Fitzgerald: The Michael Coren Show: "We Are All Homers"

Karthik said: "For one, I do agree with Pipes. Moderate Muslims are not part of the problem but part of the solution if the problem of Islamic supremacism/Islamism has to be solved."

Really? Part of the solution? Well, that would be nice, but what are these "moderates" effectively DOING beyond saying nice things to non-Muslims?
Are they arguing with Islamic scholars in halls of Islamic learning and clerics in mosques who promote this supremist/Islamism?
Are they working to DEFEAT Islamic polititians who allow or promote these concepts?
Are they aggressively working to change what is taught to Islamic children about attitudes and actions towards non-Muslims (especially Jews)?
Are they working hard to STOP the current MASSIVE persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims and their Muslim majority governments?

There may be a HANDFUL of Muslims who are doing SOME of these things, but EFFECTIVELY on a scale of any appreciable impact: WHERE ARE THEY??

If Tarek against the evidence of the Hadith and Islamic tradition can believe that Aisha was 14 or 20 years old then he can believe anything.

The problem is not that Aisha was only nine years old when the marriage was consumed. The problem is that because Muhammad is believed to be a perfect man a norm and tradition thereby has been established valid for all times for all Muslims.

To call what Muhammad did for "child-rape" is of couse a provocation and a parachronism. We cannot and should not use modern ethical standards to judge events in ancient history.

But we can and we should pass moral judgement on modern Muslims who justify their peadophilia with reference to the Perfect Man and islamic tradition.

So Tarek is caught in a moral dilemma. Should he lie or tell the truth about Aishas age?

For a true believer the answer is easy. He should do whatever it takes to promote the interests of Islam and for this purpose Islam gives him the right to lie.

Coren has no idea about the details of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira and the audience even less, so Tarek gets away with his legal religious deception - taqiyya - and Wafa Sultan is revealed as an aggressive extremist.

It would have been much more effective to attack modern Muslims who abuse children. Like the great Ayatollah Khomeini who lowered the marriage age for girls from eighteen years old down to nine years old when the Islamic Republic Iran was established. Who himself at the age of 27 marriaged a 10-year old girl and called it a blessing from Allah. And told parents not to let their girls have their first menstruation at home but in marriage.

That was a tactical mistake on the part of Wafa Sultan. On the other hand for those in knowing this revealed Tarek as a slimy bastard Muslim about as moderate as rev. White.

Have you ever looked at Jochen Katz' "Answering Islam"?

Your argument is nonsensical, as Islam isn't a race.

I don't have any racial prejudice against Arabs. Maybe you're not aware of this, but not all Arabs are Muslims, and most Muslims are not Arabs.

I denounce all racial prejudice and intolerance as immoral. Race is something that can't be changed, and in and of itself it doesn't predispose one towards any type of behavior. As a free man of the West, however, I fully believe it is the right of all men to be able to debate, criticize---even mock, defame and disrespect---ANY ideology or worldview, be they political, philosophical or religous.

If you were to explain this to Steve Gilchrist, I have the sinking feeling that he'd deal with this new information by telling you angrily that he's got a Muslim friend, a hell of a nice guy, he's had him over to dinner and been to his house, too, and so that proves that there is no such passage in the Qur'an. Q.E. D. It's at that level.
Ugh, this has happened to me so many times, and I'm sure it has happened to a lot of you guys as well.

-----

It's also happened many times on these very pages of Jihad Watch comments, and not always by Islam apologists; sometimes by Jihad Watchers themselves, in one fashion or another.

staringattheview.blogspot.com

For non-Muslims who want to learn how to debate Muslims, but don't have time to get a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, a great website is thereligionofpeace.com, particularly the sections of the site called

The Myths of Muhammad
Games Muslims Play
Is the Qur'an Hate Speech
The Myths of Islam

One can find these sections on the left side of the site, if one scrolls down a wee bit. One excellent aspect is that all the claims made are referenced to core Islamic texts and also linked to those texts at respected mainstream Islamic websites.

There is also an excellent short politically incorrect biography of Muhammad at the religionofpeace.com. The site is excellent for an extremely compact debate training.

I agree with drjz's rebuttal of Karthik's Pipes Dream.

This trope, that the Moderate Muslim will save us from the problem their own Islam is causing, reveals something subtly different from what it appears to be ostensibly on the surface: On the surface, it appears to be a straight-forward expression of reasonable hope based upon what the proponent must surely believe to be facts to substantiate that hope.

Probe beneath the surface, however, and you will discover that the trope really has little to do, centrally, with Muslims at all: it is really about allaying one's own anxiety in the face of a semi-conscious dread and horror that wells up in anyone who has begun to learn about Islam, as Pipes has been doing for years. And the anxiety about the horror and the menace of Islam, and of Muslims, is less an anxiety about Muslims, than it is an anxiety about what we will do to Muslims, once we admit the full horror, the full menace. What else can we do, if we "go there"? Obviously, being white Westerners, we would have no choice but to "round them up", intern them and commit genocide against them. And since Muslims are ostensibly, virtually every time we see any of them, a wonderfully diverse rainbow of ethnic peoples, such a monumental crime becomes doubly evil (for we all know that ethnic peoples are worth more, as victims, than white Westerners, since white Westerners are perpetually paying off the ethical mortgage on the uniquely evil and uniquely enormous crimes they perpetrated against Noble Savages throughout history right up until recent history).

There are basically two kinds of people who react in two different ways to this slowly emerging realization of the full horror, the full catastrophe, of Islam and of Muslims: One kind, the Pipesians, as they continue to learn more and more of that horror, spend as much time developing defense mechanisms of denial in their heads by which to ward off the realization of the full horror, as they do learning about Islam.

The other kind continues on the learning curve and sooner or later faces the grim consequence of the data: that Islam is the problem and that all Muslims enable that problem.

The Pipes Dream is not the only style of denial here: there are many configurations, many flavors. Some can be further along in waking up than Pipes from the Pipes Dream, but still hang on tenaciously to their own sort of denial that seems, from the way it may be formulated, to be more realistic than Pipes, yet still provides comfort through one's own belief in innumerable innocent Muslims who must be protected from our own needs to defend ourselves. Meanwhile, others are even deeper in denial than Pipes: those would be the PC MCs, who are not even within the orbit of the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement at all, as Pipes just barely is, hovering as he does at its outer periphery.

