Here is my promised response to "Problems With Jihadwatch's Op-Ed In Emory Univ. Student Paper," by Ali Eteraz at Eteraz.org. Just in case anyone is confused, as always with this sort of thing the blockquoted portions are from Eteraz's article and the non-blockquoted parts are my response.
We can conclude that the politicization of American universities is complete when everyone from Barrack Obama, a popular candidate for President, and Jihadwatch, a blog on the fringes of American conservatism, both feel the need to dive into our intellectual sanctuaries to peddle their opinions. As a matter of policy, politicians and pundits should abstain from entering the academcy unless they are invited.
Yes, that would be great. The academy should be above politics. Unfortunately, the academy has already been politicized. Politically and ideologically motived academics like Omid Safi and Carl Ernst indoctrinate their students into a particular view of my work and that of others, instead of giving those students the tools to come to their own conclusions about the issues at hand. Then, after spreading their propaganda, they refuse to discuss these issues with me. These are just two small examples of the manifest fact that the academy has already been politicized. When Rashid Khalidi can hold a professor's chair at Columbia University and Ward Churchill can become not just a professor, but a hero of the Left, clearly the "politicians and pundits" have already entered the academy. But only one point of view is dominant there; read my friend D'Souza's Illiberal Education or David Horowitz's new Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom.
This dominance should be challenged, if our universities are going to survive as anything more than propaganda centers.
Recently, Jihadwatch writer Robert Spencer submitted an op-ed full of glaring errors to the Emory Wheel, Emory University's Student Paper. The central premise of this op-ed (which is a shortened version of his earlier post), was this:Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute "Sharia" worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology.The article then quotes various legal scholars from Islamic history that purportedly support the thesis of the article. It then, generously, concludes with challenging a college student to a debate.
I make no apologies for challenging a college student to a debate. A person who makes public assertions ought to be prepared to defend them, no matter what his or her station in life. College students should be the last people who are immune from intellectual challenge or debate. I myself have innumerable times invited discussion and debate about what I have written, and have in return, as I noted below, received only abuse. You can see that abuse, including sometimes outright falsehoods about what I actually say, in the print debates I've had with Hussam Ayloush, Asad AbuKhalil, and Khaleel Mohammed.
Well, contrary to myth, my books are not full of abuse, but of documented material. If I am wrong, establish that with evidence. Instead, polemicists have attacked my publishers, my character, my motives, my decency as a human being, predicted I would die lonely and abandoned and damned me to hell, and then called me a polemicist. All's fair in love and war, but they should know that such tactics convince only the credulous, and do not constitute credible refutation of the points I have made -- and what's more, they suggest an inability to respond substantively.
So yes, I'll happily debate that college student. Or Safi, or Ernst, or Akbar Ahmed, or Jamal Badawi, or Ahmed Afzaal, or Mark LeVine, or any of the other academics who have either declined my invitation to dialogue or debate, or never quite gotten around to getting back to me.
Immediately one has to look at the most obvious of errors in this piece.
Good. You, Mr. Eteraz, will be among the first to raise specific objections.
First, none of the scholars Spencer cites to were alive after the year 1406 A.D. The only link he offers between the past and today is the assertion that one of the jurists, Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328), is a "favorite of Osama bin Laden and other jihadists." Yet, on the basis of the fact that one jurist, from more than 600 years ago, is the "favorite" of Bin Laden, Spencer derives his conclusion that Jihad is a "constant" element of "mainstream Islamic theology." One scholar. 600 years removed. One Bin Laden. Can a reasonable person really believe that such a link proves something about "mainstream Islamic theology"? One doesn't have to attend Emory University to be able to answer that.
Mr. Eteraz might have a point were that the only such "link" that could be provided. However, in a piece that has to be kept under 600 words and that must cover a great deal of ground, there will be some inevitable telescoping of material -- and unfortunately, there is a great deal more evidence available to establish that jihad and the subjugation of unbelievers is a mainstream element of Islamic theology and law. By noting that "none of the scholars Spencer cites to were alive after the year 1406 A.D." and complaining that I provide only one "link...between the past and today," Mr. Eteraz gives the impression that I am overlooking 600 years of evolution and development in these areas. And one would reasonably assume, of course, that in any arena of human endeavor, over 600 years there will be considerable change.
That's a reasonable conjecture. However, in this case it founders. Why? Because when bin Laden and other jihadists cite these ancient jurists, they clearly believe that their rulings are still normative for Muslims -- and clearly they also believe that their Muslim audience will recognize this as well. Read through Osama's writings, and you'll find numerous references to Ibn Taymiyya, as well as Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Malik ibn Anas, Ibn Qayyim, and many others. Nor is this something only bin Laden does. Sayyid Qutb, whose writings, as I'm sure Mr. Eteraz would acknowledge, are enormously influential among jihadists today, says that Ibn Qayyim, who died in 1350, “has summed up the nature of Islamic Jihaad.” And Ibn Qayyim does that, he explains, by delineating the three phases of Qur'anic revelation about jihad, about which I have written many times: first, no warfare was permitted, then defensive warfare, and finally offensive warfare, which is to be normative for all time.
