Jihad Watch: Eteraz, Islamic jurisprudence, and Emory University

March 3, 2007

Eteraz, Islamic jurisprudence, and Emory University

Here is my promised response to "Problems With Jihadwatch's Op-Ed In Emory Univ. Student Paper," by Ali Eteraz at Eteraz.org. Just in case anyone is confused, as always with this sort of thing the blockquoted portions are from Eteraz's article and the non-blockquoted parts are my response.

We can conclude that the politicization of American universities is complete when everyone from Barrack Obama, a popular candidate for President, and Jihadwatch, a blog on the fringes of American conservatism, both feel the need to dive into our intellectual sanctuaries to peddle their opinions. As a matter of policy, politicians and pundits should abstain from entering the academcy unless they are invited.

Yes, that would be great. The academy should be above politics. Unfortunately, the academy has already been politicized. Politically and ideologically motived academics like Omid Safi and Carl Ernst indoctrinate their students into a particular view of my work and that of others, instead of giving those students the tools to come to their own conclusions about the issues at hand. Then, after spreading their propaganda, they refuse to discuss these issues with me. These are just two small examples of the manifest fact that the academy has already been politicized. When Rashid Khalidi can hold a professor's chair at Columbia University and Ward Churchill can become not just a professor, but a hero of the Left, clearly the "politicians and pundits" have already entered the academy. But only one point of view is dominant there; read my friend D'Souza's Illiberal Education or David Horowitz's new Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom.

This dominance should be challenged, if our universities are going to survive as anything more than propaganda centers.

Recently, Jihadwatch writer Robert Spencer submitted an op-ed full of glaring errors to the Emory Wheel, Emory University's Student Paper. The central premise of this op-ed (which is a shortened version of his earlier post), was this:
Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute "Sharia" worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology.

The article then quotes various legal scholars from Islamic history that purportedly support the thesis of the article. It then, generously, concludes with challenging a college student to a debate.

I make no apologies for challenging a college student to a debate. A person who makes public assertions ought to be prepared to defend them, no matter what his or her station in life. College students should be the last people who are immune from intellectual challenge or debate. I myself have innumerable times invited discussion and debate about what I have written, and have in return, as I noted below, received only abuse. You can see that abuse, including sometimes outright falsehoods about what I actually say, in the print debates I've had with Hussam Ayloush, Asad AbuKhalil, and Khaleel Mohammed.

Well, contrary to myth, my books are not full of abuse, but of documented material. If I am wrong, establish that with evidence. Instead, polemicists have attacked my publishers, my character, my motives, my decency as a human being, predicted I would die lonely and abandoned and damned me to hell, and then called me a polemicist. All's fair in love and war, but they should know that such tactics convince only the credulous, and do not constitute credible refutation of the points I have made -- and what's more, they suggest an inability to respond substantively.

So yes, I'll happily debate that college student. Or Safi, or Ernst, or Akbar Ahmed, or Jamal Badawi, or Ahmed Afzaal, or Mark LeVine, or any of the other academics who have either declined my invitation to dialogue or debate, or never quite gotten around to getting back to me.

Immediately one has to look at the most obvious of errors in this piece.

Good. You, Mr. Eteraz, will be among the first to raise specific objections.

First, none of the scholars Spencer cites to were alive after the year 1406 A.D. The only link he offers between the past and today is the assertion that one of the jurists, Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328), is a "favorite of Osama bin Laden and other jihadists." Yet, on the basis of the fact that one jurist, from more than 600 years ago, is the "favorite" of Bin Laden, Spencer derives his conclusion that Jihad is a "constant" element of "mainstream Islamic theology." One scholar. 600 years removed. One Bin Laden. Can a reasonable person really believe that such a link proves something about "mainstream Islamic theology"? One doesn't have to attend Emory University to be able to answer that.

Mr. Eteraz might have a point were that the only such "link" that could be provided. However, in a piece that has to be kept under 600 words and that must cover a great deal of ground, there will be some inevitable telescoping of material -- and unfortunately, there is a great deal more evidence available to establish that jihad and the subjugation of unbelievers is a mainstream element of Islamic theology and law. By noting that "none of the scholars Spencer cites to were alive after the year 1406 A.D." and complaining that I provide only one "link...between the past and today," Mr. Eteraz gives the impression that I am overlooking 600 years of evolution and development in these areas. And one would reasonably assume, of course, that in any arena of human endeavor, over 600 years there will be considerable change.

That's a reasonable conjecture. However, in this case it founders. Why? Because when bin Laden and other jihadists cite these ancient jurists, they clearly believe that their rulings are still normative for Muslims -- and clearly they also believe that their Muslim audience will recognize this as well. Read through Osama's writings, and you'll find numerous references to Ibn Taymiyya, as well as Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Malik ibn Anas, Ibn Qayyim, and many others. Nor is this something only bin Laden does. Sayyid Qutb, whose writings, as I'm sure Mr. Eteraz would acknowledge, are enormously influential among jihadists today, says that Ibn Qayyim, who died in 1350, “has summed up the nature of Islamic Jihaad.” And Ibn Qayyim does that, he explains, by delineating the three phases of Qur'anic revelation about jihad, about which I have written many times: first, no warfare was permitted, then defensive warfare, and finally offensive warfare, which is to be normative for all time.

Now: why does Qutb, why does bin Laden (and I have plenty more examples of this sort of thing, Mr. Eteraz; if you would like to dispute this point further, I will produce them, but I am not doing so now for the sake of brevity) think that by citing people like Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, who lived so very long ago, they will convince Muslims today of the correctness of their position? Don't they realize that modern jurists have changed the way Muslims think about these things, and so none of their readers will accept arguments from older authorities?

Unfortunately, they don't realize that, because it isn't so. Because the gates of ijtihad have long been closed, there has not been significant development of theology or law in these areas. (Here is a Muslim scholar explaining what that means, and arguing that these gates should be reopened.) Qutb and bin Laden know that, and they know their audiences will know it. They know therefore that citing ancient scholars is tantamount to citing established and received opinion.

This is illustrated by the fact, which I mentioned in my letter to Emory but which you do not mention in your post, that the Shafi'i legal manual 'Umdat al-Salik, or Reliance of the Traveller, although it was first written centuries ago, was certified by Al-Azhar in 1991 as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy. Al-Azhar didn't say it was an illuminating historical artifact, or an insight into what Muslims used to believe long ago; they said it was a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy today. Yet it too contains material about the obligation of the Muslim umma to wage war against unbelievers in order to subjugate them as dhimmis under the rule of Islamic law.

The next problem is the very use of the term "Islamic Theology." Spencer seems to believe that when he quotes from "jurisprudence" he is automatically speaking about "theology." We see this when he says:
Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. It is affirmed by all four principal schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence.

I'm afraid to inform the distinguished New York Times bestselling author on Islam that Islamic Theology is very distinct from Islamic Jurisprudence. Islamic Theology is an altogether different discipline encompassing metaphysics, philosophy and eschatology. It is called Kalam. (One would be well advised to read Profesor Wolfson's Philosophy of the Kalam in order to see how distinct Islamic Jurisprudence truly is from Islamic Theology). Kalam is speculative philosophy which produces theological precepts. Islamic Jurisprudence, as with all jurisprudence, on the other hand, deals with actual legal problems. The word for Islamic Jurisprudence is fiqh. I am very interested in learning how Kalam and Fiqh became one and the same.

Here Mr. Eteraz is just playing "gotcha." Islamic theology is legal; Islamic law is theological. This is illustrated by the fact that the Qur'an and Hadith, which are undoubtedly religious texts, form two of the most significant bases for the formulation of fiqh. And I never claimed that kalam and fiqh were one and the same.

This leads me to some other other problems with the article.
Islam is, like Judaism (and unlike Christianity which is what Spencer practices), a juridical religion.

Is that so? Hmmm. A juridical religion? You mean theology and law have some overlap? I thought you just told us they didn't.

The Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet, both contain conflicting verses and narrations. In order to fashion a means of reconciling these conflicts with the changing nature of human life, the earliest members of Muslim community devised a methodological system of law or jurisprudence (fiqh). Spencer is, unlike the average blog troll...

Great. So I'm an above-average blog troll. This is the kind of silly mudslinging that I wish Mr. Eteraz could bring himself to resist.

...actually aware of the juridical nature of Islam, and as such, a dialogue with him is not only possible, but refreshing. He recognizes that the best way of enunciating Islamic Law is to quote Islamic Jurists. For that much, he should be applauded.

Thank you.

However, the problem arises when Spencer then tries to convince everyone from his readers to Muslims themselves, that the only authentic jurists (or most popular jurists) are those from the past from whom he pulls his quotes.

Here Mr. Eteraz commits the common fallacy of attributing to me what I report from bin Laden, Qutb, Azzam, Al-Banna, Zarqawi, and other jihadists. They, as I explained above, cite ancient jurists to support their positions, and obviously assume that their Muslim audiences will find such evidence compelling. I report that they do this, and Mr. Eteraz says that I am the one doing it. Unfortunately, this little problem is in reality far larger than me.

Certainly, people like Ibn Taymiya and Ibn Khaldun were authentic jurists in Islam. Unfortunately, what Spencer doesn't recognize is the fundamental problem of jurisprudence, whether its Islamic or secular: jurists are bound by their context; the world around them.

Oh, I recognize that very well. But, as I explained above, the jihadists don't seem to. One of the biggest problems we have regarding the global jihad today is that jihadists cite Muhammad's example -- in other words, the example of a seventh-century man -- as normative for today. They don't seem to mind in the least flattening out the context and behaving as if Muhammad's example were outside time and normative for all times and places. For example, Mukhlas Imron, mastermind of the Bali bombing, said: "You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a reward above no other? Aren't you aware that the model for us all, the Prophet Muhammad and the four rightful caliphs, undertook to murder infidels as one of their primary activities, and that the Prophet waged jihad operations 77 times in the first 10 years as head of the Muslim community in Medina?" Zarqawi responded to criticism of his videotaped beheading of Nick Berg by saying: "The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in [the battle of] Badr and to kill them....And he set a good example for us." They do the same kind of thing with these old jurists.

One has only to think of American Jurisprudence. At one point in time, American Jurists like John C. Calhoun argued that "slavery was a positive good" (on the Senate floor no less). Even the founding fathers, jurists the likes of which very few have ever existed, held that a black man was, under the law, only worth 3/5th of a white man (and women were worth nothing). Does this mean that "bigotry is a constant element of American law?" Any reasonable person would conclude no. As such, any reasonable person should also be able to conclude that the world prior to 1406 -- when a Christian Europe and an Islamic Africa/Asia were at war, is a very different world than the post WWII, UN regulated world. The rulings of those jurists -- and a jurist is just a fallible lawyer -- in the past about their politics means no more to me than the jurisprudence of John C. Calhoun on race relations. It isn't just in race relations that American Jurisprudence has changed. Until 1986, the legislators in the state of New York allowed a 15 year old girl to be married. This law was changed when jurists came along and revised their opinion and made it 18.

