I take it he approves of slavery as well?

Just to repeat some of the best websites by ex-Muslims:

http://www.secularislam.org/testimonies/index.htm

http://www.faithfreedom.org/

http://www.middleastwomen.org/

http://www.apostatesofislam.com/

http://www.geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/home.htm

http://www.homa.org/

http://www.noniedarwish.com/pages/745434/index.htm

http://www.ladeeni.net/english.htm

http://www.geocities.com/murtad_malaysia/

http://www.mukto-mona.com/

And another good site:

www.muslimrefusenik.com/

Well, then, let me play devil's advocate...

What *is* the difference, fundamentally, between apostasy and treason? A clear refutation, from first principles, of the type of argument presented in this article is going to become more and more important.

Islam is an army, the army of Islam, the umma al-islamiyya. Those who "revert" to Islam are conscripts into that army. Their weapons are many. Qital, or combat is one. Wealth is another. "Pen, speech" (propaganda, dawa) is another. And breeding furiously is still another weapon. The one who leaves the army is in fact a traitor, and to be treated as such. Only the collective, the umma, matters, never the individual. Those who crave to yield up the pain of being an individual may find the army of Islam, its rules, its constrains, its interference with every area of life, appealing. Most of us, however, will think of it in quite other terms.

Check out this article about children in Senegal who are pressed into begging to fund Muslim school teachers:

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41241&SelectRegion=West_Africa

SENEGAL: Kids beg for hours to fund Muslim teachers

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

© Claire Soares

Talibes make the most of the traffic lights being on red

DAKAR, 24 May 2004 (IRIN) - Moussa doesn’t know how old he is or how long he has been in Dakar begging for money to keep his Muslim schoolteacher from beating him. But he knows what he wants to be when he grows up – a white man.

Malnourished children stretching out their hands for a coin are a common sight in many African cities, but in this most western tip of the continent, it is not poverty driving them onto the streets but adults.

Moussa is one of thousands of Senegalese boys, plucked from their rural roots and sent to moderate religious schools – daaras - in the cities to learn about Islam and memorise its holy book, the Koran.

Yet the pupils, known as talibes or disciples, learn little, forced to spend 10 hours a day trudging the streets for coins so they can pay their marabout teachers and for scraps so they can feed themselves.

“I have to take 200 CFA (36 cents) back to my marabout every night,” Moussa mumbled, digging in a tomato-paste tin for that day’s collection of coins.

It is early evening in one of Dakar’s more affluent suburbs and the boy, who looks no older than seven, doesn’t have even half the required amount. “If I’m short, the teacher hits me with a stick,” Moussa said resignedly.

He rubbed at a red scar on his forehead from a beating last week as he explained how there was only one thing he wanted to be when he was older.

“I want to be a white man.”

Some marabouts argue that they have no other way of providing for the boys, that they had the same upbringing and that begging teaches the children humility. But these reasons don’t convince everyone.

EXPLOITATION

“Obviously we’re not talking about all marabout teachers, but for some it has reached the point where children are a business,” said Lahad Ndiaye, who works for the Synapse Network Center, a Dakar-based group that has tried to help the talibes.

“It’s exploitation pure and simple. You see kids who can’t recite even two verses of the Koran. They don’t have time to learn because they’re on the street all day.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal – about one percent of the population – and “talibe children are the vast majority”.

“I think the problem is growing,” Mamadou Wane, a UNICEF child protection officer, said in an interview in his Dakar office.

“Poverty is hitting rural areas ever harder here, meaning more kids in the city daaras,” he continued.

Daaras have been around since the seventeenth century and in their original incarnation were based in villages. Parents would send their children to work the marabout’s fields in return for a religious education.

But in the last 50 years or so, bad droughts shrivelled crops to dust, the national economy spluttered and the marabouts joined the exodus to the cities. There, riches proved equally elusive, and for some sending their pupils to beg was a neat solution.

“The marabouts have no salary and they have to support 20 to 30 kids, it’s impossible,” said Babacar Sene, a Muslim elder in Ouaka, one of the outer suburbs of Dakar.

Sene is well known in the local community, where a number of marabouts operate but refused to discuss their operations.

“I don’t agree with begging, it’s irritating. But it’s a thorny problem to solve. What else can the marabouts do?” added the 76-year-old, who chose to send his 23 children to French-speaking schools and teach them the Koran at home.