"@Hesperado"

[...]

"I completely agree with you on this. The current anti-Islam movement's aim is to cleanse the planet from all the Muslims."

You completely misread the context of Hesperado's post and are now knowingly and slyly trying to attribute your assertion about the anti-Islam movement to him. He was referring to a self-deluding concept as an "inevitable" result of learning about and realizing the dangers Islam poses to the West, therefore preventing people from beginning to want to understand about Islam.

Hesperado has never espoused rounding up Muslims to kill them all, and neither has any administrator on this site.

I would be interested to see what you can present as relevant anti-Islam source that does espouse those sentiments about Muslims as a policy. Do you care to provide one?

"Also kindly note that when the westerners talk about anti-semitism they only say it about the Jews. But I believe that anti-Arabism should also be considered anti-semitism.

I wonder what do you think ?"

I think you need to study "The Legend of Islamic Antisemitism" by Andrew G. Bostom.

Let me give you a hint why by quoting from the beginning of Chapter I:

A Survey of Its Theological-Juridical Origins and Historical Manifestations.

INTRODUCTION

Robert Wistricch has emphasized the problematic nature of the term "antisemitism", derived from a group of cognate "Semitic" (i.e., stemming from the biblical Shem, one of Noah´s three sons)languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Ethiopic - and applied, inappropriately, to a pseudoscientific racial designation bt the German journalist Wilhelm Marr in the 1870s. Regardsless, for the past century, as Wistrich notes,

the illogical term "entisemitism" ... (w)hich never really meant hatred of "Semites" (for example, Arabs at all, but rather hatred of Jews, has come to be accepted in general usage as denoting all forms of hostility towards Jews and Judaism throughout history.

Bernard Lewis debunked a common apologetic argument, which expolits the limitations of the term antisemitism - and asserts that Arabs somehow are incabable of antisemitism:

"The argument is tometimes put forward that the Arabs cannot be antisemitic because they themselves are Semites. Such a statement is self-evidently absurd, and the argument that supports it is doubly flawed. First the term "Semite" has no meaning as applied to a group as heterogeneous as the Arabs, or the Jews, and indeed it could be argued that the use of such terms is in itself a sign of racism and certainly of ignorance or bad faith. Second, antisemitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews, and it is therefore available to Arabs as to other people as an option should they choose it. "

But perpahs the strongest evidence that antisemitism was never meant to be directed at Arabs (or Muslims, or any non-Jews) comes from the perpetrators of the genocidal antisemitic violence, the Nazis. During a November 1942 press conference, a Berlin foreign ministry spokesman, as reported in New York Times, took "great pains" to assure Arabs that Nazi antisemitic policies were directed at Jews, exclusively. The spokesman elaborated:

"The difference between Germany´s attitude toward Jews and Arabs has been clearly shown in the exchange of letters between the former Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali, and the German Institute for Racial Problems. We have never said the Arabs were inferior as a race. On the contrary, we have always pointed out the glorious historic past of the Arab people."

If you read and understood all 766 pages of Bostoms book you would be in an eminent position to discuss Islamic Jew Hatred with the very well informed contributers to this site instead of just sounding like an ignoramus.

Eloquently put and well reasoned statement. Not much to add except two quotes from the mind of George Orwell:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Long live the revolution here on JW. ;-)

During a November 1942 press conference, a Berlin foreign ministry spokesman, as reported in New York Times, took "great pains" to assure Arabs that Nazi antisemitic policies were directed at Jews, exclusively. The spokesman elaborated:

"The difference between Germany´s attitude toward Jews and Arabs has been clearly shown in the exchange of letters between the former Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali, and the German Institute for Racial Problems. We have never said the Arabs were inferior as a race. On the contrary, we have always pointed out the glorious historic past of the Arab people."

This is a vitally important piece of data that would help dispel that canard to the effect that Hitler and the Nazis were "Christians" and being racists could not possibly have entered into a partnership with Muslims. Does Bostom provide a full citation to that New York Times article?

Jo:

Posted the following reply to Tarek on that website and reposting it here in case it gets censored.

"Now, if it is okay for the Jewish community to abandon child marriage despite evidence that it was permitted and practised in medieval times, then why is the standard set differently for Muslims? "

A little bit of obfuscation there Tarek as the Jewish community did this a long time ago and muslims have not. No one I know is worried that the Jews wll revert to medieval practices but that islam hasn't given them up yet.

"Even if I were to concede--and I do not-- that Muhammad married a nine-year old, isn't it more important that we work--both Jew and Muslim--to end this practise?"

Putting this in the present tense is also a lie unless you meant that it is up to the Jews to help the muslims end this practise. I don't think that you meant it that way though as your lie of ommission on the Michael Coren show suggests. You only stated the subtitle of your new book rather than the title which is "Why We Hate Jews".

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Hate-Jews-Unveiling-Anti-Semitism/dp/0771047835/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269100432&sr=1-2

So you've given up on Shariah, Hadiths, Honour Murders, Child-rape and violent Jihad. Are moderate muslims en masse now contributing to freedom loving defenders of democracy such as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn for the money they spent to defend themselves against the lawfare Jihad of your leaders such as Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Sowahardy? Elmo's marionette, Khurram Awan, who represents the next generation of "moderate muslims" boasted that even though they lost they succeeded as the defendents had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in their defense.

So what remains of this cult you cling to, having given up all these parts of it? Do you also deny that your "prophet" also was a polygamist, a murderer and a rapist? Have you used your celebrity and leadership as a moderate to pressure the Ontario Attorney General to prosecute Iman Ali Hindy for performing many polygamist marriages and deporting him?

From your article in the National Post "Perhaps the answer she had in mind was too outrageous even by her own standards: Force Muslims to convert or die. " Just another lie projecting muslim beliefs onto infidels. In fact most infidels have in mind that you should obey our codified common law or go to jail and be deported. Note that's not obey the opinion of those like Daniel Pipes who consider and project themselves to be the intellectual elite, but the law for the common people. As long as you insist on calling yourself a Pakistan-Canadian, or others Palestine-Canadians, Somalia-Canadians or Arab-Canadians we don't consider you to be Canadians, but we do know to whence you should return.

