Fitzgerald: Islam compatible with democracy?

No.

Dear Hugh,

When you say "leave the Muslim countries to their own devices" and "Buy what oil you must, but limit all other contacts" would you include the charitable works in that? I'm thinking of basic medical aid and clean drinking water together with measures we might have to take to stop the spread of diseases which could harm us. I'm also thinking of the basic Christian call to be charitable, say in the matter of food for example.

As a Christian I'm not sure how far my conscience would let me follow you down this route. It's not that I disagree with your basic idea, it's just that I don't know how far you would want to go.

Dominic.

David Littman had an article on the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights in Midstream or Middle East Quarterly about 6 or 7 years ago, as I recall.
Carlo Panella discusses this same "declaration of right" in his 2005 book, Il 'Complotto Ebraico'

Ditto on the no.

It does no good for either side of the dialogue to try to impose its values on the other. In that sense, the Dutch Council has it right and you, Hugh, have it wrong. Your formula is a kind of bullying of Islam to give in to your own values. It's no better than the bullying of Islamists to reduce us non-Muslims to subservience or coerced submission to Islam. Withdrawing aid and promoting isolation will only make the "clash" worse.

I would be all for putting some conditions on regular aid. For example, if a country has oil revenue, it should not need regular humanitarian aid. However, when a tsunami or earthquake hits, we should not hold off our aid to ordinary helpless Muslims. We should carefully monitor where the aid goes, we should be vigilant, but standing by mercilessly is not the Christian way.

I'm broadly with Dominic on this one. It's messy and frustrating and even sometimes downright dangerous to deal with Muslims as just a bunch of human beings with a different set of values and a different mindset. However, peace has never been achieved by pushing the "enemy" away, by constantly passing judgment in a negative way.

Nor can peace be achieved through dishonesty, through lying to ourselves and to others. It's good that you express your views forthrightly but you would talk differently if you held a responsible position of power or if you were a member of a committee trying to apply scientific (objective) principles to a highly emotional dilemma.

This Dutch Council may not have come up with a convincing solution. I'm with you there. But your formula sounds worse. Please reconsider.

We should definitely help in situations like the Pakistan quake or the tsunami. If I can trust the media's take on the attitudes of the locals who saw what we were doing, we appear to them to be superhuman, righteous, compassionate and merciful. The fewer excuses they have (ala disengagement where we can) plus examples of our manifest superiority, the more Muslims will question their own ways.

Now I'm really confused. Surely it is the mindset and values that we are fighting and aren't our servicemen and women trying hard not to kill or wound excepting where they absolutely have to. Aren't they trying to set an example?

I thought that we were trying to persuade the moslem peoples to see Islam for what it is rather than set about killing people to protect ourselves. If we are losing the battle for our own survival then Hugh's way would be a way that a decent Christian could follow (perhaps as I said with some clarifications) because he is not advocating mass slaughter or any other unChristian act. Our decency is what marks us of from the moslem. Let's not lose it.

Are we losing the battle?

Dominic.

Islam compatible with democracy?

Nope.

Islam compatible with democracy? Yes. Islam is as compatible with democracy as a cuckoo's egg is compatible with (another species) bird's nest.

(Actually from the point of view of Islam: yes; from the point of view of democracy: no).

Dominic says "Now I'm really confused". Very much so. Unlike the Koran, the New Testament is not a declaration of war but it is not a suicide pact either.

Dominic

As a Christian I understand that we have compassion for those who suffer the consequence of any real war. Yet one has to ask if that compassion extends to those who will destroy you and me, if given the chance.

Then again, if we went to a war footing, then providing sustenance to the enemy at time of war is treason. Render unto... comes into play.

"They simply DENY everything, saying armenian genocide never happened, women are treated equally etc."

No they don't. I know a moslem family here in London. I met them when they were walking their dog in the park. Yes, they have a dog as I do. We got talking. We still talk. I've even been to dinner with them and their (shock, horror, gasp) Jewish neighbours at their house several times and they have been to dinner at my flat.

Once on a Friday evening I met the whole family in the park and laughingly asked them why they were not at the mosque. They said to the best of my recollection that they couldn't be bothered that Friday because the speaker was some uneducated idiot from Pakistan who always preached hatred for the west and they had decided that they couldn't go along with that. They went on to freely admit that there was much in the Koran that they couldn't be having with.

A few weeks later they invited me to meet other members of their community who also felt the same way. These people identified themselves as British moslems and they readily without prompting identified huge parts of the Koran as just plain wrong in today's world.

They were frightened of what they described as the young terrorist element in British Islam and asked me not to repeat their words so I guess I've said enough but they were hopeful for the future. I don't think that they were lying.

Dominic.

Quijybo and Dominic

I dont think that is what happened in the wake of the Tsunami. Australian charitable workers were threatened for trying to convert muslims, even though this was not true. Barnabus Fund also reports that Christians suffering from the Tsunami, were pushed aside when it came to getting aid provided by Western countries. This was all predictable and was predicted.

What has been clear for sometime now, is that muslims regard aid from the non-muslim world as their rightful due. That aid is a confirmation of our supposed inferiority to muslims. Unless there is a change in that mindset, I do not see what beneficial effect there can be from our charity - in fact it has the opposite effect.

Hugh is not arguing for war or unnecessary cruelty - just that we refrain from indulging in meddling in the affairs of muslim nations, and that means not supporting them with aid, which only justifies their islamic arrogance and props up a system of belief long overdue for the scrapheap.

I have deep sympathy for muslims, as they are the primary victims of islam, and it is our unfortunate task, like it or not, to free them from the slavery of islam.

To quote Churchill yet again

"The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

Dominic posted: They went on to freely admit that there was much in the Koran that they couldn't be having with.

If they said that, then they are not muslims anymore.

Dear DP111,

Yes our compassion must extend that far. The question is what form that compassion should take. We don't kill POWs, we don't target civilians if we can avoid it, we don't attack hospitals. It's those sort of things that make us better than the enemy. We also try to re-educate and help our defeated enemies. How good is that!

Dominic.

Dominic, the problem with giving humanitarian aid to countries run by (or overrun by) terrorists is that money is fungible. Assuming that the money even gets to the people who need it in the first place, it just frees up other revenue to be spent on terrorism. Also, many of these countries are oil-rich, so why don't their own leaders and millionaires help their poor?

I, too, am a Christian, and I do believe we all have an obligation to help the bleeding man at the side of the road (see parable about Good Samaritan), but not if the help I give winds up killing crowds of innocent people in a pizzeria or at a seaside resort.

Again, why do all these people need clean drinking water and simple medical care in the first place, when their countries and their fellow-Muslims are so rich in oil and other natural resources? No one ever seems to address that question.

I don't think it serves our interests to help any muslim population anywhere under any circumstances. They will not appreciate it and it will only come back to haunt us. So no good will can be garnered. The United States went to war against the Serbs who were slaughtering the muslims, and what good will among the jihadists did that buy the Americans? It bought them 9/11.

As a culture, the western culture must deny Islamic nations everything, including the air to breathe, if possible.

As individuals, however, you can still be Christians and go and sacrifice your lives for them. That is your choice. You will get your reward in heaven. (Although not 72 virgins) But the Christian imperative does not apply to nations, only to individual Christians. So as individuals, give them your last piece of bread while they stone you. But as a culture, we need to crush their cult simply in order to survive.

Thanks to all of you. I told you I was new to all of this. I feel that I am really learning something here. I don't have your knowledge - yet - but I'm working on it.

Thank-you all. It is fun to post here as well as serious. I have to go to bed now because I've got to work tomorrow. I'll check in again when I get home.

Dominic.

Hugh

An intersting question

but your solution is flawed, I cannot see how

"imposing democracy on Muslim countries"

can be achieved by

"leave the Muslim countries to their own devices"

I have to agree with Dominic, it is important for us in the West to continue interaction with the Middle East.
There are those in Iran for example who hate the regime they now have (this was documented when the Isreali FM spoke to Iranians during a phone in on the Radio), and with no outside contact who is to say what would happen to these individuals if this contact disappeared.

I persoanlly do not think the problem is just democracy, it is secularism aswell.
Both need to be implemented inorder to protect the people from their own religious Zealots.

This certainly worked in the west and allowed the people to become more elightened and free'er thinkers, they gained access to education and therefore the ability to explore sciences, which essentially brought about the industrial revolution.

Many comments here refer to Islam as being an old religion, I think we have to face the fact that it is and therefore it will take time, not single actions by western governments to bring it into line with modern day behaviour.

Dominic

I'm glad that you have posted what you have. It is time we questioned some assumptions which are taken for granted.

You posted:

These people identified themselves as British moslems and they readily without prompting identified huge parts of the Koran as just plain wrong in today's world.

They were frightened of what they described as the young terrorist element in British Islam and asked me not to repeat their words so I guess I've said enough but they were hopeful for the future. I don't think that they were lying.

First, if these muslims seriously questioned or did not believe huge parts of the koran, then they are not muslims, and are really not part of what this war is about. They are bystanders, neither helpful nor hostile.

Second, they were frightened.
If they are frightened then again, what are they frightened of? Of the Jihadis in their midst or the consequences of what may happen to them, if we really took this war seriously, as we did in 1939?

Third: they were hopeful for the future.
What future and what type of future. If they are not helpful in this war, but in fact identify themselves as muslims, then they will be used by their leaders, in the muslim numbers count, for demanding more islamisation/dhimmification of Britain. The fact they did not want you to quote them indicates that were not really serious.

It is unfortunate Dominic, that certain ideologies will not understand or accept, unless totally defeated in war, just as the Nazis were. Though WWII led to massive bloodshed, in the end it saved countless lives in the future, not just physically but spiritually. Islam has always been a religion of the sword, and despite the good intentions of some of your muslim friends, the ideology will not go away unless comprehensively defeated.

I and Hugh have advocated a much more benign way to win this war, and thus release muslims from a system that they cannot leave even if they wanted to - separation from the islamic world. No further immigration, and no Jizya. It is not vengeance or hatred that motivates, but the hope that such a policy will make the islamic world realise the total bankrupcy of its ideology. If this proves unsuccessful, then at the least we will have saved countless lives in a future civil war in Europe. I'm ever mindful that ruthless European nationalism is ever present, just under the surface. I see some signs of that already.

I will wish you goodnight, and thank you for raising this issue in such a gracious manner.

Being a Christian does not mean to be charitable just to score points with God. Turning the other cheek does not mean that you should sit on your ass while friends, family, and yourself are being slaughtered. On Guadalcanal in '43 the Japanese soldiers were seriously deprived of food and medicine due to American success in stopping their resupply convoys, would anyone have counseled the American generals to drop the enemy some supplies for "humanitarian purposes?" This struggle is soon to become a hot war. The Islamic enemies will not distinguish civilian from soldier or child from adult. In their minds we are all combatants; every non-believer is a soldier. If, after the next earthquake levels a village in Iran, I will wonder if our generosity saves the life of the next suicide bomber.

P.S. This was actually posted by Pelayo, Tennesseepride is my son.

Its an interesting argument

and a tempting one
But... there are several problems with this logic..

A. We tried this right before WWII broke out (isolationalists) stated it was a european issue..
Until we were attacked..

B. Change is not possible unless moved upon by a greater (Outside force)... Even so called moderate muslims realize this.. (i hope there still alive)..

C. To just cut off ALL contact with the muslim world doesnt mean they wont try to "Contact us"

D. The liberal news media (which loves) to portray anything the US does as Evil would scream bloddy murder that we are starving the poor muslim kids (remember sadamms oil for food)
Half the UN including kofi annans son was in on the ripping off of the iraqi people..

So i could imagine since they couldnt run that correctly (oil for food) how would they handle trying to feed 1.2 billion muslims and at the same time trying to keep the same people from using the money / oil to buy weapons in which to attack the USA...

I am sorry but if you go down this road..
Then be prepared to see every night on tv
Dead and dying muslim children ...
And all the hollywood celebrities demanding
The presidents head (because he didnt feed them)..

jingoist-

If Saudi Arabia and Dubai and Qatar and Libya and Morocco won't feed their own brothers in Islam, I sure as hell won't.

Nor will I leave raw meat out for brown bears who might be a little peckish from a long winter and I certainly won't be putting out trays of sugar water should Africanized killer bees ever get to my latitude.

Let Muslims, those sanctimonious, kafir-hating, smug little supermen, support the Ummah on their own resources.

Help those who truly appreciate it.

Don't breed piranas in your pants.

The Nazis and Imperial Japan were stopped by force. The next time someone tells you war is never the answer, make sure to reply: It stopped Hitler. But Islam is a belief-system, and it is not so much an overt military threat, as a threat through Da'wa, demographic conquest, and the money that could never have been generated by inshallah-fatalism, but could be generated in only one way: an accident of geology. And that accident of geology exists, and the oil is there, and the hundreds of billions flow in every year.

Communism (Soviet version, and therefore also Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Rumanian, East German, and Bulgarian versions) lost its hold (though the Russian penchant for despotism did not disappear) when a sufficient number of Russians in the nomenklatura recognized that Communism had failed on its own -- i.e. economic -- terms.

