A haunting Dan Simmons Essay

[Evilmav2]

I've been a huge Dan Simmons fan for years (I've read every work he has ever published, even though his early horror works are not quite as compelling as his short story collections and his later great, great science fiction works, like the Hyperion and Ilium/Olympos series), and I thought some of y'all might enjoy reading this haunting and unnerving essay concerning a time traveler who has some things to tell Dan about the future...

April 2006 Message from Dan
Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors:

The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a husky voice that he was a Time Traveler come back to talk to me about the future.

Being a sometimes science-fiction writer but not a fool, I said, “Prove it.”

“Do you remember Replay?” he said.

My finger hovered over the final “1” in my dialing. “The 1987 novel?” I said. “By Ken Grimwood?”

The stranger – Time Traveler, psychotic, home invader, whatever he was – nodded.

I hesitated. The novel by Grimwood had won the World Fantasy Award a year or two after my first-novel, Song of Kali, had. Grimwood’s book was about a guy who woke up one morning to find himself snapped back decades in his life, from the late 1980’s to himself as a college student in 1963, and thus getting the chance to relive – to replay – that life again, only this time acting upon what he’d already learned the hard way. In the book, the character, who was to experience – suffer – several Replays, learned that there were other people from his time who were also Replaying their lives in the past, their bodies younger but their memories intact. I’d greatly enjoyed the book, thought it deserved the award, and had been sad to hear that Grimwood had died . . . when? . . . in 2003.

So, I thought, I might have a grizzled nut case in my study this New Year’s Eve, but if he was a reader and a fan of Replay, he was probably just a sci-fi fan grizzled nut case, and therefore probably harmless. Possibly. Maybe.

I kept my finger poised over the final “1” in “911.”

“What does that book have to do with you illegally entering my home and study?” I asked.

The stranger smiled … almost sadly I thought. “You asked me to prove that I’m a Time Traveler,” he said softly. “Do you remember how Grimwood’s character in Replay went hunting for others in the 1960’s who had traveled back in time from the late 1980’s?”

I did remember now. I’d thought it clever at the time. The guy in Replay, once he suspected others were also replaying into the past, had taken out personal ads in major city newspapers around the country. The ads were concise. “Do you remember Three Mile Island, Challenger, Watergate, Reaganomics? If so, contact me at . . .”

Before I could say anything else on this New Year’s Eve of 2004, a few hours before 2005 began, the stranger said, “Terri Schiavo, Katrina, New Orleans under water, Ninth Ward, Ray Nagin, Superdome, Judge John Roberts, White Sox sweep the Astros in four to win the World Series, Pope Benedict XVI, Scooter Libby.”

“Wait, wait!” I said, scrambling for a pen and then scrambling even faster to write. “Ray who? Pope who? Scooter who?”

“You’ll recognize it all when you hear it all again,” said the stranger. “I’ll see you in a year and we’ll have our conversation.”

“Wait!” I repeated. “What was that middle apart . . . Ray Nugin? Judge who? John Roberts? Who is . . .” But when I looked up he was gone.

“White Sox win the Series?” I muttered into the silence. “Fat chance.”

#

I was waiting for him on New Year’s Eve 2005. I didn’t see him enter. I looked up from the book I was fitfully reading and he was standing in the shadows again. I didn’t dial 911 this time, nor demand any more proof. I waved him to the leather wingchair and said, “Would you like something to drink?”

“Scotch,” he said. “Single malt if you have it.”

I did.

Our conversation ran over two hours, but the following is the gist of it. I’m a novelist by trade. I remember conversations pretty well. (Not as perfectly as Truman Capote was said to be able to recall long conversations word for word, but pretty well.)

The Time Traveler wouldn’t tell me what year in the future he was from. Not even the decade or century. But the gray cord trousers and blue-gray wool tunic top he was wearing didn’t look very far-future science-fictiony or military, no Star Trekky boots or insignia, just wellworn clothes that looked like something a guy who worked with his hands a lot would wear. Construction maybe.

“I know you can’t tell me details about the future because of time travel paradoxes,” I began. I hadn’t spent a lifetime reading and then writing SF for nothing.

“Oh, bugger time travel paradoxes,” said the Time Traveler. “They don’t exist. I could tell you anything I want to and it won’t change anything. I just choose not to tell you some things.”

I frowned at this. “Time travel paradoxes don’t exist? But surely if I go back in time and kill my grandfather before he meets my grandmother . . .”

The Time Traveler laughed and sipped his Scotch. “Would you want to kill your grandfather?” he said. “Or anyone else?”

“Well . . .Hitler maybe,” I said weakly.

The Traveler smiled, but more ironically this time. “Good luck,” he said. “But don’t count on succeeding.”

I shook my head. “But surely anything you tell me now about the future will change the future,” I said.

“I gave you a raft of facts about your future a year ago as my bona fides,” said the Time Traveler. “Did it change anything? Did you save New Orleans from drowning?”

“I won $50 betting on the White Sox in October,” I admitted.

The Time Traveler only shook his head. “Quod erat demonstrandum,” he said softly. “I could tell you that the Mississippi River flows generally south. Would your knowing about it change its course or flow or flooding?”

I thought about this. Finally I said, “Why did you come back? Why do you want to talk to me? What do you want me to do?”

“I came back for my own purposes,” said the Time Traveler, looking around my booklined study. “I chose you to talk to because it was . . . convenient. And I don’t want you to do a goddamned thing. There’s nothing you can do. But relax . . . we’re not going to be talking about personal things. Such as, say, the year, day, and hour of your death. I don’t even know that sort of trivial information, although I could look it up quickly enough. You can release that white-knuckled grip you have on the edge of your desk.”

I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.

“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.

I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .”

“I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he stood, refilled his Scotch glass, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”

“You mean the War on Terrorism,” I said.

“I mean the Long War with Islam,” he said. “The Century War. And it’s not over yet where I come from. Not close to being over.”

“You can’t have a war with Islam,” I said. “You can’t go to war against a religion. Radical Islam, maybe. Jihadism. Some extremists. But not a . . . the . . . religion itself. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceloving people who wish us no harm. I mean . . . I mean . . . the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace.’”

“So you kept telling yourselves,” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost frightening edge to it. “But the ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough”

Great, I was thinking. Of all the time travelers in all the gin joints in all the world, I get this racist, xenophobic, right-wing asshole.

“After Nine-eleven, we’re fighting terrorism,” I began, “not . . .”

He waved me into silence.

“You were a philosophy major or minor at that podunk little college you went to long ago,” said the Time Traveler. “Do you remember what Category Error is?”

It rang a bell. But I was too irritated at hearing my alma mater being called a “podunk little college” to be able to concentrate fully.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the Time Traveler. “In philosophy and formal logic, and it has its equivalents in science and business management, Category Error is the term for having stated or defined a problem so poorly that it becomes impossible to solve that problem, through dialectic or any other means.”

I waited. Finally I said firmly, “You can’t go to war with a religion. Or, I mean . . . sure, you could . . . the Crusades and all that . . . but it would be wrong.”

The Time Traveler sipped his Scotch and looked at me. He said, “Let me give you an analogy . . .”

God, I hated and distrusted analogies. I said nothing.

“Let’s imagine,” said the Time Traveler, “that on December eighth, Nineteen forty-one, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress and asked them to declare war on aviation.”

“That’s absurd,” I said.

“Is it?” asked the Time Traveler. “The American battleships, cruisers, harbor installations, Army barracks, and airfields at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in Hawaii were all struck by Japanese aircraft. Imagine if the next day Roosevelt had declared war on aviation . . . threatening to wipe it out wherever we found it. Committing all the resources of the United States of America to defeating aviation, so help us God.”

“That’s just stupid,” I said. If I’d ever been afraid of this Time Traveler, I wasn’t now. He was obviously a mental defective.“The planes, the Japanese planes,” I said, “were just a method of attack . . . a means . . . it wasn’t aviation that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, but the Empire of Japan. We declared war on Japan and a few days later its ally, Germany, lived up to its treaty with the Japanese and declared war on us. If we’d declared war on aviation, on goddamned airplanes rather than the empire and ideology that launched them, we’d never have . . .”

I stopped. What had he called it? Category Error. Making the problem unsolvable through your inability – or fear – of defining it correctly.

The Time Traveler was smiling at me from the shadows. It was a small, thin, cold smile – holding no humor in it, I was sure -- but still a smile of sorts. It seemed more sad than gloating as my sudden silence stretched on.

“What do you know about Syracuse?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked again. “Syracuse, New York?” I said at last.