Tell me what keeps you in this cult of your moon god and miserable so called prophet?

The problem with putting an end to child rape by old Muslim men is that Muhammad did it, and it does not matter what time or date it took place in. Muhammad is seen as the perfect man, one to be copied for all time, and if he is perfect, so are his actions.

"Does Bostom provide a full citation to that New York Times article?"

Unfortunately not. But the note to the Nazi-quote is interesting:

"(5). "Nazis Reasure Arabs - Antisemitism Confined to Jews, Spokesman Explains", New York Times, November 5, 1942; Bernard Lewis recently expanded on this same incident in his essay "The New Antisemitism", American Scholar 75, no. 1 (2006): 25-36.

"While in Berlin, Rashid Ali (the Pro-Nazi Iraqui Premier deposed in May/June 1941) was apparently disquieted by the language and, more especially, the termonology of antisemitism. His concerns were authoritatively removed in an exchange of letters with an official spokesperson of the German Nazi Party. In answer to a question from Rashid Ali as to whether antisemitism was also directed against Arabs, because they were part of the Semitic family, Professor Walter Gross, director of the Race Policy Office of the Nazi Party, explained with great emphasis, in a letter dated October 17, 1942, that this was not the case and that antisemitism was concerned wholly and exclusively with Jews. On the contrary, he observed, the Nazis had always shown sympathy and support for the Arab cause against the Jews. In the course of his letter, he even remarked that the expression "antisemitism", which has been used for decades in Europe by the anti-Jewish movement, was incorrect since this movement was directed exclusively against Jewry, and not against other peoples who speak a Semitic language." (p. 33).

Let me add an excerpt from an article by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann: "Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam":

" ... During a 1941 visit to Berlin, for example, Hitler declared the Arab mufti an "honorary Aryan" - interpreted by Dalin and Rothmann as the mufti's having found his "soul-mate" - and, while touring Auschwitz, al-Husseini "reportedly urged the guards in charge of the (gas) chambers to be more diligent and efficient in their efforts." The mufti himself notes in his diary that "I will keep up my fight until the complete destruction of the Judeo-Bolshevik rule has been accomplished. ..."

Link:

http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-07-20/books/17174071_1_radical-islam-muslims-icon

Also, I read somewhere, that Hitlers Mufti was submitted to craniometry at the Racial Institute and found to be pure Aryan, and that this test result was the "scientific" basis for the answer given to Rashid Ali and at the press conference. Unfortunately I was not able to locate the source. So take it with a grain of salt.

"Muhammad is seen as the perfect man, one to be copied for all time, and if he is perfect, so are his actions."

True, KrazyKafir; and here we have yet another vile and insane belief at play. I mean how could anyone believe that a lying, thieving, child raping, mass-murderering CRIMINAL could possibly be a perfect man. Shame on those that subscribe to such evil tripe. It's just so obvious which god muhammad and his followers serve, and it isn't the one true God -- it's satan and his crowd.

I meant "mass-murdering", not murdererererering ..got a little flustered there ....

Hi, Debanjan Banerjee -

First of all, thanks for your kind comment about my blog. I have a question for you, if you don't mind. You described Wafa and people like her as "throwing venom" on the name of Prophet Muhammad.

I was recently in an email correspondence with a Muslim who was talking about the fact that Muslims are "evolving" in their understanding of Muhammad. I wrote to him:

You are also free to "evolve" in your understanding of Muhammad, although I don't have a clue how that works. Does that mean that Muhammad did not torture Kinana to death at Khaybar to steal his money and then rape his 17 year old bride Safiyah (after beheading her father and brother in Medina), or that you just don't talk about it? Or take the fantasized route of Muslim historians and claim that Safiyah dreamed about Muhammad and was thrilled to marry him? Or just pretend that was part of the culture of the day, and has no relevance 14 centuries later? Or ignore all that to quote a hadith about Muhammad worrying when the Jew who kept throwing garbage in his yard didn't show up one morning?

Would you also describe me as someone "throwing venom" on the name of Muhammad? Doesn't the Muslim have a responsibility to answer these hard questions honestly?

By the way, the person I wrote to replied by saying the account of Muhammad torturning Kinana was "unsubstantiated" in Islamic history. I was shocked - I can read it myself in both Arabic and English in Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, the two earliest and most authoritative biographers of Muhammad. Why are the most challenging questions about Muhammad suddenly "unsubstantiated" when they are brought up as criticism? It reminds me of how Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi responded to Wafa Sultan's quoting the Hadith where Muhammad said, "Paradise as under the shadow of swords". Qaradawi said it was a "weak" Hadith, and of course accused Wafa of being "ignorant". Suddenly al-Bukhari's Hadiths are weak because Muhammad said something Muslims do not want to be reminded of!

"because Muhammad said something Muslims do not want to be reminded of"

Or they just don't want you to know about it in a, disapproving, manner.

When it comes to Islam, I think "murdererererering" is applicable.

...lol, so true :)

Thanks for this, Hugh.

This thread is better than poetry.

What amazes me though, is that so many posters still give Tarek Fatah the benefit of the doubt, instead of calling him the bald faced liar he is.

"besides, Tarek Fatah is by now a well-recognized (in Canada, anyway) Voice of Moderate Islam - it's his career, it's what he does, it's how he makes money, and he certainly doesn't like Wafa Sultan coming in and queering his well-paid pitch to the synagogue set."

I would like to see Wafa Sultan and Robert Spencer become TV superstars and their message heard in every language and to make Oprah millions. (fat chance) At the same time I would like the Tarek's and the Tariq's disappeared, ridiculed and exposed.

Don't get stuck on whether or not Tarek Fatah was offended or insulted, he has no right not to be.

Tarek Fatah offends and insults all of us, and our intelligence, when he insists on playing a game of permanent Let's Pretend ....

Well said, Man With Hat.