Senegal is a religiously tolerant country where many Muslims even celebrate Christmas and Islamic militancy is limited to the odd Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

SENSITIVE SUBJECT

But even so, when some 95 percent of the population is Muslim, tackling the talibe problem is a delicate business.

“The fact that people can talk about it now, that’s already progress,” said UNICEF’s Wane.

The UN group has been involved in projects since the early 90s. It has worked with village chiefs to set up 40 community daaras so children can stay close to families and has developed a French and Arab curriculum for Koranic teachers to use.

Other organisations like Dakar-based development organisation, ENDA have set up contact points in the bigger towns where the child beggars can eat, get access to water and interact with different adults.

“It’s about giving them a variety of reference points, beyond the marabout,” one of the organisers Moustapha Diop explained.

For while some talibes like Moussa dream of nothing but escape, others have adapted to the early-morning hitch-hike into town, begging for most of the day, squeezing in study late at night and having to sleep on flattened cardboard boxes.

The aid workers at Synapse Network Center, a locally based Non governmental organisation, discovered first-hand how difficult it can be to break the talibe habit when they set up a drop-in centre. Within five months, the boys had all dropped out.

“They had already got the taste for the street, they had the notion of liberty while out begging… and they had got used to keeping any extra money they collected,” said Ndiaye.

I WANT TO BE A MARABOUT

A group of talibes squatting in the midday sun by a bench in Dakar’s main square illustrate the point. They admitted missing their parents, and living in worse conditions now then when they were at home but said they were happy.

“We’re lucky, we get to keep some of what we earn on the street, not like some talibes. I want to stay here and learn until I can be a marabout myself,” 10-year-old Umar said with a grin.

His friend Seydou, sporting a digital watch and fashionable if dirty shorts, announced proudly how he had been at a French school three years ago and then left to join the daara: “It was my own decision. I like the Koran more and I want to be a marabout.”

But as UNICEF’s Wane points out not every talibe can become a marabout.

“To have a future they need to learn agricultural skills or Wolof or French,” he said.

“There needs to be an institutional response. Koranic schools should be recognised… then transformed so they have to provide a basic general or professional education,” he said.

The government, conscious of the country’s secular status, is currently grappling with reforms. According to newspaper Le Soleil, it wants to “give all schools a structure which produces an educated and competent citizen who has religious values and is ready to participate in his country’s development.”

For Cire Kane, another Synapse Network worker, the talibe problem should be a priority.

“When these kids grow up they won’t have the skills to find work and they’ll stay on the streets. Senegal is preparing a time-bomb for itself.”

This deeply concerns me........my 2 best buddies are Apostates who were Sunnis but became Christians many years ago ......... We live in Canada......what happens if some Islamic lunkheads start getting it into their head that my buddies should be terminated?? Folks, this is hardly out of the question but becoming more and more realistic...

My buddies were blessed that there father who was quite angry but is a liberal muslim and not an Orthodox Muslim........they could have lost there lives there.......I remember there Father inviting us all over one day a few weeks after they became Christians.....luckily, all he did was call them names and questioned there motives.......but if Sharia passes, lets face it......we have a problem...

Thanks

Here is an update on the Hamtramck "call to prayer" issue:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/8750380.htm

Posted on Mon, May. 24, 2004

Controversy over call to prayer ignites debate on religious rights

BY CECIL ANGEL

Knight Ridder Newspapers

DETROIT - (KRT) - On the roof of the Al-Islah Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Mich., a tall post with three loudspeakers stands ready to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer.

The installation is simple, but the issues surrounding it have grown far more complex than anyone expected.

They have thrust a city known for its Polish Catholic heritage - a city once visited by Pope John Paul II - into a nasty war of words over religious rights and the standing of Islam in America.

The controversy mushroomed from a local squabble over a mosque's desire to broadcast the call to prayer to one that has captured headlines around the world. Newspapers in the Middle East, Europe and Asia have run reports. Hamtramck City Council members have been pelted with e-mails from across the United States and abroad.

People from all over metro Detroit - from pastors and imams to lawyers and white supremacists - also have joined the fray. A noise ordinance amendment allowing the broadcasts passed unanimously last month, but the furor over the issue could come to a head again Tuesday night.

That's when opponents will have their last chance to persuade the City Council to rescind the amendment. But the council isn't likely to reconsider its earlier vote, and so the debate - for the moment - may be moot.

