Last week, “Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for casting a magic spell on a local family and ‘turning its life upside down.’” The maid “confessed” to using sorcery, and “commission experts took the magic items to their office and managed to dismantle and stop the spell.”
Far from being absurd aberrations to be dismissed, such accounts, which are becoming better known thanks to the Internet, are stark reminders of the incompatibility between the Western and Muslim worldviews, or, more to the point, the difficulty Western peoples have transcending their own paradigms and understanding the Muslim worldview in its own right—above and beyond the issue of sorcery.
In his book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Robert Reilly, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, helps explain the Muslim worldview by thoroughly documenting the historic and doctrinal roots behind it; by refreshingly bypassing the overly dramatized question of “what went wrong,” he explains the more pressing “why it went wrong.”
The book is a reminder of the importance of epistemology: before understanding Muslim acts, one must understand the Muslim mind that initiates them. We discover that Shakespeare’s dictum “Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” in Islam becomes “nothing good or evil but Allah says so.”
The author sheds light on the struggles of the different schools of Islam, showing how by the 10th century, the fatalistic, deterministic schools triumphed, delivering the death blow, not only to the notion of free will, but natural law as well: “a theological deformation … produced a dysfunctional culture.” From here one can understand the full impact of the popular assertion “the doors of ijtihad [intellectualizing] closed in the 10th century.”
Reilly chronicles how the giants of Muslim philosophy, such as Ghazali and Ashari, concluded that knowledge was unknowable, that moral truths can only be ascertained through revelation. Accordingly, all knowledge—the very bounds of reality—came to be limited to the words of the Quran and its pronouncer, Islam’s prophet Muhammad.
The ramifications of such intellectual calcification are immense: “All acts are in themselves morally neutral”; “Allah does not command certain behavior because it is good; it is good because he commands it. Likewise, he does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it.”
Equivocations, such as the following by Ashari, become commonplace: “Lying is evil only because Allah has declared it to be evil…. And if he declared it to be good it would be good; and if he commanded it, no one could gainsay him.” Of course and as Ashari knew, the Islamic deity and his prophet are on record permitting and even encouraging Muslims to deceive.
Similarly, the spirit of inquiry perishes: “the only thing worth knowing is whether a specific action is, according to Shari ‘a: obligatory, recommended, permitted, discouraged, or forbidden. The rest is irrelevant.” It is precisely for this reason that in Islam, the law—what is right or wrong, how one should live—trumps “theology,” the latter designated as kalam, that is, mere “words.” This is also why in the last millennium Spain alone has produced more books than the Arab world in its entirety.
Likewise in the realm of science: Reilly cites a Pakistani physicist—not an uneducated, impoverished “radical”—saying it is un-Islamic to believe that combining hydrogen and water makes water; rather, Muslims are “supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of Allah [which need not always be consistent] water was created.”
The Closing of the Muslim Mind explains the singularity of Muslim epistemology and its antithesis to Western sensibilities: it explains why a maid is arrested and charged with sorcery and the dread of bewitched animals; explains why adult “breastfeeding” and habitual lying pose no moral problems; explains why top Muslim clerics insist the world is flat and ingesting the feces and urine of Muhammad is salutary; explains why jihadists believe their terror is pious and a libidinous paradise awaits them.
All these “alternate” ways of thinking make sense when one accepts that, in the purely Muslim mind, intuitive reasoning, the human conscience, and even common sense take a backseat to the literal words of Allah and his prophet, seen as the founts of all truth and reality—or, inevitably from a non-Muslim perspective, the words of a deluded or deceiving 7th century Arab.
Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published Islam-specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He writes a weekly column for Jihad Watch.
Nailed you, Tiger, if you're reading. Free psychoanalysis.
Leave Islam.
It is intellectual bondage.
KerrrPOWWW!!!! winoceros, Raymond I and the other guy, Rolls-Royce Reilly.
Scottish TV October 6th 2011
A man with delusional religious beliefs launched a vicious attack on a fellow patient the day after he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Abdul Mumin repeatedly kicked and stamped on Leo Zheng in a TV room at a ward at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, leaving him with brain injuries
Mumin, 24, was seen by a psychiatrist in the wake of the incident and said "Allahu Akhbar" - God is greatest.
But when Mumin was transferred to the high security State Hospital at Carstairs he expressed fears about the devil trying to harm him and getting him away from praying.