Hey, what about me? Where are my speaking engagements? We all have to eat. I don't understand why all those groups who are happy to have Tom Friedman never call and never write. Available, too, not only for weddings and bar mitzvahs, where I promise tn pull my punches so as not to spoil the cheerful atmosphere, but also at Hindu and Sikh meetings. What's more, suppose you have relatives or friends or business acquiantances or someone you are thinking of marrying but you've got to get that someone straight on the subject of Islam, people who persist in their wilful ignorance or misunderstanding of Islam, and you think they need a little lecture or two that will convince them. Or it could be a law firm, a country club, a board of directors, your own extended family whose members, less knowledgeable than you, or perhaps your ungrateful children who don't read enough, and are giving you such grief. Well then, Barkis is willin' because Barkis needs to pay for new wiring in the house, and trees to come down, and a car that will last another ten years and....well, you get the idea. Like everyone else, I have a special soft spot for billionaire hedge-fund operators, or at least -- if the price is right -- can convince myself that I do, as long as they are obedient. Contact my agent, Mr. R. Spencer.

...lol, U funny :)

Good insight. Fatah has made a career out of being a moderate Muslim who is supposedly the ally of all good and decent non-Muslims looking to support the "moderates" in their well-publicized, but barely-evident fight to wrestle their faith from the "Islamists" and "extremists."

However, Fatah must know that he has no ideological grounds on which to stand when it comes to convincing Muslims that jihad, hostility to non-Muslims and child marriage aren't part of Islam. So he spends his time trying to convince the West that their true allies, the apostates, who know Islam and tell the truth, are bigoted "extremists," and those Westerners who work with the apostates are themselves full of anti-Muslim bigotry.

Thus the problem of making the "good" Islam vs. "bad" Islamist distinction is that it leads to the repetition of all kinds of platitudes and analogies that ultimately muddy the waters and weaken the impact of clear-headed thinking about Islam and the danger it poses for infidels. If there is a "good" and "moderate" Islam, what does one do about the central figure of Muhammad, even if somehow Muslims could possibly reinterpret the Koran and Hadiths? I mean, the "good" Muslims still view Muhammad as their prophet. Even if the reformers can put his troubling actions in the context of his time (child marriage, call for on-going war against non-Muslims, genocide/ethnic cleansing of Arabian Jews, polygamy, slavery, racism, thieving, raping, looting, amputations, outlawing adoption, killing apostates, terror, deceit--just to name a few, though I am not convinced that these were all universal 7th century customs) and no longer revere him as a perfect man whose example should be followed literally, they still have to find something good about him, some reason that he should be a venerated figure in their faith. What would that be?

...the [Muslim] person I wrote to replied by saying the account of Muhammad torturning Kinana was "unsubstantiated" in Islamic history. I was shocked - I can read it myself in both Arabic and English in Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, the two earliest and most authoritative biographers of Muhammad. Why are the most challenging questions about Muhammad suddenly "unsubstantiated" when they are brought up as criticism?

We really have to graduate beyond this position we are in now of treating Muslims as though we could give any of them the benefit of the doubt, as though we could ever know that any one of them is a rational interlocutor participating in a discussion in good faith.

I.e., it is time we graduated to the position of prejudice against Muslims: We must assume they are lying and will continue to lie. Were we to do that, what purpose would discussion then have? Only one: as a spectacle carefully and cleverly calculated and orchestrated by us, for the benefit of educating our fellow-citizens who haven't yet woken up.

Thanks for the additional information.

...I read somewhere, that Hitlers Mufti was submitted to craniometry at the Racial Institute and found to be pure Aryan...

This would make a great scene in a movie. The Grand Mufti would be escorted into the "Racial Institute", wearing his full regalia, including his long robe and cylindrical hat, then when he is seated to begin the test, he removes his hat and hands it to a guard before one of the Nazi scientists approaches his head with a set of calipers and a slide-rule to begin the measurements...

For what it's worth, I've seen photographs of the Grand Mufti al-Husseini, and he looked rather white, and seemed to have red hair and beard. He might well have come from Yugoslavian stock.

For other Hadith about little Aisha, see the posting by Kinana of Khaybar in this thread. And what counts is not whether or not there is one Hadith or a dozen, but what Muslims themselves believe, as indicated by their behavior. If virtually the first act of the Ayatollah Khomeini was to lower the marriageable age of Iranian girls to nine, and everyone in Iran knew exactly why he was doing that, surely that is evidence that Muslims believe that Muhammad married, in every sense, little Aisha when she was nine, called away from playing on her swings.

And look at the Qur'anic commentaries by both Muslims and well-prepared non-Muslims. There's no doubt, and Tarek Fatah should simply admit to what he knows, and many more non-Muslims are finding out about every single day. He should say: this is what Muslims believe Muhammad did. And they are also taught that Muhammad is the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil. And they are taught not to question anything done by that Perfect Man, just as they are taught not to question anything in Islam, but to accept the rules as to What Is Commanded and What Is Prohibited and to accept their role as slaves of Allah.

And that is why I, Tarek Fatah, am so sorry for all those generations of Muslims whose mental and moral growth was stunted because, through no fault of their own, they were born into, and raised up within, Islam.

Yes, he might say that.

He might.

But he won't.

Hesperado,

While I am as against the Islam vs. Islamist distinction that Pipes makes, I am not so sure that it is because he fears a horrible things being done by whites once they learn the truth about Islam. I would assume that he feels, at least in part, that the goal of warning the West about the threat from the advance of Islam is so important that he doesn't want to be tuned out or to be accused of bigotry (though the Islamists accuse him anyway, of course).

That may explain why he can say that there is no difference between his views and Robert Spencer's, and then speak publicly about a "moderate" Islam that Robert believes is fantasy. I am not an apologist for Pipes and I have no idea what his motivations are. But I bet his column at the NY Post, many of his speaking engagements, and his access to political leaders might shut down. Is it better that these audiences hear Pipes talking about the very real threat to America from Sharia Law, from jihad, from Saudi funded mosques and groups like CAIR, of his skepticism about spreading democracy in the Muslim world and the dangers of the "peace process," than that they don't hear from someone like Pipes because he is dismissed as a bigot?

Again, I am not making excuses for Pipes, as I prefer telling it like it is; I'm just trying to think of a good reason why one might take his approach. Because I don't believe in the Islam vs Islamist distinction, I choose get my insight and education on Islam and Jihad from this website.

