That should be "peace be upon him," but anyway, here is a very fine review of my new book The Truth About Muhammad by William Tucker in The American Spectator:
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." -- James JoyceIf you want to spend a depressing afternoon, try flipping through Robert Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad. It's not a long read, but when you're through you'll have an idea of the monumental task awaiting the West.
Unlike the founders of other religions, whose lives are often shrouded in legend and mystery, Muhammad's rise took place -- as 19th century French scholar Ernest Renan put it -- "in the full light of history." Muhammad himself dictated the Koran. There are numerous other accounts of his life, both from people who knew him personally and from the hadith, a collection of "sayings of the prophet" that scholars collected shortly after his death. There is no great mystery about who Muhammad was or what he stood for. The only mystery is why the West has so much difficulty in recognizing it.
Muhammad was a warlord, pure and simple. He roused a disorganized group of nomadic tribes into a ruthless, fearless army. During his lifetime, he conquered the Arabian Peninsula and his followers eventually extended those conquests from Spain to India. By all rights, he should take his place in history among of Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, and Tamerlane the Great as early history's great military leaders.
The difference is that Muhammad was also a prophet -- or maybe just a bit of a psychopath. Probably illiterate, he was nevertheless extremely familiar with Jewish and Christian doctrines that prevailed throughout the Middle East. Realizing that people would not be won over unless they abandoned their religion, Muhammad reinterpreted these faiths, styling them all as forerunners and himself as the "Last Prophet," come to replace both.
Beginning in middle age, Muhammad heard the voice of god -- Allah -- almost daily. His followers took notes and these transcriptions were eventually compiled into the Koran. As Spencer points out, Allah's dictates often went into strange detail and had an uncanny way of aligning themselves with The Prophet's desires. When Muhammad decided to take his own son's young bride for his wife, for example, Allah expressed approval. When several of Muhammad's wives ganged up on him because of his philandering, Allah gave him permission to divorce them -- a Koranic passage that still governs divorce in Muslim societies today.
But it's worse than that. Where Allah and Muhammad occasionally disagreed, Allah was actually more harsh -- a kind of Freudian superego regurgitating the grim fantasies of early childhood. In several instances, Muhammad was ready to forgive his rivals and enemies but Allah wouldn't let him. Instead, they had to be beheaded.
What has survived from Muhammad's eventful life, then, is not just a record of his conquests but a philosophy, a religion, a set of personal attitudes that prevails among more than a billion people of the world today. Those attitudes are not very friendly. Briefly, they prescribe that might makes right, that forgiveness is a sign of weakness, and that no fate is too vile for those who reject the wisdom of The Prophet. Jihadists beheading their captives still quote Koranic scripture -- accurately -- today.
More than anything, Spencer's detailed analysis is a remarkable endorsement of Thomas Carlyle's idea that "History is the elongated shadow of great men." Say what you will about social and economic circumstances, about natural resources and geography, or even -- if you are to believe Jared Diamond's bizarre ramblings -- that climate is the determining factor of history, the fact remains that the ethos of every civilization can be traced to the historical actions of a few individuals.
Confucius was a hermetic scholar who set China on a path of family loyalty, submission to authority, and respect for learning. The authors of The Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita were Brahmin scholars who preached supreme detachment and caste divisions. Buddha was the Indian Prince Siddhartha who rebelled against the Hindu caste system but taught extreme patience and withdrawal from the world. Moses was a lawgiver who led his people out of bondage. Jesus was a prophet who taught personal responsibility and the forgiveness of sins. Muhammad was a warrior who led armies into battle and taught that the sword was a proper instrument for converting the unbelievers.
Granted, each of these founders often contradicted himself and the message of each has not always survived in its original purity. But each of these prophets set the tone of a civilization that still reverberates today. The tone of Islam, from its very beginnings, has been intolerance, conflict, and conquest. As a result, Islam now finds itself at war, not just with the West, but with every civilization on its borders. Of course this is everyone else's fault. Muslims are like the boy fighting with everyone in school whose mother comes to the principal's office wanting to know why everyone in the school is fighting with him!
Spencer uses one example after another to bring home the point. In a story from the 9th century hadith of Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Bukahari, for example, Muhammad confronted a group of Jews about to punish a couple that had committed adultery. Asked to expound their own law, one of the rabbis then began to read from the Torah, but skipped a verse mandating stoning, covering it with his hand. Abdullah bin Salam, a rabbi who had converted to Islam, saw the trick.
