In my book The Truth About Muhammad, I take Karen Armstrong to task for misrepesenting what the Muslim historian Tabari says about the age of Muhammad's wife Aisha when she married the Prophet of Islam:
Yet of these facts there can be little doubt. According to ahadith reported by Bukhari, the Prophet of Islam “married Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consumed [i.e., consummated] that marriage when she was nine years old.” He was at this time in his early fifties. Many Islamic apologists claim – in the teeth of this evidence – that Aisha was actually older. Karen Armstrong asserts that “Tabari says that she was so young that she stayed in her parents’ home and the marriage was consummated there later when she had reached puberty.” Unfortunately, her readers are unlikely to have volumes of Tabari on hand to check her assertion; contrary to Armstrong’s account, the Muslim historian quotes Aisha thusly: “The Messenger of God married me when I was seven; my marriage was consummated when I was nine.” (p. 170)
On a posting about her Financial Times review of my book and my response, this gave rise to an exchange between me and a commenter who calls himself variously "An American," "Watcher," and "Chris." (I called him "Rick" because I am fairly sure who he is, as another fellow who called himself "Rick" made some of the same points in the same language about Armstrong and Aisha in another place some time ago, but that's another story, and in any case his identity isn't important.) I have decided to post this as a separate article because I believe it is instructive in many ways. A few of those ways:
1. "Chris" is typical of many who object to points that I have made in his contempt and arrogance. These are familiar features of the discourse of both the Left and apologists for jihad and Islamic supremacism, as is a refusal to discuss the issues on a rational basis or consider the evidence at hand. "Chris" is typical also in his claim to have information to refute what I'm saying, but never quite getting around to producing it. ("Chris" was apparently working from Wikipedia, although he claimed not to be -- and for all I know he really does own the exact same Arabic edition of Tabari that Wikipedia refers to, although he never took up my repeated invitations to post the salient quotes, and after indulging in a bit of fun with this, finally I posted the main one for him.)
Anti-jihadists should always be prepared to be dismissed as "ignorant" as well as "bigoted," and should always persist in the face of this, pressing the Islamic supremacist apologist to produce the evidence he claims to have, while marshalling the facts and presenting them so that they speak for themselves.
2. "Chris," as well as Armstrong herself and many others, claim that the best Islamic sources say that Aisha was much older than nine when Muhammad consummated his marriage with her. In reality, however, the Islamic sources that Muslims consider most reliable overwhelmingly support her having been nine. Here is an excellent summary of that evidence, compiled by Sam Shamoun. It is hard, therefore, not to conclude that they reject this evidence because they do not wish to believe it -- it involves implications they don't wish to contemplate. This is of course true of multitudes today when it comes to the facts about jihad and Islamic supremacism: they don't believe it because it is too frightening or unpleasant to be true.
3. Those implications in this case involve the fact that Muhammad, as the supreme example of human behavior in Islam, is imitated even in his child marriage -- and that becomes a moral and public health issue in today's world that is almost universally ignored. That's why this is much more than just a squabble about old texts. It is ultimately a question about the defense of the human rights of the girls who are victimized in this way. In the name of human dignity, reform-minded Muslims need to stop denying that Aisha was nine, acknowledge that many Muslims believe she was nine and imitate Muhammad in this, and construct a case for why Muhammad is not to be an example for conduct in this particular (and others).
Otherwise, women will continue to suffer. And Armstrong and "Chris," in attempting to demonstrate that this marriage never happened instead of facing its implications, are abetting that suffering.
I. "Chris" to Spencer:
Mr. Spencer,Although you are correct in stating the Tabari verse, what you fail to realize is that there are a minimum of 50 verses of Tabari which discuss the marriage to Aisha, each with a differing account on the consumation date. Some are vague, others give widely varying dates. You chose the one which fits your interpretation the best. Karen uses the verses which are used the most often in mainstream Islamic discourse and recognized as correct, something which you don't know anything about nor even attempt to participate in. Yes, people will respond saying that "just because the verse exists, then it must be true" justification. Usual when people are put into a corner about Islamic sources. It might work here, but unfortunately for you all not much outside the level of this discourse.
Just doing some thinking...
II. Spencer to "Chris":
Watcher:Like everyone else who ever says I misuse or misquote the Islamic sources, you fail to come up with a single specific citation.
I challenge you to do so. I have Tabari right here now as I type this. Volume VII, "The Foundation of the Community." The section headed "The Marriage with 'A'ishah" begins on page 6 and continues to page 8. On the bottom of page 6 Tabari says, "In this year also the Messenger of God consummated his marriage with 'A'ishah." Then he goes on to discuss the date, noting that accounts differ as to whether it was 7 or 8 months after his arrival in Medina. Then Tabari says: "He had married her in Mecca three years before the Hijrah, after the death of Khadijah. At that time she was six or, according to other accounts, seven years old." So she must have been nine, or at most ten, when he consummated the marriage.
Tabari then quotes a hadith, giving the isnad in detail, and quoting Aisha as saying: "...my marriage was consummated when I was nine..." Then the rest of the section explains that the consummation took place during the month of Shawwal, but no other age is given for Aisha at the time of the consummation other than nine.
Same thing in Tabari Volume IX, "The Last Years of the Prophet." Aisha is quoted on page 131: "The Messenger of God consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old." Then two other ahadith are given, on the same page, each with its isnad chain, and both say she was nine.
So you say other ages are given for Aisha at the time of the consummation of the marriage, and that those other ages are given in Tabari. All right. I know of passages that seem to support her being older indirectly, but none that come out and say explicitly that she was older. So quote him, please, with the volume number and page number. I have all 39 volumes right here in my office, and I'll check where you direct me.
Looking forward to it.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
III. Spencer to "Chris":
What's more, Watcher, if Aisha's being nine is not understood as true in "mainstream Islamic discourse," how do you explain the following?The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that over half of the girls in Afghanistan and Bangladesh are married before they reach the age of eighteen. In early 2002, researchers in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan found half the girls married by age thirteen. In an Afghan refugee camp, more than two out of three second-grade girls were either married or engaged, and virtually all the girls who were beyond second grade were already married. One ten-year-old was engaged to a man of sixty. In early 2005 a Saudi man in his sixties drew international attention for marrying fifty-eight times; his most recent bride was a 14-year-old he married in the spring of 2004.
Child marriage enjoys the sanction of law and custom. Time magazine reported in 2001: "In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys. The law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move. An attempt by conservatives to abolish Yemen’s legal minimum age of fifteen for girls failed, but local experts say it is rarely enforced anyway. (The onset of puberty is considered an appropriate time for a marriage to be consummated.)"
The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”
In early 2007, severe drought in Afghanistan led some Afghans to sell their daughters into marriages – including girls as young as eight years old – to buy food. One Afghan mother explained: “I need to sell my daughters because of the drought. We don’t have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married.” Other girls have been sold to make good on opium debts. An Afghan girl named Saliha recounts: “I was 13 when my father married me off to a 20-year-old man, whose father had given a loan to my parents and they were unable to return the amount or the quantity of opium.”
Why is all this happening, unless it bears the sanction of Muhammad's example -- or more precisely, why is all this happening, if Aisha wasn't really nine when she had sex with Muhammad, and every Muslim knows that, and so child marriage has no more justification in Islam than it does in anything else?
Looking forward to your explanation.
Just doing some thinking.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
IV: "Chris" to Spencer:
Well, welcome back to column day. I will start at the beginning:Aisha was married in 622, mush kida? OK:
1. Tabari Volume 4, page 50--states that all of Abu Bakr's children (Aisha being one of them) were born during the pre-Islamic stage (jahiliya) which ended in 610 with the revelation of Iqara. Therefore, Aisha had to have been born earlier, making her at least 12, if not slightly older at the time of marriage.
2. Tabari Volume 1, Page 493--after abu Bakr converted, he was sent by Mohammed to Ethiopia in 615 to escape Meccan persecution and didn't want to take Aisha with them so tried to push up the original marriage. She would have been a minimum of 7 (taking into account the first verse she would have to be a minimum of 12) and if the consumation didn't happen until 3 or so years later that would make her about 15-16.
I'll now cut to your good buddy, ibn Kathir:
Aisha's older sister, Asma, was around 10 or so years older than Aisha, who died in 693 at the reported age of 100, although a lot of people argue that isn't right, we'll go with it as a good round number. In 622, that would make her like 29 and her sister like 19 at the time of marriage.
(Oh, I did a web search and apparently this is up on Wikipedia as well, so feel free.)
I am almost positive that you are going to tell me that the quotes you cite are from Aisha herself so therefore they must be true. However, there weren't exactly birth certificates going around back then, so age is a difficult indicator--especially with the mixture of sun and moon cycles used to calculate years during the pre-Islamic times.
Now for your other matter:
There is no evidence that "Islam" was the driving factor in these child marriages, usually driven by economics (hello, dowries, especially if the United States is ripping up your country like in Afghanistan and you only have two choices to survive on the new cash-driven system: get a dowry for your daughter, or grow some opium). If you can find the fact that the 1/26,000,000 Saudis used the one Tabari verse you've got as justification I will definitely agree he's got some problems. What about the people here who are pedophiles, are they using biblical justification (they are sometimes Christian)--but that argument doesn't work because we're here, and they're over there, so that must be different. You always seem to be so scared of Iran--I personally don't like Khomeni--but he said a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that it is all "Islamic" and instantly gets enshrined into 1 billion people's minds as right. Also, them conservative councilis of Iran usually act out of economics as well (see Tobacco fiasco a little bit earlier, using religion to do something political and economic). Bardo, just because the legal age is there doesn't mean that people actually follow it (perhaps they see the low age as un-Islamic?). Currently, that age hovers around 23 or so years old in Iran according to the statistics bureaus in the country.--I see a problem here, you are going to argue that "simply because Khomeni (or any other thinker regardless of who they were or what people thought about the saying or whether debate occured or not or the status of that quote today is) said it, it can and will be used indirectly by all Muslims throughout the world, from that point in history on. I think that is the wierdest logic around, but go for it.
Your logic kind of turns into that whole nonsense you and Mrs. Fallici post humus (hope that's right) had with that Reason writer: "if a non-Muslim pees on a wall, it's because they've got to go to the bathroom. If a Muslim pees on the same wall, it's because they are on a jihad against the West."
Just doing some thinking...
(Unlike some commentors on this board, I work. Therefore, I am not able to respond at breakneck pace like you guys.)
V. Spencer to "Chris":
Watcher -- mind if I call you "Rick"? Anyway, it's funny how your earlier statement, "a minimum of 50 verses of Tabari which discuss the marriage to Aisha, each with a differing account on the consumation date" now becomes a few passages from which you surmise that she must have been older than nine, for none of them actually states her age directly.But let that pass. The other question is your edition of Tabari. In mine, volume 4 page 50 is discussing the Babylonian kingdom of Ahasuerus, and never mentions Abu Bakr, and vol. 1 doesn't even have a page 493. Did you actually look these up, or just get them off Wikipedia? Anyway, the edition I have is from SUNY Press. Where's yours from?
Anyway, even if these references are accurate, and of course I'm sure they are, as I have seen them before (although I still would like to see them from you, unless you're just relying solely on Wikipedia), they rest on a number of unwarranted assumptions. One is that if all of Abu Bakr's children were born in Jahiliyya, they would have had to have been born before 610. This doesn't make sense, particularly in light of the fact that Islam proper, as marked by the Islamic calendar itself, doesn't begin until the Hijra. It is much more likely that the time of Jahiliyya extended to the Hijra. Your second false assumption is that Aisha would have had to have been seven to have been left behind when Abu Bakr went to Abyssinia. On what do you base this assumption?
Please give me the exact citation from Ibn Kathir. I have his tafsir on hand also, and will check it.
You say: "I am almost positive that you are going to tell me that the quotes you cite are from Aisha herself so therefore they must be true." No, you're quite wrong. I am going to say that since the affirmation that she was nine appears in Bukhari, as well as Tabari, and in other hadith collections as well (including all but one of the Sahih Sittah), it is accorded the presumption of reliability by the great majority of Muslims. You flatly assert that "there is no evidence that 'Islam' was the driving factor in these child marriages," but the evidence is just that: since Muhammad did it, it is good to do, since he is uswa hasana (Qur'an 33:21). Being "scared" of Iran, or "liking" Khomeini or not, is irrelevant -- what matters is that he lowered the marriageable age of girls to nine in imitation of the Prophet, and that's why it is a widely accepted practice in the Islamic world.
Once you dismiss all the evidence I've presented, you then claim that I blame Muslims with no evidence, and invoke Fallaci and Cathy Young as if that makes your point. A neat trick, but hardly convincing. I have given you Bukhari (citations available on request), Tabari, and examples from all over the Islamic world. You have given me spurious references to Tabari, and denied that the evidence from the Islamic world has anything to do with this question -- why? Just because you don't want it to be.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
VI. "Chris" to Spencer:
I am sorry that we do not share the same editions. Mine are the same as used in Wikipedia article, although I found that the references were the same later on during the day. It was published in Beirut, and the edition was printed in Arabic, not English. I am sorry to say that it comes down to it you are really good at doing nothing but showing your ability to squeeze as many personal attacks into a single post--which doesn't merit your knowledge of Islamic discourse. Also, your inability to read what I wrote is uncanny (like I said elsewhere, I have found the reading comprehension class and would like to know if I should pay for two seats or just one), so I will say it again:"...that there was something "Islamic" to do with the marriages..." means:
Find me the statement made by the Saudi citizen that he quoted your Tabari verse to justify his marriages. Find me the statement made by an Afghani farmer stating that he uses his in-depth study of Tabari and his high-level Islamic education (doubt that he has any, can't do much learning when people are shooting) and not simple survival economics to sell off his daughter. Find me the statement that all Iranian men demand to marry women at nine (I quoted an Iranian government source saying that most Iranian women don't get married until their 20s, but you don't care unless it fits your argument.) Find me these things and then we can talk about Islam being a problem. You are trying to connect what somebody said quite some time ago to something that is happening today, and you have no connection, other than the fact that something related to it was written 1000 years ago--which doesn't mean that everybody is using it today, or even discusses it beyond the realms of the Ulema.
As for your Tabari, I managed to drop by a mosque and ask on this particular matter (although you don't think that mosques are worth anything in terms of Islamic knowledge). Tabari's entire justification, the entire presence of that statement in his work, is predicated upon the presence of the Bukhari verses, which have been and are being debated extensively. I know you don't believe this argument, especially when it comes to the verses you quote, but the "isnads" of these Bukhari verses have been and are being questioned, such was the subject of a book published out of al-Azhar (last year I think) about Tabari and Bukhari's fuzzy math and how since the subjects of calculated math weren't established until later, the vast majority of these dates in the sources should not be seen as correct. I will get you the title of it if you want.
Also, in response to your claim that you make to anybody who argues with you, I won't quote again the sources that you already know about that refute your argument. Just because it doesn't appear in the section of the book you read (Tabari's original and the Arabic don't have such distinctions between sections) doesn't mean you are instantaneously right. It was about this point that I was banned last time, so I am interested to see what the next course of action is...whether things will continue, or I will "cut and run" as it was referred to by not being allowed to post a rebuttal before the discussion drifted away.
Just doing some thinking...and Rick is fine, but my name is Chris.
(By the way, in all honesty, I hope you found my apology about the banning in another posting today and will consider it. I don't mean to launch attacks on anybody that are not true.)
VII. Spencer to "Chris":
Watcher:What a happy coincidence that both you and the Wikipedia article on Aisha's age use the Dara'l-fikr edition of Tabari, published in Beirut in 1979! Now, I know Wikipedia is swell and all, but they do let a few errors creep in here and there -- and entries on particularly controversial subjects are beset by apologists and ideologues, some with scant regard for facts -- so why don't you post the exact relevant quotes? Since, lo and behold, you just happen to have that exact edition right at hand, and so far you haven't made a point that isn't made on Wikipedia. Post the quotes here. Arabic is fine. Go on -- post them right here, or send them to me at director@jihadwatch.org if you prefer.
The fact is that child marriage is rampant in the Islamic world in imitation of the Prophet. Your suggestion that only scholars know this arcana is specious. No one has to read Bukhari or Tabari or the others who testify to this to find this out -- all they have to do is learn about the Prophet's life in any Islamic school in an Islamic country.
Take, for example, what the Islamic scholar Muhammad Ali Al-Hanooti said about Aisha and Muhammad: ”A'isha got married when she was 9, when the Prophet (SAAWS) died, she was 19....What is wrong in her marriage of six or nine or whatsoever?" This was published in Islam Online:
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2002-06/15/article55.shtml
...and no one at Islam Online saw fit to note that of course everyone knows that she wasn't nine, and this al-Hanooti character is confused and misinformed (probably led astray by my black Zionist arts). Now why didn't they do that? Why did they let it pass? And where did al-Hanooti get the idea that she was nine in the first place? From me?
The fact that Aisha's age is debated is beyond dispute. But you are taking the fact that people dispute about it as an indication that Aisha was not nine when her marriage was consummated, and that no Muslim believes that she was -- that only wicked fellows like me dig this stuff up. Would that it were so, but it isn't.
What's more, you say, "Find me the statement that all Iranian men demand to marry women at nine (I quoted an Iranian government source saying that most Iranian women don't get married until their 20s, but you don't care unless it fits your argument.)" Speaking of reading comprehension, I noted that Khomeini lowered the marriageable age of girls to nine. Did I say he required marriages to nine-year-old girls, or demanded that men marry nine-year-olds? Of course not. You are just setting up a straw man to knock down, because that is easier to deal with than what I actually wrote.
Finally, you come around to it -- it's all my fault: "You are trying to connect what somebody said quite some time ago to something that is happening today, and you have no connection, other than the fact that something related to it was written 1000 years ago--which doesn't mean that everybody is using it today, or even discusses it beyond the realms of the Ulema." In so saying you sidestep entirely Muhammad's centrality as uswa hasana -- which makes what this man said and did 1400 years ago, as reported in the hadith collection Muslims consider most reliable (Bukhari), very important indeed.
You also resort in this to the familiar tactic of attributing to me what I report. No problem, old man -- I get this all the time. Zarqawi said that he cut off Nick Berg's head in imitation of Muhammad's beheadings after the Battle of Badr, but when I say that he said that, people routinely pretend that I am the one who made up the idea that Muhammad beheaded anyone. Same thing here: Muslims tolerate child marriage because of Muhammad, but when I note that, suddenly I'm the one who made up that Muhammad married a child. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, "Chris," but all too many Muslims see Muhammad as an excellent example to imitate, in this particular and in many others.
Meanwhile, while whining about personal attacks, you never quite got around to explaining why, if the period before the Hijra was not jahiliya, the Islamic calendar begins with the Hijra, or why Aisha had to be seven if Abu Bakr left her behind. In other words, you didn't deal with the substantive arguments I made, but instead pretended that I didn't make any. It's so much easier that way, isn't it?
Rick, Chris, sure -- I know who you are.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
VIII. "Chris" to Spencer:
Obviously you have found the quotes, and I won't repeat them to you as they are available on the site. You also have said nothing that isn't on Wikipedia, so why does that make you right, and me wrong?Uh oh, 1979! Dangerous! People have old books! Scary! Let's write exclamation points and "boogy boogy" scare quotes return! Spencer can read a citation! Goodness! Was there more than one set surviving?!? Are there books available in places like Cairo or Beirut that are old!?! They don't make new printings of old editions!?! Run away!
As for jahiliya (this is getting really reflective of your knowledge on Islamic history):
Jahiliya is the period before Islam. Hijra is the migration of MUSLIMS fleeing oppression in Mecca to Medina, beginning the Islamic calendar. Because there were Muslims during the Hijra, then obviously the discussed ending of Jahiliya had occured before the Hijra. Otherwise, how could Muslims have migrated when there was no knowledge of Islam (that lack of knowledge is called Jahiliya).
Also, I don't know if you know this (however it is talked about like every day) but the command "Iqara," and the subsequent three time repetition story is constantly referred to as the beginning of Islam and the end of the Jahiliya. Just because the calendar starts doesn't mean that the religion starts at exactly the same time. I am surprised at you, Robert, this is something you should know a lot more about.
By the way, whoopee that Khomeini lowered the marriable age. He looks pretty angry, too, but that doesn't mean he wanted to kill everybody. You still didn't answer the claim, and (let's follow your logic) I won't answer your claims in detail unless you answer mine. If that is the case, and "all too many Muslims" follow this example, why has the marrying age for women and men continued to increase since the revolution? Let's move to somewhere else, like Eygpt. Why, in a country where ~85% are Muslims is the minimum marriage age 16, and most marriages actually happen much later despite the law, like into the 20s?
Uswa hasana---in what context? Hasana for bukra? Hasana for imbara7? Hasana for salawat? Tova ba-kol? Let's assume for the moment that you're 100% right--Mohammed married a six year old, fag3aha wa nus. What about the argument that certain rules don't apply to everybody else and only worked for Mohammed (like the special covering for his wives, that some Muslims have inappropriately taken on themselves). This is a separate issue, but let's delve a bit, I'm feeling adventurous. ar-Raheeq al-Makhtoum, a book that you quote sometimes, says that Mohammed had rights as a prophet that people do not, such as in number of wives, types of marriage, etc. This was not the first book to discuss it, and there are many others that make the same argument. If you are right, the next logical step might be dangerous, but we can keep that for a later date.
Just doing some thinking...
(Still didn't answer that "find me..." paragraph, huh? Zarqawi, great. You found a murderer who was fleeing authorities in Jordan (because his Islamic tutors turned him in for being violent, but you won't respond to that) assassinated a reporter and said something to make him sound different than an idiot. Find me the multitude of Muslims who agreed with his justification. Do you remember the protests against Zarqawi in Pakistan (no, you don't) that said he wasn't Muslim, etc? What about the ones in Cairo, and the religious statements from Azhar stating that his actions constituted nothing more than depraved murder? Some English poetry major had "Ax Ishmael" written on his arm right before he killed a bunch of people. So now he's a follower of a particular English poem, or maybe an admirer of Moby Dick [my English teacher told me he is uswa hasana (a good example) of how far revenge can go], or is he still just a murderer?)
(I did deal with your substansive arguments, but you don't respond to them and say later that I didn't say anything about them. Also, glad to hear that everybody's cheering you on...I feel so bad [why would I expect anything else on this site])Some Muslims are wrong and have evil intentions. You agree with their interpretations and promote an equal response to them. Transitive property applies.
IX. Spencer to "Chris":
American/Watcher/Rick/Chris:"Obviously you have found the quotes, and I won't repeat them to you as they are available on the site."
The quotes aren't on the site. Just references. That's why I asked you to produce them, since you say you have the book right there with you. Just so there's no doubt about what it says, ok, old man?
"You also have said nothing that isn't on Wikipedia, so why does that make you right, and me wrong?"
I just checked the Wikipedia article, and actually, I've said plenty that isn't on Wikipedia -- none of the data about child marriage in the Islamic world is in Wikipedia. Also, the quotes I gave you from Tabari are not the ones that are in Wikipedia. This doesn't make me right and you wrong in itself, but it shows which one of us has actually researched the matter, and which one is acting out of blind prejudice.
"Uh oh, 1979! Dangerous! People have old books! Scary! Let's write exclamation points and "boogy boogy" scare quotes return! Spencer can read a citation! Goodness! Was there more than one set surviving?!? Are there books available in places like Cairo or Beirut that are old!?! They don't make new printings of old editions!?! Run away!"
You, like Karen Armstrong, seem to think no one will check on you. In the paragraph in question, there are no quotation marks at all, much less "'boogy boogy' scare quotes." Nor did I remark on the edition's having been published in 1979, other than to note it in the process of specifying which edition Wikipedia -- and, lo and behold, you -- use. And indeed, you might have the 1979 Beirut Tabari -- I'm sure you do. So why not post the exact quotes from it that you (and Wikipedia) have referenced, so that we can see what it actually says?
"As for jahiliya (this is getting really reflective of your knowledge on Islamic history):
Jahiliya is the period before Islam. Hijra is the migration of MUSLIMS fleeing oppression in Mecca to Medina, beginning the Islamic calendar. Because there were Muslims during the Hijra, then obviously the discussed ending of Jahiliya had occured before the Hijra. Otherwise, how could Muslims have migrated when there was no knowledge of Islam (that lack of knowledge is called Jahiliya).
Also, I don't know if you know this (however it is talked about like every day) but the command "Iqara," and the subsequent three time repetition story is constantly referred to as the beginning of Islam and the end of the Jahiliya. Just because the calendar starts doesn't mean that the religion starts at exactly the same time. I am surprised at you, Robert, this is something you should know a lot more about.
Yes, I don't know anything about this, and never heard it before. (Actually, you can find discussion of the Hijra in my book The Truth About Muhammad, beginning on page 89, and of Jahiliyya in some detail in Onward Muslim Soldiers and elsewhere.) In any case, you are apparently unaware that the transition from jahiliyya to Islam is not an either/or, night and day matter. In this brief Muslim biography of Muhammad, he abolishes the practices of Jahiliyya in Mecca ten years after the Hijra (see #10, The Farewell Pilgrimage):
http://www.ezsoftech.com/islamic/infallible1e.asp
So Jahiliyya must have still existed 10 years after the Hijra. But of course, that refers to unbelievers. The connection of the end of Jahiliyya for Muslims to the Hijra stems from the character of Islam as a political and social system as well as an individual religious faith. That system was not implemented until the Hijra -- hence the calendar connection, indicating that Islam actually begins with the Hijra, not with the Iqraa (not "iqara"): the society of Islam was not established until that time. Thus some argue that Jahiliyyah ended for Muslims at the Hijra (just as modern jihad theorists, such as Qutb, argue that most Muslims today live in Jahili societies), and hence the reference to Abu Bakr's children all being born in Jahiliyyah does not necessarily mean they were all born before 610.
