Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers a few reading suggests for the military and others:
Anyone who has gone to Iraq and has not yet read the books of Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or (I'd give someone The Dhimmi first, then Islam and Dhimmitude and The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam and then, if they have made it through those, Eurabia which is the most difficult read of all), Ibn Warraq, and The Legacy of Jihad -- should. Give them one or more. Send them to the base libraries.Ibn Warraq's two books on the origins and early development of the Muslim holy book, The Origins of the Koran and What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, & Commentary need to be read by anyone wishing to comment on when the Koran became finally more-or-less accepted in the form it is known today. Contrary to the contentions of the enthusiast and Believer, there is no evidence for this Koran (I will stick in this posting with this spelling) having jelled during the time of Muhammad (i.e., in the period when Believers think Muhammad existed), but very likely much later.
What was the role played in the making of the Koran by, for example, the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus (the same one who placed the "farthest mosque" in Jerusalem)?And as for "one Koran" -- what shall we say about Hafs and Warsh variants of the Koran, and their differences?
Ibn Warraq traces the history of Western Koranic scholarship (Muslim scholarship is of course identical to the received standard version of Islamic belief, and one can adjust that version only in very tiny ways, at the edges, or face the obvious consequences, if one is a Muslim or still claims to be) in an essay in a recently-published collection that also contains the important article on the Dome of the Rock's supposed "Muslimness" by the scholar Christoph Luxenberg.
Ibn Warraq is also completing his latest book, entitled "Which Koran?" He holds no academic position. No Middle Eastern Department will touch him. He has been invited to speak at a few places, but he is not recognized by the apologists of MESA Nostra. Neither the Muslims who now make up a majority of its membership and are fiercely protective of Islam and will not brook real scholarship about it, and the others, the get-along non-Muslim apologists who fear their Muslim colleagues, or have a sympathy for Islam that possibly led them to such specialization in the first place, will have anything to do with him or his work.
But it is Ibn Warraq, and not they, who had done the most to gather material, his and that of other scholars, and with his own brilliant essays explained that corpus of schoalrship, and its history.
It is he who will enter history -- not a single one of his detractors or those so carefully ignoring him.
They should be embarrassed. Of course they are not. Not in the slightest.
For lives of Mohammad, I like best those by non-Muslims, especially Muir's The Life of Mahomet. It has been reprinted and is available for about $50. There are other biographies by non-Muslims -- Arthur Jeffery, Tor Andrae, and Maxime Rodinson -- all in English. I think any edition of the Sira for Muslims will have all the stuff you might think wouldn't be there -- but it's there. Don’t miss especially Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Ishaq’s early Sira.
As for the Hadith, properly Ahadith in the plural but usage now permits one to use "Hadith" as the plural, and I prefer it -- just fits English better, there is Al Ahadith Al Sahiha (Al Albani), which is a compendium of all the authoritative, good, true and trustworthy, or "Sahih" collections, of which those by al-Bukhari and Muslim (the name of the compiler), are held to be the best, the most authoritative.
But these collections are very expensive. You can find this stuff on line. That's one of the few things about the Internet worth having. The Internet has all this stuff, sometimes very nicely arranged by topic: Infidels, Women, Warfare, and so on.
You might, just for fun, ask the Saudi Embassy or someone for a free compilation of the Ahadith. Perhaps they'll think you are a likely candidate for adult-onset Islam, and want to help you in your Spiritual Search. They've got the money. See what they'll send you. And read around in it slowly so you don't go crazy. It will make you crazy.
Let the too-loyal generals get their potted reading lists, helpfully prepared by the likes of John Esposito and Peter Bechtold.
The officers and men of the regular army, the Reserves, the National Guard, can form a core, and in turn educate others.
That's the secret.
Knowledge.
