These people are obviously nuts, it only shows how bloody corrupt the system is. When people in power willingly shut their eyes and ears to the truth, what more can you do? I'm not going to waste time talking to a brick wall. It's bad enough that muslims are oblivious to reasonable arguments, I have even less patience with idiotarians such as Kofi Annan (and a host of others) that lie through their teeth or are simply too ignorant for their own good. Next thing you know they'll be telling us that the holocaust is a jewish fabrication.

www.dutchdisease.com

Posted by: Leveller at December 11, 2004 2:53 PM

What standards will be used by the arbiters of 'distorted opinions' on Islam? Perhaps we will have an 'Islamo-Judge', Esposito himself perhaps. He will listen and read and with a loudspeaker, a stamp, or whatever, he will proclaim: 'DISTORTED' or 'CORRECT' or 'ALMOST DISTORTED'.

Has anyone ever heard Robert talk of 'distorted opinions'? I haven't. I would venture a guess that he has never used these terms in the sense they are being used here. Why? I don't know, because Robert believes in evidence and rational argument? All he asks for is a chance to debate, but Esposito just turns his back: I guess we need some Islamoarbiters to moderate any debate with Esposito or the gig is off.

Esposito talks in ways that should be terrifying to anyone trained in critical methods of reasoning: the connotation of these remards is that we need 'arbiters' of Islamo-discourse to solve issues of 'distortion' or 'false opinion'. Esposito is heading in the direction of the divine command mentality of the Qur'an itself. "This is the correct rule because the Prophet says so. He talks to God and everything God says is correct." Esposito: "This is the correct interpretation of the Qur'an because I say so (or some other Islamo-arbiter) and everything I say is correct is."

And anyone who questions the authority of the 'Islamoarbiters' has a mysterious pathological condition (undefined, unresearched, but it exists) known as 'Islamophobia'. What they need are the Islamopsychodoctors who correct distortions and false opinions about Islam.

"Take two to these and call me in the morning..."

And if that doesn't help, call the paddywagon.

Posted by: JTF at December 11, 2004 6:03 PM

The word "Islamophobia" must be held up for inspection, its users constantly asked precisely how they would define that word, and they should be put on the defensive for waving about what is clearly meant to be a scare-word that will silence criticism.

So let us ask them, which of the following criticisms of Islam is to be considered "Islamophobia":

1) Muhammad is a role-model for all time. Muhammd married Aisha when she was 6 and had sexual intercourse with her when she was 9. "I find appalling that Muslims consider this act of Muhammad to be that of the man who is in every way a role-model, and hence to be emulated. In particular, I am appalled that virtually the first act of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a very orthodox and learned Shi'a theologian, was to lower the marriageable age of girls in Iran to 9 -- because, of course, it was Aisha's age when Muhammad had sexual relations with her.

2) I find appalling that Islam provides a kind of Total Regulation of the Universe, so that its adherents are constantly asking for advise as to whether or not, for example, they can have wear their hair in a certain way, grow their beards i in a certain way, wish an Infidel a Merry Christmas (absolutely not!).

3) I find appalling the religiously-sanctioned doctrine of taqiyya -- would you like some quotes, sir, about what it is, or would you like to google "taqiyya" and find its sources in the Qur'an?

4) I find appalling many of the acts which Muhammad committed, including his massacre of the Banu Qurayza, his ordering the assassination of many of those he deemed his opponents, even an old man, a woman, or anyone whom, he thought, merely mocked him.

5) I find appalling the hatred expressed throughout the Qur'an, the hadith, and the sira for Infidels -- all Infidels.

6) I find nauseating the imposition of the jizya on Infidels, the requirement that they wear identifying garb on their clothes and dwellings, that they not be able to build or repair houses of worship without the permission of Muslm authorities, that they must ride donkeys sidesaddle and dismount in the presence of Muslims, that they have no legal recourse against Muslims for they are not equal at law -- and a hundred other things, designed to insure their permanent, as the canonical texts say,
"humiliation."

7) I find the mass murder of 60-70 million Hindus, over 250 years of Mughal rule, and the destruction of tens of thousands of artifacts and Hindu (and Buddhist) temples, some of the HIndu ones listed in works by Sita Ram Goel, appalling.

8) I find the 1300-year history of the persecution of the Zoroastrians, some of it continuing to this day, according the great scholar of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce, which has led to their reduction to a mere 150,000, something to deplore. There are piquant details in her works, including the deliberate torture and killing of the dogs (which are revered by Zoroastrians), even by small Muslim children who are taught to so behave.

