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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Karen Armstrong on Harris and Maher: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps”

Nov 24, 2014 2:33 pm By Robert Spencer

KarenArmstrongPost_full_600Remember all those Jewish terror plots? Jews shouting “Shema Yisrael” as they blew themselves up in crowds of non-Jews and flew planes into buildings? Remember those captured internal documents of Jewish organizations saying they were working toward “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” so that “the religion of Moses was victorious over other religions”?

Karen Armstrong is by no stretch of the imagination an original thinker. As I have noted many times here, Leftists and Islamic supremacists tend to parrot the same talking points, as if they were all reading from the same script. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a database somewhere of themes to sound and stock answers to questions, since they repeat themselves with such dreary regularity. Armstrong here is repeating talking points that we have heard before from the likes of Jeffrey Goldberg, Islamic supremacist pseudo-moderate Reza Aslan, Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison, Nicholas Kristof, and Canadian Muslim leader Syed Sohawardy, among many others.

Christopher Hitchens ably took apart the central claim being made here when writing last year about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero: “‘Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,’ Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.”

Armstrong’s aim (and the aim of all the others who have repeated this) is to intimidate her hearers into thinking that criticism of Islamic supremacism leads to the concentration camps, and thus there must be no criticism of Islamic supremacism. The unstated assumption is that if one group was unjustly accused of plotting subversion and violence, and was viciously persecuted and massacred on the basis of those false accusations, then any group accused of plotting subversion and violence must be innocent, and any such accusation must be in service of preparing for their subversion and massacre.

The difference in this case is not only that Muslim leaders worldwide have made their intention to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims very clear, in a way that Jews never did in the run-up to the Holocaust; it is also that anti-jihadists nowhere advocate a “final solution” for Muslims, and never will — we are merely calling upon them to drop the authoritarian and repressive aspects of Sharia and obey the laws of the Western societies in which they live. This is a movement in defense of freedom and equality of rights before the law.

But Karen Armstrong for some reason wants to enable the advance of a repressive and authoritarian model for society, and in order to do so she smears those who are resisting the imposition of that societal model.

“Karen Armstrong on Sam Harris and Bill Maher: ‘It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps,'” by Michael Schulson, Salon, November 23, 2014:

…There’s a line in your book that struck me: “Terrorism is fundamentally and inherently political, even when other motives, religious, economic, and social, are involved. Terrorism is always about power.”

I think I’m quoting some terrorist specialist there.

Even when [terrorists] claim to be doing it for Allah, they’re also doing it for political motives. It’s very clear in bin Laden’s discourse. He talks about God and Allah and Islam and the infidels and all that, but he had very clear political aims and attitudes towards Saudi Arabia, towards Western involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. The way he talked always about Zionists and crusaders rather than Jews and Christians — these are political terms. Since the early 20th century the term “crusade” has come to stand for Western imperialism.

In the Hamas martyr videos, the young martyr will segue very easily from mentioning Allah the Lord of the world, and then within a couple of words he’s talking about the liberation of Palestine — it’s pure nationalism — and then he’s into a third-world ideology, saying his death will be a beacon of hope to all the oppressed people who are suffering at the hands of the Western world. These things are mixed up in that cocktail in his mind, but there’s always a strong political element, not just a going towards God.

In fact, all our motivation is always mixed. As a young nun, I spent years trying to do everything purely for God, and it’s just not possible. Our self-interest and other motivations constantly flood our most idealistic efforts. So, yes, terrorism is always about power — wanting to get power, or destroy the current power-holders, or pull down the edifices of power which they feel to be oppressive or corruptive in some way.

This is not really a mixed motivation at all. “Even when [terrorists] claim to be doing it for Allah, they’re also doing it for political motives. It’s very clear in bin Laden’s discourse. He talks about God and Allah and Islam and the infidels and all that, but he had very clear political aims and attitudes towards Saudi Arabia, towards Western involvement in Middle Eastern affairs.” Of course — because Islam has from its beginning included a political, supremacist, expansionist and authoritarian program. Armstrong’s error here is assuming, or trying to get her audience to assume, that when bin Laden or Hamas talked politics, they couldn’t have been doing it all for Allah. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam (a real one) — the assumption that it is inherently otherworldly like Christianity, whose founding figure said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” when in reality Islam is quite this-worldly, with a founding figure who said, “I have been commanded to fight against people until they confess that there is no god but Allah and I am his messenger.”

How direct is the link between colonial policies in the Middle East and a terrorist attack in New York or London?

I think — and I speak as a British person — when I saw the towers fall on September 11, one of the many, many thoughts that went through my head was, “We helped to do this.” The way we split up these states, created these nation-states that ISIS is pulling asunder, showed absolutely no regard for the people concerned. Nationalism was completely alien to the region; they had no understanding of it. The borders were cobbled together with astonishing insouciance and self-interest on the part of the British.

Leftists like Armstrong frequently display an unconscious ethnocentrism: they assume that Islamic jihadis are simply passive reactors to Western atrocities, with no capacity to act on their own, for reasons on their own. Of course she thinks “we helped to do this,” since she denies to Muslims the capacity for independent thought and action. She would deny this, of course, but try this: tell her that you think 9/11 was caused not by any Western atrocity, but by the Islamic jihad doctrine, and watch how long it takes her to call you “bigoted” and “Islamophobic.”

Plus, a major cause of unrest and alienation has always been humiliation. Islam was, before the colonial period, the great world power, rather like the United States today. It was reduced overnight to a dependent bloc and treated by the colonialists with frank disdain. That humiliation has rankled, and it would rankle, I think, here in the States. Supposing in a few decades you are demoted by China, it may not be so pretty here.

Every fundamentalist movement that I’ve studied, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.

So, when we in the West talk about religion as the cause of this violence, how much are we letting ourselves off the hook, and using religion as a way to ignore our role in the roots of this violence?

We’re in danger of making a scapegoat of things, and not looking at our own part in this. When we look at these states and say, “Why can’t they get their act together? Why can’t they see that secularism is the better way? Why are they so in thrall to this benighted religion of theirs? What savages they are,” and so on, we’ve forgotten to see our implication in their histories.

We came to modernity under our own steam. It was our creation. It had two characteristics. One of these was independence — your Declaration of Independence is a typical modernizing document. And you have thinkers and scientists demanding free thought and independent thinking. This was essential to our modernity. But in the Middle East, in the colonized countries, modernity was a colonial subjection, not independence.

Without a sense of independence and a driving force for innovation, however many skyscrapers and fighter jets you may possess, and computers and technological gadgets, without these qualities you don’t really have the modern spirit. That modern spirit is almost impossible to acquire in countries where modernity has been imposed from outside.

When you hear, for example, Sam Harris and Bill Maher recently arguing that there’s something inherently violent about Islam — Sam Harris said something like “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas” — when you hear something like that, how do you respond?

It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps in Europe. This is the kind of thing people were saying about Jews in the 1930s and ’40s in Europe.

This is how I got into this, not because I’m dying to apologize, as you say, for religion, or because I’m filled with love and sympathy and kindness for all beings including Muslims — no. I’m filled with a sense of dread. We pride ourselves so much on our fairness and our toleration, and yet we’ve been guilty of great wrongs. Germany was one of the most cultivated countries in Europe; it was one of the leading players in the Enlightenment, and yet we discovered that a concentration camp can exist within the same vicinity as a university.

There has always been this hard edge in modernity. John Locke, apostle of toleration, said the liberal state could under no circumstances tolerate the presence of either Catholics or Muslims. Locke also said that a master had absolute and despotical power over a slave, which included the right to kill him at any time.

That was the attitude that we British and French colonists took to the colonies, that these people didn’t have the same rights as us. I hear that same disdain in Sam Harris, and it fills me with a sense of dread and despair.

Is Islamophobia today comparable to anti-Semitism?

Let’s hope not. It’s deeply enshrined in Western culture. It goes right back to the Crusades, and the two victims of the crusaders were the Jews in Europe and the Muslims in the Middle East.