Hesperado, I'm not ready to go that far and treat all Muslims with prejudice. Just today I received the following email from a young man in the UAE:

Hi, I have been recently reading your blog and I have to admit, it's fantastic. The arguments you put forward and your views are well thought out and hmm...erudite. The real reason I am writing is to thank you for your help to find the term EX-muslim. It kind of sums up what I was until recently (i am in pendulum mode right now, swinging from extremist right to atheist left). My recent understanding into Islam has been the View from the Top method. I have been trying to figure out what kind of MAN Muhammad was...and if he was normal human being, a person."

In my response, I encouraged him to keep thinking, said I was sure he would end up on the right side of the fence, and offered to respond to any questions or comments he might have. There are thousands of young Muslims like him who are reading our blogs and websites and trying to make their minds up about Islam. I'm not too quick to consider them all as beyond the pale.

4i,

A very thoughtful post!

I think the difference between Pipes & Spencer is more in approach, call it tactics, than in philosophy. I believe that Geert Wilders has made the same distinction as Pipes, i.e., muslims vs. islam. But Geert has to temper his message to avoid the "extremist" label as he tries to get his meesage out to the main-stream. It seems that today's PC/MC environment can only handle truth in small doses, if at all. I think you are quite right; if that's Pipes's tactic, then his message is still worth hearing, the more-so if he has an influential audience that considers him credible. Small steps are better than no steps!

BTW, for myself, I do not believe that the disease (islam) can be separated from its carriers (muslims). Just because the Western,
"enlightened" mind is loathe to painting with a broad brush doesn't mean that it's not true in this case!

Regards!

G

staringattheview,

The Muslim you would exempt from rational prejudice whose email you adduce as evidence strikes me as dangerously labile, possibly schizophrenic. I wouldn't trust that Muslim with a wet match.

I just know from my own experiences that a lot of people tune me out or change the subject once I don't make distinction between the "extremists" (i.e. "Islamists") and those who practice "moderate Islam," when it comes to talking about Islamic supremacism and the contents of the Koran, Hadiths and Sira. But I don't make that distinction, because I want to wake people up and cut through all the soothing platitudes that keep infidels from taking the necessary acts of self-defense.

However, I do wonder if I would be better moderating my approach as not to scare off people who had never (or only hesitatingly) thought about what Islam's texts and traditions contain. The best I can do is use jihad or jihadists rather than Islam or Muslims, but I find it really hard to play the Islam vs. Islamist/moderate vs. extremist game without feeling like I'm being intellectually dishonest. At the end of the day, both devout and secular Americans take on faith that all religions, at their core, have the same fundamental values, even as they admit that they are unfamiliar with Islamic sources. They acknowledge that I know more than they do about such matters, but quickly add that they still can't believe that all religions don't have an inherently peaceful or "love your neighbor" creed at their core. I ask them to look at the Koran or check out authoritative Islamic sources for themselves, but they never do. I think people are afraid that the entire foundation of their tolerant, secular, humanistic, egalitarian worldview will crumble to pieces if they allowed themselves to consider that Islam is not a benign ideology and that it might be necessary, for our own protection, to "discriminate" in determining who we let into our countries, our militaries, our police, etc, and that once the percentage of Muslims gets to a significant number of the population, major changes in our way of life beyond the increased threat from terrorism. Most Westerners, it seems, are willing to die or be enslaved, rather than give up their cherished illusions. Somehow, they have to stay true to their post-modern dogma and continue believing, that when it comes to the massive influx of Muslims to Western Europe and North America, that this time things will turn out differently than they have in every other instance in recorded history.

4infidels,

I would assume that he [Pipes] feels, at least in part, that the goal of warning the West about the threat from the advance of Islam is so important that he doesn't want to be tuned out or to be accused of bigotry (though the Islamists accuse him anyway, of course).

Not only Islamists; everyone in the mainstream too. Besides that, my impression of Pipes is that he is not merely pursuing a realistic tactic, but that he sincerely believes his position -- as incoherent as it is. Many sincere people have incoherent positions.

That may explain why he can say that there is no difference between his views and Robert Spencer's...

I think that's more because of Spencer's ability to tap dance, and Spencer's belief in keeping people on his side who are at least within the orbit of criticism of "elements of Islam". I, on the other hand, believe in aggressively critiquing people who are in our orbit who seem too soft on Islam. It doesn't mean we necessarily ostracize them, but we should keep them on their toes, which means calling them on their softness. The West shoudl be strong enough to do that. If the West is not strong enough to do that, one wonders if the West is strong enough to uphold its tradition of self-criticism.

...I bet his column at the NY Post, many of his speaking engagements, and his access to political leaders might shut down.

I think at some point we have to stop being so anxiously careful to walk on eggshells; particularly when the enemy is mass-murdering us, or otherwise ambivalently countenancing that.

Is it better that these audiences hear Pipes talking about the very real threat to America from Sharia Law, from jihad, from Saudi funded mosques and groups like CAIR, of his skepticism about spreading democracy in the Muslim world and the dangers of the "peace process," than that they don't hear from someone like Pipes because he is dismissed as a bigot?

I don't think that's an Either/Or proposition. We can point out flaws in Pipes at the same time, if flaws indeed exist, which I think they do. See my link above in my linked phrase "Pipes dream" for a detailed analysis of those flaws.

dlp, you said,

Again, this is why JW has a reputation for being a Muslim hate site. And for its lack of serious, considered discussion.

If you mean the comments section of this site, you may have a point. But what you say does not apply, I think, to Spencer's own writings. If you say it does apply to Spencer, then please prove that by showing specific statements where Spencer is in error or hate-filled in what he says.

Kinana of Khaybar,
You make an interesting point, that polls and surveys of Muslims show that most Muslims around the world want sharia, and therefore are not moderates. But I'm not so clear on the exact meaning of those polls.

What seems clear from human rights stats around the globe is that Islamic culture is relatively hostile ground for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. It can sprout up to varying extents, but the soil is evidently poor, probably because Muhammad, in the most authoritative Islamic texts, says things like "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."