I believe I have answered this point already.

So, how do we know that most Muslim people do not, and are not, listening to the edicts of jurists from 600 years ago? Well, most Muslim nations are not at war with non-Muslim nations, and where there are tensions these are not on the basis of anyone's religiosity (most are land disputes).

This doesn't establish what Mr. Eteraz wishes it to establish. There may be any number of reasons why Muslim nations are not at war with non-Muslim nations. One chief one is that most majority-Muslim nations today are not ruled solely by Islamic law. Sharia is only fully in place in Saudi Arabia and Iran. So what they do doesn't establish anything about Islamic law. Another reason why they may not be fighting is that most are in no military or economic position to wage war against anyone. So to take their behavior as establishing something about Islamic law is risky at best. And there are other reasons why they may not be fighting today -- Musharraf's regime, for instance, has a shaky alliance with the U.S., which it obviously believes is good for Pakistan to maintain, and for which Muslim hardliners in Pakistan excoriate that regime.

As for the assertion that most disputes between Muslim and non-Muslim nations involve land, not religion, I don't think that holds up on the basis of the evidence. Even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have been settled long ago were it not for the intransigence on the part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad over their desire to destroy Israel utterly. That intransigence, as the Hamas Charter makes clear, is derived from Islamic principles. And all over the globe, from Indonesia and the Philippines and Thailand to Kashmir, Chechnya, and Nigeria, the Muslim warriors frame these "land disputes" in terms of religion. The evidence for this is posted regularly at Jihad Watch.

The only "Muslim" parties today who engage in killing on the basis of someone being non-Muslim are jihadists; not the "mainstream of Islamic theology." For the most part, jihadists are prosecuted as criminals all around the Muslim world (the Pakistani military has lost close to 2000 men in hunting Al-Qaeda), and jihadist methods and approaches are rejectedby Muslims universally; not to mention giving rise to anti-jihadist fatwas.

There is no doubt that the Pakistani military and other Muslim entities have fought against the mujahedin; I have never remotely asserted anything to the contrary. But here again, this doesn't tell us anything about Islamic law. In Pakistan, Muslim leaders routinely fulminate against Musharraf precisely because of what they regard as his disloyalty to Islam. All over the Islamic world, jihadists recruit among peaceful Muslims by quoting from the Islamic texts and presenting themselves as the exponents of "pure Islam." Most Muslims do reject them, but the jihadists have the intellectual initiative in the Islamic community today; why is that? Why hasn't there arisen a large-scale international movement working on a theological level to refute them, if the refutations were as ready to hand as you suggest they are?

In fact, one will see that Spencer's article cites to a jurist from the Maliki school of law (Khaldun), yet if one compares Khaldun (d. 1406) with this jurist alive today from the Maliki school, we immediately see how the jurist today conceptualize war (very differently from the past). Here is another example, this jurist being a student of scholars trained at al-Azhar university, and concludes this about violence:
A. Taking the law into one's own hands amounts to either Fasad fi'l-Ard (creating disorder) or Muharabah (rebellion) -- both of which are punishable by death in Islam.
B. The Prophet's saying (sws) usually cited to give credence to the idea that Islam allows an individual or a group the use of force to end wrong is actually related to the use of power within the confines of the social and legal authority.

C. In Islam, there is no concept of Jihad (Qital to be more precise -- that is militant struggle in the way of Allah) or the implementation of punishments without the authority of the State.

I am glad to see this sort of thing, and hope that it gains a wide audience among Muslims, since at least to some degree it does directly challenge the jihadists on Islamic grounds. The core of their disagreement with the jihadists appears to be that they reject the validity of suicide bombing and argue that jihad warfare can only be waged with the permission of the state authority. For instance, Akiti says (in the pdf cited in Eteraz's first link above, on page 22) that "whether one likes it or not, the decision and discretion and right to declare war or jihad for Muslims lie solely with the various authorities as represented today by the respective Muslim states..." The same assertion appears in the one Mr. Eteraz quoted directly, from Asif Iftikhar: "In Islam, there is no concept of Jihad (Qital to be more precise -- that is militant struggle in the way of Allah) or the implementation of punishments without the authority of the State."

One might get the impression from Mr. Eteraz's piece that the positions of Akiti and Iftikhar represent the dominant view among Muslims today, who reject the position articulated by Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Qayyim and the rest. Unfortunately, however, there is a difference of opinion on this question among contemporary Islamic scholars. Some argue that Muslims may wage war in order to establish that Islamic state, and then continue to wage war against unbelievers under its aegis. Others contend that the Islamic state must be established by peaceful means, and only then may Muslims wage jihad warfare. The latter position was held by Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the influential Pakistani jihad theorist who died in 1979 (whose views of jihad I discussed in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers), Sheikh Muhammad Said Ramadan Al-Buti (whose view of jihad I discussed in my book Islam Unveiled), and Sheikh Muhammad Naasir ud-Din Al-Albani (whose condemnation of suicide bombing I note in Onward Muslim Soldiers). The former view is held by Islamic scholars such as Muhammad Amarah and Khair Haykel, as well as by Abdullah Azzam, cofounder of Al-Qaeda, and, of course, other mujahedin today.

It is important to note, however, that Maududi and Al-Buti, as well as others who hold this view, don't reject the idea of jihad against unbelievers in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. Maududi, after all, wrote that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”

So in other words, this is just a disagreement about means, not about ends. The authorities Mr. Eteraz has invoked have not rejected the idea that Muslims must wage war in order to subjugate non-Muslims. In fact, Iftikhar says this in the same article that Mr. Eteraz quotes: "If an Islamic State - or United Islamic States - declared a morally and tactically justified armed jihad against a nation and needed the services of a Muslim, it would be a matter of his faith to render them and a distinct privilege if he ends up laying down his life as a result."

So the Islamic supremacist imperative remains in place. Will Mr. Eteraz kindly produce Islamic jurists who argue that Muslims should not wage war against unbelievers -- as unbelievers -- under any circumstances, but should live with them as equals not just on a temporary basis until they become strong enough to impose Islamic law, but on a permanent basis? I would love to see them.

I therefore want to thank Spencer for providing an opportunity to demonstrate to Muslims and non-Muslims alike that in Islam, changed conditions bring about changes in law. American Law with respect to racism and gender underwent reformation. Islamic Law with respect to violence against non-Muslims has also modified to fit with the world in which it finds itself.

Yet the jurists he cites leave intact the prerogative of the Islamic state to wage war against unbelievers. Is that really a sufficient modification?

I completely accept the usual rejoinder from critics that there are many areas of Islamic Law where today's jurists have simply accepted the opinions of jurists from the past (and done injustice). This includes women's rights, minority rights, and the issue of apostasy, among others.

Quite so. And indeed, this is the usual practice, since the gates of ijtihad are closed.

However, as time passes, more and more Muslim jurists are making up their own minds about these issues. I'm not even a jurist and I am doing my own thinking about these matters.

Good.

Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the high Mufti of Egypt, whom Spencer in another post tries to paint as an extremist because Gomaa (like John Ashcroft) does not allow graven images in statues...

Cheap shot. Ashcroft supports no terrorist groups, although since Mr. Eteraz equates Dick Cheney with Stalin, he may disagree.

...recently allowed women to get hymen reconstruction surgery, as well as allowing women the right to political leadership. Other major jurists today have allowed women the right to lead prayer. Even al-Azhar University, by no means a bastion of reform, has taken a strong stance against Female Genital Mutilation which it once used to permit. Islamic Law changes. I hope that is obvious by now. The way islamic jurisprudence evolved to make rules limiting violence serves as a model of how islamic jurisprudence will evolve to give rights to women, minorities and non-Muslims. I wish that Spencer would recognize this and leave Muslim reformists from having to correct his errors.

Ali Gomaa, according to the New York Times, supports the jihad terrorists of Hizballah. I'm glad he opposes genital mutilation and the rest, but when Hassan Nasrallah shouts "Death to America!" and Ali Gomaa approves, pardon me if I am underwhelmed by his moderation.

And anyway, as I have repeated ad infinitum, I wholeheartedly support genuine Muslim reformists. My friend Tashbih Sayyed, editor of Muslim World Today, is on the Jihad Watch Board. But there are many who are styled reformists who either deny that Islamic texts and teachings have ever been used to justify violence, which is a flagrant falsehood, or whose reforms dissolve upon inspection, such as Akiti and Iftikhar above.

In conclusion, jihadists, whom Spencer tries to link to the Islamic schools of law are actually deniers of Islamic legal methodology, preferring to circumvent Islamic Law altogether.

This assertion is, to put it mildly, unproven by anything Mr. Eteraz has said in his piece.

This actually confirms a point I've made previously; namely, the problem within Islam is a problem of intellectual anarchy which I provide one way of how to address.
And this problem is not alleviated when a group claiming to watch the jihadis is looking in all the wrong places.

I want to thank Emory students Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem who articulated their response to Spencer. I also want to bid kudos to Emory sudent Ammara Abbasi for writing this wonderful article on the moral and ethical principles that underlie the spiritual jihad. While I am heartened to see American students articulate their disagreements in such a positive manner, it is somewhat problematic that young adults who should be studying for their mid terms and enjoying going to parties are put in the absurd position of having to defend their faith from someone outside the academy who already have careers writing about Islam.

As I noted here, Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem did nothing but attack me personally. They provided no evidence whatsoever that anything I said was false. Neither did Ammara Abbasi. If Mr. Eteraz thinks this is a valid method of discourse, the prospects for his actually convincing Muslims that his version of Islam is the correct one are dim, for they will not be convinced by personal attacks and invective in lieu of rational arguments any more than anyone else will be.

In closing, the idea that it is "somewhat problematic that young adults who should be studying for their mid terms and enjoying going to parties are put in the absurd position of having to defend their faith from someone outside the academy who already have careers writing about Islam" is absurd. College ought to be a place where people are learning to think, and doing things precisely like defending their faith. I was responding to assertions of fact made by an Emory student. In response, I made other assertions of fact. The five students who then responded were under no obligation to do so, and indeed, as I have already noted, offered no substantive refutation of what I wrote, but only venomous characterizations and vicious accusations. That Mr. Eteraz would then hold them up as being somehow victims is beyond absurd. I find it very funny, and telling, that Aneel Naeem dismisses as "outside agitators" the commenters who took him and his cowriters to task at the Emory Wheel site for not dealing with substance of what I said but just indulging in ad hominem attacks. "Outside agitators" -- where have I heard that term before? Oh yes, that's what Southern segregationists called the Northerners who came South to support the struggle for racial integration. Well, I am happy to be an "outside agitator," agitating against this false claim of victimization and base personal attacks passing as intellectual discourse.

