I enjoyed the read...thanks..

Posted by: exsgtbrown at May 9, 2007 8:03 AM

In his limp riposte to initial criticism at this website "Spengler" deplores what he describes as "the sophomoric method of pasting quotations into one's copy-book is insufficient." Who can disagree? Who could possibly be in favor of "the sophomoric method of pasting quotations into one's copy-book"? Who could possibly beg to differ from the proposition that "the sophomoric method of pasting quotations into one's copy-book is insufficient." Not I, dear reader. Not you. No one.

What I, and you too, dear reader, object to is "Spengler's" reductive description of Robert Spencer's books as engaging n the "sophomoric method of pasting quotations" into his "copy-book" which, we are all agreed, if done would indeed be "insufficient." And we object to it because that is not Spencer's method, and because what he presents is not an enantiomorph of Karen Armstrong, but something quite different. And it is true that he spends a good deal of time quoting from Muslim sources, from the canonical texts of Qur'an, Hadith (Bukhari and Muslim), Sira,and explains just why these texts matter so much, and further explains how Muslims deal with what we non-Muslims readily perceive as the Qur'an's inconsistencies, or incompletenesses, and how they decide which Hadith to treat as authentic and authoritative and which to treat as less so, or not at all, and how they regard Muhammad, and what he said, and what he did, as recorded in both Hadith and in the Sira (the biography of Muhammad). And then, to offer further guidance as to what Muslims have, over the past centuries, been taught to believe, Spencer provides the evidence of Muslim commentators, Muslim jurisconsults from both Sunni and Shi'a Islam, and within Sunni Islam, the four main schools of Sunni jurisprudence (and where they differ and where they overlap), and wjat Muslim historians, Muslim philosophers, over many centuries, have written. And finally, he relates these texts, these tenets, these attitudes, to what Muslims today, from Al-Qaradawi to Ayatollah Khomeini to Bin Laden to the Sheik al-Azhar, write, say, think.

This is not , pace "Spengler," mere "pasting of quotations into a copy-book." This is not "sophomoric." This is not "insufficient." Spencer has set himself the task of mass pedagogy, in a field where everyone thinks he can have his say (who has not pronounced himself on the subject of Islam -- everyone from Timothy Garton Ash to Martha Nussbaum, it seems, simply "knows" what Islam is all about).

"Spengler" should know when to stop digging.

As for the further comment that "they are Muslims for existential reasons," well -- it's not a phrase I can take seriously. Can you?

Posted by: Hugh at May 9, 2007 8:13 AM

Spengler is fun to read, but he has never constructed a coherent viewpoint the way Robert has. Spengler produces sparks, but little heat or light.

Posted by: Omega Brown at May 9, 2007 8:29 AM

I continue to learn a great deal from the articles and rebuttals on this site. Many thanks.

Posted by: Josephine at May 9, 2007 8:39 AM

Some things can only be seen and understood from the outside. A sleeping man is "inside of" the world of sleep but at the moment his intellect knows nothing of sleep. A dead animal has an "inside track" on death but knows nothing of death.

I think Islam is the same way. Only one who has rejected Islam can truly understand it for embracing it requires the shutting down of a lot of reasoning ability.

Curious how Jesus (be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves) and Paul (make sure of all things) both commanded us to use our heads and think about things, but did Mohammad ever once command his followers to think everything through?

Posted by: IAmFree at May 9, 2007 8:46 AM

Robert explains why he takes the time to reply to Spengler:

"It is, as always, an exercise designed to help equip people who may find themselves confronted by the same arguments."

I've crudely calculated that over the past 5 months I have spent approx. 4.5 hours a day reading Spencer, Fitzgerald, Hirsi Ali, Warraq et al. I sometimes feel like my brain will explode soon with all of this critical information. Thank you Robert and Hugh. I for one am better "equipped" because of your efforts. Don't stop writing. Don't ever stop.

Posted by: Leave Iraq Now at May 9, 2007 8:47 AM

I too have spent a lot of time studying the jihad from Mr Spencer, et al over the last 1 1/2 yrs and at times feel as though my head will explode. And thank you for enlightening me. Now I also take the time to explain to friends and acquaintances what I have learned and have made more than a few "converts" to the Crusade.
Please keep up the great work.
Keep the faith!!

Posted by: the czar at May 9, 2007 9:01 AM

There are some patently wrong assertions that Spengler is making without any basis. A few of them are

--They are human beings in profound anguish, many of whom turn desperate and destructive.

Spengler here is talking about terrorists who blow up planes and trains and kill innocent beings who unfortunately are not in that 'profound anguish'.

--The Koran is not a self-help book, nor it is it a political manifesto; it is an existential stance with respect to the world.

As Robert eloquently put it this is just 'puffery'. It is Spengler's worldview to see Koran as a existential stance or terrorists as human beings in profound anguish that is his fancy but not necessarily reality.

---Muslims do not check off a list of precepts, good or ill; they are Muslims for existential reasons

This is the worst of all. All the value judgements(and actions that follow) of Muslims come off of a checklist of precepts good or ill(halal/haram). The checklist is provided in Koran(and Hadith). Spengler invents an existential choice for Muslims where none exists.

Also Spengler berates the Pope in the full article on esoteric philosophical point of whether God created the world out of Love or not without answering the question raised by Pope on what is the new in the teachings of Mohammed which is not evil.

RT

Posted by: RT at May 9, 2007 9:01 AM

On the one hand, Spengler is incredibly wrong to miss the importance of Robert Spencer's work.

On the other hand, I wonder if Spencer has misunderstood what Spengler meant by being "inside" Islam. Robert Spencer took that to mean that Spengler is saying one must be a Muslim to comment on it. But couldn't Spengler have meant something else by "inside": that any good poet, whether Muslim or not, gets inside an experience and then renders that back to the reader as an experience, i.e., a qualitative, not abstract, living whole. Robert works in prose, and is an awe-inspiring master of history and facts and logic of Islam. Spengler is totally wrong to underrate the importance of that logical, factual, prose approach, and to suggest that the kind of accuracy to which Robert Spencer attains does not involve empathy. But just as autobiography can take one inside history and make it an experience full of color and smells and grit and agony and pleasure, and do so in a concrete way that a prose historian, however great, cannot do, so perhaps Spengler was suggesting that any sufficiently good poet can get inside the experience of Islam in a way that a purely logical, factual account cannot do. Robert Spencer conveys, among many other useful things, a huge and indispensible knowledge of the working parts of Islam. That knowledge in general is an abstract, not a qualitative or experiential or aesthetic or emotional sort of knowledge. Spengler should know that both sorts of knowledge are essential and should be integrated.

One of Spengler's many errors in this situation has perhaps been that he does not see that a Robert Spencer needs great empathy to penetrate Islam accurately from without inward, as it were -- at least as much empathy as the poet needs to adequately express a thing from so to speak from within outward.

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 9:20 AM

Does Spengler consider himself an insider of Islam, JihadWatch, DhimmiWatch? Where is Spengler's empathy for Robert Spencer, Hugh Fitzgerald, Orianna Fallaci, Bat Ye’or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali,Ibn Warraq, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Tashbih Sayyed, or Ali Sina, or so many others?

It certainly does not appear that Mr. Spengler has 'read' the material, or perhaps it is his own lack of comprehension/empathy. Pathetic.

Posted by: justamomof4 at May 9, 2007 9:55 AM

Sounds like Spenglerian backpedalling when all that is needed is an admission by him that he did not consider the relative weight of the authors (Spencer and Armstrong) seriously, at first, and was speaking shallowly and glibly because he had a poetic fish to fry.

Perspective requires an inside and outside view.

Why poke out one eye?

It's always the cover-up that makes things worse than a simple acknowledgement of originally being mistaken.

Adonis makes many good points.

And so does Mr. Spencer.

Spengler, not so much.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 9, 2007 10:11 AM

The dreamy belief that the "poet" is different from the rest of us is both a fallacy, and pathetic, though not a pathetic fallacy strictu senso. There are good poets, and bad, poets -- and prose writers -- who are capable of getting inside the minds of others, by dint of knowledge and the exercise of the imaginative faculty. When Keats said he could identify with a pigeon pecking on the street, or with boxers in a boxing match (if I remember those "Letters" from classes long ago) he was showing that he too possessed what he identified in Shakespeare as "negative capability."