He shook his head slowly. “Thucydides’ Syracuse,” he said softly. “Syracuse circa 415 B.C. The Syracuse Athens invaded.”

“It was . . . part of the Peloponnesian War,” I ventured.

He waited for more but I had no more to give. I loved history, but let’s admit it . . . that was ancient history. Still, I felt that I should have been able to tell him,or at least remember, why Syracuse was important in the Peloponnesian War or why they fought there or who fought exactly or who had won or . . . something. I hated feeling like a dull student around this scarred old man.

“The war between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies – a war for nothing less than hegemony over the entire known world at that time – began in 431 B.C.,” said the Time Traveler. “After seventeen years of almost constant fighting, with no clear or permanent advantage for either side, Athens – under the leadership of Alcibiades at the time – decided to widen the war by conquering Sicily, the ‘Great Greece’ they called it, an area full of colonies and the key to maritime commerce at the time the way the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf is today.”

I hate being lectured to at the best of times, but something about the tone and timber of the Time Traveler’s voice – soft, deep, rasping, perhaps thickened a bit by the whiskey – made this sound more like a story being told around a campfire. Or perhaps a bit like one of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories on “Prairie Home Companion.” I settled deeper into my chair and listened.

“Syracuse wasn’t a direct enemy of the Athenians,” continued the Time Traveler, “but it was quarreling with a local Athenian colony and the democracy of Athens used that as an excuse to launch a major expedition against it. It was a big deal – Athens sent 136 triremes, the best fighting ships in the world then – and landed 5,000 soldiers right under the city’s walls.

“The Athenians had enjoyed so much military success in recent years, including their invasion of Melos, that Thucydides wrote – So thoroughly had the present prosperity persuaded the Athenians that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible and what was impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The reason for this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strengths with their hopes.”

“Oh, hell,” I said, “this is going to be a lecture about Iraq, isn’t it? Look . . . I voted for John Kerry last year and . . .”

“Listen to me,” the Time Traveler said softly. It was not a request. There was steel in that soft, rasping voice. “Nicias, the Athenian general who ended up leading the invasion, warned against it in 415 B.C. He said – ‘We must not disguise from ourselves that we go to found a city among strangers and enemies, and that he who undertakes such an enterprise should be prepared to become master of the country the first day he lands, or failing in this to find everything hostile to him’. Nicias, along with the Athenian poet and general Demosthenes, would see their armies destroyed at Syracuse and then they would both be captured and put to death by the Syracusans. Sparta won big in that two-year debacle for Athens. The war went on for seven more years, but Athens never recovered from that overreaching at Syracuse, and in the end . . . Sparta destroyed it. Conquered the Athenian empire and its allies, destroyed Athens’ democracy, ruined the entire balance of power and Greek hegemony over the known world at the time . . . ruined everything. All because of a miscalculation about Syracuse.”

I sighed. I was sick of Iraq. Everyone was sick of Iraq on New Years Eve, 2005, both Bush supporters and Bush haters. It was just an ugly mess. “They just had an election,” I said. “The Iraqi people. They dipped their fingers in purple ink and . . .”

“Yes yes,” interrupted the Time Traveler as if recalling something further back in time, and much less important, than Athens versus Syracuse. “The free elections. Purple fingers. Democracy in the Mid-East. The Palestinians are voting as well. You will see in the coming year what will become of all that.”

The Time Traveler drank some Scotch, closed his eyes for a second, and said, “Sun Tzu writes – The side that knows when to fight and when not to will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.”

“All right, goddammit,” I said irritably. “Your point’s made. So we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in this . . . what did you call it? This Long War with Islam, this Century War. We’re all beginning to realize that here by the end of 2005.”

The Time Traveler shook his head. “You’ve understood nothing I’ve said. Nothing. Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough. They had grown soft since their slaughter of every combat-age man and boy on the island of Melos, the enslavement of every woman and girl there. The democratic Athenians, in regards to Syracuse, thought that once engaged they could win without absolute commitment to winning, claim victory without being as ruthless and merciless as their Spartan and Syracusan enemies. The Athenians, once defeat loomed, turned against their own generals and political leaders – and their official soothsayers. If General Nicias or Demosthenes had survived their captivity and returned home, the people who sent them off with parades and strewn flower petals in their path would have ripped them limb from limb. They blamed their own leaders like a sun-maddened dog ripping and chewing at its own belly.”

I thought about this. I had no idea what the hell he was saying or how it related to the future.

“You came back in time to lecture me about Thucydides?” I said. “Athens? Syracuse? Sun-Tzu? No offense, Mr. Time Traveler, but who gives a damn?”

The Time Traveler rose so quickly that I flinched back in my chair, but he only refilled his Scotch. This time he refilled my glass as well. “You probably should give a damn” he said softly. “ In 2006, you’ll be ripping and tearing at yourselves so fiercely that your nation – the only one on Earth actually fighting against resurgent caliphate Islam in this long struggle over the very future of civilization – will become so preoccupied with criticizing yourselves and trying to gain short-term political advantage, that you’ll all forget that there’s actually a war for your survival going on. Twenty-five years from now, every man or woman in America who wishes to vote will be required to read Thucydides on this matter. And others as well. And there are tests. If you don’t know some history, you don’t vote . . . much less run for office. America’s vacation from knowing history ends very soon now . . . for you, I mean. And for those few others left alive in the world who are allowed to vote.”

“You’re shitting me,” I said.

“I am shitting you not,” said the Time Traveler.

“Those few others left alive who are allowed to vote?” I said, the words just now striking me like hardthrown stones. “What the hell are you talking about? Has our government taken away all our civil liberties in this awful future of yours?”

He laughed then and this time it was a deep, hearty, truly amused laugh. “Oh, yes,” he said when the laughter abated a bit. He actually wiped away tears from his one good eye. “I had almost forgotten about your fears of your, our . . . civil liberties . . . being abridged by our own government back in these last stupidity-allowed years of 2005 and 2006 and 2007 . Where exactly do you see this repression coming from?”

“Well . . .” I said. I hate it when I start a sentence with ‘well,’ especially in an argument. “Well, the Patriot Act. Bush authorizing spying on Americans . . . international phonecalls and such. Uh . . . I think mosques in the States are under FBI surveillance. I mean, they want to look up what library books we’re reading, for God’s sake. Big Brother. 1984. You know.”

The Time Traveler laughed again, but with more edge this time. “Yes, I know,” he said. “We all know . . . up there in the future which some of you will survive to see as free people. Civil liberties. In 2006 you still fear yourselves and your own institutions first, out of old habit. A not unworthy – if fatally misguided and terminally masochistic – paranoia. I will tell you right now, and this is not a prediction but a history lesson, some of your grandchildren will live in dhimmitude.”

“Zimmi . . . what?” I said.

He spelled it out. What had sounded like a ‘z’ was the ‘dh.’ I’d never heard the word and I told him so.

“Then get off your ass and Google it,” said the Time Traveler, his one working eye glinting with something like fury. “Dhimmitude. You can also look up the word dhimmi, because that’s what two of your three grandchildren will be called. Dhimmis. Dhimmitude is the system of separate and subordinate laws and rules they will live under. Look up the word sharia while you’re Googling dhimmi, because that is the only law they will answer to as dhimmis, the only justice they can hope for . . . they and tens and hundreds of millions more now who are worried in your time about invisible abridgements of their ‘civil liberties’ by their ‘oppressive’ American and European democratically elected governments.”

He audibly sneered this last part. I wondered now if the fury I sensed in him was a result of his madness, or if the reverse were true.

“Where will my grandchildren suffer this dhimmitude?” I asked. My mouth was suddenly so dry I could barely speak.

“Eurabia,” said the Time Traveler.

“There’s no such place,” I said.

He gave me his one-eyed stare. My stomach suddenly lurched and I wished I’d drunk no Scotch. “Words,” I said.

The Time Traveler raised one scar-slashed eyebrow.

“Last year you gave me words about 2005,” I said. “The kind of words Ken Grimwood’s replayers in time would have put in the newspaper to find each other. Give me more now. Or, better yet, just fucking tell me what you’re talking about. You said it wouldn’t matter. You said that my knowing won’t change anything, any more than I can change the direction the Mississippi is flowing . So tell me, God damn it!”

He began by giving me words. Even while I was scribbling them down, I was thinking of reading I’d been doing recently about the joy with which the Victorian Englishmen and 19th Century Europeans and Americans greeted the arrival of the 20th Century. The toasts, especially among the intellectual elite, on New Year’s Eve 1899 had been about the coming glories of technology liberating them, of the imminent Second Enlightenment in human understanding, of the certainty of a just one-world government, of the end of war for all time.