"Lift your hand!" Abdullah cried, and the verse duly read, Muhammad exclaimed, "Woe to you Jews! What has induced you to abandon the judgment of God which you hold in your hand?" And he asserted: "I am the first to revive the order of God and His Book and to practice it."Muhammad ordered the couple to be stoned to death; another Muslim remembered, "I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones."
Compare this to Jesus' prescription in an almost identical situation: "Ye who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."
Muhammad's story belongs to a period when, to quote Mark Twain, "History was one damned battle after another." Most of the world has left this era behind. The rise of civilization has been the history of people learning to live in peace and cooperate with each other on a wider and wider scale. All this requires that people forgive and forget, letting old grudges eventually recede into the past. Islam not only nurtures old grudges, it celebrates them. The Sunni and the Shi'ia are still fighting over the death of Hussein, Muhammad's grandson, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D.
The fruit of Jesus' teaching of tolerance and forgiveness is that Western Civilization has been able to prosper while Islam remains locked in an era of primordial combat. Certainly we have had our wars and religious conflicts, but the overall trend has been toward cooperation and civilization -- especially in America, a land where much of history is virtually forgotten. Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the great Eastern religions are also proving that they can prepare people for the modern world.
So why can't we make it clear to Muslims that it is time to forget the desert morality of the 7th century? For one thing, the people defending Western Civilization don't seem very familiar with its accomplishments. Last week the New York Times recounted how the Dutch government is introducing Muslim immigrants to Western values by showing them a DVD of "topless women and two men kissing" ("Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center," October 11). What would you think of a country that introduced itself by flaunting its pornography? Does the word "decadent" come to mind?
Robert Spencer has outlined the situation very clearly:
The words and deeds of Muhammad have been moving Muslims to commit acts of violence for fourteen hundred years now. They are not going to disappear in our lifetimes; nor can they be negotiated away.Islam is just as violent and conquest-oriented as the jihadists say it is. The question is not whether Islamic values are incompatible with ours. The question is whether we are going to assert our own values -- or let decadence and submission lead the way.
when mohammed was peaceful, allah was peaceful.
when mohammed was angry, allah was angry.
when mohammed was horny, allah was horny.
it's pretty clear who was wearing the pants in that relationship.
just finishedthe book, excellent work.
A funny thing came to me while reading the Koran. It keeps harping on the fact that the Christians are polytheists for worshipping Jesus as well as God. OK- how do the Muslims differ? Everytime one mentions Mo there's "peace be upon him" right after his name. Pretty much the same deal when they mention Allah. Not only that, but the way the Koran is written I'm not sure much of the time if "We" means both Mo and Allah together. Since the Koran is also big on blasting hypocrisy aren't Muslims violating their own book by basically elevating Mo to Allah's status they way Christians are claimed to do the same with Jesus?
Money talks; and
the Politically correct have done enough damage.
I don't think it so much lack of values or decadence but a case in which Islam is playing both ends against the middle.
Not that a slime mold as Islam really thinks of such strategy but it has certainly opportuned the situation arising after WWII.
It's nevertheless depressing that most of the USA and Europe sleep on after the rousing noise of 9/11.
Could it be possible that from all accounts, both muhammed and allah are worshiped, proof is that of the covering of his face and the bruhaha about a dozen Danish cartoons?
Islam is a cult of a false prophet. I've said so countless times now. This book will just bring evidence of such to the forefront of discussions and such a brave attempt is of historical importance in and of itself. Robert Spencer should have the highest praise for giving the blunt facts to the people.
Just 10 years from now people will be talking about Islam like we discuss the Nazis today -- with unveiled disdain and contempt for such evil. That is my prediction.
bigcatgirl13106
Could it be possible that from all accounts, both muhammed and allah are worshiped
Yes, hence no pictorial representation!
Re: "When Muhammad decided to take his own son's young bride for his wife, for example, Allah expressed approval".
Much of the pattern in the Muslim belief-system is of selfishness presented as "religious" principle. "Religion" is used as a cover for supremacist attitudes, deception and exploitation of the unbeliever. It's a mental illness invented by a clever but mentally ill person. I suspect there are great similarities in the personality of Hitler and Muhammad. Hither also talked of an "inner voice" that guided him. However, the "inner voice" finally led to the destruction of Germany as beliefs were treated as facts.
Could it be that Mo and Allah were one and the same? Somebody kick my butt for saying that.
