Despite being unable to defend his remarks about Islam when challenged to do so at the America's Truth Forum, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has repeated and expanded his false charges about me:
However the Muslim allies of the West, like General Pervaiz Musharraf, are very unlucky. On one side, their friends like George W. Bush have always praised their efforts in the war against terror, but on the other side Western writers like Robert Spencer are creating an impression that the real problem is not radical Islamism: but Islam as such. Robert Spencer claimed that Islam is a violent religion, which orders Muslims to kill all the Jews and Christians, he is also alleging that the Holy Quran allows Muslims to lie and so Muslims should change the Quran. Robert Spencer is wrong. Islam allows Muslim men to marry Jewish and Christian women, without changing their religion. What does it mean? Islam is a tolerant religion. Robert Spencer cannot deny the fact that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself struck a peace-deal with Jews of Medina, if our Prophet could have a peace-deal with Jews, we can also have a peace deal with Jews and Christians.I don’t understand why some Western writers are trying to impose a radical form of Islam on all the Muslims.I am not a Muslim scholar, but – for me - Islam is very simple, and according to my understanding, Islam is not violent, it is peaceful. Islam says that the blood of an innocent non-Muslim is equal to the blood of a Muslim. The Quran speaks for truth, there is no permission in the Quran for lying. Robert Spencer cannot malign Islam with wrong facts and figures. He cannot mix-up real Islam with extremism.
I believe it is a peculiar species of dishonor for someone to repeat claims after already having declined to defend them, and to expand upon them with falsehoods. But for the record, here are Mir's assertions and my replies:
Robert Spencer claimed that Islam is a violent religion, which orders Muslims to kill all the Jews and Christians...
I have never said this -- not at the America's Truth Forum symposium in Las Vegas where I met Hamid Mir, or anywhere else. I challenge Hamid Mir to produce a quotation by me to substantiate his claim, or else to retract it.
...he is also alleging that the Holy Quran allows Muslims to lie and so Muslims should change the Quran.
As I told Hamid Mir in Las Vegas, this is in Qur'an 3:28 and 16:106. Don't believe me -- take it from Ibn Kathir, who is a mainstream Qur'an commentator. In his commentary on 3:28, Ibn Kathir says that it means that when Muslims "in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers," they may "show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda said, 'We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.' Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, 'The Tuqyah [taqiyyah] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.'"
Let Hamid Mir challenge such teachings from Ibn Kathir. I didn't make them up.
Robert Spencer is wrong. Islam allows Muslim men to marry Jewish and Christian women, without changing their religion. What does it mean? Islam is a tolerant religion. Robert Spencer cannot deny the fact that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself struck a peace-deal with Jews of Medina, if our Prophet could have a peace-deal with Jews, we can also have a peace deal with Jews and Christians.
Actually, the fact that Muslim men can marry Jewish and Christian women, but Jewish and Christian men cannot marry Muslim women, shows just the opposite: traditional Islamic law is anything but tolerant. And as for Muhammad's peace treaty with the Jews, by the end of his life he had killed or exiled all the Jews of Arabia. It would be nice if that treaty could be the basis for hope, but the fact that Muhammad himself broke it doesn't bode well for its utility as a model.
I don’t understand why some Western writers are trying to impose a radical form of Islam on all the Muslims.
This is, of course, a charge that Dean Esmay and others have made: that by speaking of the way jihadists use the Qur'an and Islamic theology, I am only encouraging them. But whether coming from Mir or Esmay or anyone else, this charge is false, and hides an unwillingness by self-proclaimed moderate Muslims to do what they must do: confront and combat the jihad ideology. I am not trying to impose radical Islam on all the Muslims. I am trying to get self-proclaimed moderates like Hamid Mir to confront the elements of Islam that need reforming instead of simply denying that those elements exist. For if they don't confront the jihadists, the jihadists will continue using those Islamic teachings to recruit and motivate terrorists. But it looks as if Hamid Mir, like so many others, would rather confront me.