I would like to suggest "Understand the Hadith" by Ram Swarup. Link here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1591020174/qid=1131891585/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0437965-6979335?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
If you buy this in the US you will get the bits that were cut out, in order not to 'outrage' the Indian Muslims
At just over 200 pages long he takes apart the Sahih Muslim and analyses it for the reader. Unless one really feel the needs to delve deeper into the diabolical sources of Islamic thought (or lack of it), this should pretty much cover what one needs to know about the hadith.
At www.TheTruthProject.blogspot.com , we focus on some important books. We are always looking for reviews to post, and the email contact is available at the site.
Hugh, you are so right! Knowledge is power.
An essential bibliography would run into another five dozen titles. Sometimes an author is not necessarily to one's liking in every way, but in this or that book is wonderful. Bernard Lewis, for example, is the author of some wonderful books -- "The Political Language of Islam," "The Muslim Discovery of the West," "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East." He silkily dispatched the primitive Edward Said in a single essay, "The Question of 'Orientalism.'" Yet Lewis also scants the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim societies (three paragraphs devoted to the topic, two of them exculpatory, in 400 pages of "The Middle East: A History of the Last Thousand Years") and has shown in other ways, especially in his belief that Kemalism was permanently ensconced in Turkey and could not be dislodged; his early notice of the "return of Islam" but his inability to declare this to be unsurprising and linked, not so much to the desarroi of Muslim life, but to the oil money, and the Muslim millions within Europe, and the technolgoical advances that allowed the spread of Islamic doctrine, beyond the mere rituals of worship, to the remotest villages and to Muslims deep within the Bilad al-kufr. Lewis was an enthusiastic supporter of the Oslo Accords, which he ought to have seen through right away --does Muslim reliance on the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyyah mean something to him? What? He has been a believer, it appears, in Iraq as Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations. While J. B. Kelly was expressing his view that the Americans should get out as soon as possible, and not try to remake Iraq because it would only cause damage to the Americans, and could not possibly result in any such "Iraq the Model," Lewis was still unwilling to declare that he had been mistaken. And all of his mistakes have been in one direction: in underestimating the power, the tug, the effect of Islam even on those Western-educated, extremely charming, flattering, and seductive representatives of the Muslm world, from the best, most secular -- but still "Muslim" -- Ottomanists, to important people in Amman. At a higher level, at the highest level, some may allow their own delight in the company of others, soft-spoken others, flattering others, others who will appreciate your own knowledge in a way that people who do not know Arabic or Turkish or Persisan cannot, and therefore in a sense are now your best and most appreciative audience -- and this gets in the way of the stony, but necessarily implacable, analysis of Islam, and what it does even to "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims, that is required. Too many of htose who are almost there as analysts or warners about Islam, never get to the point of real understanding and alarm, because they keep holding out the hope of using those "moderate" Muslims and therefore cannot go all the way in their analysis of Islam.
In a sense, some of them (and I am not talking here about Lewis) are stuck with the notions they began with, even as they try, subtly, to move away from their original positions without drawing too much attention to such a delicate, sfumato-like touching up of the original picture, so that they do not have to admit that they were wrong in the first place. Who, having been a professional scholar of Islam, and having jumped through all the academic hoops, wants to admit that it is possible for non-specialists, to grasp more fully, and more quickly, and to see farther into the likely future, than those who studied all those years, took their generals, wrote a book or two on Islam that turned out to be pedestrian or possibly equestrian in nature, and have even developed money-making lecture-based or website-based empires. Their mental horses, however, having balked at leaping over the last few hurdles on the course toward understanding Islam and Muslims and the menace and what's to be done, and how and why and where and when, are still stuck, turning round and round, the horse looking slightly confused, the rider himself just a bit puzzled, as it slowly dawns on him that what he thought had been a thorough-bredd turned out to be a nag, a suitably quixotic jinete, upon which one can tilt soothingly only at the windmill of "extremist" or "non-moderate" Islam.
Hugh,
on a slightly different topic - well, not so different actually - did you get my mail about my impressions re. "Le radeau de Mahomet" ? I sent it on friday, through Robert's address...
(Sorry for this little french-speaking advertising)
________________________
Recherche de volontaires francophones.