Islam is akin to Communism. Its adherents cannot be militarily subdued, though they can be prevented from acquiring the most dangerous kind of weaponry. But the conditions can be created, not by doing anything but by doing nothing, to force Muslims to confront the reasons for their despotic regimes, their economic paralysis, their moral and intellectual deficiencies, as demonstrated by the absence, for the past thousand years at least, of any of the philosophy, science, free and skeptical inquiry, that have made the West the West. And now, when all the non-Muslim parts of the world are, to one degree or another, open to change and to development, Islam, wrapped in its own (false) dreams of past glory, and in the immutable texts of Islam, and in the punishment meted out to all would-be apostates, is permanently stuck. So let it be stuck -- but let Muslims learn that they have only Islam itself to blame. And the best way to do this is to stay as far away from the Muslim world, to refrain from the messianic or merley good-hearted but naive and dangerous belief that everyone is malleable, everyone can be influenced for the better, and the West need not fear an encounter with the sly apologists for Islam. But it has every reason to fear, because too many people in the Western world cannot grasp the meretriciousness of Muslim spokesmen, and confuse the outward amiability, even liquid-brown-eyed kindnesses, that can conceal all manner of menace, detected -- if detected at all -- too late.

This seems to be a document for Dutch foreign policy, which is one of engagement with Islamic nations, in their natural state, rather than, via the Bush way of setting up democracies all over the Middle East.

Amadinejad and the Hamas government can't be complaining. They are in power through democracies. The Dutch might be frightened by the outcomes of these elections - which are bringing to power terrorists and terrorist organizations.

But it is still early days - for Middle Eastern democratization. At first democracy to those in controlled societies - must be like the kid in the candy shop, who’s allowed to choose anything he wants. But when his choice makes him a little sick, he then makes a better choice, next time.

According to one freedom fighter over there, most Iraqis are not interested in the strict Shar’ia law. In one sense Saddam was like the Ottoman - he understood the struggle between the Islamic law and his own rule. Even if the bombings continue to some extent in Iraq, that country is no longer headed by a dictatorship, it is a democracy. The deed is done.

And even if you have a radically elected government in office, the benefits are that the group becomes visible, and international pressure can then be applied, with the intention of moderating the organization – all options on the table.

Islam as a religion is one thing, but reality is another. All the religious rhetoric in the world will not feed the Palestinian people. It seems that one of the main concerns in the region is that Iran’s action might somehow lead to the interruption in oil supplies – as this is a main source of income for Arab States. Ahmadinejad was elected, because it was thought that he was a man of the people, yet there have been reports of economic strife in Iran - so if he doesn’t deliver, all the nuclear noises in the world will not save him.

I think we have to wait this one out – Reality is the real crucible.

Its adherents cannot be militarily subdued, though they can be prevented from acquiring the most dangerous kind of weaponry.

Hugh

I disagree. If the West (not even all the Infidel World, just the US, Australia, Israel and a few other countries) figured out that Islam was what needed to be abolished, they could wipe out the military of every member of the OIC, except maybe the Turkic Republics north of Afghanistan. Once that happened, and these countries recognized that discarding Islam was their only hope of being left alone, one would see wonders in terms of an attitude adjustment.

Countries being left to Islam on their own is not going to change things. Otherwise, countries like Mali, Mauritania, and a whole bunch of states in Saharan Africa (not counting the Arab ones) would have thrown off Islam long ago - there is minimal contact with the Infidel world, to the best of my knowledge.

DP111 asked:

First, if these muslims seriously questioned or did not believe huge parts of the koran, then they are not muslims, and are really not part of what this war is about. They are bystanders, neither helpful nor hostile.

It is entirely possible for a Muslim to discount the hadith, retreat to the Quran, and insist on purely spiritual interpretations, discounting Quranic war talk as historically contextual and inappropriate today. It is entirely possible for a Muslim to remain fiercely a Muslim and yet see the world in a way almost indistinguishable from Ghandi's, as was the case with Badshah Khan.

You are neither a Muslim nor (as I gather) from the Muslim world and you have absolutely no right to proclaim what a Muslim can and cannot do with his/her religion.

You have no right, either, to proclaim non-Jihadist Muslims as irrelevant. They are, to you, simply a nuisance factor because they render your own ideological Jihad unclear.

My apologies for responding to a question addressed to Dominic but he's gone to bed and it's midday here in Australia where I reside.

Islam pre-empts all possibility of democracy in the societies it controls because its ideology circumscribes every aspect of all Muslims' lives. There is nothing left to a Muslim's discretion except perhaps HOW he should slaughter the supposed "enemies of Islam."
And that's about it.

When do you cut your nails? Look it up in the Kuran.

How much can you eat at breakfast? Check the Kuran.

Is sugar haram on Tuesdays? Guess where to find out!

How long can one stay in the bathroom? Muhammed will tell you in THE BOOK.

Ad nauseum.

Democracy is not given a chance by Islam. Nor is any individual's free will.

Dare you permit your shadow to fall in front of an imam after three? Check the Kuran.

Can you breathe air when.....

"How much can you eat at breakfast?"
-- from a posting above

Egg-beaters omelet (no saturated fat), vegetarian ham (ditto), two pieces of toast with apricot jam, two cups of espresso with skim milk. Oh yes, and one New Duranty Times. Is that okay?

Hugh wrote: "Islam is akin to Communism."

This is oft repeated nonsense. Islam has deep historical roots and has appealed to a wide range of peoples across the globe. It is a major and a well established world religion.

Communism was a brief experiment, all over in a wink when viewed through the lens of history. I'm no Marxist myself but some readers of Marx claim that communism was a distortion of his ideas and perhaps those ideas have yet to be fully understood. Perhaps, too, Marx will remain a nobody within the longer march of history.

Nothing that happens from now on will alter the fact that Islam has a history and presence that remains formidable to this day. It is naive to think otherwise.

Just recently in my local (Bankstown, NSW, Australia) area, some Islamist idiots (from Hizb ut-Tahrir) concluded that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Here, on Dhimmi Watch, an otherwise intelligent writer agrees!

Those Muslims reject assimilation and isolationism and so do I, whether it is enforced on them or whether they are trying to enforce it on us. There is a middle way called "integration" and it does mean both sides giving in a little.

I fully endorse the efforts to open all of our eyes to the dangerous aspects of Islam but the leap from there to a policy of "apostasize or die" smacks too much of reverse coercive conversion and I will have none of that.

Re: Breakfast

You are what you eat.

Muhammad, then, ate Froot Loops.

This is the example for all mankind, for all time, so you'd best be burning that box of Cap'n Crunch.

fully endorse the efforts to open all of our eyes to the dangerous aspects of Islam but the leap from there to a policy of "apostasize or die" smacks too much of reverse coercive conversion and I will have none of that.

Posted by: Arizona at April 24, 2006 10:36 PM

Well Arizona, have none of that if you wish. You might want to brush up on Islamic history, and not the revisionist version. Then pay close attention to the sermons emanating from the bowels of Islam---Cairo, Saudi Arabia, Palestine. Sit in on a few sermons there in Australia; you might be shocked at what you hear. Who knows, you might eat your words some day.

By the way, one does not have to be a muslim to understand the muslim psyche and the Islamic ethos. Fourteen hundred years of Islamic history are well documented and since Islam is immutable, it hasn't changed a bit over time. There is nothing complicated about Islam except the contorted maneuvers Islamic "scholars" used to fabricate the great farce known as Sharia, four major schools of it. It took some brilliant minds to turn the crude, vulgar, nonsensical blather of an illiterate warlord into a legal system, but nothing about Islam is rational.

Arizona-

"Communalism" (renamed "communism" by Marx and Engels) is the oldest form of 'government' on earth: the tribe, sharing. Primitive Chritsianity is pure communism, when practiced seriously. So, only the more militant, political, "secularized" form of "communism" was a "brief experiment".

Its impulse remains as a perennial human 'ideal'. And can be called up by any new cult leader at any moment. It answers everything in this life, and, with a "God", the next.

Islam is a kind of "deistic communalism", or "holy" communism, if put enacted.

The Ummah, or collective, owns all, commands all, and regulates all, with Allah (through the spokesman -either a Caliph or Imam- in the position of 'His' mediator) as the chieftain/warlord/punisher/"bestower of booty".

Marx and Engels' failure was to dismiss the natural sacred hunger (for what they sneered away as the "opiate") as irrelevant to frail human nature.

If we did not die -and enter an Ineffable Mystery- such earthly answers might satisfy. But the deep, cosmic longing remains, therefore limited visions about the future of our species, given by such "de-god-ed" communal dogmas, will never please enough people to survive.

We need Supreme Answers, -even if they are later found to be utterly "mistaken". (Aztec gods, Moloch, etc.)

Any answer beats no answer.

Islam is one such attempt at an Answer.

One of the crudest, most brutal, self-delusional and inherently violent.

But, to a backward, resentful people, filled with envious revenge fantasies, it suffices.

It is Power to the powerless. Knowledge to the ignorant. And the Divine Weapon to the impotent.

What more could you want?

Especially if you are unwilling to take the harder path of serious education, studying comparative theories of the world and its beliefs, being humble in the face of the Universe's profundity, and taking ancient precepts like "Know thyself" and "It is greater to conquer yourself than the world" to heart.

Quick answers for the impatient usually win in the short run.

(1350 years seems to be the longest such a monomaniacal fixation has survived.)

But, Islam played on masculine weakness with the brilliance of a Machiavelli merged with an Atilla.
Letting little hometown despots terrorize their women, brutalize their neighbors, steal the goods of their betters, destroy the cultures of their superiors, and get 72 virgins if their failed.

It's almost as it the devil's 'Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness' was finally accepted.

By Mohammad.

Every three year old tantrum-throwing cretin would understand it perfectly.

Allah, thus- the Absolute Brat.

And his followers, the permanently infantile.

Susanp advises: "You might want to brush up on Islamic history, and not the revisionist version."

It matters not which version anyone brushes up on, the fact is it is there and it is deeply rooted.

Just as there are many "histories" of Islam, there are many faces and many expressions of it. Every aspect is human, every invention, every folly. I stand before it knowing that I, too, am human. Any one of us could have created, swallowed, and worshipped a similar silly nonsense.

Many of the details of sharia law are despicable to the modern psyche but Islam is not some static thing. It has changed and developed over time and the changes were more often instigated by the people. There is a good deal of communalism in Islam (thank you, profitsbeard, for that clarifying term).

And yes, profitsbeard, Mohammad did agree to unify worldly power with spiritual power. Jesus did say "no" to the former. However, neither you nor I would have heard of Jesus had not a worldly power taken Him under its wing.

Maybe a toddler can teach a grown man a thing or two. Toddlers know how to survive in a world which they know almost nothing about. Rather than be overwhelmed by it all (except on brief occasions when a tantrum relieves the pressure) they trot through their day trusting life to serve them well enough. And if sometimes life is cruel, still, they were happy until that moment and not anxious. Death takes you either way so why not be joyful until it does?

"Hugh wrote: "Islam is akin to Communism."

This is oft repeated nonsense."
-- from a highly selective quotation, in a posting above

What I wrote, and what must be quoted in full for the initial sentence to be interpreted correctly (for what follows shows the way in which the sentence "Islam is akin to Communism" is to be understood, as it cannot conceivably be understood if presented, unfairly, standing alone:

Islam is akin to Communism. Its adherents cannot be militarily subdued, though they can be prevented from acquiring the most dangerous kind of weaponry. But the conditions can be created, not by doing anything but by doing nothing, to force Muslims to confront the reasons for their despotic regimes, their economic paralysis, their moral and intellectual deficiencies, as demonstrated by the absence, for the past thousand years at least, of any of the philosophy, science, free and skeptical inquiry, that have made the West the West. And now, when all the non-Muslim parts of the world are, to one degree or another, open to change and to development, Islam, wrapped in its own (false) dreams of past glory, and in the immutable texts of Islam, and in the punishment meted out to all would-be apostates, is permanently stuck. So let it be stuck -- but let Muslims learn that they have only Islam itself to blame. And the best way to do this is to stay as far away from the Muslim world, to refrain from the messianic or merley good-hearted but naive and dangerous belief that everyone is malleable, everyone can be influenced for the better, and the West need not fear an encounter with the sly apologists for Islam. But it has every reason to fear, because too many people in the Western world cannot grasp the meretriciousness of Muslim spokesmen, and confuse the outward amiability, even liquid-brown-eyed kindnesses, that can conceal all manner of menace, detected -- if detected at all -- too late.

Posted by: Hugh at April 24, 2006 09:38 PM"

In that sense, in the sense in which it must be dealt with, by creating the conditions, or allowing the conditions to be created, that will force its adherents to find that their woes are attributable to Islam itself, as such Communists as Aleksandr Yakovlev and Gorbachev (upon whom the influence of a Czech roommate at MGU in the 1950s was extremely important) slowly came to understand. Offering up, without the context supplied by the entire paragraph that followed (and which has been cut-and-pasted above), the first sentence "Islam is akin to Communism" (to which anyone would immediately reply: "Akin" in what way, exactly? What do you mean? Tell us more. And of course I did tell that more, but you forgot to include it, in order to more easily mock what is not so mockable.

Furthermore, you go on to tell us that Islam is a "major and well established world religion." It is called a "world religion" faute de mieux. In fact, such a description may once have satisfied, but it satisfies no longer even if Muslims continue to describe Islam as just a "religion." It is far more than anything else calling itself a "religion." It is better called a religio-political system, one in which certain religious rituals (the Five Pillars) play a part, but not the central part. For also central to Islam is that doctrine of aggressive conquest known as Jihad, the struggle to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam and shrink the boundaries of Dar al-Harb, so that ultimately all barriers to the dominance of Islam, and to the Holy Law of Islam, are overcome. That is not tangential but central to Islam. New converts are not sought in order to save individual souls, but to find further recruits for the Army of Islam.

The poster in question then adds the following:

"There is a middle way called "integration" and it does mean both sides giving in a little.

I fully endorse the efforts to open all of our eyes to the dangerous aspects of Islam but the leap from there to a policy of "apostasize or die" smacks too much of reverse coercive conversion and I will have none of that."