He said the devil existed and he stopped people worshipping "the one and only God".
Forensic psychiatrist Professor Lindsay Thomson said it was her view that Mumin suffered paranoid schizophrenia.
Mumin had revealed that when he first went to the Royal Edinburgh there was "a Chinese guy" sitting next to him who looked and smiled in a way he did not like.
Is this what happens when your "religion" by its nature encourages your paranoia?
Concise. Not a wasted word. And laser accurate!
More please!
I know a mahoundian microbiologist - an actual 'scientist' - who, when she has the slightest pain, believes that jinn are pinching her. A complete and utter wacko, she has even TAUGHT at the University level in this country, where she proceeded to give bad grades to many non-mahoundian 'infidels' out of pure spite. Luckily, she rarely kept a job beyond a term or two due to poor performance reviews and complaints, but the damage was done in any case.
This article nails the pathology of the cancer. But the message is contained inside a website, and is not common knowledge to the movers and shakers of the world.
Where are the doctors who will perform the surgery necessary to halt the progression of the disease, and to rid the minds of this dinosaur of thought? Today's Western political, educational, religious, and social leaders are off on tangents as to the solution by touchy-feely tolerating the Beast in our present society, though many are with resources to and capable of stepping up to the plate and hitting the home run, or at least to put a couple men on base so that later Miley & I can inflict the inconspicuous lethal wounds into the Beast.
Till such a time when conditions are more favorable, Miley & I, and y'all, simply wait until the cows come home. So it goes.
Very happy that the damage was not permanent CGW.
. .one fold, one flock, even sheep of other flock.
Islam is the ultimate curse on planet Earth.
This is a wonderful book and I recommend it to anyone. It opened my eyes as to why Muslims remain isolated in their group-think. For a Muslim, an acorn doesn't grow into an oak tree because of any inherent qualities of the acorn, but only because Allah wills it to be so. He wouldn't be surprised if one day the acorn grew into a rhinoceros, or if the sun came up in the west. It is all due to whatever Allah wills that particular day. It's like they've willfully given themselves lobotomies and reject any scientific evidence and is actually pretty amazing that they continue, in spite of all evidence, to promote this charade. They can't admit that they made a mistake in closing those ijtihad gates a millenium ago, so persist, to the world's detriment, in making the same mistakes today.
Good show. Seems an interesting read I will follow up for sure. Irredeemable superstition is at the very core of why Islam constitutes such a dysfunctional outlook on society. Together with its inhumanity. It'll be money well spent.
I finally, through the publishing of this article, have been able to connect the dots between Islamic theology and the Sharia. Need to have the full book for my continued education of Islam, which serves as a sword against jihad.
Thanks, Robert, I'm glad you were the first I went to get informed and have learned directly from you, that, through education, is the sword to be used against those that attempt to take away our freedoms thru jihad.
Think about how the "religion" of Islam affects the elementary principle of "cause and effect". When a Muslim observes a cloudy sky, he or she does not assume it might rain. It does not rain In Islamic thought, unless Allah wills it.
Jihadis in Afghanistan, do not take target practice. It is only by the will of Allah, that bullets will reach their targets.
It is no wonder why Muslim countries are so primitive and backward. Islam is a frozen world where the will of Allah takes the responsibility of inquiry, reason, or freedom of thought away from humanity.
The struggle against Islam is a struggle against a system of thought that restricts its followers from becoming truly human. It is a struggle for the souls of one billion people - prisoners in their own minds.
Yes, she left Harbiland and went back to teach the savages in her home territory, another Arab squat-land called Jordan.
IN September last year, I made a posting that bears upon the subject of this thread.
Here is what I wrote.
In 2008, Tawfik Hamid, a somewhat disaffected or lax Muslim, who claims to be a 'Qur'an only' Muslim, wrote a useful article entitled, "The Development of a Jihadist's Mind".
It was discussed at jihadwatch, here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/the-development-of-a-jihadists-mind.html
The title is, in fact, something of an oxymoron, because Hamid, child of a 'secular Muslim' upbringing in Egypt, in describing how he was recruited and indoctrinated by the Jamaah Islamiyah while he was at university, effectively delineates the intensive cult programming by which sharia pushers, working upon the groundwork already laid in a standard 'basic Islamic' upbringing/ education, can turn an ordinary somewhat-lax Muslim, into a jihadist ghazi raider.
