What about Islam and the West

[nick4rp]

This is an issue I still struggle with, even though I've gone on board with the Ron Paul Revolution.

The recent comments by the British Archbishop does concern me. Whether or not we were wrong with going into Iraq, we do have this clash of cultures. France and Britain have already become overrun with Islamic extremism, and France has never been one to really support Israel, so its obvious that its not "only because we are there".

This is the point that I have difficulty with my neo-con friends in convincing them to vote for Ron Paul. So my question is, irregardless of the 1953 Blowback, we are here now. We have to have a foreign policy regarding this don't we?

Islam does have goals to subdue the earth doesn't it, especially under Sharia law.

This is the "strongest point" that a McCain or neocon would try to use against Ron Paul. As a Paul supporter, (who does think Islam is a threat to our culture) what do you guys have to say?

Even the Dems, will talk the talk like they want to end the war, but in the back of their heads, they do know that they cannot cut and run, as the lingo goes. Even Obama when asked that (60 mins I think) said that he would have to make that decision if he gets information that we need to stay in iraq.

I know Iraq didn't cause 9/11 and I seperate that fact, but what I'm talking about here is the "clash of civilizations" that concerns me.

To me, what happens to Britain, is only 10 to 20 years of us. If Britain falls, I see us not far behind.

So how would Ron Paul address this issue. This is the one issue my circle of Repub. friends debate with and this is where they would rather vote for the Huckster.

I understand we have to try to make friends, but sometimes, there are just bad people in the world that won't ever become your friend. What then?

 

[american empire]

the muslims lands have already fallen to us....they are our colonies....with our puppets governing their people....

maybe you need to come out of your one dimesional thinking and visit the muslim world......clash of civilization?...eh....maybe its they who are scared of us chiping into their civilization and eroding their culture....they have been around much longer han we have so this misconception is very idealistic

you should really travel the world and not limit your thinking to the thoughts of middle america....have you ever been to dubai or kualalampur or qatar or tehran or istanbul.....
i guess not...hence the bologne talk i see above....

besides you should talk to a muslim in the US ...find out what their culture is about...what kind of things are shunned and what are welcolmed.....the only way both sides are gonna get out of this stigma of clash of civilizations is that each side does away with their prejudices and visits each others countries and mingle and interact.....and not to mention stop watching fox news which polarizes the two for its on benifit....

my advice travel ......because i can feel the prejudice oozing in your post....

 

[Dustancostine]

American Empire,

Have you read the Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Or her other book Infidel?

What about anything by Oriana Fallaci?

Just curious.

 

[Max Stirner]

I think in Britain, which has and probably always will have a much larger per capita Muslim population, this is a much larger issue. There is no real concern in my mind that we in the U.S. have much to fear as far as Sharia law goes.

The statement from the British Archbishop, however, is disturbing in the extreme. It really crystallizes the kind of decadent hyper-liberalism that afflicts Britain, Europe, and European religious/social institutions in particular, although I think it's worth remark that the statement has garnered so much criticism in the British Isles. Personally, I think it won't be all that long before Britain does see some portions of Islamic law filter into their overall legal system and the root of it is the same problem the French have(and ultimately the cause of the riots they've been periodically having), namely that they allow so much autonomy in immigrant groups, both in law and in public administration in general. It creates an atmosphere of isolation and separateness that's really destructive and combined with the demographic shift and the kind of moral vacuum that plagues Europe it won't probably be more than another 50 years before it does happen. So, in a strict sense, he is right, it is "unavoidable" under current conditions.

The point is that it should bother the Archbishop most of all, because even as an atheist I can tell you that his job is to promote and attempt to expand his church(not into government but throughout society). If even he won't stand up for the Anglican church, who the hell will?

As far as Ron Paul's stance, I'd imagine he'd point out that Britain is it's own nation and that if that's the route they want to take, then so be it. If it's huge asylum fraud and massive, unrestricted immigration to their nation that they want, then let them have it. There's nothing to be done on our part, it's up to them and that there shouldn't be much fear about terrorism from them because British intelligence is a much better police force to deal with any Islamic terrorism than, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia. From our perspective we need to end the unjust policies that inspire terrorist acts in Iraq, Britain, and here and bring the troops home to provide some actual "defense" from the department so named.

Let the Europeans grow old and eat cake though, let's just make sure that America is still free and prosperous enough for them to immigrate to when it really starts hitting the fan across the pond.

 

[american empire]

Have you read the Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Or her other book Infidel?

this is exactly the ignorance i am talking about...you consolidate your opinions based on a womans writing who had to spice up the atrocities to seek asylum.....she probably did go through all the atrocities and i do not deny they do take place...but to paint the whole population of followers with the same stroke of the brush is rather naive....

my point is that it should be not Islam that should be blamed for what some people do....same as Christianity should not be blamed due to what some neo con evangelist who have lost their direction....there are good people and bad people in every religion....

my point is you should go travel the world and find out for yourself if all these stories are true or not....but i would say its easier for ppl to base their opinions on books written by a skewed population ...just like its easier to get your news sitting passively on tv rather than researching it on the net.....

 

[hairball]

I kinda lifted this from another forums, because some seem to think if we don't accept THEIR view of the world, if we do choose to see things from a less than narrow perspective, we are being obtuse. Books as well as experiance are some of the best ways to go, and to dismiss the books posted seems to be forced ignorance. But here is the article about Englands burdgeoning problem of how some of Islam is to be accepted and allowed in the West. Fine to talk about history, but the Muslim have not been acting like most of their historical predassesors. They have spit into some tolerant sects, and others have remained intolerant and thuggish.

Having seen, firsthand, and talked with those who did live there, I am very comfortable with the facts of the matter regarding what is going on. This article puts it best...

Rowan Williams -- the Archbishop of Canterbury - has a couple of problems:

He wants his religion to commit suicide

He's really an employee of the government of Great Britain, the Queen being the head of the Church of England - which is supposedly at war with the very people who want to establish their obnoxious medieval laws and customs in Britain. Yet he wants to destroy the legal system of his employer and his nation.