Instead, what words would a time traveler or poor Replay victim put in his London Times or Berliner Zeitung or New York Times on January 1, 1900, to find his fellow travelers displaced in time? Auschwitz, I was sure, and Hiroshima and Trinity Site and Holocaust and Hitler and Stalin and . . .

The clock in my study chimed midnight.

Jesus God. Did I want to hear such words about 2006 and the rest of the 21st Century from the Time Traveler?

“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly. “Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar.”

“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled them down phonetically. “Where are they? What are they?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.

“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.

“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty months from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”

I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then.

“General Seyed Reza Pardis,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three. Tel Aviv. Baghdad International Airport, Al Salem U.S. airbase in Kuwait, Camp Dawhah U.S. Army base in Kuwait, al Seeb U.S. airbase in Oman, al Udeid U.S. Army and Air Force base in Qatar. Haifa. Beir-Shiva. Dimona.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Shehab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me want to throw up.

“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.

“Wasn’t the beginning on September 11, 2001?” I managed through numb lips.

The one-eyed scarred man shook his head. “Historians in my time know that it began on June 5, 1968,” he said. “But it hasn’t really begun for you yet. For any of you.”

I thought – What on earth happened on the fifth of June, 1968? I’m old enough to remember. I was in college then. Working that summer and . . . Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. “Now on to Chicago and the nomination!” Sirhan Sirhan. Was the Time Traveler trying to give me some kind of half-assed Oliver-Stone-JFK-movie garbled up conspiracy theory?

“What . . .” I began.

“Galveston,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “The Space Needle. Bank of America Plaza in Dallas. Renaissance Tower in Dallas. Bank One Center in Dallas. The Indianapolis 500 – one hour and twenty-three minutes into the race. The Bell South Building in Atlanta. The TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco . . .”

“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

“The Golden Gate Bridge,” persisted the Time Traveler. “The Guggenheim in Bilbao. The New Reichstag in Berlin. Albert Hall. Saint Paul’s Cathedral . . .”

“Shut the fuck up!” I shouted. “All these places can’t disappear in the rest of this century, your goddamned Century War or not! I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t say in the rest of your century,” said the Time Traveler, his torn voice almost a whisper now. “I’m talking about your next fifteen years. And I’ve barely begun.”

“You’re nuts,” I said. “You’re not from the future. You escaped from some asylum.”

The Time Traveler nodded. “That’s more true than you know,” he said. “I come from a place and time where your grandchildren and hundreds of millions of other dhimmi are compelled to write ‘pbuh’ after the Prophet’s name. They wear gold crosses and gold Stars of David sewn onto their clothing. The Nazis didn’t invent the wearing of the Star of David . . . the marking and setting apart of the Jews in society. Muslims did that centuries ago in they lands they conquered, European and otherwise. They will refine it and update it, not toward the more merciful, in the lands they occupy through the decades ahead of you.”

“You’re crazy,” I cried, standing. My hands were balled into fists. “Islam is a religion . . . a religion of peace . . . not our enemy. We can’t be at war with a religion. That’s obscene.”

“Have you read the Qur’an and learned your Sunnah?” asked the Time Traveler. “It would behoove you to do so. Dhimmi means ‘protection.’ And your children and grandchildren will be protected . . . like cattle.”

“To hell with you,” I said.

“Your dhimmi poll tax will be called jizya,” said the Time Traveler. His voice suddenly sounded very weary.“Your land tax for being an infidel, even for fellow People of the Book – Christians and Jews – will be called kharaz. Both of these taxes will be in addition to your mandatory alms – the zakat. The punishment for failure to pay, or for paying late, a punishment meted out by your local qadi, religious judge, is death by stoning or beheading.”

I folded my arms and looked away from the Time Traveler.

“Under sharia – which will be the universal law of Eurabia,” persisted the Time Traveler, “the value of a dhimmi’s life, the value of your grandchildren, is one half the value of a Muslim’s life. Jews and Christians are worth one-third of a Muslim. Indian Parsees are worth one-fifteenth. In a court of the Eurabian Caliphate or the Global Khalifate, if a Muslim murders a dhimmi, any infidel, he must pay a blood money fine not to exceed one thousand euros. No Muslim will ever be jailed or sentenced to death for the murder of any dhimmi or any number of dhimmis. If the murders were done under the auspices of Universal Compulsive Jihad, which will be sanctioned by sharia as of 2019 Common Era, all blood money fines are waived.”

“Go away,” I said. “Go back to wherever you came from.”

“I come from here,” said the Time Traveler. “From not so far from here.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Your enemies have gathered and struck and continue to strike and you, the innocents of 2006 and beyond, fight among yourselves, chew and rip at your own bellies, blame your brothers and yourselves and your institutions of the Enlightenment – law, tolerance, science, democracy – even while your enemies grow stronger.”

“How are we supposed to know who our enemies are?” I turned and growled at him. “The world is a complex place. Morality is a complex thing.”

“Your enemy is he who will give his life to kill you,” said the Time Traveler. “Your enemies are they that wish you and your children and your grandchildren dead and who are willing to sacrifice themselves, or support those fanatics who will sacrifice themselves, to see you and your institutions destroyed. You haven’t figured that out yet – the majority of you fat, sleeping, smug, infinitely stupid Americans and Europeans.”

He stood and set the Scotch glass back in its place on my sideboard. “How, we wonder in my time,” he said softly, “can you ignore the better part of a billion people who say aloud that they are willing to kill your children . . . or condone and celebrate the killing of them? And ignore them as they act on what they say? We do not understand you.”

I still had not turned to face him, but was looking over my shoulder at him.

“The world, as it turns out,” continued the Time Traveler, “is not nearly so complex a place as your liberal and gentle minds sought to make it.”

I did not respond.

“Thucydides taught us more than twenty-four hundred years ago – counting back from your time – that all men’s behavior is guided by phobos, kerdos, and doxa,” said the Time Traveler. “Fear, self-interest, and honor.”

I pretended I did not hear.

“Plato saw human behavior as a chariot pulled by precisely those three powerful and headstrong horses, first tugged this way, then pulled that way,” continued the Time Traveler. “Phobos, kerdos, doxa. Fear, self-interest, honor. Which of these guides the chariot of your nation and your allies in Europe and your surprisingly fragile civilization now, O Man of 2006?”

I stared at the bookcase instead of the man and willed him gone, wishing him away like a sleepy boy willing away the boogeyman under his bed.

“Which combination of those three traits -- phobos, kerdos, doxa -- will save or doom your world?” asked the Time Traveler. “Which might bring you back from this vacation from history – from history’s responsibilities and history’s burdens – that you have all so generously gifted yourselves with? You peaceloving Europeans. You civil-liberties loving Americans? You Athenian invertebrates with your love of your own exalted sensibilities and your willingness to enter into a global war for civilizational survival even while you are too timid, too fearful . . . too decent . . . to match the ruthlessness of your enemies.”

I closed my eyes but that did not stop his voice.

“At least understand that such decency goes away quickly when you are burying your children and your grandchildren,” rasped the Time Traveler. “Or watching them suffer in slavery. Ruthlessness deferred against totalitarian aggression only makes the later need for ruthlessness more terrible. Thousands of years of history and war should have taught you that. Did you fools learning nothing from living through the charnel house that was the 20th Century?”

I’d had enough. I opened my eyes, turned, reached into the top left drawer of my desk, and pulled out the .38 revolver that I had owned for twenty-three years and fired only twice, at firing ranges, shortly after it was given to me as a gift.

I aimed it at the Time Traveler. “Get out,” I said.

He showed no reaction. “Do you want more than words?” he asked softly. “I will give you more than words. I give you eight million Jews dead in Israel – incinerated – and many more dead Jews in Eurabia and around the world. I give you the continent of Europe cast back more than five hundred years into sad pools of warring civilizations.”

“Get out,” I repeated, aiming the revolver higher.

“I give you an Asian world in chaos, a Pacific rim ruled by China after the vacuum of America’s withdrawal – this nation’s full resources devoted to fighting, and possibly losing, the Century War – a South America and Mexico lost to corruption and appeasement, a resurgent Russian Empire that has reclaimed its old dominated republics and more, and a Canada split into three hateful nations.”

I cocked the pistol. The click sounded very loud in the small room.

“We were speaking about ruthlessness,” said the Time Traveler. “If you fail to understand it at first, you learn it quickly enough in a war like the one you are allowing to come. Would you like to hear the litany of Islamic shrines and cities that will blossom in nuclear retaliatory fire in the decades to come?”

“Get out,” I said for a final time. “I’m ruthless enough to shoot you, and by God I will if you don’t get out of here.”

