I'll bet Christopher Hitchens who loathes Muslim people

[Hardrada]

is having fits now they are rising up against their oppressors!!

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. It seems to me that Hitchens is pretty down on Radical Islam

I don't think it's a Muslim thing per se.

[Hardrada]

3. Is Cat Stevens a radical Islamist?

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. Is your point that Hitchens has said something about Cat Stevens?

I don't have any idea about Cat Stevens, or Radical Islam other than that's what Hitchens is always lathered up about.

[Hardrada]

15. Hitchens will not tolerate listening to him.

[riderinthestorm]

20. So if he doesn't like Cat Stevens' music, he must hate the revolutionaries

too in the mid-east?

I am not getting your logic at all.

[NoPasaran]

22. Hitchens loathes singer-songwriters

Don't ever bring up James Taylor with him!

:scared:

[DeSwiss]

36. By that measure then.....

...I loathe him too. I think his music sucks. And you could add a whole bunch of fundamentalist Christians to that list as well. Like Falwell and Dobson and the cranks that come on the radio talking about perdition as if they knew what that was.

- I don't know where you were going with this, but you lost me.

[Codeine]

42. I don't tolerate listening to Cat Stevens either,

mostly because he sucks ass in the hardest, most boring way possible.

[Confusious]

17. Hitchens just hates all religions

The muslims aren't a special case, as much as it seems you would would like them to be.

"Hitchens often speaks out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he calls "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam"."

wikipedia

[arcane1]

2. Wouldn't he loathe the oppressors too?

:shrug:

[Hardrada]

5. Not if they are in our pay and do our bidding.

[eissa]

4. Hitchens is a neocon tool

A Blair/bush apologist who would make Rudyard Kipling proud. Fuck him.

[Hardrada]

7. He used to be be something of a progressive. Long ago.

But, yeah, he sided with the neocons. Knew which side his bread is buttered on.

[inademv]

11. No he isn't

Hell, he pooped all over Blair in a debate. His support of the Iraq war was based on the fact that Saddam was a despot, he advocated his overthrow well before it became the neocon position.

[HuckleB]

48. Bzzt. Wrong.

It was the neocon position, and Hitchens agreed with it. Hitchens never explained why we should attack Saddam, but not the rest of the world's despots. Thus, Hitchens has no excuses.

[TheBigotBasher]

12. Blair will always be an enigma.

He achieved relatively efficient public services with no major tax increases and on the back of that alone he would still be PM now. Cameron could hardly beat Brown, Blair would have still walked the floor with him.

His government however became increasingly authoritarian (detentions without trial, house arrests and a proposal to move towards compulsory ID cards). This was all on top of Iraq. One of the worst Foreign Policy decisions in history.

[pscot]

28. Blair's not an enigma

he's a punk.

[pscot]

29. Blair's not an enigma

he's a punk.

[applegrove]

6. I liked it when Hitch wrote for our side. I miss him since he went over to the dark side.

[riderinthestorm]

8. Does that even make sense? Aren't the oppressors also Muslim?

Christopher Hitchens isn't a fan of RELIGION. Not sure what his disgust with religion has to do with the revolutions in the Mid East

[Hardrada]

19. A fear of theocracies might be part of it.

[riderinthestorm]

21. I fear theocracies! That doesn't mean I'm not 110% behind the overthrow of cruel dictators.

The Egyptians, Tunisians, (and hopefully all the others that are still in flux) will have to create their own way forward but to link Hitchens this way is bizarre.

Do you think Hitchens is being unreasonable to fear that theocracies may replace dictatorships?

[Hardrada]

24. Each nation will have to find its own way forward but we should

stay out of it and not adopt interventionism which Hitchens did (does) support.

[riderinthestorm]

27. So now you hate Hitchens because he supports interventionism?

You appear to be all over the block with this. I'm pretty sure that the US and other major players were/are heavily intervening in both the revolutions as they were active, and the post-revolutionary period.

I don't support that kind of activity but a lot of thoughtful people would disagree (framing it as strong diplomacy or other bullshit). Now THAT could be a discussion point about Hitchens but painting him as a hater of these revolutions because he dislikes Islam seems to be a pretty big stretch imho.

