Steve DenBeste Suicide Watch
Jerry Falwell would be pleased.
“We will accept no compromise,” said a statement by Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Ishaq al-Fayad, one of the three top [Iraqi] Shiite clerics who serve beneath the most senior religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Al-Fayad said separation of religion and state must be “completely rejected.”
Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark.
February 7th, 2005 at 9:32 am
You know that DenBeste is slowly dying from an incurable, degenerative disease, don’t you?
http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/060036.php
February 7th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
>>>You know that DenBeste is slowly dying from an incurable, degenerative disease, don€™t you?<<<
I do now, I guess.
Of course, unless he’s blaming his disease for his diseased writings, then I’m not sure what you expct me to do.
February 7th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Reading the comment, Den Beste doesn’t say he’s dying from the disease actually. Only that it keeps him from writing. Perhaps he declared himself to be dying elsewhere? It would certainly excuse some of the self-pity and martyrdom in the linked comment.
February 7th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
>No, you cannot guess what disease I have and you do not have >a suggestion for a miracle treatment for it.
That’s what he says. Really strange. I mean, I happen to have a health condition that has no clear origin and for which the treatment is uncertain — though it’s not fatal, thank goodness. And I don’t have any trouble naming it (MS). Why would no one be able to guess his disease? Genetic, degenerative, requiring stimulants as treatment– can’t be that hard to figure it out. I guess it just sounds strange to me, like there’s some reason why he can tell everyone about it but refuses to name it and says it’s unguessable.
Calling Dr. House!
I’m very sorry for him, as for all ill people, and hope he has better medical insurance than I do (none of my treatment is covered by my health insurance, and it’s $1200 a month). I hope -everyone- has better health insurance than that!
February 8th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
You’re a particularly pathetic character, aren’t ya?
February 10th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Maybe he wasn’t specific because he did not want to give more ammunition to hatemongers like hesiod. Congrats on your 15 minutes of fame as a pathetic misanthrope.
February 10th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Hesiod, Den Beste is worth a thousand of you. For one thing, he knows whereof he speaks. For another, he wouldn’t wish harm on you despite your despicable character. For a third, his generosity toward others in the Blogosphere has been legendary — including some whose views were almost the exact opposite of his.
Have a nice life.
February 10th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
Hesiod’s complaints seem a bit empty. I read the linked essay from Beste and there’s nothing remotely “diseased” about it.
February 10th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Hesiod, whatever that means, did you actually read SDB’s posting to which you link? Could you please cite what you consider therein to be “diseased writing”? That the bulk of what passes for modern Islam appears to be a breeding ground for the most intolerant, singleminded, angry and anti-Western group of lunatics grouped anywhere on the planet (except for a Seattle Starbuck’s)? That there may need to be some babies thrown out with the proverbial bathwater? What on earth are you ranting about?
February 10th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
Hesiod, you linked to an article by Steven Den Beste called “Defeating Islam”.
I read the essay. It makes an analogy between militant Islamic fundamentalism and pre-World-War-II Japan. Mr. Den Beste speculates that the U.S. and its allies will have to defeat militant Islamic fundamentalism in the same way that the Allies in World War II defeated imperial Japan.
It’s a very interesting essay. It manages to consisely summarize nearly a thousand years of Japanese history, and make a powerful analogy to our situation today.
You also quote Ayatollah al-Fayah as “completely reject[ing]” the principle of separation of church and state. You don’t state explicitly what the connection is between the quote and the Den Beste link is, so I won’t speculate as to your exact meaning.
However, the title of your post, “Steven Den Beste Suicide Watch”, indicates that you think Mr. Den Beste would find news of Ayatollah al-Fayah’s attitude to be very depressing.
While the quote is not good news, to be sure, I would be very surprised if Mr. Den Beste did not anticipate this exact kind of difficulty in establishing a functioning liberal democracy in Iraq.
As you know, he has written extensively about the prospects for democracy in Iraq. He has on numerous occasions described at length who the competing factions are in Iraq, and how they may or may not succeed in throwing a big monkey wrench into the process of establishing good government.