Right, because Jews along the crusaders’ routes would be massacred —

They became associated in the European mind. We’ve recoiled, quite rightly, from our anti-Semitism, but we still have not recoiled from our Islamophobia. That has remained. It’s also very easy to hate people we’ve wronged. If you wrong somebody there’s a huge sense of resentment and distress. That is there, and that is part of it, too.

I remember speaking at NATO once, and a German high officer of NATO got up and spoke of the Turks resident in Germany, the migrant workers who do the work, basically, that Germans don’t want to do. He said, “Look, I don’t want to see these people. They must eat in their own restaurants. I don’t want to see them, they must disappear. I don’t want to see them in the streets in their distinctive dress, I don’t want to seem their special restaurants, I don’t want to see them.” I said, “Look, after what happened in Germany in the 1930s, we cannot talk like that, as Europeans, about people disappearing.”

Similarly, a Dutch person got up and said, “This is my culture, and these migrants are destroying and undermining our cultural achievements.” I said, “Now you, as the Netherlands, a former imperial power, are beginning to get a pinprick of the pain that happened when we went into these countries and changed them forever. They’re with us now because we went to them first; this is just the next stage of colonization. We made those countries impossible to live in, so here they are now with us.”

How should one respond to something like the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, or the threat of terrorism that originates in Muslim countries?

Saudi Arabia is a real problem, there’s no doubt about it. It has been really responsible, by using its massive petrol dollars, for exporting its extraordinarily maverick and narrow form of Islam all over the world. Saudis are not themselves extremists, but the narrowness of their religious views are antithetical to the traditional pluralism of Islam.

We’ve turned a blind eye to what the Saudis do because of oil, and because we see them as a loyal ally, and because, during the Cold War, we approved of their stance against Soviet influence in the Middle East.

Fundamentalism represents a rebellion against modernity, and one of the hallmarks of modernity has been the liberation of women. There’s nothing in the Quran to justify either the veiling or the seclusion of women. The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce, legal rights we didn’t have in the West until the 19th century.

Inheritance? The Qur’an rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).

The Qur’an also declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).

Worst of all, the Koran tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them” (4:34).

It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).

That’s what I feel about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. It’s iniquitous, and it’s certainly not Quranic.

Where do you, as someone outside of a tradition, get the authority to say what is or isn’t Quranic?

I talk to imams and Muslims who are in the traditions….

Funny how so many imams inside and outside of Saudi Arabia disagree with her. They don’t count, apparently, if they have uncomfortable opinions.

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", moral equivalence, Useful idiots Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Wolfgang says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    Oh no, I thought this ugly woman who look’s like she was sired by a rough one night stand by a pug and bulldog in a back alley was gone from the press……sadly it appears not…….she still looks like she should wear a black garbage bag over her head though.

    • ECAW says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 2:57 pm

      Shame you drag this down to the trashy level of what the woman looks like.

      The real issue is what is going on in her head, and on that score she is certifiably bonkers.

      • Bob Smith says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 3:33 pm

        Quit playing the woman card. Armstrong has earned all the rabid bad mouthing she gets. If she can’t take the hard cold facts – she should shut her mouth.

        She is so certifiably bonkers it makes her look like the back end of a dog. And she should have the common sense to wear a burka for the sake of others.

        • ECAW says

          Nov 24, 2014 at 3:45 pm

          How impressed would you be if Robert Spenser debated on this level?

        • voegelinian says

          Nov 24, 2014 at 7:10 pm

          Exacgtly right. She deserves any and every opprobrium we can level and fling at her, including the C word.

      • mortimer says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 5:42 pm

        The real issue with Armstrong is she’s a GNOSTIC and believes Islam is a version of Gnosticism. It is not. Islam is political! It’s ARAB IMPERIALISM with the justification of a ‘divine calling’. The religion came about much later. There is no evidence of a religion in the first 60-70 years. No whatsoever. They were gangster who decided to go legit, but failed. The caliphs became the worst sort of fascists. Islam is stuck there.

        Islam is 80% POLITICAL and less than 20% religious. That’s why few Muslims actually PRACTICE the religion of Islam. Though ALL MUSLIMS ARE POLITICAL and loyal to the supremacist Islamic Empire.

        Armstrong does violence to the facts of Islam’s creation by the caliphs from Abd al Malik on. She finds historical facts ‘distasteful’ and upsetting so she invents her own theory of how Islam was created. She’s made a career out of twisting the facts, but it’s an unbelievable theory based on her guesswork, fantasy and skill as a creative writer.

        • Zimriel says

          Nov 24, 2014 at 11:36 pm

          Your heart is in the right place but… there are some pretty decent articles out there which muse that Islam *did* have some roots in gnosticism. There’s a translation of von Harnack’s article to that effect in Ibn Warraq’s “Christmas in the Koran”. The Elkasaites (spelling varies) are named as intermediaries.

        • No Fear says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 5:09 am

          What use is a world filled with tranced out gnosis-intoxicated Jihadists? From reading Joseph Campbell I learned that their are two main ways of inducing ecstatic trance….the way of the priest and the way of the warrior. The whole paradigm of the “warrior who kills off all evil in the world” is fine when the “world” is your own microcosm but when the “world” is the “macrocosmic world” then it becomes a political bloodbath.

      • SallyA says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 12:28 am

        ECAW, like other intelligent women run off from JW by the misogyny in some of the comments (see, e.g., above), you may not be returning. But I hope you do, because your voice adds considerably to the dialog about Islam. Why let childish males insecure about smart females ruin the discourse with bullying snark and run us off? I read here, because the coverage is educational, and occasionally I comment. I hope you’ll know that sisterhood is powerful, even on blogs, and I have your back to say you didn’t deserve the cheap-shot level of comments directed at your words here. But you probably already know that! Have joy in your connections to greater energies than the carping that sometimes passes for ideological analysis of the fustercluck that is Islam.

        • Gart says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 8:34 am

          Well said.

        • Marblenecltr says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 11:32 am

          Sally A, you and ECAW make very good points, but please forgive us for being a little less than intellectual as we allow our emotions to influence our expressions. KA is defending a belief that calls for the killing or enslavement of all non-Muslims, and that belief is shedding blood and attacking humanity around the world. If emotional expressions help put a stop to this mass murder, I am for it, and so should be PM Cameron and Prince Charles. As for myself and many others, misogyny plays no part in this, for Arafat also was the object for scorn for his deeds but received some for his gargoyle-like appearance. My apologies for some of my remarks is for good people carrying an appearance less than popular today but who nevertheless/in spite of the fact maintain good character.
          As for scholarly KA, I recommend she find someone to select good books of history and newspapers and read them to her LOUDLY.
          As for gnostics, etc., Mohammad wrote in the Koran that there would be those who carried out jihad merely with their goods and not their persons, and such people would not be properly serving Allah.

        • gravenimage says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 1:55 pm

          SallyA wrote:

          ECAW, like other intelligent women run off from JW by the misogyny in some of the comments (see, e.g., above), you may not be returning…
          …………………………………..

          Sally A, ECAW—whether male or female—has been posting here for quite some time, and is unlikely to be “run off” by a few flippant comments.

          I’m a woman who has been reading—and commenting—for eight years here on Jihad Watch, and I have to tell you I am *far* more concerned with sex slavery, “Honor Killings”, and stonings than I am with occasional sexist venting here by Anti-Jihadists.

          This may not be the highest form of debate, but I think Karen Armstrong is pretty ugly, as well—and not because of her looks, but because she is shilling for a creed that mutilates women, immures them in Burqas, condones forced marriage, and sacralizes pedophilia and rape and sex slavery.

      • Wolfgang says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:30 am

        lol…………….well she IS trashy and Bonkers !

      • mad-aussie says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 5:42 am

        Yeah but you have to admit, as far as women go i have seen better looking scrotums.

