Turkish columnist says that "liberal Muslim" Mustafa Akyol is actually an Islamic supremacist working for restoration of caliphate

Here's one of several past pieces on the false hopes of those Brave Young Muslim Reformers, of whom Mustafa Akyol, with his "sola scriptura" business (these Muslim reformers love to appropriate inappropriate terms taken from the history of Christianity, a faith quite different in its aims and claims, and major figure, from Islam:

Fitzgerald: The state of Islamic reform

What we expect now of Muslims is so little that we are in danger of exaggeratedly praising that which is not so much a forthright condemnation of Jihad, and the entire Believer-Infidel division that runs through all of Islam. We applaud the Muslim condemnation of attacks on fellow Muslims, without noticing that no similar outrage has ever been displayed when the victims are non-Muslims. Muslim reformers are seldom if ever asked if they would object to attacks on Jews in or out of Israel, or if they would argue that the entire division of the universe between Believer and Infidel, dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, is illegitimate.

And of course the aggression of Jihad, whether conducted through terrorism or other means, cannot be eliminated through appeals to Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and any would-be Muslim reformer must know it. The only way out is to jettison altogether -- as fictions and false hair -- the Sunnah (i.e., Hadith and Sira), and perform some interpretive prestidigitation that will permit the elimination of, or at least the complete spiritualization of, many passages in the Qur'an, or to attempt the latter magic-trick for Qur'an and Sunnah as well. Unlikely in the extreme.

There is now a lot of money being tossed to "Brave Young Muslim Reformers," some of whom, like Khaled Abou el Fadl, are nothing of the sort, but simply thrusting careerists, apologists for Islam of the most transparent kind -- and given to bouts of hysteria as well. See Khaled Abou El Fadl's reaction to last summer’s apologist movie on the Crusades, where he predicted attacks on Muslims. "I stake my professional reputation" on this prediction, said the hysterical self-promoter. See also the webpage devoted to this self-described "one of the world's leading experts on Islamic law."

A particular offender is the Carnegie Foundation, which under Vartan Gregorian (see his memoir of a Tabriz childhood, where he reports, but does not understand as someone who has internalized a good deal of the dhimmi mentality, the limits of his own immediate experience of Islam and of Muslims) has been spreading the money to every Scholar of the House who says he is busily engaged in "Reforming Islam." How are they reforming Islam? In what way? Are they changing the texts? Changing how the texts will necessarily be received by a billion people, not all of whom are quite so impresed with Khaled Abou El Fadl and the other Reformers as they are with themselves? Are they imitating Rashid Rida, or any of the others who failed completely, in the last century and a half, to "reform" Islam as they thought it should be reformed? How could the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Whatchamacallit, or similar Good-Works foundations, conceivably doubt that there might be something wrong in supporting the "reformers" who may not successfully "reform" anything, but are quite successful at grant-getting (not the least of the academic world's problems is that grant-getting is an ability increasingly unrelated, and sometimes in inverse proportion, to merit)? They can't conceive of such a thing. Why? Because such reform simply has to be, that's all -- I mean, if Islam can't be reformed, then....

Many statements by self-professed Islamic reformers, or those who see that something is terribly wrong with the world of Islam, with the world's Muslims, simply show that the most advanced Arab Muslims, of whom there may be some thousands out of several hundred million, only a few dozen of whom dare write openly, know that something is terribly wrong and wish to distance themselves from it all. They wish to bring Muslims to their moral senses.

But when you look closely at what they write, you see that they can never confront the tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam in full. It is always slightly oblique, askew, always with something left out. Does Fouad Ajami, who knows that the world of Arab Islam is full of nonsense and lies, tell us forthrightly that that nonsense and those lies narutally derive from the mental effort of having to accept, and somehow make oneself believe, Islam itself and its essential goodness, with everything that is in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and never to fully examine the real as opposed to the false history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims? These "reform-minded" Egyptians or Saudis never quite can bring themselves to write openly of the long history of mistreatment of whole non-Muslim peoples, of their artifacts, of their histories. They cannot write about what is in the Hadith and Sira, for to even adumbrate the subject of Muhammad's behavior is not possible. If some of these would-be "reformers" present themselves as latter-day Calvins and Zwinglis, in their use of that phrase "sola scriptura" (the Turkish "reformer" currently presenting the Acceptable Face of Islam in certain American publications, one Mustafa Akyol, is particularly fond of invoking "sola scriptura," meaning -- let's stick to the "inoffensive" Qur'an, and somehow drop the Sunnah, drop the Hadith and the Sira, as if such were possible) it is the Qur'an's very opaqueness that allows it to be discussed -- for what is opaque there is crystal-clear in Hadith and Sira. That is why some Muslms even say the Qur'an cannot truly be understood without the Sunnah, but the reverse is not true. If certain Muslim organizations eagerly distribute the Qur'an, it is because they know just how opaque and incomprehensible, and therefore inoffensive or unalarming, that Qur'an may seem to hasty Infidel readers, who in any case will not know about "abrogation" and will be eager to focus on the half-dozen constantly repeated and misunderstood phrases ("There is no compulsion in religion" and "He who kills a man...it is as if he has killed the whole world" and one or two others like that, misunderstood, quoted out of their proper context, and in no way representative of the full message of the Qur'an); the same is not true of the Hadith or the Sira, which are quite direct. Hence Infdiels will not be receiving the same free copies of Hadith and Sira any time soon.

