Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage on Karen Armstrong's response to 7/7, which is sadly typical of the response in certain quarters:
In the wake of the 7/7 London bombings many politicians and pundits have raced to renounce the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” A London Anglican priest named Paul Hawkins said in a sermon: “We can name the people who did these things as criminals or terrorists. We must not name them as Muslims.” It may seem odd to deny to the likely perpetrators of the bombings the name that they themselves prize above all others, and it is certainly a disservice to any genuine Muslim reformers who might be trying to identify and root out the causes of violence from within Islam, but such are the politically correct dogmas that prevail in most contemporary public discourse. And no one is better versed in those dogmas, or more relentless in her pursuit of any dissenters from them (with a fury that the most ruthless Inquisitor would envy), than Karen Armstrong.Armstrong, of course, is the ex-nun who now spends a great deal of time propagating, through her books Islam: A Short History and Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet and a steady stream of articles, a highly tendentious version of Islam, as benign as Quakerism and as expansive as the most liberal form of Anglicanism. In Islam: A Short History, she blames Christians for the misapprehension that Islam is not a peaceful religion:
Ever since the Crusades, the people of Western Christendom developed a stereotypical and distorted vision of Islam, which they regarded as the enemy of decent civilization....It was, for example, during the Crusades, when it was Christians who had instigated a series of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world, that Islam was described by the learned scholar-monks of Europe as an inherently violent and intolerant faith, which had only been able to establish itself by the sword. The myth of the supposed fanatical intolerance of Islam has become one of the received ideas of the West. (pp. 179-180)
As rescue workers continued to dig bodies out of the rubble in London, she took up the cudgels yet again, writing a piece in The Guardian entitled “The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA.” In it, she professes astonishment that last year, at a “conference in the US about security and intelligence in the so-called war on terror,” someone she identifies only as “one of the more belligerent participants” argued that “as a purely practical expedient, politicians and the media must stop referring to ‘Muslim terrorism.’ It was obvious, he said, that the atrocities had nothing to do with Islam, and to suggest otherwise was not merely inaccurate but dangerously counterproductive.”
Armstrong was astonished, mind you, not because this analysis is absurd, but because she was amazed to hear it from the bull-necked hawks she expected to find at such a conference. Yet although the belligerent participant’s recommendation is common these days, it makes about as much sense as saying, “Now, we must not refer to ‘Nazi anti-Semitism.’” The Nazis were anti-Semitic because of core Nazi teachings. The Muslim terrorists are committing acts of terrorism, by their own account, because of core Islamic teachings. Saying that we are supposed to ignore that is tantamount to saying that we must ignore what the enemy tells us about himself, who he is, what he wants, and why he is fighting. Which is tantamount to saying that we should surrender. We cannot defeat an enemy we are afraid to name.
Yet Armstrong says that “our priority must be to stem the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida, instead of alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral violence. Incorrect statements about Islam have convinced too many in the Muslim world that the west is an implacable enemy.” Armstrong here seems to be saying that if we ignore the elements of Islam that give rise to terror, they will stop giving rise to terror. I contend on the contrary that if we are to have any hope of stemming “the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida,” it can only come from speaking forthrightly about what it is in Islam that makes them flow into such organizations, and calling upon Muslims who call themselves moderate to renounce those Islamic teachings -- while alerting non-Muslims to the existence of such teachings, so that they can take realistic actions against the threat in its true dimensions. No problem can be fixed by denying that it is a problem.
But of course, Armstrong would not accept that it is a problem in the first place. She declares that “these acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur’an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness.” Yet it is not enough any longer, if it ever was, simply to assert that the terrorists “violate essential Islamic principles” and talk about self-defense and peace. The jihadists have again and again characterized their struggle as defensive. Let Ms. Armstrong demonstrate, if she can, from the Qur’an or Islamic tradition, why their characterization is in this case inaccurate, and how moderate Muslims today can refute it. If she cannot, then moderate Muslim leaders should do so, or risk giving their very professions of moderation a hollow ring.“Like the Bible,” Armstrong says, “the Qur’an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion. Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign.” But the problem within Islam is not that of a few aggressive texts in the Qur’an, parallel to a few in the Bible. In the Bible there are indeed aggressive texts, but there is no open-ended and universal command to all believers to make war against unbelievers, a la Qur’an 9:29. Nor is that an isolated text: Islam, unlike Christianity, has a developed doctrine sanctioning and calling for this warfare. The Shafi’i manual Reliance of the Traveller, which bears the endorsement of Sunni Islam’s most respected authority, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, stipulates that jihad is “a communal obligation” to “war against non-Muslims.” It teaches that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax . . . The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim” (o9.0, o9.1, o9.8, and o9.9). This is one reason why jihad terrorists like Osama bin Laden want so badly to restore the caliphate – so that such a jihad can be pursued. There is no doctrine like this in any other major religion.