Not that a slime mold as Islam really thinks of such strategy but it has certainly opportuned the situation arising after WWII.
It's nevertheless depressing that most of the USA and Europe sleep on after the rousing noise of 9/11.
That's exacly my analysis of the situation. The mo's had put their ideas of conquest to rest in the face of our superiority in all arenas - not only the military - until they realized our weakness of Political Correctness.
The great depravity of WW2 and the Holocaust caused Europeans to think and reconsider their ways. The greatest vicitims of WW2 and Nazism were the Jews and it's more than ironic that the muftis are now the beneficiaries of our "collective guilt".
Our collective guilt ought to give us cause to be more than protective of the State of Israel.
Anyway.. the muftis saw a crack in our armour - the vulnerable spot on our achilles' heel. The spot left unvovered when Siegfried bathed in the dragon's blood which he'd slain.. a leaf happened to fall upon his heel and this was where an enemy's arrow finally felled him.
The West has been shouting to the world where our weakness lies and thus they have come to take advantage of us with open arms and hands!
"The great depravity of WW2 and the Holocaust caused Europeans to think and reconsider their ways. The greatest vicitims of WW2 and Nazism were the Jews and it's more than ironic that the muftis are now the beneficiaries of our "collective guilt".-germaninamerica
That's a excellent insight. It's true. And much of the Arab-Muslim world supported Hitler's war against the Jews. Hitler once said, "there are good Semites and there are bad Semites". He considered the Arabs the "good Semites".
RasoolalShaytan:
No, I had not seen your site until today, but I've blogrolled it now. If something offends Muslims, I'm very amused.
I'm certain Hitler would have considered Arafat and Nasralla among his favorite "good Semites".
RasoolalShaytan:
I already have a similar T-shirt. Made it myself, wear it at each 5k race I run in.
You're probably right Frank, and Hitler would have killed them last.
Islam is just as violent and conquest-oriented as the jihadists say it is. The question is not whether Islamic values are incompatible with ours. The question is whether we are going to assert our own values -- or let decadence and submission lead the way.
They tell us what Islam is....BUT PRESIDENT BUSH WONT LISTEN...........We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Sharia [an Islamic legal code]. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam."
Osama bin Laden
Germaninamerica:
Our collective guilt ought to give us cause to be more than protective of the State of Israel.
___
Yes, very true, but in addition many of the not so 'guilty' Republicans have a high stake in misleading themselves to the Muslim threat, Bush being a prime example -- and the Right misleading the American people owing to enormous investments with Muslim countries with oil at the top of the list -- outsourcing, trade in products from cotton to gum arabic, banking and monetary schemes and corporate interrelationships as with the Dubai port fiasco.
In fact, Lodi California, is a basicly conservative area with a large Muslim population that is largly Republican -- and Muslims would prefer to segway into the US political system via the most conservative (read intolorant Americans for their purposes) thinking they can create a partner with them against the godless left, than side with liberials who often lack their values or needed capital for their progress.
Islam is a horrible parasite upon the nation. Like a larvae that will eat the host from inside out -- with little regard to the organs of contrasting political parties.
Islam is most definatly playing both ends against the middle
"By all rights, he should take his place in history among of Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, and Tamerlane the Great as early history's great military leaders.
I like the article. But does the author realize that except for Alexander The Great, all the rest mentioned are early muslim destroyers of civilizations ?
I like the article. But does the author realize that except for Alexander The Great, all the rest mentioned are early muslim destroyers of civilizations ? arjun.sevak...............................Spirituality
Genghis Khan's religion is widely speculated to be Shamanism, which was very common among nomadic Mongol-Turkic tribes of Central Asia. Genghis Khan towards the later part of his life became interested in the ancient Buddhist and Tao religions from China. The Taoist monk Ch'ang Ch'un, who rejected invitations from Song and Jin leaders, traveled more than 5000 kilometers to meet Genghis Khan close to the Afghanistan border. The first question Genghis Khan asked him was if the monk had some secret medicine that could make him immortal. The monk's negative answer disheartened Genghis Khan, and he rapidly lost interest in the monk. He also passed a decree exempting all followers of Taoist religion from paying any taxes. This made the Taoist religion very powerful at the expense of Buddhists [citation needed]. Genghis Khan was by and large tolerant of the multiple religions and there is no cases of him or the Mongols engaging in religious war against people he encountered during the conquests as long as they were obedient. However, all of his campaigns caused wanton and deliberate destruction of places of worship if they resisted.[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan#Spirituality
With his latest book, Mr. Spencer has trespassed into the personal realm of Muslims to expose their deepest held beliefs. He has intruded into religious privacy to package and sell this "proprietary information" to the competition. How dare he use the same texts and translations as trusted by Muslim holy men. He is not a Muslim, thus, not worthy to view such divine documents.
