The United States finds itself with...

The United States finds itself with forces of reaction. Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban's annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women?

- Christopher Hitchens

A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq

culture islam islamism jihad music taliban terrorism united-states war-on-terror women

Other quotes by Christopher Hitchens

There are times when it is conservative to be a revolutionary, when the world must be turned on its head in order to be stood on its feet.

- Christopher Hitchens

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

- Christopher Hitchens

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for

- Christopher Hitchens

Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists—and Marxists—were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect.

- Christopher Hitchens

There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.

- Christopher Hitchens

I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every momentand who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence forsuch a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not justimpossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. Thiswould perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal—except that the believer claims to know,not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actuallyknown. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance andconsiderable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being cantell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate theseterms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than P a g e | 5 of 29Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, letalone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true.

- Christopher Hitchens

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