Now: why does Qutb, why does bin Laden (and I have plenty more examples of this sort of thing, Mr. Eteraz; if you would like to dispute this point further, I will produce them, but I am not doing so now for the sake of brevity) think that by citing people like Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, who lived so very long ago, they will convince Muslims today of the correctness of their position? Don't they realize that modern jurists have changed the way Muslims think about these things, and so none of their readers will accept arguments from older authorities?
Unfortunately, they don't realize that, because it isn't so. Because the gates of ijtihad have long been closed, there has not been significant development of theology or law in these areas. (Here is a Muslim scholar explaining what that means, and arguing that these gates should be reopened.) Qutb and bin Laden know that, and they know their audiences will know it. They know therefore that citing ancient scholars is tantamount to citing established and received opinion.
This is illustrated by the fact, which I mentioned in my letter to Emory but which you do not mention in your post, that the Shafi'i legal manual 'Umdat al-Salik, or Reliance of the Traveller, although it was first written centuries ago, was certified by Al-Azhar in 1991 as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy. Al-Azhar didn't say it was an illuminating historical artifact, or an insight into what Muslims used to believe long ago; they said it was a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy today. Yet it too contains material about the obligation of the Muslim umma to wage war against unbelievers in order to subjugate them as dhimmis under the rule of Islamic law.
The next problem is the very use of the term "Islamic Theology." Spencer seems to believe that when he quotes from "jurisprudence" he is automatically speaking about "theology." We see this when he says:Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. It is affirmed by all four principal schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence.I'm afraid to inform the distinguished New York Times bestselling author on Islam that Islamic Theology is very distinct from Islamic Jurisprudence. Islamic Theology is an altogether different discipline encompassing metaphysics, philosophy and eschatology. It is called Kalam. (One would be well advised to read Profesor Wolfson's Philosophy of the Kalam in order to see how distinct Islamic Jurisprudence truly is from Islamic Theology). Kalam is speculative philosophy which produces theological precepts. Islamic Jurisprudence, as with all jurisprudence, on the other hand, deals with actual legal problems. The word for Islamic Jurisprudence is fiqh. I am very interested in learning how Kalam and Fiqh became one and the same.
Here Mr. Eteraz is just playing "gotcha." Islamic theology is legal; Islamic law is theological. This is illustrated by the fact that the Qur'an and Hadith, which are undoubtedly religious texts, form two of the most significant bases for the formulation of fiqh. And I never claimed that kalam and fiqh were one and the same.
This leads me to some other other problems with the article.Islam is, like Judaism (and unlike Christianity which is what Spencer practices), a juridical religion.
Is that so? Hmmm. A juridical religion? You mean theology and law have some overlap? I thought you just told us they didn't.
The Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet, both contain conflicting verses and narrations. In order to fashion a means of reconciling these conflicts with the changing nature of human life, the earliest members of Muslim community devised a methodological system of law or jurisprudence (fiqh). Spencer is, unlike the average blog troll...
Great. So I'm an above-average blog troll. This is the kind of silly mudslinging that I wish Mr. Eteraz could bring himself to resist.
...actually aware of the juridical nature of Islam, and as such, a dialogue with him is not only possible, but refreshing. He recognizes that the best way of enunciating Islamic Law is to quote Islamic Jurists. For that much, he should be applauded.
Thank you.
However, the problem arises when Spencer then tries to convince everyone from his readers to Muslims themselves, that the only authentic jurists (or most popular jurists) are those from the past from whom he pulls his quotes.
Here Mr. Eteraz commits the common fallacy of attributing to me what I report from bin Laden, Qutb, Azzam, Al-Banna, Zarqawi, and other jihadists. They, as I explained above, cite ancient jurists to support their positions, and obviously assume that their Muslim audiences will find such evidence compelling. I report that they do this, and Mr. Eteraz says that I am the one doing it. Unfortunately, this little problem is in reality far larger than me.
Certainly, people like Ibn Taymiya and Ibn Khaldun were authentic jurists in Islam. Unfortunately, what Spencer doesn't recognize is the fundamental problem of jurisprudence, whether its Islamic or secular: jurists are bound by their context; the world around them.
Oh, I recognize that very well. But, as I explained above, the jihadists don't seem to. 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. For example, Mukhlas Imron, mastermind of the Bali bombing, said: "You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a reward above no other? Aren't you aware that the model for us all, the Prophet Muhammad and the four rightful caliphs, undertook to murder infidels as one of their primary activities, and that the Prophet waged jihad operations 77 times in the first 10 years as head of the Muslim community in Medina?" Zarqawi responded to criticism of his videotaped beheading of Nick Berg by saying: "The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in [the battle of] Badr and to kill them....And he set a good example for us." They do the same kind of thing with these old jurists.