The ordinance was to take effect Wednesday, but a petition drive may have stopped it. Acting City Clerk Genevieve Bukoski said she will notify the council Tuesday that the petitions have been certified.

Under the city charter, if the council declines to rescind the amendment after receiving the petitions, the ordinance is automatically put on hold and becomes a ballot initiative. Voters will decide at a special election or in August, the next scheduled election.

"I haven't seen any indication from anyone on the council that they're changing," City Council President Karen Majewski said Monday.

The Al-Islah Islamic Center was on track to be the first mosque in the 2.1-square-mile city of 23,000 to begin broadcasting the call to prayer several times a day. It had planned to start broadcasts on Friday.

Opponents have called the plan to broadcast the call to prayer noise pollution, an offense to Christians and a violation of their religious right.

The arguments, like those expressed Monday by Hamtramck resident Caroline Zarski, 81, often seem paradoxical.

"I'm a Christian Catholic. I practice my own religion," Zarski said. "I don't want to listen to them."

Zarski said she lives near two of the city's three mosques and is likely to be within earshot of the calls to prayer.

"This is a melting pot. We all become Americans," she said. "What they're trying to do is make us assimilate into their culture."

About 90 percent of the letters Hamtramck City Council members have received oppose the broadcasts, Majewski said. The letters range from reasoned opposition to "racist and personally offensive name-calling using vulgar language," she said.

Many express bitter feelings about the rising profile of Islam in the United States at a time when U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq. Many of the letter writers seem frightened by the spread of Islam in America and see Hamtramck as the place to take a stand.

Legal experts disagree on whether the ordinance as written is constitutional.

Robert Sedler, a Wayne State University law professor, said the government cannot promote religion, but it "may take action that is precisely tailored to protect the religious freedom of individuals and groups."

However, Kary Moss, director of the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ordinance has a problem because it specifically mentions religion. She said the ordinance should refer to bells, calls to prayer and other constitutionally protected speech in general rather than as the specific announcement of religious meetings.

"It singles out religious speech for special attention," she said.

As the controversy grew, some people threatened boycotts of Hamtramck or Michigan. During hearings on the ordinance, many traveled from across metro Detroit and beyond to express support for or opposition to the ordinance.

The Rev. James Marquis, pastor of the New Covenant Worship Center, traveled from Wellston, Ohio, to tell the City Council last month: "We feel like they're setting a precedent and they're forcing us to hear a prayer we don't want to hear. They are reciting a prayer to a God we don't believe in."

---

© 2004, Detroit Free Press.

Folks:

Did you see that Howard Rotberg, that author who was shouted down, has made a post on the thread with that newspaper article about his aborted speech? Check it out.

I guess for the smiple mind like mine we look at this and see we have to say good by to Hollywood if this is to come to pass, and most of the American youth who are not pure. Wow Oh My!!!

Good thing we are not French!
or belive our press! Stay strong and buy a few guns my friends we have that Freedom under the 2nd add. This [2nd add] we have to stand for or America will be lost and if we fall the World Falls and the Mulsums know this and the Fight will not be easy and never has been.

Part of the Americian Tribe

God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and all who fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen

I hate to say this but Osama (OBL) got just what he wanted- i.e. a defninte split of Muslims and Westerners. The initial war on terror has now turned into an unofficial war on islam. The popularity of this site and others is evidence of this. I know that is what many on this site want--I too want islamic reform (so if that means a war on islam then I'm already in).

I am pro-Bush so please take my statements at face value. The reason I am writing this is that I feel that we have played right into Osama's hand. Not that OBL could have seen all of this coming but to some extent he wanted this split. While more Westerners are waking up to the islamic threat there are also muslims waking up to call of jihad and their faith.

I'm wondering if there was a better plan that we could have taken from the start. No doubt that after we leave Iraq there will be other regimes in need of change--but is full scale military invasion the right way? On a positive note, the best outcome of this war has been the creation of the US sponsored tv station in the mid-east. GENIUS. Now we need to shut down Al-Jazeera and put out some more news programs--with a Western slant of course.

After that, of course change ME EDUCATION. I just want to make one final point: I was raised religiously (non-muslim), and in my study of the bible I was never taught about other religions. What I mean by that is, I never heard a negative word about any other religion. As a result I am a fairly tolerant person. Why do muslims preach hate? I just don't get it. It is such a waste of life and precious time we are alloted on this planet.

