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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Something being annoying or inconvenient doesn't make it untrue. The use of false flags and lying about one's intentions/beliefs are something that radical Sunni groups have historically engaged in and endorsed.

All radical groups engage in deception, concealment, and false flags. The question is whether this is something specific to Islam. Which I maintain it is not, contrary to the people yammering about "Taqqiya" as if they have discovered Islam's deep dark secret. Yes, Muslims, like Christians and Jews, believe it's okay to lie to unbelievers who are persecuting them or to protect others. That's it, it's not a general practice of lying to unbelievers pretending you aren't planning to kill them.

My reply to there being no mainstream Islamic sects that you know of who endorse that, is "No shit Sherlock". We are not talking about mainstream Muslims, we are talking about Deash, and the sort of guy who would Abracadabra Snackbar his way into a Christmas market.

And my reply to this is what I said above: I don't know if any Daesh clerics have issued some tortured interpretation of "Taqqiyah" to convince their agents to go deep cover as an infidel, but if so, I've never heard of it. And if the people I am complaining about were only claiming that jihadists are violent fanatics who twist their religion to justify terrorism, I would say "No shit Sherlock" right back at you. My point is that it's very common to see people claiming, essentially, that all Muslims (or ex-Muslims) are (or should be assumed to be) lying about their intentions. I saw this quite explicitly in a bunch of Twitter threads about Taleb al-Abdulmohsen. ("No such thing as an ex-Muslim," etc.) You proposed it as an explanation.

That said i still think that the most likely explanation is that the media is simply lying.

Maybe, though if there's evidence that he's actually a jihadist and the media is covering it up, that would be pretty dumb since we're already seeing years of his Twitter rantings being dug up.

And that even if they are not lying, his alleged views are not some weird "mix", they are to all appearances fairly typical amongst the more woke elements of the online right.

I still think "woke right" is a pretty incoherent concept, but to the degree it exists, it think it fits exactly what I mean by "weird mix"; it's a stew of assorted resentments and grudges that don't neatly fit into a single coherent ideological category.

Yes, Muslims, like Christians and Jews, believe it's okay to lie to unbelievers who are persecuting them or to protect others.

Christians are not allowed to lie to escape persecution under traditional interpretations of moral theology.

The question is whether this is something specific to Islam.

I didn't claim that false flags and deception were specific to Islam, only that they were tactics that radical Islam has been known to engage in and endorse.

I don't know if any Daesh clerics have issued some tortured interpretation of "Taqqiyah" to convince their agents to go deep cover as an infidel, but if so, I've never heard of it.

One of the core tenets of Wahhabism (the subset of Islam from which pretty much all modern radical Sunni movements trace thier roots) is that anything is acceptable if it is done in the pursuit of god's enemies. Or to put it in more familiar/secular terms, there are no bad tactics only bad targets. Deash clerics don't need to make the argument explicitly because the argument is already implicit in the Deash worldview.

if there's evidence that he's actually a jihadist and the media is covering it up, that would be pretty dumb since we're already seeing years of his Twitter rantings being dug up.

Is your argument really that the media and assorted twitter personalities couldn't possibly be decieved and would never just lie to our faces? Because if so i have a bridge in London to sell you.

I still think "woke right" is a pretty incoherent concept

And again, i disagree because it seems pretty coherent to me.

As i have argued in prior discussions there seems to be a distinct subset of the extremely-online "right" that is far more "woke" and identitarian than they are right-wing. One of the unifying themes of this subset is a seething resentment of Christians/Normies/Anyone who isn't as black-pilled miserable or cynical as they are.