And that cult programming involves, quite precisely, the nullification of all independent thought and perhaps even of thought as such.
I quote the most telling passage from Hamid's article:
"During my first year of medical school, a Jamaah member named Muchtar Muchtar invited me to join the organization. Muchtar was in his fourth year, and Jamaah had given him the title amir (prince or caliph) - a designation taken from early Islamic writings that is associated with the Islamic caliphate or amir almomenin (prince of the believers).
"I accepted his invitation, and we walked together to Jamaah's mosque for noon prayers.
"On the way there Muchtar emphasized **the central importance in Islam of the concept of al-fikr kufr, the idea that the very act of thinking (fikr) makes one become an infidel (kufr).** {my emphasis - dda}.
"(In Arabic both words are derived from the same three root letters but have different meanings.)
"He told me,
"Your brain is just like a donkey [a symbol of inferiority in the Arab culture] that can get you only to the palace door of the king [Allah].
'To enter the palace once you have reached the door, you should leave the donkey [your inferior mind] outside."
"**By this parable, Muchtar meant that a truly dedicated Muslim no longer thinks but automatically obeys the teachings of Islam."** {my emphasis - dda}. END QUOTE.
'al-fikr kufr' - 'the very act of thinking - FIKR - makes one an infidel KUFR'.
'a truly dedicated Muslim no longer thinks but automatically obeys the teaching of Islam'.
In other words: the ideal Muslim (Submitter) is ...someone who has, effectively, beheaded or, so to speak, brain-wiped himself, becoming a robot whose only 'thoughts' are The Programming.
IN the comments attached to Mr Robert Spencer’s online QURAN BLOG, 27.1.2008, at HotAir, the discussion of Sura 13, ‘The Thunder’, someone noted – ‘thank you Robert for your trenchant analysis and thank you Hot Air for blogging the Koran. No other political blog has the courage to do it.
'I’m always struck with how anti thought the Koran and Islam is. It seems like the major goal of the religion, besides killing/enslaving everybody ELSE, is to not let its own followers think.” - Mojave Mark on January 27, 2008 at 12:35 PM.
Now I'm pretty sure Mojave Mark hadn't read Tawfik Hamid's article, nor could he have known of the proverb "al-fikr kufr"...but he had Islam dead to rights.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks of the same drive to annihilate the person, to suppress or destroy the thinking and questioning self, specifically as regards the Muslim training of women, in her book 'Infidel'.
"A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings I felt when I read those books ['those books' being lush Western romances - dda]. A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile.
"**If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you**
(my emphasis - dda; she is speaking of the indoctrination of women, but it chimes horribly with what Tawfik Hamid says, the idea that the mere act of *thinking* makes you an Infidel).
"In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development; many people, especially women, never develop a clear individual will. You submit; this is the literal meaning of the word islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind". [Infidel: p. 94].
C S Lewis, in his little book 'The Abolition of Man', warned that modern western relativist education was creating 'men without chests'.
Islam's aim, on the other hand, as described by Hamid and Hirsi Ali, seems to be... 'People Without Heads'.
Those who saw off or chop off the heads of living people have already - so to speak - beheaded themselves. There is nothing behind their eyes.
Islam: Women Without Faces; People Without Heads.
this is article with pin point accuracy. my 19 years of living in Iran in a religiou house hold this was the exact way they think. My dad and his side the family were/are very religous and my dad had the say. my mom side of the family however were very educated and they hated Islam. I was exposed to both side. I sometimes woder what if both sides have been religios. how whould I be? most certainly not here. Raymond is correct in that if Allah said so, that is it. they dont think twice about it. I remmeber when I was 10 years old and there was good bye party for my unlce they sent me to get a bottle of vodka)they would call the liquer store and saying I am sending my nehpew to pick it up and they would give it to me). I came back with that bottle and my dad kicked the S..out of me. I took my aunt Linda who was visiting and took her by caspian sea where my family is from and many people would not shake her and they said she in NAJES, meaning unclean! I can tell you mind blowing storeis. when I was 9 years old we were the only people in the nieghbor hood with a TV a balck and white one. it was 3am and appollo 11 was landing and we were watching it live when my uncle walked in the seeing the comotion and he said this is a lie. in the koran he said" it takes 30 years with the flying horse to go moon and he turned the tv off. very year I was forced to go to the mourning of Imam Hussein the most revered Imam in shai sect and people are pounding their chest and crying over an A...hole eho dided 14oo years ago. I can on and on. but it is 630 here in NYC and I am going have a cigar and a stiff scotch.