Posted by Robert at March 3, 2007 7:14 AM
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Comments
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Dear Eteraz and Esmay ...

Since you're here until I can hopefully get you banned, I will now challenge you. And I do this from the point of view of having had Muslim friends for 35 years and also from being a STAUNCH supporter of moderate Muslims.

First, some really obvious things:

(1) Americans were attacked on 9/11 by radical Islamists quoting us the Qur'an.

(2) Radical Islamists, quoting the Qur'an have terrorist cells in 60 countries.

(3) Muslims quoting the Qur'an blew up a train in Spain and attacked buses and trains in London, set up massive bombs in Bangladesh, beheaded and burned civilians in Thailand, bombed a night club in Bali and burned 202 people to death, routinely carry out suicide attacks on Israelis, routinely bury IEDs while hiding behind children. Of the 16,990 civilian deaths in Iraq this year, 16,719 were the result of "insurgency" (read: terrorist) bombings of civilian market targets or "collaborators" (people who dont' want their country taken over by terrorists). The other 271 were collateral damage of American RESPONSE to those attacks or the deliberate killing of terrorists (thank you, GIs!).

(4) The general habit of Muslims, who believe THEY are superior because they believe their religion is superior, is not ever to criticize each other publicly. This does NOT hold true for brilliant Islamic theorists like Mustafa Akyol. This also does not hold true for Sheikh Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the bravest man in Iraq, who is a Sunni tribal leader fighting the Saudi/Syrian Sunni "Insurgency" (read: terrorist war) in Iraq. However, it DOES hold true for virtually all of the Muslim "pundits" in America.

(5) My theory is that the Muslim "pundits" in America are actually (a) cowards and (b) opportunists and (3) supremacist manipulators. Why do I say that? Because America isn't the enemy of its Muslim population. It protects its Muslim population. The real enemy of Islam -- which cowardly Muslims are too spineless to right -- is the radical ulema in the United States bought and paid for by the Saudis for the 28 years. But you guys try to find a way to ex-communicate those guys or get the eight madabhib to set standards that exclude -- standards that would quite obviously exclude from the Qur'an those verses that are inimical to those of other religions, that create a Dar-al-Islam vs. a Dar-al-Harb, that are inimical to women's full rights in Islam and Islamic countries, that call for the dhimmitude or murder of non-Muslims, that incorporate desert tribalist hudud punishments (amputations and stonings) for criminal and non-criminal acts.

(6) Meanwhile, the opportunism runs on: Instead of solving these problems, American Muslism set up US Airways to try to get profiling stopped. Profiling will stop (or should stop) only when the next bomb that goes off doesn't have a Qur'anic attached to it by people you will not throw out of your religion. The British did not bring Gerry Adams to the table by strip-searching Norwegian grandmothers at the airport as an attempt to prove they were not "profiling". Of course they're profiling. And it's working, because there hasn't been a major attack in this country since 9/11.

(7) The bottom line is that it is NOT our reponsibility to listen to your endless whining that you're not being treated "good enough." It is not our responsibility to take care of your every whining alleged grievance -- which are actually GRIEVANCES THAT YOU ARE NOT BEING TREATED AS SUPERIOR BEINGS. No sale.

(8) It is a testament to the undying willingness of Americans to try to be fair that they give a hearing to this crap, but even that needs to stop. Put up or shut up. In fact, this is your SOFT TERRORISM -- the use of Americans' goodnesses and fears to try to carve out in America special privileges, a relativist subculture over which you have control above the reach of US law (in your treatment of Muslim women, for example), using US civil codes to protect the hate speech and incitement to war and violence that goes on in US mosques, and to bully the US government and US businesses into giving you special treatment that now Christian, Jew, Hindu, Jain, Confucian, Buddhist, native American Great Spiritualist, or New Age metaphysician could get. You don't want equality. You want to be BETTER THAN, which is the whole problem here.

(9) And you blew the choice. You had a choice to stand up against the terrorists and win. You could have won in a WEEK had you put 3 million Muslims on the National Mall to decry Al Qaeda and Radical Islamism. Had American Muslims done that, it would have echoed the 100,000 Iranian citizens who went into the street with candles in the night to tell Americans how sorry they were that the attacks had occurred. And these are people who are flayed to death for standing up to the mullahs in the country where the live. American Muslims could have done what Queen Rania did when she hit the streets of Amman, Jordan, in blue jeans and a sweat shirt with 80,000 Jordanians to protest the attempted chemical attack on the Jordanian capital several years ago. It so angered Al-Zarqawi that he sent attackers from Iraq to punish the Jordanian people -- Hashemite Sunnis for whom the Wahhabis have no love as they fear they will again rule Mecca and Medina (and dear God I do hope so!) -- for standing up against terrorism. But you have never followed these examples, nor the examples of the Bangladeshis who writing hilarious letters to the editor ridiculing the very people who threaten to bomb them, calling them "space aliens" for their little Wahhabi hats and their drag-the-ground Wahhabi beards, which even Azzam the American has made a valiant attempt to grow. We'll have you know that it appears he's making progress, but his brain is still melting.

So you blew it. Instead of being the brave Muslims we see standing up as they can in some of the most dangerous place in the world -- and DYING FOR IT -- you do nothing but try to manipulate the American people into backing down because "you feel insulted."

Well, get this: I don't give a damn if you feel insulted. YOU are insulting. YOUR game is insulting. The only Muslim I know who has a kid if Iraq fighting the Sunni terrorist war is Ali Alyami, the Saudi Ismaeli dissident who gets his life routinely threatened. You guys can't even stand up for fellow Muslims like Zudhi Jasser when he speaks out SOLIDLY that Islamic terrorism has to go, and says that shari'a law must NEVER replace civil law in any country. What happens when he says that. The little Wahhabi rats' nests and anthills down in Arizona treat him and his family to accusations of apostasy and blasphemy, signals in the open press that they are fair game to be murdered by Muslim radicals.

So, in whose hands was the end of Islamic terrorist -- the revitalization of interpretation that would have thrown out the hadith, ALL highly spurious "attestations" that the Prophet said this or that, highly suspect as being politically motivated (certainly the fantastic Ayesha tale made up to buttress Sunni claims over Shi'a claims for the rule of Islam) -- the revitalization of interpretation that would have relegated the hateful verses to historical context only (as Mustafa Akyol suggests) and would have reversed the weight of interpretation to favor the PURELY TRANSCENDENTAL, SPIRITUAL VERSES OF THE QUR'AN TO SOLE IMPORTANCE AND GOT RID OF THE REST.

But that's too gutsy for you guys. Then again, protecting Islam from being destroyed by the people of the Nejd (as prophesied in the Qur'an) is not your issue. Your issue is seeing how much pity you can get, how many special treatments you carve out of American culture -- this is the ego of manipulation, the game being to prove you are smarter than Americans by constantly getting them to kowtow to you and back off their criticism of the way you behave and what you preach -- AND GET ATTENTION. SO MUCH OF THIS CRAP IS ABOUT GETTING FACE TIME ON TV.

And D'Souza last manipulation is the most disgusting of all.

D'Souza is trying to placing himself upon the moral high ground by claiming American culture is decadent and that the reason we got attacked is that Al Qaeda was disgusted by our immortal behavior.

What everybody is missing is that this claim is as supremacist coming from D'Souza as any I have ever heard. Because ... D'Souza's unspoken fiat is that MUSLIMS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS POLICE FORCE AND PUNISH THOSE WHO BREAK THE "RULES" THAT ISLAM HAS SET FOR THEM. THEREFORE, ARGUES D'SOUZA, YOU AMERICANS BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF.

NO, YOUR PHILOSOPHY BROUGHT IT ON US, AND IT QUOTES QUR'ANIC VERSES while it beheads, burns, rapes, tortures, incarcerates, stones, and cross-amputates those Muslims and non-Muslims who do not accept the SELF-STATE AUTHORITY OF SUPREMACIST MUSLIMS TO CREATE THE RULES FOR ALL HUMANITY AND ENFORCE THEM ACROSS THE LINES OF SOVREIGN NATIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

You're right. I don't accept your "SELF-DECLARED AUTHORITY" DO ANY SUCH THING.

And I find D'Souza "moral superiority" ludicrous and his preaching to the choir -- AMERICAN CULTURAL MODERATES AND CONSERVATIVES ALREADY KNOW THIS, FOR HEAVEN SAKE -- spineless as per usual.

Want to compare?

Americans, due to their civil rights laws defending free speech -- which Muslims routinely use to whine about ALLEGED grievances -- are the same ones that free speech extremists use to defend porn on the internet, in the movies, and in local clubs. Half of the US Congress is trying to deal with the intricacies of protecting freedom of thought, word, and harmless deed while setting rational limits on the rest. But you don't even don't even stand up against the incitement of violence towards Christians and Jews in your own mosques.

But compare the record of America to that of Islam:

(1) Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran stand in violation of every international human rights agreements on the treatment of women and children.

(2) Hudud punishments of amputation, stoning, beheading and sometimes burning and castration (see Saudi prisons on this) have been banned worldwide as inhumane, yet they routinely carried out by Islamic countries and pan-state terrorists.

(3) Women who are raped are stoned to death for adultery.

(4) Women who are raped must present two to four witnesses to defend themselves -- four in Iran. That is why the gang rape packs move in threes.

(5) Women in Islamic countries are subject to forced marriage to men much older, a form of slavery banned in the Qur'an. But Muslims worldwide do nothing.

(6) Women in Islamic countries are denied education, independent travel and work.

(7) Women in Islamic countries are considered property to be traded for gambling or other debts, a form of slavery.

(8) Temporary marriages allow Muslim men to use women as prostitutes without civil protection for themselves or their children.

OK, it's a partial list, but I have work to do. Others may want to complete this list!

The number of the times the word "women" is used above is an indication of how much radical Islamism is about controlling women for sex and service. Qubt and al-Banna went CRAZY that Egyptian women got rights-- based on the work of an enlightened imam doing enlightened hermeneutics on the PURELY TRANSCENDENTAL VERSES OF THE QUR'AN -- rights to vote, rights to education, rights to property and children. And then, one brave women let herself be photographed without a veil. And it was uphill from there.

Qubt was an obviously sexually neurotic man who claimed he never married because he couldn't find a woman "pure enough." Oh yeah, right. He was a very sick man. Al-banna on the other hand was a violent control freak.

Do I hear you guys railing about this violence in Islamic countries, this inhumanity, this enslave of women and children?

