In "Religion of Peace? Robert Spencer asks the hard questions" at National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy discusses my book The Truth About Muhammad and some of its implications.
Islam is quintessentially tolerant. Its adherents are hospitable to liberty, equality, and pluralism, the rudiments of modern democracy. Those committing terror in its name are heretics — a fringe which has “hijacked” a “religion of peace.”This conventional wisdom brims over the mainstream media’s daily servings. It is, moreover, the not-to-be-questioned premise of U.S. policy on a host of paramount issues: everything from how the war on terror is conceptualized and prosecuted, to the wisdom of negotiations with Iran, a sovereign state for Palestinians, agitation for freedom and popular self-determination throughout the Middle East, and the assumption that our own growing Muslim population will seamlessly assimilate.
But is it true?
Emphatically, the answer is “no.” So argues best-selling author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in The Truth about Muhammad — Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95). And he does not expect you to take his word for it.
Painstakingly, Spencer has crafted a biography Islam’s Prophet from the authentic Muslim Sunnah, comprised of: the Koran, which is taken by believers to be the verbatim word of Allah, dictated to Muhammad in Arabic by the angel Gabriel; the tafsir, or Koranic commentary; the hadith, which are lengthy volumes recording the words and traditions of Muhammad (there are six different collections, dating from the eighth and ninth centuries); and, finally, the sira, authoritative biographies of the Prophet, including what remains to us of Ibn Ishaq’s hagiographic account, written about 150 years after Muhammad’s death in 632.The picture that emerges is complex but not ambiguous. Muhammad was a dynamic figure — necessarily, among the most dynamic in history, having formed from scratch a movement that ultimately dominated lands from the Near East to Central Asia (to say nothing of pockets of Europe, Africa, and the Far East), a movement that today claims over a billion adherents. He was also, through and through, a product of Arabia’s tribal antiquity — a fact often stressed by Islam’s modern sympathizers to explain, if not smooth, the Prophet’s many rough edges.
In such a life, unsurprisingly, one finds episodic acts of tolerance and benevolence. But there are episodes and then there is trajectory. The arc of Muhammad’s life tends decisively to intolerance and inequality. His was, ultimately, a bellicose, us-versus-them world of conquest and booty. This cannot but help but imbue the religion he founded. In it, his example is normative: the scriptures revere him as “an excellent model of conduct” (Sura 33:21), who exhibits an “exalted standard of character” (68:4) and obedience to whom is repeatedly adjured — indeed, is made equally as essential as obedience to Allah Himself (4:80). Recalling the Muslim fury over Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2005, Spencer points out that in the Koran “again and again Allah is quite solicitous of his prophet, and ready to command what will please him. To the mind of someone who accepts the [Koran] as an authentic revelation, this places Muhammad in a particularly important position.”
CONTRADICTION AND AMBIGUITY
The Prophet of Islam was born in Mecca, a member of the Quraysh tribe which did a lucrative trade in pilgrimages to the local shrine, the Kabah — now the central locus of Islamic worship but then home to numerous pagan idols. Both Muhammad’s parents died in his early childhood. In his twenties, he was hired as a traveling salesman by his distant cousin Khadija, an accomplished merchant woman whose wares he deftly traded in Syria. Though fifteen years his senior, Khadija proposed marriage, becoming the first of Muhammad’s many wives (biographers peg the number at between eleven and thirteen, with Muhammad having claimed to be “given the power of sexual intercourse equal to forty men”). Eventually, she also became the first Muslim.
Muhammad’s prophetic career spanned about 23 years after he received, at age 40, what he came to believe was his first revelation. Initially, the call to Islam was a straightforward summons to monotheism — to worship only “Allah,” who, Spencer explains, may have been the tribal god of the Quraysh (and thus one of the many local deities).
As further revelations fleshed out nascent Islam, there was transparent borrowing from the Bible, the Torah, other Jewish and Christian sources (including heterodox strains of Christianity then abundant in Arabia), Zoroastrian writings from Persia, and local pagan ritual. The resulting similarities discomfit Muslims, who often insist that they represent not emulation but happenstance, the Koran having been recited to Muhammad (who was illiterate) by Allah in His original language of Arabic. Beyond that, any seeming Judeo-Christian influence is attributed to Jews and Christians being fellow “People of the Book,” whose God Muslims share and whose heritage they claim to supersede. It is, in fact, an enduring tenet that Jews and Christians are, as Spencer puts it, “sinful renegades from the truth of Islam,” who corruptly altered their scriptures to elide foreshadowings of Muhammad’s coming.
One of the seeming contradictions of Muhammad’s life is the contrast of his early hospitality toward Jews (and Christians) with his final position of unremitting enmity. Contradictions, of course, create ambiguity. This is useful for Islam’s modern apologists, who incessantly underline a few isolated episodes of tolerance and even kindness as if they could bleach away Muhammad’s legacy of arch hostility toward non-Muslims — a legacy built, for example, on the Koran’s admonition that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51); on Muhammad’s vision of the end of the world: marked by Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, … there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him”); and on the Prophet’s deathbed call for the total expulsion of unbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula — a desire the Saudi government honors to this day, particularly in Mecca and Medina, cities closed to non-Muslims.
Spencer cogently explains, however, that there is no real contradiction or ambiguity. Especially in the early phase of his prophesying — the Meccan period before Hijra, when the Muslims were forced to flee to Medina — Muhammad had great reason to be solicitous: He was building a movement. Arabia’s powerful Jewish tribes (the Qaynuqa, Auf and Qurayzah, among others) were among those the Prophet most energetically called to Islam. Thus we find Muhammad “situating himself within the roster of Jewish prophets, forbidding pork for his followers, and adapting for the Muslims the practice of several daily prayers and other aspects of Jewish ritual.” Muhammad, moreover, struck a treaty with Medina’s Jewish tribes — grandiosely regarded by Muslims as “the world’s first constitution” — which described them as “one community with the believers” (though tellingly, even in this amicable period, the pact drew sharp distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims).
In fact, this adaptability, when exhibited in Muhammad’s similarly earnest efforts to convert his native Quraysh to Islam, resulted in the nearly ruinous “Satanic verses” incident (made infamous in modern times by Salman Rushdie’s book and the consequent murder fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). Desperate to be reconciled with his own people, Muhammad convinced himself that he’d received a revelation allowing Muslims to pray to three pagan goddesses favored by the Quraysh as intercessors for Allah. The Quraysh were thrilled, but the Prophet, upon a countermanding revelation from an angry Gabriel, soon realized he had not only contradicted the core of his monotheistic preaching but potentially undermined the entire Islamic enterprise by raising the possibility that his revelations were not authentic. Allah forgave Muhammad, observing that Satan’s interference had been an occupational hazard for all His beleaguered prophets through the ages. Still, the incident is sufficiently embarrassing that Muslim scholars and apologists continue ferociously to discredit it, although, Spencer concludes, the evidence preponderates against them.
