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Reason magazine, the dhimmi publication that has attacked Jihad Watch several times, has published in its current print issue an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I haven't seen it, and was not planning on commenting on it until it appeared online -- which is always a few weeks after it appears in print. However, so many people have been sending me this discussion of some elements of the interview by Rod Dreher, and since Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in the news, I thought I'd post this now.
The new issue of Reason contains a lengthy interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave apostate Muslim who fled the Netherlands and now lives in the US. Alas, it's not yet online, but it's definitely in a Baweresque vein. She pulls absolutely no punches. Like Bawer, she too blames the West for its craven passivity in the face of a violent threat. And she won't have any of the false equivalence among Abrahamic religions. Though she is now an atheist and wishes everyone would be, she said that if people have to accept God, she would rather that they become Jewish or Catholic because both religions have a much more humane concept of God than "the fire-breathing Allah who inspires jihadism and totalitarianism."
She might profitably have discussed at this point those humane atheists Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who had a bit to do with totalitarianism themselves, but -- I haven't see the interview.
When the interviewer asked her if she thought Islam could bring about positive social change in the same way that religious Protestants helped end US slavery, and Catholicism helped end communism in Poland, she responded sharply:Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.Reason: Don't you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world's 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, 'defeat Islam'?
She doesn't really answer, except to say that Islam must be resisted at every opportunity, "in all forms, and if you don't do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed." She said that she believes we are headed to that point "because the West has been in denial for a long time." We didn't deal with the problem when it was easier, and now it's much worse:
Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it.Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, "Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution," he's wrong?
Hirsi Ali: He's wrong. Sorry about that.
Of course it's true, as I have noted many times: there are moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Every school of jurisprudence and sect that Muslims consider orthodox teaches that it is part of the responsibility of Muslims to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law. Consequently, Daniel Pipes's formulation is valid only when it is understood that the moderate Islam that is the solution has to be invented -- it is not a traditional form of Islam. I have spoken at conferences where Dr. Pipes was also speaking on several occasions, and have heard his answers when asked about exactly this point -- and he has said essentially the same thing. He has also written at his website: "Robert Spencer and I have discussed the perceived differences in our view of Islam. He and I concluded that, although we have different emphases - he deals more with scriptures, I more with history - we have no disagreements."
Later in the interview, the Reason interviewer points out that she's in favor of civil liberties, but would appear to deny them fully to Muslims in the West. She responds by saying that to save civil liberties, you have to restrict them on those who would take them away from everyone. She even goes so far as to say that all Muslims schools should be closed down in the US. She says that the Western constitutions that allow freedom of religion are products of the Enlightenment, and were written at a time when no one could have conceived of the jihadi threat. She says passing constitutional restrictions on Muslims is going to happen because the problem of Islamic extremism is not going to go away, and in fact is going to get worse -- though sensibly, she acknowledges at length that there are some pretty strong reasons why America doesn't have the same problem as Europe (e.g., Muslim immigrants to America want to assimilate, there's not a welfare system for them to grow dependent on, white guilt is different in the US, etc.).She concludes that the West's arrogance is its own worst enemy "because in the West there's this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway." And, she says, this mistaken notion that if we "indulge and appease and condone," everything will work out in the end.
"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger."
Truer words were never spoken.
Posted by Robert at October 4, 2007 5:14 PM
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Well, let's see if any of the mainstream UK newspapers report this.
But she's right when she says Islam is the problem.
You can dislike Communism, but it doesn't mean you hate ethnic Russians from the 1950's. Same with Islam. Would the press please de-couple criticism of a political ideology from hatred of people.
Posted by: Celsius![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 4, 2007 6:29 PM
Wow!
There is no moderate Islam.
Freedom of religion is a down fall when the religion is jihadi.
Freedom to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law.
at October 4, 2007 6:34 PM
As may know, Infidel is a wonderful book; and buying it is an easy way to support this brave woman.
Posted by: StillBreathing at October 4, 2007 6:44 PM
Hirsi Ali knows. Oh yeah, she knows Islam through and through. As for inventing a new Islam, while I have much respect for Daniel Pipes, I remain extremely skeptical. I would ask the following: why bother? Discarding Islam for another religion or no religion seems easier and preferable to trying to save something which should not be saved. You'd have to gut Islam like a fish to have anything left of value. What's the point? Marxism and Nazism have been placed on the trash-heap of history. Islam belongs there too.
Posted by: Wellington at October 4, 2007 6:44 PM
As may know, Infidel is a wonderful book. Buying a copy is an easy way to support this brave woman.
Posted by: StillBreathing at October 4, 2007 6:45 PM
Hitler was not an atheist. Much of his writing tells us that. He believed in a state religion (as opposed to a religion of the state like in the USSR/China et al).
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at October 4, 2007 6:51 PM
But, Celsius, Islam isn't a "political", atheist ideology, like Communism. It's a theocratic ideology. And Russians had Communism foisted upon them in the early 20th century, whereas Muslims have had, and have embraced, Islam and Mohammed since the early 7th century. The two are different. Muslims ARE Islam.
Posted by: darcy at October 4, 2007 6:51 PM
WOW! What a splendid savvy woman Ms Ali is - any chance of her being able to run for President...
Posted by: Morgane at October 4, 2007 6:55 PM
You can't say we didn't warn ya!
Watch this rare, BBC-TV's Panorama programme featuring Islamist whistleblower, Shiraz Maher, a former member of the Muslim extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir ("HT") - exposing their agenda to wage terror to intimidate the free world into submitting to Islam & mutating into an Islamofascist society.
DemoCast.TV
at October 4, 2007 7:01 PM
By viewing Islam as inherently extreme, we could also avoid making some strategic mistakes by not assuming that overthrowing a dictator in a Muslim state will automatically result in a more moderate government, simply by dint of building a democratic infrastructure.
By identifying the doctrinal bases of the violent supremacism, those Muslims who are sensible will question, as Hirsi Ali has done, and may break with Islam. At the same time, non-Muslims will become less naive, and better able to defend the culture.
The ugly truth has a prettier outcome than beautiful lies.
at October 4, 2007 7:21 PM
Andrew Ian Dodge
You should read Hitler's book "Hitler's Table Talk". Even a quick look at the reviews on Amazon would help you. While you have a small case for saying he was not an atheist, he was absolutely anti-Christian. Don't make the mistake of relying on his propaganda speeches over his more frank table talk. But I have noticed that atheists cherry pick Hitler's propaganda to prove him religious and they cherry pick the founders speeches to prove them non-religious. It's rather hilarious.
Or check out
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_hitler.html
at October 4, 2007 7:33 PM
"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger."
And I've got to assume she's not talking about confronting Christians who would like a Christmas display in a shopping mall.
The problem is going to get bigger and bloodier, in our own streets, if it's not confronted.
The founding fathers came up with a solution when their "unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", were threatened:
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
If there's one thing I don't relish, it's the thought of Islamic fanatics shooting at me from one direction, and our own government troops shooting at, ehm... I mean protecting Islamic "religious" expression from another.
at October 4, 2007 7:39 PM
Wow. Thanks for this. I can't wait to read the whole article.
"She even goes so far as to say that all Muslims schools should be closed down in the US." -- from the article
Here in Ontario, Canada, some people (including the journalist Michael Coren) are saying that those who are opposed to government funding of religious schools are guilty of "anti-Muslim feeling" and "Islamophobia".
Tarek Fatah, on the other hand, has spoken out against funding Muslim schools in Canada.
I guess Tarek Fatah and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are Islamophobes, then. (sarc)
Posted by: Josephine at October 4, 2007 7:46 PM
"Reason: We have to crush the world's 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? "
It's a better statement than question.
at October 4, 2007 7:56 PM
I object to the phrase "dhimmi publication." "Reason, a publication that has attacked Jihad Watch..." would have been more effective.
Posted by: Hugh at October 4, 2007 8:08 PM
I've wondered for a long time what the subtle differences were between Spencer and Pipes on Islam. So I'm glad to finally learn the answer: Pipes and Spencer actually have no disagreements about Islam. I knew their positions were not far apart, but I didn't know there was no daylight between them.
Posted by: traeh at October 4, 2007 8:16 PM
Hugh:
I stand by my characterization of Reason magazine.
Cordially
Robert
at October 4, 2007 8:17 PM
It may well be that the Dutch government has a point in its decision to cease paying for Dutch security personnel to live in the United States, and to guard Hirsi Ali, especially if she is now making money giving lectures, in which case it may have been felt that she can pay for some of this herself. But Hirsi Ali is of great value. And if the Dutch, if they understood that she in awakening the most powerful member of the West to the threat of Jihad (and not merely that "war on terror" that Bush thinks has Iraq as its "central front" and that can be won, or partly won, by "bringing democracy" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East), Hirsi Ali is of great, possibly unrivalled value, given her mediagenic appearance and her own history, would probably reinstate that protection.
