Jihad Watch: Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War

December 10, 2004

Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War

From the New York Times, with thanks to Uncle Jeff:

CAIRO, Dec. 9 - Muhammad Shahrour, a layman who writes extensively about Islam, sits in his engineering office in Damascus, Syria, arguing that Muslims will untangle their faith from the increasingly gory violence committed in its name only by reappraising their sacred texts.
First, Mr. Shahrour brazenly tackles the Koran. The entire ninth chapter, The Sura of Repentance, he says, describes a failed attempt by the Prophet Muhammad to form a state on the Arabian Peninsula. He believes that as the source of most of the verses used to validate extremist attacks, with lines like "slay the pagans where you find them," the chapter should be isolated to its original context.

"The state which he built died, but his message is still alive," says Mr. Shahrour, a soft-spoken, 65-year-old Syrian civil engineer with thinning gray hair. "So we have to differentiate between the religion and state politics. When you take the political Islam, you see only killing, assassination, poisoning, intrigue, conspiracy and civil war, but Islam as a message is very human, sensible and just."

Interesting. So I suppose he would set aside sura 9 as a guide for contemporary Muslims. But how will he prevent it from being taken up again by those who think that conditions are sufficiently analogous to those of the time when it was written?

Mr. Shahrour and a dozen or so like-minded intellectuals from across the Arab and Islamic worlds provoked bedlam when they presented their call for a reinterpretation of holy texts after a Cairo seminar entitled "Islam and Reform" earlier this fall.
"Liars! Liars!" someone screamed at a news conference infiltrated by Islamic scholars and others from the hard-core faithful who shouted and lunged at the panelists to a degree that no journalist could ask a question. "You are all Zionists! You are all infidels!"

This is what Shahrour gets for "brazenly" tackling the Qur'an.

The long-simmering internal debate over political violence in Islamic cultures is swelling, with seminars like that one and a raft of newspaper columns breaking previous taboos by suggesting that the problem lies in the way Islam is being interpreted. On Saturday in Morocco, a major conference, attended by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, will focus on increasing democracy and liberal principles in the Muslim world.
On one side of the discussion sit mostly secular intellectuals horrified by the gore joined by those ordinary Muslims dismayed by the ever more bloody image of Islam around the world. They are determined to find a way to wrestle the faith back from extremists.

Interesting: seven paragraphs into the article, the Times implicitly acknowledges, as if everyone knows it, that the extremists are not a "tiny minority," and are not as discredited as the Times would have had us believe on many other occasions, but are in control of the interpretation of Islam, such that the faith must be "wrestled back" from them. Funny thing: whenever I point that out, I get called an "Islamophobe." Will the American Islamic apologetics industry now label the Times "Islamophobic"?

Basically the liberals seek to dilute what they criticize as the clerical monopoly on disseminating interpretations of the sacred texts.
Arrayed against them are powerful religious institutions like Al Azhar University, prominent clerics and a whole different class of scholars who argue that Islam is under assault by the West. Fighting back with any means possible is the sole defense available to a weaker victim, they say.

Al-Azhar is arrayed against them? Now wait a minute, Grey Lady: I thought you wanted us to believe that Al-Azhar "has sought to advise Muslims around the world that those who kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics," and that, in the words of a sheikh whom you quoted approvingly and gave the last word on the place: "Al Azhar is the only institution in the world that has learned the moderate Islam and taught it in a moderate way without fanaticism, and without abiding by the teachings of a school that promotes rigidity or violence."

The debate, which can be heard in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, is driven primarily by carnage in Iraq. The hellish stream of images of American soldiers attacking mosques and other targets are juxtaposed with those of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheading civilian victims on his home videos as a Koranic verse including the line "Smite at their necks" scrolls underneath.

That would be 47:4, and its existence, along with that of many other verses, is what will make any reform prohibitively difficult. Which is not to say that the attempt should not be made, but it must involve a complete rejection of literalism. Even that, however, is highly unlikely:

Asked about those who say the problem lies deep within restrictive interpretations of Islam itself, Sheik Mais grimaced and exclaimed, "Take refuge in God!" summing up the viewpoint of most Islamic scholars.
You cannot divide Islam into pieces, he says. You have to take it as a whole.

But whose whole, the would-be reformists respond, lamenting what one Saudi writer calls "fatwa chaos." A important difficulty under Sunni Islam, as opposed to, say, the Shiite branch predominant in Iran or the Catholic Church, is that there is no central authority to issue ultimate rulings on doctrinal questions.

Those in the liberal trend believe that Islam, now entering its 15th century, needs to undergo a wholesale re-examination of its basic principles. Toward that end, the Cairo conference this fall recommended reviewing the roots of Islamic heritage, especially the Prophet's sayings, ending the monopoly that certain religious institutions hold over interpreting such texts and confronting all extremist religious currents.

Those taking part were harshly accused of dabbling in a realm that belongs solely to the clergy, with the grand sheik of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's most senior religious scholar, labeling them a "group of outcasts."

But Mr. Shahrour says he and an increasing number of intellectuals cannot be deterred by clerical opposition.

He describes as ridiculously archaic some Hadith, or sayings, attributed to Muhammad - all assembled in nine bulky volumes some 100 years after his death and now the last word on how the faithful should live.

"It is like this now because for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword, that all Arab countries and even Spain were captured by the sword and we are proud of that," he said. "In the minds of ordinary people, people on the street, the religion of Islam is the religion of the sword. This is the culture, and we have to change it."

Interesting again: if non-Muslims point out that Islam was spread by the sword, Islamic apologists call them names. But now we hear in the Times that for centuries Muslims have been told that. The maddening thing is that after this small spell of truth-telling, the Times will be back to its old dhimmi tricks tomorrow.

Posted by Robert at December 10, 2004 8:09 AM
Print this entry | Email this entry | Digg this | del.icio.us

Comments
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jihad Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)

Well, the comments of this Mr. Shahrour are heartening somewhat - it's rare to see any muslim actually speculate that Sura 9 deserves even segregation. But it's also no surprise that the majority of muslims are simply "arrayed against" the West, nor that the conquest of Spain fills them with simpleton's - I mean, simple - pride.

Who is raising the contradictions in the NYT to more public awareness? This is the kind of hypocrisy that desperately needs pointing out. But advancement on the former issue is unlikely - I've debated with muslims on their dawah websites and they take great pride in saying that they accept all the Quran while Christians and Jews reject (in their infidel fashion) specific passages of the OT and NT. (In fact, some even insist that the other 'Abrahamic' religions get back to their 'roots'; that is, slaughter, OT-style. And this advice is actually given in concern for the souls of the members of these faiths. Nice.)

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff

at December 10, 2004 8:51 AM

This particular blog may be called How To Read a Page. But it is no longer the literary texts dissected by I. A. Richards, or Wimsatt, or Brooks & Warren that require such treatment, but newspaper articles that, in a different age, would never have required such parsing.

The Times' problem is that both the paper, and individual reporters, including those who have been reporting from the MIddle East and are good at that -- mere reporting -- do not have an understanding of Islam, nor of its centrality in molding the minds of men throughout the Muslim world, or the ways in which it molds, through schoolbooks, sermons, allusions in conversation, and the complete monopoly on what passes for intellectual life, among the great mass of people (and the handful who are silent skeptics, keep that skepticism to themselves, save for the very occasional semi-demi-hemi quaver expressing not-quite-complete acceptance of the Muslim Party Line.

Teasing out for analysis the inconsistencies, the half-truths, the confusion, all of which arise from the essential incomprehension of htis belief-system, as Robert does here, is most helpful.

One wonders what the editors and sub-editors and panjandrums and Sulzberger himself know, or allow themselves to know, or even contemplate thinking about learning, about Islam? Who will they go to? Muslims, the more plausible and "moderate" the better? Some Wunderkind such as Noah Feldman, who showed in his contributions to the "draft" Iraqi constitution, and in his writings, naivete -- possibly Roy-Mottahedeh-induced naivete -- about Islam? Or will the Middle Eastern beat be left to Tom Friedman, silly Tom Friedman, who has never ever understood what underlies everything that happens in the Middle East, or Nicholas Kristof, so heart-on-sleeve indignant about the atrocities in the Sudan, and so uncomprehending of how those atrocities fit completely into the twin animating ideas of Islam: murderous hostility to the Infidels (the blacks in the southern Sudan), and Islam as a vehicle for forced arabization of others, and for the dominance of Arabs within Islam itself, as with the attacks on non-Arab black Muslims in Darfur.

Confusion and chaos reign in the minds of the Times' men, and will, until everyone sits down, decides to study Qur'an and hadith and sira, perhaps even to read around in Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye'or, not to mention in the lengthy compilations of scholarship on Islam that has been overlooked during the past half-century.

Then, and only then, will the Times, when it comes to the biggest subject in the world today, Islam, and the islamization through Da'wa and demography, of Europe, stop making non-sense.

Is it too much to ask, that when Safire retires in a few months, that a sine qua non for his replacement be a knowledge of, an understanding of, Islam?

Posted by: Hugh

at December 10, 2004 8:53 AM

It is indeed heart warming Geoff, but what instantly brings back the chill is the realization that with such widespread ignorance and hatred in the muslim world , the kind of reform we would need to insure that jihad would never rear it's ugly head again will be nigh-on impossible to acheive if not completely impossible.

Once again we see that anyone who dares speak out against the korans "sacred texts" gets assaulted with verbal rotten tomato syndrome.

