Indian gov't minister: "Islamic terrorism" an incorrect term made up by Westerners angry over 9/11

I think any Western politician who continues to say such things should be tossed out.

All politicians must read Andrew Bostom before they say anything else about Islam.

I mean, when "Mukherjee asked them to show which part of the Holy Book encouraged fundamentalism", couldn't he have done some basic research or just read Andrew Bostom's 'The Legacy of Jihad' to get ANY idea?

This man is a useful idiot.

How bout Muslim Terrorism, maybe he would like that better..wait, wait, I GOT IT !!

Terrorism perpetuated by the people who make a Haj to Mecca..that will work

I always thought that among those most directly threatened by Muslims, in neighboring countries and deep within, Israel's leaders took the cake for wilfully ignoring Islam. I see that I was wrong.

When Pranab Mukherjee asserts that "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" he is attempting to suggest that Islam, that the Qur'an, again and again inculcates the idea -- directly, and not by oblique hint -- that Muslims should "strike terror" into the hearts of Infidels. This is repeated many times, in the Qur'an, in the Hadith, and in the actions of Muhammad recorded in the Sira.

And when Pranab Mukherjee asserts that "[t]he patriotism of Muslims is no less than others in the country" he is attempting to explain that at the very center of Islam is the idea that all of humanity is divided between Believers and Infidels, and that the former are taught to hate the latter, and are also taught that their sole loyalty should be to fellow Muslims, everywhere. There are no doubt some Muslims who are lapsed in their observance, and who may violate this rule of loyalty to Islam and Muslims alone, but so what? Should Infidel nation-states count on this, when it is both a rare occurence, and one that might easily be overcome in a return to that old-time religion, and that, in any case, may be feigned to begin with? No, Infidels and their governments cannot make such a civilizational bet, take such a risk.

As for Pranab Mukherjee, one should perhaps be charitable and assume he simply has not bothered to study Islam, though as with Israeli leaders who exhibit the same dangerous innocence, one wonders whether he has any conception of his responsibilities, and the duty of due diligence, that applies outside of Wall Street, but as well to all those who presume to instruct and protect others.

Pranab and the Congress party of India are dhimmis and that is why most of the time in order to appease the Indian Muslims vote bank come with such dhimmi attitude and statements.

What happens to Hindus Nationalists or BJP, or VHP are branded as Hindu fundamentalist attacking Muslims. Most all of the Muslims in India get haj subsidies.

The problem is who are the Indian voters going to vote for the coming election. Are they still going to vote for congress?

I agree. "Islamic terrorism" is completely unacceptable! Why to offend terrorists?

It is just Islam.

And the award of dhimmi of the month goes to the MORRON Pranab Mukherjee.
With MORRONS like him in charge no wonder India is suffering from ISLAMIC TERROR ATTACKS.
People like him and his partymen are more than happy and willing to backstab and betray their own people in order to appease the muslims.
Every Hindu that votes for these dhimmi politicians is a IDIOT.

ps. These muslim appeasing Congress dhimmi's do not want to use the words Islamic Terrorism BUT they are more than happy to use the words Hindu Terrorists.
Just shows how hypocritical they are. Hopefully there will come a day when dhimmi's like him will be executed for their TREASON

We need to send the enitre Congress party to go live in Pakistan so they can be happy with their own kind.

-Ayo Gorkhali

I've appreciated the work of Mr. Spencer for some time now. But I think everyone can benefit from skepticism, including this blog.

Mukherjee is wrong, but so is a blind judgment of him and his type.

No matter how you look at it, Islamic Radicalism needs to be defeated, and Islam does need to become more at ease with the modern world. One way to do this, is indeed a strategy in which Islam is used to decry radicalism in its name.

Pushing Muslims towards some kind of protestant reformation, to peer into their texts and purge them of the vile parts, would be akin to going to the West, and demanding that each and every writer and thinker of the last 200 years who had something good to say about Western Civilization, be shunned, on the grounds of Western historical sins and errors.

