Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the significance of the fact that so much jihad violence is inspired, according to its perpetrators, by the Qur'an -- and what can be done about it:
When one looks around the world, one is not struck by the numbers of Muslims rushing to denounce Bin Laden, nor Ayman al-Zawihiri, nor Al Qaeda, nor Hamas (landslide victor among the "Palestinian people"), nor the Muslim Brotherhood (quintupling its representation in Egypt's Parliament, and certainly, in a free and fair election, the likely victor in Egypt), nor the F.I.S. in Algeria (well, they won the last time they were allowed to run), nor Lashkar Jihad, nor Jaish-e-Mohammed, nor -- well, here you can fill in the name of any group you wish, a half-dozen in Pakistan, another half-dozen in Indonesia, a few al-Sayyaf groups in the Philippines, and so on around the world. One looks at how Hindus are treated in Bangladesh, at how Christians are treated in Indonesia and Pakistan and the Sudan and in the new, improved, and freer, and therefore more Islamic Iraq, and is impressed -- impressed with how closely the behavior of Muslims, feeling their new power, both real and imagined, mimics that historically of Muslims toward all non-Muslims subjugated by them, over 1350 years.And one asks oneself: what prompts this behavior? What prompts Muslims all over to think it right and proper for them to engage in boycotts, in recall of ambassadors, in death threats to all Danes everywhere, to violent demonstrations thousands of miles from Denmark to protest the exercise of the Western right of free speech, as exercised by Westerners in their Western land, by Muslims who presume to impose their own notion of what can and cannot be expressed? What prompts Muslims all over the world either to approve, or to remain silent, or to attempt to mislead Infidels about the real source of the death sentence that the convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman faced in Afghanistan, and that only Western pressure managed to force the government to prevent (at least so far) by coming up with an obvious face-saving technicality as an excuse?
It looks a lot like those who base their views squarely on Qur'an, Hadith, and the example of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, have it right -- or at least right enough for hundreds and hundreds of millions of Muslims. Khaled Abou El Fadl, whose website lists Books You Should Not Read (among them Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq, whom he may believe lack the "credentials" he thinks so necessary -- the "credentials" of the likes of John Esposito and Michael Sells, whose scandalous apologetics and omissions -- those "Lyrical Suras" that so misleadingly make up Sells’s "Approaching the Qur'an" -- have been abundantly documented) -- he is the one who doesn't understand.We can take Khaled Abou El Fadl's measure. Perhaps he managed, for a brief shining moment to claw his way to a position at his present post, but Yale Law School was having none of it. The jig is mostly up, even if the grant money keeps coming in, for the apologists who tell us that they are going to “reform” Islam, but never quite get around to showing us how they are going to do it. Or else they claim something still more absurd, which is that Islam needs no "reforming" because it is only these wild men, these "extremists," who say and believe certain things, and they have no textual authority.
All the textual authority goes the other way -- as Robert Spencer continues tirelessly to politely point out.
Or is there a different Qur'an, or a different set of muhaddithin, and a different set of facts about the life of Muhammad, that constitute a hermetic knowledge accessible only to Khaled Abou El Fadl, and those who seem mightily impressed with him?
So we are now being told that all the tradition of all the Islamic jurists is to be thrown overboard, although millions of Afghans and others clearly take it seriously. We are being told that we can somehow convince hundreds of millions of fanatical (or simply ordinary) Muslims to engage in this wholesale jettisoning of the Qur'anic commentators and jurisconsults, because that is the only way to lighten or sweeten the message in the Qur'an, and isn't that what we have to do, as some of us implicitly recognize?
And then there remains the little matter of Muhammad as a personage to be revered and emulated -- who is going to red-pencil a number of the most "authentic" Hadith, or perhaps throw them out altogether, and while we are at it, throw out the Sira (the biography, in the basic Muslim version, of Muhammad)? Who will declare it done? And how could it possibly be accepted? It can't, and holding out such hope to naive Infidels is meretricious and sinister.
There are ways to limit the power of Islam and its hold over the minds of men. One way is to subject Islam to study within history -- that is, to see it as a text with its own history, that can be studied as Western scholars, beginning with such Germans as Wellhausen, did for the Old Testament, and then the New Testament, and then all sorts of other texts, over the past 150 years or so, that were regarded as sacred in Judaism or Christianity. Why should the texts of Islam be permanently removed from such study?