The Time Traveler nodded. “As you wish. But you should hear two last words, two last names . . .religious judge Ubar ibn al-Khattab and rector-imam Ismail Nawahda of New Al-Azhar University in London, part of the 200,000-man Golden Mosque of the New Islamic Khalifate in Eurabia.”

“What are those names to me or me to them?” I asked. My finger was on the trigger of the cocked .38.

“These religious officials were on the Islamic Tribunal that sentenced two dhimmis to death by stoning and beheading,” said the Time Traveler. “The dhimmis were your two grandsons, Thomas and Daniel.”

“What was . . . will be . . . their crime?” I was able to ask after a long minute. My tongue felt like a strip of rough cotton.

“They dated two Muslim women – Thomas while he was in London on business, Daniel while visiting his aging mother, your daughter, in Canada – without first converting to Islam. That part of sharia, Islamic law, is called hudud, and we know quite a bit about it in my time. Your grandsons didn’t know the young women were Muslim since they both were dressed in modern garb - -thus violating their own society’s ironclad rule of Hijab — modesty. The girls, I hear, also died, but those were not sharia sentences. Not hudud. Their brothers and fathers murdered them. Honor killings . . . I think you’ve already heard the phrase by 2006.”

If I were to shoot him, I had to do it now. My hand was shaking more fiercely every second.

“Of course, the odds against one sharia court in London sentencing both your grandsons to death for crimes committed as far apart as London and Quebec City is too much of a coincidence to believe in,” continued the Time Traveler. “As is the fact that they would both be introduced to Muslim girls, without knowing they were Muslim, and go on a single dinner date with them at the same time, in cities so far apart. And Thomas was married. I know he thought he was having a business dinner with a client.”

“What . . .” I began, my arm holding the pistol shaking as if palsied.

The Time Traveler laughed a final time. “All of your grandsons’ names were on lists. You wrote something . . . will soon write something . . . that will put your name, and all your descendents’ names, on their list. Including your only surviving grandson.”

I opened my mouth but did not speak.

“According to their own writings, which we all know well in my day,” continued the Time Traveler, “ ‘Hadith Malik 511:1588 The last statement that Muhammad made was: "O Lord, perish the Jews and Christians. They made churches of the graves of their prophets. There shall be no two faiths in Arabia.’ And there are not. All infidels – Christians, Jews, secularists -- have been executed, converted, or driven out. Israel is cinders. Eurabia and the New Khalifate is growing, absorbing what was left of the old, weak cultures there that once dreamt of a European Union. The Century War is not near over. Two of your three grandsons are now dead. Your remaining grandson still fights, as does one of your surviving granddaughters. Two of your three living granddaughters now live under sharia within the aegis of New Khalifate. They are women of the veil.”

I lowered the pistol.

“ Enjoy these last days and months and years of your slumber, Grandfather,” said the scarred old man. “Your wake-up call is coming soon.”

The Time Traveler said three last words and was gone.

I put the pistol away – realizing too late that it had never been loaded – and sat down to write this. I could not. I waited these three months to try again.

Oh, Lord, I wish that some person on business from Porlock would wake me from this dream.

It was not the horrors of his revelations about my grandchildren that had shaken me the most deeply, shaken me to the core of my core, but rather the the Time Traveler’s last three words. Three words that any Replayer or time traveler visiting here from a century or more from now would react to first and most emotionally – three words I will not share here in this piece nor ever plan to share, at least until everyone on Earth knows them – three words that will keep me awake nights for months and years to come.

Three words.

Sincerely,

Dan Simmons


Is this blood-soaked, dire sigil of murderers and fanatics waxing to a cruel and corrupt ascendency?

[Drbio]

Whew....long read but darned good read.

[sixeightmkw]

wow, that was genius.

[jacktruth]

A lot of threes

[sixeightmkw]

I wonder what the 3 words were.

[Five-ofan]

wow. I will have to check out some other dan simmons works. Thanks for posting that.

[sixeightmkw]

beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice.

[chumdawg]

Haunting read, indeed.

[Five-ofan]

lol. i am trying to think of what the 3 words could be.

[Mavdog]

maybe in simmons next dream galileo will come to him and relate how he had so much fun with the religious leaders of his time. hint: they weren't muslim.

or perhaps he could have a mythical conversation with Tomas de Torquemada. He was a person who showed just how open minded and tolerant he and his cohorts were to non christians. hint: they weren't muslim either.

guess what? christianity has a repressive, intolerant, even murderous history by some of its believers. that history extends all the way to the 20th century.

imo just like christianity, islam will progress out of it, too.

[Evilmav2]

Originally Posted by Five-ofan

lol. i am trying to think of what the 3 words could be.

'New York City', perhaps...

[Evilmav2]

That's a stupid analogy, MD (and as Dan Simmons puts it so well in his above essay, "God, I hated and distrusted analogies."...

The Spanish Inquisition was a phenomenon that was wholly concerned with cleansing heresies from within the Catholic church, by searching out and purging or punishing converted Jews, Muslims, and Illuminists who were still practicing their religions in secret, and was not an instrument of Christian aggression toward other religions. Unlike the crazed Mohammadens of today, all of their religious excesses were focussed internally against heretics, rather than toward other sects, and the terrible reputation of first Torquemada's 18 year inquisition, and then the tamer inquisition that followed has been grossly magnified by centuries of Reformation-era/protestent, anti-Catholic propaganda.

Whereas some sloppy historians have claimed that as many as 135,000 conversos died under Torquemada, and that torture was more commonly used than not, recent analysis of the fastidiously kept paperwork that the early Inquisition kept has revealed a far different picture. Most modern scholarship on the matter indicates that over the entire course of the Spanish inquisition (between it's founding by Ferdinand in 1480 and it's dissolution in 1808) roughly 125,000 conversos were tried, and between 1,000-2,000 were executed. Furthermore, reformation-era propaganda aside, the same inquisition records that have given modern scholars a more realistic grasp of how many folks were tried by the inquisition for heresy, also indicate that only between 1-2% of those tried underwent any form of torture, and unlike the lurid pictures painted by reformation-era and later historians, the forms of torture employed and it's frequency were very much in keeping with the kinds of treatment that municipal authorities or the crown would have contemporaneously applied against common criminals throughout Europe. If anything, many of the excesses of the inquisition would probably pale when compared to the kinds of every day horrors that were common practice throughout Europe where all manners of mutilation were routinely applied to petty criminals, publicly eviscerations and drawing-and-quartering was often the fate meted out to capital offenders, and where grotesque tortures that surpassed those sanctioned by the church in both originality and depravity were routinely employed by crown authorities to draw out confessions from the unhappy objects of their attentions.

Thusly, if modern scholarship is to be credited, fewer Christians were killed by the Christian inquisition over the entire course of it's nearly 330 years of existence than people of all nationalities and religions were killed by fanatic, Mohammaden murderers one bright blue morning in New York 3 1/2 years ago. And additionally, even if you really do believe that some kind of ridiculous equivalence exists between the evils and horrific excesses that are currently being perpetrated by fanatic, expansive Jihadi Islam against all opposing cultures and religions of the world, and the worst evils and excesses of the internally focussed Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago, that doesn't change the fact that Islam already holds the murder-devil of Pakistani nuclear weapons in it's bone-cold hands, and unstable Pakistan is unlikely to remain the lone member of the Islamic nuclear club for long.

The ability to wield worldwide death and calamity on a scale that no mere inquisitor of the 16th century could ever imagine in his worst dreams of Meggido and Revelation are already in the hands of the Prophet Muhammed's followers, and that is why your attempt to draw some kind of correlation or analogy between the threat posed to the world by the machinations and madness of the millions upon millions of followers and sypathizers of Jihadi Islam to the over-blown actions of a small religious court in Spain many centuries ago is mendacious, muddle-headed, and asinine...

[Five-ofan]

I will have to do some of my own research to check em2s info but even disregarding whether it is true or not, the past sins of one group in no way justify the current sins of another.

[Mavdog]

No evil, what is "stupid" is to claim that "The Spanish Inquisition was a phenomenon that was wholly concerned with cleansing heresies from within the Catholic church" when the fact is the Inquisition killed tens of thousands of jews. how the murdering of jews can be considered "cleansing heresies from within the Catholic Church" and NOT "an instrument of Christian aggression toward other religions" is absurd.

More people were killed by the inquisition in one passing season then were killed by the attack on the WTC. both were ruthless acts of murder.

