Rabbi Aryeh Spero reviews my book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't at Human Events:
Robert Spencer has done it again. Religion of Peace? is the fifth in a series of meticulously researched and analyzed books he has written regarding the major issue of our day -- the dangerous challenge of Islam to the West. He is absolutely correct in underscoring the religious impulse behind Islam’s latest push to sublimate the West. But a secularized West seems to its own peril unwilling to acknowledge this religious component as the engine behind the hard and soft jihad coming our way.This is a swift read written in a fluid manner reflective of a thinker who has long thought about the points he makes. The book is not weighed down by ponderous sentences, though Spencer’s ideas are deeply reasoned.
Ignoring Ancestral FaithSpencer’s main thesis -- and he is on the mark -- is that too many in the West no longer realize that our life of liberty, rewarding individualism and human rights are a direct consequence of and specific to a unique religious philosophy -- the Judeo-Christian one. Because so many have become distant from the knowledge and a kinship to their ancestral faith and since so many are intoxicated by the feel-good sentimentality of multiculturalism, they cannot and will not appropriate to the Judeo-Christian outlook the overwhelming credit it deserves for providing us the life we here in the West enjoy, the life of liberty and choice.
Living in times where the fashion is to pronounce that “nothing is intrinsically better than anything else,” elitists categorize all religions as basically the same, indistinguishable in their big ideas and aspirations. Imbibing such foolishness and lacking religious seriousness, many in the West wonder why the need to stave off the non-al Qaeda form of Islam since they assume our life and institutions would be equally benevolent, appealing and forward-looking if under the control of another religion, Islam.
Spencer proves the folly of such assertions by citing not only the distinct differences between scriptural and Koranic verses but, even better, also spotlighting those who interpret and give shape to these verses for its followers, thus establishing the on-the-ground philosophic and theological realities separating Islam from the Judeo-Christian worldview. He does so not by being disrespectful or dismissive of Islam, but by quoting countless imams loyal and proud of their ideology -- those in the Islamic driver’s seat -- who deride our freedoms, concept of free-will and especially the allowances we in the Judeo-Christian community grant women in making decisions for themselves and as equal partners in family and public life.
In fact, beyond the religious imperative of Jihad -- which demands either conversion, second-class dhimmi status or death for non-believers -- the unspoken yet most animating force behind jihadism is the fight-to-the-death mentality of Islamists unwilling to relinquish the authoratative power men have over their women and daughters and the near arbitrary way in which men may have their way with women -- be it for honor, lust, power, convenience or sheer hierarchy.
There is an enormous difference, which filters down to every moment and aspect of society, between a religious outlook that labels moral only those activities freely chosen as opposed to an ideology that finds coercion admirable even if it results in the called-for submission to sharia law. There is a difference between a Judeo-Christian theology that ascribes to scientific inquiry a rationality conforming to the rational and predictable principles upon which God created the cosmos and that which looks negatively on any form of inquiry and investigation -- rationality itself -- if it could lead to conclusions different from unyielding sentences in an ancient text.
Enemies of the West
Too many in the West fail to realize this for they are still myopically fighting their age-old enemy here, the one they see on the street. As Spencer so aptly puts it: “The most determined enemies of Western civilization may be those on the left who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists.”
As with communism before, leftists judge Islam not by its actuality around the world today but the utopia its proponents say it will become when all live universally by it alone. In contradistinction, the anti-American left is eager to summarily chuck America and capitalism by deliberately refusing to notice our high ideals, overwhelming accomplishments and reality of goodness, relentlessly highlighting only the exceptions where we have failed (relatively minor) even though, unlike other societies, we earnestly redress our problems.
Typical of many of the multicultural and socially enervating dummkopfs graduating our brain-washing colleges today is a young woman named Rachel, cited in the book. Speaking to a group of American Indians, she tells the chief: “I don’t see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race and culture are nothing. On the other hand, you of the American Indian traditions have something great, something to be proud of.” Liberals love to wax rhapsodically about every culture but their own. Other people’s pride in their culture is considered admirable and healthy while expressed pride in the Judeo-Christian American civilization is characterized as racist, ethno-centric and bordering on ”Nazism.” It’s no wonder they are unwilling to fight to preserve our culture.
