Ali Eteraz has written a very lengthy reply to my post here. I don't want to turn this site into Eteraz Watch, but since he -- alone among those who criticize my work, including vaunted scholars such as Khaleel Mohammed and Carl Ernst -- offers at least the semblance of a substantive reply, I will deal with his substantive points.
I do this ultimately for the same reason that I answered his raving friend Esmay when he started calling me a "traitor": people of good will might be wondering about some of these issues, and they may find this exercise useful. However, I do not mean to compare him to Esmay, since Eteraz generally refrains from substanceless mudslinging, and offers up actual points for consideration. As such, I am happy to engage him.
In summary, Mr. Eteraz has failed either to demonstrate that anything I have written is inaccurate, or to produce even one Islamic jurist who teaches that Muslims should coexist peacefully with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis, without ultimately striving for domination. Nor has he shown us any evidence for the existence of any schools of Islamic law that do not teach Islamic supremacism.
Meanwhile, I put the photo above here because it is easy to forget that at Jihad Watch and in my books I am reporting on genuine activity. I am told that some are charging that my last post on Eteraz was akin to nativist anti-Catholicism. In the past, others have compared my work to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Both anti-Catholicism and antisemitism of the Protocols type, however, were based on fictions. There was no Catholic or Jewish plot to rule the world, and no genuine evidence of such. But there are Islamic supremacists. The fellow in the picture above is one, and he has many colleagues. I didn't print his sign, I didn't hand his sign to him, and in fact he and I have never met. In other words, I am often charged with claiming that Islamic supremacism exists, as if I am trying to make something out of nothing. But it does exist, apart from me, and I will not be cowed from reporting about it by spurious analogies.
Anyway, Eteraz's elephantine post is entitled, "Robert Spencer's Inconsitency [sic], Response To Substantive Argument and General Eteraz Thoughts." I am not reproducing parts about which I have nothing to say, so go to his site to read the whole thing.
I also want to add that initially this was going to be a six part post. However, for the sake of maintaining the momentum of the dialogue I have cut it short and put forward only the more salient items (or the ones that occurred to me as I wrote while listening to Abida Parveen which mean I probably forgot a few things).
How nice. I like Abida Parveen.
Mr. Spencer’s reply is littered with major and minor forms of inconsistency. These inconsistencies are casual reminders that Mr. Spencer is not a scholar on Islam.
I have never bothered to address this point before, since I have made myself abundantly clear about this for years. Since the beginning of this site, anyone could have read this here: "I draw no conclusions of myself, and I do not ask anyone to take anything on my word. Pick up any of my books, and you will see that they are made up largely of quotations from Islamic jihadists and the traditional Islamic sources to which they appeal to justify violence and terrorism. I am only shedding light on what these sources say."
My FrontPage bio, which I incidentally did not write, says that I am a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law. But in that case the word is used in the ordinary sense of someone who has knowledge of the content of a thing, not in the specialized Islamic sense of someone who can issue rulings or interpretations of Islamic texts. I do not do that and have never claimed to. I have no interpretation of the Qur'an or Hadith of my own. I am not a mujtahid or a faqih. What I do is explore what the texts of Islam say, and how they are used today by Muslims.
This would seem to be an elementary point, but it is lost on virtually all my critics. Of course, they have reasons for not wanting to grasp this: routinely I read that I say that the Qur'an teaches warfare against unbelievers, when what I actually do is report that numerous Islamic authorities maintain that the Qur'an teaches warfare against unbelievers. But the prospect that I could be actually talking about something within Islam rather than airing my own prejudices is obviously too hard for some people to accept, whatever the evidence.
I am no scholar of Islam either. I am a regular guy. In fact, I consider myself an (aspiring) novelist and amateur poet (all of my works are in English, even though it is my fourth language). Thus, the fact that even I am uncovering these glaring inconsistencies should be very troubling to Mr. Spencer especially as he goes forward towards debating academics with Phd's and such.
I might be more troubled if Mr. Eteraz had actually delivered on his promise to demonstrate the "glaring errors" of my last post, but since, despite his regular-guy mastery of four languages, he couldn't come up with even one, I think I'll sleep just fine tonight.
1 – Twice in his post Mr. Spencer states that the “gates of ijtihad are closed.” He makes the statement to reinforce the point that Islamic Law has not been evolving.Ijtihad, according to Wiki, “is a technical term of Islamic law that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah.” According to Washington Times, “Ijtihad -- or hermeneutics -- refers to the institutionalized practice of interpreting Islamic law (sharia) to take into account changing historical circumstances and, therefore, different views.”
Anyone who quotes Wikipedia on anything should know better, but let it pass. The definition is adequate for our purposes here.
The phrase “Gates of Ijtihad are closed” is a reference made by eminent scholars like Joseph Schacht, JND Anderson and WM Watt referring to what they thought was an institutional effort by Muslim jurists themselves to limit the freedom to practice ijtihad. Thus, whenever someone says “the gates of ijtihad are closed!” (and some Muslims themselves say it, too), one is being extolled to accept that since the "gates are closed", Islamic Law has not been evolving.This is what Mr. Spencer wants me to accept. Fair enough, for the time being I will accept that the gates of ijtihad were indeed closed.
Now that I have accepted it, perhaps Mr. Spencer will not mind explaining why he repeatedly contradicts his own views on the closure of the gates? He makes numerous statements in which he implicitly and explicitly accepts the existence of Islamic Reform. So I ask, which is it? Either the gates of ijtihad are closed, or Islamic Reform neither exists, nor can exist.
Mr. Eteraz goes on to argue at some length that the gates of ijtihad are not closed, and that I was inconsistent in noting that they were closed and then speaking about modern jurists who disagreed with older jurists. Here again he is just playing "Gotcha," as he did in his first post, instead of presenting a serious argument. Mr. Eteraz could have found the solution to this apparent inconsistency in the fact that I linked to this article in my first post. It is an article written by a Muslim, the London-based Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar, who acknowledges that the gates of ijtihad are closed and thinks they should be reopened. My friend Silas of Answering Islam informs me that Reliance of the Traveller, which has already come up in my exchange with Mr. Eteraz, says this about ijtihad: "When the four necessary integrals of consenus exist, the ruling agreed upon is an authoritative part of Sacred Law that is obligatory to obey and not lawful to disobey. Nor can mujtahids of a succeeding era make the thing an object of new ijithad, because the ruling on it, verified by scholarly consensus, is an absolute legal ruling which does not admit of being contravened or annulled." (b7.2)
That the gates of ijtihad are closed means that taklid, not ijtihad, has been the ordinary practice among Islamic scholars for many centuries. Under the rule of taklid -- authority -- one does not reason independently from the Qur'an, Sunnah, and ijma (scholarly consensus); rather, one reasons from the rulings of the established schools of jurisprudence (madhahib). Thus the rulings on major issues tend to become rather fixed. However, today some scholars are trying to reopen the gates of ijtihad. I support them in this effort. Is it inconsistent of me to note that the gates of ijtihad are closed and then to speak about modern jurists disagreeing with earlier jurists? No more inconsistent than saying that Southern segregation laws of the 1950s required blacks to sit at the back of the bus, and that Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus.
By the way, Akiti is one of the highest ranking Maliki scholars in the world today so actually he is quite representative of the dominant views of Muslims. In fact, he is more dominant amongst the Maliki school today than Khaldun, whom Mr. Spencer cited to in his editorial, was in the Maliki school in his day. Iftikhar is a student of the world famous Javed Ahmed Ghamidi (who is a regular on Muslim satellite TV).
Since I noted in my earlier post that neither Akiti nor Iftikhar reject the concept of armed warfare by Muslims against unbelievers, as long as it is led by state authority, I do not find these assertions either compelling or comforting.
Third, Mr. Spencer actually himself goes so far as to recognize that there are even differences of opinion between contemporary Muslim scholars.
It might have been generous of Mr. Eteraz to note at this point that the common caricature among his slavering friends -- that I portray Islam as a monolith -- is clearly false.
Fourth, when confronted by the reality of Sheikh Ali Goma, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, whose rulings on Sunni family law break tremendously from historical jurists, Mr. Spencer gives up on the argument that the gates of ijtihad are closed, choosing to exclude the Grand Mufti by abandoning the argument about the closure of the gates of ijtihad, and instead opting to talk about Goma’s views on Israel. Mr. Spencer keeps asking me to be honest. Well, I am honestly asking, what exactly is Mr. Spencer’s methodological critique with respect to ijtihad? At the moment, I have no idea. Sometimes he says the gates are closed. Sometimes they are open long enough for a jurist to be condemned on the basis of a conflict that started in 1948.
Israel has nothing to do with ijtihad. Ijtihad is the process of making a ruling about a point of Islamic law. Israel is a political entity. Supporting Hizballah, as does Ali Gomaa, is not a matter of Islamic law, but of contemporary politics. To be sure, many mujahedin hate Israel because of elements of Islamic thought that disallow the existence of an Infidel polity on what is believed to be Muslim land, but that still doesn't get us to Hizballah. Here Mr. Eteraz is needlessly confusing the issues at hand.
I think that in the 20th century, positive developments in Islamic Law with respect to the issue of violence against non-Muslims have been terribly hurt by what is called political Islam. This movement rejects the reality of ijtihad. It will not let Muslims accept the reality of the post WWII international human rights scheme and wants Muslims to accept the same as what Joseph Schacht and Mr. Spencer want Muslims to accept: namely, adjusting Islam to changing situations is imposible. Of course, I am not the first to pick up on this strange similarity of interests shared by Mr. Spencer and radical Islam.
No indeed, Mr. Eteraz is not the first person to say this, but he is just as wrong as the rest of them. In reality, as he would know if he actually read what I write, I rather frequently call upon Muslims to accept "the reality of the post WWII international human rights scheme," and request that they adjust Islam to "changing situations." (And his slur on Joseph Schacht, a great scholar of Islam, is completely unwarranted.) All I have asked, and will keep asking, is that they do this the way all reformers have done similar things in other traditions: by acknowledging what needs changing. An analogy: If the Protestant Reformers had indignantly denied that the Catholic Church taught Transubstantiation and the sacramental priesthood, instead of arguing that such doctrines should be discarded, they would not have been reformers, but obfuscators. A genuine Islamic reformer today would acknowledge that, say, the death penalty for apostasy is mainstream Islamic teaching, affirmed by all the madhahib, or schools of jurisprudence, and then explain why this should be set aside. But that is not the same thing as claiming that Islam doesn't teach this in the first place.
As Dinesh D’Souza, whom Mr. Spencer calls a “close friend” recently wrote:
I have never called Mr. D'Souza a "close friend." I called him "my friend D'Souza" in the earlier post in an ironic manner. Dinesh D'Souza is not in any sense my friend. I responded to his contention that I am supporting bin Laden here.
2 – Since we’re talking about internal inconsistencies and I just mentioned Dinesh D’Souza, then I have to wonder why Mr. Spencer calls Mr. D’Souza a “close friend” just a few days after Mr. D’Souza called Mr. Spencer a “conservative Islamophobe.” It is quite possible that Mr. Spencer is such a gracious individual that he can forgive such things. [I tend to think that Mr. Spencer is indeed so gracious as I have been quite impressed by his behavior towards me in this debate]. However, does this mean that Mr. Spencer will acknowledge that he is, indeed, an Islamophobe? I doubt he would be OK with that. Thus one has to wonder: his close friendship with Dinesh D’Souza is inconsistent with his unwillingness to be termed an Islamophobe.
Mr. Eteraz again misquotes me, as I did not call Mr. D'Souza a "close friend," and as I explained above, I called him my "friend" only ironically. I thank Mr. Eteraz for his kind words, but as for his question, no, I will not acknowledge that I am an "Islamophobe," because I am not an "Islamophobe." Mr. Eteraz may have a preferred definition, but taking the word (a recently coined, politically manipulative word in any case) to mean an irrational prejudice against Muslims as an aggregate, I am not suffering from any such thing. I speak and write about the content of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and of the teachings of Islamic jurists. This material is available for anyone to see, but many people would prefer that you didn't see it. They have found that charging me with prejudice, bigotry, Islamophobia, hatred, is an effective way to make people who haven't studied this material think that I am making it up, or jimmying the evidence in some way out of some personal animus. When people like the gentleman in the photograph above say, "Islam will dominate," and I in turn say, "Some Muslims say, 'Islam will dominate,'" some onlookers find it comforting to blame me and call me an "Islamophobe." Unfortunately, however comforting that may be, it will not make the gentleman with the sign go away.
3 – Mr. Spencer is completely inconsistent about his views on the academy. First he says that the academy “should” be above politics. Should is a heavy word. As a Christian Mr. Spencer knows it is the word of the moral imperative. Yet a few lines later, due to the fact “that the academy has already been politicized” Mr. Spencer wants that people find nothing wrong with him and Mr. Horowitz also politicizing the academy!
Here Mr. Eteraz demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the aim of Mr. Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights. Its purpose is not to introduce a different kind of politics into the academy, but to prevent propaganda replacing genuine intellectual inquiry. It is not, despite common claims by Leftists, an attempt to bring conservatism into the academy. Mr. Eteraz can find this explained at length in Mr. Horowitz's new book Indoctrination U.
That sounds utilitarian to me. Not at all something that someone who uses the language of the moral imperative would use. In short, Mr. Spencer doesn’t really believe that the academy should not be politicized. What he claims he wants – “the academy should be above politics” – and what he wants to do – debate with everyone including students and support Horowtiz' ads which conflate the religion of Islam with the terrorism of Hamas – are completely inconsistent.