...the image of "a tall post with three loudspeakers stands ready to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer."

...reminds me of a WWII film i saw as a kid...
it was a city in Germany...the film
in B&W....the Nazi's were pumping out propaganda from a tin speaker all day long...people were sitting at a cafe,talking,if i recall...trying to ignore it...

*shudders*

-doc

Joe H.: I second a lot of what you say. But I'd go a bit farther, especially as someone who has enjoyed good personal relationships with Muslims (including some pretty traditional ones) in the past.

Back in 1979, the mainstream and liberal American media decided to call Khomeini's gang "fundamentalists". Why? Well, peaceful, responsible, tax-paying American Evangelical Christians were deserting the Democratic Party in Jimmy Carter's hour of need; and here was a chance to make them look un-American.

This is why European pundits, with painful objectivity, posit a moral equivalence between Christian and Muslim "fundamentalisms"--even if the Christian fundamentalists regard KKK and Aryan Nations race-based theology as heretical.

It's also why once, an alarmed Malaysian I met (a diplomat who had hoped the Cold War anti-Communist coalition would hold together to make a better world after 1991) asked me, "Since America is against fundamentalism, does that mean I am your enemy because I won't eat pork, and pray five times daily?"

I think of that whenever I hear of trouble in the islands of Southeast Asia.

I hope the editorial boards of the Washington POst and NYTimes are real, real proud of themselves.

Take away the window dressing and Islam's death for apostates is nothing but the babaric and inhuman religious practice of human sacrifice to appease an angry god.

I just read that the Imman of the mosque in Hamtramck has stated that the calls to prayer would take place even if the city council reversed it's deceision. The residents only needed to gather 540 signatures and so far they have over 600.
I guess our laws just don't mean anything to these people.
I swear before God, if this were to happen where I live, they would get soooooooooooo sick of having to replace cut speaker cords, the pole its self and the speakers, not to mention the blasting of Black Sabbath at exactly the same time prayers were called. Lets see how they like Iron Man!!
You know in all seriousness, thats exactly what the residents should do, all you would need was an ordained minister (and you can get an ordination very easily), locate your chruch right across the street, you could literally call it the Church of Rock and Roll, the president has already been set in California, through the penal system, for the recognition of alternate religions
and under the guidelines already set by the city council in Hamtramck, you could blast Ozzie Ozbourne as your call to prayer also.
But, hey, thats just what I would do.

Well like I said the residents are mostly polish...I think a good LOUD polka 5 times a day will cure the muslims, every resident with a good polka tune broadcasts it out their livingroom window, maybe even live polka bands strolling past the mosques...lets see...michigan, must be lots of hunters there...loudspeakers on a pole seem like pretty good target practice to me...I will bet they are repairing those speakers several times a week...

If the council recinds their decision and the mosque still broadcasts wailing and shreiking then they are in violation of the law and should be shut down...simple.

http://www.geocities.com/evilislamist/

Someone just sent this site to me. The pictures are so...so...man, well, look, just have Maalox handy if you have a weak stomach.

This is the true face of islam, and I swear to Christ, I will fight to the death to keep it from taking over my beloved America.

Some good posts on this thread. The problem with the Muslims in this town is that they don't want to get along with other folks -- they want to dominate them. Now other religions that have more pieces of the ultimate truth, don't need to replicate aspects of their home culture everywhere they spread. But Islam doesn't mix well with other cultures; it instead uses them as a springboard to set up an Islamic culture. Did these guys really think that this would go over well in Michigan? America has been corrupted from within for many years, and I'm sure these guys thought that we'd be pushovers by now.

Hi Catherine,
I tried to E mail you in private, but your address is false.
I enjoy some of what you have to say and think it has value.
However, many times I just skip your posts because it takes too much effort to try to figure out what you are trying to say.

Could you try to write better, please? None of us is perfect and don't have to be, but we do try to be readable.

Take a little time to edit your writing. I do. It's only showing respect to others to not waste their time by doing the work beforehand.

Thank you.

Patricia:

All Catheter has to say is "LIBERALS BAD! CONSERVATIVES GOOD! BUSH GOD! CLINTON SATAN! (drool.) KERRY BAD! FRANCE BAD!"

Seriously, folks... this guy Ibn Warraq is the bravest man in the world.