What can he mean by "integration"? How does he propose to "integrate" members, not of an alien creed, but of an alien and a hostile creed, who are taught to retain their hostility toward all non-Muslims, taught again and again not to let it slip, in Qur'an, in Hadith, in the example of Muhammad? Just how do you propose to have the Infidels "give" even more, so that somehow Muslims will dease to believe in the divine right of Islam to dominate everywhere, and for Muslims to offer Infidels either conversion, death, or the permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, that if we look around the world today, in all the lands where Muslims rule, that is exactly the condition of non-Muslims, whether HIndus in Pakistan and Bangladesh, or Hindus and Confucians and Christians paying the disguised Jizyah of the "Bumiputra" system in Malaysia, or the mistreatment of Christian Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Iraq, and all non-Muslims among the foreigners now working in Saudi Arabia. The evidence is so conclusive, and so consistent, in time and space, and of course it would be, since it all is grounded in the same immutable texts of Islam. What conceivable further "giving" by the Infidels, who have already allowed into their midst, without too much thought, tens of millions of Muslims who everywhere have shown in their behavior and their aggressive demands for changes in Infidel laws, customs, manners, and understandings, an unwillingness to accept what the indigenous Infidels have created, and have the extraordinary nerve, as no other immigrants ever have had, to demand that the societies they settle in change, and accommodate them. What conceivable "integration" is possible -- save for the handful who will be willing to jettison Islam altogether, in a non-Muslim society where they can do so without risk of punishment?

I also wonder to whom that last comment quoted above is addressed. I assume that the poster, in declaring his opposition to the idea of forced conversion of Muslims -- "apostasize or die" -- is not attributing such an idea to me. To whom, then, is he offering a shudder of disapproval for such an idea? One would like to know.

I warmly approve of Hugh’s stance here. It is the way to go.

Of course, we should not go as far as to endanger too many people’s lives, but we have to go far enough, one way or another, for

1. Protecting ourselves
There sure will be an “after-Islam” era, but if we, the West, succumb to that plague, it won’t be such a good time. Thus we have to build some barriers between the West and Islam. The stronger the better.

2. Making Muslims understand the inanity of Islam
As long as things are mixed, as long as Muslims will be able to put the evil on others, the bulk of them will continue to believe that Islam, anyhow, is a fine thing. We have to crush that conviction, and leaving Muslims to themselves entirely is a good way to do it.

Concretely, it would be a banning of Islam. If the West comes that far, many Muslims who are content with just believe (that Islam is right) will start to think about it harder, and question its basic tenets, its divinity. When enough of them will give signs of that thinking, it will be time to open some gates again. For that is the only true reform Islam can make: to question its religious value till the answer is clear – there’s hardly any.

Besides, just to place the debate along those lines (no Islam anymore, ever) is a good thing in and by itself. It leads people to consider, imagine ways to drop the whole thing, and this has to start somewhere. I mean, it may not be the way it will be eventually, but to think of it in those terms sure is part of it. So this very debate, on refusing Islam altogether, is an excellent thing, a very necessary brainstorming. And as in any brainstorming, only positive ideas should make it to the record.

So, yes, let's say Islam is absolutely, definitely, totally incompatible with democracy, with human dignity, with freedom, and thus should be banned entirely, concretely. Then let’s talk about the best ways to get there.

I think Hugh is absolutely right. The only way muslims will ever realize the utter futility of islam is to be totally immersed in it, with no Western influence or assistance. They have been inculcated with the belief that they are superior but have been victimized by the inferior crusaders. They would blame all their problems on the Jews and colonialism for a while, but would soon learn that they need the West much more than the West needs them. When their oil is gone, and it will dry up, will there be any reason to maintain the facade of "friendship" with these primitives? Imagine the hordes of muslims that will be clamoring to get into the Great Satan or any Western country when the oil money stops flowing.

They may be religious fanatics of the worst kind, but they are human, and humans like to be comfortable. They will be forced to make some major adjustments in their societies, or suffer accordingly. Why should we let them come to our world and screw it up like their own? If they choose to fight amongst themselves as they have done for centuries, let them have at it. May the best sect win. I doubt if the average muslim will find "pure" islam an Elysian delight. We cannot impose democracy on these people and we have no right or obligation to try. Their religion forbids individual freedom, the benchmark of our civilization. They will never adapt to our ways; they will inexorably struggle to impose their perversions on us.

The accidental wealth of the islamic world, which would not exist if not for Western technology and expertise, is sufficient to take care of all the umma's needs. Why should we give them our money when they use theirs to spread their vile religion in our countries, and fund terrorists? Are we crazy?! Muslims are inherently bellicose; violence, terrorism, and constant conflict are all they understand. To them, compassion, kindness, and generosity are human frailties. It is completely insane to believe that they can permanently coexist peacefully with non-muslims.

Arizone-

Your comparison with 'toddlers gleefully wandering in safety' forgets the reason for their survival:

-a controlling, watchful adult.

So, are you comparing the West to the adult and Islam to the toddler?

Are we supposed to babysit this infantile cult as they blunder through creation, smashing what doesn't give them instant gratification?

But the world doesn't want the "global policeman" model.

So, as Hugh suggests, and you apparently unconsciously agree, we need to permit the Koranic brat to burn its own hands on the manifold 'stoves' of blistering reality, and wise up eventually on the scars of its own educating pain?

I concur.

No more infidel nursemaids for the Ummah's arrogant fantasy life.

Let Islam alone, to fail and fail again, in its contact with the hard truths of Nature, and her unforgiving Laws, whether of Thermodynamics or Non-contradiction.

And even watch stoically as they end up tumbling off myriad conceptual or literal cliffs.

Some only learn after the rake flies up and hits them in the face the tenth time they step on it.

(Or 1350, in some cases.)

We should let spoiled Islam educate itself.

(And maybe send iodine and sympathy.)

As Nietzsche said:

"They are like crabs: try to help them and they claw you; leave them alone, and they walk backwards."

Time to let Islam walk backwards on its own.

A lot of problems would be solved by terminating all aid and assistance to Muslim countries and blocking all immigration from those countries, but Europe doesn't feel that it's having any problems, so of course there's no need for solutions.

Hugh whined: "... but you forgot to include it, in order to more easily mock what is not so mockable."

What verbose tetchiness! I gave enough quote so people could see to which post I was referring. It would be tedious to quote more context than that. Where would it end? Do I need to quote the entire post? Do I need to quote the entire initial essay?

I'm delighted that I've got your goat enough to elicit such a delicious response. (I'm an old woman, by the way, just for the record.)

OK, enough banter. Let's look at the substance of your response.

You don't like me calling Islam merely a religion because you would rather describe it as a "religio-political system". That is still a religion but it is one that is more comprehensive in its scope than any previous religion. Christianity was merely a "religio-blank system" and Islam filled in the blank.

You show a Christian bias here, whether you call yourself a Christian or not. You are an heir to Christian thinking which defines religion in that restricted sense. "Get thee behind me, you Satanic political worldly beast!"

What gives you the right, the spiritual authority, to constrain religion so? To which God do you listen so exclusively? You sound very much like a political animal to me. You sound like one of God's creatures that has (at least) a political consciousness. The purely religio-blank consciousness is not so evident, being presumably personal or private or "secret". So be it. Still, if you have an ear for your own political deity, what is so wrong with Mohammad acknowledging this as a legitimate aspect of deity?

God encompasses all things. Why would She leave out politics?

When it comes to the topic of integration, you misunderstand my meaning here. You are exhibiting a complete lack of faith or trust in Muslim souls being able to adapt to modernity, democracy, secularism, etc. I think the ones who can't adapt, who find the tension too much to bear, are the Ali Sina's and Ibn Warraq's of this world. They throw out their Muslim heritage, their Muslim roots, and that is supposed to ease the tension. It doesn't work. These modern apostates don't sound serene.

(Mind you, they are doing an excellent job of extending our understanding of the faith they have abandoned and for this, I am extremely grateful to them.)

Integration is a tricky idea and it's understandable that both sides fear it. It is not assimilation which is what you make it sound like. It is not about the parent culture having to bend backwards to accommodate the incoming or "child" culture. It is about both sides making efforts at accommodation.

Where you misunderstand me is where you talk about what you have to give. All I ask is that you remain open to what Muslims might give. If you close your mind to that, if you insist that Islam will not change, just a little, to suit the modern world, then you will fail to notice the small changes, you will fail to encourage them, you will fail to congratulate Muslims on those small efforts.

Robert has a Jihad Watch and a Dhimmi Watch. What about - also - having an Integration Watch, a deliberate looking out for those small steps where a Muslim is "getting" what democracy is really all about or where a Christian is "getting" some essential point of Islam that renders it attractive enough to have survived 14 centuries?

Integration is like making a baby. It will not be a clone of the father, nor a clone of the mother. It will be the outcome of the parents' sexual and emotional interaction. In political terms, integration is the outcome of two cultures mingling and inter-relating. No one really knows what will come of it. Like any good parents you have to trust in greater forces, God if you like.

As far as I know, there is no equivalent to an amniocentesis here. We can only trust that a human phenomenon (us) "married" to another human phenomenon (them) will result in something that is still recognisably human.

Yes, "apostasize or die" is my paraphrase of your formula. What is incorrect in that?

ajm concluded:

So, yes, let's say Islam is absolutely, definitely, totally incompatible with democracy, with human dignity, with freedom, and thus should be banned entirely, concretely. Then let’s talk about the best ways to get there.

Susanp writes: "The only way muslims will ever realize the utter futility of islam is to be totally immersed in it, with no Western influence or assistance."
And what, pray tell, have Muslims been doing for the past 14 centuries or so? The current Western influence and "assistance" can only be dated back to a century or two and coincides with Islamic decline ... coincidence?

I used to be as delusional as you Arizona.

profitsbeard asks me: "So, are you comparing the West to the adult and Islam to the toddler?"

No, that was not my intention at all. Of course, the West is the adult or receiving "home" to the incoming Muslim in our lands but we are children when we try to grasp what Islam is about. Any one of us has a responsible adult side and an unknowing but still questing child side. We all need our mature as well as our youthful energies.

That is all I meant to say.

You assert that: "you apparently unconsciously agree"

There is no "apparent" to it. I simply disagree. I have no problem with letting people learn from their mistakes but I don't agree with the wording used, such as the depiction of Muslim peoples as "the Koranic brat". That is insulting both to Muslims (through its intent) and to toddlers (who are fine fellows if loved as they deserve to be loved).

As far as I can see, neither you nor Hugh nor any of your judgmental fellows are genuinely leaving Islam to its own devices. You are telling it loud and clear just what is wrong with it, just like a nagging and whining parent, just like a broken record with nothing new to say.

Jesus Christ Supercop,
With a name like yours I'm not surprised that you suffer from a delusional nature.

It's not my bedtime or anything but I've contributed quite enough to this debate. If anyone wants to take up any matters with me further, feel free to visit me here:
free2code forums (scroll down to Life/Other forums)

Thank you for the discussion and best wishes to you all.

Arizona wrote:

The first sentence is good. The second sentence should read: "Then let's deconstruct this nonsense and salvage whatever pearl of wisdom it might contain."

You mix up what you want to mix up, but you don’t use my words for that, please. What you propose is Muslims’ job, not ours. Let’s do our job, let them do theirs, and the world would go round.

While I think that Islam is incompatible with democracy, I wonder what can be done for those muslims who think that there are parts of the Quran that don't fit in our times. They are (intellectual) apostates, clearly, but they grew up muslims and I think it is a huge step to leave this system.

As a christian, you can leave church and still adhere to secular values which are not contradicting the christian values, as a muslim you accept a different set of values: Take the Golden Rule: In Islam it is restricted to the brethren, in the other faiths it is general.

I read Irshad Manji - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irshad_Manji -and I admire her stance, but I don't think it really works. Islam is flawed.
But I do not know what we in the West can do for these decent people other than offering the intellectual apostates a state and laws that protects them.

Arizona,

The truth of the matter is that Christianity resolved the whole " church-state " issue nicely when Jesus, being asked about paying the tax to Cessar and the answer is given. It is the famous " Render unto Cessar's what is Cessar's and render unto God's what is God's."
It all means that IT IS A MUST to keep the two seperated. This is the best way to keep the peace between church and state; which would create bigtime troubles when the two are conbined.

The above is the answer to what you call the
"religio-blank system" that you write about the Christian faith.

The Muslim faith makes the bad mistake of having mosque and state come together because it a recipe for trouble, which has produced bitter fruit in the form of state supportive terrorism. When faith and state are kept seperated, then you have peaceful and productive nation states.

FreeSpeech wrote:

But I do not know what we in the West can do for these decent people other than offering the intellectual apostates a state and laws that protects them.

Islam is systematically using the best things we have got for the worst of its chaotic purposes. It is actually using the First Amendment for killing religious freedom.

Arizona posted:

You are neither a Muslim nor (as I gather) from the Muslim world and you have absolutely no right to proclaim what a Muslim can and cannot do with his/her religion....You have no right either, to proclaim non-Jihadist Muslims as irrelevant. They are, to you, simply a nuisance factor because they render your own ideological Jihad unclear.

First, I dont think you have the right to say what I can or cant think. But still, I wont interfere with your right to write what you think.

Let us set aside what is one's right or not and address what you wrote.

A muslim who does not believe in the Koran as the literal word of Allah, effectively renders the whole of the Koran null and void. In no manner have I suggested that I'm the arbiter on what muslims should believe in or not. I'm just pointing out the ramifications of what Dominic posted in his conversations with some muslims.

Note what Dominic wrote

Dominic posted: They went on to freely admit that there was much in the Koran that they couldn't be having with.