Does "Spengler" think that only those capable of arranging lines in a form that looks something like verse have this ability, this "negative capability" to get "inside Islam"? And does he think that those who call themselves "poets" and produce "poems" (or, more generally, call themselves "writers" as, at last count, half-a-million souls did in this country so full of the goddam "creative" who have taken those courses, common as much, in "creative writing," taught by all kinds of people, so many churning out their unreadable stuff that it merely clogs the distribution channels, and uses up attention, that might be better paid to the real thing, which may appear in all sorts of guises. See, on this, the tart, and far-from-saintly (despite rumors about her future sainthood that have reached me from inside the Vatican) Flannery O'Connor, suggesting dourly that far from needing more encouragement, would-be writers in this country have not been discouraged enough.

What an innocent. What a naif. "Poets" can get "inside Islam." And only "poets" -- not someone such as Robert Spencer, who bothers to read the texts, read the history of Islam, and -- not incidentally -- has known (as I have) all kinds of Muslims, up close and personal, in his life. No, it's that line or two by Adonis, it's those "poets" who are not only the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but who see, merely by being called, or calling themselves, "poets," who have those profound insights that do not require knowledge, or the diligent application of that knowledge to matters at hand. "Spengler" prefers the empathetic identification with "Arab" despair (what about "Pakistani" despair? what about "Iranian" despair? What about all kinds of other Muslims in their "despair" at not being able to confront the position of Islam in the world, and certainly unable to confront, in their own brains, the dim realization that it is Islam itself that explains the failures -- political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual -- of Muslims all over the world, and for a very long time?).

On Keats and Shakespeare negative capability looks good. But when "Spengler" suggests that this negative capability is the sole province of poets, he is offering up merely the romantic crap of the semi-lettered.

Posted by: Hugh at May 9, 2007 10:12 AM

The poets Asmā bint Marwān, Abu 'Afak, and Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, all penetrated to the very core of Muhammad and his invention. It cost them their lives.

Posted by: alexon at May 9, 2007 11:54 AM

If reliance on prose writing and logical analysis - mischaracterized as "pasting quotations into one's copybook" is sophomoric, then sole reliance on poetry and emoting as being somehow "honester" or more accurate is, well...freshman.

Posted by: freedomschool at May 9, 2007 12:53 PM

Hugh wrote:

when "Spengler" suggests that this negative capability is the sole province of poets, he is offering up merely the romantic crap of the semi-lettered.

Yes. Spengler's whole approach seems to be skewed toward a one-sided subjectivism. First he says, in effect, that the Quran and any other book are infinitely malleable as to interpretation: that anyone can make anything of them, and that quotation in the service of analysis is of little use regardless of who does it or how. Then, after thus jettisoning even the possibility of even an asymptotic approach toward objectivity, he goes on to celebrate the poet -- and perhaps he intends other artists as well -- as the exclusive possessor of a means to get inside or empathize with something.

Robert Spencer seems to have misunderstood Spengler to mean that only a Muslim could get inside Islam, when Spengler seems to have meant that only a poet could get inside anything. Robert Spencer's mistake, if in fact he made the one I suggest, is something like a typo, an oversight, or perhaps a result of unclarity in Spengler's prose; whereas Spengler's mistake in privileging poets alone vis-a-vis knowledge is a profound one.

Spengler spoils his point by taking it to an absurd extreme. Poets -- and here I don't mean anyone who decides to call himself that, nor do I pretend to know exactly what a poet is, only that he is not just whatever anyone arbitrarily chooses to call a poet -- poets do, of course, usually do something different from what scientists or writers on matters-of-fact are doing, even if the scientific process has metaphor or imagination at its core, and even if real poetry has cognition in its core.

Wasn't it C.P. Snow who wrote The Two Cultures? Wasn't that supposed to be about overcoming the impermeable walls of hostility and incomprehension raised between the sciences and the humanities, and about the idea that some kind of integration is needed, since art is in fact cognitive, and science is in fact imaginative? That book was written in the 1950s, I believe. Where has Spengler been?

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 1:31 PM

"The dreamy belief that the "poet" is different from the rest of us is both a fallacy, and pathetic..."

Thank you, Hugh Fitzgerald, for hitting the nail on the head.

There is a place for empathy but emotion is not the main focus of scholarly analysis of religious texts and practices. I've known a few good people that are Muslims and I have empathy towards them but they have taught me nothing about Islam, the Koran, Islamic fundamentalists, jihad, etc.

If I want to learn about a religion, I will go to someone who has studied the texts and who is as impartial as possible (which rules out anyone who is proselytizing).

I went to a counselor once. She was extremely empathic and I liked her. But I lost respect for her when she gave me her unscientific theories about some of the illnesses that I have. She's great at empathy but when it comes to medicine she's a quack.

Posted by: Josephine at May 9, 2007 1:50 PM

Robert said:

Every time I do this, people comment, "Don't waste your time, because so-and-so is an idiot," or "too prejudiced to see the truth," or whatever.

I've come to the conclusion that engaging and replying to these people is very important. It's important to keep up the dialogue, and keep pointing out the reality of the Jihadist mindset based on Islam's teachings. They should be challenged and corrected, and not allowed to have the last word. Keep it up, Robert.

Posted by: Proud Infidel at May 9, 2007 2:41 PM

Spengler's allusion to "comic book villains" is an unfortunate choice of words, as no person has ever been killed by a comic book villain. Or ever will be.

BUT--

Something like 300 million unfortunate human beings have been murdered by Islam's institutionalization of first degree murder aka jihad over the past 13 centuries. And it isn't slowing down now.

This guy Spengler is basically another idiot letting the jihadist murderers off the hook, but is clouding the issue (and his complicity) with phony 'existential' issues. Islam teaches first degree murder as it always has through the Kuran's homicidal prose; this is probably because it evolved out of the human sacrifice sects that were once prevalent in the Middle East since the Mesopotamian age. Notice if you will that killing has never once stopped being on the Islamic religious/political agenda; neither for the "infidels" nor the Muslims themselves (as we see in the Shia-Sunni schism). Spengler can cloud the issue all he wants; the sad fact is that killing of non-Muslims is and always has been part and parcel of Islam (vis-a-vis the Kuran). Islamic terror and bloodshed will be with us until we find a way to rid the world of this unimaginable horror.

Comic book villains? If only it were so.

Posted by: pythagoras at May 9, 2007 2:55 PM

There are any number of problems in Mr. Spencer's approach, of which I will mention two:
1) Mohammed may never existed, and
2) If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Qu'ran, which well might be an 8th- or 9th-century compilation.
If that is the case, writing biographies of Mohammed and citing the Koran may be entirely beside the point. I do not know whether this is the case, partly because the threat of violence has driven Qu'ranic text criticism underground and it is difficult to get qualified scholars to address the issue.
One reason that the Qu'ran contains so much contradictory material (such that the odious Karen Armstrong can quote it as readily as the estimable Mr. Spencer) might well be that it is a later compilation derived from disparate sources. Part of the problem in addressing this issue is that Christians and Jews are uncomfortable with text criticism of their own Scriptures. I do not believe that the Documentary Hypothesis destroys Biblical authority (as Rosenzweig said, R can stand for Rabbeinu), but that is a different matter.
Obviously I do not mean to say that one has to be a Muslim in order to understand Islam. Kierkegaard is one of the most perceptive writers on Jewish faith (if we believe Heschel and Wyschogrod), while Rosenzweig is one of the best theologians of Christianity. What I mean, and have said in print on numerous occasions, is that the existential theology of Kierkegaard, Barth, Rosenzweig and -- yes -- Ratzinger provides keys to understanding what Islam actually is, and how Muslims actually think. My objection to Mr. Spencer is precisely what he concedes: that is a long time since he read Kierkegaard. Actually, I would recommend beginning with Rosenzweig and working backwards.
This is a very simple point: to approach a religious conflict without the tools of theology is like going to a gunfight without a gun. Otherwise, criticism of Islam is likely to be arbitrary, superficial and impoverished.

The trouble is that apart from Pope Benedict, who threw a few pebbles into the minefield and then backed off, Western theologians have not had the temerity to pursue the direction of theological analysis that Rosenzweig set forth. The heavy divisions of the West have sat in reserve, leaving lightly-armed skirmishers like Mr. Spencer to throw themselves into the breach with inadequate intellectual armament.

I elaborated this point here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HJ03Aa03.html

The intellectual poverty of American policy-making on the right is to some extent responsible for the setback that the West has suffered in Iraq. By failing to understand what it was dealing with, the Administration lost popular support for the war on terror (a poor characterization to begin with) and has limited the options of the West. Without intellectual rigor on these issues, America is likely to make more mistakes, and risk losing the great civilizational war now in progress. I respect Mr. Spencer's good intentions, but I reiterate: it isn't good enough.

Posted by: Spengler at May 9, 2007 2:56 PM

The above post, by the individual referring to himself/herself as "Spengler", I find incredibly amusing.

I think I know what the "problem" is -- it's two different ways of seeing the world...East vs West.

