No big surprise. The people within the DHS are no doubt predisposed to believe what the Muslim apologists are saying. Just another clone of the State Department.

Posted by: Brett_McS at May 4, 2008 8:14 AM

"In fact,[one was] the editor of AltMuslim.com, Shahed Amanullah. The others who met with Chertoff on May 8, 2007 were the Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed of American University; M.J. Khan, a Houston city councilman; and Reza Aslan, author of the popular book No God but God. "Reza Aslan..."

Fitzgerald: A tribute to Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan’s book No God But God continues to reassure and obfuscate. Some editor at Random House obviously thought this book would be just the ticket -- the thrusting young academic, a "good Muslim" eager for Reform, and fitting right in with the dreamy belief of some that

1) "democracy is on the march" in the Middle East

and that

2) "democracy will necessarily bring with it all sorts of wonderful things, so that Infidels can sit back, relax, and not worry about the islamization of Europe and silly things like that."

That editor was someone who knew nothing about Islam.

There is no end to this.

A commenter here at Jihad Watch once asserted that “it is pluralism, not secularism, that defines democracy. A democratic state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy.”

Really? Is that what defines the liberal democracies in the modern world -- "pluralism"? And not, rather, extreme solicitousness for the autonomy of the individual, the kind of solicitousness that can be found in the Bill of Rights?

One wonders if Reza Aslan has permitted himself to read another, more sober and piercing Reza, that is Reza Afshari, who has written intelligently on the incompatibility of the Sharia with modern ideas of human rights. This incompatibility is expressed, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One wonders if he has given thought to "freedom of conscience" and why, when non-Muslims under Muslim rule were permitted to stay alive and even to practice their religion, their numbers inevitably dwindled as individuals could no longer endure the various disabilities, beginning with the jizyah but hardly ending there, that constituted that system of deliberate humiliation and degradation that we now know call, from the word "dhimmi," dhimmitude.

"Pluralism" is not enough. If the population were to be parceled out among various "beliefs," this would still not necessarily imply freedom of conscience. (And what happens to those who are resolutely without belief? Are they tolerated, or accepted as full equals, as well?) In other religions, apostasy is not now punished. In Islam, it can lead to a death sentence. And even the most seemingly up-to-date, tolerant, relaxed Muslims get extremely defensive when one raises this issue. I discovered this years ago when, among a group of advanced Kuwaitis, the kind who send their children to the American school and spend much of the year outside of Kuwait, there was a real chill and then a series of amazing lies when I raised the issue of Mr. Hussein Qambar Ali, the Kuwaiti apostate, about whom a great deal was written 6 or 7 years ago.

Reza Aslan’s book is essentially transparently inane. This has not kept it from being praised by, inter alia, John Esposito, about whom the less said in polite company the better (except by James Schall or Habib Malik); Noah Feldman (whose claim to temporary fame -- and lasting tenure -- is that of being the Yeshiva-Bokher-who-Practically-Wrote-the-Constitution-Of-the-New-Iraq); and by Tom Reiss, whose spent five years tracking down the identity of Kurban Said, or Lev Nissenbaum, the author of the well-known "Ali and Nino," which takes place in old Baku, with starcrossed Muslim boy and Christian girl. Reiss’s research may have given him a William-Dalrymplish delight in the mysteries of the Muslim-East-and-its-encounters-with-the-West. But that is not the same thing as taking the trouble, through late lucubrations, of being versed in the theory and practice of Islam.