BRUTAL CONQUEST
In any event, good will between Muslims and non-Muslims proved fleeting. Muhammad’s overriding aim was Islamic hegemony not ecumenical coexistence. Upon resettling in Medina, Muhammad became as much a political and military leader as the apocalyptic preacher of his first 13 years of prophesying. The Jews, like the Quraysh, many Christian communities, and other non-Muslims declined to heed his call. Rejection of Islam was construed as attack upon Islam, for which the prescription was jihad.
Incontestably, jihad is a central imperative (in fact, the highest obligation) of Islam. Muhammad’s career as a fierce and, at times, brutal warrior illustrates the futility of efforts to render congenial to modern sensibilities this command to struggle against perceived enemies. Yes, the Koran famously asserts that there shall be “no compulsion in religion” (2:256). But however hortatory this injunction may be, it is ahistorical. Islam was spread by the sword.
The Prophet’s military feats began with attacks, many of which he led personally, on Quraysh caravans. These raids, Spencer explains, were not merely acts of vengeance against those who had rejected Islam; they further “served a key economic purpose, keeping the Muslim movement solvent.” Booty would be central to Muslim militancy, and thus grew rules for its division (such as one-fifth of the haul set aside for the Prophet, and the propriety of using female slaves as concubines). Asked by a follower about the legitimacy of nighttime attacks given the probability of endangering women and children, Muhammad indicated these were permissible because such noncombatants “are from them” (i.e., the unbelievers).
It is due to this and other lessons that the battles of early Islam resonate today — creating a major hurdle (I fear, an insuperable one) for reformers hopeful of convincing the ummah (i.e., the worldwide Muslim community) that it’s the terrorists, not the reformers themselves, who are doctrinally wayward.
The Prophet, for example, directed “martyrdom” operations. Martyrdom, Spencer elaborates, was understood exactly as it is by today’s jihadists: “referring to one who (in the words of a revelation that came to Muhammad much later) ‘slays and is slain’ for Allah (Qur’an 9:111), rather than in the Christian sense of suffering unto death at the hands of the unjust for the sake of the faith.”
Muslims were authorized by another revelation to break treaties — particularly with the Jews — when there appeared advantage in doing so (8:58). And in the tone-setting “Nakhla Raid” against the Quraysh, a timely revelation helped Muhammad overcome his initial reluctance to accept booty derived from killings committed by his followers during the sacred month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden. Those murdered had disbelieved Allah. This, the Prophet learned, was the greater evil. Of course, the collateral lesson, as Spencer relates, was that “[m]oral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.”
Believers were instructed to fight and behead non-believers (47:4), and did so mercilessly. After the out-numbered Muslims decisively triumphed over the Quraysh in the “Battle of Badr,” for example, one captured Quraysh leader pled for his life, asking, “But who will look after my children?” “Hell,” replied Muhammad, ordering the man killed. Another leader’s head was brought as a trophy to the Prophet, who expressed delight and gave thanks to Allah. (No wonder then, Spencer interjects, that when al Qaeda’s strongman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, decapitated American hostage Nicholas Berg, he declared, “The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in Badr and to kill them…. And he set a good example for us.”) (Brackets in original.) Allah, in fact, expressed anger at Muhammad after Badr because the Prophet agreed to take ransom from some captured Quraysh leaders rather than beheading them as his companion, Umar, had urged.
In Medina, the Muslims were pitted against an alliance of the Quraysh and the Qurayzah Jews in the “Battle of the Trench.” During the Muslims’ building of the defensive trench, Muhammad’s pick blows are said to have emitted lightening flashes, which drew cries of “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest” — the “Islamic cry of victory” for Spencer) and were interpreted by the Prophet as a sign that Allah would eventually make Islam triumphant beyond Arabia in the east and west. Opining that “war is deceit,” Muhammad directed one of his followers to appear as a sympathizer to the enemy factions, while sowing discord between them. It worked: the Quraysh abandoned the field and the Muslims laid siege to the Jews, whom Muhammad called “brothers of monkeys.” (Spencer notes three places — 2:62-65, 5:59-60 and 7:166 — where the Koran records that “Allah transformed the Sabbath-breaking Jews into pigs and monkeys.”) When the Qurayzah surrendered and sought mercy, Muhammad agreed with the assessment of his follower Sad bin Muadh that “their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives.” In the execution, Muhammad personally participated in the beheading of between 600 and 900 captives — including all males who had reached puberty.
This incident was not unique. Spencer recounts that Muhammad ordered a Jewish poet, Kab bin al-Ashraf, killed because the Prophet took offense at “amatory verses of an insulting nature about Muslim women.” After the murder, he commanded the Muslims: “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” When Muhammad ordered the expulsion of the Nadir Jews with whom area Muslims had a treaty, Muhammad’s emissary declared, “Hearts have changed, and Islam has wiped out the old covenants.” When the Jews declined to leave, Muhammad construed this to mean that “[t]he Jews have declared war” — another reminder that whether Islam is “under attack,” the trigger of jihad, is ever in the eyes of the beholder. In the ensuing siege, the Prophet ordered the earth scorched, refuting his own prohibition against the wanton destruction of property so often cited by Islamic apologists. And in the “Raid at Khaybar,” Muhammad directed that a Jewish leader, Kinana bin al-Rabi, be tortured to extract the location of tribal treasure; when al-Rabi stood fast, Muhammad had him beheaded, and later, when more hidden treasure was located, the incensed Prophet — as he had done with the Qurayzah Jews — directed that warriors among the Khaybar Jews be killed and the women and children taken as slaves.
WHY MUHAMMAD MATTERS
Why rehash these and other chilling episodes in the meteoric, militaristic rise of early Islam? Because, Spencer maintains, they are crucial to appreciating the dual challenge faced by Westerners and Islamic reformers.
Americans, told incessantly by their elites that Islam is a “religion of peace,” watch in bewilderment when, for example, a Muslim convert to Christianity is subjected to a death penalty trial in the “new” Afghanistan, liberated from the Taliban due to great American sacrifice. How, they rightly wonder, could the “moderates’ now in charge abide such a thing? The answer is as simple: Islam’s prophet made death the penalty for apostasy. (“Whoever changed his Islamic religion,” said Muhammad, “then kill him.”) There is a crying need, Spencer observes, “for Westerners to become informed about the words and deeds of Muhammad — which make the actions of Islamic states much more intelligible than do the words of Islamic apologists in the West.”