An interesting comment of yours is this:

Thusly, if modern scholarship is to be credited, fewer Christians were killed by the Christian inquisition over the entire course of it's nearly 330 years of existence than people of all nationalities and religions were killed by fanatic, Mohammaden murderers one bright blue morning in New York 3 1/2 years ago

duh. the inquisition was an assault on the jews and the muslims who lived in iberia, who had lived there for decades under the moors. It was only in its later years that the inquisition was launched against the protestants as well as the non-christians.

you and simmons want to portray the muslims of our time as evil, murderous, scheming to lay claim to the tools of authority to drown out those who oppose its religious based governance. yes, that is EXACTLY what the middle ages of our european history brought to the people of that time through the force and power of the church.

to ignore the parallels between the fundamentalist muslims of today and the church's actions not only in spain but also extending up to modern times with pope pius ignoring and in fact even condoning the actions of the facists hitler and mussolini is not only "asinine" but also disingenuous.

yes, fanaticism by muslims is evil. so is fanaticism by christians. so is fanaticism by jews. so is fanaticism by hindus.

[Drbio]

*yawn*


This was an interesting piece. I look forward to more if his works.

[dude1394]

That was then, this is now. This is going on now! There are honor killings and dhimmitude and sharia law now, not thousands of years ago before modernity.

There are world-wide death threats being issued against authors, cartoonists, film-makers NOW and carried out NOW.

Throwing crusades up as some sort of moral equivalence is sticking your head in the sand.

[Evilmav2]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

No evil, what is "stupid" is to claim that "The Spanish Inquisition was a phenomenon that was wholly concerned with cleansing heresies from within the Catholic church" when the fact is the Inquisition killed tens of thousands of jews. how the murdering of jews can be considered "cleansing heresies from within the Catholic Church" and NOT "an instrument of Christian aggression toward other religions" is absurd.

How on earth can you say that? Your assertion is quite simply not true, Mavdog...

Certainly Ferdinand and Isabella expelled an estimated 200,000-250,000 Jews from their newly united kingdom in 1492, and thus ultimately creating the Sephardic community, but this act, as terrible as it was, was an act of expulsion, not wholesale murder, and it was certainly not conducted under the auspices of Torquemada's inquisition.

To my understanding, the worst excesses of this expulsion lay in the edict of expulsion's prohibition against Jews taking silver or gold with them during this second diaspora, and in a wholesale state-sponsored ransacking of synagogues in search of even more specie, but to claim that the the united Kingdoms of Aragon, Granada, and Castile murdered 'tens of thousands' of jews- much to make the absurd claim that these phantom murders were carried out by the inquisition- is completely unsubstantiated by any credible primary historical sources.

If you have any credible sourcework to back up your rash claims, I would be amused and interested to see it, and heck, tomorrow I just might stop by the SMU library on my way home and spend the bare 10 minutes that it would take to find enough authoritative citations to bury your idiocy properly, because sadly, you obviously don't know what you are talking about here.

Edit- Heck, we don't have to wait until tomorrow to find an authoritative refutation of your 'tens of thousands of Jews were killed by the inquisition' claim (although I'll be more than happy to find some more tomorrow afternoon). Something as basic as the Wikipedia article on 'The Spanish Inquisition' holds this interesting and cited quotation:

"It appears to be a fact as well as a theory that Jews who never ceased professing Judaism were, on the whole, left undisturbed. In the fourteen years of the activity of the Spanish Inquisition, from its establishment in 1478 to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, we hear of only one persecution directed against a Jewish community, where the Jewry of Huesca was accused in 1489 of having admitted conversos (pseudo-converts from Judaism to Christianity) to the Jewish fold. It was precisely the inability of the inquisitorial courts to check Jewish influence on the conversos that served as a decisive argument for the Catholic monarchs in banishing Jews from Spain..." (Baron, Dr. Salo Wittmayer, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, New York, 1937, Volume 2, p.58).

And this one:

"The task of the Inquisition was not to Persecute Jews but to cleanse the Church of unorthodoxy. The Inquisition was not concerned with infidels outside the Church but with heretics within it" (Sokolsky, George E., We Jews, New York, 1935, p.53).

Now I don't like to rely upon pat, possibly ill-contexed quotations in a serious argument, but even without access to a proper library (please hurry Google-library), it's not too hard to see that your above claim is utterly, and embarassingly ill-informed here.

[mcsluggo]

I didn't find the piece to be particularly interesting. I found it to be ham-fisted and overplayed.

I've read COUNTLESS scifi stories that take the exact same tired tone about whatever their pet issue of the time is:

"...if only those fools back in <chose the era the book was writen: 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, 2000s, whatever> as we future enlightened souls are, then <insert author's pet issue> would not take place.... Damn the humanity!"

I've read the EXACT same line of over-wraught drivel about BOTH sides of the global warming issue alone:

(If only those fools in the 1990s realized we were on the verge of moving into an ICE AGE they would have never curtailed economic advancement and simultaneously foolishly deprived us of the greenhouse gasses that would have saved us... damn the humanity!)

(if only those cretins in the 1990s could have read the obvious signs that global warming was already overwhelming them, we enlightened folk in the year 2060 would not have to have daily tornados, and beachfront Illinois property.... Damn the humanity!)

its a tired overused literary tool in the scifi lit, and this auther added an additional spicing of over the top melodrama. Oh well, in short stories you don't always have the luxury of subtlety... so sometimes I gues a sledge hammer has to suffice.

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by Evilmav2

...
Thusly, if modern scholarship is to be credited, fewer Christians were killed by the Christian inquisition over the entire course of it's nearly 330 years of existence than people of all nationalities and religions were killed by fanatic, Mohammaden murderers one bright blue morning in New York 3 1/2 years ago. ...

First off, even if your stats are the correct ones (and a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that they are at the far end of the most conservative estimates provided by historians), But even if they are correct, you are going to to try to compare an action by a secritive sect that has been expunged from all states except the failed state of Afghanistan (hell, al quada was even driven out by the kill-happy madman Saddam) to an institution that was integrated into the basic fiber of society in several established countries?

Furthermore does anyone believe that the inquisition was the only instance where either fanatics or self serving aholes have used chrisianity as a banner to perform murderous horrendous actions?

And additionally, even if you really do believe that some kind of ridiculous equivalence exists between the evils and horrific excesses that are currently being perpetrated by fanatic, expansive Jihadi Islam against all opposing cultures and religions of the world, and the worst evils and excesses of the internally focussed Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago, that doesn't change the fact that Islam already holds the murder-devil of Pakistani nuclear weapons in it's bone-cold hands, and unstable Pakistan is unlikely to remain the lone member of the Islamic nuclear club for long.

The ability to wield worldwide death and calamity on a scale that no mere inquisitor of the 16th century could ever imagine in his worst dreams of Meggido and Revelation are already in the hands of the Prophet Muhammed's followers, and that is why your attempt to draw some kind of correlation or analogy between the threat posed to the world by the machinations and madness of the millions upon millions of followers and sypathizers of Jihadi Islam to the over-blown actions of a small religious court in Spain many centuries ago is mendacious, muddle-headed, and asinine...

so the fact that technology has progressed and given the potential for additional (as yet unused) tools of destruction they are more evil than the poor fools that only had wood and tar to murder and maim with? More efficient, perhaps. But more evil?


Look, there is validity to question the comparison of PAST christian action to CURRENT muslim action. You don't need to try to rewrite history to whitewash all of the horrific shit that has been perpetrated in the name of one of the biggest pacificts in the history of the world, Jesus Christ. (btw, Muslims can make no similar pacifist claim about Mohammed).

The only partial counter I would offer to the "But what about comparing the actions of Muslims to Christians RIGH NOW... question" is that Christianity is now unquestionably on the top of the heap in terms of power at its disposal. Military, economic, cultural domination, whatever, Christianity-based-society rules the roost right now. If you look at it as an ideological struggle to dominate the world: The team that is losing ALWAYS assumes more drastic strategies. When was the last time you saw the hockey team AHEAD by two goals pull their goalie in the final two minutes of the game? THe "team" on top assumes more conservative tactics, and the "team" falling behind takes more drastic action. THis is in no way an "excuse" for a move to extremism, but it is a part of the explanation that doesn't have anything to do with the underlying tennets of Islam, just Islam's relative postion in the world's power equation right now.

[dude1394]

http://commentarymagazine.com/articl...aid=12104039_1

Islam’s Imperial Dreams

Efraim Karsh

When satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper sparked a worldwide wave of Muslim violence early this year, observers naturally focused on the wanton destruction of Western embassies, businesses, and other institutions. Less attention was paid to the words that often accompanied the riots—words with ominous historical echoes. “Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it,” declared Khaled Mash’al, the leader of Hamas, fresh from the Islamist group’s sweeping victory in the Palestinian elections:

This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. . . . By Allah, you will be defeated. . . . Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good.