One notices that the most advanced of these good-hearted, outwardly westernized, and therefore rational beings, who publish their daring thoughts, their criticism of their own countries, regimes, worlds, in Al-Asharq Al-Awsat or other London-based papers (which represents the summit, and also the limit, of their mental freedom) they never list, among the matters needing attention and reform, any of the tens of thousands of terrorist attacks on Israelis and Jews. Above all, they fail to realize that that in the end is the real test of Islam, of Muslims, and the Jihad: will they abandon the Lesser Jihad against the tiny, and inoffensive state of Israel? For Israel is an Infidel state in Dar al-Islam. And so Israel puts them to the real test. Israel, after all, is not -- and they know it perfectly well -- out to dominate the Middle East. Instead, it has offered again and again to collaborate in all sorts of ways with its neighbors, and only in despair now is trying to dissociate itself as much as possible from those who support, and will always support, the relentless Jihad against it. One key test of Islamic Reformers is their ability to see that Infidels, including the Israelis, even within this Dar al-Islam (a concept that sums up the manichean division of the world between the Infidel and the Believer) entitled to a sovereign state of their own. Perhaps they can slowly try to approach the issue, by admitting that non-Arab Muslims -- the Kurds, say, or the Berbers -- have a perfect right to sovereign states of their own in the Middle East and North Africa. It is a hard thing for Muslim Arabs to admit. Would they, could they? Can an Egyptian Muslim "reformer" not merely protest the mistreatment of the Copts in Egypt, but also dare to publicly relate that mistreatment to the teachings of Islam, and note that what the Copts endure is what all other indigenous Christians and Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, have endured? And even to go from there to discuss the 60-70 million Hindus killed, or to mention that the Indian and Pakistani Muslims of today are the descendants of Hindus who, either forced by immediate threats of death, or by the slower unendurable anquish of dhimmi status, converted to Islam -- is that something any Muslim "reformer" can recognize and admit to?

When it comes to the Lesser Jihad against Israel, how many Arab "reformers of Islam" are able to reexamine Arab propaganda, and to admit to themselves, much less to others, that that propaganda has been based on a rewriting of history, of the demographic history of the Ottoman vilayets that made up the territories of Mandatory Palestine, and on overlooking the land-ownership under the Ottomans (with 90% of the land owned by the state)? How many might admit that the Jews continued to live in the Middle East under Muslim rule, and that while in a few places, where the European powers had been particularly influential (Baghdad in the 1920s, Cairo and Alexandria from roughly 1880 to World War II), Jews were allowed to live and obtain a certain amount of prosperity, elsewhere, as in Yemen, their condition amounted to chattel slavery? How many might admit that everywhere they were in a state of permanent insecurity, and that Baghdad prosperity could be overturned in a "Farhud" and an entire community wiped out? The same thing happened when Nasser came to power to the Jews of Cairo and Alexandria. And not only to the Jews, but to the Greeks, Italians, Armenians, to all those who were not "Egyptian" (i.e. Arab or Muslim) even if their families had lived in Egypt for generations.

The sympathetic understanding of the rights of non-Muslims, including the Jews of Israel, and of such Christian minorities as the Maronites who once held Lebanon as their refuge from Islam, is a litmus test for those who present themselves as Islamic "reformers." They may be quite good at being rewarded, a bit too prematurely, in the Western world, with support, positions, and being accorded an audience. But they should be put to the test: do Infidels, even Infidels in possession of this or that territory, have rights that are independent of whatever Muslims may grandly, and most temporarily, deign to accord them? Do Infidels have their own histories, their own appeals to legal, moral, and historic rights? Or is the very idea one that is impossible for Muslims, even "reforming" Muslims, to quite comprehend? Decades of ARAMCO and Arab League propaganda have convinced many that the Middle East and North Africa belong to Islam and to Arabs -- this is what the phrase "the Arab world" means. But there are many others, both non-Arab Muslims, and non-Muslims, present within that so-called "Arab world."

