The latest from Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer looks at the upcoming Islam Awareness Week at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and its implications for the non-Muslim world. From FrontPage:
“We know what we are, but know not what we may become,” observed Shakespeare, who no doubt knew not that four hundred years after his death, he himself would be proclaimed a Sufi Muslim. “Shakespeare would have delighted in Sufism,” said the Islamic scholar Martin Lings, himself a Sufi Muslim who also goes by the name Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din. “We can see he obviously knew a lot about some kind of equivalent sect or order.”According to The Guardian, Lings will argue that Shakespeare’s “work resembles the teachings of the Islamic Sufi sect” in the International Shakespeare Globe Fellowship Lecture at Shakespeare’s own Globe Theatre in London. Lings will speak in November during Islam Awareness Week, which will also feature other Muslim speakers, while Islamic scenes are projected on the Globe’s outside walls. “On the final weekend,” says The Guardian, “a souk will take over the premises, with stalls selling eastern wares.”
By the pricking of my thumbs, something preposterous this way comes. “It’s impossible for Shakespeare to have been a Muslim,” David N. Beauregard, a Shakespeare scholar and coeditor of Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, told me. Beauregard has argued that there is a “growing consensus that Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic.… he maintained Roman Catholic beliefs on crucial doctrinal differences.” He notes that “this is not to say that Shakespeare was occupied with writing religious drama, but only that a specific religious tradition informs his work.” And it isn’t Sufism.
But of course, the Globe’s Islam Awareness Week is not so much about Shakespeare as it is about present-day Britain’s anxiety to appease its growing and restive Muslim population. Shakespeare is just the latest paradigmatic figure of Western Christian culture to be remade in a Muslim-friendly manner: recently the State Department asserted, without a shred of evidence, that Christopher Columbus (who in fact praised Ferdinand and Isabella for driving the Muslims out of Spain) was aided on his voyages by a Muslim navigator.
It is a sign of the times when this kind of thinking is no longer confined to Islamic apologetics websites, but is taken up by the Globe Theatre and the U.S. State Department — hardly representatives of the cultural fringes — and even American textbook publishers. The state of American education is so dismal today that teachers themselves are ill-equipped to counter these historical fantasies. They will become willing propagators of the new history: nothing to fear from Muslims, you see. Shakespeare was one of them. Oh yes, and Goethe. And Abraham Lincoln’s mother. And Napoleon Bonaparte. What? You didn’t know the Napoleonic Code was based on Sharia law?
Sharia law — aye, there’s the rub. No doubt there will be no mention at the Globe Theatre’s souk of the fact that many Muslims in Britain believe that the British government, and indeed any government, has no legitimacy unless it implements Sharia. No admirer of the Sufi Shakespeare is likely during the festivities to quote the Egyptian Muslim writer Sayyid Qutb, whose writings are revered today by radical Muslims worldwide. Qutb declared that “the foremost duty of Islam is to depose Jahiliyyah [the government and society of unbelievers] from the leadership of man.” Radical Muslim leaders everywhere today call upon Muslims to recover the teachings of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition that enjoined them to institute Islamic hegemony by force if necessary.
But it has become a rule of the public debate that such aspects of Islam cannot be mentioned. We must accept on faith that no Muslim among those streaming into Western countries has any plans to interfere with the constitutions of those countries, now or in the future. And if they do, what of it? Muslim Spain, after all, was a paradise of multiculturalist harmony. Shakespeare was a Muslim. And on and on.
The Syrian writer Sadik Al-Azm recently declared that there was no clash of civilizations, because the West was so strong and the Islamic world so weak that any conflict would inevitably result in the triumph of the West. Al-Azm didn’t consider, however, that the West itself would look upon Othello’s boast of smiting “a malignant and a turban’d Turk” and decide that he should go for some sensitivity training. If radical Muslims like Britain’s notorious Sheikh Omar Bakri ultimately realize their dream of seeing the black flag of Islam flying from #10 Downing Street, and continue to advance elsewhere in the West, the fault, as Cassius told Brutus, will be not in our stars, but in ourselves.
But fear not the muslim hordes! The US is currently making the muslims in Iraq die quite fast.
"About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
Some of the commentators on this blog are seeing their wishes for more Srebrenicas come true.
The following links are free, but require registration:
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9445/full/llan.364.9445.early_online_publication.31137.1
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9445/full/llan.364.9445.early_online_publication.31138.1
The full scientific article can be found at:
http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf
This is of course not the first assault on Iraqi civilians:
"Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
Albright and the terrorists are thinking in the same way: "the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to reach one's political goals"
This is of course nothing that patriotic US media is interrested in.
The US plan to destroy water treatment, then to restrict chlorine and other necessary water treatment supplies, was done with full knowledge of the explosion of water-borne disease that would result.