Also, look closely at Armstrong’s wording: “Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely.” This is similar to a fatwa of Mufti Ebrahim Desai of South Africa: “if a country doesn’t allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum [hell]. If the Kuffaar [unbelievers] allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them.” A central part of the Islamic religion traditionally has been its prescriptions for governance. Would opposition to Sharia be hindering Muslims from practicing their religion freely? The problem with such statements -- both Armstrong’s and Desai’s -- is that they are so elastic as to be meaningless in terms of restricting Muslims from waging war. The “America is waging war on Islam” rhetoric coming today from jihadists is a case in point. They assert that America is waging war on Islam, despite President Bush’s strenuous efforts to establish the contrary, and thus justify waging war against us.
Likewise Armstrong’s statement that “Islamic law...forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign.” Innocent civilians. Were the office workers in the World Trade Center innocent? Osama says no. Can Armstrong refute him on Islamic grounds? If not, then what is the value of making such an assertion in the first place?
Armstrong continues with another common canard: “We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings ‘Catholic’ terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise. This is obviously the case with Zionist fundamentalism in Israel and the fervently patriotic Christian right in the US.” It is true that the IRA’s was not essentially a religious campaign. The IRA was not claiming to blow things up in the name of their religion or justifying their actions by reference to Christian scripture. The jihad terrorists today, however, explain that they are acting in the name of Islam, and quote Qur’an copiously. Nor was the IRA an international movement with a program calling for the subjugation the world under its system of law and societal mores. Islamic terrorism is.
Armstrong does grant that “sometimes a military effort may be a regrettable necessity in order to defend decent values, but an oft-quoted tradition has the Prophet Muhammad saying after a military victory: ‘We are coming back from the Lesser Jihad [ie the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad’ - the far more important, difficult and momentous struggle to reform our own society and our own hearts.” Yet of course, Osama and his ilk would say precisely that a military effort is a regrettable necessity today in order to defend decent values. This again calls for refutation, not glossing-over. And as for that Hadith, Ms. Armstrong may not be aware that attacks upon it form a central part of jihadist polemic. Abdullah Azzam, a founder of Al-Qaeda, and Hassan Al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, argued that it was a weak hadith, and thus should not be followed by Muslims. They maintained that jihad was primarily warfare and that Muslims should understand it as such. And indeed, this statement of Muhammad does not appear in the hadith collections that Muslims consider most reliable. Here again, if moderate Muslims really do not wish their children to join terrorist groups, they must refute the arguments advanced by Azzam and Al-Banna. Armstrong shows no indication of even knowing that such arguments exist.
It gets worse. Armstrong even goes to bat for the Wahhabis: “even though the narrow, sometimes bigoted vision of Wahhabism makes it a fruitful ground for extremism, the vast majority of Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror.” Obviously not, any more than the vast majority of Nazis actually worked in death camps. But in any case, the idea that Wahhabism is violent and the rest of Islam is peaceful is simply false. The doctrines of violent jihad are found among all Muslim sects. And Armstrong seems at least aware of this: she argues that jihad terrorism should be renamed “Qutbian terrorism,” stating that “Bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in 1966.” It is at least good of Armstrong to acknowledge that Qutb was not a Wahhabi. Other Islamic apologists are not so willing to do so. But what Armstrong has not demonstrated, and cannot demonstrate, is that “Qutbian terrorism” represents in any way a departure from traditional Islamic teaching, or that most Islamic schools of thought reject its key principles.