It is not just interpretations but setting aside much in the koran. That effectively makes them apostates.

You wrote:

You have no right, either, to proclaim non-Jihadist Muslims as irrelevant. They are, to you, simply a nuisance factor because they render your own ideological Jihad unclear.

Non-Jihadist muslims, particularly those on the verge of Apostasy, are irrelevant in the context of what we are discussing. I never wrote that non-Jihadist Muslims were a nuisance. In fact, the more the better. It does no good at all if you misquote.

This war we are in is primarily concerned with the ideology of islam that requires its adherents to Jihad. It is not people but the ideology - an ideology that makes it a capital offence to leave islam. Muslims should have the freedom of choice as any other person, and if the religion makes that a capital offence, then it is not just a right but duty of all, to question all aspects of that ideology.

The travesty of a response by Arizona, whom I won't be raising any time soon, is answered below.

1. "I gave enough quote so people could see to which post I was referring."

Never mind the tin ear which would permit such a phrase as "gave enough quote." But to give one sentence: "Islam is akin to Communism" without then giving any of the very long paragraph that explains that opening sentence, will not do. No reasonable person could describe that as constituting giving "enough quote."

2. "verbose tetchiness!"

"Verbose" is used when there is an "unnecessary" plenitude of words. My plenitude is necessary. Nor does "tetchiness." I am sweetness incarnate.
Ask my parakeet. Ask my gold fish. And my teacher says that if I keep up the good work, some of my reach schools will actually be my safety schools.

3. God, by the way, is not "She." In my view, He doesn't exist, but if he did, he would certainly choose to look just as Michelangelo depicted him.

Now to the rest:

5. "You don't like me calling Islam merely a religion because you would rather describe it as a 'religio-political system.'"

It's not a question of "like." Islam is quite different from all other major world religions (and the minor ones too). It is a system for the Total Regulation of Life. Furthermore, behind the Five Pillars (shehada, zakat, salat, Ramadan, hajj) of individual worship, there is so much more about the division of the world between Believer and Infidel, and between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, so much about the need to forever push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam at the expsense of Dar al-Harb, so much about the need for Islam to dominate everywhere, so much about war in Qur'an and Hadith, and not war as simply something of antiquarian interest (like the wars of the Israelites, or the wars in the Mahabharata -- which given its length might best be read in the abridged version by R. K. Narayan).

To call Islam a "religion" without more is to ignore that entire, central aspect of this belief-system. Furthermore, as is clear from your own expressed sentiments -- or sentimentality, about this "world religion" -- that word "religion" tends to be accorded by many a kind of mechanical respect, and that respect is misplaced. One should cast a beady eye on all beliefs, and see which ones represent a geopolitical threat, and which ones appear most interested, if they do make universalist claims, in saving individual souls. Save all the souls you want. Just don't kill or subjugate those who are, by the lights of your own faith, Infidels.

6. "You show a Christian bias here, whether you call yourself a Christian or not."

What Christian bias? How? I am a content non-believer. Took no effort at all. Would take a great effort to make me into anything else, and I doubt if it would take. On what basis do you make such pronouncements -- you who accuse others here of presuming to tell Muslims what to think. Actually we are not presuming here to tell Muslims what to think. The audience we seek to reach is that of Infidels who are uneasy about remaining ignorant of Islam, and who wish to find out what the whole thing is all about, and who have been through enough "Dialogues" and "Mosque Outreach Nights" and "that nice Pakistani I work with wouldn't hurt a fly" stages of Muslim-apologetics as to be awarethat something very funny and phony is going on, and wish to seek, outside the army of apologists, for information that helps one to make sense of Muslim demands, Muslim acts, Muslim attitudes that become completely explicable once one has studied and thoroughly assimilated the nature, and content, of Islam.

7. "All I ask is that you remain open to what Muslims might give. If you close your mind to that, if you insist that Islam will not change, just a little, to suit the modern worldready to try something else: to wit, knowledge."

Haven't we been here before: "All we are saying -- is give peace a chance." How much longer? Another 1350 years? Yes, we've been here before. What is it that Muslims can reasonably be asked to do? Stop misleading unwary Infidels. Stop denying 1350 years of Muslm conquest subjugation. Stop pretending that the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam was wonderful, an example of "tolerance" and so on. It wasn't. And it certainly isn't now: just look around the world. Stop that highly selective quotation of the Qur'an, and the complete omission of the Hadith, except insofar as some highly doubtful (in the Muslim view) hadith can be pulled up to defend Islam, as that one about Muhammad returning from the Lesser Jihad (of war) to the Greater Jihad of domestic life, and the struggle to remain on the Path of Allah. Muslims know perfectly well the difference between the accepted hadith and the ones that are apocryphal, just as they know perfectly well what meaning is given to the Qur'an, and to such phrases as Sura 2.256. Stop all the nonsense and lies, because the more Infidels are forced to study for themselves, and the more times they are lied to about the contents of Qur'an and Hadith, the more suspicious they become, and the more determined they are to spread the word, with implacable determination, about Islam.

8. "Integration is like making a baby. It will not be a clone of the father, nor a clone of the mother. It will be the outcome of the parents' sexual and emotional interaction. In political terms, integration is the outcome of two cultures mingling and inter-relating. No one really knows what will come of it. Like any good parents you have to trust in greater forces, God if you like."

What does this mean? You can simply assume that somehow Islam will stop being Islam, and will create, in its encounter with Infidels, some new product of "two cultures mingling and inter-relating." How would they mingle and inter-relate when Islam does not practice, and does not preach, either pluralism or tolerance -- not in any of the lands conquered by Islam. Isn't the historical evidence already overwhelming? Why do you say "no one really knows what will come out of it"? We know what comes out of it. Look at the Copts who were the original inhabitants of Egypt when Arab Muslims invaded. How are things for them? How are things for the Maronites who were living in Lebanon before the Arab Muslim invaders? What wonderful syntheiss came out of the Muslim invasion of North Africa, which had been an important part of Christian civlization (Tertullian and St. Augustine both were from North Africa)? What happened when Islam "mixed" with Zoroastrianism in Sassanian Persia? I'll tell you what happened: the Zoroastrians suffered persecution for 1300 years, and a state that was once totally Zoroastrian now has about 150,000 out of 70 milliion people (some did manage to flee, and their descendants are the Parsis of Mumbai). How did "Islam" and "Hinduism" or "Jainism" all get along? What was produced by that little Experiment in International Living? The destruction of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples, the mass killing of some 60-70 million Hindus during the 250 years of Muslim rule, the forced conversion of those who are the ancestors of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi Muslims today. The enslavement of whole villages, matter-of-factly described by the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta in his Rihla. What about the Hindus all over the East Indies, and the Buddhists? How have they fared, what wonderful syncretistic mixture has emerged from their encounter with Islam? How much of history do you expect us to overlook -- all of it, or just 99% of it? Are you familiar with the explicit rules governing the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule? Start with Antoine Fattal's "Le statut legal des non-Musulmanes en pays d'Islam" or the many articles in English on the same subject. It should make your blood run cold. Or at least prevent you from wishful thinking, pieties, and that determination to avoid reality, and charge us with the most absurd things, such as that baseless "apostasize or die" business you offer without the slightest evidence except your own misreading and misunderstanding.

9. "I think the ones who can't adapt, who find the tension too much to bear, are the Ali Sina's and Ibn Warraq's of this world. They throw out their Muslim heritage, their Muslim roots, and that is supposed to ease the tension."

This is, for me, the most maddening of your collection of maddening remarks. What presumption! What gall! What the hell do you know about these people, who are the most intelligent, most morally aware, bravest, and also, by the way, often the funniest people who, through no fault of their own, were born into Islam and dared, often at great risk, often endangering their relations with their own families, to see their way clear from this totalitrian and primitive belief-system that doe snot contain within itself the possibility for change, given the immutable and uncreated nature of the Qur'an, and the inability to dare to tamper with the record of the sayings and acts of Muhammad, a most disturbing model of the Perfect Man.

As for this business of the supposed inability to "bear the tension" which in your view must explain the apostates, what are you talking about? They cannot bear "the tension" of accpeting Islam, a primitive system of Total Regulation? It is unclear, perhaps even to you, because having then presumed to criticize such people (I doubt if you know a single outspoken and articulate ex-Muslim, because if you did, you could not conceivably write this kind of thing. Go out, find a few, and talk to them. They don't need to "ease the tension" of being Muslims. They were born into Islam. As they got older, and had the freedom, mostly by living in the West, to compare Islam with what their studies, even of comparative religion, or of Western philosophy, allowed them to learn, they became more and more dissatisfied, and then appalled, with Islam. Given how apostates are treated, they were brave to make that sense of dismay public, in the hope to help others, both Infidels and Muslims, see the reality of Islam. Have you read "Why I Am Not a Muslim" (Ibn Warraq) or "Islam the Arab National Religion" or the collection of testimonies of ex-Muslims collected in "Leaving Islam" (ed. Ibn Warraq). Until you have read at least this much, you have no right to pontificate on the subject of ex-Muslims. Or are you merely repeating what some local Muslims tell you, as tney try to explain away the phenomenon of apostates from Islam? I suspect the latter. They are at their wits' end, about these apostates, and this "they're only trying to avoid the tension of being a Muslim in the West" is the only, transparently phony, argument that they can offer. You sound like you've bought it hook, line, and sinker. (Anwar Shaikh).'

10. "Yes, "apostasize or die" is my paraphrase of your formula. What is incorrect in that?"

Short answer: Everything. I don't want to treat Muslims as they would treat us. I don't want to force them to give up Islam "or die." I don't want to kill them. I want their presence in the Infidel lands kept to a minimum, and their attempts to bully us, to frighten us, to change our laws, customs, manners, and understandings, responded to with implacable and relentless opposition. I want them only to have to start connecting the dots, the dots between the figure of Muhammad and the despots who rule, the belief that a ruler's legitiimacy comes not from the will of the governed, but only from Allah, as his will is expressed in the Qur'an, and from the example of Muhamamad. I want Muslims to begin to realize that the habit of mental submission, the hatred for free and skeptical inquiry, that Muslims rely on to prevent, precisely, apostasy and all other forms of questioning of Islam, also prevents the enterprise of science, and encourages conspiracy theories, belief in wild rumors, credulity of all sorts beyond that required by Islam. I want Muslims to connect their own economic paralysis with the inshallah-fatalism that Islam itself encourages, in every way, including that of the phrases that fill every other sentence that are meant to remind us that we are helpless slaves of Allah, and that what is to be, will be, and there is nothing we can do about it, and furthermore, that Allah knows best. That is what I call inshallah-fatalism. What do you call it?

I could go on. But ten items have been enough to expoose this proffered farrago of selective and unfair quotation (one sentence did not entitle you to boast that you "gave enough quote"); presumption about my own beliefs and about the reasons for why apostates such as Ibn Warraq have come to the conclusions they have come to. And that ridiculous "apostasize or die" charge for which not a single phrase, out of my thousands of available postings, is offered in evidence -- what kind of idiots do you take me, or the rest of those who come to this website, for?

Ten palpable hits. I was intent, you see, on doing a little more than merely grazing Arizona.

Where's #4? My belief in the Well-Ordering Principle has been trod upon.

Actually, I tip my hat, as one whose "default sound" (i.e., anytime I do something Windows doesn't like) is "Son, you got a panty on yore haid" from Raising Arizona.

ajm: "You mix up what you want to mix up ..."

The sentence was yours to deconstruct. Muslims are only responsible for deconstructing their own sentences.

FreeSpeech: "As a christian, you can leave church and still adhere to secular values..."

Those "secular values" are loaded with Christian ethics. They are simply Christianity with the weird supernatural elements discarded.

It's not so long ago that it would have been unthinkable for a Christian to leave the church and yet still retain the ethical structure derived from it.

I can't see why, given just a little more time, Muslims cannot "catch up" and do the same. Processes of this sort take generations to achieve and Muslims have only been really intermingling with us closely for decades.

bigcatgirl13106: "IT IS A MUST to keep the two seperated."

What Jesus "said" - "Render unto Caesar" - is what a Gospel writer wrote and it can be interpreted simply as a call to maintain the distinction, not necessarily to keep the two apart and unrelated. The Western civilization we live in today is a result of the marriage of Christian spirituality with Roman political presence.

The two are NOT seperated, even to this day.

Both Bush and Blair (and Howard here in Australia) are "God fearing" men and they consult their own conscience (God within the soul) when making decisions. They apply the ethical values that are derived from Jesus' teachings. It is a nonsense to believe they consult ONLY the people. If they did, they would become vacuous popularist puppets with no substance to their leadership.

Where's #4?

Maybe it's like Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

4 - Nothing. No fourth thing.

These things tend to come in batches of three (Kings/Wishes/Stooges), five (Porter's Forces), seven (Wonders of World), ten (Commandments) or twenty (questions). That's why Sheikh Abdullah El-Faisal's "Nineteen Reasons to Hate Jews" was so silly. Especially as one of the reasons was "because they are hateful", bringing it down to eighteen, an even sillier number than nineteen.

Muslims have only been really intermingling with us closely for decades. - Arizona

Actually, you've touched on something interesting there: The problem is, Islam doesn't "mingle." It infiltrates (which may look innocent enough at first, and fool many a Westerner), it dominates as soon as it can, but mingling just won't do.

Take, for example, the 781-year run of Islamic rule in Spain. All that convivencia caca aside, that's the most telling example of Muslim "intermingling" with the West.

These things tend to come in batches of three... - Interested

I take my authoritative lists of facts in Mersenne primes (2^n + 1).

Then, to quote another Python moment: "Five is right out."

