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June 16, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:49
The Young Cultural Relativists
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CNN's Chris Cuomo just got into a big argument with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani about some of the uses of language in talking about the Orlando shooting and also which culture is better.
You know you're in for a good time when the young Turks start talking cultural relativism.
Let's do this.
The fact is that the weaker you are, the harder they hit you.
And there is a connection between radical Muslim and attacking gays and lesbians.
Oh, don't be such an Islamophobe, Rudy.
It's just because it's expressly stated in the Quran and Hadiths that being gay is wrong and punishable by death.
Radical Muslims believe that the death penalty is the correct punishment for gays and lesbians.
That's not so much the radical position as it is fundamentalist.
Anyone who has a fundamentalist view of Islam, which is most Muslims, can't help but think that being gay is immoral and needs to be punished.
And if you follow God's example, that punishment is death.
And when Anderson before, who I thought had some very beautiful remarks, talked about people, you know, having come, people argue over gay marriage in the United States and things like that.
Well, look, we argue about gay marriage in the United States.
There's nobody in the United States who argues for death for homosexuals in the United States.
Actually, yes, there are, Rudy.
But those people just happen to be Muslims.
So this is a very, very different culture.
Yeah, no, it's true.
And we're at a very different level of civilization.
And somebody should point out the superiority of our civilization to the barbarians that we're facing.
You know what?
I agree.
I agree with you.
I think that we should exactly do that.
I think that we should fight cultural relativism wherever we find it.
And that's not to say that there aren't Muslims who think that killing people in general is wrong.
I'm just going to show you a clip by, honestly, I think he's my favorite Muslim preacher at this point.
I've watched quite a lot of his stuff and he's a really, really moderate guy.
But listen to the exasperation in his voice.
And he caused from the two of them a multitude of male and female to spread, to spread on earth from the two of them, which means you are all part of one family.
Remember to fulfill each other's rights.
Those who are Muslim from amongst you, you have more than one link.
Those who are not Muslim from amongst you, the least you can say is you have one link and that is the link of humanity.
When you see someone doing something wrong, it is not correct to kill them.
It is not correct to harm them.
It is correct to teach them.
It is correct to guide them.
It is correct to tell them and not to lose hope and to continue telling them.
How many of us do that which is wrong?
And we do it for years on end.
And the day comes when we turn back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
After a long time, today we witnessed killing of gay people in the United States of America.
I want to tell Something very interesting about this.
We cannot condone sporadic killing.
That's what it is.
It's killing no matter where it is.
It can be in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or anywhere else in the world.
We are against killing.
Why kill innocent people?
People who have not fought you.
They will be kufar, they will be disbelievers.
You can disagree with them, but you're not allowed to go out and just kill them.
You cannot.
Your duty is da'wah.
Your duty is to go out and give them the message of the deen.
So when we say that we condemn the killing of people just like that, it does not mean we are condoning any of their actions.
Nor does it mean we might be agreeing with every aspect of their living.
But it means they are human beings and your duty towards them is to correct them or to tell them or to guide them or to express your disagreement.
But you cannot go around killing people.
That's something common logic that you can understand.
Even if Islam disagrees with disbelief, for example, there are people who hate the Jews.
You cannot go and kill them.
There are people who hate Muslims.
They cannot come and kill us.
There are people who hate Christians.
We cannot just go and kill them.
They cannot go and kill them, etc.
You cannot do that.
This is something that you need to understand.
And if you don't, there is something wrong with your Iman and your brain.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive us.
It doesn't mean I agree with Christianity, nor do I agree with Judaism, nor does it mean I agree with any other behavior or inclination.
But what it does mean is as a human being, I don't have the right to take the law in my own hands and to start killing people as and when I wish and I think no, not at all.
I doubt there is a single person who would disagree with anything he's just said there.
But this guy also thinks that you cannot be gay and a Muslim.
Being gay is sinful and against Islam, which is a standard line for an Abrahamic faith to take.
So yes, we can say even the best among them are still inferior to us culturally.
And this is not to say that these are bad people.
That chap you were just listening to is called Mufti Megh, and he is clearly not a bad person.