This is too little too late, the jihad against the entire of humanity is well underway, and a reformed muslim speaking out against the religion here and there just isn't enough, it's just a blip on the horizon, a star in space.... we need muslims to speak out allover the place before it gets any kind of attention. I'm more concerned about making western society aware of islams malevolance first, and that requires people like Sharour to speak to the US and Uk and Europe on TV, on the radio, wherever they can and alert people. People like us who post here at JW can only do so much as can apostates who are dedicated to opening up peoples eyes to the threat of the death cult... and we've got the left-wing countering us, so for every person we convert, they're unconverting someone. Whereas actual muslims speaking publicly and honestly about the dangers and true horror of their religion would be impossible for the left to oppose, it would go against their grain so to speak.

I've not been posting here as much recently because I believe time is running out , and we really do need to alert as many people as we can, and thats exactly what I'm doing.

They're even fucking with christmas over here in the UK now, and to me thats a bridge way too far...

Posted by: Rikki

at December 10, 2004 9:38 AM

Salman Rushdie questioned the supressed 'satanic verses' (-allowing polytheism, for a time, at Mecca, and then rescinded by Mohammad as a boo-boo, using the old Flip Wilson excuse "The devil made me do it!" to censor his previous 'revelations' by substituting a NEW & IMPROVED revelation-) and a lot of good it did him.

Rushdie's point was: "Well, if one group of verses was 'satannic', why not the whole shebang?"

This didn't sit well with the ayatollahs, etc.

I'd say, Mr. Shahrour will be looking for three things in the near future:

1) a new name
2) a new address
or
3) a new head.

It won't work, Mr. S.
It's the whole book.
Like a cheap sweater.
You pull one thread, the whole mess unravels.

These 'Muslim scholars' are as naive as the EU politicos.

Posted by: profitsbeard

at December 10, 2004 10:36 AM

Exactly, profitsbeard.

Posted by: Carolyn2

at December 10, 2004 11:57 AM

Robert Spencer asks a valid point: if a new interpretation of Quran is presented, what is the guarantee that some muslims in future would not interpret it back literally again?

I am interested to know how the Jews handled it, and see if a model could be found. Clearly the Jews believed at one time in the sanctity and divine nature of the old testament with all its violent and harsh content and rules, including death penalty for non-believers or apostates, stoning etc. How did they, from a theological point of view, manage the transform in the context? And are Ortodox Jews still believe in those texts literally?

As for Sura 9, I think most of the muslims do believe that the Sura specifically referred to the war betwen Prophet Mohammad and Meccans. I have not seen any statements from Bin Laden or other extremists that uses this specific sura to
justify an open end war against infidels. They usually use the verses that declare "defence of the religion" or "justice for the oppressed" to justify their position.

Posted by: SeenathePersian

at December 10, 2004 11:59 AM

"Those in the liberal trend believe that Islam, now entering its 15th century, needs to undergo a wholesale re-examination of its basic principles."

Is this not bid'a?

Innovation in Ibadah [worship, i.e. all acts of submission to Allah, as defined in Qur'an and Sunnah:

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=bid%27a&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Dd0b25e964561dc0a%26clickedItemRank%3D1%26userQuery%3Dbid%2527a%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fmuttaqun.com%252Fbida.html%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPTop%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmuttaqun.com%2Fbida.html

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 12:44 PM

From the Hadith - Muslim, Narrated Jabir ibn Abdullah:

"The best speech is that embodied in the Book of Allah, and the best guidance is the guidance given by Muhammad. The most evil affairs are their innovations; and every innovation is an error."

How then to reform Islam if "every innovation is an error"?

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 12:54 PM

*** PETITION TO FREE COPTIC PRIEST'S WIFE ***

http://www.petitiononline.com/beleiver/petition.html

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 1:36 PM

Seenathepersian says: I am interested to know how the Jews handled it, and see if a model could be found. Clearly the Jews believed at one time in the sanctity and divine nature of the old testament with all its violent and harsh content and rules, including death penalty for non-believers or apostates, stoning etc. How did they, from a theological point of view, manage the transform in the context? And are Ortodox Jews still believe in those texts literally?
---
Not being Jewish, I don't know how they did it from a theological point of view. But the big difference between the Jews and the muslims is that the Jews were (are) intelligent, able to think for themselves, and distinguish between right and wrong. They chose the moral path.

But the muslims had their greed and lust harnessed and sanctified by mohammed, and only a few questioned this and they were silenced. The bedouin ethos of looting and pillaging, with some nasty additions by mohammed, eg. breaking of oaths was now allowed, killing family members, marrying the wife of adopted sons, lying, all which even some of his contemporaries viewed as immoral,now became holy. Female self-determination was quashed. The Arab's sense of morality was completely warped by islam and through the centuries their moral sense has been extinguished. They can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, they are no more than automotons.

Setanta

Posted by: Silvester

at December 10, 2004 1:46 PM

Easy Gods Laws the 10 comments written by God Himself The one thall shall not murder?

the Rabbis made a law Love thy neigbor as thy would want to be loved[- the sex] because then you would break another of Gods 10 laws!! Called the Golden Rule!!

Read the storys and you will find some of the lessons that were learned!!

Then read the quran and see what lessons you find?? Hate killing and conquest??

Then try to figure out how to fix the problem??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Sight,Wisdom, and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat Amen

PS
I liked Hughs answer last night and we just take out their big stuff and let them kill each other we have to add no travel and then you have some thing??

Posted by: Catherine

at December 10, 2004 2:03 PM

SeenathePersian:

Actually bin Laden invoked Sura 9:5 in his "Declaration of War on America" in 1996:

"Allah knows that there blood is permitted (to be spilled) and their wealth is a booty; their wealth is a booty to those who kill them. The most Exalted said in the verse of As-Sayef, The Sword: "so when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters where ever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush" (At-Tauba; 9:5)."

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 2:21 PM

Pay no attion to what they say but what they do we have been down this road before let's take the fork and watch from a distance and be ready to strike??

Remember what was still is in 2001 and now in 2004??

has any thing changed really??

The investment seems to have come largely from Saudi Arabia, which financed the American- backed mujahedeen, or holy warriors, in their fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980's and later — until Sept. 11 — embraced the Taliban.
That flow of funds from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states has come not only from public coffers, but in millions of dollars of private money as well, which was contributed to charities and other groups that serve as another way to promote a specific vision of Islam.
In Pakistan in particular, they helped to establish the madrassas, schools that inculcated vast numbers of young people in the stern, unforgiving Wahhabi strain of Islam, which has taken root in its harshest form among the Taliban. This strain is also found Central Asia, where Russia and some new nations confront radicals inspired by Islam.
All over the Islamic world, charities have helped to win both admiration and obligation for particular Islamic views.
From its base in Beirut's southern suburbs, the Iranian-backed Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, which is Shiite Muslim in orientation, is also the country's largest nongovernmental organization. It schools young men like Ali Isa, 19, cares for them in its clinics and — not least — preaches to them in its mosques.
"My loyalty is to Hezbollah and Sheik Fadlallah," Mr. Isa, an auto mechanic with a closely trimmed black beard, said recently. "Lebanon does nothing for me."
He was referring to Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah's spiritual adviser, a gentle-looking and extraordinarily popular 62-year-old cleric who remains on American lists of suspected terrorists for his links to Hezbollah's more radical past.
Mr. Isa said he agreed with Sheik Fadlallah that the attacks on the United States were wrong. But he also said he agreed that if Mr. bin Laden is caught, he should be tried in a Muslim court rather than by "a court of infidels," and he took exception when asked if he recognized that not all Muslims shared that view.
"Who else besides Fadlallah has any business telling us what Muslims should believe?" he asked.
In its most extreme forms, of course, militant Islam has thrived most where state power is least, in places like Afghanistan, Lebanon and Sudan, and so it is not surprising that stronger states like Egypt would use what power they can to promote religious moderation.
Across the Islamic world, this is most often done in the form of partnership between religious and secular authorities, like the one between Al Azhar and the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

I SAY NO I SEE NO CHANGE??

THE MONEY STILL FLOWS AND THE SCHOOLS STILL TURN OUT THE HATE??

AS NASSEEM ON THE OTHER THREAD POINTS OUT AND THE JIHAD GOES ON THEM THINKING ALL ALONG WE DON'T SEE THEM CUTTING OFF PEOPLES HEADS AND TAKEING LANDS ALL IN THE NAME OF THEIR FAITH??

NO TAKE THE FORK IN THE ROAD AND SEE WHAT THEY DO?? NOT SAY!!

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight, and Courage to Destroy the emeny islamic terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat And give the World Strength to Stand and Fight them Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 10, 2004 2:44 PM

When Islam went eastward, especially to places like Indonesia it was spread mostly by Sufi's and trader merchants. Then again sufism considers jihadism the antithesis of its goals. If so many arab nations weren't so stubborn they may want to look at the example of a multicultural civil society in predominantly muslim Malaysia. Recently a number of the more strict interpretationist muslim political parties were slammed in the elections.

Posted by: omar_masry

at December 10, 2004 2:47 PM

It is irrelevant what the Jews did or do with their religion and their holy texts because, however misguided by their 'GOD is ours' motto, they are not proselitizers and leave alone everybody around them. The muzzies also adopt the attitude of 'GOD is on our side' attitude but differently from their semitic cousins want everybody join the club, forcibily if necessary, thus promoting hatred and its by-product:DEATH&WAR.

Posted by: Cid Campeador

at December 10, 2004 2:50 PM

Posted by: Rikki at December 10, 2004 09:38 AM

Gold Star for you today!!