His site www.secularislam.org is a treasure trove of facts and data that really helped open by liberal, democratic eyes a few years back.

Spare me the flame mail unless you can tell me three ways that W fought terrorism before 9-11. Better yet, instead of whining and lying about how "lib'ruls love terrorism and hate America" why not help me with some ideas for how I can better convince my fellow liberals to join us against the jihadists? I have already convinced a few.

Perhaps some of the followers of Allah or their western apologists who visit this site can explain why Ibn Warraq or anyone else who wishes to leave Islam should have to live in fear of his life?

And we are meant to believe Islam can safely co-exist in the West!

"What *is* the difference, fundamentally, between apostasy and treason?"

Jim asked this yesterday, and I don't think anyone answered. I say treason is betrayal of a government to which one owes loyalty. Apostasy is an offense against God. It is right for the government to punish the former. Those who trust and believe in God will leave it to Him to punish the latter. Thus those who want the government to punish apostasy show their confusion and lack of faith.

To Roger Burk:

"Those who trust and believe in God will leave it to Him to punish the latter."

But according to Islam God requires us to punish apostates. Man is under an obligation to create a just society where crimes are punished.

A crime against God surely is worse than a crime against man.

Have anybody asked a muslim what he thinks about apostasy? What do they say and what are their different arguments? Perhaps there even is a nice opinion poll with depth interviews somewhere in an academic ivory tower.

The apostasy question is not just of academic interest. Its hard for people to start to use their brains and start discussing with other people when you fear that somebody might think your act may be worse than high treason.

Thanks to Ali Dashti for the links.

Curious,

Try this site. www.iviews.com It's an American online "news" site in Culver City, California. Spend some time there and go back through some of the articles, read the posts and you will find your answer directly from their mouths which is better than any of us telling you.

Good luck.

I agree with Keith...Ibn is very brave...but isnt it a shame that he has to be brave simply to leave a "religion". His story makes me thankful that I wasnt born into a muslim family, something I had no control over but am thankful for nonetheless. I decided that I no longer wanted to attend the Catholic church when I was 18...Father McCready didnt come after me with an AK47...no nuns laying in wait to take me out with sniper fire...it was my decision and thats it.

USAGirl is right. Leaving Islam is harder to do than leaving anything else, since you have guns pointed at you immediately.

It also works in scholarship. I've suffered because I don't conform to the rest. I get the low grades, I'm called racist and I get sick from stress. Next year is my final year. Will the grades be high enough for grad school? Looks like I'll be at the library forever.

I really feel for you Ibn...its not fair anyone should have to live like that, best of luck with your grades....is there anyone that could help you..is there anything anyone can do for you...wish I could help.

Keithjoy: I have also come to worry that modern liberalism is a cancer in our society, but I'd definitely refrain from saying Bush is God--I plead the First, Second, and Third Commandments. As for Clinton being Satan; all I'd say is that ex-Pres. Clinton is corrupt, slimy, scheming, and thoroughly untrustworthy--and her husband's a womanizing liar.

AT LAST THE PENNY HAS DROPPED !!!
fFrom the Sunday Times in London

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1119570,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2762-1119847,00.html

AI,
What is your trying to show us? The only thing that comes up is a members logon page.
Try to paste the article, ok?
Thanks

AT LAST THE PENNY HAS DROPPED !!!
From the Sunday Times in London

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1119570,00.html

May 23, 2004

Islam and democracy: the impossible union
Iranian Muslim Amir Taheri says his faith cannot embrace western liberalism because our notions of equality are antithetical to the basis of Islam

In recent weeks there has been much soul-searching, in the Islamic world and among the wider Muslim diaspora about whether Islam is compatible with democracy. This sparked a debate hosted by Intelligence2, a forum I took part in last week. As an Iranian now living in a liberal democracy, I would like to explain why Islam and democracy are essentially incompatible.
To understand a civilisation it is important to comprehend the language that shapes it. There was no word in any of the Muslim languages for democracy until the 1890s. Even then the Greek word entered Muslim vocabulary with little change: democrasi in Persian, dimokraytiyah in Arabic, demokratio in Turkish.

Democracy is based on one fundamental principle: equality.

The Greek word isos is used in more than 200 compound nouns, including isoteos (equality), isologia (equal or free speech) and isonomia (equal treatment).