I stand by everything I have said and written about Islamic teachings. Neither Mr. Eteraz nor anyone else has ever demonstrated that any of it is false. There is no reason why these teachings should not be a matter of free and open discussion in academic settings as well.
4 - This one is not an inconsistency as much as a curiosity. Why does Mr. Spencer want to debate all these academics? Generally, in order to debate someone you have to be considered their "equal" in terms of accomplishment and credentials (not always, but that is the general rule). Mr. Spencer can debate Dinesh D'Souza because they are both conservative public intellectuals. I cannot debate Dinesh D'Souza because I'm a left-leaning libertarian who doesn't even have a book. Mr. Spencer wants to debate Omid Safi and Ernst and I'm sure a bunch of other academics. Yet Mr. Spencer lacks what an academic possesses: a PhD and tenure at a university. It would be very gracious indeed for an academic to "step down" and talk to Mr. Spencer. But the failure of an academic to be gracious isn't an indictment of anything. If anything, I think it would be a waste of Mr. Spencer's own time to debate with an academic. He'll end up with homework. Besides, those academic conferences are really boring. I request Mr. Spencer to avoid any congregation where the definition of fun is dissection of the farming habits of Egyptian villagers from 1861 to 1869.
I am not interested in credentials. I know plenty of idiots with PhDs. I am interested in truth, and will discuss the truth with anyone, and will not apologize for wishing to do so. And incidentally, Daniel Pipes, who has the PhD Safi required as a prerequisite for speaking with him, offered to debate Safi in my stead. Safi turned him down too. Why was that?
5 - This one is neither an inconsistency nor a curiosity. It is a tangent. Mr. Spencer talks a lot about how he feels humiliated, attacked and beseiged by people who disagree with him. I do think he has a point. People should be civil to one another even when discussing something like radical Islam. However, Mr. Spencer is incredibly naive if he thinks that he's the only one who has to suffer the proverbial sling and arrows of the intellectual trolls. As I told him, I have been called a "shit weasel" by Islamophobes (among other things), and have been quite brutally treated at the Ann Coulter Chat Forum. So, if Mr. Spencer wants others to encourage a culture of respect, he needs to start with his own comments section which, if you read the Ann Coulter chat, contains quite a few characters reminiscent of my experience at the forum. If I see him begin a serious effort to eliminate hateful speech about Islam on his website I will reciprocate by doing the same about anyone who speaks hatefully about the ideas of Robert Spencer. I think this is more than fair since I already do not permit anyone to insult Mr. Spencer's religion or Jesus Christ.
Comments are unmoderated at Jihad Watch. I believe the antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech, and unlike his pathetically insecure friend Esmay, I would rather discuss and debate my positions rather than shut down dialogue. As I have stated repeatedly, whenever I see hateful material, I remove it, and depending on the content of what was said, ban the writer; however, there are hundreds of comments and if I read them all I would never get anything done. By far the people most frequently banned at Jihad Watch are banned for slurs on Muslims in the aggregate or something of that nature. Muslims and defenders of the global jihad come in frequently, and some are longtime posters. As I have also noted many times, anyone who thinks that I agree with a particular comment should demonstrate that agreement from my own writings, or else the assertion remains unproven.
Anyway, this paragraph by Mr. Eteraz demonstrates that he continues to misunderstand why I mentioned the virulent hatred directed my way by his friends in the first place. It wasn't because my feelings were hurt; his friends have already proven themselves to be so lacking in integrity that I am just fine with being on their bad side. Nor did I mention it because I expected him to do anything about it -- although I did note that his failure to correct their obvious errors manifested a certain lack of interest in dealing fairly, and I stand by that.
So why did I mention it? My point was, and remains, that for years now I have presented evidence for what I am saying, and all I have received in return is abuse. Abuse is not an argument. I may indeed be a puffy buffoon, or a deranged con artist, but these epithets do not demonstrate that I am wrong. Only actual evidence would establish that, and that evidence has not been forthcoming. That Mr. Eteraz continues to fail to grasp this point is disheartening.
Anyway, in speaking of the Shafi'i manual Reliance of the Traveller, Mr. Eteraz says:
Mr. Spencer, as was also true for me, probably does not understand the way Muslim jurists use treatieses of law: the treatises often provide the "black letter of the law" which in many cases is then rejected in commentary as inapplicable due to changed circumstances.
Super. Provide examples, please, of jurists rejecting Reliance's "black letter of the law" about how the umma, under the leadership of the caliph, must make war "upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax." Not just rejecting modern jihadists on the basis of the fact that there is no caliph, as do Akiti and Iftikhar, but also rejecting the whole concept -- the idea that under any circumstances there should be war against unbelievers in order to impose Islamic law upon them.
It is kind of like how in American law students are taught the common law Rule Against Perpetuities from many centuries ago even though most states legislate their own version of the Rule which has nothing to do with the old school Rule Against Perpetuities. In other words, Al-Azhar certified the Reliance conscious of the fact that today’s jurists would reject it as inapplicable because rulings are no longer valid.
That's not what the statement from Al-Azhar says. It says it is a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy. "Is," not "was." As Bill Clinton says, it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. And in fact, the translator, Nuh Ha Mim Keller, left untranslated parts of the original text that he considered had no applicability for the modern age. However, he translated page after page of material about violent jihad.
2 – Mr. Spencer makes a very good point which I think bears amplification. Namely, that jihadists don’t seem to acknowledge being bound by context. He says:One of the biggest problems we have regarding the global jihad today is that jihadists cite Muhammad's example -- in other words, the example of a seventh-century man -- as normative for today. They don't seem to mind in the least flattening out the context and behaving as if Muhammad's example were outside time and normative for all times and places.I completely agree. Since we agree, what does Mr. Spencer propose we do? I would be most keen to hear his ideas since I’ve never once read him propose a way out of this, our, problem.
Here Mr. Eteraz acknowledges that he has never read any of my books.
My guess is that he would say that Muslims should do away with following the example of Muhammad.
In some particulars, yes. When Zarqawi says he beheaded Nick Berg in imitation of Muhammad's beheadings after the Battle of Badr, is that really the example of Muhammad that Mr. Eteraz wants to follow? I doubt it is. In The Truth About Muhammad I provide many other examples of mujahedin invoking Muhammad's example. Should we pretend this isn't happening? Or confront it and try to formulate positive ways to deal with it?
Not sure that one is going to fly. Not to mention that some parts of Muhammad's life were incredibly beautiful so much so that even yours truly, who was once both an atheist and a denier of the revelation was forced to acknowledge it:
"Parts of Muhammad's life were incredibly beautiful." Parts. Fine. Follow him in those parts. Retreat from literalism in other aspects. Judaism and Christianity have developed interpretative traditions that reject literalism in certain particulars regarding their Scriptures. It will be much harder for various reasons for Muslims to do this, but the attempt should be made.
Here is my idea: Muslim reformist jurists and free thinkers who are part of the Muslim community must reinforce, to the Muslim world, that jihadists are flattening out the context and behaving as if what they say about Muhammad is normative for all.
"Out of context" again. Demonstrate for us, please, how the context makes for a benign Muhammad who doesn't teach warfare against unbelievers. Why not just admit it? Why not say, "Yes, Muhammad taught warfare against unbelievers, but we believe that that teaching must be set aside in our age and all future ages"?
Interestingly, it appears to me that Mr. Spencer represents about the only group on the face of the Western world who does not recognize the value of the traditional scholar. Counterterrorism groups, large parts of the Republican Party, and notable conservatives like Ralph Peters, D’Souza, Andrew Sullivan, the writers at TNR, National Review and even bloggers like The Anchoress, and large parts of Pajamas Media, have all concurred with my opinion. Instapundit has now linked to three major Eteraz.Org initiatives, all of which seeks. I’m starting to believe that Mr. Spencer’s opinion, that Islamic Law, in toto, is the problem, is not even mainstream within the conservative ranks; how can then the mainstream of United States really take it seriously (this goes to the promise I made to Mr. Spencer to explain to him why Muslims don’t engage with him).
Mr. Eteraz should provide evidence for his claim that I say that "Islamic law, in toto, is the problem." As for Ralph Peters, D'Souza, National Review, and the Anchoress, sorry, but I am not moved by peer pressure. I am telling the truth. None of them have provided any evidence to demonstrate the correctness of their positions. Unless and until they do, I am not going to join their party.
First of all, Mr. Spencer’s reliance upon Mawdudi’s articulation of Islamic Law flies in the face of Mr. Spencer’s other cherished view: the gates of ijtihad are closed. You see, Mawdudi actually believed in keeping the gates of ijtihad open. So when Mr. Spencer recognizes Mawdudi as an Islamic Law scholar, he actually affirms the whole point that I’ve been trying to make: Islamic Law changes based on the context in which various jurists emerge. Thank you Mr. Spencer.
Playing "Gotcha" is fun, isn't it, Mr. Eteraz? I have dealt with the gates of ijtihad above. And in any case, Maududi was a firm traditionalist, who cannily used the language of Marxism and other contemporary jargon to couch his traditionalism -- as I discuss in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers.
Mawdudi’s example also helps illustrate how exactly Islamic Law evolves and reform. In the mid 1940’s Mawdudi concluded that anyone who converted from Islam had to be put to death. Yet, by the early 1970’s numerous students of his broke away from him, founded their own school, and rejected this conclusion. These students then provided their own Islamic legal critique of why there is no death penalty for apostasy and how Mawdud and others were wrong. Mr. Spencer should be familiar with all this because he and I have had a back and forth on the issue of apostasy before. In that discussion, too, he kept citing back to classical scholars who are no longer relevant, while I repeatedly put forward the opinion of scholars today.
By this Mr. Eteraz suggests that the death penalty for apostasy is a relic of history, dug up by me in my fanatical Islamophobic quest. Unfortunately, in light of the Abdul Rahman case, and other similar cases, such as that of Hussein Qambar Ali -- Robert Hussein -- in Kuwait in the 1990s, it looks as if some Muslims are still listening to those classical scholars. I am glad these classical scholars are no longer relevant to Mr. Eteraz, but they are all too relevant to all too many Muslim authorities today. What does Mr. Eteraz propose to do about this?
4 – One has to return to the fundamental reason that I took exception to Mr. Spencer’s Emory Editorial and found it to be "full of glaring errors." His thesis was that “jihad [meaning violent jihad] is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology.” Mr. Spencer, claims about the “mainstream” of anything need a lot more substantiation than references to Shaykh Abdullah Azzam (spiritual founder of al-Qaeda), or Zarqawi’s opinions on Islamic Law (who didn’t even graduate elementary school), or the legal pronunciations of Osama Bin Laden or Mukhlas Imron. Yet here, in order to prove a claim about the “mainstream” Mr. Spencer offers the opinions of criminals and illiterate ones at that. Pardon me if I remain unconvinced.
This is completely false, and highly disingenuous of Mr. Eteraz. In my actual letter to Emory, I didn't refer to Azzam, Zarqawi, bin Laden, or Mukhlas Imron. I referred to them later not in order to establish anything about Islamic theology, but to show that jihadists refer to Muhammad's example and the teachings of classical jurists.
In this context, though, Mr. Spencer offers me a challenge:Will Mr. Eteraz kindly produce Islamic jurists who argue that Muslims should not wage war against unbelievers -- as unbelievers -- under any circumstances.I certainly would if Mr. Spencer could produce contemporary mainstream jurists outside of OBL and militant fringe groups who say that Muslims should wage unconditional war against unbelievers solely for their unbelief? There isn’t one. [In fact, when OBL, who is not a scholar, first issued his fatwa in 1999, he didn't say that war against the West had to be an unconditional war against inidels but only as long as the West retreated]. The burden of producing a scholar today that says what Mr. Spencer believes is the true theory of Islamic law with regard to jihad, rests with Mr. Spencer and he has, and will, fail to produce.
Al-Azhar is a militant fringe group now, I see. I quote a manual they endorsed in 1991, and he says they only endorsed it as a museum piece, which contradicts their own words, and then he says I have failed to produce any contemporary authorities who teach this. Neat, but unconvincing. The burden of proof is not on me in any case. If there were no jihad violence in the world today, and no one like that chap in the picture, it might be. But with jihad terrorists waging war in the name of Islam all over the world today, Mr. Eteraz's failure to produce even one contemporary jurist who rejects warfare against unbelievers in all circumstances is glaring, and telling. No wonder the mujahedin have the intellectual initiative in the Islamic world today.
The reason for that failure is quite simple: average Muslims themselves don’t want to wage unconditional war against unbelievers. It is therefore no surprise that they do not have scholars agitating for this.
Average Muslims, however, are a recruiting ground for those Muslims who do want to wage such war. And apparently they are defenseless against this recruiting activity, since "they do not have scholars" formulating any theological leg for them to stand on when the jihadists come around and challenge them to live out "pure Islam."
In Mr. Spencer’s defense, he does keep coming back to Seyyid Qutb and Mawdudi, who, I concede are two 20th century "ballers" i.e. heavy weights. However, the fact of the matter is, that for the large part, Qutb and Mawdudi exist outside the Islamic legal tradition. They were more akin to “free thinkers” than jurists. Mawdudi, for example, was a journalist. Qutb was a Marxist revolutionary before turning to writing his exegesis of the Quran. Their opinions on violence and killing apostates have certainly been influential in some quarters. I grant that without a moment of reluctance. However, one has to do a lot more analysis of the legacy of these two men than to say simply that they extolled violence against the non-believers:
Fine. They did a lot of other things too. They were kind to widows and orphans. They cooed at babies and made them giggle. But they did extol violence against unbelievers. And to call them freethinkers, journalists, and Marxist revolutionaries doesn't disprove the points they made any more than calling me a bigoted Islamophobe disproves the points I have made.
b) Mr. Spencer believes that when Qutb and Mawdudi call on Muslims to establish an Islamic State even by violence, it means that they are calling for the killing of non-Muslims for their unbelief.