Among Islamic radicals, such gloating about the prowess and imminent triumph of their “nation” is as commonplace as recitals of the long and bitter catalog of grievances related to the loss of historical Muslim dominion. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly alluded to the collapse of Ottoman power at the end of World War I and, with it, the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate. “What America is tasting now,” he declared in the immediate wake of 9/11, “is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated.” Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s top deputy, has pointed still farther into the past, lamenting “the tragedy of al-Andalus”—that is, the end of Islamic rule in Spain in 1492.

These historical claims are in turn frequently dismissed by Westerners as delusional, a species of mere self-aggrandizement or propaganda. But the Islamists are perfectly serious, and know what they are doing. Their rhetoric has a millennial warrant, both in doctrine and in fact, and taps into a deep undercurrent that has characterized the political culture of Islam from the beginning. Though tempered and qualified in different places and at different times, the Islamic longing for unfettered suzerainty has never disappeared, and has resurfaced in our own day with a vengeance. It goes by the name of empire.



“I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’” With these farewell words, the prophet Muhammad summed up the international vision of the faith he brought to the world. As a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities. In order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising “struggle in the path of Allah,” or jihad. As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”

....there is lot's more at the link...

[Evilmav2]

Lordy, I really hate reading tedious point-by-point response posts, and I sure as heck hate writing them as well, but in this case I really don't have many other options...

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

First off, even if your stats are the correct ones (and a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that they are at the far end of the most conservative estimates provided by historians), But even if they are correct, you are going to to try to compare an action by a secritive sect that has been expunged from all states except the failed state of Afghanistan (hell, al quada was even driven out by the kill-happy madman Saddam) to an institution that was integrated into the basic fiber of society in several established countries?

So radical, Jihadist Islamic terrorists have, 'been expunged from all states except the failed state of Afghanistan'? That statement is grossly, and demonstrably incorrect, and even if you are narrowly and legalistically just referring to 'Al Qaeda' ('The Base'; itself a nebulous aggregate of various Muslim fanatic Mohammaden groups, of which there are many in the world), then you are still wrong. Both the recent London bombings and the Madrid train bombings were conducted by operatives who considered themselves to be nominally part of 'Al Qaeda', and who had at least some degree of contact with other folks who also considered themselves to be 'Al Qaeda', who in turn had at least some degree of contact with other folks who had close contact with more seasoned Al Qaeda leadership elements that are hiding and scheming throughout the Islamic world.

'Al Qaeda' is an infection that is almost impossible to pin down, is incredibly decentralized, and often chaotically unorganized, but their particular brand of malevolent affliction has certainly not been expunged from any host country that it has choosen to infect in this beautiful but fragile green and blue globe of ours...

Furthermore does anyone believe that the inquisition was the only instance where either fanatics or self serving aholes have used chrisianity as a banner to perform murderous horrendous actions?

As were the Crusades, as were the Reformation-era Protestant-Catholic wars of religion, as were the often brutal practices of Spanish and Portugese missionaries in the New World, ad infinitum...

Sure, lots of bad and worse things have happened in this short, recorded history of ours, and more than a few of those bad things were influenced or caused by the prevailing religious attitudes of the specific age and region where they happened (Christian, Muslim, Panthiest, Meso-American-Sacrificial, etc... indeed, almost all of them). But that is sadly beside the point.

The point I was trying to make to Mavdog earlier is precisely this (and maybe I should have worded it this way) : What happened in the Spanish Inquisition between the years 1480 and 1808 was certainly regrettable, and was certainly morally wrong, but as gauged by the prevailing moral and societal standards of the age, I say that the outrageous murder of innocents that fanatic Islam is committing daily in the name of their prophet today is proportionately worse, and is a far more ominous outrage than the 1000 or so executions of Christian heritics that a small religious court commanded over a 330 year period a couple of centuries back.

Water that has passed under the bridge is nothing but water that has passed under the bridge... And no matter how bad the Spanish inquisition was (a point that might have been an even more contentious subject of between a Swiss Calvinst Juror and a Spanish Catholic priest in the 18th century, than perhaps it should be today), that religious court didn't have the ability to Destroy the World. Over the next fifty years- years that both you and I are probably fated to serve as witness to- Fanatic, Jihadi, deeply believing followers of the Prophet Muhammed will assuredly come to possess that nightmarish ability, and that is a frightening thing.

That is why I found Mavdog's smug attempt to draw some kind of ironic equivalence between the Spanish Inquisition and the bad-and-going-to-get-worse war of the West against Islam to be both specious and despicable.

so the fact that technology has progressed and given the potential for additional (as yet unused) tools of destruction they are more evil than the poor fools that only had wood and tar to murder and maim with? More efficient, perhaps. But more evil?

Yes. This isn't an academic exercise; this is a question of life and death- For you; For me; For the friends, loved ones, and families of us both; For everybody reading this; For every gosh-darned person who lives on this world of ours, and for all of the progeny who will follow us all.

For the last sixty years we have lived in an age where human civilization has balanced itself on the terribly sharp, direly precipitous bevel of a nuclear knife. Our race has been lucky enough thus far to maintain that precarious balancing act, but a fanatic, unreasonable, implacable foe like the millions upon millions of Muslims who support, or indeed, actively fight for, the Islamic Jihad against the whole portion of civilized human civilization that chooses not to pay obeisance to the memory and supremacy of their exalted prophet Muhammed, is frighteningly likely to destroy such-said desperate balance.

As I said above, the Spanish Inquistion was a bad, bad thing, but it never had the ability to give birth to Yeats' rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Radical Islam does, and as I've said repeatedly, that is why Mavdog's attempt to draw some kind of moral equivalence between the actions of today's hordes of murderous, Jihadi Mohammaden's who want to kill or force all infidels into 'submission' to the rule of Allah and the law of the prophet, to the actions of something as currently, greatly inconsequential as the 15th century Spanish inquisition, is dangerous, specious, and inane.

Look, there is validity to question the comparison of PAST christian action to CURRENT muslim action. You don't need to try to rewrite history to whitewash all of the horrific shit that has been perpetrated in the name of one of the biggest pacificts in the history of the world, Jesus Christ. (btw, Muslims can make no similar pacifist claim about Mohammed).

I'm not trying to whitewash anything. The inquisition was terrible, and the second diaspora was even worse, but the old history student in me prompted me to point out the fact that however bad Torquemada's inquisition was (as well as the ones that followed it), it's significance and horrors have been vastly overblown by first Reformation-era Northern European scholars and historians who destested the Roman church, then by chauvinist Anglo-Saxon scholars who were always more than happy to assume the worst of their continental neighbors (particularly the Catholic ones), and has now been overblown by a more recent generation of 50's, 60's, and 70's agenda-driven social historians who were always happy to embrace and occasionally exagerate just about any historical episode that lent itself to their preferred anti-religious, anti-Western narratives. Recent scholarship- based on primary source, documentary evidence- has discredited much of the old anti-Catholic myth/history that surrounded the inquisition, and I was merely pointing that out above.

The only partial counter I would offer to the "But what about comparing the actions of Muslims to Christians RIGH NOW... question" is that Christianity is now unquestionably on the top of the heap in terms of power at its disposal. Military, economic, cultural domination, whatever, Christianity-based-society rules the roost right now. If you look at it as an ideological struggle to dominate the world: The team that is losing ALWAYS assumes more drastic strategies. When was the last time you saw the hockey team AHEAD by two goals pull their goalie in the final two minutes of the game?
THe "team" on top assumes more conservative tactics, and the "team" falling behind takes more drastic action. THis is in no way an "excuse" for a move to extremism, but it is a part of the explanation that doesn't have anything to do with the underlying tennets of Islam, just Islam's relative postion in the world's power equation right now.

So all of geo-politics is predicated by what religion is 'on top of the heap'? And evidently you don't condone, but you can understand, the 'drastic' late-game tactics of Radical Islam in it's 'game' against Christianity? Ugggghhhhhhhhh...

[Mavdog]

first, even though I strongly disagree with your assertions evil your composition is a pleasure to read. a wordsmith you are sir.

Originally Posted by Evilmav2

How on earth can you say that? Your assertion is quite simply not true, Mavdog...

"According to Llorente, the Inquisition in Spain dealt with 341,021 cases and over 30,000 people were burned"

http://www.sephardiccouncil.org/inquisition.html

so, if tens of tousands were themselves burned, and that figure does not include the numbers whose lives were taken by violent attacks outside of these sentences of immolation, or of those who lost their lives when they were expelled from the Iberian peninsula and sent fleeing without any possessions but for the clothes upon their back, yes it is true and accurate to say that "tens of thousands died".