      • Champ says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:48 pm

        She is a bowzer!! …woof!

    • Ayattollahowmany says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 7:05 am

      She’s what the Aussies refer to as a ‘Bush Pig’. I’m against the burkah but would make an exception in her case…

    • Jax Tolmen says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 8:31 am

      I fail to see what, if anything, this woman’s appearance has to do with the issues at hand. As a reader of JihadWatch, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Robert never stoopes to the level of personal attacks to prove his point.

      It’s disgusting and unnecessary, although I understand the reasoning behind it without condoning it. No one here likes this woman, in fact many of us find her to be unbearably repugnant by virtue of her damaging statements and wilful ignorance. It makes us feel better in the moment to throw personal attacks at those who wrong us – but it achieves nothing good.

      Stop and think for a moment how your comments will be perceived by the wider internet community. If the first comment they read on this site were yours, I would not blame them for assuming we are all twits attacking a woman’s appearance instead of her political views. This does not reflect well on the movement at all.

      • Champ says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:50 pm

        Ok, let me think for a minute, or two …

        Yep, she’s a bowzer!! ..bark, bark!!

        Relax, this is the comments section and Robert Spencer states things his way, and I state things my way. Sigh.

      • The Buffster says

        Nov 26, 2014 at 9:31 am

        I agree, Jax. It’s good to keep to the high ground.

  2. Marblenecltr says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 2:49 pm

    Karen, were Mr. Spencer to marry you, chapter 4 of the Koran, around verse 34, would give him permission to send you to your room and administer unto you a beating with a stick. I know, in one of your scholastic works, you state that the beating is to be done with a twig, but I think that there and elsewhere you are revealing problems with interpretation. Or something.

    • EYESOPEN says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 6:57 pm

      What did Robert Spencer ever do to you??? Please, don’t even write in jest what you wrote to illustrate a point. It is too hideous a fate to even conceive. (I’m being mildly humorous here; but I’m sure you understand my meaning.)

      • Marblenecltr says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 7:30 pm

        I owe the greatest of apologies to Mr. Spencer; I gratefully receive your rebuke and will try to avoid such thoughts, let alone expression of them, and keep them far from me. KA is a two chador woman, but I failed to consider that in dealing with her argument, for it exceeds deserved rejection even more than her appearance.

  3. Dave J says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:00 pm

    The closest we are to concentration camps for innocent people is the muzzling of free speech by “Human Rights Commissions” and repetitive accusations of “Islamophobia”. Not to mention the murder and enslavement of Christians and Atheists in the Middle East.

    Who are the real Fascists here?

    • mortimer says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 5:45 pm

      Leftard cultural Marxists believe it isn’t fascism if THEY do it.

    • EYESOPEN says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 6:58 pm

      Bulls-eye!

    • The Buffster says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 7:13 pm

      So true.

      When a doctrine actually does command followers to make war on unbelievers until the whole world is under the rule of that religion, and when the history of the founder of that religion is rife with wars of conquest, plunder, enslavement, and rape, and you see a portion of present-day believers re-enacting that pattern, that’s something that has to be acknowledged and discussed. Thoroughly.

      The danger to any innocent person’s rights comes when a society loses the understanding of the value and purpose and inalienability of those rights – rights such as freedom of speech, of press (media) of association, of religion (conscience), of the right to one’s honestly obtained property…

      Hitler’s Germany destroyed all of these for *everybody*, including the most blonde, blue-eyed, Aryan darling.

      The people who uphold individual rights for all do not want to put Muslims in concentration camps. They want to make sure that those Muslims who take their religion seriously and Mohammad’s example as something to emulate do not manage to destroy the individual rights of all, in whole or in part, so that NOBODY ends up in the equivalent of a concentration camp.

      If we can’t talk about it honestly and completely, we can’t prevent it.

      • The Buffster says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 7:56 pm

        I want to clarify a paragraph of mine, and I don’t see a way to edit a published post other than this.

        “The people who uphold individual rights for all do not want to put Muslims in concentration camps. They want to make sure that those Muslims who take their religion seriously and Mohammad’s example as something to emulate do not manage to destroy the individual rights of all, in whole or in part, so that NOBODY ends up in the equivalent of a concentration camp.”

        Should be: “The people who uphold individual rights for all do not want to put Muslims in concentration camps. They want to make sure that those Muslims who take their religion seriously and Mohammad’s example as something to emulate do not manage to destroy the individual rights of all, in whole or in part. Those who fight against Islamic doctrine and sharia and jihad do so in order that NOBODY ends up in the equivalent of a concentration camp.

      • gravenimage says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 9:06 pm

        Good posts, Buffster.

  4. Salome says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:02 pm

    Terrorism is political. So is Islam.

  5. Tradewinds says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:02 pm

    This lady is absolutely nuts.

    • mortimer says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 5:48 pm

      Sam Harris and Bill Maher believe in freedom of speech and compassionate democracy. They are the furthest thing from fascism.

    • mad-aussie says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 5:44 am

      And Butt Ugly!

  6. avi5 says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    Karen Armstrong is a fake and a mediocrity who has made a very lucrative career thank you out of spouting her narrow-minded views. She has done incalculable damage.

  7. TNT says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    Did this woman read Mein Kampf? Sounds like it, not only that, she sounds like the top French General whom in WWII appeased Hitler and granted all his request at the cost of the French Nation ( France ) with his new way of thinking! She sounds as if she is announcing publicly gas chambers will be used to shut you up! Really! So no more freedom then Mrs liberal new way of deadly thinking Kampf. Yup the cauldron not the kettle is simmering to a boil.

  8. Islamisdeath says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    What she espouses hurts my very being and her incredible ugliness hurts my eyes.

  9. King Dave says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    To say followers of Islam are the most violent practitioners on Earth right now, would be bigotry. ….If it wasn’t true.
    Clearly Mrs. Armstrong cares little about Islamic atrocities and even less for their victims.
    I understand her liberal political reasons for dismissing Islamic religious violence and the victims, but not her complete lack of morality, ethics and common sense.

  10. Steffen Larsen says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    But she is perfectly right. It IS this kind of talk that led to the concentration camps.

    Her kind of talk, appeasement, an unwillingness to see eye to eye with facts.

  11. TNT says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:15 pm

    Dear Mrs Kampf;
    Will you kill me if say I’m Christian, Buddhist, Hindu. Jewish, atheist, yazadi, exmuslim, or muslim who opposes Sharia? Just wondering about that as well.
    Seeing you are looking for blood I won’t thank you for your time.

  12. AnneCrockett says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Oh of course. The chant of “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the Gas!” makes her scared for the safety of …the chanters.

  13. timothius says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    The most outrageous remarks I’ve ready in a long time. Did someone mention that she was educated? Really now. How csm that be possible?

  14. William says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    “Karen Armstrong is by no stretch of the imagination an original thinker.”

    Mr. Spenser is being too kind. She is not only not an original thinker; she is not a thinker at all. She is like a parrot. There is not much behind that very unhandsome visage. She does not realize that she would have been of greater service to mankind if she had remained in the nunnery.

    Regarding her face, she reminds me of the Wife of Bath. Or perhaps, she personifies one of the three witches from Macbeth – fair is foul and foul is fair.

    • ECAW says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 3:42 pm

      Would all you people going on about her looks raise the matter if Pamela Geller looked similar?

      • mariam rove says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 3:51 pm

        What? M

        • ECAW says

          Nov 24, 2014 at 4:14 pm

          M – Don’t you understand my point? There are two actually. The first is that to add personal insults when disagreeing with someone is both spiteful and childish. If you equally insult someone you agree with then you would be being obnoxious but adult at least.

          The second is that only women come in for this kind of irrelevant rubbishing. When did you hear this sort of thing about men, and the counter jihad world is not exactly bursting with male oil paintings.

          William – yes, fairly ghastly but probably not much worse than most women of her age. What has that to do with the price of fish?