It does seem that most of the leading Muslims around the world are not moderates. Not that most of them are for terrorism. But the majority do seem to be in sympathy with this or that form of Islamic supremacism and Islamic law. The non-leaders, meanwhile, are not so much moderates, as they are nothing in particular, passive non-entities vis-a-vis Islam. That's why public protests by Muslims against terror in the name of Islam are so tiny: the Islamic leadership is not rallying people to go. And the Muslim masses seem passive vis-a-vis Islam, and often supportive of the more or less supremacist Muslim leaders.

Traeh,

The meaning of those polls about "sharia" and "strict sharia" needs to be interpreted in light of more specific information about exactly what is understood by sharia, and in light of other related information.

For example, as I recall from the PEW and World Public Opinion surveys, most Pakistanis (about 80%) want strict sharia. What does that mean? Just Islamic personal and family law, and nothing more? Further polling by PEW indicated that about 78% to 82% of Muslims in Pakistan wanted implemented stoning to death for adultery, and the death penalty for apostasy. We know what Pakistan is like for non-Muslim minorities living there, from all the news reports presented here.

Regarding freedom of expression, the poll questions are often worded in a way that obscures distinctions between the general western conceptions and the Islamic conceptions of "freedom of expression." Even so, polls indicate that most Muslims will say they value "freedom of expression," but further more specific questions, such as whether the government should be allowed to punish people who insult religion, reveal that most Muslims do want such punishment to be imposed. (That is, they don't accept freedom of expression in the western sense). The percentage of Muslims wanting such punishments to be imposed would probably be even higher if the questions specifically referred to punishing people for insulting Islam. In the West, such as in the U.K., the majority of Muslims want those who criticize Islam or "insult" Muhammad to be criminally prosecuted and punished.

As for leading Muslims, I am reminded of the results of a vote taken by the Iranian religious leaders on the death penalty for apostasy, and almost all of them supported it. The fact that 62% of Iranians express support for al-Sistani (an Iraqi Ayatollah who uses Islamic scripture to justify classifying and treating non-Muslims as "najis"--feces, urine, etc.--and who rules that blasphemers should be killed) gives us some clue that most Iranians generally are almost as fanatical in their Islam as are their religious leaders.

Polls do indicate the large minorities to majorities of Muslims do support this or that terrorist group (it is important to distinguish Shia and Sunni in these polls, something most pollsters don't bother to do. Support for Hezbullah is high among Shia; support for Al-Qaeda was still as high as 49% among "Arabs" in 2006, and thus probably even higher among Sunni). Bin Laden, last time I checked the polls, was still more popular than any politician in Pakistan.

My reading of the data on freedom of conscience, where the relevant test is freedom to apostatize publicly from Islam, is that it appears that most Islamic countries have some official or parallel sharia laws that can be used to punish apostates. At least a dozen Islamic countries have the death penalty for apostasy. In some countries such as Egypt the penalties are in place but are less than death; in other countries the penalty is death or imprisonment. All Islamic countries as far as I'm aware are members of the OIC and have endorsed the Cairo Declaration, which affirms sharia supremacy. Thus, apostasy can in theory be punished by any Islamic country, even if there is not already an official state law on the books or a parallel means of punishment through sharia courts. This of course is all in addition to the ever present threat from vigilantes.

In the absence of sufficient data on the popularity of the apostasy penalty among Muslims throughout the Islamic world, and the percentage of Muslims who would be willing to act as vigilantes to punish apostasy, we can get some idea of how bad the situation is there by looking at public apostates in the west. We know that almost all, if not all of them, are not safe to speak in public; they receive death threats and require bodyguards. It is reasonable to infer that it is much, much worse in much of the Islamic world. If the percentage of Muslims who want the death penalty imposed for apostasy is about 30-36 percent in the U.K., we can assume that it is much higher in the Islamic world. If 6% of Muslims in the Netherlands would be themselves willing to carry out vigilante violence on an apostate, again this would be much higher in the Islamic world.

If we take into account the fact that the majority of Muslims in the U.K. want those who criticize Islam to be criminally prosecuted and punished, and we take into account that publicly-declared apostates are generally going to end up saying something that is deemed to be "insulting" to Islam or Muhammad, the support for punishing public apostates one way or another is probably very high. We can reasonably infer that the majority of Muslims world-wide want some form of penalty for those apostates who go public and explain the reasons for their apostasy from Islam. (Even if they don't get punished for apostasy per se, they can get punished for making blasphemous statements in explaining their apostasy). Public apostasy plus criticism of Islam is considered especially egregious. The Saudis (on their official website) cite Quran verses 9:12-14 as justifying the death penalty for apostates who insult Islam/the Prophet.

Nice point, sir.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, George,

Small steps are better than no steps at all. It's about strategy a lot.

PC/ MC-people certainly won't want to see Islam as a disease. But Islam-wary people should argue that it at least should be examined as well as any worldwide threathening disease, in its characteristics and effects. If only to exonerate it, because it sure is much indicted and seen as a threat to freedom and peace now!

And both Daniel Pipes and Geert Wilders are very instrumental in examining, explaining in great detail what Islam IS and CAUSES. Up to some worst-case-danger. Now I don't mind if others then try to paint a best-case of Islam, too, I only mind when people try to deny us our right to investigate Islam to the bottom and take some reasonable political worst-case-countermeasures.

Hesperado can speak for himself what he means with what he says and what consequences his conclusions should have.

But I think that you, dlp, now make 'Strawman" and "slippery slope-"fallacies.

Perhaps Hesperado is too strong-worded and he should say that "All Muslims must be considered POTENTIAL Liars". That the strong possibility of many of them lying on many occasions must be taken into consideration. And appropriate worst-case-countermeasures should be carefully considered.

But with that he is NOT saying: 2-tier-society, rounding them all up, yes, there was at least something the NAZI's and fascists did good (as you imply him saying).

Whereas your position would be: In order to prevent us being offensive, hurting feelings, being liable to fascism etc, we must TRUST all Muslims as much as all Non-Muslims. Not even considering massive evidence of Muslims lying on vital issues concerning our security.

You seem in effect to be saying; Oh, our values can defend our freedom, prosperity, happiness, lives etc ALL BY THEMSELVES, we don't have to do much.

Not even when many of us know how "the other side" is "HATE-SPEECHING", Oppressing, attacking our "faith-brothers" in THEIR countries, even then you still want us to give the good example and treat THEIR "faith-brothers" completely equal, without so much as questioning their loyalty. Because of the power of our values alone.