The foundation of American policy, furthermore, is the conceit that moderates represent the Islamic mainstream, that they reflect the authentic image of a Muhammad — the “highest example of human behavior” — who championed the values of democracy and equality. “But,” as Spencer cautions, “if the jihad terrorists are correct in invoking his example to justify their deeds, then Islamic reformers will need to initiate a respectful but searching re-evaluation of the place Muhammad occupies within Islam — a vastly more difficult undertaking.”
And this must be said not just of jihad terrorists. Spencer, for example, is understanding about the actions of Muhammad, then aged 50, in taking Aisha as a wife when she was six and consummating the marriage when she was nine. This was, after all, in the spirit of the times. Nevertheless, for believers, the Prophet’s example transcends its time, and thus child-brides are a commonplace in the Islamic world. Muhammad’s Islam, moreover, still confines women to a subordinate status — the Koran likens a woman to a “tilth” to be used as a man wills (2:223); a man may take four wives and have sex with slave girls (4:3); a woman’s testimony is valued at half that of a man (2:282); and so on. There is, moreover, simply no credibly denying the denigrated status of non-Muslims, reduced by Muhammad and his successors to humiliating dhimmitude and, as we have seen, brutalized.
Individually, countless Muslims have evolved past these notions. But Islam has not — certainly not in a dominant or convincing way. If anything, atavism is at least as strong a current as reform. Is it realistic to believe the tens of millions (more likely, hundreds of millions) of Muslims whose compass is Muhammad’s belligerent, hegemonic vision of Islam — a vision that has endured for 14 centuries — will abandon it in favor of an Islam that embraces liberty, self-determination, and equality based on our common humanity? Anything, one imagines, is possible … but such a seismic shift is not going to happen any time soon.
Robert Spencer graphically illustrates the depth of our folly in thinking — or, rather, blithely assuming — otherwise. An alarming book, and a necessary one.
The truth about Muhammad hurts. It hurts real bad. I've never seen a people so in denial about about the character and actions of the central figure of their religion. Muslims will brag among themselves about Muhammed's conquest and ruthlessness. But have a non Muslim criticize Mohammed's life and they go ballistic. As in cartoon riots.
Muslims are pathetic idolaters of Muhammad and his concocted Allah. Allah was invented imagined hallucinated to give Muhammad street credibility among the rough and tumble pagan Arabs of his time.
Buddhists have a very high opinion of Buddah but I've never heard of riots and fatwas against those who criticize Buddha. Muslims are very insecure about Muhammad because some part of them knows have awful his life was. Oh, Hitler had his good side too, I'm sure. He liked children and German Shepard dogs
Robert's Mo book is #292 with 111 reviews. Many of the reviews have additional comments to them. How is Karen the Carpenter's Mo book doing? #5,527 and 11 reviews
Say it ani't so Mo!!!
Gobsmack me with a Koran!
"Muslims are pathetic idolaters of Muhammad and his concocted Allah" Posted by dennisw
I have a ceramic bunny on my television stand. Hmmmm, so maybe I can call him Bunnallh and we can all worship him as god?
FACT
Taking an idol, tossing the rest of your idols and CALLING it god, does not MAKE it GOD you Muslims!
We know this from a biblical story in the OT when the Hebrews (after God through Moses released them from their Egyptian bondage)turned around while Moses was on the mountant and in their impatience and desire to have an idol to worship - made a gold calf and called it their god.
GOD was NOT happy about this!
Islam IS idolatry and ANY idolatry is an ABOMINATION to God (of demonic origin) and I do not care SPIT what the PC out there say about my saying this. Our ignorant politicians need to be speaking the truth.
The TRUTH hurts.
Re: "Of course, the collateral lesson, as Spencer relates, was that “[m]oral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.”
Islam permits deception and is unique among the "religions" of mankind in that regard. It is absolute truth-fact that Islam permits deception.
Muhammed introduced the DNA of deception into the belief-system and much of the exploitation and violence follows from that. Jesus (e.g.) absolutely forbid all deception-hypocrisy and said that anyone who deceived others was "from the evil one". Deceivers of anyone were not to be recognized as a followers of Jesus.
War is deception. Deception is war. Muhammad was a deceiver.
Why would someone treat a belief-system as if it is scientific fact, particularly when it permits deception with Kafirs? The answer is that the belief system gives a short-term advantage-reward to the believer, a supremacist attitude, as well as permission to deceive and exploit Kafirs and even allows Kafirs to be murdered with a good conscience (Kafirs are not "innocent").
As Tariq Ramadan has pointed out, Kafirs are people who do "not recognise the last message as the truth." The perception that Kafirs do not recognize truth creates a whole array of rationalizations and perceptions re Kafirs that result in conscious and unconscious supremacist attitudes and behavior, as well as the very ugly Muslim permission to deceive Kafirs.
Islam has no moral mandates against deception with Unbeliever-Kafirs. Islam is a "religion" of deception. Islam is moral lunacy.
"Islam is a "religion" of deception." Posted by Frank
Yes, and the Bible says that Satan is the FATHER OF ALL LIES.
So WHO are they REALLY worshipping?
Sorry. My last comment wasn't PC.
As with many non-Muslims, I was amazed at CAIR style deceptions and wondered how this could be? (How can "religious" people do that?) Now I understand that the "religion" makes deception with Kafirs a moral action. It has no absolute mandate against deception-hypocrisy.
People who have the permission to say one thing in public and another in private are hypocrite-deceivers and moral lunatics. People such as Tariq Ramadan and CAIR are moral lunatics. They are modern Pharisees.
The Goobs-
If Jesus was right then there is no way of getting out of that one. Jesus was very clear on the matter of deception-hypocrisy. He said all hypocrisy-deception comes from "the evil one".
Jesus' absolute mandate against hypocrisy-deception is probably his hardest teaching. However, the only people Jesus condemned were deliberate deceivers, and he was gentle with sinners. Jesus did not condone sin, but he saw it as part of human nature. It was deception that he saw as inhuman and satanic. He was very clear re that.
The truth about Muhammad hurts. It hurts real bad.
dennisw you are so correct! Robert's books are the silver bullets that will help destroy islam. it sometimes seems we take so many steps forward, and then some back, but in the end, truth erupts and allows people to see the deception of islam.
Frank and Goobs, thank you for your comments! I agree wholeheartedly. Could you please cite the scripture where Jesus speaks thus about deceivers? I want to add it to my arsenal in arguments about Islam.
I do recall that in the NT there were two times that Jesus got really worked up: Once in the temple with the moneychangers, and once when he talks about Satan being the "Father of all lies."
