There is a must-read symposium on the possibility of reform in Islam at [1] FrontPage today. The participants are Khaleel Mohammed, the famous Muslim professor who has been hitting the lecture circuit arguing that the Qur'an teaches that Israel belongs to the Jews, and with whom I tangled [2] here; Kamal Nawash, the Founder and President of The Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism; and Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist who has become an ardent Zionist and evangelical Christian.

Quotable sections abound -- including one in which moderator Jamie Glazov, who takes an active role here and scores some tremendous points, kindly invokes me and my last book. Much more important is what follows afterward, when Khaleel Mohammed denies the whole legacy of oppression that is dhimmitude, and is rightly scored by Glazov for it:

I am speechless in response to Mr. Nawash’s denial that there are verses in the Qur’an that propagate violence against non-Muslims and that command that Islam must be imposed on non-Muslims. The tragedy of 9/11, for instance, and the whole history of dhimmitude, I am afraid, does not stand before our eyes because Muslims imagined some teachings. It might have something to do with, just to start, Sura 9:5, the famous Verse of the Sword, and the fact that it is the Qur’an’s final word on jihad. In any case, Robert Spencer's authoritative study [3] Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West pretty well lays this whole argument to rest.

Our arguments here have clearly become cyclical, and it is depressing to try to discuss a possible reformation of Islam if we can’t even agree on the basics, one of them being that Islam’s violent jihad just might have something to do with Islamic religious texts.

It is Prof. Mohammed’s turn, go ahead.

Mohammed: Let me get to the crux of the matter:

Dhimmitude is a term coined by one Islamophobe I know...referring to the status in which non-Muslims within an Islamic state must live.

He is, of course, applying the contemptuous, dismissive, and ultimately empty term "Islamophobe" to the great and groundbreaking historian Bat Ye'or. It is easier for him to do that than to refute the mass of historical evidence for the oppression of the dhimmis that she brings forth in her books.

In the Christian and Jewish experience is there an equivalent? I assume that I am being asked to do detective work here. I had assumed that each one knows his text and we can work with this.

For Judaism, I am not concerned with the Torah's view on non-Jews because never in traceable history have we found this.

For Christianity, does the term "Inquisition" ring a bell? Does the name of a place like "Matamuros" ring a bell? I come from Guyana--where I remember in my youth that we had to go to Church school, and in other parts of Latin America, the governments forced their version of Christianity down the throats of people.

Australia, New Zealand and even the US history testify. Are these things past? For most countries yes, but in Latin America, it is still thriving....

Why did Egypt, Persia etc become Muslim? The answer is simple; the intellectuality of Islam was way above and beyond what they had....

I see no reason for Muslims to apologize for Jihad as the Pope has rightly done for the Crusades: the Muslim response was a defensive one. It was their right. If you ask about Balkanization, and the Armenian genocide and seek apology from me--yes, I feel that was wrong, and those Muslims did what was absolutely against Islam and humanity. ...

There are several books in the Arab world against violent interpretations of Jihad--many of them published in Saudi Arabia. I do agree that there are probably as many that advocate violence--but in a world where many Muslims see themselves and their religion being threatened, it is something that I can understand, but not condone....

As for Muslims who have not spoken out--have we sunk so low that we have resorted to lies on this level? Almost every mosque, every imam here has spoken out. But for Shoebat and his ilk, those people have to hate Islam and declare their hate for righteousness in order to fit his warped idea of doing good....

FP: Prof. Mohammed, it is disappointing that you brush off “dhimmitude” as just a “term” referring to “the status in which non-Muslims within an Islamic state must live.” This is like saying the Holocaust is just a “term” referring to “the status” in which Jewish people had to live in places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald – and then saying nothing else about it.

It’s like saying that “Gulag” is a term referring to the status of certain peoples in Soviet Russia who did not fit into the design of Soviet communism -- and then saying nothing else about it.

The “Islamophobe” that you refer to who has coined the phrase “dhimmitude” is, in my humble view, a courageous hero who has made sure, like the Alexander Solzhenitsyns and Elie Wiesels of this world, that the sufferings and fates of millions of innocent victims of brutal despotism are never forgotten.

You ask: “since when is this [the Verse of the Sword] the Qur'an's final word on Jihad?”

I think you know very well that the 114 “suras” in the Qur’an are separated by Muslim scholars into the two categories of “Meccan” and “Medinan” and that the Medinan verses follow and also nullify many of the former verses. And I think you are aware that even mainstream Islamic commentators regard Sura 9 as precisely the Qur'an's last word on jihad, because it was the last sura revealed. But this debate must occur at another time and place.

You say the answer for why Egypt, Persia and Syria became Muslim is a “simple” one: “the intellectuality of Islam was way above and beyond what they had.” It is depressing to see this horrifying subject treated with such flippancy, especially with the awareness of the violent forced conversions that had occurred in the conquered territories. What integrity would it take for a person to say to someone that the kulaks under Stalin decided to enter into collectivized agriculture because it was “above and beyond what they had?”

You say that your “freest discussions--far more liberal than this one I am now having--were in Syria, Yemen and yes, Saudi Arabia.” To suggest that you would be freer in an open discussion in Saudi Arabia than in this symposium leaves me speechless. Everyone in this discussion knows very well what would happen to you in Saudi Arabia if you stood on a street corner and read aloud even a few random lines of this symposium.

You denounce Mr. Shoebat for being an unbeliever in Islam’s ability to “reform,” but if you are the one that would lead an Islamic Reformation, I think it would be important to reflect on one theme: What if, when Mikhail Gorbachev arrived to lead the Soviet regime, he announced that there needed to be a Glasnost, but that part of Glasnost would be the ideological stance that there was no Red Terror, no purges, that Lenin and Stalin never made one error, that there had never been any Gulag, and that anything that the Soviet regime might have done wrong had absolutely no roots in the ideas of Marxism itself?

Bravo, Glazov. I am honored to be allied with you in the struggle.