“There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam,” complains Armstrong, and she notes that “precise intelligence is essential in any conflict.” Quite right. And she is right again when she says that “by making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.” Yet ironically enough, it is clear from her own obfuscations and distortions of Islam that she herself has not made this disciplined effort. Her continuing influence, however, is just one indication of why it is so crucial today that other, less-biased analysts do so, and do so quickly.
Spencer says:
" I contend on the contrary that if we are to have any hope of stemming “the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida,” it can only come from speaking forthrightly about what it is in Islam that makes them flow into such organizations, and calling upon Muslims who call themselves moderate to renounce those Islamic teachings"
And this will take how long?
Decades?
And in the mean time isn't this approach much more likely to suck _more_ young muslims into the extremist/fundamentalist orbit?
The hope is that, in time, after the moderate "renunciationist" ideology has been around long enough, the fundamentalist dogmas will strike even the fundamentalists as out-of-date and absurd; much like what has happened with many aspects of Christianity and Judaism.
So what is the real harm in pretending that the fundamentalist aspects of Islam aren't "real" Islam right now? Wouldn't you agree that this approach is more likely to stem the tide of angry, young muslims, who perceive their religion as being "under attack" (which, let's face it, it is -- though understandably so), toward the fundamentalist bent? Again, in time the moderate, modern Islam will have been around for long enough that the fundamentalism will itself die a natural death.
This is a _far cry_ from "surrendering". Rather, it's much more the realist option.
Now, I'm not some liberal candy ass. Anyone can do a search of my posts and see that. I took a hardline stance against Islam for a long time. But really, I just can't see the hardline approach yielding any better results than "let's pretend Islamic violence isn't really Islamic" approach.
Now, if we were prepared to take a _real_ hardline approach, which would be to ban Islam, demand every Muslim in our countries publicly renounces Islam (force them to burn a Koran or something, or even better, flush one down the toilet) and deport those that don't. Publish hardcore anti-Islam propagand 24/7. Indeed set up an entire Department of DeIslamification of Planet Earth. Give Mecca and Medina orders to evacuate as they will be nuked in two weeks time, and lob a nuke into the Arabian desert just to prove we're serious. No Muslim country qualifies for any aid until they renounce Islam. No visitors from Muslim countries allowed. After a grace period, the death penalty to any Muslim caught in our lands. THIS is a real hardline approach and one I would wholeheartedly support. If we're not prepared to this -- and we most assuredly are not, not even Spencer would support this -- then I have no choice but to side with Koran Armstrong's approach.
OT, but by the way where is Cat Stevens in all this? He is usually the first person that the media go and ask for a comment.
Someone like Karen Armstrong is precisely the kinid of psychically marginal character thrown up by the Western world, and such types often find the answer to their mental and emotional desarroi in embracing that all-purpose Total Explanation and Regulation of the Universe. As she is a former nun, she becomes even more likely to Be On a Spiritual Search (these Spiritual Searchers need to be subject to the strictest of scrutinies).
But for the moment, she is the exemplar of Equivalence. "We all do it" -- especially Christians and Jews (whatever it is that Muslims are accused of). There are equal "fundamentalisms" (note the Scott-Applebyish plural here -- the pluralizing of the problem, the mere adding of an "s," performs the presto-magico trick of moral equivalence, and of making the menace seem to come equally from three directions, those absolutely insane "Christian right" or "right-wing Christians" who are either True Believers, or Elmer-Gantry shams who are in it solely for the money, or somehow they become conflated as "True Believers but also Elmer-Gantry shams who don't believe a word of it but are in it strictly for the money" and then, of course, those mad-dog "Jewish fundamentalists" who, every man jack of them, want to expand Israel all the way to the Hindu Kush, and by the way, all of whom are prepared, all over the world, to behave as "typical Jewish settlers -- you know, the ones who wave their Uzis about, get up in the morning to uproot those Palestinian olive trees, and want to raise each of their children to emulate Baruch Goldstein's mental raptus in that mosque" -- and finally, we come to the teeniest-tiniest kind of "fundamentalism" that any of the "three abrahamic faiths" or "three monotheisms," that problem with the "handful of extremists" who "claim to be acting in the name of Islam" but who, as Karen Armstrong, John Simpson of the BBC, George Galloway, The Guardian, The Independent, and practically everyone else you can think of who presumes to instruct us on the subject of Islamic terror (such as Tony Blair) will tell you, are regarded with absolute abhorrence by "the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims" who are, of course, "law-abiding" (they don't jaywalk, they presumably pay what taxes those not on the government dole must pay -- "law-abiding" indeed).