[Hardrada]

37. I am not so sure about our actual involvement . I do know

Hitchens went along with the Iraq war and lent it some intellectual support and I have not found that forgiveable.

[scarletwoman]

9. What a bullshit post. Do you have any citations to back up your assertions?

A citation that illustrates how Hitchens "loathes Muslim people"?

A citation that quotes any recent comments by Hitchens regarding the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa?

If not, what is the purpose of your post? Just getting some hate on?

[Hardrada]

23. I don't hate the man but have always been puzzled by his views

since he seems to take some positions on the progressive side and some (like supporting Iraq invasion) which do not. I have followed a continuing discussion on him in The Nation Magazine for which he once wrote.

[PurityOfEssence]

32. Yet somehow you're an expert on them

Bit of a stretch, don't you think?

[Hardrada]

33. I read his books. ja naturlich! I enjoyed the one about Henry Kissinger.

[RZM]

39. What's so puzzling about that?

You can't fit most people's views on everything under the sun into one ideological box.

[Codeine]

43. Every single person here has an opinion

that would be difficult to reconcile with a progressive party line. We are all complex and difficult human beings.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" - Walt Whitman

[msanthrope]

45. My favorite line of Whitman!!! n/t

[HuckleB]

49. .

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_urbanities-steyn.html

http://original.antiwar.com/levesque-alam/2010/08/27/christopher-hitchens-and-the-quest-for-grade-a-muslims/

[CJvR]

13. I doubt Hitchens...

...loaths Libyans, Tunisians or Egyptians. He does despise religion so if you are claiming all people in those nations are brainwashed religous zombies you would probably be right in describing his reaction. More theocracy is something the world do not need.

[Hardrada]

16. I suppose he is an equal opportunity despiser!

[snagglepuss]

26. Perhaps you should look up the difference between Muslim and Islam

and then do us a favor and quote Hitchens saying he hates Muslims (and btw I'm no fan of hitchens). He doesn't like Islam or any other faith.

[Hardrada]

35. The American Heritage Dictionary shows no essential difference.

Are you using some arcane reference work inaccessible to the rest of us?

[snagglepuss]

40. Evidently you're digging at the bottom of the barrel for a source that agrees

with your mistaken notion. Dictionary.com is hardly an authoritative source. That you chose that rather than something like the Encyclopedia Britannica speaks volumes.

snip

Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, and its adherents, called Muslims....


http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/295507/Islam


Primary Contributors:
Muhsin S. Mahdi
Biographical Information
James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic, Harvard University. Author of Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History.

Fazlur Rahman
Biographical Information
Professor of Isl?mic Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1969–88. Author of Islam and others.

Annemarie Schimmel
Biographical Information
Former Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture, Harvard University. Author of Gabriel's Wing; Islamic Calligraphy; and others.

William Montgomery Watt
Biographical Information
Professor of Arabic and Isl?mic Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1964–79. Author of Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman; Muslim Intellectual: A Study of al-Ghaz?l?; General Editor of Isl?mic Surveys.

[HuckleB]

50. .

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_urbanities-steyn.html

http://original.antiwar.com/levesque-alam/2010/08/27/christopher-hitchens-and-the-quest-for-grade-a-muslims/

[JI7]

14. that's like saying he hates Christians , it's religious fundamentalism he has a problem with

[Hardrada]

18. He is down on religious belief per se. I got that from his book and

I imagine that's ine of the reasons he is on the Bill Maher show since they have that in common.

[JI7]

31. yeah, he is, but that's still different from saying he hates the entire group of people

[Hardrada]

34. I think the term "Islamofascist"is rather a broad brush.

And it did provide some intellectual credulity to the Iraq War and that is damnable.

[Codeine]

44. I'm down on religious belief as well.

I think it's all completely and utterly stupid. That doesn't mean I hate believers.

[Catherine Vincent]

25. Isn't he very ill?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

30. Yes he has esophageal cancer.

I think he hates what people do in the name of religion, and fundamentalism of any kind.

[HEyHEY]

38. Hitchens is down on all religions. And fuck anyone calling him a neocon tool

He's an independent thinker. So, if you can wrap your puny, undeveloped brains around that fact you could maybe objectively listen to what he says and decide if you agree or disagree. It's a much more intelligent approach than just putting people into categories, but I guess then you'd have to think as well. ANd that sucks!

