Our old friend John Esposito chimes in once more, this time in the Washington [Bleep] (as Mr Liddy would say), about how swell Islam is. Like all good propagandists, Mr Esposito expertly combines vague truths with crucial omissions. Let's take a look:
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam originated in the Middle East. As F.E. Peters shows in "The Children of Abraham," the commonalities can be striking. Muslims worship the God of Abraham, as do Christians and Jews. Islam was seen as a continuation of the Abrahamic faith tradition, not a totally new religion. Muslims recognize the biblical prophets and believe in the holiness of God's revelations to Moses (in the Torah) and Jesus (in the Gospels). Indeed, Musa (Moses), Issa (Jesus) and Mariam (Mary) are common Muslim names.
All true. Well done, John. No mention, however, that Islam believes that Christians and Jews adulterated their scriptures and that it is the duty of Muslims to conquer such "People of the Book" and compel them to pay the jizya (poll-tax) in accordance with Quran 9:29 and make them "feel themselves subdued." A not-so-minor oversight.
Muhammad is the central role model for Muslims -- much like Jesus is for Christians, except solely human. He is seen as the ideal husband, father and friend, the ultimate political leader, general, diplomat and judge. Understanding Muhammad's special place in Muslim hearts helps us appreciate the widespread anger of many mainstream Muslims -- not just extremists -- with the denigration of a Muhammad-like figure in Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses," the controversial 2005 Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad in unflattering lights or Pope Benedict XVI's 2006 speech quoting a long-dead Byzantine emperor who accused the prophet of bringing "only evil and inhuman" things into the world.
Muslims care so much for their great prophet that they will threaten with death an author who besmirches him and go hysterical over a reference to a "long-dead Byzantine emperor" -- whose civilization, by the way, the Muslims finally extinguished in 1453 by force of arms. Just imagine what they'd do if he'd been a recently-dead Byzantine emperor!
But the more notable point here is Esposito's facile glossing over of what Muhammad means for orthodox Muslims. "He is seen as the ideal husband, father and friend, the ultimate political leader, general, diplomat and judge." Indeed, and therefore -- what? Perhaps it would help the [Bleep]'s readers to tell us a little about the ideal man? But Mr Esposito knows better than that. The last thing he wants to do it to get into a detailed discussion of Muhammad's, shall we say, checkered career. No mention, of course, of the war crime he committed by decapitating the men of the Bani Quraiza after the Battle of Medina as attested to by the canonical Islamic sources, Sahih Al-Bukhari and Ibn Ishaq in the Sira. I had the temerity to mention that yesterday morning on Fox while locking horns with Imam Shamsi Ali. As usual, he replied with the standard Islam-is-peaceful sputter and studiously avoided specifics.
I will cease here and let you take on the rest of Mr Esposito's pablum on your own. Why not express your views to the [Bleep] at letters@washpost.com? Mr Esposito has also obligingly proffered his email, jlejpe@gmail.com, so feel free to tell him what a super job he is doing.
One word describes Esposito the Expert: Shallow.
Esposito is not only a whore for this cult, he is, in the tradition of Walter Duranty, Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose an agent and a propagandist for Islam.
In a sane world he would hang. Full stop!
Should read 'well paid whore' for the cult. This guy is most certainly in it for the money, he is not stupid or ignorant.
Besides, Muhammedans worship Muhammad. Without Muhammad, no Allah. Without Muhammad, no cult of Islam.
When you see assorted mufti's and imam's declare 'we love our profit more than we love our own children'- what is it then other than Muhammad worship?
These savages don't belong among us. Time to make an end to this spook!
For what it's worth, I sent the following email to letters@washpost.com:
To the Editor:
I have one or two objections to John Esposito's deceptive article, "Want to Understand Islam? Start Here."
Islam is a bit too totalitarian and violent in its core documents and history to warrant the uncritical treatment Esposito accords it. Islamic terror is bad enough, but is not even the greatest danger from Islam. The greatest danger, where sufficient numbers of Muslims congregate, is the introduction of Islamic culture's authoritarian forms of spiritual, ideological, and legal life, which have some powerful system-wide effects even in somewhat liberal places like Turkey and Indonesia. As for the rest of the Muslim world, data gathered by human rights groups show that Muslim-majority states are in general lagging every other region of the globe in terms of political rights and civil liberties. Europe, meanwhile, has seen its freedom of speech chilled by Islamic death threats against journalists, artists, politicians, and teachers. And Islamic murder in Holland, Spain and the U.K. have intimidated many European leaders and journalists into silence and obsequiousness, when intense criticism of Islam is desperately needed.
See Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad and the Fate of Non-Muslims, a book with source documents covering the whole history of jihad over the last 1400 years. See also Bat Ye'or's Islam and Dhimmitude, a book that amply documents the history of non-Muslims living under Muslim rule. Even in fabled Andalusia, life for non-Muslims was often legally structured rather as Jim Crow was structured for black Americans.
I admire Buddhism, Animism, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, and the other great religions, and there are things to admire about Islam, but Islam is distinctive in the extent to which its core documents and legal traditions contain stubbornly totalitarian and violent elements that require relentless criticism if there is to be a chance of bringing about vitally needed reform. The Washington Post should be helping in that reform effort, not publishing whitewashes by the deceptive propagandist John Esposito.
I also sent to Esposito a copy of the above letter.
What else can be expected from yet another cohort of the unholy alliance...
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2197
"Forecasting a trend of ever-increasing freedom and democracy in Muslim lands, in 1994 (a year after the first attack on the World Trade Center) Esposito wrote, "democratization in the Muslim World proceeds by experimentation and necessarily involves both success and failure. "
I commonly hear in Saudi Arabia: "We must find our own solutions to our problems."
Translation 1: "We are being Islamic enough." Translation 2: "We are too stupid to learn from other peoples' mistakes."
Errata Sheet
For "Islam was seen as a continuation of the Abrahamic faith tradition, not a totally new religion."
read:
"Early Islam naturally appropropriated and distorted elements of Judaism and Christianity (readers of the Bandar Beacon will want to consult the seveal anthologies edited by Ibn Warraq on the early Qur'an, including "The Origins of the Koran" and "What the Koran Really Says," as well as his "The Quest for the Historical Muhammad") which was mixed into the substratum of Arab pagan lore -- the djinn, for example, is still devoutly believed in.
This was because relatively small groups of Arabs, already pre-existing in separate colonies among the much larger, settled, richer, advanced non-Arabs, chiefly Christians and Jews, found useful the construction, no doubt by divers hands (but perhaps special attention should be given to the first Umayyad Caliph, Abd el-Malik b. Anas, in Damascus), of a belief-system that could be presented to the conquered Christians and Jews not as a brand-new and alien form of belief, but rather as "a continuation of the Abrahamic faith tradition, not a totally new religion."
The new, revised, much improved Esposito text would then continue as follows:
"The investigation of early Islam is one of the most fascinating and exciting areas of scholarly endeavor in Islamic studies. It is also an area of study conducted entirely by Western scholars of Islam -- les vrais -- and not one in which any Muslims have wished to participate, for the spirit of free inquiry is entirely lacking in Islam.
That is why, from the days of Ignaz Goldziher, who first studied the Hadith in a skeptical manner (and Goldziher was deeply sympathetic to much of Islam), through the great scholars of Islam -- through C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Joseph Schacht, right up to the present, with the work of John Wansbrough, and then Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, and so many others, Andrew Rippin and Louis de Premare and Gerd Puin, who use all kinds of evidence, and whose names can be found in the anthologies edited by Ibn Warraq and which I, John Esposito, would like to recommend so very highly. And I would of course like to recommend too that all those who study Islam make themselves familiar with the work of Christoph Luxenberg on the "Syro-Aramaic" (i.e., the Aramaic of Edessa) substratum or underlay for the early Qur'an, which helps us explain the approximately 20% of the text that makes little or no sense, even to readers of classical Arabic.
I'm sorry that I myself, lean mean jogging John Esposito, have had no time to read any of these people, and until now have had not the slightest inclination to recommend them, or make any of these scholars known to my colleagues, to my students, to those I advise in the corridors of power (and did I tell you that during the Clinton Administrtation I was very much on call, my expertise constantly sought?).