9) I find the record of Muslim intellectual achievement lacking, and I attribute this lack to the failure to encourage free and skeptical inquiry, which is necessary for, among other things, the developoment of modern science.

10) I deplore the prohibition on sculpture or on paintings of living things. I deplore the horrific vandalism and desturction of Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist sites.

11) I deplore the Muslim jurisprudence which renders all treaties between Infidels and Muslims worthless from the viewpoint of the Infidels, though worth a great deal from the viewpoint of the Muslims, for they are only signing a "hudna," a truce-treaty rather than a true peace-treaty -- and because they must go to war against the Infidel, or press their Jihad against the Infidel in other ways, on the model of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, no Infidel state or people can ever trust a treaty with Muslims.

12) I deplore the speech of Mahathir Mohammad, so roundly applauded last year, in which he called for the "development" not of human potential, not of art and science, but essentially -- of weapons technology and the use of harnessing and encouraging Muslim "brain power" for the sole purpoose of defeating the Infidels, as a reading of that entire speech makes absolutely clear. Here -- would you like me to read it now for the audience?

13) I deplore the fact that Muslims are taught, and they seem to have taken those learnings to heart, to offer their loyalty only to fellow Muslims, the umma al-islamiyya, and never to Infidels, or to the Infidel nation-state to which they have uttered an oath of allegiance but apparently such an oath must be an act of perjury, because such loyalty is impossible. Am I wrong? Show me exactly what I have misunderstood about Islam.

14) I deplore the ululations of pleasure over acts of terrorism, the delight shown by delighted and celebrating crowds in Cairo, Ramallah, Khartoum, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and of course all over Saudi Arabia, when news of the World Trade Center attacks was known -- and I can, if you wish, supply the reports from those capitals which show this to have taken place. I attribute statements of exultation about the "Infidels" deserving it to the fact that Islamic tenets view the world as a war between the Believers and the Infidels.

15) On that score, I deplore that mad division fof the world betweeen Dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, and the requirement that theer be uncompromising hostility between the two, until the final triumph of the former, and the permanent subjugation, and incorporation into it, of the latter.

16) I deplore the sexual inequality and mistreatment of women which I believe I can show has a clear basis in the canonical Islamic texts, and is not simply, pace Ebadi and other quasi-"reformers," a "culutral" matter.

17) I deplore the fact that Infidels feel, with justice, unsafe in almost every Muslim country, but that Muslims treat the Infidel countries, and their inhabitants, with disdain, arrogance, and endless demands for them to bend, to change, to what Muslims want -- whether it be to remove crucifixes, or change the laws of laicity in France, or to demand that "hate speech" laws be extended in England so as to prevent any serious and sober criticism of Islam.

18) I deplore the emphasis on the collective, and the hatred for the autonomy of the individual. In particular, I believe that someone born into Islam has a perfect right to leave Islam if he or she chooses -- and that there should be no punishment, much less the murderous punishment so often inflicted.

19) I find the record of Muslim political despotism to be almost complete -- with the exception of those Muslim countries and regimes that have, as Ataturk did, carried out a series of measures to limit and constrain Islam.

20) I deplore the fact that while Muslims claim it is a "universalist" religion, it has been a vehicle for Arab imperialism, causing those conquered and islamized in some cases to forget, or become indifferent or even hostile to, their own pre-Islamic histories. The requirement that the Qur'an be read in Arabic (one of the first things Ataturk did was commission a Turkish Qur'an and tafsir, or commentary), and the belief by many Muslims that the ideal form of society can be derived from the Sunna of 7th century Arabia, and that their own societies are worth little, is an imperialism that goes to culture and to history, and is the worst and most complete kind.

21) I deplore the attacks on ex-Muslims who often must live in fear. I deplore the attacks on Theo van Gogh and others, and the absence of serious debate about the nature of Islam and of its reform -- except as a means to further beguile and distract Infidels who are becoming more wary.

22) I deplore the emptiness of the "Tu Quoque" arguments directed at Christians and Jews, based on a disingenuous quotation of passages -- for example, from Leviticus -- that are completely ignored and have not been invoked for two thousand years, and I deplore the rewriting of history so that a Muslim professor can tell an American univesity audience that "the Ku Klux Klan used to crucify (!) African-Americans, everyone standing around during the crucifixion siniging Christian hymns (!)."