Aslan says that “there are few scriptures in the great religions of the world that can match the reverence with which the Quran speaks of other religious traditions.” There are several things about this statement that are worth noting. The first is that there is no reverence -- none -- in the Qur'an about how other "religious traditions" -- whatever that may mean -- are spoken about. None. Not a single passage. And then, of course, there are the Hadith and the Sira -- one hopes that somewhere, sometime Reza Aslan, who was born in Iran and raised in easygoing America far from the Islamic Republic of Iran, will deal with them with some honesty and depth. (Had he had the misfortune to have been raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran, one suspects he would not be writing the nonsense he has written). For the Qur'an, the only "religious tradition" is that of Islam; Judaism and Christianity are not part of another "religious tradition" but are simply wrongly-received (by their benighted followers) versions of the one and only true belief -- Islam itself. Judaism and Christianity are not even permitted to be rendered with any accuracy: the Muslim Jesus is far from the Christian Jesus, and Judaism is also a parody of itself in the incondite hodge-podge of the Qur'an.

But the second thing to note is the absurdity of his claim that "few scriptures in the great religions of the world that can match the reverence with which the Qur'an speaks of other religious traditions." Well, how could Judaism speak of "other religious traditions"? Its sacred books certainly could not contain any commentary on Christianity or Islam -- can Reza Aslan guess why? And Christianity could not show "reverence for other religious traditions" except Judaism, and there, like IBM wishing to seize market share from Apple, of course some of the early Christians (who were all Jews) had to say something not quite nice about Judaism or those who followed it. After all, would IBM go around and say how wonderful Apple was, in order to take away its customers? Yet, is it not true that there has always been a recognition of a connection between Old and New Testaments, between Judaism and Christianity? And this is true even if some Christians have not exactly demonstrated in their behavior an awareness of this, or done anything to prevent that quest-for-market-share that helps explain some parts of the Gospel of John or the use to which the description of Christ's death, to metastasize first from anti-Judaism into antisemitism, and then from antisemitism into the full-blown pathological mass-murder within living memory. This should have made, but did not, the slightest exhibition of antisemitism into something that would be met with the fiercest condemnation, ostracism, and punishment.

And how, conceivably, could the sacred texts of such ancient religions as Buddhism and Hinduism, long predating any of the monotheistic ones and conceived in distant India, conceivably have made any mention at all of other religions, much less shown that "reverence" for other "religious traditions" that Reza Aslan blandly claims as characteristic of Islam?

He really has to think a little bit more about how when B comes after A, we should not fault A for failing to mention B. It is called chronology. Learned historians know all about it. And so do schoolchildren.

But not Reza Aslan.

[Posted by Hugh at October 8, 2006]

Posted by: Hugh at May 4, 2008 8:28 AM

If you haven't read the DHS memo in pdf above, please do. It is truely staggering to see at work how rigidly, faithfully, and blindly government officials cling to their "experts" once assigned.

Good riddance to the word "moderate", however. It was always a meaningless term (you'll be hearing "mainstream" much more).

No more jihad. Robert, it appears the URL takfirideathcultwatch.org is not yet taken.

Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 4, 2008 8:30 AM

I didn't want to present only my view of Reza Aslan in the “tribute” posted above. That would be unfair. No, gentle and intelligent reader, you deserve to be presented with what others think of Reza Aslan. So I went to Reza Aslan's website, and found Reza Aslan's description, at that website written and maintained by Reza Aslan, of Reza Aslan:

"Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a regular commentator for NPR's Marketplace and Middle East Analyst for CBS News.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology of Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He has served as a legislative assistant for the Friends' Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected president of Harvard's Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, a United Nations Organization committed to solving religious conflicts throughout the world. He is a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and serves on advisory boards of both the Council of Foreign Relations and the Ploughshares Fund, which distributes grants to further peace and diplomacy throughout the world.

Until recently, he was both Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Iowa and the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and others, and has appeared on Meet The Press, Hardball, The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper, and Nightline.

His first book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam has been translated into half a dozen languages, was short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction.

Born in Iran, he now lives in Santa Monica, Ca, where he is a Research Associate at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy. His next book, How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We're Losing the War on Terror will be published by Random House in the Fall of 2008."