And the reason, you see, is simply time. I do have my jogging. I do have my development work -- my fund-raising, that takes up so much of my time. For I have a whole crew here at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and they need to be paid. There is loyal John Voll, and loyal Yvonne Haddad. There are others, the kind of people who will not let our donors down. There are lectures to be given, and possibly a King Abdul Aziz Prize to fatten my future. There is my own salary, my own take -- and I haven't done at all badly, let me tell you. But that's why I haven't been able to get to any of the books I've mentioned, but have been churning out books with such titles as "Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?" (can you guess from the title what the book might conclude?),and coffee-table stuff, with lots of pictures of tulips and turbans, and the interior of the Blue Mosque looiing, as always, positively ravishing. A word of advice for "Islamic scholars" who wish to be as successful as I: make sure you have those books on Islam, even those supposedly scholarly ones, full of pretty pictures -- full of that local-color that fills the reader's mind with thoughts of exotica, and along with the Iznik tiles and that perennial favorite, those painted groups of turbanned Turks, the odd camel will do, but please, listen to me, do go very heavy on what, after all, is the only art form that the Muslim world can offer save for calligraphy, that isn't a patch on what the Chinese and others in the Far East can supply. So put in as amny of the mediagenic mosques as you can find -- you can start by consulting, but only on esthetic matters, Oleg Grabar (but watch out, he's too much of a real scholar to fully trust - just borrow his pictures). Make sure you get in some nice Persian examples, and the Taj Mahal, and the Dome of the Rock, and the Umayyad Mosque, and a few examples from fabulous Bokhara, and the less about Islam, real Islam, that is the texts of Islam, that you put in -- and please, no hint of Antoine Fattal, not a mention of Bat Ye'or, just leave any serious discussion of the meaing of the word "dhimmi" out of your work for as long as you possibly can -- just look at how I have managed to avoid that subject -- but if you must, do it with the old "Umarite Covenant" business. That always gets them. Mention as few of the hundreds of great Western scholars of Islam, in the period 1870-1970, as possible. If they never learn even the names of Henri Lammens, St. Clair Tisdall, Georges Vajda, Charles-Emmanuel Bousquet, Edmond Fagnan, Samuel Zwemer, and others. And if any smart young student finds out about them on his own, and dares to mention them, simply invoke the magical phrases "Orientalism" and "Edward Said" and put on a big show of indignation about these "so-called Orientalists," and that will shut him up, and satisfy many of the lemmings in your class. It's always worked for me."
Oh dear. I didn't mean to publish right here those last few paragraphs. They are part of the "Teacher's Guide" that I , lean mean highly-successful-in-every-respect John Esposito, quietly supply to those who use whose names are on the list compiled by my colleagues at the annual meetings of MESA Nostra, the Trusted Ones, the ones whom we can always count on not only to assign my books in their college courses, but to be careful about what the students find out, and careful about what they are never supposed to find out. My god, I hope no one notices this. Let's hope.
Greg,
You were on Fox News? Has the segment been youtubed?
Two words: Deceptively Shallow.
Hugh's excellent posting above brought this to mind:
http://khalas.wordpress.com/
"When I accepted fundamentalism and uncovered the unadulterated religion of Islaam, I eventually became unimpressed. Besides tawheed, what the religion offered wasn’t much. To the naive, Islaam appeared divine with the hypnotic recitation of the Arabic Qur’aan, captivating Middle-Eastern architecture, and stunning Arabic calligraphy. Our Western culture and Judeo-Christian traditions just paled in comparison. However, just like in art, it only seems creative when the influences and sources are left unknown. Once you uncover the plagiarism, what remains is tediously pedestrian."
I always wonder when I ask myself this questions, if Muslims worship God why do they bow down to a rock (moon rock? ) in Mecca? Is that not worhip of something?
A little editing. It should be "these" for "these questions".
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam originated in the Middle East. As F.E. Peters shows in "The Children of Abraham," the commonalities can be striking. Muslims worship the God of Abraham, as do Christians and Jews.
NO, they do not. God is not double-minded. God does not tell the Jews that they are the "apple of G-ds eye", then tell moslems that Jews are to be "destroyed to the last".
Allah excuses all manner of what is called evil in the Jewish and Christian texts. He's not the God of the Bible.
Moslems claim there is only one god and his name is allah. Allah appears nowhere in the Torah or the Bible. Not there. Allah is not the God of the Bible.
"why do they bow down to a rock (moon rock? )"...actually, they run around the rock 7 times, then kiss it (that is, those who get close enough)...but, I suppose you already knew this. (Some of the "purists" of Islam have found this custom to be "pagan" and advocated for its termination...and for a while the Hajj was stopped...but, then the "holy" cities experienced a loss of revenue, so the Hajj was allowed.)
There are certain elements of islam, though, that I think are even more damaging (problematic.) On another thread there have been all those reports about Vison TV allowing a Pakistani imam to advocate for jihad...but, even this is not "the problem." What's worse (imo, anyway) is the Vision TV programs (the Muslim ones) which claim to teach the Koran -- but then use biblical "quotations" or stories -- BUT, these stories are not given "straight" -- in fact, they oftentimes run directly contrary to what the text actually teaches -- that is, the Koran "commentators" distort (beyond recognition) the actual text. I don't know if they do this because of ignorance, or if it's deliberate. Some of it is actually bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. But, the problem is is that these messed up "stories" are then (because I'd suspect that 90 percent of Canadians have probably never actually read "the Bible" -- I'm referring especially to OT or Hebrew scriptures) taken as "true." So, then the task becomes compounded -- having to repeatedly explain, "'no', that's not in the text -- read the text." but, people don't read. And so these Islamic distortions percolate through Canadian society. (in other words, many Canadians are gradually, perhaps unwittingly, becoming Islamized.)