But in any case, what has the American government been doing? Has it offered to pay for her protection? For that matter, has the American government thought about establishing a permanent security force that can be called on whenever speakers on Islam feel the need for such protection? Otherwise, the situation will become like that in Europe, in the Netherlands itself, where many will simply fall silent, and a large part of what constitutes free speech will have been silenced. We have seen examples of people being shouted down, in North America, in Montreal and San Francisco, for daring to present a point of view favorable to Israel. We have seen examples of death threats being made, and the F.B.I. should be at work, with the police, and all those who make such threats tracked down, charged, and prosecuted. Even one threat is one threat to many, and should be cause for prompt deporation, in the case of a non-citizen, and in the case of someone who managed to become a citizen, then stripping someone of citizenship for "acting in a manner that tends to give aid and comfort to the enemy" (and that enemy can be defined as consisting of all those who "believe in, or support, or participate directly or indirectly in the effort to ensure that Islam comes to dominate the world) might be worked on by the legislative drafters to ensure that it will be approved.
But it is not the Dutch government alone that may be too hasty, or not sufficiently appreciative of the force and fervor and power of Hirsi Ali. Even more shameful has been the failure of the American government to immediately step in and offer to take over. If Blackwater can be paid billions to protect State Department bureaucrat planning to hand out still other billions in Iraq, then some security firm in this country can be employed to protect Hirsi Ali. She is worth many dozens of battalions, if only what she does and says and stands for were properly understood, and promoted.
But who does properly understand? So many in Washington can conceive of "war" merely as Boots On The Ground, or Bombs Away. That's it. Bush and others keep telling us that is an "ideological war" and then proceed to show, by their actions, that they haven't the faintest idea how to conduct that "ideological war" that they think they have identified. They think that the "ideology" they are fighting is not Islam (Islam is fine, Islam is swell, Islam is one of the world's great religions, let's not touch Islam), but some strange modern mutant, something that comes from weird "takfiris" who will be solemnly analyzed by the likes of that Hero of Baghdad, Frederick Kagan, sudden scholar -- like so many on the think-tank-and-lecture-circuit gravy train, who now recognize that they have to start talking about Islam with an air of great authority (just read the My Weekly Standard piece by Kagan, the one published a week or two ago, in which he describes those brand-new "takfiris" and the brand-new ideology that explains "Al Qaeda" with not a hint of understanding that this is all classic Jihad doctrine, facing not "modernity" but rather the current conditions of the world, a world in which Jihad can now be pursued, using instruments far more effective than direct military combat would be at this point, not because some "new" and "fringe" variant -- in the kaganish understanding -- of Islam has appeared to conduct this thing that new and fringe group calls “Jihad,” but because Jihad can be pursued by traditional Muslims but in untraditional ways, in ways that take advantage of OPEC trillions (ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone), and immigrant-Muslim tens of millions, who through their own inexorable overbreeding compared to the indigenous non-Muslims (an overbreeding supported by the generous subsides in medical care, in housing, in education, in unemployment benefits, in everything, paid for entirely by those same non-Muslim taxpayers and the system of entitlements they created, long ago, for their own poor, having no thought of what a Muslim underclass determined to become a permanent overclass everywhere they went would mean for them, those Infidels, and their children, and their grandchildren).
So Ayyan Hirsi Ali, brilliant and beautiful, who should have been on talk-shows, who should have met with Congressional leaders, who should have addressed audiences of generals and other officers at the Pentagon, who should have met with Bush and the National Security staff and the upper (and lower) echelons of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., who should have met with the Clintons and Barack Obama and all the other Democratic candidates, who should have addressed the Senate, instead was denied what she needed – a life-and-death matter for her – that security detail, and not a billionaire in America, now busily organizing to “support the Iraq war effort,” not a single person in the Pentagon or in the Executive Branch or in Congress or in the media, appears to have taken note, and demanded that she be protected, and not just she, but all others who have proven themselves to be articulate enough to be valuable, or invaluable, in the real war effort.
Meanwhile, in Tarbaby Iraq, where no one can explain how keeping Iraq together, and bringing toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls, the “Iraqi people,” on the other side of the goddam mountain will help us, no one can explain so they don’t explain, they simply force us to accept and the opposition, unsure of itself but determined not to “look soft” on “terrorism” (in other words, not to analyze the problem, not to speak forcefully out about that carefully-unnamed “ideology” that is tip-toeingly alluded to), keeps Tarbaby Iraq going by the failure to present the devastating and unanswerable critique that can be made, and has been made here, at this website, about a thousand times. And part of that critique was a presentation of What Should Be Done.
And What Should Be Done is for Infidels to arm themselves, arm themselves with a knowledge of Islam, not the Islam of the armstongs and espositos and ernsts and bulliets and safis and assorted MESA-nostrans, but rather the Islam of C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Joseph Schacht, and Antoine Fattal, and K. S. Lal, and St. Clair Tisdall and Henri Lammens, the Islam of Ray Ibrahim and Bishop Moubarec and Habib Malik and Charles Malik and Youssef Ibrahim, the Islam of Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq and Irfan Khawaja and Azam Kamguian and Wafa Sultan and mediagenic, brilliant and beautiful, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom the government of this country simply couldn’t afford to protect, just couldn’t be bothered. After all, it needs the money to win hearts, to win minds, in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Pakistan. Or Jordan. Or Egypt. Or the so-called “Palestinian” territories.
Amazement. Fury. Contempt.
Posted by: Hugh at October 4, 2007 8:27 PM
Only a conservative, such as Nixon, could convince a relatively conservative America to trust that it was okay to open relations with Red China.
For similar reasons, but reversed, it seems to take someone like Hirsi Ali -- a woman, a member of a minority group, a feminist, and someone who knows Islam from the inside -- to get the at least somewhat respectful ear of the Left to listen a little to the view that Islam is a grave totalitarian threat.
Posted by: traeh at October 4, 2007 8:30 PM
Defeating Islam will become impossible if we elect a democratic president -- then our goose is really cooked.
The cost of war is staggering; but the cost of doing nothing is even more staggering. How are we suppose to defeat Islam, as Ali suggests, without another war? Are we suppose to dialogue our enemies to death?
Posted by: champ at October 4, 2007 8:35 PM
I wouldn't say that...
case-in-point, Joe Lieberman...the one guy even W Bush admitted was the only one capable of beating him.
at October 4, 2007 8:45 PM
Hirsi Ali's pen is mightier than the Sword of Islam, which is why she is considered such a threat in certain circles.
Telling it like it is can be very dangerous, particularly for those who are afraid to hear it.
at October 4, 2007 8:59 PM
Yeppers. Keep in mind the words of a confirmed "real muslim"
PM Erdogan: The Term “Moderate Islam” Is Ugly And Offensive; There Is No Moderate Islam; Islam Is Islam
Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, PM Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam”, often used in the West to describe AKP and said, ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
Pay attention people. Right from the horse's (a "true" muslim') mouth.
Source: Milliyet, Turkey, August 21, 2007
Posted by: j_not_a at October 4, 2007 9:08 PM
Nothing will be learned from her death other than the knowledge that those who didnt learn something from 911 dont want to learn
Posted by: GrennBeck at October 4, 2007 9:08 PM
OT - Please help me.
I am including a small part of an email I received from my son who is a Junior, majoring in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Islam, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He would like to eventually get a job at the State Dept. using his major. I have tried to give him another view of Islam, other than the one he is spoon-fed at UW (the same institution who hired Kevin Barret to teach Islam, and whose class my son was in).
"...it bothers me sometimes when I go to your house because you seem to always spend 90% of the time talking about how you hate arabs. I know you are entitled to your own viewpoint, and I try not to really get in your case about it, but it does get to me sometimes. I have a different viewpoint, and I hope that you would respect it as well even if you don't agree. Hearing hate and stereotypes (even if you think that it is justified) coming out of my mom's mouth is something I have a hard time digesting."
Hate Arabs??? NO, I try to talk to him about the viewpoints discussed here and other places about ISLAM!! Once again, race and ideology are being confused and that is something that our universities do very well.
What I would like from all of you is a list of: books, videos (Memri,etc.), articles, etc., that I can send to him and say, "Here, look for yourself...learn for yourself...don't just listen to your professors, who usually have a predetermined outlook on the issue and assign books that uphold their outlook on the subject."
I know I'm asking alot, but I'm trying to educate my son and he just doesn't want to listen...Having said that, who ever wanted to listen to their mother at 21??? :-)
Thanks
Posted by: mepeteart at October 4, 2007 9:23 PM
mepeteart:
First of all, your son isn't learning very well if he interchanges Muslims with arabs. Yikes.
So much for the education department in ME studies at his school...
Buy him "Infidel" by Hirsi Ali... there are plenty of books too.
Posted by: atheling at October 4, 2007 9:26 PM
mepeteart
oh god, this is like 1984, when the young boy turns in his father.
look, your kid may well denounce you to the board of teachers or something, im serious. he really sent you this email?
1984, here we come, neighbours denouncing neighbours, East German Stasi style.
Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at October 4, 2007 10:01 PM
Mepeteart,
My only comment in reply is "Have you performed due diligence? You owe it to your children and your grandchildren to do so" "Due Diligence" means what it says - find out all the facts! Read the Koran, Infidel and especially Don Richardson's "Secrets of the Koran" plus, of course, Robert's informative books.
People also need to be made aware of the Palestinian propaganda! The situation in Palestine is NOT what it seems. Please, please, please educate others about that situation. A VERY GOOD piece in David Kupelian's book "The Marketing of Evil". Pages 177-181. Would anyone please tell me if it is OK to paste it here? I carry it on my memory stick to be ready at any time to pass it on.
Posted by: PorkyPig at October 4, 2007 10:07 PM
uy him "Infidel" by Hirsi Ali... there are plenty of books too.
maybe buy him a return ticket to saudi arabia, pack his bags, put a porno mag, the bible, and a bottle of whisky in there. when he's there ask him to point out female drivers, women without headscarves and women wearing western clothes, or even better yet, single females walking out on their own.
then when he comes back, give him "Infidel" by Hirsi Ali and tell him, "now do you understand what i'm trying to tell ya!"
Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at October 4, 2007 10:11 PM
"a list of books...."
-- from a posting above
I put up recently a list that, lest it be misinterpreted by some, held the Spencer -- that is, deliberately left off that list the books written by Robert Spencer, such as "Onward Muslim Soldiers" and "The Truth About Muhammad" and, edited by Spencer "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance." You can silently put back on the list any that you wish to add.
Here is that article, which also lists at the end some websites run by those who were born into and raised within Islam, but have chosen to leave it, but did not mysteriously, as Muslims insist, suffer a sudden and complete memory loss about Islam once they became apostates:
Fitzgerald: Recommended Reading -- Hold the Spencer
Professor Carl Ernst has made much of the supposed “right-wing” and “conservative” and “Christian” and -- all together now -- supposedly “right-wing Christian conservative” views of Robert Spencer, with his hate-site and his hate-filled rants and his hateful views, and so on, and so bloody forth. Those who actually have been visiting this site for months or even for years know that such a caricature is absurd. And if they have also read Robert Spencer’s books, they know what useful exercises they are in haute vulgarization – popular divulgation, intended for the mass audience, which needs to find out something about Islam, not least to avoid such follies as the venture in Iraq.
But I am not here to praise Robert Spencer, but to entirely ignore him. Not only that, I am here to suggest to students of Carl Ernst that they entirely ignore the books of Robert Spencer. Don’t look at them. Don’t read them. For if you read them at this point, with Professor Carl Ernst having done what he can to undercut any appeal or interest those books might have for you, you are now most unready to read them.
So do something different. Read as widely among the most important explanatory works about Islam. Then, after you have read, and not merely read but thoroughly assimilated some of the material in those books and articles, then – and only then – come back to Robert Spencer, and read what he has to say, and ask yourself this: do Spencer’s views accord with what Snouck Hurgronje says, and what Arthur Jeffery, and Henri Lammens, and Joseph Schacht, and Bernard Lewis (yes, despite misgivings about Lewis’s understanding of the dhimmi, and his desire to maintain friendships with Muslims, and his general unwillingness to go nearly as far as he should), and Bat Ye’or, and Ibn Warraq, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and for that matter such people whose books have not yet appeared and so cannot at this point be part of any list of Recommended Reading, such as Wafa Sultan, all say, in their different ways, with their attention to different aspects of Islam? Or do Spencer’s views accord more with the view that Carl Ernst presents you with in his carefully-bowdlerized syllabus and in his carefully apologetic presentations, which he inflicts on you, you poor students, who must do nothing to give a hint of real disagreement -- though one of those phony classroom encouragements of “free and open discussion” is by now, no doubt, part of Ernst’s carefully-thought-out modus operandi? And what are the implications of this: that all the Western scholars from the age of uninhibited scholarship about Islam and Islamic history, and all the most articulate and uncowed apostates who have appeared in the West today, are far closer in their view of Islam to what Spencer offers than they are to the thin gruel that Carl Ernst serves up to his hapless and (once they are enrolled beyond the Add/Drop period) helpless students in both his handful of assigned texts by others, in his own or Omid Safi's promised "scholarship"?
In that spirit -- a deliberately Spencer-less spirit -- students from Carl Ernst's course are offered below a list of Suggested Reading. It consists of books by twenty-seven authors, few of whom are likely to have been included on Professor Ernst’s own syllabus, or to be mentioned in whatever list of “Other Reading’ he hands out or otherwise make available.
The list was kept to under thirty authors (the list might have had 130), with a deliberate inclusion of many unsurpassed scholars from the Golden Age of Western scholarship about Islam -- the period from 1870 to 1970. Many celebrated scholars are not included: there is not the Mohammedan Studies by Ignaz Goldziher, not Noldeke on the sources of the early Qur’an; not John Wansbrough’s Quranic Studies, and in the case of C. Snouck Hurgronje, possibly the most important of Western scholars of Islam, only one title is listed.
There are many other articles that one could find -- that one should find -- in back issues of “The Moslem World” (now “Muslim World”), especially those that appeared before 1950. A CD containing the Encyclopedia of Islam can also be obtained.
The syllabus of Carl Ernst, one suspects, contains such things as a bowdlerized Qur’an -- the Approaching the Qur’an of Michael Sells, and texts such as Edward Said’s Orientalism. These are designed to undercut, before the students even encounter them, the scholarship of those who, in England, France, America, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, made the study of Islam their life’s work. Said himself may have been an Arab, but he was not a Muslim. He never received a Muslim education. Rather, he attended first an Anglican school, Victoria College, in Egypt, and then continued his education in the United States. His elementary blunders, his fantastic mistakes, have been quietly dissected by Bernard Lewis in his article “The Question of ‘Orientalism’” -- and more recently by an entire book devoted to explaining who the “Orientalists” were, and why Said, who simplified, omitted, misunderstand, or simply misread so many of them, deserves not respect but contempt. That book has been written by the hardly unsympathetic-to-Islam English writer Robert Irwin.
I haven’t looked at Ernst’s syllabus. But I’m sure he does not include Robert Irwin’s book, nor Bernard Lewis’s article, and I assume he includes Orientalism, as that is a staple of the Higher Apologetics in universities. I doubt if he includes a single work by any apostate from Islam -- not a single thing by Ibn Warraq or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or even Irshad Manji. He is unlikely to add the soon-to-be-published book by the articulate and brave Wafa Sultan to any future syllabus. He is unlikely to welcome the book to be published this month by Ibn Warraq, which shows that Said was not merely wrong, but completely, totally wrong. For it is the Western world, since the Greeks, that has been wide open to other societies, and it has been the world of Islam that has appropriated, but always claimed as its own, never giving credit to others, and which maintains an attitude of permanent hostility to all Infidels everywhere, as Islam naturally teaches. For if you are taught that Dar al-Islam must forever be in a state of war (if not open warfare) with Dar al-Harb, and that it is the duty of Muslims to participate, sometimes collectively and sometimes as an individual duty, in Jihad to spread Islam by removing every barrier to its expansion and its dominance, you are unlikely to be “open to ‘the Other.’” And Islam demonstrates in so many ways every day, beginning with the indifference to Western ideas and institutions and art and literature (look at the near-absence of translations into Arabic), but a very great interest in Western military hardware. Muslims have a solemn duty to remove all the obstacles to the spread of Islam until it covers the globe, and Infidels are reduced to their proper condition -- that of dhimmis -- who must acquiesce in Muslim rule and endure a condition of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.
But will Carl Ernst’s students get a hint of this? Will they read the Qur’an and Hadith with understanding? Will they learn about the figure of Muhamamd, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, or will the figure be described vaguely as “one of the great inspired leaders of history” with no attention to what counts -- the details of that “great inspired leader’s” life.
They are much more likely to be treated to modish fantasies of the type that Maria Rosa Menocal, not a historian but a student of literature, produced in her feel-good fairy-tale The Ornament of the World, thus contributing not to history but rather to the romanticized version or “myth” of Andalucia that got its start with two Romantic writers, Washington Irving with his Tales of the Alhambra and Chateaubriand with Le dernier des Abencerages.
Ernst will do his best to undercut, in advance, to poison minds, in advance, so that they cannot possibly encounter without their minds already having been affected, any of the trustworthy, non-apologetic scholars of Islam. But one hopes you will be able to resist, and to supplement what he force-feeds you by quiet investigations and research of your own. It is Carl Ernst who wishes to ensure that you are exposed only to his, carefully-crafted, received version of Islam and of the history of Islam, and who insults -- quietly, sweetly, implicitly -- you, and who wishes to carefully direct your reading. He gives new and sinister meaning to that phrase “directed reading.” It is we who would have you read everything you can, and find out everything you can, from the hundreds of books, and thousands of articles, by the great scholars of Islam.