But it is certainly true that the end of Jahiliyyah is almost always identified by Muslims with the Iqraa, the beginning of Muhammad's revelations. The point is that the term is not fully clear, and thus cannot be made the foundation of an effective argument.
By the way, whoopee that Khomeini lowered the marriable age. He looks pretty angry, too, but that doesn't mean he wanted to kill everybody.
You're dodging the point again. I never said he wanted to kill everybody. I said he lowered the marriageable age of girls to nine in imitation of the Prophet. In response, you have now several times misrepresented what I said -- evidently you are unable to deal with the implications of what I really said.
"You still didn't answer the claim, and (let's follow your logic) I won't answer your claims in detail unless you answer mine. If that is the case, and "all too many Muslims" follow this example, why has the marrying age for women and men continued to increase since the revolution? Let's move to somewhere else, like Eygpt. Why, in a country where ~85% are Muslims is the minimum marriage age 16, and most marriages actually happen much later despite the law, like into the 20s?"
Because Egypt is not an Islamic state. The Ikhwan is working to institute Sharia there. If they succeed, watch the legal age for marriage start going down.
Uswa hasana---in what context? Hasana for bukra? Hasana for imbara7? Hasana for salawat? Tova ba-kol? Let's assume for the moment that you're 100% right--Mohammed married a six year old, fag3aha wa nus. What about the argument that certain rules don't apply to everybody else and only worked for Mohammed (like the special covering for his wives, that some Muslims have inappropriately taken on themselves). This is a separate issue, but let's delve a bit, I'm feeling adventurous. ar-Raheeq al-Makhtoum, a book that you quote sometimes, says that Mohammed had rights as a prophet that people do not, such as in number of wives, types of marriage, etc. This was not the first book to discuss it, and there are many others that make the same argument. If you are right, the next logical step might be dangerous, but we can keep that for a later date.
Uswa hasana in any and all contexts, as you know, except where specifically ruled out (as in the number of marriages). But anyway, fine. No problem. Please produce a citation indicating that Muhammad's example in marrying Aisha is one of prophetic privilege, not to be imitated.
Just doing some thinking...
You flatter yourself.
(Still didn't answer that "find me..." paragraph, huh?
Which one? The one in which you challenge me to find you some Muslim saying he married a child because he read it in Tabari? A silly challenge, because Tabari is not the only source, but anyway, I actually did answer that.
Zarqawi, great. You found a murderer who was fleeing authorities in Jordan (because his Islamic tutors turned him in for being violent, but you won't respond to that)
Are you kidding? I have discussed this at length in many contexts. See, for example, this article, in which I discuss a piece Zarqawi wrote to justify his actions because he was being challenged by Muslims.
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18242
Unfortunately, as I note in the piece, his theological points have not been clearly or unequivocally repudiated or refuted by moderate Muslims.
...assassinated a reporter and said something to make him sound different than an idiot. Find me the multitude of Muslims who agreed with his justification.
Read Jihad Watch every day, and you'll see them in action around the world. See also here, where 49.9% of Muslims surveyed approve of OBL:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467849587&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
There's no doubt that many Muslims detest all this. Unfortunately, they are not very active against it.
Do you remember the protests against Zarqawi in Pakistan (no, you don't) that said he wasn't Muslim, etc?
Oh, a mind reader, eh? Actually, I remember them better than you do, as I remember that they were in Jordan, not Pakistan, and that they happened after he killed Muslims. No similar protests were made when he killed non-Muslims. Here's something to refresh your memory:
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20051118-110234-2315r.htm
What about the ones in Cairo, and the religious statements from Azhar stating that his actions constituted nothing more than depraved murder?
Yep. Al-Azhar denounced the Berg murder -- although some of the authorities quoted here seem to be more upset about mutilation of the corpse than about the killing itself:
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-05/12/article08.shtml
In any case, this is a thrill, but the thrill is tempered by Al-Azhar's forked tongue -- e.g., Tantawi's approval of suicide attacks in Israel:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP36302
Some English poetry major had "Ax Ishmael" written on his arm right before he killed a bunch of people. So now he's a follower of a particular English poem, or maybe an admirer of Moby Dick [my English teacher told me he is uswa hasana (a good example) of how far revenge can go], or is he still just a murderer?)
Your English teacher is nuts. Get a new one. In the meantime, Muslims really believe Muhammad is uswa hasana, and your attempt at a reductio ad absurdum won't change that.
(I did deal with your substansive arguments, but you don't respond to them and say later that I didn't say anything about them. Also, glad to hear that everybody's cheering you on...I feel so bad [why would I expect anything else on this site])
Anyone can comment. You're here too. If you don't like what they say, come up with some substantive refutation. Everyone is waiting for you to do that. I'm looking forward to your posting quotes about Aisha from your Beirut edition of Tabari!
Some Muslims are wrong and have evil intentions. You agree with their interpretations and promote an equal response to them. Transitive property applies.
I don't agree with their intepretations. In fact, I have repeated innumerable times that there is no "true" Islam, as Islam has no central authority. But the jihadists present their Islam as the "true" Islam, and moderates have as yet mounted no effective theological response. You certainly haven't.
I must say, I envy your owning that edition. I have an Arabic Tafsir al-Jalalayn printed in Damascus and bought in Beirut, and an Arabic Qur'an in a handsome case, also printed in Damascus, and some other Arabic editions (mostly hadith) from Saudi Arabia, but I don't have the Dara'l-fikr edition of Tabari. You are fortunate! Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing those Tabari quotes.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
X. Spencer to "Chris":
American/Watcher/Rick S./Chris:Go ahead and post the Arabic, please, from your Beirut edition of Tabari, so that we can see exactly what it says, but I will now stop teasing you about your tall tales about your library. Let's talk about the matter at hand. The quote you need is actually in the SUNY edition of Tabari in vol. XI, "The Challenge to the Empires," p. 141.
It says that Abu Bakr's 2nd wife "bore him 'Abd al-Rahman and 'A'ishah. All of these four of his children were born in Al-Jahiliyyah from his two wives whom we have named."
This is the major support for Armstrong's case and yours. Yet in The Truth About Muhammad I reported that Aisha was nine, and didn't mention this. Was this because I was selecting the accounts that made the case I wanted to make, as you claim? No. It is because I wanted to provide an accurate portrayal of how mainstream Muslims see Muhammad. Armstrong, and you, dismiss all the evidence that she was nine, primarily because you don't want it to be so. Yet testimony that she was nine appears in Bukhari, which Muslims consider the leading hadith collection, as well as in Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abu Dawud, An-Nasai, and Ibn Majah -- that is, five of the six hadith collections that Muslims consider most reliable (Sahih Sittah).
Islamic theologians will tell you that Tabari does not take precedence over any of those, and in any case, Tabari also records she was nine, in several places -- which multiplicity of testimony indicates a multiplicity of sources, which for Islamic theologians adds a presumption of reliability. The assertion that she was nine also appears in the sira of Ibn Ishaq, as well as in that of Ibn Kathir (I never did get that Ibn Kathir reference from you, by the way.)
Stack up all that, and place against it that Tabari says in one place that Aisha was born in the time of Jahiliyyah. Let's assume that by the time of Jahiliyyah Tabari meant the period before 610, and add in the other scattered passages that suggest -- although none of them ever say directly -- that she was older than nine. Even then you don't have a case, since the testimony of the Sahih Sittah is so overwhelmingly in favor of her having been nine.
Then there is the evidence from the Islamic world, which you dismiss as a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but which I maintain clearly stems from Muhammad's status as uswa hasana. There is also evidence that mainstream Muslims today believe she was nine -- contrary to your claim. I gave you one above, and now here is more. In al-Mubarakpuri's biography of Muhammad, "The Sealed Nectar," which won first prize in a Muslim World League competition for a biography of Muhammad in 1979 (ooh, 1979), it says this of Aisha: "She was six years old when he married her. However, he did not consummate the marriage with her till Shawwal seven months after Al-Hijra, and that was in Madinah. She was nine then" (p. 483).
Why does al-Mubarakpuri think this? Was he an "Islamophobe"? Why didn't he credit these scraps from Tabari as trumping the testimony of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, An-Nasai and Ibn Majah? Because that is not how Islamic theology works. The Sahih Sittah have much more weight than Tabari. And that is why in The Truth About Muhammad I reported that Islamic tradition says Aisha was nine. That is also why in that book, as well as in the Financial Times, I charge Armstrong with misrepresenting Tabari by saying that he says the marriage wasn't consummated until she reached puberty, which he never says at all.
Was Aisha nine when the marriage was consummated? I don't know and I don't care. All I care about is what Muslims believe about it, and how that belief affects their actions today. There is abundant evidence that Islamic tradition says she was nine, much more clearly, more often, and in more authoritative sources than those that suggest (but never state) that she was older. There is abundant evidence that all too many Muslims worldwide are acting on that belief and marrying children.
On the basis of all that, I call upon Muslims not to deny that Muhammad's example supports this behavior, but to admit that, and reject him as a literal example to be followed in this particular (as well as others, but that's another story). You then come along and charge me with ignorance for saying that the Islamic sources say she was nine, and assert that Muslims don't really believe this. Well, I have now given you evidence from the Islamic sources and from the behavior of Muslims today that many do. Denial is not what we need -- honest reform is what we need. You are not aiding in this effort; rather, you are obstructing it.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
"Otherwise, women will continue to suffer. And Armstrong and "Chris," in attempting to demonstrate that this marriage never happened instead of facing its implications, are abetting that suffering."
This is a vitally important point. The entire apologist industry for Islam is guilty of this. Once its done enough, we can conclude denial is intentional, and the consequences of the denial are intended and even satisfaction taken from them. At a certain point, and its been passed, obfuscation of the truth, ethnic and religious cleansing denial, denial of the role of the Quran and Islamic history in cleansings, becomes simply being an accessory to crimes against humanity.
Thank goodness she was at least 13 when Safwan al-Sulami committed zina with her.
pigfarmer-
You are going for a gross-out laugh but unfortunately what you say is true. While the Perfect Man and his wannabes must wait for his little Mountain Flower to turn nine - he is allowed to get pleasure from mutual 'fondling'.
I love the spirited debate:
R.S 1
An American, et al 0
....I am saving this debate and will study it often....I am sure the content will appear again...
...Muslims hate the truth, especially when the infidels know it...
The Left also has a long-standing habit of ignoring embarrassing truths, and crucifying any who dare to bring them up
It's a mental illness for some, where you contradict the illusions of the patient at your peril
For others, it's the anger of the "Three Card Monty" street hustler when somebody points out the scam to the rubes he's trying to con
pigfarmer-
This is way off topic but your nic brought back a vision of hope that I experienced over the weekend. I attended a grade school carnival with my son on Friday. Games, inflatable toys, food and the like to celebrate the coming of spring and the end of the school year. Being this is Minnesotastan, it would have been impossible not to notice the numbers of various tribes of Somalians strolling the halls. Soon I was met face-to-face with a large pig, the mascot of 'Famous Dave's" barbecue. I immediately thought, someone's going to call a fatwa on that pig and a major jihad's going to come down on this grade school staff. How could the be so insensitive? Later on I saw that pig again. This time it was in the gymnasium where the DJ was blasting "We will rock you" (by Queen). To my amazement that damn pig was dancing with on of the Muslim tribes. Bet old Mohammed was rolling over in his grave.
Indeed, why does the Muslim apologist spend his time on boards like this, trying so valiantly and good-naturedly to convince kuffar that what we hear and read all the time from Muslims all over the world, is mistaken? Surely his energy would be far better spent trying to convince his co-religionists that they are mistaken. He has a real opportunity here to become that fabled creature...a Muslim reformer.
Fame and riches await! Concerning this vexatious (to him) question of Aisha's age; perhaps he can start by engaging in a little gentle one-on-one with the heirs of Khomeini?
Robert, I'm amazed that you wasted so much time and effort on Watcher/Chris/Rick. He is obviously past praying for and confusing him with the facts will only serve to drive him and his ilk into hysterics.
While I appreciate solid information in whatever form it is presented, I can't help thinking of Heinlein's quote in 'Time Enough For Love': "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
I can't think of a more perverse or disgusting thing than naming your Daughter Aisha.
It's no suprise that it's among the most popular Islamic names, right up there with MO.
Why won't "Chris" and Karen Armstrong believe Aisha?
She say 9.
Trust the person involved over the later commentators, apologists and obfuscators.
I believe Aisha.
Poor kid.
This pseudo expert’s true nature was summed up in two sentences of his/her post….
1
“Find me these things and then we can talk about Islam being a problem”
As you repeatedly instructed Robert…..
“Just doing some thinking”
Well Chris,
Look around you, stupid, Islam IS a problem, a huge problem.
Mirroring your fellow minded apologists, you also refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth.
2
“By the way, whoopee that Khomeini lowered the marriable age”
The fact that you would trivialise such a perverse act shows you for what you really are, if you were in front of me I would spit in your face.
The only reason I think Robert wastes time on you, is to show others how depraved, people like you really are.
OT, but a sign of the growing mainstream skepticism of Islam.
From the National Review:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTFiZTk3ZWE4OWI5OGUwOGMxYWEwNzA0MTcyODg4ZTY=
The poster who may variously sign-on as An American/Watcher/Chris/Rick arrogates to themself superior knowledge, understanding and cognition. For those of us not so quick in the uptake, this poster helpfully signs off with "Just doing some thinking" to emphasize the point. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for signing off in such a way, because I wasn't sure they were doing much thinking at all.
For instance, there is a little thing called Occam's Razor. This principle states that the simple, direct answer tends to be the best answer in the absence of any strongly contradictory evidence. This principle is a cornerstone of the Western philosophical tradition and stands in opposition to the convoluted thinking upon which conspiracy theory tends to stand. This is not to say that all explanantions are simple but rather explanantions should only be as comlicated as necessary to explain the evidence.
Our hero on the other hand appeals to increasingly esoteric verses in the ahadith to make the point that Aisha may have been much older than the age she herself gives at the time of the consummation of her marriage with the Moslem prophet. Okie-dokie. Then maybe our expert would like to explain why our now teenaged Aisha was still playing with dolls at the time of her marriage, and why her playmates all ran away when the Moslem prophet appeared; all of which is also recounted in the ahadith. I'd love to hear the resolution to this little paradox, although I anticipate only another haboob of factoids with no clear direction.
However, in the meantime I'm afraid that the poster, An American or whoever, is just a self-congratulating blowhard and I wonder why was so much time spent on this person? To borrow from one of my favorite films "This honors the unworthy."
Bullshit is bullshit but the study of bullshit is scholarship.
39 Volumes of Bukhari? Just for Bukhari!
Ah, Islam, a bottomless pit of stupidy and depravity to be studied and researched ad infinitum by its followers. God forbid they might do something useful and productive with their time.
My goodness, what a spirited debate that was! And surely all of those peace loving, logical thinking muslims will have a thirst after knowledge and a peace that passes all understanding :)
But really, all that research in Bukari. Wow.
I have read 65% of the Quran (first in German, the next time in English) and must say, it is a journey. If I am forced to read just one more convoluted and historically incorrect version of Moses vs. Pharaoh, I may just throw up. Or: and the unbelievers will get their just due, blah blah blah....
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
Rick = pwn3d
"The Left also has a long-standing habit of ignoring embarrassing truths, and crucifying any who dare to bring them up"
Now lets have a discussion of the bestiality that the Prophet of God sanctioned. Or is that too sensitive a subject?
Mohammad's depravity went far beyond sex with a 9 year old child.
Spencer wrote: "It is hard, therefore, not to conclude that they reject [many Muslims] this evidence because they do not wish to believe it -- it involves implications they don't wish to contemplate."
Spencer fails to mention another motivation for why many Muslims ostensibly reject this kind of unflattering evidence: through their Islamic instincts woven into their sociocultural psyche, they are reflexively obliged to defend Islam against all perceived attacks, including intellectual attacks, coming from Infidels; and the question of whether these attacks are well-grounded or not, or whether the charges reflect poorly on Islam itself, never enters into their minds: it is all about a visceral and imperviously stubborn defense of what is apodictically and prejudicially perceived to be ipso facto perfect.
Muslims like "Chris" and "sublimer" will stand with their feet dug in to defend a perfect Islam until the cows come home; and though their expressions and locutions have the appearance of an actual human and reasonable discussion, it is no such thing: it is the inexorable operation of a soulless (but not emotionless) machine programmed for self-defense -- nothing more, nothing less.
will it change anything if aisha was 6 or 60. mo was, is and will remain a blood thirsty pervert barbarian who atleast married 11 times and had countless afternoon encounters. i can't beleive there are billion people who are willing to die for mo. what a religion, what a god. feel like throwing up.
An American/Watcher/Rick/Chris:
You could stop the deception and post as "A Phony Prick". That way you can simplify things.
AS for MO and Aisha..
You
Silly ,silly infadels...will you ever learn?
The answer is right here;
Book 004, Number 1034:
Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: A woman, an ass and a dog disrupt the prayer, but something like the back of a saddle guards against that.
Woman are the same as dogs to MO...
So what?..you say, we know that..that's a givin'..
But what does that have to do with Mo doing the "wild thing" with Aisha?
Well..look at it this way..
If woman are the same as dogs,
then it make sense that women years are the same as dog years.
So in human years she was 9 but in dog years she was really 49...and him being male.. he goes just by human years..54.
So she was really 49 and he was 54!
http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm
Alarmed Pig Farmer,
Frank,
Joe Schmoe
Robert has repeatedly asked everybody on this board to stop using the JW site in the sleazy way you're now using it. The reason: it's beneath (way beneath) the general moral tenor of this site, and CAIR just comes on here and quotes YOU guys and attributes the gutter talk you throw out to him.
Please stop it. I am tired of seeing Robert answer for what YOU do.
I think it is very important to note that American/Watcher/Chris/Rick demonstrates the classic argument of the Muslim apologetic. He first puts forth the moral equivalency argument. Secondly, he furthers his argument with the usual ÿou need to read it in Arabic argument. These are standard tactics for the Muslim lurkers on this and other websites. I also like the tactic of using Christian and patriotic nomes de plume to make it look as though they are non-Muslim.
Muslims cannot disguise the truth from those who know the truth...and Muslims hate the truth...especially when the Infidels know it....
Now, about Aisha ...
Robert's point about the writings about Aisha is, I believe, that it is pointless to try to say she wasn't 9 years old when every sleaze from Riyadh to Brixton is using the hadith to say that she was, and to excuse egregious behavior with it.
However, I don't believe this account, and it is one of the reasons that the hadith ALL need to be chucked out, and all these "histories" of Tabari and whomever else as well.
Aisha's age appears NOWHERE in the Qur'an, and if it were an important point it certainly likely would have. The first set of hadith were collected by Bukhari 100-150 years after Muhammad's death, and out of some 600,000 or more he chose just 3,000 thought to have been reasonably respectable in provenance.
However, among these, the ones having to do with Aisha were said to have been "transmitted" from Baghdad, where they were traced to a man in his 70s whose memory was questionable. Also, the "Baghdad" connection is always suspect, since Sunnis there were under "house arrest" and threat most of the time.
Two other things come up: One is that there was GREAT NEED for the Sunnis to establish Aisha as Muhammad's only virgin wife. Khadija, his first, was a widow. Two subsequents wives were also war widows. If Aisha were pre-pubescent at the time of her "consummation", that would prove she was a virgin and therefore the claim of her father, Abu-Bakr as caliph would (somehow!) have legitimacy over the claims of the Persian Ali, despite the fact he was Muhammad's favorite. Some Shi'a even claim that Ali was God himself.
There is dating evidence that is fairly convincing that Aisha was likely 12 to 19 when she married, based on trips of Abu-Bakr's with established dating that indicates she could not have been less than 12 when they returned.
HOWEVER, the major point is this: Until Islamic scholars deal with the hadith and the histories written upon them, women, as Robert says, will continue to suffer. And the BS disseminated by Karen Armstrong that whitewashes the "basis" -- hadith which are HONORED by imams of all schools of Sunni and Shi'a Islam -- of this egregious violation of basic humans rights of women will continue.
It is not for Muslism to condemn Robert for bringing it up to be dealt with. It's for them to throw out the hadith they already know are wrong.
And the second thing to be clear about here is that if Muhammad had actually done this, he would have had his throat slit, because pre-Islamic custom in Arabia absolutely forbade such a practice, and NOBODY -- not even Muhammad -- would have been able to escape ever scimitar after him had he done such a thing.
Child marriage is still a reality in the Muslims communities where evil men use this exoneration to do as they please, and in India, China and Pakistan, though it has been illegal in India since 1929 and is also officially illegal in Pakistan. It is most prevalent in rural areas in India.
And it is growing among Muslim populations as radicalization progresses inside Islamic communities. See films by MEMRI, particularly those from Dispatches.
Morgaan Sinclair-
I think you are a wee bit over reacting, Morgaan. However, I will stop chewing gum in class since the teacher has warned me.
Frank, you wanna look at what Alarmed Pig Farmer et al. have just written???
This site is not for porn. And what Alarmed Pig Farmer et al. wrote is porn. Yours was mild by comparison, but don't play: You guys get quoted -- with Robert's name attached.
And BTW, why don't you stop taunting me for doing what somebody, anybody on this site, should have done the minute that Alarmed Pig Farmer's sleazy post went up -- including you. Instead of ridiculing me for standing up for Robert's integrity and that of the site, why don't you help me?
Morgaan Sinclair-
I'm not ridiculing you. In fact, I think there are things about you that are admirable and likable. You are also quite smart. But you are a bit of a school marm. It reminds me of the John Belushi's panic (I think it was in the movie "The Blues Brothers") when he thinks he sees his 6th grade teacher Sister Mary at the top of a stairway. If you are not a teacher, I'll take it all back...
Anyway, I would not ridicule you. You are not to be trifled with...but neither am I to be trifled with...
Morgaan
I hope to avoid any attacks on you in this thread - provided it's mutual.
For the historical record, Ali was not Persian. He was a Qureish Arab, and married to Mohammed & Khadijah's daughter Fatima. Shia hold him as the rightful successor as they think his family is his rightful line of succession. (The basis is puzzling, since both Abu Baqr and Umar bin Khattab were Mohammed's fathers in law, and thereby related to him as well through marriage, as was Ali). Also, was Hafsa - who married Mohammed when she was 22 - married prior to him? If you don't know, can anyone else answer this - Robert? Hugh? Khaybar Oasis? Profitsbeard?
In fact, Ali was a part of the conquering Arab army that defeated the Sassanids at Qādisiyyah (outside Ctesiphon - near today's Baghdad). So he was definitely not a part of Persian heritage. Reason Shia Farsis claim him as theirs is the marriage of his son Imam Hussein with Shahr Bano, who was thought to be the minor daughter of Yazdgird III - the last Sassanid ruler. However, the historical accuracy of whether the hapless girl who got married to Imam Hussein was actually the daughter of the Sassanid ruler is questionable, since he and his family fled Ctesiphon after the defeat at Qādisiyyah, and his son Firoze fled to Tibet after his death. Given the status of women in Zoroastrian Persia, it's highly unlikely that Yazdgird would have fled with his son, while leaving his daughter behind.
At any rate, the Shia belief that Ali was a legitimate successor to the Sassanids stems from that marriage. Historically, it's as questionable as the evidence you cite of Aisha's age (and that goes into another thorny subject - that of the historical Mohammed, and what he really did, as opposed to the Sunnah accounts. Given that several generations of Muslims devoted their lives to every aspect of his life, I don't share your skepticism that they were wrong.) As to the accounts of Abu Bakr's trips, I wonder what evidence you have that establishes her age at 19?
One last point - if somebody cites Islamic texts, such as Joe Schmoe does above, why is it 'gutter talk' on their part? If people dig up excrement that can be found in Bukhari, and reproduce that here, why would it be defamatory? Like Robert himself says, all the hatred in his writing comes from what he cites, rather than from him. Similarly, if any of us cites material from the Quran or the Hadiths and then comments on it, and CAIR picks it up later, why is it a legitimate complaint on their part, even if they were to attack the original posters, instead of Robert Spencer?
Why the intense interest in discrediting what a female herself reports? Granted, the Islamic "method" of reasoning regarding the hadith is utterly comical to anyone even minimally trained in logic, but still, why the burning desire to discredit Aisha's words, and to do so using the same tortured nonsense Muslim clerics apply?
I'll argue Aisha was our first documented Stockholm-syndrome victim; from an molested child, she gradually mutated from protest ("Her skin is greener than her clothes," "I have seen no-one suffer like the believing women," "Your Allah moves swiftly to accomodate your desires," etc.) to the same sort of vicious, violent behavior Mohammed exhibited as a "prophet." Talk about identifying with your abuser.
But set that aside. Mohammed's example of behavior toward women is utterly monstrous even without the allegations of child-rape and pedophilia. This man raped women immediately after murdering their husbands and fathers before their eyes. He kept women prisoner for the purposes of rape, and encouraged his followers to do so. He imagined a Paradise full of female robots and little boys, all endlessly available for sexual use.