A Craven Canterbury Tale

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, February 12, 2008; A19


Is this a storm in a teacup, as the archbishop now claims? Was the "feeding frenzy" biased and unfair? Certainly it is true that, since Thursday, when Rowan Williams -- the archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Church of England, symbolic leader of the international Anglican Communion -- called for "constructive accommodation" with some aspects of sharia law, and declared the incorporation of Muslim religious law into the British legal system "unavoidable," practically no insult has been left unsaid.

One Daily Telegraph columnist called the archbishop's statement a " disgraceful act of appeasement"; another called it a " craven counsel of despair." An Observer columnist eruditely wondered whether the archbishop's comment might count as a miracle, according to David Hume's definition of a miracle as a "violation of the laws of nature," while the notoriously sensationalistic Sun launched a campaign to remove the archbishop from office.

Feebly, the archbishop's supporters have tried to defend him, reporting that he is "completely overwhelmed" by the hostility and "in a state of shock." Arguing that his remarks were misunderstood, misinterpreted and taken out of context, his office even took the trouble to publish them, in lecture form and the radio interview version, on his official Web site. I highly recommend a closer look. Reading them, it instantly becomes clear that every syllable of the harshest tabloid criticism is more than well deserved. The archbishop's language is mild-mannered, legalistic, jargon-riddled; the sentiments behind them are profoundly dangerous.

What one British writer called the " jurisprudential kernel" of his thoughts is as follows: In the modern world, we must avoid the "inflexible or over-restrictive applications of traditional law" and must be wary of our "universalist Enlightenment system," which risks "ghettoizing" a minority. Instead, we must embrace the notion of "plural jurisdiction." This, in other words, was no pleasant fluff about tolerance for foreigners: This was a call for the evisceration of the British legal system as we know it.

I understand, of course, that sharia courts vary from country to country, that not every Muslim country stones adulterers and that some British Muslims volunteer to let unofficial sharia courts monitor their domestic disputes, which is not much different from choosing to work things out with the help of a marriage counselor. But the archbishop's speech actually touched on something far more fundamental: the question of whether all aspects of the British legal system necessarily apply to all the inhabitants of Britain.

This is no merely theoretical issue, since conflicts between sharia law and British law arise ever more frequently. One case before the British court of appeals concerns a man with learning disabilities who was "married" over the telephone to a woman in Bangladesh.

Though British law recognizes sharia weddings, just as it recognizes Jewish or Catholic weddings, this one, it has been argued, might be considered so "offensive to the conscience of the English court" that it cannot be recognized -- unless, of course, the fact that the marriage is legal under Bangladeshi sharia law is the most important consideration. Meanwhile, police in Wales are dealing with an epidemic of forced marriages, honor killings remain a perennial problem, and British law has already been altered to accommodate "sharia" mortgages. The archbishop is absolutely right in his belief that a universalist Enlightenment system -- one in which the legitimacy of the law derives from democratic procedures, not divine edicts, and in which the same rules apply to everyone living in the same society -- cannot easily accommodate all of these different practices.

Many explanations for the archbishop's statements have already been proffered: the weakness of the Church of England, the paganism of the British, the feebleness of Williams's intellect, the decline of the West. At base, though, his beliefs are merely an elaborate, intellectualized version of a commonly held, and deeply offensive, Western prejudice: Alone among all of the world's many religious groups, Muslims living in Western countries cannot be expected to conform to Western law -- or perhaps do not deserve to be treated as legal equals of their non-Muslim neighbors.

Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That's why -- if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop -- I'm on the side of the Sun.""

 

[midevilmark]

Explain to them if they were to read their constitution, they would understand the highly improbable nature of being over run by any group, by virtue of the Electoral College, and a federalist system. The problem starts with the fact that today’s politicians have made the system top down and highly centralized. By flooding just 218 congressional districts and concentrating on just 25 sparsely populated states any group could conceivably over take the system.
The flip side of this would be the Federalist system where the express purpose of the Federal government is protect the people’s constitutional rights within the states, and in essence leaving states to do what they want in that framework. “Infiltrators” would have to gain a majority in 51 states to institute their goals. That would mean an influx of close to 150 million people to effect change, pretty hard I would say.
If we just stuck to our system, we would be fine. The problem is when men want power before anything else, it leaves the door open for anyone else who is desirous of power to figure out a way to get it also. The original system was built to thwart power mongers and despots; we just need to rediscover it.

 

[HazardPerry]

nick4rp I come across much sentiment similar to yours, and you seem like you are on the right track already. Asking such an important question demonstrates that you are curious more than convinced, and that is always the proper intellectual footing.

I don't want to point to myself, as merely a single individual, as being able to represent such a diverse spectrum of personalities, opinions and culture as the Islamic world, but I am a Muslim myself, I have studied Islam and Middle Eastern affairs extensively at a University level, and have traveled widely in the Muslim world. Having accrued these experiences that are rather rare in the West, I try to take great care in maintaining a sort of...scholastic integrity, if you will, in speaking about these experiences. So let's look at some of your questions.

First, before anything else, I have to point something out that is too often glossed over or taken for granted. It seems like such a natural assumption that many people let it pass, but it is in fact one of the foremost breaches of intellectual rigor in all of Middle Eastern studies. Many historians and sociologists place it on par with insisting the Earth is flat, or various other absurdities that are widely accepted because they reflect handily the viewpoint of the lay observer, when in fact the reality is a good deal more complex.

I am referring of course to the title of this thread, "Islam and the West." This setting, of "the West" on one hand and "Islam" on the other, is problematic for several reasons, the most obvious of which is that both are ambiguous and indeed, intermixed. Reducing the complexities of cultural and societal exchange, immigration, history and population into neat groups of supposedly like-minded people bounded by lines on a map is, I think you will agree, rather juvenile. Now I am not saying that you are juvenile for naming your thread this, rather it reflects a meme that has been constantly and blindly disseminated by those who understand the situation the least, and pilloried and torn down by those scholars who understand the situation the most.

I am going to elaborate on this, so let's look at something else that you said, also reflecting the same meme:

we do have this clash of cultures

and again:

what I'm talking about here is the "clash of civilizations" that concerns me.

I don't know whether you know it or not, but you are engaging in the most blatant triumph of collectivist clap-trap ever to masquerade as legitimate policy since colonial times. It stems from a very problematic paper published by a political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington (apparently moonlighting as an anthropologist ) called The Clash of Civilizations?. Amusingly, the question mark has since been removed and this exercise in absurdity has been expanded into a full-fledged theory (and book deals ).