Toward that desired end, here is a list of twenty-seven authors. See what you can find. See what appeals to you. See what sense it makes, or fails to make. The more you read, the more widely you read, the less likely it is that you will be taken in, and the more likely it is that what you read will help you not only to better understand the past, but also what is happening today, in southern Sudan and southern Nigeria and southern Thailand and southern Philippines, in Darfur and among the Berbers of the Kabyle and Morocco, and among the Muslim populations everywhere, who are raised on precisely the same texts, inculcated with the same ideas, impressed with the need to fulfill the same central duties, and who exhibit remarkably similar attitudes toward the idea of human freedom and individual autonomy, toward the idea of free and skeptical inquiry, toward the idea of untrammeled artistic expression, and toward the very idea that non-Muslims, too, deserve to build, and preserve permanently, their own legal and political institutions and social arrangements, free from the pressure from Muslims to change or surrender them in order to please Muslims and meet Muslim demands.
Here is that list. Read around, whatever you can, whenever you can. As a "corrective" to the pabulum I assume you will be fed in the official syllabus:
1) Tor Andrae, Mohammed: The Man and His Faith (Routledge)
2) M. M. Azami, Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature (American Trust Publications)
3) Andrew Bostom (ed.), The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus Books)
4) Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge University Press); The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)
5) Ali Dashti, 23 Years (Mazda Publishers)
6) Antoine Fattal, Le status legal des non-Musulmanes en pays d'Islam [for French speakers only] (Dar al-Kitab, Beirut)
7) Sita Ram Goel (compiler and editor), The Calcutta Quran Petition (Voice of India)
8) Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton University Press)
9) Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (Free Press)
10) Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge University Press)
11) Ibn Warraq, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad; What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary; The Origins of the Koran (all Prometheus Books)
12) Hans Jansen, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism (Cornell University Press)
13) Arthur Jeffery, Islam: Muhammad and his Religion (Liberal Arts Press)
14) Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Johns Hopkins Press)
15) Ayatollah Khomeini, A Clarification of Questions (Westview Press)
16) K. S. Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India; Theory and Practice of the Muslim State in India (both reprinted by Aditya Prakashan)
17) Henri Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions (St. Joseph’s University, Beirut)
18) Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Oxford University Press); Islam In History (reprint: Open Court Press); Islam and the West (Oxford University Press), The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (Schocken)
19) David Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam; The Early Development of Mohammedanism (both Oxford University Press)
20) V. S. Naipaul, Among the Believers; Beyond Belief (both Vintage Books)
21) Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism; Jihad In Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton Studies in Islam)
22) Xavier de Planhol, The World of Islam (Cornell University Press)
23) Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, The Lawful and The Prohibited in Islam (Al-Halal wal Haram Fil Islam) (Shorouk International)
24) Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed (Vintage Books)
25) Joseph Schacht, Mohammedan Jurisprudence; An Introduction to Islamic Law (both Oxford University Press)
26) C. Snouck Hurgronje, Islam: Origin, Political Growth, and Its Present State (Manohar Publishing -- Indian reprint house)
27) William St. Clair Tisdall, The Sources of the Koran (online at truthnet.org)
In addition, it is important for students to familiarize themselves with at least three different translations of the Qur’an, such as those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, A. J. Arberry, and N. J. Dawood. Many can be found, presented synoptically, at various websites. Such concepts as naskh should be grasped before students begin to try to make sense of seeming contradictions in the text; impenetrable parts of that text should not phase students, but they should be aware of the work of Christoph Luxenberg and others who attempt to explicate the approximately 20% of the text that remains unclear.
In order to grasp the concept of the Sunnah, the customs and manners of 7th century Arabia that act as a kind of gloss on the Qur’anic texts, students should familiarize themselves not only with the life of Muhammad, from the various biographies listed above, but also familiarize themselves with the collections of Hadith by Bukhari and Muslim, and read, in no particular order, at least several hundred of the Hadith until they feel familiar with them. The text by M. M. Azami above will explain the concept of “isnad” and how the muhaddithin assigned their ranking of authenticity to the tens of thousands of Hadith (properly, “ahadith”) that they collected.
Students are asked to familiarize themselves both with Muslim websites, especially those in which fatwas are sought and given, and with the websites of those who grew up in Islam but have left it, such as the sites www.faithfreedom.org and www.answering-islam.org."
[Posted by Hugh at September 4, 2007]
at October 4, 2007 10:24 PM
"maybe buy him a return ticket to saudi arabia, pack his bags, put a porno mag, the bible, and a bottle of whisky in there. when he's there ask him to point out female drivers, women without headscarves and women wearing western clothes, or even better yet, single females walking out on their own".
LOL!
But seriously, mepeteart, are you paying for this??? If you are, I'd pull the plug and tell Junior that he has to get a job and pay his own way.
Don't sponsor dhimmitude.
Posted by: atheling at October 4, 2007 10:24 PM
It only makes sense that if this world faces the threat of a world Islamic caliphate that rational individuals begin to deconstruct, criticize and call a myth just that - a myth. Orthodox Muslims insist on conversion, submission or death of every non-Muslim therefore the only proportionate response is to annihilate this belief system from the inside out. If they want to play for keeps then destroy the Islamic will to believe in Allah.
The point I see Ms. Ali. making is not to crush 1.5 billion Muslims but to crush their reasons for believing in the existence of Allah. Constant, rational discourse and philosophical deconstruction of the Islamic myth would all but immunize children of Muslim heritage. Of course this would take time but no grown child of Muslim descent would in good conscience adhere to the demands of such a "god" in light of modern contra-evidence. Grown Muslims who are hopelessly beyond debate are lost to their memetic programming but their offspring are not. The soft underbelly of the Islamic faith are the open minds of Muslim children exposed to a modern world where their god cannot reconcile the rational nature of this universe. Their continued exposure to modern sciences, ethics and moral philosophies...etc all but insure that the manifestation of Allah in the Qur'an will reveal it's failures in due time.
Of course we would have to exchange Political Correctness with Political Directness in order to properly rub their noses in all the copious bullshit revealed in the Qur'an.
That said, I take exception to "She might profitably have discussed at this point those humane atheists Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who had a bit to do with totalitarianism themselves". Ummmm...A lack of "god" belief among atheists does not automatically imply the adoption of new insane and irrational ideas. Those men and/or their ideas are dead or are dying for very good moral reasons and their varied convictions share nothing with the rational disbelief championed by Ms. Ali.
We should consider the lessons learned in defeating those flawed belief systems and apply them to this latest scourge on humankind. What we've got to do next is recognize our collective backbones and show the Muslim Ummah just how imaginary, powerless and mythological Allah really is.
Posted by: Quantum Infidel at October 4, 2007 10:31 PM
"Daniel Pipes's formulation is valid only when it is understood that the moderate Islam that is the solution has to be invented -- it is not a traditional form of Islam."
-- from Robert Spencer's comment above
"the moderate Islam that is the solution has to be invented..."
Vaste programme, monsieur.
Posted by: Hugh at October 4, 2007 10:32 PM
Metaphart;
Breeze Terrace greetings. Shalala and the professors kicked us off campus, but we stayed, and later served with pride. Just tell your son to embrace Islam.
The belief system wouldn’t be bad for him at all. He could take a few more wives. That would be bearable because he could order them to shut up and, if they didn’t, he could send them to their rooms and scourge them. If they still give him lip, he could just repeat “I divorce you” three times and get a younger replacement(s). The ‘temporary wife’ and ‘sex with slaves’ provisions might also be interesting to him.
Western pluralism is overrated. Just think about it. He probably hates Ellen Degeneris, Oprah out the window. A Queer Eye for the Straight Guy reunion with cranes and ropes. No more Will and Grace.
Finally justice for his two federal Senators. He’d probably be able to watch a day-long ceremony. Heck, it might even be mandatory.
He could probably do without bratwurst, music, and dancing. None of this wining and dining crap with women. Doing without beer might be tough, but he can learn how to make it at home and be sneaky.
And, most importantly, they’d shut down that decadent Rathskeller.
at October 4, 2007 10:54 PM
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao weren't part of a movement or religion called "atheism". They never attended an atheist church or mosque. I don't think the comparison to religious tyrants and totalitarianism is valid.
Posted by: savitch at October 4, 2007 10:54 PM
savitch, not sure you are right about that -- Communism was aggressively atheistic and in addition to those it murdered for political reasons, it also murdered millions of religious believers merely because they were believers and therefore were considered an obstacle to the absolute power of the party and the State.
Posted by: traeh at October 4, 2007 11:01 PM
@ Hugh - Thank you for the list - I will give it to him. I fear, since I have mentioned (often!) Robert Spencer, that that is 'off limits' to learned discussion in his mind.
@ leon - Yes, he actually sent me this email in response to my querry as to why he doesn't come here more often. To give you some context, the reason he is studying Islam is because I had started that same study some two years before and, after the discussions we had had, he decided to declare his major and study that. As a matter of fact, he would always share his books with me and we would discuss his studies to the point that, at the end of last semester, he wanted my point of view as to what his final paper should be in his class, Islam in Iran. The paper was "How Tribal Islam Has Affected Persian Culture". At one point, he said to me that I could pass any of the classes he was in. What happened??? I don't know...all I know is that all of a sudden I'm a bigot.