As great as the West is, we also had another side to ourselves, and while we repudiate it today, there will always be someone not satisfied with the repudiation.Someone who demands a monument here, a mention there, reparations for this and that. Never will they be happy, until you basically abnegate yourself into nothingness. What's left then of your Civilization? Nothing.

So with Islam. If there is an understanding in the world elites, that Islam does indeed breed violence, the worst way of dealing with this is by poking a stick in the hornet's nest! You want to radicalise Muslims - make sure that they think you associate Islam with evil. That you reject the religion from top to bottom, because nothing good in it, outweighs the bad.

That's essentially what Spencer does. He exposes the unfortunately true aspect of Islamic fundamentalism, inherent in the very religion, even at its most global. But does reducing the religion to "nothing more than evil" really solve the clash of civilizations?

The simple truth about the Mumbai attacks, is that 99 percent of the world's Muslims condemn it in their hearts. To think otherwise, is insane. The other side of the coin, is that if these terrorists weren't Muslim, then it may have happened another time, another place, for a different. To view their desecration of Chabbad House as immanent to their religion - is historically ignorant. Its the same as saying that if a few white people scribble graffiti on a Jewish grave, all whites share an inherently anti-Jewish ideology. It's simply absurd.

Mukherjee isn't the issue. It's Westerners of his sort, who say similar things. But that's where we need to think, before we get worked up over it.

Islam is not going to go away, nor is anyone going to fight all of Islam. The only possible solution to Islamic radicalism, is Islam. Arguing with every cleric who states that Islam does not condone terrorism, and laughing at every mufti who issues a fatwa against something which is clearly allowed or even abetted by the Koran, is counterproductive. Muslims themselves need to be convinced that Islam does not tolerate aggression.

How does convincing them of the contrary, help anyone? And that's what Spencer does. He spends his time convincing everyone, that Islam encourages aggression.

Textually, this is true, but why reduce the religion to a text?! It's like reading the Old Testament, or some of Paul's letters in the epistles, and then telling Protestants who are family-focused, that Jesus said "leave your family for my sake".

This is stupid. No religion is reducible to its text. Religion, is by definition something which ties people, who are presumed to be living!

Spencer reduces Islam to a text, and unfortunately, he willfully ignores every attempt to transcend this text by other Muslims. That Muslims' in Central Asia drink alcohol, or that Egyptian Islam allows for the carving of statues, is never mentioned here. This creates the illusion that all Islam is Talibani-Saudi. The illusion that Islam is condemned to being a textual relic, where every mention of Jihad outweighs living Muslim's attempts to interpret "jihad" in ways respectful of human life, be it in the West or East.

the easiest thing to fix the problem of islam and
muslims is to give them a permanent new names:
alla the arab satan; Islam the satanic cult;
muslims the satan worshippers; quran the satanic
verses;mohammad the messenger of alla the arab
satan.

There is a word for Pranab Mukherjee in his native Bengali. It's called 'chodu' (meaning f___er)

To skepticoverall,

your analysis is filled with wishful thinking. For instance, how do you know 99% of the believers condemned Mumbai in their hearts? How do you know what is in anyone's heart? Much less those who hold dualistic ethics with one set of ethics for themselves and another set for the kafirs (us) and who hold the belief of sacred lying (taqiyya).

"No religion is reducible to its text" you write. Islam is a fundamentalist religion because the texts are followed as closely as possible. We can't push Islam towards a reformation. There has been no reformation of Islam because there can't be. It has closed itself to critical thinking and now resides as a closed system.

Do you not understand that the koran is literal words of their god allah and thus the reason that the koran is 'deified' and treated with such reverence? Also without the other sacred texts, the hadith and mohammed's biography, the sira, islam, which is not only a religion but a culture and a political system, can't be practiced. Again, islam is dependent on its texts.