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Damn good review. Nails it. Islam is indeed a path to an intellectual dead end. Guaranteed.
a few other gems from memri (sorry if these have been posted before):
Saudi Cleric Warns of Western Conspiracy: Design of Jedda Airport Resembles a Penis and a Vagina
Koranic verses and olive oil heal a man shot 70(!) times.
this also includes a discourse on snow flakes, zamzam water, and those pesky jinns. AND SATAN.
and of course the classic Harry Potter and the Zionist conspiracy
free registration is required for the last two, which is definitely worth it
this is one of the greatest pieces l have read on this site, and the comments from all of you are worth reading several times! l cannot thank God enough for allowing me the courage to ask about islam and understand how evil it is with help from this site and everyone here. l find that now we need to get out instead of preaching to the choir, and doing every bit we can.. even though small in comparision to what Robert and his people do every day on this site. right now on my facebook.. there is some person that had this opening about protesting in Windsor.. called..protest in Windsor..'s Tahrir square.. and some muslims chimed in.. l am now trying to educate non=Muslims from this lady's FB about how evil islam without really insulting muslims or islam right out.. but giving enough doubts for them to question,, that democracy is the farthest thing on the minds of people from tahrir square~ giving examples of Copts getting killed,, CBS reporter being raped and almost beaten to death.. l am trying my best to to crack something into the minds of these brain dead leftists! This site has helped to educate myself and now l feel l can go out bring down islam with knowledge!
"'a truly dedicated Muslim no longer thinks but automatically obeys the teaching of Islam'.
In other words: the ideal Muslim (Submitter) is ...someone who has, effectively, beheaded or, so to speak, brain-wiped himself, becoming a robot whose only 'thoughts' are The Programming."
This explains why islamic nations are still stuck in the Middle Ages.
"touchy-feely tolerating the Beast"..Not just tolerating..Promoting,encouraging,bowing..but mostly FEARING..1400 years of pure BS..or MS rather..Moons++t mo-sh++,Wow..Next time somebody goes to the moon,please stick a stickman of mo-ham-nuts in the Sea of Tranquility..
I told a Muslim firend by email about the renewed attack on Christian churches where he lives. He replied that it was just "rumour" and that such "rumours" existed all around the world; he didn't want to know about them.
By email I tried to argue with him but he has cut me off: to him I no longer exist.
"friend", of course.
Thank's for excellent comment:
"In 2008, Tawfik Hamid, a somewhat disaffected or lax Muslim, who claims to be a 'Qur'an only' Muslim, wrote a useful article entitled, "The Development of a Jihadist's Mind".
Tawfik Hamid were among those who praised Reilly's brilliant book:
"I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to deeply understand the different ways of thinking within Islam and the phenomenon of radical Islam."
In the second last chapter Reilley analyze the sources of Islamism and how the Jihadi mind is created. Here an excerpt:
"... Islamism is an ideology in the classic sense in that it offers, or rather insists upon, an alternative "reality" - one that collapses the separate realms of the divine and the human, and arrogates to itself the means to achieve perfect justice here in this world or, as Qutb said, "to abolish all injustice from the earth." This notion of the inner perfectibility of history - the achievement of perfect justice here - is the very heart of ideology, whether sacred or profane. It places alongside reality its false version and insists that reality conform to its demands. Its adherents live in the magical world of this second reality and obey its laws. They may seem to live and move in the realm of the real world, but they are already transposed into the second, false reality. When they behave according to its laws - such as slaughtering innocent people without remorse - others are surprised and disturbed because they do not know the contours of this second reality, which has just been so shockingly imposed on them.
Jessica Stern, the author of "Terror in the Name of God", reflected the puzzlement that initially strikes almost everyone encountering Islamist terrorism until they come to understand its ideology as a pseudoreligion rather than as a political movement. She writes:
"I have come to see that apocalyptic violence intended to 'cleanse' the world of 'impurities' can create a transcendent state. All terrorist groups examined in this book believe - or at least started out believing - that they are creating a more perfect world. From their perspective, they are purifying the world if injustice, cruelty, and all that is anti-human. When I began this project, I could not understand why the killers I met seemed spiritually intoxicated. Now, I think I understand. They seem that way because they are."