@ athling - Am I paying for this? No, his father is - I just pay for the books (and other stuff). And I gag when I have to pay for some of them - such as Kevin Barrett's books!!! I just try to educate him, while his father is a BBC, PBS, MSNBC, etc. afficienado. *Sigh*
Posted by: mepeteart at October 4, 2007 11:04 PM
You say those tyrants never attended an atheist church or mosque, savitch, but the Communists went to extraordinary lengths to create substitute ceremonials, secular functions invested with intense quasi-religious passion. Since that passion could not legally be directed toward the Transcendent, the feeling for the sacred had instead to be directed toward such items of secular Communist faith as "the People" and "the glorious Party" and "History's Inevitable Goal" and "Comrade Stalin," around whom there was a personality cult absorbing much religious-like fervor from the masses.
Posted by: traeh at October 4, 2007 11:14 PM
"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger." I agree, the crusades were launched 900 years ago, and with periods of retreat, continue to this day, the Americanist crusader forces are in the mid east to stay, 70 years ago the west developed their greatest weapon which was used to destroy the muslim world, and give birth to the Arab world. The weapon? nationalism, Nationalism was injected into the mid east like poision from a serpent on a sleeping giant, it weakened what was strong and has allowed the infiltration, control, exploitation and destruction of our land. Slowly its dawning on us that Islam is what made us great. One day u will hear of 2 arab nations, joining to become one Muslim nation, and on that day know that the Khilaphats fever has boken.
Posted by: smithy at October 4, 2007 11:20 PM
One more thing to top your son's reading list:
http://www.islam-watch.org/IbnWarraq/Fascism.htm
This is the essay in which Ibn Warraq, who was born into Islam, and raised in Islam, and has formally studied Islam as an academic subject, and who has four important books on early Islam and the origins of the Qur'an to his name, compares Islam and Fascism, or rather the fourteen defining characteristics of Fascism as set out by Italian novelist and semiotician and essayist and journalist Umberto Eco.
He should read carefully not only Ibn Warraq, but Ali Sina, and Anwar Shaikh, and Wafa Sultan, and Azam Kamguian, and Irfan Khawaja, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others who know Islam intimately, and who know what Muslims talk about when they think non-Muslims are nowhere around (Ibn Warraq has many fascinating stories about what he heard, not only from Muslims, but from non-Muslim "scholars" of Islam who assumed he was still a Muslim, with many of them revealing -- assuming that they were in like-minded company -- an antisemitism that, Ibn Warraq suspects, is part of what drew them to Islamic studies, or Middle Eastern studies, in the first place.
Of course students are impressionable. And professors, even those we can see right through, can appear to be "brilliant" to those who have little to compare them to, and who may be taken in by a combination of an air of authority and that ostentatious friendliness -- the invitations to students to share a chicken-and-pita meal at a professor's house, has worked wonders for quite a number of MESA-Nostrans (google "MESA Nostra" for more).
Bonne chance. In bocca a lupo. And if that doesn't work, if he refuses to see the light, well, smack him around a bit. Kids these days -- who the hell do they think they are? They're not entitled to opinions unless they do their homework.
On the other hand, how can you blame them? Bush didn't do his homework. All kinds of people responsible for Tarbaby Iraq didn't do their homework, and still can't identify or name the enemy, or what language to use to describe the assault, through varied instruments, on the entire non-Muslim world. Why should you expect your son to do better than Bush et al.?
Well, I know why you should. He's your son. You do expect better. And quite right, too.
Posted by: Hugh at October 4, 2007 11:25 PM
mepeteart-
Email your son this link to the English version of the book by a Pakistani immigrant to the Netherlands, "Mohammed Rasoel" (his nom de guerre), which was banned in the Netherlands in 1990. Entitled: "The Downfall of Holland, land of the naive fools", it was removed from the stores as "hate speech", for criticizing Islam's intentions, and the author was fined about a thousand dollars.
Maybe the voice of someone from inside the cult (a non-"Arab", former Muslim) will get through to your kid.
It's humorously trenchant.
http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/heroes/downfall.htm
Hang in there and keep swinging.
Posted by: profitsbeard at October 4, 2007 11:30 PM
My fellow Australians
perhaps we should get up a petition to persuade our government to take her in, and to pay for her protection. Hire her to give lectures at Duntroon Military College, about Islam, and how to detect and deal with fanatical Muslims - I'm sure that once the word got out, the Defence Forces would experience a massive surge in enlistments, since she is terribly easy on the eyes.
Or the New Zealanders, if they had any wit at all, should offer her citizenship - plus a fearsome bodyguard of twenty Special-Service-trained Maori warriors.
Come on. Infidel men, where is your courage and initiative? Where is the handsome, patriotic Israeli David (up-to-the-minute in Mossad and Shin Bet combat techniques), or ASIO employee, or US Marines veteran, or handsome battle-honed Sikh, or even Chinese-martial-arts trained Singaporean army officer, who will make the delightful and courageous Ms Ali an offer she simply couldn't refuse...marriage, residency/ citizenship, freedom to speak her mind, and her own personal bodyguard at her side night and day? Plus, of course, personal instruction and daily practice in all the arts of hand-to-hand unarmed and armed combat.
She would be an asset to any nation. Worth her weight in gold.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 4, 2007 11:47 PM
Mepeteart--
You might already be doing this, but if not, you might find it productive to ask your son questions. Specific, unpleasant, sticky questions that his professors are probably hoping no one will ask, like about abrogation in the Qur'an, various episodes in Muhammad's life, things found in the ahadith, particularly Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, and so on.
He'll have to think harder to come up with answers to things like that than to simply discard opinions offered to him, and even if he doesn't seem receptive initially, the ever-growing catalog of questions posed to him will start to tip the scales against uncritical acceptance of what he's hearing at school.
Best of luck, and stick to your guns. If nothing else, maybe a few years down the road he might surprise you with those three words almost all of us have had to humble ourselves to say to one or both parents at some point:
"You were right."
Posted by: MarisolJW at October 5, 2007 12:01 AM
An enemy is crushed by destroying his economic and military assets. Destroying his economy weakens the enemy's military and makes its destruction easier.
The Middle East's economies are based largely upon oil. Our military could seize these oil fields - largely destroying the Middle East's economies. Oil fields are classical, geographical military targets. Seizing and holding them does not require enemy co-operation (In contrast, our strategy in Iraq seems to require the co-operation of people who are not on our side.)
I am not talking about making friends in the Middle East. I am talking about throttling islam. Action against the Middle East would have to be accompanied by appropriate measures against islam's presence in the USA. Hirsi Ali has the right idea.
I would like to see a serious discussion by a trained military strategist on how we might accomplish the reduction of the Middle East ... someone who appreciates the phrase, "destruction in detail".
Posted by: Havoc at October 5, 2007 12:08 AM
Marisol- OH, my goodness...do I ask those questions!! I try to be very low-key and ask questions exactly like you illustrate, and then give examples from the Koran and the Hadith that abrogate what he has been taught. That's why I figured my last avenue would be books, etc. by learned scholars which might...MIGHT...be something he would pay attention to. After all, this is a kid who wants to work for the State Dept.!!!! I think at this point, Mom is not the fount of information that he needs, which is why I was begging for a list of educational material to send him. At which point, I plan to bow out...at least until he grows up some. I still have hope for him, he just needs to grow up some. After all, as Churchill said " If you're not a liberal when you're you're 20, you have no heart. And if you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no brain." And of course, I'm paraphrasing that quote.
Posted by: mepeteart at October 5, 2007 12:29 AM
Clearly.
We are at war with Islam.
1. The Constitutions of the great republics of the West have a soft underbelly, utterly exposed to the pestilence of Islam, and written when the threat of such a hideous movement was unthinkable.
2. Likely a majority of Muslims would like to live their lives at peace in the world with people of other faiths.
3. That majority of peaceful Muslims are utterly powerless to stop the more aggressive and domineering members of their "religion," and as such are hostage to Islam as a whole.
4. The Constitutions of the great Western republics, themselves unprotected and defenseless against the insidious and deceitful aggressions of Islam to their very existence, are, in their current state, utterly defenseless to their own destruction.
5. Thus, the truly peaceful Muslims AS WELL AS the patriotic citizens of the Constitutions of the great republics of the West are hostage to the same disease: Islam.
6. For true peace, Muslims must radically change or renounce Islam. Also, the Constitutions of the great Western republics must be altered or changed to acknowledge this fatal genetic deficiency that leaves them open to pure destruction.
Should we all do this now, or should we wait for the ultimate catastrophe (they call it The Gift) that inevitably comes to your town, or mine?
If it's war, it's war. Gloves off. Fuck PC. Fuck the media. Fuck multicultarlism.
We in the West have been given the gifts of freedom and civilization. We owe it to our antecedents and children to safeguard all of it. This is our time. This is our Land.
We have the privilege of preserving and continuing the great human progression of the West.
I accept.