Even in Israel, with its Zionist idealists from Russia and Eastern Europe, its refugees from Hitler, its concentration-camp survivors, and its continued flow of Jewish immigrants, both those who necessarily need a refuge (as the Ethiopian falasha), and those who leave lives of comfort in the Westen world for an ideal, are now outnumbered by those Jews who arrived, also refugees, or descendants of Jewish refugees, from those Jews who had never left the Middle East or North Africa. Similarly, the Kurds and Berbers, the Maronites and the Copts, are not foreign to this "Arab world." They predate the arrival of the Arab Muslim conquerors, and should be recognized as predating it. Their claims not merely to be free of mistreatment, but of some far more significant recognition, should not be ignored or begrudgingly discussed, but openly so -- and by Arab Muslims who wish to assume the mantle of "reform" within Arab Islam. These peoples are not fossils, their ethnic or sectarian identity to be trifled with, they merely to be regarded as insufficiently "arabized," ridiculously clinging to their identities, say, as Maronites, when they should instead accept the linguistic and cultural imperialism by which the use of the Arabic language becomes an acceptance of Arab identity. That acceptance of Arab identity, and the forgetting of one's own non-Arab past, becomes a way to enroll Christians in Arab lands in Muslim causes. They come to see the world through the prism of Islam, and identify, as so many "Palestinian" islamochristians do, with the war on Israel. Even in the West, they continue to identify with Islam -- through that meretriciously imposed "Arab" identity that makes some of the descendants of Lebanese Christians, for example, come to forget that their own ancestors did not see themselves as "Arabs" but as "Maronites" or "Christians," and that they left the Middle East in the first place because of the massacres of Maronites that begin in the mid-19th century, and because of the constant pressure, and hostility, and insecurity, that Islam engendered.

All of these people, in the view even of "reforming" Arab Muslims of the most advanced kind, appear to have only such rights as are to be granted as Arab Muslims choose, in their "generosity," to grant. This is the wrong way to look at the matter.

It will be hard, but necesary, for those "reforming" Arab Muslims, if they want to avoid the permanent war between Islam and not the West, but Islam and the Rest, to do much more than they have been willing to do. They should be willing to admit, for example, that the recent, deliberate, tendentious invention, after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, of the "Palestinian people" has been useful to present the Lesser Jihad against Israel as merely a matter of "competing nationalisms" -- though one would have difficulty finding anything unique to distinguish "Western Palestinian" Arabs from "Eastern Palestinian" Arabs (i.e., Jordanians), or for that matter, from those people who are mysteriously called "Israeli Arabs." These "reformers" should themselves point out that nowhere in in the writings and speeches of such figures as the Mufti of Jerusalem, or George Antonius of "The Arab Awakening," indeed, nowhere at all in the pre-1967 speeches of any Arab diplomat or leader, does the phrase "Palestinian people" occur. So many of these "Palestinians" arrived from outside "Palestine," with the defeated army of Abd el-Kader, with the veterans of Mehmet Ali, with the European Muslims transferred by the Ottoman government from the former Muslim-ruled lands in Europe in the 1880s, from Iraq and Egypt and the Emirate of Trans-Jordan in the period 1920-1940.

If a small Infidel state cannot be permitted to exist, cannot be permanently accepted within borders that reflect not the salami-tactics of the Slow Jihad, but legal, moral, and historic claims that made sense to the League of Nations and, if anything, make even more sense today, then the whole notion of ending the Jihad is shown to be nonsense. You cannot end it only "in part" because here or there, the enemy has proven too resilient. And while Jihad can be put on the back burner for a decade or a century, it cannot be ripped out of Islam. Not even if a hundred thousand Brave Young Reformers claim to have done so, with foundation money backing them up.

The morally and intellectually most advanced people born within the world of Islam, the ones who have been given the freedom, by living in the West, to see the farthest into the problem of Islam, have concluded (and it is much harder for Arabs to do this than for those who do not have their ethnic identity so entirely wrapped up in Islam, such as Iranians or Pakistanis) that Islam itself cannot be reformed and must be abandoned. And so they do -- but seldom openly, and never openly in dar al-Islam. Yet as Locke and Pierre Bayle noted, freedom of individual conscience is the freedom that matters most. This is something that Islam must permit to those born into Islam through no fault of their own -- the complete freedom to leave Islam.

Only then will something like progress be made. Neither Ibn Warraq, nor Ali Sina, nor Azam Kamguian, nor Irfan Khawaja, nor a thousand or ten thousand other articulate ex-Muslims, get anything like the attention -- much less the financial support of foundations -- for their important articulation of what Islam is, and why Muslims need to think, and re-think. Why is this? Why are ex-Muslims, the bravest and clearest-sighted of all those born into Islam, forced to fend for themselves, while only those who stoutly cling to Islam despite the mental and moral compromises they must make and the apologetics and falsities they must necessarily swim in, are feted and financed and hailed?