However, his culture has not progressed to the point ours has.
It is still regressive.
These are the opinions of normal average Muslims.
People who do not consider themselves to be radical.
People who do not consider themselves to be terrorists or anything of the sort.
Can we have the camera?
Can we have this camera focusing on all the audiences?
Can we have this camera focusing on all the audience?
Because every now and then, every time we have a conference, every time we invite a speaker, they always come with the same accusations.
This speaker supports the death penalty for homosexuals.
This speaker supports the death penalty for this crime or this crime or that he is homophobic.
They subjugate women, etc., etc., etc.
It's the same old stuff coming all the time.
And we always try to tell them, I always try to tell them that, look, it's not that speaker that we're inviting who has these extreme radical views, as you say.
These are general views that every Muslim actually has.
Every Muslim believes in these things.
Just because they're not telling you about it, or just because they're not out there in the media, doesn't mean they don't believe in them.
So I will ask you, everyone in the room, how many of you are normal Muslims?
You're not extremists, you're not radical, just normal Sunni Muslims.
Please raise your hands.
Everybody, mashaAllah.
SubhanAllah.
Okay, take down your hands again.
How many of you agree that men and women should sit separate?
Please raise your hands.
Everyone agree.
Everyone agree.
Brothers and sisters.
SubhanAllah.
So it's not just this radical shirstan.
Allahu Akbar.
Next question.
How many of you agree that the punishments described in the Quran and the Sunnah, whether it is death, whether it is stoning for adultery, whatever it is, if it is from Allah and His Messenger, that is the best punishment ever possible for humankind.
And that is what we should apply in the world.
Who agrees with that?
Allahu Akbar.
Are you all radical extremists?
SubhanAllah.
So all of you are saying that you are common Muslims.
You all go to the different massages in Norway.
Or is it, are you like a specific sect like the Islamic sect or anything like that?
Are you like that?
No.
Are you like that?
Please raise your hand if you like this extreme Islamet sect or anything like that.
No one.
Allahu Akbar.
How many of you just go to this normal massage?
It's in Norway.
The normal Sunni mosque.
Please raise your hands.
Allahu Akbar.
So what's the politicians going to say now?
What's the media going to say now?
That we're all extremists?
We're all radicals?
We need to deport all of us from this country?
SubhanAllah.
Allahu Akbar.
Is there anyone who isn't a self-flagellating cultural relativist who thinks that Islamic cultures are superior to Western cultures?
I mean, by what metric are you using to demonstrate even their equality to ours?
Western societies are at the top of anything that can be considered good.
I mean, like, Human Development Index, Western countries.
Internet connectivity, Western countries.
Freedom of the press, Western countries.
Property rights for women, Western countries.
Women's physical security, Western countries.
LGBT rights, Western fucking countries.
An absence of child labor, Western countries.
What about an absence of slavery?
Oh, that's right.
Western fucking countries.
Western civilization has better values.
And this is reflected in the material success of Western countries.
For the individuals who live in them, it isn't just some privileged class who benefits.
Everyone benefits.
Even the weakest and most vulnerable in our societies are taken care of far better here than anywhere else in the world.
So I don't want to hear any of this cultural relativist bullshit about other cultures.
Oh, they're just the same.
They're just different.
No, they're inferior.
Flat out inferior, not as good.
We can prove it with the numbers.
When you are so quick to, like their goal when something like this happens is to identify it as this is the result of Islam.
In the case of institutional hatred against gays, yes, it does seem to be the result of Islam in the Middle East.
I mean, it's literally written into the documents.
It's codified in law and punished in almost every Muslim country.
And in many of them, it's punishable by death.
So it's hard to think that this isn't the result of Islam.
Even though it seems very clear in this case, this is the result of a person who is taught by his religion and culture to hate the fact that he was gay.
Stop right there.
I think we need to hear that again.
Hear that again, maybe in slow motion, just so we can really capture the essence of what you're saying here, John.
This is the result of Islam.
This is the result of a person who is taught by his religion and culture to hate the fact that he was gay.
This is the result of Islam.
This is the result of a person who is taught by his religion and culture to hate the fact that he was gay.