One has only to think of American Jurisprudence. At one point in time, American Jurists like John C. Calhoun argued that "slavery was a positive good" (on the Senate floor no less). Even the founding fathers, jurists the likes of which very few have ever existed, held that a black man was, under the law, only worth 3/5th of a white man (and women were worth nothing). Does this mean that "bigotry is a constant element of American law?" Any reasonable person would conclude no. As such, any reasonable person should also be able to conclude that the world prior to 1406 -- when a Christian Europe and an Islamic Africa/Asia were at war, is a very different world than the post WWII, UN regulated world. The rulings of those jurists -- and a jurist is just a fallible lawyer -- in the past about their politics means no more to me than the jurisprudence of John C. Calhoun on race relations. It isn't just in race relations that American Jurisprudence has changed. Until 1986, the legislators in the state of New York allowed a 15 year old girl to be married. This law was changed when jurists came along and revised their opinion and made it 18.
I believe I have answered this point already.
So, how do we know that most Muslim people do not, and are not, listening to the edicts of jurists from 600 years ago? Well, most Muslim nations are not at war with non-Muslim nations, and where there are tensions these are not on the basis of anyone's religiosity (most are land disputes).
This doesn't establish what Mr. Eteraz wishes it to establish. There may be any number of reasons why Muslim nations are not at war with non-Muslim nations. One chief one is that most majority-Muslim nations today are not ruled solely by Islamic law. Sharia is only fully in place in Saudi Arabia and Iran. So what they do doesn't establish anything about Islamic law. Another reason why they may not be fighting is that most are in no military or economic position to wage war against anyone. So to take their behavior as establishing something about Islamic law is risky at best. And there are other reasons why they may not be fighting today -- Musharraf's regime, for instance, has a shaky alliance with the U.S., which it obviously believes is good for Pakistan to maintain, and for which Muslim hardliners in Pakistan excoriate that regime.
As for the assertion that most disputes between Muslim and non-Muslim nations involve land, not religion, I don't think that holds up on the basis of the evidence. Even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have been settled long ago were it not for the intransigence on the part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad over their desire to destroy Israel utterly. That intransigence, as the Hamas Charter makes clear, is derived from Islamic principles. And all over the globe, from Indonesia and the Philippines and Thailand to Kashmir, Chechnya, and Nigeria, the Muslim warriors frame these "land disputes" in terms of religion. The evidence for this is posted regularly at Jihad Watch.
The only "Muslim" parties today who engage in killing on the basis of someone being non-Muslim are jihadists; not the "mainstream of Islamic theology." For the most part, jihadists are prosecuted as criminals all around the Muslim world (the Pakistani military has lost close to 2000 men in hunting Al-Qaeda), and jihadist methods and approaches are rejectedby Muslims universally; not to mention giving rise to anti-jihadist fatwas.
There is no doubt that the Pakistani military and other Muslim entities have fought against the mujahedin; I have never remotely asserted anything to the contrary. But here again, this doesn't tell us anything about Islamic law. In Pakistan, Muslim leaders routinely fulminate against Musharraf precisely because of what they regard as his disloyalty to Islam. All over the Islamic world, jihadists recruit among peaceful Muslims by quoting from the Islamic texts and presenting themselves as the exponents of "pure Islam." Most Muslims do reject them, but the jihadists have the intellectual initiative in the Islamic community today; why is that? Why hasn't there arisen a large-scale international movement working on a theological level to refute them, if the refutations were as ready to hand as you suggest they are?
In fact, one will see that Spencer's article cites to a jurist from the Maliki school of law (Khaldun), yet if one compares Khaldun (d. 1406) with this jurist alive today from the Maliki school, we immediately see how the jurist today conceptualize war (very differently from the past). Here is another example, this jurist being a student of scholars trained at al-Azhar university, and concludes this about violence:A. Taking the law into one's own hands amounts to either Fasad fi'l-Ard (creating disorder) or Muharabah (rebellion) -- both of which are punishable by death in Islam.B. The Prophet's saying (sws) usually cited to give credence to the idea that Islam allows an individual or a group the use of force to end wrong is actually related to the use of power within the confines of the social and legal authority.
C. In Islam, there is no concept of Jihad (Qital to be more precise -- that is militant struggle in the way of Allah) or the implementation of punishments without the authority of the State.
I am glad to see this sort of thing, and hope that it gains a wide audience among Muslims, since at least to some degree it does directly challenge the jihadists on Islamic grounds. The core of their disagreement with the jihadists appears to be that they reject the validity of suicide bombing and argue that jihad warfare can only be waged with the permission of the state authority. For instance, Akiti says (in the pdf cited in Eteraz's first link above, on page 22) that "whether one likes it or not, the decision and discretion and right to declare war or jihad for Muslims lie solely with the various authorities as represented today by the respective Muslim states..." The same assertion appears in the one Mr. Eteraz quoted directly, from Asif Iftikhar: "In Islam, there is no concept of Jihad (Qital to be more precise -- that is militant struggle in the way of Allah) or the implementation of punishments without the authority of the State."