We are grateful for any truth-telling at this point. But only the full truth, nothing but the truth, about Islam will do. And there are standards by which to judge: the lucid written words of Ibn Warraq, the piercing spoken words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the relentless debater's energy of Ali Sina.

Accept no substitutes.

[Posted by Hugh on December 4, 2005]

... so I read this peace by the Turkish columnist ...

A Freudian slip, Robert, revealing your true feelings?

Is is not Muslims that are forcing us in the West to accept their double standards, and nor is the trojan horse a self declared "liberal" Muslims.

No, the trojan horse is not Islamic at all but is relativism and a loss of self confidence and mission by the West. Everything is being driven to its "logical conclusion" until it becomes reduced to the absurd, only to accelerate the loss of confidence. This being beautifully exemplified by recent reports such as the absurdity of The Netherlands sponsoring a mega-mosque near Ground-Zero, or a burqua being seriously touted as an expression of women's rights and self-actualisation, or free speech having a no-go-zone when it comes to critique of Islam and its leadership.

Islamists are simply and opportunistically filling a vacuum that they did not initially create.

Mustafa Akyol recently displayed his true colors, nailing them to the mast, in fact, of the Mavi Marmara, but even before that he was exercised about the Swiss daring to express their own opposition to having their land littered with minarets, those deliberate symbols of Muslim worldly power (the Call to Prayer from the minarets is entirely unnecessary in an age of wrist-watches and computers) originally insisted upon as a way to o'er-top the Christian campanile).

I wrote about it and I am re-posting that comment here:

Mustafa Akyol Becomes Hysterical, Nazi-Invoking, Over The Swiss Vote

Mustafa Akyol is one of those self-styled "reformers" of Islam, helping to lull Westerners, and possibly himself too, with the dreamy idea that any day now, despite all the failed attempts over the past 1400 years, Islam can somehow be changed so that it will be able to co-exist with other faiths without dominating them, and forcing the adherents of those faiths into positions of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. Akyol has had a good run among the softer minds in the West, who are always looking for signs of such Bright Young Muslim Reformers, never asking themselves how this "reform" is to be achieved or, even more important, how changes in the texts of Islam could possiby be accepted by the billion mostly very primitive people who believe in Islam.

Akyol likes to appropriate terms from Christianity. Thus, in describing his own project, of somehow convincing the world's Muslims to ignore the Hadith and Sira (and thus, presumably, to greatly diiminish the role of Muhammad -- an impossible task, but not for "reformer" Miustafa Akyol) -- and to stick on ly with the Qur'an, Mustafa Akyol calls this the wya of "sola scriptura," for all the world depicting himself as a Calvin or Zwingli on the Euxine Sea.

But when attacked, he becomes hysterically defensive -- about Islam, and about himself. You can find examples of how quickly he collapses, and the facade of sweet reason crumbles, by googling around. I think one or two of these exchanges may have been -- I can't remember -- with me.

And his reaction to the Swiss vote on minarets is instructive. LIke Dr. Zakir Naik, and so many other Muslims, he cannot understand why the minaret, a symbol of Muslim o'ertopping aggression, should be banned, why indeed any non-Muslims believe they have a right to interfere with, to contain or constrain, the symbols of Muslim aggression or, still worse, perhaps think they are justified in being alarmed about Islam and wish to constrain it, and its myrmidons, and bezonians, still further. He talks of "racism" when he knows perfectly well that Islam is an ideology, not a race, and his attempt to confuse the matter by talking about Turkish "racism" against Kurds as similar to the "racism" displayed against Muslims in Switzerland, when he should be talking about the position of non-Muslims, and churches, in the Musliim world. Mustafa Akyol avoids the obvioius, and he might, just might, be listened to with something other than complete disgust if, for example, he had chosen to demand, over these past years, that the Hagia Sophia be made a working church again, as the hint of a glint of a campaign to make Turkey open to Christianity, the historic faith that was well-established in Anatolia before Islam arrived, and to show other Muslims the way of "tolerance" that Mustafa Akyol shows himself concerned about only when it comes to o'erweening minarets in the Oberland.

His article cuts right to the chase: the rhetorical chase of the Third Reich. It is no longer the Swiss, you see, but "the Aryans" -- the Swiss as Nazis -- who banned the minaret. For only Nazis or their sympathizers could do such a thing, in the view, or the rhetoric, of Mustafa Akyol.

Take a look:

Aryan supremacy reigns supreme in Switzerland

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

MUSTAFA AKYOL

You must have heard that the open-minded people of Switzerland took to the polls last weekend to ban minarets – in a country where there are only four of them.

These days, the global news is full of stories and commentaries about this apparently democratic, yet shockingly illiberal decision. But if you really want to understand the undercurrents that led the majority of the Swiss society to this unbelievable point, I would suggest watching a 1940 film, “Der Ewige Jude.”