He attempted to throw away one of his wives because she was old and ugly and no longer of sexual use to him. He apparently forced some of his wives to watch him having sex with their co-wives. He called women stupid and irreligious because they were forced to live under rules he himself invented (perhaps this form of circular thinking explains Islamic reasoning to this day.) And in the most disgusting case, he ordered a woman to strip (presumably for his sexual pleasure) before ordering her stoned to death for adultery.
Aisha's case is certainly a powerful argument against the inhumanity of Islam, but I find the other examples of his revolting behavior equally persuasive. They certainly indicate a pattern, a pattern which is reflected in the daily lives of Muslim women all over the world.
Muslims should not simply be pressured on the case of Aisha. They should have the facts of Mohammed's behavior toward all women presented to them, and they should be asked, quite politely, if they believe they are entitled to follow Mohammed's example -- and if not, why not?
Chucking out the extra-Koranic texts, as Morgaan Sinclair recommends, will not solve the problem of Islam, whose various disgusting and dangerous features are sufficiently present in the Koran itself, such as the divine sanctioning of de facto sex-slavery through spoils of war (4:24) and the divine sanctioning of men beating their wives (4:34).
Furthermore, I doubt that hundreds of millions of Muslims will take the advice of Morgaan Sinclair. Therefore, Islam as it stands is solidly and irretrievably rooted in the extra-Koranic texts in addition to the Koran.
Robert, whether Aisha was 9 or not, today's 9 year old muslim girls who are married are being FORCED to, and forced marriages are forbidden in Islam, I'm sure you know that. Back then is different then now, back then there was no schools, jobs or good opportunities for women, so it was better off to marry early and have a person take care of you. Look into Aisha's marriage to prophet Muhhammed and you will see that he more of a mentor to her then her husband, and that's what their marriage was mainly about, it was not about sexual desires. Today's muslim men who want to marry a 9 year old want to marry them only to fullfill their sexual desires, and if people question them they'll use the example of aisha's marriage as an excuse. But like I said above, no 9 year old today would be married off to an old man without it being forced, do you think that 9 year old girl would ever grow up normal?
In the end, these people (with the childbrides) are perverting Islam for their own use.
Morgan Sinclair,
Its not Pigfarmer who is 'pornographic' as you claim, it is what Muslims do and feel justified doing.
Watch this, its Arabic, a woman who is being taunted by some TV presenter and towards the end she really lets it fly:
http://terror-watch.net/media/womans_rights_islam.wmv
Correction: he more of a mentor to her then a husband"
Correction: he was more of a mentor to her then a husband"
The argument about Aisha's age when her marriage was consummated is real interesting. There is a great deal of evidence suggesting she was nine, but there is also suggesting she was 14-15. Muslim scholar Maulana Muhammad Ali wrote about this during the 20's or 30's in his book "Muhammad The Prophet".
Link: www.muslim.org/islam/aisha-age.htm
Age of Aisha at time of marriage with Holy Prophet Muhammad:
It is believed on the authority of some Hadith reports that the marriage ceremony (known as nikah, amounting to betrothal) of Aisha with the Holy Prophet Muhammad took place when she was six years of age, and that she joined the Holy Prophet as his wife three years later at the age of nine. We quote below from two such reports in Bukhari.
“It is reported from Aisha that she said: The Prophet entered into marriage with me when I was a girl of six … and at the time [of joining his household] I was a girl of nine years of age.”
“Khadija died three years before the Prophet departed to Medina. He stayed [alone] for two years or so. He married Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.” [3]
As to the authenticity of these reports, it may be noted that the compilers of the books of Hadith did not apply the same stringent tests when accepting reports relating to historical matters as they did before accepting reports relating to the practical teachings and laws of Islam. The reason is that the former type of report was regarded as merely of academic interest while the latter type of report had a direct bearing on the practical duties of a Muslim and on what was allowed to them and what was prohibited. Thus the occurrence of reports such as the above about the marriage of Aisha in books of Hadith, even in Bukhari, is not necessarily a proof of their credibility.
Determination of the true age of Aisha:
It appears that Maulana Muhammad Ali was the first Islamic scholar directly to challenge the notion that Aisha was aged six and nine, respectively, at the time of her nikah and consummation of marriage. This he did in, at least, the following writings: his English booklet Prophet of Islam, his larger English book Muhammad, the Prophet, and in the footnotes in his voluminous Urdu translation and commentary of Sahih Bukhari entitled Fadl-ul-Bari, these three writings being published in the 1920s and 1930s. In the booklet Prophet of Islam, which was later incorporated in 1948 as the first chapter of his book Living Thoughts of the Prophet Muhammad, he writes in a lengthy footnote as follows:
“A great misconception prevails as to the age at which Aisha was taken in marriage by the Prophet. Ibn Sa‘d has stated in the Tabaqat that when Abu Bakr [father of Aisha] was approached on behalf of the Holy Prophet, he replied that the girl had already been betrothed to Jubair, and that he would have to settle the matter first with him. This shows that Aisha must have been approaching majority at the time. Again, the Isaba, speaking of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, says that she was born five years before the Call and was about five years older than Aisha. This shows that Aisha must have been about ten years at the time of her betrothal to the Prophet, and not six years as she is generally supposed to be. This is further borne out by the fact that Aisha herself is reported to have stated that when the chapter [of the Holy Quran] entitled The Moon, the fifty-fourth chapter, was revealed, she was a girl playing about and remembered certain verses then revealed. Now the fifty-fourth chapter was undoubtedly revealed before the sixth year of the Call. All these considerations point to but one conclusion, viz., that Aisha could not have been less than ten years of age at the time of her nikah, which was virtually only a betrothal. And there is one report in the Tabaqat that Aisha was nine years of age at the time of nikah. Again it is a fact admitted on all hands that the nikah of Aisha took place in the tenth year of the Call in the month of Shawwal, while there is also preponderance of evidence as to the consummation of her marriage taking place in the second year of Hijra in the same month, which shows that full five years had elapsed between the nikah and the consummation. Hence there is not the least doubt that Aisha was at least nine or ten years of age at the time of betrothal, and fourteen or fifteen years at the time of marriage.” [4] (Bolding is mine.)
To facilitate understanding dates of these events, please note that it was in the tenth year of the Call, i.e. the tenth year after the Holy Prophet Muhammad received his calling from God to his mission of prophethood, that his wife Khadija passed away, and the approach was made to Abu Bakr for the hand of his daughter Aisha. The hijra or emigration of the Holy Prophet to Madina took place three years later, and Aisha came to the household of the Holy Prophet in the second year after hijra. So if Aisha was born in the year of the Call, she would be ten years old at the time of the nikah and fifteen years old at the time of the consummation of the marriage.
Later research:
Research subsequent to the time of Maulana Muhammad Ali has shown that she was older than this. An excellent short work presenting such evidence is the Urdu pamphlet Rukhsati kai waqt Sayyida Aisha Siddiqa ki umar (‘The age of Lady Aisha at the time of the start of her married life’) by Abu Tahir Irfani.[4a] Points 1 to 3 below have been brought to light in this pamphlet.
1. The famous classical historian of Islam, Ibn Jarir Tabari, wrote in his ‘History’:
“In the time before Islam, Abu Bakr married two women. The first was Fatila daughter of Abdul Uzza, from whom Abdullah and Asma were born. Then he married Umm Ruman, from whom Abdur Rahman and Aisha were born. These four were born before Islam.” [5]
Being born before Islam means being born before the Call.
2. The compiler of the famous Hadith collection Mishkat al-Masabih, Imam Wali-ud-Din Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Khatib, who died 700 years ago, has also written brief biographical notes on the narrators of Hadith reports. He writes under Asma, the older daughter of Abu Bakr:
“She was the sister of Aisha Siddiqa, wife of the Holy Prophet, and was ten years older than her. … In 73 A.H. … Asma died at the age of one hundred years.” [6]
(Go here to see an image of the full entry in Urdu.)
This would make Asma 28 years of age in 1 A.H., the year of the Hijra, thus making Aisha 18 years old in 1 A.H. So Aisha would be 19 years old at the time of the consummation of her marriage, and 14 or 15 years old at the time of her nikah. It would place her year of birth at four or five years before the Call.
3. The same statement is made by the famous classical commentator of the Holy Quran, Ibn Kathir, in his book Al-bidayya wal-nihaya:
“Asma died in 73 A.H. at the age of one hundred years. She was ten years older than her sister Aisha.” [7]
Apart from these three evidences, which are presented in the Urdu pamphlet referred to above, we also note that the birth of Aisha being a little before the Call is consistent with the opening words of a statement by her which is recorded four times in Bukhari. Those words are as follows:
“Ever since I can remember (or understand things) my parents were following the religion of Islam.” [8]
This is tantamount to saying that she was born sometime before her parents accepted Islam but she can only remember them practising Islam. No doubt she and her parents knew well whether she was born before or after they accepted Islam, as their acceptance of Islam was such a landmark event in their life which took place just after the Holy Prophet received his mission from God. If she had been born after they accepted Islam it would make no sense for her to say that she always remembered them as following Islam. Only if she was born before they accepted Islam, would it make sense for her to say that she can only remember them being Muslims, as she was too young to remember things before their conversion. This is consistent with her being born before the Call, and being perhaps four or five years old at the time of the Call, which was also almost the time when her parents accepted Islam.
Two further evidences cited by Maulana Muhammad Ali:
In the footnotes of his Urdu translation and commentary of Sahih Bukhari, entitled Fadl-ul-Bari, Maulana Muhammad Ali had pointed out reports of two events which show that Aisha could not have been born later than the year of the Call. These are as follows.
1. The above mentioned statement by Aisha in Bukhari, about her earliest memory of her parents being that they were followers of Islam, begins with the following words in its version in Bukhari’s Kitab-ul-Kafalat. We quote this from the English translation of Bukhari by M. Muhsin Khan:
“Since I reached the age when I could remember things, I have seen my parents worshipping according to the right faith of Islam. Not a single day passed but Allah’s Apostle visited us both in the morning and in the evening. When the Muslims were persecuted, Abu Bakr set out for Ethiopia as an emigrant.” [9]
Commenting on this report, Maulana Muhammad Ali writes:
“This report sheds some light on the question of the age of Aisha. … The mention of the persecution of Muslims along with the emigration to Ethiopia clearly shows that this refers to the fifth or the sixth year of the Call. … At that time Aisha was of an age to discern things, and so her birth could not have been later than the first year of the Call.” [10]
Again, this would make her more than fourteen at the time of the consummation of her marriage.
2. There is a report in Sahih Bukhari as follows:
“On the day (of the battle) of Uhud when (some) people retreated and left the Prophet, I saw Aisha daughter of Abu Bakr and Umm Sulaim, with their robes tucked up so that the bangles around their ankles were visible hurrying with their water skins (in another narration it is said, ‘carrying the water skins on their backs’). Then they would pour the water in the mouths of the people, and return to fill the water skins again and came back again to pour water in the mouths of the people.” [11]
Maulana Muhammad Ali writes in a footnote under this report:
“It should also be noted that Aisha joined the Holy Prophet’s household only one year before the battle of Uhud. According to the common view she would be only ten years of age at this time, which is certainly not a suitable age for the work she did on this occasion. This also shows that she was not so young at this time.” [12]
If, as shown in the previous section above, Aisha was nineteen at the time of the consummation of her marriage, then she would be twenty years old at the time of the battle of Uhud. It may be added that on the earlier occasion of the battle of Badr when some Muslim youths tried, out of eagerness, to go along with the Muslim army to the field of battle, the Holy Prophet Muhammad sent them back on account of their young age (allowing only one such youngster, Umair ibn Abi Waqqas, to accompany his older brother the famous Companion Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas). It seems, therefore, highly unlikely that if Aisha was ten years old the Holy Prophet would have allowed her to accompany the army to the field of battle.
We conclude from all the evidence cited above that Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) was nineteen years old when she joined the Holy Prophet as his wife in the year 2 A.H., the nikah or betrothal having taken place five years previously.
Footnotes: [3]. Bukhari, Book of Qualities of the Ansar, chapter: ‘The Holy Prophet’s marriage with Aisha, and his coming to Madina and the consummation of marriage with her’. Volume 5, Book 58, Number 234 and 236.
[4]. Living Thoughts of the Prophet Muhammad, 1992 U.S.A. edition, p. 30, note 40.
[4a]. This Urdu pamphlet was published by the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam, Bombay, India. A partial English translation is available at this Lahore Ahmadiyya website.
[5]. Tarikh Tabari, vol. 4, p. 50.
[6]. Mishkat al-Masabih, Edition with Urdu translation published in Lahore, 1986, vol. 3, p. 300–301.
[7]. Vol. 8, p. 346.
[8]. Those four places in Sahih Bukhari are the following: Kitab-us-Salat, ch. ‘A mosque which is in the way but does not inconvenience people’; Kitab-ul-Kafalat, ch. ‘Abu Bakr under the protection of a non-Muslim in the time of the Holy Prophet and his pact with him’; Kitab Manaqib-ul-Ansar, ch. ‘Emigration of the Holy Prophet and his Companions to Madina’; and Kitab-ul-Adab, ch. ‘Should a person visit everyday, or morning and evening’.
[9]. Muhsin Khan’s English translation of Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 37, Number 494.
[10]. Fadl-ul-Bari, vol. 1, p. 501, footnote 1.
[11]. Sahih Bukhari, Kitab-ul-Jihad wal-Siyar, Chapter: ‘Women in war and their fighting alongside men’. Volume 4, Book 52, Number 131.
[12]. Fadl-ul-Bari, vol. 1, p. 651.
-------------------------------------------------
Anybody care to add to it or refute it?
Later on I saw that pig again. This time it was in the gymnasium where the DJ was blasting "We will rock you" (by Queen). To my amazement that damn pig was dancing with on of the Muslim tribes. Bet old Mohammed was rolling over in his grave.
Oh don't be so sure, now. I've received several secret trasmissions from disgruntled Islamic scholars at al-Azar University containing ancient documents proving that Mohammed would frequently have Aisha fry up BLT sandwiches on the Coleman stove in the tent, before sunrise. Hungry from a hot thighing session, the two of them would hurriedly gobble down the sandwiches and bury the pork grease in the sand before the Companions --- olfactorally challenged as unwashed folk --- were able to get a whiff and became suspicious of their great leader.
* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *
Betcha Mohammed would really chow down on the spare ribs at Famous Dave's.
WAT-123:
Maulana Muhammad Ali published Muhammad the Prophet in 1924. And it's a good thing he did! For 1300 years Muslims had believed Aisha was nine when she married Muhammad -- good thing Maulana Muhammad Ali came along to clear up the matter!
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Sheikh Yer_mamy or whatever ...
What Alarmed Pig Farmer wrote is PORN. That I say it's PORN does NOT condone, exonerate or grant moral equivalency to the abuse of women by Muslims.
But it also does not mean that I do not defend Robert against people who cause him trouble and I also do not shut up about this kind of sleaze on websites. I am offended and angered by it.
And I am surprised and shocked that instead you jump somebody who wants to keep this discussion in some kind of dignity -- RATHER THAN DOING WHAT YOU JUST DID, WHICH WAS SUPPORT SLEAZE TALK ON SOMEBODY ELSE'S WEBSITE.
Jeez.
Hizbullah_Supporter ...
You can try this whitewash until the sun burns out, and the only thing that's going to work is when the GOOD Muslims shut down the sleazoids in London who preach taking 9-year-old girls in the mosque ... and when the eight madhabhs ILLEGALIZE every single hadith inimical to women, declare the death penalty for honor killing and FGM, stop pretending that forcing women into cover and breeding them like cattle is OK, stop suicide bombing everybody, stop imposing religion on people who don't want it, and stop shooting journalists at the Iran-Iraq border who are exposing Hizbollah's terrorist smuggling and gunrunning.
Any questions?
Look, basically, these reports of what "Aisha said" surfaced sometime between the time Mohammad died and about 800 AD. I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe half the Qur'an is original to the time of Muhammad. Pre-Islamic mythology shows up ALL OVER the Qur'an, and is certainly not original to the book.
The only thing that is going to work here is that Muslim leaders stop pretending this stuff is "channeled" straight from the source. Some of it can be credited to Muhammad, some to pre-Islamic mythology, and a VERY GREAT DEAL to the warlords who took over Islam within 50 years of its his death and then invented whatever they wanted to satisfy their own personal predelictions and political desires.
Therefore, I don't care what Muhammad Ali had to say about it. I care that the Muslim leaders of the madhabhs DECRY it and learn the art and craft of excommunication, which although badly used many times in the past, has its points.
'Til then, I would like the Muslims who lurk these boards to get off it.
You spend your time throwing rocks at Westerners who have EVERY RIGHT to explore the ideology that radical terrorists QUOTE as they are beheading, raping, torturing, bombing, and terrorizing in the name of your religion.
Go fight them. Find a spine, and go fight them instead of getting ever-so in your ego that you can take a pot-shot on somebody on an internet site under a false name.
Grow a spine and go over and fight these guys where they live, and stop expecting us to fight for you.
The hell with you.
I used to sleep with an older woman, she taught me a lot. Does that make her a mentor in Hezbollah’s thinking? Or was it all about the pleasure?
The above citation seems to be an Ahmadiya invention, going by the citation above. We all know how mainstream they are in Islam: the OIC categorically classifies them as heretics, and in Pakistan, they are forced to document themselves in their passports as non-Muslims.
True - they may consider themselves Muslims every bit as much as Sunnis and Shia, and Naseem here shows good evidence of that. As Infidels, we don't doubt it - we recognize Ahmadiya just as inimical to us as other Muslims: if there ever were to be an Ahmadiya country, it would be as much of a hellhole as any other Sunni/Shia country.
But that aside, the above citation alone is enough to get rejected by all mainstream Muslims. As Robert points out, it was published in 1924, and there is no way that Sunnis or Shias will accept that over the narrations of Aisha herself in Bukhari and Muslim(?).
I support Morgaan's point about keeping our comments clean and reasonable. I believe that is what Robert wants and what will best support what we should be trying to do: inform the world of the truth about islam.
Chris/Rick/Whatever needs to understand the main point: it doesn't actually matter what age we think Aisha was. What matters is what age islamists think she was.
Thanks, Lili ...
And I agree. And I think that's Robert's point, too. They quote these passages when they force a 10-year-old girl into cover and threaten to beat her if she doesn't comply. They quote these passages when they advocate sex with children. The quote these passages when they kill.
Yet how very "holy" the average Muslim feels coming onto this site -- congratulating themselves for defending Islam!!! How proud they feel! How very better-than-thou they feel! How very holier-than-thou they feel!
No, defending Islam is DEMANDING (at the risk of your life, as it is the risk of our lives!) that people stop this butchery and women-slavery in the name of God.
Some imams are now privately saying that they believe the religion will be entirely destroyed from within and illegalized all over the world in 50 years. And that likely the radicals will stage a nuclear attack on the United States that will be answered in nuclear fashion, destroying the religion forever. Some feel that Islam will go down in history as the worst religion in the history of the world, and that this generation of Muslims will be counted as the worst generation that ever lived and destroyed the religion.
OR ... AS THE QUR'AN SAYS ... THE DESTRUCTION OF ISLAM WILL COME OUT OF THE NEJD.
You listening, Hezbullah????? You listening?
WAT_123
Thanks for your exposition. But it's left me even further confused.
My confusion is simply put: What is one to do with verses from Bukhari, such as 5:58:234, 7:62:64, 7:66:65 and 8:73:151, all of which, in Aisha's voice, describe her encounters as a child with the Moslem prophet? Some of them describe her betrothal at the age of six with the consummation at the age of nine, being taken from the swing on which she was playing. Others describe how the Moslem prophet would come to watch her play dolls with her girlfriends. The accounts go on and on and all sound pretty creepy to me, if you don't mind me saying so.
So which account is the accurate one, Bukhari's or Maulana Muhammad Ali's? If Ali's account is the accurate one, then Bukhari has been shown to be at least untrustworthy and perhaps even a liar. And if this is so, why has it taken so long to make such a discovery? Offhand, it leads one to wonder what other untruths might lie within the ahadith.
But if Ali's account turns out to be the fabrication, then his efforts betray a very telling uneasiness with the truth. For good reason.
Sheikh Yer'Mami ...
Thanks for the link ... To everybody else. The link posted by SYM above is Great. Here it is again:
http://terror-watch.net/media/womans_rights_islam.wmv
For those who don't know who this is ... She's GHADA JAMSHEER (they got her name wrong on the subtitles). She is a Bahraini woman who has fought very successful battles against shari'a courts for women who divorce and want custody for their children. She is CONSTANTLY sued by everybody! And she won't give up. She's as smart as Nonie Darwish and with considerably more fire to her, which I'd say she needs.
She is MAGNIFICENT, and she is indicative of a whole new breed of Islamic feminist who needs our very real support.
Thanks, Sheikh. I appreciate it.
‘What matters is what age islamists think she was.’
What’s that age then? 16, 39, 72? The problem with Islam is that it can mean anything you want depending on your interpretation and political view.
Is it a religion of peace or war? Does it allow a secular government? The Turkish military seems to think it does.
Does a Muslim mother in Yorkshire want her child to self detonate? Who’s more Islamic, him or her?
So does it matter what age Aisha was? I’d say not a lot personally. Muhammad wasn’t the first person in history to set standards that today we would baulk at. The BBC would overload in a panicked frenzy if it was reporting the world our ancestors inhabited, never mind Muhammad’s caravan raiding antics and small child preferences.
Can you imagine the BBC correspondent in Deva twisting his toga in disgust as another slave got fed to the lions? He’d be the lions light lunch for complaining.
I’m not standing up for that man; I detest the idea of what he did. But I also detest the idea of Catholic priests hiding up chimneys and Buddhists setting themselves on fire.
At the end of the day I believe that Sun Tzu wrote a book of war that stands up today, but Mohammad wrote a book of total war.
I have read the discussions back and forth and read the citations. An ordeal, I'll tell ya.
Citing "research" done in 1920 must include the biography of the person doing the research. Imagine two hypothetical biographies of Bill Clinton that will be written twenty years after his death. One biographer leaves out every thing associated with Monica Lewinski. Another biographer devotes two or more chapters to the sordid events. Why would the Lewinski episode be ignored? Why would another writer pen two or more chapters? The same is true with latter day writers about Mohammed.
If Aisha said she was nine, then, dammit, she was nine, or else could not count to ten.
Islam is what modern Muslim clerics say it is. If the Ayatollah Khomeni(sic?)lowered the marrying age to nine, then one must believe that he had a sound basis for doing so.
Hey Chris, WAT_123, follow this link, http://islamqa.com/index.php?ref=1493&ln=eng&txt=marrying%20age , then you two can contact the dispenser of this opinion and tell him how wrong he is. Lay it on thick, now. When you compose your letter to Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid, you can use the same arguments you used in the debate with Mr Spenser. Good luck.
Doctors split on hymen repairs
“We get more and more women coming in and saying that their brothers or fathers will kill them if they find out they’ve slept with a man. But it’s important to say no, because if we don’t we’re giving in to the fundamentalists,” Professor Lansac said.
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/05/07/france-as-fundamentalist-islam-spreads-so-does-demand-for-hymen-repair/
I've now twice read the whole debate between Spencer and Rick/Chris/Watcher/An American and found I understood it a whole lot better the second time around.
One thing that became clearer on second reading was how badly Spencer spanked Watcher in that debate. The first time I read the thing it was sometimes difficult to follow some of the arcane references, not to mention the occasionally tortured syntax of Watcher.
Thank you Sheik yer'mami for the conclusive link.
"In summary, then, it is permitted to contract marriage with a young girl and to hand her over to her husband to stay with him before she reaches adolescence. As for consummating the marriage, this does not happen until she is physically able for it. Thus the matter becomes quite clear. Do you see anything wrong with a man living with his young wife in one house, bringing her up and teaching her, but delaying consummation until she is ready for it? We ask Allaah to show us truth and falsehood and to make each clear. And Allaah knows best."
Modern scholarship and the Dr. Abigal Imam agree. 9 years old, but she was ready...
kind of like, you know, "she was asking for it" to justify rape.
And Spencer knows best!
Why would watcher, WAT_123, et al. imply that such a learned man, with far more credentials, was not correctly quoting and interpreting the document? He agrees with Spencer and proves that modern society is negatively impacted by this justification of child rape. Just thinking...
Robert Spencer wrote:
Spencer makes the additional point that Muslims are far from considering Tabari (whom Watcher uses as his chief evidence) as important as the Sahih Sittah, but in any event, Tabari himself explicitly refers to Aisha as 9! Watcher, on the other hand, has to use an uncertain definition of when the period of pre-Islamic ignorance ("Jahiliyya") ended, so that he can make some uncertain deductions that Aisha was older than 9, even though nowhere does Tabari explicitly state that she was older. Did pre-Islamic ignorance end with the Iqraa or first revelation? Did it end with the Hijra to Medina? Did it end ten years after arriving in Medina? And then a clincher came when Robert also pointed out that Qutb said that even today some Muslims live in "Jahili" nations, still in the period of pre-Islamic ignorance. So that Watcher's argument was shown to be founded on a quicksand-like assumption.
But the bottom line for Robert was not to establish how old Aisha "really" was. He doesn't know and doesn't care how old she was. He merely wanted to establish what most Muslims believe and why they believe it.
It would be great for Robert Spencer at some point to publish some of his debates in book form. Contests draw large audiences: the Olympics, a race, a boxing match. Because of the drama of not foreseeing the end with certainty, and because the competition forces competitors to be so on their toes, the audience gets sucked in.
After seeing this debate, don't you just know Spencer would be able to do the same to Armstrong, and don't you know she knows that and so will shy away from any direct debate with him?