Let's see. First, the poster alleges that Mo might not have existed. Yes, indeed, that may very well be true. Unfortunately, that says absolutely nothing about approx. 1 billion people in the world who do, presumably, believe in said individual's existence. Suppose on planet X, 1 billion people believe in the existence of an Alien Being Called Zeon. Would you or would you not wish to know something about what the 1 billion people claim about Zeon? Would it be of importance that, in actuality, Zeon never existed?

Suppose further, for the people of Planet X, that Zeon was alleged to have written a "holy" text. Would you (say as an aspiring anthropologist) not be interested in what the followers of Zeon claimed was stated in these "religious" texts?

Now, back to earth. Of course, one can do a search for "the historical Mo" -- and come up empty handed. Or do a historical exegesis of the text (as per the 19th century for the Bible) -- and again, so what?

The remainder of your post is puerile and off topic. Why begin attacking Robert Spencer? Do you think that this builds you up?

Then, of course, not content to simply disparage Spencer, you proceed to attack American "right-wingers" for failures in Iraq -- o gee, how original! how insightful! Followed, of course, by a series of conclusions (no evidence, of course, to support any of your contentious conclusions), just blind accusations.

Once again, the West meets East. Chalk it up to a wholly different (or the Eastern, non scholarly, counter logical) way of viewing the world.

If you actually expect readers to follow your link, dream on.

Posted by: J.S. at May 9, 2007 3:36 PM

what a windbag

Posted by: hierophant at May 9, 2007 3:38 PM

If you walk past a large bucket of festering shit logic should tell the individual, assuming they are of sound mind, that it should be avoided or better still disposed of. Failure to do so could be bad for one's health.

Spengler believes that before you arrive at this conclusion you have to immerse yourself in the bucket of shit while reading poetry and quoting Rosenzweig.

What puffery indeed!

Posted by: hierophant at May 9, 2007 3:49 PM

Yeah, "working backwards" (I'm quoting) is probably "Spengler's" best hope of attaining "intellectual rigor on these issues."

Posted by: J.S. at May 9, 2007 3:49 PM

And if we needed any "synopsis" we'd only have to take a videotape recording of "Spengler" eating a cracker, then running it in reverse...Et voila! vomit!

Posted by: J.S. at May 9, 2007 3:52 PM

There are a billion and half Muslims- says Spengler and that's the first thing he gets wrong. Islam always loves to inflate it's numbers and Spenglrer has fallen for it. More like 1.2 billion tops http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_numb.htm

Posted by: dennisw at May 9, 2007 3:56 PM

I respect Spengler's good intentions but that isn't good enough. I give him props for posting here. Billion+ Muslims believe in Muhammad, that he existed, that he dictated the Koran. So that is our starting point.

Posted by: dennisw at May 9, 2007 4:04 PM

Greetings to you Mr. Spengler:
You said:

There are any number of problems in Mr. Spencer's approach, of which I will mention two:
1) Mohammed may never existed, and
2) If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Qu'ran, which well might be an 8th- or 9th-century compilation.
If that is the case, writing biographies of Mohammed and citing the Koran may be entirely beside the point. I do not know whether this is the case, partly because the threat of violence has driven Qu'ranic text criticism underground and it is difficult to get qualified scholars to address the issue.

I am aware of your #1 and #2 above, but don't quite see why those are a problem with Robert Spencer's approach. He works to elucidate not what actually happened, but what Muslims -- or huge numbers of them -- believe happened, believe about Islamic law and so on. Is that not a vitally necessary service to render a world that is surely misled and ignorant about what Muslims believe?

You are saying that what Spencer is doing is not sufficient, but probably you mean to be a little bit more critical than such a mild reproach suggests. After all, what in human endeavors is ever sufficient? Anyway you've said something of what you meant by insufficiency here: that we need an existential and theological depth knowledge in order to help us really understand Islam and the stance we should take toward it. You are suggesting that there is a deeper kind of knowledge that Robert Spencer is not providing. You suggest a more empathic and poetic approach is needed.

Let me suppose for the sake of discussion that you have at least an inkling of what you are talking about when you refer to a "deeper" existential and theological knowledge. My question to you would be this: Are there any major errors of concrete fact in Spencer's work that you can point to? Because if you find no major factual or logical errors in that work, then surely any existential depth knowledge, of the kind to which you refer, can only arise most soundly based on absorption of and interchange with the more "superficial" knowledge you attribute to Spencer. If existentialist theologians and poets have not learned their more mundane ABCs, then the flower of depth that those poets of Islam produce will be, though perhaps beautiful in its way, warped, won't it? And unnecessarily vulnerable for want of basic information about what Muslims believe.

So even if Robert Spencer is only teaching Westerners the alphabet -- that is, if not depth knowledge, a sine qua non for sound knowledge of the depths, isn't it? I can understand finding things to criticize Spencer about, but your rather wholesale dismissal of his work -- or so it sounded to me -- appears wrong-headedly divorced from an important class of facts that are as important as any dialectic or poetic clairvoyance you suppose can be brought to bear. You seem to think that what constitutes an adequate interpretation of the Quran is something not just elastic, but infinitely so. That extreme form of subjectivism leads you to underrate the empirical, reportorial, and logical approach of Robert Spencer, and to overrate the poetic. Both approaches are essential, both interact and are fundamentally interrelated while yet remaining distinctive. The West needs the rigorous down-to-earth reportorial and observational work Spencer is doing to understand Islam and to educate the public, which is short on good sources of information.

Anyway, glad to see you show up and say something here.

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 4:04 PM

Faith is a subjective matter, and objective and reportorial methods may not get at it. Rosenzweig in the Star begins not with Torah interpretation but with the Jewish prayer book, the week, Sabbath, the daily action of being Jewish. By the same token, any standard Muslim prayer book available on the Internet will tell you more about Islam than the Qu'ran: the Jewish prayer book has ten times as many pages as the Muslim prayer book has lines of text. It is not prayer at all in the Jewish or Christian sense; most of the difficulty in learning prayer is learning physical stances (rather like close-order drill). But I have written this all before, and at great length.
Put the matter another way: let us posit that the Qu'ran is not a coherent document of divine authorship, but an incoherent and internally contradictory compilation. What does it tell us about people who insist upon Qu'ranic literalism? One answer might be that they are the instruments of the religious establishment that interprets the Qu'ran, but that is insufficient; why should they be that? The intense loyalty of Muslims to Islam must go beyond belief in the text, for the text does not permit itself to be believed in by its very nature.
Again, the tools of theology (and in particular the existential theology of Rosenzweig) are a miner's lamp that allows us to navigate through this Cave of Wonders. What I have written is at best commentary on Rosenzweig and a few other theologians. The fact that the defenders of the West have left behind their heavy armament and gone to war with sticks and stones helps explain the setbacks of the Right in the "War on Terror." I oppose Islamism. I want to destroy it. But America has lost, not gained ground in the past two years. If that is not a good reason for a critique of method, what possibly could be?

Posted by: Spengler at May 9, 2007 4:20 PM

Mr. (Herr?) Spengler:

I enjoyed reading your thoughtful response to the posting above. There is a problem that I have in the material quoted from your blog site, however. It is the second to last sentence in which you state: "But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy." I disagree with your sense of priority. In order to to have any chance of defeating your enemy, you must first recognize that you have an enemy.

I agree with you in that understanding the mindset of one's enemy is an absolute necessity in developing an effective defense. But rather than employing a religious/philosophical template in orer to consider this problem, I think it more expedient to consider Islam as a social pathology, in which the "Us versus Them" is codified and sealed in a bond of circular thinking. Knowing this, appreciating this, would be more practical and effective in drafting a domestic and foreign policy capable of surviving the tide of such fanaticism. It would also allow for the reaching out to those in the Moslem community who wish to escape from that world.

Posted by: Chatillon at May 9, 2007 4:21 PM

Spengler, thanks for the response. I'm working on my response to your response now. -- Cheers

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 4:27 PM

I would characterize Spengler's approach as 'you don't just need to know what your enemy thinks, you need to know why he thinks it.' In this context, discussion of existential anguish is more than intellectual puffery.

This, I think, is a shortcoming of Spencer's approach that may be more adequately approached in poetry.

Posted by: Tuor at May 9, 2007 4:29 PM

I have always believed, and have written in dozens of published essays, that Islamism is the enemy of Western freedom, and I have disagreed with those (e.g. Daniel Pipes) who seek to distinguish Islamism from Islam. I have cast doubt on the likelihood that "moderate Islam" (ie, Islam as a religion of personal conscience) might ever exist (in contrast to the poet Adonis, who advocates such a transformation of Islam). There Mr. Spencer and I agree. But Adonis is a far more effective critic of Islam than Spencer (or I, for that matter): he tells Muslims that Islam not only prohibits the objective conditions for progress, but stunts the personality of the individual. His poetry makes this horrifyingly vivid. It may not be great poetry (I do not read Arabic and do not presume to judge) but it is quite effective in this regard. As I noted, his view overlaps in some respects with Rosenzweig.