Her presentation of Muhammad as a "peacemaker" who "brought peace to the warring tribes of Arabia" is a fantasy worthy of Scheherazade. Her little book on Islam, which fails even to include the "Jihad" among its topics, and fails as well to mention the little matter of the conquest, over 1350 years, of vast lands that were inhabited by larger, more populous, more advanced non-Muslim peoples, and to whom something happened, but from Karen Armstrong's vacuous vademecum we cannot tell what -- what happened to all those Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists? -- where did they go, how did they disappear in such great numbers, what happened to their cultural artifacts, Ms. Armstrong -- we are just a tad curious.
Really, although she has had a line in the "three-faiths" being equal -- as in her book on Jerusalem, that "city holy to three faiths" where the reader is asked to believe that Jerusalem holds the same place in Islam that it does in Judaism and Christiainity, which might come as a surprise to the Guardians of the Two Holy Places, Mecca and Medina, not to mention those hundreds of millions of people who turn their prayer-rugs Mecca-wards at least five times a day, pointing right at that black stone which, at least once in each Muslim's lifetime, he is instructed he should, if he can, visit and circumambulate seven times widdershins the Magic Wonderstone of Mecca. Surely Karen Armstrong knows that -- so why does she give us this "holy to three faiths" Jerusalem without explaining how Jerusalem, not mentioned once in the Qur'an, came to be identified with that pharse about "the farthest mosque" from which Muhammad ascended on his winged steed al-Burag up and back (an aller-retour ticket) within 24 hours, how that "al-masjid al-aksa" (the furthest5 mosque) was placed, as a geopolitical claim to the sites holiest to both Jews and Christians, was made not by a theologian but by the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus who had so much to do with the formulation of, perhaps the invention of, early Islam.
At the moment she can't really announce her conversion to Islam. She is not a Muslim in name only. Her worldview, her stout defense, her ignorance and silliness that result in an apologetics as good as anything as the past masters of taqiyya could wilfully produce -- surely they entitle Karen Armstrong to some sort of recognition.
I know what. As long as she has not yet formally declared herself a Muslim, and belted out for the world, in a tremolo, her admission that "I wandered around/And finally found/The faith that was true/No other faith gives me a thrill/Without Islam's charms I feel so blue" she remains a candidate, as a non-Muslim, for "services rendered to Islam" which is one of the richly rewarded prize categories of the King Faisal Prize (the "Islamic Nobel" -- which, it has to be said, in science is awarded to completely reputable, if necessarily non-Jewish, candidates).
So, if an Infidel may be permitted to nominate someone for the next King Faisal Prize for Services to Islam -- recent winners include the "Crusades-from-the-Muslim-point-of-view"Professor Carole Hillenbrand (well done Carole -- now that the House of Al-Saud thinks well of you, how do you rate with Jonathan Riley-Smith or David Abulafia, or don't you, counting your banknotes, care?)-- I hereby do.
Yes, Karen Armstrong's Services to Islam are the stuff of legend. Give her the money. Give her the trip to Saudi Arabia. Let her announce her conversion a day after she pockets the money. And then she can go to Mecca. She will be thrilled. Prince Abdullah will be thrilled.
And we will be thrilled, to have played just a small part in bringing her achievements to the attention of the proper authorities who, no doubt, have been fondly observing Ms. Armstrong's productions from afar, with untellable gratitude.
Hugh:
As usual, you hit the nail on the head with sparks.
My dear "spect8or":
The proposal you advance is genocidal fantasy, and denying the truth will get neither you nor Armstrong anywhere.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
As I did not know what Armstrong looked like, I googled her. Very interesting experience. Her posed photographs - of which there seem to be plenty - cast her as a typical ageing hippy, with a mild beatific smile; but unposed ones, including one in which she is receiving some sort of academic award in Australia (God help us!) are noticeably different - the smile, in particular, does nothing to suggest mildness. Of course, publishers do their best to make their authors look like human beings, but I find the difference significant in terms of more than just vanity.