This was an anti-Semitic “documentary” produced by Fritz Hippler, who, under Joseph Goebbels, ran the film department in the Propaganda Ministry of the Third Reich. The 62-minute film, whose title means “The Eternal Jew,” was made to convince its German audience that Jews were dangerous creatures who, simply by their existence, threatened the civilized society of the Aryan peoples.

Aryan aesthetics

Aesthetics was at the basis of the “Der Ewige Jude” argument. The movie presented extended scenes about life in Polish ghettos, focusing on the long hair, beards, skull caps and caftans of Orthodox Jews. Contrasting these Eastern-looking people with the blond, blue-eyed and heavily muscled German athletes, the film argued that there is a fundamental gap of values between the two.

“The Nordic concept of beauty,” it said, “is completely incomprehensible to the Jew.” The latter, according to the script, were “dirty” people who enjoyed living in “bug-infested homes.”

To further emphasize the argument of incivility, the film also focused on the Jewish religious practice of kosher slaughtering, in which animals are bled to death. “Their so-called religion prevents the Jews from eating meat butchered in the ordinary way,” the narrator noted, remarking on how dreadfully different this was from the “well-known German love of animals.”

“Der Ewige Jude” was not speaking without “evidence.” It “proved” all its arguments with carefully selected facts. When it argued, for example, that Jews are compelled by their “so-called religion” to hate and conspire against non-Jews, the film quoted a few passages from the Jewish scriptures that indeed said harsh things about the gentiles.

Finally, the film focused on current events of the era. It told how Jews were multiplying rapidly among the Aryan peoples, polluting their clean living spaces. “They spread from Eastern Europe like an irresistible tide,” it warned, “flooding the towns and nations of Europe.”

That was the year 1940. And we all know what tragically happened in the next five years.

Now, if you want to understand why all this Nazi madness is relevant to today, you just need to replace the word “Jew” in the paragraphs above with the word “Muslim.” You will get a narrative very similar to that told by the nascent anti-Islamic movement in Europe, including the Swiss People’s Party, the main champion of the recent minaret ban.

Of course, this parallelism has its limits. First, I should note that I do not, by any means, foresee a “Muslim Holocaust” coming. Probably no European nation will ever go that insane again, at least in the foreseeable future. Moreover, there are differences between the sources of the anti-Judaism of the early 20th century and the anti-Islamism of today.

The Jews had become the focus of Nazi hatred simply because of the latter’s vicious ideology. In the current hatred against Muslims, though, one has to acknowledge the part played by the reaction to some of the nasty stuff done in the name of Islam: terrorism perpetrated or inspired by Al-Qaeda, violent protests against satirical cartoons, the repression of women in some Muslim communities, etc., etc.

Yet, still, one needs the contribution of racism and xenophobia to move on from these serious problems among Muslims to go against Islam as such, and against all of its believers. The overwhelming majority of Europe’s Muslims are in fact peaceful and law-abiding people who are just trying to make ends meet. Banning the very symbol of their place of worship means telling them: “Hey, in our eyes, you are all dangerous. Your mere existence here is our problem.”

Yet another Semitic people to hate

I know this mindless paranoia well, because we have a similar problem in Turkey with the Turkish racists. They despise the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, for its indeed despicable acts of terrorism. But then they channel their reaction toward all Kurds, not really looking at whether they really support the PKK or not, and moreover, not asking why those who support the PKK do so.

“The problem,” their motto reads, “is simply the Kurds themselves.”

Turkish racism is ugly, to be sure, but so is the Swiss one. The core problem in the latter belief, as I said, renders down to the old idea of Aryan supremacy – the idea that European Nordic people, and their “civilized” way of life, are inherently superior to those of the Eastern Semites, who are “polluting” it.

In other words, anti-Semitism, an aptly coined term, continues. In 1940, the hated Semites were the Orthodox Jews whose darker skins, strange food, “dirty” beards, skull caps and long caftans were enough to make them deplorable to the Nazis.

In 2009, apparently, the hated Semites are now the Orthodox Muslims, whose darker skins, strange food, “dirty” beards, skull caps, long caftans, and, as a novelty, headscarves and chadors, are the problem.

Just too bad to be true."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, of course. The Arabs like to say, idiotically, "we can't be antisemitic because we, you see, are 'Semites" too." And that ridiculous argument is now taken up by Mustafa Akyol. Now it is not only Arabs, but all Muslims, who are "Semites" -- that is, are Jews, are suffering as the Jews did. How true. Banning four minarets in Switzerland, that are symbols of Muslim power and aggression (and they are purely symbolic, they are not used, nor needed, for the Call to Prayer). is practically Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec.