Note to US christians: The above doesnt need to bother you. Compassion is such a old fashioned concept. God is much more interested in your sex life.
To quote the bard:
"So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament."
I notice two things in Curious' article:
Leslie Stahl- CBS cheerleader for kerry.
Madeleine Albright- Clinton admin.
Did they not quote Any republican/conservatives? Or could they find None? Or is this another 'october surprise' article?
One wonders how many Iraqis would be dying if Saddam were still in power and waging yet another war. How many dying in the Olympic headquarters. How many more mass graves, gasings...
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Dear Curious:
Concerning sanctions against Iraq, google Oil for Food scandal, this was when petrol revenue from Iraq went towards Saddam's foreign cronies and collaborators instead of helping his own people.
Do you know how many palaces Saddam and his family built and how lavish they were when his own people were going without?
Dear Curious:
Who is making Muslims in Iraq die very fast?
The US is try hard to avoid civilian casualties whereas the insurgents are deliberately targeting them. Don't you hear in Sweden of all the suicide bombings outside police stations? How about that time recently when they bombed and killed 35 children who were being given sweets to celebrate the opening of a sewage works?
Read this rubbish in the Guardian. Kindest thing would be to say this geezer who is 90 yrs + is senile. Don Cossacks had long covering cloaks called borkas [not sure if spelling is right] are we allowed to claim that this is the origin of 'burkas' now worn by Muslim women??
Curious Citizen from Sweden -While you are overflowing with sympathy via propaganda from the
Guardian, your own people are afraid to walk in the streets of Malmo.
" the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts."
In fact, it turns out not to be a reliable study at all! The figures are not based on actual body counts but on hearsay received in random interviews with about 800 households. Even so, UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw has promised an investigation of the report's claims.
A previous study based on press reports (which frequently turn out to be exaggerated) put the death total at around 15,000 - and that includes victims of the daily insurgent attacks (car bombs, indiscriminate mortar attacks, executions, massacres of recruits etc.)
Concerned Swedish Citizen needs to take a good look at what's happening around him in Scandanvia. Wake up and smell the Arabica!
Curious Citizen from Sweden shows well why Europe is doomed. The need of the EuroLeft (about 90 percent of them) to hate Americans and America far overrules any other concern for them. Even as barbarians are raping their daughters and establishing medieval sharia right under their very noses, they can only chant, "Hate America, hate America, hate America" like little parrots.
Here's a howdah-doo: Elephant, from his distant castle, has supplied the perfect Shakespearean description of taqiyya. Makes my day.
curious_from_sweden, how's the Malmo jihad going? Have you managed to get rid of all those dirty Swedish kufar yet?
'Curiosity', 'Citizenship', 'Sweden'...
My goodness, friend, those very notions are now in play in da'wa and the jihad: 'Curiosity' is not allowed unless you are curious about acceptable things. Your 'right to citizenship' is a political idea, Sharia and the rights and privileges believers in the ummah supercede your claim. 'Sweden' is just a temporary designation in the dar al Harb of a land that rightfully belongs to Allah, and will be so claimed with da'wa and jihad.
And this is paranoia? Hate mongering?
Prudent study is preferable to prejudiced argument, hasty conclusions, and biased generalization, especially when your very identity and life are at stake, over the long haul. Pleaes take some time to study Islam with a little more luster than this thing you call 'curiosity'.
Well said, JTF!
We must constantly remember that our 'right' to be curious, to question, to examine, to object and to protest - priveleges which are taken for granted by most of us most of the time - are only rights because they were fought for with blood and courage by our predecessors.
Though these hard-earned rights are often used trivially within our culture, we must be prepared to defend them from those determined to suppress them.
Long ago this was explained to "Curious Citizen from Sweden," but bears repeating. "I Am Curious Yellow" was a Swedish movie considered daring for its time, in those antediluvian years, when pornography of the mass-market round-the-clock kind was still in its innocent infancy -- oh, probably in the early 1970s. And no doubt that movie did what it was supposed to do, and made its makers money. However, any juxtaposition of the words "curious" and "Sweden" will evoke smiles, even smiles of a summer night, in many quarters still. So consider changing it. Monikers matter.
But, as your posting above shows, in attempting to be taken seriously that may be the least of your problems.. The Lancet has been politically compromised more than once recently (see its absurd editorial last April 13 berating Israel for the deterioration in the conditions of the “Palestinians” – as if the free clinics frequented by Arabs at Israeli hospitals are not enough, nor the scrupulous medical care offered even terrorists who murdered Israelis but themselves survived, is not enough for whoever wrote that Lancet editorial. No, the Israelis are to be blamed as well, in the view of that nasty editor, for Arafat’s insatisable greed, and the limitless corruption in the P.A. that has caused a diversion of health funds to real estate in Europe and Heliopolis (and just how many hundreds of millons of dollars does Suha herself, in her Paris luxury, control?). The Lancet has been steadily seized, at least in its editorial department, by those consumed by the usual blend of anti-American and anti-Israel views, and whoever is behind it, he, she, they are once again at it, with permitting this crazed “estimate” of 100,000 extra civilian deaths each year. To begin with, should one not be at the very least subtract the several hundred thousand deaths, on average, during each year of Saddam Hussein’s rule, and as a direct result of that rule? As for the health figures themselves, the methodological errors with which the study is riddled will soon be exposed.