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 10, 2004 3:10 PM

Cid Campeador wrote: [It is irrelevant what the Jews did or do with their religion and their holy texts because, however misguided by their 'GOD is ours' motto, they are not proselitizers and leave alone everybody around them. The muzzies also adopt the attitude of 'GOD is on our side' attitude but differently from their semitic cousins want everybody join the club]

That was not my question. Clearly now reformed Jews do not believe in the sanctity of the old testament and the laws that were enshrined in it, such as killing apostates and stoning adulterers. Robert Spencer raises the question that Muslims will not be able to do theologically. I want to know how did the Jews manage to justify the reform from a theological point of view.

I hope I get a more intelligent answer than Silvester's "because you muslims are stupid". Fine. Suppose we are stupid. Now we want to see if we could copy those intelligent Jews in reforming their religion.

Posted by: SeenathePersian

at December 10, 2004 3:15 PM

SeenathePersian,
Perhaps you should try Googling "Reform Judaism" - maybe one of the sites explains how these branches of Judaism broke away from the Orthodoxy. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 4:43 PM

BTW, Omar,
I've been intrigued with what little I've read of Sufism - it certainly seems preferable to Salafism and Wahhabism.

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 4:45 PM

MUSLIM SCHOLAR...hmmm..what universities can you major in that subject, wonder what kind of classes you need to take, how high of a degree do you need to be considered a muslim scholar...bachelor? master? or do you need to go for the doctorate...of course I guess having the longest, scraggliest beard and the prettiest robe puts you in the running.

Posted by: USAgirl

at December 10, 2004 4:49 PM

Of course you can take the Abe Lincoln route and become a Muslim scholar on your own. Given the curriculum at the universities, you'll probably get a more well-rounded education that way.

Posted by: Mike

at December 10, 2004 4:54 PM

Posted by: SeenathePersian at December 10, 2004 03:15 PM

THIS MAY HELP??

HAVE A DIG LIKE FOR DINOS??

PICK A PLACE WHERE MO-HAM-OD WAS AND FIND SOME NEW BOOKS sCROLLES WHAT EVER AND SAY A LoT OF THE WRITTINGS TODAY ARE WRONG USE YOUR FAITH LIKE

http://etori.tripod.com/dajjalsystem/protection.html
Protection from al-Masih ad-Dajjal

I have told you so much about the Dajjal (Antichrist) that I am afraid you may not understand. The Antichrist is short, hen-toed, woolly-haired, one-eyed, an eye-sightless, and neither protruding nor deep-seated. If you are confused about him, know that your Lord is not one-eyed. (Abu Dawood)

LOOK AT THE MONSTER WHO FOLLOWS ubl[yellow coward who runs away] PUT SOME THING IN TODAY WITH THE OLD??

The Prophet () warned that the Dajjal would be the greatest fitnah or trial mankind would know.
There would be no creation (creating more trouble) than the Dajjal right from the creation of Adam to the Last Hour. (Muslim)

LOOK AT THE WORLD TODAY AND HOW THE MULSUMS ARE LIVING IN THE HATE THEY CREATE??

I'M SURE YOUR MULSUM TEACHERS CAN MAKE THIS WORK ??

BETTER TRY FAST BECAUSE THE MONSTERS WILL NOT ONLY DESTROY THOSE ON TV BUT YOU WILL SUffER FROM WHAT THEY ARE DOING??

AGAIN A DIG AND SOME OLD HISTORY TO HELP THE DISCOVERY!!

Conclusions
Many people find the prophecies of the End of Time to be fascinating. Indeed, the companions, themselves (), would frequently ask the Prophet () about the Hour and the Signs of its coming. But we should exercise caution. We should rely on authentic sources. Beware of sources which interpret the Qur'an and sunnah as allegory. Beware of articles, texts, and speakers who claim that Dajjal is a device, or a concept, or a system. Though he will have devices and technologies at his disposal which he will use to persecute those who do not follow him, and though he will instill false concepts and ideas into the people, and though a system is currently being established which will welcome him when he arrives; he is only a man. Nothing more, nothing less.

USE YOUr FAITH To FIND THE WAY??

YOUR Q? IF JEWS STILL STONE PEOPLE THE ANSWER IS NO THE lAWS OF GOD WILL NOT ALLOW IT??

IF MULSUSMS BELIEVE IN THE SAME GOD AS SOME SAY YoU SHOULD FOLLOW THE LAWS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK AND MURDER LIEING STEALLING ARE ALL BAD!!!

TALK ABOUT HOW THE RULES OF HATE WERE REWRITTEN BY GREEDY MEN USE THE NEW BOOKS YOU FIND?? MIGHT HELP??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to Stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat and give the World Strength to stand and Fight them Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 10, 2004 5:11 PM

Seenatheperson,
you ask an interesting question re the changing understandings that Christians and Jews have to 'their books'.

Christianity, Buddhism and islam all have ' an ideal person' as teacher/messenger, a central figure,
fortunately for the planet, two out of three were genuinely good people whose lessons and examples lead us to a higher level.

Jews, do not have a central figure the like of the above
- have a living history over three times as long as islam
- have thousands of years of stories/history, with thousands of 'characters'in them, none of them perfect, not even some prophets; understanding comes from all of them
- show, in 'their book', of a constant rethinking of what is and is not appropriate behaviour, worthy of g-d; this rethinking continues to this day
- have gained from the pain of losing their holy places, losing control of their country, a number of times over recorded history. Rituals had to change, liturgy changed/adapted, rethinking and remaking of the religion was accelerated
-,being a minority among Christians, muslims and Hindus focused Jews on what was central to them, what was not possible, etc

Because mo is the central figure in islam and because mo gave the wrong lessons and the wrong examples, i do not see how islam can be 'reformed'.

Posted by: dby

at December 10, 2004 6:21 PM

sSeena does not want change all this talk from Iran today??

Wasn't it just last mo. some 16 year old girl was stoned to death??

and now they marry their girls at 10 yrs old??

Funny at how they think we are so stupid that we do not see through their CRAP!!

LUST:

Qur’an 33:51 “You may have whomever you desire; there is no blame.”

Tabari VIII:187 “The [sixty-two-year old] Messenger of Allah married Mulaykah. She was young and beautiful. One of the Prophet’s wives came to her and said, ‘Are you not ashamed to marry a man who killed your father during the day he conquered Mecca?” She therefore took refuge from him.”

Qur’an 66:1 “O Prophet! Why forbid yourself that which Allah has made lawful to you? You seek to please your consorts.”

Qur’an 66:4 “If you (women) turn in repentance to him, it would be better. Your hearts have been impaired, for you desired (the ban) [on how many girls Muhammad could play with at a time]. But if you back each other up against (Muhammad), truly Allah is his protector, and Gabriel, and everyone who believes—and furthermore, the angels will back (him) up.”

Qur’an 66:5 “Maybe, if he divorces you (all), Allah will give him in exchange consorts better than you—submissive, faithful, obedient, adorers who worship, who travel, and are inclined to fasting—previously married or virgins.”

GUESS HE DIDN'T LIKE FAT WOMEN??

Bukhari:V6B60N8 “Umar said, ‘Our best Qur’an reciter is Ubai. And in spite of this, we leave out some of his statements because Allah’s Apostle himself said, “Whatever verse or revelation We abrogate or cause to be forgotten We bring a better one.”

SO NO MATTER WHAT IS SAID??

Qur’an 9:3 “Allah and His Messenger dissolve obligations.”
Qur’an 66:1 “Allah has already sanctioned for you the dissolution of your vows.”

SO HOW CAN WE BELIEVE YOU??

Qur’an 33:11 “In that situation the Believers were sorely tried and shaken as by a tremendous shaking. And behold! The Hypocrites and those in whose hearts is a disease said: ‘Allah and His Messenger promised us nothing but delusion; they have promised only to deceive us.”

WE HAVE GROWN UP WE SEE YOUR LIES NOW!!

Qur’an 33:14 “Say: Flight will not avail you if you flee from death, killing, or slaughter. In that case you will not be allowed to enjoy yourselves but a little while. Say, ‘Who will screen you, saving you from Allah if he intends to harm and injure you?’”

SEENA DON'T TELL US YOUR ARE TRYING TO??

Qur’an 74:52 “Each one of them wants to be given scrolls of revelation spread out! No! By no means! Nay, this is an admonishment. Let them keep it in remembrance! But they will not heed unless the Lord wants them to. He is the fountain of fear.”

WE SEE THE WHOLE BOARD NOW??

Tabari VI:110 “When Muhammad brought a revelation from Allah canceling what Satan had cast on the tongue of His Prophet, the Quraysh said, ‘Muhammad has repented of [reneged on] what he said concerning the position of our gods with Allah. He has altered [the bargain] and brought something else.’ Those two phrases which Satan had cast on Muhammad’s tongue of were in the mouth of every polytheist. The Messenger said, ‘I have fabricated things against Allah and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken.’”

NOT LOOKING FOR MUSSIS BELIEVING IN SATAN IN ALL??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Sight,Wisdom, and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Defeat ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat and give the Wold the Strength to Stand and Fight them Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 10, 2004 6:25 PM

Hi USAgirl,
just to mention that a huge plurality of degrees issued by arab universities are in islamic studies. Is it one third or two thirds of all phd's from saudi universities are in islamic slush........we then allow these islamic slush grads to teach in european and american mosques.

Are we stupid or ....