Posted by: JohnAdams at October 5, 2007 12:40 AM
"The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger." I agree, the crusades were launched 900 years ago, and with periods of retreat, continue to this day, the Americanist crusader forces are in the mid east to stay, 70 years ago the west developed their greatest weapon which was used to destroy the muslim world, and give birth to the Arab world. The weapon? nationalism, Nationalism was injected into the mid east like poision from a serpent on a sleeping giant, it weakened what was strong and has allowed the infiltration, control, exploitation and destruction of our land. Slowly its dawning on us that Islam is what made us great. One day u will hear of 2 arab nations, joining to become one Muslim nation, and on that day know that the Khilaphats fever has boken.
Posted by: smithy
Strano.. allahfanculo se fa biocchato del Jihadwatch peró un islamofascista che si chiama "smithy" siempre é lí!
Que cazzo..?
Chiaro che Allahfanculo parla una lengua forte alcune volte.. perché questa é la lengua che capiscen i nosti nemichi!
Loro non capiren la lengua diplomatica.. loro interppretano la lengua diplomatica de essere l'idioma de la capitulazione.
La unica cosa che loro comprendono bene é: "affanculo islam!"
Arrividerci.. noi non le voiliamo vedere mai!!
Allahfanculo islam!
Posted by: 2and2is5 at October 5, 2007 1:24 AM
Can we get a loud cheer for Miss Hirsi-Ali?
As I keep pointing out, secularists such as her are a great ally in this fight. And, precisely because they are atheists, the canhope for a world without Islam. Or one where Islam has been so thoroughly broken that it will never recover.
And another such would be Sam Harris, who recently wrote:
"
The second reason to be attentive to the differences among the world's religions is that these differences are actually a matter of life and death. There are very few of us who lie awake at night worrying about the Amish. This is not an accident. While I have no doubt that the Amish are mistreating their children, by not educating them adequately, they are not likely to hijack aircraft and fly them into buildings. But consider how we, as atheists, tend to talk about Islam. Christians often complain that atheists, and the secular world generally, balance every criticism of Muslim extremism with a mention of Christian extremism. The usual approach is to say that they have their jihadists, and we have people who kill abortion doctors. Our Christian neighbors, even the craziest of them, are right to be outraged by this pretense of even-handedness, because the truth is that Islam is quite a bit scarier and more culpable for needless human misery, than Christianity has been for a very, very long time. And the world must wake up to this fact. Muslims themselves must wake up to this fact. And they can.
[...]
To be even-handed when talking about the problem of Islam is to misconstrue the problem. The refrain, "all religions have their extremists," is bullshit—and it is putting the West to sleep. All religions don't have these extremists. Some religions have never had these extremists. And in the Muslim world, support for extremism is not extreme in the sense of being rare. A recent poll showed that about a third of young British Muslims want to live under sharia law and believe that apostates should be killed for leaving the faith. These are British Muslims. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should be brought to justice. These people don't have a clue about what constitutes a civil society. Reports of this kind coming out of the Muslim communities living in the West should worry us, before anything else about religion worries us."
Can we have that one framed? I'll repeat it again:
'The refrain, "all religions have their extremists" is bullshit - and it's getting the West to sleep. All religions don't have these extremists.'
The full article is here if anyone wants to references it:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html
at October 5, 2007 1:34 AM
That being said, this is one of the few times I've seen Robert Spencer say something trite and silly:
"She might profitably have discussed at this point those humane atheists Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who had a bit to do with totalitarianism themselves, but -- I haven't see the interview."
With respect - and I little else apart from respect for Mr. Spencer - this is such an old chestnut I can't believe it keeps coming up.
First of all, Hitler was not an atheist. He made many positive references to Christianity, not to mention his wierd pagan beliefs. He enjoyed strong support from Protestant Christian dominations and the Catholic Church, including the Vatican.
Stalin and Mao were atheists, but Stalin built on centuries of mysticism and servitude that had been inculcated by the orthodox Russian Church for centuries. Neither Stalin nor Mao were exponents of human reason, but served doctrines as mystical and as life-hating as any followed by the Mullahs in Tehran or the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Fanusi Khiyal at October 5, 2007 1:41 AM
No retreat!
Islam will be defeated on the battlefield of ideas in open and clear combat with Western democracy. This will occur as the courageous relentlessly reveal the truth about Islam itself. The post below says it well:
“The point I see Ms. Ali. making is not to crush 1.5 billion Muslims but to crush their reasons for believing in the existence of Allah. Constant, rational discourse and philosophical deconstruction of the Islamic myth would all but immunize children of Muslim heritage. Of course this would take time but no grown child of Muslim descent would in good conscience adhere to the demands of such a "god" in light of modern contra-evidence. Grown Muslims who are hopelessly beyond debate are lost to their memetic programming but their offspring are not. The soft underbelly of the Islamic faith are the open minds of Muslim children exposed to a modern world where their god cannot reconcile the rational nature of this universe. Their continued exposure to modern sciences, ethics and moral philosophies...etc all but insure that the manifestation of Allah in the Qur'an will reveal it's failures in due time.”
“We should consider the lessons learned in defeating those flawed belief systems and apply them to this latest scourge on humankind. What we've got to do next is recognize our collective backbones and show the Muslim Ummah just how imaginary, powerless and mythological Allah really is.”
Posted by: Quantum Infidel
NO GREATER BULLY PULPIT EXISTS, THAN THE ONE OBTAINED BY OUR TROOPER'S BOOTS ON JIHADI GROUND.
No retreat! Kill the jihadi, educate the Muslim.
at October 5, 2007 1:54 AM
Mr. Spencer,
Ms. Ali has returned to her "Adopted Country". A country under siege and in total denial about the seriousness of the Muslim cultural transplantation upon European soil, which Ms. Ali's presence as a member of elected parliament clearly demonstrates.
Today's anti-Western, anti-White, and anti-Christian world, welcomes her, Ms. Ali, like Eloi answering the siren call of the cannibalistic Morlocks in H.G. Well's "Time Machine". The danger we face from Islam, is pathetically, traitorously, answered by straw men, both politicians, and intellectuals, experts, and pundits, all of who all speak from both sides of their mouths while trying to balance the Western, liberal, democratic angles all on the head of a pin for the sake of diversity unto death.
The fascinating thing about this is, that the West, its culture, society, and establishments, are oblivious to their own looming demise, solely due to a sick, self imposed cultural abandonment.
Upon closer examination, the loss of this untapped, under-appreciated, "national asset", as you put it, Ms. Ali, means that her anti-nationalist, (read anti-Western identity) tendencies, her wide-eyed, if not unconvincing advocacy (until now) for the all encompassing "misunderstood" fictional "moderate Islam", is suddenly jettisoned by HER en route back to Festung Euro-ummaopia. I guess, she is frustrated with the balancing act.
Ms. Ali features aspects in her public persona fundamentally antithetical to everything the traditional West stands for. ALL Moslems, courtesy of fourteen centuries of rigid, intolerant siren calls by their prophet, Mohammad to conquer the world for Islam, subscribe simultaneously to a type of superiority and fear which embodies the essence of the Islamic texts and cannot be repudiated by true Muslims.
Ms. Ali is a liberal, feminist, Moslem hybrid. Her faith, which I assume she rejects, represents total submission to the will of Allah. A god that bears no recognizable traits to the god Christians and Jews of the West worship, and who casts dissent, violence, intolerance, and confusion everywhere Islam’s miserable shadow falls.
So what have we lost? What have the intellectuals supported, and what has Ms. Ali become? Has she finally asserted as a Muslim, what should have been obvious to all but the most foolish, that the Other, Islam, is simply not compatible with Western, secular, humanism, and the skeletal remains of its Judeo-Christian heritage. Has she finally discredited those Western “useful idiots”, who champion beyond all reason the bankrupt notion that they know better than actual Moslems that Moderate Islam is the answer to genuine Islam because Islam is what people want it to be. Sorry to say that we see what Moslems in their various countries worldwide want it to be and how to conduct it's affairs.
Finally, is her brand of medicine a cure for the sickness of the West, or a feel-good toxin whose misguided and deliberately evil elites have prescribed to a sick West as a panacea for a terminal illness? I say good riddance to Ms Ali.
Posted by: Anthony at October 5, 2007 3:48 AM
Anthony,
You sound as if you've been relying too much on tendentious 3rd-party characterizations of her work. AHA has never espoused "moderate Islam." Her statements in the Reason interview were no different from what she has said previously.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
at October 5, 2007 6:44 AM
residency and/or citizenship, then run for the Congress or Senate ...THe qualifications are relatively few....
Qualifications (Senate)
Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution sets forth three qualifications for senators: each senator must be at least 30 years old, must have been a citizen of the United States for at least the past nine years, and must be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state he or she seeks to represent.
United States Representative in Congress
(53 Districts)
November 2, 2004 General Election
I. QUALIFICATIONS
A candidate shall:
A. Be at least 25 years of age, a U.S. citizen for seven years,
B. There are no residency requirements for candidates for US Representative in
Congress.