Yes, we have every reason to suspect that a gay Muslim might hate themselves because of what Islam teaches about homosexuality.
I'm glad that in your bumbling attempt at apologetics, you accidentally managed to agree.
That you would never identify an Italian killing someone as radical Italian murder or something like that.
Yes, because that would be moronic.
Italian isn't an ideology.
A mafia is not exclusively an Italian idea.
But I do know that the young Turks like to think in lazy stereotypes, so do go on.
Or implicate that everybody must be a part of the mafia because that's the best known violent part of this culture.
Idiot.
You wouldn't do that.
Then why bring it up?
Now, Rudy Gianni didn't actually accept that as an analogy, but I think that it is an interesting one.
No, it's a stupid one.
It's a false equivalency.
Being Italian and converting to Islam are not the same thing.
Do you know who's got an Italian relative that was part of the mafia?
Rudy Giuliani.
So he must be guilty by virtue of being an Italian and related to someone in the mafia.
Do you remember how we were talking about a religion that persecutes gay people?
Was he really?
His dad was a collector for a loan trip.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, absolutely.
No wonder he's touching you about it.
So the thing that they agreed upon at the end was that their culture, meaning Muslim culture, is barbarian.
Yes.
And you would agree too if you were forced to live in a country where, I don't know, a woman gets raped and she gets punished.
I mean, really, it's her own fault for allowing a stranger to put a date rape drug in her drink, take her back to his flat and then rape her.
She deserves an $800 fine and then to be deported.
Bitch brought it on herself, didn't she, Jimmy?
And ours is not.
That's right, Jimmy.
Ours is not.
It's not perfect, but we have definitely made more social progress than they have.
Yeah, they use subtle language.
Barbarian.
John, you're gay.
You should think it especially egregious since you would be a primary victim of Islamic law.
So, you know, I've had this conversation with other people.
You know, it's that our culture is better than yours looking down the nose.
Our culture is better because we don't throw gays off the off of roofs in our culture.
You sound so disappointed, Jimmy.
I'm sorry that we aren't like them.
I mean, to be fair, that is just the Islamic State.
Most of them just hang or stone them.
So, I mean, it's not like everyone gets chopped off a roof.
Some people just get killed in truly medieval fashion.
And don't forget the number of people who are simply beheaded for their crimes with a sword, John.
A fucking sword.
I went to a Trump rally last week.
Oh, yeah, this sounds relevant.
How many of them were agitating for gays to be executed by the sword?
Yeah, they want to.
Is there literally nothing you won't say?
I mean, is there nothing so ridiculous that you won't just simply lie about it to smear your opposition?
I mean, I wouldn't accuse you of being pro-pedophilia.
I would never do it.
I would never say, look, Jimmy Door, I watched the Young Turks the other day.
They want you to molest children.
That's what they want.
They want you to do this.
I would never say that, Jimmy.
I would say the opposite.
Would say literally, I don't think the young Turks are pro-pedophilia.
I'm sure they're against it.
Because at the end of the day, I may disagree with their politics, but they are still rational.
No way, I'm fucking wrong.
Oh, yeah.
The reason why we don't throw gays off the roofs in the United States is because we had to wrestle the culture away from those motherfuckers, which is about half of them that do want to do that.
Fucking hell, Jimmy.
You just can't stop, can you?
Has a homosexual ever been executed by the state for being homosexual in the United States?
I mean, I was, I spent a good 10 minutes on Google trying to find one example, Jimmy.
Couldn't find one.
Couldn't find one at all.
Nobody is advocating for homosexuals to be executed.
Nobody.
Oh, apart from Muslims.
Sorry, they are advocating for it.
They're very clear on it and they're very vocal on it.
And it's mainstream Islamic opinion that homosexuality is immoral, Jimmy.
But no, you flagellate yourself.
You go ahead and say, lie through your fucking teeth that Trump supporters want to execute gays by throwing them off buildings, you fucking lunatic.
That's why, because we and we keep it.
And right, guess what?
Liberty requires eternal vigilance.
And that's what this is about, right?
Yeah.
Wrong.
This is about you desperately trying to get back at your Catholic parents.