If anything, I would imagine Mr. Den Beste is currently still enjoying the satisfaction of witnessing (from a distance) the inspirational Iraqi elections of January 30th.
In any case, whatever Mr. Den Beste’s reaction would be to the ayatollah’s quote, it really does nothing to gainsay Mr. Den Beste’s analysis, whether one agrees with it or not.
By the way, I think you should change the title of your post. It is highly inappropriate to refer to someone with a chronic degenerative disease as someone who is likely to soon commit suicide. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Den Beste, and your title is an undeserved insult.
Thank you.
February 10th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
What did Mr. DenBeste ever do to you anyways ?
February 11th, 2005 at 5:58 am
Absolutely vile. I’ll bet serial killers have more class. Enjoy the spotlight, it’ll fade soon. Your writing sucks. Hell, you can’t even spell at a 6th grade level.
February 11th, 2005 at 6:23 am
I see the trolls have arrived.
The funny thing is, their comments have nothing to do with what I wrote.
They can’t even lie competently.
February 11th, 2005 at 6:40 am
You are a complete jackass, for ignoring the substantive replies to your ignorant and dimwitted posting. I asked you to cite one, just one thing in the linked post that could objectively and reasonably be described as bigoted (and you’ve had about ten opportunities to spell that word right and have whiffed on most of them.) Since there are a half-dozen folks who come here to find out what the noise is, you announce “the trolls have arrived”.
Actually, my question asking for an explanation of your bigot remarks stands. Assuming you have no rational explanation for yourself, and finding no objective reason to justify it, I must assume that it’s just your own anti-Conservative partisanship that bubbles over.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Saying I’m a waste of your time doesn’t cut it. Giggling like Beavis and Butthead in your little den of ineptitude here doesn’t either.
Either you engage in dialog, or you are just talking to hear yourself talk.
February 11th, 2005 at 6:55 am
“You are a complete jackass, for ignoring the substantive replies to your ignorant and dimwitted posting. I asked you to cite one, just one thing in the linked post that could objectively and reasonably be described as bigoted (and you’ve had about ten opportunities to spell that
word right and have whiffed on most of them.) Since there are a half-dozen folks who come here to find out what the noise is, you announce “the
trolls have arrived”.”
What “substantive” replies? The ones telling me to go to hell, (essentially)?
Here’s what I wrote in an e-mail to Rod Boyd, which will be my last response on this subject, unless someone wants to have an honest debate, rather than hurl insults.
A red herring, or a straw man defense. As I pointed out, SDB is clever enough not to talk like a bigot, using bigotted language. What he does do is go beyond arguing that there is a virulent strain of radical, fasicst Islam that must be combatted, to arguing that ISALM ITSELF is the problem.
First of all, his argument is complete bullshit. Saudia Arabia, to take the most obvious and prominent example, is one of the most developed countries in the Middle East. You can argue that one of the reactions to this rapid development is the rise if the very strain of Islamic radicalism SDB is attacking. But, you can’t argue that it prevented the development.
In any event, even in the United States, Christian fundamentalists have negative reactionary views toward “modernization,” and pop culture. But because we are a republican form of Government, we have a safety valve for their anti-culture outlook. It is a function of all religious doctrines to be socially conservative. SDB, as usual, lets the tail wag the dog. It is the lack of legitimate political liberty that has caused this virulent form of Islam to develop. Not the other way around.
In addition, how does SDB explain Iraq? It’s political development was not stunted by Islam. Nor was pre-revolutionary Iran for the matter. Islam became a means to oppose the repressive regime. The Shah failed to adapt, and died. Saddam adapted, and survived until we took him out.
You are being wifully ignorant.
Nope. He is an anti-Islamic bigot. I understand why people don’t want to face reality. But that is the truth.
P.S.
While SDB has a reputation (undeserved in my view) for being an intellectual, he demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about human nature and politics.
Political expression is like the air in a balloon. When one part of the ballon is pushed down, the air has to go somewhere else. In a repressive regime, it cannot be through the public square or traditional political means. It therefore seeks out other ways of expression. One possibility is that the balloon pops.
Religious institutions often become a signifcant avennue of political dissent.