Hells-bells-lala-supporter says that forced marriages are forbidden in Islam - in that case Mohammedans must have a lot of practice in carefully distinguishing between an arranged marriage and a forced marriage, which is clever of them, because the British authorities have given up. The Metropolitan police, fed up of fobbing of a couple of hundred hysterical Muslim girls a year appealing to them for help pressured the government to make forced marriage illegal. Consular posts in Bangladesh and Pakistan were also complaining about having to sort out cases of fugitive young brides to be or, let's face it, victims of marital rape.Under pressure from the Muslim lobby the government decided that it was too difficult to tell the difference between a forced and an arranged marriage and failed to ban them. If forced marriages are against Islam
1/ Provide the strict definition of forced marriage in Islam, no doubt accompanied by detailed discussion around the subject by Muslim scholars
2/Tell Muslims what it is and tell them to stop it.
3/Tell the British government what it is so they can prevent it.
Actually, forget 3 - the UK government should ignore Muslim opinion and prevent it anyway.
Marwan'sDaughter wrote:
MD:
I have heard this before but don't really know the sources well enough to be able to use it in criticizing Islam, so would be grateful if you could refer me to the source/s Muslims consider most reliable for this particular aspect of Muhammad's actions.
Well, somebody got up on the wrong side of the rock.
Morgaan Sinclair! Puhleeze, we are discussing a subject that in and of itself is beyond sleaze. The very fact that we are discussing a dirty old man doing the horizontal jitter-bug with a nine year old is enough. Compared to that, what AP Farmer wrote is PG-13 at most .
I did a further search of this article, and it looks like the first AP Farmer comment was removed. However, we are still discussing sex between a 57 year old man and a nine year old child. How pornographic is that image?
Traeh -- The stories I had in mind were those of Safiyeh, a 17-year-old girl imprisoned at the battle of Kaibar, and Zainab -- Zainab's reference escapes me at the moment but I can find it. I remember Safiyeh's story in detail because it's so heartbreaking. Safiyeh was regarded as the most beautiful girl among the captives, and Mohammed became enraged that he did not receive her as part of his 1/5 tribute portion. He ended up horsetrading other sex slaves with the soldier that owned Safiyeh to get her, only hours after her husband and father had been murdered by the Muslims.
Some reports have it that Mohammed was actually drenched in her father's blood when he dragged her to his tent.
Can you imagine this.
I will see what I can do to find the nauseating Islamic textual passages, doubtlessly recited with lip-licking pleasure by the holy men of this repulsive ideology, that describe these episodes.
Traeh -- The second story I was thinking of was of Juwairiya -- not Zainab -- taken and raped by Mohammed at the raid of Bani Mustaliq.
"Narrated Ibn Aun:
I wrote a letter to Nafi and Nafi wrote in reply to my letter that the Prophet had suddenly attacked Bani Mustaliq without warning while they were heedless and their cattle were being watered at the places of water. Their fighting men were killed and their women and children were taken as captives; the Prophet got Juwairiya on that day. Nafi said that Ibn 'Umar had told him the above narration and that Ibn 'Umar was in that army.” Volume 3, Book 46, Number 717:
This same Hadith is recorded in the Sahih Muslim Book 019, Number 4292, which validates the claim of its authenticity."
Safiyeh's tragic story, unbelievably spun by Muslims, is related in several hadith. They're collected, with careful (though I think excessive) objectivity by Mr. Spencer in "The Truth about Mohammed," pages 142-43.
As an aside, it is important to remember whenever any Muslim claims forced marriages are not acceptable in Islam is that Mohammed, when asked how a woman consents to marriage, replied that "her silence is consent." Who, I ask, is a young woman to complain to when her quick-fisted father and hot-tempered, honor-fueled brothers are determined that she marry?
Muslim mothers have quite the history of enthusiastically assisting in their daughters' murders.
Robert Spencer,
I hope my humor does not cause a problem as
I deeply respect the work you do.
If I am out of line, please let me know.
The dog years was my way of highlighting the fact that Mohammand had the power to justify the unjustifiable, and give logic to absurdity, Which by the way, are quit amazing feats for a mere mortal to accomplish and accomplished he was.
Please stop it. I am tired of seeing Robert answer for what YOU do.
When you catch me asserting something not widely acknowledged my Moslem authorities, or using profane language, then you may start barking orders.
Until that time, mind your own damned business.
Unsupported assertions. What you see in my writings here is not porn nor profanity, it's Islamic fact.
Alarmed Pig Farmer, champ, Pelayo ...
As soon as I pointed out Alarmed Pig Farmer's pornographic post, JW immediately wrote me, asked where it was and removed it, and thanked me for pointing it out.
Certainly Robert can take care of himself -- and he's asked that people on this site do not use it in vicious or dirty ways.
The cogent points made by many here look good (and are good) -- but then they expose themselves as having tawdry or misogynist sides or as people who would genocide groups they don't like or deny the vote to people are 90% of the population of some area -- while touting "democracy" in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
And champ, Alarmed Pig Farmer wasn't talking about sex practices as outlined in the Qur'an or ahaditha. He was writing porn on somebody else's website, words that may be attributed to someone who doesn't deserve it, as Robert is ultimately responsible for the site.
It was removed for good reason.
Alarmed Pig Farmer ...
You weren't talking about what's in the Qur'an. You were writing what's in your own head.
And I'll comment as I please. Your post was removed for being pornographic.
Joe Schmoe ...
You're a good egg!
BTW, the dog years is an interesting wrinkle, because part of the problem with Aisha may be the fact that the terminology of aging in use at the time was quite bizarre -- and never rectified in translation.
Here's how it goes [from Hakim Niaz Ahmad,تحقیق عمرعا،شہ صدیقہ (Research on the age of Ayesha), Mashkoor Academy, Karachi]: Comparison of hadith of Aisha's age with hadith of Laylat al-Qadr, in which 1 was used for 21, 3 for 23, 5 for 25 and so on, suggest that maybe Aisha's reports were transmitted literally and 16 became 6 and 19 became 9, as it is a way of talking in Arabic language when base is already known.[3]
And secondly: According to almost all the historians, Asma bint Abu Bakr, the elder sister of Aisha, was ten years older than Aisha.[33][34] Asma is reported to die in the 73 AH, when she was 100 years old.[35][36] Now, obviously if Asma was 100 years old in the 73 AH, she should have been 27 or 28 years old at the time of Migration to Medina (1 AH). If Asma was 27 or 28 years old at that time, Aisha should have been 17 or 18 years old at the same time. Thus, Aisha - if she got married in 1 AH or 2 AH - was between 18 to 20 years old at the time of her marriage.
There's a **TON** more stuff that indicates that Aisha actually married late, rather than early, in the customs of this culture, particularly the fact that Abu Bakr was traveling with her for the years she was supposedly already married to Muhammad. And it is clear she married AFTER this travel, not before.
That's why I say that ALL of the hadith written about this supposed child marriage are the fiction of Sunni warlords trying to dissolve the claim of hereditary Shi'a bloodline of Ali's claim to the caliphate by producing a "virgin" wife for the Sunnis, one so young that her children could not be claimed not to be of "pure" stock as she could never possibility have slept with another man.
"Denial is not what we need -- honest reform is what we need. You are not aiding in this effort; rather, you are obstructing it."
Why make a point that Aisha might have been older since the Mahametans will not agree and are comfortable, some even delighted, with her being younger (except when infidel eyes are upon them). They accept it and act accordingly, not just mollifying criticisms of pedophilia, but codifying and promoting it. So why would you participate in a whitewash, which you in fact do not know to be true?
"That's why I say that ALL of the hadith written about this supposed child marriage"
I'm sorry, were you there? Show me the protests from antiquity of the Shi'a denying the hadith to be sahih. Show me extant versions of the unredacted and uncorrupted texts.
Concerned Citizen ...
No, I wasn't there when all this happened -- and NEITHER WERE THE PEOPLE WHO CLAIMED IT. The claim that Aisha was nine was made by the SON of a man who said that he heard that she was nine -- a man whose memory was suspect even in the time that he lived, a man under the "Baghdad Sword", making his account suspect anyhow. That's why I say the hadith -- all of them -- have to go, as do some of the best Islamic theoriests now. And that is the only way women in Islamic countries are going to be freed.
Mustafa Akyol makes the point that the early authorities got it backwards. They elevated secondary sources above the original ones. The order, he says, should be: Meccan verses, Medinan verses, hadith -- and then use Fazlur Rahman's orientation that 7th century tribal customs and outlook have to be REMOVED from Islam as limited sociality impinging upon religion. That would remove from the Meccan verses anything inimical to women or people of other religions, and leave only the mystical, egalitarian, rights-based verses of the Qur'an. His point is that if the hadith were declared historical and taken out of Islam as "religious content" 90% of the problems between Islam and the West -- Islam and women, Islam and Chrisitans, Islam and Jews -- would simply disappear. For his enlightening discussion on this see: http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2004/10/a_case_for_islamic_renewal.php
But what the radicals do (and a lot of Islamic jursiprudence period) is that they work backwards. The later it was said, the more validity it has. This gives GREATER authority to secondary sources such as hadith and GREATER authority to Medinan verses, which should, according to Akyol, be historical only much greater authority than the spiritual verses of the Qur'an, which notably gave women more rights in 7th-century Arabia than they experienced in Western Europe until the 19th century ... and declared racism a paramount evil. Zakat (alms-giving) was the first social financial solution ever invented for freeing slaves.
So, as long as the tawdry Muslim men quote the hadith to subjugate women, Robert has every right to keep publishing it. Don't stop shining the light on it. It needs light. Halogen light.
But Akyol's point is also not wrong, and that side of things needs to be communicated as well, because only by continuing to point out that the hadith have NO real basis in fact (see Akyol on the text-examination fallacies of the early compilors of the hadith), and that is the greatest hope we have to create as Daniel Pipes' "good-neighborly" Islam. It can be done. But not until the hadith are chucked.
To you and others, I will continue to express my opinion as you express yours.
To Concered Citizen, et al.
Perhaps read this, and you'll see what I mean ... and why I have some hope this can actually get straightened out. It gives me some hope that some really fine moderate Muslims are working on this, work I hope will be respected and supported.
From Mustafa Akyol (abridged)
Full article at http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2004/10/a_case_for_islamic_renewal.php
One day, among the books of my grandfather, I came across a prayer book that had three quotes at its back cover. The first two quotes were from the Koran and they were about how and why God created us. I was deeply touched to read the very words of God and taken away by their message. But the third quote was very shocking. "If your children do not start praying at the age of 10," the quote said, "then beat them up." I was horrified. I knew that my grandfather — such a kind, compassionate man — would never ever beat me up, or even talk rudely to me. However to see that this is what "Islam" ordered to parents and grandparents was very disturbing.
Yet, I noticed an important detail: This third quote was not from the Koran. So it was not God's word. It was a "hadith", a term I had never heard before. I asked my grandfather what I hadith was. "They are the words of our Prophet," he said. But I wasn't satisfied. "Are you sure," I asked, "that he really told these?"
More than two decades have passed since then. And by time, I realized that my juvenile suspicion about the hadiths, the sayings and deeds attributed to Prophet Muhammad, was not inaccurate. Of course there were many beautiful hadiths, giving so noble moral truths. But there were many disturbing, bizarre, irrational ones too. The more I noticed them, the more I felt certain that a re-evaluation of traditional Islamic sources is necessary.
This is in fact the view of some notable modernist Islamic scholars. Important figures like Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan (d. 1898) and Pakistani scholar and reformer Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) have argued that the hadith collection that we have today needs a revolutionary re-examination. These collections were piled up by some Muslim scholars who lived at least two centuries after the death of the Prophet. To distinguish the true sayings of the Prophet from the many fake and distorted ones, these scholars developed a method of defining the degrees of reliability in the chains of transmitters. Yet their method had a major flaw. As also noted also by some Western scholars, "the content of the hadiths known as the matn (text) was rarely subject to critical examination" and, as a result, "even the best-attested hadiths . . . are anachronistic in content, contradict each other or are at variance with the spirit or letter of the Koran."[1]
You weren't talking about what's in the Qur'an. You were writing what's in your own head.
No, I was writing about what's in the Sunnah, in the form of the hadiths, Ishaq, and any number of other historical commentaries.
Your post was removed for being pornographic.
I wrote what is widely acknowledged by Moslem experts in the various Islamic texts on the subject.
It's people like you who create the terrible problem of Islamic Fictive Reality afflicting the world today: Infidels must depict and interpret Islam as if it adheres to civilized behavioral standards.
In other words, Infidels must censor themselves and paint Islam in a unrealistic favorable light because to not do so would upset somebody.
Somebody like you.
Islam was and is pornographic. Especially as regards the behavior of Mohammed, his Companions, and subsequent followers.
Take up your censorious requirements with a Moslem.
Sinclair,
I apologize that I have often skipped your posts for their length, tedium and what I had perceived as internecine contentiousness. I was unaware that you were Muslim. Several of my comments above are shown to be misdirected, and many of yours more perspicuous.
Alarmed Pig Farmer ...
Your post was removed for being pornographic. What you described was what went on in YOUR HEAD. You were not quoting the Qur'an, but your own thought.
As I said before, my complaint about your sleaze does NOT exonerate hadith that were created to serve the pleasures of evil men of the 9th century, used now to serve the pleasures of evil men in the 21st century.
However, your sleaze is your own, and having it on this site threatens the legitimacy of the site itself and can easily be misquoted with Robert's name on it by CAIR, which has done so repeatedly in the past.
If you'd like further explanation OF WHY YOUR POST WAS REMOVED BY JIHADWATCH, why don't you write to JW and ask them about it.
However, the removal of your post speaks for itself.
And I would remind you: I do not have the capacity to remove anything. If I did you, champ, Infidel Pride and a number of others who lie, engage in purely ad hominem attacks, call for genocide, or publish your own sexual fantasies under the guise of "commenting about Islam" (ha!) would be banned for life.
Alarmed Pig Farmer ...
Why do you tell us all why YOU think your post was removed by JW management????
Concerned Citizen ...
Nice try, but I'm not Muslim and you know and everybody else knows it.
But it's a SPECTACULAR indication of just how sleazy so many of you are, that when someone criticizes anything you say, you declare them Muslim so you can convince others that they have some evil vested interest and therefore they can be dismissed as taqiyyah or worse.
How can you lie about another person in this manner? How can you do that?
Excellent piece by Daniel Pipes in NY Sun this morning:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4497
"The first two quotes were from the Koran and they were about how and why God created us. I was deeply touched to read the very words of God and taken away by their message"
My apologies again, I hope you can see why I might have been confused.
Concerned Citizen ...
I quoted Mustafa Akyol, and I followed standard APA Citation in doing it, crediting him BEFORE quoting him, so I don't really understand the confusion. But I accept your apology, as I think that kind of thing sometimes happens when someone's trying to scan a lot of material fast. I only got past this after I took the Photoreading Course, which I'd recommend to anybody going to college or with a lot of stuff to read on a daily basis (that would be me, some 200 listserves every morning).
http://www.photoreading.com/
I am a Christian with many moderate Muslim friends (for about 35 years now). I am trying to decide if I'm Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Certainly I am strong Deist who thinks God didn't only give us dominion over the earth -- but the ability to create reality out of thought, word, deed and imagination -- and tremendous responsibility for our own reality creations, which we shouldn't blame on God (none of this inshallah stuff as if anything we did we did only because God let us ... God gave us free will and the responsibility for it. It's not God's or the Devil's fault if we do it.)
Where exactly I fall in the Christian family I don't know, but at this point I do seem to gravitate more toward the doctrine of Orthodoxy which seems to imply a God more as I experience God (I won't say "He" because I do not perceive any gender involved at that level) to be. But to the way many, many Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Jews, Confucians, ethnicists and general metaphysicians, including the very most magical ones, practice ethical, peaceful, compassionate, responsible and loving ASPECTS and INTERPRETATIONS of their reigions, I find no objection. However, radical Islamists and the Hindutvu need to take a hike.
But, not problem that you were confused. And I thank you for the apology and greatly appreciate it as it is rare on this site.
And, Concerned Citizen ...
JW management removed Pig's post. I think if you want to know why they did that, you could just write them and they'll tell you. ... However, I am happy to take responsibility for the fact it was my suggestion.
I read his post. I thought it was over the top, but as others have said, no worse or visually evocative than these and other examples:
Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 4, Number 233:
Narrated 'Aisha:
I used to wash the semen off the clothes of the Prophet and even then I used to notice one or more spots on them.
Volume 3, Book 44, Number 683:
Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:
The Prophet (along with his companions) reached Mecca in the morning of the fourth of Dhul-Hijja assuming Ihram for Hajj only. So when we arrived at Mecca, the Prophet ordered us to change our intentions of the Ihram for'Umra and that we could finish our Ihram after performing the 'Umra and could go to our wives (for sexual intercourse). The people began talking about that. Jabir said surprisingly, "Shall we go to Mina while semen is dribbling from our male organs?"
Abu Dawud
Book 11, Number 2159:
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Abbas:
Ibn Umar misunderstood (the Qur'anic verse, "So come to your tilth however you will")--may Allah forgive him. The fact is that this clan of the Ansar, who were idolaters, lived in the company of the Jews who were the people of the Book. They (the Ansar) accepted their superiority over themselves in respect of knowledge, and they followed most of their actions. The people of the Book (i.e. the Jews) used to have intercourse with their women on one side alone (i.e. lying on their backs). This was the most concealing position for (the vagina of) the women. This clan of the Ansar adopted this practice from them. But this tribe of the Quraysh used to uncover their women completely, and seek pleasure with them from in front and behind and laying them on their backs.
When the muhajirun (the immigrants) came to Medina, a man married a woman of the Ansar. He began to do the same kind of action with her, but she disliked it, and said to him: We were approached on one side (i.e. lying on the back); do it so, otherwise keep away from me. This matter of theirs spread widely, and it reached the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him).
So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur'anic verse: "Your wives are a tilth to you, so come to your tilth however you will," i.e. from in front, from behind or lying on the back. But this verse meant the place of the delivery of the child, i.e. the vagina.
>>
Personally, I believe the ahadith and Aisha regarding her being prepubertal or peripubertal at her first conjunction. I believe this to be a perversion, and I do not believe the "Prophet" first became attracted to her on that day. Whether he in any form acted on this physically is unknown. We do know that he married her before it was acceptible to complete the act, and that he must have made great pomp at the time it was revealed as though he had accomplished some moral feat to have held off, or as if to punctuate some denial that he had.
Concerned Citizen.
(1) Please see Akyol on the likely invalidicity of ALL hadith, including the ones you post from Bukhari and the writings by Dawud, which are considered to have NO legitimacy by any Muslim imam I know.
(2) If washing semen off something is considered pornographic, then the following must be considered pornographic, too (from the Talmud, Halacha commentary found at http://www.torah.org/learning/halacha-overview/chapter60.html)
QUOTING:
Semen is also a source of impurity by touch; and a man who has had a seminal emission or a woman who has had sexual relations are impure [as it says "And if semen comes out of a man he shall bathe all his flesh in water and be impure until evening; and any garment or skin that has semen on it shall be washed in water and be impure until evening; and if a man lies with a woman seminally they shall wash in water and be impure until evening"4].
END QUOTE.
For Concenred Citizen:
And further EXPLICITY on bodily functions from M'tzora
Leviticus 14:1 - 15:33
This translation was taken from the JPS Tanakh and found at: http://www.jtsa.edu/community/parashah/jpstext/metzora.shtml
QUOTING:
Chapter 15
1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: 2 Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
When any man has a discharge issuing from his member, he is unclean. 3 The uncleanness from his discharge shall mean the following — whether his member runs with the discharge or is stopped up so that there is no discharge, his uncleanness means this: 4 Any bedding on which the one with the discharge lies shall be unclean, and every object on which he sits shall be unclean. 5 Anyone who touches his bedding shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 6 Whoever sits on an object on which the one with the discharge has sat shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 7 Whoever touches the body of the one with the discharge shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 8 If one with a discharge spits on one who is clean, the latter shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 9 Any means for riding that one with a discharge has mounted shall be unclean; 10 whoever touches anything that was under him shall be unclean until evening; and whoever carries such things shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 11 If one with a discharge, without having rinsed his hands in water, touches another person, that person shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 12 An earthen vessel that one with a discharge touches shall be broken; and any wooden implement shall be rinsed with water.
13 When one with a discharge becomes clean of his discharge, he shall count off seven days for his cleansing, wash his clothes, and bathe his body in fresh water; then he shall be clean. 14 On the eighth day he shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and come before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and give them to the priest. 15 The priest shall offer them, the one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. Thus the priest shall make expiation on his behalf, for his discharge, before the Lord.
16 When a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water and remain unclean until evening. 17 All cloth or leather on which semen falls shall be washed in water and remain unclean until evening. 18 And if a man has carnal relations with a woman, they shall bathe in water and remain unclean until evening.
19 When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being blood from her body, she shall remain in her impurity seven days; whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. 20 Anything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; and anything that she sits on shall be unclean. 21 Anyone who touches her bedding shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening; 22 and anyone who touches any object on which she has sat shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening. 23 Be it the bedding or be it the object on which she has sat, on touching it he shall be unclean until evening. 24 And if a man lies with her, her impurity is communicated to him; he shall be unclean seven days, and any bedding on which he lies shall become unclean.
25 When a woman has had a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or when she has a discharge beyond her period of impurity, she shall be unclean, as though at the time of her impurity, as long as her discharge lasts. 26 Any bedding on which she lies while her discharge lasts shall be for her like bedding during her impurity; and any object on which she sits shall become unclean, as it does during her impurity: 27 whoever touches them shall be unclean; he shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and remain unclean until evening.
28 When she becomes clean of her discharge, she shall count off seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 29 On the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, and bring them to the priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 30 The priest shall offer the one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering; and the priest shall make expiation on her behalf, for her unclean discharge, before the Lord.
31 You shall put the Israelites on guard against their uncleanness, lest they die through their uncleanness by defiling My Tabernacle which is among them.
32 Such is the ritual concerning him who has a discharge: concerning him who has an emission of semen and becomes unclean thereby, 33 and concerning her who is in menstrual infirmity, and concerning anyone, male or female, who has a discharge, and concerning a man who lies with an unclean woman.
END QUOTE
Now, Concerned Citizen:
My complaint about Pig's post is that it was really his sexual fantasy to which the board was subjected. You will find VERY explicit sexual references in most, if not, all the religions. The Hindus wrote the Kama Sutra, the Japanese Shinto gave their kids wood block pictures upon marriage, all religions talk about "clean" and "unclean" in various ways and get VERY explicit when giving instructions.
The fact that the Qur'an indicates musk instead of water in changing some of the Judaic precepts is a minor point, wouldn't you say?
For Concerned Citizen, further:
"The semen of the fertility god could be seen spurting as rain from heaving during an orgasmic thunderstorm; in concentrated form it appeared in certain powerful plants like the Mandrake, or Holy Plant, identified in many cultures with the sacred fungus, Amanita muscaria, or in the aromatic gums and resins that formed part of the traditional unctions of priests and kings. Such functionaries thus became `holy', that is separated to the god's service, being smeared, or `anointed' with his divine substance. They were therefore called `the anointed ones', that is, `messiahs', or christs, more specifically in the Old Testament, `those anointed with Jehovah/Yahweh'. (I Sam. 26:11; Ps. 2:2)"
Now, I ask you. Is it worse that
First, I doubt your point about the ahadith "are considered to have NO legitimacy by any Muslim imam I know". Either you are susceptible to taqiyya, or you have an exceptionally cloistered set of imams at your disposal.
Second, I missed the musk/water comparison on the exhultation of the child bride's laundry chores regarding the personal actual semen of the "Last Prophet". It still disgusts me.
Third, few Christians cite the Talmud as a tu quoque. Quo vadis?
Fourth, the images provoked by Leviticus are clinical, the image conjured by Bukhari above regarding Jabir's adhesive and draining member is "surprising" only in its inclusion in a text, which despite your protests, is and has been considered sahih and useful to formulate conduct for many centuries.
Morgaan Sinclair,
I must make this clear to you that The Kama Sutra is not a Hindu holy book. It is sex education, pure and simple. You can find several ancient Hindu books on subjects as diverse as economics, several on medicine and surgery, mathematics, literature and philosophy.
Hezbollah Supporter tries to differentiate between Muhammad's marriage to Aisha and today's forced marriages. Is he actually suggesting that 9-year old Aisha was a party to the decision to defile her?
Arjun.sevak
The hadith aren't a "Holy book" either, but they get quoted here as if they were.
And yet I apologize for the analogy. AND, I think the Kama Sutra is intended as sex education and NOT as anything pornographic whatsoever.
Concerned Citizen:
First: The imams I know are simply more intelligent than the usual, not AT ALL taqiyyah (there you go again with false accusatios!, and certainly not stupid or blind or anything else you can come up with.
Second: The quote from Leviticus is NOT "clinical", it is indicative of the procreative-dominant way of speaking of the time.
Third: I'm not surprised you don't know that musk was substituted for water in copying an Old Testament precept into the Qur'an. In a desert it's much easier to come by musk than water, unless you'd like to have the whole tribe die of dehydration so you can take a bath every day.
Fourth: You have to be able to look at all Holy Books with the same timeshape consciousness -- not reserve one set of standards for your own but apply another one to your enemy. You either play fair or you don't.