23) I deplore the phony appeals of the "we all share one Abrahamic faith" and "we are the three monotheisms" when, to my mind, a Christian or a Jew has far less to fear from, and in the end far more in common with, any practicing polytheistic Hindu.

24) I do not think Islam, which is based on the idea of world-conquest, not of accomodation, and whose adherents do not believe in Western pluralism except insofar as this can be used as an instrument, temporarily most useful, to protect the position of Islam until its adherents have firmly established themselves.

25) I deplore the view, in Islam, that it is not a saving of an individual soul that is involved when one conducts Da'wa or the Call to Islam, but rather, something that appears to be much more like signing someone up for the Army of Islam. He need not have read all the fine print; he need not know Islamic tenets; he need not even have read or know what is in sira and hadith or much of the Qur'an; he need only recite a single sentence. That does not show a deep concern for the nature of the conversion (sorry, "reversion").

26) I deplore the sentiment that "Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated. " I deplore the sentiment "War is deception" as uttered by Muhammad. I deplore what has happended over 1350 years, in vast swaths of territory, formerly filled with Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, much of which is now today almost monotonously Islamic. I do not think Islam welcomes any diversity if it means the possiblity of full equality for non-Muslims.

27) I deplore the fact that slavery is permitted in Islam, that it is discussed in the Qur'an, that it was suppressed in 19th century Arabiaonly through the influence of Britisn naval power in the Gulf; that it was formally done away with in Saudi Arabia only in 1962; that it still exists in Mali, and the Sudan, and even Mauritania; that it may exist in the Arabian interior, but certainly the treatment of the Thai, Filipino, Indian and other female house workers in Arab households amounts to slavery,and it is no accident that there has never been a Muslim William Wilberforce.

I could go on, and am prepared to adduce history, and quotations from the canonical texts. And so are hundreds of thousands of Infidels who have looked into Islam, or in their own countries, had a close look at the Muslim populuations which have made their own Infidel existences far more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous than they would otherwise be.

If this is "Islamophobia" -- show me exactly why it is irrational (i.e. not based on facts or observable behavior, or a study of history), an "irrational" dislike or even hatred of Islam. If you cannot show that, then perhaps the word should not be invoked. But if you do invoke it, be prepared to have copious quotations from Qur'an and hadith and sira constantly presented to audiences so that they may judge for themselves, without the "guidance" of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

Posted by: Hugh at December 11, 2004 8:43 PM

Great post Hugh.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at December 11, 2004 9:12 PM

The new, completely transparent Conflicts Forum is another "disinterested" (i.e. Arab-funded, Muslim-backed) organization that has just announced it is getting into the act of saving the Infidels from their crazed, islamophobic selves. . Among its participants: Patrick Seale, for years the court hagiographer of Hafez al-Assad (there are those who wonder whether Seale is directly or indirectly on the Syrian payroll, for he has been toiling in those vineyards for a long time), Mark Perry (who used to do public relations for the late native of Cairo Al-Kidwa), and Alistair Crooke (whose name says it all –and can his “Letter From Eurabia” beamed to American audiences eager to hear from the BBC all the wonderful things happening in that new politico-cultural entity, be far behind?), all determined to convince alarmed Westerners that there is nothing to fear, that Muslims everywhere want the same things Infidels do – you know, no corruption, family values, all that good stuff, what could be plainer?. And, no doubt, Conflicts ?Forum will attempt to convince, as their Arab paymasters want them to convince, the Western world that all those who are uneasy with Islam and the growing Muslim presence in the Bilad al-kufr (Lands of the Infidels), should just relex, their fears are entirely groundless, and all such worries are merely the result of an extraordinarily successful and diabolical plot by – you guessed it – a “handful” of determinied “Neo-Cons” (Likudniks all – even Wolfowitz who has always followed his leftist sister’s line on Israel).

It is going to be a bit difficult for Crooke, Seale, and Perry. Recent events just don’t seem to be making their point in quite the way they would like.

And surely they must be more than a handful if they have arranged, inter alia:

1) the killing of 450 children and teachers in Beslan

2) the murder by a pretend-Muslim of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam

3) the bombing of the Madrid metro

4) the bombing of over 3000 churches in Indonesia by "American neo-cons" pretending to be Muslims

5) the attacks on Christian churches and Christians all over Iraq by "Neo-con Americans" trying to whip up anti-Islamic sentiment among those same Christians who otherwise simply adored Islam

6) the attacks on Copts, including the kidnapping and forced conversion of Coptic girls and women, one of whom was the wife of a Coptic priest, in Egypt -- all of it leading to the result desired by the "American Likudniks" who have for 1350 years been destroying Coptic sites, reducing the Copts to a status of humiliation in their own country, and are now ready to reap the rewards by tricking the Copts into blaming Egyptian Muslims, when of course Richard Perle is behiind the whole thing -- just ask Crooke, Perry, Seale.