Posted by: dby

at December 10, 2004 6:32 PM

To the query above as to how the Jews "reformed" their religion, by "Seena the Persian" the answer is simple, and it applies as well as to how Christianity evolved:

1) an attitude that encourages free enquiry, the sacred books are not above and beyond study, but are subject to human investigation. This begins with philological and historical study of how the texts originated, what parts of them may or may not be attributed to this or that source, how doctrines evolve, the role played by texts in different languages (Aramaic, Greek, the English of the various translations from Wycliff and Tyndale to the King James version, to the Authorized and Revised Standard and so on).

2) a keen awareness that humans, not a god or God, wrote the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. This means they can be approached in an entirely different way.

3) lack of Manichaeanism -- that is, no strict division of the world between Believer and Infidel, that requires the former to punish the latter (the latter may not, in a particular religion, make it to whatever Paradise is available, but this does not require that the Believer slay him here below to hasten the Infidel's descent to hell).

And much more.

Muslims have never been encouraged in the exercise of free and skeptical enquiry. Islam does not permit the study, for example, of the Qur'an as a text, with a history, with slow accretions. We owe the real study of the ealry Qur'an entirely to non-Muslim Western scholars -- including, most recently, to Christoph Luxenberg, whose studies should revolutionize how the early Qur'an is considered. But instead, attempts are made by Muslims to ban the sale even of Newsweek when it happens to carry a small article on Luxenberg. All of this hysteria by Muslims, whenever it is suggested that Islam can be studied like any other religion (or belief-system) has not gone unnoticed by non-Muslims. Over the past few years, non-Muslims have been getting a crash course in how Muslims offer

1) false connections ("we are all monotheisms" or "we all share the abrahamic faith")

2) victimology (Arab Muslims are the victims of Western colonialism -- when in fact Arab imperialism, which uses Islam as a vehicle, is the most successful imperialism, comprising cultural and linguistic aspects that cause those conquered and islamized even to forget their own non-Arab and pre-Islamic identities, or at least to try to (it did not work in Persia, thanks to Firdowsi and others) study of the origins of the sacred texts, subjectthat matter how Christians stopped taking the Bible completely literally.

3) denial of the real tenets of Islam

4) taqiyya and tu-quoque arguments:

a) Taqiyya -- the religiously-sanctioned doctrine which says it is permissible to lie both about the tenets of Islam, and about one's own adherence to Islam, in order to save or promote the Faith or the Believer and
b) Tu Quoque -- the constant assertion that both the Christian and Jewish Bibles are equally hair-raising in certain passages (they aren't, and in any case, those passages centuries ago became null and void -- rabbis, for example, have not for centuries been taking their sermon texts from the bloodier passages in Leviticus -- it is an utterly phony attempt to pretend that "you do it too"

The belief-system of Islam has for 1350 years offered Infidels three choices: death, conversion, or the permanent status of dhimmi, a status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. The history of Jihad-conquest, from Spain to India and beyond, shows that every non-Muslim group -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians -- all suffered the same fate.

When Muslims continue to attempt to distract, to draw false analogies, to deny what is in Qur'an and of course to keep Infidels even from learning much about the hadith and the sira (who wants Infidels to know about the Bani Qurayza, or the attack on the Jews of the Khaybar oasis, or the fate of Asma bin Marwan, or -- especially -- about 9-year-old Aisha?), when they do these things, they simply make the situation far worse, for they reveal to Infidels, as nothing else does, that there is no possibility of serious confrontation with Islam by Muslims.

They are interested only in fooling us, to have us keep our guard down, so as to be let off the hook, and so that the effort of, for example, islamizing large swaths of the dar al-Harb through Da'wa and demography (overbreeding Muslim families in the Bilad al-Kufr) can continue, unopposed. It is too late. Too many Infidels have ignored the apologists ensconced in the universities (and there are even apologists among the Muslims who are hired to conduct "studies" for the Pentagon on Islamic doctrine -- but they, too, can easily be revealed to be practicing apologetics and taqiyya, perhaps out of ignorance or embarrassment rather than the desire to deliberately mislead, which would, of course, be a more sinister motive).

Look at Iran, SeenathePersian. Read history. Read the chronicle of Arakel of Tabriz, for example, and what happened in the 1660s. Think about Firdowsi, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, Rumi. How many of those poets do you consider to be orhtodox Muslims? How many of them would choose to live, today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, or indeed anywhere in the Muslim world? Where is science, art, freedom of thought? Where can peole tell the truth, if they feel like it? What must it be like, what a relief, to be someone born into Islam who can finally, like Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina or Azam Kamguian or tens of thousands of others, finally slough it off, as a snake sheds its skin?

You have a right to think, and choose, for yourself. Forget about defensiveness. Forget about filial piety. Go re-read the Qur'an. Read again about the history of Muhammad's behavior -- look up Sir William Muir, or Tor Andrae, or Arthur Jeffery, and see what they wrote about Muhammad. Read the hadith.

And as you read, read not as a Muslim or muslimah, but as an Infidel. What impression, do you think, the Qur'an and hadith and sira make on us, the Infidels?

You are free to think for yourself. Go to www.faithfreedom.org and www.secularislam.org. Read Ibn Warraq's compilation of testimonies of ex-Muslims, "Leaving Islam." Read carefully. Don't keep defending the indefensible, or trying to explain away what cannot be explained. Try.

Posted by: Hugh

at December 10, 2004 6:41 PM

Hugh - superb response . . .as usual.

This particular website has been the source of an education I never expected to receive. The information is distressing at times, but this knowledge is the crucial weapon that can not be taken for granted.

Posted by: justamomof4

at December 10, 2004 8:13 PM

And more on how things are distorted by the press:

Al-Zarqawi's Loss Is Fallujah's Gain
By Erick Stakelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 10, 2004

An article posted on CNN’s website last week exemplified the glaring disconnect between the mainstream media’s reporting on the war in Iraq and the reality on the ground.

The title of the piece—which was attributed to CNN Producer Arwan Damon—blared, “Falluja ‘a horror’ after U.S.-led offensive,” with the subhead warning, “Long road ahead for residents of shattered city.”

Judging by these dire proclamations from CNN, you’d think that Fallujah was a paradise prior to the recent American-led assault, rather than the brutal, mini-Islamist state it had become over the past year.

All U.S. and Iraqi forces have done in Fallujah has been to kill or capture thousands of Islamist terrorists—many of whom had taken to publicly executing Fallujans who didn’t embrace their Stone Age ideology—while giving hope to a city that had descended into chaotic violence long before the Coalition’s offensive began on November 8.

The fact that terrorist attacks against U.S. and Iraqi troops have decreased dramatically ever since was no coincidence. By early November, the terrorists who ruled Fallujah had amassed enough weapons to take over all of Iraq.

To date, U.S. and Iraqi troops have found at least 650 homemade bombs in Fallujah, as well as shoulder-fired rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, an anti-aircraft artillery gun and thousands of mortar rounds, according to the Pentagon.

In addition, last week, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud said that Iraqi troops had “found a chemical laboratory” in the city “that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons” and possibly even anthrax, news which the New York Times, Washington Post and their ilk have been less than enthusiastic to report.

Perhaps nowhere is the U.S.’s resounding success in Fallujah more evident than in the recent statements of terrorist kingpin Abu Musab al-Zaraqwi, who had made the city his own personal killing field before beating a hasty retreat in early November.

On November 24, in an audiotape posted on an Islamist web site, al-Zarqawi bitterly condemned Sunni Muslim clerics for not supporting the insurgency in Iraq, saying “Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.”

Admitting that his forces were being “surrounded and hurt” by American troops, al-Zarqawi added that Iraq had been handed over to “the Jews and Crusaders” under “the darkest circumstances.”

The desperate tone of al-Zarqawi’s recent statements echoed that of a letter he sent to Al-Qaeda leaders last January in which he fretted, “our enemy is growing stronger day after day,” and “our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the throat of the mujahedeen has begun to tighten.”

Clearly, al-Zarqawi is feeling the heat in Iraq, and has been for some time. Even his fellow terrorists are turning against him: in a November interview with the London daily Al-Hayat, Nu’man ibn ‘Uthman, a former jihad fighter in Afghanistan, said that al-Zarqawi’s group—al-Tawhid Wa-al Jihad—was not part of Al-Qaeda.

‘Uthman added that al-Zarqawi’s bloody tactics in Iraq “damage Islam,” and “will eventually lead to the isolation of al-Zarqawi's group.” As for al-Zarqawi’s recent oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden, ‘Uthman believes that “it will have a very negative effect” because Iraqi citizens “are not interested in Al-Qaeda’s plan.”

If ‘Uthman’s analysis is correct, al-Zarqawi’s days in Iraq are clearly numbered. If he is indeed in the area in and around Mosul, as has been reported in recent weeks, he won’t be able to stay there very long. Coalition forces are committed to mopping up various trouble spots throughout the Sunni Triangle region—places like Mosul and Ramadi—in the run-up to the January 30 Iraqi elections.

Despite calls from some Iraqi political parties to postpone the elections, President Bush insisted last Thursday that “it’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls.”

And he’s right: free elections would not only help stabilize Iraq, but would also further discredit al-Zarqawi and his minions in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Come late January, with the Sunni Triangle pacified and Iraqi citizens repudiating terror by electing a democratic government, al-Zarqawi—if he is still alive—will have little recourse other than to perhaps flee into neighboring Syria or Iran.

He certainly won’t be welcomed in his old stomping grounds. While you aren’t likely to hear about it from the mainstream press, Fallujah has once again become a “no go” zone—this time, for terrorists.

Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counter-terrorism research institute.

Posted by: susan_b

at December 10, 2004 10:14 PM

Nice post Hugh.