That is, prime numbers than can be expressed as 2^n + 1. Not just any n will do. :)

poisonr: "If I thought the bible and the gospel are bad books I wouldn't call myself christian."

Certainly, fundamentalist Christians do not accept people like myself (a mere heir to Christianity) as "true" Christians. I therefore avoid the term for self-identification. Jesus is one of my main doorways to deity but I don't feel the need to treat the Bible or the Gospels as more than great literature. If there were fewer fundamentalist Christians around, muddying the waters, I would forthrightly call myself Christian. As it is, all sorts of accusations and false assumptions would flow from that assertion.

They cheated with the Seven Deadly Sins. They got up to six, and should have called it a day, but they knew seven was a biblical-sounding number, so they scraped around or cast about or whatever and put sloth in.

Sloth isn't a sin at all. If Mohammed had just slobbed about in his tent in a drunken stupor, or Booz Endormi as some French poet called it, the world would have been a better place.

I can't see why, given just a little more time, Muslims cannot "catch up" and do the same. Processes of this sort take generations to achieve and Muslims have only been really intermingling with us closely for decades. Posted by: Begum Arizona

What makes you think that they will do in 1410 years what they couldn't go in 1400 years? When you say "us", you can only be meaning the physical us, who are all a few decades old, and you can't be counting our forebears. As Hugh pointed out in his response to your ignorant remarks, Islam has come into contact with countries from North Africa to the East Indies, and every one of those contacts has been confrontations. I guess there was something wrong with everyone of these civilizations - be it the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Sassanids in Persia, the Rajputs in India, the native Hindus in Indonesia. Nothing wrong at all with any of their Muslim enemies.

Given these generations of experience, the last thing we need is a worldwide social experiment. Muslims need to be collectively expelled from Infidel lands. It's not "apostasize or die", as you so crudely put it; it's "apostasize or leave". It's not enough that Infidels can't be Infidels in dar-ul-Islam; they can't even be that in dar-ul-Harb.

We don't need integration with such troglodytes. We need them quarantined. You can join them, if you so desire, but you have no business telling us what we have to put up with. Not in Australia, not in US, not Europe, not India, not Thailand, not anywhere in dar ul Harb.

"What Jesus "said" - "Render unto Caesar" - is what a Gospel writer wrote and it can be interpreted simply as a call to maintain the distinction, not necessarily to keep the two apart and unrelated. The Western civilization we live in today is a result of the marriage of Christian spirituality with Roman political presence.

The two are NOT seperated, even to this day.

Both Bush and Blair (and Howard here in Australia) are "God fearing" men and they consult their own conscience (God within the soul) when making decisions. They apply the ethical values that are derived from Jesus' teachings. It is a nonsense to believe they consult ONLY the people. If they did, they would become vacuous popularist puppets with no substance to their leadership. "

Arizona,

What the above Gospel means is that the Christian faith and its spiritual aspects is to be lived in the full by believers and not depending on a state church. There is nothing wrong with discerning out what God wills for in your life. The Christian faith is a relationship with God. Also because of the presence of believers, Western society has benefited. But also the Christian faith has benefited because there is no state church, but the allowence of different Christian churches. Also it keeps the politics out and helps people fully put into effect the positives of Christian guided values.

DP111: "First, I dont think you have the right to say what I can or cant think. But still, I wont interfere with your right to write what you think."

I said nothing about your right to think, only about your right to "proclaim".

What I "say" is what I write and only the site owner can interfere with my right to write here.

A muslim who does not believe in the Koran as the literal word of Allah, effectively renders the whole of the Koran null and void.

I would refer you here to my post above to poisonr. It is fundamentalist Christians who deny me the right to call myself a Christian while I treat the Bible merely as great literature. It is fundamentalist Muslims who deny progressive Muslims the right to call themselves Muslims while they treat the Koran merely as great literature.

The Islamists really don't need your help in this. Rather, the Irshad Manji's of this world need your support and understanding. Many can't understand how she can still call herself a Muslim. She can do it because she's braver and more forthright than I am.

I have no beef with defending a Muslim's right to question, criticize and even leave Islam. I have no beef with aiding and abetting the non-Muslim world's questioning, criticizing and judging of Islam.

I DO have a beef with denying the right of a Muslim to understand Islam in his/her own way, to appreciate some bits and disapprove of other bits, while still identifying with the whole ... just as I do with Christianity.

Arizona

You categorically wrote

You are neither a Muslim nor (as I gather) from the Muslim world and you have absolutely no right to proclaim what a Muslim can and cannot do with his/her religion....You have no right either, to proclaim non-Jihadist Muslims as irrelevant.

That is I have no right to write about views - even though I never wrote what Muslims can or cannot do with their religion.

If according to you I have the right to think but not to write about it, what use is it anyway? In any case you wouldnt know of it. A pointless and absurd bit of logic. Then you weasel out by saying that only What I "say" is what I write and only the site owner can interfere with my right to write here.

Precisely, and that is why you have no right to tell me what I can or cannot write, though that bit of admonition didnt strike you when you wrote that "I had no right". This is much of the same tenor, that we in the West have no right to caricature anything in Islam.

And who cares what fundamentalist Christians think of you - totally irrelevant point, as long as they do not behead you or anyone else, using their beliefs as justification. When they start doing that, you can be sure that I, and many others, will criticise them, regardless whether we have the right or not.

You posted:

I have no beef with defending a Muslim's right to question, criticize and even leave Islam.

Good that you have no beef that a Muslim has the right to criticise or even leave islam. Unfortunately your "no beef" is again irrelevant. The real beef is that any muslim who dares to leave Islam is subject to a murderous fatwa, justified by Islamic tenets. And if you have no beef with that, then that is your problem?

You seem to have no compassion for those who suffer under the lash of Islam, whether they are Muslims or Christians in Muslim nations.

Hugh: "The travesty of a response by Arizona ... => Ten palpable hits."

1. I'm merely assigning a greater intelligence to the readers here than you seem to be.

2. Your "plenitude" may be necessary but "verbose" it nevertheless is.

3. God is "She" if I say so and Michelangelo depicted Her very nicely indeed.

4. Silence is indeed golden.

5. Every major world religion is "a system for the Total Regulation of Life". Islam is different from the others, yes, but you could say the same for any of the others.

6. I would refer you here to my posts above to poisonr and then to DP111.

7. You have misquoted me but it looks accidental.

The current "war" has been going on for 5 years (or 5 decades if you want to include the Israel wars). An exaggerated use of fuzzy logic will stretch it back 1350 years. Yes, give it time.

8. You are confusing integration with syncretism which is only one way to solve the tension between two cultures. (Did that long paragraph omit Sikhs or did I miss something?)

9. As it happens, I have read this and that, enough to form an opinion. You sound just like the Muslim apologists who insist I read heaps of stuff before I can be deemed to truly understand Islam. Have you mastered ancient Arabic so you can be equipped to truly understand the Koran?

10. I fully endorse your defensive strategies for standing up to Islamic attempts at dominance. I don't agree with your bullying tactics to alter their beliefs. "I want Muslims to begin to realize .." the truth as you see it. As I and some others have noted, your proposal could result in the futile deaths of innocent Muslims, people who have every right to their beliefs.

You simply cannot target Islam as a whole without targetting Muslims as a whole.

I can see that further comments have been posted while I was responding to ones I found here this morning. I need to go to work now but will try to respond further later.

Thank you to everyone involved. I'm finding this a very interesting discussion.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald

Wolves in sheep's clothing on an extremist Islamic mission

http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/wolves-in-sheeps-clothing-on-an-extremist-islamic-mission/2006/04/22/1145344316019.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Via LGF.

7. You have misquoted me but it looks accidental. The current "war" has been going on for 5 years (or 5 decades if you want to include the Israel wars). An exaggerated use of fuzzy logic will stretch it back 1350 years. Yes, give it time.

8. You are confusing integration with syncretism which is only one way to solve the tension between two cultures. (Did that long paragraph omit Sikhs or did I miss something?)

There's no "current" war. The point at Jihadwatch has been that all wars waged by Muslims - be it Palestinians against Israelis, Pakistanis against Indians, Bosnians/Kosovars vs Serbs, Chechens vs Russians, Indonesians vs their Christians, Malaysians vs their Hindus, al Qaeda vs the West, etc is ONE war - a war to convert the world of Infidels into a world of Islam. A war that started 1400 years ago, and has continued ever since, with varying intensity at various theaters. There may be different local combatants at various places, but it's an easy fallacy to make that these wars are unconnected. Granted that thugs from Hamas may have no contacts with those in Lashkar e Toiba, but their goal remains the same, albeit in different places - kill the Infidels. (Problem being that not too many Infidels have realized it.) Just as the Battle of Midway and the Battle of El Alamein were part of the same war, similarly a suicide bombing in the Neve Shaanan area of Tel Aviv is a part of the same war as a terror attack on the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi. And note that both these 'battlefields' are in Infidel terretory.

As for the Sikhs, I fail to see how your point is strengthened had Hugh mentioned them. Of the 10 Sikh Gurus, two were executed by the Moghuls, while one was assassinated by a Pathan. Even though Sikhism started as a religion that was supposed to be equi-distant from both Hinduism and Islam, persecution at the hands of the Muslims ensured that they were tightly allied with the Hindus. They were not given any better treatment than other Infidels.

Rush Limbaugh once said that the way to achieve peace in a war is for one side to win. Peace is something that can only be enforced - it's called terms of surrender. You are welcome to root for Islam in this confrontation, but don't pretend that peace is going to be achieved in any way other than a total victory - either for dar ul Harb, or for dar ul Islam.

This Arizona character thinks that a cogent refutation of Hugh's lengthy latter post can be accomplished with snide aphoristic pot-shots.

On another, related note, Arizona wrote:

"God encompasses all things. Why would She leave out politics?"

This is precisely the infantile logic which Muslims clamp onto like terriers clamping onto a bone they will not yield. One can at least understand why the Muslim mentality, impoverished by a lack of civilizational progress (and motivated by a divine imperative to worship regression), would find sustenance in such a rigid bone. One is dismayed when a Westerner like Arizona (watch for her to disingenuously declaim "How do you know I'm a Westerner?"), who should know her history a little better, would proffer up this bone of logic at this late stage of the game, after the West has gone through at least 5 centuries of argument, discussion, intellectual ferment, political strife and violence -- all agonizingly working out this very complex issue that has effectively dismantled the theocracy of Christendom and given painful but rewarding and spectacularly productive and beneficent birth to the modern paradigm of the highest degree of separation of religion and state in all history, on all levels -- from high culture, to popular culture, to societal behavior, to laws, to philosophy, to education, to politics, to family relations, to individual conscience.

Response to AZ (which, by the way, means "I" in Church Slavonic):

1. You mean calling a single sense an ample quotation, when you leave out a whole paragraph of elaboration without which that first sentence makes no sense -- because in your own revealing phrase, you "gave enough quote" -- is actually a tribute to the intelligence of readers. In what way, exactly?

2. I won't bother to reply. I find myself so often a pleasure to read.

3. I am entitled to imagine the God I don't believe in, and I certainly would not have the modish bad taste not to believe in a God other than the one depicted by Michelangelo. You can do what you wish -- for all I know, your god is a dead ringer for Andrea Dworkin. I like my Gods -- the ones I don't believe in -- patriarchal. I'm just a traditional atheist. The village smithy kind, under the chestnut tree, with large and sinewy hands.

4. During Study Hall -- otherwise Mr. Murphy might send you to Detention.

5. This is nonsense. Does Christianity tell you how to wear your hair? Every single food you can or cannot eat? Every single article of clothing that is permissible and what parts of the body must be clothed? Even the way you wash, or wipe yourself? Really -- I hadn't noticed Jesus or for that matter Moses or for that matter the Buddha or for that matter the Rig Veda telling us all those things. I'll have to re-read them. I'm sure you must have some basis for this assertion, other than merely pulling thoughts and words out of the air.

6. Can't be bothered to look.

7. Where is the misquotation? Chapter, please, and verse.

8. "Tension between two cultures"? That does not begin to describe what happens to non-Muslims under Islam. Have you read anything on the treatment of non-Muslims after Jihad-conquest? Did that figure of 60-70 million Hindus killed mean nothing? Did those Zoroastrians who vanished, those Copts who were much diminished, those Christians who disappeared from North Africa, those Buddhists and Greco-Bactrian civilizations of Afghanistan, those Hindus from the East Indies? You think you can simply pass over that, and blithely talk about "tension" between "two cultures"? Look, Islam divides the world between Believers, who form a community, the umma al-islamiyya, and Infidels, who are despised and, if allowed to live, can only live, under the Holy Law of Islam, according to strict and very onerous conditions, including but hardly limited to the payment of a capitation tax, the Jizyah, and with a whole host of other political, economic, and social disabilities. Are you pretending that that division of the world between Believer and Infidel is not central to Islam?

9. You've read "enough to form an opinion." How much is that? One book? Two books? Three bookshelves worth? Books by Karen Armstrong and John Esposito? The Qur'an in some godawful bowdlerized form, or the full Qur'an, with explanatory notes (including those that demonstrate how much milder the Qur'an is in English than in the original, as with the Arabic word translated into English as "punishment" but which means so much more, practically torture, and what one must do when confronted with obvious internal contradictions in the Qur'an itself. And the Qur'an itself simply will not do, either. You need to read a few hundred of the Hadith, and then to read about Muhammad. He, not Allah, is the central figure in Islam. He is the Hero of the tale, he is the Main Personage, he is the Perfect Man. Well, you can't really judge what that might mean unless you find out all about Muhammad, and what he did. And that includes the Banu Qurayza, Asma bint Marwan, Abu Akaf, the Khaybar Oasis, the Treaty of Hudaibiyya, little Aisha, and another four dozen incidents that Muslims hope you either will never find out about, or if so, will allow them to "explain it all to you."