        • SallyA says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 12:48 am

          @ ECAW – Like other intelligent women run off from JW by the misogyny in some of the comments (see, e.g., this thread), you may not be returning. But I hope you do, because your voice adds considerably to the dialog about Islam. Why let childish males insecure about smart females (or women who have internalized the misogyny) ruin the discourse with bullying snark and run us off? I read here, because the coverage is educational, and occasionally I comment. I hope you’ll know that sisterhood is powerful, even on blogs, and I have your back to say you didn’t deserve the cheap-shot level of comments directed at your words here. But you probably already know that!

          Phyllis Chesler has been saying some newsworthy things as a well-published woman for the freedom of women (and men) who is opposed to Islam. Karen Armstrong has an agenda apparently about selling her particular books with their religious equivalency and pluralism slant. Ben Affleck has a similar apparent economic agenda about the types of movies he likes to make. Karen and Ben alike ignore the horrific sexism and rapism and generic oppression inherent in Islam. But their agendas are no call to reduce either person to commentary about personal appearance and/or disparaging sexual epithets, instead of critiquing the merits of what they say. It was more than fair and decent for you to point out the double standard applied to Karen. (Ben’s in my comment only to make the point.)

          Have joy in your connections to greater energies than the carping that sometimes passes for ideological analysis of the fustercluck that is Islam.

        • ECAW says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 1:32 am

          So, just one poster gets it. I have been shocked that some people here (including one or two who clearly have a high regard for their own intellect) clearly think it strengthens their argument to add “By the way, you’re an ugly cow” rather than dragging it down to the level of the playground (aka school yard).

          There’s no likelihood of my being run off by the negative reaction, I quite enjoy a good spat but I am alarmed at the possibility of being turned into a feminist by spending too much time here. I am a man by the way 🙂

      • Salah says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 3:54 pm

        She’s ugly because she hates the Truth. That’s why Satan is ugly even when he disguises himself as an angel of light.

      • William says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 3:55 pm

        We are talking about Ms. Armstrong. She has a ghastly appearance. Do you agree?

      • somehistory says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 4:50 pm

        If Ms. Geller had the same features, she would still look different because she is different on the inside. The inside, what the person thinks, feels, advocates, their goals in life, influence the way they look to others. A sweet, wrinkled old lady is much better to look at than an evil, smooth-skinned woman who is no lady.
        So, No, even with the same features, Ms. Geller would not be ugly.

        And yes, much has been said about what islam and its ugliness does to the appearance of the men who lust for the death or enslavement of other humans. Many have been described as ugly…because islam has made them ugly. Evil, ugly eyes esp. islam is an equal-opportunity uglifier.

        • Wolfgang says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 4:41 am

          agreed …….:) but some posters on here don’t appreciate a man’s viewpoint…….but then I am just an ole southern redneck boy……

      • Know Thy Enemy says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:09 am

        I agree with ECAW. People need to stop denigrating women based on their looks, even if she is a Leftist and Islam’s useful idiot to the extreme. Only her views, her lack of understanding of things, and her mentality, should be criticized. Not her looks!

      • Wolfgang says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:39 am

        Nup ……Pamela Geller looks pretty good……. 🙂 plus she has inner beauty as well, this old bag has no inner beauty as well !…get it ?

  15. Stanton Cordray says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:19 pm

    I wish I could believe that Robert’s answer to this would be more widely read than it will be, but, I fear that the Karen Armstrongs are the ones with the visibility.

    To be fair to her, Armstrong is obviously of the opinion that every one of the multifarious, vicious, non-stop expressions of Islamic supremacism that we never stop hearing about (there will be another one along soon) is a mere marginal eccentricity which has nothing to do with the religion that motivated it. Disagreement with that makes you a Nazi apparatchik spoiling to set up concentration camps.

    This is the kind of thinking that critics with an insider track like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan have called “suicidal”. Speaking for myself, I am more respectful of the inside trackers than I am of sentimental, mushy-headed ex-nuns.

  16. R Cole says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    Unbelievable!!

    Karen Armstrong’s a proponent of the Sharia – and Sharia imperialism.

    I think the aim is that the outreach between Muslims and Christians / western world – was meant to be conducted through clergy – it was hoped that western religious leaders could be used to effectively control – the western public. They have found a willing vessel in Karen Armstrong.

    Karen Armstrong is like a person in denial – who is allowed to speak and what they say is accepted as fact.

    ::

    Flaws in K Armstrong argument

    She often uses the argument that – the Koran verses are misinterpreted – firstly – told to her – by those who have an interest in protecting the sanctity of the religion – ie. they hope to go to heaven via that route [and some even hope to benefit or profit from terrorists’ gains – why fund it otherwise] – and secondly – the verses the terrorists use – do indeed say such things [fight, kill, terrorize, subjugate, collect jizya]. A serious conflict of interest and a denial of reality.

    Sharia Dreamland-State

    So she goes around in her merry snow-globe way — but it must be said that evoking the holocaust of millions of Jews as having any relation to the criticism of the Islamic religion – an ideology – is out of order – and she needs to be reminded in the strongest sense – that we live in the free world. Unlike in the Muslim majority world – where they imprison their own citizens – for the crime of expressing dissent of Islam.

    In the west – that is why we call them hard won rights.

    It would appear Karen Armstrong might be happy if some Saudi Imam – should decide what we say.

    Possibly she will argue next – that there are more freedoms under the Sharia.

    ::

    Be Honest Karen Armstrong – Just Say Islam Needs Reform!

    You wonder why with all the things she says – she doesn’t talk – about the need for Islam’s reform – i’m sure her opposites on the outreach table – tell her that there are no issues within the Islamic religion – that are a problem – so thereby what argument would you base the need for reform of the religion on – it’s perfect. And to be nice – she takes them at their word!!

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 9:45 pm

      R Cole rote:

      You wonder why with all the things she says – she doesn’t talk – about the need for Islam’s reform – i’m sure her opposites on the outreach table – tell her that there are no issues within the Islamic religion – that are a problem – so thereby what argument would you base the need for reform of the religion on – it’s perfect. And to be nice – she takes them at their word!!
      …………………………….

      The appalling Karen Armstrong is quite a bit worse than you think—she isn’t just a sweet, wooly-headed lady who naïvely listens to Muslim apologists—she is *herself* a Muslim apologist. She wrote a hagiographical biography of the vile “Prophet” Muhammed, where she either whitewashes or excuses every vicious thing he ever did.

  17. duh_swami says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:27 pm

    Psychobabble…and lots of it…Is there some compelling reason to believe anything she says? She’s simply a con artist, similar to those found in prison or as salesmen on a used car lot. Would you buy a used car from this woman?

    • pumbar says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 1:10 am

      A used CAIR saleswoman?

  18. Sam says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:27 pm

    Another nutcase. How can a person be so out of touch in this era of internet? Soon to be controlled because of these nuts. This woman is delusional. Period.

  19. profitsbeard says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    What actually led to the concentration camps and ultimately death camps was Hitler’s spoken understanding that the WW I era Muslim genocide of the Armenians was ignored by the world.

    He figured that exterminating the Jews would meet as little global protest or response.

    If WW II had not been underway Hitler probably would have been proved correct.

    To the delight of his Muslim allies who were thrilled by the “final solution”.

    Armstrong is a deceitful apologist for a totalitarian Death Cult.

    May her vestigial l conscience rot her from within.

  20. jewdog says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 4:39 pm

    There will always be airheads like Karen Armstrong, but her particular achievement is to find a market niche for herself as a sort of airhead spokesperson. She misunderstands Islam in a way that many people do in the West, especially in missing the intrinsic political nature of Islam, since Western religions do not have that connection.
    Her misunderstanding is no harmless lapse, but represents mainstream thinking. It is her kind of ethno-centric, mirror-image fallacies that have brought catastrophic mistakes into Western policy: On immigration, and in fruitless, messianic military campaigns. Her ideas are not only wrong, but dangerously so.