In fact, so grave is the charge that a committee of distinguished English scientists really should be appointed to look into The Lancet and its recent politicization. Good candidate to head, and select other members: Aaron Klug, F.R.S., Nobel Prize-winner, and former President of the Royal Society. The Lancet needs some cleaning up, even needs to be sterilized in the autoclave of coherent thought.
As for the rest of your facts, Curious Swedish Citizen, well -- you live in Occupied Europe, and cannot be held fully responsible if you are kept from many truths. Even here we have plenty of trouble, what with The New York Times, and the likes of Peter Jennings (one would prefer that he spent 100% of his time on womanizing, instead of 97%, even with the likes of Hanan Ashrawi and the young wife of a dying senior colleague, just to keep him from making the kinds of mischief he has been making for years on ABC News). In the United States one cannot expect the television, radio, or the newspapers ever to hint at telling the public what is contained in Qur’an and hadith and sira (and the words "hadith" and "sira" never appear in the mass media -- only the Qur'an exists for them), but other ways of self-education, including this website, are more readily available than in Occupied Europe. And books by Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, and others, all of which are hard to find, or often not translated, or even strengst verboten in this or that part of Europe, can readily be found here. One wonders what it will take for the curtain to be drawn back, and things only whispered, things that many think but few are permitted to say aloud, will be said. Islam, the belief-system of Islam, is still treated like one of those “best-kept-secrets” that public-relations firms like to tout -- a chic new restaurant in Soho, a private club, an Umbrian hill-town that hasn’t yet been mentioned in Town and Country or Conde Nast’s Traveller, and we all want to keep it that way. Islam, one of the "best-kept-secrets." Sssssh. Let’s keep everything we know about it to ourselves.
Americans are wracking their brains trying to figure out how to get the truth most effectively to the captive peoples of Occupied Europe. No doubt neither Bush nor Kerry, neither Huck Finn nor Julien Sorel, is the proper person to plan this campaign, or to be the chief spokesman. Far cleverer, far more articulate people, are needed. What makes matters worse is how many of those people in Eurabia are unaware that they are captive peoples, captives of an intolerably biased press, radio, and television. Do hold on to any short-wave radio you may possess, and if the Eurabian Authorities instruct you to turn in it, disobey that order. Be patient. The cavalry is coming.
Hugh has altered my perceptions again; the ABC news jingle will just never be the same...
Curious citizen of Sweden,
no more pious bs. from you please.
We all remember the last world war, when the mercenary swedes, rather than fighting hitler, sold the nazis the steel they needed to kill our boys, and made fortunes at it.
Now, another world war, and again sweden is on the sidelines giving pious lectures to those who have, from ww2, through the commie menace ( do you really think your puny armed forces are what stopped the russians from taking you ) spent their treasure and their lives so you could live freely.
Sweden's attitude sucks. Keep your Eriksen cell phone and your Saabs.
Curious Citizen from Sweden,
You stupid Sweedie person you are!!! yaaaarrrrr .
You have “self identified” yourself as a Swede therefore you should not enter into debates regarding Honor, Security and Morality.
Unfortunately for you, based on your nations cowardly treachery during the Second World War, anything any Swede says re morality and the concept of justice and doing the RIGHT thing are regarded as been nothing more than the utterances of some bored porno film maker who has finally run out of people, animals and things having sex, to film for his / her next great contribution to the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately for all Swede’s the World has not yet forgotten your Nations disgraceful past and at times present, Your nations un dyeing loyalty for your fellow Socialist’s in the former Iraqi regime in Iraq and the present gang of Socialist hoodlum’s in Syria is admirable, however I would suggest to you that you will have more success selling Porn than you will selling Socialism to the FREE World.
Get a job, get a life, get a Country you can be proud of, not one of these “pretending” villages in Eurabia that the islamic hoards will soon take from you and turn you and your fellow islamoSwedes into a rug muncher five times a day in the name of some gangster they call allah ……..
Or to be more to the point SHUT THE F***K UP
Please, Sweden may have some relevance for some Swede’s but not for anybody in the West, you are probably neck and neck with those effete French Arafat Lovers in the credibilty stakes, go back to Sven,Ben or Brit and ROLL EM!!!!!!!
Yours faithfully,
RSole.