As far away as the believers stray from the textual doctrine(which they call the straight path)is the amount they are a kafir and as such, are in danger of being labelled a hypocrit and shunned. But how many muslims are hypocrits and/or apostates we don't know since they don't speak out.

Robert Spencer reduces Islam to its texts because that is what its believers do.

I could go on with a critique of your comments but I'm pressed for time. You can remedy your ignorance by reading and studying. I'm not sure what you can do about your arrogance and cowardice.

Skepticoverall; Thankyou for this analysis. Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the internet going through Sufi websites, for historical and other reasons. What you said struck me as well, very forcibly. Islam is not going away, even in the West. The passion of Muslims of all kinds, and the spiritual aspirations of many of them, which when heard in their own words sound perfectly innocent, is profound and can never be ripped out of them by any means.

When I started reading the Koran I spoke to my Muslim friends - I have a small few - very harshly indeed and then stayed away from them for a while. They seemed to not see the religion as I did, from a "text" point of view.

Now that I have calmed down and started talking to them again, I think that although it is vital to know the texts, to understand the "big hoax" nature of the cult of Mohammed, and to not go along with any of their nonsense such as anti-Americanism, expecting me to conform to their modesty regulations or whatever, it is also incumbent on me to accept that these friends are people of goodwill who happen to have been born Muslim and who I probably have no power at all to convert away from their religion.

I find the US group "Muslims against Sharia" intriguing, and when I feel bold enough I might gently encourage them to explore this kind of group. Maybe; I am not sure. But I don't want to just push them away because of their religion, especially after the kindness (non-proselytising kindness) they have shown me.

I still think Mukherjee is being disingenuous. There is nothing wrong with facing issues squarely and asking Muslims to do the same. Talking as he did was like a slap in the faces of Westerners and others who have had to grapple with the vile phenomenon of "Islamic terrorism". But he is also trying to find justification for his appeasing attitude and inaction; trying to save face.

Phew. Can't we just forget about globalization? It is too hard, we all have to be experts on each others' cultures...I think I'll go bushwalking...

PG, no matter how nice your islamic friends are to you, they will always have to draw a line in the sand called islam. On one side of the line is the kafir (that's you) and on the other side is them (the believers). This is the profoundly dualistic nature of this complete way of life.

Allah tells them that they are superior, the best of all peoples and that kafirs are less than human and must submit to islam. That's if they are true believers.

If they are really your friends, they are hypocrits and can be threatened with apostasy, for the koran says (more than once) not to take kafirs as friends. In islam, the kafirs can be lied to, stolen from, terrorized, raped and killed with mohammed's and allah's blessing.

Sites like this one, JihadWatch and DhimmiWatch are a sign of a healthy debate and democracy, and it is unfortunate, that our political leaders are suppressing such debate at every turn. However, that doesn't mean that either JihadWatch or Dhimmiwatch have got it 100 percent right. Part of the reason why someone like Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis enjoy a relatively large mainstream readership, while Spencer's work - oftentimes even more scholarly - virtually no mainstream at all, may have to do with the following reification taking place here:

1) The tendency to bundle all political, religious, and social events into one phenomenon of Islamic Jihadism.

2) To conflate all Islam with Islamism.

3) To insist on the textuality of the Koran, and to force it as a dogma onto all Muslims, even if they resist!

First point. Imagine if you take the middle ages, and explain each and every negative event and happening in Europe, as a result of the barbarism of medieval Christianity. Its nonsensical.

It is ridiculous to bundle every outburst of social activism (or dis-activism, since its a gross failure) in the Muslim world, with Islam.

It is ridiculous to explain the Israel-Palestine issue entirely with Islam (since it ignores the profound anti-Israel mindset in Europe's Catholic community, Latin America, in Russia and China.)

Not everything that happens in that great Dar Al Islam, is an issue related to Islam. Even terms like "Dar Al Islam" should be used sarcastically, since to imagine that the leaders of each and every Muslim country go around thinking first and foremost about the interests of the Muslim community, is like assuming that in the concert of democracies, each and every leader goes around first and foremost pondering what are the communal interests of the democracies, before and in lieu of considering what are the immediate social, economic, and political concerns of his electorate. Its absurd.