That an "advanced" Muslim, one who has travelled and lived in the West, has received every benefit from the West -- didn't Daniel Pipes champion Akyol for a while, in his attempts to continue to reach out, work with, and no doubt help obtain financial support for collaborative projects with, "Muslim reformers"? -- one who grew up in the comparative mental freedom (because of Kemalism) of Turkey, should quickly become so hysterical, is telling.

"Alternatively, you can always have a post-modern Caliph reign the Muslim world from a predominantly Christian country where he resides." -- from Burak Bekdil, addressing Mustafa Akyol

Yes, of course.

Fethulleh Gulen, who lives in splendor jut outside Washington, D.C., enjoying all the many benefits -- the security, the technology in working order the everything -- that an advanced Western non-Muslim state has to offer.

After all, when Khomeini was kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, he sought -- and found -- refuge not in any Muslim country, but in France, that provided him with the safe sanctuary, at Neauphle-le-Chateau, that proved perfect for his uses, and allowed him to plot and promote from there the downfall of the Shah and the rise of Vilayat-e-faqih, or what turned out to be: Rule by Khomeini.

60:9: "God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion, and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion."--from the article

Other notes about Sura 60 (skipping verses that are not relevant here).

60:1 -Muslims are instructed to not take Allah's enemies as allies
60:2 -Muslims are warned that non-Muslims might "stretch forth their hands and tongues" against Muslims to get them to disbelieve in Islam
60:4 -it is exemplary for Muslims to hate non-Muslims until non-Muslims convert to Islam
60:7 -Allah may "ordain love" between Muslims and their enemies. See above, for what would logically have to happen for this "love" to be permitted, i.e., the non-Muslims convert to Islam.
60:8 -Allah "does not forbid" Muslims from acting justly or kindly toward non-Muslims who didn't fight Muslim; he only forbids this in regard to those who fought or helped the fighting against Muslims (60:9)
60:13 -don't be friends with those with whom Allah is wroth, i.e., disbelievers generally (i.e., those who've learned about Islam or have been invited to it but who haven't embraced it), but this alludes to the Jews more than anyone else.

Unanswered in all of this is what to do about non-Muslims who do not engage in outright combat, or aid it, but who break Islamic laws, e.g., such as criticizing Islam and Muhammad in public. 9:12-14 commands Muslims to fight those who fight Muslims, but the non-Muslims reviling or criticizing Islam is one of the reasons listed for fighting them. The warning in 60:2 does imply that those who criticize Islam ("stretch out their tongues") and try to persuade Muslims to leave it are not protected and are not to be befriended.

I smell a personal vendetta between Burak Bekdil and Mustafa Akyol.

"Why are Muslim Turkish soldiers part of a Christian alliance fighting, killing and driving Muslim Afghans from their homes? Is that halal? Does 60:9 command that Muslims can ally with Christians against other Muslims if these other Muslims chose to terrorize? Is 60:9 one of the verses that is not applicable to 21st century politics?"

This is very revealing about how Burak Bekdil sees the world. I suspect that he is the same sort of Muslim supremacist as his opponent.

@mike ryan

Many Armenians blame the Armenian Genocide on Ottoman Jews, and also blame Israel and American Jewish lobby groups for continuing it by blocking US recognition of the genocide.

Just check out armeniangenocide.com You will find it filled with anti-Semitic posts.

Here is one such thread: http://forum.hyeclub.com/archive/index.php/t-5708.html.

@Kepha

You clearly are too dim to comprehend Burak Bekdil's blatant sarcasm.

Here's Mustafa Akyol's entire sneering, Taqiyya-filled response to columnist Burak Bekdil:

"Adultery, stoning and myths about Islam"

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=adultery-stoning-and-myths-about-islam-2010-07-09

He blames stoning on *the Jews*—even though Jews have not stoned anyone for almost two millennia—while women have been stoned or are under sentence for same in contemporary Nigeria, Iran, and Somalia, and until just a few years ago, in Afghanistan—all under Islamic Shari'ah law.

In a survey carried out in Indonesia it found that "almost half the respondents back stoning as a punishment for adulterers." That's in "moderate" *Indonesia*.

He mentions that stoning is not recorded in the Qur'an. This is true. In a famous Hadith, there is a *special lament*, where the narrator worries that some may in future forget that Rahm (stoning) is proscribed because the Qur'an neglects to mention it. A large number of Hadith emphasize the "Prophet" Muhammed's enthusiasm for stoning.

He then goes on to conflate the horror of stoning under Shari'ah law with the presence of old "blue laws" still on the books in some US jurisdictions.

He ends with this:

"The trouble we have in the post-Ottoman Muslim world is a resurgence of fundamentalism and literalism — a mindset internalized by not only the Islamists, but, as you can see, also the secularists."