I always wonder when I ask myself this questions, if Muslims worship God why do they bow down to a rock (moon rock? ) in Mecca? Is that not worhip of something?
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at July 22, 2007 12:37 PM
Yeah, it's called idolatry.
How can the Muslim god be the same as the God of the Jewish/Christian God. There are simply are lot of contradictions to be found in allah, which says the two are not the same.
j_not_a,
That is why I say "moon god rock".
J.S., you said:
In other words, television imams are inaccurately recounting parts of the New and Old Testament stories, and because many people, including non-Muslim TV viewers, don't read the New and Old Testaments, the imam's Islamized versions of the Bible are taken without question as accurate recountings of what the Bible says. So people are getting Islamized without knowing it. Yikes.
"What's worse (imo, anyway) is the Vision TV programs (the Muslim ones) which claim to teach the Koran -- but then use biblical "quotations" or stories -- BUT, these stories are not given "straight" -- in fact, they oftentimes run directly contrary to what the text actually teaches -- that is, the Koran "commentators" distort (beyond recognition) the actual text... " Posted by: J.S.
J.S. -- Yes, I saw a clip of a program on YouTube (where else?) in which a Muslim guy "quoted" the Bible and said that Jesus foretold the coming of Mohammed, etc. But I've read the Bible a few times and I know the verse was actually about Jesus promising that the Holy Spirit would come.
I agree with your assessment: many Christians might not be familiar enough with the Bible to know when they're being bamboozled.
j_not_a,
That is why I say "moon god rock".
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at July 22, 2007 4:45 PM
Gotcha. Was beem "sourcastic" to quote Sandy Dennis in the original Outoftowners. Didn't mean to come across as snarky. I reserve my snarkyness for the mohammedans who don't see the irony of their hypocrisy when they claim to denounce idol worship.
On the bright side, check out the comments! People are saying things there that they only used to say here.
Some of the dawa programs to promote Islam that I've seen -- it's difficult for me to try to understand their (that's Muslim) "logic."
Allow me to explain. On one program an Imam patiently explained that Adam and Eve were not really naked...and that a certain verse (remember the part about who made clothes for Adam and Eve?) Anywho, that verse, according to the Imam was "false." (as I laugh).
I think the kind of "biblical exegesis" that Muslim's do is as follows: 1) they start with a Muslim precept -- "males and females must be modest (not show up in public naked, say)". 2) any item in the biblical text which would suggest otherwise must, therefore, be "wrong" or "didn't happen." In a sense they are active bowdlerizers of the text. (in the meantime, of course, they miss the moral significance of much of the stories.) (for example, as a consequence of Adam and Eve's sin an animal dies...an animal dies to provide cover to hide their nakedness...a kind of tragic denouement if one thinks about it.)
Anyway, the Imams make stuff up as they go along -- zero regard for adherence to the text. Anything they don't like, it's changed. Then they claim "superiority." Meantime countless people may be (or are) being fooled...as in, "O this is a religious person -- he wouldn't be mistaken or lying..."
Oh, almost forgot, and to futher their claim of "not NAKED!!", some will also assert that Adam and Eve were NOT human (ie, they may have been animals!!) yes, same program...
Good points, traeh and Josephine. I suspect a lot of nominal and ill-informed Christians (probably some Jews, too) are indeed being suckered by the Muslim claim that 'we worship the same God as you do', and 'we honour Jesus', or 'we honour Moses'.
I recently had to deal with a family member whose child attends a school where they had representatives of various 'faith traditions' explain their beliefs. She had been very impressed by the Muslim rep who had talked sweetly about how Jesus and Mary and Abraham and Moses are in the Quran, and how much 'respect' Muslims have for them.
I had to explain, as simply as I could, the radical difference in substance and tone between the original Biblical stories and characters, and the gutted, distorted and indeed perverted versions that appear in the Quran. Why it was that the supposed Muslim 'respect' for Jesus basically amounts to 'damning with faint praise'.
Bottom line, whatever your own religious background or none, when dealing with naive Christians who've been swallowing daawa, cut to the chase: tell them, Muslims deny that Jesus died on the cross. Show them the Big Lie: a lie aimed deliberately at the foundation of Christianity.