The original paper is so problematic from a scholastic point of view that it was given to us as our first assignment, as freshmen in my University's history department. We were to analyze the paper and provide critical analysis. Our professors then used it as a tool to demonstrate how not to formulate assumptions, theories, and analysis. It is used as a punching bag for literally every aspiring anthropologist or historian to cut their teeth on.

The late Edward Said wrote his own critique of the paper and its then-apparent fallout in October, 2001. It is worth reading.

Huntington, his flawed conceptualizations., and probably his greatest advocate, one Bernard Lewis, quickly gravitated to important advisory positions in the U.S. Government following the publication and popularization of the theory. Many people point to the supposed prescience of Huntington in 'predicting' the current clime of Islamic extremism. It is, at best, a self-fulfilling prophecy, however, as Huntington and like-minded adherents were deploying policy crafted along inherently and gravely flawed assumptions to begin with, exacerbating the current climate of polarization and antagonization.

I didn't mean to prattle on for so long about this point, but it is something that has now, unfortunately taken root in the minds of many "Westerners," who now, conveniently, find themselves neatly and diametrically opposed to everything "Islamic." This is a dangerous and naive conception of the world that we must do everything in our power to break down. It is collectivism at it's very, very worst. It must be addressed forcefully and with rigor every time it is encountered, and that is why I took such pains to point this out to you.

On to meatier discussion:

So my question is, irregardless of the 1953 Blowback, we are here now. We have to have a foreign policy regarding this don't we?

Firstly, and I intend no harm understand, 'irregardless' is a made up word often used to take the place of 'regardless.' The extra prefix, the syllable it brings, and especially that luscious double consonant no doubt combine to tickle all sorts of vocabulary receptors, but it is a forbidden fruit that must be resisted, as it is nonsense.

Moving on, the 1953 coup in Iran is hardly the beginning, end, or even the peak of various policies and operations, covert or otherwise that are antagonistic to the Middle East and Muslims in general. You must study the broader history of cultural exchange, and political interaction, but particularly the events of World War I concerning the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab Revolt, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, and consequent events such as, in no particular order, the Suez Crisis, the Algerian War, even the Egyptian Expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte, a fascinating case study in itself. Whew. I know this is a lot of reading, and I am aware that Wikipedia is not in any way exhaustive on any of these topics. But it is convenient for me to throw many links your way that you might easily be able to browse to lead to further insight. The "Islamic World," a cursory study of history will inform you, has engaged the West primarily on the basis of being on the unfortunate end of colonial policies, occupation, larcenous pillage of natural resources, and cursory disregard for sovereignty. "Why they hate us" should be readily apparent.

In answer to your question, yes, we most certainly do need a foreign policy regarding the rise of Islamic extremism. It begins with a candid assessment of our related policy and that of our allies towards the region. It continues with a re-formulation of the troubled ideas that led us to those policy conclusions in the first place. It comes to fruition with the anticlimactic (and rather plain) conclusion that to live in peace and avoid needless friction, we must simply engage sovereign nations as sovereign nations. As equals. No more Machiavellian machinations or morally ambiguous subterfuge.

I understand we have to try to make friends, but sometimes, there are just bad people in the world that won't ever become your friend. What then?

It must be recognized that the unfaltering will to hijack and sacrifice an airline full of innocent people, and send it beaming into the side of a skyscraper requires more than vapid promises of virgins. A martyr is nothing without a cause to die for. Muslims are no more likely to lash out by sacrificing their very lives than any other group of people. Palestinians or Saudis or Afghans are not inherently "bad," nor are they predisposed towards explosives and flag-burning. They may have a certain amount of cushion from religion, but there are instincts which can go beyond the deepest faith, and to override those requires systematic and often first-hand abuse of those who would become terrorists by those who are subsequently attacked. It reflects, I think, a simplistic viewpoint that certain folks in the world are just "bad apples," that cannot be engaged on a level playing field. Perhaps if we did not stoop to underhanded compromises of our ideals in the first place, we would not be facing such animosity.

Moving on:

Islam does have goals to subdue the earth doesn't it, especially under Sharia law.

I don't want to spend too much time on this, because it reflects a basic misunderstanding of Islam and Shari'a which can be easily remedied in about an hour of reading. I will say that Islam certainly has no goals to subdue the Earth, nor to subdue non-Muslims, or various others. You can trust me or not, but like LeVar used to say, you don't have to take my word for it.

Shari'a law is a much bandied-about and little understood topic, which is why it gives rise to such exceptional controversy. It is nothing more or less than a moral structure by which to fashion an ideal Islamic society. Just what exactly is Shari'a is a matter of some dispute. As a Muslim myself, my opinion is that Shari'a must present Qu'ranic precedent rather explicitly in order for me to take it seriously. Qadi, or Islamic "judges," have often ruled on various matters in a very human way, allowing cultural or societal precedent to get the better of them and affect their judgements. If such a ruling were to happen many hundreds of years ago, it may be accepted into a sort of Shari'a "lexicon," however I find it no more or less valid just because it is an old or even ancient ruling. The point is, Shari'a is an ambiguous and deep subject that is interesting to explore but not always particularly Islamic, from a Qu'ranic point of view. It is political Islam, and often used to further agendas, stir up misunderstanding and even fear, on both sides of the table. The only 100% canonical document in Islam is the Qu'ran, and, like our US Constitution, it is often misconstrued purposely in a systematic way which can lead to the illusion of canon when in fact the reality is much different.

An important point, and the one that I will leave you with, is that you must re-program yourself not to think of Islam as a monolithic force through the ages. It's adherents are hardly of one mind, indeed they are often more diverse in their beliefs and conceptions than most Christian or Jewish denominations. The tradition of commentary and interpretation is incredibly strong in Islam, all the more reason to study first the Qu'ran itself, and only then digest opinions thereof. Islam is a decentralized religion. There is no Pope, nor any other religious rank. To be an Imam, a sort of priest, but more appropriately one who leads prayer and often a lecturer, the only prerequisite is that people want to hear you speak! Many mosques even rotate Imams amongst their congregation.