As for your remark that in my insistence that "whereof we do not know, thereof we should not speak," take it up with Ludwig. It is an obvious point. And to tell me that I "remind" you of Muslims -- the kind who try to shut Infidels up by telling them that they "don't know Arabic" or "don't know enough" -- that is absurd. I want you to unintimidatedly learn everything you can about Islam. They do not. I want you to read the Qur'an, the full Qur'an, with real understanding. They want to be able to quickly guide you through it, and to helpfully point to a few passages -- Sura 2.256 for example, but not Sura 2.257. Oh, they've been "explaining" Islam to unwary Infidels for years. It's down to an unnatural science. And while I encourage you to read the Hadith and the Sira, Muslims, and CAIR, who don't mind handing out Qur'ans because they know much of the original does not come through, many phrases remain puzzlingly vague to Infidels, and the contradictions that remain in the text but have been settled by the doctrine of abrogation, make the Qur'an seem, bloody and violent as it is, much less so than it really is. There is nothing in commmon between the Muslim desire to prevent you from finding out more, and my desire that you find out more.

How do you know you know enough to "form an opinion"? On what basis do you possess such self-assurance? Do you feel you hav adequately answered not only me, but all the others who have taken issue with you at this friend? You haven't.

10. You have misunderstood me completely. I don't want to "bully" Muslims. I don't want to have much to do with them at all. I want to have as little to do with them as possible. I want their presence in the Infidel countries of the West limited, immigration by Musliims halted, and the conditions that increase the political or economic power of Muslims changed -- by government fiat, or by private parties making private choices as to where to give their custom.

"I want Muslims to begin to realize .." the truth as you see it. That does not mean I want to send missionaries to them. I don't. That doesn't mean I want to do a thing to them. I simply want them, unaided by Infidels, to confront their own failures. That's it. Is that aggressive, or bullying? I just don't want to remake the Muslim world, to save them time and again through foreign aid, through free access to our education and medical care and our advanced societies. They have been for the past 33 years the recipieints of the largest transfer of wealth -- all of it unearned wealth, some $10 trillion dollars in oil and gas revenues -- iin human history. Fantastic. And what have they done with it? Still no modern economies, still reliance on wage-slaves (and in some cases real slaves, or quasi-slaves) from abroad. Still despotisms, with the only one of the Muslim states that is a semi-democracy in the Western sense being the one country that systematically constrained Islam -- Turkey. Socially, the treatment of women and of minorities remains, by Western standards, completely barbaric (see the Copts, the Kurds, the black Africans in Sudan, the Berbers)in Muslim-majority countries. Intellectually, nothing in science, nothing in music, hardly a thing in art (save for some mosques, and Qur'anic calligraphy) -- and that's that. Leave them alone. Let their most advanced minds begin to figure things out, and connect the dots that lead to Islam. Leave us Infidels out of it. We did not in any way cause those failures; Islam itself has been the cause.

That's it.

I suggest that should you take the trouble to answer, it better be good. This is not a cozy little chat room where you can just mosey on in and set a spell, and offer up your own views, and assume they will be treated with respect becuase, you see, they are your views. They won't. I have less patience now than I did a year or two ago, having wasted so much time having to suffer through those who obstinately keep repeating the same thing, and remain mulishly incapable of actually learning more, thinking more, and beginning to make sense. No, I no longer suffer those mules gladly.

If all you offer is the kind of thing you have been offering at this thread, you will soon be posting into the ether. We can't waste time and space. This is not Hyde Park Corner.

I certainly appreciate Arizona's comments and the call for seperation from Hughd between Islam and secular Western society. I feel that neither side should overtake and conquer the other because in their seperation each defines the other. I have no common religion and am at the outer edges of the Western, secular side, beyond Libertarianism almost to the point of blissful anarachy. However, I respect the devout Muslim living in Iran who has submitted to Islam and has relgion as the central guiding principle of his life. I am willing to accept the decadence of Western society as a payment for my ability to live in freedom although I in no way condone it. That Muslim in Iraq need fear nothing from me

except

if he raises his sword to kill our conquer me, then I must defend myself, my country, my culture,my kindred abroad. If Dominic's Muslim friends stay pat in their fear and do nothing to rid the demons that have seized their religion and have used it to try to subjugate or kill Infidels, like myself, then unfortunately they will become part of the problem. The Islamic Fascists have started this war in the name of their religion, Islam.

My father entered World War II as a mere kid of 17 but with the ideal that he was defending his country and his world against a cruel, totalitarian regime whose intent was to enslave and destroy the principles of Freedom that he believed in. His willingness to risk his life along with the countless other Americans and Westerners have allowed me to live in a land of plenty and to bring his grandchildren into a world of unlimited possibilities. I feel another form of Totalitarianism has sprung up, this time in a relgious context. We have to know what side we're on.

That is still a religion but it is one that is more comprehensive in its scope than any previous religion. Christianity was merely a "religio-blank system" and Islam filled in the blank.
Posted by Arizona

Arizona, you refer to Christianity in the past tense, why? Islam did not fill any blanks in Christianity; the authors of the Qur'an plagiarized the Bible and the Torah, twisted and perverted the stolen material, added Arabic myths, superstitions, and fantasies, and composed a manifesto of muslim superiority and perpetual war. The fact that the religion of islam dictates to muslims how to address bodily functions; dress; bathe; eat; sleep; engage in sexual relations; and perform endless, asinine daily rituals hardly makes it superior or "more comprehensive", only ridiculous. What do these things have to do with the worship of God? Islam is an insidious form of mind control achieved through brainwashing.

You blamed islamic decline on Western influence, or inferred as much. During the time that islamic lands were colonized by the Europeans, there was modernization and attitudes did change. But the die-hard mullahs, imams, sheiks, and other radical elements could not allow modernization, Western cultural influence, progress. These things threatened islam and its strangle-hold on muslims. So they ran the Europeans out of their countries and have been whining and moaning ever since about "colonization" and how it crippled them. They cripple themselves, but they are "the best of people", the rightful rulers of the world, so why do they consistently remain the poorest, most illiterate, most ineffectual and helpless of all people? Why it's the fault of the Jews, Israel, the Great Satan, and the crusaders, of course.

The truth of the matter is that the islamic world has tasted Western progress, modernity, brilliance, and ingenuity, is incapable of replicating Western achievements because of the restrictions and inhibitions of islam, and it covets our prosperity. Muslims believe that they are entitled to seize the fruits of our labor, our prosperity, our success, simply because they are muslims, they are superior, and allah told muhammad to plunder, pillage, murder, rape, kill and enrich muslims at the expense of the infidels. And you think these medieval savages are entitled to invade our countries and "practice their religion", despite what practicing that religion entails? I can't decide if you are a convert to islam, an ignorant useful idiot, or a self-hating, suicidal liberal.

Shinoliite: The problem is, Islam doesn't "mingle."

I would agree that it hasn't mingled much before and I know of no fruitful result of the Spanish convivencia unless you count Ibn Arabi. Maybe we should be counting him ...

Islam has no other option but to mingle today in the global village that we've become. It doesn't have a lot of experience of being on the subservient side of a power relationship (except with Allah) so it does have quite a bit to learn.

Then again, do we have all that much experience ourselves? Certainly any remnants of European pagan culture would say so. Pagan Europe was dominated by the Roman Empire and the Christianity it then forced onto it. Some see the Nazi holocaust as a revenge attack on the roots of the Christian aggressor.

How much is our current anger and fear of Islam rooted in that experience? None of us likes to be bullied but we've all been bullied many times and long before Islam came onto the scene.

Shinoliite: "Five is right out."

Not if you're looking for the quintessential truth.

Infidel Pride: What makes you think that they will do in 1410 years what they couldn't go in 1400 years?

Rome wasn't built in a day. After 1600 years, Christianity saw fit to burn Giordano Bruno; given another 3 decades it had progressed to merely threatening Galileo, forcing him to recant, placing him under house arrest for the rest of his life, and banning his writings. If Islam can progress as fast as that in the next ten years it will be doing pretty well.

bigcatgirl13106: There is nothing wrong with discerning out what God wills for in your life.

I would entirely agree. Only, when Tony Blair consults his conscience (God in the soul) over whether to take his country to war, how different is that from a duly elected Iranian president doing the same (only calling his conscience "Allah" rather than "Jesus")?

DP111,
You have every right to write whatever you want and I have every right to deny you the authority to proclaim. Others may accept your authority on the matter. I don't, so get over it.

DP111: An article in the Sydney Morning Herald

Sorry, I thought people here knew about this rather local matter. I should have included that link in an earlier post. I found out about this meeting here at Dhimmi Watch:
Bolt: Muslims here who say democracy is a no, no

I have watched the videos at risala.org and what is scary is how articulate, educated and even incisive the speakers are. No ignorant ME imams here.

The Sydney Morning Herald report is much later but more focussed. It's a good summing up.

This is in my neck of the woods and it is why I saw red when I came across almost the same title under Hugh's name. It was shocking to me to see that a Jihad Watch Board Vice President would so closely agree with an idiot Jihadist.

And it was Anzac Day as well, a day when we remember the ravages of war.

Hence my getting all fired up about giving peace a chance.

Infidel Pride,
As far as I'm concerned the Sikhs did a bloody good job of trying to syncretize Islam and Hinduism. If the Muslims didn't "get it", it doesn't detract from the Sikh effort in my own eyes.

Rush Limbaugh once said that the way to achieve peace in a war is for one side to win.

Wise words. I'm rooting for the modern Muslims being able to live in peace with modern Christians. I'm rooting for outright war being avoidable. I'm both battling for and praying that my side will win.

Television: This Arizona character thinks that a cogent refutation of Hugh's lengthy latter post can be accomplished with snide aphoristic pot-shots.

Clearly you think Hugh needs your own good self to help defend him. I'm already being outnumbered here by a gang of over a handful. I must be doing OK if you feel the gang needs a new member.

Hugh,

1 - 6: pfft

7: "All I ask is that you remain open to what Muslims might give. If you close your mind to that, if you insist that Islam will not change, just a little, to suit the modern worldready to try something else: to wit, knowledge."

I didn't write the bold bit at the end.

8 - 10: pfft

I have no further time for you, either.

Briars: I certainly appreciate Arizona's comments ...

Thanks, mate.

I feel another form of Totalitarianism has sprung up, this time in a relgious context. We have to know what side we're on.

I'm simply questioning, here, the identification of the sides as "the West" and "Islam" and, like you, the idea that one of these must dominate the other.

I'm also questioning the simplistic idea that Islam has just the one Jihadist face. To deny that face is silly but to treat it as the only face is not fair to the many many Muslims who don't read it like that at all.

I'm inspired by a film I saw recently, "V for Vendetta", in which a mass of masked people opposed their totalitarian government. If enough of us speak out against the narrow-minded Muslim readings, we will cease to be easy targets. Rushdie had a bad time of it, van Gogh paid with his life, but in small ways we must each speak up against the outmoded encrustations at Islam's door to deity.

In my local area, people are starting to speak up against that aspect of Islam, some even using their own names in letters to the editor. (These are little people who cannot afford security beyond what the local police can offer.)

It is scary but this is where I think the soldiers are lining up. Roughly half of those soldiers are Muslims themselves.

It doesn't help if we tar all Muslims with the same brush. To push them all away, irrespective of their private understandings of Islam, is to fall prey to the real totalitarianism in our midst.

Susanp: I can't decide if you are a convert to islam, an ignorant useful idiot, or a self-hating, suicidal liberal.

I'm probably a bit of each, LOL!

Thank you for acknowledging my power to confuse. ;)

Responses to Arizona's remarks from several posts:

Arizona said:

...some Islamist idiots (from Hizb ut-Tahrir) concluded that Islam is incompatible with democracy

The question about Islam's compatibility with liberal democracy can't be understood in the abstract and absolute either/or sense in which you couch it above (though I doubt you meant to pose the question that way). It is a practical question: how compatible is Islam with liberal democracy? Just how inimical to liberal democracy is Islam? Human rights groups like Freedom House have shown that in terms of civil liberties and political rights, the group of Muslim-majority countries is well behind every other region in the world. Even if one fails to note the peculiarly totalitarian constellation of ideological elements structuring the Quran and Hadith, yet the relative paucity of freedom in majority-Muslim nations should give pause about Islam and what it portends for the future of freedom globally.

Arizona said:

Islam is not some static thing. It has changed and developed over time...

Again, the question is not so useful if posed in that either/or sense -- as if the only two possible answers are: 1) it hasn't changed or 2) it has changed. The meaningful question is, how much has it changed? How inimical is Islam to evolution and development? A little? A great deal? There is much evidence suggesting that Islam is dangerously inimical to transformation and contains much that seeks to destroy 'otherness', because otherness often leads to transformation. Do not simply assume that major religions are equally totalitarian or liberating. Seek to place religions and ideologies accurately somewhere on a nuanced spectrum ranging from superdictatorial to highly free. Then measure Islam based on detailed study of all points of view -- including the Islam-skeptics. After that, I think you can reasonably expect to become afraid.

Arizona said:

...current Western influence and "assistance" can only be dated back to a century or two...

I don't know about assistance, but Western influence goes back much further than a couple of centuries. The Muslim world had translations of Aristotle many (ten?) centuries ago, and Muhammed was influenced, to some degree, by Judaism and Christianity. Furthermore, the effects of ending engagement with the Muslim world would be very different now, in an era of rapidly advancing Western technology. It was largely that rapidly increasing acceleration of tech that forced the end of the Soviet Union, which was falling ever more rapidly behind.