Islam says that the blood of an innocent non-Muslim is equal to the blood of a Muslim.
Then why did the Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh in his book A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, say this: "Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain"? Did I tell him that?
Since Hamid Mir is again making assertions about Islam and then denying that he actually knows anything about Islam, I doubt he will agree to a debate or dialogue with me, but in any case I nevertheless hereby issue the invitation to him to do so.
Robert Spencer looks pretty good for a 1400 year old. After all, if he did invent "radical Islam" he would have had to be around for the very start of Islam itself.
Mir must need medication or something, saying Robert Spencer is forcing Muslims to be radical. Yeah, he's the father of jihad. What a nut job-perhaps he should apply for a vice presidency in Iran. Only a mind such as A-Nut's can appreciate such a cukoo mentality.
Robert,
He's, "Not a Scholar," so I just disregard what he says.
His, "American Hiroshima" report does have me wondering about his credibility and allegance...
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com
It truly amazes me what can be read in "black & white" in the koran is denied by these people all the time!
Wow Robert, I have a feeling you will destroy the Islamo-Nazis with the power of your Black Zionist ability to go back in time and rewrite history.
I can't resist but to quote a post from a Jew at debbieschlussel.com
Don't talk with a rabied dog, don't even try it.
... friends like George W. Bush have always praised their efforts in the war against terror, but on the other side Western writers like Robert Spencer are creating an impression that the real problem is not radical Islamism: but Islam as such.
And.... what's wrong with raising such a question? In fact, doesn't the world owe Spencer, and the 5 or 6 other humans on the globe who would publicly raise this vital question, the perfect right to explore it as they see fit?
Whatever happened to academic freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of speech?
Three things happend:
1) Mass media (Cf., Marshall McLuhan)
2) Marxism (Cf., Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels)
3) Islam (Cf., Mohammed and Abu Bakr)
Put together and stirred vigorously, these three ingredients make a witch’s brew that has put a spell on us all.
* 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 * * 33:21 *
That Hamid Mir could question open & fair exploration of this Central Question behind Islam demonstrates what punks Moslem men are.
Here's why there is so much punk-dom in Islam (hint, Mohammed and even Allah themseves are punks):
It is not fitting for a Moslem or a Moslima to have any choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option. If any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a wrong Path.
--- God denouncing freedom in Koran 33:36
He who fears will mind.
--- God scaring people into Submission (aka Islam) in Koran 87:10
Were they to obey, showing their obedience in modest speech after a matter had been determined for them, it would have been better.
--- God endorsing intellectual cowardice in Koran 47:21
Believers, obey Allah, and obey Mohammed. Do not falter; become faint-hearted, or weak-kneed, crying for peace.
--- God clearly implying that anybody who would cry for peace is a cowardly pussy
He who disobeys the Apostle after guidance has been revealed will burn in Hell.
--- God threatening people (e.g., Infidels) with hell fire for the grave sin of not buying into Mohammed’s tiresome criminal childish bloodthirsty bullcrap
Methinks Hamid Mir is just trying to stay alive, as the mere act of appearing on the same dias with Robert Spencer in Las Vegas has undoubtedly caused many of his more enthusiastic coreligionists to brand him as an apostate. He must be thinking about all those dull knives in Pakistan that are ready to saw his head off the next time he shows his face over there.
Beyond stupid!
Hamid Mir is the prototype of the twisted Muhammedan mind, unable to reason and unable to cope with an inquistive mind...
Laughable? Yes. But also sad to see the effect of the madrassa-education and the resulting brainwashed zombie display himself in this foolish way....
"Robert Spencer cannot deny the fact that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself struck a peace-deal with Jews of Medina"
Yeah, "struck" being the key word here. Such a deal - the Jews got to lose their heads and Muhammad ( Piss be upon him) took their land, property and the women.