  21. Kepha says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 5:07 pm

    As a Christian fundamentalist, I’ am indeed aware of the spiritual battle raging about us. Part of us is the unwillingness to give credit where it is due.

    First of all, the liberation of women got kicked off in the Graeco-Roman world by a Jewish Rabbi named Saul of Tarsus who taught that among those in the Messiah, there is neither male nor female, and that husbands are to love their wives as the Messiah loves his congregation.

    I note that recently, Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the UK, in speaking at a Vatican symposium, saw monogamy as breaking the power of over-wealthy males (who monopolize the women in many cultures, including modern Islamic and ancient Graeco-Roman) and equalizing marriage for “the rest of us”. he was defending traditional marriage, and gave one of the best pieces on the subject that I have read, whether or not I am completely with him theologically.

    • Kepha says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 5:09 pm

      Further, I will guess that when Genesis, with its pattern of one man and one woman, was penned, it was in part of Holy Spirit-given polemic against cultures where the big hero [Anglo-Saxonism]s whatever he can get his mits and private parts on.

      • gravenimage says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 10:01 pm

        Kepha wrote:

        ….polemic against cultures where the big hero [Anglo-Saxonism]s whatever he can get his mits and private parts on.
        …………………………………..

        Were this the case, Kepha, then why don’t Anglo-Saxons have multiple wives, sex slaves, and “pearly boys” to abuse?

        The fact is that the Western hero is *not* one who oppresses and dominates everyone he can—this isn’t something most Westerners admire at all, or deem heroic.

        It *is*, however, exactly what pious Muslims admire—the loathsome “Prophet”, considered a model for all time, is *exactly* of this type.

        • Kepha says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 7:00 pm

          Gravenimage, by “Anglosaxonism”, I meant a rather rude, crude, and socially unacceptable word that does not ultimately come from Latin. It starts with F.

        • gravenimage says

          Nov 25, 2014 at 7:48 pm

          Not sure why that would be “Anglosaxonism”, Kepha—but OK.

          Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

  22. Beagle says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 5:34 pm

    Armstrong lives in another world. Though no fan of Sam Harris, connecting him to the Holocaust is outrageous defamation. Or, par for the course when daring to question Islam.

    That photo is the stuff of nightmares by the way.

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 7:57 pm

      Agreed, Beagle—I find aspects of Bill Maher somewhat obnoxious, as well—but in the long view, both he and Sam Harris are entirely civilized men, and accusing them of acts that would lead to a new Holocaust is the falsest calumny.

  23. mortimer says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 5:52 pm

    “Saudis are not themselves extremists”

    DELUSIONAL. Wahhabist Salafism is the problem, Karen. It is canonical Islam.

    • ECAW says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 2:50 am

      “Saudis are not themselves extremists”

      Yes, if I could change one thing about the popular discourse on Islam it would be the use of the word “extremist”. It implies that the IS types are at the extremes of the religion but the opposite is true. Since they faithfully follow the example of Mo they should be called centrists and nominal Muslims should be called extremists.

  24. mortimer says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:07 pm

    Karen, you say Islam is NOT the mother lode of bad ideas?

    What’s this?

    Worst Points about ISLAM

    1. Blackmail is sanctified
    2. Extortion is sanctified
    3. Armed robbery is sanctified
    4. Forcible conversion is sanctified
    5. Illiteracy is glorified
    6. Pedophilia/child marriage is recommended
    7. Woman half the value of a man
    8. Woman deficient in intellect and religious ability
    9. Hatred is sanctified: outsiders are filthy animals
    10. Forged holy text: Koran plagiarized from other ancient writings
    11. Members forbidden to befriend outsiders
    12. Members not censured for killing outsiders
    13. No Golden Rule in Koran or the “reports” of the prophet
    14. Kindness only among “brother” Moslems
    15. Death sentence for criticism of Islam or founder
    16. Death sentence for leaving Islam for sake of conscience
    17. Death sentence for asking a member to leave Islam
    18. Death sentence for being raped and pregnant
    19. Death sentence for being raped and “dishonouring” family
    20. Death sentence for criticizing living leaders (mullahs) of Islam
    21. Lying to outsiders (non-Moslems) is recommended
    22. Dictatorship is the standard political model (one caliph over the world)
    23. Opposed to liberal democracy (government by the people, for the people)
    24. Rape of non-Moslem women is sanctified by Allah
    25. Death sentence for being apathetic member of Islam
    26. Black people were created to be slaves of Arabs
    27. Members not permitted to work for outsiders
    28. Compulsory hatred of Jews
    29. Compulsory hatred of Christians
    30. Individual has no importance; the group comes first
    31. Blind following: mullahs do all the thinking for you
    32. Multiple marriages, temporary marriage, concubinage, sex slave girls
    33. Paranoia of outsiders = they are filthy animals, the worst of beasts
    34. Arab cultural imperialism – a holy Arab empire
    35. Barbaric, cruel and unusual punishments: crucifixion, amputation, wall-pushing, lashing, stoning, female circumcision, beheading (only religion institutionalizing decapitation)
    36. Suspect “holy” text composed by mass murderers
    37. Scribes tricked Mohammed into writing egregious errors
    38. World political domination is goal
    39. Humiliation of outsiders is necessary
    40. Koran plagiarized from Syriac, Talmudic and other religious texts
    41. Satanic verses: founder went back on his main idea of monotheism…oops!
    42. Worshipping the Moon meteorite (black rock: symbol of fertility and 28-day menstrual cycle)
    43. Islam cannot change – Death sentence for all who try to change it
    44. History of Islam is a river of blood – Islam’s royal family butchered…by Moslems!
    45. Kamikaze attacks are sanctioned as the ticket to paradise!
    46. Permanent warfare with non-Moslems=peace only between members of the cult (unless they disagree)
    47. Intellectual dishonesty…Imperviousness to facts contradicting the cult…selective reality
    48. Opportunism is the ethical principle…an action is ethical if it advances the cult
    49. Personality cult of founder who is considered “perfect” in spite of evidence to the contrary: i.e. rape, plunder, mass murder, contract killing, enslavement, pedophilia, truce breaking, genocide, etc.

    • ECAW says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 2:40 am

      Excellent list. I shall certainly use this to try and change minds. But I am unsure about

      no. 26 Not in Mo’s original that I know of. Wasn’t one of his top men a freed black slave?

      no. 37 What’s this? Mo never wrote any of it down.

  25. duh_swami says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:09 pm

    It’s Islam that’s ugly…Islam treats us to loads of ugly every day. Islam was founded on ugly, by ugly people who maintain its ugliness to this day. Karen is doing her part.

    • Jaladhi says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 6:31 pm

      Hi DS, have interchanged ugly by evil and still your comments fit very well: Hope you don’t mind!!

      It’s Islam that’s evil…Islam treats us to loads of evil every day. Islam was founded on evil, by evil people who maintain its evilness to this day. Karen is doing her part. Therefore, this Muslim is ..

      • duh_swami says

        Nov 24, 2014 at 7:02 pm

        Books have been written about how good or bad Islam is, when it can be summed up in one word…evil…

  26. Jaladhi says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:26 pm

    Just like any other Muslim,this lady continues to lie and spread lies of Islam!! She talks about concentration camps just because of Bill Maher’s truthful comments about Islam and Muslims while conveniently forgetting that Muslims have committed genocide of non-Muslims(more than 300 million slaughtered) for last 1400 years and are still continuing it in various parts of the world. Liar and/or delusional. I think this is her jihad to save Islam at any cost – totally morally repugnant!!

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 10:10 pm

      Supposedly she is not a Muslim convert—although I would not be surprised if she was.

      But Muslimah or dhimmi tool, she is a repulsive apologist for Islam either way.