Looked up those authors you mentioned (Sir William Muir, or Tor Andrae, or Arthur Jeffery) and found Muir the most interesting due to his keen perception of Muslim "intellectualism" and his character sketch of Muhammad. I noticed that he was very fair with regards to Muhammad, noting his urbanity but offering a caveat stating that it does not override his greed, lust and bloodlust. It's a real shame that we DON'T have academics like these anymore. Besides blaming it all on the Said Revolution, is there any reason why we don't see work like this, even from the last 20 years? Afterall, most all of those authors are quite old.

-igor

Posted by: igor

at December 10, 2004 10:29 PM

Sean the Persian:

WHat happened to Judaism?

First of all, remember that the Bible was given over a long period of time. The Old Testament includes portions given by God to Moses on Sinai in 1450 BC; while its last books, written under Persian rule, date from the 4th century BC. The New Testament was given via the apostles of Jesus Christ, within a generation of his death and resurrection.

The "violent verses" of the OT are generally associated with the calls to conquer and inherit the land of Canaan, which God promised to Abraham. Abraham, however, was not allowed to in herit the promised land "for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gn. 15:16--note: Amorite= Amurru, which was Mesopotamian for "Westerner"; i.e., Abraham was a native of Mesopotamia).

The Torah's ban on the seven nations of Canaan is part of a wider context in which Israle is also warned that it will be thrown out of the land if it walks in the ways of the Canaanites.

The prophets of the Old Testament (including the historical books from Joshua through the Kings) show us how Israel indeed broke covenant with God, offered its children to idols, etc. Well, the Bible NEVER says anyone was turned into apes or pigs, but it does tell us that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came down on Jerusalem in 586 BC, destroyed the city, and carried off the people into exile.

The exile is perhaps the watershed event for Judaism in that it taught the Jews how to live as a minority and in dispersion. The synagogue, a place of prayer and study, rather than the temple [a place of sacrifice, which was destroyed] became the dominant institution of Jewish life.

This did not completely banish violence and holy war from Jewish life and thought. While the Jews lived peaceably enough under the Persians, they successfully revolted against the Greek Seleucids in the 2d century BC; and were briefly independent until the Romans came along.

Growing out of a Judaism that remembered the exile, inheriting its Scriptures, and initially spreading among the Jews of the dispersion, Christianity is also, partly, a product of the Babylonian exile. The New Testament contains no instruction for holy war waged by the Messianic community, except for a witness by word and ethical example. However, it does portray Jesus as a conqueror (especially in the book of revolution), so those converted to Christ may speak of themselves as his "defeated" former enemies; or those reformed from certain sinful habits may also use military terminology about their experience. Jesus' resurrection is also an important source of military metaphor in Christian spirituality, for we see Jesus as the one who conquered death for the sake of his people.

The Bible does not teach a basic goodness of man (at least not since Adam sinned). and is thus replete with warnings that "we" (God's Chosen People, whether before or after Messiah) can lose--especially if we incurr God's fatherly displeasure--and thus must practice humility.

Looking back on the Old Testament history, my advice for an Islam that wants to "reform" is, piss off China real, real, bad, and get beaten by them all the way to Mecca, then watch them barbecuse pork in the ruins of the Ka'aba. The West won't cut it. By the time we Westerners get to Mecca, we'll probably have Muslim allies, and out of respect, we'll let them take the city.

Posted by: Kepha1

at December 10, 2004 11:16 PM

I wonder if the NYT article demonstrates that a shift has very recently begun to take place -- since the murder of Vincent Van Gogh's great-grandnephew in Europe -- a shift to an increasingly alarmed concern that Islam itself (not just misinterpreters of Islam) might be inimical to compromise, civil rights, freedoms, etc.

On the question of how the Jews and Christians achieved reform and how that might be relevant to Islamic reform, it might be worthwhile to have a look at Michael Novak's book, The Universal Hunger for Liberty, Why the Clash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable. I don't know if Novak is too optimistic, but when Muslims have asked him how Islam can become more supportive of freedom and democracy, Novak has argued that the Islamic doctrine of divine reward and punishment implies a theology of human responsibility and therefore of freedom. Novak seems to say that Muslims could draw this implicit lesson from the Koran, could make it explicit and perhaps generate an Islamic Reformation in that way.

I might add however that it seems critical to keep in mind that different religions are somewhat distinct in character and therefore face very different reform challenges. There seems no reason to assume that all religions are equally flexible or capable of reform. There have surely existed some religions that were inherently too rigid to be reformed, religions that could only break or be abandoned altogether. The tendency today to say that all religions are essentially the same seems about as accurate as saying all animals are essentially the same. Differences would suddenly be remembered if one learned one were soon to be sealed in a room with an untethered animal for 10 minutes but were not told what kind of animal it was to be.

If we turn relativism into an absolute, we contradict ourselves. To be consistent, relativism must take its own medicine and relativise itself. Therefore relativism cannot absolutely invalidate absolutes, though it should make us humble and tolerant in recognizing our uncertain and imperfect grasp of what those absolutes are. Therefore we are not called to admit that all religions are the same, we are called to keep a sharp awareness of our fallibility as we argue in a civilized way about which religions (and secular theories, too) are closer to, and which further from, the truth.

Posted by: ed

at December 11, 2004 8:11 AM

Kepha1 and Ed,

Thanks for the responses. Hugh, it does not help that you simply repost your single preach in replying to every question even when it is not relevant. If I understand Kepha and Ed correctly, you are basically saying that the destruction of the jewish kingdoms by the Romans and the hardship the Jews had to live with for centuries afterward forced them (and Christians later on), to revise their beliefs and reform their religion. It does sound correct. But remind you that as late as 12-13th century, most prominent theologians such as St. Thomas Acquinas still belived in taking the harsh and violent passages of old and new testament literally. So something must have changed since then. Acquinas is particularly noted for his justification of Leviticus 24:16.

So it seems most of the reform in the religion must have come in the later centuries (15th and afterwards). The protestant movement itself is not the answer, as at the begining it was even more rigid and harsh than Catholic Church in literal understanding of the faith.

So I think one must look beyond those centuries, more into the contemporary age. Perhaps it was the French revolution that forced a significant revision of the faith?

Posted by: SeenathePersian

at December 11, 2004 10:52 AM

Posted by: SeenathePersian: "But remind you that as late as 12-13th century, most prominent theologians such as St. Thomas Acquinas still belived in taking the harsh and violent passages of old and new testament literally."

Response:

There are no violent "passages" in the New Testament period. The Old and New Testaments both are records of what happened, what was spoken, and prophetically what is to come.

The difference between Christianity and Islam is that the New Testment instructs against forceful behavior whereas the Islamic texts instruct in favor of forceful behavior. Christianity instructs to not couple with political rule. Islam instructs to definitely couple with political rule. Christianity is concerned with the life to come. Islam is concerned with land, oil, and that which belongs to this world. Pretty major differences. You tell me which is deception.

Posted by: SeenathePersian: The protestant movement itself is not the answer, as at the begining it was even more rigid and harsh than Catholic Church in literal understanding of the faith.

Response: This is an outright lie, this person does not objectively know, research, or study historical fact and context. This person's statement contains an embedded paradox referring to the "begining [sic]" yet offering a conclusion.

Posted by: Report

at December 11, 2004 12:44 PM

Dear Report,

As I mentioend specifically, I am not interstd in diffrnces between Christianity and Islam, which I agree have two fundamentally different outlooks. If my comment on protestanism is incorrect, I take it back.

My main question remain about the way the Judaism was refomed, and exploring how they managed to re-interpret the violent passages and rules of the old testament. Your informative response is most appreciated.

Posted by: SeenathePersian

at December 11, 2004 12:59 PM

Posted by: SeenathePersian at December 11, 2004 10:52 AM
YOU ARE JUST ANOTHER MUSSI WHO IS FULL OF SH-T!!!

YOU MUSSIS DON'T WANT TO CHANGE YOU WANT THE WHOLE WORLD!!

YEA FROM A REDNECK WOMAN!!

HERE IS THE TRUTH AND YOU KNOW IT!!!

