect politicians who will enforce laws prohibiting foreign political parties from interfering with our domestic policies (barring Islam in the West, just as we barred the Communist and Nazi Parties). Until then, we can make progress by diminishing Saudi money supply, by riding bicycles, joining car pools, using public transportation, communicating more electronically and less personally, picketing against oil-burning power plants and in support of coal-fired and nuclear plants, promoting the development of our own oil resources (e.g., our huge oil-shale reserves, which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia), participating in the use of renewable energy, such as biofuels and solar, geothermal, wind, wave, and tidal energy, and supporting international fusion-research programs (which if successful, will provide unlimited electrical energy from fusing the heavy hydrogen isotopes found in abundance in the oceans).
In the end, the choice is between embarking into the future with the help of the world’s most knowledgeable scientists or being enslaved in the past by the world’s most ignorant clerics.
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