Actually, no. I have never said that. Killing is just one option. Conversion or subjugation are the others, cf. Qur'an 9:29, Sahih Muslim 4294, etc.
Mr. Spencer conflates these two concepts without thinking them through. When a scholar calls for the establishment of an Islamic State by violence, that violence is almost always directed at Muslims themselves, not non-Muslims. Qutb’s revolutionary calls were directed at Egyptians, asking Egyptians to overthrow the dictatorship of the Marxist Gamal Abdul Nasser. (Mawdudi actually never called for the establishment of an Islamic State by violence, but even if he did, the state he was referring to was Pakistan which is majority Muslim. Ultimately Mawdudi stopped agitating to make Pakistan into an Islamic State once the word “God” was inserted in the constitution). Point is that linking Qutb and Mawdudi to violence is quite easy because of their aggressive and supremacist language. However, limiting their influence, or altogether dethroning them, is quite easy as well. If it weren't so easy, Mawdudi's students, within the course of his life wouldn't have refuted him.
I should be less concerned because their violence was directed toward other Muslims? I thought I was supposed to be the Islamophobe, Mr. Eteraz! In any case, the problem with all this is that if the Islamic state that Qutb and Maududi wanted to establish were indeed established, it would then wage jihad against non-Muslims -- as the "reformers" Akiti and Iftikhar acknowledge. And if limiting the influence of Qutb and Maududi is really so easy, I'd like to see Mr. Eteraz do much more of it.
6 – The issue of the silence of the mythical silent majority. Mr. Spencer and others often believe it quite reasonable to ask that if Muslims truly do reject violence then why aren’t they protesting against the jihadists. This is absurd.First of all, I am not even going to get into the simple fact that many Muslims live in Western backed tyrannies (see e.g. Saudi Arabia’s royal family’s relationships with the Bushes, or the $ 2 billion in aid that the blogger detaining government of Mubarak receives) which repress any public protest. Second, this argument is not merely irrational, it is illogical. The opposite of violence isn’t protest. It is withholding from violence. When Muslims stay “silent” what they are actually doing is the opposite of violence. This should be elementary. Think of it in other terms: silence, or inaction, is an act itself. When Martin Luther King Jr. created a non-violent movement, what exactly did they do? Yell, scream, chant and fight? No. They stayed silent.
On the contrary, he spoke up, persistently and eloquently. I don't see a Muslim Martin Luther King. Please point one out to me.
Let me reiterate that: when we talk about non-violence, we talk about staying silent and inert.
Nonviolence means not harming people. It doesn't mean not speaking out against evil. Do you yourself even believe what you are writing?
Reflect on that then ask why the standards change when applied to Muslims.
They don't. It is exactly the same standard. Where is the Muslim "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" against the jihadists?
As for why Muslims in the United States don’t protest: we don’t feel we need to. We are good American citizens. Our median per capita income is the second highest of any group (after Indian Americans). There are numerous Muslims in the armed forces. You can meet Muslim marines on my website who served this country in Yugoslavia, Iraq and other theaters. For more substantiation of my point, consider what one popular Sunni Shaykh has to say about what Muslims in the West need to believe:
All this is great, but how many Mike Hawashes and Mohammed Reza Taheri-azars is it going to take for you to think maybe you do need to be more energetic about fighting the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism?
When one lives in a particular country, one agrees verbally, in writing or effectively to adhere to the rules and regulations of that country. This, according to the Shariah, is considered to be a promise, agreement and trust. One is obliged to fulfil the trust regardless of whether it is contracted with a friend, enemy, Muslim, non-Muslim or a government. The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him & give him peace) and his Companions (Allah be pleased with them all) always stood by their word and did not breach any trust or agreement, as it is clear from the books of Sunnah and history. Thus, to break a promise or breach a trust of even a non-Muslim is absolutely unlawful and considered a sign of being a hypocrite (munafiq).
Even Islamic apologist Yahiya Emerick acknowledges that Muhammad broke the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, although he excuses him with a bit of legal hair-splitting. In any case, when CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper says, "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," I get the impression that at least some Muslims in the U.S. consider their tacit pledge "to adhere to the rules and regulations of that country" to be only temporary, until conditions allow for a different course of action.
Whether or not over the long term the collective silent treatment by the Muslim community towards the jihadists will be successful is another question altogether. I believe that it will not make the problem go away. I believe that you have to make fun of the jihadist argument (as I do here and here and here), reduce it to rubble intellectually (as I do here to Bin Laden and here to Zarqawi) and give Muslim states all the authority they need to hunt militants.
Unfortunately, you haven't reduced their argument to rubble or even to large chunks of rock. It is still as solid as ever. Please do hack away at it.
However, there are many Muslims who believe that the militants are so fringe that even talking to them is absolutely worthless. “Why should I waste my time reacting to Osama when he is so obviously acting against the dictates of Islam,” is something I hear often. So reflect on this: by virtue of the fact that I take the time to intellectually rebut an illiterate idiot like Zarqawi I’m actually giving the jihadist more credence and validation than the average Muslim walking around in Karachi who simply ignores Zarqawi in favor of going to work. My protest is satire and intellect; most Muslims choose the easier kind of protest. I can't say that I blame them. Writing doesn't pay.
With respect, this is a dangerously blinkered view. Unfortunately, it is not at all obvious to far too many Muslims that Osama or Zarqawi are acting against the dictates of Islam. There are no programs teaching against the jihad ideology in mosques. And meanwhile, jihad recruitment among Muslims continues.
In other words, every day when I get up, I provide a way for thousands of global citizens to do precisely what Mr. Spencer think is impossible, and his commentators think cannot happen: the construction of an alternative narrative to extremism.
Again you charge that I claim that something I ask for all the time is something I really think is impossible.
As such, correcting Mr. Spencer’s errors is not something I have much interest in. I find his obsession with jihad a little boring – and frankly so does Hugh Fitzgerald from his own website.
Sorry not to have entertained you. I will try a little soft-shoe next time. And as for Hugh's article, you utterly missed the point of that also.
The real work to be done is in encouraging creativity and creating a culture of introspection. Jihadwatch can’t do that. That is the bottomline. That is why whenever put to the test, all Mr. Spencer can ask for is a "debate" and not a "collaboration."
I am all for collaboration with genuine reformist Muslims. That's why Tashbih Sayyed of Muslim World Today is on my Board.
In any event, since it is clear that even Muslim majority countries are not fully running Islamic Law, our focus as people who want to address problems in the Muslim world, cannot merely be on “reforming Islam” or “reforming Islamic Law.”
Actually, insofar as Muslim countries don't adhere to Islamic law, they are better for women and religious minorities. Cf. the recent attempt in Pakistan to take rape out of the realm of Islamic law, in which it is established by four male witnesses, and judge it according to modern standards of forensic evidence. The people protesting this change, and championing the old law that victimed so many women, are Islamic clerics. Because of things like this, I think reforming Islamic law is a fine place to start.
As such I issue Mr. Spencer a challenge: use some of your resources to help us compile the information we are looking for. Certainly you have far more money than us. Certainly, with your qualifications and the qualifications of all the people around you and all the writings about the Muslim world you do, there must be countless hundreds of people in the Muslim world whom you can call upon to help us gather this information. You have my email address.
This is very funny. You have belittled my qualifications all through this post, and then you turn around and ask me for money and laud my qualifications. Be serious.
That's enough. Ali Eteraz can say what he wants to say. Above all, he has failed either to demonstrate that anything I have written is inaccurate, or to produce even one Islamic jurist who teaches that Muslims should coexist peacefully with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis, without striving for the domination the chap in the picture wishes for. He has not produced any non-supremacist schools of Islamic law. More's the pity.
UPDATE: In his response to this, Mr. Eteraz asserts that "Mr. Spencer himself constantly affirms the existence of Islamic Reform and legal evolution while saying that the gates of ijtihad were closed. He never addressed that inconsistency."
I am sorry he didn't read my above post more closely. If he had, he would have noticed that I wrote this: "...today some scholars are trying to reopen the gates of ijtihad. I support them in this effort. Is it inconsistent of me to note that the gates of ijtihad are closed and then to speak about modern jurists disagreeing with earlier jurists? No more inconsistent than saying that Southern segregation laws of the 1950s required blacks to sit at the back of the bus, and that Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus."
He adduces a quotation by the Islamic scholar Javed Ahmed Ghamidi about Qur'an 9:123: "The verse referred to and other verses of similar meaning are directed at the immediate addressees of a Prophet (Rasul) and have no bearing on us," and adds: "I found this example in 2 minutes. It's not my fault Mr. Spencer doesn't want to spend the time browsing for such stuff."
I'm glad to see it. In reality, I have never denied the existence of individual reformers. I have one on my Board. I invite Mr. Eteraz to provide evidence that Ghamidi rejects in principle the entire ideology of Islamic supremacism and the imposition of Sharia, and that his view in this has been adopted by any of the established madhahib, or has mainstream support in the Islamic world.
He also says:
Here is Shehzad Saleem:First and foremost, only an Islamic state has the authority to wage Jihad. No independent group or organization has the right to launch an armed struggle in any way.Secondly, after the departure of the Prophet (sws) and his Companions (rta), the only legitimate reason for an Islamic State to wage Jihad is to curb oppression and persecution in another country – whether Muslim or non-Muslim.
"Curb oppression and persecution" is analogous to "just war" and "humanitarian intervention." Even we in the U.S. believe in that.
I have already dealt with the insufficiency of saying that jihad is a prerogative of the Islamic state. As for "oppression and persecution," please explain how you would refute someone like Mufti Ebrahim Desai, who asserts that any obstacle placed in the way of the spread of Islam constitutes oppression and persecution, and is hence a casus belli. This is not a rhetorical question. It is a real one, for on it hinges the possibility of establishing a lasting framework for lasting peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims as equals.
With respect to vese 9:29 of the Quran, Dr. Moiz Amjad says this:[It] should be quite clear that the referred verse of Surah Al-Taubah relates particularly to the Ahl-e-Kitaab - the Jews and the Christians - of Arabia, who were the direct addressees of the call of the last messenger of God.Dr. Amjad is saying that the permission to engage in Jihad against unbelievers ended with the death of the Prophet because after his death every future generation of non Muslims and unbelievers were NOT the direct addressees of the Quran.
Great. My response here is exactly the same as above re Ghamidi.
The fact remains that Dr. Spencer didn't find any mainstream jurists today who do prescribe jihad against the unbeliever like I asked him.
Anyone I name he will say is not mainstream -- I am sure that Desai is not mainstream, nor are Qutb and Maududi and their followers, or Al-Buti, or others I have already mentioned in this post or the last one. The problem here is that Muslims are reading Qutb and the others, and acting upon them, and Mr. Eteraz is trying to pretend that this is not happening.
His sole argument was based on the Reliance of the Traveler.
Anyone who has read my last post and this one will know that this statement is flatly false.
He must think a lot of this book since he has now mentioned in four different pieces of writings. However, I addressed this pretty conclusively already...Yet, instead of refuting my reply Mr. Spencer wanted me to provide more evidence.
Indeed. And why did I do that? Because your "evidence" was just a flat assertion that modern scholars only use Reliance to refute it. You provided no examples of this. Are we just supposed to take your word for it?
Mr. Spencer more evidence lies in this: there are no mainstream jurists calling for jihad against unbelievers. No one is citing the Reliance. Who cares if the Reliance exists if it is not cited? When jurists don't cite a book, or follow its prescriptions, Mr. Spencer, that is considered obvious proof of the fact that it carries no weight today. Mr. Spencer, what are you going to say to that? Cite to the Reliance for the fifth time? The Reliance is not a jurist. It is just a book from many centuries ago that sits in the library at al-Azhar.
Mmm-hmmm. Yet somehow, from somewhere -- and I'm sure it isn't Reliance, for there are many other such books -- Muslims around the world are getting the idea that defensive jihad is fard ayn today: obligatory on every believer. And they are fighting it. And you, instead of fighting them, are fighting me.
We can keep playing this game all night.
We of course can, my friend.
hmm, I was expecting an argument, not assertions.
Anyway, here is a question addressed to just one traditionalist jurist.
Question: My question concerns the following verse of the Qur’an:
O ye who believe! Fight the disbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him. (9:123)
Should we just start fighting with the unbelievers on the basis of this verse?
Answer: Each Qur’anic verse has a perspective and a context and must be understood accordingly. The verse referred to and other verses of similar meaning are directed at the immediate addressees of a Prophet (Rasul) and have no bearing on us.
That is Javed Ahmed Ghamidi.
Truth seems to stem from whatever Ali wants it to be -- whether or not it IS true. That's what liars do. Sorry you have to endure this, Robert.
Ali:
"hmm, I was expecting an argument, not assertions."
Coming from you, I find that statement astounding.
Please provide a list of statements I have made for which you would like to see documentation, and I will provide it.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
This is all fascinating, and I appreciate your taking the time to spell it out.
As for Ali Eteraz, I don't mind his cherry picking scholars to support his own view of Islam. But I certainly won't be lulled into thinking that because he can pretend that "we have never been at war with East Asia" political Islam is not a serious problem all around the world, and that their view of Islam has ample support among traditional Muslims.