[Forkboy]

41. He's still pretty much a fuckface.

:shrug:

[HuckleB]

52. He pretends to be an independent thinker.

He's overrated, egotistical, lacks insight, and has killed too many trees.

[charlie]

46. Good grief. He doesn't loathe Muslim people

And the uprisings are the sort of thing he's long wanted to see in the middle east.

[HuckleB]

51. I'm not so sure about that.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_urbanities-steyn.html

http://original.antiwar.com/levesque-alam/2010/08/27/christopher-hitchens-and-the-quest-for-grade-a-muslims/

[CrawlingChaos]

47. What I have come to believe about Hitchens & his cohorts

And by cohorts I mean those associated with the movement called "new atheism" - Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, Bill Maher and a few others.

After observing them for quite some time I have come to believe their ranting and raving about religion as a whole provides them cover for attacking their real target - Islam. Hitchens happens to be the most flagrant warmonger of the bunch (although Harris comes close).

Btw, I wasn't sure about Dawkins for quite some time, until he started to feature videos by the outrageous Muslim-hating racist Pat Condell on his website. Dawkins also recently bemoaned the decline of Christianity in Britain because, he said, Christianity functions as "a bulwark against something worse" (meaning Islam, of course). Again, no equal-opportunity hating there.

Anyway, sorry to digress. Here's a short article about Hitchens and his anti-Muslim bias that might be of interest:

http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/01/21/haroon-mughal-why-christopher-hitchens-writes-about-things-he-doesn%E2%80%99t-understand-tunisia-islam-and-sources/

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. Here's a radical idea: look to see what he has written

The list of his articles on Slate reveals he wrote a piece after the Tunisian revolution, but before the Egyptian one:

Tunisia Grows Up
Here's hoping the Jasmine Revolution improves upon the legacy of Habib Bourguiba, the nation's first president.

...
I was interested to see an interview last week with a young female protester who described herself and her friends as "children of Bourguiba." The first president of the country, and the tenacious leader of its independence movement, Habib Bourguiba, was strongly influenced by the ideas of the French Enlightenment. His contribution was to cement, in many minds, secularism as a part of self-government. He publicly broke the Ramadan fast, saying that such a long religious holiday was debilitating to the aspirations of a modern economy. He referred with contempt to face-covering and sponsored a series of laws entrenching the rights of women. During the 1967 war, he took a firm position preventing reprisals against the country's Jewish community, avoiding the disgraceful scenes that took place that year in other Arab capitals. Long before many other Arab regimes, Tunisia took an active interest in a serious peace agreement with Israel (as well as playing host to the PLO after its expulsion from Beirut in 1982).

Not to idealize Bourguiba overmuch—he became what is sometimes called "erratic," and at one point proposed an ill-advised "union" of Tunisia with Libya—but he did help to ensure that Tunisia's secularism and the emancipation of its women was its own work, so to speak, rather than something undertaken to please Western donors. It will be highly interesting in the next few weeks to see how this achievement holds up after the Perón-style tawdriness of the Ben Ali regime has potentially discredited it.

During my stay, I visited the University of Tunis, attached to the "Zitouna" or "olive tree" mosque, to talk to a female professor of theology named Mongia Souahi. She is the author of a serious scholarly work explaining why the veil has no authority in the Quran. One response had come from an exiled Tunisian Islamist named Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who declared her to be a kuffar, or unbeliever. This, as everybody knows, is the prelude to declaring her life to be forfeit as an apostate. I was slightly alarmed to see Ghannouchi and his organization, Hizb al-Nahda, described in Sunday's New York Times as "progressive," and to learn that he is on his way home from London. The revolt until now has been noticeably free of theocratic tinges, but when I was talking to Edward Said, the name of "al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" was still unknown, and atrocities like the attack on Djerba were still in the future. We should fervently hope that the Tunisian revolution turns out to transcend and improve upon the legacy of Bourguiba, not to negate it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2281450/

and then one just as things were starting in Egypt - http://www.slate.com/id/2283168/ - but that's not very specific. But in neither is he 'having fits', nor does he seem to loathe Muslim people. He does say he hates theocracies, though.