And if we want to compare some of the quotations harmful to women in the Qur'an to ones describing in detail where to put that red-hot poker that you can find in the Malleus Maleficarum, now THAT would be some discussion.
In the meantime, we could ask the Holy See to close the Office of the Inquisition and stop lobbying against CEDAW -- in COLLABORATION with ALL THE ISLAMIC STATES!!!!.
That said, I have NO problem pointing out the incredible abuse of women in Islam and work with Islamic feminists on a daily basis.
AND ... that doesn't give you guys, who seem bent on defending your own no matter how sleazy they get, an excuse for spewing porn on this board.
Ignoring your other assertions, many of which are ludicrous,
"not reserve one set of standards for your own but apply another one to your enemy. You either play fair or you don't"
Personally, I see YOU as the one distorting the "standard" to support a tu quoque argument. The Bible does not support pedophilia, and is not crude. The sahih sittah ARE used AS sacred by the majority of Muslims, thus they can be compared negatively with the Bible, fair being fair.
Concerned Citizen ...
Of course you will "ignore my other assertions", which are always based in fact ... because you don't like what they imply.
We have a long, hard battle with radical Islamists coming, and in the process I am not happy about having to entertain those who abuse the process for their own adolescent purposes -- like Pig -- or who are 100% polemical attack with NO INFORMATION EVER -- like champ.
Nor do I feel amused by the people like you who get play semantics games while it's clear that all people of the time of which we speak -- tribalists all, male chauvinists all, polygamists all, racists all -- spoke in extreme sexual terms about everything, because fertility was survival and the ownership of women secured that survival.
The hadith were not written by Muhammad. I'm not wild about much that he did, but the things you are quoting here are not of his hand. I do not believe for a MOMENT he would have slept with a 9-year-old girl having spent half the Qur'an trying to stop female infanticide in Arabia, and having secured rights of marriage, divorce, and inheritance, having allowed women to speak at assembled mixed groups, and the like.
So clear is the Qur'an on equal rights that Islamic feminists are battling shari'a courts from Nigeria to Bahrain based on equal rights granted them in the Qur'an -- and they are winning.
The invalidation of the hadith -- and particularly this one -- on the basis of BAD PROVENANCE, as Akyol suggests, isn't just the best hope for women who have to deal with this crap -- it's also the best hope those wishing to de-fang Al Qaeda when they quote this BS.
I do not accept your authority to tell me what is and isn't real about the hadith or valid about the hadith. I have better sources than you for that.
But I think you should look at one thing. What are you really in this for -- a solution? or superiority?
Because your answer to that will color everything you do in the next three decades it will take us to deal with this.
"all people of the time of which we speak -- tribalists all, male chauvinists all, polygamists all, racists all -- spoke in extreme sexual terms about everything, because fertility was survival and the ownership of women secured that survival."
Objectively false. Show me an example from the Tanakh or the NT that describes actual individual reproductive organs salaciously. What you gave above IS clinical. What is in the Song of Solomon is largely metaphorical. Parts of what is in the Sahih hadith is graphic and crude. They do not compare. I don't have to feel superior (I acknowledge your breadth on world religions), nor do I have to accept categorical denigration of my faith's texts to satisfy a tu quoque argument sparing the Islamic texts toward some evanescent Islamic reform.
Regardless of what you say, and it is not my "authority" as I have none. Pragmatic objectivism shows Islamic reform is largely moving in the opposite direction. I am not of the camp that believes there is a "thirty year" solution based on "reforming", sanitizing, or neutering Islamic texts coupled with mollycoddling what is left. The Sahih Sittah are here to stay, and even if your algorithm for reform succeeded, these texts will continue to be pulled from the dust and their counsel reanimated.
"So clear is the Qur'an on equal rights that Islamic feminists are battling shari'a courts from Nigeria to Bahrain based on equal rights granted them in the Qur'an -- and they are winning."
With all due respect to the poster, who appears periodically to be much enamored of Islam (his raptures on the "Words of God" on his grandaddy's Koran, etc.), it is simply nonsense to claim that the Koran provides women with "equal rights."
If the Koran actually gave women equal rights, Muslim women would have the right to four husbands, an equal inheritance, equal weight to testimony in court, and the right not to be beaten for "disobedience" or forced into sex at her husband's whim.
The poster appears to have caught the Islamic disease of "words mean what I want them to mean" -- and thus the concept of equality goes down the drain along with "martyrdom," "modesty," "honor," and the like.
Concerned Citizen:
See Pipes today in The New York Sun (or here http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4497)
Part of your problem in gauging the relativity of things is that you don't read enough.
I don't have to gauge the relativity of things. Creating relativity where disparity exists is not required.
I read plenty, just not your posts generally.
MARWAN'S DAUGHTER ...
DAMN IT. CAN YOU READ??????
I quoted Islamic theorist Mustafa Akyol, a big fan of the Pope's and one of the best reformists on the planet. That's HIS grandfather and grandmother he's talking about. He is a Muslim, and one of the very finest people I have ever known. He is a deep, passionate supporter of the State of Israel (on Qur'anic grounds that Israel belongs as a land to the Jews), opposes the institution of shari'a ANYWHERE until it clears up entirely inequities about women's rights, and openly -- and in print -- decries all violence and jihad.
He is the op-ed editor of Turkish Daily News, Turkey's largest circulation daily newspaper.
He is a friend of my family.
You should go back to not reading my posts, Concerned Citizen. They're over your head.
Marwan's Daughter.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of my identity so you are not confused again:
I am a woman.
I am a Christian.
I am 59.
I post under my own name.
I am a book editor, writer, magazine managing editor and student at Harvard.
I have 7 children: one son is mine, two are adopted daughters and two sons of my husband's, and I have two more sons, both Marine chopper pilots (one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan) for whom I am surrogate mother because they have no family whatsoever. My other children have adopted them in a way that they will inherit equally with my other children. My natural son calls them "blood brothers by heart".
I have had Muslim friends for 35 years.
I have read all the world's scriptures.
I am a supporting member of five Islamic feminist organizations.
I routinely have epithets thrown at me in Harvard Square bars by Leftist bigots who despise conservatives.
Good to see you back after your deleted meltdown. Benzodiazepines do help, don't they? Enjoy trying to reconstruct the thread to cover your embarrassment.
good grief, mo...i have to agree you were sounding more and more muslim as the argument wore on!
i'd like to know why, if women are considered equal, they require the testimony of 2 to equal 1 man in a court of law? and inheritance is not equal, either...
you can claim all you want the hadith aren't the qu'ran, but they are the fiqr of muslims worldwide...that cannot be escaped, from what i've seen.
i'm certainly not claiming to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i think all the islamic knowledge has clouded your sense of humor...or maybe you've had too many Libs sniping at you over the years.
don't sweat this so much, mo...if you're that much smarter than the rest of us, why do you bother trying to 're-train' us? "wastes your time and is annoying to the pigs"...or so i've heard.
Kafir ...
I never made any claim that women were treated equally in Islam, only that the hadith claiming Ayesha was nine is based on poor sourcing and tends to run against the fact Muhammad them many freedoms -- freedoms which have subsequently been taken from them, an argument that Muslim feminists use to good advantage in court. See Bernard Lewis on the overtaking of Islam by desert tribalist warloads within 50 years of Muhammad's death -- an act that precedes the completely spurious hadith that followed.
Clearly, Islam is the religion in the world that has most ground to make up on this stance as the situation is horrid. But it is by no means the only one that has human rights issues staring it in the face.
A list of the countries refusing to ratify CEDAW and religio-political pressures and the quarters they come from, will give you some big hints about that I mean.
Ms. Sinclair -- I'm sorry for missing the fact that you are a woman. Your earlier posts, including the one you made some time ago apologizing to Robert for something you apparently did against him, should have made that clear.
I also should have taken your word for it that you are a Christian. I was misled by the form and content of some of your arguments, which I have seen many times before from Muslim apologists.
Having ducked bottles thrown by dhimmi leftists in bars myself, I congratulate you; and as an admirer of Meena -- I imagine RAWA is one of the Islamic feminist organizations you mentioned -- I do it again.
Morgaan Sinclair says of Mustafa Akyol that he is:
one of the best reformists on the planet.... He is a Muslim, and one of the very finest people I have ever known. He is a deep, passionate supporter of the State of Israel (on Qur'anic grounds that Israel belongs as a land to the Jews), opposes the institution of shari'a ANYWHERE until it clears up entirely inequities about women's rights, and openly -- and in print -- decries all violence and jihad...He is a friend of my family.
Now here are some excerpts from Bat Ye'or's analysis of Mustafa Akyol's Islam, from a 2004 Jihad Watch article:
"The hope inspired by Mr. Mustafa Akyol’s long article in Front Page Magazine is tempered by his deception. Mr. Akyol speaks of the necessity to re-interpret the fundamental teachings and scriptures of Islam... However, Mr Akyol does not explain on what authority a selection of hadith and events of the sira will be made, since, he himself, in the course of his argumentation, simply uses them to prove the justice of Islam.
...
"Mr. Akyol again contradicts himself by implying that the Qurayza’s punishment was justified, because they acted treacherously while of course there are no objective proofs for such accusations, which rest merely on the demonization of the victims."
...
"As Mr. Akyol stated rightly [but disingenuously and irrelevantly, given Mohammed's status as uswa hasana], this was not exceptional at that time. The problem now is that such acts have been attributed to the Prophet Muhammad who is the model to be emulated by all Muslims. Hence, while even worse wars might have been perpetrated in the world by rulers long since forgotten, the acts and sayings of Muhammad concerning non-Muslims are still binding for over a billion Muslims today. To decry Dr. Bostom’s analyses, based on 13 centuries of Islamic teaching and writing, and accepted today in all Muslim countries, is almost surrealistic."
...
"Mr Akyol’s explanation of jihad itself is particularly disingenuous. In a democracy “a final jihad on western secular materialism” is shocking. This is especially concerning given that the word “faith” can be understood in its Muslim sense which states that the only true faith is Islam. (Qur’an 3:17)."
"What exactly is “western secular materialism”? Will that be replaced by a Shari’a morality?"
Mr. Akyol denies their [Koran, Hadith and Sira's] self-evident interpretations, and that is his right, but he should try to convince – not a Western audience – but over a billion Muslims who curiously share the views of the Muslim texts and authorities..."
"Mr. Akyol prefers to try and persuade Westerners of the perfection of Islam, simply denying that the horrors that occurred in Muslim history, chronicled with great accuracy by Dr. Bostom, either didn’t happen, or were not done by Muslims. This sort of twisted logic is little removed from the warped thinking which justified the bizarre accusations that the CIA, Americans, or Zionists must have perpetrated 9/11 because Muslims could not commit such horrors."
"It would be meaningless to answer all of Mr. Akyol’s affirmations, accusations and denials, including the genocide of the Armenians."
Interesting that Morgaan is so fervently adamant about nailing the Serbs for "genocide", yet she lauds as a great reformer and "friend of the family" a Muslim who does not own up to the far more solidly proven Armenian genocide.
Bat Ye'or goes on to note Morgaan's friend's --
"...total rejection of the history of dhimmitude, despite copious documentation by both Muslim and non-Muslim sources, and its replacement by a glorification of a just and peaceful Islamic rule over tens of millions of subjected, non-Muslim peoples, precludes any understanding between those who call a jihad a genocidal war, and those who call it a liberation (even having the temerity to deny the jihad genocide of the Armenians). Mr. Akyol invokes testimonies which are contradicted, multiple times over, by others he chose to ignore."
"Mr. Akyol’s affirmation that it was not Muslims who perpetrated the acts described is merely his personal opinion based on his current appreciation of Islam. Finally, while Mr. Akyol’s efforts to modernize religious beliefs are praiseworthy, they should be directed exclusively at convincing his coreligionists, not attempting to persuade the non-Muslim victims of Muslim aggression that their ordeal did not happen or was an idyllic era for which they should be grateful. Spare us another “Golden Age”."
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003675.php
Then there is this criticism of Morgaan's "friend of the family" and "great reformer" Mustafa Akyol from the pen of Robert Spencer himself. The opening sentence from Spencer reads:
"Mustafa Akyol’s third and latest attempt to show that Osama bin Laden and Company have hijacked the religion of peace is as mind-numbingly disingenuous as it is windy and off-point."
Read it all:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15459
"along with my fantastically wonderful response to them, which I do wish JW had left there as lesson to both of you. [weg]"
You mean your repeated f-bombs, threats of litigation and privacy invasion... and you're declaring some kind of victory as a "lesson to both of you". Puhleeze. You see ad hominems where they don't exist. I apologized to you in good faith, after wrongly ASSUMING you were Muslim, before I found you weren't. It wasn't an epithet. It was a correction in my posture for berating you for choosing a contrary argument, one I naturally would have assumed you to take HAD you been Muslim.
I more properly should have taken you to task for quoting "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth" after you claimed to be a Christian, and especially when you started dropping the f-bomb.
It is useful to remember that mainstream muslims, including 'sholars' and 'preachers' never ever question the fact that Aisha was married at age 6.
In fact, if you remember Bilal Philips who was caught on the 'Undercover Mosque' expose, was clearly heard saying that since the Prophet had done so, he had legitimized marrying pre-pubsecent girls forever.. and muslims need not have to apologize for it at all.
Here is a video of the same sheik backtracking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_ZqeR27Mg
I will absolutely stand by Mustafa Akyol, and he will be a member of my family forever.
The Islam that he avows and practices is so good and so peaceful that it is a MODEL of what should be done with the religion.
He completely disavows all violence, supports 100%
women's rights and total equality within Islam, supports a Jewish state and a Catholic papacy, and disavows any dhimmitude for people of any religions.
I quite understand that Spencer and Ye'or disagree with him about many things. And I disagree with all three about some.
However, there is no question in my mind that the so-called "Forums" on FPM in which Mustafa participated were often set-ups. In one particular case, Trifkovic was brought in AFTER the forum started, and when Mustafa quoted an article ON FPM's WEBSITE, Trifkovic accused him of slander, and FPM printed it. When I proved to FPM that Mustafa had quoted an FPM article, they still tried to make the slander stick -- and refused to remove the REAL offending document until I pointed out to them that they were scapegoating Mustafa.
Ah, that's nice. It took me a week to straighten it out.
Basically, it doesn't matter who says it -- Spencer, Ye'or, and certainly not Trifkovic -- Mustafa Akyol is a friend in this battle, one of the best we have, and what has gone on, on the FPM website, is a travesty and an act of immorality on the part of everybody who took part in it.
NOW ...
MUSTAFA AKYOL HAS ***** NEVER ***** SAID THAT MUSLIMS DIDN'T PERPETRATE 9/11. He has said that those who do such things are NOT following any decent form of Islam, as he does not believe that Wahahbism even deserves the term, it is such an incredible perversion of Islam. He would, in fact, excommunciate them had he the power to do so -- and so would those who agree with him."
I will just say that the I should much rather have Mustafa Akyol as a friend than some basher like remote_control.
I would suggest to anyone that they read Mustafa's recent articles rather than remote_control's cherry-picking attack, which is actually on me, not Mustafa.
Some examples:
Enough of Christophobia
Decrying the Murder of Christians in Istanbul
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/04/enough_with_christophobia.php
Pope Won Hearts and Minds
for Washington Post
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/12/pope_won_hearts_and_minds.php
A Feminist Islamic Reform (Washington Post)
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/07/a_feminist_islamic_reform_in_turkey.php
Holocaust Denial Won't Help Iran -- or Palestinians
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/12/holocaust_denial_wont_help_iranor_palestine.php
Still Standing for Islam -- and Against Terrorism (for Front Page Magazine)
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2004/10/still_standing_for_islam_and_against_terrorism.php
Boshievism in a Headdress
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2005/05/bolshevism_in_a_headdress.php
I Am an Armenian Today
Decrying the murder of Hrant Dink
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/01/_i_am_armenian_today.php
Now, I count as cherished personal friends BOTH Robert Spencer and Mustafa Akyol. If you have a problem with that, that's YOUR problem.
Mustafa and Robert and I don't have a problem with it. And our discussions about our agreements and disagreements with each other's points are private and extremely respectful all around.
It would behoove many of you here to see if you can bridge such worlds, even if you don't agree with everything said by any particular person.
But I will tell you this: I have never met a better human being than Mustafa Akyol in my life. And that's saying something, because I have some very incredibly good people.
If I may interject my two cents, Morgan Sinclair seems to be using the same apologia one grows accustomed to when debating Westernized Muslims.
The chain of transmission documenting Muhammed's relationship with Aisha is not confined to one or even two sources in the various Hadith that document it. To characterize them singularly...and as "dubious"...is simply disingenuous.
It is good to remember that some people claim to support moderate Islam, when their real purpose is to destroy it all, thus killing the little geese doing their damnedest to lay golden eggs.
In the last three weeks, more than 3 million Muslims in Turkey and Pakistan have protested Islamization of their governments. Their point is that until shari'a law can be THOROUGHLY cleaned up of its Fascist and totalitarian elements, it cannot be trusted in rule of a population.
Mustafa Akyol has made the point that shari'a cannot be implemented until women's full rights and those of all other groups can be assured.
See Pipes today for the rationale of calling for immense support of moderate Muslims worldwide. Radical Islam is the problem, he says. Moderate Islam is the solution. And I agree with that.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4497
But, Ms. Sinclair -- what would Mr. Akyol think about your apparent belief, given your threats of litigation, that the suggestion that you are Muslim on the ground of your arguments and responses is somehow defamatory?
Mustafa knows well exactly how I feel about everything. He knows I do NOT believe Muslims to be bad per se.
YOUR slander evolves from the fact that you are lying about me. You call me a taqiyyah Muslim and thereby YOU are making the claim that I am an enemy and a liar who cannot be trusted.
It is not the fact that some people are Muslims -- as, for example, Irshad Manji is a Muslim -- that is the slander. Nonie Darwish is a Muslim. Tashbih Sayyed, who is a director of this site, is a Muslim.
That is the not the slander.
The slander is that I am NOT a Muslim, but you try to say I am so you can declare me your enemy, and discredit me.
Clearly, it is not BEING a Muslim that makes somebody an enemy. It is being a TERRORIST that makes someone your enemy.
I support Robert's exposure of bad hadith and Qur'anic verses inimical to Jews, Christians and women, because the whitewashing of them is ridiculous when imams in the Brixton mosque and Al Qaeda use them to incite violence and abuse women.
And Mustafa would only agree. See:
A Case for Islamic Renewal (why the hadith have to go):
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2004/10/a_case_for_islamic_renewal.php
He can't wait for these verses to go, either.
The interesting thing is that although Mustafa knows I see things from points of view different than his own and that I am not the proponent of Intelligent Design he is (though I think rank Darwinism is wrong, too), he NEVER treats me badly for disagreeing with him.
For that matter, Robert doesn't, either. And we have had some fairly hot debates.
But neither of these people bashes dissent, slanders, or lies.
Neither of them.
Would that could be said for many of you.
"See Bernard Lewis on the overtaking of Islam..." Thanks, Mo, but I've seen him in person, and read his works. It's actually my job.
My argument was that I think you're "trippin' on your underwear" (to quote a great scholar and 30-year 'friend' of the Middle East, my father) over every little comment here. I just feel your blood pressure rising by the moment.
I also have to say that having Muslim friends for years may or may not be to your advantage. Depends on the friend and how devout they really are...you have to wonder, given their cultural disregard for the truth, whom they are really deceiving?
My father relayed to me many a time how, during his business meetings, he felt that any moment a mullah could walk in & point the finger at him, and nobody in the room would bat an eye about separating his head from his neck. These were his Muslim friends since the '70s...and he knew sheikhs and many a 'Westernized' Muslim.
Kafir is Kafir. Given the number of times I've been a pariah to the Muslim community, I think I'll stick with the fatwa list for friends to be 'safe'...
Side Note - Curious why you're listing CEDAW, or any UN org for that matter, as a reference for appropriate behavior. Generally conservatives don't trust most Federal orgs, let alone international ones. Any particular reason?
concern citizen -
where's the litigation/f* bomb post? was that immediately removed?
/sigh. I said the form and content of your arguments suggested that you were a Muslim, and then I detailed why I thought so.
You responded that you were not.
I apologized for missing the fact that you were a woman. Further, I stated that I should have taken your word for it that you were a Christian. Non-Muslims use Islamic arguments, responses and apologetics also; you don't have to be a Muslim to use them. I jumped to conclusions, and I apologize.
I appreciate your efforts to support the reform of Islam, though I believe the example of Mohammed, and the immutable, Jew and woman-hating words of the Koran, make this a Sisyphean task.
Finally, I wonder if the women who are beaten according to Koran 4:34 make the distinction between Islam and Islamic terrorists that you do.
Marwan's Daughter.
I would bet that I spend more time with Islamic feminists who are working on this than you do. Which is why getting these inimical verses removed is Job #1.
The fact is, not all Muslim men (by a long shot) beat their wives, and they are practicing an Islam that is effectively excluding these verses RIGHT NOW.
The trick is to get them mobilized to overtake the religion, and the problem is that the radical imams running the madhdahbs are bunch of real creeps by large.
But they will respond to the masses in the streets, and when they see 100,000 is Islamabad and a million in Istanbul, they start getting the message (I hope).
Kafir ...
CEDAW is particularly powerful, because were it ratified by the most powerful states, it will effectively force Islamic countries to enforce equal rights for women under the law -- or face sanctions from the United Nations.
It is potentially a very powerful tool in the hands of the civilized world.
More than 90 countries have ratified. The United States has not, claiming that its women already possess more rights than CEDAW grants, and states a "fear" that it would water down women's rights in the United States. If that sounds like BS, it's cause it is. The USA routinely signs every anti-slavery, anti-racist, pro-religious freedom, pro-children's rights piece of legislation that goes through the UN, despite the fact that slavery, racism, and exploitation of children is ALREADY illegal in the United STates. So ... why won't they sign this one? Pressures from the busienss community that fear that they may, yet, have to pay women the same as men for equal work. These interests foiled the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress despite the fact that 87% of the American public was for it.
The ugly little secret here is that the two MAJOR holdouts other than the USA are the Arab League and the Catholic countries following the Pope's refusal to back it.
For the Muslims it means that they would have to grant equal civil rights in all areas:
No longer would a woman's testimony be worth only 1/2 of 1/3 of a man's.
No longer would the loss of her life be equal to the loss of a man's leg.
No longer could she be denied equal inheritance.
No longer could she be forced to marry, or be denied divorce.
No longer could her children be taken from her as the possession of her husband's family.
No longer could she be denied her home when her African Muslim husband dies.
No longer could FGM be forced on her.
No longer could she be given less food and medicine than a man (a big problem in Africa)
No longer could a man be sentenced to less for killing a woman than a man.
No longer could a man be exonerated for "honor" killing on the basis of tribal or religious custom
No longer could a woman be denied the right to drive
No longer could a woman be forced into cover a man does not have to wear.
Etc., etc., etc.
It's a very powerful set of precepts.
So, why doesn't the Pope go along with CEDAW, since it helps in the battle against radical Islam and helps gain the freedom of the most oppressed subpopulation on earth?
Because the Holy See is afraid that equal access to medicine can mean access to birth control and, possibly, abortion.
There is NOTHING in CEDAW that indicates this, but just on the CHANCE that might possibly be construed that way "one day", the Pope is willing to consign the Muslim women of the world to another 50, or 100, or 1,000 years of pain and suffering.
And in doing so, the Holy Father (whom I adore for many other reasons) and the USA (Greed Central for huge corporations) will not ratify CEDAW, and without their power and support behind it, it cannot succeed.
But if it could get it (a project for Catholics right here!), CEDAW could be one of the MOST POWERFUL forces inimical to the spread of radical Islam the world has ever seen.
But it really is putting your politics where you mouth is, and it would take a HUGE exposure and pressuring of both the Catholic Church and the USA to get it done.
If the Democrats win the next Presidential election, there's a possibility that the USA will ratify it. But Bush, as well as the evil of getting us into this war, is not going to anger his evangelical base by doing this. And the odd thing is that if most of the religious right just READ IT, they would go for it in a minute. In a minute.
Kafir ...
More of the same. Now you know what my blood is, and that it's rising.
Well, my blood pressure is what it always is, dear, 116 over 78.
There are lot of ways to try to control other people's expression, and the one you just used is called "parental condescension" which treats the "little woman" as an implied hysteric.
And that's according to my husband, the Harvard professor of psychology and the writer of seven best selling books on the subject.
Nice try. No cigar.
"He completely disavows all violence..."
Yeah, right -- unless it's in "self-defense". You just haven't scratched your friend deeply enough to find the classical Islamic loopholes.
Remote_control .... that's just unfair, and your ignorance is showing.
This is a very, very good man. The best. He is asset to the future of the world, to be frank.
Mustafa Akyol will be addressing the conservative think-tank Council on Foreign Relations -- on Turkish poitics -- on Friday afternoon, May 25th in New York City. If any of you are there, please do come up and introduce yourselves by your anonymous handles.
I read these comments up to about noon EDT wondering what AP Farmer could have said. I got a headache and stopped. Nevertheless, Ms. Sinclair, these records are not kept, but if they were you would probably hold the record for continuous posting on JW/DW. All this debate about Aisha's age is minutae that is meaningless in the face of all those hundreds of ten thousands of imams, muftis, and ayatollahs who accept her age at consummation as nine. You seem to have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic that a duplicate key . . . Oops, wrong movie.
You seem to have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic that Aisha was out of high school when she married Mohammed.