In fact, beginning with Ignaz Goldziher's study of the Hadith, and continuing with such scholars as John Wansbrough, and then Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, and in another line, from Mingana to Christoph Luxenberg, the Qur'an, or the circumstances of early Islam, have been subjected to such study. Everyone knows that there are many passages in the Qur'an that do not make any sense. Along comes Luxenberg, proposes to untie many of the knottiest problems by seeing through the present Qur'an to an Ur-Qur'an which, he maintains, was probably in Aramaic, or more exactly in Syriac (the Aramaic of Edessa), and that passages now read as Aramaic make sense, as they do not make sense if one continues to try to fit them into some Arabic-language mold.
If the Qur'an can be de-mystified, that will do more than a thousand Khaled Abou El Fadls claim to be doing. Simply treat Islam the way all other major belief-systems have been treated. That will do plenty, to lessen the violence, the aggression, the fanaticism. That is not a "reformation." It is, rather, something else -- the spirit of the Enlightenment, allowed at long last to enter the minds of many Muslims.
"If the Qur'an can be de-mystified, that will do more than a thousand Khaled Abou El Fadls claim to be doing. Simply treat Islam the way all other major belief-systems have been treated. That will do plenty, to lessen the violence, the aggression, the fanaticism. That is not a "reformation." It is, rather, something else -- the spirit of the Enlightenment, allowed at long last to enter the minds of many Muslims."
I agree in theory, but getting the vast majority of Muslims from point A to point E (Koran as God's eternal book that supercedes all other guidebooks for life plopped down hermetically perfect for all time into the lap of Mohammed --> Koran as another normal text among all other cultural texts) might be no less difficult, probably more difficult, than getting them to jettison traditional hadiths as that Haidon person suggest and accept a Koran Lite.
Whatever our solutions for the collective Muslim mind, I think there's no way around the fact that we are looking at a tyrannosaurus rex and expecting it to evolve into a docile salamander overnight. In the meantime, we need to be locked and loaded.
Trying to get these people to change the koran and their beliefs is going to take a very long time. They don't see anything wrong with it.
I would propose a free world ban, meaning any country that basically isn't muslim, until and unless, they rewrite the koran and get rid of the sura's and hadiths. If they don't like it, go back to the middle east.
Get rid of all verses that even hint of killing and beheading infidels. Women considered as tilth. No word of jihad anywhere. Apostasy. Supremacy.
I'm sure this would reduce the koran to one sentence, "I am allah". But , oh well.
We have to do something. We cannot allow future jihadists to keep living among us. And my feeling, is, we're going to have this problem for a VERY long time.
Muslims who presume to impose their own notion of what can and cannot be expressed?
That's the essence of Islam, and a key reason why it's a patently fake religion (worship of evil, military operations, and national political ideology are some other reasons why it's fake).
MORE MOSLEMS WHERE IN THE HOLY HELL ARE MY FRESH MOSLEMS I AM SO ANGRY
hundreds of millions of fanatical (or simply ordinary) Muslims
How can anybody who worships what the Koranic God said and what Mohammed did be ordinary? They can be Moslems which, I guess you have a point is an extraordinary thing to be.
WHILE MOSLEM MAN MAKES ME SCOWL MOSELM WOMAN'S GOATEE MAKES ME HOWL
beginning with Ignaz Goldziher's study of the Hadith, and continuing with such scholars as John Wansbrough, and then Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, and in another line, from Mingana to Christoph Luxenberg…
This is no time for study; it’s time for action. I repeat myself: a Bud campaign of prime time 60-second dramatic production ads --- strictly based on Islamic scripture, mind you --- would change the course of history. This grad school thing is a good way to kill oneself and other innocent people. I would submit that a fraud like John Esposito and his professor buddies already have blood on their hands.
Well, the Kalid Ibn Islama Fasicist might not be at Yale Law School, but he is at UCLA law school, #15 law school in the country and the best one in LA. I know people in that school and I cannot believe such a great, beautiful, peaceful school would allow this poisonious, shameful lier to teach there.