      • Know Thy Enemy says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 4:26 am

        Karen Armstrong falls in the group (among others) who hate their own self and their country. Here is what she said (from the article) –

        “Similarly, a Dutch person got up and said, “This is my culture, and these migrants are destroying and undermining our cultural achievements.” I said, “Now you, as the Netherlands, a former imperial power, are beginning to get a pinprick of the pain that happened when we went into these countries and changed them forever. They’re with us now because we went to them first; this is just the next stage of colonization. We made those countries impossible to live in, so here they are now with us.””

        She clearly has this guilt complex and what is worse is that she is actively working towards western countries be punished for past colonization.

  27. epistemology says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:34 pm

    Albert Camus once said after the age of thirty you’re responsible for your face. I think what he meant was that the face is the mirror of the soul that evolves after a certain age. But I don’t want to elaborate on that. Others have done it before me.

    What really pisses me off is her utter naivete paired with impertinence. History teaches us that Islam was always and always will be supremacist. As someone here put it rightly 80% politics (supremacism) and less than 20% religion and I’d add a good dash of superstition. Rational thinking is absolutely alien to Mohammedans. Islam is devoid of spirituality as a former nun Karen Armstrong should be aware of this fact. But she wants to teach us otherwise.

    Being a Jew I always feel offended when people compare anti-Semitism to Islamophobia. The Jews were always not only part of the society they lived in, they also contributed a lot. Mohammedans contribute a lot, too, no doubt about that such as crime, rape honour killings, the list is long.

    • Wellington says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 8:35 pm

      With you again, epistemology. And yes, compariing anti-Semitism to Islamophobia is particularly egregious. Anti-Semitism has been real (N.B., sadly, I have to use the present perfect and not just the simple past) and often deadly. Islamophobia, by contrast, is rooted in fiction (and deception) and is virtually never lethal. A greater difference would be hard to find.

      Oh yes, adding to what you said about Camus, I would provide a supporting comment by Orwell, to wit, that everyone by fifty has the face they deserve. Karen Armstrong was born in 1944. And yes, her countenance says a lot.

      Hope you and yours are doing well, my friend. I suppose it’s OK, even though you’re across the pond, to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Of all American holidays, it is my favorite. Take care, my friend.

      Long live Western Civilization. Long live America. Long live Israel.

  28. EYESOPEN says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 6:51 pm

    This “useful idiot” is no more than a tool. She turned her back on religious life and is now a paid wh0re for izlam. So sad. The “useful idiot” should really stop to consider her fate when the “useful idiots” are no longer of any use.

  29. Rob says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 7:04 pm

    In the 100 years since the start of WW!, what steps have successive regimes in Libya, Iraq, etc, taken to put their national borders into the correct (non-colonial) alignments?
    Answer – NONE!

  30. eduardo odraude says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 7:23 pm

    It is self-deluded and appeasing fools like Armstrong who led to the concentration camps.

  31. voegelinian says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 8:02 pm

    Other than (perhaps) Stanton Cordray above, I seem to be the only one who considers Karen Armstrong’s articulated position to be logical. Dead wrong, irrational and well night treasonous — but still logical. As long as most in the Counter-Jihad fail to appreciate the full logic of the PC MC paradigm (the basis of her position), they will be continuing to take a hammer to a problem that requires a Phillips screwdriver.

    • voegelinian says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 8:02 pm

      well nigh* (and good night…)

    • Wellington says

      Nov 24, 2014 at 10:06 pm

      I submit that arguing for mass deportation of Muslims from a nation like America is an attempt to take a sledgehammer, and not just an ordinary hammer, to the problem which Muslims pose in Western nations. And yet you flatter yourself by arguing for no metaphorical hammer at all but rather for a metaphorical Phillips screwdriver approach. Methinks you err in the exact direction you aver others do, only much more so, and all the while believing you are going in an entirely different direction (though you aren’t) which, of course, you think the correct one. In short, it would be hard to get things more ass-backwards than you just did.

      As ever I remain

      Just one more Ole’ JW Softie,

      Wellington

      • Jay Boo says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 12:50 am

        Voeg and Wells
        You are both experts at articulating your viewpoints so it is well that I see the both of you here at the same time.

        Something is puzzling me about one thing in the beginning of the third paragraph of the article. At first glance it appears to say something unintended (That Christopher Hitchens wrote this a year ago)
        It reads:
        “Christopher Hitchens ably took apart the central claim being made here when writing last year about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero: ”

        I am guessing from the link that this is a repost of a paragraph referenced in the link from what was then a year later.

      • voegelinian says

        Nov 25, 2014 at 7:35 pm

        Two different Problems: the Problem of Islam, and the Problem of the West’s myopia. Ironically, and oddly, the Counter-Jihad Softies insist on taking the oppositely wrong tools to each — to the latter, a hammer (“those damned Leftist Elites!”); to the former, a sophisticated array of fine-tuned calibrated screwdrivers supposedly predicated upon a complex taxonomy of Muslims, as though Mohammedan Taqiyya + the dangers their dangerous ones pose don’t render any taxonomies recklessly, dangerously useless (unless deployed with ruthlessly Realislamik skill which, needless to say, would be dubiously entrusted to the Counter-Jihad Softy).

    • Mirren10 says

      Nov 27, 2014 at 3:54 pm

      In what way is this daft bint’s position ‘logical’ ? Do tell.

      • voegelinian says

        Dec 1, 2014 at 3:53 pm

        I’ve explained many times how the PC MC paradigm is logical. By the way, I distinguish between logical and rational: an obsessive-compulsive neurotic, for example, can logically organize his day by checking exactly 337 times every day whether he turned his stove off (plus a hundred other things), being quite logical in doing so, but not rational. The PC MC logic is predicated upon an anxious need to prevent a criticism of the Tiny Minority of Extremists from expanding to target all Muslims. Where it becomes irrational is in its suppression of any information that leads to an alarmed appraisal of the systemic and metastasizing problem of Muslims, fearing that such an appraisal would open the floodgates to going down the slippery slope toward rounding up vast numbers of innocent Muslims, putting them in camps, and genociding them. (This irrational anxiety is additionally augmented by the PC MC hot button of White Guilt, since they tend to see Muslims as a Brown People — i.e., as an Ethnic People (or as a wonderful diversity, mosaic, tapestry, stir-fry, paella of Ethnic Peoples).)

        This anxious need I’ve found many times amongst Jihad Watch commenters, incidentally; though they obscure it (usually unwittingly) with lots of tough talk and braggadocio against Islam; so the difference between the JW Softies and Karen Armstrong is only one of degree, not of kind.

        All of what I’ve articulated above I have articulated a thousand times before in dozens (if not hundreds) of Jihad Watch comments over the freaking years, and I know Mirren has read it at least a few times. Why she has to ask me now as we near the close of 2014 I have no idea.

  32. Kilfincelt says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 8:24 pm

    Yes, European countries did colonize many of the Muslim countries, but they also ended slavery by doing so. Prior to that time, untold millions of blacks and whites went into slavery in the Muslim world. European countries and the U.S., for awhile, paid the Barbary Pirates, who were Muslims, tribute to keep them from attacking and enslaving the crews of European and American ships. This little fact seems to have escaped KA’s attention so I guess she would have preferred the continuance of slavery.

    Furthermore, the Crusades were a slightly belated reaction to the spread of Islam in what had been Christian lands and the attacks by Muslims on Europe proper. The Muslims were not the victims. They were the perpetrators. They colonized Spain and North Africa; thus, they were imperialists. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire tried to conquer Europe and were thrown back twice at the gates of Vienna. The woman needs to learn history from someone other than Islamic apologists.

  33. gravenimage says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 8:57 pm

    Karen Armstrong on Harris and Maher: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps”
    ………………………………

    *Appalling projection*. Muslims are *right now* running rape camps in Nigeria for Christian schoolgirl kidnap victims, and in the Islamic State they are running slave markets for captured Christian and Yazidi women. If there are any Muslim victims here, it is Shia women being treated like Infidels by their orthodox Sunni coreligionists.

    No Infidels are doing anything like this.

