Saturday, April 30, 2016

Britain? Moderates? How's That Again?


  • A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
  • Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders" try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
  • If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
  • If there were indeed a "moderate majority," when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.
One often hears about the "moderate Muslim majority." 'After any terrorist attack, politicians tell us that, "The moderate majority of Muslims utterly condemn this." After any outrage, commentators and pundits spring up to say, "Of course the vast majority of Muslims are moderate." But is it true? Are the vast majority of Muslims really "moderate"?

A number of factors suggest perhaps not -- most obviously the problem repeatedly revealed by opinion polls. Time and again, the results of opinion polls in the Western world, never mind in the Middle East or North Africa, show a quite different picture from the "moderate majority" aquatint.

True, such polls can often show that, for instance, only 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year. True, that is only between a quarter and a third of British Muslims sympathizing with the blasphemy enforcement squad. On other occasions, such as recently in Britain with a new ICM poll commissioned by Channel 4, they find that a majority of Muslims hold views with which most British people would disagree. So for instance, the recent ICM poll found that 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. That's a striking figure. Not 52% of British Muslims saying homosexuality is "not their cup of tea" or that they are "not entirely on board with gay marriage," but 52% of British Muslims thinking that homosexuality should be made a crime under the law.

But it is what happens after such polls emerge that the "moderate majority" idea really comes under strain. First, of course, there is always an attempt to put a positive spin on the results. So for instance, when the post-Charlie Hebdo poll came out last year, the BBC (which had commissioned the poll) ran it with the headline, "Most British Muslims 'oppose Muhammad cartoon reprisals.'" Although true, it is not the most striking aspect of its findings. But it is what happens next that is most revealing and more truly calls into question whether we are really dealing with a "moderate majority" or, more truthfully, with a "moderate minority." Because whenever the results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders," try to prove that the poll is a fraud. It happened with the release of the ICM poll in the UK, as it has happened with every previous poll. With the exception of only one or two prominent dissident Muslims, every Muslim voice in the media and every Muslim group decided not to concern themselves with the ICM findings, but to try to pull apart the validity, methodology and even 'motives' of the poll. This is deeply revealing.

It is worth trying a thought-experiment here. Whatever community you come from, imagine your reaction if a poll like the ICM one on British Muslims had come out about whatever community you feel a part of. Imagine you are a Jew and a poll had come out saying the majority of other Jews in your country want to make being gay a crime. What would your first reaction be? My impression is that most Jews would be deeply embarrassed. Very shortly after that first reaction, you might begin to wonder what could be done to change such a terrible statistic around. It is possible, if you knew nobody of your faith who thought that homosexuality should be criminalized and had never come across this position before (or any previous polling which suggested the same thing) that you might question the credibility and methodology of the poll. But otherwise, you would probably sigh and wonder what could be done to improve things. If you knew the findings to be fairly accurate, why would you try to tear apart the findings?

Likewise, if tomorrow a poll were published of the opinions of white British people of Christian upbringing in the UK, I would take some interest in it. If it revealed that 39% of British Christians believed that wives should always obey their husbands (as the ICM poll showed British Muslims believe) then I would have some worries. If it also found that almost a quarter (23%) of British people of Christian origin wanted areas of the UK to divest themselves of the law of the land and be run instead on some Biblical literalist "take" on the law, I would worry some more.

Of course, neither of these eventualities is remotely likely to arise. But let us say that it did. What would be my reaction? The first would be to hang my head in shame. And I would hang it just that bit lower if the findings came as absolutely no surprise to me. If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed that what I had always known was now known by everyone else in the country.

What is most interesting then, when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never, ever, any hint of such introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack. If there were indeed a "moderate majority," then when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia law, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them. It is a tiny symptom of a much larger problem, the repercussions of which our societies have hardly begun to face.



Douglas Murray is a current events analyst and commentator based in London.

‘Al Qaeda to kill 8 types of people’

h/t www.thereligionfpeace.com


islam wants to kill the majority of humans on this planet


‘Al Qaeda to kill 8 types of people’ 

http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2016/apr/29/al-qaeda-kill-8-types-people


Mohammad Jamil Khan

Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) will be targeting people who commit eight specific kinds of offenses against their ideology, SITE Intelligence Group has said.

The list of targets were put forth in a statement written in Bangla, dated April 8 and signed by one Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, claiming to be the spokesperson for Ansar Al Islam, or Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent, Bangladesh Branch.

US-based extremism monitoring company SITE Intelligence Group uploaded the statement to their website yesterday, saying it was released on the official AQIS website and twitter account.
The AQIS statement comes with the heading, “who are our next targets.”