Arizona said:

..."getting" some essential point of Islam that renders it attractive enough to have survived 14 centuries...

The specific length of time something survives need not have a direct relation to its 'attractiveness'. To suggest that survival is a simple measure of "attractiveness" is to greatly oversimplify. For example: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, because I am the meanest motherf----r in the valley." You get the point.

Arizona said:

It's not so long ago that it would have been unthinkable for a Christian to leave the church and yet still retain the ethical structure derived from it.

I can't see why, given just a little more time, Muslims cannot "catch up" and do the same. Processes of this sort take generations to achieve...

In this respect at least, you equate Christianity and Islam. Or at any rate you say you "can't see why" Muslims shouldn't be able to "catch up" and "do the same" as Christians did, in leaving the religion while maintaining the ethics. (I'll leave aside that I find the ethics of Islam, as for example in Chapter 9 of the Quran, too often offensively violent and chauvinist toward the "other".) In making this equation, you are arguably overlooking an elephant in your living room. Consider: one need not be a Christian to see that Christ's reputed acts and statements provide a much more liberal example than do the reputed acts of Mohammed (as shown in Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, and the earliest biography, and the Quran itself). If something is too rigid and illiberal it can evolve but slightly, and beyond that point it can only break other things or be broken itself. In many ways Islam seeks to break down and destroy liberal institutions. I wonder if you have been reading mostly apologists for Islam, and ignoring skeptics. I find Robert Spencer one of the more reliable skeptical authors. If you haven't already read it, you might also find Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept useful, not to mention a great page-turner. (Bawer is gay, by the way.) There is also the physician Andrew Bostom and his The Legacy of Jihad. And many other writers are becoming concerned about the encroaching totalitarianism of Islamic culture.

Arizona said:

What Jesus "said" - "Render unto Caesar" - is what a Gospel writer wrote and it can be interpreted simply as a call to maintain the distinction, not necessarily to keep the two apart and unrelated. The Western civilization we live in today is a result of the marriage of Christian spirituality with Roman political presence.

The two are NOT seperated, even to this day.

With this last comment of yours, I suppose you are seeking to point out a certain technicality, even if you thereby obscure another elephant from view. It almost sounds as though you wish to fudge the difference between theocracy and pluralist states. But surely not. Surely you do not mean to play down or deny the huge difference between societies in which the State does not significantly impose a particular set of religious values on the populace, and societies that unite temporal and spiritual realms and establish a theocratic orthodoxy? Because if you truly believe that, for example, the free exercise and non-establishment clauses of the First Amendment are that meaningless, then really your sympathy with Islam becomes much more understandable. And it would help explain how it is you seem to ignore another huge threat to the Western world's survival: channeler Muhammad in effect became Caesar, whereas the one that Christians call "Christ" sought to articulate the distinction you mention between the things of Caesar and the things of God. Muhammed was the ruler of a warrior theocracy and he is reputed to have said, in hadith taken by most Muslims as reliable and authoritative, that there should be no two religions in Arabia. And thus it is, in spades, in Saudi Arabia today. If you are a Christian, (or any non-Muslim) tough luck, you may not bring your holy book with you into Saudi Arabia today, and it is illegal for you to engage in your rituals or religious readings, even in the privacy of the home. Unfortunately, Allah himself advocates the gradual spread of Islam's dominion everywhere (see for example Chapter 8, verse 39 of the Quran, make sure to look at several authoritative translations), and the gradual subjection of non-Muslims to second class status. There is more theo-fascist chauvinism one could cite in the Quran and Hadith, and their interpretation by all the main schools of Islamic law -- but enough from me. In my view, Islam just isn't like other major religions. It is aggressively totalitarian to a unique degree.

Under current demographic trends, Europe will relatively soon become majority-Muslim. This could well mean the gradual end of Europe as a pluralist society. There is much evidence to make your sanguine expectation appear doubtful, and in my view you are too lighthearted and need to have a closer look at the current practice of Muslim-majority societies, and at the sacred texts of Islam, and at the skeptical guides.
- Omar

"It doesn't help if we tar all Muslims with the same brush. To push them all away, irrespective of their private understandings of Islam, is to fall prey to the real totalitarianism in our midst."
-- from a posting above

No one is "tarring all Muslims with the same brush." One is pointing out that all those who claim to be adherents of a particular belief-system, and who live in conditions that make it clear that they now possess or are capable of possessing a complete knowledge of what that belief-system teaches, and beyond those tenets, what attitudes it so clearly incculates, including that division of the world beween Believer and Infidel, and the uncompromising hostility (Sura 5.51 and hundreds of other passages about Unbelievers and about Jihad in the Qur'an, and many hundreds of the so-called "authentic" Hadith), must be assumed to agree with, or at least not to be horrified by, those passages in Qur'an and Hadith.

What should we do? Ignroe those tenets contained in the immutable texts? Should we ignore the way non-Muslims -- Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and so on -- are right now being treated in countries where Muslims dominate? Should we ignore how the historic and religious monuments of non-Muslims have been treated by Muslism, not in the past, but right now? And what should we do with all that historical evidence, the 1350-year history of Jihad-conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, and the entire legal edifice built up to impose on non-Muslims not only the onerous Jizyah tax, but a whole host of political, economic, and social disablitites, including the inability to testify, on behalf of any non-Muslim, including oneself, and have that testimony count, in the Islamic courts (which is the only place that a Muslim could conceivably be called to account).

What shall we do? Ignore all of that history? Ignore what the texts say? Pretend they aren't there?

Will that make everything better? Will that make us safer? Will that ensure that Muslims in this country will not take Islam seriously?

One more thing:

At this one thread, "Arizona" has already put up 20 postings. That kind of thing will not be permitted again. She has a choice: a maximum of three postings under any particular article (that seems reasonable), or non-appearance at this website in the future.

Arizona posted: You have every right to write whatever you want and I have every right to deny you the authority to proclaim. Others may accept your authority on the matter. I don't, so get over it.

I dont accept everyone to agree with what I write. This is all understood, not just on this site but plain commonsense.

You have no authority to deny me to write or proclaim. You may write so but no authority - none whatever. So get over it, as you say.

A cursory examination of Arizona's forum which she linked above

http://www.free2code.net/plugins/forums/view.php?f=10&p=50522&os=20

has a thread called "Islamic Site". Interestingly, most of the posters there seem to have a healthy disdain for Islam. Arizona seems to have popped her head into Jihad Watch a few days ago and concluded that we were extremist, and therefore took it upon herself to inject what she thought was a moderating devil's advocacy. The basis of her moderation, as evidenced by her comments here (at least the substantive ones, which are rare) seems to be an incoherent framework of theoretical, relativistic equivalency, applied abstractly (and with little apparent knowledge) to the problem of Islam. I.e., she starts from the premise that Islam is no better or worse than any other religion and that Muslims are just as amenable to reason and the appetite for civil democracy as anybody else, and then twists and/or rejects all incoming data that might contravene that premise.

P.S.: I wouldn't raise this if I thought Arizona was a rarity; unfortunately, her approach seems to be all too common.

Television--

I wish I'd said that.

Arizona posted: You simply cannot target Islam as a whole without targetting Muslims as a whole.

So that means we should not target Marxism as an ideology as that would target communists, or have targetted Nazi ideology, as that would target the whole of Germany.

Islam is an ideology that is repugnant to any decent human being. The fact that Muslims still adhere to it, is that many have no option to leave without a murderous fatwa on them. This makes Islam akin to the Cosa Nostra, where similar rules apply. The Mafia ofcourse, is into robbery and brigandage, much like the Islam that mohammed invented, and further added slavery and other obnoxious elements to what is now regarded as a religion.

It is not only right but a duty to attack islam.

As Churchill said over a hundred years ago. "The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

As far as I'm concerned the Sikhs did a bloody good job of trying to syncretize Islam and Hinduism. If the Muslims didn't "get it", it doesn't detract from the Sikh effort in my own eyes.

"Get it?" The Sikhs almost got wiped out in the 18th century for all their troubles. It was fortuitious that they survived, but even they found out that while their efforts didn't result in hostility from the Hindus, Muslims were determined to wipe them out.

What is it with all the Muslim-apologist-Sikh-fans on this site? First Naseem, and now you? Is ignorance of history a pre-requisite for coming out with such inane statements? Wait, don't answer that...

Wise words. I'm rooting for the modern Muslims being able to live in peace with modern Christians. I'm rooting for outright war being avoidable. I'm both battling for and praying that my side will win.

Which side would that be?

Islam and democracy go together like a hemophiliac with a pet porcupine.

Or rather Islam and democracy go hand and hand like water and electricity.

Sikhism was not an attempt to syncretistically find a "third way" that could accommodate both Hindus and Muslims, as "AZ" appears to think. It was a fighting faith that developed in response to Muslim aggression, with one of the mandatroy four k's being the dagger. The Sikhs suffered greatly from the Muslims, for they were their fiercest opponents. Nothing used to relieve me more, at Heathrow, than the sight of Sikh turbans on those checking passports.

Hugh

That is correct, but that's not how it got started. The first 4 Gurus were completely passive, and were busy with projects like the creation of the Gurmukhi script for the Punjabi language, the foundation of Amritsar, etc. At that time, the Moghuls were too busy with their wars with India's domestic Afghan rulers to bother about the Sikhs. All that changed during the 5th Guru Arjan Dev, and his execution by the Moghul emperor Jehangir. In response, his son Har Govind was the Guru who converted the Sikhs into an army, and his great grandson Govind Singh was the one who formalized it into a military order.

Also, not to nitpick, but they have 5 'K's, not 4, of which the Kirpan, or dagger is one.

Not nitpicking. Mere, well-justified desire for accuracy. My explanation (which is not meant to excuse, because I should probably have looked it up): I tried to remember, and all I could think of was: hair, bracelet, dagger, pants. Hair, dagger, pants, bracelet. That must be it, I said to myself. I couldn't think of anything else. So I came up with four. Now I realize that two of the k's pertain to hair (the hair itself, and the comb). And I know the word "dagger" doesn't quite do it for the "kipchan" but "sword" seems a bit too long.

Sorry about my k-k-k-k-katy slip.

Though I didn't agree with Arizona's posts, they were the occasion of some extremely educational responses from Hugh (and others) here. My 2 cents is that Hugh should at least postpone imposing a 3-post limit. This was apparently her introduction to the site and after her "Little-Bang" of a beginning putting out a pile of (in my view) superficial yet not unintelligent posts, if she returns her contribution might become less obtrusive and obstructive, and more of a useful challenge. Anyway, she seems to be one of the many one would like to persuade. No one here (of course least of all Hugh or Robert) wants to preach only to the choir. - Omar

At this one thread, "Arizona" has already put up 20 postings. That kind of thing will not be permitted again. She has a choice: a maximum of three postings under any particular article (that seems reasonable), or non-appearance at this website in the future.

Wow, Hugh, I did get your goat, did I not? You are threatening me with annihilation, are you? This only confirms for me your secret association with those Muslim Jihadists, especially dangerous because it is unconscious. This only confirms for anyone who will be allowed to read this that you yourself have a totalitarian bent.

I don't write under threat of being deleted.

I did consider replying to those who have addressed me by using just one post, as Hugh has used to reply to several of my own posts (to him and to other people).

My apologies to those I might have replied to but I am now under the equivalent of a writer's "death threat" or "fatwa" from the Imperial Leader of This Thread. So I will not reply here.

Instead, I will post my replies at a forum that I moderate (and I can assure you that I have NEVER EVER threatened an intelligent poster with annihilation simply for forcefully disagreeing with me):
free2code religion forum

See you there, folks (if you dare).

.

Shame on you, Hugh.

Shame on you, Jihad Watch.

.

There's many a slip twixt c-c-c-cup and lip.

One more thing.

Here is a link to the actual topic started at free2code:
Retreat From Anti-Islamist Fatwa

This all started when I genuinely welcomed the contribution of Dominic, and was looking forward to some real exchange of views.

Instead Arizona came in with quite uncalled for intemperate language, mixed in with misquotes and plain falsification of what I wrote.

And here again
Arizona posted: My apologies to those I might have replied to but I am now under the equivalent of a writer's "death threat" or "fatwa" from the Imperial Leader of This Thread. So I will not reply here.

After quite blatantly writing -- "you have absolutely no right to proclaim what a Muslim can and cannot do with his/her religion....You have no right either, to proclaim non-Jihadist Muslims as irrelevant".
After behaving like a dictator, she now has the temerity to complain of being under a writers death threat or fatwa. Typical falsification by her. And again, she has no idea what a real death threat to a writer is. Van Gogh and the cartoonists know what a real fatwa is, rather this whingeing, moaning and pretending to be a martyr of some sort.

All this has been apparant throughout Arizona's postings - a disregard for accuracy, ignoring pertinent questions, then replying with intemperate language, mixed with falsifications of what Hugh and others posted.

Dominic, a poster, came with in some questions, which though not new here, were useful, in the sense that they asked us to re-examine our views again. It is Arizona who should be ashamed of herself for hijacking a discussion that Dominic started with good manners and grace, and that was proceeding along those lines. It is never pretty to see the exposure and discomfiture of a dishonest poster.

And now Arizona is playing the victim - a martyr in the cause of freedom of expression.