And once I had put up what you see above, I suddenly realized something. Reza Aslan and his ilk come not single spies, but in battalions. And he is not alone, but rather one of a set of quadruplets, and heretofore unrecognized because separated at birth, and I also realized, with a thrill of satisfaction, that I have written tributes not only to Reza Aslan (see a posting above), but that I have written tributes to his three long-lost brothers as well, all of them now being touted (especially by themselves) as Guides to Islam.

In addition to Reza Aslan, the other three are:
Mark LaVine (professor in the California system, and rock star polymath), Khaled Abou El Fadl (professor of Islamic Law, unfortunately turned down for the post he dearly hoped to get at Yale Law School so he still must put up with San Diego), and Dinesh D'Souza (who lives and works, and operates -- in every sense -- in sunny California).

They all bear a remarkable family likeness, these sunny California boys, for they belong to the Great Tribe of Self-Promoters and Hollow Men -- creatures very much of the age, children of these decadent decades -- with their self-promoting websites, their careful self-descriptions where they tell us that they are "internationally-acclaimed" or "recognized" as great experts on this, or on that, and then tediously list, as if quantity were a guarantee of quality -- the talk shows on which they had been booked as "Islamic experts" or the well-paid campus talks they had given, or the publishers they had fooled (oh god, those bookers, those campus groups, those publishing house credulous dopes, are all quite easy to fool).

These are Confidence Men -- not Melville's creation, not even Thomas Mann's "Felix Krull" -- but simply, akin to coney-barkers or mountebanks selling their patent medicine. But Presentation Is All (in this they are like young business-management consultants), and they glossily offer their wares -- that is, themselves -- at these grotesque websites, that are quite professional productions.

The Hollow Men, these quadruplets separated at birth. You can find out a little more about them here:

A Tribute to Mark LaVine: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004273.php

A Tribute to Scholar of the House Khaled Abou El Fadl:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005615.php

A Tribute to Dinesh D’Souze: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014869.php

You know, now that I think of it, maybe they aren't quadruplets. Perhaps they really all come from a set of quintuplets. Yes, how could I forget? There's Noah "After Jihad" Feldman. He does, doesn't he, have so much in common with Reza Aslan, and Dinesh D'Souza, and Mark LaVine, and Khald Abou El Fadl?

But still, one thing still makes me question that notion, makes me think it might be wrong. It's the one thing that doesn't quite fit. You see, Noah Feldman doesn't live in, or operate out of, California.

Posted by: Hugh at May 4, 2008 9:17 AM

This is just insane.

However, I am inclined to believe that it's all about taking the easy way out. It's much simpler to accept the words of the islamic apologists and believe that this is just 'a small minority of radicals that don't represent islam, which means peace.' That means that all the DHS has to do is look out for johnny jihad, and there's only a handful of those in the world. At least, that's what the DHS would more than likely say.

Facing the reality for the DHS and the governments of the West is much more difficult. I have no doubt we can defeat these individuals on the ideological front, it's just that it would take an effort, and I don't think they're that interested. They'd rather tackle "global warming."

Posted by: s at May 4, 2008 11:11 AM

Hugh and Robert,

You may or may not have seen/read this paper by Dr. Sherifa D. Zuhur published by the the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College: Precision in the Global War on Terror: Inciting Muslims through the War of Ideas(PDF warning) - you might find it quite interesting.

Posted by: Eg at May 4, 2008 11:36 AM

I suggest that we no longer use the word "peace" because that is the word that through Islamic doublespeak has become meaningless. Instead, "Vigilant Perpetual Egalitarian Coexistance". "Vigilant" because it is also probably never again going to mean what we used think it meant.

Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 4, 2008 12:10 PM

Eg,

I'm intrigued. I hope Hugh and Robert take notice. It is worth noting, to begin with, that this book was less than THREE WEEKS ago. I read the capsule profile of the author. She seems, at first glance, very authoritative--given that her book coincides with these new security directives and emphases, she must have some influence at the top.

Posted by: John C at May 4, 2008 12:59 PM

"...That this book was [issued] less than THREE WEEKS ago."