7) the "Neo-con" conspiracy to turn Hindus against their very pleasant former overlords, the Muslims who happen to have been massacring Hindu villagers and peasants in Kashmir, and now, with a vigor not seen since 1971, when the Razakars polished off several million Hindus, again in Bangladesh.

8) Douglas Feith has apparently engineered the killing of the French engineers in Pakistan, and for the past few decades the attacks on Christians and Christian churches which led Bishop John Joseph to kill himself as a protest against the persecution of Pakistani Christians, without any succor or rescue by the Pakistani government, about 7 years ago.,

9) the torture of Brian O'Connor in Saudi Arabia for daring to be a Christian was of course one more concoction of the Greater Israel band in the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building who will stop at nothing to enlarge the already vast empire of Israel.

10) Please be on your guard. If anyone, anyone at all, tells you there are some very unpleasant things in the Qur'an, hadith, and sira, and then proceeds to quote those unpleasant things to you -- it's all a Neo-con Lie. People will even rewrite the sacred texts of the only true religion. Hard to believe, but true.

If you need confirmation, please contact Prof. John Esposito, Sabbagh Professor of Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (well, he's not really the Sabbagh professor, but he might as well be). He can set you straight. Whatever you do, don't by accident get connected to James V. Schall at the same university. Or to Habib Malik in Beirut.

11) Just a note about those bitter, lying people -- all those crazed ex-Muslims. A funny thing happens to some people. One day they are Muslims, and they know everything about Islam. And then, a day or a week or a month or a year later, they declare they are ex-Muslims. And you know something? The minute someone declares that he (or she, but shes don't count, do they?) is an ex-Muslim, he simply forgets everything about Islam he ever knew. He now knows nothing. He is no longer to be relied on for any information about Islam. It just disappears from his brain. As soon as they stop being Muslims, they stop knowing a thing about Islam, or what Muslims say to each other, or how they think, or what is in the texts, or what they make of those texts. All that knowledge dwindles, in a New York nanosecond, to nothing.

Amazing, but true. See Ripley's Believe It -- Or Not.

I choose Not.

Posted by: Hugh at December 11, 2004 9:51 PM

Once more--with feeling:

I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I am not an "Islamophobe"--that is, I do not fear Islam, I despise it. It is the ideology that appeals to the primitive, the brute, the one who wallows in bloodletting, women-beating, enslaving, robbery, subjugation of all who do not think as he does, and pretends that this comes from a god via an angel and an Arab illiterate.

No, I do not suffer from "Islamophobia." I am, however, anti-Islam. I do not hate Muslims, nor do I despise Muslims--I despise the ideology that they follow, that keeps them from rising above the qualities enumerated in the foregoing paragraph. I do not feel sorry for Muslims, because pity is a weakness, and one cannot face those that seek to either destroy or subjugate one with compassion.

Islamophobia is fearing "submission." I do not fear it. I will not submit to those who demand my submission. Above all, I value freedom, and Islam is the antithesis of freedom. Freedom--liberty--is what makes life worth living. As I opened with them, so I will close with--but only an echo of--the words of Patrick Henry. I choose liberty above death. When faced with death or submission, my choice is clear. I will extract as dear a price as possible for my choice.

Posted by: unicorns62000 at December 11, 2004 11:40 PM

"When the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry -- that is a sad and troubling development," Annan said. "Such is the case with 'Islamophobia.' The word seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, the weight of history and the fallout of recent developments have left many Muslims around the world feeling aggravated and misunderstood, concerned about the erosion of their rights and even fearing for their physical safety."