But it's not reasonable to try to shove THAT through all our throats.

And about JW being a HATE SITE. I don;t know about you, but many people who are in opposition to so-called "HATE-SPEECH" claim to know the difference between "Insulting-Just-because-of-Hating-with-no-other-intention" and The intricate combination of Highly-valuable-true-criticisms with harsh insults. Which is vital to protect at all times, and attacks on which are veritable attacks on our security and progress. Freedom of Speech is THAT important.

But they don't in practice; When Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan etc criticize true lamentable facts about Islam and Muslims, the emphasis put by these anti-HATE-SPEECH-people is almost always primarily on the tone and NOT on the contents, which very often get conveniently ignored because of all the attention to the "Tone", the form".

And as I said; even IF it is so objectionable, the condemned "HATE-speech" is not considered worldwide, either trough ignorance or willfully, but only selectively applied to the Islam-critical side, NOT to the "Islam-sycophantic" side, at least NOT in equal measure it seems to me. And ignorance can never be an excuse for double-standard-hypocrisy.

I re-listened to both tapes last night, and then looked again at what was posted as "Part I" and realize, to my chagrin, that I had left out several paragraphs of discussion, including many more cites from the Hadith, about Aisha, and that, inadvertently, I had placed that material in Part II. It was a case of mistakenly thinking that Aisha was discussed by Tarek Fatah on both tapes. Now that I have caught my own error, I will have the material on Aisha, more than what is there now, properly inserted in "Part I" above. I won't put in everything -- it would be too long -- but I will put in much more than is there now.

Why?

Because the story of Aisha is a good one to focus on. It is a test of a "moderate Muslim's" honesty and good will. If he cannot face up to what is written, and what is believed by more than a billion Muslims, if he insists on one way or another to deny this, either by claiming that she "really" was "at least fourteen" or even as old as "19 or 21," (what about the dolls, what about the swings, what about Al-Bukhari, what about what is written in the Muslim commentaries, what about what the Ayatollah Khomeini thought when he lowered the marriageable age of girls to nine?), or by claiming that she had reached puberty and we don't really know her age, but what's wrong with marrying a girl who has "reached puberty" -- well, if the Defense of the Real and True Islam is going to be on that level, it's worthelss, and the person flagging such Moderate-Muslim wares not to be trusted.

I'd bring up Aisha very soon in any debate -- or any question-and-answer period. I'd do it, say, with Tariq Ramadan, who contrary to what some people think, on more than one occasion has fallen apart -- on an NPR show, when a questioner raised the issue of Taqiyya, which startled him, and then refused to let that issue go when Tariq Ramadan, realizing he could not deny it outright, claimed that it was only a "Shi'a" doctrine and then, when the caller came back with the Qur'anic basis of the doctrine and with authorities on Islam who noted it was also part of Sunni Islam, and there was, furthermore, "kitman" -- well, it discombobulated him quite a bit. And when he was debating with Ibn Warraq and others in London, he fell apart, just as he did on French television debating Sarkozy, or even more, Alain Finkielkraut. Someone or some group of people need to make sure they raise that issue when Ramadan comes to town, and is treated with kid gloves by the likes of Ian Buruma, and others carefully picked not to give Ramadan a difficult time, but to celebrate him.

By the way, I wonder if Ian Buruma not know about the way that in another debate his close friend, and at St. Antony's former colleague of Ramadan Timothy Garton Ash, in his own debate in London, started to speak truthfully about Muhammad, and denounce him, and then later, terrified and apparently almost hysterical, went around begging that all tapes of this outburst be destroyed lest Muslims come after him, Timothy Garton Ash? And Timothy Garton Ash believes they did. But what does that tell Ian Buruma about Islam, and Muslims, if his friend Timothy Garton Ash demonstrated such fear? Hmmm?

If we insist on relying exclusively on polls for our judgment concerning Muslims; and if that insistence of course fails, or refuses, to factor in the growing mountain of data about Muslim behavior that Jihad Watch constitutes -- including the uniquely deadly danger innumerable numbers of them pose along with the reality of taqiyya as not only a general sociopsychological trait among Muslims but also a central instrument of jihad, throughout the world including in the West -- then locutions such as we see riddling the linked quotes from Kinana of Khaybar's presentation of poll data about Muslims --

"most Pakistanis",
"about 78% to 82% of Muslims in Pakistan",
"polls indicate that most Muslims...",
"the majority of Muslims...",
"The fact that 62% of Iranians...",
"some clue that most Iranians generally are almost as fanatical...",
"large minorities to majorities of Muslims...", etc.,

-- would be cogent and useful in terms of our #1 priority of protecting our societies from the uniquely deadly danger that innumerable Muslims pose.

If however we factor in that mountain of data that Jihad Watch constitutes, it no longer remains reasonable to suppose that the Muslims bracketed out by these locutions are any less dangerous than the ones that were netted by the polls.

To take one example out of many different ones could adduce to palpate holes in the polls approach: consider the poll datum that about 78% to 82% of Muslims in Pakistan wanted implemented stoning to death for adultery, and the death penalty for apostasy. First, it would be hoped that it would be agreed that any Muslim who believes in the death penalty for adultery and apostasy is ipso facto an extremist and potentially deadly to us.

Secondly, once reasonable men can agree on that, the question becomes: How do we put this datum to pragmatic use? Can we identify the 22% to 18% of Muslims who might not be extremist and deadly based on their alleged rejection of those death penalty laws? Where are they? Did the pollsters tag them with microchips so we can know who and where they are now, and in the future? Do we have their addresses? Will we know when they move, or take a trip or emigrate to the UK or Canada? This of course is the flip side of the coin of the question of our ability to similarly identify and track the ones we can reasonably consider extremist and deadly, the 78% to 82% whom the poll found support the hudud laws. If we cannot identify and locate, and keep track of, these two populations of Muslims we are assuming exist -- and upon whose difference we are basing our claim that all Muslims should not in fact be considered extremist and deadly -- then what practical usefulness do such poll data provide?