The first category includes people who make statements against and belittling Allah, the Prophet (SM) and Islam.

It emphasises however, that being an atheist in personal life would not make anyone a target.
“Rather the targets are those who under the guise of atheism and free thought make insults against the Prophet SM and Islam.”

In the second category are the people who are supporting or patronising those making insults against Islam or Allah.

The third category includes people who are “preventing the practice of Shariah and Islamic tenets” in their own spheres, whether they are school, college or university teachers, mayors or local leaders, heads of any organisation, judges, lawyers or doctors.

The fourth category are the people who are “implementing a western/Indian agenda” by presenting a “distorted view of Islam” with their speeches and writings.

“The person might be a story or drama writer, intellectual, poet, journalist or editor and artist of any cinema or drama,” the statement said.

Number five includes people opposing Shariah or undermining Islam through their speeches or statements.

Number six consists of people who are spreading “nudity and shamelessness” in the society.

Here the statement underlines that there is a great difference in Shariah between engaging in something forbidden and trying to lead the society towards it.

People who are involved efforts to remove Shariah from education, culture and the economic arena fall under the seventh category.

Finally the last group of people are those who are trying to “extinguish the light of Islam from this land.”

The statement then emphasised that ordinary Muslims and people from other faiths were not the targets of AQIS.

Asked about this statement, Monirul Islam, the head of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit, said they were looking into the AQIS claim on the Kalabgan murder.

The CT Unit was keeping an eye on social media and online activities, the additional commissioner said.

- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2016/apr/29/al-qaeda-kill-8-types-people#sthash.NVUBLEdW.dpuf

Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam is BOOED by radicalised inmates at his prison - because he did not go through with his suicide bombing

Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam is BOOED by radicalised inmates at his prison - because he did not go through with his suicide bombing


  • Alleged extremist spent first night in Fleury-Mérogis prison on Wednesday
  • The 26-year-old was whistled and jeered by extremist lags upon his arrival
  • Reaction was provoked by his supposed failure to detonate suicide vest
  • Arrested over November's attacks in French capital which killed 130 people


The man accused of being the logistics chief behind the Paris terror attacks was booed by radical Muslim inmates after arriving in jail - because he failed to carry out his suicide bombing.

Salah Abdeslam spent his first night in Fleury-Mérogis prison on Wednesday after being extradited from Belgium.

He was arrested over last November's attacks in the French capital which claimed 130 lives.

Upon arriving behind bars, the 26-year-old was whistled and jeered by extremist lags enraged by his alleged failure to detonate his suicide vest during the Paris onslaught.
Salah Abdeslam spent his first night in Fleury-Mérogis prison on Wednesday after being extradited from Belgium
Armed police officers escort Abdeslam to a police vehicle during a raid in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium
Salah Abdeslam (left) spent his first night in Fleury-Mérogis prison on Wednesday after being extradited from Belgium. Upon arriving behind bars, the 26-year-old was whistled and jeered by extremist lags enraged by his alleged failure to detonate his suicide vest during the Paris onslaught
He will remain in custody in the southern Paris jail (pictured) - Europe's largest - until his next court hearing on May 20
He will remain in custody in the southern Paris jail (pictured) - Europe's largest - until his next court hearing on May 20

Investigators say Abdeslam told them he had arranged logistics for the November 13 bombing and shooting attacks and had planned to blow himself up at a sports stadium there but backed out at the last minute.

He is suspected of having rented two cars used to transport the attackers to, and around, the French capital. He will remain in custody in the southern Paris jail - Europe's largest - until his next court hearing on May 20.
Despite being held in solitary confinement, extra security measures have been put in place to prevent him making contact with other prisoners.

French officials yesterday charged Abdeslam with murder, association with a terrorist group, possession of weapons and explosives as well as sequestration over the hostage-taking at the Bataclan concert hall where 90 were killed. 

Speaking yesterday, his lawyer described him as a 'moron from Molenbeek' with 'the intelligence of an ashtray'.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Erdoğan Calls for Faith-Based UN Reform

Middle East Forum
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Erdoğan Calls for Faith-Based UN Reform

by Burak Bekdil
Hürriyet Daily News
April 27, 2016
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Slightly edited version of article originally published under the title "Fine, then ... India, Japan and Israel in the UNSC?"

