One of the most striking elements of the response to the talks that I have been giving on university campuses all over the country is the never-yielding unwillingness of Muslim questioners to admit even the smallest point. They will dismiss the evidence that I bring from authoritative Islamic sources of the jihad imperative to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law as the ravings of a few extremists, not hesitating to repudiate any authority, no matter how influential it may be in the Islamic world.
This may seem to be a canny tactic, as most of the non-Muslims in any given audience have no idea who is an authoritative voice in Islam and who isn't, and so it gives the impression that I am quoting marginal people to whom the vast majority of Muslims don't listen. But as an approach it carries with it some serious risks: anyone in the audience who does know anything about Islamic theology and law, and about who the authoritative voices are in the Islamic world, will know they are lying. Also, anyone who is reasonably well informed about the extent of jihad activity worldwide, from Europe to Indonesia, will wonder just how tiny this Tiny Minority of Extremists™ really is.
Another hazard of the policy of deception, rooted as it is in Muhammad's dictum that "war is deceit" and the Qur'an's mandate to deceive unbelievers when under pressure, is that not all Muslims in attendance may have gotten the memo. So it was at SUNY-Binghamton, where I spoke Tuesday night. One questioner asked me specifically about the Islamic doctrine of religious deception. I explained that it was founded upon the words of the Qur'an itself: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them” (Qur’an 3:28).
The Sunni Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir explains that in this verse “Allah prohibited His believing servants from becoming supporters of the disbelievers, or to take them as comrades with whom they develop friendships, rather than the believers.” However, exempted from this rule were “those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda' said, 'We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.' Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, 'The Tuqyah [taqiyyah] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.'"
This practice is also sanctioned by the Qur’an warning Muslims that those who forsake Islam will be consigned to Hell — except those forced to do so, but who remain true Muslims inwardly: “Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters unbelief — except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith — but such as open their breast to unbelief, on them is wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful penalty” (Qur’an 16:106). Ibn Kathir explains that “the scholars agreed that if a person is forced into disbelief, it is permissible for him to either go along with them in the interests of self-preservation, or to refuse.”
Moreover, Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection that Sunnis consider the most reliable, records three times Muhammad's statement that "war is deceit." Another hadith in a collection considered reliable by Sunnis has Muhammad saying that lying is permissible "in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them)" (Sahih Muslim 6303). Muhammad also gave the killer of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf permission to lie in order to deceive Ka'b and lure him to his death.
Another venerable Sunni commentator on the Qur'an, as-Suyuti, says that "it is acceptable (for a Muslim) to eat the meat of a dead animal at a time of great hunger (starvation to the extent that the stomach is devoid of all food); and to loosen a bite of food (for fear of choking to death) by alcohol; and to utter words of unbelief..."
Anyway, after I had explained all this, a Muslim questioner started talking about Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and how they persecuted Muslims and forced them to convert to Catholicism, such that many Muslims feigned conversion while remaining Muslim inwardly. Did I think that the doctrine of religious deception, he asked me, was revealed in view of that situation? In reply I told him that the doctrine of religious deception was found in the Qur'an, as I explained above, and that it was therefore considerably older than the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Yes, he replied, but asked me again: didn't I think that the doctrine of religious deception was revealed by Allah to Muhammad in order to provide for the situation that Ferdinand and Isabella would create, far in the future? Being somewhat slow on the uptake, it was only then that I realized that his question assumed the divine origin of the Qur'an, and I told him that I declined to make a statement of faith in Islam. But his question was inadvertently revealing: he was not, unlike other questioners, full of wounded indignation and hotly denying that Islam had a doctrine of deception at all. He was assuming that Islam does have a doctrine of deception, and trying to get me to see the divine wisdom of this doctrine.
But that was the only crack in the facade. Otherwise the hostile questioners resorted to their usual tactic of charging that what I was saying was false without ever being able to pinpoint any actual inaccuracy in anything I said. One girl tried valiantly, explaining that in Islam there were four -- well, she couldn't quite remember what they were, but there were four of them, and they were sort of like sects, and why hadn't I said anything about the diversity among them? I explained to her that she was probably thinking of the four major madhahib, schools of Sunni jurisprudence, and that they did not differ in any significant particular on the Islamic community's obligation to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law.
Significantly, no one in the audience challenged that assertion -- in fact, after eight college speeches during this round of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, no one ever did. Which is not to say that some didn't hesitate to lie: one man claimed falsely that I had never referred to Muhammad as a prophet during my talk (since I am not a believer, I had referred to him during the talk as "the prophet of Islam") and asked me, in a tone of reproach, what people were going to think of Muhammad after hearing what I had said. He then proceeded to note that I had said nothing about how kind Muhammad was to his neighbors, how gentle, how beloved of his friends. I acknowledged that this was true -- I discussed these traditions in The Truth About Muhammad -- but pointed out that Muhammad had also commanded, in ahadith Muslims consider equally authentic, warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers. Was he denying the existence of such traditions? He did not answer the question.