A whole day has been wasted when you could have been e-mailing the muftis at these sites explaining the ramifications of an error that has beeen standing for over 1000 years.
http://www.islamonline.net
http://islam.tc/ask-imam/index.php
http://islamqa.com/index.php?ln=eng
You could be the person who singlehandedly reforms Islam; they will build statues in your honor and issue stamps with your picture. You need to explain to these muftis that Aisha was at least eighteen and the error is due to hearsay, rumors, inaccurate calendars, false memories, bad arithmetic, or indigestion. All you need are the wedding pictures.
In fact, Pelayo, these muftis have NO EVIDENCE -- nor does any credible evidence exist -- of what Aisha's age was AT ALL.
And the sooner we all call them on the whole structure of the hadith -- the sooner they can throw it out.
I don't know what good it does to validate their point, when there is ample evidence to the contrary.
AND, what we should be doing is supporting hermeneutics based on a thorough re-reading of sources to throw out all this Hisham and other stuff.
I am firmly of the opinion that all of the hadith are pure fiction, made by up people using "Mohammad said" to their own best advantage.
And, BTW, Cornelius, I know who you are, but it's a pleasant subterfuge, so we'll leave it. [weg]
I have heard from Mustafa Akyol this afternoon. He has read, at my request, everything on this thread, and he feels I have represented his beliefs completely accurately.
Pelayo,
I would love to be the person who straightens out this mess, but it will take may of us -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- to do it, working from many angles, probably for a long time.
A substantive question for Ms. Sinclair:
Could you please expand on your assertion of the Q'uranic basis for women's equality and the freedoms granted them by Mohammad? What freedoms are these, where is the documentation for it, etc, etc. Or just refer me to an already existing explanation please.
i'm serious, because what I've come to understand (and as has been posted is that in the Quran, women's testimony is less valued, their inheritance is limited, they are to be covered, and are allowed to be beaten if their husband only detect a whiff of disobedience. That sounds nothing like my interpretation of freedom.
An observation for Ms. Sinclair:
You seem to post a lot, and take everything very personally, and all too literally. I mean, when Kafir uses the term "blood pressure," he is using it as a metaphor, not that he can actually detect your blood pressure. You seem to get very worked up over these posts, is all that meant, I think. After all you have invoked your lawyer, medical malpractice, asset forfeiture, and Senate laws, in just this thread!
Not every post is worthy of a reply, or two or 3.....
Finally, please don't take what I just said as an attack, because it isn't meant as one. I applaud your efforts at reform, and working for women's rights, and wish you all the best.
Robert Spencer has never tried to prove anything about Aisha's age. This is all about what zillions of true blue Mohammedans think is true and the basis for that belief. One would think that after one thousand years someone could have set the record atraight. It is the nature of Mohammedism, nothing is to be questioned, and excommunication is not in the Islamic lexicon. If excommunication was the only penalty, there might be only about thirty followers of El Perfecto.
Ms Sinclair, only an insider could have cleaned out Tammany Hall. Islam cannot be reformed by a kaffir.
It's so nice that Mr. Akyol, this asset to the future of the world who (according to Ms.Yeor's characterization) appears to believe that all those Armenians just fell down the cellar stairs, is so willing to review all of Ms. Sinclair's hard work for accuracy.
"the Pope is willing to consign the Muslim women of the world to another 50, or 100, or 1,000 years of pain and suffering."
Guys! It's not the Jews' fault for forcing Muslim men to beat and subjugate women after all! It's the Pope's!
Good grief. Just when you think it's safe . . . Did teach me something, though. You'd better hear 'em actually recite the Shahada; otherwise, they're just garden-variety dhimmis.
Morgaan Sinclair:
CEDAW is particularly powerful, because were it ratified by the most powerful states, it will effectively force Islamic countries to enforce equal rights for women under the law -- or face sanctions from the United Nations.
No longer would a woman's testimony be worth only 1/2 of 1/3 of a man's.
No longer would the loss of her life be equal to the loss of a man's leg.
No longer could she be denied equal inheritance.
No longer could she be forced to marry, or be denied divorce.
No longer could her children be taken from her as the possession of her husband's family.
No longer could she be denied her home when her African Muslim husband dies.
No longer could FGM be forced on her.
No longer could she be given less food and medicine than a man (a big problem in Africa)
No longer could a man be sentenced to less for killing a woman than a man.
No longer could a man be exonerated for "honor" killing on the basis of tribal or religious custom
No longer could a woman be denied the right to drive
No longer could a woman be forced into cover a man does not have to wear.
Etc., etc., etc.
It's a very powerful set of precepts.
And it will make not a scrap of difference to the Islamic world. The central issue in Islamic world is one of Authority. And while Robert says there is no central human authority in the Islamic world (true), nevertheless all Muslims agree that the Quran is the final authority. Therefore if CEDAW contradicts the Quran, there is no way Muslims are going to abandon the Quran.
It will never happen.
And Robert also acknowledges the exceptionally thin chance of the Islamic world reinterpreting the controversial passages non-literally.
Some of those items are non-theologically controversial within the Islamic world e.g. FGM but others are not.
And there is no way the UN is going to issue sanctions on all 58 OIC countries. Collectively they supply other nations Oil and Gas, and I cannot see a UN resolution getting past the Security Council. For sure China would veto it (heavily dependent on Oil), and maybe France, possibly even Russia (not dependent on Oil & Gas). The 57 OIC countries are a very powerful bloc within the UN.
I take it you aware that 57 OIC are signed up to the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, a subset of the UN Declaration of Human Rights?
And it works out that "Women" is one of the 2 key areas where it differs. See here for a copy
www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm
See also Wikipedia for a critic of it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam
I also noted that the past 10 years, Stephen Lewis who was the UN envoy to Africa on HIV/AIDS often gave speech-after-speech on the need for Womens rights to be upheld, and did not get beyond the discussion stage. Very little progress was made. And I have no doubt the Islamic bloc was a drag factor.
Does this I think that Womens rights are a waste of time? Far from it. But I understand that when you confront the Islamic world, you are confronting it over the source of Authority. And I have not noticed in your posts that you acknowledge that.
"There are lot of ways to try to control other people's expression, and the one you just used is called "parental condescension" which treats the "little woman" as an implied hysteric."
That's just amateur hour. Some things should be left to the real pros, who know about more effective techniques like threatening lawsuits to deprive people of their livelihood and homes.
UK Infidel Lover ...
How do you know it won't help? I think it will change things a very great deal -- and FOR SURE, the Muslims are scared of this little piece of international agreement, because they have poured IMMENSE pressure and arm-twisting into the campaign to stop it.
That alone is worth paying attention to.
And if the RCC doesn't think there is power in it, why do they fight it? Why are they willing to form a powerful collusion with the entire Arab League against it?
And, there this: Even if the chances are thin that we can avoid a hot, shooting war over this, I am willing to pour tremendous energy into the attempt to have Islam transform with peaceful means, and we have to do our best with regard to BOTH possible realities.
And if Robert didn't think there was worth in crying in the wilderness about it, he wouldn't do it, would he? He is not some stupid or foolish man.
Morgaan Sinclair:
HOWEVER, the major point is this: Until Islamic scholars deal with the hadith and the histories written upon them, women, as Robert says, will continue to suffer. And the BS disseminated by Karen Armstrong that whitewashes the "basis" -- hadith which are HONORED by imams of all schools of Sunni and Shi'a Islam -- of this egregious violation of basic humans rights of women will continue.
How are they going to do that?
The Hadith is a problem. If you reject all of it, then Muslims are left with the problem that much of the Quran is not understandable.
If you decide to sift through the material, on what basis do you decide to accept/reject aHadiths?
Everything in Bukhari?
Some criteria on Isnad chains?
To me, it seems that their problems over the Hadith are insoluble.
There is also the problem with the first 4 Caliphs. Sunni Muslims say they were "rightfully-guided" yet some of their historical actions are deplorable.
I dont hold much hope for the reformation of Islam (but the attempt I guess must be made).
Morgaan Sinclair,
Bottom Line:
I trust Robert Spencer's and Bat Ye'or's assessments of Mustafa Aykol more than your assessment of him.
Morgaan Sinclair:
Child marriage is still a reality in the Muslims communities where evil men use this exoneration to do as they please, and in India, China and Pakistan, though it has been illegal in India since 1929 and is also officially illegal in Pakistan.
It may be now. But there is no guarantee it will remain like that. Pakistan's constitution is based on Islam (it says so), so it will only take 1 case for a lawyer to argue that the lack of child marriage (for girls) is un-Islamic and at that point the law is repealed. Of late, Pakistan is becoming increasingly Talibanised.
You might well be aware of Pakistan's hudood laws which have been used by unscrupulous Muslim men to rape women. If they complain, they can find themselves jailed on grounds of adultery or fornication because they lack 4 male witnesses.
All from the Quran. And Pakistan's clerics oppose the removal of the laws.
remote_control
I can't imagine why anybody would listen to you about anything, so your opinion about anything is meaningless to me.
But it's your loss. Mustafa Akyol is an incredible person.
Morgaan Sinclair:
Look, basically, these reports of what "Aisha said" surfaced sometime between the time Mohammad died and about 800 AD. I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe half the Qur'an is original to the time of Muhammad. Pre-Islamic mythology shows up ALL OVER the Qur'an, and is certainly not original to the book.
The only thing that is going to work here is that Muslim leaders stop pretending this stuff is "channeled" straight from the source. Some of it can be credited to Muhammad, some to pre-Islamic mythology, and a VERY GREAT DEAL to the warlords who took over Islam within 50 years of its his death and then invented whatever they wanted to satisfy their own personal predelictions and political desires.
Well I think the same. But it does not matter what you and I think. What matters is what Muslims think of the source material. And they believe that the Quran is the uncreated word from Allah. Only if you can punch holes in what they beleive will that have any weight with them.
And just what is it you are advocating Morgaan? You seem certain about your objective in terms of Womens rights but in the area that really counts with Muslims (authority) you dont seem to have a strategy.
remote_control is 100% right in his analysis when he said, "Chucking out the extra-Koranic texts, as Morgaan Sinclair recommends, will not solve the problem of Islam, whose various disgusting and dangerous features are sufficiently present in the Koran itself, such as the divine sanctioning of de facto sex-slavery through spoils of war (4:24) and the divine sanctioning of men beating their wives (4:34). Furthermore, I doubt that hundreds of millions of Muslims will take the advice of Morgaan Sinclair. Therefore, Islam as it stands is solidly and irretrievably rooted in the extra-Koranic texts in addition to the Koran."
In addition, there is no way Muslims are going to take your set of precepts on Women and reinterpret Quranic passages in a way that is in line with your precepts. The issue for the Muslim is Authority and the Quran comes first, not your precepts.
UK Infidel Lover:
You're right, of course. My point is that there are some Islamic theorists out there who are OVERTLY challenging the whole way in which all this stuff is weidhted.
Radicals weight War verses and hadith highly.
Reformists (Akyol et al.) say the hadith have to absaolutely, totally GO ... that the verses of the Medinan period must be relegated to historical status, and that only the Meccan verses remain, and they have problems with some of those.
Those guys have my support, and they'll continue to have it.
"Fine, you're on the list."
Making lists now, are we? Why don't you consult your husband about what sort of personality makes such lists? (Of course, I suppose just because one is xxxxx doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you. Funny how that can create a self-fulfilling prophecy over time though isn't it?).
Oh - and yup. That's goading. What are you gonna do? Sue me for "goading"?
"She was goading me your honor!"
P.s. I detest bullies. Especially the kind of bullies who threaten to sue people and cause them financial ruin because of what they say. It reminds me of certain people. But if I said who they were, you'd probably try to sue me for making the comparison.
Caroline, please do enlighten me as to why slander should be protected speech and why you feel your own personal freedom of expression would cramped by someone saying they won't lie down and take slander and will exercise their full rights under the law if you do it again?
Hmm? Speak up!
And while you're at it comment on any one of any of a hundred posts in this thread that SPOKE to points, posts I wrote, posts anybody else wrote.
Note to UK/remote:
Oh, yes, indeed, chucking the hadith and the Medinan verses will remove 90% of what divides Islam from modernity. It may not fix everything, but it's a remarkably good start.
Would you go for 90%? Why or why not?
Morgaan Sinclair:
But it's your loss. Mustafa Akyol is an incredible person.
So what?
So what if he is incredible?
It does not count
You have watched on JW, Robert Spencer debate with various hostile Muslims here. Now some of them have understood their faith better than others. Some of them might be incredible people.
But none of that counts.
What matters is the argument between RS and them.
Can they answer RS's points?
Because if they cannot and Robert punches holes through their arguments, they are beaten Islamically, then it matters not one jot whether they are "incredible". The central issue is truth not how "incredibile" they are as humans.
And similarly with Mustafa Akyol.
The real question is whether his articles are consistent with Islam. Because if they are not, Islamic scholars are going to dismiss his arguments. He needs to be able to give answers with the difficult passages that make consistent sense to a Islamic scholar.
100s of millions of Muslims don't have to take my advice. They only have to take the advice of Fazlur Rahman, Mustafa Akyol, et al.
In fact, you are right: It's only moderate Muslims who can do this, just as you wouldn't expect a repeal of doctrines (such as the RCC doctrine that an altar on which a woman has stepped must be destroyed ... which was repealed only in 1965) to be effected by a Muslim imam.
It has to happen within the religion. But pressures brought to bear from OUTSIDE the religion -- from government, from human rights NGOs, from exposure (this site), from political and economic realities (a reason to get off oil), can help tremendously.
AND your point is actually THE reason to support good Muslims. It's the point that Pipes made today so well:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4497
Caroline --
She has threatened other posters on JW before, so I am not the first, and I won't be the last. She also threatened to sue people on FrontPageMagazine, which may be why she was banned from their website.
This practice is just ridiculous, and I know Robert would not approve of her using his forum to threaten lawsuits. It's shameful.
Morgaan Sinclair:
Oh, yes, indeed, chucking the hadith and the Medinan verses will remove 90% of what divides Islam from modernity. It may not fix everything, but it's a remarkably good start.
Would you go for 90%? Why or why not?
But what 90% would you throw?
And what 10% would you keep?
The 90% you would throw would include material that Umar included in the Quran. And he was priviledged to have heard Mohammad. And Muslims axiomatically argue that Mohammad was prophet, the words he heard revealed were from Allah and therefore, how can you chuck anything away?
What you are going to have to come up with is a alternative theological model that is consistent and makes sense to a Muslim and explains their early history.
I think the odds are 0%.
Given the inconsistencies within Islam, the general Muslim understanding in 2007 of the Quran, the Hadith and Sira is reasonably consistent with their early history under Muhammad and the next 4 Caliphs.
I dont beleive their theological model is that different from Muhammads.
And that means the current 2007 understanding of Womens role in Islam is, unfortunately, Islamically correct (with some of your points debatable).
It is rather similar to the early Christian debates as to what constituted scripture:
e.g. Marcion accepted just Luke and Pauline letters. He rejected the OT and other parts of the NT.
UKL.
Yes, it does count, at least with me.
I have to go, but I will just answer it this way, though I know you'll likely not understand.
Mustafa decries the out-of-context historical bashing of Islam that tells only one side of the story. The Ottoman Empire employed jizya, that's true. But the people who paid it did not have to serve in the Ottoman army, which was a draft situation, because they were of another religion, therefore the "servants of the princes of foreign powers". For example, Catholics paid jizya, but could not be forced into serving in an Ottoman army that would fight Christians. When the British Empire demanded an end to dhimmitude, Christians and Jews revolted, because they were more than willign to pay the tax if they could get out of the things it bought. Now not telling THAT part rather leaves out a whole bunch of stuff -- like the fact that the Ottoman Muslims saved 2 milliion Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 by the Christians and then save 40,000 of them again by hiding them in the caves of Cappadoccia when Christian Crusaders attacked them. When the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire sent the ships to Cadiz, he sent them to save the "Older Brother" and felt it his duty as a Muslim. But all of that is forgotten in the version of Ottoman history that are told for the purpose of convincing the masses that Islam is all bad.
While this goes on, what is also ignored is the that in Europe at the time, Jews were burned as heretics, stripped of ****ALL**** civil rights -- we're not talking a tax here, we're talking you're not allowed to live in the city walls, and Martin Luther is calling on people to burn your synagogue and giving people permission to kill you by saying that you "shouldn't be protected on the highways." And if that weren't enough, if you're Jewish at this time in Western Europe, you're being blamed for the death of Christ and it's just one pogrom after the other. In Russia, if the price of a loaf of bread goes up, the Jews are to blame. The invention of Zionism by Theodore Herzl was the direct result of a 19th century full of so many pogroms in Western Europe that he came the conclusion that only if there were Jewish state could there be safety. And he wasn't talking about the Middle East when he said it.
There are any number of historians who will tell you that the rise of the Third Reich would have been impossible without the collapse of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, and that is quite likely the truth.
And when Jews started arriving from Europe to Israel after the War, Muslims waved into the surf and carried them bodily to the shore to help them. I am quite well aware of what the Mufti of Jerusalem did, but that was not the major feeling among the Palestinians then, though that feeling is dead now.
So when Muslims read a one-sided history and a one-sided characterization of Islam, they are at once dismayed, sometimes angered, and always fearful that the West continues to disseminate into open airwaves the very things Al Qaeda would most like to convince Muslims are true.
...............
On the other side of it, the pure propaganda put out by some -- and Mustafa Akyol is NOT among them -- that Islam is all sweetness, goodness and light is the kind of saccharine BS that leaves a culture in harm's way to an incredible degree.
Therefore, people like Robert and Bat Ye'or have been trying to warn people of the dangers -- Ye'or herself stripped of Egyptian citizenship because she was Jewish and Robert determined to expose every single Qur'anic verse and hadith that Al Qaeda uses day in and day out to convince Muslims they can and should kill with impunity.
It is ridiculous for Muslims to accuse Ye'or and Spencer of being unfair, when it's Al Qaeda they should be railing at about this stuff.
As I said earlier to Hezbollah_supporter:
How very brave of you to come in here and "defend your faith" under an anonymous handle, when you will not find the enemy here. The enemies of Islam and Muslims are Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Ansar-al Islam, Gema'a al Islamiya, Jemaeh al Islamiya, and the Janjaweed Militia, to name a few.
Taking offense at the same words spoken by a Westerner that a Muslim SHOULD decry to the face of Al Qaeda is a dangerous waste of time.
In fact, in my way of seeing things, all have something to learn from the other. I see Spencer, Ye'or and Akyol as natural friends. I believe they have been very much "set up" by others, and that's where my real anger lies in this.
And I look forward to a time when they can meet each other, as I think they will see something in the other -- and each other's point of view -- of tremendous worth.
I do not know Bat Ye'or, except by things that Robert has said about her, but I know this: What she says of her own suffering in Egypt is the truth, and she is brave and beautiful for having laid it out.
But I do know Robert and Mustafa. I have friendships with both. And NEITHER of them has EVER said a word to discourage me in my friendship with the other. They are both of tremendous good will.
And, I like to think that one of these days they will find common ground; though I do not expect them ever to entirely agree with each other, they are, effectively, trying to accomplish the same thing.
And in that, they share a space they sometimes do not realize. Because I can see the overlap between them, and mostly I think they do not.
So ... I wish treasure both of them.
I have to go.
Thank you for talking about real points, not just dumping one attack after the other for two solid days.
Well, OK, UKL ... just one more and I gotta go.
Islamic feminists are one of the most successful groups of lawyers and theologians on this planet. They have a guts that is just remarkable, because they are doing this in the most dangerous conditiosn in the world.
These are the women who are the lawyers for women in Pakistan and Nigeria. They defend rape victims and win their cases. They are the lawyers bringing anti-sharia laws to the Pakistani parliament. They are the women who got the Nigerian pregnant woman's death sentence for zina overturned.
You know how they did it?
In the Qur'an, there are FUNDAMENTAL verses that declare women's equality. Based on that, they overturned her death sentence, because the MAN didn't get punished for sleeping with her AT ALL.
This violated a basic tenet of shari'a laid down in the fundamental spiritual verses (Meccan). And that's how they argued it. And they won.
They bring men to court for honor killing and they win. Not as much penalty as they should have, but 10 years ago, nobody got a conviction at all.
Islamic feminism has THRIVED on the internet, because women can convene and talk outside the presence of men (well, everywhere but Saudi Arabia, which has the most advanced listening software in the world -- one reason a lot of Saudis buy internet service from Qatar). They are everywhere now. And they are starting to have a HUGE impact.
And when they convened in Spain a few months ago -- from all over the world -- they read some of Akyol's stuff on chucking the bad hadith. I cannot TELL you what an impact that had on the women that Mustafa said that. And they will be arguing against the hadith.
Their numbers are HALF THE POPULATION of the Islamic world, and they are now pushing hard.
They may be one of the great assets the world has for transforming Islam, becuase despite the danger they are so determined that the next generation of Muslims women will not be the possession of a man or a religion, but person with the rights they believe that Allah and the spiritual verses of the Qur'an gives them.
The fact that they are winning in the most hostile shari'a courts in the world means something.
And the fact that the Indonesians and Malaysians refused to let go of their secular governments by margins of nearly 80% in 2003 means something, too.
They're scared, and the truth is that dealing with Kaiser Soze is terrifying. When you have Al Qaeda et al. capable of such debased violence against any dissent, you have a terrorized population. And that requires tremendous courage and strength to go up against. But they do.
I would suggest you goggle a woman named Konca Kuris and read her life story. She is dead now. And she knew what they might do to her, but she stood up anyway.
That deserves some respect. And Mustafa Akyol is a friend to Muslim women, a friend to Christians and Jews, and a friend to moderate Islam and a future of peace, benign religion, nad mutual respect.
And, again, I deeply hope that there comes a time in my lifetime when I see these people, who have the same aims, as the friends I think they might become.
Morgaan Sinclair:
It has to happen within the religion. But pressures brought to bear from OUTSIDE the religion -- from government, from human rights NGOs, from exposure (this site), from political and economic realities (a reason to get off oil), can help tremendously.
That is not enough. Do you remember the church putting pressure on Galileo to recant his beliefs that the Earth goes round the Sun?
Galileo was 100% right, so who cares how many people put pressure on him? Any victory of theirs is temporary, in the long term, falsehood cannot stand.
And so, what difference does it make if pressure is bought to bear if Muslims basically believe that their beliefs are correct?
AND your point is actually THE reason to support good Muslims. It's the point that Pipes made today so well:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4497
I think Pipes is valuing things that are not sufficent. So whether I choose to support what Pipes supports, it will eventually fall.
In all of the arguments here, you have failed to appreciate that truth is paramount. It comes first. It is the basis of all of RS's arguments with Muslims. I think you think that truth is secondary, as long as there is a big enough movement (what Pipes reported on), that is all that matters. It is not too far removed from "the end justifies the means". If good things for Women are the result, who cares if new Islamic foundation is all falsehood? Well it wont last. So you should care.
You ought to take look at Lawrence Auster's arguments with Daniel Pipes.
Pipes argues there is such thing as "moderate Islam". Auster argues there is no such thing, Islam periodically goes through less malign phases which can be mistaken for moderateness.
And I think a good assessment of the past 1400 years of Islam will conclude that Auster is right, Pipes beliefs on moderate Islam is just wishful thinking.
Lawrence Auster:
The Search for Moderate Islam: Part I - Does it Exist?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=16799
The Search for Moderate Islam: Part II
If it doesn't exist, then what?
www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=16801
Pipes finally admits the problem is Islam, not “radical” Islam
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/005023.html
"Caroline, please do enlighten me as to why slander should be protected speech and why you feel your own personal freedom of expression would cramped by someone saying they won't lie down and take slander and will exercise their full rights under the law if you do it again?"
I have seen numerous instances in which posters, operating under the normal rough and tumble of forums such as this - have made casual insults towards other posters and also quite frequently have made the sorts of casual inferences that some posters made towards you today - i.e. her arguments sound like the usual apologetics - ergo I infer she's a Muslim - the sorts of inferences that get made ALL THE TIME in such forums but you are somewhat unique in wielding a sledgehammer in response by calling such casual insults and incorrect inferences slander and lies and defamatory. People on a forum such as this, who are already concerned about threats to freedom of speech, which are becoming very real indeed in criticizing islam, should not have to put up with your hypersensitivity and extraordinary ego and threats of defamation and lawsuits in response to such comments.
In other words, get over your damned self! The last thing the free world needs at this point, especially at a site like this, is a hypersensitive person who actually threatens to sue posters here. Geez. Even the Muslim trolls here show more fortitude and strength of character in their ability to take on numerous posters attacking them. Sublimer was a great recent example of such.
"And while you're at it comment on any one of any of a hundred posts in this thread that SPOKE to points, posts I wrote, posts anybody else wrote."
Morgaan - I have commented on the substance of hundreds of posts here over the last several years (many more than you have). If I don't have anything to add of substance (or simply aren't in the mood to post), I generally keep my mouth shut and read with interest what others have to say. It is rare indeed that I have been pissed off enough at one of our own that I have chosen to address myself to them. It's something I almost never do because I see no cause for it. You, I am sorry to say, are an exception. And it is my right on a forum such as this to choose to address another poster, rather than the topic itself. You're not exactly a withering wallflower Morgaan. So I trust that you can handle it that I feel compelled to take issue with you when have asked for other posters here to be banned (a previous thread) and now when you have actually threatened to sue other posters here. I find that despicable and have felt compelled to comment on it directly precisely BECAUSE I find it so despicable.
Morgaan Sinclair wrote:
"In the Qur'an, there are FUNDAMENTAL verses that declare women's equality."