"Certainly you have far more money than us. Certainly, with your qualifications and the qualifications of all the people around you and all the writings about the Muslim world you do, there must be countless hundreds of people in the Muslim world whom you can call upon to help us gather this information. You have my email address."
Jizya!!!!!!!!!!
Do you feel "subdued" by his all powerful response Mr. Spencer. Great response and worth the read.
Robert, inshallah we'll have more discussions at a later time. I have already spent half of my weekend on this. In the meantime you can reflect on the question posed to javed ahmed ghamidi that i've posted in the comments above.
I give a few final thoughts here:
http://eteraz.org/story/2007/3/4/17842/76463
Classic!
Ask for a specific example and it's "I'm tired" "I've already spent too much time on this", "I'll get to this later (not".
What a maroon.
Robert, here is your opportunity to do something about your commentators. You wanted me to reciprocate, yes? Here's your chance to take the olive branch which I extended to you in my post:
>
It takes quite some gall
* to have an educated person like Spencer invest an inordinate amount of time and effort with a lot of patience in responding to what are essentially comments that exhibit neither knowledge nor reasoning ability
* then complain, that it is not Spencer, but he who spent too much time on it, without ever demonstrating that he has ever studied the subject he pontificates about
While I understand and appreciate the public value of responses to such as Eteraz, it is also clear that they elevate his ilk to a prominence for which there is no justification whatsoever. How many would know of Eteraz if Spencer did not engage him? And is there any chance that he is persuadable?
Ali Eteraz:
I explained about the comments above. People can have their own opinions about how effectively you have answered me, no? What this man has said about you is that you have avoided providing any effective evidence for your assertions. On that, I agree with him.
I myself, however, would not call you a "maroon." I think you're a very clever fellow.
As far as reciprocating goes, no, in fact not. I said above that I didn't want you to do anything about your friends. As I have explained several times, I merely pointed out that the fact that you stood by when they spread obvious falsehoods was telling, and their argument by abuse was ineffective. That's all.
Note my Update to the original post, above.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I'm always struck by how utterly ridiculous it is to bring these arguments to Jihad Watch. Why not convince the clerics in Qom or Jeddah? This reminds me of the debate over the Islamic punishment of death for apostasy, while the poor Afghani convert was actually facing death for apostasy.
It's always a striking juxtaposition: free Muslim living in the West v. cleric reciting traditional Islamic beliefs back in the dar-al-Islam. But rather than taking the argument where it matters, to the cleric, they come here and attack the messenger.
eteraz, you seem to be under the misapprehension that you are being taken seriously. Rather, Robert is using your writing as an example of the extreme lameness (dare I say elephantine lameness?) of your ilk. He gave you plenty of opportunities to respond in a non-lame manner, but you've blew it long ago, pal. Again, as Bugs Bunny says "What a maroon".
robert, or is it ann crocket.
you are sockpuppeting. i caught you.
Ali Eteraz:
I explained about the comments above. People can have their own opinions about how effectively you have answered me, no? What this man has said about you is that you have avoided providing any effective evidence for your assertions. On that, I agree with him.
I myself, however, would not call you a "maroon." I think you're a very clever fellow.
As far as reciprocating goes, no, in fact not. I said above that I didn't want you to do anything about your friends. As I have explained several times, I merely pointed out that the fact that you stood by when they spread obvious falsehoods was telling, and their argument by abuse was ineffective. That's all.
Note my Update to the original post, above.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Posted by: AnneCrockett [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 4, 2007 08:34 PM
I also got a screen capture.
Sorry for lowering the tone Mr Spencer - I can't tell you how high is my regard for you - but I come from a land Down Under where we are somewhat more direct in our opinions.
Mr. Eteraz:
I am not Anne Crockett, and I am not sock puppeting. In fact, however, she is a family friend, as well as a JW News Editor, and she is here tonight. She posted her comment above, and didn't sign out before I wrote mine.
Anne Crockett has posted at Jihad Watch many times while I have been out of town, and our styles are different. Her existence is not in dispute.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
"Question: My question concerns the following verse of the Qur’an:
O ye who believe! Fight the disbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him. (9:123)
Should we just start fighting with the unbelievers on the basis of this verse?
Answer: Each Qur’anic verse has a perspective and a context and must be understood accordingly. The verse referred to and other verses of similar meaning are directed at the immediate addressees of a Prophet (Rasul) and have no bearing on us.
That is Javed Ahmed Ghamidi."
Other Muslim scholars, both old and new, have a differing opinion regarding 9:123.
5.4 MAARIFUL TAFSIR ON 9:123 Page 503
Previous verses carried inducement to Jihad. The first verse from the present ones (123) which opens with the words: (O those who believe, fight those disbelievers who are near you) gives details, for disbelievers are spread out all over the world and any confrontation with them has to have some sort of functional sequence. The verse says that Jihad should first be waged against those of the disbelievers who were near. "Being near" could be taken in terms of the place, that is, the disbelievers who live closer to home base should be fought against first. And it could also be understood in terms of relationship, that is, those who are near in kinship, parentage and other social bonds should be given precedence. This is because Islamic Jihad is essentially carried out in their interest and for their well being, therefore, when it comes to care and concern, kinsfolk have precedence - similar to the command given to the Holy Prophet (And warn your near relatives against the punishment of Allah - 26:214). He carried out the command by assembling people from his family and conveyed to them the Word of Allah as revealed to him. The circle then became larger. Keeping the same principle of near and far, confronted first, as compared to other, were disbelievers who lived in the vicinity of Madinah, such as Banu Qurayzah, Banu Nadir, and the people of Khaibar. After that came the fight against the rest within the Arabian Peninsula. And after things were settled there came the last command to fight the disbelievers of Byzantium that resulted in the expedition of Tabuk.
5.5 IBN KATHIR ON 9:123
(I’ve taken the liberty to break the quotation below into paragraphs).
The Order for Jihad against the Disbelievers, the Closest, then the Farthest Areas
Allah commands the believers to fight the disbelievers, the closest in area to the Islamic state, then the farthest. This is why the Messenger of Allah started fighting the idolators in the Arabian Peninsula. When he finished with them and Allah gave him control over Makkah, Al-Madinah, At-Ta'if, Yemen, Yamamah, Hajr, Khaybar, Hadramawt and other Arab provinces, and the various Arab tribes entered Islam in large crowds, he then started fighting the People of the Scriptures.
He began preparations to fight the Romans who were the closest in area to the Arabian Peninsula, and as such, had the most right to be called to Islam, especially since they were from the People of the Scriptures. The Prophet marched until he reached Tabuk and went back because of the extreme hardship, little rain and little supplies. This battle occurred on the ninth year after his Hijrah. In the tenth year, the Messenger of Allah was busy with the Farewell Hajj. The Messenger died eighty-one days after he returned from that Hajj, Allah chose him for what He had prepared for him [in Paradise].
After his death, his executor, friend, and Khalifah, Abu Bakr As-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, became the leader. At that time, the religion came under attack and would have been defeated, if it had not been for the fact that Allah gave the religion firmness through Abu Bakr, who established its basis and made its foundations firm. He brought those who strayed from the religion back to it, and made those who reverted from Islam return. He took the Zakah from the evil people who did not want to pay it, and explained the truth to those who were unaware of it. On behalf of the Prophet , Abu Bakr delivered what he was entrusted with. Then, he started preparing the Islamic armies to fight the Roman cross worshippers, and the Persian fire worshippers. By the blessing of his mission, Allah opened the lands for him and brought down Caesar and Kisra and those who obeyed them among the servants.
Abu Bakr spent their treasures in the cause of Allah, just as the Messenger of Allah had foretold would happen. This mission continued after Abu Bakr at the hands of he whom Abu Bakr chose to be his successor, Al-Faruq, the Martyr of the Mihrab, Abu Hafs, `Umar bin Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him. With `Umar, Allah humiliated the disbelievers, suppressed the tyrants and hypocrites, and opened the eastern and western parts of the world. The treasures of various countries were brought to `Umar from near and far provinces, and he divided them according to the legitimate and accepted method. `Umar then died as a martyr after he lived a praise worthy life. Then, the Companions among the Muhajirin and Ansar agreed to chose after `Umar, `Uthman bin `Affan, Leader of the faithful and Martyr of the House, may Allah be pleased with him. During `Uthman's reign, Islam wore its widest garment and Allah's unequivocal proof was established in various parts of the world over the necks of the servants. Islam appeared in the eastern and western parts of the world and Allah's Word was elevated and His religion apparent. The pure religion reached its deepest aims against Allah's enemies, and whenever Muslims overcame an Ummah, they moved to the next one, and then the next one, crushing the tyrannical evil doers. They did this in reverence to Allah's statement,
(O you who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you,)
END OF QUOTES
http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/swordverse.htm
"But there are Islamic supremacists. The fellow in the picture above is one, and he has many colleagues".
History is one long record of the establishment of nations and empires via the conquest, the extermination of some recently "indigenous people's" culture and often the actual extermination of the "native" peoples, or at least the requirement that they pay tribute to those who appoint themselves as "the best people" to rule over them.
The conquerors usually have a "religion"-ideology that rationalizes the new ruling class domination. Islam, as Hugh has pointed out, was the engine of Arab Imperialism. Islam's record of conquest, exploitation and genocide cut a path from India to Spain. Muslims established themselves as the new ruling class in the places where they displaced, exterminated or subdued the "natives".
All this is the typical pattern of history. The Aztecs did it to the Toltec, the Spaniard did it to the Aztec, the Arab did it to the Spaniard, etc. The beat goes on. Even in North America (which was largely wilderness and cold much of the year) the "native Americans" were pushed out or made Dhimmis by "the best people".
Islam is the most effective rationalization for dehumanization and exploitation, for the killing of "the other" in history, and its mandates to subduing unbelievers has to be addressed. However, all of the academic discussions are moot as long as there is no freedom of religion and freedom of conscience in Saudi Arabia etc, in Dar-al-Islam. The human right to freedom of religious belief and equality for all faiths in every Muslim country (especially Saudi Arabia)must take place in order for Jihad and Islamic supremacism to end.
Mr. Spencer,
I have no reason to disbelieve you. You tread like an honest guy.
You can't fault me for being vigilant in this day and age.
Have a good night.
I have a theory the Raz would simply cease to exist if he didn't have windmills to tip at. Islam which is destroying entire cultures under it's power is goes unnoticed by him and yet Mr. Spencer with the Truth is something to pick at.
"hmm, I was expecting an argument, not assertions.
Anyway, here is a question addressed to just one traditionalist jurist.
Question: My question concerns the following verse of the Qur’an:
O ye who believe! Fight the disbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him. (9:123)
Should we just start fighting with the unbelievers on the basis of this verse?
Answer: Each Qur’anic verse has a perspective and a context and must be understood accordingly. The verse referred to and other verses of similar meaning are directed at the immediate addressees of a Prophet (Rasul) and have no bearing on us.
That is Javed Ahmed Ghamidi."
Statements like this one, "priceless".
I'm wondering to myself: If we reject the weak arguments and non-existent evidence in support of the positions adopted by (the now semi-famous) Ali E, are we pushing him into the arms of the jihadi extremists? Hmmmm...?
I don't wish anyone to actively vocalize an opinion on this question for there are schools of thought that believe silence and inaction = action in the face of tyranny.
"Should we just start fighting with the unbelievers on the basis of this verse? "
Islam Question and Answer
www.islam-qa.com
Question No 26125
The difference between jihad and qitaal, and the types of jihad for the sake of Allaah
Question:
What is the difference between "Jihad" and "Qitaal" ?.
Answer:
Praise be to Allaah.
The word jihad is more general than the word qitaal (fighting). Jihaad may be with the tongue (by speaking out), or with weapons (which is qitaal or fighting) or with money. Each of these categories includes numerous subcategories.
Jihad with the tongue includes jihad against the kaafirs, as well as jihad against the hypocrites, jihad against the people of bid’ah (innovation), and jihad against the people of misguidance and whims and desires.
Qitaal may only be done with weapons; it includes fighting the kaafirs, fighting the wrongdoers and fighting the Khawaarij.
The greatest kind of fighting is fighting those who disbelieve, for Allaah has commanded us to fight them. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allaah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allaah and His Messenger (Muhammad), (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”
[al-Tawbah 9:29]
“O you who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you”
[al-Tawbah 9:123]
Jihaad against the kuffaar with weapons is of two types: jihad talab (offensive jihad) and jihad daf’ (defensive jihad).
Jihad talab means attacking the kuffaar in their own lands until they become Muslim or pay the jizyah with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “I have been commanded to fight the people until they bear witness that there is no god but Allaah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah, and establish regular prayer, and pay zakaah. If they do that, then they have protected their blood and their wealth from me, except in cases decreed by Islamic law, and their reckoning with be with Allaah.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 25; Muslim, 20.
The purpose of this kind of jihad is not to fight the kuffaar and take their wealth, rather jihad is prescribed for a great purpose which is discussed in question no. 34637.
The second type is jihad al-daf’ (defensive jihad). If the enemy attacks a Muslim country or fights a Muslim country, then jihad is obligatory in that case. If the people of that country are able to undertake this obligation, then all well and good, and the others should support them, both financially and spiritually (by making du’aa’ for them). If the people in that country are not able to undertake this obligation by themselves, then those who are nearby must support them, each according to his ability, whether by giving money, speaking out, or going and fighting. And Allaah knows best.
See also questions no. 20214 and 34830.
Islam Q&A
The responses are handled by Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid, using only authentic, scholarly sources based on the Quran and sunnah, and other reliable contemporary scholarly opinions. References are provided where appropriate in the responses. All requests are held with confidence, and replies are available personally and/or publicly (posted to this site).