Lying, IMHO, (be it on a political level, like Islam, or on a personal level) is so abhorrent to God, because it completely circumvents the victim's free will. And Free Will is so absolutely precious in God's sight. He endowed us and the angels with it, knowing full well the mess that would ensue, but went ahead with giving it anyway, because he felt nonetheless that the exercise of Free Will was worth it. When someone deceives, I think in God's eyes it is as bad as murder.
Though I have read about the life of muhammad, each time I read about the individual deeds, I am shocked. And muslims, having bestowed the title of "uswa hasana, al insan, al kamil" (the perfect man to be emulated), repeated all his deeds countless times in the last 14 centuries. From looking like him, dressing like him, to looting, raping, murdering, destroying all monuments that they came across. How many people have died till now because every single muslim through the centuries imitated the perfect man ? Hundreds of millions were killed in India. How many in Persia, Mesopotamia, Byzantium, Egypt ?
At last the truth about Muhammed and what really he has done and taught is being brought to light. Thank-you Robert and God Bless you.
Is this idolatry ?
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/relics/sac5.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/relics/prophet.htm&h=632&w=533&sz=90&hl=en&start=9&tbnid=Qi9FkZKKajL8BM:&tbnh=137&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmuhammads%2Brelics%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
Is this idolatry ?
Google for images of relics of Muhammad.
" Koran having been recited to Muhammad (who was illiterate) by Allah in His original language of Arabic. "
Although I am scarcely erudite in this region it is my impression that the Koran's first language was NOT Arabic but the older Syrio-Aramaic and that many of the "obscurities" and the "impossibles" of the Koran( not to mention the illogicality of many sura) are to to the poor translation into Arabic on top of its already present bastardic plagiarisation of many other texts(improvise when you cannot remember).
I wont write my opinion of the Koran, Muhammad, Islam or 99.9% of Muslims to avoid the censor.
Hitler's philosophy of life and politics was based upon the Koran and the more I look at both ideologies the more parallels I find(eg SS= janissaries). This is ONE area which needs to be worked upon as it shows Islam in its true light.
"Hitler's philosophy of life and politics was based upon the Koran"
Perhaps you are referring to this quote:
"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity! -then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity
alone prevented them from doing so."
(August 28, 1942, midday)
p. 667 "Hitler's Table Talk; 1941-1944" translated by N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Enigma Books (1953)
Well done pointing this out, I wish someone would get the 'The Truth...' read by Dubya & Co.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe spreads
faith through violence...
.
nichtdhimmi-
I am not really a chapter and verse guy on these things and am hardly a good Christian. However, the Gospels are filled with condemnation of deception-hypocrisy. Jesus got in trouble with the Pharisees for his strong condemnations of their deception. Meanwhile, in an attempt to divert the issue, the Pharisees condemned Jesus for being the friends of tax collectors such as Mathew and Levi. (Tax-collectors in the ancient world were guys who extorted money in "tax farms" to meet a number for the state and they kept anything over that. They were John Gotti-Al Capone types who did business via their gangs.) Yet Levi and Mathew became disciples of Jesus and Jesus told the Pharisees that tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God before the Pharisees. The Pharisees were not happy with Jesus.
If you read through the Gospels, Jesus' mandates against hypocrisy-deception are a powerful theme in his teachings. I don't think Mohammad would have been a happy bunny with Jesus. Jesus would have told Mohammad to take his "war is deception" crap and shove it.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:ltjHQDQnjI0J:www.biblepath.com/beatitudes.html+let+your+yes+be+yes+and+your+no+no,+all+else+comes+from+the+evil+one,+jesus&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5
National Review is mainstream. This is a good sign. However, though Andrew McCarthy's review (and other similarly hopeful columns in the past) must pass William F. Buckley's imprimatur, it would be nice if the Grand Old Man himself would weigh in on this most important issue of our time before he croaks (he turned 82 in last November).
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' 39But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also".
Gandhi said that this quote led him to his non-violent approach. He said he kept wondering what Jesus meant and one day it became clear to Gandhi what Jesus meant. Gandhi said that what Jesus was saying "is that when you tell the truth you may have to take a blow, you may have to take several blows, but that you should stand your ground". Gandhi said it was a call to absolute bravery and non-violence. He said "Jesus was offering us a way out of the madness". Gandhi was a rare man, very human, flawed, but a very great man. Gandhi was a Hindu but he thought the teachings of Jesus were quite compatible with Hindu teachings.
The idea that the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Mohammad are compatible is utter nonsense. Mohammad was a deceiver and violent.
Mr McCarthy:
Emphatically, the answer should be: "HELL,NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
At last the truth about Muhammed and what really he has done and taught is being brought to light. Thank-you Robert and God Bless you.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at January 11, 2007 10:10 AM
************
There is a crying need, Spencer observes, “for Westerners to become informed about the words and deeds of Muhammad — which make the actions of Islamic states much more intelligible than do the words of Islamic apologists in the West.”
We in the West still have one big problem: our leaders will not listen. Nothing we do matters. We are exhorted against religious bigotry while the bigots take over. The insane are running the asylum.
We are told that Islam's problem with the West will be ended once we get the Palestinians everything they want from Israel. There's just one problem: Islam's view of others and its militarism predates the founding of Israel. It even predates the founding of the US.
You can't argue that it's merely a "radical" view of "moderate Islam" when it was the rationale for the attacking of US ships by the Barbary States over two centuries ago.
Seeking a peace treaty, based on Congress' vote to pay tribute, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (then ambassadors to France and Britain) asked Dey's ambassador why Muslims had so much hostility towards America. They later reported to Congress the ambassador told them Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Upon becoming president, Thomas Jefferson had the will to fight back. When will our leaders summon up the same will? Will it be before or after we are destroyed?
I would be very careful because Islam is Shari'a and Shari'a is nothing but moral absolutes, Islam is the personification of absolutism, especially moral absolutism, it is the most rigid, unforgiving, unbending religion on the planet.
Morality is, whether you care to admit or not, in the eye of the beholder.. FGM (Female circumcision and slavery, and stoning, and honor killing) are moral in Islam.
As regards morality handed down by a god, remember that there are millions of self appointed spokesmen for various gods, and countless interpretations and understandings of the "word" of this or that god even between believers.
The claim of moral absolutes is just a form of psychological terrorism, the use of words, argument and the bandwagon effect to force people into conformance or agreement with one's own position or beliefs, which are driven by one's own fears and needs.
That is how Islam works on it's population, that is how all relgions work on their populations, be they Tao, Hindu, Jew, Christian, Islam or Buddhist.
as Spencer relates... “[m]oral absolutes were swept aside [in original Islam] in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.”