Because of this decentralization, the spectrum of opinion and practice is vast. As a Muslim, you must return to the original documents (in this case, the Qu'ran) in order to form your own opinion on what constitutes canon and heresy. I do not expect this of you or most American non-Muslims, but that is why I do my best to write posts such as these, to share my experience. Only through such dialogue and the mutual understanding it may precipitate can these unnecessary rifts be bridged. :o

 

[jstmike]

Maybe if we didn't displace millions of Muslims from their countries and forever pollute their land with Depleted Uranium then maybe the west wouldn't have this issue?

 

[VoteForRonPaul]

Well, I would like to add my simple understanding of what is happening.
First, for us to understand what is currently happening we have to read and understand history. No understanding of history means continuation of failure in addressing problems. "And that is what makes Ron Paul unique".

Everyone of us carry a level of extremism regardless of what our beliefs are, but the issue here is, what flames this extremism to the highest level and what brings it down to its lowest.
I believe that knowledge is a major factor here (not the only factor but a major one), the more knowledge we have the less extreme we will be. We the people need to learn to be "free thinkers" when we go to the library we do not have to pick a book that Imam or a preacher wants us to read but we need to do it ourselves.
Both neocons & Islamic extremists are two faces of the same coin. If you bring those here and send those there and exchange cultures they both would do the same thing again and again. Why? Because they are not "free thinkers" and knowledge is the bad word.

Okay back to history before I forget. I think it is very important for us to study two periods.
First: The period before the so called "independence" of the third world.
Second: The period after the so called "independence" of the third world.

Briefly the first period which is "before" is summarized in a massive occupation of the third world, and occupation at the old days equaled to barbarism ( no mercy here).

The second period which is "after", the third world did not have a chance to breath freedom because once the occupation ended, dictators were installed, almost immediately and dictators did non less than occupation.

And here specifically in the second period comes the role of United States. The US had a golden chance to become the most loved country over the earth but the ill minded people blew it away by supporting the dictators with open checks in addition to the very secretive relation which started between the US and Israel. And ofcourse the CIA played the dirtiest role of all in damaging the reputation of the United States allover the world.

This second period which started almost after the world war two was the most critical but most dangerous period of all. And thinking of all these historical consonances you will understand how extremism was flamed and it rose inside some hearts to the highest levels and we all regardless our beliefs we all are affected by it.

Extremism will never be defeated by extremism because both reflects the same ideology and that is why it is a no-win war. This era needs people like Ron Paul and no other!

 

[Mopsus]

One can rant and rave that it is an issue of Jew v. Muslim, Christian v. Muslim or Jew v. Christian or any combination thereof.

It simply boils down to a battle between the "haves" and the"'have nots."

If we eliminated the worry of any parent that their child would be hungry and be wanting of an education and future...... the sooner we'd be rid of violence.

Anyone that argues that, better call their mom and pose that question to her.

It is not about East v. West, Jew v. Islam ....it is about past v. future!

 

[nick4rp]

my advice travel ......because i can feel the prejudice oozing in your post....

hey man, i'm on your side, that's why i ask, don't be so harsh.

i've travelled to Europe and my parents were immigrants, so I'm not "middle america white" if you think that.

i suggest you re-read the post. i'm asking how to talk to my neo-con friends to help convert them into thinking more openly and not have this warmongering attitude.

no need to flame me dude....if i knew, i wouldn't ask...that doesn't mean i'm prejudice!

 

[nick4rp]

my point is you should go travel the world and find out for yourself if all these stories are true or not....but i would say its easier for ppl to base their opinions on books written by a skewed population ...just like its easier to get your news sitting passively on tv rather than researching it on the net.....

if travelling supposedly gives you "knowledge", then why should I believe the astronauts who landed on the moon? I haven't travelled there, therefore I don't know if its even true that I can float up and down like the footage shows.

dude, i understand experience is important, but you make it out like that all of america that HASN'T travelled doesn't know sh*t. That's faulty logic.

Then you go on to say to "research on the net". What makes you think the net is any more reliable than someone going to Dubai or wherever. I'm sure if I went to Tibet, they'd give me a different viewpoint about the Chinese than if I was in China.

Location does not give you "more truth". If I went to So. Central LA and hung out with Bloods, then I'd come out hating Crips. Now if I went to to Crip side, vice versa.

Fact is, there's radical elements in any religion. If you read the writings of the Hadith, they say Jews came from rats. I don't need to go to Israel to get that information, its writting down. There are going to be moderates in the religion or others who want to reform it. The facts are facts.

That's why I'm asking what Ron Paul would do with radicalism? Britain is the last bastion before it hits the US, because our societies are so much more alike, than say, France. In the same vein, what will we do with any perceived threat?

That's the factor that divides someone from supporting Ron Paul and someone with more neo-con roots. This is the heart of the debate with my friends and I'm trying to find a good answer.

Whether we started this problem or not is not the question, what I want to find out is, now that we have a forest fire, how do we go about putting the fire out?

To me, if it were an analogy, a neocon would go and attack the fire. It would seem, those of us on the non-interventionist camp would wait for the fire to come to our neighborhood.

Don't flame me, I'm just asking for advocate's sake...

Thanks!

 

[nick4rp]

nick4rp I come across much sentiment similar to yours, and you seem like you are on the right track already. Asking such an important question demonstrates that you are curious more than convinced, and that is always the proper intellectual footing.

Hey, HazardPerry, great post. I'm going to have to absorb it, as it is full of good intellectual "meat" to "chew on". I'm glad you recognized that I'm just asking.

Trust me, I was very neo-con in my thinking and I'm slowly peeling it away like an onion.

Feel free to PM me and I'd like to hopefully dialog with you more offline.

Thanks!

 

[nick4rp]

The point is that it should bother the Archbishop most of all, because even as an atheist I can tell you that his job is to promote and attempt to expand his church(not into government but throughout society). If even he won't stand up for the Anglican church, who the hell will?