Just look at the JihadWatch main page. Everything is conflated. Everything is bundled together into one big "Islam" and the slightest pretext or presence of "Islam" is the reason for even posting it. Sure, Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, but honestly, do people think that's all Hamas is about, Islam? I.e. that they are "Hamas' as in "resistance" doesn't raise questions? For about forty years the UN has mandated anti-colonial guerrilla groups - legalizing their violence (I guess Spencer missed the seventies UN resolution on this), and groups such as Hamas, the PLO, Hezbollah, and Fatah have grown on this fertile ground as a result of their war with Israel, not just as a result of their Islamic heritage. Sure, Hamas uses the term Jihad like we use the term Latkes, but come on, its part of the whole Israel-Palestine ecology!

Before some folks get carried away by what I say - let me be clear - I hope Israel exterminates Hamas, and doesn't stop until each and every armed member is dead. That said, there will come another organization to replace it, with a new membership (the families of the killed Hamasim), and it may be Islamic, and it may not, but honestly, who believes for one instant, that the Palestinian situation is just the work of nefarious ideologies? You mean it has absolutely nothing to do with demographics, economics, the UN, the left, and non-Evangelical Christianity (which differs little from Islam in its anti-Israel perspective)?

Second point. All Islam is not Islamism. Very often Islam is just a heritage, one that differs little from say Sunday non-shopping day in Europe, and Christmas in America. Like any heritage, it can be radicalized and channeled for political or social and commercial purposes (think X-mas sales). What in fact, is the difference between a secular Turkey, in which pork wont be served in a hospital out of respect for its heritage, and secular France, where due to its religious heritage, pork can be served in a hospital? I would like, before all problems between Islam and the West are reduced to Islamism, or Jihad, or the Koran, to at least hear an answer about this simple example of Turkey vs France.

Third point, it is factually wrong, nothing more and less, to claim that Islam is 100% textual tradition. This may be the case in Saudi Arabia, and in circles where textualism is gaining ground, but it is contrary - and felt as contrary- to the majority of Muslims in places like Egypt or Morocco. Take for example the row raised about a fatwa in Egypt, which supposedly outlawed sculpture. Now why doesn't Mr. Spencer inform the public about this row? And why doesn't the public know, about the enormous production of sculpture, by Muslims, in Egypt. I hope its not because it breaks the mold of reducing all Islam to a text.

Frankly, it is simply factually wrong, to maintain that Islam is a majority textual religion. And I believe it is a fact that Mr. Spencer acknowledges. But this doesn't show in the clear attempt by Spencer, to literally force upon all Muslims, his vision of Islam. Islam is a diverse religion, lets be honest about that please.

That said, I am grateful for Mr. Spencer's work, insight, and tenacity, and it is largely thanks to him, that we have the opportunity to have these sort of discussions. He is absolutely right on many points - but not right on them all.

Skepticoverall

how do you account for the fact - discovered by a police study in the UK in the early 1990s - that women married to Muslim men, in the UK,were EIGHT TIMES more likely to be murdered by their spouses, than women with spouses of any other faith or none? Nothing to do, at all, with the explicit textual instruction to beat wives who are merely suspected of harbouring rebellious attitudes?

How do you account for the fact that the taking of obscenely young child brides is and always has been common, right across the Islamosphere, from Morocco to Yemen to Iran to Indonesia, and if challenged, is always adamantly defended by reference to the sacralised example of Mohammed and Aisha?

How do you account for the extraordinary fact that, once one grasps the traditional Muslim meaning assigned to the story of the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, every futile and disastrous 'peace process' engaged in by non-Muslim with Muslim entities, past and present, on three continents, suddenly snaps into focus; and the likely future conduct of the Muslim participants, becomes boringly predictable?

