No joking around on this one: this is really what some of these good folks believe.

Or at least they say they believe it. It gets kinda hard to figure out what's going on in their minds.

Updated... in the jump.

It would seem that hardcore Muslim racists (we use "racist" in its broader, term-of-art sense, meaning "irrational and xenophobic loyalty to one's group") say things partly because it's what a member of the group in good standing is supposed to say, no matter how ludicrous.

We see this phenomenon all the time, even in America. A friend of ours used to say, in the middle of political discussions with liberals who didn't know he was a conservative, "You know, 'studies show' that by the year 2005, the entire state of California will be homeless."

He kept a straight face while saying it, and he didn't get so much as an arched eyebrow or blink at the "fact." Liberals would just say, "I knowwwww!" and agree with him. It was a new "fun fact" they could add to their debating points; they didn't even bother to consider for one second the absolute ridiculousness of the "fact" offered to them. It supported their worldview; why bother with skepticism about it? Skepticism should be reserved for facts you don't like.

No offense, but some on the right are guilty of something almost as silly when they say "Saddam Hussein was the weapon of mass destruction." Well, we suppose one could make a case that the motive, means, and opportunity to create WMD's is nearly as important as the actual WMD's; but still, come on. Obviously, when we were talking about WMD's, we weren't talking about Saddam Hussein.

The more insular a group is, the more it ludicrous it becomes. All groups need the healthy tonic of outside challenge to keep themselves from becoming moronic. We personally have learned the most about a topic when challenged intelligently and vigorously; when challenged, we wanted to prove ourselves right, so we did some homework, and figured out 1) where we were right 2) where we were arguably right, depending upon whether one accepted some tendentious premises or dubious assumptions and 3) where we were flat-out wrong.

Insular groups become more and more ridiculous for several reasons. First, of course, is the fact that people are polite, especially with like-minded fellows, and don't jump to contradict those they deem friends or political allies.

And then there's one-upsmanship. To get noticed in a like-minded group, you've got to always up the ante. You don't want to just say the stuff everyone else says, of course. So there's always the tendency for insular-groups to become increasingly dominated by the most outrageous and ridiculous members therein.

Rene Gonzalez, who wrote that vicious anti-Tillman piece as the man was being buried, is a shining example. It wasn't enough to get noticed simply saying "war is bad;" no, Mr. Gonzalez had to push the envelope if he wanted attention beyond what his meager intellect and writing-skills would naturally afford him. So he thought it would be a good idea to revile a man, whose greatest flaw -- even according to Mr. Gonzalez -- was being a misguided dupe of Bush's who gave his life in the service of a cause unworthy of him.

Obviously, Mr. Gonzalez is never going to be a star in any aspect of life. The very best he can shoot for is mediocrity. No one has yet been able to explain to us what "propetic idiocy" might possibly mean; we think he was looking for something along the lines of "fated idiocy," and his pocket thesaurus misled him into believing "prophetic" was a good synonym. And so, this walnut-brained dipshit had to pen a hateful screed against a hero to get his fifteen minutes of attention.

Had the herd of sheep he belonged to been less insular and more willing to consider outside criticism, he might have realized his little tantrum was a bad idea, rather than a sure-fire way to win friends.

The same progression of increasingly over-the-top one-upsmanship must surely being going on in racist Muslim circles:

1) The Jews took the land of Palestine unjustly.

2) The Jews run the world.

3) The Holocaust never happened, and Adolf Hitler is wrongly maligned by Jewish slander.

4) Okay, the Holocause did happen, but Adolf Hitler is actually guilty of being too timid in its execution.

5) The Jews caused 9-11.

6) "Osama bin Ladin" is actually the nomme de guerre of Fort Lee, NJ orthodontist Dr. Beverley Fishbein, DDS.

Has anyone else noticed the direct correlation between one's incompetency as an artist and one's propensity for believing that menstrual blood and dog feces constitute an exciting new medium to be explored?

And making this normal phenomenon all the worse is the fact that deception seems to be an accepted part of Muslim politics, especially as regards outsiders; they have elevated race/religious/ethnic loyalty well above the virtue of objective honesty. There is no libel too absurd to be spread against non-Muslims; to even question a slander against the Jews would be to be guilty of race-treachery against Islam.

Perhaps Middle-Easterners are more honest when speaking quitely "within the family," but we wouldn't know. All we see are their public declarations about massacres and outrages and such.

There's little better example of that than the people who carry posters of the burning WTC with Osama bin Ladin's smiling face next to the carnage, but then chant "Zionists were behind 9-11."

So, ultimately, who the hell knows what an actual Middle-Eastern Muslim actually believes or thinks? Between the ludicrous propaganda mindlessly parroted without any degree of enlightened skepticism or empiricism, and the penchant for lying as a political tool, it's very difficult to know whether such people are outright insane or merely possessed of the same sort of extreme xenophobic race-loyalty as Ku Klux Klansmen.