The joint commissioner of the Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria, said of the captured terrorist Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving perpetrator of the 2008 mass murder in Mumbai, India, "He was led to believe that he was doing something holy."
With scathing sarcasm, Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Tunesian reformist, said od Islamist terrorists, "No criminal is more despicable than one who not only fails to feel any guilt after (committing) his crime, but also harbors the illusion that this (crime) will bring him ... divine reward. This conversion of bad onto good not only spares him guilt, but also turns an unhappy person into a happy soul.
Thus, terrorism is not simply terror - some people doing terrible things on the spur of the moment. It is murder advanced to the level of a MORAL principle, which is then institutionalized in an organization. - a cell, a party, or a state - as its animating principle. It is this rationalization that allows, as Meddeb said, "the conversion of bad into good", on which the organization is based. In order to act, terrorists must first firmly believe that their violence is moral or "holy", that it will achieve some higher good. Therefore, the very first thing one must understand is the ideology incarnated in the terrorist organization that allows terrorists to do this; it is the source of their moral legitimacy. Without it, they or their organization cannot exists. It is the "ism" in terrorism. In the case of radical IslamISM, already mentioned, they trinity of thinkers behind the ideology is Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Bana, and Maulana Maududi.
The means for the transformation of reality onto the alternative reality is, as in all ideologies, total control based upon absolute power, exercised to annihilate the old order. Qutb said that "only a radical transformation with the complete destruction of the old systems could guarantee the flourishing of the ideal society under God's suzerainty." Maududi stated that Islam is a "comprehensive system which envisages to annihilate all tyrannical and evil systems in the world and enforces its own programme of reform which it deems best for the well-being of mankind."
While most ideologies are secular attempts to displace religion as the main obstacle to fulfillment, Islamism is based upon a deformed theology that nonetheless shares in the classical ideological conflation of heaven and earth into one realm. It i exactly in these terms that its chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, spoke: "Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system." This means that "the patent purpose of establishing God's law on earth is not merely an action for the sake of the next world. For this world and the next world are but two complementary states. ... Harmonizing with the divine law does not mean that man's happiness is postponed to the next life, rather it makes it real and attainable in the first of the two stages." In other words, transcendent ends will be achieved by earthly means, as Qutb said, "to reestablish the Kingdom of God upon earth" or to "create a new world." This is obviously not a political objective but a metaphysical one. Its achievement will bring about a condition, predicted Qutb, which sounds eerily similar to that proclaimed by Marx for his classless society: "Universal adoption of the Divine law would automatically mean man's complete emancipation from all forms of enslavement." To reach this goal, announced Maududi, "Islam wants the whole earth and does not content itself with only a part thereof. It wants and requires the entire inhabited world." ..."
I strongly recommend everyone here to read Reilly's meticulously researched book - a must-read. It is in the words of Roger Scruton, "Lucid and fascinating ... Brilliant ... This book serves a purpose for which we should all be profoundly grateful."
Indeed we should!
"Islam is indeed a path to an intellectual dead end." Not only intellectual but also emotional, psychological and indeed spiritual. It always frighten me to see that demonic look when pious Muslim commit the most heinous acts of violence of torture, mutilation, and murder. A sociopath/psychopath paradise.
I realize full well that Islam is a dead end in all the respects you mentioned that I did not in my previous post, but I confined my comment to what the review by Ibrahim addressed and that is the intellectual dearth which Islam creates. And it's huge.
In my opinion, here is the "heart" of RI's piece:
________________________________________________
"The ramifications of such intellectual calcification are immense: “All acts are in themselves morally neutral”; “Allah does not command certain behavior because it is good; it is good because he commands it. Likewise, he does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it.”
_____________________
This explains it all. Muslims act on fear of Allah, because they do not exactly know how to act.
_____________________
Think of nature, and how wild animals "act" when cornered and consumed with fear. This is the Jihadist's "mind" at "work". This is the "pious" Muslim's mindset.
__________
The word, "calcification", is critical. In ESL, we say, "fossilized" (the linguistic errors that are so deeply set in the subconcious, that it takes much work and time to "free them") because the dissonance is hardened.