I would be very careful because Islam is Shari'a and Shari'a is nothing but moral absolutes, Islam is the personification of absolutism, especially moral absolutism...
Interestingly, Islam evinces a fascinating paradox with regard to moral absolutes: Islam's moral code as it was forged by Mohammed (and/or later Muslim constructors of the Mohammed of legend) is sheer casuistry fused with a sense of absolutism -- i.e., in whatever form the fluid casuistic appetites and needs of Mohammed flowed, that became frozen in absolutism: so the absolutism in Islam lies not so much in the concretized rules, but in the prescription to abide, with a ferociously fanatical devotion, by those rules and by the superstructure they form. It is Nihilism with a God, and Anarchism with a Purpose.
Nariz, I am astounded by your coming here to declare to everyone that if we do not embrace your atheism and your dreamland hope for humanity, then we are the ideological and moral equivalent to someone who believes that it is perfectly fine to have female circumcision, slavery, stoning, and honor killing. The thing is that I'm sure that you believe this notion that it isn't Islam per se that is the problem, but that ALL religion is the problem, and it must be eradicated.
You really need to expound upon this notion for us. I mean, if Christianity, Buddhism, Judism, Hinduism and the rest are no better or worse than Islam, because they all shackle humanity beneath the yoke of some misguided false myth of immaginary "morals," then you need to set about to prove how much better humanity would be if there were no absolute rights (unalienable right to life, human value of all people, community standards, the right to worship and speech) and wrongs (murder, theft of property, denial of property, denial of employment for no reason, denial of justice).
You are a dangerous person, Nariz. You would take the absolutes away and replace them with either mob rule or the dictates of an all-high potentate.
Nariz Doesn't seem to have a problem with the idea that someone will come and cut his head off if they get the chance.
Unbelievers never understand until it is too late.
What Jesus said to those who were liars and deceivers.....
"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
SOULD FAMILIAR FOLKS?
What did Paul write in advance about Mohammed's angel messenger that would show up some 800 years after Jesus?
Let God's curse fall on ANYONE, including myself, who preaches ANY other message than the one we told you about. Even if an ANGEL comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed.
Why I think Mohammed's 'angel' was Satan.
Because the scriptures warned us about false teachers that would come -
"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 2 Corinthians 11:14"
Revelation 21:8 - tells us what the future will be for liars and those who worship idols (false gods)
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars–their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death
"Morality is, whether you care to admit or not, in the eye of the beholder.. FGM (Female circumcision and slavery, and stoning, and honor killing) are moral in Islam".-Nariz
That was the argument of the Nazis. I don't buy it. I don't think good and evil are radically subjective concepts. I think that by reasoning we may make valid judgements of what is good and what is bad.
I am suspicious of "religious", atheist dogma-any dogma. I think good and evil may be discovered by reason. Socrates believed that. All real education is about discovering what is good and what is bad based on reason-or what is it about?. All dogma, left, PC, "religious", etc. is a danger to discovering (by reason) what is good and what is evil.
"Morality is, whether you care to admit or not, in the eye of the beholder....Nariz
WOE! NARIZ!
GOD is the one who decides the law and what is good and what is evil....NOT man. GOD is HOLY and the judge.
Consider this verse.
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"
Nariz, you're walking on thin ice. You'd better make peace with God.
P.S. Frank, we KNOW what is good and what is evil because God has given each of us a conscience (with knowledge) so that we are without excuse.
PSS....the good news is that He also gave us freewill.
Nariz-
Kant said that the morality of any behavior (its goodness or evil) can be understood by asking the question: if everyone in the world did as I do, how would that impact me? It's really another version of Jesus'"Do unto others as you would have them do to you".
I think that (Jesus' "do unto others...etc.") may be the essence of all moral behavior. How do we want people to treat us? Should we not treat them as we wish to be treated? ( For example, we do not wish to be deceived? Then should we deceive others? And if we do deceive others, for what reason do we do that?) Do we (and others)deserve justice (to be given what belongs to us/them)? How may we reason to discover what is just and what is not just-to discover what each person deserves? There are many questions re good and evil and I don't think they are purely subjective or relative concepts. Reason points to objectivity in matters of good and evil where people are free to reason.
American government has roots going back to ancient Greece where Socrates asked such questions. Socrates is not wanted where there is no reasoning-where "religious" or other dogmas put people to death for the use of reason about what is good and what is evil.
A few reminders, somewhat interconnected:
1. No proselytizing.
2. This is a non-sectarian site. And a site at which to make common cause with others who are concerned with jihad, on a local and global scale. There are other times and websites at which you can take issue with whichever collection of "you people" you think are at the root of all the problems in the world.
3. The agenda here is defending civilization against jihad and sharia law. As Hugh has said in the past, please dismount all hobbyhorses before entering. Do not use our space to exploit jihad concerns as your "foot in the door" for pressing another, peripherally connected agenda here.
4. Rein in your conspiracy theories. Big Oil, Big Business, Skull & Bones, Freemasons, Bilderberg, Opus Dei, Stonecutters, etc. For one thing, it lowers the property value, like scattering rhetorical car parts on the lawn. Also, people get tired of hearing/reading the same spiel over and over, and will simply scroll past you, and get tired of having to do so.
PAVLOV'S DOG...Yes that amongst many things: Speer's memoirs, Mein Kampf, Himmlers private talks and speeches and many years of National Socialism study.
The tactics used by muhammad were a revelation to Hitler whose opinion was that if Muhammad could wield the thieving, filthy, lazy arabs into a coherent and victorious army, what could he do with the far superior deutsche volk? So he no hesitation in using these tactics(eg Munich is a perfect example of this).
To many in germany and elsewhere Hitler was a messiah and although he himself had no claims to godhood the steps were in motion for this to happen and for National Socialism to become a religion. The Teutonic Knights idea of Himmler was a first step in this direction. Hitler saw Muhammad's skillful use of a God as justification but having no need for religion himself he thought that he could go one better by creating a doctrine of success where he himself would eventually be given an honorary apotheosis(like Augustus).This is NOT far fetched.
My point here is that IF Germany had won the war (and although we won, most people have NO idea as to how close a thing it was and it wasn't that we won but that Hitler LOST the war for germany) this would have happened and we would have seen a repeat of what happened in the mid 7th century using the same tactics as used by Muhammad. With the Jews out of the way and the world conquered in theory Nazism would have appeared to become benign, that is , until someone decided to disagree strongly then we would have seen the strong hand of Muhammad.The ruthlessness of Nazism is based primarily upon that of islam.