Looks pretty obvious to me...and the good Sheikh
here...
Hmmmm....now where did I put that scimitar?
BLACK HOLE = Ali Eteraz
I admire (and am a wee bit jealous) of Robert and Hugh's nitty-gritty knowledge in these matters. They are scholars. But they are going to win the argument because it is much easier to prove the existence of something than to prove the non-existence of something. But ultimately, what I note above must come to pass before Islamic supremacism ends. But it will end one day. Then we (Muslim and non-Muslim) will be allies against some new supremacist ideology. The beat will go on till human nature changes.
It seems to me that the earnest desire of Ali Eteraz and Dean Esmay and others that Robert cease his writing is evidence that they do not fully believe their own arguments that Islam is basically OK.
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that everything posted at JW, both news and analysis, were baldly false. Why bother to attend to it, then?
My perception is that they are afraid that Robert's analysis is sound, and that calling attention to these things within Islam will make a bad situation worse. But if there is a real danger of that happening, that seems to greatly weaken the argument of the Eterazs and Esmays of the world.
If Robert's analysis is the joke that Mr. Eteraz makes it out to be, he has nothing to fear from it. Presumably he is afraid that others will be influenced by it. If Muslims are radicalized by such analysis, it proves Robert's point. Is Eteraz afraid that non-Muslims will consider Robert's arguments and draw their own conclusions? Surely they have the right to do that; they aren't yet under Sharia.
Thanks much for your work, Robert.
Sincerely yours,
Samuel Conner
robert,
why are you even bothering arguing with these people?
it's like arguing with a drunkard in a pub whom claims that if you dont see little green pixies like he does then he's gonna take you outside and kick your head in! just expose them for the violent psycopaths and cult death followers that they are but please stop speaking with them and encouraging them to proselytes their cult.
sadly the more crap they speak the more that westerners will listen to them, believe in them and follow this cult, (it's called the stockholm syndrome)
Ali Eteraz makes a noble attempt at making Islam sound so adaptable to modern times. And that it is in the process of reformation. That would be great if it was true.
The only problem I have is when I think back over the course of only the last year or so when millions of Muslims took to the streets calling for the death of Infidels over the "cartoon rage" and the Pope for his quotation of truth.
Not to mention calls for jihad from all quarters of the Islamic world "death to those who insult Islam" the list is so long it defies reason.
It is not up to infidels to come up with the solutions to moderate the 300 to 500 million Muslims who would love to see the Jews dead and the west destroyed.
Ali Eteraz what do YOU propose should be done? This something that needs to take place NOW not over the next several decades. Please PLEase PLEASE give a credible solution!!! If you can?
Courage is the requirement for all virtue. It requires we govern fear and insecurity. It makes us move to grasp the truth and makes us willing to admit when we are wrong and stand firm when we are right with the facts. We must pray to God for courage, for God's mercy on our cowardice and insecurity so that He will turn it to courage. Perhaps Robert and this fellow have that courage which is never a smooth road. The road of truth is often eight miles of bad road and a bumpy ride. It takes courage and steady nerves to stay on it. So far nobody has fallen out of the car.
Esmay drove the car into a pit.
Wow Robert,
You have an amazing amount of patience. Even when idiots like D'Souza and Eteraz keep on attacking you, you still keep at them with the truth. Man, if I were in this position I would snap and come down to their lowly levels.
Carry on sir,
M.Ram
The more I read Eteraz, the more he seems like the Religious Left. You know, the ones who claim things like the Bible doesn't condemn homosexuality, women can be priests, etc. Notice also that the Religious Left is bleeding membership and those denominations that follow what is plainly written are growing. It's the same thing with Islam. Either you reject what is there or you accept it. Trying to morph it into something else just isn't going to work. You may be able to play at the edges, but the core is always going to remain.
"robert, or is it ann crocket.
you are sockpuppeting. i caught you."
The above quip speaks volumes about eterez.You can almost hear the wide-eyed paranoia in it.Why the hell would Robert want to fake a post when he has so many people visiting this site? I smell a scoundrel!
Till now you have given this man the benefit of the doubt but I begin to doubt his good will.Quite aside from his empty argumentation and predilection to ad hominum tactics he mostly seems interested in drumming up bussiness for his site.How many times are you going to answer his points only to have him ignore you and continue to make the same claims?
Terrahawk-
You have a good point. People don't like gray areas in their beliefs. But maybe there is a balance somewhere. Lincoln told a story of a guy he knew who liked his drink and who was thrown out of a church because the congregation considered him a drunk. He then got on the wagon and started preaching total abstinence re liquor. They threw him out again. Finally, one Sunday the guy came into the church with a bottle of whisky and asked "just how much of this here critter is all right to remain in good standing in this church"? Average people like some balance and common sense too.
I had trouble wading through all the minutiae outlined in this post. I agree with fp that Robert seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort in responding to Eterez. Robert's tenacity in refuting this person's arguments is admirable but obviously Eterez can't see the wood for the trees and never will.
A few words can sum it up: Attempted obfuscation.
A bit of turnspeak, Tu Coque, flawed reasoning, deliberate taqiyya and if all fails, ad hominem nonsense.
All of it fails to address the issues, no questions are ever answered.
That simply confirms it again: Islam is what it is, not what some Muhammedan would have us believe. Most of us here know more than the average Muhammedan headbanger. We must never forget that a majority of them are illiterate and poor. Even those who study in the US or elsewhere can't leave their mental bagage behind. They are unable or unwilling to overcome the mental block that shackles them.
We have seen many come and go here on JW/DW, some seem a bit more sneaky and others are more cunning, but never honest.
Robert has unbelievable patience, unreal!
And we all know that one Muhammedan cannot simply cook his own private Islam, or can he?
Cathkins et al:
Why am I spending time dealing with Ali Eteraz? Because for all his obvious faults of omission and commission, he is the only critic of my work who even comes remotely close to discussing what I actually say. The others content themselves with lying about what I say and portraying me as the devil's spawn. Accordingly when James sent me Eteraz's first post I felt honor-bound to reply.
And above all, I write these things always with an eye toward providing a guide for people who may find them useful in clarifying questions they also were wondering about.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Frank,
In fact, Christianity is really about balance. Drinking alcohol is fine, but drunkenness is bad. Sex is good in the proper context. Having things is fine, but things should never rule your life. Loving God is the only thing that is never balanced.
But, back to the discussion. Unless you can provide a basic and easily understood framework, people are going to accept literally what their religion says. You can't write some detailed PhD thesis and accept that that will effect the common person. For instance, Ali gets the one response about Sura 9. The problem is how do we know which Koranic verses are specific to context and which are not. For a Christian, the general framework between Old and New Testament is that the New replaces all of the religious observances, ordinances, and punishments. It doesn't mean certain things aren't still wrong, but how we are to respond is different. Now what is the Islamic equivalent for understanding specific context and general statement? You hear people like Eteraz saying it's all about context. Well, that's not enough. How do we see that context? A PhD explanation isn't going to sway the common guy who sees a direct command.
Dear Mr. Spencer,
This note is to commend your almost stunning degree of patience when confronted by such intentional opacity as that shown by Mr. Ali Eteraz. That you merely go on to respond with more corroborating evidence, while politely pointing up your opponent's total lack of any valid countering data, must serve as a model of courtesy and intellectual honesty to us all.
Mr. Eteraz's replies continue to be wholly uncontaminated by factual information or accurate documentation. He evinces no awareness of just how severely this damages any hope there is of persuading even the most gullible amongst us. Your ability to maintain such a diplomatic tenor while being confronted by one who is so obviously unscathed by the ravages of intelligence is nigh well saint-like.
It is more than obvious that you comprehend how vital your mission is with regard to exposing the immense danger presented by Islamic doctrine. The unshakable professionalism you conduct yourself with is a critical component of Jihad Watch's ongoing credibility. Your retention of such courtesy and academic integrity when faced with so much gratuitous provocation gives no opportunity for the spotlight to wander off of its important focus upon educating Western minds about Islamic jihad. For your Herculean efforts towards this end, I give you deep and abiding thanks.
Our government’s near total abdication of its duty to protect America's citizenry leaves web sites like Jihad Watch as lonely beacons in an ever more perilous night. Once the West has finished with its task of subduing Islamic jihadism many of us will probably have you to thank for our survival. For all that you and the staff of Jihad Watch do for our safety, I am truly grateful.
With Sincere Gratitude,
Zenster
” I was expecting an argument, not assertions.”
I came here for a good argument!
Ahh, no you didn't, you came here for an argument!
An argument isn't just contradiction.
Well! it can be!
No it can't!
An argument is a connected series of statement intended to establish a proposition.
No it isn't!
Yes it is! 'tisn't just contradiction.
Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position!
Yes but it isn't just saying "no it isn't".
Yes it is!
No it isn't!
Yes it is!
No it isn't!
Yes it is!
No it isn't! Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
It is not!
It is!
Not at all!
It is! ...
I found the debate very informative. Food for the mind. It is clear that Ali Eteraz attempted to trap Mr. Spencer is a game of details. A very effect tactic if facing someone who is weak in that area.
The debate over one or another Islamic jurist and their opinions on Islamic law was useful. It provided new words for ones vocabulary and new names of various people related to Islamic history. For anyone who wishes to understand why we are in this fight you have to know some history (even of Islamic Law). It can be a little rough on someone not used to it but after a little research and several readings you feel better about your own stance in this conflict. In the coming days I will use information from this skirmish to better my own knowledge of Islam.
Therefore it serves not just Mr. Spencer in defeating a potential challenger (weak as it may have been for he quotes Wikipedia) but also made the overall throbbing brain of JW readers smarter. For that we should be thankful to have it played out for all to see.
It tells me I still have much to learn...
My opinion is still the same but it helps in fortifying my own views and allows me to make better arguments if I should god forbid ever meet someone with this kind of challange.
Robert,
Thanks for all your work. I can honestly say you are my role model! ha. I admire your patience when having a debate I have learned to do that myself. Getting angry and making off the wall comments solves nothing. Excellent Job in the debate.
I just find it amazing that Muslims seem to think that Radical Islam is some sort of a myth. They act like it is something that we are exaggerating. I often wonder what it will take for Muslims to realize it is a problem and they they must develop a doctrine that teaches against Jihad warfare. As you have stated there is not ONE Islamic jurist that is teaching against warfare against unbelievers.
I often hear Muslims say "well its only 5% of Muslims or some small number like that is radical."
Some Small number! First of all I believe the percentage is more along the lines of 15-25%. Even at 5% that is millions of people. That is one large army that wants to see the world under Islamic rule. Why do Muslims seem to think this is a small problem? There is a total denial that there is a problem of radical teaching in the Islamic community. Yet it is not hard to find imams in the Middle East teaching jihad and hate. They are all over Middle East television. Not to mention imams right here in America like Imam Musa and the likes. I have yet to understand how Muslims that reject this type teaching see this as a small problem when it is so widespread. Maybe Ali can explain this to me.
Eteraz at least attempts to deal with the substantive points made by Robert, and that is so incredibly rare. Altho he pretty much demonstrates he is not a careful reader, at least Eteraz shows that he has made some effort to be objective and to address what Robert is actually saying, as opposed to taking the default (categorical) mode of calling names and making conclusory assertions.
But Eteraz lost me as an interested and sympathetic listener with some of his cheap shots.
To cite two instances, does he understand how pompous his point about credentials and scholars sounds? That was a complete turn-off, for me.
And his misunderstanding of Hugh Fitzgerald's "Boredom" post - - which, as usual, was full of the wit and highly entertaining insight only Hugh can do in his appealingly distinctive voice - - made me think that Eteraz just grasps at anything he thinks might be of some polemical value, regardless of how valid the point is. Or, maybe Eteraz is just too shallow to have understood the post. It's hard to tell.
As Hugh might say, I am turned off by the "atmospherics" of the Eteraz writings.
But it is obvious that he did put in a lot of time and effort in the writing, and he is to be commended for engaging the ideas to the extent that he did.
LOL Zenster,
Love the reference. I just found this video on YouTube. Oh how I love the Python cast. Insanity with a straight face ("And now for something completely different"). If only real life were as funny as Monty Python.
Spencer rightly complains: "Anyone I name he will say is not mainstream..."
This is similar to the other tendency I've noted as operative in the PC Multiculturalist template with regard to identifying "moderate Muslims" and "radical Muslims": any time a Muslim in the world does something outrageously bad, that Muslim is automatically labelled a "radical Muslim" (or other equivalent terms, "fundamentalist" / "extremist" / "Wahhabist" etc.). The labeller never stops to wonder, let alone investigate, whether that Muslim really was "radical" before he did the outrageously bad thing or whether he could well have been behaving like a "moderate" -- or whether, God forbid, these categories of moderate/radical might not be helpful in analyzing the problem of Islam.
The axiomatic and immediate label of "radical" put on any Muslim or Islamic group that does outrageously bad things helps to perpetuate the myth that these "radicals" are completely different from the other Muslims who must be a harmless and moderate majority, and it effectively suppresses any serious investigation into any overlap or cross-fertilization between the two categories, or even into the possibility that this division of the Muslim world might not be a category we are superimposing on it -- for the express purpose of protecting the vast majority of Muslims from our evil slippery slope toward Western Bigotry, Racism and Genocide --, rather than one that "must" be there already.
Absolutely riveting.
I thought the most poignant exchange....and the one which so thoroughly demolished Ali's argument and ultimayely, his credibility, was as follows....
ALI ETERAZ: "When Martin Luther King Jr. created a non-violent movement, what exactly did they do? Yell, scream, chant and fight? No. They stayed silent."