As far as Ron Paul's stance, I'd imagine he'd point out that Britain is it's own nation and that if that's the route they want to take, then so be it. If it's huge asylum fraud and massive, unrestricted immigration to their nation that they want, then let them have it. There's nothing to be done on our part, it's up to them and that there shouldn't be much fear about terrorism from them because British intelligence is a much better police force to deal with any Islamic terrorism than, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia. From our perspective we need to end the unjust policies that inspire terrorist acts in Iraq, Britain, and here and bring the troops home to provide some actual "defense" from the department so named.

Let the Europeans grow old and eat cake though, let's just make sure that America is still free and prosperous enough for them to immigrate to when it really starts hitting the fan across the pond.

Max, you have very good insight, especially on point about the Anglican church and not standing up to their principles.

Its all about principals, just like Ron Paul is the most principled candidate.

You make a point that Ron Paul would just let Britain handle their own problem. I can see that based on what our founders said about keeping out of alliances. But maybe you or others can clear these questions I have about this.

Some Republican/Conservative friends of mine would say "well, that was 200 years ago, the world has changed, they didn't have radical Islam to deal with, blah, blah". So how do you address that statement. Its almost framed in a sense to say "you're ideas don't apply to TODAY".

Other statements are like, "well, if we leave Britain alone, what would've happened if we didn't get into WWII and stop the Nazis".

I get that Nazi analogy all the time. So honestly, do we just leave Britain be? To me, it seems they are saying, "why can't we be a good neighbor to our friends?"

Maybe it sounds simplistic, but every country it seems would still be doing things "in their own interests". The recent Chinese guy who was arrested for giving secrets to China is an example. Putin with Russia is another. I mean, we will always have some form of strife or conflict even if we were to have a "non-interventionist" foreign policy.

This is what I have trouble convincing my neo-conservative leaning friends. And some days, their arguments sound compelling to me to say "its too difficult to think the Ron Paul way".

So I'm asking here for some good answers to give them and re-assurance. Like my one friend says, "there's no negotiating with terrorists". And then they hear of the one incident in Iraq where the terrorists strapped bombs on two retarded women, and that got their neocon blood boiling.

Whether the news report was true or was a set up, I don't know. I just want to know how we can promote non-interventionism in light of news like this, which keeps most of the voters in a warmongering state of mind.

Anyone?

Thanks!

 

[american empire]

apologies nick.....voteforronpaul has a good post and you do make valid points...

but then when you pull stuff from you know where...by saying this...

If you read the writings of the Hadith, they say Jews came from rats

give me quote for that.....you cannot eh....haha hence "the oozing" statement but then again it is a clash of civilizations b/c there will always be people on both sides who resist change....who dont want to go away from the values of their forefathers....

and no im not trying to inflame you....and there is nothing wrong with reading over traveling....

why don't you read Secret History of the American Empire....by john Perkins....

it isnt just about Islam vs the West....its about respecting other cultures and people which our
companies and people do not respect...like the amazon, indeginous in bolivia, opening of starbuck's in ancient regions of china etc....you get what i am saying...

this isnt a one sided game...there is blame on each side....but regarding your concerns ...one poster has done well to describe the role of the constitution .....that post should have allayed your fears....

 

[Mini-Me]

Hey, HazardPerry, great post. I'm going to have to absorb it, as it is full of good intellectual "meat" to "chew on". I'm glad you recognized that I'm just asking.

Trust me, I was very neo-con in my thinking and I'm slowly peeling it away like an onion.

Feel free to PM me and I'd like to hopefully dialog with you more offline.

Thanks!

Yup, HazardPerry's post was very enlightening...a more blunt point to make might be:
Perhaps you should ask your friends what they propose - if we presuppose collectivist thought and a "clash of cultures," what is the best course of action to protect our culture? Should we escalate the situation as the neocons seem to favor? Or should we try to tone down the rhetoric and learn to view the world in individualistic terms, so maybe we might give Muslims less of a reason to view all of us collectively and negatively?

Things to keep in mind:
No matter how predominantly Muslim America's population becomes (which is highly doubtful in itself), a proper Constitutional republic with limited government would prevent theocracy from ever occurring (so, errr...achieving that is priority #1 ). The reason is simple: Just like only some Christians pine for theocracy, only some Muslims do as well (I'd imagine most are smart enough to realize that a theocracy is a threat to their liberties).
You'll always have your "crazies" of all persuasions, but tolerance and respect go a long way toward encouraging the same treatment from most people (yes, including Muslims - they aren't some hive-mind of suicide bombers ). In contrast, a persecution complex and hostile "us or them" rhetoric from one collective group will only incite the same persecution complex and hostile "us or them" rhetoric from their chosen collective enemy group.

In other words, presupposing that Muslims are all inherent enemies of our culture (and collectively treating them as such) will only serve to make them our enemies.

 

[american empire]

an article i found .......

Furore and excitement the world over was caused by Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams’ Lecture titled Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective (a foundation lecture at the Royal courts of Justice on Feb 7).

As is the way, media normally does not print entire speeches or lectures, but brings to the public the salient points, or what they think is the spirit of what was said. A few of the widely reported headlines were: “….suggests adoption of sharia in Britain”, “Sharia in UK is unavoidable”, “calling for parts of Islamic law, or Sharia, to be introduced into Britain”, and many more in the same vein.
Cheers, expressions of horror, disgust, dismay, and anger were the various reactions from around the world: weblogs are angry over his ‘appeasement of Islamism’, ‘could be so gullible…I can only assume that all the Muslims he meets are senior leaders of the community who tell him what a wonderful book the Koran is’ – said a member of the General Synod; and the Times of India went so far as to say, “Is it multi-cultural to cave in to extremist religious demands? Because that is what an adoption of sharia in the British legal framework will amount to….it is not a big jump from tolerating different legal definitions of marriage to tolerating unequal treatment of women”.

Amidst this furore I decided to peruse the Lecture, based on which he had been interviewed by BBC’s Radio 4. If I were to summarise the thrust of his (over 6000 word) argument, it would be thus: that there is a ‘presence of communities in British society that relate to something other than the British legal system alone’; that in any given society, even in Muslim majority societies, any people have dual, or more, identities: as citizens and as believers in a faith; that ‘our social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging’ and that citizens of the country should be recognised to be part of more than one jurisdiction i.e., the law of the land as well as any laws/code of moral conscience that may be derived from religion or culture etc.