Corporate espionage is illegal...exposing proprietary information to benefit adversaries is a crime. How dare Mr. Spencer do the same to Islam?
Corporate espionage is illegal...exposing proprietary information to benefit adversaries is a crime. How dare Mr. Spencer do the same to Islam?
he's jus pointin out he truth,truth hurts sometimes,dont it?
The warrior and lawgiver that the Islamic prophet is most like is Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Both were genius leaders of men, completely ruthless and yet aware of how to motivate on and off the battlefield. Whereas Muhammad took Jewish heads, Toyotomi took Korean ears--30,000 of them.
Both began life in humble positions and rose to complete power and solidified social hierarchy--though they were self-made.
Neither could grow a line of succession beyond their enormous personalities and thus bequeathed their mission to various followers.
BUT, only one claimed to be thelast prophet of the Almighty.
"What would you think of a country that introduced itself by flaunting its pornography? Does the word "decadent" come to mind?"
Complete nonsense in an otherwise good review. The whole point is that toplessness and gay relationships, in the Netherlands, are *not* pornography, but simple freedoms that people are entitled to without being attacked. And if the DVD showed some of the great works of art by western artists, what would they show? Representations of naked human beauty, often created by gay artists.
"Just 10 years from now people will be talking about Islam like we discuss the Nazis today -- with unveiled disdain and contempt for such evil. That is my prediction."
Have you read my website? I give it less than 5 years in my state.
Such optimism is buoyant -- but I fear it's riding on an Internet bubble. I think we'll be lucky if our Western society in general (not just little pockets of Jihad Watchers here and there) can learn to connect Islam itself to the "minority of extremists" before 50 years pass.
Mohammad was MAYBE a bit of a psychopath? Oh please.
Mohammad was the very textbook model of a psychopath.
Please read "Without conscience: the disturbing world of the psychopaths amongst us" by Dr Robert Hare.
"just by boycotting everything islam, we can starve them to death and I mean boycott them PERSONALLY" -
that is not possible, because there is too much resistance within us to achieve total boycott effectively, however.
I have stopped buying stuff made in Pakistan, Turkstan or what have you since Sept 11th 2001. I am not going to change my mind as long as I live. I am a strong willed person.
Henry - Islam is a cocktail religion of Judaism, Christianity and psycho-pathetic thinking. I would not take he/we too seriously saying of Allah.
@henry
There are several possible reasons why allah speaks in the first person plural presumptious:
1) allah says we (oui) because he studied French.
2) allah has a mouse in his pocket
3) allah is a rock, an idol. He is blind, deaf and dumb. He lets mohammad (the inventor of allah) do the talking for both of them.
4) mohammad and his allah are like the fraudulent Wizard in the Wizard of Oz. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
It's a bombastic rhetorical device employed by mohammad to con and befuddle the idiot arabs.
Verily we say that izlam is an abhorrent creed.
"he was nevertheless extremely familiar with Jewish and Christian doctrines"
I think that's a pretty generous statement.The Koran reads like second or even third hand accounts of the Bible. mohammed confused the sister of Moses with the mother of Jesus. I'm not a christian and even I know what a huge mistake that is.
"Nobody here has come up with a strategy to really defeat Islam."
We need to challenge their ideology, and Robert's book is the start of that.
We need to (rightly) separate Mohammedanism from Islam. Mohammedanism is a violent perversion of the "true Islam," which is the "peaceful Islam" we keep hearing about, but never see anymore.
We need to explain to the Muslims at every opportunity, through counter propaganda and other venues, that "true Islam" is really Christianity. Mohammed deceived them. Evil men--the imams and ayatollahs--today perpetuate that deceit for personal power. And Muslims are their victims.
The Muslims don't have to fight the west (or fight anybody). True Islam--Christianity--came to dominate the west long ago, spreading a message of conciliation, peace, and love.
Arjun
Chenghiz Khan - despite the name Khan - was not Muslim. Nor were most of his descendants. In fact, only some of the Mongol empires, like the 8th generation Ilkhanate in Persia - converted, and in China, Kublai Khan's successors never converted.