This is a discourse of a different nature than the one that Messrs. Spencer and Fitzgerald has provided, and it pulverizes the Karen Armstrong point of view. By taking the Qu'ran at face value and performing a critique, Spencer et. al. address Muslims on issues for which they (and their apologists) have a pat response. It is ineffective. It comes across as caviling.

No-one should underestimate the intelligence of Muslims; there are tens of millions of young Muslims who read such writers as Adonis (he is universally known to educated Arabs). They know that Islam is in crisis. The West will win some of them over, and fight some of the rest. The more who are won over, the less horrible the fight. Reciting the sins of Islam (which are legion) does nothing; they will say, what about the Inquisition, the extinction of Amalek, etc. etc.? Addressing their existential trap is a different matter. That requires a set of skills that can be learned -- I assert -- from Rosenzweig, Kierkegaard, Barth and others.

Posted by: Spengler at May 9, 2007 4:51 PM

Mr. Spengler - Somewhat along the lines of what Chatillon posted, it seems to me that Spencer's work may be most useful in terms of telling the infidel what HE most needs to know about how Islam sees HIM. For that, an objective and rational focus (in western terms), rather a poetic, subjective explanation from the Muslim's POV, would be needed. At the point at which we're at, vast numbers of people in the west are perhaps already too much seduced by concerns about how Muslims subjectively experience their faith, which is why as Chatillon points out, they can't even conceive of Islam as the enemy. That empathy for Muslims is what disarms the west from taking the necessary measures he needs to defend himself - things like returning to a strategy of containment and separation. They can't defeat us militarily. They can only defeat us from the inside. So the main priority needs to be convincing westerners that the texts actually DO say what they say about infidels and the Muslim right to dominate them etc (this alone would be unbelievable to most westerners since they project their own religious values onto Muslims) so that they will begin to grasp that the threat is real and that we need to take steps like stopping Muslim immigration. The right doesn't even understand that because large numbers of them are still projecting their religious values onto Muslims. In short, I think we need more objectivism at this point rather than more empathy.

If we are interested in the subjective matter of what it is that keeps Muslims believing in Islam so strongly, maybe we should study what makes cults and brainwashing so effective.

Posted by: Caroline at May 9, 2007 5:05 PM

Spengler,

Ah! Now I see. omg -- I don't believe that Robert Spencer wants (or desires) a Muslim audience! That's not to whom he's primarily writing. The audience is to "Infidels". No one underestimates the intelligence of Muslims...we are far more apt to underestimate the "intelligence" of our Western "elites"...It's the UK Brits (and the State Dept.) who decry the Turkish military from threatening to step in to stop the religious fanatics...these people in the West are as much a problem as the religious Muslim fanatics.

Posted by: J.S. at May 9, 2007 5:29 PM

"Spengler":

Good to see you here, but your persistent characterization of my work as mere Qur'an-quote-mongering, equivalent to Armstrong's in the opposite direction, indicates that you know nothing about what I really say, and probably haven't read any of my books or articles.

Another indication of this is your adducing the point that Muhammad may never have existed, or that the Qur'an is the product of historical development, as if these points damage my thesis. In reality, I discuss both at some length in my book The Truth About Muhammad.

Accordingly, I find it hard to take your criticism seriously, although I thank you for it.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Posted by: jihadwatch at May 9, 2007 5:39 PM

Q- Who reads poetry for ammunition to defend Western Civilization from Imperialistic Islam?

A- (Crickets chirping)

We're trying to expose a terroristic ideology, whether it was founded by one lunatic or an amalgam. And find ways to defeat it.

If Arabs and Muslims are in anguish, let them start killing the terrorists in their midst with a little more prosaic fervor and a little less blank verse.

Or, in a poem:

Mohammad,
hearing voices
pinched a faith,
of past rejoices,
then demanded
all must bow
to his stolen,
sacred cow.

1400 years of terror
from one godforsaken error.

I love poetry, but I think I'll survive by prose.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 9, 2007 6:39 PM

Spengler states..."but we are in a crisis, and need to use the best tools available to deal with it. Muslims are not comic-book villains. They are human beings in profound anguish, many of whom turn desperate and destructive. I am not saying this can be solved with therapy! One has to meet violent force with superior violent force, period. But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy. Ticking off the bad guy’s bad points doesn’t do the job."

What rubbish!! Would you suggest that we "get inside the mind" of Hitler? Poor misguided and misunderstood Hitler. Hugs to Hitler! Perhaps if we simply listened to his anguish and suffering more, or put him through therapy, and even empathized with him a little more, than maybe he never would have carried out him evil plan.

These aren't 'broken hearts' that we are dealing with -- these are 'evil hearts' we are fighting against.

Evil hearts spawned by an evil prophet, who wrote an evil book, which is producing evil followers. This is evil, pure and simple; and evil doesn't have room for your empathy anyway.

That's how I see it.

Posted by: champ at May 9, 2007 7:00 PM

Hi again, Spengler. You wrote:

Faith is a subjective matter, and objective and reportorial methods may not get at it.

I don't think I said they would "get at it," if by that you mean produce a completely sufficient understanding. I said, I think, that reportorial, logical and observational methods are an essential part of "getting at it," and that you seem to underrate those methods. Unless I'm mistaken, you are speaking rather like a farmer who wants to grow a flower without bothering about carefully worked soil. Or if you want existentialism, recall that Merleau-Ponty said that though Hegel was mistaken to think history "walks on its head," Marx was also wrong to think that all we need consider are history's feet. To Merleau-Ponty, it was the whole body of history that should be considered. There is an analogy here between the mistake you make and the one Hegel made.

Rosenzweig in the Star begins not with Torah interpretation but with the Jewish prayer book, the week, Sabbath, the daily action of being Jewish. By the same token, any standard Muslim prayer book available on the Internet will tell you more about Islam than the Qu'ran:

I guess you say this because you think Robert Spencer bases himself on Quran interpretation? Spencer knows much more than the Quran. He knows Islamic history in depth, he knows the various hadith collections, he knows tafsir, he knows the sira, he has followed closely thousands of news stories, he knows the specific conditions in Islamic nations around the world, and much else.

the Jewish prayer book has ten times as many pages as the Muslim prayer book has lines of text. It is not prayer at all in the Jewish or Christian sense; most of the difficulty in learning prayer is learning physical stances (rather like close-order drill). But I have written this all before, and at great length.

Not sure what your point is here. You seem to be reinforcing your earlier point that in seeking to understand Islam one perhaps shouldn't start from the Quran, but from Muslim practices, such as how they pray. Again, Robert Spencer knows, in detail, about Muslim prayer practices, I'm willing to give you ten to one odds on a bet. Spencer reports on Muslim practices every day and in every book he writes, at least to some extent. He is far from the Quran-myopia you seem to be alluding to.

Put the matter another way: let us posit that the Qu'ran is not a coherent document of divine authorship, but an incoherent and internally contradictory compilation.

I would agree it is not of divine authorship, but it's not enough to say simply that it is "incoherent and internally inconsistent." A critical question, on which so much turns, is how incoherent and internally inconsistent is it? Is it absolutely incoherent? Is it pure chaos into which anybody can read anything they want? Or does it canalize most minds into some finite number and range of possible channels? Are there no patterns or unities in the concepts the Quran imprints on minds? Are there as many different Islams as there are people? Again, you confuse elasticity with infinite elasticity, and as a result teeter toward extreme subjectivism. If I'm not mistaken, Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction has argued for a somewhat pluralistic -- not infinitely elastic -- potential of interpretation in literature. And I think he there takes an explicitly intersubjective approach to literature, just like many of the world's finest existentialists.

What does it tell us about people who insist upon Qu'ranic literalism? One answer might be that they are the instruments of the religious establishment that interprets the Qu'ran, but that is insufficient; why should they be that? The intense loyalty of Muslims to Islam must go beyond belief in the text, for the text does not permit itself to be believed in by its very nature.