Dans le triple espoir de faire connaître un peu Robert Spencer et ses ouvrages, de trouver un éditeur intéressé par son "Guide Politiquement Incorrect de l'Islam", et de diffuser les informations qu'il contient sur la nature et les dangers de l'Islam, nous avons entrepris de traduire certaines parties de celui-ci; Mr Spencer est au courant de cette initiative.
Nous n'en sommes encore qu'au début, mais nous avons commencé à poster des textes pour relecture sur un blog.
Si le projet vous en dit, si vous avez envie de nous aider, ou simplement si vous êtes curieux d'en savoir plus: http://www.precaution.ch/gpi/
__________________
(For a short english summary: we're trying to make Mr Spencer and his books better known in French-speaking countries; we have the intent of drafting a translation of parts of the P.I.G. and try to get an editor interested in this precious book. And we ask if some of the french-speaking people posting here are interested in this project)
Yes.
This is too much, and too varied, stuff to read for the vast majority of enlistees and civilians.
This reading list is only suitable for a tiny cadre among the (hopefully millions of us) anti-jihadists.
What is needed is a definitive, complete, yet ruthlessly minimalized compendium of all the facts one needs to know but were too PC to ask about the Problem of Islam.
This compendium would be the second line of offense, after the 5-page pamphlet which Archimedes (another poster here) suggested.
After this compendium, those more ambitious among the (hopefully millions of us) anti-jihadists can then dip into Hugh's reading list.
Some books on Islam and India
http://voiceofdharma.com/books.html
I thinl the book by Ram Swarup suggested above might be the same as the book here
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/uith/
A couple of interesting ones
The Calcutta Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/tcqp/
Negationaism in India - Concealing the Record of Islam by Koenraad Elst
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/negaind/
There is also an interesting book on fatwas
The world of fatwas, or, The shariah in action
by Arun Shourie
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/8190019953/qid=1131929405/sr=8-11/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i9_xgl14/102-8150447-5296162?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Hugh,
Thank you for your efforts, however, I must concur with Dr Pepper that the list is too large and varied. As an officer actively engaged in both the "shooting war" and the "information war," I find enlisted personnel are far more interested and willing to learn than other officers. However, most of them lack the education and skills to wade into most of the books you suggest. They are for the advanced student, not the initiate.
Were I to reduce this list to the absolute core, I would settle on three items: RS's Islam Unveiled, which I have seen turn officers smug with "all religions have extremists" sentiments into serious skeptics of any plans to turn Iraqis into liberal democrats; the Koran, any version which does justice to Sura 9; and this website, which is an education in itself. What is probably needed to round out this list is a work of history. Fregosi's Jihad is highly readable, but it would be even better after a good editor removed 50 pages or so of repitition from it. Maybe Pryce-Jones' The Closed Circle would be more appropriate.
I agree that the books on the Qur'an, three of them anthologies edited by Ibn Warraq, may not have been appropriate. But I think some book that deals with early Islam, as a belief-system concocted out of pre-Islamic Arab lore, along with considerable bits and pieces of both Judaism and Christianity, mixed-up and confused, but still recognizable in their distorted forms, a belief-system that obviously was meant to both justify and promote the conquest by Arabs who had already been settling within Mesopotamia and possibly Syria, among populations far more numerous and civilized and wealthy and advanced than they were, would be useful.
Soldiers in Iraq, going to Iraq, coming back from Iraq could, if they educate themselves, form a kind of core of resistance. They must have seen, many of them, with their own eyes, how Muslim Arabs behave, the meretriciousness, the eagerness to pocket American aid, the feigned or non-existent gratitude or the gratitude that could evanesece overnight if the largesse ceased, or the protection ceased.
I wonder how many studying for the higher ranks will be assigned, or will get hold of on their own, some of these books, including "The Legacy of Jihad" which is an important compilation.
And what, one wonders, will Congress do to break the stranglehold of MESA Nostra members on the teaching of Islam?