Not nitpicking. Mere, well-justified desire for accuracy. My explanation (which is not meant to excuse, because I should probably have looked it up): I tried to remember, and all I could think of was: hair, bracelet, dagger, pants. Hair, dagger, pants, bracelet. That must be it, I said to myself. I couldn't think of anything else. So I came up with four. Now I realize that two of the k's pertain to hair (the hair itself, and the comb). And I know the word "dagger" doesn't quite do it for the "kipchan" but "sword" seems a bit too long. Sorry about my k-k-k-k-katy slip. Posted by: Hugh

Glad you took it that way. My memory of my high school history is quite rusty, but if I remember right

Kesh - hair/beard
Kara - bangles
Kacha - pants
Kangha - comb
Kirpan - dagger

I'll let any Sikh reader correct this, if inaccurate, and leave it at that.

Most people would not hysterically describe the request that I made as one of a mad-dog totalitarian bent on "annihilation." My, my. Here, for the record, is what has occurred. Someone shows up at this site, someone who feels she knows all she needs to know about Islam, and proceeds to give us her thoughts, her feelings, her criticisms. She shows not the slightest acquaintance with the Qur'an or Hadith, or the awareness that she might need to. As "Television" says above, she begins with the assumption that Islam is a "religion," and that all religions must mean more or less the same thing (but why?), she proceeds to make all kinds of crazed accusations. The one that got my particular billygoat gruff was this wild charge of my suggesting that Muslims either "apostasize or die." This is a most peculiar misreading of everything I have suggested, which is based on the notion that only Muslims, in the countries where Islam dominates, should be allowed to endure the solitary confinement of Dar al-Islam, and to be forced to confront the link between the failures of their societies and states and Islam itself, without any Infidel aid, or intervention, or bullying, or anything other than the odd strike to keep certain weapons from being acquired.

For someone to show up, and at a single thread inflict on poor little JW readres not one, nor five, nor ten, but fully twenty postings, som e of them quite long, most of them quite maddening in their mix of imperiousness, ignorant self-assurance, and bland misquotation of others, and then to suggest that, having not been banned, but only asked in the future to limit postings, at any single thread, to three, and to hysterically scream in bold Shame on Jihad Watch and Shame on You, Hugh and then gone on to suggest that it is illegitimate to try to police this website to keep things moving along so that the pedagogic effort is not lost in distractions of the kind she so obviouslly presented (a spanner in the works with every posting), is absurd.

This particular absurdity will not be allowed to re-occur. No doubt others will appear, and will be dealt with, each in its own way.

Of course, one could eliminate all the postings. But so many of them are valuable, that it would be a pity.

So it's goodbye to AZ, in Phoenix or red-rocked Sedona, or Flagstaff or Tombstone, or possibly overlooking the Canon de Chelly.

And aren't you pleased to have been informed about what Az means in Old Church Slavonic?

This is a full-service website.

Hugh posted

most of them quite maddening in their mix of imperiousness, ignorant self-assurance, and bland misquotation of others, and then to suggest that, having not been banned, but only asked in the future to limit postings, at any single thread, to three, and to hysterically scream in bold Shame on Jihad Watch and Shame on You, Hugh

Bland misqoutation can occur occasionally and it may be just a slip, but what occurred was deliberate and consistent. This is just plain dishonsty. Her conceit could not allow her to admit that she was at fault in any degree.

It was apparant from the first, that this Arizona poster had a very high regard of herself. Her conceit showed again when she wrote, "Clearly you think Hugh needs your own good self to help defend him. I'm already being outnumbered here by a gang of over a handful. I must be doing OK if you feel the gang needs a new member.

It never occurred to her that she may be wrong.

And again, conceit and arrogance showed as in the sneer "Hugh whined".

Despite such and other provocations, I'm glad that all other posters replied with good manners.

Finally she took the opportunity to get out pretending to be martyr under a fatwa from Hugh, with a "and I can assure you that I have NEVER EVER threatened an intelligent poster with annihilation simply for forcefully disagreeing with me

So hypocrisy as well, considering her conceit and high handed imperiousness manner.

From The Godfather:

"Clemenza: Oh, Paulie... won't see him no more. ..."

My favorite scene. That and leaving the gun, taking the cannoli.

I see an opportunity here to return to the beginning, with Dominic's questions of conscience...

I have asked much the same questions, as I suspect do many Christians. The only answer that has satisified me to date might also be the most obvious one; and therefore the last solution we human beings think of...

Before stating the obvious, I think it relevant to mention that I live in Adelaide, South Australia: approximately 5,000 miles from the back of Beyond (just left of the Black Stump). Yet even from this lofty vantage point, I can see that "the world" is, indeed, in a peck of trouble. And, since the world is comprised of 5 billion or so human beings, I tend to feel quite small at times. What is one, against so many? The only way clear to an answer is to ask another question: "What would Jesus do?" And it is here that I can safely state the obvious...

Jesus would evaluate the entire situation in the light of the Word of God. He would be ever mindful of the Commandments of God, which are available to all. He would also be sensitive to the ultimate Will of God (or Desire of God, or the Yearning of God) which is that "none should perish, but that all should be saved." Finally, Jesus would provide a "Nike" styled answer, meaning: "Do it!" Perhaps you are not sure... Consider this. Jesus entered the Leper colony.

I am a member of a tiny Adelaide church (40 adults). This little church was a major force in bringing the remnants of 3 Dinka families to Adelaide, from a truly hellish nightmare that remains to this day in the southern half of the Sudan. They literally tremble if they hear the "call to prayer" by the Moslem community that is normally out of earshot. I have grown quite close to the 16 year old young man who is the whole of his family. He has asked: "Would you help the Arab (meaning Moslem) if he were in the shoes I walk?" I have answered: "Yes." He smiled. He accepted. Such grace is rarely experienced without a complete change of heart. Why did he accept my answer? Because I was truthful...

Well said, maranatha50.

maranatha50

I'm afraid it is too late to return to the beginning - mainly because of the disruptive, dishonest, intemperate and sneering posts of Arizona. In the process she has frightened off posters such as Dominic, which probably was her intent all along.

She now returns, as I expected she would, even though she promised that it was the last post she was going to put up. Dishonesty yet again.

After the contemptible and supposedly last post of hers, she is now trying to have the last word.

Holier-than-thou brigades on the loose.

One wonders what Arizona cares about what Jesus would really do, since the historical records of what Jesus would really do are, as she claims, so unreliable. One therefore concludes that she pats maranatha on the back less for being a "true Christian" than for showing how a follower of Jesus can rise above that horrible category of the "Islamophobe". One wonders if maranatha would wash Zarqawi's feet after he has, while praising Allah, beheaded a fellow Christian or fellow anybody. Or would maranatha, if the opportunity presented itself, use physical violence against Zarqawi to prevent such a beheading? It appears that to the ilk of maranatha and Arizona, such a choice is beyond their interest or concern; if so, talk about "shame"!

FYI ARIZONA: You're an idiot!

Your understanding of Islamic ideology and history are non-existant. Until you sit down and read the whole horrible story of Islamic conquests across the globe you will continue to spout the ridiculous and unintentionally biased nonsense you have been.

May I suggest 'The Sword of the Prophet' by Serge Trifkovic?

But please, read SOMETHING on the topic. Stop making this garbage up!!!! I know you're making it up even by only reading a few lines!

Pythagoras

As for aid to Pakistan is concerned I say: "CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME." Help the less fortunate in a place where such efforts WILL be more likely to be appreciated (your home country). Not some place where the money will probably be embezzled by 'religious' clerics in order to massacre the samaritan(s) offering the aid.

The Last Word. *chortle*

Going back to the question that began this particular forum, I would want to ask a simple question. What, exactly, is Democracy? The many posts, especially from Hugh, have answered that question in reverse. I can now see what Democracy isn't. So, what do you call "what Democracy isn't", in light of today's world events. And the answer, in one word, is: Islam. I have no problems there. But I do have one concern.

The question of the role to be played by Christians in this clear and present danger was not actually answered. I offered an example of what one (surprisingly) small group of Christians has done, in the face of the Islamist onslaught. I have also offered what I deem to be a Christian response to a young man's question concerning the "Arab". Now, if I am permitted to elaborate on my answer, it might assuage Television's concerns regarding my loyalties...

My young Sudanese friend has been speaking English for only a few months. For him, the word 'Arab' has many connotations, depending on the context. I establish the context of his words as we speak together. This is as a result of asking, rather than assuming (hint hint).

He might be referring to the dreaded and much hated Arab marauders, but then there is no mistaking his body language. He might be referring to Muslims in general, although his grasp of universal ideas is rather limited. Arab is specific; Moslem is universal. Or, finally, he might have been referring to the black Sudanese Moslems who are also being slaughtered (etc) by the dreaded Arab marauders. Which do you think?

In case you were not aware, the Arab marauders always emit their warcry just before annhialating unarmed men, women and children. When a black Sudanese Moslem hears what is believed to be the call to prayer, to be followed moments later by shrieks of terror and grief, s/he will not recover trust in an Allah who does this thing. Many black Sudanese Moslems are apostasising. Do I not help them?

Finally, as a Christian (so-called 'People of the Book'), I am unlikely to be granted the "privelege" of bearing witness to the beheading of fellow human beings. I cannot recant my faith. I cannot become Dhimmi. I cannot look upon human beings who move so far down the path of evil without feeling intense revulsion for both them and for everything they stand for. Given the opportunity? I shudder to think...

I stand with Hugh out of reason, not out of some sort of silly alliance that I anticipate some may claim based on a ridiculous notion of 'brotherhood of disbelief' (how ridiculous is that?). I have disagreed Hugh in the past, but this time he is right on. One cannot impose democracy or democratic values on others because the values that underlie those revolutions must grow in fertile soil. Those conditions exist in only a handful of Moslem lands.

One is reminded of countries like Poland or Romania in such a discussion. Why did nations such as those so strongly desire to bring about revolutions, which ultimately led to governance which closely resembles Western style democracy? Firstly, those Central European nations were unnaturally ripped away from Western Europe and had always felt as though they did not belong in the Soviet/Russian sphere. Moreover, they experienced failure in their own midst. As if they needed a reason to escape communism’s grip, they also witnessed first hand communism’s abysmal failure. But Russia, which experienced the same (or even greater) humiliation, never really gave up on its doctrine. I submit that the difference is cultural, with Central Europe longing to be part of the West, and Russia knowing it cannot really easily emulate the West. This is not to say that Poles are somehow superior to Russians, or that there is anything magical about Polish soil. What I am suggesting is that the stepping-stones for Western style democracy do not yet exist in toto in Russia, whereas they were considerably more ripe in a place like Poland. This is not just a question of geography, but of history. When one adds the complication of Religion to the mix, the differences become far more pronounced.

Admittedly, communism and ‘Islamism’ are far from identical, but a theocracy is certainly a form of tyranny that resembles communism at times. However, in both cases, they must be allowed to self-destruct and implode. In order for those circumstances to exist, Islamic nations must be allowed to experiment with their systems. I am not suggesting that there be no consequences for ompisiton of say, Sharia law, but allow them to do so nonetheless. Let them impose the Sharia and let the tyranny begin. Only then will people cry for freedom. We ought not fight the battles of the reformers as surrogates.

Hugh is correct that the Moslem world must be left alone to deal with it's own demons. The West cannot impose its belief system on them anymore. To do so is would be seen as nothing more than colonialization. Western Europe demanding reforms of Eastern Europe will never be viewed historically as colonialization. However, our demands upon Moslem lands will be viewed in that way.

Consider also that the US’ position at the helm of the Western world makes it an easy target for the title: Crusader. Anything the crusaders bring will be viewed with enormous suspicion. Additionally, the era of colonialization has largely passed. You also cannot colonize an area as vast as the Moslem world. Lastly, any minor ‘democratization’ that you are successful in implementing (at enormous cost in terms of both human lives and money) will be seen as foreign and thus subject to being expunged/expelled/purified from the societal norms.

Those of you here who criticize Hugh presuppose that the Moslem world is not familiar with Western ways and democratic forms of government; that they are all starving for democracy and freedom from tyranny. Without a doubt, people in these countries want freedom, but not freedom resembling anything we have in the West. Oh, but they want democracy all right! They want the purple finger kind that allows them to bring in Moslem fundamentalists into power by ‘will’ of the people. My friends, most of them are also (superficially) familiar with the West, yet they repudiate our values. Yet, some of you believe that by showing them love and kindness (and occupation and jizya), you will magically transform them into say, Europeans?

If we follow the Bush model of intervention followed by occupation, we might see some short-term improvements at enormous cost to the US and perhaps other countries. However, no amount of money will ever cause anything to develop that even remotely resemble our own Western style democracies. Moreover, the US has finite resources. This mission into the Moslem world to democratize it is folly and will cost us to experience a tremendous power loss and economic decline. This will strengthen China and Russia. Are you all unfamiliar with Algeria? Haven’t the French made the same mistakes in Algeria, albeit on a smaller scale than the US, only to see their century plus efforts gone to waste? Worse yet, they are hated even more as a result of their occupation and colonialization. We too will be blamed for every misstep and every problem in the Moslem world. Let us leave and let them fight out their differences. Let us force their reformers to risk their lives to stand in the way of 'radicals'. We also make it too easy for those potential reformers to simply emigrate to the West.

I would take a very firm line with the Iraqi government. I would tell them that we have no more patience; that they must abide by all of our demands or we will pull out and leave them to their own devices. While that may seem advantageous to them at first glance, the reality will soon set in.

The question then becomes just how much we are willing to help if the nations living under our occupation decide they want us to stay. That, of course, is a different scenario. I am not advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Rather, I am suggesting that the conditions and demands that we make of our subjects change dramatically. If they fail to reform, then they must accept the consequences. One consequence might be our near total withdrawal or troops and financial support. I also utterly repudiate the Bush vision of a ME democracy, that will "resemble their own traditions." What the hell is that? Those same exceptions were not made for Poland and Romania.