Well, I can't entirely disagree, because strictly speaking whatever happens -- including the "intense loyalty of Muslims to Islam" -- has complex causes, so there is always at least a degree of insufficiency in any explanation of events. The question, once again, is how insufficient is the explanation "belief in the text"? Would you say that "belief in text" provides 2% of the explanation for Muslims' loyalty to Islam? 10% ? 40%? Would you say that in Indonesia, more than in Saudi Arabia, belief in text is the causal factor? Or do you claim that belief in text forms 0% of the cause of Muslim loyalty to Islam? Or, to leave aside quantitative precision, which may be unsuitable to the messy complexity of the phenomena being considered, would you say belief in Quran-hadith-sira texts is a negligable causal factor, or a minor factor, or a major factor, or the most significant but not the only factor? Clearly you wouldn't say the latter.

In any event, your position as far as I have seen seems incoherently absolutist about the Quran being an incoherent lump of clay with virtually no causal effect of its own. To be coherent, it seems to me, you must acknowledge some not completely negligable degree of causal force in the texts. But such acknowledgement might also require you to place a greater degree of value on Spencer's work than you have recently, because Spencer's work is in part concerned with detailed textual questions.

When you say:

the text does not permit itself to be believed in by its very nature

you again fall into a one-sided subjectivism. You not only find the text incoherent; you find it absolutely incoherent. But that is false. The text is to some degree contradictory and incoherent, and to some degree or other consistent and coherent. Why should you speak in absolutes as soon as you want to characterize the degree of the Quran's incoherence? Such coherence as there is, and the ways in which Islamic law and practice has dealt with the limits of that coherence, are part of what Spencer describes in careful detail. Spencer said recently that the four main schools of Islamic law agree about 75% of the time. There you have some fairly impressive coherence and incoherence both.

Again, the tools of theology (and in particular the existential theology of Rosenzweig) are a miner's lamp that allows us to navigate through this Cave of Wonders.

Sounds interesting. I'll keep my eyes open for Rosenzweig.

What I have written is at best commentary on Rosenzweig and a few other theologians.

Are your commetaries on Rosenzweig available at your website?

The fact that the defenders of the West have left behind their heavy armament and gone to war with sticks and stones

Are you perhaps mixing up Spencer with some who comment at his site? There is no doubt that a few commenters at this site are relying on very crude sticks and stones. But I suppose by sticks and stones you didn't mean that kind of ad hominem crudity. No, you are alluding to the lack of existential "depth" knowledge again.

But surely with that sticks and stones metaphor you are not saying that Spencer has been an ineffective battler for the survival of the West?
You said the current strategy of the West has failed (didn't you?) as if that strategy were something coherent, the responsibility for which could be pinned on Robert and some other mysteriously coherent group. But surely the West's strategy has been at least as incoherent as the Quran. So why do you apparently believe there is some clear Western or unified Right wing consensus on what to do and that it agrees with Spencer? I don't see anything so clear as that.

In any case, the fact that Spencer and the very small number of other commentators who have worked in rough consensus with him have not utterly changed the whole course of history yet and the paths of 6.5 billion people on earth, would be a poor reason to say Spencer's strategy was failing. As one man, Spencer has had a huge effect in making people in the West more vigilant. A tremor has gone under your feet in the last six months, I dare say, and Spencer has been no small part in building that tremor coursing through Western opinion toward greater vigilance and concern.

The fact that the defenders of the West have left behind their heavy armament and gone to war with sticks and stones helps explain the setbacks of the Right in the "War on Terror."

To me you seem too relunctant to grant any degree of coherence and thus of causality to the Quran, while in the quote just above you seem too ready to see coherence in simple explanations built up by throwing together such ambiguous notions as make up the expression, "setbacks of the Right in the War on Terror," "heavy armament" vs. "sticks and stones." Perhaps in your mind all that is more subtly laid out, but on the page it looks like ordinary slogans and little more. Do you believe that the Quran, for all its incoherence, has more ambiguity and less coherence than the statement you just made? Do you really believe in that statement and is that statement really why you are loyal to the path of life you are following? Or shouldn't we ignore what you say you believe, and look somewhere else to explain your actions? I hope I'm not being unfair to you, but what you said of the Quran and its lack of causal force in explaining Muslim loyalty to Islam, seems to me similar to your case. Why should we believe that the semi-coherent slogans you sometimes speak really explain who you are and what you are doing?

I oppose Islamism. I want to destroy it. But America has lost, not gained ground in the past two years.

Well, perhaps. But again, I think you thus put way too much trust in the coherence of a simple story line, a slogan. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The whole of the past and the whole of the future are telescoped, in various ways, into the present moment, aren't they? Because of that complexity, I would say that beneath the lack of progress, in the "depths," there is often progress, and at a still deeper level, there is a still more fundamental lack of progress, while at an even deeper level, there is an even more fundamental progress. I suppose it's not turtles all the way down, but maybe you get my point. To you, things become nothing but layers beneath layers when it comes to understanding the motivations of Muslims. But when you describe your own outlook, you occasionally speak in rather pat slogans.

I do think there are depths within depths in history: there are miniscule, small, medium, large, jumbo and huge historical waves all flowing together, sometimes interfering with each other, sometimes enhancing each other. So I'm not sure the simple story line you gave about "setbacks" and so on will turn out to have been more than a superficial illusion beneath which things were moving toward the good for us.

If that is not a good reason for a critique of method, what possibly could be?

A critique of method is good, and I think it's good you offered it. But you haven't said anything, so far as I can tell, that leads me to think I was mistaken about you underrating and excessively diminishing what Spencer is doing.

I don't say no other methods should supplement his, and neither does he say that. I think he reacted, to a significant extent accurately, to your rather complete dismissal of what he tries to do. That is a critique of your method that I suspect is accurate, and anyway what has your depth method or Rosenzweig's done to solve history's Islam troubles? Why shouldn't Rosenzweig's method, or the ineffectiveness of it to shift the course of history as yet, take some of the blame for the "setbacks" the world faces today? You might say your method hasn't been tried, but that's more or less what I said, at some point, about Spencer's educational efforts -- a great many people are unaware of them, including among the Right you lump together with Spencer. But Spencer has often disagreed with the Right. In any event, I believe his efforts are making progress. Let that progress be supplemented by whatever Rosenzweig can accomplish.
A pleasure to see you show up here again.

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 7:25 PM

Spengler,

You write: (S) "The Koran is not a self-help book, nor it is it a political manifesto; it is an existential stance with respect to the world."

I suppose it contains some aspects of all of the above, though self-help, politics, and "existential stance" are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories. Those are all rather broad and poorly-defined categories. Though not quite a political manifesto, the Koran certainly contains many political elements, particularly in the Medinan verses (e.g 4:59-4:65; 5:44-49, and many others, including the many verses of warfare, such as 9:5, 9:29, 9:36, etc., zakat and jizya payment, sura 8 which deals with the spoils of war, etc., which are cited in Islamic jurisprudence).

Here are some others (not all of them Medinan):

6:165: He it is Who hath placed you as viceroys of the earth and hath exalted some of you in rank above others, that He may try you by (the test of) that which He hath given you. Lo! Thy Lord is swift in prosecution, and Lo! He verily is Forgiving, Merciful.

22:39-22:41. Sanction is given unto those who fight because they have been wronged; and Allah is indeed Able to give them victory; Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah - For had it not been for Allah's repelling some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and oratories and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled down. Verily Allah helpeth one who helpeth Him. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty - Those who, if We give them power in the land, establish worship and pay the poor-due and enjoin kindness and forbid iniquity. And Allah's is the sequel of events.

2:251. So they routed them by Allah's leave and David slew Goliath; and Allah gave him the kingdom and wisdom, and taught him of that which He willeth. And if Allah had not repelled some men by others the earth would have been corrupted. But Allah is a Lord of Kindness to (His) creatures.

7:157. Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them. He will enjoin on them that which is right and forbid them that which is wrong. He will make lawful for them all good things and prohibit for them only the foul; and he will relieve them of their burden and the fetters that they used to wear. Then those who believe in him, and honour him, and help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him: they are the successful.
7:158. Say (O Muhammad): O mankind! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah to you all - (the messenger of) Him unto Whom belongeth the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth. There is no God save Him. He quickeneth and He giveth death. So believe in Allah and His messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, who believeth in Allah and in His Words, and follow him that haply ye may be led aright.

33:36. And it becometh not a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His messenger have decided an affair (for them), that they should (after that) claim any say in their affair; and whoso is rebellious to Allah and His messenger, he verily goeth astray in error manifest.

42:10. -All disputes must be referred to Allah. (Koran, Islamic Law).

18:26. -No one may share in Allah’s government (Koran, Islamic Law).

5:45 “…Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are wrong-doers.”

29:49. “…And none but the Zalimun (polytheists and wrongdoers, etc.) deny Our Ayat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.).”

6:57. “…The decision is only for Allah, He declares the truth, and He is the Best of judges."

2:165. “…all power belongs to Allâh and that Allâh is Severe in punishment.”