From this perspective the poor man wanted to open up questions of what society as a whole expects from the law in a largely secular social environment. This is in the background of several opinion polls in Britain sensationally reporting that Muslim communities in the country were desirous to live under Shari’a law. So he tries to investigate in this Lecture the broad question of how much accommodation the law of the land could or should give to minority communities, be they Muslim, Orthodox Jewish, Roman Catholic or other. To illustrate most of his argument/ thoughts, however, Willams used Sharia as the mainstay of his discussion. At much length, he tried to delineate the differences between the conservative and classical schools of legal interpretation, and the modern voices arguing for ‘an extension of the liberty of ijtihad (essentially reasoning from first principles rather than the collation of traditional judgements)’, highlighting also the internal debate within the worldwide Islamic community.

The style and thrust of the Lecture was reflective and somewhat academic. Perhaps because Dr. Rowan Willams is of an academic bent. At length he developed his argument to advocate ‘supplementary jurisdictions’ for the minorities.

Here his argument becomes intriguing, not to say self defeating. First, he envisions granting the recognition to Shari’a law in very limited areas only, mentioning as an example laws governing marriage. Second, he is at pains to outline that the ‘supplementary’ jurisdictions as articulated by him, cannot imply that any member of society might be deprived of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed to them (or to all other citizens outside of the minority community) by British Law, nor make them liable to punishment by members of the said community for claiming those rights and freedoms. He gives the example of the issue of a widow’s inheritance from her husband (as prescribed in the Qur’an), originally intended to guarantee the rights of the widow in a time and place where such a concept was otherwise unknown, but taken literally in the context of this day and age, it would put the widow at a relative disadvantage. He then gives examples of punishment for apostasy, marriage and divorce laws etc. The vein of his arguments is that modern interpretations, and resultant laws, are in existence in countries like Malaysia. And in essence the shar’ai laws to be given recognition in the Britain legal system could arguably be imagined to be on those lines. But at NO COST could any shar’ai laws in Britain by envisioned to violate the basic tenets of human justice as enshrined in the British penal system. He recognises that no collusion ‘with unexamined systems that have oppressive effect or allow shared public liberties to be decisively taken away by a supplementary jurisdiction’ is possible, i.e, ‘no blank cheques’. Puzzlingly though, he is still in favour of providing ‘choice’ to be exercised in terms of which system of law a minority citizen wants to take recourse to!

Now this is his proposed solution for an inclusive policy to avoid ghettoisation and disenfranchisement of the minorities’ pluralism in terms of religions and cultures – i.e, by giving some form of legal recognition to their religious and cultural loyalties. He argues that this path would integrate isolated communities into the larger society via discussion and ‘mutual questioning and mutual change’…..!
My objections to the Archbishop’s thoughts are very different to both the general public outcry and hysteria at allowing archaic and absolute Islamic laws beginning to take hold within the British legal system on the one hand, and jubilant reception by the Islamist revivalists on the other. My objection, upon careful examination of his paper, is that he has offered nothing but a sugar coated-vacuum filled pill, in terms of the crux of his proposal. When principles of British justice are to prevail, in case of any conflict, what has he offered except complication and layering of the legal system resulting in convoluted rounds between systems and delayed justice for the people. Imagine only the case of the Muslim widow who chooses to go with the Will of her deceased husband, as opposed to the Shari’a law/ court, whilst her brother-in-law/ father-in-law etc. choose the Shari’a? Ultimately, the British legal system will prevail, after much legal wrangling, costs and tribulations of having to go through two different systems (as if going through one were not enough).

Not putting too fine a point on it, the poor Archbishop would have been well advised to not foray into this arena where he had nothing of substance to suggest or offer. His philosophical suggestions, if implemented would only create the appearance of alternative and parallel penal systems (in itself a dubious concept), burdening the minorities only with layers of conflicting and unnecessary legal systems, with huge potential for further havoc. By his own admission, ultimately any ‘supplementary’ legal code will always be junior to the British penal code. To my mind, if it has potential to offer anything at all, it is to further stoke further race relations issues, by naively offering an obviously (admittedly a well intentioned) empty shell to the minorities, and the newest handle to media to misquote and further stir frenzy about nothing.

 

[hairball]

At one time Christianity was as brutal and bloody as Islam is now. Nothing like a religion to bring out the absolute worst in people. Thing is, Christianity has evolved to the more enlightened promises of its scriptures. Islam has not.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23162712

As here, where there are countries that have such outdates laws on the books, and are willing to murder its own citizens under the guise of following shria law to the letter we will have that clash. There is no allowing them to integrate their beliefs into another society, unless that society is intent on suicide. Look at the problems the french and the English have had.
In Afghanistan, there is a professor who is facing the death penalty for merely QUESTIONING polygamy. The ole starched shirts in the region say it is heretical to question polygamy, so even within their own ranks, they make WAR on each other over religious dogma. To allow that anywhere outside the sand box is suicidal. Apologists who dismiss the writings of women who have suffered under the intolerance of their religion are despicable in their intellectual cowardice to make a dicenment about the religion.

Many within want to slough off the mark of doctrinal thuggery the way priests and minor clergy sloughed off the witch burnings and crimes of heresy the Chritians seemed so fond of at one time. Till then, be wary of people who say we should 'accept' and be 'tolerent' of another religion, simply because they may be the religion of peace. Many of their adherents may not be so peaceful, and desire to bruing their intolerance in collision with our laws.

 

[hairball]

but then when you pull stuff from you know where...by saying this...

give me quote for that.....you cannot eh....haha hence "the oozing" statement but then again it is a clash of civilizations b/c there will always be people on both sides who resist change....who dont want to go away from the values of their forefathers....

....

You know, before you go spouting off too much, you really do a little bit of checking. The quotes do exist, and you will find the chapter and verse within this post. The article puts it pretty well in perspective, but while you ooze about what YOU claim are fictitious quotes, others decide to repudiate the youtube laziness of argument, and post this... Enjoy...

This is the second post in the “Problematic Quranic Verses series where I look at verses being misapplied by Muslims. The first was on the “Slayer Verse” Quran 9:5. I obviously understand that I’ve gotten in trouble when writing about the Quran (and its virgins) before. No Virgins this time; just Jews and Apes. Get my posts via email here.