Here is Jacques Ellul, the great French social and political analyst and observer, in his preface to Bat Yeor's "The Dhimmi", remarking upon the peculiar resistance to change, that he saw as a characteristic of Islam.

"Still, of course, notions and concepts change. The Christian conception of God or of Jesus Christ is not for Christians the same today as that of the Middle Ages. And we can multiply examples.

"But, precisely, the thing I found interesting, [indeed] striking, about Islam, one of its singular qualities, is its fixity of ideas.

"On the one hand it is obvious that things evolve more if they are not ideologically fixed.

"The regime of the Caesars in Rome could transform itself much more [readily] than the Stalinist regime, because it did not have any doctrinal and ideological frame, which would have given it strictness and continuity.

"Where a social organization is founded on a ‘system’ it tends to reproduce itself much more precisely.

"Now, Islam, *much more than was Christendom* {my emphasis added - dda}, is a religion which aims to give a definitive or final form to the social order, to the relationships between people, and to frame every moment in everyone’s life.

"So it tends toward a fixity that most other social forms did not have.

"But even more, we know that all Islamic doctrine (including religious thought) has taken a legal aspect.

"All texts have been subjected to an interpretation of a legal type, and all the applications (even of the spiritual realm) have had a legal aspect.

"Now, we must not forget that the legal has a very exact orientation: to fix – to fix the relationships – to stop time – to fix meanings (to arrive at the point where one term has one meaning and just one) – to fix the interpretations.

"Everything that is legal changes as slowly as possible, and does not obey any reversal.

"Of course, there can be evolution (in the practice, in jurisprudence, etc) but when there is a text that is considered ‘foundational’ of some sort, it is enough that someone should want to go back to it afresh, and the changes will be lost.

"*And that is indeed the situation with Islam* {my emphasis added - dda}

"A legal approach followed everywhere produced a fixity (not absolute, which is impossible, but maximal), which means that historical study is essential.

"When someone goes back to a term, to an Islamic institution from the past, we need to know, since the fundamental text (here, the Koran) has not changed, what were the apparent transformations, the developments;

"we must always go back to the principles and original facts;

"and that all the more because Islam has achieved something very rare, an integration of the religious, political, moral, social, legal, and intellectual [realms]: forming a tight ensemble in which each element is a part of the whole." END QUOTE

One must remember that Ellul speaks as a sociologist; as a lecturer in law; as a man who served as Professor of the History and Sociology of Institutions, at the University of Bordeaux.

Therefore, his observations, concerning the nature of Islam: the fact that it is a totalitarian system; that it is legalistic, and peculiarly resistant to change; are not trivial and cannot lightly be dismissed.

Response to dumbledoresarmy:

I am not negating the impact of thought on action. And I share Spencer's wariness of Islam.

1) Based on the influence of thought on action, I would indeed expect Islamic wife-beating to outshine other immigrant communities.

But increased cases of wife abuse are common in several immigrant communities, not to mention low-class communities in general (and there is likely to be a correlation between status and country of origin in most instances). with no ties to Islam - Carribean, Eastern non-Muslim, Latin American, even Eastern European. Obviously the levels and viciousness are not those of the Islamic community, but this is due to several factors.

Does the textuality of the Koran have something to do with this? Somewhat. The Islamic world in general, without resort to text, comprises the highest tribal and clan based concentrations in the world. A Kurdish man may want to perform genital mutilation, with somewhat weak justification from Islam, while a Muslim in Egypt, will find no justification in Islam at all. Speaking of genital mutilation, it tends to happen in clan based and tribal socieities ,and this I think is the more important factor. Hence you find Christians in Africa practicing it. Where is the Koran in their case?

So yes, I agree, the Koran is a problem in treatment of women, as regardless of textualism, it is a culture and tradition which guarantees legal inequality of men and women. Textually, however, the Koran can be used to successfully argue for equality. Especially when hadiths and fatwas are ignored - which in the case of cultural adaptation, will be.

