Alyssa A. Lappen reviews my new essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats non-Muslims in FrontPage today:
“A thing without a name escapes understanding,” warns preeminent Islamic scholar Bat Ye'or of jihad and dhimmitude—the Islamic institutions of, respectively, war and perpetual servitude imposed on conquered non-Muslim peoples. Both, Ye’or notes in an essay entitled “Historical Amnesia,” are in the process of globalization.This is not the benign economic globalization that most Westerners laud. Islamic jihad and dhimmitude trade in every available means—military, political, technological and intellectual. And if the towering collection of 63 essays (including Ye’or’s) contained in the new book The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims is to be believed, these specific Islamic processes are globalizing at a disturbingly rapid pace. The book, courageously assembled by JihadWatch director and FrontPage columnist Robert Spencer, provides historical and contemporary profiles of jihad and dhimmitude.
In six sections, the book delineates how Islamic ideology has affected non-Muslims both historically and in the contemporary world. The first three sections cover the myth vs. historical realities and Islamic law and practice regarding non-Muslims. The last three sections cover how the myth of Islamic tolerance has affected contemporary geopolitics, power politics at the United Nations and, finally, academic and public discourse. It is Ibn Warraq's forward and the latter 400 pages in which this book really shines. He explains:
Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects; the life of its followers without qualification; and the life of those who follow the so-called tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from getting in the way of Islam in any way. And I mean Islam, I do not accept some spurious distinction between Islam and 'Islamic fundamentalism' or Islamic terrorism'.The September 11, 2001 murderers acted canonically. They followed Sharia, a collection of theoretical laws and ideals “that apply in any ideal Muslim community.” This body of regulations, based on divine authority, according to devout Muslims “must be accepted without criticism, without doubts and questions.” It sacrifices the individual's desires and good to those of the community.
“Expressing one's opinion or changing one's religion” are punishable by death. That apostasy is not today mentioned in the legal codes of most Islamic countries, Warraq notes, hardly implies freedom of religion for Muslims in those states; their penal codes are filled with Islamic laws. The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum.
Ironically, despite Islam's immutability, the myth evolved through the Western propensity to criticize its civilization. In 98 CE, Roman historian Tacitus in Germania compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome. Michele do Montaigne (1533-1592) in circa 1580 painted noble savages based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization.
Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism. In 1686-89, for example, Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians. Of course, Islam had claimed millions of lives—in 1399, Taimur killed 100,000 Hindus in a single day. But during the 17th century, and later the Enlightenment, writers perpetuated the “two ideal prototypes, the noble savage and the wise and urbane Oriental,” substituting Turks for Muslims, and Islamic tolerance for Turkish tolerance.
Read it all.
Morning All!
Today’s Extras:
The Leftist Academia’s propaganda machine. It's the perfect Anti-Science: Mention only the facts that back you up, ignore contradictory data, vilify anyone that questions you, stamp out calls for reform, repeat the lies again and again, and eventually you will win. ~ kj
Parents are getting fed up with PC on Middle-Eastern studies:
http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200504110831.asp
Middle East Mythology:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CarolineGlick/cg20050409.shtml
Nonsense. Islam provides a guide to humanity in everything that they do. We are shown, by God we believe, through Islam what is right and what is wrong and we act according to the guidance. When people, knowingly or unknowingly, act against the guidance of Islam is when injustice and tyranny become widespread.
My dear Shukri,
Please explain the difference between "a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects" and "a guide to humanity in everything that they do."
Please also explain why "injustice and tyranny" are so widespread in places where Islamic law is followed most scrupulously, e.g. Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Cordially,
Robert Spencer
I wish this could be featured in the major newsmedia, people need to know what is in store for them if islam succeeds in it's attempt to establish the caliphate.
Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.
“The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam,” Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. “The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews....”
The above quote is from the article.
That was one of the saddest things I have seen.
Islam scrambles your eggs
Thanks for pointing out the disconnect RS
The saddest thing I think I've ever read is Shukri calling islam just.
ISlam is conspiracy to commit murder and comspiracy to commit genocide. It has done since its inception (BEFORE muhammed). it is tyranny personified.