In fact, today Chenghiz Khan is revered in Mongolia as a national hero, and that country is 2% Islamic, if that. Had Chengiz Khan been a Muslim, so would Mongolia.
From that list, only Tamerlane was a Muslim. The religion Chenghiz belonged to was a local Mongol religion called Tengri.
Infidel Pride,
The changez khan I have read about was most certainly a muslim ; He invaded North West India (now afghanistan). (I will try to get his background, seems to me that a lot of "history" we read was not history at all.) Also, is changez khan the same as genghis khan, about whom a poem was written by some British poet ?
Henry--
It's the royal We. While Jehovah tells Moses "I Am That I Am" Allah prefers "We" and so did other lords of all they surveyed, including Queen Victoria, especially when she was not amused.
I think we'll be lucky if our Western society in general (not just little pockets of Jihad Watchers here and there) can learn to connect Islam itself to the "minority of extremists" before 50 years pass.
Posted by: remote_control at October 17, 2006 03:51 PM
You are entirely too pessimistic. Where there's a will, there's a way. Americans are many things, but stupid isn't one of them.
When islam reaches out and touches Americans in a personal way, they will initially recoil and then react. As I've said before, many Americans have never seen a muslim; three or four million muslims in a sea of 300 million Americans are a drop in the bucket. I know, they multiply like rats and they will become more visible as they proliferate, but so what? Let them whine, threaten, sue, and demonstrate---who cares? They have worn out their welcome in Europe and their bully tactics are common knowledge.
Muslims are their own worst enemies. Their braggadocio does not impress or intimidate, it only alienates. I know a few career military officers who recently returned from Iraq, and believe me, they know the score! It took them only a few months in Iraq to learn that islam is evil to the core, and to see that it is the driving force behind the war there. One of them told me that every Qur'an should be confiscated and destroyed!
Our soldiers understand what we are up against and in private, they admit that Iraq is a lost cause. Most Iraqis are treacherous cowards, even the police and military. These poor guys have already done two tours there and they all agree that Iraq is a corrupt, backwards, uncivilized, desolate hell on earth. Better yet, they all agree that islam and islamic clerics are responsible for 100% of the misery, death, destruction, hate, and intolerance that permeates Iraq and the M.E. They have friends and family, all of whom will hear their stories and repeat them. Our military people will be on the front lines when they come home, spreading the word about islam and its reprehensible spawn.
Chingiss was not a muslim, was rather primitive and open in his religion, and his dialogue with the Imam of Bukhara (after conquering the town, Chingiss had a grand party) shows genuine curiousity about religious ideas. Anytime anyone managed to unite nomads, they were a most powerful force, except much of the time after conquering fat cities they settle down and get lazy, and Chingiss' grandsons already were spinning off chunks of his empire. The genius of Mohammed lay in fusing tribal unification with transcendent notions of religion and elevating into a religios canon rules of war and of his military state. In this way his empire continues to wage jihad without him, having a self-perpetuating system, Ottomans, Somalis, once you convert them they just keep on going....
The christian world tried to have a bit of theocracy too, but the kings and popes never saw eye-to-eye, and whatever theocracy they did manage to get going was busted by the black plague, which Dar-Es-Islam somehow avoided(?).
Arjun
He wasn't - I recall reading those facts in National Geographic. Also, one of his generals did invade India during the Mamluq sultanate, but was somehow kept off Delhi; later Mongol invaders to India were still non-Muslim, but were kept out/repelled by Balban and Ala-ud-din Khilji. The Mongols didn't have a genocidal history against the Hindus; most of their attacks in India - limited as it was when compared to Herat or Baghdad - were targetted at the Sultanate of Delhi.
Another thing about the Mongols is that they were remarkably tolerant when it came to religion, given that they started of as Tangris, Buddhists and Christians; it was only after 8 generations of the Ilkhanate in Tabriz that that portion of the empire islamized. Similarly, while the Golden Horde started off as Mongol, it gradually evolved into Turkic, and later on islamized as well, which accounts for Kazakhstan and the region south of it being Islamized. This tolerance can be said to have been their undoing, as it resulted in their empires becoming islamic. It's a pity that they didn't wipe out Islam from their lands. Had they successfully terminated the Mamluq or Khilji dynasties, Hindus could have regained their religious freedom, if not their political independence.