Tragically, and in his own words, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks (or pretends to think) that the primary reason behind terror in Turkey is to prevent Turkey from getting into the world's top 10 economies. "We very clearly see that it does not suit some people's interests for Turkey to become one of the top 10 economies in the world ... And they try to steer Turkey away from its goal through the scourge of terror."
... So, because the world's top 10 economies don't want Turkey on the list; they held secret meetings and decided that the best way to stop Turkey's rise was to plot terror in a land that was best known for its peaceful past?
At the same time, Mr. Erdoğan also thinks that Turkey or another Muslim country should be sharing the same powers as the presumed culprits of the global plot against Turkey: the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Erdoğan bemoans that 'there is no Muslim country among the five' permanent members of the UN Security Council.
In a recent speech, Mr. Erdoğan renewed his famous "the-world-is-greater-than-five" dictum. "There is no Muslim country among the five – all of them are Christian, non-Muslim. What is that approach? Is it fair? It's not!" he roared, reminding everyone that he wants a Muslim member state at the UNSC "only to make the world fair" (not to be confused with the fact that Mr. Erdoğan is Muslim).
Just smile and forget the fact that Mr. Erdoğan thinks that permanent member China is a Christian country. There may be a boom in the number of house churches in the country but I have not read about the Communist Party declaring the country's official religion to be Christianity.
If not five, what does the world equal, then, in Mr. Erdoğan's thinking? All 193 U.N. member nations as permanent members of the Security Council, all with veto powers? That would not be practical. One country representing each monotheistic faith? Is Mr. Erdoğan implying that he wants Israel as a permanent member?
Should China and North Korea spell each other off and represent the atheist seat? Then the new UNSC should have India as a permanent member representing Hinduism and Japan representing Shintoism.
But the Muslim representation in UNSC could be more problematic than Mr. Erdoğan envisages. To begin with, which Islamic sect should win a seat at UNSC? Sunni or Shiite, or both? If it would be Sunni only, would that not go against Mr. Erdoğan's preaching that all faiths must be represented? So, it will be Iran and a Sunni permanent member. But which Sunni country? It is not too hard to guess Mr. Erdoğan's idea on the ideal candidate. But what would be the fair criteria? The world's "most Muslim Sunni country?" Sadly, science has not yet invented a Muslim-meter.
One natural candidate could be Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam's holy place. It would also be fun to have both Saudi Arabia and Iran sitting on the UNSC together and in peace – and with Israel, too.
Another criterion could be to nominate the most populous Muslim country in the world. That would point to Indonesia and even Pakistan and Egypt would come before Turkey. Indeed, India, where according to the 2011 population census the Muslim population is twice as big as that of Turkey, would be a far better candidate than the Crescent and Star.
Mr. Erdoğan complains that all five permanent members are Christian but since in the new "faith-based setting" there will be Sunni and Shiite members, what if the Christians want representation on the grounds of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant (and other) faiths? What about the animists in Africa? Or Zoroastrians – for whom Mr. Erdoğan has never hidden his deep disdain?
And, by the way, are we talking about a security council or a world congress of the faithful including those with faith in no faith?
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics:  Turkey and Turks  |  Burak Bekdil

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How Islam Erases Christianity from History

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How Islam Erases Christianity from History