No, I hear you whining about whether you can have special privileges at an airport in the Midwest or whether you can set up US Airways and then sue them, shake-down style, for money and laws that make Americans ignore the IEDs Muslim terrorists set off in markets full of women and children and your crafty little shoe bombs and the bomb-belts Palestinians place as toys around the waists of Muslim toddlers in the Gaza Strip.

And why do you do this? Like Bill Clinton, "becuase I could get away with it."

While the world burns down with Muslim violence, American Muslims play dirty little manipulation games as acts of soft terrorism -- which they know they can only effect because standing behind them is a terrorist who may enforce their demands with debased violence.

American Muslim manipulation runs on the veiled threat (pun intended) that if we do as you demand -- and listen to your insufferable and utterly specious moral preaching when Muslims violence has taken moral breach down to a level unknown since the Gestapo -- there will be more violence. You preach appeasement to us and you get it to fly because when we see good people like Daniel Pearl beheaded on television, when we see a woman stoned or shot in the head for being raped, WE ARE STILL NORMAL ENOUGH TO RECOIL IN DISGUST AND EMPATHETIC PAIN. Momentarily we lose our ability to close a fist and say, "Fuck you, you despicable animals!"

And that may be a fault of ours, but know this: Not all of us have lost the ability, and America's slumber won't last forever on this one.

Meanwhile, what do our Muslim American compatriots do? They whine about their civil rights. They assert their self-proclaimed "moral supremacy." Don't make me laugh.

What is really going on with you guys is the most egregious mass act of opportunism in the history of the United States. You whine about "racial incidents" when more racial incidents occur against WASPS than any other group in America (per capita percentage), with the Jews coming a close second. As Stephen Schwartz -- Muslim -- has pointed out, anti-Muslim incidents are so far down the list as to be negligible.

You strut around campuses pretending to be victimized. You whine and bitch and piss and moan constantly, while American service people overseas try to straighten out the mess made by Islamic radicalism on the one hand and Islamic cowardice on the other.

And it's spineless yellow-bellied cowardice. And why? For the same reason human rights organizations decry American rights abuses -- which they should where they exist -- but never mention the torture and gang rapes in Saudi prisons, the torture and rape and amputations carried out in Iran, the beheadings and live burnings and breast amputations (for not wearing cover) that occurred in Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Fallujah before the US went in and cleaned out the cockroaches that had taken over the city.

Why don't they? Because when you whine to an American about your ALLEGED "disenfranchisement" Americans give you a lolly pop, put their arm around your shoulder, and try to make it all better.

When you complain to a Muslim publicly about his violence toward his own or others, he kills YOU, your family, and your friends. Or he kidnaps your daughter and rapes her.

You're cowards. And you're dirty opportunists. You're the best-educated, richest, most powerful group of Muslims in the world, and you could FORCE the ulema to deal with this problem and you will not.

Instead, when people like Zudhi Jasser, Mustafa Akyol, and others point out the problems and LAY OUT THE SOLUTIONS, they are attacked.

And those of you who claim to be the "peaceful" Muslims REALLY following Islam don't defend those guys. You do not defend Muslim women becuase you tacitly agree with the position they should keep the place desert tribalist crafted for them. And when women start talking to you on boards -- Anne Crockett comes to mind -- you tell her to shut up, but you don't say that to men on this board, do you?

YOU WILL NOT DECIDE FOR ME WHAT MODERATE ISLAM IS. YOU WILL NOT DECIDE FOR ME OR MY COUNTRY WHAT A MODERATE MUSLIM IS.

NOW THAT MUSLIMS HAVE ATTACKED US, CONTINUE TO ATTACK US, PROMISE TO ATTACK US, DEMAND THAT OTHER MUSLIMS ATTACK US, I WILL MAKE THAT DECISION FOR MYSELF, BECAUSE I MUST THE DECISION ABOUT WHAT MUSLIMS I WILL AND WILL NOT SUPPORT.

So you claims that you will do it for me fall on dear ears. D'Souza's claims that he will be the moderator of American morality BECAUSE HE IS A MUSLIM AND MUSLIMS HAVE THE RIGHT TO POLICE MORALITY FOR ALL THE WORLD falls on deaf ears over here.

FOR ME ...

A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO BELIEEVES IN THE EQUALITY OF ALL HUMANITY, FOR ALL RELIGIONS, AND FOR MEN AND WOMEN AND *** STANDS UP FOR THOSE RIGHTS ***. As do, I point out, American Christians and Jews.

A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO OPPOSES THE IMPOSITION OF ANY FORM OF SHARI'A LAW ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD SO LONG AS SHARI'A EMPLOYS HUDUD PUNISHMENTS AND BEARS ENMITY AGAINST THOSE NOT OF ITS RELIGION AND NOT MALE.

A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO FIGHTS ISLAMIC TERRORISM OPENLY AND PUBLICLY.

A MODERATE MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO FIGHTS TERRORIST HATE SPEECH AND INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE AND WAR IN HIS OR HER MOSQUE.

A MODERATE AMERICAN MUSLIM IS A PERSON WHO DEFENDS THE LAWS OF AMERICA IN PUBLIC AND IN PRIVATE.

Truncated list, but hey, duty calls.

To sum up here, Muslims are failing Islam and will be the reason it is destroyed. While you posture and do your little moral preaching numbers to people who frankly don't need, Islamic terrorists and mantling biological, nuclear and chemical weapons. The next time they pull a big one, my guess is that it's going to be "all she wrote." All over the world, Muslims who have a spine (that would not be you guys) are voting Islamists out of office -- with GAM prime minister elected in Aceh, with Badawi elected in Indonesia, with that dirty, lying, sleaze-bag Mahathir thrown out in Malaysia. The Iranians would do it if they could. Abdullah would get rid of the Wahhabis if he could. In Nigeria, extreme shari'a wasn't voted in, it was AMPUTATED in. Etc. Etc. Etc.

It's AMERICAN Muslims who HAVE NO SPINE AND PLAY THESE GAMES.

And what don't you like about Robert? He keeps quoting THE SAME QUR'ANIC VERSES THAT BIN LADEN DOES.

He doesn't agree with Bin Laden. What Robert is saying is that until you deal with these verses a "peaceful" Islam that IGNORES them is not enough. You have to get rid of them, becuase over and over again in your history those verses -- ON WHICH AN UN-ELECTED BIN LADEN RUNS A WAR, ON WHICH THE UN-ELECTED SALAFISTS RUN A WAR, ON WHICH THE UN-ELECTED TALEBAN RUN A WAR must be changed -- have led to war against and enslavement of all Muslims you do not agree with and all non-Muslims period.

Now, either you have the spine to deal with the REAL PROBLEM -- which is NOT alcohol in a cab in Minneapolis -- or you don't.

And so far, you don't.

That is why Robert Spencer et al. have to be the ones who do your job for you. And what do you do?

You whine that he is insulting you.

Oh, poorest possible you! Oh, poor little kids! They want another lolly pop.

No. Get off your fat, rich, spoiled American opportunist asses and get your butts overseas and solve these problems. And if you're spineless and whiny for that, at least support the Muslims who DO have the spine and stop playing games that embarrass and destroy the religion you say you love.

Grow up. And stop manipulating.

And what does Al Qaeda say when they read your next vitriolic little rant of "blasphemy" screed?

They just say, "Attaboy, Eteraz. Attaboy, Esmay."

It's not Robert who is doing Al Qaeda's work -- if he were it's unlikely that Azzam the American would have "invited" (ha!) him to convert to Islam with a copy of "The Truth about Muhammad" in his hand, don't you think?

It's YOU who are doing Al Qaeda's work, though I'd agree it's not because you necessarily want to be a terrorist. You just want to be important.

So be important. Transform Islam into TRANSCENDENTAL SPIRITUAL ISLAM. That's your job. Get about doing it.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 10:37 AM

For Esmay and Eteraz:

Excellent quote from Zodiac from other post:

Equating Spencer (railing against radical Islamism) and Bin Laden is like equating Churchill (railing against Nazism) and Hitler.

Completely specious, malevolent, and dishonest argument. Spencer is doing the job you're too spineless and yellow to do. Period.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 10:40 AM

Robert wrote:

"That Mr. Eteraz would then hold them up as being somehow victims is beyond absurd."

But, Robert, don't you understand. Anything but total support for whatever a Muslim says is unacceptable. Of course they're victims. Anybody who defines themselves as "insulted" when you bring up that they are tacitly supporting the most debased violence with the Nazis is, of course, A VICTIM!!!

Robert, why can't you get that? I'm shocked! Shocked! [weg]

Keep up the good work. It brings these termites out of the woodwork where it's plain for all to see that they're busy eating the house.

And I iterate: NO MODERATE MUSLIM WORTH THEIR SALT PRETENDS TO BE "INSULTED" THAT YOU DECRY THE VIOLENCE IN ISLAM. THEY DECRY IT, TOO.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 10:54 AM

Sounds like Robert Spencer is getting under the craw of liberal and muslim thinking...good job, Robert! Keep up the good fight. Truth is truth and no amount of liberal and muslim squirming can change that.

Posted by: angryeagle

at March 3, 2007 10:54 AM

I'm still waiting for these fatwas denouncing Muslim imperialism, dhimmitude, jizya, and jihad. Where are they? Why don't Muslims cite them and denounce jihad?

Posted by: John Sobieski

at March 3, 2007 10:55 AM

"Even the founding fathers, jurists the likes of which very few have ever existed, held that a black man was, under the law, only worth 3/5th of a white man (and women were worth nothing)".

The so-called 3/5 "Federal ratio" was put in the constitution at the instance of anti-slavery forces. The south, for electoral purposes, wanted all slaves considered in any census and for representative and electoral vote purposes. The anti-slavery forces wanted slaves not counted at all until they were free. The compromise was reached to avoid a melt-down of the constitutional convention. But people like Hamilton warned that the issue (correctly)would eventually be settled by war.

This guy does not know what he's talking about. It's the same old attempt to shame crap. Islam is just another historic rationalization that permits the domination and economic exploitation of some lately "indigenous people" (it's being done in darfur today). The Arab empire and Ottoman empire were typical of this pattern in history. Anyone who thinks this pattern is unique to any group (Western, Aztec, Arab, America, etc.) is a liar or a fool.

Islam is just another rationalization for a historic pattern of exploitation and conquest in the name of "religion" or ideology. The shame game crap has to end.

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007 10:58 AM

Whoa, Morgaan

Great post. You basically said what all of us (including Robert) want to say but can't for reasons of politeness. I think Robert should say something like that the next time he debates a spineless apologist.

Posted by: wrathofasma

at March 3, 2007 11:03 AM

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

"Even the founding fathers, jurists the likes of which very few have ever existed, held that a black man was, under the law, only worth 3/5th of a white man (and women were worth nothing)".