Could you please let me know what they are, or guide me to someplace that lists such verses?
I mean, I have serious doubts as to how they can co-exist with ones about women't testimony and beating and being covered, etc, etc.
I'm commenting on your posts, as you have requested.
Oh, and bravo for these brave women fighting the good fight. More power to em!
Caroline, just to point out, you made NO point relevant to the discussion and your WHOLE post is another ad hominem attack.
Mo Foe ...
I'm sorry. I can't do it right now as I should be gone and out of the house already.
But here's a start. You'll find these 53 books on Islamic feminism very enlightening.
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Gender-Jihad-Womens-Reform/sim/1851684638/1/ref=pd_sexpl_esi/002-2293695-9632817
I'm waiting for "A Tribute to Morgaan Sinclair."
UKL: I think Lawrence Auster has been pretty nasty to both Pipes and Spencer (see multiple comments by Robert on this site). Anybody who doesn't do as he likes is "consorting with the enemy" or some such nonesense.
If you want to know what Pipes says, read Pipes, not Auster.
Caroline --
Americaningermany and I have been corresponding, and she asked me if I could get your e-mail address. But if you don't want to post it here, then she and I would completely understand!
~Champ
Just to set the record straight:-
I haven't read much of this thread but I've seen Robert addressing "watcher" as an alias for "chris".
I am "watcher".
I have nothing to do with "Chris", etal, whoever he/they is/are.
I will email Robert about this.
Watcher ...
I'm sure it's hard to keep this straight with people posting anonymously. And I'm sure Robert will be glad to hear you're not Chris. Welcome back.
watcher:
You're right-- you're "watcher." The other guy is "Watcher." Unfortunately the system for registering usernames isn't case sensitive (we've had the same issue with other duplicate sets of names).
I don't know what we can do about it, though I think "Watcher" has gone back to posting as "An American."
But we know you're "you," if that's any consolation.
Marisol Seibold
Jihad Watch News Editor
"Caroline, just to point out, you made NO point relevant to the discussion and your WHOLE post is another ad hominem attack."
Morgaan - you manage to make nearly every thread you post on about YOU. Therefore, my comments directed towards you ARE relevant to the discussion. I.E. I am now disussing YOU, something I would think you'd be quite pleased about actually. Of course, if you truly DON'T wish to become the subject of discussion on any given thread, I'm quite certain you're intelligent enough to figure out how to accomplish that goal. (Hint - threatening to sue other regular posters here would not be a move in the right direction). So you are correct. My posts on this thread are an ad hominem attack, by intention. Indeed, sometimes a cigar IS just a cigar.
(Champ - I hope you and AIG will understand that I do not wish to post my email address on this forum.)
Marisol --
Glad to see you are on! I need your opinion on something. Should JW be a platform for leveling lawsuits? Morgaan has threatened to sue me, and she threatened to sue another poster a few months ago, and this needs to stop. Why is she allowed to do this without being held accountable?
Please reply!
Caroline -- I completely understand! Take care!
Caroline, I am talking about Islamic feminism, the Ottoman Empire, Spencer, Ye'or, Akyol, Konca Kuris, Ayesha, hadith, Qur'an, desert tribalist culture, honor killing, jihad, Pipes, moderate Islam, CEDAW, the Pope, the Arab League, the Equal Rights Amendment, women's rights in Islam, Islamic jurisprudence, Nigeria, Pakistan, moderate Muslim rallies in Turkey and Pakistan, and the upcoming Council on Foreign Relations meeting in New York in two weeks.
You are talking about ... me.
So I think if you start talking the issues you will solve the problem you are creating and then complaining about.
Morgaan, I would like an apology.
And I know what Robert goes through about this, champ, because he posted an appeal on the front page of this website that posters STOP writing inflammatory, denigrating, sexually explicit posts about Muslims because CAIR quotes them and puts Robert's name on them.
That's how I know how he feels about it. I read what he writes.
Morgaan Sinclair,
My opinion may be worthless to you, but what about Robert Spencer's?
Robert Spencer said that Mustafa Aykol's attempt to separate Islam from violent jihad is, and I quote, "mind-numbingly disingenuous".
Spencer in the same article also says that Mustafa Aykol, in speciously denying that abrogation is a significant factor in Islam, "resorts to shallow and base name-calling instead of actually addressing the arguments of his opponents."
Then Spencer says of Mustafa Aykol: "Akyol performs a neat pirouette to avoid the avalanche of quotations that Bostom, others, and I myself invoked from the hadith and sira -- traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his biography -- to justify the killing of captives in Islam. He simply denies the authority of the sources..."
And, about the Armenian genocide, Spencer says of Mustafa Aykol that: "Akyol breezily dismisses the Armenian genocide, in which two million people were slaughtered, as “inter-communal violence,” and blames the Armenians as much as the Ottomans.
This Holocaust denial in itself reveals the utter moral bankruptcy of Akyol’s argument..."
And finally, Spencer says of Mustafa Aykol: "Akyol more and more seems to me like one who is trying to reassure jittery Westerners about Islam, rather than refute the radicals. But his reassurance is hollow, and is only likely to make people less guarded against future attacks by Muslims who do not accept his arguments. His arguments do nothing to stop jihadists from continuing their murderous work."
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15459
An opinion, stated forthrightly as an opinion, is not necessarily slander. "I think you are a crook" is not slander. "You are a crook" might be slander.
If someone says, "I think you, Morgaan, are a Muslim." that is not a slanderous statement. I will gleefully tell you that there is not one thing you can do about it.
Please see my two posts above about Spencer, Ye'or and Akyol.
I have nothing to add to that.
Pelayo, claiming a person is a Muslim when they are not -- claiming they are taqiyyah when they are not -- is NOT opinion. It is a deliberate lie and slander.
champ, I would like an apology for the six months of ad hominem attacks you have launched against me on this website.
Morgaan, I do not know what to say. Taunting? Perhaps. But an opinion, no matter how baseless it may seem to you is not slander, libelous or anything else.
You keep referencing a Senate Bill; I therefore presume it is not yet a law. There is a difference between taunting and threatening.
remote_control
We will have to agree to disagree about Mustafa Akyol. I find him an incredibly good person, and as I say above, I believe that he and Ye'or and Spencer are after the same thing. They are natural friends. And I believe they have been set up and used in their communications with each other.
That said, they (and we) differ in many respects. But for a sampler of what he really believes, I would suggest the following:
I would suggest to anyone that they read Mustafa's recent articles rather than remote_control's cherry-picking attack, which is actually on me, not Mustafa.
Some examples:
Enough of Christophobia
Decrying the Murder of Christians in Istanbul
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/04/enough_with_christophobia.php
Pope Won Hearts and Minds
for Washington Post
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/12/pope_won_hearts_and_minds.php
A Feminist Islamic Reform (Washington Post)
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/07/a_feminist_islamic_reform_in_turkey.php
Holocaust Denial Won't Help Iran -- or Palestinians
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/12/holocaust_denial_wont_help_iranor_palestine.php
Still Standing for Islam -- and Against Terrorism (for Front Page Magazine)
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2004/10/still_standing_for_islam_and_against_terrorism.php
Boshievism in a Headdress
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2005/05/bolshevism_in_a_headdress.php
I Am an Armenian Today
Decrying the murder of Hrant Dink
http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/01/_i_am_armenian_today.php
Now, I count as cherished personal friends BOTH Robert Spencer and Mustafa Akyol. If you have a problem with that, that's YOUR problem.
Mustafa and Robert and I don't have a problem with it. And our discussions about our agreements and disagreements with each other's points are private and extremely respectful all around.
It's law.
And why would you want to taunt someone for having a different opinion about something than you do? Why punish diversity of opinion.
I only wind up pushing back hard after onslaughts that last more than 36 hours.
You guys start off with it on the FIRST post of the day.
You are indistinguishable from the Leftist thugs at Harvard Square bars who first beat up on you and then try to get your projects cancelled if you say that Nancy Pelosi shouldn't have been sucking up to Bashir al-Assad. Where's the difference.
I express a difference of opinion that doesn't utterly conform, lock-step fashion, to YOUR opinions, and I get attacked.
And you'll even do it over a pornographic post I complained about to project this site. Amazing.
And no, saying someone is a taqiyyah Muslim when they are not is tantamount to callign them an enemy of their friends and their country.
And that, my friend, is slander.
P.S. Mustafa Akyol's point about the Armenian Genocide is not as it was made to appear on FPM. The point that the Turks were trying to make is not that it didn't happen and NOT that it wasn't horrible.
They were trying to make the point that Russia and the United States sealed the records of what actually happened in the run-up to the slaughter.
And what happened was that Russian made a deal with the Armenians that if they would help Russia defeat and break up the Ottoman Empire they would give them their own state. So, the Armenians helped by carrying out 80 years of terrorist attacks on the Empire. When vengeance for those attacks came, the Turks tried to genocide them.
Again, we have the act in historical vacuum, though there is nothing, EVER, that can justify 2-3 million Armenians killed. There are people on the FPM website who have family that perished inthe attacks.
However, the records of the Russians, which would be critical to a full telling, are still sealed. That is because it bears evidence not just of the Armenian operations, but also of the set-up the Russians performed on the Armenians that duped them into being a Russian front army. And then, what's worse, is that with the expansion of the USSR, Russia took over and abused the Armenians for decades.
Knowing of this rather secret history, Dr. Bernard Lewis actually denied the Armenian genocide in France and was charged by French courts, stood trial and was convicted of denying genocide. That, I find, shocking.
But I do support the Turks in their attempts to force the United STates and the Russians to open the files and let the whole thing air out.
When Mustafa tried to indicate almost a century of Russian-Armenian complicity in an ongoing terrorist war against the Ottoman Empire on its borders, he got creamed.
I've been to one worlds fair, a picnic, and a rodeo. This is the most interesting thread on JW/DW in a long time. All because of a nine year old girl who lived a long time ago.
I have a very, very thick skin. Call me anything you want, just don't call me late for supper.
Nope -- you first.
Marisol --
Glad to see you are on! I need your opinion on something. Should JW be a platform for posters like champ who engage in endless ad hominem attacks? Why is she allowed to do this without being held accountable?
Please reply!
champ, nobody on this board, and likely nobody in your life, owes you an apology for anything.
Morgaan Sinclair,
Unless Robert Spencer formally and explicitly retracts the article of his on Mustafa Aykol which I quoted, then those quotes I posted of Robert Spencer's stand. And they sufficiently taint Mustafa Aykol as an unworthy partner in our collective struggle against the problem of Islam.
Robert Spencer, being the rhetorical gentleman he is, of course would remain on friendly speaking terms (with a little socializing spice thrown in at a cocktail party, perhaps, now and again) with a Mustafa Aykol, but that is irrelevant to the specific substance of Robert Spencer's characterization -- as significantly exemplified by the quotes I suppled above -- of Mustafa Aykol's stand on key aspects of the most important issue of our time, the problem of Islam.
"Mommy, Billy's lookin' at me."
Sometimes some things just have to be said (written?).
"Pelayo, claiming a person is a Muslim when they are not -- claiming they are taqiyyah when they are not -- is NOT opinion. It is a deliberate lie and slander."
No, what it is is a bloody INFERENCE. The sort of INFERENCE that people make on these anonymous forums all the time. Only someone with a ridiculously inflated sense of their own importance would take themselves so damn seriously as to accuse anyone on a forum such as this of "lies" and "slander" and "defamation of character" in response. Like I said before, for Pete's sake - Get over Yourself! If you seriously want people to listen to what you have to say on the substance, then quit it with the darned "Morgaan show".
Pelayo,
OK, we'll make sure you get supper on time. And it has been an interesting thread.
It really lays out the problem, and if you go reading a lot on the subject of womens' rights in Islam, you find everything from new gender-just hermeneutics by some *brilliant* Islamic scholars to the most hateful interpretations and vicious torturing of women by radicals.
Badawi, whom some call an apologist and some say is a real moderate (I can't decide which is true), has called from a ground-up reevaluation of all the source texts, read against the influx (in waves) of military-political usurpation of the religion in very early times, within a decade or two of Muhammad's death.
Badawi seems to believe that some things that are in the Qur'an actually do not belong there (pre-Islamic mythologists would agree with this, at least in part, as they know some of the Qur'an was copied from pre-Islamic texts as well as being borrowed from the Torah). He (like Akyol) thinks the hadith are mostly completely spurious.
And he believes that the earliest verses of the "transmission" -- which talk about complete equality between the sexes and among the races -- should trump anything that comes out of it.
The early ulema fixed it the other way around, so that the warlike verses and those inimical to women, Christians and Jews (crafted during times of siege) gained precedence over the spiritual precepts, which Badawi and others believe should always have precedence.
So, yeah, it's interesting. And there is now a whole proliferation of published works by Islamic feminists who aren't taking ANY man's word for ANYTHING. And I think they wind up being a dark horse that slips through a thicket of resistance in appealing to conscience and spirituality.
I hope I live long enough to see it all work out.
And this is where I think both sides converge in intent, and where there is a place for both tacks at once: The exposure Robert makes sure is always there is a must, but calling on the times in history where Islam was actually further along in human rights than other cultures extant at the time, is encouraging of the belief that it can transform.
In fact, according to my professor of Iranian/Turkish/Afghan studies, it is this last century that has seen a kind of Islamic fundamentalism that hasn't been seen since the time of Tamiyyah. And at NO time in the past has shari'a ever been the only law (typically there were at least four types) and the only time that just one set of social precepts was insisted upon.
The only exception to that: Saudi Arabia.
Anyhow, yes, fascinating converstation.
remote_control
What you are suggesting, I am afraid is out of the question.
You're not my type, and you couldn't get a good woman like me if your life depended upon it.
And, for the 1000th time, I'm not a Muslim.
We all comment here behind the anonymity of the CRT curtain, few of us know anybody personally. For all we know, some of us may be next door neighbors or co-workers. Why anybody takes this stuff personally to this depth is beyond me.
No, Caroline. When you fully explain it to people over and over again, and they tell the outright lie with knowledge, that is not inference. That is a lie, and it is slander.
Have a look at remote_control's last post. He knows, of course, QUITE well that I am not a Muslim. And a number of people at JW know where I attend church, so they are aware of the fact as well.
I post under my own name, Pelayo. And it is because of anonymous slander taht the law was passed. Arlen Specter got enough of this anonymous slander business.
Caroline, please notice that I wrote an ON-TOPIC post to Pelayo, and you just right back in to talk about me.
Why don't you get a life and stop leaning on me as some kind of topic around which to express yourself. You tiring and boring when you do this.
Come on ... get an intellectual grip and contribute something to this debate.
remote_control
Your use of denigrating language toward women is very indicative of why you took such umbrage at JW's removing a sleazy post of Pig's.
"You're not my type, and you couldn't get a good woman like me if your life depended upon it."
LOL!!
Remote, you must be crying your eyes out.
Regarding the statute Ms. Sinclair references, please be aware that it does not give her a personal right to sue anyone. This statute discusses a federal crime, which would require a federal prosecutor to decide to instigate a proceeding. Second, there is considerable doubt about what Congress intended when it enacted the statute, and whether the statute as written is even constitutional.
Go here for a quick discussion of the statute:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+The+new+annoy+law+explained/2100-1028_3-6025396.html?tag=st.prev
There is also a great deal of further discussion on the Web of what the statute means or might not mean; google it, or just follow posts around.
Regarding the "onslaught" Ms. Sinclair claims she is experiencing, one might point out that noone forced or is forcing her to remain at her computer, logged into this site. Further, any inferences made regarding her religious status, drawn as they were from the statements, reasoning and arguments in her posts, have been corrected by the people who made them. Including me.
Finally, I find Ms. Sinclair's assertion that calling someone a Muslim, whether or not they are one, is "tantamount to calling them an enemy to their friends and their country" is utterly repulsive and hateful. Notonly is it so to the very people she wishes to defend, but also to everyone who wishes to find a way for all Americans to live in equality, dignity, and respect, under a non-religious rule of law.
No mosques burn here. The same cannot be said of churches and synagogues elsewhere.
No, I think remote is just being thrilled he got to use the C-word and the F-word in the same sentence -- and he's had so much fun playing around with the M-word and the T-word all day that he just practically be beside himself with joy. What a day for him!
Now, what do you think of Amina Wadud's assertion that Margot Badran's analysis is correct?
Marwan's Daughter:
I think you might be giving some VERY bad legal advice here. But that's up to you and those who'd like to believe you.
The law reads:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
That's per offense.
MD ...
When you accuse someone of being a taqiyyah Muslim on a site like this -- which is synonmous with an undercover radical Islamist operative -- you most certainly are making an accusation that someone is an enemy.
Is good?
Morgaan - it is ridiculous for you to pretend at this point that this thread is about anything BUT you. It's how every thread you post on turns out. I'm not up to the pretense at this point that this thread isn't about you. So I will just be honest about that fact and post about you. I will reiterate that if that isn't what you want - there are honest ways to avoid it. Stop accusing posters of slander and lies and defamation. Stop running to the teacher to get their posts banned. Stop calling for the banning of regular posters here. Stop threatening to sue people. It's really very simple. I don't give a rats ass if you post under your regular name or your husband is a professor at Harvard. I've never heard of you. Most people here have never heard of the great Morgaan Sinclair. Whether your real name is Morgaan Sinclair or not, to the rest of us you're just some anonymous poster because we don't know you. We don't travel in your apparently elitist circles. Nobody else here accuses those who argue with them and make inferences about them of lies and defamation and slander. And they don't threaten to sue other posters. Like i said earlier, we've had many trolls here, like Sublimer over the past several days, that have handled themselves with real dignity while being attacked by dozens of posters. If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the damned kitchen. Nobody is making you post here. And you could easily rise above the fray by not taking the bait of any posters who criticizes you. You can't, e.g. expect to come on here and not be attacked by Serb posters who visit this forum. You do indeed post a great deal of interesting substance, as I'm sure any poster here would acknowledge. But you are no innocent victim of attack. Rather, it's quite apparent that you are the sort of woman who is used to having her way. Fine. Good for you. But the great thing about a forum like this is that we don't care who the hell you are or who you know. You can't expect to act like some damned imperious princess and not get attacked, especially after you threaten to sue other posters here.
I believe, MD, that you missed remote_control's jihad moment, which was rushed off-site immediately by JW management, in which he accused me of being a FMC. You'll have to figure that out as it's unprintable.
So your assertion that it's all cleared up isn't correct. It'll be cleared up when you and champ and Caroline start talking about the subject instead of me.
Now, what is your opinion of the rallies in Islamabad and Istanbul, and do you agree that in the rallies in Istanbul had a hidden anti-American reference in the use of ABD?
Actually, Caroline, the thread is now about your rants.
Correction:
The thread is now about Caroline's ranting invective, champ's lame zings, and remote_control's use of the C word.
Hit it, Caroline. And make sure you don't trip up and saying some ON TOPIC. We'd hate for you to blow your perfect record.
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Bully for you Morgaan. Way to give ammunition to the enemy. But since Morgaan is more important than anything else, including the anti-jihadist cause, hey, what the hell?
Speaking to Marwan's Daughter, and only Marwan's Daughter,
I agree that suggesting
1) someone might be susceptible to taqiyyah and
2) excuse me, I didn't understand you to be a Muslim, and I apologize for any misunderstanding, when you frankly haven't read essentially any of their posts to be knowledgable of their background, writings, etc.
is not proof of intent, and insufficient cause for invoking the federal statute.
Actually Morgaan - this thread is now about your ego - same as every thread you post on.
Where on earth do you come up with this? If I wanted to call you an "undercover radical Islamist operative," I would have done so. Those guys appear to be busy in New Jersey, anyway, and have no time to blog.
I simply pointed out that your arguments in other posts, regarding Aisha and womens' rights, were very similar to those made by Muslim apologists -- so similar, in fact, that an inference could be drawn that you were in fact a Muslim, but did not wish to reveal it. For example, it is still difficult to see how anyone not enamored of Mohammed can claim with a straight face, as you did, that the Koran provides "equal rights" for women, when that statement is manifestly untrue. No one claimed you have a bomb underneath a burka, or are any sort of dangerous enemy to anyone or anything. Further, the inferences made were corrected immediately, as you wished.
What's puzzling me is how someone who obviously believes so strongly in womens' rights, as you do, and is willing to put foot to pavement about it, as you seem to, would be so keen on defending a faith which systematizes, codifies, sanctifies and practices womens' subjugation to the extent Islam does.
My point, Caroline, is that many of you come on this site to get your anger management problems handled by other people.
Go handle them yourself.
I will not be leaving.
I will not be "handling attacks by dozens of posters" as if they had the right to be horrific bullies and spew sexist invective. And (to wit) it is not unexpected that Serb posters will attack anyone who disagrees with them or stands up to their demands for ultimate power over everyone, as 100,000 dead bodies in Bosnia and Kosovo attest. But that the generation posting population of this site puts up with this incessant gang-banging does make them, or you, right. Just attest to YOU having to have YOUR way about everythign.
YOU, Caroline, never stop trying to control the speech on this board that is NOT slander. You can't keep the attention off yourself ANYTIME you come on here.
And if Pelayo or anybody else tries to have an ON TOPIC conversation, you're going to stop and bring it back onto what YOU just have to get your rocks off about.
And God help us all if people are talking to each other and not paying attention to you.
remote_control may be one hostile, invective-spewing troll, but he's got something to say.
Infidel Pride is an attack machine, but at least he thinks.
Concerned Citizen may be a bigot, but he's got some brains about.
But not you, not champ, not Pig Farmer.
It's all about you all the time. Your chirpy, supposedly intelligent zings and long tirade invectives against people personally.
YOU NEVER HAVE ANYTHING TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE POINT BEING DISCUSSED.
YOU ARE 100% AD HOMINEM VITRIOL AND THAT'S ALL YOU ARE.
And you will NOT let the rest of discuss a salient point.
So far from its being "all about me", Caroline, it's all about YOU.
And you are *** USING *** me to get attention for yourself.
Again, speaking only to Marwan's Daughter:
I further agree that any
"assertion that calling someone a Muslim, whether or not they are one, is 'tantamount to calling them an enemy to their friends and their country' is utterly repulsive and hateful."
There are numerous agent provocateur's here, some are Muslim, some are not. But I believe none of us wish any of them, Muslim or not, any personal ill will.
Speaking only to Caroline:
Excellent posts as always. Thank you.
Unindicted others: Thank you.
It's clear from the way she speaks taht Caroline is a member of the Serbian Defense League, which posted this on their website:
Dear reader, our pages prove beyond shadow of doubt that Jews, and specifically Jews, have conspired to break up Yugoslavia with the intent to form new states that would cast votes of support for Israel in the UN Security Council. Since only the Serbs opposed the breakup, Jewish media and organizations conducted smear campaigns based on lies to turn the world against our people who saved countless Jews in WWII. I invite you to join the Serbian Defense League and help bring the criminals to justice.
Only to everyone other than Concerned Citizen:
It's quite obvious from the use of the word "provocateur" that any opinion not utterly conforming to Concerned Citizen's views is considered a "provocation" not an opinion.
Tells you a lot about which people think they have a right establish "norms" on this site.
And, of course, Caroline, no matter how many times you claim you are not a member of the anti-Semitic Serbian Defense league, it won't matter. Because I'm just "infering" from what you say that you are. So no matter how many times you say it's not true, I can still "infer" it, publish it, and it's not slander.
And if you say it is, I'll just have 100 of my closest friends come on and tell you what you say is a "provocation".
I do wish that even at this late hour that all of us who wish to live in peace with people of all race, faiths, and creeds, could as the Reverend Rodney King put it
Ca..Ca..Can't www..wwee...all just get along?
Even if some believe Aisha was 9, and some 19, or 29 or 109. Even if some believe that the Bible is as tortured and repugnant as other books (un-named, of course), or believe that Jews just want to take over the world. Whether they believe Muhammad was a pedophile, or a geriatrophile, or just somewhere inbetween...
Ca..Ca..Can't www..wwee...all just get along?
Come on, your list of enemies is longer than that; there are at least 50 posters who cannot stand you and your "contribution" to JW.
But I'm honored to be among the best of the best!
Fine by me, Concerned Citizen. But it stops for me when people lie, repeatedly, after being told the truth.
I think you missed remote_control's classic, which was FUUMC. You'll have to figure that you. Marisol's quick trigger finger was fast, but I got it for my archives anyhow.
Someone who has a different opinion than yours is not a provocateur, CC. They're just a person with a different opinion.
Alarmed Pig Farmer,
I would at this time like to distance myself from any statements made or not made on this website, including or not including this thread, that I might, in any way, calculable or incalculable, be ascribed or not ascribed, to having any more brains than you.
Your posts regarding the goings on in Minnesota (e.g. FGM) have been some of the most horrifying, yet enlightening material I have ever read.
Morgaan - apparently my excessive attention to you today has given you the mistaken impression that I spend most of my time at this forum leveling ad hominem attacks at other posters. Like many other posters here, I do indeed spend time debating trolls when they come here. But I can assure you, that the attention I am devoting to you on this thread today, is unique in my several years of posting here. One of the reasons I feel compelled to do it is because I cannot stomach your sheer hypocrisy, as when you state
"YOU, Caroline, never stop trying to control the speech on this board"
Have I called for you to be banned Morgaan? Have I run to Spencer and asked for any posts to be deleted? Have I threatened to sue anyone?
No. None of it. Rather, I have reacted in anger at your attempts to control people's freedom of speech. Scroll back to my very first post on this thread and you will see that that is what prompted me to jump into the fray with you in the first place.