The old conflation—here leveled at columnist Burak Bekdil, and often aimed at Robert Spencer and other anti-Jihadists, as well—that pointing out a barbarity is the same—somehow—as perpetrating that barbarity in the first place.

Interesting, too, that in this long detailing of Akyol's grievances, that he not once addresses Bekdil's urging that Erdogan try to get Sakineh Ashtiani's savage sentence commuted.

It seems he considers seeing Islam accused of sanctioning stoning much more objectionable than the barbarity of stoning itself.

"The trouble we have in the post-Ottoman Muslim world is a resurgence of fundamentalism and literalism — a mindset internalized by not only the Islamists, but, as you can see, also the secularists."

Th's quote from Akyol (in the fuller version quoted by "gravenimage" just above) is telling. He is attempting to make some kind of equivalence between "fuyndamentalism and literalism" of two kinds. There are the "Islamists" who are "fundamentalists and literalists" (in truth, almost all Muslims are required to take the Qur'an to the the immutable and literal word of God) and then there are "the secularists" (such as Bekdil) who are apparently guilty of the very same thing -- of being "fundamentalists" and, especially, "literalists," not because they believe that the Qur'an is the literal word of God, but because they believe -- and quite correctely -- that Muslims, full-blown unsecular Defenders of Islam, such as that phony "reformer" Mustafa Akyol, with his "sola scriptura" (that is, the Qur'an without the Sunnah -- a false hope, in all respects, for those thinking that might lead to Muslim "moderation"), take the Qur'an as the literal and therefore immutable Word of God.

In other words, the secularist such as Bekdil who claims good Muslims must take the Qur'an literally is himself a "literalist" and dangerous in the same way as the "Islamist" fundamentalists and literalists. What rot. Bekdil simply points out both the literalism of the True Believer (like Mustafa Akyol, who becomes hysterical when his illogic and true beliefs are exposed), and the fact that sometimes Muslims, even Erdogan and his government, behave hypocritically in light of what the Qur'an says, but do so not because they are not True Believers, but because out of calculations of raison d'etat or immediate self-interest, and having convinced themnselves that they are working for the longterm greater good of Islam, may themselves violate, without ceasing to believe deeply in, the Qur'an.

He, Bekdil, was merely trying to use the observed violation of some Qur'anic passages, by those who like Erdogan and other members of his government, certainly believe like most Muslims that the Qur'an is the literal Word of God, as a way to mock Akyol.

And mock him, unanswerably, Mr. Bekdil certainly did.

It's getting harder for the Akyols of this world. Too many Infidels know too much, and are eavesdropping even on conversations in the Muslim lands.

Does anyone still promote Akyol, as one or two once did, as the kind of Muslim we all need? Or has he, especially since his hysterical Mavi-Marmara and Minaret-Ban outbursts, lost even that support?

Here's yet more from Mustafa Akyol, from 2007, claiming that the "real" threat to democracy is not "Islamism", or those who would impose Shari'ah law, but something he calls—I'm not kidding—"Secularo-Fascism". He also claims that Turkey as it is today is—unbelievably—"Islamophobic".

"Secularo-Fascism Versus ‘Moderate Islam'"

I hope the Western world will understand that the current political conflict in Turkey is not between “Islamists” and “secularists,” as some commentators put it. No, the two poles in the conflict are actually Muslim democracts and secularo-fascists.

http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/05/the_latest_jewish_conspiracy_moderate_islam_akp.php

"The Threat Is Secular Fundamentalism"

http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/05/the_threat_is_secular_fundamentalism.php

"The Secularist Hype in Turkey Is a Fact-Free Paranoia"

http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/05/the_secularist_hype_in_turkey_is_fact_free_paranoia.php

Here Mustafa Akyol sneers at the very idea that Shari'ah might be on the march in Turkey:

"Reductio ad Sharium—A Popular Turkish Demagoguery"

"Which brings us to the real issue at stake: What is happening in Turkey is not the advance of “Shariah,” but the reclaiming of a fair share of the public square by the country's more conservative and rural-based masses and their newly rising elite."

Of course, what many of the "more conservative and rural-based masses" want to see is, well, Shari'ah. The *most* "conservative", in fact, would like to see stoning.

http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2007/05/reductio_ad_sharium_popular_turkish_demagoguery.php

Since the subject of Armenians and Jews has come up.

I urge any Armenian poster and lurker at this forum, today or in the future, and any Jewish poster and lurker, today or in the future, to obtain and read, if they have not already done so, John Roy Carlson, 'Cairo to Damascus'.

For the name 'John Roy Carlson' was a nom de plume adopted for purposes of covering his identity when he went into enemy territory - among the Muslims who were setting out to wage Jihad against the newborn Jewish state of Israel.