....While establishing residency and/or citizenship, Ms Ali, no doubt would easily become knowledgeable in parlimentary procedure and maintain a well versed knowledge in the trends of the country and of the world...
.....She would certainly be better than most of those serving today....and the state she represents would be proud of her service and commitment to the values of freedom....
....She could possibly win in a landslide.....
at October 5, 2007 7:01 AM
....the first part, apparently did not post....
...Ms Ali, could return to the US and establish residency...
at October 5, 2007 7:04 AM
Andrew Ian Dodge
“Hitler was not an atheist. Much of his writing tells us that. He believed in a state religion (as opposed to a religion of the state like in the USSR/China et al).”
Your second sentence is correct. Hitler did indeed want an official state religion. However, it was to be used as a propaganda tool to control the German people. Hitler understood that the German people would never abandon their belief in God. However, he had nothing but contempt for people of faith, and he certainly had no personal spiritual need for any religion or for God. I believe this qualifies him as an atheist.
at October 5, 2007 7:08 AM
Don't forget - the USA supports creation of new Islamic state - independent Kosovo. You've already helped Bosnan Muslims:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNG-pRWx7rA
Don't shoot your leg again
Posted by: LazarOfSerbia at October 5, 2007 7:18 AM
"She even goes so far as to say that all Muslims schools should be closed down in the US. She says that the Western constitutions that allow freedom of religion are products of the Enlightenment, and were written at a time when no one could have conceived of the jihadi threat. She says passing constitutional restrictions on Muslims is going to happen because the problem of Islamic extremism is not going to go away, and in fact is going to get worse -- "
........ALI ALI ALI ALI ALI!!!!....She is indeed smarter than most of the US politicians when it comes to Islam.....
....If she ever runs for office in an area where I can vote....if ever.....
Posted by: exsgtbrown at October 5, 2007 8:06 AM
Hitler. Is he or isn't he? An atheist, that is.
You have to bear in mind that when this question is raised, there is usually a hidden agenda.
There is an implication that atheists have no moral values, presumably because it is perceived that Hitler had none.
The false premise is that atheism is a belief system. It is NOT. An atheist just does not accept the existence of supernatural forces, specifically supernatural beings. In fact Christians are atheists when it comes to Zeus or Woden or any of the thousands of other gods which litter human history. In fact, Hitler's circle had pagan beliefs. Pagan gods, but still gods.
One's moral values or behaviour can be formed by a wide range of influences. You need only consider the effect that Greek philosophy still has on modern thought. Atheists are not excluded from these influences and debates about the nature of good and evil. There are many instances where they have been prime movers.
Humanists, who are atheistic, would argue that they have a strong moral code, superior to religions, because it does not involve handing over personal freedoms and ideas over to gods or spokesmen for gods.
The real danger is totalitarianism. Belief in a supernatural being does not protect you from this anti-human ideology.
That is why humanists can stand alongside Christians and Jewish people and any others who recognise that danger in Islam.
at October 5, 2007 8:22 AM
It is about time someone exposed inherit evil of Islam publicly. It is imperative for all who know the truth about Islam to educate those around us. Nothing less then the survival of the free world depends on the articulate communication of the truth about Islam. I pray that Hirsi Ali would understand and know the love and saving power of Jesus Christ. It is terrible what Islam has done to her.
Posted by: kerusso at October 5, 2007 8:43 AM
"First of all, Hitler was not an atheist. He made many positive references to Christianity, not to mention his wierd pagan beliefs. He enjoyed strong support from Protestant Christian dominations and the Catholic Church, including the Vatican."
Fanusi Khayal:
Please give examples for that statement. If Hitler was "supported" by the Vatican and Protestant Christian denominations then why did he kill all those priests and nuns? Why was Dachau the concentration camp of choice for sending Catholic priests?
Secondly, Hitler was no longer Christian. He endorsed German paganism and a return to Teutonic mythology.
Here's a link which lists the names of the Catholic priests and nuns who were martyred by the Third Reich for speaking out against Naziism:
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/history/vlapomar/persecut/nazi.html
Excerpt from Pope Pius' Encyclical addressed to the German faithful in 1937:
Excerpts from ENCYCLICAL "Mit Brennender Sorge", by Pope Pius XI to the
German Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and Church, March, 1937:
"WITH DEEP ANXIETY and with ever growing dismay We have for a considerable
time watched the Church treading the Way of the Cross and the gradually
increasing oppression of the men and women who have remained devoted to her
in thought and in act in that country [Germany]... This anxiety of Ours has
not been lessened by the reports which the representatives of the reverend
Episcopate dutifully and truthfully brought to Us on Our sick-bed."
"...in the summer of 1933...at the request of the German Government We
resumed negotiations for a Concordat on the basis of the proposals worked
out several years before...In spite of many serious misgivings We then
brought Ourselves to decide not to withhold Our consent...no one in the
whole world who has eyes to see and ears to hear can say today that the
fault lies with the Church and with her Supreme Head. The experience of the
past years fixes the responsibility. It discloses intrigues which from the
beginning has not other aim than a war of extermination. In the furrows in
which We have labored to sow seeds of true peace, others - like the enemy
in Holy Scripture - sowed the tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny,
of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church, fed from
a thousand different sources and making use of every available
means.....Anyone who has any sense of truth left in his mind and even a
shadow of the feeling of justice left in his heart will have to admit that,
in the difficult and eventful years which followed the Concordat, every
word and every action of Ours was ruled by loyalty to the terms of the
agreement; but also he will have to recognize with surprise and deep
disgust that the unwritten law of the other party has been arbitrary
misinterpretation of agreements, evasion of agreements, evacuation of the
meaning of agreements, and finally more or less open violation of agreements."
"...an oppression of the conscience of the faithful such as has never
before been witnessed..."
"...We now turn to you and through you to the faithful Catholics of
Germany, who, like all suffering and persecuted children, are very near to
the heart of the Common Father. In this hour in which their faith is being
tried like true gold in the fire of tribulation, and of secret and open
persecution, when they are surrounded by a thousand forms of organized
religious bondage, when the lack of truthful news and of normal means of
defense weighs heavily upon them, they have a double claim to a word of
truth and spiritual encouragement...."
Late 1937, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau's. Pastoral to his archdiocese:
"All over Europe in these days, with blasphemous rashness and fury,
a fight is being carried on against the God-Man, our Redeemer. Faith in
Christ and Christianity is being everywhere represented as obsolete and
worthless, as unworthy of a German. Moreover, the Church itself is
attacked by those who maintain that she is the enemy of our nationality.
Step by step our youth is being estranged from the Church. Havoc is being
wrought in the religious thought of our children. The more the priest is
excluded from the work of education, the more rapidly does youth lose its
hold on the true Faith, religious life, and joyful devotion to the Catholic
Church.... Now the Rosary is a prayer which, like a golden chain, binds
together and unites..."
Doesn't sound like support for Hitler to me.
Now where is your evidence?
at October 5, 2007 11:09 AM
"allah" is Satan and muhammad is Satan's messenger.
Posted by: CGW at October 5, 2007 11:51 AM
Good post zoltix!
Atheism simply means not believing in unproven (improvable) phenomenon. It does not mean that you agree with every other ‘atheist’ out there. Interestingly I wonder who coined the term atheist in the first place.
As for Hitler; it's irrelevant what he personally thought. What is relevant is how he was able to use religious belief to further his goals. Now why do you think that was?
at October 5, 2007 2:44 PM
Robert wrote:
"She might profitably have discussed at this point those humane atheists Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who had a bit to do with totalitarianism themselves, but -- I haven't see the interview."
I'm a bit surprised that Robert would make this error. (Then again, he did erroneously refer to Derbyshire as a "born again atheist"...Derbyshire refers to himself as a "Mysterian," which is a subcategory of agnosticism). It is an error in at least three respects.
1. The weight of evidence indicates that Hitler was a believer in some kind of God, whereas there is no evidence that Hitler did not believe in God.
2. Some atheists have indeed committed atrocities. However, there is nothing in the atheist proposition as such that commands anyone to carry out such atrocities. Contrast that with Islam, where the propositions in the central doctrine (Koran and "genuine" Hadith and Sira) do command such atrocities in the name of ideology.
3. Hirsi Ali now argues against the equivalence argument (used to try and equate Islamic and Christian "fundamentalists"), so this comment by Robert is not constructive, in addition to being contrary to fact.
--------------------------------
The claim that Hitler was an atheist is often made, but there is no evidence to support it. There are, however, mountains of evidence, both from public and private statements, that Hitler believed he was a Christian. You will find Hitler calling himself a Christian, and more generally a believer in God, many times in many contexts. There is no statement where Hitler ever calls himself an atheist, nor does he ever advocate atheism. On the contrary, Hitler actually said,
"“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm
patagonianplato,
You admit that...
"Hitler did indeed want an official state religion. However, it was to be used as a propaganda tool to control the German people."
Replace "however" with "...and"
"Hitler understood that the German people would never abandon their belief in God. However, he had nothing but contempt for people of faith, and he certainly had no personal spiritual need for any religion or for God."