Unlike the jihadists arrayed against us, the elitists shaping America’s outlook refuse to see this as a clash of civilizations or a war of religions. To do so, they would be forced to take sides. Many no longer like or identify with our side. For most, it would be “unsophisticated” to have to, this late in the game, extol the Judeo-Christian beliefs they have fought their whole lives and too embarrassing to embrace the patriotic Americanism necessary to fight for our culture. To do so would strip them of their identity and their reason for getting up each morning. Thus, they deny the reality of jihad.
On the fifth line of the above review, it should have said "subjugate" instead of "sublimate". It's amazing how mere six letters convey such a stark contrast in meaning. Excellent review though.
Rabbi Aryeh Spero writes in his book review: ” Spencer’s main thesis -- and he is on the mark -- is that too many in the West no longer realize that our life of liberty, rewarding individualism and human rights are a direct consequence of and specific to a unique religious philosophy -- the Judeo-Christian one. Because so many have become distant from the knowledge and a kinship to their ancestral faith and since so many are intoxicated by the feel-good sentimentality of multiculturalism, they cannot and will not appropriate to the Judeo-Christian outlook the overwhelming credit it deserves for providing us the life we here in the West enjoy, the life of liberty and choice.” This is a point on which both he and Spencer agree, that our Western civilization is based on our Judeo-Christian values, a civilization rich in successes in granting human freedoms, overcoming slavery, and shining with both economic and technological successes as the world had never seen. Islam has nothing like it, and in fact is embarrassingly regressive in how it ports itself in the world as a stiflingly oppressive ideology of illogical demands on the human mind, where personal responsibility and freedom of choice are subsumed to inshallah fatalism, even to our time of death determined at our time of birth. These two worlds have no common ground, not even a handle where they can connect in some form of dialogue that makes sense. The response to our questions of reason are met instead with rage and violence from the Islamists, where the liberty of choice we enjoy is trounced underfoot by raging riotous condemnations of our way of life as the great satan. How can multiculturalism be blind to this? This has been a haunting question since Islamic jihad had thrust forward its ugly face onto the world stage, already predating 911, and from which we are still shaking our heads in disbelief. Reason has no appeal to their understanding, dialogue becomes a monologue if neither understands the other, and multiculturalism’s responses to this jihadic aggression had been anemic, if not conciliatory. How did this happen, that our Judeo-Christian values were so undermined that we find ourselves either unable or unwilling to counter this threat to our freedoms and way of life by denying the reality of Jihad? Where did Judeo-Christian values go wrong?
There are no easy answers to this, as to where we went wrong. Is it the ghost of Marx still haunting our famed halls of academia that reduces, erroneously, all history to class struggle? Is it vestigial fear of a new Crusade by right wing Christian conservatives? Or perhaps a new Inquisition? Or another witch hunt, like the Salem witch trials, that may surface like an unwanted bastion of intolerance of other cultures? Or is it the haunting memory of Hitler’s holocaust against the Jews, where any reference to another people is automatically shut off to prevent progroms? Is it from guilt of past slavery? Are we guilt ridden by past evils committed, ghosts of the past, to the point where we are frozen before this newly reborn threat of jihad against our civilization’s successes? Are we so guilty of enjoying life that we should be apologetic to their culture of death, so shabby and poor? What shining light of success can the Islamic world hold up to us, and by which to judge us as morally and socially lacking? Where are their successes? Is it honor killings, or death for apostasy, or cartoon riots, in how they compare themselves to us? No rationally sane person would think so. So why do we hesitate to call our culture great, and theirs fallen? Is it because on multicultural grounds we are not allowed to voice this without bringing back those fears of past evils? Hitler’s Nazism was not our civilization. Progroms against the Jews were not from Jeffersonian democratic ideas and separation of church and state. The Salem witch hunts were not the basis for our cultural success in the arts and sciences. Our rich literature is not from some desert nomad’s delusions of world conquest for his god, but from the souls of our inner culture of the individual, that we have a right to be creatively free, to express something special from inside ourselves to write and share with others. The Spanish Inquisition did not trigger a world jihad, though it may have been in response to a historically present jihad against Spanish Christians. Nor was Islam impetus for the Renaissance and subsequent European Enlightenment. Are multiculturalists oblivious of where we came from, and what made us great? What was it of our Judeo-Christian values that turned them off? Colonialism’s legacy of subjugating less developed peoples? What is it exactly that multiculturalists fear about our Western civilization’s success, and why are they so stuck on it? What strikes fear in their hearts to value other peoples cultures but degrade their own? Something must have hurt them deeply, because they cannot raise themselves to acknowledge that we are great.