http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm

The Real History of the Crusades
By Thomas F. Madden

With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.
As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word "crusade" in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn’t the present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame?
Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.) Clinton took a beating on the nation’s editorial pages for wanting so much to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle Ages. Yet no one disputed the ex-president’s fundamental premise.
Well, almost no one. Many historians had been trying to set the record straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. They are not revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, this is a "teaching moment," an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. It won’t last long, so here goes.
Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.
So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.
With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.
Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne’er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders’ expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.
During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.
* * *
Urban II gave the Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East. As his successor, Pope Innocent III, later wrote:
How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? ...Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?
"Crusading," Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was understood as an "an act of love"—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, "You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.’"
The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ. The word crusade is modern. Medieval Crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims, performing acts of righteousness on their way to the Holy Sepulcher. The Crusade indulgence they received was canonically related to the pilgrimage indulgence. This goal was frequently described in feudal terms. When calling the Fifth Crusade in 1215, Innocent III wrote:
Consider most dear sons, consider carefully that if any temporal king was thrown out of his domain and perhaps captured, would he not, when he was restored to his pristine liberty and the time had come for dispensing justice look on his vassals as unfaithful and traitors...unless they had committed not only their property but also their persons to the task of freeing him? ...And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with the Precious Blood...condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help Him?
The reconquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was not colonialism but an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God. Medieval men knew, of course, that God had the power to restore Jerusalem Himself—indeed, He had the power to restore the whole world to His rule. Yet as St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached, His refusal to do so was a blessing to His people:
Again I say, consider the Almighty’s goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself.... I call blessed the generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.
It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the perspective of medieval Christians, Muslims were the enemies of Christ and His Church. It was the Crusaders’ task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. Indeed, throughout the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Muslim inhabitants far outnumbered the Catholics. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned. In any case, such efforts were by peaceful persuasion, not the threat of violence.
The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews’ money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.
Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:
Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. "Not for their destruction do I pray," it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered.... Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but "they only wait for the time of their deliverance."
Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.
It is often said that the roots of the Holocaust can be seen in these medieval pogroms. That may be. But if so, those roots are far deeper and more widespread than the Crusades. Jews perished during the Crusades, but the purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested. In a modern war, we call tragic deaths like these "collateral damage." Even with smart technologies, the United States has killed far more innocents in our wars than the Crusaders ever could. But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children.
By any reckoning, the First Crusade was a long shot. There was no leader, no chain of command, no supply lines, no detailed strategy. It was simply thousands of warriors marching deep into enemy territory, committed to a common cause. Many of them died, either in battle or through disease or starvation. It was a rough campaign, one that seemed always on the brink of disaster. Yet it was miraculously successful. By 1098, the Crusaders had restored Nicaea and Antioch to Christian rule. In July 1099, they conquered Jerusalem and began to build a Christian state in Palestine. The joy in Europe was unbridled. It seemed that the tide of history, which had lifted the Muslims to such heights, was now turning.
* * *
But it was not. When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting largely because they were an attempt to counter that trend. But in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. It was downhill from there.
When the Crusader County of Edessa fell to the Turks and Kurds in 1144, there was an enormous groundswell of support for a new Crusade in Europe. It was led by two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, and preached by St. Bernard himself. It failed miserably. Most of the Crusaders were killed along the way. Those who made it to Jerusalem only made things worse by attacking Muslim Damascus, which formerly had been a strong ally of the Christians. In the wake of such a disaster, Christians across Europe were forced to accept not only the continued growth of Muslim power but the certainty that God was punishing the West for its sins. Lay piety movements sprouted up throughout Europe, all rooted in the desire to purify Christian society so that it might be worthy of victory in the East.
Crusading in the late twelfth century, therefore, became a total war effort. Every person, no matter how weak or poor, was called to help. Warriors were asked to sacrifice their wealth and, if need be, their lives for the defense of the Christian East. On the home front, all Christians were called to support the Crusades through prayer, fasting, and alms. Yet still the Muslims grew in strength. Saladin, the great unifier, had forged the Muslim Near East into a single entity, all the while preaching jihad against the Christians. In 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, his forces wiped out the combined armies of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured the precious relic of the True Cross. Defenseless, the Christian cities began surrendering one by one, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem on October 2. Only a tiny handful of ports held out.
The response was the Third Crusade. It was led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the German Empire, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard I Lionheart of England. By any measure it was a grand affair, although not quite as grand as the Christians had hoped. The aged Frederick drowned while crossing a river on horseback, so his army returned home before reaching the Holy Land. Philip and Richard came by boat, but their incessant bickering only added to an already divisive situation on the ground in Palestine. After recapturing Acre, the king of France went home, where he busied himself carving up Richard’s French holdings. The Crusade, therefore, fell into Richard’s lap. A skilled warrior, gifted leader, and superb tactician, Richard led the Christian forces to victory after victory, eventually reconquering the entire coast. But Jerusalem was not on the coast, and after two abortive attempts to secure supply lines to the Holy City, Richard at last gave up. Promising to return one day, he struck a truce with Saladin that ensured peace in the region and free access to Jerusalem for unarmed pilgrims. But it was a bitter pill to swallow. The desire to restore Jerusalem to Christian rule and regain the True Cross remained intense throughout Europe.
The Crusades of the 13th century were larger, better funded, and better organized. But they too failed. The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Yet once he was on the throne of the Caesars, their benefactor found that he could not pay what he had promised. Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world. Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do. The tragic events of 1204 closed an iron door between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, a door that even today Pope John Paul II has been unable to reopen. It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart.
The remainder of the 13th century’s Crusades did little better. The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) managed briefly to capture Damietta in Egypt, but the Muslims eventually defeated the army and reoccupied the city. St. Louis IX of France led two Crusades in his life. The first also captured Damietta, but Louis was quickly outwitted by the Egyptians and forced to abandon the city. Although Louis was in the Holy Land for several years, spending freely on defensive works, he never achieved his fondest wish: to free Jerusalem. He was a much older man in 1270 when he led another Crusade to Tunis, where he died of a disease that ravaged the camp. After St. Louis’s death, the ruthless Muslim leaders, Baybars and Kalavun, waged a brutal jihad against the Christians in Palestine. By 1291, the Muslim forces had succeeded in killing or ejecting the last of the Crusaders, thus erasing the Crusader kingdom from the map. Despite numerous attempts and many more plans, Christian forces were never again able to gain a foothold in the region until the 19th century.
* * *
One might think that three centuries of Christian defeats would have soured Europeans on the idea of Crusade. Not at all. In one sense, they had little alternative. Muslim kingdoms were becoming more, not less, powerful in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The Ottoman Turks conquered not only their fellow Muslims, thus further unifying Islam, but also continued to press westward, capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself. By the 15th century, the Crusades were no longer errands of mercy for a distant people but desperate attempts of one of the last remnants of Christendom to survive. Europeans began to ponder the real possibility that Islam would finally achieve its aim of conquering the entire Christian world. One of the great best-sellers of the time, Sebastian Brant’s The Ship of Fools, gave voice to this sentiment in a chapter titled "Of the Decline of the Faith":
Our faith was strong in th’ Orient,
It ruled in all of Asia,
In Moorish lands and Africa.
But now for us these lands are gone
’Twould even grieve the hardest stone....
Four sisters of our Church you find,
They’re of the patriarchic kind:
Constantinople, Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Antiochia.
But they’ve been forfeited and sacked
And soon the head will be attacked.
Of course, that is not what happened. But it very nearly did. In 1480, Sultan Mehmed II captured Otranto as a beachhead for his invasion of Italy. Rome was evacuated. Yet the sultan died shortly thereafter, and his plan died with him. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. If not for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually certain that the Turks would have taken the city. Germany, then, would have been at their mercy.
Yet, even while these close shaves were taking place, something else was brewing in Europe—something unprecedented in human history. The Renaissance, born from a strange mixture of Roman values, medieval piety, and a unique respect for commerce and entrepreneurialism, had led to other movements like humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration. Even while fighting for its life, Europe was preparing to expand on a global scale. The Protestant Reformation, which rejected the papacy and the doctrine of indulgence, made Crusades unthinkable for many Europeans, thus leaving the fighting to the Catholics. In 1571, a Holy League, which was itself a Crusade, defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Yet military victories like that remained rare. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic—no longer worth a Crusade. The "Sick Man of Europe" limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired, leaving behind the present mess of the modern Middle East.
From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades. Religion, after all, is nothing to fight wars over. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies. And yet, both the medieval and the modern soldier fight ultimately for their own world and all that makes it up. Both are willing to suffer enormous sacrifice, provided that it is in the service of something they hold dear, something greater than themselves. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

Thomas F. Madden is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is the author of numerous works, including A Concise History of the Crusades, and co-author, with Donald Queller, of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople.

SO YOUR 12 AND 13 ARE JUST YOUR WAY OF PLACING BLAME SOME WHERE ELES??

WHAT USEING CAPS TODAY REPORT??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to stay the course to Victory to Defeat ALL islamic terrorist and ALL who Support them Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 11, 2004 2:32 PM

So I think one must look beyond those centuries, more into the contemporary age. Perhaps it was the French revolution that forced a significant revision of the faith?

Posted by: SeenathePersian at December 11, 2004 10:52 AM YOU TALK OF 24:16 BUT IN 24:17 IT SAYS
"If a man kills any human being he shall be put to death"

So You see that if you are a thinking person and ask Q?s you will see how it is don"t Kill or Murder and you have to ask Q?s and the qu-ran says you can't do that??

there are many places in the qu-ran like this but you have to remember that the books were written by men!!

Only the 10 comaments were written by God so if as you mulsums say you want change this is a good place to start with Q?s allowed and connect more to Gods laws!!

I can see you don't want reform because you find it hard you to talk to a WOMAN!!

So I see you as just another lier as told to you in your book!!!

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to stay the course to Defeat ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the World Eyes to their Threat Amen

Posted by: Catherine

at December 11, 2004 2:51 PM

Seena:

You sound sincere, so I will give a sincere answer to your question. The evolution away from the literal interpretation of the Torah began during the period of Jewish military defeat between the time when Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem and descecrated the Temple with his presence in 63 BC and the final crushing of the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 AD. During this time various Jewish factions fought the Romans through a variety of responses ranging from civil disobedience, to terrorism (the Sicarii), to direct military action (the 66 and 132 AD revolts). As each of these revolts were crushed in turn, most of the surviving Jews turned from militant forms of Judaism to increasingly spiritual forms using the Talmud to reinterpret the Torah.

The Talmudic rabbis held that Moses had transmitted an oral Torah through the priests and sages along with the written version. The oral Torah became the basis for ending the ability of the now scattered Jewish communities to enact capital punishment, declare apostates, etc. Specifically, the basis in Jewish law for ending capital punishment is based on the fall of the Temple and the inability of the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, to meet. The Talmudic sages have held that Sanhedrin can only be convened in a Jerusalem with a true Temple, God-sanctioned temple. Only a properly-constituted Sanhedrin can approve a death penalty. Therefore, no Sanhedrin, no death penalty.

