How to talk with Muslims

This is a link to Protein Wisdom where Jeff Goldstein continues to back up his claims about words meaning what you communicate, not what the listener chooses to hear. (he goes back years on this, though the blogosphere is aburst with his thoughts of late)

The link through goes to a guy who suggests “10 terms not to use with Muslims” because they get the meaning wrong.

rofl
Because they’re lame?
Because they’re idiots?
Because they only listen to words and not the intent behind the words and the words mean different things to Muslims than to the dictionary?

The author says that he’s figured out these terms with his Muslim friends.

I know this is sacrilegeous, but I’m going to move on to dogs. When you have a dog and he/she is a problem dog, it doesn’t hurt and it will help if you learn his language and learn how to listen to what he’s saying to you through his movements.

Going through a door first….I’m in charge.
Licking your chin….you’re in charge.
Wagging with his tail a little to the right…..happy dog
Wagging with his tail a little to the left…..nervous dog

etc, etc.

Humans, if you crouch down over your dog to hug him, his natural world says that’s an aggressive move.
If you pat him, instead of pet him. Aggressive move.
If you share you food with him….wimpy human.

The thing is your dog isn’t an idiot. He’s going to try to get away with things, but if you are clearly master of your domain letting him out the door first will not change that dynamic. If you clearly love and spoil your dog he may not like getting patted over petted, but he’s not going to think you mean him harm.

Dogs work to understand us, just as we work to understand them…..which brings me back to Muslims.
They are human beings for crying out loud. My friends know I don’t appreciate cussing around me – yet I can clearly interpret when they mean ill by it and when it just is what it is…no big whoop.

Muslims can handle it if you use the word ‘freedom’ and mean freedom vs when you mean to “imply an unbound licentiousness”. So Mr. Seiple, please note…your friends probably aren’t that good of friend vs unable to handle your words.

Sheesh – give the folks some credit will ya!

Appeasement

First: make peace with your enemy and release some of their people who you’ve captured.
(kissing their butt is not required, but a nice touch on the way out the door)

Pakistani authorities have released 12 Taliban militants as part of a peace agreement with Islamist in the northwestern Swat Valley.

Second: await attack

The brazen occupation of a Pakistani police academy Monday by heavily armed gunmen near the eastern mega-city of Lahore was the latest indication that Islamist terrorism, once confined to Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt, now threatens political stability nationwide.

Third: Feel free to expect that the attack came from your peace pact brothers.

The top Taliban commander in Pakistan is claiming responsibility for the deadly attack on a police academy in the country’s east.

Got back to step one and repeat the process.

The Washington Post hasn’t gotten the update about the Taliban claim yet.

No group has asserted responsibility for the attack, but Pakistani experts said the most likely source was Lashkar-i-Taiba, or Army of the Pious, a militant Punjabi group.

Happy Blogiversery…..to me

Four years! I can not believe I’ve had that much to say in four years!!

Actually – based on the kind of blogging I do….mostly complaining….it’s a sad, sad thing that I’ve had this much to say. Somebody has to do it. The 75 million or so blogs that are out there can’t handle all of it!

So – as a regular furniture re-arranger at my house, it’s time to do a bit of rearranging here. Plus it’s the year of change, right….? That’s me up there on the banner. Looking ever so pensive at my desk, trying, trying to find the sense in the day’s news.

Thank you all for sticking around or for just dropping in.

Thank you especially to Scott of Environmental Republican and

Jk of ThreeSources who both not only give me ideas and new ways of thinking of things, but link with regularity.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the Instalaunches that have freaked out my sitemeter.

And thanks to my commenters who let me know you’re out there!!

I definitely still enjoy this little hobby and it keeps my friends happy because most of my rants are online vs in their ears!

Nominations

I have to agree with Dinocrat on the new administration being mostly boring now. While things were outrageous for a while, we now know that this guy Obama is over the top. No new news.