A former nun, is she? She should thank her lucky stars that she did not live in an age were nunneries were under attack by Muslim warriors seeking to deflower the nuns and sell them into sexual slavery. Some how though, I do not believe that she would have been all that bothered if a Mujahid claimed her in a raid... She just seems like the type.
P.S. Wonder of wonders to me why people like this Armstrong find their way in the church and not a commi group in the first place.
Wasn’t it Karen Armstrong who in the July of 2002 in Al Hayat regurgitated the usual terrorist apologetics? Something like: “Palestinians don't have F-16s, and they don't have tanks. They don't have anything to match Israel's arsenal. They only have their own bodies.”
Karen Strongarm, being a colossally naive female (who else but a masochistic numbnut would, as a woman, not utterly despise the patriarchal, he-man-woman-haters-"club" of Islam?), doesn't understand masculine psychology, which renders her pipedream of diffusing the urge to jihad -by telling "peaceful lies" about the Koran, Hadiths, etc. -a total world-historical folly.
Males like drama. The don't pluck daises in fields on Sunday, they watch flashy, noisy cars run around in circles at 200 mph, crashing for exclamation points, - or they stare at costumed men bashing into one another for a round or oblong ball (symbolic head of an enemy).
Jihad fulfills this urge to adrenalized drama, it feeds the 'heightened sense of existence' that is instinctual in men. The excuses they cull from Koran verses are just icing on their murderously militant cake. No p.c. calls to "can't we all just get along?" or strategic deceptions about how sura 9:5 is either historically defunct, or simply symbolic, will matter to young, vigorous, resentful and aimless males in the Islamic world.
They want action. And they can't have a drink, they can't play music, they can't lust openly after Beyonce Knowles or Britney Spears, their societies' are top-down dictatorial messes, their education system is brainwashing with a little engineering added, and their outlets for creative expression are considered 'profane'.
What's a VERY FRUSTRATED, but otherwise organically-human guy to do?
They want to be heroic. It is a masculine calling in the genes. And, forbidden any other method for expressing themselves, the jihadist existential theater (of the absurd) hands them a pre-written script for Glory, Identity, Drama, Freedom and Eternal Reward.
Try balancing that with Karen Strongarm's puerile and smarmy schoolmarmy fantasy world of well-behaved (if lied-to by their elders like her about the real meaning of- and actual quotes from- their own religious rulebook) Muslim gentlemen.
Content to see those bloodcurdling cries for global conquest uttered by Mohammad and Allah as wishy-washy, bleached-out 'instructions to be nice', and to 'strive inwardly'.
Human nature, throughout in the red record of Time, demonstrates that, without a healthy means of expressing the visceral muscular energy and somatic-psychological desires, especially in males, these same raw forces will become malignant, and find diseased expression. (De Sade, in prison, is a perfect example.)
As William Blake put it (roughly):
Stagant pools of spirit breed reptiles of the mind.
And these reptiles take hold of the body, and look for trouble.
Whether in the form of a suicide vest, or by secretly giggling as they place bombs on a bus.
The orgasmic 'release' (denied to them in every other realm of their life/being by anal and anti-creative Islam), as demonstrated by explosive terror, becomes a nihilistic substitute for as profoundly-moving but positive and loving acts.
Until the biological roots of the urge for action are also addressed, the weepy, wan and wimpy responses like Strongarm's are doomed to be a (blood-spattered) doily placed on the eviscerated seat arm of a blown-up Tube train.
Denial may make you feel good... but only until the cold dull knife touches your throat.
Then you start to realize all of the chances you missed to have a real effect on the mortal problem we now face... but too late.
The Koran is a warlord's handbook for a world Terror State.
Karen may want to live there as their lapdog.
I prefer to tell the truth and fight the tyranny.
If she survives the battle, she can crawl on her bare knees from Fez to Jakarta as penance for her obstructionist delusional state.
With scholars like her, we need more illiterate pit bulls.
JasonP,
You are correct. I read this about her in some book review. What do you expect from the mother superior of postmodernism?
Hugh,
Very trenchant and witty analysis (as usual). Actually, on Bill Moyers "NOW" Karen Armstrong declared herself a "free-lance monotheist." But I agree that her rhetoric is more characteristic of someone who has decided to settle accounts with the Catholic church (kind of like that other ex-clergy loon James Carroll).