And this whole thing that some, you know, Noob Jomsky just said the biggest terrorist, who's the biggest terrorist program in the world?
It's our drone program.
How many gays have you drone striked?
Just out of interest.
I mean, I'm against the drone program as well, Jimmy.
Very much against it, in fact.
But I still don't think it's the same as murdering civilians with the intent to murder civilians.
I will at least give them the benefit of the doubt that when they do kill people that they in a way that they call collateral damage, it's not intentional.
They're not trying to wipe out these families.
They're trying to kill terrorists.
I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's counterproductive.
I think it produces more terrorists than it prevents.
But that doesn't make them moral equivalents, Jimmy.
So, you know, you don't think our drone program is horrible?
You don't think we have religious people starting wars, killing hundreds of thousands of people, ordering torture?
If they were doing it in the name of Christianity, I would agree with you, Jimmy.
But they are not.
They are not saying, look, Matthew 22, 16, kill gay people.
We better do that.
We better bomb them and let's torture them as well.
They're not doing that, Jimmy.
Okay?
They're wrong.
I agree with you.
What they're doing is wrong, but it's not the same.
And we can do something about them doing it.
We can lobby.
We can petition.
We can protest.
And that's what you need to do about the Islamic treatment of gays.
To cover it up, we just had Kim Davis having a rally with the Republican presidential campaign hopefuls about how much they can discriminate and take rights away from gay people.
You know what, Jimmy?
I didn't see that.
So I'm just going to assume that you are accurately representing what they said.
What you're saying is completely truthful and is in no way a deliberate misinterpretation of what they said in order that you can demonize them on your show.
So fuck you about how somehow you're better, Rudy Giuliani, than anybody else.
Rudy Giuliani may be many things, Jimmy, but he is not your president and he has not authorized drone strikes and torture.
He has not done these things, you fucking idiots.
So yes, he is better than the people who ordered these things and he is better than the people who execute gays by the sword.
You are a Cretan.
It's Cretan, you cretin.
Rudy Giuliani is not from Crete.
Yeah.
There's lots wrong with you.
You want to demonize those people, and then when it's convenient for you, you want to use those same people you demonize as a baton to beat your political opponents with.
I think you're talking about yourself there, Jimmy.
But no, he's just talking about the Islamic attitude towards homosexuals.
It's very regressive.
You should be opposing it.
And I just want to say that I have absolutely no love for Rudy Giuliani.
If it wasn't for people like you actively polluting the dialogue surrounding Islam, not radical Islam, Islam and what the core tenets of Islam are, I would probably be criticizing Rudy Giuliani.
So that's all bullshit.
Agreed.
Everything you have said is bullshit.
That whole thing, again, this class of cultures, you know, this, I'm from the Catholic religion where they raped boys for decades and probably longer.
Oh, fuck's sake, Jimmy.
This has nothing to do with Catholicism.
And now I'm going to have to defend Catholicism against you.
Where does it say in the Bible that it's okay to rape a child?
And covered it up on purpose and still do it.
In fact, they just got legislators in New York to put in legislation to make it harder for victims to sue.
What kind of fucked up culture is that?
Yes, that is the fucked up culture of the Catholic Church.
I am very much against it, as I'm sure you should be.
But let's not pretend it's the same as executing people for their sexuality.
It's not.
You are conflating corruption within an institution and the institution taking measures to protect itself from exposure with the doctrine of the institution.
Pro-life.
That's very pro-life, yeah.
No.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of Christians in the United States are Protestants.
And this altar boy raping is almost exclusively Catholic.
So let's see, you have the benefit of being able to look at the clash of cultures without trying to tie your essence into one of them.
Are you kidding?
He literally just did the opposite.
He personalized it.
He sat there talking about his Catholic background and how much he hates it.
And then you say, oh, well, you've got the benefit of being objective and neutral.
No, shut up, you fucking idiot.
And so you can see them for what both of them are.
No, he can't.
He thinks a scandal within the Catholic Church is the same as having laws that mandate the execution of homosexuals.
Most people engage in this class of cultures thinking one is clearly better, and so they can't see the faults of it.