2)Young brides has been obscenely common in the Christian West until modernity, and this goes for Jews too. It has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Just look at the age of an average Hindu bride, or shammanist brides in Africa. Sure, the Koran can be used to justify this, in face of demands to abolish it - so can the Bible. And it would have been, even as late as the 19th century.

3)Peace with Islam. We've had it for 700 years. The Ottomans cannot be reduced to Islam.

4) Jacques Ellul underestimates the role of modernity on cultural adaptation. On the other hand, apologists of Islam, ignore the ideologies tendency to fight modernity. However, this is not the case in all Islamic countries. Ironically, the richest Muslim countries, are Wahabi. But they are rich, not modern.

All cultures have an element of fixing ideas. While Islam indeed has a bigger problem with this than some, it is hard to see how Latin America or Russia, measure up. Let's not confuse rapid GDP growth with adaptation. The Chinese are still clueless on Democracy.

Ellul is wrong to think that the point of the legal is to fix in stone. This is rhetoric. One can just as easily claim, since it is rhetoric, that the legal has a tendency towards flux. Note the number of contradictory fatwas in Egypt, in the last 100 years.

All ideologies have a totalitarian aspect, so it is a meaningless observation about Islam. All thought, tends to totalitize. I'd venture a great deal of the totalitarisation of Islam, is being done by Spencer. Because he ignores its variety.

It is also odd, to single out Islam, following just 80 years of the female vote in the West - where Christianity figured as a perennial rational, for denial of the vote.

I always wondered, since you mention Ellul, why do critics of Islam, ignore the work of Michel Onfray's Atheist Manifesto, in which he described all three Abrahamic faiths as raging mad? Surely you are aware, that polygamy is not forbidden in Judaism, except by a rabbinical order of the 12th (somewhere near there) century - which applies only to Ashkenaz. Still, there are ultra-orthodox groups in Israel, who are Askhenaz, who practice polygamy. The Old Testament, is clearly a problem here, isn't it?

So why don't conservative and reform and mainstream Orthodox practice polygamy?

So the Old Testament isn't the problem?

Anyway, there are many great books written on the emancipation of women in Christendom, or should I say "from".

Unlike the abolitionists, suffragets could not resort to Biblical text to justify their cause.

the poetess: "PG, no matter how nice your islamic friends are to you, they will always have to draw a line in the sand called islam."

What a load of crap! Islamists are more of a threat to Muslims than to non-Muslims; Islamists murder more Muslims than Christians, Hindus, Jews, and everybody else combined. Non-Muslims do not display the propensity to kill us. Therefore it would make a lot better sense to draw a line in the sand called self-preservation. Religion is a private relationship between a person and God. Why should we care how PG chooses to worship (or ignore) God as long as he doesn't make us do it in the same way?

Skeptic

a propos Michel Onfray, and your citation of his sweeping statement that Christians, Jews and Muslims - 'the three Abrahamic religions' are all equally stark raving mad:

anyone who thinks that Islam is an 'Abrahamic religion' (i.e. that it has anything genuinely in common with the Biblical faiths, Judaism and Christianity) is a blind fool.

Islam is a death cult; even a human sacrifice cult, for down through the centuries, on three continents, its adherents have slit the throats or whacked off the heads of real live humans while chanting Allahu Akbar. No Jew or Christian has ever believed that the *only* sure way to merit Paradise is to deliberately and personally murder another human being, themselves, with their own hands.

Judaism and Christianity are NOT death cults; they are NOT human sacrifice cults; they UNDO and OPPOSE human sacrifice cults.

The foundational events of the offering of Isaac - who is given back - and the self-offering of Yeshua (who is also, according to Christian confession, given back) - are understood by anyone with a gram of intelligence, as events that totally subvert the way in which 'sacrifice' was commonly understood and practised in the ancient world. (It is no coincidence that Islam zeroes in on both these accounts and attacks them head on with obsessive force. It HAS to get rid of them, nullify them, in order to re-establish human sacrifice).