Again we find no equivalent in any of the Muslim languages. The words we have such as barabari in Persian and sawiyah in Arabic mean juxtaposition or separation.

Nor do we have a word for politics. The word siassah, now used as a synonym for politics, initially meant whipping stray camels into line. (Sa’es al-kheil is a person who brings back lost camels to the caravan.) The closest translation may be: regimentation.

Nor is there mention of such words as government and the state in the Koran. Early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts, but never those related to political matters.

The idea of equality is unacceptable to Islam. For the non-believer cannot be the equal of the believer. Even among the believers only those who subscribe to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, known as the “people of the book” (Ahl el-Kitab), are regarded as fully human. Here, too, there is a hierarchy, with Muslims at the top.

Non-Muslims can, and have often been, treated with decency, but never as equals. There is a hierarchy even for animals and plants. Seven animals and seven plants will assuredly go to heaven while seven others of each will end up in hell.

Democracy means the rule of the demos, the common people, or what is now known as popular or national sovereignty. In Islam, however, power belongs only to God: al-hukm l’illah. The man who exercises that power on Earth is known as Khalifat al-Allah, the regent of God. Even then the Khalifah, or Caliph, cannot act as legislator. The law has already been spelt out and fixed forever by God.

The only task that remains is its discovery, interpretation and application. That, of course, allows for a substantial space in which different styles of rule could develop.

But the bottom line is that no Islamic government can be democratic in the sense of allowing the common people equal shares in legislation. Islam divides human activities into five categories from the permitted to the sinful, leaving little room for human interpretation, let alone ethical innovations.

To say that Islam is incompatible with democracy should not be seen as a disparagement of Islam. On the contrary, many Muslims would see it as a compliment because they believe that their idea of rule by God is superior to that of rule by men, which is democracy.

The great Persian poet Rumi pleads thus:

Oh, God, do not leave our affairs to us
For, if You do, woe is us.

Islamic tradition holds that God has always intervened in the affairs of men, notably by dispatching 124,000 prophets or emissaries to inform the mortals of his wishes and warnings.

Many Islamist thinkers regard democracy with horror.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini called democracy “a form of prostitution”, because he who gets the most votes wins the power that belongs only to God.

Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian who has emerged as the ideological mentor of Salafists (fundamentalists who want to return to the idyllic Islamic state of their forebears) spent a year in the United States in the 1950s. He found “a nation that has forgotten God and been forsaken by Him; an arrogant nation that wants to rule itself”.

Last year Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of the leading theoreticians of today’s Islamist movement, published a book in which he warned that the real danger to Islam did not come from American tanks and helicopter gunships in Iraq but from the idea of democracy and the government of the people.

Maudoodi, another of the Islamist theoreticians now fashionable, dreamt of a political system in which humans would act as automatons in accordance with rules set by God.

He said that God has arranged man’s biological functions in such a way that their operation is beyond human control. For our non-biological functions, notably our politics, God has also set rules that we have to discover and apply once and for all so that our societies can be on autopilot, so to speak.

The late Saudi theologian, Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim al-Jubair, a man I respected though seldom agreed with, believed that the root cause of contemporary ills was the spread of democracy.

“Only one ambition is worthy of Islam,” he liked to say, “to save the world from the curse of democracy: to teach men that they cannot rule themselves on the basis of man-made laws. Mankind has strayed from the path of God, we must return to that path or face certain annihilation.”

Those who claim that Islam is compatible with democracy should know that they are not flattering Muslims.

In the past 14 centuries Muslims have, on occasions, succeeded in creating successful societies without democracy. And there is no guarantee that democracy never produces disastrous results (after all, Hitler was democratically elected).

The fact that almost all Muslim states today can be rated as failures or, at least, underachievers, is not because they are Islamic but because they are ruled by corrupt and despotic elites that, even when they proclaim an Islamist ideology, are, in fact, secular dictators.

Socrates ridiculed the myth of democracy by pointing out that men always call on experts to deal with specific tasks, but when it comes to the more important matters concerning the community, they allow every Tom, Dick and Harry an equal say.

In response his contemporary, Protagoras, one of the original defenders of democracy, argued: “People in the cities, especially in Athens, listen only to experts in matters of expertise, but when they meet for consultation on the political art, ie of the general question of government, everybody participates.”

Traditional Islamic political thought is closer to Socrates than to Protagoras. The common folk, al-awwam, are regarded as “animals”. The interpretation of the divine law is reserved only for the experts.