It was a mistake for Hamid Mir to be invited by Jeff Epstein to that conference held, bizarrely, in Las Vegas. No doubt the notion was something along the lines of-- he'll attract press, he's got all these sensational reports about Al Qaeda and nuclear weapons smuggled into America. That's the level at which some people think when constructing a list of whom to invite.
And it was amusing, according to reports from those who were there, to see someone pushing Hamid Mir at the Restoration Weekend, someone from South Carolina who is, presumably, Hamid Mir's agent, wanting to promote and push this character without stopping to consider what he is all about.
There are not a few such promoters and mountebanks around, and they include not only agents, but in some cases the principals themselves, pretending to be "experts" on Al Qaeda or Islam or something, and flogging their well-paid wares wherever they can.
Caveat emptor.
"Robert Spencer claimed that Islam is a violent religion, which orders Muslims to kill all the Jews and Christians, he is also alleging that the Holy Quran allows Muslims to lie and so Muslims should change the Quran".
He couldn't be more right!.
The truth speaks for itself.
Keep on good work Robert!.
Not only the conscious people in the west who endorse you but also a substantial number of people in the so-called muslim countries as well !
"Robert Spencer is wrong. Islam allows Muslim men to marry Jewish and Christian women, without changing their religion. What does it mean? Islam is a tolerant religion"
-- from Hamid Mir's comments
What rot. Of course Muhammad the conqueror, who himself took among his wives (was it eleven of them, or only nine? I've lost count) and concubines Christian (Coptic) and Jewish women whose husbands, fathers, brothers he had killed in battle.
Of course the Muslims could take the wives, regarded as booty, of the non-Muslims they conquered in battle. It made sense.
But just let a non-Muslim man try to marry a Muslim woman without himself converting -- that is impossible, that is forbidden, that is punishable by -- well, by all the ways that Muslims have of punishing non-Muslims, in lands ruled by Muslims but not, as yet, in the lands just a decade or two ago regarded as Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels.
Taqiyya may get Hamid Mir, and his credulous or possibly merely greedy agent, somewhere. But not here it won't.
Quote:
Islam allows Muslim men to marry Christian and Jewish women,without changing thier religion.What does it mean?Islam is a tolerant religion.-Hamid
Actually this shows the intolerance in Islam because it only applies to muslim MEN.A muslim woman cannot marry a Christian man.This is considered extremely haram and the best the woman can hope for is to be banished from her family and at worst she may become the victim of a "honor killing".
Muslims sometimes cite the fact that a man can have multiple wives as a sign of how liberal Islam is,but again,they fail to mention that a woman cannot have more than one husband.
JLP
"A peace deal with the Jews of Medina.."
Didn't he have massacred hundreds of Jewish men and boys after the siege of Medina?
Here's a similar article.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/mir112106.htm
I agree with you Hugh. It's quite odd that Hamid Mir was invited to that conference.
"I agree with you Hugh. It's quite odd that Hamid Mir was invited to that conference."
If something can be normal and unsurprising, and odd at the same time, then it was odd.
So what then ARE the solutions "real Islam" possesses to combat extremism? "Real Islam" claims a myriad of solutions it can bring to all facets of life. Surely then, solutions for extremism from such a "perfect, complete system and way of life" would entail much more than just blaming Western writers for "encouraging" it, yes? Or maybe that's what the sharia handbook says --- "when extremists hijack 'real Islam', blame non-Muslims"?
Impressive system they have there.
Liars cannot be called "moderates". How about calling them
"Currently Nonviolent But Deceitful Islamic Apologists"
Mr Islamsforlosers, I totally agree with you that Mr Spencer is looking sprightly for a 1400 year old, him and otehr Western writers.
I don’t understand why some Western writers are trying to impose a radical form of Islam on all the Muslims.