4:80. -To obey Mohammad is to obey Allah. (to obey Muhammad, please see Hadith for the 'wisdom' (Koran 3:164) which Muhammad taught).

Obey Muhammad (3:32, 3:132, 4:13, 4:59, 4:69, 4:80, 5:92, 8:1-2, 8:20, 8:46, 9:71, 24:47, 24:52-56, 33:33, 47:33, 49:14, 58:13, 57:9)

45:18. (Pickthall). “And now have We set thee (O Muhammad) on a clear road* of (Our) commandment; so follow it, and follow not the whims of those who know not.”
*shareeAAatin

33:21. -Muslims must try to follow Mohammad's example conduct.

59:6 “…Allah giveth His messenger lordship over whom He will.”

59:7. “And whatsoever the messenger giveth you, take it. And whatsoever he forbiddeth, abstain (from it).”

35:10. “Whosoever desires honour, power and glory then to Allah belong all honour, power and glory [and one can get honour, power and glory only by obeying and worshipping Allah (Alone)]. To Him ascend (all) the goodly words, and the righteous deeds exalt it (the goodly words i.e. the goodly words are not accepted by Allah unless and until they are followed by good deeds), but those who plot evils, theirs will be severe torment. And the plotting of such will perish.”

57:25. “Indeed We have sent Our Messengers with clear proofs, and revealed with them the Scripture and the Balance (justice) that mankind may keep up justice. And We brought forth iron wherein is mighty power (in matters of war), as well as many benefits for mankind, that Allah may test who it is that will help Him (His religion), and His Messengers in the unseen. Verily, Allah is All-Strong, All-Mighty.”

4:13. These are the limits (imposed by) Allah. Whoso obeyeth Allah and His messenger, He will make him enter Gardens underneath which rivers flow, where such will dwell for ever. That will be the great success. 4:14. And whoso disobeyeth Allah and His messenger and transgresseth His limits, He will make him enter Fire, where he will dwell for ever; his will be a shameful doom.

[The next two ahadith are considered mutawatir]

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 89, Number 251:
Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "Whoever obeys me, obeys Allah, and whoever disobeys me, disobeys Allah, and whoever obeys the ruler I appoint, obeys me, and whoever disobeys him, disobeys me."

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 89, Number 258:
Narrated 'Abdullah: The Prophet said, "A Muslim has to listen to and obey (the order of his ruler) whether he likes it or not, as long as his orders involve not one in disobedience (to Allah), but if an act of disobedience (to Allah) is imposed one should not listen to it or obey it. (See Hadith No. 203, Vol. 4)

...Anyways, to support your above claim, you would have to cite verses that support it.

Certainly, many Muslims today do believe at least some of the political and legal propositions of the Koran and Hadith should not only be followed but enforced on non-Muslims, e.g., about 78% of British Muslims believe that the Danish Muhammad cartoonists should be criminally prosecuted and punished. About 31% of British Muslims believe that apostates should be put to death. That figure is likely to be higher in Islamic countries. In addition, across Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, and Indonesia, an average of 70.5% of Muslims agree that sharia law should be strictly enforced in all Muslim countries.
Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/14/opinion/main1893879.shtml
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/246.pdf
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/apr07/START_Apr07_rpt.pdf

You may not believe that the Koran was political, but Muslims today seem to disagree.

BTW: In studying Adonis, your sample size = 1. How repesentative is that? I agree that we can learn something from Adonis, but his views are not likely very representative of Muslim Arabs or Muslims generally.

"I do not believe that anyone can make Islam out to be whatever what they want,"

That appears to be a sober retreat from your earlier statement to the effect that people could quote the Koran to have it say whatever they want. (I hope that you did not literally believe that!)

S: "but that the sophmoric method of pasting quotations into one’s copy-book is insufficient."

Nothing sophomoric about citing evidence from the primary sources. However, even if this was a trait of sophomores, the issue is whether or not it is valid. Yes; it's a matter of supporting your claims. For example, I don't have sufficient warrant to believe what you say above about the Koran, because you don't cite any textual evidence from it to support your claims. Indeed, it would be irresponsible for anyone to believe what you say about the Koran, unless you provide support, showing examples of what you are talking about.

All quotations are not equally representative of the source. To ascertain whether or not a quote is representative, one must read the whole Koran, as well as the available material on the probable context of the verse, as well as the textual context.

In any case, Spencer doesn't just quote the Koran. Spencer cites evidence from Hadith, Sira, tafsirs, Islamic historians and Islamic history, Islamic jurisprudence, and present-day activities of concern throughout the world, current trends and statistics in regards to Muslims' beliefs about important issues, etc.

(Even Armstrong doesn't rely solely on quotes form the Koran).

The Koran is only one--albeit important--source to be consulted in arriving at a clear and realistic idea of what Muslims of all kinds actually believe today.

S: "Islam is a religion, that is, a spiritual act, not a set of doctrines that one agrees to or not."

I have read the Koran, and it is reasonably clear that believers must agree with it's contents. Hundreds of verses threaten hell-fire to those who reject/deny 'Allah's' revelations, "admonitions", etc.

S: “No-one should underestimate the intelligence of Muslims;”

I agree. But criticizing the problematic aspects of Islam, in a scholarly way, is more respectful of Muslims’ intelligence. It would be disrespectful to fail to do so, as forthrightly and honestly as one would criticize any other ideology or belief.

Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at May 9, 2007 7:30 PM

To Khaybar Oasis I have'nt read the whole Quran, only bits of it. What is it with muslims thinking they get virgins when they get to heaven? Are they serious? And the young darkeyed prepubescent boys. What do they plan on doing with them? Have I taken the passages I've taken these from out of context? Am I misunderstanding the meaning? Were'nt these things some of what Mohammed promised when they reach paradise?

Posted by: Barry at May 9, 2007 7:44 PM

Barry,

"What is it with muslims thinking they get virgins when they get to heaven? Are they serious?"

The Koran certainly does contain verses that promise the dark-eyed houris, with high breasts, wide eyes, pleasant gaze, reclining on couches, to be wedded to the true believers. There are no verses that deny it (or if there are, I've missed them and no Muslim apologist I've ever talked to have cited any...save for a few such as Manji who spread the ludicrous "white raisins" idea). Well-respected Koranic exegetes such as the pair who wrote the Jalalayn, and Ibn Kathir, and many others also support the houris-in-Paradise idea. The idea is also supported by the sahih Hadith and the Sira of Ibn Ishaq. (In one episode in Ishaq's Sira of Muhammad, [p. 519 of Guillaume's translation, 2006] Muhammad turns the other way when he sees a slain jihadist. He explained that he was looking away because the jihadist in question was now in paradise with the houris: "'He has with him now his two wives from the dark-eyed houris'"). The sex-with-houris idea is certainly promoted among the Palestinians, as is documented in Robert's Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam.
Here's more:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=IA7401
'72 Black Eyed Virgins': A Muslim Debate on the Rewards of Martyrs
October 30, 2001. MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 74

Many Muslims have also written that paradise will be whatever they wish for or desire, so doesn't have to be houris, but those are available if they want them. The other question concerns Muslim women: What do they get? Well there are the pearly boys, but those are probably supposed to be servants. So again, I think many Muslims think paradise will be whatever they desire.

Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at May 9, 2007 8:16 PM

Do muslims think the American way of life threatens their way of life? And if so, is this on a personal level with each and every American or anyone who is not a muslim? I don't care if someone's a muslim, jew, christian, satanist. I don't care what anyone is until they are a physical threat to my family, my friends, my countrymen. Are the muslims from the middle-eastern nations a threat to us? All muslims? I don't know? The would be attackers of Fort Dix were from Albania. Are Albanian muslims the threat? There have even been American born muslims that have joined al-quada forces. I am sure the list goes on forever with the common factor of all of them being that all are muslim. Call me crazy but do you think maybe the enemy is Islam itself? I don't know.

Posted by: Barry at May 9, 2007 8:18 PM

Thankyou for the answer Khaybar Oasis

Posted by: Barry at May 9, 2007 8:22 PM

...and Barry,

Here is my sophomoric quotation of some of those paradise verses:

2:25 And give glad tidings (O Muhammad) unto those who believe and do good works; that theirs are Gardens underneath which rivers flow; as often as they are regaled with food of the fruit thereof, they say: this is what was given us aforetime; and it is given to them in resemblance. There for them are pure companions; there for ever they abide.