Here's one idea: make universities keep records of the numbers of veterans (regular army, Reserves, National Guard), especially in deparments of MIddle Eastern or Islamic studies, or in fields colorably close to such (i.e. history professors who might teach subjects that include Islamic history, or parts of it). And then, by law, make the receipt of any federal or other government support depend upon some reasonable representation on the faculty of those who are veterans of the campaign in Iraq, and who are far less likely to be fooled by, and put up with, the nonsense from so many members of MESA Nostra (which google, for more on same, along with "Posted by Hugh").
Have I misremembered, or have you and I had arguments over what the American policy in Iraq should now be? If so, I just want to reiterate everything I've been so boringly repeating here at JW for more than 2 years about the futility nad misallocation of resources and hideous waste, of remaining in Iraq. Nothing that has happened convinces me that I have been wrong; I get more convinced every day that I've been right. And in this particular case, it maddens me. I'm more convinced than ever that the best thing is to get out now, give the Kurds whatever support, open or hidden, we can, and let the Sunnis and Shi'a go at it, and hope that each draws in money, men, materiel, from both sides. Exploit those divisions. Let them widen. And widen.
Well, let me know.
One more thing. the following excerpt from your posting might help in the obvious goal of fundraising (at which Robert and I seem to be hopeless babes in the woods, separately or together, while other people are quite clever and successful at it -- they're just wrong about all the most important stuff):
"Were I to reduce this list to the absolute core, I would settle on three items: RS's Islam Unveiled, which I have seen turn officers smug with "all religions have extremists" sentiments into serious skeptics of any plans to turn Iraqis into liberal democrats; the Koran, any version which does justice to Sura 9; and this website, which is an education in itself."
That unsolicited praise at the end is just the kind of blurb on the non-existent jacket of this website that is needed:
"this website....is an education in itself"
Longterm Lurker
Do you think it could play in Peoria?
There is no excuse for not becoming familiar with Islam and the history of Islam and its effect on neighbors and non-Muslim citizens. Although some are scholarly tracts, Hugh's list includes some that are geared to the average reader.
Hugh, you have not "misremembered" me. We have disagreed in the past, and I still respectfully disagree with you on many points. But we also concur on many points. I disagree with many of my allies, but I nonetheless consider you an ally, a potent and articulate one.
What I have seen over the past several months deployed is two lines of thought. The first is the "all religions have their extremists" line, but in most cases the troops recognize that this is wishful thinking, and are open to discussions of Islam that outline why it is fundamentally hostile to all other religions and peoples. The second line is a more honest admission of ignorance. The troops don't buy the "religion of peace" line, but lack the knowledge to understand why it is a falsehood. My recommendations for their reading are based on my experiences with both of these groups. I've also found that both of these groups are very sensitive to the agenda of the author, and if they sense that the author has an axe to grind or a hidden agenda, they will reject the whole of the author's effort. For that reason, among others, RS is extremely effective with both of these groups, especially his Islam Unveiled. He is perceived as being extremely fair and even-handed. Seriously, if you can only buy one book in bulk to give to a deploying unit, give Islam Unveiled. I have littered Iraq and Afghanistan with copies of RS's books, and can testify that they disappear off library bookshelves with lightning speed.
Texts that deal with the pagan/Jewish/Christian origins of Islam are generally unappealing, however valuable they may be to the advanced student. They do appeal to Christians, however, especially evangelicals, and to some Catholics. However, these are people who generally do not need any convincing that Islam is a threat.
As for this website, I can tell you that it is read at higher levels of our government and military than you might expect, and I know that readers of this site are also writing the
"thought pieces" that are going to very high offices. Now, they are not always well-received there, but they are read, and the ensuing arguments have affected policy, even if only in small ways that are not yet obvious to the larger public. The effects have been in many cases to prevent further misadventures of the sort you regularly excoriate, but since I can't prove these negatives to you, I can only ask that you take my word for it. The discussions at this site are having a positive effect.