Do critics of Robert Spencer seriously use this argument? Do they imagine that Islamo Fascism is the fault of Robert Spencer because he points it out in the Koran? DO they dare suggest that people who blow themselves and others up in teh name of Islam (or even do a spot of Muslim Busking), didn't think of it until Robert Spencer came along? Am I understanding this right, because that is the pathetic limit of victimhood. It's just outrageous, and says a lot about the people who swallow it.
Hamid Mir-
http://www.mxfitness.co.uk/images/articles/fingers%20in%20ears2.gif
Perhaps I wrote too soon about "real Islam" not providing a solution? Further along in the article, Hamid writes....
Fine...Hamid sets the table for "real Islam" to come through with the "solution-of-solutions" to combat extremism. And here it is....
Ah, so one of "real Islam's" best solutions against extremism is to increase the number of Muslims in America so that they somehow act as "human shields" against al-Qaeda?
And yet earlier, Hamid writes....
....contradicting his "Muslim human shield" theory, since terrorists have demonstrated that they're willing to kill Muslims with impunity anyway.
Further down the article, Hamid does offer six more solutions, but they pretty much all dictate what America should do, not what "real Islam" can do. For example, how can "real Islam" educate Muslims away from 9/11 conspiracies? How can "real Islam" change authoritarian Middle-East regimes? How can "real Islam" facilitate dialogue betwen Hamas, Hezbollah, and America? Why doesn't "real Islam" step up to the plate where an un-Islamic America has failed? Why can't "real Islam" simply wow the world with the divine solutions it claims it has for a "perfect life for all" and shame America in the process for trying to solve things the un-Islamic way? Is it because "real Islam" really doesn't offer any real solutions (outside of telling an un-Islamic America what SHE should do)?
Back to the "solutions" drawing board for "real Islam", Hamid.
Excuse me, but did he say "...no permission in the Quran for lying?"????
Then how does he explain "Taqiyyah"?
(there is considerable info online)
I may have been born on a Wednesday, but it surely wasn't LAST Wednesday.
Hamid Mir says
When somebody says "Islam says," I assume roughly that they are referring to (a) the Koran, (b) the sahih Hadith, (c) one or other of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or (d) simply giving a statement about their own private Islam which is to some extent different from a, b, and c.
We see quite a lot of (d). I believe the "my own private Islam" people have an imaginary friend in their head called "Islam," and whenever they get in trouble, out comes "Islam" to say just the right thing on just the right occasion. Hamid Mir has apparently been talking to his imaginary friend, Islam.
To find out what Islam, (a), (b), and (c) say, read this excerpt.
Highlights: The Koran says believers and disbelievers are "not equal"; the sahih hadith say that no Muslim shall receive the death penalty--which is the standard penalty for killing a Muslim--for killing a disbeliever; and Islamic law says that the blood money payable for killing a non-Muslim is a fraction of what is payable for killing a Muslim, that there is no penalty for killing an apostate, etc.
P.S. The Koran does not use the word "innocent" or equivalent to refer to non-Muslims.
"Hamid Mir spreads falsehoods about me"
Mr. Spencer,
This guy is one of the Talibani Supporters of Pakistani Journalist Fraternity.
He has met twice Osama before and after 9/11 Do you think that was normal!!!
I have watched his interviews & discussions in Pakistani TV and hearing him on it I always thought that IF this man is called Liberal Pakistani Journalist then What wil we call the Terrorist supporters.
In almost all his discussions on TV he criticises
USA and West not to say about India.
Do you think Osama gave this guy permission to Interview him Just like that. NO & Osama knows that he is one of them and I am sure this guy knows where is OBL now.
IF this man is called Liberal Pakistani Journalist then What wil we call the Terrorist supporters.
Call them "devout Moslems."
"Hamid Mir spreads falsehoods about me"
Get ready for Hamid Mir and other Muslims to start spreading falsehoods about what the Qur'an is really saying. They will tell you that you are taking the Qur'an out of context, but they won't try to tell the Terrorists and Extremists that they are wrong. That might start a civil war within the Muslim world if they did that.