http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=386
If there is a war at all - and in my view, as I said elsewhere, this is a sui generis kind of conflict and would be better described as grand policing - then its frontline passes through the soul of every Muslim. I have Muslim friends, good, warm-hearted, hard-working people; there are one or two of them to whom I would trust my life. And yet in my view even the best of them have a screwed-up relationship with Islam. Denial is virtually universal, and I have a suspicion that the best of them could not live with themselves if they admitted what Islam really is. It is a part of their identity; indeed, in talking with the Muslim friend I respect most, I find that she has practically no patriotism in the sense that I have - in the sense of Socrates, of something owed to one's native country as to one's father and mother - of the notion of country inextricably bound with that of duty. Part of it is that she has lived the life of a Gypsy, having lived in three different countries by the time she was ten (her father works for a multinational banking corporation and gets shifted around). Again, her branch of Islam is a minority in her own country and her family is frequently in danger from rioters. But she does have roots in her native country nevertheless: a large family connection, and apart from that an appreciation of her language, literature and traditions (such as food). Nevertheless, the truth is that Islam is the undivided heart of her own group identity. I am a Catholic, an Italian, an European, and have lived in Britain long enough to feel some loyalty to this country too; she has none of it. She does not feel that her sense of duty, for instance, has anything to do with her national identity, and indeed it took me some time to explain to her what patriotism means. To her, national identity is a surface feature of Islamic identity.
And the problem with her, in a sense, is that she is much too good for her religion. She is naturally upright, hard-working and highly talented, and has worked her way, by talent and hard work, into a good Western university. She fits in well. It is her religion that does not; and it is in defending the indefensible, driven by her sense of loyalty, that she ties herself in agonized knots. She is young, only twenty, and I hope that in time she may come to see through the religion as an intellectual (!) tradition, as a law, as a set of customs; but there is that damned group loyalty to get through. It is the reason why the likes of Irshad Manji or Magdi Allam, in spite of their more or less complete separation from anything that may be described as Muslim thought and practice, still insist on calling themselves Muslim.
The reverse is true for suicide bombers, but the issue is the same. Their souls are torn. As Theodore Dalrymple, I think, pointed out, it is exactly because they cannot convince themselves of the superiority of their religion to the alien cultures that gave them science and democracy, efficient weaponry and the Internet; and therefore they are driven to destroy themselves. To rush at the thing you hate, to die hitting it, is a way to silence the unsilenceable doubts, the doubts raised by every moment when you use an alien appliance or take advantage of alien power.
The ultimate object of this grand policing, or war if you like, is to somehow break the stranglehold of groupthink and denial on the mass of Muslims around the world, thus making it possible for Muslims to join the human race on sane terms. To that end, I would say that very little could be more useful, in the long run, than a rational look at Islam as an historical phenomenon. Not, I mean, by mere polemic, because if you are convinced that Muhammad was altogether unique in history, you will not be convinced by hearing him called a paedophile or a pervert. Your convinction is way upstream of such things; even if you are bothered, even if it would never occur to you to violate a nine-year-old, you know in advance that you are not like the Prophet, and that what is wrong for you was not necessarily wrong for him. It is that uniqueness, and the whole host of historical misconceptions that surround it, that need to be attacked. And the attack must be constant. Heaven knows, Qur'anic tradition gives enough evidence of its own insufficiency; but there is a mountain of conscious objections and unconscious assumptiosn that needs breaking down. I do not think we will live to see the end of the job, though our children may.
Thanks, Mr. Fitzgerald, for this thoughtful post. I disagree with "Alarmed Pig Farmer", and here's why.
1. The use of the historical critical method to examine sacred texts more deeply than traditionalist methods does NOT have to be seen as a substitute for military preparedness. Just as the struggle against Communism had both military and ideological components, so the struggle against Islamism and Jihadism has an ideological component as well. Today this is the task of intellectuals who've not succombed to the wretched epistemology of cultural and ethical relativism. To imagine that the challenge of Islam can be met solely by military means is naive because it omits the challenge of converts to Islam in Western countries. When even women in Western Europe who've been raised in either secular or Christian families decide to become Muslims, it becomes more apparent that a dual apologetic (secular and religious - both Jewish and Christian) is an important aspect of cultural resistance.
2. The history of historical critical approaches to the Bible shows that several responses attend this development: (1) some lose all faith; (2) others find that these methods deepen understanding of faith and welcome the doctrinal development that serious scholarship fosters. Thus, we have those who reject completely these methodologies (fundamentalist Christians), those who find these approaches as incompatible with faith in any form (secularists), and those who discover that newer approaches contribute significantly to the deepening of faith (Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, moderate evangelicals, and both Conservative and Reform Jews - and some Orthodox Jews).
3. WHAT Muslims do once they've come to appreciate the implications of scholarly approaches to the Quran and the Hadith is up to them. Some will abandon the faith entirely. Others will convert to Christianity or Judaism. Some will make efforts to reopen the doors of ijtihad. But there's no question that widespread awareness of the results of historical criticism of the Quran will make conversions to Islam among even half educated Westerners much rarer.