If it was our Judeo-Christian values that made us great, and I believe they are, then why are those same values unable to rise up from the ghosts of past fear and guilt to challenge the jihad evils against us? Their stifling culture of death can hold not candle of comparison to our vibrant culture of life. So why is multiculturalism so stuck on self effacing guilt while the aggressive enemy crows of their greatness? The world is upside down! And yet, it is in our Judeo-Christian values that this inversion is taking place, not theirs, but ours. We are not evil. They are! We need to stop and rethink our cultural values as never before, what has made us free of the kind of oppression Islamic jihad would turn back on us, to turn us back before the American Revolution, before the European Enlightenment, before the Renaissance, before serfdom and slavery, and back into some Medieval glory of Mohammedan supremacy over the individual in total submission. Freedom can be erased in one sweep if we are not careful, if we let multiculturalism sentiments guide us rather than acknowledging that we are better. We are better because we are not slaves. Our Judeo-Christian legacy is that we are free.
OK, here we go yet again. Another rapturous nutcase proto-jihadist, who will, thankfully, stop short of beheading people (since the Holocaust, murdering the perfidious Jew has become unfashionable). But MZ has the goods, s/he can save your soul from eternal damnation! Woohoo! All us pathetic Jews need to do is to divorce our eternal Partner in covenant - clearly logically impossible, but folks like MZ never give up!
The Jews "misunderstand...their own scriptures". Excuse me, you bigoted imbecile, how much Hebrew do you know? Do you want me to print a point-by-point refutation of your religion based on the Hebrew Bible? Unlike you, MY religion does not require me to convert the world. (Hint on the origins of jihad!)
What's our particular "misunderstanding"? "They have no sacrifice for sin although their scripture requires it." How many times have I heard that GARBAGE? God never requires the impossible from us. There are too many examples to list. Suffice it to say that you can't be held responsible for the lack of a sacrifice if there's no Temple! DUH! And if you're such an expert on "scripture", you might have noticed a prophet saying "Let our lips compensate for the bulls" (Hosea 14:3), i.e., prayer must take the place of sacrifice.
I know, I know, you're one of those types who lick their chops thinking of all the people who'll burn in hell because they don't belong to your denomination. No, that's a little unfair. You feel sorry for all the poor wretches whom your God of love will condemn to eternal damnation for the sin of living a moral life outside of your church.
I am so glad that I am not a part of all that. When I want to read about the real God of love, I read - the Hebrew Bible.
Don't get me wrong. I love that America is a Christian country, and I fear greatly what will happen if we become ungrounded, like Europe. But no way am I going to sit back in silence when someone uses a forum like this, which is meant to be about the War Against Militant Islam, in order to tell me how I "misunderstand" my own scripture, which is 1300 or so years older than yours. I'm sticking with the Sinai covenant. Deal.
Surak and MZ - you are talking past each other, I'm afraid.
Both of you perhaps need to count to ten, then go back and re-read Rabbi Spero's excellent review of Spencer's book.
Then, for something that fits in beautifully with Spero's and Spencer's arguments, you should both google, and read, Joshua A Berman's article, "God's Alliance With Man", in "Azure", (online magazine), Summer 5766/ 2006. Look: forget the Declaration of Independence, or the Magna Carta. The REAL and original revolution in human religious and political history is the Sinai Covenant. I would go so far as to call it the Magna Carta of humanity.
Berman's article showed me why Golda Meir could quip about ruling a nation of a million Prime Ministers. To translate Berman's point fairly loosely into modern terminology, he might have said that each Jew - every single member of the House of Israel - is a 'prime minister', answerable to his sovereign, but having dignity, authority and a good deal of freedom within that relationship. Once one frames the relationship between everyman and the divine in those terms, no earthly tyrant, despot or slavemaster can ever claim that his rule mimics - or is legitimised by - the divine/ metaphysical Order of Things/
And through Christian translations of the Hebrew scriptures and their attempts to translate Jesus' interpretation into everyday life, these same radical and revolutionary assumptions gradually seeped into the Gentile world. (The tragedy is that at the same time so many Gentile Christians, despite worshipping Jesus the Jew, and reading the Jewish scriptures, failed so terribly to extend love and gratitude toward Jesus' own people, the ordinary, real live Jews that they saw in front of them).