YES, AND WE FOUGHT A WAR TO END ALL THAT. WHAT WE'RE ASKING YOU TO DO IS FIGHT A WAR THAT ENDS YOUR OWN INSTEAD OF FIGHTING US FOR THE RIGHT TO KEEP RIGHT ON SAYING THAT:

A woman's testimony is worth 1/4 of a man's?

A woman's life (in terms of retribution paid) is worth that of a man's ONE LEG.

You are doing that NOW. We made John C. Calhoun eat his words!!!

And answer this:

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE WAR IN DARFUR IS ABOUT??? IT IS AN ***ARAB*** RACIST AND RADICAL ISLAMIST WAR AGAINST BLACK AFRICANS, CHRISTIANS, AND MODERATE MUSLIMS.

You argue so filthy that it's hard even to read what you write. You're not discussing anything.

YOU ... ARE ... JUST ... MANIPULATING ... FOR ... ATTENTION.

And you're destroying any chance for Islam in the future by doing so.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:04 AM

Etaraz says the founding fathers considered a black man worth three-fifths of a white man. His false statement is worth correcting, in case readers of JW think that he has scored a point against Mr. Spencer.

The allusion is to the Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution when it was written in 1787. The Compromise had to do with how many Representatives a state was to have in Congress. The slave-state delegates wanted the basis for the count to be the whole population. The free-state delegates wanted it to be just the free population. The slave-state proposal would have given the slave-owners almost twice the number of Congressmen that they'd have obtained under the free-state proposal. To prevent the Union from splitting into two countries, the two sides compromised. Only 3/5 of the slaves were counted in the enumeration to determine a state's representation in the House, all of whom were, of course, slave-owners. So the Three-Fifths Compromise LIMITED the slave-owners' clout in the federal government. Of course, everyone knew that the problem was being postponed and not solved. But it had nothing whatever to do with regarding anyone as "three-fifths of a person."

Mr. Etaraz is as unethical in his invocation of U.S. history as he is in his invocation of Muslim history to discredit Mr. Spencer.

Posted by: Aileen

at March 3, 2007 11:07 AM

The 3/5 "Federal ratio" had nothing to do with any judgement re the value of blacks. It was a compromise between those who wanted slavery abolished (and slaves not counted for representation purposes until slavery was abolished) and slaveholders who wanted the slaves fully counted for representative and electoral college purposes. There were many (George Mason of the South, Hamilton in the north) who warned that this issue was eventually going to result in civil war. On 4/12/1861 it did result in civil war. 600,000 soldiers (about 400,000 from the North) died to undo the "federal ratio".

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007 11:08 AM

What eludes me is how someone as intelligent and Libertarian-at-heart as Ali Eteraz obviously is can still be indoctrinated so fully into the lie that is the cult of Islam. We live in the Communications Age, so there is less and less excuse for being incapable of seeing that Islamic mythology is no longer something to be passed on to further generations, at least, not in its its current, virulent context.

Islam is a lie. Someone challenge me on that. I dare you.

Posted by: Foehammer

at March 3, 2007 11:09 AM

Aileen ...

Yup, and the other part of this is that THESE LAWS NO LONGER EXIST IN THE UNITED STATES. During the same period of time, what was happening to women in Pakitan and Arabia?

WHAT ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING THIS MORNING TO WOMEN, MINORITIES, HINDUS, BUDDHISTS AND CHRISTIANS IN SAUDI ARABIA WHERE CONVERTING GETS YOU THE *** DEATH PENALTY ***.

And how come I never heard from these Muslim guys any examples about how Muslim WOMEN are treated? Hmmm??? Whassamatta guys, cat got your tongue?

Guess they're too busy telling Anne Crockett she should shut up.

Back into that burqa, Anne, you've forgotten who you are what you're not (a human being).

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:11 AM

Foehammer ...

Because Eteraz is a Muslim first and a liberal second and a card-carrying member of the SUCK UP TO THE MUSLIMS WITH BUCKS brigade.

Do you know the kind of points he gets for this kind of attack on a guy like Robert Spencer?

Do you have any idea how much money there is in that?

ESMAY AND ETERAZ:

PLEASE PUBLISH ON YOUR WEBSITES TODAY ALL THE MUSLIM PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS WHO HAVE DONATED MONEY TO YOU.

ALL OF THEM.

WITH AMOUNTS, DATES AND CONTACT PEOPLE.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:13 AM

@ Morgaan: Hehe. I have no idea how much these Islamists and Liberals take in as donations, but I can disclose how much I've ever received through Foehammer's Anvil:

And yet I still fight on.

As I stated yesterday to Esmay, but in slightly less words, it's a matter of having superior convictions and if more on the Left would show me character strengths worth emulating, I might give them a greater portion of my attention.

But don't anyone hold your breath.

I fight because I know I'm right and because I know that I'm not here on Earth just to breathe the air, drink the water and collect gray hairs on my head.

Posted by: Foehammer

at March 3, 2007 11:22 AM

Morgaan Sinclair says "a moderate Muslim" is this, that, and a dozen other things, all in hysterical caps. He forgot to add one more thing that "a moderate Muslim" is: a half-Muslim.

Posted by: Aileen

at March 3, 2007 11:23 AM

QUOTING ETERAZ:

...recently allowed women to get hymen reconstruction surgery, as well as allowing women the right to political leadership. Other major jurists today have allowed women the right to lead prayer. Even al-Azhar University, by no means a bastion of reform, has taken a strong stance against Female Genital Mutilation which it once used to permit. Islamic Law changes. I hope that is obvious by now. The way islamic jurisprudence evolved to make rules limiting violence serves as a model of how islamic jurisprudence will evolve to give rights to women, minorities and non-Muslims. I wish that Spencer would recognize this and leave Muslim reformists from having to correct his errors.

CLOSE QUOTE.

*** NOT GOOD ENOUGH ***

Sharia law should be fought everywhere on the planet and should be institute NO WHERE -- as should no other religious law -- in the place of secularly held constitutional rights.

*** AND THE WHOLE PROBLEM IS THAT IT'S NOT UP TO SOME MAN WHO IS, BY VIRTUE OF CANNON AND POSITION, DENYING WOMEN RIGHTS ALREADY TO TELL THEM WHAT THEIR RIGHTS ARE. ***

And even those "changes" -- oh, boy, we get to have a hymen reconstructed while the men go free of the rapes they commit, the honor killings they perform, and the female genital mutilation they force -- are by select imamic fatwa, and tney are NOT embraced by eight madabhs that run Islam, whose ulema have NEVER spoken out against violence against women or terrorism or violence toward non-Muslims.

Do you think we're all stupid? Do you think we can't read?

Do you know how INCREDIBLY STUPID AND TRANSPARENTLY MANIPULATIVE YOU LOOK???

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:26 AM

What can you expect from a center of higher education, if the written word will not even be acknowledged.

If Islam reformed itself in the 1920's to the views held as being as they were say, 700 years ago. Would it not follow that any Jurist notions would adjust itself as well? Are the proof of such notions not personified in the former Talliban Goverment in Afganistan?

Where are all the Peaceful Muslims? Who are they, where are they, and how many of them are there?

Why do we only hear from the Socialists and the Communists that Muslins are "peaceful". I would imaging that if there were really peaceful Muslims that number in the high majority. Why hasn't the Left lined them up in numbers every day, day after day, telling us how wonderful they are?

How long do you expect "progressives" to carry your water bucket befor you have to put somehing in it?

Muslims suffer fron Infidelobia. They need treatment.

Posted by: flowerknife_us

at March 3, 2007 11:26 AM

I found the commentary by Ali Eteraz a bit sad. Argument by name calling is easy and very effective to the home audience (after all Muslims use the 'crusader' label long after the body of last crusader has turned to dust).

Whatever the difference between Islamic law and Islamic belief, it must be pointed out Islam is more about practice than belief (Orthodox Judaism shares that). The rulings of legal scholars are not just minutiae that are filed away to be read by scholars. They are instructions on how to act today. The websites of many well known Muslim scholars include Q&A sections that are designed to answer day to day questions.

In the last 40 years or so religious conservatism has been a growing trend in many religions. We see an appeal to roots not just in Islam, but in Hinduism and Christianity. The terrorists have learned very well how to couch their rhetoric fo the same appeal.

What is annoying is the inability of Muslims to be honest about what Muslims believe. Whether it is a wealthy Saudi saying he is not a Wahhabi but a Salafi (sp?), or Tarig Ramadan claiming that Sayed Qutb shared none of his grandfather's beliefs. Westerners like myself grow tired of this kind of sophistry. The call to violence based on Islam appeals to somebody and those somebodies are not little old ladies in Christian churches.

Posted by: Jerry M

at March 3, 2007 11:31 AM

Aileen, I'm a woman. I know it's hard to get with the name, but I'm a woman.

I hold out the hope that a moderate Islam can be crafted, because I know a great many Muslims who have lived on by the Meccan, spiritual verses and chuck the rest.

That has to be formalized. That is our best hope, the one that will result in the fewest lost lives.

But that is a fight that only Muslims can wage. I support their doing so.

If they don't do it, they will likely force us into a worldwide, hot nuclear confrontation. With so many people on the planet, it's possible that humanity and the ecosystem itself won't be able to survive that on a global level.

So I'm always for encouraging Muslims to stop this crap on the hope they won't force the kind of confrontation that will be coming if they continue to play it so hard and fast. Sadly, it doesn't look promising.

But I will continue to support moderate Muslims who are trying to reform Islam -- AND ETERAZ AND ESMAY ARE ***NOT*** AMONG THEM. Eteraz and Esmay are shuck'n'jive artists who are in it for the fame.

I'm sorry you don't like my use of caps. If people are skimming, they tend to read the part in caps. Which is why I use them.

And I know plenty of full-blood Muslims, most in foreign countries, who are standing up daily to this and holding their own. Most are intellectuals on an international level, and they are brave indeed. I won't be bringing in racial balances as part of the arguement as I believe the argument is purely ideological, except that the Arabs are fighting a racial cleansing war in Darfur that is actually a race war sold on ideology to get the Saudis to fund the NIF, of which they are 100% sponsor.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:33 AM

"NO MODERATE MUSLIM WORTH THEIR SALT PRETENDS TO BE "INSULTED" THAT YOU DECRY THE VIOLENCE IN ISLAM. THEY DECRY IT, TOO."

from a posting by Morgaan Sinclair

It would be nice if these moderate Muslims raised their voices above a whisper. If they're not willing to speak loudly and often, as Robert does, then what good are they?

Why shouldn't I believe that they will simply follow the strong horse? They're waiting to see which side wins and they'll go along with it. If that means Islamism, they'll accept it with no protest.