Shukri, I find your position intensely fascinating, like lines of calligraphy serenely rolling away in a background of sheer bull.
"Nonsense. Islam provides a guide to humanity in everything that they do. We are shown, by God we believe, through Islam what is right and what is wrong and we act according to the guidance. When people, knowingly or unknowingly, act against the guidance of Islam is when injustice and tyranny become widespread."
Nonsense. So when people reject this Sharia, you would, of course, suppress and oppress them - to which effect you've posted elsewhere. So how, by the most propagandic viewpoint imaginable, can you find a difference between your posting and:
"Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects"?
If you force the majority populace to accept it, Shukri, then it is totalitarian. You've already told us that rejection of the sharia would not be allowed (and would lead to "fornication", apparently, whatever that's supposed to mean; but I hear it causes tsunamis!). Ergo, it's totalitarian. End of story.
Thanks but no thanks.
Geoff
Honesty, I'm still chuckling about this:
"Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects"
To which Shukki counters with:
"No - Islam provides a guide to humanity in everything that they do."
And still doesn't get the irony. Now, THAT's ironic.
Seriously, Rob, can we ban the "comeback kid"? He can't argue his way out of a paper bag.
Geoff
Sort of OT, but of interest. I found this accounting of a real-life stoning from a link on Co-Jet.org, http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/islamwhitewash.htm.
There are many interesting pieces in this article (paedophilia, quotes, excuses, etc.) that contain some material that isn't often seen, such as the one on the real-life stoning piece (under "stoning to death"). There is a picture of the stoning victim as a little girl, and two pictures of the stoning itself. It's hard to imagine the brutality of this process just from the phrase "she was stoned to death."
There is also a picture of a woman who has been savagely beaten. Her injuries are so severe that she resembles a patient in a burn unit. It has none of the beauty of the lashing in the van Gogh production.
Horrible--absolutely horrible. I can only imagine that more of this sort of thing would help convince fence-sitters and the ignorant that the complaints of people like us about Islam aren't just mean spirited, racist, Islamophobic, intolerant slurs by a bunch of lunatics at the fringe.
Shukri-
3 little, teenie-weenie quibbles:
1)
So 53 year old men are supposed to sleep with 9 year old virgin girls?
(Ah, Islam, what glories I had not known!)
And
2)It is okay to lie to your wife to get nookie?
(The moral glow is like that of a putrifying log in a bog!)
And
3) It is good to mock and humiliate and browbeat half of humanity (females) into the delusional state of mind wherein they consider themselves only worth half of the lying [see above] males?
(Quick!Where do I sign up for membership this transcendent and miraculous cult?!)
In the words of the Prophet Moe Howard:
"Salami, salami, baloney!"
Western globalization is Pragmatic Utopianism in action. The hard-core leftists don't like it because it appears to be based on "capitalism", and there are some theoretical/practical disputes between the corporate and intellectual elites on what Utopia's ultimate structure should look like.
The two elitist groupings are inter-dependent and inter-connected with dual membership at the highest levels. They are like the parental class with increasing separation of views as the blood-line becomes thinner down the line and "sibling rivalry" increases, mainly due to ignorance and stupidity or internal power-struggles.
Real capitalism and the laws of the market were corrupted and destroyed many years ago, what the corporatist/intellectual elite have done is a natural result of access to power-- they have "fixed" the system so they practically cannot lose, they have "fixed" it so the risk-factor to themselves inherent and critical to the maintainance of the laws of the market(both intellectual and economic) are so reduced as to make them basically window-dressing at the highest levels.
The elimination of societal independence and low-level competition is the ultimate goal, (which naturally leads to dependence and subservience). The internet throws a wrench in their gears, and incremental control and regulation, from many different angles is to be expected. Some test-balloons have already been floated and more will follow.
What we have going on now is a struggle between the corporate/intellectual elites of the "Western" world and their counterparts in the islamic world. Programmed consumerism vs. programmed religious cultism. Both are totalitarian, but one is crude and openly brutal, the other is sophisticated and subtle- a "soft" slavery.