by Raymond Ibrahim
PJ Media
April 21, 2016
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This article has been slightly edited.
An ISIS video released last month shows members of its religious police in Mosul, Iraq, burning hundreds of Christian books it deems blasphemous.
While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory.
Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire. As one report put it, ISIS was "burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of" Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam.
As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam's normative approach. This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan, hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hanna Kildani, a Christian, said that "there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era," "many historical mistakes," and "unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum." "Tenth grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region." Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate, including the portrayal of Christianity as a Western (that is, "foreign") source of colonization, said Kildani.
Dr. Hanna Kildani (left) told a conference in Amman in February that "there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era" in Jordan's educational curriculum.
Of course, Christian minorities throughout the Middle East—not just in Jordan—have long maintained that the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region's Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam.
"It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians," said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt. "Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640]. The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The Christian era was gone. Disappeared. An enormous black whole."[i]
This agrees perfectly with what I recall my parents, Christians from Egypt, telling me of their classroom experiences from more than half a century ago: there was virtually no mention of Hellenism, Christianity, or the Coptic Church—one thousand years of Egypt's pre-Islamic history. History began with the pharaohs before jumping to the seventh century when Arabian Muslims "opened" Egypt to Islam. (Wherever Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, Islamic hagiography euphemistically refers to it as an "opening," fath, never a "conquest.")
Sharara Yousif Zara, an influential politician involved in the Iraqi Ministry of Education agrees: "It's the same situation in Iraq. There's almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books, and what there is, is totally wrong. There's nothing about us being here before Islam. The only Christians mentioned are from the West. Many Iraqis believe we moved here. From the West. That we are guests in this country."[ii]
For generations, Muslim students have been indoctrinated to see Christians as a non-organic remnant of Western colonialism.
Zara might be surprised to learn that similar ignorance and historical revisionism predominates in the West. Although Christians are in fact the most indigenous inhabitants of most of the Arab world, I am often asked, by educated people, why Christians "choose" to go and live in the Middle East among Muslims, if the latter treat them badly.
At any rate, the Mideast's pseudo historical approach to Christianity has for generations successfully indoctrinated Muslim students to suspect and hate Christianity, which is regularly seen as a non-organic parasitic remnant left by Western colonialists (though as mentioned, Christianity precedes Islam in the region by some six centuries).
This also explains one of Islam's bitterest ironies: a great many of today's Middle East Christians are being persecuted by Muslims — including of the ISIS variety — whose own ancestors were persecuted Christians who converted to Islam to end their suffering. In other words, Muslim descendants of persecuted Christians are today slaughtering their Christian cousins. Christians are seen as "foreign traitors" in part because many Muslims do not know of their own Christian ancestry.
Due to such entrenched revisionism, Muslim "scholars" are able to disseminate highly dubious and ahistorical theses, as seen in Dr. Fadel Soliman's 2011 book, Copts: Muslims Before Muhammad. It claims that, at the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the vast majority of Egyptians were not, as Muslim and Western history has long taught, Christians, but rather prototypical Muslims, or muwahidin, who were being oppressed by European Christians: hence, the Islamic invasion of Egypt was really about "liberating" fellow Muslims.
Needless to say, no real historian has ever suggested that Muslims invaded Egypt to liberate "proto-Muslims." Rather, the Muslim chroniclers who wrote our primary sources on Islam, candidly and refreshingly present the "openings" as they were—conquests, replete with massacres, enslavement, and displacement of Christians and the destruction of thousands of churches.
In short, Islam's attacks on Christianity are not, as some in the West know, limited to the physical, but for long have involved intellectual attacks dedicated to undermining its heritage -- dedicated to erasing Christianity's history in the very region of its birth.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
[i] Quote from The Last Supper: The Plight of Christians in Arab Lands by Klaus Wivel.
[ii] Ibid.

Related Topics:  Anti-Christianism, History  |  Raymond Ibrahim

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Turkey's Islamic Supremacist Foreign Policy

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Turkey's Islamic Supremacist Foreign Policy

by Uzay Bulut  •  April 29, 2016 at 5:00 am
  • "We have never been involved in an attack against Turkey ... we were never involved in such an action... Davutoglu wants to pave the way for an offensive on Syria and Rojava and cover up Turkey's relations with the ISIS which is known to the whole world by now." — YPG (Kurdish) General Command.
  • "Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot demography -- in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the 16th century." — Victor Davis Hanson, historian.
  • Turkey, for more than 40 years, has been illegally occupying the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus, historically a Greek and Christian nation, which it invaded with a bloody military campaign in 1974.
  • What Turkey would call a crime if committed by a non-Turkish or a non-Sunni state, Turkey sees as legitimate if Turkey itself commits it.
The crumbling buildings of the Varosha district of Famagusta, Cyprus, photographed in 2009. The area lies within Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus. The inhabitants fled during the 1974 Turkish invasion and the district has been abandoned since then. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Between March 29 and April 2, 2016, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, paid a visit to Washington D.C. to participate in the 4th Nuclear Security Summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama.
In an interview with CNN broadcast March 31, Erdogan said, "We will not allow an act such as giving northern Syria to a terrorist organization... We will never forgive such a wrong. We are determined about that."
Asked which terror organization he was referring to, Erdogan said: "The YPG [Kurdish People's Protection Units], the PYD [Democratic Union Party] ... and if Daesh [ISIS] has an intention of that sort then it would also never be allowed."
Erdogan was thereby once again attempting to equate Islamic State (ISIS), which has tortured, raped, sold or slaughtered so many innocent people in Syria and Iraq, with the Kurdish PYD, and its YPG militia, whose members have been fighting with their lives to defeat genocidal jihadist groups such as al-Nusra and ISIS.


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Daniel Greenfield's article: The Unexpected Snake

Daniel Greenfield's article: The Unexpected Snake

Link to Sultan Knish




Posted: 28 Apr 2016 11:54 AM PDT
The Farmer and the Snake

A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life.

The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.”

The Greatest Kindness Will Not Bind the Ungrateful.

The moral of this Aesopian fable from a mere 2500 years ago is that doing good to evil will only lead to more evil. Aiding those who kill only brings more death, not life. It is human nature to think that people will return good for good and evil for evil. This kind of thinking perversely leads some to assume that if they are being assaulted, then they must have done something to deserve it. This logic is routinely used to argue that Islamic terrorists are simply paying us back in the same coin.