Metaxy,
If you are reading this, thanks for the compliment on my review (I could not respond yesterday due to the usual technical difficulties!)
Hey all,
Come and vote on my book reviews at Amazon. Here are both of them (under the pseudonoym "Nelson Mondragon":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3J3QSQTGSU0TY/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-5656372-3914263?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Here is the link for voting on my review of Armstrong's "Muhammad":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0062508865/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/103-5656372-3914263?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
And here is the link for voting on my review of Scheuer's "Imperial Hubris" (You need to scroll down to the bottom to find the review):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1574888498/ref=pd_sxp_f/103-5656372-3914263?v=glance&s=books
While you are at it, go vote on all the other reviews. In fact, go look up Robert Spencer's books and vote on all the credible reviews (I just finished scrolling through all 109 reviews of "Islam Unveiled" and voted). Let's give more credibility to people who tell the truth about Islam. Stand up and be counted!
"Stagant pools of spirit breed reptiles of the mind."
Great quote and AWESOME POST! I sure hope it's not copyrighted because I'm adding it to my collection ;-)
Big Sleep, I used that quotation too a few years ago, and what a telling piece of observation it is of man. Liked the Goethe quotion, too. Your gentle reminder that not everyone is familiar with the canon of Western literature is now well-taken.
Andrei Rublev,thank you for your comments earlier. Nicely written, cogent, and deeply appreciated.
Regarding Karen Armstrong, I know of her work only until Jerusalem:..., after which I could no longer stomach anything she writes. Prior to that she exposed herself as a fascist thinker, and an extremely erudite one at that. She is according to me a psychopath, which I hope I'm using in a text-book meaning. Her work is a continuous solipsism. Her emphasis on "mysticism' shows a complete disregard for humans as autonomous others, as even existing in any real, i.e. onotological sense: they are simply in the way of Armstrong's mission to purify the universe for the mystic reunion with the "(whatever.)" She is dangerous. She is a killer at heart, as it were. Given the powers to do so it is obvious from her writing that whe will kill anyone and everyone if the displease her. She is at root the typical Nazi mystic. She is a frightening woman, and I live in a neighborhood where we are all armed and ready on a constant basis to deal with drug gangs. Karen Armstrong scares me.
We allow ourselves to misread the platitudes she writes of Islam and mysticism becasue we don't seem to have grasped the link between fascism and Islam, between fascism and the mutated Leftism of our time. We fall into the worst and most dangerous blunders because we do not examine the nature of such obviously good things as Mother Nature, Spirtitualism, Racial Memory, Collective Unconsciousness, Dasein. All of the hippy/trendy feel-good nonsense we take as benign, as the Karen Armstrong version of Islam is pure fascism.
The curse of the time is that it peels back the thin veneer of civilization that is the flimsy foundation of my personal being, underneath which is the dark pool wherein lie my lizards. They are roused, and they are swimming to the top waiting to feed.
Karen Armstrong and that lot are poking sticks where they should never have probed.
This is why Karen Armstrong is so loathsome and- dare I say it- evil, though squirmy, disgusting, little 'e' evil rather than grandiose, operatic, capital 'E' evil. I was just looking through the online sample pages of a book on jihad that addressed this issue (in fact, Armstrong probably got her information from the exact same text) and in fact there is no consensus on these very particular issues: a few jurists forbid the use of fire completely, lots allow it according to their own peculiar conditions, and ditto goes for the destruction of buildings/homes/property, and the killing of "innocents"- particularly who gets to be called innocent.
Armstrong knows enough to know the truth and so her highly tendentious portrayl of Islam cannot be the work of someone who is ignorant, or is just a wishful thinking-ecunmenist. Indeed, those who know the magician's tricks ccan see her sweating profusely as she tries to keep all three balls in the air, switching from "Islamic law...forbids" on one matter, to "The Qur’an prohibits..." on the other, with no particular criteria for the switchbacks outside the obvious one of providing an apologia. Usually she is so good at this the innocent ("innocent" as a non-dhimmi kaffir can be, I guess) bystander fails to notice the legerdemain, but in this instance the balls have dropped, the smoke has vanished, and the mirrors hiding in their dark corners send a wayward glint into the audience for just a fraction of a second too long. Karen Armstrong is a LIAR. The next time she appears at your campus, or on your TV, please write her host and ask why they are sponsoring a known LIAR.