The essence of Islam/Nazism is the them/us dichotomy with us being the fulfilment of a supremacist doctrine and them being totally expendable. This meant extermination or slavery. As the primary point here was race, "conversion" was not always possible although mnay SS camp guards actually complained about the gassing of blonde women and children who appeared blatantly aryan whatever their supposed origins.
Another interesting point was booty. Although the army and the SS had strict rules about such this did not apply to the nazi hierarchy who had no hesitation in doing so and the same applied to rape. This was NOT an effect of Nazism but a hangover from the centuries of Lutheran prudity upon the german peoples and it would have been slowly eliminated after several decades. Hitler's staemment above was a complaint about the lingering prejudices of this and the damage that they did to his ideal state.
A good example is the SS and here I am talking about it as it was conceived not as the war made it to be in the end where almost anyone was accepted. Because of the need for racial purity brood mothers were established whose job it was to conceive children from SS desirables . These children would be brought up in a spartan SS creche and trained from childhood to fight(see janissaries).
So my conviction is here that WW2 was another test of Muhammad's principles(???) and they proved to be again very successful.
Suffice it here to say: that Islam as well as both creating and maintaining the Dark Ages has shown itself to be the most pernicious of doctrines and is worse than even communism which at least was founded on ethics however nonpragmatic they were and that nazism is the fond child of Islam and very much in the image of Muhammad. This is quite important is the destruction of the "peace and tolerance" myth.
In response to the above posting of "a few reminders:
What good are these reminders when, as I have already gotten word from Robert Spencer in an email, that he's "banned" Nariz already several times, but he has the means to keep coming back to provoke and agitate those of us who care about defending civilization against jihad and sharia law? He can come here with impunity to accuse non-Muslims for being the problem, and declare that it doesn't matter if you're a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, ALL WHO BELEIVE IN A GOD ARE THE PROBLEM.
I know that I'm setting myself up for a "ban" myself for pointing this out, but personally, I become repulsed when I come here and see that the moderators have absolutely no control over the content of what is posted here. I agree that there needs to be a sense of personal responsibility for what people say here, but how can that happen if people who commit offenses here are allowed to keep coming back over and over?
MarisolJW-
I do not know who specifically you have in mind. As for me, I have no particular religious orientation and don't like dogmas. If I make references to Jesus, it is only as a fact-contrast to Mohammad. I am really criticizing the whole multicultural dogmatism that implies that all religious beliefs are basically the same, practically interchangeable. Clearly they are not equal and not interchangeable in the matter of Islam and Christianity. Even to a skeptic(I am a skeptic) it is clear that the mandates of Jesus against all hypocrisy-deception are worlds apart from mandates to war and deception in Islam.
Frankly, I wish folks with Hindu or Buddhist beliefs would discuss those belief-contrasts with Islam on JW. I know Christianity to some degree-so I see the contrasts. However, I am sure that the other major belief-systems are also worlds apart from Islam. I think those differences matter on the issue of Jihad. Beliefs matter-even to skeptics.
In any case, I do not go anyplace on a hobbyhorse or with a hobbyhorse. It's not my style.
Yohannbiimu--
No, I'm not going to ban you. It's good to hear from posters on concerns about the site. Dissent certainly isn't what prompts a banning, but rather a persistent pattern of behavior, after multiple reminders such as the one above. And I am inclined to agree with you.
Frank-- not to worry. I do appreciate the difference between what I was taking issue with above, and discussing, comparing and contrasting religions, which can be highly instructive, like the "Jesus vs. Muhammad" items in the margins of Robert's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam.
What concerns me is proselytizing on this site, and the wholesale trashing of what other posters believe or don't believe.
On the original subject, I know where to look when I want to dig up Quran and Hadith references. Does anyone know a place online where I could find the Sira? I've checked FaithFreedom.org, but somehow, it seemed to lack originality. Does anyone know of any others?
Frank, I'd be glad to describe to you contrasts between Hinduism and Islam, but I wouldn't know where to begin, and where to end. Hinduism is polytheistic (not henotheistic like Islam) and has its own pantheon, and is very analogous to the ancient Greek religion: the Ramayana, for instance, has strong parallels with the Illiad. Hinduism has its trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver (of righteousness) and Shiva the destroyer (of evil). Their consorts respectively are Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, Lakshmi the goddess of wealth, and Durga, the goddess of power. Below that in the hierarchy are several Gods personified from the elements. Because of this division of labor between different Gods (think of it as several VP's in a corporation running different functions, such as Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations, et al), Hinduism tends to be more tolerant due to this polytheistic component.
Contrast with Islam? For prayers, Hindus face eastwards towards the Sun, not towards any particular geographic location in India, such as Varanasi, Prayag, Mathura,... For Hindus, white is the color of purity, not black, which is a color symbolizing evil. While Islam is all about eviscerating all other religions, there is no mention of any religious denominations in Hinduism, and even the word 'Hindu' doesn't exist in Sanskrit - the term there is 'Vedic'. Muslims are buried facing Mecca, Hindus are cremated to return to the elements... (Interesting co-incidence between Hinduism and Judaism - the Magen David is the same as the Brahma Shatkosh, and shares a similar status alongside the swastika, which was a sacred Hindu symbol long before Hitler picked it).
While Buddhism was an offshoot of Hinduism, Buddha is regarded in Hindu scriptures as the 9th incarnation of Vishnu. If one considers Christianity a derivative or extension of Judaism, one could just as easily consider Buddhism as a derivative or extension of Hinduism.
Also, while it's been noted here that Hinduism is an India specific religion, I don't think it's much more India centric than Judaism and Christianity is Israel centric. Although some of the gods/goddesses in Hinduism include the Himalayas and the Ganga, note that Hinduism was also practiced in the East Indies (still is in Bali and Lombok), and in Cambodia, where the Angkor Wat was an example of Hindu architecture.
Marisol, apologies for the OT segway
MarisolJW-
Yes, beliefs treated as facts are a problem. I sometimes think that Aristotle's proposition that man is a "rational animal" is less the case than that man is a believing animal.
Beliefs have consequences in terms of behavior. I would love to hear more from Hindu and other people with knowledge of other belief-systems and see them contrast/or show similarities with the beliefs of Islam. (For example, do they permit deception with unbelievers?) I am abysmally ignorant of Hinduism etc., but I don't see any Hindu Watch or Buddhist Watch or Christianwatch, and am not concerned about being blown-up by a Rabbi and suspect that these belief-systems have much in common that is quite different from Islam re deception and violence.
As you know MarisolJW, beliefs matter. This whole site is about that. It's a great site.