Indian history books don't mention whether Chengiz Khan was Muslim or not, and Islamic historians, full of hubris as usual, generally condemn Chengiz Khan (spellings of his name vary from Chengiz to Genghiz to Jenghiz) for ransacking Baghdad, but refrain from criticizing Tamerlane, who did the same thing. It's also questionable whether Chengiz Khan was an ansestor of Babur - there's little evidence to support that.
Infidel Pride,
Thanks for the information. I tried to look up Mongolian history over here, and found that I would have to do some deep digging in the library (Just back from there). When I arrived on JW sometime in April this year, I had no idea that I would be reading so much history. I have learned a lot of European history and that of the ME. I thought I knew most history of my own country, but I was wrong. I have learned a lot about India as well. This site is for serious scholars, or research scholars ; the wealth of information on history, politics and cultures that one gets from the perusal of JW, one is unlikely to get anywhere else on the web.
Genghis Khan's army is said to have stabled their animals in mosques as they toured Persia. They were not muslims. This was during a time when the Crusades were going badly for Europe, so the Mongol rampage was a bit of a blessing. It's too bad that the Mongols and Europeans didn't make an alliance.
As far as defeating Islam, our leaders must first become actually aware that there is a real threat.
Then, those same leaders, must admit the solution is not within their mental capacities to solve.
They need to convene a group of the Robert Spencers and Hugh Fitzgeralds of this world and let them brainstorm effective ways to combat the Jihadists.
Finally, put real power in the hand of responsible people who are not just interested in furthering their political careers.
Until then, we remain at the mercy of a bunch of politically correct opportunists who want to be all things to all people, i.e. incumbents.
Somehow, America needs to find people who care more about their country than about all the perks and adulation of their fellow politicos who walk the hallowed halls of government.
Our elected officials have one major character flaw: They believe they really are superior beings, rather than the truth that they were able to fool enough of the people to get elected.
Honest people are hard to come by.
Cactus,
Your comment above sums up my thoughts exactly. I belong to another country, but the leaders over here are of the same kind as the ones you mention.
Funny. I am most of the way through Robert's excellent book about Muhammmed, and was going to write in that the main character sounds like a psychopath to me, plain & simple.
Glad to see it's apparent to some others. I mean, c'mon...the man "heard voices" who told him, basically, what he ultimately wanted to hear.
ESPECIALLY when he thought he might be acting a tad bit wrong, such as taking on more wives or not believing his (child) bride in the matter of her fidelity.
Oh, and Henry; that royal "we" that Hugh has mentioned. Have you noticed it's use is often (think corporate letters & e-mail) to absolve or deflect responsibility for a particular individual? Can't imagine it's any different for Allah.
Oh, and JanuaryMan - yes; I think Mo was possibly the first "Sybil".
To belabor a rather minor point, I believe the royal "We" alludes to the fact that the ruler speaks for the people over whom he or she rules, as head of state and the face of the nation. It does not refer to some "divine right of kings" concept, linking the sovereign into some fellowship with God. God or allah referring to themselves as "We" reinforces that the respective diety rules over and speaks for everything in their creation. Rulers, of whatever nature, are taken as representatives as well as lords. It is as a representative that they refer to themselves as "We".
"The rise of civilization has been the history of people learning to live in peace and cooperate with each other on a wider and wider scale. All this requires that people forgive and forget, letting old grudges eventually recede into the past." -William Tucker
How would Mr. Tucker judge the efforts of the French parliament to pass a law stating that you'll be prisoned and fined (45k Euro) if you deny the so-called Turkish genocide of Armenians? A very forgiving effort, initiated by the forgetful Armenian diaspora indeed!
* The reason for the absence of pictorial representation of the prophet in Islam is to prevent Muslims from going astray and worshipping the representations of Muhammad (pbuh), just as the Christian had done to Jesus (pbuh).
The reason for the absence of pictorial representation of the prophet in Islam is to prevent Muslims from going astray and worshipping the representations of Muhammad (pbuh), just as the Christian had done to Jesus (pbuh).
Posted by: Oben d'Imishte at October 18, 2006 07:53 PM
Jesus is God and Christians know that. Your arrogant, supremacist, islamic certitude is showing, or was that intentional? As for the Armenian genocide, genocides should never be forgotten. Mr. Tucker had a good point; forgive and move on. But atrocities committed against humanity can never be forgotten. I'm sure you've heard the old adage about history repeating itself.
Islam is guilty of the most horrific genocides in the history of mankind. You can rest assured that historians will guard the legacy of islam with great care for the sake of posterity.