Posted by: PMK

at March 3, 2007 11:35 AM

Morgaan Sinclair-

The infantile and Pharisaical finger pointing ("we good, you bad") nonsense misses the whole issue of how peoples use "religion" or ideology to rationalize conquest, domination, exploitation and often the extermination of some recently "indigenous" people. The Aztecs did it to the Toltec, the Spaniard arrived and did it to the Aztecs, and before that the Arabs did it to the Spaniards. It's a pattern in history in the establishment of every nation and empire. Islam (as Hugh has correctly pointed out) was the engine of the advance of the Arab empire and Arab imperialism. We are witnessing a resurgence of this typical pattern of history today within Islam.

The problem is that this pattern is now becoming a danger to the whole species on the planet because of technological advances. We cannot tolerate this infantile nonsense anymore. We have to stop being Pharisaical on how humans use "religion" and ideology to conquer, exploit and kill what Waffa Sultan has called "the other".

Every group rationalizes its will to power and perfumes the skunkiness of human nature by pretending to be innocent victims. Islam is perfect at doing that.

(BTW, three cheers for Robert for having the guts to address the real problem. But that problem is finally a human problem.)

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007 11:36 AM

There are few more important debates that must be held on all Western canpuses than the challenge of islam.

One can recall when the islamic supremicist bullies and pukes, and their toxic socialist supporters at Concordia U, in Montreal, created the most vile conditions on campus.

Why were they there ?

The very desideratum at a university is an open mind.

Yet there they were, trying to shut down free debate, intolerant of other views, the very death nell of openness and freedom.

Posted by: dgene

at March 3, 2007 11:45 AM

Oh, those pesky Americans!

You tell them to shut up, and they just won't do it. How annoying, eh, Mr. Esmay? Mr. Eteraz?

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 11:49 AM

As a matter of policy, politicians and pundits should abstain from entering the academcy unless they are invited.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

the leftists liberals educators want total control of the education system so they can continue to pollute the minds of our next generation with the failed policies of the elitists, leftists and liberals...........

The Texican.
Live free and die free.
God Faimly America Freedom the only choice at any cost.

Posted by: The Texican

at March 3, 2007 11:51 AM

And I iterate: NO MODERATE MUSLIM WORTH THEIR SALT PRETENDS TO BE "INSULTED" THAT YOU DECRY THE VIOLENCE IN ISLAM. THEY DECRY IT, TOO.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair at March 3, 2007 10:54 AM
++++++++++++++++

please edify me and show me where i can find any info on moderate islam/muslims condemning radical islam/muislims.............

IT DOES NOT EXIST.............

REMEMBER, MUSLIMS WILL LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING TO INFIDELS...........

war with the cult of islam is inevitable for the cult of islam only wants peace through conquering the world................

prepare be armed be ready.............

The Texican.
Live free and die free.
God Faimly America Freedom the only choice at any cost.

Posted by: The Texican

at March 3, 2007 12:01 PM

This debate again highlights the trouble with mislabeling our fight against Islamic supremacism as a "war against terror."

As Robert's post implies, if Akiti and Iftikhar had any significant influence, it might help stop Islamic "terrorism" (non-state violence against civilians)--certainly an improvement over today's situation--but it would do nothing to stop the steady "peaceful" marches toward Islamic rule across the globe (via demographics and "democracy"). And it's the latter that should worry any non-Muslim much more than terrorism.

Terrorism is a "means" to unspecified ends. Sharia is a very specific ends.

Posted by: kamala

at March 3, 2007 12:02 PM

Mr. Eteraz and Mr. Esmay,

The people on this forum are already pretty sure that they are dealing with radical Islamist apologists.

But we're willing to entertain the possibility we are wrong:

(1) Do you agree with the assessment made by the imam on the Dispatches UTube videos that "Allah created woman defective. Even if she has a PhD, she is defecitive" ... "it's hormones."

(2) Source: Ibid: If a girl is 10 and refuses to wear cover, she should beaten.

(3) Do you believe it's OK for Muslim websites to call on Muslims to kill Westerners, Christians?

(4) Would you like to see shari'a replace the Constitution of the United States?

(5) Do you believe that Buddhists are evil?

(6) Do you believe that Muslims are justified in commiting violent acts against non-Muslim majority cultures if they deem them to be "decadent" or "immoral".

(7) If yes to #6, on what authority do Muslims act as the world's international "muttawiyyah" (religious police)?

(8) Do you believe that Christians and Jews are "infidels"?

(9) Do you believe that Muslim women should answer first to the imam who tells them how to dress, how to make love, how to wash, how to pray, and how to be in relationship to her husband ... or do you believe she has a right to avail herself of the civil liberties granted her under the U.S. Constitution?>

(10) Are you OK with arranged marriages without the consent of the women?

(11) Do you agree with the Muslim division of property that gives women less property than men?

(12) Do you believe in denying women the right to vote based on gender?

(13) Do you believe in denying women the right to education, equal food and medicine, based on gender?

(14) Do you believe women should have the right to drive and hold jobs?

(15) Do you believe that "honor killing" is justified?

(16) Do you believe that Islam gives a man the right to beat a woman?

(17) Do you believe that islam commands Muslims to spread the faith by sword?

(18) Do you believe that Islam commands Muslims to spread the faith by deception, manipulation and threat?

(19) Do you believe that Sufis are apostates?

(20) Do you believe in the death penalty for apostasy?

(21) Do you believe in the death penalty for adultery?

(22) Do you believe, as Al Sistani said in a fatwa last week, that homosexuals should be killed "in the worst possible way"?

(23) Do you believe that hudud punishments -- amputations, cross-amputations, lashings, stonings, burnings, and beheadings -- should be allowed in Islamic countries?

(24) Do you believe that sanctions should be imposed on any Islamic country that does not follow ALL human rights intenrational agreements?

(25) Do you believe that the US should stipulate that 1/2 of the 10,000 student visas just granted to Saudi Arabia should go to women?

(26) Do you believe that shari'a should be banned until it is solidly human rights based, giving equal rights to minorities, religious "others", and women?

(27) Do you object to "shake-down" manipulations such as the one played against US Airways?

(28) Do you object to the "shake-down" manipulations for special treatment run by the cabbies in Minneapolis?

(29) Do you believe that Muslims should rise up and decry the death threads made against Robert Spencer and his family by Muhammed Soulja of Great Britain?

(30) Do you believe Muslims should openly protest against Al-Zawahiri when he demands that Muslims rise up against Americans and others?

(31) Do you believe that the school system in the Palestinian Territories should be forced to stop preaching jihad to elementary school kids?

(32) Do you believe that HAMAS should be required to remove its terminology of exterminating the Jews or be barred from power?

(33) Do you believe that homicide bombing is an acceptable form of social and political protest?

(34) Do you believe that CAIR should wait to defend Muslims until the verdict is in. Examples: the 22-year sentence given Ismael Royer for material support of terrorism and waging war against the sovreign State of India (Americans aren't allowed to wage their own private wars against other countires). Alamoudi, 23 years for material support of terrorism. Al Arian, deportation on a plea bargain (he should have got life), after turning in all his friends. Please answer this question in some detail.

(35) Do you believe that Saudi Arabia has the right to put to death those who convert to Christianity?

That'll do for a start. I have another 65 pertinent questions, but I don't want to tire you out since you minds are so weak to begin with.

Thank you for answering. We're all waiting.

Or are you going to play your usual lying, manipulative, cowardly, spineless, yellow-bellied gambit of "we're morally superior -- just cuz we said so!!!!!"

Waiting with baited breath. Not really. Muslims never answer questions like this, becuase doing so exposes them as not being the moderates they claim to be and would like us to believe they are.

.....................

If you'd rather do a short one: just tell us which hadith and violent verses YOU would be willing to remove from the Qur'an.

After all, I'm sure that you really want the rest of us in the world to feel safe and loved -- and that it's not REALLY the case that it always has to be ALL ABOUT YOU.

That's not true, is it?

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 12:11 PM

Corrections: BAD Muslims never answer questions like the ones above because answering always exposes how moderate they're NOT.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 12:19 PM

I conclude Mr. Eteraz deserves a loving pet name of RAZ as all he does in life is raz other people.

Raz is a nobody who is like those twits who go around getting autographed pictures of celebrities, hang them on the wall and think they are important in knowing someone who doesn't know them.

Raz goes around and picks fights with Mr. Spencer and get attention. Raz is not a Muslim at all, but a low self esteem twirp who chose Islam as it was an easy venue for him to gain attention. Islam for him is Britney Spears shaving her head. She had the sense to seek rehab, but Raz only feeds his addiction.
As of yesterday on Mr. Spencer's public feed, Raz's "site blog" generated a whopping TWO hits as a referring site. BOY A WHOLE TWO PEOPLE WERE ON HIS SITE and cared enough to come here and look at what was happening.

So Raz is getting his 15 minutes of fame making fun like a bigot of Mr. Spencer not speaking Arabic like an Arab and proving to the world it is not Islam he is speaking about, but his own addiction of worthlessness.

What should be done is D'Souza, the Big Double D and Raz should be locked into a room together as D has enough pompous ego to feed a sponge like Raz as they both debate like parrots the things they do not know, but have heard someone else has lived.

Posted by: Lame Cherry

at March 3, 2007 12:24 PM

please edify me and show me where i can find any info on moderate islam/muslims condemning radical islam/muislims.............

IT DOES NOT EXIST.............

From a posting by Texican

Thomas Haidon, the Chief Legal and Policy Advisor of the Free Muslim Coalition and a member of its Board of Advisors, says that moderates are unable to speak out because of Islamic laws against apostasy.

To quote Mr. Haidon:

"The laws of blasphemy under orthodox Islam are fairly well established, embedded and have generally remain unchanged over centuries. In most Muslim countries, moderate Muslims cannot speak on this issue out of fear of being accused of apostasy.
In 2005, Sheikh Al- Qaradawi issued a legal ruling on moderate Muslims who challenged the Islamist orthodoxy. His solution to this problem was to declare them "intellectual apostates", subject to death. Moderate Muslims are under siege in these countries."

(There's a lot more in the 12/1/06 Frontpage symposium on the pope and Islam, available on JW.)

That tells me that non-Muslims looking for like-minded people in the Islamic world are out of luck, at least until someone in the Muslim community decides to get a backbone. There are no Patrick Henrys in the Muslim world and there will be no reform until several are born. Therefore peace will remain elusive.

Posted by: PMK

at March 3, 2007 12:29 PM

Esmay has "drawn a line in the sand", and if you have any thoughts outside of his brainwaves, you are not welcome to post. How intelligent of him.
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1172621961.shtml

Posted by: Carolyn2

at March 3, 2007 12:32 PM

“The Quakers were the first group in America to attack slavery. In his book Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, John Woolman contended that no one had the right to own another human being. In 1758 the Philadelphia yearly meeting said that slavery was inconsistent with Christianity, and in 1775 Quakers played a dominant role in the formation of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first antislavery society in America.”
http://www.csusm.edu/Black_Excellence/documents/pg-s-a-revolution.html

All men are created equal and endowed with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The beginning of the end for Western slavery?