The "world" was not "compelled to coin a new term" -- it was Muslims who coined the word, and they did so deliberately. For that word so deliberately kept undefined is merely a weapon employed to deflect criticism, to label all those who may offer criticism of Islam and of its adherents, basing their criticism not on some blind prejudice, but on their own observations and study. Indeed, the entire Western world -- its political leaders, its media, its university departments of Middle Eastern studies -- have all been engaged in a massive effort to deflect criticisim or disarm it. It is despite all that that Infidels everywhere are coming to some conclusions about Islam, and the more they study, and the more they observe, and the more "Interfaith" gatherings and little Muslim Outreach evenings they attend, all of which end up being dismal exercises in Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque argumentation, the more wary, and critical, and indignant, and sometimes more, they become. The game is up. From a Beslan school full of children to a Bali nightclub full of revellers, from Madrid subways to Moscow theatres, from New York skyscrapers to Najaf mosques (where Sadr's bezonians tortured, killed, and stacked the bodies of Iraqis who had opposed their reign of terror), from Istanbul to India, the evidence just keeps piling up. And the evidence, too, of what is actually in the Qur'an and hadith and sira -- and how many Infidels, a few years ago, even had heard of the "hadith" and the "sira," or had any idea what was really in the Qur'an, or had ever heard of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya -- is now on-line, and it can easily be read. And all the excuses, all the nonsense, can no longer be offered up -- for we Infidels, fortunately, have the guidance of defectors from Islam, ex-Muslims such as Ibn Warraq (whose own three-part guide, posted at Jihadwatch, to debating Muslims, and how not to be intimidated or snookered, will for many prove invaluable).

Kofi Annan, as Oriana Fallaci notes in her Fallaci Intervista Fallaci, looks, on the surface, to be far more presentable, and far more decent, and far more intelligent -- grey hair, gravelly voice, grave mien -- than in fact he is. The words quoted above are the words of a simpleton. Perhaps Edward Mortimer, that early admirer of Khomeini and Nazi-Zionist conspiracy theorist, who feels a special responsibility to protect Islam, is the main puppet-master here, or perhaps it is Ms. Rishmawi (the "Palestinain" behind-the-scenes operative who was so influential with Mary Robinson, she of the antisemitic lynch-mob meeting in Durban in September 2001). Or perhaps it is Annan -- the man who is responsible for more black African deaths than anyone since Leopold III of Belgium, who really thinks that the word "islamophobia" came into use because it actually described a real, and deplorable condition -- that is, unfair, unjust, prejudiced and irrational (i.e. without foundation, against reason and logic) phobia, or hatred, of Islam. What is unreasonable or irrational would be the opposite -- that is, the continued inability of many Infidels to regard Islam as just another "religion" worthy of respect, perhaps at the edges a bit rough, but hijacked by a few extremists, or even many extremists, but having a decency at its core, a real religion of "peace" and "tolerance" as a number of Western leaders have insisted.

If, upon reading and studying Qur'an and hadith and sira, and if, after looking aroud the world over the past few years, and if, after having studied the history of Jihad-conquest and Muslim behavior toward dhimmis -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists -- you do not feel a deep hostility toward the belief-system of Islam and toward its adherents (for the category of "moderate" is nearly meaningless, given the dangerous use to which "moderates" can be put in continuing to mislead the unwary Infidels), then it is you who are irrational, and need to have your head examined.

Kofi Annan is not the worst secretary-general of the U.N. That prize, so far, goes to Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim. But Annan still has some months, or even years, to go. It may soon be neck-and-neck. It may be a photo finish. And that's not all that will be finished.

Posted by: Hugh at December 12, 2004 1:30 AM

Dear Robert Spencer

You asked when the UN will be holding a conference on Christphobia. I would like to suggest that a better phrase to use in describing the particular raging hatreds and bigotry inherent in the Islamic wolrd today is 'Kaffirphobia'. This offers an holistic approach in examining the universality of the Islamic worlds contempt and bigotry for all non Muslim religions and belief systems, including Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and so on, and also including non religious governing principles like secularism and liberal democracy. It therefore emphasises the point that this is not a Islam versus Christianity/The West issue. It is an issue of Islam versus the entire non Muslim world.

Posted by: Kaffir Boy at December 12, 2004 5:38 PM

Open Memo to kofi Annan:

What is your annual salary paid to you by al-Qaeda???

Sincerely,

Pythagoras

Posted by: pythagoras at December 12, 2004 11:35 PM

Thank you Hugh.

Kofi should be out of there.

The audacity of the islamics just bends my mind out of shape sometimes, and the ignorance or naivete of the western sympathizers that islamics play to.

Seems to be a full scale attack on our society; military ( through small and large scale terrorism ), judicially ( the proposed new Brit law forbiding any upset to a moslem ) and financially ( financing massive propaganda through movies, tv channels, conferences like this UN bs, and 'buying' pundits opinions [ and politicos ?].

Posted by: dby at December 13, 2004 2:44 AM