[sixeightmkw]

What are we trying to do here? figure out who is worse.

Ok, yes, people did things in the name of christianity over the 1000's of years. But for the most part, christianity has been a peacful religion. It is established on peace and love. No where in the New testament does it say death to infidels who do not convert or beleive or whatever. The Muslim nation has been solely based on pain and destruction since there birth in the B.C.'s. They have fought and feuded with the Jews constantly non stop for the past 2000 + years. Islam is a peaceful religion but again, people are doing things in its name same as people have done with chrisitanity. They are killing people. They are ruthless. They teach their children to kill, to sacrifice themselves, to hate everything that is non "them". This needs to come to a stop before Bin Laden and his cohorts get a hold of a few nukes and gets them over here.

What if BinLaden did this? What if he got say 3 nukes over here and destroyed say DC, NYC, and lets say LA or Dallas or another big city? the country, the world would be in turmoil. I don't want to think of what would happen. As the story tells, we are all too busy arguing about shit that doesn't matter. Same as we did before, and then boom, we get attacked. I just hope it doesn't come to some type of nuke, or chemical weapon, or somethjing like that.

[Mavdog]

no six eight, it is not an attempt to "figure out who is worse".

my point is that fanatics, be they muslim or christian, jewish or other, have existed throughout our history. the existence of today's muslim fanatics is a scourge for all of our societies just as other religious fanatics who existed through our world's history were.

your assertion that "They [muslims] have fought and feuded with the Jews constantly non stop for the past 2000 + years" is totally inaccurate. there have been periods of tolerance by muslim rulers of countries where jews lived and there have been rulers who persecuted jews (as well as other non-muslim religions). likewise there have been christian rulers who were guilty of persecution and the murder of jews, and there have been christian rulers who were more tolerant.

both religions are guilty of intolerance and persecution of jews at historical points in time.

we need to not fall victim to applying a broad paintbrush to islam as a religion that is "solely based on pain and destruction since there birth in the B.C.'s", especially as such claim is historically inaccurate (islam emerged in the third century AD) and again there have been islamic rulers who allowed and even protected their indiginous non-muslim people.

religious fanaticism is wrong, no matter who or what philosophy is behind it. not every believer of a religion is a religious fanatic, not every muslim is a terrorist.

[sixeightmkw]

check this out. It took a while to read because it is so long, but I had never know this stuff. I checked out some of the sources the guy was using and they checked out. This is really amazing stuff. Again, it is a long read, but it identifies alot about Muhammed that I never knew about.

http://answering-islam.org/Silas/terrorism.htm

[sixeightmkw]

Along the lines of time travel, this is very intersting stuff. Look at this guys website.

johntitor.com

it is pretty much the same thing. Pretty interesting read on the website.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

imo just like christianity, islam will progress out of it, too.

maybe, but what is the cost of allowing that progression?
Let's say Christianity did destroy countless indiginous American cultures and 10 million individuals before it progressed out of a violent period. I still don't want Islam to do that.

How many people do you think should be sacrificed so that the religion of peace can gain a peaceful perspective?

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

maybe, but what is the cost of allowing that progression?
Let's say Christianity did destroy countless indiginous American cultures and 10 million individuals before it progressed out of a violent period. I still don't want Islam to do that.

How many people do you think should be sacrificed so that the religion of peace can gain a peaceful perspective?

well, none.

otoh, what is the choice that you suggest we make? remove everyone of the islamic faith?

[Usually Lurkin]

we should break up all the governments and organizations that rule or seek to rule by bloody tyranny.

How 'bout you? You're the one that suggested Islam must pass through a phase of bloody oppression. Do you propose anything other than a wait-it-out approach?

[Mavdog]

"pass through a phrase of bloody oppression"? not exactly, my assertion is that there have been/are extremist of all sorts in most every faith. we should isolate these extremists and by that hopefully neuter their ability to forment violence. yes, we should be aggressive against regimes such as in iran.

btw there are multiple governments who operate by tyranny, and many have nothing to do with islam. some are currently our allies. what do you propose we do with them?

[Gus]

You should read the book "From Time Immemorial". To say Jews were EVER tolerated by Muslim rulers is a stretch. They were tolerated in that they weren't slaughtered. Pretty much how the original story that started the thread described the treatment of non-Muslims in "the future" is how the Jews were treated in the best of times. And the Arab nations were quick to expel all of the Jews from their countries once Israel was formed.

And to try and equate the current terrorists with the Crusades is also a stretch. The first Crusades were a response to Muslims invading and threatening the Byzantines.

Originally Posted by Mavdog

your assertion that "They [muslims] have fought and feuded with the Jews constantly non stop for the past 2000 + years" is totally inaccurate. there have been periods of tolerance by muslim rulers of countries where jews lived and there have been rulers who persecuted jews (as well as other non-muslim religions). likewise there have been christian rulers who were guilty of persecution and the murder of jews, and there have been christian rulers who were more tolerant.

[Mavdog]

"In 1830 Sultan Mahmud II declared: “I distinguish among my subjects, Muslims
in the mosque, Christians in the church and Jews in the synagogue, but there is no difference among them in any other way. My affection and sense of justice for all of them is strong and they are all indeed my children.”

The policy of Ottomanism was further articulated in 1839 in the Imperial Decree of Gulhane.It included a commitment for equal justice for all Ottoman subjects, regardless of religion."

http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/Sli...arch/sec_4.pdf

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

btw there are multiple governments who operate by tyranny, and many have nothing to do with islam. some are currently our allies. what do you propose we do with them?

um, I said:

we should break up all the governments and organizations that rule or seek to rule by bloody tyranny.

I perhaps give your cross-relgion analogy more credit than you do. If the Catholic Church were to start behaving as they did during the Inquisition (or start behaving as these Islamofacists are today) then I'd say we'd have a responsibility to break it up.

not exactly, my assertion is that there have been/are extremist of all sorts in most every faith. we should isolate these extremists . . .

but you chose the inquisition as your analogy. Who was there to isolate the Catholic Church to neuter them? They were a dominant world power.

christianity has a repressive, intolerant, even murderous history by some of its believers. that history extends all the way to the 20th century.

That doesn't sound like isolatable extremists. Mount Carmel was isolatable extremists. The Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam can be ridiculed out of influence. The violence we're seeing from Islam is state sponsored, and official religious oppression. Just as was the Inquisition.

The article above was wrong to state that framing a war as a war on terrorism is a category error. The stupid analogy of a "war on aviation" is a misdirection. Aviation is a tool that we want as part of our daily lives. As a behavior, it's neutral. Terrorism is not just a tool. It's an evil tool. Anyone that uses it is declaring war on civilization. It's mind boggling to me that the world community does not turn around and crush all organizations that make use of terrorism as a method of warfare.

On the other hand, to frame it as a "war on Islam" would be functionally stupid. Right now we have some number of potential enemies (potential suicide bombers) within our borders (as do our allies). That number is not as great as the number of muslims within our borders because we have done a fair job of highlighting a distinction between militant Islam and peaceful Islam. No doubt we can and should do a much better job at this. If, however, we immediately abandon that approach for the one advocated by this article, we will also immediately declare war on all the muslims within our borders, and significantly increase the number of militant muslims (potential suicide bombers) within our borders.

A "war on terrorism" is more analogous to a "war on tyranny" or "war on communism". Which have both worked.

[mcsluggo]

I basically agree with your points.

but...

you are correct, "terrorism" is a tool. And although it is never defined adequately enough (when does "terror" become "war tactics" and vice versa-- is napalming a villiage that has insurgents in it a "war tactic" while suicide bombing a warship with a raft full of explosives "terrorism"?-- but this is just a digression) I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone on this site that is "pro terrorism", however you define it.

Communism, on the other hand, is an ideology. It is much more like Islam (or perhaps like radical islam) than it is like terrorism, a tool. The "war on communism", otherwise known as the cold war, was won by basically waiting it out. Capitalism works better than communism as an economic driver, and representative democracies/capitalism work better than control/communist systems at adapting to a changing landscape.

we won by basically waiting until the Commies showed the world, and themselves, that their system was vastly inferior. It was the "soft" diplomacy that won that one.



So what do we do against the ideology of radical islam? It has such a horrific backwards looking tilt that it will never succed in attracting mass appeal on a level playing field where there is a clear alternative of progress in the long run (while maintaining the religion of Islam, certainly economic progress and ISlam are not diametricly opposed to each other.) How could it? Rulers like the Taliban always grow in the shadow of wider conflicts. You NEVER see something like the Taliban, Nazis, etc... emerging in prosperous, peaceful times.