And so it went. It's really fairly obvious that if Muslims at these campus talks really rejected the ideology of jihad and Islamic supremacism, they would not charge me with "hate" for discussing its existence, or traffic in denial and obfuscation about the existence of this ideology. Every one of these talks has been, or should have been, instructive for non-Muslims in the audience who may have assumed that the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ actually rejects the Islamic supremacist agenda. But I doubt that very many of those non-Muslims have had their eyes open to what was going on right in front of them, in Binghamton and elsewhere -- and for me the worst was yet to come, at a virtual Islamic supremacist storm-trooper hate rally at East Tennessee State University the next night. But that will be the subject of another post.
This is the great quandary of the Muslim apologist; because Islam and the Quran are of divine origin, they HAVE to be PERFECT, otherwise the whole edifice crumbles.
When reality intrudes as it constantly does - failure and atrocity are automatically attributed to "misunderstanding"...or just as often, the machinations of the enemies of Islam.
"And so it went. It's really fairly obvious that if Muslims at these campus talks really rejected the ideology of jihad and Islamic supremacism, they would not charge me with "hate" for discussing its existence..."
"Reporting about haters is hateful, you see." --RS
Wait a minute - I was just reading a longish post by Hugh that came before mine - and now it's gone.
Where'd it go?
This is the great quandary of the Muslim apologist; because Islam and the Quran are of divine origin, they HAVE to be PERFECT, otherwise the whole edifice crumbles.
by Cornelius
But some of them still find a way to make everything all right - allah is perfect and allah had a plan but allah was also able to change his mind and modify the rules as time went on, thus explaining the apparent contradictions in the koran. allah was apparently dependent on human events. When things didn't go as planned, he had to adjust. This would seem to go against Islam's doctrine of predestination but none of us are allowed to say that allah had no right to change his mind because allah is perfect.
darcy;
I don't know if Hugh is around right now, so I will answer your question. I just saw Hugh's post and called him up, because in it he made reference to some incidents that took place not in Binghamton, but the following night at East Tennessee State University (I have told him all about both over the phone). I asked him to revise the post but he wanted to keep it as a unity and so opted to take it down.
However, I am working on the report on the East Tennessee State Hate-Spencer Fest now, although it probably won't be finished until tomorrow as I am in an airport and will soon be entering another can of sardines and be sent hurtling through the air again. When it is finished and posted, Hugh will re-post his comment.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Reply to RS above:
Oh, OK. Because as usual his post was quite interesting and right-on-target and I was going to quote a few sentences and comment. Then, it wasn't there!
So, I'll wait 'till it reappears.
Meanwhile, I'm feeling sick upon learning that the East Tennessee visit was a "Hate-Spencer Fest." So sorry. How depressing. Yes, at the end of his post Hugh referred to the "SA of 1933." What is the "SA" - though of course I know it's a reference to Nazi Germany.
PMK,
Yep. Muslims have become quite creative in rationalizing God's "inconsistencies".
Muhammad himself was particularly adroit at explaining the reasons for God's seeming change of mind when it happened...interestingly, the change always seemed to benefit Muhammad.
SA = Sturmabteilung
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
OK - Stormtroopers. Also known as "Brownshirts."
Who knew we had 'em right here at East Tennessee State? How in the world did that happen?
Getting the PC, Multicultural, Brainwashed, Infidel audience, to get a clue as to what is going on is all that really matters. If that goal is reached then everything else is moot.
Trying to get deceitful, pathological liars to admit to their own faults, is just asking for a life time of blood pressure medication.
In "Joe the Plumber" lies a valuable lesson.
Joe understands the flow of water. Just show him where the sewer is and he'll make the connection.
I guess you don't hear this enough, Robert, but: thanks. Thanks for what you're doing. Sorry I couldn't catch any of the talks; by coincidence I was about three hours away from one on the way to a conference.
I've got a Hindu student now, and you should have heard her damnations of islam; she spotted a headline in a newspaper on my desk. Yikes.
Prophet Geoff
In other words…
“Moderate” Muslims cannot, or will not stop their more faithful so-called “radical “ Muslims from carrying forth the edicts of Islam. Instead, moderate Muslims end up simply denying anything is wrong with Islam. So is there really any use to calling them moderate?
They are Muslims, and they follow Islam. They will defend Islamic principles in school auditoriums, in government offices, and on the battlefield if push comes to shove. They defend it even if it hurts them, because it is something they are familiar with, just like over 90% of white American southerners did not own slaves, and the practice ended up just hurting them as well, yet many still ended up defending it under the rubric of state rights, or some other contrived notion, or saying the north was not any better (notice the Spanish Isabella reference). Also just like most Germans were not Nazis, yet defended Nazism under the notion of defending the fatherland from Communism etc.