One might get the impression from Mr. Eteraz's piece that the positions of Akiti and Iftikhar represent the dominant view among Muslims today, who reject the position articulated by Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Qayyim and the rest. Unfortunately, however, there is a difference of opinion on this question among contemporary Islamic scholars. Some argue that Muslims may wage war in order to establish that Islamic state, and then continue to wage war against unbelievers under its aegis. Others contend that the Islamic state must be established by peaceful means, and only then may Muslims wage jihad warfare. The latter position was held by Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the influential Pakistani jihad theorist who died in 1979 (whose views of jihad I discussed in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers), Sheikh Muhammad Said Ramadan Al-Buti (whose view of jihad I discussed in my book Islam Unveiled), and Sheikh Muhammad Naasir ud-Din Al-Albani (whose condemnation of suicide bombing I note in Onward Muslim Soldiers). The former view is held by Islamic scholars such as Muhammad Amarah and Khair Haykel, as well as by Abdullah Azzam, cofounder of Al-Qaeda, and, of course, other mujahedin today.
It is important to note, however, that Maududi and Al-Buti, as well as others who hold this view, don't reject the idea of jihad against unbelievers in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. Maududi, after all, wrote that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
So in other words, this is just a disagreement about means, not about ends. The authorities Mr. Eteraz has invoked have not rejected the idea that Muslims must wage war in order to subjugate non-Muslims. In fact, Iftikhar says this in the same article that Mr. Eteraz quotes: "If an Islamic State - or United Islamic States - declared a morally and tactically justified armed jihad against a nation and needed the services of a Muslim, it would be a matter of his faith to render them and a distinct privilege if he ends up laying down his life as a result."
So the Islamic supremacist imperative remains in place. Will Mr. Eteraz kindly produce Islamic jurists who argue that Muslims should not wage war against unbelievers -- as unbelievers -- under any circumstances, but should live with them as equals not just on a temporary basis until they become strong enough to impose Islamic law, but on a permanent basis? I would love to see them.
I therefore want to thank Spencer for providing an opportunity to demonstrate to Muslims and non-Muslims alike that in Islam, changed conditions bring about changes in law. American Law with respect to racism and gender underwent reformation. Islamic Law with respect to violence against non-Muslims has also modified to fit with the world in which it finds itself.
Yet the jurists he cites leave intact the prerogative of the Islamic state to wage war against unbelievers. Is that really a sufficient modification?
I completely accept the usual rejoinder from critics that there are many areas of Islamic Law where today's jurists have simply accepted the opinions of jurists from the past (and done injustice). This includes women's rights, minority rights, and the issue of apostasy, among others.
Quite so. And indeed, this is the usual practice, since the gates of ijtihad are closed.
However, as time passes, more and more Muslim jurists are making up their own minds about these issues. I'm not even a jurist and I am doing my own thinking about these matters.
Good.
Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the high Mufti of Egypt, whom Spencer in another post tries to paint as an extremist because Gomaa (like John Ashcroft) does not allow graven images in statues...
Cheap shot. Ashcroft supports no terrorist groups, although since Mr. Eteraz equates Dick Cheney with Stalin, he may disagree.
...recently allowed women to get hymen reconstruction surgery, as well as allowing women the right to political leadership. Other major jurists today have allowed women the right to lead prayer. Even al-Azhar University, by no means a bastion of reform, has taken a strong stance against Female Genital Mutilation which it once used to permit. Islamic Law changes. I hope that is obvious by now. The way islamic jurisprudence evolved to make rules limiting violence serves as a model of how islamic jurisprudence will evolve to give rights to women, minorities and non-Muslims. I wish that Spencer would recognize this and leave Muslim reformists from having to correct his errors.
Ali Gomaa, according to the New York Times, supports the jihad terrorists of Hizballah. I'm glad he opposes genital mutilation and the rest, but when Hassan Nasrallah shouts "Death to America!" and Ali Gomaa approves, pardon me if I am underwhelmed by his moderation.
And anyway, as I have repeated ad infinitum, I wholeheartedly support genuine Muslim reformists. My friend Tashbih Sayyed, editor of Muslim World Today, is on the Jihad Watch Board. But there are many who are styled reformists who either deny that Islamic texts and teachings have ever been used to justify violence, which is a flagrant falsehood, or whose reforms dissolve upon inspection, such as Akiti and Iftikhar above.
In conclusion, jihadists, whom Spencer tries to link to the Islamic schools of law are actually deniers of Islamic legal methodology, preferring to circumvent Islamic Law altogether.
This assertion is, to put it mildly, unproven by anything Mr. Eteraz has said in his piece.
This actually confirms a point I've made previously; namely, the problem within Islam is a problem of intellectual anarchy which I provide one way of how to address.And this problem is not alleviated when a group claiming to watch the jihadis is looking in all the wrong places.
I want to thank Emory students Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem who articulated their response to Spencer. I also want to bid kudos to Emory sudent Ammara Abbasi for writing this wonderful article on the moral and ethical principles that underlie the spiritual jihad. While I am heartened to see American students articulate their disagreements in such a positive manner, it is somewhat problematic that young adults who should be studying for their mid terms and enjoying going to parties are put in the absurd position of having to defend their faith from someone outside the academy who already have careers writing about Islam.