    More:

    Armstrong’s aim (and the aim of all the others who have repeated this) is to intimidate her hearers into thinking that criticism of Islamic supremacism leads to the concentration camps, and thus there must be no criticism of Islamic supremacism.
    ………………………………

    That’s *exactly* what this is for.

    And really, the salient comparison is not of Muslims to Jews during the Holocaust, but of Muslims *to Nazis*—all the effort is to prevent any criticism *of the Fascists*.

    More:

    Even when [terrorists] claim to be doing it for Allah, they’re also doing it for political motives…These things are mixed up in that cocktail in his mind, but there’s always a strong political element, not just a going towards God.
    ………………………………

    Karen Armstrong wants us to believe that Islam is just like Christianity, and that this is a contradiction. But there is not separation of mosque and state as there is church and state—the goal of any pious Muslim is to impose Shari’ah law—this is equally a “spiritual” and worldly duty.

    More:

    I think — and I speak as a British person — when I saw the towers fall on September 11, one of the many, many thoughts that went through my head was, “We helped to do this.” The way we split up these states…
    ………………………………

    I’m so sick of this crap.

    Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechoslavakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and they did so peacefully. Just the same happened with the reunification of Germany. As long as I’ve been around some have groused about California being too unwieldy a state, and suggestions have been made to divide north and south, or east and west, or even, in a recent proposal that didn’t make the ballot, to split into six separate states. I admit I find this a bit silly, but if Californian ever does divide, it will be done peacefully,

    The idea that a polity cannot be reconfigured without violence is false.

    But more than this, the idea that the way to accomplish this even with violence is to attack the ex-colonial power simply makes no sense.

    Mo other former colonial nation is doing this—just Muslims.

    And even more salient is the fact that the US had *nothing* to do with mapping Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia, or any other part of the Middle East. Blaming her for 9/11 makes *no sense*.

    But Karen Armstrong is counting on her readers being ignorant of this fact.

    More:

    Leftists like Armstrong frequently display an unconscious ethnocentrism: they assume that Islamic jihadis are simply passive reactors to Western atrocities, with no capacity to act on their own, for reasons on their own. Of course she thinks “we helped to do this,” since she denies to Muslims the capacity for independent thought and action. She would deny this, of course, but try this: tell her that you think 9/11 was caused not by any Western atrocity, but by the Islamic jihad doctrine, and watch how long it takes her to call you “bigoted” and “Islamophobic.”
    ………………………………

    This is very true—the idea that non-Westerners are not only incapable of doing anything negative without its being a reaction to Western wrongs, but that they are incapable of *any* agency of their own.

    More:

    Plus, a major cause of unrest and alienation has always been humiliation. Islam was, before the colonial period, the great world power, rather like the United States today. It was reduced overnight to a dependent bloc and treated by the colonialists with frank disdain. That humiliation has rankled, and it would rankle…
    ………………………………

    Note that she doesn’t mention why Western countries first went into Dar-al-Islam—France entered Algeria because this Barbary State would not stop pirating Western ships and enslaving their crews.

    In other words, the West would have no problems if only she had allowed Muslims to continue to enslave and murder us…

    More:

    We’re in danger of making a scapegoat of things, and not looking at our own part in this. When we look at these states and say, “Why can’t they get their act together? Why can’t they see that secularism is the better way? Why are they so in thrall to this benighted religion of theirs? What savages they are,” and so on…
    ………………………………

    What crap. This isn’t about religion versus secularism—it is *only* Islam that is supremacist and violent.

    More:

    We came to modernity under our own steam. It was our creation. It had two characteristics. One of these was independence — your Declaration of Independence is a typical modernizing document. And you have thinkers and scientists demanding free thought and independent thinking. This was essential to our modernity. But in the Middle East, in the colonized countries, modernity was a colonial subjection, not independence.
    ………………………………

    I am sick of the belittling of Western achievement—the Declaration of Independence os not a “typical modernizing document”. Moreover, this doesn’t explain why so many non-Western countries are eagerly embracing most aspects of modernity. The only one really embraced by pious Muslims are modern weapons systems.

    More:

    Without a sense of independence and a driving force for innovation, however many skyscrapers and fighter jets you may possess, and computers and technological gadgets, without these qualities you don’t really have the modern spirit. That modern spirit is almost impossible to acquire in countries where modernity has been imposed from outside.
    ………………………………

    This may be true in some cases—although certainly places like Thailand, India, Taiwan, and especially Japan are quite civilized and hugely innovative. Not so with Dar-al-Islam, though—so perhaps it has to do with something more than just being non-Western…

    More:

    When you hear, for example, Sam Harris and Bill Maher recently arguing that there’s something inherently violent about Islam — Sam Harris said something like “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas” — when you hear something like that, how do you respond?
    ………………………………

    What crap. Are all ideas equal? Are footbinding, stoning women to death, and death camps just the same as universities, public sanitation, and curing polio? Good God…

    More:

    Similarly, a Dutch person got up and said, “This is my culture, and these migrants are destroying and undermining our cultural achievements.” I said, “Now you, as the Netherlands, a former imperial power, are beginning to get a pinprick of the pain that happened when we went into these countries and changed them forever. They’re with us now because we went to them first; this is just the next stage of colonization. We made those countries impossible to live in, so here they are now with us.”
    ………………………………

    You hear this crap all the time, too—that we should happily endure the rapes and beheadings in the streets from violent Muslims because we deserve it. The ultimate in suicidal “political correctness”.

    It is also bs—Islam has *always* been violent and supremacist. The idea that they are only doing this to their former Western colonial masters is an *utter lie*. How does this explain Muslim savagery in China, in Thailand, in Kenya, in Sudan, and in many other places? Were Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs in Pakistan ever “colonial masters”? How about animists in Nigeria? Christians and Yazidis in the Islamic State? Of course not.

    More:

    How should one respond to something like the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, or the threat of terrorism that originates in Muslim countries?

    Fundamentalism represents a rebellion against modernity, and one of the hallmarks of modernity has been the liberation of women…
    ………………………………

    Now this vicious bint is blaming the free West for the oppression of women under Islam—with the idea that they are only mistreating women because they are rebelling against oppressive “modernity”.

    What crap—Islam has *always* oppressed women. It is a core part of Islam, revisionist tripe notwithstanding.

    Ultimately, Karen Armstrong’s whole sthick is to blame all the horrors of Islam on its Western victims—utterly sickening, but far from uncommon these days. *Ugh*.

  34. Guest says

    Nov 24, 2014 at 11:25 pm

    The article is boring, but the top comments are great: even Salon readers are getting it. Many western liberals are getting sick of islam and are not blind to its evils, esp. since the islamic state began.

  35. Wolfgang says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 4:44 am

    oooooooooooooooh you are a naughty boy !

  36. Dennis says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 6:22 am

    I read some of Karens books. Recently read her books on Mohammed. Then I went to live in Muslim dominated countries. She is really out of touch. Like my brother Jews who refused to see the Nazi terror until they and the Gypsies were devoured, she should life in a Muslim country. Lets see how long she would last!

  37. Vivienne Leijonhufvud (goldie) says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 9:18 am

    I have read this woman’s publication ‘The History of G-d’. She is not only anti-semetic she is also a defrocked Nun. Her book spends copies chapters speaking of the glory of Islam and Sufism. Anything this rather stupid woman publishes I take with a pinch of salt. Suffice it to say it always interesting to read the rubbish the enemy of humanity publishes.

  38. Vivienne Leijonhufvud (goldie) says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 9:27 am

    Without attempting to market on Jihad Watch (my own book due to be published next year). Many readers I hope will find my fictional story of the impact of Islam on the Scandinavian community far more realistic. I have taken it upon myself to speak out about this stone age cult of violence and atrocities committed in the name of Islam — to show there are many of us who are aware Islam neither integrates nor fits with our values.. As I pointed out in another comment the Austrian MP had the Turkish Ambassador to Austria publicly dismissed. This example needs to be adopted by the EU, Scandinavia and the West. Islam is a serious threat to us all.