“One of the earliest voluntary organizations in Britain which was devoted to a single cause was the anti-slavery movement. In 1787 a committee of twelve was appointed, including six members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). The Quakers had set up a committee of their own in 1783 in order to obtain and publish "such information as may tend to the abolition of the slave trade." Two other members of the committee were Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp. These men in particular went to great lengths to collect evidence, finding out precisely how little space was allotted to slaves on the ships and similar details. They began to publish pamphlets to stir public opinion against the trade.”
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/antislavery.html

1758, 1776, 1787, 1833, 1865.
All men are created equal and endowed with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Posted by: tgusa

at March 3, 2007 12:38 PM

Morgaan and I don't agree on some things, but her comment today is outstanding.

Posted by: Carolyn2

at March 3, 2007 12:38 PM

PMK, moderate Muslims are probably the majority, but they have a number of things against them:

(1) They rightly fear incarceration, torture and death, for themselves and their families, if they speak out, because the RULING elite always use conservative religion to control them ... and the country. See Nigeria, quotations by prime minister on how he DELIBERATELY used Islam to control the population.

(2) They speak out, and they are hit at once from both sides: Muslims accuse them of blasphemy and apostasy, and unreasonable anti-Islamists for whom there CAN BE no moderate Islam EVER, smash them even harder than they smash the true bad guys.

(3) Peace doesn't get press. If you get a moderate Muslim who wants to go on TV and talk about it, they're out of luck. Fox helps a bit, but they'd much rather pit a radical Muslim against a radical "nuke Mecca" ranter because it makes for better TV.

(4) CAIR makes sure they are the only voice of Islam in America. They are ROLLING, ROLLING, ROLLING in money. After Qatar lost the bid to control US ports, the government of Qatar gave CAIR $50 million dollars "to improve the image of Islam in America." That's a lot of money. But where there is money, there is influence of the media. Prince Alwaleed bragged that because he owns part of Fox News (actually a big chunk) he got the coverage "toned down" -- in the same way Champ wants to control the vibrancy of the language -- so Islam doesn't sound so bad on TV as you roll the film of the last child's decapitated head on the streets of Falluja, blown off by a market bomb.

(5) The US government is appeasing American radical Islam, so the moderates getting no support from the government. They have no big, monied legal fund to fight CAIR and others for harassment.

(6) Many moderate Muslims just feed themselves the line that they didn't do it, so it really isn't Islam that did all this stuff. Yes, it is, and that is denial.

(7) And then you have the suck-up-to-Al-Qaeda cowards and opportunists who know what the problem is and either won't deal with it or actually are making careers out of sucking off the problem like vampires.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 12:41 PM

Carolyn2 ... thanks. We are actually much closer than you think, but the specific things I've commented on so far are the ones on which we divererge most significantly. However, I'm see us well past 95% in agreement and enjoy your posts. I make sure I read them all in their entirety.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 12:43 PM

champ-

They will not answer her and not because of strong feeling, though they might pretend that is the reason. But questions do make people think even when they are left unanswered.

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007 12:50 PM

Morgaan Sinclair:

Allow me to compliment you on your passionate and impressive comments.

Do not be discouraged to do; so take the floor and use that podium at will my friend.

Regards
Mackie

Posted by: Mackie

at March 3, 2007 1:08 PM

One scholar. 600 years removed. One Bin Laden. Can a reasonable person really believe that such a link proves something about "mainstream Islamic theology"?

Does anyone besides me see a hole between this and...

Spencer is, unlike the average blog troll, actually aware of the juridical nature of Islam, and as such, a dialogue with him is not only possible, but refreshing. He recognizes that the best way of enunciating Islamic Law is to quote Islamic Jurists.

Big enough to drive a Mac truck through? Mr. Eteraz acknowledges that by quoting the right scholars from more than 600 years ago Mr Spencer is doing EXACTLY what is needed, islamically speaking, to draw accurate conclusions about mainstream islamic jurisprudence.

The latter remark is very gracious (even with the "troll" jab), and sets Mr. Eteraz apart from many of the polemicists we see ragging at Mr. Spencer. It is nice to see an apologist who is prepared to offer the sort of concession of respect for his opponent as Robert routinely does, which keeps the tone of this dialogue much higher than we are accustomed to seeing.

But small graces do not spare one from scrutiny in the matter of consistency: you cannot acknowledge, on the one hand, that your opponent is using correct methodology and, on the other hand, try to bring down his argument on the basis of that same methodology.

The gracious quote also leaves me wondering what the point of the foregoing grade-school lesson on the difference between jurisprudence and theology is for. Clearly Etaraz doesn't think he needs to educate Spencer on this point, though the lesson seems an expansion on the attempted "gotcha" that precedes it. Then he concedes that Spencer isn't in need of such a lesson. Perhaps the whole thing is just an aside to the reader, whom Eteraz doesn't credit with this knowledge. Fair enough.

But I can't escape the feeling that it is not Mr. Spencer, but himself, with whom Mr. Eteraz is really debating. If so, I hope he eventually wins.

I mean loses ... whatever.

Posted by: Archimedes2

at March 3, 2007 1:21 PM

"But I can't escape the feeling that it is not Mr. Spencer, but himself, with whom Mr. Eteraz is really debating. If so, I hope he eventually wins. I mean loses ... whatever."

Well said, Archimedes. Well said, indeed.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 1:28 PM

America's universities are not so much being "politicized" as they are being subverted into propagandistic indoctrination centers for Communist and Islamic ideology. This situation really stinks, I might add.

Universities are supposed to prepare American citizens for life. That can only be done through their teaching valid material to their students in earnest. If a school is going to teach a subject to thousands of it had better pony up with the cold facts of that subject in the lecture halls. Fabrications, distortions, and bogus political and moral analogies (such as equating Dick Cheney with Josef Stalin---a man who murdered tens of millions of Russian people under the banner of Communist ideology) being palmed off as facts by professorial quacks such as Ward Churchill (and Eteraz) and countless others are a true insult to the intelligence of the millions of Americans who went to colleges (often struggling to pay the tuition by working nights), worked hard, and who made earnest use of their degrees and what they learned through obtaining them.

One thing that no one will EVER learn from Islam, however, (in any form it takes) is RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE. Even in its spiritual incarnations (such as Sufism), extreme violence normally reigns supreme. This is built into the very fabric of the faith itself; I don't see this aspect of Islam changing at all.

Without life itself, there could be no ideology to guide, run, or ruin it. Muslims can not and certainly would never be willing to comprehend this reality as they continue to pretend that ideology can take precedence over life itself. I therefore send Muslims and Islam-apologists to wear a dunce cap and sit in the corner until further notice. That especially goes for Emory University and its Islam-apologists in its student body and faculty!

ps 'Champ'- you unknowingly provide a case in point of the failure of higher education in America; "gutts" is spelled "guts." What are "gutts"???

Posted by: pythagoras

at March 3, 2007 1:34 PM

Morgaan,
As valid as your points are, they don't get past the fact that the threat we face comes less from CAIR and more from WITHIN the Muslim world.

If "moderate" Muslims are unwilling to speak up and they're unwilling to form any kind of resistance or do anything that might get them a fatwa (remember Salman Rushdie) then they can't fight the radical islamists. What good are they to us? They won't help us. Either their own freedom means nothing to them or Islam means more. Which is it?

From the symposium posted on JW:

"Sudanese reformer Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed Taha (editor of Al-Wikaf in Khartoum) was beheaded by Islamists sympathetic to Al Qaradawi for the crime of apostasy because he merely printed an article which dared question the Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) ancestral lineage, despite the fact that he disagreed with the content of the article. This does not bode well for moderate Muslim voices. A second primary reason for the "silence" of moderate Muslims is the lack of a unified voice. There are many moderate Muslims in the West and in the Muslim world. However they often speak as lone voices. Moderate Muslims do not have a collective power base to be able to speak, in security, in a unified voice."

Do these moderates care about their future or their children's future? (Silly question considering how they offer them up for suicide!)

We can handle the people here who want to destroy us. The people around the world who want the same thing (I say they want it, since they refuse to condemn it. Fear is not an option.) are another matter. Do we close the country to all Muslims of all nationalities? Do we bomb them to the stone age in an act of preventive war? Will we be allowed to destroy a country the next time because "a few radicals" destroyed a major city in America?
Get real.

THERE ARE NO MODERATES.

IF THERE WERE, WE WOULD HAVE HEARD A WORLD-WIDE CRY OF ANGER AND DISBELIEF BY NINETY NINE PERCENT OF ALL MUSLIMS AT WHAT NINETEEN PEOPLE DID TO OVER THREE THOUSAND OFFICE WORKERS.

INSTEAD WE SAW PEOPLE DANCING IN THE STREETS! WE SAW BIN LADEN LIONIZED, NOT CONDEMNED. MODERATES SUPPORT BIN LADEN! MODERATES CALL OUT FOR JIHAD AGAINST ISRAEL. MODERATES APPLAUD THE DEATHS OF NON-MUSLIMS. THEIR SILENCE CAN BE DESCRIBED IN ONE WORD: DEAFENING!!!!!!

Posted by: PMK

at March 3, 2007 1:34 PM

Morgaan
Bravo!
I want to back you up in your perception that, distilled down to some kind of "essence," Islam is about controlling women's lives, and, distilled even further, their sexuality.
Qutb is clear evidence of that.
Theodore Dalrymple noted that, in his practice as a physician for inmates in a London prison, many young men from Muslim families did not practice Islam at all--they didn't pray, they did drugs, they didn't eat halal, they committed all sorts of crimes--but they had one thing in common: an obsession with their sisters' sexual purity.

D'Souza's appreciation of some nebulous, never thoroughly explained Muslim "patriarchal family values" in his latest book seems to be about the same issue, control of women's sexuality and freedom. When he talks about the left's depraved culture, it's always about what women do--or are allowed to do--in America, and, by extension, in Western culture. Britney Spears is utterly repugnant, I agree, but so are Hillary Clinton's attempts at removing children from family control and put them under the state's, one of the goals of communism.
The notion of victimhood at the hands of various entities--leftists, democrats, colonialists, imperialists--is not a conservative position. Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. Nobody held a gun to the head of the 9/11 terrorists. They freely chose to do what they did. They had free will, as all humans do, unless their thinking is impaired by disease or psychiatric disorder, and there's no evidence that has been the case in any of the Jihadist attacks since 9/11. Over and over again, we have evidence of a coherent, reasoned program on the part of the terrorists to attain a certain goal.

Posted by: ovidius_naso

at March 3, 2007 1:39 PM

PMK ...