Think of the Catholic Church in the 1980’s in the Warsaw Pact countries, especially Poland.
Most of the time, religious counterbalancing of a political regime’s oppression is a good thing. But, sometimes, it can become worse than the disease, as it has in the case of the Middle East.
The Catholic Church went through it’s inquisition phase, and it’s repressions phase. Europe, also, had a very unpleasant experience with totalitarianism that the Church was not going to emulate in it’s fight against Communism.
Islam and the Middle Eastern countries have never developed politically. This isn’t because of Islam, however. As the the Islamic empire created by Mohammed and his successors was once the most advanced civilization on Earth, with it’s only rival possibly being China.
It was a hotbed of learning, innovation, science and prosperity for hundreds of years.
The problem was that, except for Turkey, the entire old Isalmic Emprie never benefitted from the republican/democratic revolution of the 18th century. More generally, I should say, it never experienced the Enlightenment as the West did. Which was, ironically, a reaction against Christian religious fundamentalism. And again, ironically, it was the Isalmic empire in the 18th century that was more religiously tolerant than Christain Europe, and the Islamic empire also had a long history of scientific inquiry, so the principles of the enlightenment never really took hoold there.
Bush, to a certain extent, is correct that “freedom” is the antidote. But, it cannot be imposed from without. Ultimately, it has to be a self-imposed freedom. Embraced by the people themselves, who will take pride of ownership of it.
You can create a hothouse environment where democracy can flourish artificially in Iraq for a while. But it will not necessarily be self-sustaining.
Bush’s mistake is that he chose Iraq as his target, when he should have pushed Iran’s budding democratic revolution into high gear.
He should have put the Mullahs into a position whether they were either cracking down (and creating resentment), or they were giving in like Eastern European regimes did after the collapse of Communism.
They did crack down, to a certain extent. But the crackdown didn’t create the democratic backlash it would otherwise have done had we never invaded Iraq and angered many Iranians who might otyerwose be sympathetic to us.
Bush, ultimately, invaded Iraq because Saddam’s regime was low hanging fruit. Not because Iraq posed the greatest strategic threat.
I am praying for SDB. Not just because of his illness. But also because I hope he realizess how wrong he was.”
February 11th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
I had to read your posting three times, and I’m still certain that your point is meritless. You have decided, much like a Florida election judge, that you can devine his intent despite the literal reading of his words. You can see into SBD’s heart and see what his meaning is. Is it possible, just possible, that you are projecting just a teensy-weensy bit here? That perhaps you want to see him as bigoted, therefore it is so.
Because I can read volumes of his work and come to a completely different conclusion. His work reflects the opinion that Islam as intended is not Islam as practiced. Termites can be taken out a few at a time, but once they have permeated a structure, you must raze it and start over. SBD’s cited posting makes that proposition.
February 11th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
I had to read your posting three times, and I’m still certain that your point is meritless. You have decided, much like a Florida election judge, that you can devine his intent despite the literal reading of his words. You can see into SDB’s heart and see what his meaning is. Is it possible, just possible, that you are projecting just a teensy-weensy bit here? That perhaps you want to see him as bigoted, therefore it is so.
Because I can read volumes of his work and come to a completely different conclusion. His work reflects the opinion that Islam as intended is not Islam as practiced. Termites can be taken out a few at a time, but once they have permeated a structure, you must raze it and start over. SDB’s cited posting makes that proposition.
February 11th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Sorry for the double posting.
February 12th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
Hesiod,
In comment 15 above, you explain why you disagree with Steven Den Beste, and why you have such strong feelings about his views:
As I pointed out, SDB is clever enough not to talk like a bigot, using bigoted language. What he does do is go beyond arguing that there is a virulent strain of radical, fascist Islam that must be combatted, to arguing that ISLAM ITSELF is the problem.
In your initial post, you link to Mr. Den Beste’s essay, “Defeating Islam”. Here are the first two paragraphs of his essay:
Since September, it’s been politically necessary to cast this war as not being against Islam, but rather as being against Muslim extremists. It’s not the overall religion we fight, but rather the fundamentalists.