78:31. Theirs shall be gardens and vineyards, and high-bosomed maidens for companions: a truly overflowing cup.
44:54. Even thus: and We shall wed them to dark-eyed houris.
52:20. They shall recline on couches ranged in rows. To dark-eyed houris We shall wed them.
37:40 But the true servants of God shall be well provided for, feasting on fruit, and honoured in the gardens of delight.
Reclining face to face upon soft couches, they shall be served with a goblet filled at a gushing fountain, white, and delicious to those who drink it. It will neither dull their senses nor befuddle them.
They shall sit with bashful, dark-eyed virgins, as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches.
--------------------------
55:51 Each is watered by a flowing spring. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
Each bears every kind of fruit in pairs. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
They shall recline on couches lined with thick brocade, and within reach will hang the fruits of both gardens. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
Therein are bashful virgins whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
Virgins as fair as corals and rubies. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
55:60 Shall the reward of goodness be anything but good? Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
And beside these there shall be two other gardens (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?) of darkest green. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
55:66 A gushing fountain shall flow in each. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
Each planted with fruit-trees, the palm and the pomegranate. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
55:70 In each there shall be virgins chaste and fair. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
Dark-eyed virgins, sheltered in their tents (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?), whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
They shall recline on green cushions and fine carpets. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
55:78 Blessed be the name of your Lord, the Lord of majesty and glory!
-----------------------
56:28 They shall recline on couches raised on high in the shade of thornless sidras and clusters of talh (fruit trees); amidst gushing waters and abundant fruits, unforbidden, never-ending.
We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand: a multitude from the men of old, and a multitude from the latter generations.

Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at May 9, 2007 8:23 PM

Barry said:

do you think maybe the enemy is Islam itself? I don't know.

Here is one thing that's certain: whether or not Islam itself is the enemy, Islam contains, in its core doctrines and practices and in the life of Muhammad, totalitarian elements that are a danger to you and your family and to freedom of religion and democracy worldwide. That doesn't mean every element of Islam is bad. But the bad parts of Islam are quite horrid and are not mere distortions of it, nor are they mere peripheral elements that have nothing at all to do with Islam's heart or core. There are totalitarian violent elements that are part of the heart of Islam.

Beyond that, some make a good argument that Islam itself is the enemy (see the bookThe Religion of Peace, by Gregory Davis, which Spencer is now adverstising on Jihad Watch), while others make a fair argument that we should only speak of certain specific Islamic doctrines and practices that way, not all of Islam's doctrines and practices. That would seem to be more Robert Spencer's approach, though there's a fair chance I'm misrepresenting it a bit, because his approach is subtle and complex.

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 8:36 PM

And Barry, this might be obvious to you, but the other thing to keep in mind is that while large numbers of Muslims do agree with the horrid parts of Islam, many other Muslims don't really know that much about Islam, and still other Muslims don't agree with the bad parts of it.

Posted by: traeh at May 9, 2007 8:39 PM

My summary:

Spencer provides a valuable service in educating Westerners about Islam. More is needed. Because there are cross-continental similarities between cultures facing modernity, by reading the poetry of the greatest living Arab poet (and other existentially minded thinkers) we can better understand the modern Muslim mind.

I am not sure that there is anything for Spencer to be offended about. Not everyone is a poet, but one shouldn't despise those that are.

Posted by: Tuor at May 9, 2007 8:59 PM

Barry,

I would not say that Islam in its entirety is a threat because, as any apologist will tell you, there are some good aspects (e.g., help orphans, respect your parents, help the poor, etc.), and not all Muslims are violent--indeed, some are helping the anti-jihad effort. However, the presence of the small percentage of good aspects of Islam combined with the significant negative aspects in the same package does, in some ways, make Islam more dangerous than if it was purely 100% bad. If it was 100% bad, then it would be easier for people to recognize it as a problem and deal with it. In any case, when dealing with the Islam problem, I think it is best to focus on specific problematic aspects, e.g., blasphemy law, apostasy law, laws restricting women, the low threshold and myriad excuses for declaring violent jihad, the lack of internal mechanisms in Islam for conflict prevention and resolution, including de-escalation of conflicts, etc.

re the degree of threat, I guess it depends on the specific concern. The threat of violence is there, and needs to be dealt with, though there are probably only a small percentage of Muslims in the west who are actually willing to carry out violence. (That doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned, of course, because a small percentage of millions is still a large number). As for the percentage which supports violent jihad, Daniel Pipes estimates about 10-15% of Muslims world-wide on average support it (or are willing to admit that on surveys and polls).

However, it depends on the situation, the issue, the parties involved, and the question asked. For example, 40% of Indonesians say they would personally use violence against anyone who insulted Islam or Muhammad. There are also indirect indicators, e.g., 49.9% of "Arabs" (which would include not only Sunnis but some Shia and some Christians) sampled by Al-Jazeera said they support bin Laden. About 75% of Iranians support Hizballah. About 70-something percent of Palestinians voted for the known terrorist group Hamas. (The other main option was terorist group Fatah). Most Iraqis support violence against the Americans in Iraq.

The bigger, long-term threat to the west which I perceive is demographics (immigration and fertility rates) combined with Muslims' continued adherence to their doctrines. Combine the demographic jihad with the other jihads and we have a major problem unfolding over the next several decades. Demographics is the key: If Muslims had not immigrated widely to non-Muslim countries, and had not multiplied at such a rapid rate once there, we in the west would not be having much of a problem (there is much the same general problem in India and other countries). As long as the demographic problem is not dealt with, we will be dealing with terrorism for the next few decades and we may be living under Islamic governments in some countries by the later part of the century. (In some places, like France and Russia, both major nuclear powers, maybe sooner than that).

Some sources on Muslims' opinions can be found here.

Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at May 9, 2007 9:05 PM

May I offer a constructive criticism? Let's see how Spencer and 'Spengler' line up on what the nature of modernity is, what that means for the West and why that is either a threat, or a promise, to muslims worldwide......

I think THAT's where the real difference of opinion is, and not the self-sufficiency of the Qu'ran, and such....

Posted by: lzzrdgrrl at May 9, 2007 9:24 PM

"But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy."

So in order to be talking about AIDS one has to be an AIDS patient onself then?

Posted by: karelmartel at May 9, 2007 9:32 PM

Thanks everyone and Kaybar Oasis that was spot on , the fact that since not all muslim beliefs are bad makes it more dangerous than if it were all bad. That makes too much sense for the masses to comprehend.

Posted by: Barry at May 9, 2007 9:40 PM

"But in order to defeat your enemy, you first have to get inside his mind, and that requires empathy."

Only some liberal elite would say the above. where is your damm common sense man. you see what the islamist have done to their own people,and have done to other cultures and countries. spread by the sword, we need to stop the islmaist from taking over the rest of the world. l need not get in his mind to see the wanton destruction islamist have produced, in fact there is no need to get into that demonic mind, but to understand it has to be crushed or be cursed by it.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at May 9, 2007 10:13 PM

Spengler, I too welcome your appearance here and your apparent willingness to debate.

Traeh and Khaybar O. have made substantial, courteous replies to your post and I look forward to your follow-up replies, plus more from them and others. This is the kind of exchange that many of us here relish in preference to juvenile name-calling and crude sloganeering.

Not surprisingly, I think you are badly mistaken about Robert Spencer and his impact. You say: "The heavy divisions of the West have sat in reserve, leaving lightly-armed skirmishers like Mr. Spencer to throw themselves into the breach with inadequate intellectual armament." Who are these 'heavy divisions' you allude to? Christian theologists? College philosophy professors? You? The only heavy hitters I see you mention are (long) dead guys.
And characterizing Robert as a "lightly armed skirmisher" is laughable. He may be Darth Vader to his foes but one thing is for sure; He is a Force. As such he is more than capable of defending himself so I will move on.

"Put the matter another way: let us posit that the Qu'ran is not a coherent document of divine authorship, but an incoherent and internally contradictory compilation."

You and I may well believe such a thing but that is painfully beside the point since the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe quite the opposite; that the Koran is the literal and absolute word of God as transmitted by his representive on earth Muhammad. And as Khaybar Oasis pointedly remarks: "I have read the Koran, and it is reasonably clear that believers must agree with it's contents. Hundreds of verses threaten hell-fire to those who reject/deny 'Allah's' revelations, "admonitions", etc."

Then there is the systematic (as in consistant and repetitive) denunciations of other belief (excepting 'people of the book' for which there is both condemnation and support of sorts) and Non-belief. This kind of denunciation of non-belief, polytheism etc. is not unique to Islam, but the accompanying exhortations to Kill Them (unbelievers) is. If it were only found here and there in the Koran then we might dismiss it as isolated excess. But when it's hammered away at throughout the text then it cannot be ignored or explained away, especially when it is taken literally by so many who commit terrible violence in obeyance to it.

I'd like to write more but I can't tonight. Hopefully there will be more to read and revisit tomorrow.