4. Finally, just as the many apologists for Marxian socialism in academia did not prevent the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, so the ubiquitous presence of apologists for Islam in our universities will continue to challenge those concerned about truth to make greater efforts. There's a minor tradition among some of the great intellectuals of the West in recent times (G.K.Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc come to mind) who had great faith in the ability of the common man to detect the bullshit pedaled by elites in our universities. More than once in my life I've been deeply edified by the rich intellectual life of a blue collar worker with a well-worn library card.
"Part of it [impoverishment of patriotic sensibility] is that she [a Muslim woman] has lived the life of a Gypsy"
Islam itself has a Gypsy mentality: it is a trans-national Supernation which its members believe is superior to any Earthly nation. This by itself would not necessarily be a problem. Jehovah's Witnesses have a similar mentality, but Jehovah's Witnesses also tend to have a docile, pacifist culture. It is when this higher allegiance to the Supernation is combined with an immanentized Armageddon, as it is with Islam, that the problem becomes catalyzed.
Hello, Paolo,
Your interesting post raises the issue of how friendship with Muslims can (in the long run) gradually undermine at least the more troublesome aspects of attachment to Islam. I take it as a given that you pray for your friend to be given the grace of deep attachment to truth wherever found.
And one asks oneself: what prompts this behavior? What prompts Muslims all over to think it right and proper for them to engage in boycotts, in recall of ambassadors, in death threats to all Danes everywhere, to violent demonstrations thousands of miles from Denmark to protest the exercise of the Western right of free speech, as exercised by Westerners in their Western land, by Muslims who presume to impose their own notion of what can and cannot be expressed?
The answer to that is quite simple, it is the pusillanimous reaction of the non-muslim World towards this type of outrageous behavior that allows muslims to think that they can get away with everything (and, in fact, they are). They don't even have to answer to anyone for this behavior since there are plenty of dhimmi-witted non-muslims who will gladly pin excuses for them (i.e. muslims)
Ban it and/or burn it.It's a dangerous and pernicious piece of work that teaches hate and murder. Let's not pussy-foot with fascist totalitarianism.
Hello, Tom.
Yes.
Koran...plopped down
That's about the size of it. It didn't come with clouds descending, once for favoured sinners slain, or spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. Allah's mercy isn't strained. It ploppeth.
(Puerile joke - comprehensible only to British readers, thereby subverting the JW rules of decorum - what do you do if a bird plops on your car? Don't take her out again.)
Daffersd: you have to be careful that it is not the dreaded Foo bird. Its plop has powerful adhesive qualities and cannot be removed without damage, until it dries out and falls by itself. And the moral of the story is: if the Foo shits, wear it.
whoops.... I meant interested. Sorry to both Daffersd and Interested.
"Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall." - Alan Bennett, but could have, should have been me.
I doubt this will just be a battle of ideas, in the Oxford school of philosophy mode.
As Islam continues to exhibit a greater and greater degree of aggression, more organized responses, I believe (and hope) that the civilized world (read: multi-culti fellow travelers) will shed its warm fuzzy. Countries will become embolden to take defensive measures, including mass expulsions (having no other choice). We see Europe nowadays as asleep. But don't forget, it is capable of decisive and violent action as well (the Nazis, Franco, WWI).
I do believe that it will come down to expulsion. That is a first step: ridding ourselves of a fifth column. Clearly we are much much stronger than the Islamic world. In any real head-to-head encounter, we will easily prevail.
As much as I think Fitzgerald said is true about the examination of the Qur'an text, it ain't going to happen. Islam is built on an intertwining deck of cards. Take, for example, the hadiths. There have been calls for a long time by various quarters to either do away the hadiths (the Quran-Only people) or do something about the archane nature of them. Well, these people simply became silenced by the vast majority to hold dear to Sunnah of Muhammad ... to the extent that every single act is to be emulated, including the beard and the way to put on their trousers, as explained by the eminent al-Ghazali. Muslim scholars clearly saw that Islam cannot exist without the Sunnah, and the hadiths continued to feature prominently in any fiqh.
And given that the Islamic doctrine conerning the Qur'an is that it reflects the "Mother of Book" in heaven, you can bet Muslims will fight tooth and nail agains the Aramaicism of the Qur'an. You can bet they say that "it is an Arabic Qur'an", as the Qur'an itself say.
It isn't to say there is no merit in Luxenberg's thesis. But Muslims themselves will see it as a real threat to the 14 centuries of Islamic thought and won't even entertain anything like that. Consider that any person entertaining doubts in Islam is in danger of hell-fire, you can understand the hold it has on the populace.
"It isn't to say there is no merit in Luxenberg's thesis. But Muslims..."