PS: I think this episode illustrates why Hugh's constant admonition that everyone read the Koran, the hadiths, the legal and exegetical glosses and super-glosses is misguided. There is too much stuff to read and reconcile for anyone who is not an Islamic scholar or who doesn't at least moonlight as one; trying to make sense of this mountain of material will only lead to confusion, as the Karen Armstrongs of the world will simply cherry pick their evidence and lead the frustrated, tired seeker off the path of truth into their dens of obfuscation and moral equivalence. READ THE HISTORIES INSTEAD, and know Islam by its deeds. Know Islam, no peace.
"She is at root the typical Nazi mystic."
Interesting analysis Dag. I just finished reading a book called "Hitler's Priestess." It is about Savitri Devi, a French-Greek woman whose fascination with India and the "Aryan mystique" compelled her to take up an Indian name. She believed that Adolf Hitler was an "avatar" (though I can't think of any Hindus that would agree with this!). She played a key role in the Neo-Nazi movement.
I don't know if I would go so far as to call Armstrong a "Neo-Nazi," but she sure gives me the creeps!
We have as a general society unexamined positions regarding some basic personal attitudes assumed from the 1960s and since the 60.s as not only good but universally so. For example, we are mostly anti-war. We think The Land is a good thing. We get upset at the "Rape of Mother Nature."
War, well, forget my opinions on the subject. It has it's necessary uses, and it is "Just" at times. The Land, last time I looked at it, is composed of dead stuff and other decayed filth. Mo0ther nature is a mindless cannibal bitch who kills everything. I'm a very bad hippie. I don't like these things. I find them rooted in fascism.
Joseph Campbell, the "mythology" expert, he's a fascist. Yes, he's a PBS favorite who chatted up Bill Moyers constantly. C.G. Jung, that cuddly old duffer, was a Nazi sympathizer as well as in touch with the spirit world and the alchemy of being or whatever the hell. Mircea Eliade, the greate comparative religionist, a Nazi who worked hand in glove with the Iron Guard and the Roumanian fascist who came after them, if memory serves, and who remained a Nazi sympathizer all his miserable life. The 20th century's greatest philosopher, Heidegger, yes, he too went to the grave a Nazi. Julius Evola? Spiritual guy that he was, he was a Nazi. How is it that som many of these counter-culture icons are fascists? Provably so!
Oh, let's all go Gaia. Oops, let's not then. Let's read some Jules Verne novels to get away from the fascist rubbish. Oh no: the hollow Earth is a Nazi fetish. Is there no end to it? Well, this is merely the beginning.
Once we see for ourselves that too much of the 60.s is rooted in fascism we will see for ourselves that we are confused by the attitudes we have ggrown up with as normal and decent, that many of our common assumptions are based on fascism. Does it mean that KJ is a fascist? No. Does it mean that people who read gnostic literature and go to flakey weekend retreats to commune with nature are fascists? No. Not really. Not exactly. Well, sort of. Well, yes.
We allow ourselves to get tied into fascist beliefs because of our good intentions and by our lack of critical examination of the origins of same. We've let our society devolve into reaction and hatred of Modernity, the struggle we've waged since the beginnings of the Renaissance and in particular since the beginnings of the Enlightenment, not because we're fascists but becasuse we don't know what fascism is in its details, nor where those details lead from where we were in the 60s to today where we allow Islamic fascism to run wild in the streets.
Our Left is now the Right fascism of the 1930.s. How did we get to this point? By not knowing where we began. If we examine the roots of fascism in the counter-enlightenment, as Isaiah Berlin termed it, we will see that too much of our touchy-feely rubbish sentimentality is really nothing more than fascism-throught-the-backdoor. Hey what happened to us?
The Left was progressive. Now it's chock-a-block with the worst reactionaries on Earth. The Left is conflated with the Right fascism of the 1790.s. KJ and his lot are de facto fascists, and it's up to us to turn the entire Western world back to the true agenda of our Modernist Revolutions.