Posted by: alexon at May 9, 2007 10:36 PM

A fundamental point is going over the heads of about 99% of the world's total population (including Spengler and even some at Jihad Watch): the concepts of "good" and "bad" are NOT universally shared by mankind. They just aren't; and, attempts to apply these concepts to Islam imply that they are universal when in fact they aren't and results in the sort of 'confusion' we see here.

When ideology and pure attainment of that ideology is 100% of everything that matters to a human subculture as with Islam, human life takes a back seat. There is nothing more to it. Human life is disposible in Islamic ideology-- "bad" as that is to some observers, but to devout Muslims this is "good".

Muslims are going to cotinue killing in the name of al-lah in an attempt to achieve full attainment of Islamic ideology as they are told to do. This apparently is to the Muslism the ultimate "good."

In the words of Nonie Darwish: "Conquering the world for al-lah-- that's jihad." Muslims will do this because their Kuran-derived ideology has left them no alternatives. Submit or die. That's the will of al-lah. End of story.

WE will defend ourselves from people who follow this paradigm, as OUR concept of "good" and "evil" dictates. Our paradigm of "good" and "evil" will never have anything in common with Islam's paradigm of "good" and "evil" as they are diametrically opposed(we value human life while Muslims don't). So it goes with many other 'religions' and cultures.

It's time the world got over this and dealt with this issue like adults.

Posted by: pythagoras at May 9, 2007 11:34 PM

Empathy is not the same as sympathy.

Posted by: Northern Observer at May 10, 2007 2:54 PM

Spengler wrote: "By taking the Qu'ran at face value and performing a critique, Spencer et. al. address Muslims on issues for which they (and their apologists) have a pat response. It is ineffective. It comes across as caviling."

1. As Robert said, Spengler shows little or no indication of actually having read his (Robert's) works. Robert has emphasized over and over again that he does not interpret the Quran; rather he presents the sources which jihadists cite as motivation and justification for their actions.

2. The suggestion that Robert's criticisms of Islam are "caviling" (trivial, petty, unnecessary), or come across that way to fair-minded readers, is absurd. Robert consistently focusses on major issues, major problems that need to be addressed.

3. Taking into account that Robert is only one author, I would say that his criticisms have been very effective in alerting non-Muslims to the significant problems within Islam. This is a crucial role given the politically-correct but factually incorrect or misleading claims in the mainstream coverage of those Islam-related problems.

Lastly, re Spengler's claim that Islam's problems must be addressed from the inside, others have addressed that above.

I will add that, in one sense, practically all non-Muslims are "inside" Islam's reach. All of humankind is affected by it. Islam is a mission to all humankind (34:28, 7:157-158; also see sahih Bukhari quote of Muhammad: "I have been sent to all mankind" and "The earth belongs to Allah and his apostle"). With the aid of demographics, that mission is being played out in regions all over the world today. Within the context of multiculturalism and globalized jihad (of all kinds), Islam imposes itself into our lives whether we like it or not, whether "we" are Muslims or not. Indeed, in most western countries including the U.S., tax-payers' money is spent on promoting Islam as a religion of peace--especially after every terrorist attack. Islam's apologists on the one hand cannot claim that only Muslims can criticize Islam, while simultaneously demanding special "respect" and other special powers, exemptions, and privileges for Islam in the public sphere. Such a demand is a manifestation of Islamic supremacism. People like Spengler are unwittingly aiding and abetting it by arguing that non-Muslims should not criticize Islam, under the real conditions that non-Muslims are currently subjected to Islam's reach into their lives. Islam's apologists demand that people's lives be affected by Islam but that people not criticize Islam. That's supremacism.

Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at May 10, 2007 5:00 PM

Good point Northern Observer.

For myself I will come right out and declare that I am NOT an expert on the fine points of Islamic theology. Others here do have a broad and detailed knowledge of what is in the Islamic texts and I'm learning from them (first and foremost from Robert of course).

But it's not the "fine points" of what drives our Islamic Supremacist enemies that concerns me. It's the blunt, naked agression; the unconcealed, relentless jihad to place the entire world under Islamic rule and shariah law that concerns me.

Moderate Muslims and their moderate daily prayer rituals, or whatever, aren't the issue except insofar as those moderates may be lured into the radical camp by supremacists who can cite chapter and verse supporting their radical version of a pure and superior Islam which must dominate and rule over all, for Allah. If the supremacists could not make a compelling case then there would undoubtedly not exist such a global movement.

Understanding your enemy is fine up to a point.
The totality of Islam is certainly a complex and nuanced subject, especially when it is interwoven with the complexities of richer cultures and people it conquered.

But Supremacist Islam is not complicated and the point of understanding is quickly reached. For me this point of understanding was reached immediately on September 11, 2001. All else is window dressing. After that it's primarily about marshalling forces to fight back and defeat a vicious, ruthless foe. The subtle part lies in not making all Muslims the enemy while pursuing and killing the supremacists.

But this responsibility to be discerning and subtle cannot be a one-way street. If moderate Muslims do not share the radical vision of the supremacists (as we are constantly told they do not), nor wish to be tainted by their crimes, then there needs to be concrete action taken by this presumed majority of moderate Muslims to explicitly reject extremist ideology and expel them from the Ummah.

The real question then becomes why is this not happening? The uncomfortable truth may be that the radical vision is more supported by Islamic texts than is the moderate vision. I don't have the exact quote handy, but as Ibn Warraq says, There are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. It's then a straight line from an uncomfortable truth to a ugly prospect; What if Islam itself, weighed and taken whole, is substantially a Supremacist Faith? That's the ugly truth that many of us here are grappling with.

Posted by: alexon at May 10, 2007 5:14 PM

Excellent post Khaybar.

Posted by: alexon at May 10, 2007 5:17 PM

Sorry to see that Spengler is not interested in further discussion here. Traeh's post, in particular, was a worthy invitation. Oh well, back to the trolls.

"If Spengler doesn't want to listen to me, or Fallaci, or Bat Ye'or, what does he make of the fact that he can hear substantially the same things from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Ibn Warraq, or Nonie Darwish, or Wafa Sultan, or Tashbih Sayyed, or Ali Sina, or so many others?" --Robert

I call this, "Glenn Beck Syndrome". He scrunches up his face with skepticism over every word if a Non-Muslim guest is critical of Islam, but you should've seen him fawning and falling all over Hirsi Ali a few weeks ago when she showed up on his set. He all but threw himself down to wash and kiss her feet. She's no longer Muslim of course but just having that aura of being born Muslim, a former Muslim, was enough to dazzle and disarm him. Too bad the same thing happens when his guests are Muslim apologists for radical Islam.

The other thing he kept gushing about was wrapping his mind around the fact that radicals wanted her dead and how courageous she was in the face of that. And she is courageous of course, but I very much doubt he would be equally impressed by the ominous threats that Robert and other Non-Muslim critics/commentators routinely receive for their equally worthy efforts].

Posted by: alexon at May 11, 2007 2:01 AM

As a long-time reader of Spengler I think that he has a valid point. I also think that Mr Spencer has been a tad defensive -- good for debate though. There is much to be learned.

In his article Spengler says...

Western policy toward the Muslim world appears stupid and clumsy because its theological foundations are flawed. It is not what it is, nor what it was, but rather what it does that defines a religion: How does a faith address the paramount concern of human mortality, and what action does it require of its adherents?

Turning this round a little, what would better tell us more about the mind-set of Christians...quoting the Bible to show what a good man Jesus was, or looking at how Christians actually experience their religion today? Poetry may be useful to Spengler, but there are other cultural measures that can be used as means to understanding. Instead of only talking about what a religion was, we need to also talk about how the present-day experience of any religion helps or hinders people in their daily lives.

Posted by: mahdijihadi at May 11, 2007 3:19 AM

More than likely for the sake of explosive argument, I think you take Spengler's point -

"you learn a lot more about Islam by reading Adonis, who criticizes Islam from the inside, than you do from Spencer (or Fallaci, Bat Ye’or, and a dozen other writers) who attack it from the outside"

and run wild with it. I don't think he's saying that people on the outside can offer no valuable opinion to an argument, just that you should pay more heed to those speaking from the inside. Reagan's and Churchill's observations and points on the Soviet Union were incredibly important, but it's important to realize that without the context people such as Andrei Sakharov or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I don't think it would of had the relevance that it did. Those tearing down the wall from the inside could of done their job without those on the outside, but not the other way around.

Posted by: Scionkirk at May 14, 2007 4:00 PM

For thouse that don't get it...

Actions, (like blwoing yourself up and mass murder) don't come from just ideas alone... FEELINGS influence actions not collections of related facts.