Actually, I will find it very easy to ignore your posts in the future. And we will find out who has a more impressive record of antagonizing people over time. If a pattern keeps repeating itself around one, however, sometimes it's a good idea to stop and do some self-reflection.
I don't have enemies, champ. Other people may want to be enemies, but I don't actually have a list of enemies at all.
Yup, FPM is just the place for the kind of sty talk that went on here earlier, that's for sure.
I value other peoples opinions. I would shed my blood to protect their right to express them. I believe that this is one of those truths "we hold to be self evident". I believe that free discourse is what proves we have that right. I think that is what makes our country great.
I also hold my Christianity to be self-evident. I would shed my blood spread this message. I believe that my scriptures are sacred and not to be trifled with. But I would only, ever, shed MY blood and some ink to keep that from happening. I suppose that makes me a bigot, and no, I'm not going to sue for slander.
Caroline, slander is not protected speech for a reason.
And Robert removed Pig's pornographic post. And then the rest of you little punishers went on a two-day jihad to punish me for having pointed it out to him.
No, Concerned Citizen, none of that makes you a bigot or a slanderer. What makes you a bigot is your invective when someone disagrees with you. And what makes you slanderous is when you knowing lie to try to character asssassinate somebody else.
And Caroline, the problem with you is that you are punisher. And you love it.
Well, Ms. Sinclair, you inferred from a single post that I was somehow calling you a "undercover radical Islamist operative," when I did nothing of the sort.
Criticizing Islam can and does regularly bring threats of violence, mayhem, and death -- not only to the writer, artist, translator, filmmaker, or poster, but also to their families, schools, and churches. Islam has had such an effect on us that posting anonymously can be the only way to engage in such speech without fearing for one's life and family. The content of your posts shows that you have nothing to worry about, however, and I am glad you feel free to "protect" yourself from a vague statute by posting with your real name.
I happen to agree that name calling of the sort you describe does not belong on any civilized website, and I'm glad it was removed. I also understand, however, that frustration can sometimes make people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do.
I didn't see the so-called porn that was supposedly posted. I also agree that pornography is not well placed on a political website. However, some of the responses posted about the sexual content of Islamic holy texts were well put, justified, and completely defensible in the context of the discussion -- which is, after all, about Mohammed's molestation of a child.
And Caroline, you should be thrown off this board for being simply mean as a snake.
champ should be thrown off because she does nothing other than try to join whatever argument is going on and throw kerosene on it.
And I iterate, Caroline: You are punisher, and you love it.
MD ... what Robert removed from the site was a post by Alarmed Pig Farmer that was WAY over the edge. He drew some very graphic images which are not part of any reports on what happened vis-a-vis Muhammad and Aisha.
Several other posts were also removed. One person, who was the LEAST offender of all of them, immediately apologized to Robert when I pointed out that when people post this stuff it winds up on CAIR attributed to Robert, who would NEVER talk this way.
There are thousands of sexual references in this thread, but only three of them were of this nature. The rest may be explicit, but they are not a case of using the board for ... well ... other purposes, if you get my drift.
What then transpired was 36 hours of attacks on me for "limiting" pig farmer's free speech, winding up with accusations, as you've seen, that I am a taqiyyah Muslim (which is someone who's a radical Islamist pretending to be a Christian, an undercover jihadist). That is what it means to say someone is a "Taqiyyah Muslim".
Speaking only to those who don't know me and hold me no ill will:
Knowing [sic] (knowingly)
Key word. I don't know anybody on this thread. Whether they claim to post under their own name or not, how would I know. I read posts when I recognize the names. I don't recognize yours except for the reasons given above, for which I apologize for offending you by ignoring you. I've never heard of you. If that is offensive, again, I'm sorry.
I fail to see how you can "character assassinate" someone you have never heard of and don't personally know or recognize as a celebrity.
"And Caroline, you should be thrown off this board for being simply mean as a snake."
And it never occurred to me to call for you to be banned here Morgaan. Are you grasping the irony yet?
Caroline is not mean as a snake -- you are!! And everyone knows it. Caroline is one of my favorite posters, and always has been. She has never said anything to anyone at any time that I did not agree with or stand behind.
I've been posting on JW going on two years, and I've never heard her say one blessed thing that was mean. Not to you, not to anyone.
She isn't mean -- she didn't say anything that was MEAN to you, she's telling you the truth; but you're too obtuse to hear the truth. You're the one who makes invective comments.
Would someone give this woman a mirror.
One BILLION Muslims (give or take a few) believe that Aisha was 9 when first taken. Very few have expressed any concern about this, usually when being discussed by non-Muslims. Through no fault of their own, many of these peoples have limited access to information, and deficient education by Western standards. A higher percentage have less than average IQ utilizing Western standards and testing methods, through no fault of their own. Many of these peoples have reproductive rates far in excess of replacement values and those of their Western counterparts. "Traditional" Islamic teaching and indoctrination are increasing significantly, and tha source of funding of such efforts is increasing wildly.
This amounts to MASSIVE, INCREASING INERTIA to any revisionism of accepted precepts.
Ms. Sinclair: Which dictionary do you have that defines a "taqqiyah Muslim" in the way you describe? I certainly was not aware of this definition; I'd been under the impression that taqiyyah was the Islamically sanctioned practice of deception, either to other, hostile Muslim sects or to non-Muslims. Arguing to non-Muslims that the Koran provides women full and equal rights with men, for example, when it manifestly does not, might be version of taqiyyah if one is a Muslim aware of the plain statements in the Koran.
And no-one, to my knowledge, has even implied that you are a jihadist; those guys get maps to army bases and practice firing AK-47s and the like, and I'm sure you don't do that.
... however, if someone believes that they can, with a tiny cohort, effect an academic transformation on such a MASSIVE uneducated populace, using technological tools of communication with which the host populace is not privy,
they do not have my financial support, because I believe it to be misguided and futile
they do not have my physical support, because I have better risk/benefit ratios on other utilizations of my blood (see above)
they do not have my ideological support, because I just don't believe it is true
BUT, they do have my prayers, and I wish them God-speed, the best of luck, and all of the best.
Yeah, I know, CC. I think it will take awhile and a LOT of effort, but just because it's daunting doesn't mean we don't have to try.
And not all Muslims are so uneducated that they are willing to buy specious hadith hook line and sinker.
If you go to Amazon you'll find 53 books there on Islamic feminism, and they've all been written in the last five years.
In Indonesia, one of the heads of the madrassahs wrote an incredible piece saying that simply teaching Islam to young Muslims boys is NOT enough. He makes a beautiful argument that Islam is depriving boys and girls in Indonesia of a way to interface the world.
Until the rise of radicalism in the last 1/4 of the 20th century, there were incredible strides made, incredible modernization, and then Muslims hit this reaction. Now it wasn't everywhere, but part of the reaction was that Islam was actually moving very fast.
(1)In Iran, the constitution of 1926 (I think) granted women full equal rights. They had more rights just then than American women had. Then came the short skirts, the PhDs, the education, the travel. Iran became a modern state. Then they got Khomeini.
(2) In Egypt, an imam declared equal women's rights as part of the Egyptian nationalist movement which threw off British rule. At the same time they started the University of Cairo. By 1920 women were running around without cover for the first time in Egyptian history. Then came Qutb and AlBanna of the Muslim Brotherhood.
(3) In Afghanistan in the 1950s, women wore mini-skirts, went to University, and were incredibly free because Zahir Shah GAVE it to them because he thought it was the right thing to do.
Etc.
Then you get to the Iranian revoolution of 1979 and Iran goes to hell. The Soviets invade Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance can't push back the Taliban that Benazir Bhutto financed as an extranational army to product shipments between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And then you get the rise of Al Qaeda out of the Ikhwan in Southern Saudi Arabia, angry that they'd been suppressed by the Al Saud.
And then you find that in the underbelly is this mess of ideology.
My theory is that the most important thing about 9/11 is simply that "nothing succeeds like success." When Muslims saw that they could hurt us ... Muslims who are poor, ashamed and carry pride they can't justify ... it made them suddenly fantasize that they could actually take over the world.
And here we are.
But there are other forces -- women, intellectuals, theorists, shari'a experts -- who may not want WEstern culture, but they don't want their own, either.
They want a change. They want freedom, peace, and equality. And looming in the not-too-distant future is the end of the oil boom. Global climate change awareness and $3.50 at the pump in California is making Americans mad and ready for a change.
So there are things moving. It seems daunting. It seems impossibly tiring.
But giving up isn't an option. We have to keep playing Knight of the Mirrors while simultaneously support Muslims trying to make a change -- and sometimes it's just difficult to figure out who that is.
But we have to, or what do we leave our children without even mountain an effort to effect the changes we need?
Thanks champ. You're a sweetheart.:-)
champ, it is pathetic that you try to see yourself as the "best of the best" self-declared enemy that another person has. It's pathetic.
Why don't you JUST ONCE try to be something other than a sniper. All you do here is play sniper.
You must have something to sya.
champ, Caroline is a punisher. She has been punishiing me ever since the first Kosovo thread. Virtually everything you and she said on that thread had to be removed for egregious invective.
And you aren't doing her case any good.
She's a punisher and being defended by a sniper only makes her look worse.
Did you girls actually think I'd put up with close to 100 attack posts from you and eventually not name you for what you are?
She is mean. And so are you. You START OFF on threads attacking, jabbing, sniping, accusing, name-calling.
And then EVENTUALLY, whoever you're attacking starts throwing it back and you, and then you pretend you're being attacked.
You're punishers, and you love it, which is why you follow me thread to thread never speaking to any point of mine or anybody else's. It's because the discussion isn't why you're here.
You're here to find somebody to punish, and who better than someone who consistently complains about pornographic or genocidal posts???
That's right, Caroline. Suck her in and dig her grave.
MD, please don't play any more games. Everybody on this board and in this society defines taqiyyah Muslim as someone of ill will towards this country.
You're the only one I snipe with, Mo, the only one. Why is that?
Sniper Champ! I like that -- it has a nice ring to it!
You're welcome, Caroline! I meant every word!
CC wrote:
BUT, they do have my prayers, and I wish them God-speed, the best of luck, and all of the best.
Well, I can encourage you by saying this (I hope): The masses follow the leaders. And there is some GREAT shaking among the leaders.
I'm too tired to do it now, but King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia last October SHOOK UP the succession to the throne, basically saying: You get off this Wahhabi rant or you don't become king. This left Prince Nayef making the statement the other day that "separating men and women in the culture is unIslamic". This is from the worst Wahhabi in the entire House of Sau'd.
It can be done, but it is hard, and it is incredibly nerve-wracking and exhausting. It's unbelievable really.
champ, you're like a killer who's satisfied with what they do if they can just believe they'll get their name in the paper.
My name is Morgaan, not Mo. Robert's name is Robert, not Robbie.
You may not want ever to become an adult, but the rest of us like it.
"But we have to, or what do we leave our children without even mountain an effort to effect the changes we need?"
Maybe, but I still don't subscribe to Pipes' "'Moderate Islam' is the solution". Again, call me a bigot, but I believe Christianity is the solution. Let me clarify that I mean genuine Christianity, the kind Bertrand Russell said has never been attempted. Selfless, convicted, martyring Christianity. (It caught the attention of the Roman Empire before it got appropriated and misused. Despite that, where is the Roman Empire today? Who would have thought it would fall?) What if I'm right? Will we leave THAT to our children? Paraphrasing Serge Trifkovic, if it is not Christianity, it will have to be something like it. Can we construct such out of Islam, retaining the Medinan surahs?
CC ...
I don't find your statement bigoted, though Srdja Trifkovic is someone I have learned the hard way not to trust.
I would love to see a Bertrand Russell Christianity, but I don't know if framing a conflict in terms of Crusade/Jihad is necessarily a good idea. Christianity has had its nightmare periods, too, and I am a little afraid of the Pope's tendency toward stringent control of women and sexuality. By that I mean that I don't like the Pope's insistence on celibacy and complete refusal of any form of birth control with the planet facing an unfeedable population of 9 billion by 2050.
Also, Christianity has some 1,500 denominations, so it's very diffuse, and typically involves a separation of Church and state. And it can't overcome Islam in the foreseeabl future.
What MIGHT work is a a series of human rights agreements based on Christian principles, which most are anyhow.
I actually do agree with Pipes, who agrees with Robert on the need for Islam to get rid of the bad verses and completely disavow them, if I'm reading both of them correctly. I know that Pipes said that he and Spencer have "no disagreement". I think they have been trying to put together a paper about this for awhile.
Falling over, goodnight all.
To Morgaan Sinclair:
Thanks for the link to the 53 books on Islamic Feminism. It is eye-opening to even realize these books exist. Now, I'll have to read one or two...
However, that illustrates a problem I see with the whole notion of reform. Writing a book isn't going to reach illiterate folks, and I understand that many Muslims (and heck people of all denominations) are illiterate. They, the illiterate masses of Muslims, that is, only know what they've memorized out of the Quran, and what their imams tell them.
Another interesting observation: the use of language even from a feminist like yourself, that equal rights must be "given" to women, usually by a man in power. You even said "In Afghanistan in the 1950s, women wore mini-skirts, went to University, and were incredibly free because Zahir Shah GAVE it to them because he thought it was the right thing to do." Equal rights aren't anything that need to be "granted" by the benevolent male leaders, imho.
Finally, and perhaps terminally, the fact that the Quran is considered by most of your traditional Muslims as the immutable word of Allah, and it contains injunctions to kill the unbeliever and lots of other I don't see how attempts at reform will work without taking the Islam out of Islam. But, I agree with you that the effort must be made, regardless of how hard or seemingly impossible it appears.
However, I disagree with you that anything on this website could be considered slander, because the definition of slander as I understand it is that it is spoken. Libel, which is written, would be the more correct term. However, I think you would have a hard road getting any convictions over what has happened on this thread, or on any of the others on which you have threatened lawsuits.
Furthermore, I think, from reading your posts for the past several months that I have detected a pattern. You start out on-topic and have generally solid, impassioned and substantive posts. I applaud these and always learn new things from them.
Then, someone disagrees with you and uses sarcasm, or metaphors to which you take offense, and thereafter you threaten to sue, get the disagree-ers banned, and start calling them names in turn ("punisher," "mean as a snake," "sniper" etc come to mind). Even as you call them names, you claim that they are all ad hominem attacks on you.
That makes the thread devolve, and indeed become all about you. I'm sorry to report that I've seen it on virtually every thread to which you contribute. Furthermore, your attempt to silence people with threat of lawsuits reminds me of the tactics of CAIR. I'm not calling you a Muslim Taquiya or otherwise; I'm calling it as I see it.
Mote in the eye versus a beam.... ?
Finally, to quote Billy Bragg: If you've got a list, I wanna be on it!
"Suck her in and dig her grave."
Taste good -- you will be eating those words.
Nighty Night, Mo! Shows over for the night. Yawn!!
Mo Foe -- that was spectacular!! Bravo!!
Suggestion for Mo Foe:
Watch the next Kosovo thread. Count the number of attacking posts I let pass before I start pushing back. I usually give them about 36 hours. Then I push back.
And I'm well within my rights when I do.
But dissent is punished heavily on this site. You conform or it's mass and massive attacks.
And THAT is the CAIR tactic, not my exposure of it or my unwillingness to be a punching bag for people for whom it's a sport.
I'm not keeping the list. There is one, but I'm not the one keeping it. And I won't be the one who does some enforcement about it when the time comes. Just like I wasn't the one who removed Pig's post.
So if you want to be on a list, you'll have to contact others.
Slander is not protected speech because it is emotional and reputation violence as a form of intimidation and discredit. On this site, it is a constant dishonest bashing designed to make nonconformists cave and leave the site. It is harassment pure and simple.
And it's a perfect example on a conservative side completely equivalent to the Leftist violent intolerance on Harvard Square.
There is literally no discernible difference.
So I do not accept your assessment of the situation as most of the posts that were slanderous have already been removed and would suggest you watch the next Kosovo thread.
And while you're on threads in the next couple of weeks, watch how the same people take the bashing from thread to thread to thread, even when I am not there.
Dissent is not allowed. It is punished with character assassination and emotional bashing and lying.
Just out of curiousity, Ms. Sinclair, have you ever been banned from posting on other websites?
If so, was one or any of the reasons because you threatened to sue other posters?
If so, on what grounds did you threaten to sue them?
If you made such threats, did you ever follow up on them?
If you did, what was the outcome?
"MD, please don't play any more games. Everybody on this board and in this society defines taqiyyah Muslim as someone of ill will towards this country."
No, I'm going to be stubborn and disagree with you. Not "everybody on this board and in this society" believes that a Muslim, even one that deliberately misrepresents the content of his or her creed in accordance with the doctrine of taqqiyah, is necessarily someone of "ill will towards this country." It might be horribly uncomfortable to admit that the weight of Islamic texts show that Mohammed molested a child, and make an argument (rejected by the majority of clerics and believers around the world) that these texts are somehow invalid. This is arguably a misrepresentation of majority Islamic doctrine, but it does not make the person an enemy of this country.
It might also be difficult to admit that the Koran flatly states that women are, in fact, not equal to men in several critical spheres of life; but claiming that it does guarantee equality, while a deliberate misrepresentation, does not make anyone an enemy of this country.
Those are just two examples. The bad guys want to blow up buildings, mow down students with an SUV, massacre soldiers on a U.S. base with machine guns, sue Americans for reporting hijacker behavior to authorities, and shut down free speech because it somehow "insults" someone dead for 1400 years. That's jihadist. You're not, and nobody ever said you were.
Marwan, your bottom-dwelling isn't going away, is it? First you claim I'm a Muslim. When you get caught you apologize.
A coupla paragraphs later you attribute Mustafa's properly-cited work to me, again insisting I'm a Muslim.
Then you and Mo Foe attribute my refusal to put up with libel and slander as CAIR tactics.
Proof you guys have NO ETHICS. You haven't seen ETHICS in your life.
You spend 100 posts attacking someone -- more than 2,000 of them in the last six months PURELY because your intolerant thugs who allow nobody around who doesn't duckwalk to the end of the world with you -- and then when they get enough of being slandered and bashed, you pull the old bully-wimp number and pretend that you are being "done wrong."
What a crock. CAIR totalitarian tactics are your stock in trade. March your way or you gang up and post endlessly to defame, slander, libel, someone.
Posters like champ and Caroline enter a thread and do NOTHING, NOTHING but prey. No one can have a conversation on a topic.
You stop EVERY conversation to run your number. Now they are joined by you.
And what you expect from "lowly dissenters" is that they take the "attacks of dozens of people" like the unworthy little outcasts you think they are -- like a good little dhimmi.
It doesn't matter whether it's Left or Right, people should stand up to people like you on websites -- and NOT get bullied into homogenized opinion, and NOT put up with snaky snipers and parental snobs.
And after spending months offering information, offering opinions with citation, correcting misinformation only to have lies told over and over again, they should start pushing back as hard as they've been pushed.
Nobody has to march in lock-step with this boards Nazis. You successfully run off most of the people who disagree with you, and you weaken the speech of many, many more.
This isn't the worst site I've seen for PSYCHOFACISM, but it's close.
No, I've never been banned from a site except by accident for 30 minutes once. They apologized.
Since I've never been banned from a site, I cannot have been banned "for a reason".
Allowing as how action will be taken against slander is not a legitimate reason to ban anyone; it's fair warning, though sites can do as they please and at will, which is a right for them I support.
The group of about 10 women on FPM notified FPM management that they would be suing one particular poster for ongoing psychic attack on a personal, pornographic level. Was an admitted sex offender who posted details of his fantasies about us, and targeted one particular women with whom he had had a friendship in the past. His attacks on her were daily for about eight months, and then the rest of us decided to back her up. It never came to such as he was banned, although he returned from another computer under another name, and got it to work. He never accosted her again.
We didn't wind up having to sue, but we would have. Had we done so it's very likely we would have won.
The only responsibility a website like FPM has is moral. They cannot and should not be held legally responsibility for anonymous internet stalking. But if it were my site, just one case of the kind of PSYCHOFASCISM would result in one warning and then banning.
I think the way Pipes does it is good, but he's running approved commentary, not a chat room, and Middle East Forum reviews each comment.
Here it's more conversation, and the site is massive, so it's very hard to deal with.
..............
Now, how about you?
Have you ever been banned?
Have you ever tried to get anybody else banned?
If so, what evil crime did they commit?
Have you ever sued anyone?
If so, what for?
Have you ever threatened to sue anyone?
Have you ever been slandered?
What options do you think you have if someone slanders you for eight months?
What would your actions be? (choose one or more)
(1) Cave
(2) Play nicey-nicey
(3) Cave
(4) Ask 'em please,please,please to stop lying.
(5) Cave and pretend you agree
(6) Cave and play psych tapes to convince yourself that you really are willing to pretend nothing is wrong to keep the peace
(7) When people call you names, you offer to carry their bag for them in an attempt to be "friendly"
(8) Decide that people who started a war that killed 100,000 people really do deserve another country
(9) Cave
(10) Sue without warning
(11) Sue with warning
(12) Cave
(13) Figure that somebody else can be responsible for the truth and go your merry way while the world goes to hell in a handbasket
(14) Cave to psychofascist group pressure
(15) All of the above (see psychiatrist for evaluation for bipolar)
(16) None of the above (check with physician for continued presence of a brain)
(17) Accept what happens to you as God's will
(18) Accept what happens to you as something you must deserve or it wouldn't be happening
(19) Decide that since you're a woman you shouldn't have spoken to begin with
(20) Cave and leave the site.
Morgaan Sinclair
I think Lawrence Auster has been pretty nasty to both Pipes and Spencer (see multiple comments by Robert on this site). Anybody who doesn't do as he likes is "consorting with the enemy" or some such nonesense.
So? What difference does that make? I could not care if Auster is Genghis Khan. What matters is whether what Auster says about "moderate Islam" is true. And it looks true to me. The past 1400 years backs that up. Yes Auster is an abrasive personality but I care more about the issues being talked about (which ultimately affects our countries) than the personalities.
Truth is what matters, nothing else
Morgan: “There are [a] lot of ways to try to control other people's expression, and the one you just used is called "parental condescension" which treats the "little woman" as an implied hysteric. And that's according to my husband, the Harvard professor of psychology and the writer of seven best selling books on the subject.”
Funny. This “little woman” was just trying to comment that I hope you weren’t stressing yourself out too much, and nothing more. And, as a “little woman” I think the lack of “hysteria” (or just the perception of it) helps all of womankind look to be more rational creatures. (So, when did the Arabic for Infidel B*tch mean I was a man????? Huh…ironic.)
Criticism ≠ Threats.
Morgan: “[c]laiming a person is a Muslim when they are not -- claiming they are taqiyyah when they are not -- is NOT opinion. It is a deliberate lie and slander.”
Harvard, move over and let someone who’s familiar with law answer that one. Slander (actually Libel)is a deliberate statement (or writing) of falsehood (like you’ve slept with some ugly guy at school, knowing full well you haven’t) that affects your public reputation. Your reputation has not been adversely effected; ergo slander has not been committed, IMHO.
And something tells me the "knowingly" is the sticking point...I'd have to know you personally, THEN pretend I was didn't online and commit libel. That is just impossible to prove, unless I've let something slip. (Whoops!) \joke
(FINE PRINT: I am not a lawyer, I have never given legal advice, and this statement cannot be seen as other than the opinion of a layman who’s been around law for over 36 years of her life. End Fine Print.)
Examples of 'potential libel' in this thread:
“remote_control may be one hostile, invective-spewing troll, but he's got something to say.
Infidel Pride is an attack machine, but at least he thinks.
Concerned Citizen may be a bigot, but he's got some brains about."
“It's clear from the way she speaks that Caroline is a member of the Serbian Defense League.”
“[Caroline]’s a punisher and being defended by a sniper (champ) only makes her look worse.”
I think we all have a pretty clear picture now of the 'potential libel' on this thread.
And I'm responding to you because you're a woman...it's because you're taking people's comments too seriously AND then responding while you're in reaction mode.
(breathe!)
“Slander is protected speech when the subject renders it Truth.” – Kafir Kelbeh
CORRECTION:
And I'm responding to you not because you're a woman...it's because you're taking people's comments too seriously AND then responding while you're in reaction mode.
This has been an educational thread for me, and I hope others. Whether or not anyone on this thread was thin-skinned or over-reacting is beside the larger point. Within our discourse we offended (most inadvertently) an ally who is otherwise well meaning and sincere about personal beliefs. Many lessons sprang from this. Topics discussed were the limits of free speech in the context of these postings, the definitions of libel, the requirements to prosecute libel, the relationship of anonymity to these prosecutions, etc. We would do well to learn these lessons thoroughly, because the next time, it may not be an offended natural ally, it may be an enemy opportunist. We saw extremes of dampening and coarsening of free speech as a result of litigation considerations. Neither is a desired outcome. Jurisdictions in this setting could likely easily be shopped toward an unfavorable outcome, or at least a tiresome, frivolous battle, so choose your words carefully and try to know the law.
My personal opinion is that sites such as these should require anonymous posting, block personal name access, and require disclaimer acknowledgement.
Beyond that, we could probably be more sensitive, though admittedly this is difficult to define.
May I suggest an anonymous username rather than using ones ACTUAL name if someone is concerned about their reputation.
Afterall, this is a forum where beliefs/thoughts/opinions/feelings can fly like the wind; so do the smart thing and come up with a username if you're THAT worried about what people will think/say about you.
Hello!!