But the assumption that evil exists because evil has been done to someone else, tracing back to an original primal evil of injustice that can only be healed with social justice, is itself evil.

In September 1 1939, W.H Auden responded to Hitler's invasion of Poland by penning the lines;

Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return

Those same lines have been routinely taken up by those eager to pen their own apologetics for evil. In the wake of another early September, September 11th, Auden's poem was re-embraced once again by those penning essays explaining why we were the real terrorists to whom evil had been done in return for our own evil.

But while it is easy enough to dismiss W.H. Auden as naive, snakes don't always look the way you expect them to. Particularly snakes who take refuge in the mind of man. Auden was more snake than farmer and his words were the snake-words of one scaly creature excusing the evil of another.

In September 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany had an agreement. And the man who two years earlier had penned the line, "The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder" in his poem Spain, when referring to the Soviet atrocities in Spain, was not a pacifist. He was one of the snakes.

In time Auden would describe his poem as ''infected with an incurable dishonesty". The infection, the snake bite of incurable dishonesty, passes through the words. The dishonesty is a poisonous disease.

Are those who go on to quote "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return", to excuse and justify terrorism the farmer or the snake? On the surface of it, there is no clearer or simpler justification of evil than these lines. They presume that anyone who does evil, has been first sinned against. And while that may not entirely render them guiltless, it clearly spreads the guilt around and adds a touch of morally equivalent white paint to the murderous figure crouching in the center of the room.
Auden repudiated the poem, but the idea behind it is just too appealing to give up. And so we return to the farmer and the snake again. Why does the farmer pick up the snake? Is it naive pity, or is there something in the farmer that draws him to the snake? Is there something in those who feel so much pity for evil that draws them toward evil?

The dichotomy between the farmer and the snake may not be so simple after all. Because even an idiot knows better than to shelter a snake. Nor does a snake appeal to any normal person as a creature that needs sheltering. Is it only misguided pity that draws a man to shelter a snake, or something else entirely? Because the very idea that good will be repaid with good and evil with evil has something else lurking in it as we've already seen. The farmer's logic can be read both ways, the naive man who genuinely expects that only good can come of doing good until he dies of that sort of thinking, or the evil man who believes that he is safe from the snake because the evil within him and the snake makes them both victims. For the farmer to act as he does, he must believe that the snake is not evil, and such a belief is the province of the very naive or the very evil.

And so we return to September 1, 1939 again. To Hitler's tanks riding into Poland. To the inability to describe evil as evil. And we return to September 11, 2001 as well. And to so many other days. To free countries beleaguered by an enemy within its own borders, by the snakes they have taken to them, kept warm and perish, poisoned by their bites. But the curious thing is the sight of all these farmers lovingly clutching handfuls of poisonous snakes to them, proclaiming how wonderful they are, and shouting down anyone who would warn them about the deadly poison.

As Aesop knew some 2500 years ago; The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful. Virtually every civilized country affected by Muslim terror, has responded by trying to make life better for Muslims. But no matter how much they warm the snake, it still bites. The snake will always bite.

Only the fool or the sociopath genuinely believes that evil is returned only for evil. That snakes will only bite you, if you bite them first. That if you warm them and cuddle them, they will warm and cuddle you in turn. Things that are poisonous bite.
Was the farmer's crime, pity or identification with the snake? Think of Auden identifying to some degree with the grievances of Hitler's stormtroopers. Or Israel's Barak saying that if he had been born a Palestinian Arab, he would have become a terrorist as well. That is the snake speaking from inside the farmer. The voice of the snake that says the only difference between us and evil men, is that they have suffered and we have not. That sees not a moral continuum, but one in which deprivation releases and justifies our worst impulses. That says evil is actually proof of righteousness.

Every atrocity is proof of suffering. Every crime reveals a tormented soul. The worst monsters must have endured more abuse than we could possibly imagine. Evil is saintly and good is privileged.

That is the problem of the farmer who believes that inside he is really a snake, and the snake who believes he is really a farmer. For if there is no difference between good and evil, but that those who do good have had good done to them, and those who do evil, have had evil done to them-- then we can welcome in the snakes and all will be well because we are all snakes inside. And it is only by warming snakes, that we change that. This in essence is the worldview of liberalism. This is the key to much of its madness. And so they pick up the snake, and are bitten and die, wondering why their worldview which seemed so right, proved to be so wrong. And we die with them. For the farmer has carried the snake home, made a nest for it, and filled his home and the homes of his neighbors with snakes. And it may be hard to know where the farmer began and where the snake ended.