It is thanks to the unique, revolutionary Biblical vision of the dignity of the human being under YHWH, that Daniel's friends refuse to bow down to the golden image of the King of Babylon; Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman at the court of Xerxes; Jesus before Pilate speaks to the powerful Roman governor with a man-to-man fearlessness and lack of servility that Pilate must have found totally baffling; and centuries later, Thomas of Canterbury and Sir Thomas More refuse to let their kings command their consciences. "I die the king's good servant: BUT GOD'S FIRST".
There is a good reason why the Negro slaves, on the plantations of the American South, seized upon the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
(By contrast, within the world of Islam, allah's total and arbitrary domination of his human slaves mirrors and validates and perpetuates every kind of tyranny and slavery).
PS in my above, I meant to say "the end of serfdom and slavery". Sometimes I type faster than I think... or is that vice versa?
In any case, I find Rabbi Spero's review spot on, and Spencer's book totally spot on in comparing why our Judeo-Christian values stand behind our freedoms, while Islamic jihad values stand for submission to values that threaten our freedoms. There is no equality between the two, because with this freedom comes personal responsibility, not submission. Slavery for allah, an angry fatalistic god, is not compatible with respect and dignity of the individual, as beings endowed with dignity of a universal God of Love. I wish the multiculturals could understand that a 7th century Mohammedan cult of allah is unequal to our freedoms. Submission as a human value is totally against our Judeo-Christian values. It is unfortunate that our Left leaning multiculturalists find greater comfort in submission than in our freedoms.
Slavery, which degrades human beings, is against our belief of equality for both men and women, regardless or race or religion. Islam's tenet of submission is too regressive to compete with this, because it pitches man against man as believers and non-believers, woman against woman in its polygamy, and an ordained inequality of man against woman as slaves of allah. Islam's political tenet of universal submission to a regressive sharia 7th century cult has no place in our modern world of human freedom. Multiculturalism is wrong here, when freedom is challenged by submission, because where one is empowering of our humanity, the other takes it away. This is a contest the Mohammedans must loose, for their own future as well as ours, for all generations to come. But we must choose well, because we are free to choose, but a bad choice can send us back a thousand years. Multiculturalist inability to understand this Mohammedan threat cannot send us back to the dark ages. We must win this, if not for ourselves, then for all generations to come.
I was glad to read this well-written, well-reasoned article. Thank you.
Religion of peace? Religion of piss is more like it.
(I'm referring to the religion, not the book--which I'm sure is superb. But I still won't read it. It's been endorsed by ANN COULTER--and, contrary to what awake might say, I DO have principles)
As I reflect on what Robert Spencer is doing with this latest book - a book not so much about Islam as about the West - I am reminded of the wise words of French Catholic Alain Besancon in his introductory essay to "Islam et Judeo-Christianisme", a booklet containing Jacques Ellul's thoughts on Islam (the essay 'The Three Pillars of Conformity' which demolishes the classic inter-faith canards, to wit, 'Abrahamic faiths', 'we worship the same God' and 'religions of the Book'; and Ellul's two prefaces for Bat Ye'or, one on dhimmitude for 'The Dhimmi' and the other on Jihad, for 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam').
Having discussed two classic Christian responses, by John of Damascus and by Thomas Aquinas, to the challenge of Islam, Besancon remarks:
"One will note that these two authors, at the same time that they represent a precise rejection of Islam, each produced a Summa, that is to say, a complete exposition of Christianity.
"Indeed, it appears that all argument with Islam requires a deep understanding of Christian theology; and that the best way to put the Christian faithful on guard [against Islam] is to instruct them in their own religion, which in general they do not properly understand.
"A polemic against Islam is no good [for Christians] unless it is accompanied by a catechism. And this is what Jacques Ellul does in the text that you are about to read [i.e. 'The Three Pillars of Conformity']. It is important that a famous theologian speaks to us today about Islam, from the main point of view that matters, the theological." (page 12-13; translating the French, my apologies for any infelicities].
'A polemic against Islam is no good for Christians unless accompanied by a catechism': Alain Besancon.
So: in writing "Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't", Robert Spencer is, after his own degree, creating a modern parallel to the efforts of John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas.
That is, the double effort of education: not only to analyse and expose Islam but to give to us who inhabit the lands of former 'christendom', whose ancestors helped create that which V S Naipaul, a Hindu, called 'the universal civilisation', a clear understanding of who and what we are, ourselves, and what we have that is so infinitely worth fighting for.