The only usefulness would be as information to convey to our fellow Westerners who are still asleep about the danger of Islam. That is a good usefulness, though it is faced with a minefield of roadblocks. For example, most sleeping Westerners would not agree with reasonable men that, as noted above, any Muslim who believes in the death penalty for adultery and apostasy should be considered by us to be, ipso facto, an extremist and potentially deadly to us. In addition, a complex tangle of assumptions and givens will be reflexively deployed by the sleeping Westerner when we present such evidence -- assumptions and givens which will have the general effect of blunting and complicating the presentation such that one just throws up one's hands and hopes that "we should get out of the Middle East and stop making them mad", as well as "but I know lots of nice friendly Muslims over here, they are not as bad as over there"; whereby personal experience of a handful + anecdotal experience of friends and colleagues + the multiculturalist sentimentality about ethnic minorities + an excessively self-crtical distrust of one's West = will combine to tend to have more weight than all the poll data in the world.

But the biggest problem to these locutions of "some", "most", "a majority of", etc. is that any number of the Muslims they bracket out as harmless may not be harmless. This isn't just a matter of "anyone could be dangerous". We know, from the mountain of data Jihad Watch constitutes, that Muslims uniquely differ from all other populations in terms of this problem of our not knowing which among them are deadly, which are harmless. The risks of attacks on us are too high to continue playing Muslim Roulette based upon paradigms that only apply to other populations.

Really, when one stands on this growing mountaintop today which Jihad Watch constitutes, knowing the full horror of what one is standing on, one has to conclude that a certain number of long-time Jihad Watch readers have not really been fully digesting the cumulative mass of that full horror along with its millions of grotesquely terrible and alarming details. They thus effectively counsel us to play Muslim Roulette. They may do so with their own lives, but they have no right to do so with the lives of their friends, colleagues, loved ones, and fellow citizens; nor to add insult to injury by actually trying to defend such a reckless position let alone impugning those who are warning otherwise.

Yup:

you remarked above "The last thing in the world I ever expected to be doing or ever wanted to do, that's for sure, was bone up on the tenets of this hoary old religon but, like unplanned pregnancies and car accidents, life's full of surprises. I bet we'll all know more than we ever wanted about Islam before this is done, whatever "this" means"...

You might enjoy this classic essay by Mr Fitzgerald, then - "The Unsung History Boys", which first appeared as a lowly 'comment' in 2006, but was then re-posted as a lead article in 2008.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/06/fitzgerald-the-unsung-history-boys.html

(Don't forget to scroll down and read the comments).

Do I acknowledge that many people might be influenced by a favourable view of Fatah to give credence to at least his putatively "moderate" interpretation of Islam? Yes, I suspect many, who are not knowledgeable of Islam, may be subject to such persuasive influences (e.g., Michael Coren and others).

How many? Is that "many" a problem that outweighs the worth of Fatah's visible anti-Shariah stance? At best, having a favorable view of Fatah with regard to anti-Shariah is on one level analogous to having a favorable view of the BNP for their anti-Islam stance -- the latter, who have such a favorable view of the BNP in that regard, being seemingly a minority view among those who are anti-Islam. The analogy further clarifies when we note that Fatah's beliefs and the values he supports and his methods of obfuscation -- not to mention the furtherance of Stealth Jihad which his "moderation" (with its anti-Shariah shine) reinforces -- present far worse implications for our societies than those of the BNP or other similar sociopolitical pariahs that people are afraid to associate with.

...no, I do not believe that we should rely exclusively on poll and survey data, nor have I ever claimed this, nor do my posts in this thread suggest that to be the case...

I didn't say you did, and it's not material if you do. I was discussing the effect of that way of framing the problem, with its tendency to erect boundaries around vast populations whose culture, whose behaviors and whose history should militate against any such conclusions, even tentative, in favor of a generalized agnosticism with regard to weighing the harmless vs. the dangerous.

And what this agnosticism be with regard to weighing the harmless vs. the dangerous? Again I bring up the analogy of the tainted beef: when one or two packages of beef is discovered to have a deadly toxin, and one person dies, ALL the beef packages are interdicted -- MILLIONS of them -- even though everyone reasonably assumes that the vast majority of those beef packages are likely harmless. The dangers with regard to Muslims against us is far far worse than that analogous scenario, and yet people, even in the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement, insist on maintaining this mythological population of harmless Muslims whom they cannot pinpoint with sufficient reliability to make them useful for our #1 purpose: our safety.

Hugh wrote:

But what does that tell Ian Buruma about Islam, and Muslims, if his friend Timothy Garton Ash demonstrated such fear? Hmmm?
....................

Hugh, I read Ian Buruma's "Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance" a few years ago. The book was well written and well researched, but I nonetheless found it quite disturbing.

When I picked up the book, I assumed the "limits of tolerance" referred to the West's tolerance for the brutality of Islam, but his thesis seems rather more equivocal than that.

He posited a near moral equivalence between Theo Van Gogh and his savage murderer, Mohammed Bouyeri. He gave Bouyeri as loving a backstory as Van Gogh—perhaps more so.

He belabored the view that Van Gogh could be abrasive, and regarded himself in a rather immature way as an "enfant terrible".

Even assuming this were true, it might mean some people would avoid his chat show—not that he should be viciously murdered in the street for daring to criticize the barbarity of Islam.

dlp wrote, in response to a comment by Hepserado:

Brave warrior, what are you going to do with Muslims once you have rounded them all up? Are you going to brand them with a hot iron, saying "potential enemy / actual enemy"? Send them off to camps?
...................

These are so often the tactics from apologists of the very worst sort of horrors—first, to imply that people who stand against that horror are somehow just as bad—here, the implication that Hesperado's stand against the barbarity of Shari'ah somehow constitutes a sort of Shari'ah itself.

A close corollary of this are those who imply that those who expose the Islamic basis of Jihad are somehow "the same" as Osama bin Laden.

Then, dlp goes straight for the money shot, if I may be so crude: he implies that anyone who, like Hesperado, doubts the sincerity of Muslims' stance against Jihad must—inevitably, it seems—be poised to round up Muslims into death camps.

This insane "argument"—if one can dignify it as such, since it is rarely articulated in any cogent manner—is that anyone who has the decency to point out barbarism must—necessarily—be a barbarian themselves.