The sad part is now there is the change I’ll pass over some of the mundane items of business, like nominating legal folks when these items of business turn out to be outrageous.

See Harol Koh to the State Department, believer that Sharia laws has any business here in the US of A and believer in all things global – without really defining what that is. Global = Western Europe? Africa? Maybe the laws of Congo?

He’s a fan of “transnational legal process,” arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish.

………

A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says that, in addressing the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007, Koh claimed that “in an appropriate case, he didn’t see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States.”

Heresay? Hopefully.

and

David Hamilton who approves of the use of the word, Allah, but not Jesus. God is fine, as is Dios or Gott, but again, not Jesus. ??? I’m very unsure how this all works in his brain.

(ps – I am not one who thinks public things should have any sort of religious representation tossed at people. “under God” in the pledge, schools saying prayers [vs kids saying their own prayers]) Yet, I believe our inalienable rights come from God, I’m just confused by his though process here and since it’s sounds pretty Dhimmi to me, I’m throwing it up along with the Koh info.)

New Ploy?

Has the enemy upped their ante now? Instead of just throwing civilians into the piles of dead killed by US forces and they now setting up American forces to kill their own enemies?

That can’t be good.

The American forces were tricked by a drug clan into taking out a rival as part of an operation to seize an al-Qaida member. Now German soldiers are paying the price for the operation’s civilian casualties.

(the Germans who had pretty good relations there unknowingly helped out the raid.)

I’ve looked to see if the German side of this story is accurate, but there isn’t much out there on the March 21 raid on the Mayor’s house in the Imam Sahib district, near Tajikistan other than the normal problem with civilians being killed vs solely the militants.

(ps – the Centcom new site sucks. Information is old there.)

I would think that if we’re to keep allies, we’re going to have to keep them in the loop.

As long as we’re on Afghanistan here, note that the Taliban are up to their old intolerant ways.

ON March 5, in the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan, forces believed to be affiliated with the Taliban bombed the shrine of Rahman Baba (born around 1650), the most revered Pashtun poet. The attack evokes one of the grosser Taliban outrages from the pre-9/11 era: the dynamiting in 2001 of the enormous stone Buddhas in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley.

Bizarro World

Excess is out of fashion

so sayeth our President as he worked to describe “the people’s anger” towards bankers.

Try this one: “begging is out of fashion” and hence, it’s ‘ok’ that the people are angry with beggers.
Or “homelessness is out of fashion” and so, it’s ‘ok’ that the people are angry with those who live on the street.

Not in a zillion years.

Oh there was more sage advice during this big meet between the president and those bankers:

During the meeting yesterday, the president also returned several times to the need for the banks to behave modestly.

Um, dress in sackcloth? Send their kids to public schools? What is the line?
What is the definition?
Oh here’s good news:

Richard Davis, the chief executive of U.S. Bancorp, told the president that his company was placing a particular emphasis on maintaining loans and lines of credit to longtime customers, particularly small businesses, even in cases in which the bank’s risk models called for curtailing or ending those relationships.

The President said “Excellent. That is a great idea” or something to that effect.

Sucking from the taxpayers teat must suck and it must suck mostly because at some point someone really needs to say out loud

“Kiss my Ass!!”

to this guy. It can’t be done if this guy is the one moving money from us to the guys who need to say it.

Be sure not to miss who gets named to Obama’s new task force on tax reform. LOL

Chavez

Loony Hugo stole the election using electronic voting machines.

(in case you didn’t know that already)
ht Keith at ThreeSources

My Heart is Warmed

Why?

This news can only mean one thing.

The Arab world is going to start allowing Christians and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and atheists etc to all practice their religions freely.

The U.N.’s top human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations Thursday urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from criticism.

Right?
Right????!!!

ht Powerline

Clamoring for more Snow photos

Sorry folks, but it’s been DRY around here. This stuff is great.

The Economy

By South Park

Ok – it’s pretty blasphemous but I suspect Jesus would find this even more hilarious than I do.