Infidel Pride-
Very interesting. I find Hinduism a little confusing since it sometimes seems that there is a deity on every block. It's like reading a Russian novel and coming across some unfamiliar name and finding out it's the nickname of some character mentioned earlier in the book. However, I would rather have that kind of confusion-problem than the "monotheism"-problem of Islam that puts heads on a block. If you have any suggested reading on this subject (Hinduism for dummies), I would appreciate knowing about a good primer re Hinduism.
I don't know if it's even "treating beliefs as a fact," Frank-- I'm quite convinced of my own beliefs, but I recognize that there is a personal leap of faith involved that I can't force someone else to follow me on. By extension, I recognize that making a solely faith-based argument won't hold water with someone who doesn't share that faith, any more than we as non-Muslims can be expected to buy the argument that "the Qur'an says it, so it's true."
On another note, the Bantam Classic translation of the Bhagavad Gita is very accessible, including a useful introduction, and a reflection by Henry David Thoreau as an epilogue. Not a lengthy read, and very useful if you're looking for introductory material to Hinduism.
I enjoyed the discussion on whether there are "real" moral absolutes in religion or just made up ones which follow the model of the founder of the particular religion. If the later is the case, then in essence it would mean that there are actually no moral absolutes and religion is indeed a "game.".
Clearly this is one of the major differences between Christianity and Islam and was in my understanding the main point the Pope was making in his speech last September.
If I remember correctly, his point was that religious violence is unreasonable. Therefore a religion that engages in it is either false or not true to its founding principles.
Christianity has always been proud of its claim that it is the successor and keeper of the great philosophical traditions of the classical times. The early Church fathers always took pains to frame basic Christian thought in the language of the ancient philosophers. Their point was that one should believe in Christianity not only because it is the revealed Word of God but also because it was also eminently "Reasonable." It was a way of life that made sense and would produce joy and happiness if followed, even in the midst of suffering. God could not create an unreasonable religion (i.e. a violent religion), just as he could not create a square circle because he created reason as he created geometry. To do so would be against his Nature and would actually mean that he is not God.
Islam on the other hand says that Allah is so far above us all that he is above reason. He could and has demanded that his believers act violently (i.e. against reason). That is why Islam essentially has no real moral absolutes.
Christianity says in its famous slogan that "Faith follows Reason." Islam says to do what the Koran says and don't think about it.
To me, this is the stronest rationale for me in believing that God (Yahweh) and allah are not the same.
These are reasonably good places to start about Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Speaking about Hinduism, once you've gone through the sections of the quick intro, you could navigate other parts of that site for insights into various customs, practices, festivals and the like. Most Hindus are very familiar with the two major epics - the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (the latter of which contains the Bhagvad Gita that Marisol refered to above), although as far as other scriptures go, such as the Vedas and the Puranas, their milage may vary. There are several abridged versions of the above epics which one may read (I myself have been endlessly fascinated with both). Once one has read those, one may choose to explore other books about Hindu mythology, and take things from there.
Hope this helps.
remote_control said:
Interesting.
The extreme form of monotheism in Islam places God even above and outside reason. Allah thus has no necessary laws (such as reason contains). Allah can supposedly make universal laws however he wants them to be. The inherent necessity in reason and in moral reason, by which non-Muslims may lay claim to gain inklings into God's necessary being, and may know, however imperfectly, the inherent nature of good and evil -- that inherent necessity is not there in Islam. Allah has the privilege of ruling in an entirely arbitrary fashion (not according to some universal reason) like an absolute potentate. Thus the orthodox Muslim's own moral perceptions must yield to whatever Mohammad does, and thus be in absolute surrender to "Allah." Mohammad's casuistic morality and expedient ethics are thus made into absolutes. It is by making God so utterly absolute that Islam provides a cover and more than a cover for every expedient thing Muhammad chose to do and have others do.
I've been going back into the Old Testament lately, and so far I've seen no statement there that God is omniscient or omnipotent. In fact I recall a passage in which Moses causes God to repent of what He was intending to do! I don't recall divine omniscience and omnipotence in the New Testament either. But even if such beliefs do have some voice at points in the Bible, one will find them a hundredfold or a thousandfold more central to the Quran's view of Allah.
According to Charles Hartshorne, as I recall, the notion that God must be omnipotent and omniscient -- a notion that if true would make human freedom impossible -- is not present in the Bible, and was a later medieval accretion to Christian theology. As a process theologian developing the work of A.N. Whitehead, Hartshorne argued God does exist, and does possess certain superlative qualities above all other beings, but does not have perfection (because God is forever evolving), and does not have omniscience or omnipotence either. Human beings are truly free and engaged in real decision-making processes at every moment of life, and God cannot know everything in advance about the outcome of those decision processes, else they would not in fact be processes that were really deciding anything. Everything would have in fact been determined in advance. But human decision-making is real, and things are not entirely determined in advance. The universe thus surprises God, who is thus not omniscient (while yet knowing more than human beings could perhaps imagine).
Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas, I gather, have attributed to God necessary being that can be known, to an extent, through human reason. This means we can look within our own rational souls ("the kingdom of heaven is within you") and judge for ourselves, on the basis of the spiritual gift of compassionate thinking, the moral/rational worth of our own and others' deeds. Even God submits to reason in a sense, though reason is an internal necessity, and to submit to it is to submit to oneself, or to one's higher self at any rate, but not to any merely external power, as in Islam, where Allah is so transcendent that his edicts are often utterly alien to our moral reason, if we have developed any capacity for moral reason. Thus a "good" Muslim is a slave to Allah, not a son or daughter of God. The "good" Muslim does not follow his own rational compassionate moral soul. He submits to the external authoritarianism and terror of Muhammad's Allah, and if Islamic theology often seems a mere cloak for actions that were expedient to Muhammad personally, it doesn't matter, because it is not for the Muslim to use independent judgement to evaluate such things.
But Christianity and Islam differ not because one has no absolutes while the other does have them. The difference with regard to absolutes seems to be a matter of degree. In the central figure of the New Testament, truth is something living that loves and fosters human freedom, responsibility, and evolution. Is such truth, which lives and evolves, absolute? Yes and no. The experience of truth in sufficient fullness is felt to be an experience of something to some perceptible degree self-caused. But then self-causation has long been one characteristic attributed to the divine by many thinkers. And there is something absolute in self-causation, because to the extent, however partial, that one participates in self-causation, aspects of being become absolutely transparent. One sees the first cause self-causing, or at any rate glimpses that strongly. One glimpses something in which absolutely everything is visible. It is a kind of Zen moment of awareness. In so far as one thus glimpses the very ground of being, one is indeed in touch with something absolute. And yet the moment in which it happens is the moment of self-causation or partial participation in self-causation, and such a moment is essentially dynamic, evolving and open-ended. Participation in the divine processes of self-causation means participation in creative process. So the experience is of the absolute, yet of an absolute that is fundamentally evolving and growing and alive, and thus, in a way, not absolute.