As I noted here, Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem did nothing but attack me personally. They provided no evidence whatsoever that anything I said was false. Neither did Ammara Abbasi. If Mr. Eteraz thinks this is a valid method of discourse, the prospects for his actually convincing Muslims that his version of Islam is the correct one are dim, for they will not be convinced by personal attacks and invective in lieu of rational arguments any more than anyone else will be.
In closing, the idea that it is "somewhat problematic that young adults who should be studying for their mid terms and enjoying going to parties are put in the absurd position of having to defend their faith from someone outside the academy who already have careers writing about Islam" is absurd. College ought to be a place where people are learning to think, and doing things precisely like defending their faith. I was responding to assertions of fact made by an Emory student. In response, I made other assertions of fact. The five students who then responded were under no obligation to do so, and indeed, as I have already noted, offered no substantive refutation of what I wrote, but only venomous characterizations and vicious accusations. That Mr. Eteraz would then hold them up as being somehow victims is beyond absurd. I find it very funny, and telling, that Aneel Naeem dismisses as "outside agitators" the commenters who took him and his cowriters to task at the Emory Wheel site for not dealing with substance of what I said but just indulging in ad hominem attacks. "Outside agitators" -- where have I heard that term before? Oh yes, that's what Southern segregationists called the Northerners who came South to support the struggle for racial integration. Well, I am happy to be an "outside agitator," agitating against this false claim of victimization and base personal attacks passing as intellectual discourse.
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Dear Eteraz and Esmay ...
Since you're here until I can hopefully get you banned, I will now challenge you. And I do this from the point of view of having had Muslim friends for 35 years and also from being a STAUNCH supporter of moderate Muslims.
First, some really obvious things:
(1) Americans were attacked on 9/11 by radical Islamists quoting us the Qur'an.
(2) Radical Islamists, quoting the Qur'an have terrorist cells in 60 countries.
(3) Muslims quoting the Qur'an blew up a train in Spain and attacked buses and trains in London, set up massive bombs in Bangladesh, beheaded and burned civilians in Thailand, bombed a night club in Bali and burned 202 people to death, routinely carry out suicide attacks on Israelis, routinely bury IEDs while hiding behind children. Of the 16,990 civilian deaths in Iraq this year, 16,719 were the result of "insurgency" (read: terrorist) bombings of civilian market targets or "collaborators" (people who dont' want their country taken over by terrorists). The other 271 were collateral damage of American RESPONSE to those attacks or the deliberate killing of terrorists (thank you, GIs!).
(4) The general habit of Muslims, who believe THEY are superior because they believe their religion is superior, is not ever to criticize each other publicly. This does NOT hold true for brilliant Islamic theorists like Mustafa Akyol. This also does not hold true for Sheikh Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the bravest man in Iraq, who is a Sunni tribal leader fighting the Saudi/Syrian Sunni "Insurgency" (read: terrorist war) in Iraq. However, it DOES hold true for virtually all of the Muslim "pundits" in America.
(5) My theory is that the Muslim "pundits" in America are actually (a) cowards and (b) opportunists and (3) supremacist manipulators. Why do I say that? Because America isn't the enemy of its Muslim population. It protects its Muslim population. The real enemy of Islam -- which cowardly Muslims are too spineless to right -- is the radical ulema in the United States bought and paid for by the Saudis for the 28 years. But you guys try to find a way to ex-communicate those guys or get the eight madabhib to set standards that exclude -- standards that would quite obviously exclude from the Qur'an those verses that are inimical to those of other religions, that create a Dar-al-Islam vs. a Dar-al-Harb, that are inimical to women's full rights in Islam and Islamic countries, that call for the dhimmitude or murder of non-Muslims, that incorporate desert tribalist hudud punishments (amputations and stonings) for criminal and non-criminal acts.
(6) Meanwhile, the opportunism runs on: Instead of solving these problems, American Muslism set up US Airways to try to get profiling stopped. Profiling will stop (or should stop) only when the next bomb that goes off doesn't have a Qur'anic attached to it by people you will not throw out of your religion. The British did not bring Gerry Adams to the table by strip-searching Norwegian grandmothers at the airport as an attempt to prove they were not "profiling". Of course they're profiling. And it's working, because there hasn't been a major attack in this country since 9/11.
(7) The bottom line is that it is NOT our reponsibility to listen to your endless whining that you're not being treated "good enough." It is not our responsibility to take care of your every whining alleged grievance -- which are actually GRIEVANCES THAT YOU ARE NOT BEING TREATED AS SUPERIOR BEINGS. No sale.