Unfortunately, I believe that Dar al Islam will have to learn the same hard lessons the same hard way. Good luck.

Posted by: 11A5S

at December 11, 2004 6:26 PM

To Seena, Catherine, Report:
Catherine, you have some valid points, but I don't see any reason, based on his words here, for abusing Seena as you do, seeing that he seems to be sincerely trying to explore, and showing an admirable tolerance not only of very sharp criticism, but even of anger. Most Persians/Iranians are against the mullahcracy in Iran now, if one can believe articles in National Review and more centrist venues. Many Iranian citizens are looking for more freedom and democracy. I can understand concluding that Islam has many fascist threads, and hating the religion for that reason -- but why hate someone who might be earnestly searching for reform, or, who knows, even 'apostasy'? From what I have seen of Seena, Catherine crossed the line into immorality toward him and turned her laudable candor about Islam into a mirror image of the very aspects of Islam that she hates. While I appreciate Catherine's vigilance against the fascist thrust of Islam, I say shame on you for adopting some of its style in your own behavior.

As for Report, you make good points, though you misstate, in my view, when you say that Islam is not concerned with the other world, only with oil and land and this-worldly things. Surely you would have been on stronger ground (though I don't know if you would have been right) to try to argue that Islam is MORE this-worldly than Christianity, or if you tried to argue that Islam is MORE concerned about this world than the next. But to say point-blank that Islam is not concerned with the other world ignores suicide bombing and the culture of death. Yes, you could argue that for Muslims, the 'other world' is very materialistic -- I gather Karl Popper objected to the Muslim paradise partly for that reason. But it seems to me you do your own and my cause (Western values) injury when you shoot down Seena's sincere words so rudely. If he were merely pushing for Islamofascism, then you would be justified. But he is not, yet you make no distinction between individuals, and treat Sheena as an Islamofascist, as if you believed that all Muslims are of that ilk. It may be that most Muslims do subscribe to rather fascistic views, but most is not the same as all, and if you really support Western culture, which is based on what came from Jerusalem and Athens -- then you will be more careful to notice that individuals shouldn't all be tarred with the same brush, particularly when one of them (Seena) gives such strong evidence of really wanting to learn. Socrates never spoke to a decent person as you have to Seena, and neither did Christ. You can do better. Or else you can yield to the part of you that apparently admires the manner of speaking of dogmatic Ayatollahs. Certainly there is that fascistic shadow in all of us, but some people and cultures have it better caged than others.

To Seena,
I think Judaism might be too different from Islam to hope for similar reform solutions. Maybe I'm wrong, but my sense is that Islam has too many anti-freedom elements built into its very core to be reformable. I've heard Sufism respects freedom though, and if that's true, maybe there are clues there for an Islamic Reformation. Grave problems in Islam, as I currently understand it:
1. The prime exemplar (Muhammed) unified religion and state. This template may be the biggest problem.
2. The God of Islam is conceived more as a commander than as a creator (in Judaism and Christianity, God is conceived more as a creator than as a commander.) I get this from Daniel Boorstin's book, The Creators.
3. In Judaism and Christianity, man is made in god's image, the image of the Creator, and therefore told to be creative like God, i.e., be fruitful and multiply. Being conceived as in effect a creator-in-miniature, Judeo-Christian man was destined eventually to achieve a society of individual creators, i.e., a free society.
4. In Islam man is not made in God's image, i.e., does not have a divine spark within, or at least not to the extent conceived by Judaism and Christianity. The conception of a divine spark within is part of what entitles human beings to freedom and human rights.
5. Islam claims for Allah more or less a monopoly on creative power, hence the strong prohibition in Islam on artists creating images. In Judaism there was iconoclasm (image-smashing) too, but those were mainly religious images in ancient times, not modern artistic images.
6. The word for 'God' in Judaism apparently means, "I Am". The ancient Jew was not permitted to say the word outloud, and therefore could only listen to it silently welling up from within: "I Am". This sort of God would seem to be a stimulus to the discovery of the human individual, would it not?
7. Judaism does not proselytize and there are only about 15 million Jews on the earth. Christianity does seek to spread all over the earth, but in a context more of love and freedom than of force. The New Testament has very little in it to justify the Crusades, and much to condemn them. Islam seems to seek world domination by force, and this violent goal seems to be rooted deeply in the Koran.
8. It seems that neither Judaism nor Christianity deifies their scriptures to the extent that Islam deifies the Koran. Literalism appears to have more stubborn roots in Islam. Christians for the most part find deity in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, not in the New Testament. Jews, as I gather, do not take their scriptures as co-eternal with God, the way Islam takes the Koran as eternal. Most scholars give the Jews significant credit for having helped to develop the earliest human consciousness of history. They have been aware that their scriptures were historical documents, however holy, and have for very many centuries been critically reflective about the Old Testament, composed as it was by many different authors at many different times.

Seena, Perhaps the above is a caricature of the truth, but it's how things look to me at present anyway.

- Best

Posted by: ed

at December 11, 2004 9:39 PM

Igor--

Odno slovo ne o polky Igoreve, a o polkakh -- knizhnikh -- Igoreve.

What to fill that famous five-foot bookshelf with? I'm glad you liked Muir; for $50 you can buy a Kennikat reprint of the abridged, but still huge one-volume edition of Muir, who knew how to write, in a different time. Tor Andrae and Arthur Jeffery have much shorter works out.

Here are some suggestions. I've made them at jihadwatch before. If you can find "The Raft of Muhammad" by Peroncel Hugoz (written originally in French) it is well worth it. Ignore the preface; it is written by someone who clearly did not understand the book. Michael Cook's "A Very Short Introduction to the Koran" is good, and even brilliant in the way it smuggles in certain truths which he does not like to state flat out. This book is not to be confused with the apologist (mild version) Malise Ruthven's book in the same Oxford paperback series, "A Very Short Introduction to Islam." Skip that. Why Cook, and even Crone, are so -- so "prudent" shall we say -- escapes me. They refused to republish "Hagarism"? Was it only a case of disagreeing with some of their previous ideas, or something more? One wonders.

Bernard Lewis, as long as you simply skip his glancing treatment of dhimmitude and dhimmis, and understand that he has never come to grips with Islam fully because he has too many personal and professional connections that get in the way (when one is the toast of Istanbul, or made much of by Prince Hassan et al. in Amman, you would have to steel yourself so as not to make allowances for Islam of the nice Turkish variety, which you may wrongly assume is, like diamonds, forever), is often pleasurable and useful. But one cannot ignore his enthusiasm for the Oslo Accords, and his more recent foray (despite all the posing as a disinterested au-dessus de la melee scholar). Perhaps his most useful book is The Political Language of Islam. If you read French, Jean-Paul Charnay's big book (Principes de strategie arabe) and Anne-Marie Delcambre's little book (L'Islam des interdits) are good, and so is, in a different way, Le Livre des ruses (ed. Rene Khawam, which is an Arab strategy-book written 100 years before Machiavelli, a child compared to these plotters and schemers; in Italian, Magdi Allam (who appears on the RAI and writes for the Corriere della Sera) has written what is mostly sensible (but he still doesn't see the full threat of an islamized Europe, which is no joke), published this year: Kamikaze Made in Europe. I like every anthology Ibn Warraq has edited: The Origins of the Koran, What the Koran Really Says, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. And of course Why I Am Not a Muslim. And all of his essays at www.secularislam.org. steely in your intellectual resolve, and also not recalling antisemitism in Christian London, you may make allowances for Islam that should not be made). If you can find an old copy of Hazaard's (1951) Atlas of Islamic History skip the outdated text and look at the maps. Other books: Joseph Schacht on Islamic Law, Antoine Fattal on "Le statut legal des non-musulmanes aux pays d'Islam" (I'm not sure that's the title) is the best book on the legal status of dhimmis. On India, K. S. Lal's Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India and Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, along with other works by Harsh Narain, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst.

Christoph Luxenberg, both first and second editions of Die syro-aramiaische Lesart des Koran,are only in German to date. The translator is going to have to know a lot.

I enjoy Qaradawi's The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam and the book by Cook that MESA had to award the prize to last year on the same subject as Qaradawi, but of course at a sublime rather than ridiculous level.

There's a lot more, but it's late and I'd like to go watch the news. Okay?

What happened over not the past 20 but really the past 30 years, ever since all that oil money started to work its magic, is that the Arabs went right to work setting up centers of Arab and Islamic studies that would carefully serve to obscure the truth about Islam, and focus attention almost exclusively on the Arab-Israeli problem (never seen as a Jihad). Bradford, Exeter, Durham in England, the Euro-Arab Dialogue boys in France (just look at Gilles "Never Right" Kepel and dour, portentous Olivier Roy), in America Esposito's Sabbagh-funded Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and Michael Hudson et al's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (Sabbagh was a rich contractor in Lebanon; the Contemporary Arab Studies I think is mostly funded by the Kuwaitis but there may be U.A.E. and Saudi money sloshing around as well -- of course, Georgetown is in Washington, and that was the first place to put the money. They're not stupid.).