So what do you do? It is something that is very hard to attack directly, and in fact since it grows in conflict it is like quicksand or chinese-finger-cuffs, the harder you push the stronger the grip becomes. We win in the long run by having the higher ground, which we aready occupy. But, on the other hand, what do you do in the mean time: nobody wants to just sit and wait for the next attack to come. So what do you do?

[sixeightmkw]

Originally Posted by sixeightmkw

Along the lines of time travel, this is very intersting stuff. Look at this guys website.

johntitor.com

it is pretty much the same thing. Pretty interesting read on the website.

one other time travel thing, I don't know if anyone saw this, but htought it was pretty hilarious.
http://www.hbo.com/realsports/storie...de.109.s2.html
this is the story, but couldn't find the actual interview.

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by Evilmav2

Lordy, I really hate reading tedious point-by-point response posts, and I sure as heck hate writing them as well, but in this case I really don't have many other options...

You can TRY to take that ground, but since I looked at two points in your post (count 'em TWO points-- oh the confusion) and you split my post up into sixteen-quadrillion mini-blurbs... your point comes across a bit undermined

So radical, Jihadist Islamic terrorists have, 'been expunged from all states except the failed state of Afghanistan'? That statement is grossly, and demonstrably incorrect, and even if you are narrowly and legalistically just referring to 'Al Qaeda' ('The Base'; itself a nebulous aggregate of various Muslim fanatic Mohammaden groups, of which there are many in the world), then you are still wrong. Both the recent London bombings and the Madrid train bombings were conducted by operatives who considered themselves to be nominally part of 'Al Qaeda', and who had at least some degree of contact with other folks who also considered themselves to be 'Al Qaeda', who in turn had at least some degree of contact with other folks who had close contact with more seasoned Al Qaeda leadership elements that are hiding and scheming throughout the Islamic world.

'Al Qaeda' is an infection that is almost impossible to pin down, is incredibly decentralized, and often chaotically unorganized, but their particular brand of malevolent affliction has certainly not been expunged from any host country that it has choosen to infect in this beautiful but fragile green and blue globe of ours...

the state. the state. the state. Inquistion elements were intertwined with the LEADERSHIP of the countries. you were trying to weigh the actions of individuals within a society (al-queda) to the actions of the establishment in a different society (the inquisition). That was my point (and you KNEW it, as your statement below attests) but it wasn't meant to be a very big point anyhow, just a fiing across teh bow of your attemt to state that the single stupid act of 9-11 overwhelmed all stupid acts perpetrated in the name of christianity. Stupid acts are perpetrated by fanatics of all stripes. its in the fanatic handbook (you KNOW i have copy- you don't get as frothin and wild eyed as I am without it)

but you know this what I was trying to say, because you said:

As were the Crusades, as were the Reformation-era Protestant-Catholic wars of religion, as were the often brutal practices of Spanish and Portugese missionaries in the New World, ad infinitum...

Sure, lots of bad and worse things have happened in this short, recorded history of ours, and more than a few of those bad things were influenced or caused by the prevailing religious attitudes of the specific age and region where they happened (Christian, Muslim, Panthiest, Meso-American-Sacrificial, etc... indeed, almost all of them). But that is sadly beside the point.

The point I was trying to make to Mavdog earlier is precisely this (and maybe I should have worded it this way) : What happened in the Spanish Inquisition between the years 1480 and 1808 was certainly regrettable, and was certainly morally wrong, but as gauged by the prevailing moral and societal standards of the age, I say that the outrageous murder of innocents that fanatic Islam is committing daily in the name of their prophet today is proportionately worse, and is a far more ominous outrage than the 1000 or so executions of Christian heritics that a small religious court commanded over a 330 year period a couple of centuries back.

Water that has passed under the bridge is nothing but water that has passed under the bridge... And no matter how bad the Spanish inquisition was (a point that might have been an even more contentious subject of between a Swiss Calvinst Juror and a Spanish Catholic priest in the 18th century, than perhaps it should be today), that religious court didn't have the ability to Destroy the World. Over the next fifty years- years that both you and I are probably fated to serve as witness to- Fanatic, Jihadi, deeply believing followers of the Prophet Muhammed will assuredly come to possess that nightmarish ability, and that is a frightening thing.

That is why I found Mavdog's smug attempt to draw some kind of ironic equivalence between the Spanish Inquisition and the bad-and-going-to-get-worse war of the West against Islam to be both specious and despicable.

yes, technology has increased the scope of destruction that an individual, or small group, or relaticely small weak country can accomplish today. But that goes for EVERYONE, and isn't intrisic to Radico-Islam. Most of us wouldn't want to see David Duke, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Charles Taylor with a nuke either.

and yes there is a discounting across time of atrocities. I agree that it is a bit of apples and oranges to excuse atrcities today by ponting out what acestors generations ago did. now is now. you are right.

Yes. This isn't an academic exercise; this is a question of life and death- For you; For me; For the friends, loved ones, and families of us both; For everybody reading this; For every gosh-darned person who lives on this world of ours, and for all of the progeny who will follow us all.

For the last sixty years we have lived in an age where human civilization has balanced itself on the terribly sharp, direly precipitous bevel of a nuclear knife. Our race has been lucky enough thus far to maintain that precarious balancing act, but a fanatic, unreasonable, implacable foe like the millions upon millions of Muslims who support, or indeed, actively fight for, the Islamic Jihad against the whole portion of civilized human civilization that chooses not to pay obeisance to the memory and supremacy of their exalted prophet Muhammed, is frighteningly likely to destroy such-said desperate balance.

As I said above, the Spanish Inquistion was a bad, bad thing, but it never had the ability to give birth to Yeats' rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Radical Islam does, and as I've said repeatedly, that is why Mavdog's attempt to draw some kind of moral equivalence between the actions of today's hordes of murderous, Jihadi Mohammaden's who want to kill or force all infidels into 'submission' to the rule of Allah and the law of the prophet, to the actions of something as currently, greatly inconsequential as the 15th century Spanish inquisition, is dangerous, specious, and inane.

once again, EVERYONE has these frightening new capabilities that frankly I don't trust with ANYONE. Who here is comfortable that nut-bag Putin goes to sleep with his finger on the red button?

I'm not trying to whitewash anything. The inquisition was terrible, and the second diaspora was even worse, but the old history student in me prompted me to point out the fact that however bad Torquemada's inquisition was (as well as the ones that followed it), it's significance and horrors have been vastly overblown by first Reformation-era Northern European scholars and historians who destested the Roman church, then by chauvinist Anglo-Saxon scholars who were always more than happy to assume the worst of their continental neighbors (particularly the Catholic ones), and has now been overblown by a more recent generation of 50's, 60's, and 70's agenda-driven social historians who were always happy to embrace and occasionally exagerate just about any historical episode that lent itself to their preferred anti-religious, anti-Western narratives. Recent scholarship- based on primary source, documentary evidence- has discredited much of the old anti-Catholic myth/history that surrounded the inquisition, and I was merely pointing that out above.

as a catholic, i sincerely appreciate your efforts.

So all of geo-politics is predicated by what religion is 'on top of the heap'? And evidently you don't condone, but you can understand, the 'drastic' late-game tactics of Radical Islam in it's 'game' against Christianity? Ugggghhhhhhhhh...

Question: if the big flip-around envisioned in the story at the begining of the thread DID happen, and the Christian west DID find themselves on the bottom of the heap. Do you think it likely that individuals would be more likely to gravitate towards more drastic avenues of "expressing themselves"? In other words, I think there is roughly a 100% chance that angry young Christian men would form groups called something like "St. Michael's brigade" to fight and resist and reclaim the glory of christianity's past, if they found themselve living in the world outlined in the story.

Hockey analogy aside, that is human nature and all I tried to do was explain it with out framing it in the context of one religion or another. The fact that those who feel like they are on the bottom of the heap are often willing to fight a bit dirtier and meaner is not religion based but human based. If you are out to find the next great boxer, do you think you'd look in the tough neigborhoods of Dallas first, or in Beverly Hills?

[mcsluggo]

as a catholic, i sincerely appreciate your efforts.

could you please turn you PR efforts next towrds the fact that now EVERY single priest is portrayed as a pediphile? thanks

[sixeightmkw]

Originally Posted by mcsluggo

could you please turn you PR efforts next towrds the fact that now EVERY single priest is portrayed as a pediphile? thanks

they're not?

[mcsluggo]

Well, the priest I used to wrestle with (greco-roman) when I was eleven assured me one day when he was giving me a back rub in the steam room that he had never even MET a pedophile priest.

go figure