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 25, 2014 at 9:19 pm

      Will your book be available in English, Goldie?

  39. Wolfgang says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 4:12 pm

    My initial comment about her looks seems to have started this off, but the thing is many others have done the same and noticed the same thing, I was an ex soldier/ LE anyone who has been in my profession knows that sex/ looks/politics become a subject of interest to people trained for action and to kill an enemy, so there are moments of sheer terror interspersed with lot’s of downtime doing nothing at all. If you have not been in the military, you cannot understand this, put men and women together in a combat FOB and things will happen naturally and black humor comes into conversation to deal with death being a bullet away. Soldiers and Cops deal with danger and death pretty much the same way.

    As others have already said, she IS an unattractive person and ugly to me because she supports all the things I HATE such as child sex, sex slaves, and chopping off heads of people who disagree with Islam, I fought to have these fools silenced and saw men DIE for NOTHING…….does that make my flippant joking about her look’s justified ?, men I know bled out on the ground, bodies shredded by IED’s, dying with wounds you have nightmares about, so before some of you want to suggest misogyny or anything else, try walking in the shoes of the men and women who lost their lives so this disgusting ugly woman could sit down and peddle her lies while being paid well by tax dollars,any Aussies out there should be thoroughly angry and pissed about.

    Men and women are STILL dying over in those Muslim hell holes……spare a thought for them, while you get indignant about comments on this woman’s look’s, she deserves ridicule and to be shamed for her politics and the type of thinking she displays.

    I am off to have a beer.

  40. Eric says

    Nov 25, 2014 at 5:06 pm

    Ms. Armstrong seems to believe she creates her own reality regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

    • François Gravel says

      Nov 27, 2014 at 4:17 am

      Eric, your comment only validates my characterization of Karen Armstrong’s worldview as New Agey nonsense (see my own comment from November 26, 2014 at 5:49 am). Indeed, the self-proclaimed psychic and spirit medium Jane Roberts (1929-1984), who claimed to channel an energy personality calling himself “Seth,” can be heard in a 1974 video proclaiming this standard New Age dogma: “You form your own reality” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMRYkgBjCoA, 6:37). Not an islamically correct belief, for sure—nor a Christian one, for that matter—but, hey, what wouldn’t Karen Armstrong say for the sake of ecumenical “dialogue”?

      N.B.: Notice, in this series of three YouTube videos, the two shaggy, pot-smoking hippies standing rigth behind their prophetess during the whole channeling séance. Ah, the sixties!

    • François Gravel says

      Nov 27, 2014 at 4:23 am

      Sorry, I meant “Ah, the seventies!” rather than “the sixties.”

  41. François Gravel says

    Nov 26, 2014 at 5:49 am

    Karen Armstrong is just another New-Agey, ecumenically-inclined Western apologist of religion in general, and of Islam in particular. Apparently writing from some sublime “esoteric” standpoint, she would have us believe that all religions are essentially conveying one and the same message of “All You Need Is Love,” or something like that. But does her feel-good thesis stand up to scrutiny? No it doesn’t. To disprove it, let’s take Sufism as an example.

    Sufism has become oh-so-fashionable among Western “spiritual seekers” and “esotourists,” if I may coin that neologism, ever since the Hare Krishna and Transcendental Meditation-like cults of the 1960s and ‘70s lost their appeal. Ironically, this renewed interest in Sufism reeks of late Victorian and Edwardian faux mysticism portraying Sufis as Muslim equivalents of the more amiable sages of Hinduism and Buddhism. After that came the late British novelist Doris Lessing, who turned from socialism to Sufism (or so she thought) under the influence of her “good friend and teacher” Idries Shah—a fraud and a charlatan if there ever was one. And then came Karen Armstrong who, in a 2002 interview, had this to say: “The mystical branch of Islam, the Sufi movement, insisted that when you had encountered God, you were neither a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim. You were at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple or a church, because all rightly guided religion comes from God.” She adds that “before Wahhabism, which developed in the 18th century, the most popular form of Islam was Sufism.”

    True or false? Firstly, can we regard Sufism as “the most popular form of Islam” prior to 18th century Saudi Wahhabism? Karen Armstrong, who are you trying to fool here? The most famous teacher of Sufism, Mansur Al-Hallaj (858-922 A.D.), was so “popular”(?) among his fellow believers that he was publicly cut into pieces in Baghdad at the orders of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir, until his head was finally chopped off.

    Secondly, is it true that Sufism represents the tolerant, peaceful, mystical Islam? The antithesis of Wahhabism and Salafism? Well, according to Wikipedia, Ayatollah Khomeini’s biggest influences were “Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Shahabadi and a variety of historic Sufi mystics, including Mulla Sadra and Ibn Arabi.” Apparently, that didn’t prevent him from founding the fascistic/theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Finally, what about Tijaniyyah, the largest Sufi tariqa (order) in Senegal, where Tijani followers comprise 60% of the population? To learn more on the subject, I went to the website “The Portal of the Tijani Youth” (http://www.asfiyahi.org), which aims at promoting the thought of Sheikh Malick Sy (1855-1922), the former imam of the brotherhood. Here’s an excerpt from an article dated March 29, 2013, outlining the views of Serigne Mansour Sy, Caliph of the Tijanis, on gay people:

    “According to the Caliph, the return and frequency of homosexuality is a clear harbinger of great misfortune for the country. Disasters, diseases, floods and accidents are the result of the upsurge of homosexuality in Senegal. In a lengthy indictment (…) Serigne Mansour Sy, quoting Koranic verses and in light of the Sunnah of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH), recommended the stoning of homosexuals and dykes caught in the act. (…) In addition to homosexuals and dykes, those who engage in masturbation for individual pleasure will be unpleasantly surprised to see their hands become pregnant in the Hereafter. This is how everyone will recognize them.”

    Lest you should think I just made up all that crap, check it out for yourself: http://www.asfiyahi.org/VIDEO-SERIGNE-MANSOUR-SY-EN-CROISADE-CONTRE-L-HOMOSEXUALITE-L-IMMOLATION-ET-LA-MASTURBATION-La-recrudescence-du-fleau_a638.html. So much for Sufism’s so-called tolerance, Karen Armstrong.

    One last note. Karen Armstrong published in 2006 a book called “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time,” which is her second biography of Muhammad. Her first one, “Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet” (1991), earned her the Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award. Call it voluntary dhimmitude.

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 26, 2014 at 5:56 pm

      Excellent post, François.

    • eib says

      Nov 28, 2014 at 12:38 pm

      Beslan was carried out by Sufis. The sect routinely brainwashed the Christians forced into the Janissaries. Mystics? My foot.

  42. desidude2 says

    Nov 30, 2014 at 11:27 am

    KA this grotesque woman is as usual brings forth the usual nonsense about western countries colonizing the helpless mid east and north Africa. Nothing could further from the truth. name one Muslim or north African country with any western colonialists. These were never colonies but either possessions or part of their empires. the US, Canada, and Australia, South Africa were examples colonies. but you can’t name a single Muslim region that was colonized. Neither was India or Burma.
    What the west did was administer these countries, set up borders to separate warring tribes, and set up modern infrastructures to help them develop. Without the west, what would have happened to these Muslim regions? These certainly today would have been backwards warring tribes who would rather buy weapons than I-pods. There wouldn’t any kind of human rights, there would still be slave markets, and all others things acceptable.under Islam. they would be closer to being like Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

  43. José Atento says

    Dec 1, 2014 at 11:07 am

    I always wonder when supposedly Christian people protect Islam so much, just ignoring the “blood of the martyrs” over the centuries, what will they tell Jesus in Judgment Day. Please, don’t take me wrong, if you are atheist or belong to other religion. I am talking here about Christianity. This lady claims to be Christian, therefore she should believe in afterlife … maybe she doesn’t.

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