(8) It is a testament to the undying willingness of Americans to try to be fair that they give a hearing to this crap, but even that needs to stop. Put up or shut up. In fact, this is your SOFT TERRORISM -- the use of Americans' goodnesses and fears to try to carve out in America special privileges, a relativist subculture over which you have control above the reach of US law (in your treatment of Muslim women, for example), using US civil codes to protect the hate speech and incitement to war and violence that goes on in US mosques, and to bully the US government and US businesses into giving you special treatment that now Christian, Jew, Hindu, Jain, Confucian, Buddhist, native American Great Spiritualist, or New Age metaphysician could get. You don't want equality. You want to be BETTER THAN, which is the whole problem here.
(9) And you blew the choice. You had a choice to stand up against the terrorists and win. You could have won in a WEEK had you put 3 million Muslims on the National Mall to decry Al Qaeda and Radical Islamism. Had American Muslims done that, it would have echoed the 100,000 Iranian citizens who went into the street with candles in the night to tell Americans how sorry they were that the attacks had occurred. And these are people who are flayed to death for standing up to the mullahs in the country where the live. American Muslims could have done what Queen Rania did when she hit the streets of Amman, Jordan, in blue jeans and a sweat shirt with 80,000 Jordanians to protest the attempted chemical attack on the Jordanian capital several years ago. It so angered Al-Zarqawi that he sent attackers from Iraq to punish the Jordanian people -- Hashemite Sunnis for whom the Wahhabis have no love as they fear they will again rule Mecca and Medina (and dear God I do hope so!) -- for standing up against terrorism. But you have never followed these examples, nor the examples of the Bangladeshis who writing hilarious letters to the editor ridiculing the very people who threaten to bomb them, calling them "space aliens" for their little Wahhabi hats and their drag-the-ground Wahhabi beards, which even Azzam the American has made a valiant attempt to grow. We'll have you know that it appears he's making progress, but his brain is still melting.
So you blew it. Instead of being the brave Muslims we see standing up as they can in some of the most dangerous place in the world -- and DYING FOR IT -- you do nothing but try to manipulate the American people into backing down because "you feel insulted."
Well, get this: I don't give a damn if you feel insulted. YOU are insulting. YOUR game is insulting. The only Muslim I know who has a kid if Iraq fighting the Sunni terrorist war is Ali Alyami, the Saudi Ismaeli dissident who gets his life routinely threatened. You guys can't even stand up for fellow Muslims like Zudhi Jasser when he speaks out SOLIDLY that Islamic terrorism has to go, and says that shari'a law must NEVER replace civil law in any country. What happens when he says that. The little Wahhabi rats' nests and anthills down in Arizona treat him and his family to accusations of apostasy and blasphemy, signals in the open press that they are fair game to be murdered by Muslim radicals.
So, in whose hands was the end of Islamic terrorist -- the revitalization of interpretation that would have thrown out the hadith, ALL highly spurious "attestations" that the Prophet said this or that, highly suspect as being politically motivated (certainly the fantastic Ayesha tale made up to buttress Sunni claims over Shi'a claims for the rule of Islam) -- the revitalization of interpretation that would have relegated the hateful verses to historical context only (as Mustafa Akyol suggests) and would have reversed the weight of interpretation to favor the PURELY TRANSCENDENTAL, SPIRITUAL VERSES OF THE QUR'AN TO SOLE IMPORTANCE AND GOT RID OF THE REST.
But that's too gutsy for you guys. Then again, protecting Islam from being destroyed by the people of the Nejd (as prophesied in the Qur'an) is not your issue. Your issue is seeing how much pity you can get, how many special treatments you carve out of American culture -- this is the ego of manipulation, the game being to prove you are smarter than Americans by constantly getting them to kowtow to you and back off their criticism of the way you behave and what you preach -- AND GET ATTENTION. SO MUCH OF THIS CRAP IS ABOUT GETTING FACE TIME ON TV.
And D'Souza last manipulation is the most disgusting of all.
D'Souza is trying to placing himself upon the moral high ground by claiming American culture is decadent and that the reason we got attacked is that Al Qaeda was disgusted by our immortal behavior.
What everybody is missing is that this claim is as supremacist coming from D'Souza as any I have ever heard. Because ... D'Souza's unspoken fiat is that MUSLIMS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS POLICE FORCE AND PUNISH THOSE WHO BREAK THE "RULES" THAT ISLAM HAS SET FOR THEM. THEREFORE, ARGUES D'SOUZA, YOU AMERICANS BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF.
NO, YOUR PHILOSOPHY BROUGHT IT ON US, AND IT QUOTES QUR'ANIC VERSES while it beheads, burns, rapes, tortures, incarcerates, stones, and cross-amputates those Muslims and non-Muslims who do not accept the SELF-STATE AUTHORITY OF SUPREMACIST MUSLIMS TO CREATE THE RULES FOR ALL HUMANITY AND ENFORCE THEM ACROSS THE LINES OF SOVREIGN NATIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD.
You're right. I don't accept your "SELF-DECLARED AUTHORITY" DO ANY SUCH THING.
And I find D'Souza "moral superiority" ludicrous and his preaching to the choir -- AMERICAN CULTURAL MODERATES AND CONSERVATIVES ALREADY KNOW THIS, FOR HEAVEN SAKE -- spineless as per usual.