ROBERT: "On the contrary, he spoke up, persistently and eloquently. I don't see a Muslim Martin Luther King. Please point one out to me."
It is worth a look to see Eteraz's website [link above]. I only clicked on a few different things, but just the second random thread revealed this from a poster (paraphrazing a little): "I hope they sh** bricks in fear when they figure out that Islam is unstoppable." Kinda takes the wind out of his sails when he criticizes Mr Spencer for not censoring his respondents more carefully.
Mr Spencer's detractors fail to accept that there is currently an overwhelming, palpable sense by many that Islam is under the rapidly growing influence of clerics and leaders who only see violence as the solution to their troubles, both real and imagined. Their absolute numbers among a sea of "ordinary" Muslims is irrelevant-- their influence is deeply and widely felt.
How can any proclamied "humanist" Muslim not observe in disgust the carryings-on of his fellow religionists, those engaged in supremacist, genocidal ideology and tactics? The "silent majority" is so profoundly silent, even taking into account the decadent Muslims living in the West, and the majority living under corrupt and suppressive ME regimes, that it is both impossible and illogical for non-Muslims to believe there is not complicit sympathy with the radicals on the part of many tens of millions of Arabs and others. The evidence for this is better than thin; the indications to the contrary negligible.
Re: eteraz mention of Ghamidi
Ali Sina started a debate with Javed Ahmad Ghamidi through Ghamidi's student, Khalid Zaheer (as an interlocutor) last fall. The debate seems to be ongoing, with Ghamidi having basically withdrawn, handing the "ball" to Zaheer:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/Ghamidi60904.htm
I can't claim to have read it all, but Ali Sina seems to respect Ghamidi and Zaheer as "men of peace", although of course, not agree with them about the (un)truth of islam. Ghamidi is a somewhat respected "modernist" in Pakistan, who was tossed from Jamiat islami in the past. I like (/s) the way Ghamidi has his discussion through an interlocutor (Zaheer), and then withdraws. Its always nice to have plausible deniability when needed.
LYCASTE: "The "silent majority" is so profoundly silent...that it is both impossible and illogical for non-Muslims to believe there is not complicit sympathy with the radicals on the part of many tens of millions of Arabs and others. The evidence for this is better than thin; the indications to the contrary negligible."
RESPONSE: I agree entirely. But I would add that we shouldn't under-estimate the extent to which moderate Muslims are intimidated by threats of violence from their more radical co-religionists. Publicly repudiating Hamas or Hezbollah by name for example, can get a moderate Muslim - even one living in the West - a death threat....pronto.
This reality doesn't militate against the argument that Muslim extremists are preponderant insofar as fidelity to the creed is concerned. In point of fact it reinforces that argument. If Islam has indeed been "hijacked," Muslim moderates - as an expression of deep-rooted belief - would be doing whatever possible on God's good earth...sacrificing their lives even, to reclaim their religion.
Instead, Ali Eteraz and his silent majority aren't even particularly interested in registering their disapproval.
I was intrigued by Eteraz's invokation of several bloggers' endorsements for his views. Seems he is hungry for validation. The list he produces as authoritative speaks for itself. I'll throw in my two bits regarding this nice blogging Catholic lady "the Anchoress", who is, as I say, very nice and also clearly very intelligent. She treats Eteraz very politely and acknowledges that he is (or tries to be, or at least presents himself as) a true reformer in Islam. But she is careful to point out that there is a clear distinction between being a reformer and being a moderate.
Also, she does not "endorse" Eteraz' analysis of scholarship, or his views that Robert Spencer's analysis is faulty. She is, as I said, very nice. She lets people speak, and she grants them many points, but last I read her on these points she only acknowledged (as has Spencer) that it was possible to speak reasonably with Eteraz, not that she had bought into his brand of islamic scholarship.
TA does not present herself as and Islamic scholar, only as a thoughtful Catholic blogger (and I'll gladly say that she is just that). She does not profess formal training or advanced individual learning in matters of Islamic jurisprudence, and simply allows source people like Eteraz to speak for themselves.
Spencer is not so polite; as a debater he must be confrontational on points of contention, or he might as well go home. As debaters go, he is a consummate gentleman, but his writing is hard-edged and he does not yield points simply because someone claims more authority or knowledge of a matter than him; he asks for, and deserves, a reasoned engagement of his points, and his opponents often go home when they realise that he is no lightweight.
TA does not do this because she is not a debater. But graciously she yields the podium to polite folks like Mr. Eteraz, but she is intelligent enough to not yield on points of analysis that lie outside her realm of expertise. If she has done so (yielded) recently on matters such as Eteraz seems to invoke her on here, then shame on him for cowing a nice lady without the specialized knowledge needed to evaluate his arguments. As you can see, this does not work with someone like Spencer, who has spent sufficient time to become well informed.
Mr. Eteraz, it has been entertaining thus far, but I'm afraid you are coming off as somewhat ignorant yourself. It is pretty clear that you haven't even read far enough in Mr. Spencer's books to "cherry pick" them for good passages to criticize. I advise you to do so before you continue the debate further. Then come back and address his points directly. You are a much better spokesman for an islamic reformist view than we have seen for some time, and, once you are more familiar with his presentation of the islamic sources you should be much more prepared (if possible) to dislodge his claims to accurately present the positions of the classical scholars of islam and how they are used by extremists (and in mainstream islam) today.
I'm afraid, reading your "points", they all seem to focus on Mr. Spencer. I think every one so far is more about him than about any actual points he has made. Apparently you are fascinated by this person. Perhaps he is a fascinating figure, but we really are more interested in your evaluation of the actual texts of the scholars and his take on them. Although you are more polite than others, and occasionaly actually mention the issues at stake, it is a little tiring watching you dance around these points instead of diving in and giving us some idea of how you reformists actually counter the jihadists arguments.
Regard Spencer as a mirror (perhaps not perfect) of how the jihadists interpret islamid imperatives toward unbelievers. There is no point shouting at a mirror because what it reveals is ugly. The mirror is not ugly, it's that zit that the mirror makes obvious. Don't smash the mirror, pop the zit for heavens sake (and then clean it with antiseptic. Yuck!). Let's get off the whole business of calling Spencer a bad mirror. Nobody seems to be successful in making this charge. Let's see something more substantial that addresses the zit of jihadism.
[Sorry, this was double-posted in another thread by accident. My bad...]
Ali Eteraz said
Jihad is only boring to those who have nothing to fear from the jihadists; namely, the jihadists themselves and their apologists.
My first thought to the second part of the sentence: Hugh has his own website?! After searching around for a while, I realized "his" referred to Robert, not Hugh. And unless Hugh is a playright, or his full name is Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan, there were no hits on published books yet, either.
Why does Mr. Spencer want to debate all these academics? Generally, in order to debate someone you have to be considered their "equal" in terms of accomplishment and credentials (not always, but that is the general rule). Mr. Spencer can debate Dinesh D'Souza because they are both conservative public intellectuals. I cannot debate Dinesh D'Souza because I'm a left-leaning libertarian who doesn't even have a book. Mr. Spencer wants to debate Omid Safi and Ernst and I'm sure a bunch of other academics. Yet Mr. Spencer lacks what an academic possesses: a PhD and tenure at a university. It would be very gracious indeed for an academic to "step down" and talk to Mr. Spencer. But the failure of an academic to be gracious isn't an indictment of anything. If anything, I think it would be a waste of Mr. Spencer's own time to debate with an academic. He'll end up with homework. Besides, those academic conferences are really boring.
Spencer would demolish Omid Safi and the frauds, the other Muslims and pro Muslim ideologues who have hijacked our Middle East study departments. Iteraz is a true to form Muslim here, in need of a pecking order or he is lost. His put down of Spencer shows that Ertaz is fearful of debate because some of his academic favorites have benefited mightily from the left wing spoils system (as smelly as old Tammany Hall) that dominates our liberal arts faculties. With Mid East studies being the worst. Lefties and Muslims have a vise grip on hiring and tenureship
Ertaz should do his home work instead of being so lazy to think that automatically Ernst et al know Islam better than Spencer. Just because they got sinecures via a rigged system. Our Mid East studies departments were much better balanced just one generation ago. Now the lefties/Muslims/Israel haters only hire their own kind
Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan is where Ertaz is from. yet another foreign import who will lecture us about what Islam really is. Non Muslims should shut up. They are unqualified to judge and critique awful Muhammad and his awful faith
Bow down before the authentic 3rd worlder. Who wonders of wonders has exited Pakistan to become a professional Muslim in the United States, a civilized nation. One that has elevated and progressed because we are not slaves to a false prophet who keeps his people dumb, fearful and backward. Judaism and Christianity are science friendly. Islam has no use for science and economic progress. Prayer to non existent allah is ranked far ahead. That's what Muslim males waste their time doing
Yes well I didn't understand it.
Sorry...
I think the seriousness of the photo: "Islam will dominate the world", says it all. We can fill-up our heads with indirect meanings and with collateral connections to theological sermons, but the facts of terrorism is self-explanatory.
I am surprised Eteraz doesn't just post pictures of megachurches being built in Islamic Republics and Islamic Kingdoms to dominate the skyline. This would surely refute the idea that Islamic views from the 7th century still rule the Islamic world today.
United States Insitute of Peace
Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the Twenty-first Century
David Smock
"Many Muslims believe that they must choose between Islam and modernity or between Islam and democracy, but these are false choices. To reinterpret Islam for the twenty-first century, the practice of ijtihad (interpretation and reasoning based on the sacred texts) must be revived."
"Religious scholars effectively terminated the practice of ijtihad five hundred years ago. But the principles of interpretation are well established and the need for contemporary interpretation is compelling."
This is a very scholarly article on this subject with examples and history.
Searches:
"Islamization of law"
"gates of ijtihad are closed"
Results 1 - 12 of about 20 for "gates of ijtihad are closed".
"gates of ijtihad are open"
Results 1 - 4 of about 8 for "gates of ijtihad are open".
"gates of ijtihad"
Results 1 - 100 of about 842 for "gates of ijtihad".
ijtihad
1 - 100 of about 359,000 for ijtihad.
Irshad Manji on Ijtihad
"Ijtihad (pronounced “ij-tee-had”) is Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking. In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived."
"Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons."
"Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam. It’s time to revive ijtihad to update Islam for the 21st century. That’s why I’ve created Project Ijtihad."
ijtihad gates
Results 1 - 100 of about 41,600 for ijtihad gates.
Freeman Dyson webpage at Institute of Advanced Study no Ph.D.
Discussion of his lack of Ph.D.
Freeman Dyson Ph.D.
Dyson also doesn't admire the American Ph.D. system.
Freeman Dyson quantum field theory
Results 1 - 100 of about 122,000 for Freeman Dyson quantum field theory
Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the 21st Century
Religion and Peacemaking Workshop
United States Institute of Peace
Entire post is a quotation:
On March 19 the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy co-hosted a Religion and Peacemaking Workshop to explore the concept of Ijtihad and the challenge of reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the 21st Century. Held as part of USIP's ongoing series of public workshops on religion and peacemaking, the session featured a panel of distinguished Islamic scholars from around the United States. Issues the panel explored include:
* What is Ijtihad (religious interpretation in Islam), and how can it be used to address the needs of Muslim societies in the 21st century?
* How can the door of Ijtihad be reopened, and who has the right to perform Ijtihad?
* What are the main problems, challenges, and handicaps facing the Muslim world and how can we address them?
* How can Muslims resolve their differences of opinion without resorting to violence or repression?
* What role can American Muslim leaders and organizations play in promoting a more tolerant, modern, and moderate interpretation of Islam?
* Muneer Fareed
Professor, Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan)
* Muzammil Siddiqi
Director, Islamic Community of Orange County, California
* Ingrid Mattson
Professor, Hartford Seminary
* Hassan Qazwini
Imam, Detroit, Michigan
* Radwan Masmoudi, Moderator
President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
* David Smock, Moderator
Director, Religion and Peacemaking Initiative, U.S. Institute of Peace
USIP
"Who Can Perform Ijtihad?"
"The right to engage in ijtihad, according to Imam Hassan Qazwini, director of the Islamic Center of America, belongs to an individual who is a recognized expert in jurisprudence and who is qualified to derive Islamic law from original sources. This requires wide expertise and many years of studying jurisprudence, the fundamentals of jurisprudence, hadiths, the biographies of hadith narrators, commentary on the Qur'an, Arabic grammar and eloquence, and logic. Additionally, in this era, knowledge of philosophy, economics, and sociology is increasingly necessary. A mujtahid should also display qualities such as piety and moral integrity."
USIP How Might Ijtihad Be Revived?
Entire post is quotation:
One of the gravest mistakes Muslims have committed, according to Qazwini, is closing the doors of ijtihad. They have limited legal interpretation to only four prominent scholars: Malik Ibn Anas, Abu Hanifa al-No'man, Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad Ibn Hambal—the heads of the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'i, and Hambali schools of thought. The motivation for this was political. During the Abbasid Dynasty (750–1258 CE), the Abbasids decided to outlaw all other sects in order to strictly control religion and worship, as well as political matters.
Closing the doors of ijtihad has had extremely detrimental ramifications for the Muslim world. According to Qazwini, this decision has resulted in chronic intellectual stagnation, as thousands of potential mujtahids and scholars have been prohibited from offering workable solutions to newly emerging problems. Muslim thinkers have become captive to rules that were made long ago, leaving little scope for liberal or innovative thought.