But in Islam, truth doesn't evolve, and absolutes are absolutely absolute. Islam is a totalitarian system rooted in the central totalitarian features of the Quran and Muhammad's life, and exemplified by the state of Muslim-majority nations today, which are the most backward group of nations in the world in terms of civil liberties and political rights, as one can see if one visits websites of such human rights groups as Freedom House.
Obviously, the comments were meant for me. I appologize for inflicing my beliefs on folks. I will try to rein in my comments in future so as not to offend.
For me, it is difficult to look at the evil done in the name of Islam and NOT see it as a spiritual war, since the Islamists make it clear constantly that it is a spiritual war, one they are willing to die for.
I personally think it is going to be impossible to solve the problems in the ME or to get Islamists to give up the idea of owning the earth - with talk, passive politics or 'negotiations'. This clearly has never worked for Israel.
I dread to think what the world would be like with Iran possessing Nukes. It would not be at all like the cold war. Russians love their children and were not inclined, so far as I have known, to tie bomb belts on them. Russia also did not have beliefs that said if they blew themselves up, they would be rewarded with 72 virgins in Heaven.
What would stop such folks from pushing the button for radical beliefs, when they clearly do not care if they kill innocents or if they are killed? It's like putting the button in the hands of a monkey and hoping he doesn't figure out how to push it!
The American public has voted in liberal politicians (this is not a conspiracy theory) and I doubt that this group will understand that a time of peace really needs to be a time of preparation for the next war. I doubt that this group will understand that sometimes you need to look at the big picture and stop the foward motion of destructive policies before they get out control (i.e. Pelosi and Ellison).
The United States has always had political enemies and this won't change suddently tomorrow, no matter HOW nice we are to them. Such think is 'pie in the sky'.
I'd like to make one last stab at the issue of "absolute morality" if I may. The very notion of a absolute morality is is how we have a US Constitution and state constitutions in America in the first place. One cannot make laws constituted, and declare that men have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursute of happiness (as is stated in the Declaration of Independance) unless there is the idea that there are absolutes in morality AND immorality.
For anyone to come here and say that the idea of "absolute morality" is a religious tyranny that is brought down upon mankind by all religious institutions is to declare that the very documents that gave birth to our country are also tyrannical. It's no wonder that our US Constitution is in such dire danger as it is today.
yohannbiimu
-Applauding loudly-
Well said!
traeh,
"According to Charles Hartshorne, as I recall, the notion that God must be omnipotent and omniscient -- a notion that if true would make human freedom impossible -- is not present in the Bible, and was a later medieval accretion to Christian theology."
Actually, most historians of religion I believe conclude that the development and refinement of "omni-ology" in Christian theology was considerably informed by the assimilation of Graeco-Roman philosophy & theology -- an assimilation which began as early as the 3rd century A.D.
In regard the larger issue of moral absolutism, the genius of the West has been to develop and unfold the insight that it is not so simple as an Either/Or between absolutism on the one hand, and relativistic casuistry on the other hand, but rather that the only workable solution for society is a constant tension or balancing act between the two. For one thing, in any given society (and the more so, the larger and more complex it is) there will often be competing absolutes. To take a concrete example of competing absolutes that resonates today with our problem of Islam, we have
Absolute #1: Female public indecency is bad for individuals and society.
Absolute #2: Women's freedom to dress and act as they please is good for individuals and society.
Now, even in the West, the vast majority believe in Absolute #1 (this belief is not compromised in its essence by the variety of degrees of flexibility of interpretation which different Western people adopt); the vast majority of Westerners, for example, consider it bad for society if women were to walk around naked, or even exposing their private parts in public, and we have laws making those activities criminal. However, as we have all learned, the Islamic mentality is extreme about this concept, and goes much further than we are comfortable with doing, both in their rationale and in their penalties they impose.
Aside from the fact that Westerners do believe in Absolute #1 in a certain way and encompassed by various degrees (where some people think it's perfectly fine for females to dress extremely provocatively within the limitations of the law, while others find that very distasteful and bad for society and may even like to change the laws to reflect their distaste, as well as people on various points in between), Westerners also have developed a strong belief in Absolute #2, an absolute that in certain ways provides tensional opposition to Absolute #1. It is, of course, in Absolute #2 where Islamic culture is extraordinarily deficient, for their Absolute #1 is grounded by certain rationales that powerfully inhibit the socio-psychological development of Absolute #2.
Finally, to broaden out the focus again, in the West we have learned, through painful trial and error, to develop a system that tries to maximize casuistic sensitivity to individual dignity and freedom, while also maintaining a respect for the heritage of moral absolutes that were formative in the West. This system is not static: it is dynamic and continually subject to fine-tuning and evolution, since another of its Absolutes is that laws should be an expression of the will and heart of the people, and the people are imperfect human beings, not perfect moral beings with perfect knowledge of the meaning of life.
The balancing act is important: if either side is ignored too much, or given too much preference, there will be bad consequences. On the other hand, since humans are imperfect, they will never be able to balance perfectly; however, some humans are more talented balancers than others, and our Founding Fathers and their sociopolitical milieu were evidently more talented at balancing than our current generation.
Re: Posted by: Infidel Pride at January 12, 2007 01:29 AM
Thank you very much, IP.
Marisol-
Thank you too. I have some reading to do.
You're welcome, Frank
Frank
First link should have been
http://www.hindunet.org/quickintro/hindudharma/
remote_control,
Excellent point made above.
Yes.
Peter Berger's Heretical Imperative is very good on the problem of holding in tension relativism and absolutes.
We have partisans for moral shades of grey and partisans for moral black and white. If what you are saying is true, and I think it is, then the partisans of grey are no more correct than the partisans of black and white, and are perhaps less consistent. The partisans of grey, despite their love of grey, unconsciously set up a binary black and white moral world: The black hats in that world are the people who believe in moral black and white, and the white hats are the people who believe only in moral shades of grey. The partisans of grey are thus guilty of hypocrisy as juicy as any committed by the black and white moralists.
Is the difference between a difference of kind and a difference of degree itself a difference of kind? Or a difference of degree? Coleridge held it was the latter. That sort of thinking is outside the either/or dichotomy many set up between either/or thinking and both/and thinking. Outside the dichotomy of grey vs. black/white. Not entirely outside it though, or else black and white would collapse entirely into grey.
When dealing with reality, as opposed to artificial symbol systems, maybe one needs to hold on to Aristotle's principles of identity and non-contradiction, while paradoxically reincluding his excluded middle. Reality is polar, and opposites to some degree include each other.