When dealing with similarly naive Jews, tell them flat out: Muslims say Abraham offered Ishmael, not Isaac. Talk about a classic Big Lie. The Jewish scripture and the Muslim Big Lie totally contradict each other. And the Isaac story has been embedded in Jewish history for millennia before Mohammed was even born. I don't think there was ever any alternative version floating around, before Mohammed got a bee in his bonnet. Like the denial of the crucifixion, this Big Lie isn't a mere misunderstanding - it strikes precisely at a core episode in the religion that Mo. desired to destroy/ supplant.
Look: even folks here who are total atheists might find it useful to check out the Bible, so as to have at their fingertips a contrast-and-compare summary of certain Biblical figures and stories and their garbled/ perverted/ reversed Islamic counterparts, by which they may warn Christian or Jewish friends and colleagues that Muslim claims of 'kinship' and 'respect' are hollow. Tell them that Islam seeks both to absorb and supersede their historic faiths, and denies and ignores their sacred books.
(And a quote of the Quranic verses that tell Muslims not to befriend Jews or Christians, and Mohammed's sneer at Jews and Christians for being so foolish as to believe themselves to be God's beloved children, mightn't go astray, either, to put them on their guard).
"Muhammad is the central role model for Muslims -- much like Jesus is for Christians, except solely human. He is seen as the ideal husband, father and friend, the ultimate political leader, general, diplomat and judge."
... AND executioner, let's not leave that out.
John Esposito, as a teller of "taqiyya" about Islam and Muhammed, is dangerous. How can anyone want to be such a dhimmi? He's at Georgetown yet I know I'm smarter than him concerning Islam. His sugar-coating of evil Islam is too sweet for even a fly. What a dhimmi!
Here's a Bible verse to always have on hand:
Words from Jesus in the "NT": "Beware of false prophets that come after me. You shall know them by their fruits." (Matthew)
If that's not Islam and Muhammed, then I have a rhinocerous in my backyard.
You gotta hand it to Muhammad--what he did was very clever. By appropriating Jesus as an Islamic prophet, he essentially hijacked him (along with other Jewish and Christian prophets who are supposedly revered in Islam). Muslims can now claim that Jesus is more theirs than ours. Steal the West's prophet, and the rest of the West soon follows. This is why the whole Islamo-Christian civilization theory is doomed from the outset--Islam wants to destroy Christianity, not ally with it.
GetBornAgain,
"You gotta hand it to Muhammad--what he did was very clever. By appropriating Jesus as an Islamic prophet, he essentially hijacked him (along with other Jewish and Christian prophets who are supposedly revered in Islam). Muslims can now claim that Jesus is more theirs than ours. Steal the West's prophet, and the rest of the West soon follows. This is why the whole Islamo-Christian civilization theory is doomed from the outset--Islam wants to destroy Christianity, not ally with it."
Got to remember that Muhammed is simply doing what his god, the enemy, the devil, who was as Jesus had said, " a liar, a thief, and a murderer from begining" is doing, try to conquer for this very same devil all that is dear to the Jewish/Christian faiths and the west. What you have put in your post is the reality that what both the devil and Muhammed is trying to do is simply mocking the God of the Holy Bible, period. In the end God will not be mocked.
Understanding Muhammad's special place in Muslim hearts helps us appreciate the widespread anger of many mainstream Muslims -- not just extremists -- with the denigration of a Muhammad-like figure in Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses,"
Right!
As if any muhammedans actually read Rushdie's book. And if they did, what would they find? That muhammad was a normal human being, a businessman intent on marketing his "new" religion. So much for degradation and death threats.
Esposito is a stooge. Rushdie didn't even show the really evil side of the fiend muhammad.
muhammadans worship muhammad. that's why they should be referred to as muhammadans or mad muhammadans. if muhammadans had a shred of decency and intelligence they would bury their heads in the sand for shame.
They tell Muslims to join the feast, but to gain entry, Muslims must bring along non-Muslims. They attempt to convert non-Muslims. They stress; Islam is peaceful, Allah created the world, and Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad are Prophets. They wear traditional clothing. In their native tongue, they praise Allah and Islam. Western Muslim women also discuss success, career, and independence, but fail to credit the unique freedoms found in their English speaking host country.
What part of "pedophile" does Mr. Esposito not grasp?
Or "cruel slaveholder"?
Or "thieving warlord"?
Or "rapist of captives"?
Esposito must have a swimming pool full of whitewash.
And a skull full of mush.
yankee doodle, I prefer the "Mohammedans" spelling, as the word is even more suggestive somehow of Dark Ages barbarism with an "o" than a "u."
And yes, I've started to use "Mohammedans" on a regular basis. Mostly because the Moslems don't like it! They prefer "Muslims." So, for me, it's "Mohammedans" all the way!