Is your mouth operating independently of your brain, John?
Because, I mean, are you even listening to what you're saying?
They're both bad, but one is clearly worse.
Christianity, most Christianity, not all Christianity.
Hashtag not all.
Has come a long way, but it hasn't come a long way because it wanted to come a long way.
It's because it's been literally stopped from doing all of the crazy, murderous things that it did.
Yes.
Yes, that's exactly.
That's exactly it.
We forced it.
We, the liberals, forced it to change.
And that's what we need to do to Islam.
We must win this fight against these regressive attitudes.
This is a culture war against Islam, against the regressive left, and the liberals have to win it.
When Christianity was in charge, we had the Crusades and we had the Inquisition.
We had real exercise of Christian power.
Okay, John, I'm just going to stop you there, right?
Just stop.
Just stop, right?
Bringing up the Crusades as a defense of Islam is like bringing up World War II as a defense of Nazism.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Just stop it.
They've been stopped from doing that, but not because they didn't want to do it anymore.
And there are some great liberal Christians now.
Thankfully, they're allowed to exist.
They aren't killed by the right-wing Christians.
When in American history have liberal Christians ever been killed by right-wing Christians?
Just out of interest.
Can you give me an example of this, John?
But that isn't because they suddenly became benevolent overnight.
Well, you're right.
And I mean, I don't want to sing the praises of Christianity, but it has always had this distinct strain of acceptance and tolerance and love for one's fellow man.
In our culture right now, we have elected officials poisoning children with lead in the water on purpose for money.
Yes, you have corporate corruption.
It's not your elected officials doing that.
It's the businesses buying off the officials so they can continue without regulation and without punishment.
I oppose it.
Do you oppose it, John?
Do we also oppose gays getting their heads cut off because they like having dick in their ass?
Oh, if we're all in agreement, why are you conflating these things?
Let's deal with one, then another, and then another.
That's how much better our culture is than someone else who's a barbarian?
Yes, Jimmy, that is exactly how much better we are.
In our culture, this is illegal.
It is corruption.
It is not a good thing.
In their culture, chopping off the heads of gays is a good thing.
It's legal.
The government does it on purpose.
It's a public execution.
The whole town comes out to see someone get their fucking head chopped off, Jimmy.
That's the difference.
But in the light of day, knowingly, for months, if not years, we did directly on purpose poison children who are poor in one of our American cities so somebody can make political points and make more money.
Yes, the corporations have control of your political system.
They bought it.
We all agree this is bad.
It's not the subject we're discussing.
But they're barbarians and somehow we're- And by the way, nobody's in jail for doing that.
Not a fucking person is in jail for doing that.
We ordered torture on a global scale.
Nobody went to jail.
Yes, Jimmy, your political system is corrupt.
It has corrupt people within it.
They act in corrupt ways.
Counter to law.
That's why they try and keep this hidden.
Nobody's saying you live in a perfect system.
We're saying they live in an obviously inferior one.
Nobody's even investigated.
Nobody even gets prosecuted.
Nobody.
You know who gets prosecuted?
The guys who fucking out those crimes.
That's our culture.
So why don't you fix our fucking culture before you call anybody else a barbarian?
Because we have fixed all of the problems that they are still engaged in.
We believe in women's rights.
We believe in LGBT rights.
They don't.
Do you think there's not massive political corruption in Muslim countries as well?
Do you think Assad was actually democratically elected, for example?
I mean, do you think that there's nothing going on with the Saudi royal family or the Iranian fucking Ayatollah?
Do you think these countries are not also corrupt and have massive regressive social issues?
I'm so sick of this shit.
Then go and tell your therapist.
He can help you exercise the demon of the priest who touched you.
Of somehow we're fucking a much better culture.
We are.
We have forces within our culture that would pull us backwards, reduce the amount of fucking social progress we have made.
And you're one of those forces, Jimmy.
You are actually part of this.
Somehow Rudolph Rudy Giuliani, one of the scumbags of the world, goes on CNN and says anybody else is worse than him?
There we have it.
Jimmy Doar.
Rudy Giuliani is the new Hitler.
Trump supporters want to execute gays by throwing off buildings.
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