Well, I know how you feel and it's frustrating. And angering. I'm really angry now at AMERICAN Muslims, almost as angry as at the shooting jihadists.

But I also know that across the world EVERY TIME the jihadists yell for Muslims to rise up and strike at the "infidel" they are met with crushing, deafening silence.

That's because, I think, most really don't agree and don't want to kill everybody else.

The problem is that because they don't scream bloody murder about what the radicals are doing, the well-funded jihad keeps chipping away at province after province in Muslim-majority countries.

Nigeria is a good example. The STATED goal of the Saudi-financed "Taliban" of Nigeria is to take 19 provinces so that they can declare shari'a law over all 36 in the country.

So far they have 14. Five more, and they've got the whole country.

Are people standing up? Yes, they are? They are fielding candidates to run against the people who are claiming the Islamic right to kill them for apostasy as soon as they put their names on the ballot.

The first targets of radical Islam are MUSLIMS. It is much harder for them to stand up than you might think, becuase the minute they do, they are dead.

In Iraq if a Sunni stands up against the insurgency, they're dead. Six men were killed this morning for "speaking with Shia's".

This is the extranational Islamic "police force" in action. Scores of Iraqi police are killed every week, but they keep trying.

These people deserve our support. The terrorist attacks on the West are just "entrainment hits" designed to make us back off.

What they should not do is divide us from Muslims who ARE fighting the radicals. Our support is crucial to them, so that making all Muslims the same is not only unwise, but unfair.

But we can do both at the same time: We can say, yes, you have to deal with the reform of this religion, because it predisposes it to violence against its neighbors, minorities, and women.

But even though we can say Islam must be reformed, we cannot say there are no Muslim moderates. There are. But most of the decent ones ARE NOT Americans.

The American Muslim community is the worst Muslim community outside the directly jihadist, terrorist supporting states like Iran and Syria, and groups like HAMAS and Hizbollah.

The American Muslim community is manipulative, spineless, hostile, whining, woman-subjugating, greedy, fat, self-righteous and addicted to rock star limelight mentality. It is the worst, most iresponsible Muslim community in the world, allowing Saudi riyals to buy its imamry and consenting to the most debased violence on earth by its unwillingness to stand up, even in an environmental the safety of which exists nowhere else on earth.

For me, the people like Konca Kouris and Abdel Kareem Soliman, the Egyptian blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison, and the 75-year-old Islamic feminist who just had a price put on her head by Al Azhar University imams, are people we should support. These whining, yellow, male chauvinist American Muslim limelight addicts aren't.

Period.

And, I understand how you feel. Notice, though, that the people dancing in the streets were Palestinians stoked on by HAMAS. When the twin towers fell, 100,000 Iranians hit the streets with candles and flashlights -- light so bright it could be seen from the Space Shuttle -- to tell us how sorry they were we had been attacked. Then the Iranian government had Cuba block the satellite signal of the Iranian expatriate TV station in Los Angeles that was bouncing of a Cuba ground station.

I will continue to do both things: support the real moderates (Esmay and Eteraz NOT being among them because they don't ahve the SPINE to be among them) and I will make sure that speak my mind as I see fit and encourage other to do so, also in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 1:58 PM

Morgaan Sinclair-

You are not a bully. The mind is a bully, not the heart. It's this calculating "gotcha" kind of thinking that is at the core of bulling and entrapment. It's that always watching, needing to control mind, that inventor of rules, that one-upmanship attitude, that is the bully. The mind is a monster without the heart. It must control "the other" because of insecurity. (There is something to this yin/yang stuff.)

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007 2:00 PM

Yup, Ovidius_naso ... that's the dead giveaway. PATRIARCHAL FAMILY VALUES.

That's how D'Souza is trying to appeal to conservative Christians. Now, it gets dicey here, because some Christians will actually think that fits fairly well with their point of view. And some VERY conservative Christians (like the Baptists in Texas) are turning women out of professorships on the basis of a Christian text that says "women shall not teach men". Overall, Christianity still bars women from the priesthood.

So D'Souza is hoping that based on these similarities of Islam with the MOST EXTREMIST EDGE OF CONSERVATIVE CHRISTANITY he can make a case for Christians to embrace Islam.

Of course, in most moderate and conservative Christian theology, barring of women from he priesthood notwithstanding, there is NOTHING LIKE THE KIND OF HOSTILITY AND ENSLAVEMENT OF WOMEN THAT GOES ON IN ISLAM.

And hopefully, the Christians will be smart enough NOT to take this gambit in order to tone down the raging moral and ethical equivalency that is taking down a whole family structure so that who winds up raising the country's children are poverty-stricken women who get no help from me.

But what nearly everybody is missing is that radical Islam is now working both sides of the question to try to neutralize American resistance to radical Islam:

On the left, they have been using the socialist international community, which is, as per usual, so lacking in ethics it's willing to sell out women worldwide and civilization in order to take down the USA as the principal power on the planet. Little do the Michael Moores of this world realize that once it's accomplished they'll be the first beheaded to get them out of the way. They're apostates because they have no religion. Just as one famous Muslim pundit told me I had "no religion" because I do not belong to an established church.

On the right, they are now trying to make a case that Christians should embrace Islam as a co-religional force for morality, knowing full well (as some Chrsitians don't seem to realize) that the end of this journey is forced conversion to Islam -- and a PATRIARCHAL FAMILY VALUE that includes stitching up a woman's vagina to prevent sexual intercourse, FGM in some cases, honor killings, incarceration in the home, forced marriage, loss of rights over child custody, inheritance, voting, driving, and education. And that rape goes unpunished except that you kill the woman who was raped because her family is now dishonored.

No Christian should buy this gambit. The endgame of this little chess game is forced conversion.

Gotta run. I leave this in your capable hands, Frank, PMK, Carolyn2, et al. I have to get some work done.

Thank you for the conversation and the support. I appreciate it.

Posted by: Morgaan Sinclair

at March 3, 2007 2:11 PM

pythagoras --

"Gutts" is urban slang for "guts". I sometimes you urban spelling in my posts :)

Posted by: champ

at March 3, 2007 2:13 PM

Back On Topic:

Robert's respectful rebuttals To Eteraz' gratuitous, unsubstantiated attacks, in Robert's traditional way of providing Islamic sources to validate his point, rather than faulty conjecture, is paramount to the discussion at hand and all subsequent discussions on the subject of Islamic ideology.

One need only have attended an institution of higher learning in the US, to have seen the adulteration of education first hand, ahistorical and manipulated to assist in the spread of leftist propoganda. My time spent there was nearly 20 years ago, and what I know now, comparative to what I was told then, is like night to day. With the further spread of the malaise of PC Multiculturalism, in the last twenty years, one can only conclude that the problem has gotten worse.

Mr. Eteraz, in his attempt to represent himself as a reformist, an admirable quality if true, falls short on the substance of his arguments. He speaks of reformation taking place, but as Robert points out, words not supported by meaningful action ring hollow and leaves one underwhelmed by the quality of reform currently taking place.

This site is aptly name Jihad Watch, for it is the central point, how jihad is derived directly as a mandate from the immutable texts of Islamic ideology, and applied by Islamists with little to no resistence from the so-called reformists within the Muslim world. Saying Robert is mistaken on this point without providing a substantiated winning argument otherwise, is just another example of empty dialogue bereft of any real value.

Once the re-clarification of putting Islam and it's influence properly back at the source is accepted, before commenting on the words and actions of the individual Muslim, only then can meaningful dialoge and debate resume.

Indeed, jihad against the unbelievers is mandated in the Qur'an. This ideological belief was not properly abrogated from the texts of Islam, and continues to exist and thrive in the Muslim world today because of it. The gates of ijtihad are indeed closed currently and have been for about 1000 years now. These gates do need to be opened again for Islam to undergo it's necessary reformation and to not be considered the "enemy" by all things outside of Islam.

When one considers that the texts of Islam have not been "meaningfully" altered in about 1000 years, altered to renounce the mandate of jihad against all non-Muslims, Robert's referential sources, Islamic scholars from 600 years ago, and how they shaped Islam as applied today, it really isn't a stretch at all, now is it?

Posted by: awake

at March 3, 2007 2:14 PM

"politicians and pundits should abstain from entering the academy...."
-- from Ali Eteraz, quoted above

Ah, The Academy. The Sacred Groves of Academe. Where quiet scholars, free from the hustle and bustle of life, conducting their disinterested study of the past, especially when it comes to Islam and the Middle East, quietly convey to students the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, with nothing left out, nothing extenuated, and then go on to lay out the 1350-year history of Islamic conquest, Islamic suppression of all the non-Muslim peoples who, in their own lands now conquered by Islam, they were killed, or forcibly converted, or made to endure the status of dhimmi (for the Hindus, at least, this was an improvement over being killed, by the tens of millions over several hundred years, or forcibly converted -- their descendants are the Muslims of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, not to mention those who have made it to the non-Muslim lands of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States), that is the condition of deliberately inflicted humiliation, degradation, and permanent physical insecurity, "protected peoples" who were to be most imperfectly "protected," if they acquiesced in such status, from the Muslims themselves.

"The Academy..."

Rashid Khalidi. Joseph Massad. Hamid Dabashi with his Ode to Edward Said (google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said"). A thousand others, including Sells with his carefully-bowdlerized (wouldn't want to scare the women and children) Qur'an, inflicted on unsuspecting freshmen at the University of North Carolina by another apologist, Carl Ernst.

"The Academy..."

With the so-called "Arab feminist" Abu-Lughod's praise of the burqa as "portable seclusion." With others denouncing in their so-called archeological works the Israelis for daring to discover -- just imagine -- archeological evidence of the Jewish presence in Israel. With a thousand others, all of them members of MESA Nostra, providing the kind of misinformation and disinformation about Islam, and everything connected to Islam, including the various Lesser Jihads in and out of the Middle East, who populate "The Academy" -- at least in those parts of it devoted to Islam and the MIddle East-- of which Eteraz would like us to be, perhaps himself is, so impressed.

For more on this particular subset of "The Academy" google "MESA Nostra." You may even enter the "MESA Nostra Contest" -- new entries are now being accepted.

Posted by: Hugh

at March 3, 2007 2:14 PM

The human mind is the creator of systems and mind is good when it in touch with reality and feeling and does not become ruled by feeling. However, it becomes a monster when all that matters is the system, the calculation, the control. I guess the yin/yang has to be in balance. I don't know a lot about that, but the yin/yang concept(intuitively) strikes me as being true.

Islam is the control principle in overdrive. It's the face of the Ayatollah Khomeini saying "don't do that" and pointing to some rule. (I'm sure Khomeini was a real fun guy, good company for humor.)

Posted by: Frank

at March 3, 2007