You have cited no evidence that Hitler "had nothing but contmept for people of faith" and you have cited no evidence that he "had no personal spiritual need for any religion or for God." On the other hand, if you could cite a quote from Hitler where he says that he has no personal need for God or deity, or does not believe in any said gods or deities, then please post it. In all the discussions I've had about this issue, no one has ever presented a quote where Hitler calls himself an atheist, nor has any quote been presented where he says he does not believe in some kind of deity or god.
"I believe this qualifies him as an atheist."
Lack of belief in gods, or the belief that gods do not exist, are the two main forms of atheism. There is not only no evidence that Hitler held either of those positions, there is no evidence that he was any other kind of non-believer in religion.
justask,
"You should read Hitler's book "Hitler's Table Talk"."
Which version? The English translation? Have a look at Richard Carrier's analysis first. A close look at the German original shows that there is no evidence that Hitler was an atheist.
http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2002/nov02/carrier.php
"Even a quick look at the reviews on Amazon would help you. While you have a small case for saying he was not an atheist,"
A "small case"? That is laughable. There is overwhelming evidence that Hitler regarded himself as some sort of Christian or believer in God of some sort. He refers to himself as a believer many times, but never ever calls himself an atheist.
"he was absolutely anti-Christian. Don't make the mistake of relying on his propaganda speeches over his more frank table talk."
This is a common claim, that,, because there is no evidence that Hitler was an atheist, he must have been "secretly" an atheist. No one has ever quoted Table Talk to show Hitler calling himself an atheist. Christian apologists jump on phrasing referring to Hitler's dislike of some of the extant forms of organized Christianity, and instead of taking that to mean he might have a different interpretation of Christianity (albeit a highly warped one), they jump to the entirely unsupported assumption that dislike of some forms of organized Christianity constitutes atheism. If that's atheism, then many people who regard themselves as Christians would have to be defined as atheists. It is nothing new for people in different religious sects to refer to the others as non-believers or atheists.
"But I have noticed that atheists cherry pick Hitler's propaganda to prove him religious and they cherry pick the founders speeches to prove them non-religious. It's rather hilarious."
Citing evidence to support a claim is "hilarious"? The evidence is not cherry-picked (i.e., from biased sampling), because the overwhelming body of evidence, public and private, indicates that Hitler was a believer in some sort of God. That at least qualifies him as a theist, and disqualifies him categorically as an atheist.
Here's more evidence:
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2006/08/hitler-atheist.html
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/20060808-040837-8474r/
Hitler bested God by 2 commandments
HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Although he hated organized religion, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler rewrote the Christian bible and added two commandments.
In 1941, some 100,000 Third Reich bibles called "Germans with God" were distributed to Germany's churches, and while most were destroyed by devout Christians during the war, a copy was recently found in a Hamburg church, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday.
The most notable additions to the 10 Commandments were: "Honor your Fuhrer and master" and "Keep the blood pure and your honor holy," the newspaper said.
Variations on the remaining 10 were as follows:
"Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly, Seek out the peace of God, Avoid all hypocrisy, Holy is your health and life, Holy is your well-being and honor, Holy is your truth and fidelity, Honor your father and mother -- your children are your aid and your example, Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers, Be ready to help and forgive and Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice."
This supports what I've been saying, i.e., that Hitler was a believer of some sort, albeit a deeply distorted one who had gone off the main message.
Further evidence indicates that Hitler
Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion
http://www.lawandreligion.com/nuremberg.shtml
http://www.lawandreligion.com/nurinst1.shtml
Finally, there is also evidence that Hitler preferred Islam (not atheism!) over the extant forms of Christianity that he was attempting to replace with his "German Faith."
Andrew Bostom
Karl Jung, The Collected Works Volume 18, The Symbolic Life (1939), Princeton University Press, p. 281. The chapter is itself called "The Symbolic Life", and Jung was asked two questions, the first of which is the most relevant:
First, had he any views on what was likely to be the next step in religious development?
"We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god). That can be the historic future."
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/02/jung_on_hitler_and_islam.html
“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
Steigmann-Gall, pp. 252-253; Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, Orion Pub., 1997, p. 96.
at October 5, 2007 2:58 PM
This incomplete sentence in my above post...
"Further evidence indicates that Hitler..."
Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion
http://www.lawandreligion.com/nuremberg.shtml
http://www.lawandreligion.com/nurinst1.shtml
Should say "Further evidence indicates that Hitler...was attempting to replace extant forms of Christianity with his 'German Faith' version of it. His German Faith, involving belief in a God of some sort, is clearly theistic.
Posted by: Khaybar Oasis at October 5, 2007 3:10 PM
At the risk of yanking this thread off topic (again!), I would like to thank all of you who responded to my call for help in educating my son about Islam. Thanks to all of you, I was able to compile a list of books and websites and articles for him to look at. But you would be absolutely amazed at how many of the books that Hugh prescribed are NOT available from our local public library...and it's a big one here in a major University town! Here's hoping we will have succeeded in opening his eyes!
Posted by: mepeteart at October 5, 2007 3:22 PM
To believe that Hitler was a Christian based on what he said in front of different audiences is simplistic and naive.
Hitler said different things to different audiences.
The swastica was the symbol for the new religion of the Nazi's, with the totalitarian, supremacist views that were instilled in the minds of malleable youth's, and a religious fervor, or rather fanaticism was needed to indoctrinate the masses to put up with hardship and self-sacrifices.
No. This 'Hitler was a Christian' -thing based on some of Hitlers speeches is idiotic.
If Hitler was a Christian the German army would have been dressed in crusader costumes.
Military conquest and subjugation of other peoples is hardly a Christian goal.
Muhammedanism makes no beef about it.
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 5, 2007 3:34 PM
Breaking news:
Dutch Prime Minister to Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "You should leave the country"!
http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/2007/10/prime-minister-hirsi-ali-should-leave.html
Posted by: Ferdy at October 5, 2007 5:28 PM
Consequently, Daniel Pipes's formulation is valid only when it is understood that the moderate Islam that is the solution has to be invented -- it is not a traditional form of Islam.
Since a moderate version of Islam cannot exist, Daniel Pipes's proposed solution is an impossibility. Pipes, in failing to admit this fact (instead engaging in malignant sophistry that "Islam can be whatever Muslims wish to make of it"), in effect becomes an Islam apologist, as his proposal implies that a moderate version of Islam actually can be invented.
Unless Spencer himself actually endorses Pipes's Islam apologist position that a moderate Islam can be invented (thus becoming an Islam apologist himself), then as far as I can tell there does indeed have to be a disagreement between Spencer and Pipes. The question to Spencer is - which is it?
Posted by: anonymous at October 5, 2007 5:38 PM
'Dutch Prime Minister to Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "You should leave the country"!'
Posted by: Ferdy
Outrageous! Contemptible! Their cowardice, lack of honor and decency know no limits!
This should be headlining on Fox News – you know the MSM will ignore it!
Posted by: Davegreybeard at October 5, 2007 6:41 PM
TO: Khaybar Oasis who wrote,
“In all the discussions I've had about this issue, no one has ever presented a quote where Hitler calls himself an atheist, nor has any quote been presented where he says he does not believe in some kind of deity or god.”
First, I stand by my statement.
Second, as any historian will tell you, one must draw conclusions based upon the evidence at hand. Quite often, there is no direct quote at hand. That said, I admit that I know of no direct quote in which Adolph Hitler expressly states, “I am an Atheist,” or “I do not believe in God,” so I will not argue this point with you. But if this is the burden of proof that you require, so be it. In any case, you have not cited any quotes in which he expressly states, “I believe in God.” or “I am not an atheist.” If such a quote does exist, please refer me to the appropriate source. I would be happy to look into the matter further.
I thank-you for your polite reply.
at October 5, 2007 9:38 PM
To all posters who wish to debate whether or not Hitler was a Christian or an atheist, you are wasting everyone’s time including your own! It is irrelevant to this discussion.
There have been brutal murderers who were Christian, atheist, polytheist, Hindu, Shinto, and on and on. It is irrelevant because men of all religions and those of none have been guilty of brutality and murder on a massive scale.
The ONLY thing that is relevant is that Islam DEMANDS that the faithful murder the Infidel.
at October 5, 2007 11:13 PM
Davegreybeard-
"The ONLY thing that is relevant..."
Exactly.
The point that is pertinent to our present survival is not what crimes other faiths or faithlessnesses commmitted in the uncorrectable past, but what the threat is that we face from intolerant, imperialistic Islam now.
(Hitler was a "Christian" in the same sense that Jeffrey Daumer" was a "humanitarian".
I read that Adolf wanted all churches ultimately turned into astronomical observatories, which hardly sounds like the thinking of a man of anything that would pass as 'faith'.)
at October 6, 2007 12:01 AM
Without going into virtues of atheism or theism, it can be seen that while atheist tyranny is personality based cult, which remain isolated, shorter lived. Their influences do not last after a
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