Political power, like many other domains including philosophy, is reserved for the “khawas” who, in some Sufi traditions, are even exempt from the rituals of the faith.

The “common folk”, however, must do as they are told either by the text and tradition or by fatwas (edicts) issued by the experts. Khomeini used the word “mustazafeen” (the feeble ones) to describe the general population.

Islam is about certainty (iqan) while democracy is about doubt. Islam cannot allow people to do as they please, even in the privacy of their bedrooms, because God is always present, all-hearing and all-seeing.

There is consultation in Islam: wa shawerhum fil amr (and consult them in matters). But, here, consultation is about specifics only, never about the overall design of society.

In democracy there is a constitution that can be amended or changed. The Koran, however, is the immutable word of God, beyond amendment or change.

This debate is not an easy one to have, because Islam has become an issue of political controversy in the West.

On the one hand we have Islamophobia, a particular affliction of those who blame Islam for all the ills of our world. Some Muslims regard any criticism of Islam as Islamophobia.

On the other hand we have Islamoflattery, which claims that everything good under the sun came from Islam. (According to a recent BBC documentary on Islam, even cinema was invented in the 9th century by a Muslim lens maker in Baghdad, named Abu-Hufus!)

This is often practised by a new generation of the Turques de profession, westerners who are prepared to apply the rules of critical analysis to everything under the sun except Islam.

They think they are doing Islam a favour. They are not.

Depriving Islam of critical scrutiny is bad for Islam and Muslims, and ultimately dangerous for the whole world. There are 57 nations in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Not one is yet a democracy.

We should not allow the everything-is-equal-to-everything-else fashion of postmodernist multiculturalism and political correctness to prevent us from acknowledging differences and even incompatibilities in the name of a soggy consensus. If we are all the same, how can we have a dialogue of civilisations?

Muslims should not be duped into believing that they can have their cake and eat it. Muslims can build successful societies provided they treat Islam as a matter of personal, private belief and not as a political ideology that seeks to monopolise the public space shared by the whole of humanity and dictate every aspect of individual and community life. Islam is incompatible with democracy.

MORE FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2762-1119847,00.html

May 23, 2004

Comment: Minette Marrin: Children are at the heart of the battle for Islam’s soul

Last week the home secretary boldly urged Muslim leaders in Britain to increase efforts to restrain the extremists in their communities whose teachings inflame racial tension.
A paper published by the Home Office said Britain needs “to break out of the cycle of ignorance and prejudice that fracture communities”. David Blunkett singled out Muslim leaders and called on them as well as the media to deal with the “myths and misrepresentation” that divide communities.

The day before, a public forum called Intelligence2 had held a debate in London to an audience of 700 on the motion that “Islam is incompatible with democracy”. The motion was carried, the majority swayed I suspect by some powerful arguments from Amir Taheri, a distinguished Muslim journalist. After heated debate it became clear how difficult it is, even for well meaning and well informed people, to deal with myths and misrepresentations.

There are serious problems in this country between some British Muslims and the rest of the population and a better accommodation must urgently be found. Some Muslims, particularly the less educated, find it hard to integrate here and to become British in ways that matter. Instead there are too many who are indifferent, contemptuous or enraged to the point of violence and conspiracy.

This sense of disengagement seems to be more marked and growing among the young, according to surveys. Hence the new insistence on the hijab, for example. (Of course there are many who have settled into being British successfully; they are not the problem but part of the solution.) At the same time there is suspicion and anger among the non-Muslim majority, among the educated as well as the uneducated. Anybody who dismisses this as Islamophobia is refusing to face the problem.

Here public discussion is long overdue, however provocative. And it certainly is provocative to suggest that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Belief in the virtue of democracy is a central article of faith in the West, so deeply rooted as to be hardly noticed. Anyone who dissents from belief in democracy is, in western terms, apostate (however much westerners try to avoid that sort of talk). It is to deny those western absolute values — equal rights, equality under the law and the sovereignty of the people.

Of the 57 Islamic states in the world today hardly any have a full democracy in the western sense. Many others are shameful tyrannies. This does not by itself demonstrate that Islam is incompatible with democracy — there could be many historical explanations for that, including interference by western colonialists — but it is suggestive.