Governments in Muslim countries today, many of which are corrupt, greatly benefit from the absence of ijtihad. Moreover, these governments help keep the doors of ijtihad closed in order to control the religious establishment. Since religious bodies in Muslim countries rely on government financing, this makes them captive to government policies. The domination of the religious establishments by secular governments has been so powerful that it has often made religious authorities look inept. The first step toward opening the door of ijtihad, according to Qazwini, should be the liberation of religious establishments from the influence of political regimes. Religious authorities should dissociate themselves from political regimes so that they can independently issue and interpret religious law.
"Governments in Muslim countries today, many of which are corrupt, greatly benefit from the absence of ijtihad. Moreover, these governments help keep the doors of ijtihad closed in order to control the religious establishment. "
from USIP above.
BBC News on Muslim anger at Danish cartoons
"The ambassadors of 10 Muslim countries have complained to the Danish prime minister about a major newspaper's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad."
So the same governments that keep the gates of ijtihad closed also were behind Danish Cartoon rage. They met and planned it. The encouraged the riots, including flag burning, etc.
Those same governments don't allow churches to be built in almost the entire Muslim world. Most of them persecute Christians and other religious minorities and most chased out the Christian and Jewish populations in the 20th century.
"Secular" Turkey engaged in genocide on Christians and likely Jews as well.
"Religious authorities should dissociate themselves from political regimes so that they can independently issue and interpret religious law."
...what if they don't want to......
How about the definition from dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=ijtihad
"revive ijtihad "
Results 1 - 57 of about 151 for "revive ijtihad "
"Islamization of science"
Results 1 - 100 of about 9,050 for "Islamization of science". (0.65 seconds)
"Islamization of knowledge"
Results 1 - 100 of about 15,000 for "Islamization of knowledge".
Looks like Islamization of knowledge is going 15,000/151 or 100 times faster than reviving ijtihad.
A major problem highlighted in this whole exchange with the Emory Wheel pro-Islam students, and subsequently with Eteraz, is the gaping lack of information, lack of evidence presented, in regards to Islamic jurisprudence of today.
I applaud Robert for replying to the Emory Wheel. I also applaud the Wheel for giving Robert a chance to rebut the pro-Islam students' disgusting, baseless, unsupported, ad hominem attack.
That said, I find it odd that in the subsequent exchanges neither Robert nor Eteraz were able to cite much in the way of present-day Islamic jurisprudence--though of the two Robert presented better and apparently stronger evidence. Robert cited the Reliance of the Traveller (Shafi'i school), which was approved by Al-Azhar in 1991, and the Hidaya (Hanafi school but also discusses other schools), which is apparently still a very popular text and is still used widely today *[see below]. Eteraz failed to cite any authoritative texts and cited only two jurists who were giving vaguely-worded opinions about Islamic laws. He did not cite any Islamic laws on jihad, yet he insisted that the present-day conception of jihad was very significantly different than the classical conceptions (he provided no evidence for that).
Eteraz wrote:
"In other words, Al-Azhar certified the Reliance conscious of the fact that today’s jurists would reject it as inapplicable because rulings are no longer valid."
Is the above statement true? If it isn't, why doesn't Robert refute this statement directly? We know from previous posts that Eteraz will make erroneous statements (e.g., he stated that Muslims universally reject the methods of the jihadists, which is obviously false as numerous polls have shown). Is he making another reckless erroneous statement?
Even so, it is still not clear to me what the present-day schools state officially in regards to jihad, or whether or not there are any significant differences between the schools in what they are teaching about jihad. Are there official texts available for each of the schools?
In one sense, this issue doesn't matter: Jihadists are using whatever texts they can, quoted in whichever ways they like, to justify their actions and to gain more recruits. In another sense, knowing what the present-day rulings are is of central importance to the question of whether the jihadists are truly Islamic or are distorting the religion/ violating Islamic law. The only way to resolve that question is to get those present-day rulings, put them (or the key parts) on display, and let readers judge the evidence for themselves. If there are no such present-day official rulings for each of the schools, then this needs to be pointed out. In the absence of any clear official present-day rulings on jihad, the question of whether the jihadists are truly Islamic then becomes a question of examining their actions and policies against the Koran, Hadith, and Sira. We have those texts and can read them for ourselves and make up our minds based on the evidence. I have already done that and I conclude that the jihadists today are definitely well within the very flexible limits provided by the Quran and Sunnah. But we don't have the present-day Islamic legal rulings for all the schools. Therefore, there is not much basis for drawing conclusions on the present-day official Islamic legality of the jihadists' actions.
I think there needed to be much more information given about present-day Islamic law and how these texts are regarded in mainstream Islamic jurisprudence. My impression as a non-expert looking at this situation is that present-day Islamic jurisprudence is basically in disarray, a quagmire, with no one really having a clue what is going on or what the official rulings are. Prominent Muslim jurists (e.g., Gomaa) are thus free to make all kinds of pleasant-seeming PR statements, even changing those statements from week-to-week, without any definite up-to-date official texts against which we can compare those statements. They can arrange for media conferences in which they condemn terrorism and the killing of "innocents," and no one seems able to check the up-to-date official legal texts to see if those jurists' public statements are honest ones.
*Hidaya
http://amalpress.com/index.php?l_dis=publications_descr&id=14/
[Excerpts, from the publisher]
"This publication of the Hidayah is the complete translation from Arabic written by al-Marginani, arguably being the most popular and important work in the entire fiqh literature."
"The primary reason for its popularity is the reliability of its statements and the soundness of its legal reasoning. Most researchers and scholars first consult al-Hidayah before they move to another source. In the area of Muslim personal law, it has been the major source relied upon by courts in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. The need for this book, since the day it was written, led to the writing of well over forty commentaries and glosses on it, and this does not include the books written to document its traditions. This is rare not only for Islamic law, but for any field of knowledge."
Eteraz response to Spencer
Posted on Sun Mar 04, 2007 at 05:08:42 PM EST
"Here is another jurist, Shehzad Saleem also arguing that jihad theory is dead in Islamic Law:"
"First and foremost, only an Islamic state has the authority to wage Jihad. No independent group or organization has the right to launch an armed struggle in any way.
Secondly, after the departure of the Prophet (sws) and his Companions (rta), the only legitimate reason for an Islamic State to wage Jihad is to curb oppression and persecution in another country – whether Muslim or non-Muslim."
The Prophet had departed by 632 AD. All the conquests after that, i.e. everything outside of Arabia was after the Prophet departed. There
were no Muslims outside of Arabia to be persecuted.
Is Eteraz saying that it is established doctrine under Islam that all the conquests outside of Arabia are a violation of Islamic law? Or that just this one person says so? And everything done as part of them or as a consequence?
Or does it mean that some act justified all the conquests outside of Arabia? Aren't similar acts available today to justify conquests and occupations in the rest of the world? Isn't that what is happening by Muslim immigration?
The 1, 4 or 5 rightful Caliphs did those conquests and occupations after the Prophet departed. Are they not rightful Caliphs?
From "Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the Twenty-first Century by David Smock:
"Many Muslims believe that they must choose between Islam and modernity or between Islam and democracy, but these are false choices. To reinterpret Islam for the twenty-first century, the practice of ijtihad (interpretation and reasoning based on the sacred texts) must be revived."
"Religious scholars effectively terminated the practice of ijtihad five hundred years ago. But the principles of interpretation are well established and the need for contemporary interpretation is compelling."
-- from a posting above, giving a link to the original Smock article at the United States Insitute of Peace
When someone writes, without tongue in cheek, that the Camp of Islam, the world's 1 billion plus Muslims, will simply have to reform Islam, and reopen those "gates of ijithad" that were shut (not five hundred years ago, as Smock says, but a thousand years ago), and which have never been reopened since, that person has a lot of explaining to do.
Just how will those "gates of ijtihad" swing open? Who will do it? Will it be the Carnegie Foundation for Peace, handing out grant money to any clever Muslim who comes along to tell it he "has a plan" to "reform" Islam, or to "re-interpret" Islam. The mountebank's scam works, because the naive and despereate Infidels who hand out money want to believe, want desperately not to examine the tenets of Islam, the theology and law of Islam (everything connects in Islam, everything is part of a single system), the practice of Islam, in time and space, from Spain to the East Indies, over the past 1350 years, whether those Muslims were Arabs conquering the Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians of North Africa and the Middle East, or Berbers and Arabs conquering Spain, or Arabs conquering Zoroastrians, or Muslims of Persian and Turkic origin conquering most of India, and whether the conquest was outright military in nature, or consisted mainly of Da'wa (sometimes converting the ruler would do--as in Java and Sumatra) or demographic conquest, both of which were used to diminish, to the point of non-existence, the Zoroastrians in Persia, the Jews and Christians in the Middle East, steadily declining over the centuries, until now the former exist only because of the miraculous, against-all-odds rebirth of the ancient Jewish commonwealth in Israel (a feat that the greatest Italian journalist, Indro Montanelli, called possiblly "the best political development, and possibly the only good development, to come out of the twentieth century"), and because, for a while, the British and French put limits on the traditiional mistreatment of non-Muslims, but now tha they are both gone, the reassertion of old Muslim ways in Arab countries, just like the reappearance of Islam in Turkey, which 80 years of Kemalism did not manage to tie down, shows that Islam is forever.
Yet Bright Young Muslim Reformers in the West, doing no actual reforming, but making a pitch for support (and often getting it from generous Infidels), and Bright Non-Muslim Strategists, dimly aware that something needs to be changed in Islam but unwilling to recognize the near-impossibility of such change, because tehy continue to liken the immutable, Word-of-God text of the Qur'an to the Bible, continue to think that the Higher Criticism to which both Judaism and Christianity have been subjected for two centuries can somehow be applied to a very different, much more rigid, much more intolerant faith that even today unishes apostasy by death, and so few dare even attempt it even where they might somehow manage to survive (in other words, anyone born into Islam who leaves it, mentally, if living in a Muslim society, will keep his own view to himself so there can be no coming together of the like-minded, no public expression -- save in the safe West, and sometimes not even there -- of apostasy.
Those who brightly tell us that Islam "must reform" or "ijtihad must be revived" can say that, can say both things, a hundred times or a hundred thousand times. They don't tell us how this is to be achieved. They don't tell us how long it would take, were some kind of "new" Qur'an or bowdlerized Hadith to be created. They don't tell us how they expect the primitive and fanatical followers of a fighting faith, already having shnown that even in the West, even in the small numbers that they now possess, they are willing always and everywhere to aggressively make demands for changes in the political, legal, and social institutions of non-Muslims, and will not take "No" for an answer.
I repeat the Shakespearean volley from Henry IV:
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
"And so can I. And so can any man. But will they come?"
The entire Western world cannot bet the farm -- bet all the farms, and all the cities, and all the laws, and all the political arrangements, and all the individual liberties, and all the art, and all the science, and all the achievements made possible over several thousand years, from the Hellenic and Hebraic roots of the West, through the Romans, and the so-called Dark Ages (recently concluded to have been not so very dark), and the Middle Agesa, and the Renaissance (now bloodlessly called, in the academic syllabus of history departments, "Early Modern" just the way that good old English is now called "Language Arts"), and onward and upward right to the political thinkers, Richard Weaver and F. von Hayek and Karl Popper (so why does Soros, Popper's professed great admirer, not defend the West and instead end up, in the way he spends his money, not doing a thing to defend the West against the "enemies" of the Open Society?), but also Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls and Michael Oakeshott? All this is to be bet, on the merest possibility, that a billion primitives -- just look at those countries, just look at what passes for intellectual acivity, just look at how even Muslims who have received the benefit of Western education think, and argue. It is only the apostates, people such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq and Irfan Khwaja, who have one by one (no one helped them, each did it as a solitary thinker) managed to leave Islam, and in leaving, know the reasons why.
Those who prate and promise so much "reform" in Islam -- a sudden promise that is made just as Muslim behavior has at long last caused significant numbers of Infidels to wake as if from a deep dream of peace to a reality that reflects their own sane desire to preserve themselves and their societies, and an impatience with the nonsense of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque that, by dint of repetition, no longer has the intended effect in Infidels, and more and more are simply undertaking the tedious but necessary task of finding out about Islam, about the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, about Muhammmad as the Perfect Man and role model (and what that implies), about the collectivism of Islam, about the habit of mental submission that Islam not merely encourages but inculcates (and all that follows from that, incliding extreme Muslim susceptibilty to rumor, conspiracy theories, and general illogic and credulity of all kinds),and finally, the realization that Islam teaches Muslims to divide humanity into two: Believers and Infidels. And that last is the beating heart of Muslim darkness, that is being exposed to the light, and forcing some to think or pretend to think, that Muslims can now, just like that, swing open those heavy gates of ijtihad that haven't moved in nearly a thousand years, and that somehow many of the world's billion-odd Muslims will simply accept this 21st century tampering with the texts.
It's nonsense. It would be easier simply to demoralize and divide the Camp of Islam, and to show Muslims that the sources of their own political disarray and despots comes from the fact that in Islam it is not the will of the people that matters, but the will of Allah. And if they could see that without the oil wealth they would have no riches, and not a single state full of Muslims has been able, precisely to the extent that it remains wedded to Islam, are being asked to take a chance that Islam will suddenly be able to do what has never been achieved before.