'Carlson' was in fact Avedis Boghos Derounian, son of Armenian Christians who had found refuge in the United States. He loved his people; he knew their history; and he *also* clearly loves and admires the Jews who were re-founding Israel.

In the final chapters of his book, he takes a ride on a boat that is bringing the survivors of the death camps, from Cyprus to Israel; and he goes about Israel observing the miracle of the resurrection of a nation - which he describes vividly, unforgettably - and allowing it to give him hope beyond hope for the future rebirth of a free and independent Armenia.

Hear what he says - "I left Israel believing in miracles - that God still speaks, that prayers are answered, that the laws of Good and Evil still rule. By the same token I believe that Israel, after many tribulations, will survive. In the simplest of terms, Israel, as I saw it, represented Good; the Arab world - with the cruelty perpetrated upon its vast masses and with the immorality and transgression of its ruling classes - represented Evil...

"Israel proved, too, a sentimental homeland for me. For two thousand years the Jews had dreamed of independence; for a thousand years the Armenians have dramed of a sovereign, democratic homeland...I had gained entry into almost every country, but where I yearned to go most, I was not permitted. No visitor has entered Soviet Armenia since 1947. Few have ever left it.

"I thrilled vicariously at the good fortune of Israel.

"Had not the Armenians suffered under the Turks, though to a lesser degree, as the Jews under Hitler? How similar the tortured background of these two ancient peoples, how common their yearning for liberty. Had not Franz Werfel, an Austrian Jew, finding kinship with the suffering ARmenians, also found inspiration in the struggle of the Armenians of Musa Dagh for survival? How natural, then, for one of Armenian birth to find inspiration in Israel!"

Pursuant to my posting above: a very useful discussion of Armenian-American Carlson's work may be found here:

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/06/john-roy-carlson-under-cover/

Following is some information on Werfel's book, published in German in 1933, but banned by the Nazis, and whose cinematic production was squashed by Turkish diplomacy here in the USA.

I just learned that a more recent production of the movie was privately released in 1982.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forty_Days_of_Musa_Dagh

Following is some information on Werfel's book, published in German in 1933, but banned by the Nazis, and whose cinematic production was squashed by Turkish diplomacy here in the USA.

I just learned that a more recent production of the movie was privately released in 1982.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forty_Days_of_Musa_Dagh

Graven, thank you for the response. The information I was able to dig up online indicates that the Smyrna Jews faced more problems from the local Greek community than from the Ottoman authorities. There were repeated blood libels, and Jews had to keep their distance from the Greek quarter during Easter:

Smyrna was occupied by the Greek army from 1919 to 1921.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karata%C5%9F,_%C4%B0zmir

@mike ryan

All blood libels in the Ottoman Empire started amongst indigenous Christian Orthodox populations. The Ottoman authorities more often than not protected Jews against these baseless blood libels.

Ottoman Jews were mostly Sephardic refugees from the Iberian Reconquista. This made Jews a politically useful dhimmi population for Ottoman interests. Orthodox Christian dhimmi were indigenous and potentially disloyal. Jews on the other hand were migrants whose prosperity depended entirely on Ottoman partnership. Jews were specifically settled in areas with heavy Christian populations to weaken their power.

Research on the Ottoman city "Selanik", modern day Thessaloniki, Greece. It is the only city outside of Israel to ever have a majority Jewish population. And, incredibly, this was under Muslim rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_of_Thessaloniki

Andrew Bostom's series on Turks and Jews.

"Under Turkish Rule".

Part 1.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=68314118-6D77-4E06-B4D5-282AF4285BC9
Andrew G Bostom: Under Turkish Rule, Part 1.
In Front Page Magazine.com, July 27 2007.

And Part II.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=3CA6CAE4-04C9-4AC6-BA1C-08B047719A1A

Under Turkish Rule, Part II
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, August 03, 2007

And this article - Ottoman Dhimmitude -

http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/10/ottoman_dhimmitude.html

includes the following observation:

"In examining how the non-Muslim populations vanquished by the Ottoman jihad campaigns fared, it is useful to begin with the Jews, the least numerous population, who are also generally **believed** {my emphasis - dda} to have had quite a positive experience.

"Joseph Hacker studied the fate of Jews during their initial absorption into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries. His research questions the uncritical view that from its outset the, “..Jewish experience” in the Ottoman Empire “..was a calm, peaceful, and fruitful one..”.Hacker notes:

QUOTE…It would seem to me that this accepted view of consistently good relations between the Ottomans and the Jews during the 15th century should be modified in light of new research and manuscript resources. UNQUOTE

"The Jews, like other inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire, suffered heavily from the Ottoman jihad conquests and policies of colonization and population transfer (i.e., the surgun system).

"**This explains the disappearance of several Jewish communities, including Salonica** {my emphasis - dda},

'and their founding anew by Spanish Jewish immigrants."