When I was a child in Pakistan my mother and I hired a religious tutor, a “maulvi,” to come to our house and help us do exegesis (tafsir) of the entire Quran. I was nine. It was fun being a student alongside my mom because she did all the work and knew all the answers and I could zone out. The maulvi would come on his bicycle, guzzle down a gallon of butter-milk and shove down the requisite two or three potato-filled parathas and then proceed to go through the Quran with us, verse by verse, and reference the works of exegetes like Mawdudi and Ibn Kathir to tell us what each verse meant. It was an enjoyable experience until my mother told my dad that the maulvi hit on her. My mother dropped out and I had to go to the maulvi at his dingy mosque in the commercial section. A week into my solitary lessons we were discussing Moses and his people that the maulvi told me the astounding fact that once upon a time the Jews were turned into monkeys. Of course at first I didn’t believe this, but he told me it was right there in the Quran. As I was leaving he told me that some of the Jews were actually pigs (the word he used was the Urdu word “khanzeer” which is closer to “swine.”) A few days later I too stopped going to the maulvi because I found I could use the money my father gave me to pay the maulvi and instead spend it in the toy market. The whole idea of Jews as apes and pigs was forgotten.


Many years later in America, I started noticing, especially in light of the rhetoric coming out of Palestine, that an astounding number of Muslims ascribed to the notion that Jews were the descendants of apes and pigs. On the grapevine I heard that Shaykh Tantawi, head of the Al-Azhar University, the purported fount of Sunni learning, had made public statements about the Jews being descendents of apes and pigs. I then found confirmation that other leading Muslim scholars were propounding this view, including none other than the designated Imam of the Holy Kaba in Mecca: Shaykh Sudais (who strangely weeps through his entire prayers). An uneducated, sexually frustrated maulvi in Pakistan was one thing; heads of the house of learning (Azhar) and worship (Mecca) in Islam ascribing to such ideas were quite another. I decided it was time to see for myself what was going on. I told myself, surely this is not Islam. We cannot really believe that people are descendents of animals. So I turned to the Quran, hoping that those three words “Jews,” “apes,” and “swine” were not in the same paragraph.

Much to my disappointment, they were. Verses 5:60, 2:65, and 7:166. [Following are the Yusuf Ali interpretations].

5:60

Say: “Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil;- these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!”

2:65

And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them: “Be ye apes, despised and rejected.”

7:166

When in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions, We said to them: “Be ye apes, despised and rejected.”

They were right there, staring me in the face. I was deflated. After a long-standing stand-off against God due to fashionable collegiate atheism, I had only recently affirmed Allah in my heart. Upon seeing the verses I felt how I felt when I saw the second plane hit the tower (because the second one confirmed premeditation). I remembered a particular scene from Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” where Gibril and Chamcha see a group of snakes, lizards and reptiles in a jail and they wonder what has happened to them, and the reptiles reply something to the effect of, “they [jailers] described us.” Rushdie’s point is that language can dehumanize, and if language is our primary tool for knowledge, then a person described as less than a human might as well be turned into what he has been described as. There is power in words, to put it mildly.

I have a lot of respect for the Jewish tradition (whatever that is). To me, it is Moses and Maimonides and Spinoza and Marx and Levinas and Buber and Brandeis and Derrida. I have taken in as much Bellow in my life as I have Bukhari (the hadith scholar). As much Itzhak Perlman as I have Rumi. These verses represented something more than just a bump on the road to reconciliation with Islam and thus I found myself faced up against an edifice of Islamic tradition I never intended to be opposed to. Much of the tradition, on the authority of Ibn Kathir, believed that when the Quran said the Jews turned into apes and swine, that, in fact, is what happened. Literally. This view, taken to its logical conclusion led other commentators such as Qurtubi (though memory fails me at the moment), to wonder how those turned into apes and swine could have off-spring. Even the monist mystic Ibn ‘Arabi got in on the debate and concluded that those turned into animals are what gave us the animals of today.

My mother tried to give the verses a spin but when I showed her the translations cited above, she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. A friend tried to point out that at least the animals the Jews were turned into (apes and pigs) were those with whom humans had the most genetic similarity. I appreciated his effort but this was not enough for me. It became compulsion and I decided that it was time that I stopped looking around for answers and read the Quran myself. So, instead of looking on the web for translations I went and purchased a copy of the translation of the Quran as performed by Leopold Weiss, a man who had been a Jew and then converted to Islam, eventually becoming the first citizen of Pakistan and the close friend of the late Kind Saud. Not only that, but I recalled that Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad as he was later called) stated in his biography that the biggest hurdle in his acceptance of Islam had been that he could not accept that Muhammad was divinely inspired. Until a few months ago, this had been my particular problem as well, and so I thought, surely a man who had the chutzpah to state openly his doubts in the Prophet and then found a way to resolve them, could be considered a serious scholar.

I started with verse 5:60 in his translation.

Say: “Shall I tell you who, in the sight of God, deserves a yet worse retribution than these? They whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned, and whom He has turned into apes and swine because they worshipped the powers of evil:” these are yet worse in station, and farther astray from the right path [than the mockers].

The first thing I noted, that I had missed the first time around when looking at this verse, was the fact that there was no mention of Jews. “They whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned” were the ones turned into apes and swine “because they worshipped the powers of evil.” Of course, that did not mean this verse didn’t refer to Jews; oh no, it did refer to them. Except, it turned out, that this verse not only referred to Jews, but also to Christians. A subsequent pharse refers to “Men of God” and “Rabbis” - with the Men of God being a reference to Christians (especially in light of the fact that in verse 66 the Gospel is mentioned explicitly). My headache wasn’t gone, but I felt a little better. A book that did not discriminate in its epithets seemed a lot more palatable than a book that seemed to single out the most persecuted group in the history of mankind. Of course, it was not exactly a relief because now I was confronted with the fact that even more people were being referred to as descendants of apes and swine!

The other two ape and swine verses were limited to Jews, but thankfully they offered a way of resolving the issue.

Here is how Asad had rendered the two verses:

7:166

and then, when they disdainfully persisted in doing what they had been forbidden to do, We said unto them: “Be as apes despicable!”"‘

2:65

for you are well aware of those from among you who profaned the Sabbath, whereupon We said unto them, “Be as apes despicable!”