Islam PRETENDS - falsely - to be an Abrahamic religion. It isn't. It's a 'pagan' system: a monotheistic paganism.

Such biblical stories and persons as it contains are warped beyond all recognition: gutted of anything remotely resembling their meaning in their original Jewish and/or Christian context; and usually turned either upside down or back to front.

Classical Islam might be said to bear about the same relationship to the true 'Abrahamic religions', as the Satanic Black Mass bears to the Eucharist.

Oh, and one other teensy-weensy difference between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and Islam, on the other: the Golden Rule.

"Do to others as you would they should do unto you".

Judaism and Christianity both explicitly teach this; and throughout their history the meaning of the 'others' or of the 'neighbour' who must be 'loved as oneself', has only ever steadily broadened. It CANNOT be reduced to a 'tribal' or 'familial' code; it has always looked beyond. Mother Teresa saw nothing strange about seeing the face of Christ in a Hindu.

Islam, on the other hand, DOES NOT teach the Golden Rule; instead it explicitly teaches hatred and contempt for non-Muslims unless and until they buckle under the relentless bullying and 'join the gang'. This is not theoretical. The merest glance at the way in which non-Muslims have generally been treated right across the Islamosphere throughout history bears tis out. Charity MAY NOT be given to non-Muslims, and generally isn't.

SkepticOverAll: “This is stupid. No religion is reducible to its text”

SkepticOverAll: “Just look at the JihadWatch main page. Everything is conflated.”

SkepticOverAll: “Sure, Hamas uses the term Jihad like we use the term Latkes, but come on, its part of the whole Israel-Palestine ecology! ”

I don’t know who “we” is, but I am not coming with Skeptic anywhere.

One of the things that is admirable about Robert Spencer is his focus. Somehow he is able to pierce through the flack that Muslim apologists like Skeptic continually throw up.

Robert Spencer is talking about jihad, and the subjugation of non-Muslims.

He is asking for a halt to the teaching of jihad, and for mosques around the world to engage in programs teaching against jihad. He is asking to, please, stop committing violent jihad, and to stop enabling those who do.

If Robert Spencer is a laser beam, Skeptic is a tightrope walker; dancing in his “goody two shoes” along a fine edge, oblivious to his triteness.

If asking for an end to jihad is too confusing or conflated for Skeptic, I suggest he begin reading the biography of Muhammad, the hadith, the Koran, and all the official texts of Islam - something which he seems to be urging us not to do.

Well, I couldn’t disagree more. I think reading about Islam, and jihad, as revealed by the historical record, is vitally important to understanding the world today.

I can understand why people like Skeptic, and groups like the Organization of Islamic Conferences would like to keep the discussions of what Islam represents quiet, because it really is quite damning.

Although I think Skeptic has been off topic, ill prepared, and disrespectful, accusing other people of things he himself is more guilty of, I want to thank him for his posts because they are a very good example of the problem we all face.

When Robert Spencer writes “jihad”, Skeptic reads “Islam”, and that, in a nutshell, is the problem.

SkepticOverAll wrote:

...the clear attempt by Spencer, to literally force upon all Muslims, his vision of Islam.
...........................

Now I know why there is so much violence and ugliness done in the name of Islam--in Somalia, and Iraq, and Thailand, and Afghanistan, and Nigeria, and Pakistan, and Gaza, and the
Sudan, and the Philippines, and in Beslan, and Mumbai, and New York, and London, and Madrid, and Malmo...

It has nothing to do with Islam. It has to do with Robert Spencer's warped vision of Islam, which he is trying to force upon all Muslims.

Robert Spencer's effect on Muslims has been simply disastrous. I simply had no idea that he had so much influence on the Ummah--it's quite shocking...

sarc/off

SkepticOverAll, I'm afraid you've made a very elementary error, that of blaming the messenger. This is like accusing Cassandra of desiring the destruction of Troy--or even of causing it--rather than warning it was coming.