Islam, according to the winning debating team, has traditionally not had the language for discussion about democracy. There was no word for democracy itself in Muslim languages until modern times nor even apparently a word for equality. Democracy depends on an idea of equality but, they argued, in Koranic teaching the idea of equality is unacceptable; an unbeliever cannot be equal to a believer. There are other inequalities. To this day Muslim women are not the equals of Muslim men, strictly speaking.

One of the speakers drew up an Islamic hierarchy, from Muslim free men at the top, followed by Muslim slaves and Muslim women, then Jews, then Christians and so on down. There is even a hierarchy for animals and plants. This does not mean inferior beings are to be treated badly, merely differently, according to Koranic teaching. Muslims have shown at some stages in their civilisation far greater tolerance (although not equality) to their subject infidels than have Christians.

However, sovereignty cannot be given to the people under Islam. That would be blasphemy because sovereignty belongs to God and he has laid down the law and the Koran is the last word.

If correct, these are all knock-down arguments. However, they are difficult to square with my experience of Muslim friends and acquaintances — pretty much secularised I suppose — who do not appear to think like this at all and who are clearly thoroughly at home in western culture. The problem seems to be not Islam but religion, and not just religion but religion in its most fundamentalist, literal-minded, proselytising forms.

“Once again wars of religions are ready to devastate Europe. Boheman, leader of a new sect of purified Christianity, has just been arrested in Sweden, and the most disastrous plans were found among his papers. The sect to which he belonged is said to want nothing less than to render itself master of all the potentates of Europe. In Arabia new sectarians are emerging and want to purify the religion of Mahomet. In China even worse troubles, still and always motivated by religion, are tearing apart the inside of that vast empire. As always it is gods that are the cause of all ills.”

That could have been written today, but it was in fact the Marquis de Sade in the 18th century, quoted by Max Rodenbeck in his magisterial piece “Islam confronts its demons” in a recent New York Review of Books.

There seems to be a trajectory in most religions — I won’t say development or progress, although that is my bias — from early dogmatic fundamentalism, through some sort of reformation and enlightenment to a period of tolerance made possible by a trickling away of faith — that long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach — so that in the end there are no articles of belief for which anyone is prepared any longer to kill or die.

In fact there is by then little common belief at all. The teaching of the holy texts, once sacrosanct, are reinterpreted metaphorically, personally, privately. Religion withdraws from the public space and so church and state can be separated, which is pretty much essential for true democracy, although we have interesting fudges here and there. Britain is technically a theocracy.

Believers in any faith, Muslim or other, hotly resist such “reform” and fight for their own “reform”, a return to the early certainties, like America’s Christian fundamentalists. All religions have seen long battles between the literalists and those inclined to metaphorical interpretations, tending towards humanism and finally secularism.

In the Muslim world today the literalists appear to be in the ascendant. In fact, however, among educated Muslims, particularly in the West, the metaphorists (or humanists) seem to be increasing. So much crucially depends, hard though it is for British post-Christians to understand, on the religious education of Muslim children here (and all across Europe).

RE is not a soft subject, a time to doze off; it is a matter of cultural survival, of life and death.

Blunkett should therefore take the advice of Lord Ahmed, the new Labour peer, and look as a matter of urgency into the training, recruitment and licensing of imams in Britain. The accommodation we all need is in their hands.

Following your lead, that's the meaning of human life, then -- a short, nasty, brutish frustration to be greeted by death. Human beings are just animals; there is no truth; therefore, it matters not how we live. Islam is just as good as Christianity is just as good as anything else. You may not like it much, but what's the like or the dislike of yet another semi-evolved chimp?

An important point re Mr. Taheri's comments--much as I respect him.

We "Anglo-Saxons" (used as a cultural term for the English-speaking peoples; not as a racial badge) have formed a rather remarkable set of democracies--but we don't have words for democracy or politics, either. These words are borrowings from Greek (a language whose speakers did pretty well with despots from Philip of Macedon to Ioannes Metaxas).

I'll add as well that religion does make a difference. Judaism as it exists today was shaped as a dispersed community in the Babylonian exile and period of Persian rule; Christianity, originally a Jewish sect, went for a century-plus before it managed to convert a petty king in upper Mesopotamia. Islam, however, began as both a creed and a warlord's army.

Further, the Christian doctrine of original sin (everybody but Jesus Christ has a propensity towards evil, which invariably comes out) led many to hold that no one sinner could be trusted with too much power.