That “as” I knew quite well: “So am I as the rich, whose blessed key can bring him to his sweet locked up treasure” said Shakespeare. It was the “as” — the blessed “as” — of metaphor! I rejoiced a hundred times over. A metaphor means that the finality of language is absent. Being “as” something is not the same as being something. Could it be that the Quran was engaged in metaphor-making? If references to apes and swines were metaphors, it meant that the people being referred to had expressed the qualities of an “ape” and the qualities of a “pig.” Given the fact that in classical Arabic an ape was someone impulsive and a pig was someone stubborn, the metaphors seemed almost innocous (Especially since in all languages animals are used as referrants for certain qualities. Once we could learn what qualities classical Arabic invoked when referring to those animals, we could understand what the metaphor was referring to.

Before I got too excited I wanted to be certain this “as” was not a mere blip on the radar. I had too many feelings hurt to risk hurting them again. So I went and consulted another translation, this one by Shakir.

7:166

Therefore when they revoltingly persisted in what they had been forbidden, We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated.

2:65

And certainly you have known those among you who exceeded the limits of the Sabbath, so We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated.

Granted that the other two famous English translations (Yusuf Ali and Pickthall), did not have the metaphorical “as” in them the presence of the “as” in two of the more famous translations was enough to get my mind churning, and this time I was not reliant upon any authority except that of my God given reason. Suddenly I started to see patterns in the Quran that further cast light on these questionable (and certainly questionably used) verses.

First, I noticed that 2:65 was part of a flashback sequence beginning at 2:47 where the Quran was addressing the Jewish and Christian communities in the time of Muhammad and asking them to revisit their own theological histories and their relationship with God. In other words, the addressees were the Jews and Christians of that time (those alive in the life of Muhammad). This is an important distinction because the Quran treats the time during which Muhammad was alive, different than all other times. Things that were allowed, or done, during the life of Muhammad, were often not allowed, or done, after his passing. Consider: Muhammad was allowed to have nine wives, but all other Muslims can, at most, have up to four (and even there the Quran question whether one can act favorably). Muhammad was required to stay up and pray all night; all later Muslims are not so required. Muhammad was the one allowed to exact jizya from the dhimmis; after his passing the distinction was to be abolished (but sadly was not — more on this some other day). Thus, the fact that the Quran directly addressed only those Jews and Christians alive in Muhammad’s time, was significant.

Then, far more astoundingly, I noticed that the sequence starting at 2:47 actually opened with the incredible assertion:

“O children of Israel! Remember those blessings of Mine with which I graced you, and how I favoured you above all other people.”

Pardon? This seemed to me like the clearest case of the Quran picking favorites, and the presence of verses that spoke favorably of Jews and Christians at the opening of the passage soothed me somewhat further. It more firmly established the conversational nature of the discussion in the Quran. I also recalled the hadith of the Prophet which stated that of all the Prophets, Moses was God’s favorite.

At this point, I wondered whether there were other cases of “animalization” in the Quran. Whether one could truly conclude that the verses that bothered me were metaphors. While others may be aware of more, I found a couple of astounding ones.

In Surah Fil, the Chapter of Elephant, in reference to an attack made upon Mecca before the birth of Muhammad, the Quran says, referring to those that fought the invading army from Yemen:

105:3

let loose upon them great swarms of flying creatures

Some Muslim commentators, the same ones that thought that ape and pig were references to literal transformation, have interpreted this verse to mean that a swarm of flying creatures, literally, were let loose upon the invaders. However, when considered in light of classical Arabic, we realize that the idea of a “great swarm of flying creatures” was a metaphor popular among the poets in the day to refer to the state of utter decimation wrought by a group of brave warriors (the metaphor was likely popular because birds (kites and vultures) often hung out near battle-fields).

Another metaphor about animals was popular among poets of pre-Islamic Arabia. Although not in the Quran, this was the notion of the hamstrung camel, which was a metaphor for exile and loneliness. While the hamstrung camel does not appear in the Quran, the pregnant, kneeling, camel does (in the thirtieth Juz), and refers to a feeling of alienation.

In any case, in the Chapter of the Elephant, in a non-Jewish/Christian context, the Quran had animalized a group of people (namely, the Quraysh which included the Prophet’s grandfather). This gave me further proof that the reference to apes and swines was a metaphorical representation of the qualities that certain group of historical people exhibited which were like the qualities exhibited by certain animals familiar to the Arabs and was not a suggestion that Jews or Christians were the descendants of such animals, nor was it meant to read that they were animals to this day. Under classical Arabic, anyone could be an ape (if they were stubborn) just as anyone could be a hamstrung or pregnant camel (if they were lonely).

However, we must not stop here. We must not make theoretical arguments and then be satisfied. Anti-semitism is rife in the Muslim world. It is rife in European Muslim youth. In Iran and Pakistan. Muslims have to take accountability for this. They have to excavate and upturn their tradition to rid it of the strangehold of the maulvis who do not have the intellectual facility, or interest, to assure that Islam conforms to its humanistic impulse. Free it from those who turn metaphors into literalism. The Jews are the most persecuted race on the face of the earth. Yet, that has not stopped the Jews from extending a helpful and supportive hand to all other races. I freely admit that part of the impetus in writing this article has been the friendship of Jewish people such as Annie. In my opinion, no people have had more moral clarity than the Jews. While Muslims are free to disagree with Jews upon matters of politics and policy, they must not compromise their integrity, nor compromise the humanity of the Jews. As I have demonstrated, a little use of one’s mind, will show one a clear path out of the stultification of the intellectual night. The fact that the interpretation of the verses I have set forth is not popular is not an indictment of the Quran; it is an indictment of all Muslims everywhere who have perpetuated dangerous literalism. There are men and women in the tradition who have read these verses as I have. The jurists Mujahid, Asad and Ghamidi being some of them. But it is insufficient for a handful of scholars to believe such things. Our aunts and uncles, neighbors and maulvis, must be taught better.

God gave reason to the Muslim; it is the Muslim who has forgotten what he possesses. Almost seems at times that some magician has said to the Muslim “Be you stone