Posted by: John C at May 4, 2008 1:03 PM

Eg, I think you should give the link above directly to director@jihadwatch.org

Posted by: John C at May 4, 2008 1:07 PM

A while back, if I remember correctly, Mr. Spencer was invited to speak to some governmental agencies,so I suppose he was invited by people on the inside who believed Robert could help the effort against our enemies. Does this mean that other voices won the "argument"? Would someone from JW care to comment?

Like I said before, who is the Hesham Islam at the DHS?

Oh, this is another issue for Rep Myrick's group to look into as well.

Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at May 4, 2008 1:13 PM

Perhaps it is good that State and DHS have decided to stop using the term jihad. They never understood it anyway.

The Jihad never fell into desuetude. It was merely overlooked, and when Muslims lacked the ability to conduct it successfully, it was easy to misread the situation. Arab oil money, acquired through an accident of geology, not through industry or entrepreneurial flair, gave the Muslims the wherewithal to pay for madrasas and mosques and armaments, to bribe diplomats and businessmen and journalists -- in short, to conduct Jihad in a much more systematic and sustained way. That is the only change; it began, roughly, with the 1973 oil price rise, and has continued ever since.

Of course, it did not spontaneously generate in 1973. The ground work had been laid much earlier by inner spiritual strugglers including:

Sayyid Qutb was a Muslim fundamentalist and is considered one of the founders of the violent jihad, or holy war. Many Muslim leaders believe he had great influence on Osama bin Laden's journey into terrorism. Qutb attended classes at Colorado State College of Education, now the University of Northern Colorado, in 1949, and developed strong feelings about the "lack of morality" in Greeley. According to UNC records, Qutb audited summer and fall classes at CSCE in 1949, then dropped out and left Greeley in December. Qutb left America the next year and wrote his book, "Mallem Fittareek" or "Milestones," which has been called the "Mein Kampf" for Muslim extremists.

(By the way, I challenge all of you to find any Islamic website with a "books" or "bookstore" link that does not have this book readily accessible and in stock.)

‘[T]he foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose jahiliyya from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the [Islamic] way of life’.
Sayyid Qutb [doyen of the Ikhwan al-Muslimun], Milestones, Mother Mosque Foundation, New York, 1979, p. 131.
Milestones,"Far-Reaching Changes"

...Thus, when they speak about Jihaad, they speak clumsily and mix up the various stages, distorting the whole concept of Jihaad and deriving from the Qur'anic verses final principles and generalities for which there is no justification. This is because they regard every verse of the Qur'an as if it were the final principle of this religion. This group of thinkers, who are a product of the sorry state of the present Muslim generation, have nothing but the label of Islam and have laid down their spiritual and rational arms in defeat. They say, "Islam has prescribed only defensive war"! and think that they have done some good for their religion by depriving it of its method...
If we insist on calling Islamic Jihaad a defensive movement, then we must change the meaning of the word 'defense' and mean by it 'the defense of man' against all those elements which limit his freedom. These elements take the form of beliefs and concepts, as well as of political systems, based on economic, racial or class distinctions. When Islam first came into existence, the world was full of such systems, and the present-day Jahiliyyah also has various kinds of such systems.
When we take this broad meaning of the word 'defense', we understand the true character of Islam, and that it is a universal proclamation of the freedom of man from servitude to other men, the establishment of the sovereignty of God and His Lordship throughout the world, the end of man's arrogance and selfishness, and the implementation of the rule of the Divine Shari'ah in human affairs.
Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, Jihad in the cause of God.

---------

Clearly, we need to get rid of the word 'defense" as well. Perhaps State and DHS will call it "Politically Correct Opposition to Takfiri Death Cult".

Posted by: Concerned Citizen at May 4, 2008 1:40 PM

"...coney-barkers or mountebanks selling their patent medicine."
Posted by: Hugh

Bingo.

Posted by: Eastview at May 4, 2008 2:40 PM

Relatives of pickpockets and rapists and murderers also hate when their criminal cousins are named as pickpockets and rapists and murderers.