Want to compare?
Americans, due to their civil rights laws defending free speech -- which Muslims routinely use to whine about ALLEGED grievances -- are the same ones that free speech extremists use to defend porn on the internet, in the movies, and in local clubs. Half of the US Congress is trying to deal with the intricacies of protecting freedom of thought, word, and harmless deed while setting rational limits on the rest. But you don't even don't even stand up against the incitement of violence towards Christians and Jews in your own mosques.
But compare the record of America to that of Islam:
(1) Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran stand in violation of every international human rights agreements on the treatment of women and children.
(2) Hudud punishments of amputation, stoning, beheading and sometimes burning and castration (see Saudi prisons on this) have been banned worldwide as inhumane, yet they routinely carried out by Islamic countries and pan-state terrorists.
(3) Women who are raped are stoned to death for adultery.
(4) Women who are raped must present two to four witnesses to defend themselves -- four in Iran. That is why the gang rape packs move in threes.
(5) Women in Islamic countries are subject to forced marriage to men much older, a form of slavery banned in the Qur'an. But Muslims worldwide do nothing.
(6) Women in Islamic countries are denied education, independent travel and work.
(7) Women in Islamic countries are considered property to be traded for gambling or other debts, a form of slavery.
(8) Temporary marriages allow Muslim men to use women as prostitutes without civil protection for themselves or their children.
OK, it's a partial list, but I have work to do. Others may want to complete this list!
The number of the times the word "women" is used above is an indication of how much radical Islamism is about controlling women for sex and service. Qubt and al-Banna went CRAZY that Egyptian women got rights-- based on the work of an enlightened imam doing enlightened hermeneutics on the PURELY TRANSCENDENTAL VERSES OF THE QUR'AN -- rights to vote, rights to education, rights to property and children. And then, one brave women let herself be photographed without a veil. And it was uphill from there.
Qubt was an obviously sexually neurotic man who claimed he never married because he couldn't find a woman "pure enough." Oh yeah, right. He was a very sick man. Al-banna on the other hand was a violent control freak.
Do I hear you guys railing about this violence in Islamic countries, this inhumanity, this enslave of women and children?
No, I hear you whining about whether you can have special privileges at an airport in the Midwest or whether you can set up US Airways and then sue them, shake-down style, for money and laws that make Americans ignore the IEDs Muslim terrorists set off in markets full of women and children and your crafty little shoe bombs and the bomb-belts Palestinians place as toys around the waists of Muslim toddlers in the Gaza Strip.
And why do you do this? Like Bill Clinton, "becuase I could get away with it."
While the world burns down with Muslim violence, American Muslims play dirty little manipulation games as acts of soft terrorism -- which they know they can only effect because standing behind them is a terrorist who may enforce their demands with debased violence.
American Muslim manipulation runs on the veiled threat (pun intended) that if we do as you demand -- and listen to your insufferable and utterly specious moral preaching when Muslims violence has taken moral breach down to a level unknown since the Gestapo -- there will be more violence. You preach appeasement to us and you get it to fly because when we see good people like Daniel Pearl beheaded on television, when we see a woman stoned or shot in the head for being raped, WE ARE STILL NORMAL ENOUGH TO RECOIL IN DISGUST AND EMPATHETIC PAIN. Momentarily we lose our ability to close a fist and say, "Fuck you, you despicable animals!"
And that may be a fault of ours, but know this: Not all of us have lost the ability, and America's slumber won't last forever on this one.
Meanwhile, what do our Muslim American compatriots do? They whine about their civil rights. They assert their self-proclaimed "moral supremacy." Don't make me laugh.
What is really going on with you guys is the most egregious mass act of opportunism in the history of the United States. You whine about "racial incidents" when more racial incidents occur against WASPS than any other group in America (per capita percentage), with the Jews coming a close second. As Stephen Schwartz -- Muslim -- has pointed out, anti-Muslim incidents are so far down the list as to be negligible.
You strut around campuses pretending to be victimized. You whine and bitch and piss and moan constantly, while American service people overseas try to straighten out the mess made by Islamic radicalism on the one hand and Islamic cowardice on the other.
And it's spineless yellow-bellied cowardice. And why? For the same reason human rights organizations decry American rights abuses -- which they should where they exist -- but never mention the torture and gang rapes in Saudi prisons, the torture and rape and amputations carried out in Iran, the beheadings and live burnings and breast amputations (for not wearing cover) that occurred in Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Fallujah before the US went in and cleaned out the cockroaches that had taken over the city.
Why don't they? Because when you whine to an American about your ALLEGED "disenfranchisement" Americans give you a lolly pop, put their arm around your shoulder, and try to make it all better.
When you complain to a Muslim publicly about his violence toward his own or others, he kills YOU, your family, and your friends. Or he kidnaps your daughter and rapes her.
You're cowards. And you're dirty opportunists. You're the best-educated, richest, most powerful group of Muslims in the world, and you could FORCE the ulema to deal with this problem and you will not.