Bacon, not Armstrong. Reason and proof and thought, not smarmy, and eventually, hysterical P.C. irrationalism that runs into violence against the world of progressivism. Armstrong is dangerous because she's palatable to those raised on pablum fascism.
Eat the Dhimmis.
Smash the Caliphate.
Death to Mohammed.
Down with fascism.
I don't want your stinkin' jihad.
These should be our cultural cliches.
Peace, man. It grows from the barrel of a gun.
Sonofwalker, I do not know where to begin. A lot of your assertions are crude, you mix up the undeniably counter-cultural (Joseph Campbell) with the likes of Julius Evola, who never was a hippy icon and always was known as a Fascist spirit guide, and Mircea Eliade, who, whatever his politics, was an important scholar. (So was W.F.Otto, who was much more obviously a Nazi. And Carl Orff of Carmina Burana fame also was a Nazi; the Carmina themselves were premiered in Munich in 1937 and are, in their vitalism, programmatic amoralism, misplaced seriousness, and gambler ethics, as Nazi a piece of music as you could wish for.) At the same time, you strangely miss the most obvious items of real hippy totalitarianism, beginning with John Lennon's genuinely loathsome Imagine - a manifesto for a world without individuals, a contented anthill.
But what bothers me most about your post is something I have already opposed in Cubed and other posters: the idea that we can simply purge our culture of all "bad" influences - beginning, if you please, with Plato! - and end up with a nice, sound, democratic reading list that will automatically educate us all into proper citizens. Sorry, culture does not work like that. Some of the greatest works of genius have been made by enemies of liberty. Take for instance Goethe, the prime minister of a German princeling, the admirer of the tyrant Napoleon, the author of the quintessentially anti-democratic couplet:
"Freedom alone deserves, as he does life/
Who wins it over and over, day by day."
In other words, all the others are slaves by right. Do you not see the contradiction with the real doctrine of freedom, as enunciated in a deathless document:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are all endowed with certain and inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to preserve these rights governments are established among men, deriving their just authority from the consent of the governed..."
The truth is that the life of any culture, and particularly so of ours, lies in these inner conflicts, these debates and contradictions, and in not being restricted to one approved point of view. It is, indeed, so that every man ought to be able to entertain, imaginatively if not morally, more than one point of view, that culture exists at all: to teach each of us how others, especially others of impressive mind and opposing views, viewed the world. So, imaginatively speaking, both your view of nature as a cannibal and the hippy view of a benignant mother may be entertained, indeed they may be confronted and produce fertile thought. What will kill thought, as certainly as the Earth orbits the Sun, is if works of the mind are declared bad in advance. I may think that Nietzsche or G.B.Shaw push some pretty rotten agendas, but I also feel that anyone who avoids exposing himself to the power of their imaginative worlds is doing himself harm; cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Paolo, I missed your response until this late date.
I too have to take a deep breath before I can even begin to ask how you can have missed so much of what I wrote. I don't think you'll find that I'm arguing in favor of Plato, as a start, but I'm on record here as a consistent defender of free inquiry, beginning with Socrates, whom I do not confuse with or conflate with Plato. I argue consistentlyfor aporia, for open ended inquiries into the nature of the moral as an end in itself.
If there's a difference between Campbell and Evola its a matter of timing and place rather than ideology. Campbell is a fascist pure and plain. Is Evola a counter-culture icon? Today yes, if not openly understood or even heard of in the 60.s. Where do you think the ideas come from that animate yesteryear's "mystics" and the acid-dropping hippies of today? The roots and spirits are in Evola, whether he's known or acknowledged or no. Campbell's outrageous fascism is clear to those who know the tenets of fascism, its "mysticism" and irrationality, it's mysthologos.
Do I recommend some biblioclasm? No, you won't find it in my previous posts or in my mind to this day. I remain a committed democrat. I fear for the future of our democracy because of the unmet fascism that will require the masses to rage holis-blolis against moderation too in their hatred of fascism.
Perhaps you misread my particular polemic as one in which I advocate banning Kant for sanitary reasons. May I suggest that you search "sonofwalker orwell mill milton socrates." Or if you have some spare hours, "sonofwalker free speech." That list can go on indefinitly.
I do appreciate some of your insights; and if you will, please do some background reading of mine before you jump to unsupported conclusions.