But we don't adjust reality to soothe their familial feelings.

Chertoff, and company, must stand around with their mouths open, while looking up during rainstorms, like turkeys are reputed to do.

Drowning in their own silliness.

Islam: it ain't nothin' without the jihad.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 5, 2008 12:24 AM

You may or may not have seen/read this paper by Dr. Sherifa D. Zuhur published by the the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College: Precision in the Global War on Terror: Inciting Muslims through the War of Ideas(PDF warning) - you might find it quite interesting. - Posted by: Eg at May 4, 2008 11:36 AM

Here is another paper by this Dr. and her partner
LTCDR Youssef H Aboul-Enein titled "Islamic Rulings on Warfare"
to consider for further exploration and discovery.

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. Copies of this report may be obtained from the Publications Office by calling (717) 245-4133, FAX (717) 245-3820, or by e-mail at SSI_Publishing@carlisle.army.mil

Posted by: miira at May 5, 2008 7:25 AM

When you hear the term "Muslim American" or "American Muslim" aren't these names self contradicting?

How can you have Mulsim American when Muslin is anti American and American is anti Muslim in the Muslim minds?

The Muslims messge to Americans is that Muslim is anti American and America is anti Muslims.

Posted by: Lebanese at May 5, 2008 11:12 AM

"Youssuf H. Aboul-Enein..."
-- from a posting just above

In "The Marriage Game," put up here several years ago, Aboul-Enein receives mention in the paragraph that is fourth from the end:

"But your naivete affects, in the main, you, and your children. The naivete about Islam of American policymakers, who are slowly, slowly beginning to realize that perhaps "democracy" cannot be imposed, and that there is absolutely no connection in any case between "democracy" and de-islamization (meaning the imposition of Kemalist constraints on Islam, in order to create a secular class sufficient to keep the Kemalist ball rolling), and that Infidel interests are not served by the further misallocation of men, money, material, and attention in order to pursue the will-o'-the-wisp of this Light Unto the Muslim Nations.

Besides, for 80 years there has already been a Light Unto the Muslim Nations. It is called Turkey. Ataturk did what he could to constrain Islam, step by systematic step. And in those eighty years not one circumjacent or distant Muslim state emulated Turkey (except, very briefly, in Afghanistan, where the semi-enlightened ruler seemed to be interested in the Turkish experiment). Turkey itself is in constant danger of what, from the Infidel point of view, would be a relapse into greater, not less, Islam -- as Erdogan, that male sparrowhawk, chirpily pecks, pecks, pecks away at the foundations and protections of Kemalism, disguising his tying down the Turkish army, the last protector of Kemalism, as merely "complying with the requirements of the E.U." -- and who can object to that?

A futile policy, based on ignorance of Islam, or on the continued dreamy belief that Islam itself is not a problem, or that the idea of Jihad is a recent invention -- see the "Army War College study," recently put out by one Lt.-Commander Aboul-Enein, and wonder just who thinks this sort of thing, full of misstatements about Islamic tenets and what Muslim attitudes really are, was worth sponsoring. It’s just one more attempt by someone who, while no doubt a reasonably fine fellow and decent lieutenant commander in the Navy, either has no idea what Islam is all about: bearing the name Aboul-Enein, and calling yourself a "Muslim" does not make you an instant expert on what is uttered in khutbas all over the Middle East, especially if you have yourself been raised in Mississippi. Or perhaps he does know, but out of professional fear or filial piety, cannot allow himself to say.

There was recently in the news the story of a lady who realized that her husband saw her only as a way to get a Green Card, while he continued to hate America (where he could now live safely). She had the courage to publicly explain how silly and trusting and innocent of Islam she was.

If she can do it, so can the highest-ranking officers in the American army, and so can the officials in the Pentagon.

And they had better."

[Posted by Hugh at May 16, 2005]

Posted by: Hugh at May 5, 2008 11:17 AM