More Zonkyness

Blog

  • There’s No Such Thing As Islam

    There are approximately 1.6 billion muslims in the world today, so there are 1.6 billion different versions of islam; in most cases the differences are trivial (at least to "unbelievers").  In other cases the differences are rather more obvious.

    Each muslim supposedly reads the Qur'an differently and consciously or unconsciously gives different conflicting verses a different emphasis: The obvious being :-

    …slay the pagans wherever ye find them

    And :-

    whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.

    Any normal person is going to emphasise the second verse whereas murderous psychopaths will emphasise the first.

    For those who think that only the qur'an is like this, take a closer look at the bible – in particular deuteronomy 17.

    As a wooly minded liberal, I have a problem with certain aspects of certain flavours of islam :-

    • Apostasy. A number of those versions of islam have no place for god in them; if you become an atheist in certain islamic countries it is safest to go through the motions. Because being stoned to death for apostasy would ruin your entire day. And atheists are the lucky ones – it is possible for us to go through the motions and pretend.
    • Women's rights. I'm not happy with anything that believes in second class citizens.
    • Criticism. I'm human and I've got a right to criticise anything which I see has issues. Calling it "blasphemy" and threatening me with stoning isn't a sensible way of facing criticism.

    But the main problem is of course that a tiny number (in comparison to the total) of versions of islam support terrorism. Interestingly there are suggestions that many terrorists have an extremely limited understanding of islam.

    Mainstream muslims protest that the terrorists aren't real muslims and that islam is a religion of peace. Fair enough.

    But perhaps they should go a step further and declare that supporters of terrorism and terrorists are apostates, and need to talk with a qualified iman about rejoining the faith.

    For those who think that this is a uniquely islamic problem, you should read up on christian terrorism. 

  • Sunny Sea, Foggy Island

    Sunny Sea, Foggy Island

  • Images From Arundel

    #0: Autumnal Lake

    Autumnal Lake

    #1: Autumn’s Fog

    Autumn’s Fog

    #2: The Infant

    The Infant

    #3: Through The Valley

    Through The Valley

  • No, Muslims Are Not Terrorists

    One of the worst examples of muddle-headed thinking you can come across on the interwebs in the wake of the latest terrorist attrocities is the notion that somehow Islam is a religion of terrorism. Now don't get me wrong; I'm no friend of any religion, and Islam has some particularly loathsome aspects (it's treatment of women amongst them). 

    But to claim that Islam is all about terrorism is to ignore the mathematics of the situation; there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world yet only a miniscule minority are terrorists. If Islam really is a religion of terrorism, then there are an immense number of poor muslims out there.

    The critcis of Islam will point out that the Qu'ran has phrases like :-

    …slay the pagans wherever ye find them

    And that is true, but it also has phrases like :-

    whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.

    Most "holy" books are like this – you can pull out pretty much pull out a justification for anything you want. Any that applies to christians, hindus, sikhs, and just about anybody else. There are good and bad relgious people; bad religious people will support terrorism and good religious people will condemn it.

    Yes there are some muslim terrorists and it would be helpful if moderate muslims would declare that the terrorists who commit acts in the name of Islam to be apostates. No other words are likely to have as large an effect as their co-religionists to formally kick them out of the mosque.

    There are those who also claim that all terrorists are muslims which is just laughable; there have been many groups that have resorted to terrorism over the centuries. In fact if you analyse terrorist attacks in Europe up until the year 2010, the overwhelming majority were for causes other that Islam :-

  • Linux Containers: IPv6 Behaving Non-Deterministically?

    See an updated post here.

    I am obviously doing something wrong because computers are not supposed to behave like this, but my Linux containers (despite previous attempts) are booting with IPv6 privacy addresses randomly :-

    ✓ root@pica» lxc-ls --fancy | grep chagers
chagers   RUNNING  10.0.0.32  2001:8b0:ca2c:dead::5e11, 2001:8b0:ca2c:dead:f42b:6dff:fe16:2f2d  YES        
✓ root@pica» lxc-stop --name chagers; lxc-start --daemon --name chagers
✓ root@pica» lxc-ls --fancy | grep chagers
chagers   RUNNING  10.0.0.32  2001:8b0:ca2c:dead:206b:70ff:fe45:7242, 2001:8b0:ca2c:dead::5e11  YES        
✓ root@pica» lxc-stop --name chagers; lxc-start --daemon --name chagers
✓ root@pica» lxc-ls --fancy | grep chagers
chagers   RUNNING  10.0.0.32  2001:8b0:ca2c:dead::5e11                                         YES        

    That is not how computers are supposed to behave!damascus-unix-prompt