There’s truth to that, but in a real sense it may also be true that for this war to really end (without our defeat) then Islam may have to be shattered. You can describe that process in various ways, such as “Islam needs to go through its own equivalent of the Reformation”, but what it amounts to is to change it on a deep level. It will have to become tolerant, cosmopolitan. It will have to give up its belief in inerrancy and universality.
So far, you and Mr. Den Beste seem to be in remarkable agreement. You both agree that a strain of intolerant, authoritarian Islam is the source of our current conflict. You yourself refer to this version of Islam as “a virulent strain of radical, fascist Islam”.
In comment 15, you also write:
The problem was that, except for Turkey, the entire old Islamic Empire never benefited from the republican/democratic revolution of the 18th century. More generally, I should say, it never experienced the Enlightenment as the West did. Which was, ironically, a reaction against Christian religious fundamentalism. And again, ironically, it was the Islamic empire in the 18th century that was more religiously tolerant than Christian Europe, and the Islamic empire also had a long history of scientific inquiry, so the principles of the enlightenment never really took hold there.
Mr. Den Beste has written on this exact same topic many times, and in great detail. Aside from a few nuances perhaps, it is almost as if you are summarizing his views instead of presenting your own.
You also write:
It is a function of all religious doctrines to be socially conservative. SDB, as usual, lets the tail wag the dog. It is the lack of legitimate political liberty that has caused this virulent form of Islam to develop. Not the other way around.
In addition, how does SDB explain Iraq? It€™s political development was not stunted by Islam. Nor was pre-revolutionary Iran for the matter. Islam became a means to oppose the repressive regime.
Once again, your views are actually very similar to Mr. Den Beste€™s. He would probably disagree with you that all religious doctrines tend to be socially conservative. But he would definitely agree that €œthe lack of legitimate political liberty € caused this virulent form of Islam to develop.€ He would probably disagree however that it€™s a one-way street. He would probably say that some forms of Islam contribute to €œthe lack of legitimate political liberty€ in the first place.
He would say, as you do, that the lack of a European-style Enlightenment movement in the Muslim world has led many Muslims to reject the notion of a separation of church and state. And this rejection has led to many difficulties throughout the Muslim world in establishing €œlegitimate political liberty€, which in turn has led to virulent islamo-fascism.
In other words, theocratic traditions in the Muslim world have led to difficulties in places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Saddam€™s Iraq, and the Shah€™s Iran. And those difficulties have led to the rise of islamo-fascism.
So while Mr. Den Beste€™s analysis is not exactly the same as yours, it is certainly based on a similar diagnosis of the general problem, and as such, it is no more bigoted than yours.
Here€™s another quote from near the end of Mr. Den Beste€™s essay:
I, too, am a cultural chauvinist. I feel no shame in that. But I’m not militant about it, and I’m willing to tolerate other chauvinists as long as they don’t become militant. This war was thrust upon us by militant Islamic extremists, whose belief system cannot tolerate mine to exist.
For my system to continue to exist, theirs must be changed. This is not a war of faith on my side, it’s just a practical necessity. They need not give up Islam, but their fundamentalism will have to be destroyed. Islam must become tolerant, because as long as it is not we will continue to have wars with them.
Many Muslims are already tolerant. But many are not, and there is a major core of the faith of Islam which is not.
Once again, this seems to be your analysis of the situation as well. If I am mistaken, then please let me know how.
Thank you.
February 12th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
The Den Beste quote at the end of my last comment is three paragraphs, not two. I didn’t italicize the middle paragraph by mistake.
It should go as follows:
I, too, am a cultural chauvinist. I feel no shame in that. But I€™m not militant about it, and I€™m willing to tolerate other chauvinists as long as they don€™t become militant. This war was thrust upon us by militant Islamic extremists, whose belief system cannot tolerate mine to exist.
For my system to continue to exist, theirs must be changed. This is not a war of faith on my side, it€™s just a practical necessity. They need not give up Islam, but their fundamentalism will have to be destroyed. Islam must become tolerant, because as long as it is not we will continue to have wars with them.
Many Muslims are already tolerant. But many are not, and there is a major core of the faith of Islam which is not.
Sorry for any confusion.