Muslims will not look into the mirror on their own. They will only do so if forced to do it. It could be social means, like “western corruption”, economic means by loss of the wealth, through conversion by another religion, or to a reconfigured Islam (a real stretch) which accept secular liberal principles, or it could be by brute force, like warfare, etc., but no matter how you look at this will be a brutal and ugly process. The people who think that a majority Muslim nation that appears western on the surface, or picks their leaders by a ballot box, will be on our side in this process is naïve. Just like a man from Alabama, who loved democracy, yet fought for slavery, or a Prussian, who listened to Mozart, and fought for Hitler. It is just the way things are sometimes.
Geoff - have you pointed your Hindu student in the direction of this website?
I think that Muslim who raised the example of Ferdinand and Isabella didn't mean that Allah and Mohammed could see into the future, but I think he meant that the point of the deception as laid down by Allah/Mohammed was to be used in times of physical persecution, like under Ferdinand and Isabella. I've seen some Muslims use this ploy to explain the "war is deception" and other verses. Translation: you don't have to worry about Muslims lying unless you actually start persecuting them, in which case it's perfectly legitimate for them to lie to save their lives & limbs.
One of the most striking elements of the response to the talks that I have been giving on university campuses all over the country is the never-yielding unwillingness of Muslim questioners to admit even the smallest point. They will dismiss the evidence that I bring from authoritative Islamic sources of the jihad imperative to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law as the ravings of a few extremists, not hesitating to repudiate any authority, no matter how influential it may be in the Islamic world.
I've talked to several self-styled "moderate" Muslims on the Internet, and I've had exactly the same experience. Denial and obfuscation were always the order of the day, as well as charges of hate and racism. I also referred them to the five point plan to stop Islamophobia; one said it was like Jews taking advice from neo-Nazis (eh?), and a few others suddenly fell very silent.
Succinct questions, intellectual honesty, and good manners somehow eluded the audience at East Tennessee State University on Wednesday night. I was appalled at the crass grandstanding of the attendees, who seemed to have had an immutable opinion and came only to heckle. Though perhaps understandably aggrieved by the information, the mob chose to flog the messenger instead of reevaluating the documents Mr. Spencer was referring to.
Any information coming to light that injures one’s understanding of one’s religious faith is going to trigger an emotional reflex in the innermost of one’s sense of existence. The factual accuracy of this new information to the believer is inconsequential in many cases; the only permissible behavior or interpretation is the one a person has been socialized and taught to accept as correct.
Mr. Spencer’s faux pas with this audience occurred precisely at the moment they noticed he was challenging their orthodoxy with their own texts. Instead of asking questions related to the lecture, the degenerates began frothing at the mouth with excitement and elected to respond without even a modicum of tact and assassinate Spencer’s character in the most insidious ways, referring to him as a “liar” while not offering even so much as an iota of textual substantiation. After a few schmucks gave ten to fifteen minute rambles on their personal lives, I began wondering whether those audience members venerated themselves or Allah to a greater degree, or if I should attribute the behavior to some inebriate condition.
The courtesy of letting Mr. Spencer address a certain point was thrown out the window as some inquirers opted for raising their voices, interrupting the speaker, and were apparently trying to goad those who did not agree with them into a shouting match. While the school may be a refuge for the area’s young, immature, and often harmless pinkos, the behavior of this audience was beyond the pale and was some of the worst mob mentality I’ve unfortunately had to experience anywhere.
In all fairness, this isn’t an issue relating to Islam; it is simply amazingly poor manners by an intolerant group of people. I am a student at East Tennessee State University and attended this lecture, and apologize to Mr. Spencer, the readers of JihadWatch, and all present who witnessed the thuggery. There are reasonable people everywhere, but a professional attitude and scholarly detachment are often drowned by de facto censures by the ideological public that is unwilling to delve into an issue beyond a stale talking point.
You see, this is like debating a sociopath. They have the advantage because they are unhampered by the truth.
Robert:
WE love you and are your devoted followers.
CGW
From RS...One of the most striking elements of the response to the talks that I have been giving on university campuses all over the country is the never-yielding unwillingness of Muslim questioners to admit even the smallest point.
This is because each small point is a finger in the hole of the dike. If the assertion is not challenged a finger may be removed, and the whole dam is threatened.
For Islam each small point, no matter how trivial, is a threat to the perfectness of Islam. To admit any imperfection at all, even trivial, is against Allah and blasphemous, so challenges up to, and maybe even riot, must be made in Allah's defense.
Because of this, Mohammadans are compelled to be disruptive, some are just more disruptive than others...
The tactic works very well because, let us faces it, most American university students are as dumb as rocks. The day that most of those dumb arrogant brats get a clue, it will cold day in Hades.