At Columbia, just think. Schacht dies about 1969 or so. J. C. Hurewitz is offering his Cold-War stuff. A few years later, who moves into Columbia, into a post as Professor of English and Comparative Literature -- why, it's none other than Edward Said, of the liquid brown eyes and generous book-blurbs. He proceeds to help, from outside the Middle Eastern department, to remold the damn thing. He knows nothing about Islam. But he's an Arab and therefore must magically understand it. It comes, you see, with the territory. And now we have not a single serious course on Islam, on the Qur'an, on the history of Muslim conquest -- nothing serious, just Dabashi and Khalidi and Saliba the Defender of Islamic Science. Indeed, there are about two dozen people -- Gary Sick the fabulist, the man who made up, and wrote a book about, the non-existent agreement of Reagan with Khomeini, to have the latter hold onto the American hostages until after the election), Bulliet the "consultant to the State Department" who also fails to understand -- does not want to understand -- Islam; Lisa Anderson, ditto (now sitting in judgment, along with four other faculty shills, in Bollinger's pretend "investigation" of faculty misbehavior in the MIddle Eastern department).

Get the Index Islamicus. Find articles in the old Moslem World, when Jeffery and others could still, without fear or favor, tell the truth. Read Schacht, Margoliouth, Snouck Hurgronje if he is in English. Look at one of Robert Irwin's TLS letters where he lists all sorts of German scholars of Islam in one of his Dr. Jekyll (or is it Mr. Hyde who is the one we can trust) moments, and find out who has been translated.

Well, that should fill up the famous five-foot shelf, though not with the Harvard Classics.

By the way, the kleine praeludien to the booklist was in Russian only because you posted as "Igor" and I made an assumption, and could not resist the wordplay. Keeping to that same assumption, did you know that Vladimir Jabotinsky (oops, I hear Alistair Crooke and John Esposito in a chorus muttering darkly about "neo-cons" and "Likudniks") titled his memoir of the "Palestine Legion" or in Russian, "Palestinskij polk" (which he and Col. John Henry Patterson had formed -- "Slovo o polku." Thus does one figure of speech do the work of another: aposiopesis produces paronomasia.

They don't make titles, or political leaders, like that anymore.

Posted by: Hugh

at December 11, 2004 10:58 PM

The "Palestine Legion" should more accurately be called the "Jewish Legion" though during World War II 30,000 Jewish soldiers in the MIddle East fought in the British army as the "Palestine Legion"; their exploits were reported in the "Palestine Post," and on leave they listened to the "Palestine Symphony"; the toponym had not yet been cleverly appropriated by the Arabs for their own uses.

One more note on Jabotinsky: his play Samson the Nazirite (1926) so appealed to James Joyce, a hard man to please, that Joyce gave a copy of Jabotinsky's play, nicely inscribed, to the Irish tenor John McCormack, with whom he had appeared on stage in Dublin in 1904, and whose career he continued to follow closely (some suggest that McCormack is the original for Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker's son Shaun the Poet but that is a Liffey-leap too far for me); eventually his allegiance was transferred to another singer, John O'Sullivan. I feel a Dark Rosaleen moment coming on.

Posted by: Hugh

at December 12, 2004 12:39 AM

SeenathePersian says:
I hope I get a more intelligent answer than Silvester's "because you muslims are stupid"
--
Ouch, I guess I deserved that! Put it down to too many Bailey's on a Friday night! Anyway, you got a real good discussion going..

Setanta

Posted by: Silvester

at December 12, 2004 6:25 AM

11AS5 wrote: "The evolution away from the literal interpretation of the Torah began during the period of Jewish military defeat between the time when Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem and descecrated the Temple with his presence in 63 BC and the final crushing of the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 AD."

Forgive me, but I seem to recall it was Titus who conquered Jerusalem in 70 C.E. (aka A.D.) And, as to reforms in Judaism, along the lines to which you are referring, I would have to argue that the Mishne was already long in process. If you read the New Testament, Jesus quotes from it quite excessively. Just read the Sermon on the Mount and you will see whole quotes from Mishnaic sources. And, this was before Jehuda HaNasi edited and redacted the material centuries later.

Ed: As to your points, I will take them one at a time. Numbers 1-5 are pretty well argued. I can see how those thoughts are pretty consistent and accurate - perhaps, with the possible exception of #2 (I haven't read Daniel Boorsteins book, so I don't know either his arguments or on what scholarship he relies.)

I have to correct your comment in #6: "The word for 'God' in Judaism apparently means, "I Am". The ancient Jew was not permitted to say the word outloud, and therefore could only listen to it silently welling up from within: "I Am"."

The name of G-d, is based upon the word meaning to be, but a more accurate translation is "I will be" not I AM. If you read the famous comment that G-d made to Moses, when Moses asked, "If they ask me your name what shall I tell them?" G-d replies, not I AM that I AM. He says, "I will be whomever I will be." G-d's name was (and continues to be) sacred. So much so it was not used out of intense respect. Even more so, the children of Israel were commanded on Mt. Sinai that they were not to lift it up in vain - i.e. they were not to use it willy-nilly for anything and everything. They were not to use it for vain oaths. They were not to do evil in G-d's name and say that it was good. (So, they could never do what the Muslims do, murder and then say it was the will of G-d. That is an incredible blasphemy from the Jewish point of view.), etc.

I would add to the above thoughts that Judaism views man's relationship to G-d in many lights: as a child to its father, as a bridegroom with his bride, as a subject to his king, as a friend to a friend (this is exemplified in the relationship that G-d had with Abraham and later Moses), as a soldier in the service of his Lord, etc. The relationship that the Jews have with their G-d is considered very intimate. It is supposed to be the template upon which all of mankind is supposed to share and have an ongoing relationship with Him. Also, G-d, in Judaism has given man "free-will" (for better or worse). We have the choice to accept, or reject him. He is a gentleman that does not impose his will upon us. We can choose to reject him, to our detriment, but we still have the free-will to do so. I am not sure how much of that translates over to Islam, perhaps a part of it, but more than likely not in the same way. In Islam, it seems to be a thing of great fear and trepidation. If you don't do what you should do, you will go to hell. You live in a state of fear because Allah is a meanie that won't brook for disobedience - he is pure justice, untouched by mercy if you fail him.

But the G-d of the Bible, while he created the world with Justice (in Hebrew, "din"), does not live in Justice - he specializes in Mercy. That is why the text, in Genesis Chapter 2 uses the name of G-d (aka the Tetragrammaton) YkVk (aka YHVH. The name of G-d in Hebrew, whenever it is written in the text as YkVk is a delineation of Mercy. The other word for G-d, Elo(k)im, is G-d ruling as a Judge - or by "din." All of this is to say that in Judaism, you are not to live in fear of G-d (that He might "send you to hell,") you are to serve Him out of love and deep gratitude. YkVk - the G-d of Israel, is a judge (Elo(k)im) yes, but he is also a G-d of incredible mercy. Those who can only see the one in the "Old Testament" do not fully understand the text they are reading. (It helps if you can read the Hebrew - or if you know what you are looking at when you read it.) ;-)

As for #7, you are correct about proselytization in today's world; however, in the first century of the common era, proselytization was as common to Judaism as it is today for Christianity. Else, why would Jesus condemn the Pharisees for crossing the world in order to gain one proselyte? In fact, at the time of the Roman Empire (1st century) it is estimated there were about 100 million Jews, which included converts. Had there not been such devastating deaths and killing by the Romans and later the Christians, there would probably be about a billion Jews today. You ask, how can I gauge such a large number? The Chinese were one million strong in the first century.

"Jews, as I gather, do not take their scriptures as co-eternal with God, the way Islam takes the Koran as eternal."

Well, I don't know what you mean about being co-eternal with G-d, however, traditional Judaism teaches two things about the Torah: 1) It was created before the creation of the world and 2) Moses was a secretary that took down the words of the Torah, from the mouth of G-d, and transmitted it/them to Joshua and the elders of the tribes. Of course, Conservative, Reconstruction and Reform Judaism will beg to differ.

Posted by: paula

at December 12, 2004 8:14 AM

Hugh,

Actually, I am not Russian, but of Macedonian origin. I plan to learn Russian eventually though. It's one of the few European languages that I intend to master.

Thank you for the book recommendations. Also, what is your opinion of Hagarism? I found it to be an interesting read, far more avante garde than the Islamic histories that would be printed several years after. For example, what the dating of the revelations of Quran intimate about Muhammad's relationship vis-a-vis the Jews and Christians was definitely interesting. It was probably one of the first books I've read in academia (and recommended by a Middle Eastern professor) that admitted that there must have been some Jewish influence in the genesis of Islam, it DARED not tow the Salafi line and assume that Islam was the primordial religion of the Abrahamic faiths in such roundabout ways such as "Muslims believe that Islam is the true monotheism that was followed by the earliest Jews and Christians before their texts became corrupted" etc But let's eschew all of the evidence that proves the contrary and the lack of evidence that proves this point. It is therefore a belief statement so us lowly scholars cannot criticize it. Good apologetics, bad scholarship.

Perhaps Cook and Crone refused to republish it because it was a pre-Said book, that is "Orientalist"? I mean, the very title "Hagarism" would definitely put a lot of Muslims and Saidists into seethe mode, it's actually more of an insult than Mohammadean. Perhaps they are making recompense by not republishing it, so they can still have some standing among their fellow scholars and Muslim supporters? I haven't read much of the recent works, but if they disagree with Hagarism now, then they are in denial. Hagarism was so well researched that it still has standing among some Western Islamic studies profs.

Lewis is another favourite. I tend to skim his obsequious Ottoman history and his egregious Armenian holocaust denial which, thanks to him, has become pervasive in Middle Eastern depts. across Canada (and America I assume). But I do find his Arab histories very useful. He's a lot better than that vile Jew-hating William Cleveland, who said Haj Amin al-Husseini was a "moderate".

Oh, I must thank you Hugh. Some of the French books that you have mentioned gave me one more reason to continue my French education. It's really a shame that the French have become so dhimmified (both yours and mine). It is really a sad s