Instead, when people like Zudhi Jasser, Mustafa Akyol, and others point out the problems and LAY OUT THE SOLUTIONS, they are attacked.
And those of you who claim to be the "peaceful" Muslims REALLY following Islam don't defend those guys. You do not defend Muslim women becuase you tacitly agree with the position they should keep the place desert tribalist crafted for them. And when women start talking to you on boards -- Anne Crockett comes to mind -- you tell her to shut up, but you don't say that to men on this board, do you?
YOU WILL NOT DECIDE FOR ME WHAT MODERATE ISLAM IS. YOU WILL NOT DECIDE FOR ME OR MY COUNTRY WHAT A MODERATE MUSLIM IS.
NOW THAT MUSLIMS HAVE ATTACKED US, CONTINUE TO ATTACK US, PROMISE TO ATTACK US, DEMAND THAT OTHER MUSLIMS ATTACK US, I WILL MAKE THAT DECISION FOR MYSELF, BECAUSE I MUST THE DECISION ABOUT WHAT MUSLIMS I WILL AND WILL NOT SUPPORT.
So you claims that you will do it for me fall on dear ears. D'Souza's claims that he will be the moderator of American morality BECAUSE HE IS A MUSLIM AND MUSLIMS HAVE THE RIGHT TO POLICE MORALITY FOR ALL THE WORLD falls on deaf ears over here.
FOR ME ...
A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO BELIEEVES IN THE EQUALITY OF ALL HUMANITY, FOR ALL RELIGIONS, AND FOR MEN AND WOMEN AND *** STANDS UP FOR THOSE RIGHTS ***. As do, I point out, American Christians and Jews.
A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO OPPOSES THE IMPOSITION OF ANY FORM OF SHARI'A LAW ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD SO LONG AS SHARI'A EMPLOYS HUDUD PUNISHMENTS AND BEARS ENMITY AGAINST THOSE NOT OF ITS RELIGION AND NOT MALE.
A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO FIGHTS ISLAMIC TERRORISM OPENLY AND PUBLICLY.
A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO FIGHTS TERRORIST HATE SPEECH AND INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE AND WAR IN HIS OR HER MOSQUE.
A MODERATE AMERICAN MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO DEFENDS THE LAWS OF AMERICA IN PUBLIC AND IN PRIVATE.
Truncated list, but hey, duty calls.
To sum up here, Muslims are failing Islam and will be the reason it is destroyed. While you posture and do your little moral preaching numbers to people who frankly don't need, Islamic terrorists and mantling biological, nuclear and chemical weapons. The next time they pull a big one, my guess is that it's going to be "all she wrote." All over the world, Muslims who have a spine (that would not be you guys) are voting Islamists out of office -- with GAM prime minister elected in Aceh, with Badawi elected in Indonesia, with that dirty, lying, sleaze-bag Mahathir thrown out in Malaysia. The Iranians would do it if they could. Abdullah would get rid of the Wahhabis if he could. In Nigeria, extreme shari'a wasn't voted in, it was AMPUTATED in. Etc. Etc. Etc.
It's AMERICAN Muslims who HAVE NO SPINE AND PLAY THESE GAMES.
And what don't you like about Robert? He keeps quoting THE SAME QUR'ANIC VERSES THAT BIN LADEN DOES.
He doesn't agree with Bin Laden. What Robert is saying is that until you deal with these verses a "peaceful" Islam that IGNORES them is not enough. You have to get rid of them, becuase over and over again in your history those verses -- ON WHICH AN UN-ELECTED BIN LADEN RUNS A WAR, ON WHICH THE UN-ELECTED SALAFISTS RUN A WAR, ON WHICH THE UN-ELECTED TALEBAN RUN A WAR must be changed -- have led to war against and enslavement of all Muslims you do not agree with and all non-Muslims period.
Now, either you have the spine to deal with the REAL PROBLEM -- which is NOT alcohol in a cab in Minneapolis -- or you don't.
And so far, you don't.
That is why Robert Spencer et al. have to be the ones who do your job for you. And what do you do?
You whine that he is insulting you.
Oh, poorest possible you! Oh, poor little kids! They want another lolly pop.
No. Get off your fat, rich, spoiled American opportunist asses and get your butts overseas and solve these problems. And if you're spineless and whiny for that, at least support the Muslims who DO have the spine and stop playing games that embarrass and destroy the religion you say you love.
Grow up. And stop manipulating.
And what does Al Qaeda say when they read your next vitriolic little rant of "blasphemy" screed?
They just say, "Attaboy, Eteraz. Attaboy, Esmay."
It's not Robert who is doing Al Qaeda's work -- if he were it's unlikely that Azzam the American would have "invited" (ha!) him to convert to Islam with a copy of "The Truth about Muhammad" in his hand, don't you think?
It's YOU who are doing Al Qaeda's work, though I'd agree it's not because you necessarily want to be a terrorist. You just want to be important.
So be important. Transform Islam into TRANSCENDENTAL SPIRITUAL ISLAM. That's your job. Get about doing it.