Muslims will flee from and/or attack most anything with merit.
Like Pigfarmer's idea: why not 60 second dramatic production ads with facts on the hadith the sira the Koran - what it says and what it means ?
Also include the facts of 'moderate' Muslims going off and killing or trying to kill us.
What needs to accompany Hugh's proposal is massive sustained well-publicized international pressure on Islamic countries that still punish anti-Islam "crimes" such as apostacy, heresy, blasphemy, sedition, war against God, corruption on earth, etc. As long as these penalties are on the books, and in force, it will be difficult for critics and scholars to investigate, safely, the origins of Islam and the Koran.
We need to get rid of any penalties, anywhere, for the imaginary thought crimes of apostacy and blasphemy, and the process of abolishing these laws needs to be brought to into the public spotlight. Changes, rapid changes for the better, will not be achieved through debate as much as by putting progressive reformist Muslims into the positions now occupied by hard-liners. The clerics who called for the execution of the Danish cartoonists must be held to account and should be serving jail sentences. We need international pressure for pro-jihadist Qaradawi to resign. The U.S. Britain, Canada, Germany, and other countries with troops in Afghanistan must continue to put pressure on the Afghans to make changes to their constitution while it is still in its provisional state. All of these changes require government intervention, government intervention requires public awareness and support, and the latter requires massive education.
Sorry to be an orthographic gadfly again, but the word is spelled "apostasy", from the Greek stasis.
Good topic Hugh.
The Koran is a a book that is not based on eternal spiritual truths.
The Koran is not divinely inspired and does not reveal the will of God.
The Koran is a book of false claims and cultual norms that are cloaked in Arabic traditions.
Billions of people have been duped into believing that the Koran constitutes the true teachings of God.
The Koran has cast its spell on a very large group of people around the world.
Countries have adopted principles based on the Koran.
The Cairo Human Rights Declaration is one good example.
It is declaration that aims to cement the foundations of the Koran into law.
Several Muslim nations have signed this declaration.
The Cairo Declaration of Huan Rights must be terminated.
It perpetuates sharia and imposes harsh penalties ( killing an apostate, etc ).
The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights directly opposes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 18 - which addresses freedom of religion.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
link: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam
"The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights directly opposes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 18 - which addresses freedom of religion."
I have yet to see a point-by-point demonstration of this assertion. The wikipedia link provided in the post above leads the reader to a section titled "Criticism", but that criticism simply lists assertions; it adduces no actual textual comparisons.
"...the word is spelled "apostasy", from the Greek stasis."
Oops! Thanks Television, you are correct.
Television wrote: " I have yet to see a pt. by pt. presentation."
Here it goes:
__________________________________________________
Cairo Declaration states:
Article 22
(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.
(b) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah.
(c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.
Article 24
All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah.
Article 25
The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.
http://www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm
__________________________________________________
Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
The Cairo declaration basically uphelds sharia- which directly opposes the freedom to change his religion.
Has anyone given a thought to a fact? Maybe there is no "GOD" and it is all a bloody figment of our imagination...Religion clearly seems to be a tool to keep humans from uniting!
Thanks Jonathan. Merely reading Article 22 of the Cairo Declaration is sufficient to demonstrate that the Cairo Declaration is irrevocably impaired by a loophole. Articles 24 and 25 further solidify that loophole. No comparison with the Universal Declaration is even necessary (pity the fool for whom it would be necessary, I'd say).
First, I think the most powerful, simplest thing to do is to get Islam declassified as a religion and viewed as the destructive cult that it is. Second, remember that there is a time factor: the rise of the current wave of Islam is a historical/social phenomenon. Like communism, it will burn itself out one day.
Thanks Jonathan.
The best thing to do would be to have tranlated the worse coranic verses - they could stand on one leaflet - in all important languages of the world and get it distributed worldwide for free.
Muslims do not yet understand fully - although some begin to wonder - that in the contemporary settings, wether it be in the West or in the Far East, the most efficient weapon against their bloody cult could be the Coran itself, if it were read by all ignorant and naive "unbelievers" (among which some of our politicians).
For our main "enemies" now are not so much Muslims themselves but those millions of gullible voters, in the States and in Europe who still believe that islam is a religion like any other, not counting indifferents ready to conform to anything in order to avoid trouble, the perfect dhimmi type...
It is them we should reach first !
Although I am of course in principle against spamming, one could also think of using the spam techniques to dispatch the foresaid "leaflet" as widely as possible. For once spamming would so fulfill a humanitarian purpose.
Vipassi