And we are expected to believe that the Muslim masses -- forget about the unrepresentative handful of the fully westernized and secularizewd, who nonetheless out of filial piety or fear or both do not become apostates, but cling to a "reformist" dream -- will, at at time of perceived Muslim power, be willing to jettison what is central to Islam. For the idea that the world is divided between Believers and Infidels, that Dar al-Islam must ultimately swallow up Dar al-Harb, that a Muslim's loyalty can never be offered to Infidels or an Infidel nation-state but only, in the end, to fellow Muslims and to Islam, that everything is owed to Islam and to fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya, that Islam must "domiante and is not to be dominated" -- these beliefs are not tangential to Islam. They are, like the duty of Jihad to spread Islam, central to the faith of Islam. That is what the "reformers" -- who in any case hardly exist, but are given exaggerated attention by Westerners eager to believe -- do not or choose not to recognize.
And besides, we Infidels can't wait another two hundred years, or a hundred, or even fifty, for this so-called "reform of Islam" to take place. Had it begun, say, in 1800, and proceeded steadily under the pressure of the Western example and Western power, perhaps, now, it would have a chance. But even 80 years of Kemalism have hardly snuffed out Islam -- it is back, in Turkey, with a permanent vengeance. That should tell those Infidels putting their hopes, and their safety, and their civilizational bets (that is, betting the survival and well-being of their own civilization, so superior to that of Islam), on the "reform" of Islam, are wasting their time, and ours, and delaying the day of intelligent and grim recognition.
"Prominent Muslim jurists (e.g., Gomaa) are thus free to make all kinds of pleasant-seeming PR statements, even changing those statements from week-to-week, without any definite up-to-date official texts against which we can compare those statements."
I should add of course that Gomaa has made numerous not-so-pleasant statements.
TO ETERAZ:
#1: Anne Crockett is not Robert Spencer, nor vice versa.
#2: As previously, I will ask that JW administration ban Ali Eteraz from this site. He, and probably Esmay, are trying to do here what they did on Coulter's site: tie Robert up answering first false accusations followed by PURPORTED responses which are only manipulations to twist what Robert said further. If this is an example of "MUSLIM HONOR" then they are in worse trouble than I even thought.
#3: If Muslims want to DEMONSTRATE the alleged truth that they do not agree with terrorism, they can do it. DEMONSTRATE IT BY RAISING HELL WITH THE RADICALS, not spending as much time and money as they can muster playing adolescent attention games with the U.S. media. Oh, yeah, it's real brave to inundate good pundits with phony questions and strutting around their websites like little martinets. But you and I both know, Ali, that if you stand up to the REAL bad guys who are REALLY attacking your religion, then you stand up to people like Al-Zarqawi who'll cut your head off on international TV for it. As I've said before:
GROW A SPINE AND FIGHT THE BAD GUYS, IF YOU'VE THE GUTS. OTHERWISE, SHUT UP, YOU'RE NOT UP TO THIS FIGHT, AND WHILE AMERICANS DIE FOR YOUR COWARDICE YOU COULD AT LEAST STOP MAKING UTTER FUCKING FOOLS OF YOURSELF PRETENDING THAT SHADOW-BOXING WITH PUNDITS IS FIGHTING TERRORISM.
I know, I know, I cussed! I fully expect to have this post clipped at some point, but you have to admit: I just spoke the truth.
Insulted? Did I insult your religion, Ali? Actually not, I insulted you for the transparently bogus drivel you put out and called a response!
I'll get around to insulting your religion for its anti-woman verses -- which your unbelievably stupid attempt on eteraz.org to say the new Qur'an corrects (ha!) -- a little later. BTW, Ali, if women are supposed to read that crap on your website and decide that Islam is going to make out of the absolutely true assertion that it supports towards women, you're have to tell a more convincing lie that one.
#4 I can't wait for you to answer those questions of mine that you put on your webpage. And no, I will not, as you asked in your email to me last night, post your responses all over the JW website with -- you demanded -- the same gusto with which I posted them all over the website over the weekend.
No, if there's anything in your responses, you can put in an EMAIL to Robert and not smear them all over the JW website yourself, either. Which is another reason that I want JW to ban you from the site: I do not intend to be used by you to throw any more distorted lying trash into Robert's face.
If you do it, I will ask JW to remove it out of respect for myself as well as the JW staff.
Got that?
Hope so, but given your reading comprehension to date, I rather doubt it.
CORRECTION IN ABOVE POST:
BTW, Ali, if women are supposed to read that crap on your website and decide that Islam is going to make out of the absolutely true assertion that it supports VIOLENCE towards women, you're have to tell a more convincing lie that one.
Note: The only way for these verses to be neutered is to have them BANNED by the eight madabhs and declared un-Islamic. Got that, Ali?
John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 29, 2004
quote
“[More from the Ottoman Sultan’s pronouncement to his subjects]...‘all infidels are but one nation…This war must be considered purely a religious and national war. Let all the faithful, rich or poor, great or little, know, that to fight is a duty with us; let them then refrain from thinking of arrears, or of pay of any kind; far from such considerations, let us sacrifice our property and our persons; let us execute zealously the duties which the honor of Islamism imposes on us – let us unite our efforts, and labor, body and soul, for the support of religion, until the day of judgement. Mussulmen have no other means of working out salvation in this world and the next.’”
end quote
The Sultan was Caliph and thus head of the unitary religious, legal, military, political, economic, educational, academic entity known as Islam.
Does any authority in Islam condemn this statement by the Sultan explicitly? What about condemn bin Laden's fatwa of 1998? With a detailed discussion of it according to Islamic law?
bin Laden 1998 unIslamic
The results are mostly about Muslim governments being unIslamic in the view of bin Laden or others.
government unIslamic
Results 1 - 100 of about 43,600 for government unIslamic.
"Shehzad Saleem " jihad
"jihad is unIslamic"
Results 1 - 4 of about 5 for "jihad is unIslamic".
"Command to Wage Jihad"
Results 1 - 20 of about 37 for "Command to Wage Jihad"
"Permission to Wage Jihad"
Results 1 - 12 of about 24 for "Permission to Wage Jihad".
"call to wage jihad"
Results 1 - 16 of about 47 for "call to wage jihad"
"to wage jihad"
Results 1 - 100 of about 64,400 for "to wage jihad".
"wage jihad"
Results 1 - 100 of about 85,700 for "wage jihad".
"jihad against unbelievers"
Results 1 - 100 of about 1,680 for "jihad against unbelievers".
"jihad against infidels"
Results 1 - 100 of about 9,940 for "jihad against infidels".
jihad unIslamic
Results 1 - 100 of about 30,300 for jihad unIslamic.
But they appear to be not saying jihad is unIslmamic but something else.
"jihad against infidels" unIslamic
Results 1 - 54 of about 67 for "jihad against infidels" unIslamic.
"jihad against unbelievers" unIslamic
Results 1 - 21 of about 32 for "jihad against unbelievers" unIslamic.
"jihad to be unIslamic"
Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "jihad to be unIslamic".
Economic liberty and Islam
By Richard W. Rahn
March 5, 2007
"The U.N. publishes the Human Development Index (HDI) each year. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living. The Index was originally developed in 1990 by a Pakistani economist. Of the 32 countries rated "High" last year, not one was a Muslim majority country. However, of the 30 countries rated "Low," 16 were Muslim countries. "
"There are two major indices of economic freedom: one produced by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal and the other under the auspices of the Fraser and Cato Institutes. Each uses a slightly different methodology but both show Islamic countries on average have much lower economic freedom than non-Islamic countries. "
To all the posters above, but especially Old Atlantic: Thank you for posting the results of your research in such an 'adult' manner. There is an 'art AND science' to civil discourse and when your goal is to inform and persuade, your presentation is very effective. For what it's worth, today you get my award for outstanding achievement. My intention in writing is not meant to discount other styles, for in all battles we all have a part to play in the drama of human evolution starting with those who kill to those who cure.
As a right brain dominate artist I appreciate the contributions of left brain dominate scientists and mathematicians and even lawyers. They enrich and deepen my life journey.
As for why Muslims in the United States don’t protest: we don’t feel we need to. We are good American citizens. Our median per capita income is the second highest of any group (after Indian Americans). (from above)
As such I issue Mr. Spencer a challenge: use some of your resources to help us compile the information we are looking for. Certainly you have far more money than us. Certainly, with your qualifications and the qualifications of all the people around you and all the writings about the Muslim world you do, there must be countless hundreds of people in the Muslim world whom you can call upon to help us gather this information. You have my email address. (from above)
My thanks to Mr. Spencer for his patience and knowledge. These discussions do help us to understand the motivations of Muslims who seek to 'shut us up'.
The two contradictory statements above do a lot to further that understanding.
Mr. Eteraz,
One of the most important truths that we Americans beleive in is free speech. Outside of causing harm to others i.e. " yelling fire in a crowded building where there is no fire" we believe in the right to express our opinions no matter how diverse.
We have a lot of sayings about this.
'Sticks and stones' is one and there is another.
'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'
Your call for censorship in the comments section tells me that you do not honor the Constitution of my country.
Do our comments make you want to do Jihad?
Do you have any proof that this latent tendency is not there even in your so called moderates?
Why are you not appealing to the high income group that you mentioned above to put their money where their silence is to really reform this belief system that requires so much apology and so much explanation?
Malinois [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 5, 2007 10:46 AM, thanks. I also appreciate the contributions of the right brain artists whose work can help us think in a different way by a picture, poem or phrase. The Danish Cartoonists come to mind.
The above searches, as the posters on Jihad Watch show, the burden is on Muslims in a world of violent jihadi acts to say that violent Jihad is unIslamic, and to prove it to the jihadis by every means possible.
As Aunt Bea explains above, its the job of Mr. Eteraz, who doesn't like the term moderate Muslim, and other Muslims to show to the jihadis that violent Jihad is unIslamic. Some of the above searches have under 100 hits on such explicit rejections.
This is evidence against Eteraz's position. Why? Because in an age of violent acts, its incumbent on Muslim scholars to produce arguments in English and Arabic and every other language that explain why violent Jihad is unIslamic. That these searches come up almost empty shows they have not done so.
In some circumstances, silence is consent. Or it shows they are subjected to fear by the jihadis and the Islamic Republics and Kingdoms, and the networks they fund in America and Europe.
"violent Jihad is un-Islamic"
Your search - "violent Jihad is un-Islamic" - did not match any documents.
Morgan Sinclair said:
>>
2: As previously, I will ask that JW administration ban Ali Eteraz from this site. He, and probably Esmay, are trying to do here what they did on Coulter's site: tie Robert up answering first false accusations followed by PURPORTED responses which are only manipulations to twist what Robert said further. If this is an example of "MUSLIM HONOR" then they are in worse trouble than I even thought.
The problem with these debates, and with debates with Muslims in general, is the inevitable complexity of radiating topics and subtopics, questions and sub-questions that ensues, allowing the Muslim to indulge in seemingly endless dancing, prevarication and obfuscation.
My suggestion is that in any future debate, the non-Muslim critic in the debate, or (if one is present) the moderator, should insist on focusing only on one topic at a time, and not move away from the one topic until it is FINISHED, or until the two participants agree to disagree.
UK Infidel Lover:
I understand your point ... but I also want to let Ali Eteraz know I don't like this bashing he does on this site. It's a tactic that I think needs to be exposed that has been used by jihadists on anti-Jihad websites before: Flood the website and overwhelm it. Make false accusations. Twist the words of the writer and demand they respond.
It SHOULD be beneath the dignity of honest brokers in this discussion, and the repeated incidence of it by Eteraz certain makes it look as if he's NOT an honest broker.
Therefore, I'm likely to restate my request, but I do not expect it to be accepted by JW. And I would also understand their reasons for having the debate continue here.
Morgaan Sinclair wrote:
>>
I understand your point ... but I also want to let Ali Eteraz know I don't like this bashing he does on this site. It's a tactic that I think needs to be exposed that has been used by jihadists on anti-Jihad websites before: Flood the website and overwhelm it. Make false accusations. Twist the words of the writer and demand they respond.
It SHOULD be beneath the dignity of honest brokers in this discussion, and the repeated incidence of it by Eteraz certain makes it look as if he's NOT an honest broker.
>>
Completely understand. I have had that tactic applied to myself. And yes, I have had doubts
as to whether the Muslims I have dealt with are honest in their intentions. Still, I try hoping that they start questioning their own behaviour.
By now, Ali Eteraz has gone way with something to think about. He _MUST_ know that we are not asking for him to convince ourselves but that he should convince Jihadists that their actions are wrong. He _MUST_ also know that his case for his version of Islam is weak - where are the moderate Islamic jurists down the ages that would endorse his position (non-existant from my point of view). And he very likely knows that Islam has a track record of putting dissenters to death - it does not easily tolerate "heretical" beliefs which means if he puts himself out - that is reasonably brave.
Who knows - he might change, even if he is not honest at the moment - I dont know.
I don't understand why we are still entertaining Eteraz as a viable "moderate". Eteraz, as Spencer has shown, support violent jihad against us -- not now, but later, after the Umma gets an "authentic" Caliph. Eteraz wants to kill us, for crying out loud! That's not someone to have debates with. That's someone to arrest, interrogate and deport -- at best.
One reason to obey Robert's Rules of Order on posting is to keep Jihad Watch from being blocked in public libraries, schools, government offices, businesses, etc.
Regarding the Al Azar endorsement of "Reliance"
"and he says they only endorsed it as a museum piece, which contradicts their own words,"
You know what it is - you'll misunderstand Al Azar U's statement because it is Out Of Context and you don't know Arabic....
This bit really exposed that Eteraz is deliberately deceptive. I am disappointed, but I can't deny this. I've enjoyed his writing on occassion in the past.
And:
"Let me reiterate that: when we talk about non-violence, we talk about staying silent and inert."
I'm _dumbstruck_ by the immorality of that.
True Islam is the Word of God.
WWW.SPIRITUALITYANONYMOUS.COM