Here we go again. Any time the mainstream media takes up the question of what causes Islamic jihad terrorism, or whether it has any derivation in Islamic texts and teachings, you can be sure that the “findings” will be that Islam is peaceful and jihad terror is all the West’s fault. Here the WaPo wheels out a Berkeley prof, M. Steven Fish, to explain it all for you.
These articles appear more and more grotesque as the body count rises. Comments interspersed below.
“Why is terror Islamist?,” by M. Steven Fish, Washington Post, January 27, 2015:
Contemporary terrorism is disproportionately Islamist. In a recent book I reported that between 1994 and 2008, the world suffered 204 high-casualty terrorist bombings. Islamists were responsible for 125, or 61 percent of these incidents, which accounted for 70 percent of all deaths.
Just as disturbing is the reaction of ordinary Muslims. The torching of Christian churches in Niger by mobs of Muslims angered by Charlie Hebdo’s insults — a week after Islamist militants slaughtered the paper’s editor and other staff in Paris — understandably irks non-Muslims. And rarely are such demonstrations of rage eclipsed by shows of opposition to terrorism.
“Rarely”? How about never? When have we ever seen Muslims rallying against the alleged “hijacking” of their religion by terrorists? The few such demonstrations that have been held were all sparsely attended, and more non-Muslims were there than Muslims.
Most Muslims oppose terrorism, but how often do the streets of Casablanca, Istanbul, Islamabad, Dakar, or Jakarta fill with people chanting “Not in Our Name!” after incidents such as that which rocked Paris on Jan. 7-9?
Never.
And why do many Muslims even in the West express regret rather than revulsion over murder in the name of their faith?
Oh, condemnations by Muslims of this or that jihad attack are easy to find. But no one seems to have noticed, and no one seems to care, that all these Muslim groups that condemn jihad terror have no program, not one, to teach young Muslims why they should reject the understanding of Islam put forward by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, etc.
One explanation we can rule out is that Muslims are violent people. Predominantly, Muslim countries average 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people, compared to 7.5 in non-Muslim countries. The percentage of the society that is made up of Muslims is an extraordinarily good predictor of a country’s murder rate. More authoritarianism in Muslim countries does not account for the difference. I have found that controlling for political regime in statistical analysis does not change the findings. More Muslims, less homicide.
No serious analyst is claiming that Muslims are uniquely violent people. Human nature is everywhere the same. And the question of whether or not Islam teaches violence against unbelievers has nothing to do with the murder rate, as jihad terror attacks are not generally classified as homicides — although if they were in, say, Pakistan, that country’s murder rate would skyrocket.
And yet, we are still left with the terrorism problem.
Some writers explain it in terms of religious doctrine. According to Robert Spencer, the Koran contains ample rationalizations for violence against outsiders.
But the Old Testament does so as well. For example, it reports Joshua’s conquering armies massacring entire captured cities — putting sobbing children to the sword, hanging people on trees and carrying off the plunder and booty — all under God’s orders. In terms of savagery and divine enthusiasm for the slaughter of innocents, the Koran contains nothing analogous to the account in Joshua chapters 10-11.
Fish’s reasoning here is apparently that the Qur’an’s violent passages can’t be the cause of jihad terrorism because the Old Testament contains violent passages as well — even worse than the Qur’an, Fish claims — and yet we don’t see Jews and Christians committing terror attacks and pointing to their Scriptures to justify them. This ignores the fact that nowhere in the Old Testament are believers directed to imitate the actions described in the violent passages — as I have pointed out many times, the violence in the Old Testament is descriptive, not prescriptive. The Qur’an contains open-ended commands to all believers to wage war against and subjugate all non-believers. The Jewish and Christian Scriptures do not. Fish also ignores the fact that both Judaism and Christianity have mainstream interpretative traditions that direct believers to draw only spiritual lessons from these passages. The mainstream understanding of the Qur’an’s violent passages within Islamic tradition, however, is literal.
Another theory, suggested by Satoshi Kanazawa, blames sexual frustration. The promise of sexual bliss in the afterlife for the fighter for the faith is unique to Islam; and polygyny, segregation of the sexes, and normative proscriptions against premarital sex may make young Muslim men particularly prone to violence.
There is no doubt that this plays a role: witness the teenage boy who was stopped in Israel a few years ago, all wired up to blow himself up in a crowd of Infidels. As he was being disarmed, he called out, “How am I going to go to Paradise and get the virgins now?” But as even a partial explanation for jihad violence, this is not really an alternative to the idea that “the Koran contains ample rationalizations for violence against outsiders.” After all, the idea of the houris in Paradise is in the Qur’an, as is the promise of Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111).
But what little we know about the sex lives of terrorists leaves room for skepticism. In his sample of Islamist terrorists for whom he obtained family status information, Marc Sageman found that most were married men who had children. The top leaders of terrorist organizations, moreover, have been polygynous rock stars in their own earthly communities. For Osama bin Laden, heaven could wait; for Ayman al-Zawahiri, it still can.
They were imitating Muhammad, who is said in a hadith to have declared: “I would love to be martyred in Allah’s cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred” (Bukhari 52.54). But he didn’t. He stuck around and exhorted others to get “martyred.”
Another explanation finds historical rather than scriptural or social cause for terrorism and casts Muslims as bearers of legitimate, age-old grievances. The Crusades, according to Karen Armstrong, are the supreme cause of Muslim resentment.
Armstrong and Fish both ignore the 450 years of jihad aggression that conquered over half of the Christian world before there was ever a Crusade, and to which the Crusades were a tardy and small-scale defensive reaction.
Yet attributing current-day violence to events that occurred a millennium ago is questionable, especially since the Muslims under Saladin won the wars against the Christian interlopers and retained the Holy Land.
But the truth is, in the contemporary world, Christians won big. And the frustration and humiliation that Muslims now feel as a result can help explain terrorism. That frustration and humiliation is rooted in politics rather than sex and in modern experience rather than deep history. And it has little to do with the Koran.
So you see, it is all the Christian West’s fault. Fish, like so many other Leftist analysts, suffers from an unconscious ethnocentrism: while he would insist that all cultures are equal, he really thinks that only the West can act, while the Muslims can only be passive reactors to the depredations of the West: they couldn’t possibly have reasons of their own for what they do.
Let’s consider a few simple facts: Christians drew the boundaries of the states in which most Muslims live. They named those same formations, from “Senegal” to “Jordan” to “Indonesia.” Currently, people in Christian countries make up one-third of the world’s population, while holding two-thirds of its wealth and nine-tenths of its military might.
To Fish’s thinking, this must mean that the “Christian countries” have done some wrong to Muslim countries, just as socialists believe that anyone who is wealthy has ipso facto wronged poor people. Socialists cannot and will not believe that wealth could simply be a sign of success, ingenuity, and accomplishment — it can only be a sign of oppression.
Fish then sketches out a futuristic scenario in which the decline of the U.S. and the West leads to “some self-proclaimed soldiers of Christianity” lashing out “by committing terrorist acts.” Then follows the usual list of supposed Christian terrorists — Fish names three, including the ever-serviceable Tim McVeigh, and then asks, “might not some Christians countenance such acts — or even applaud them?” Yet contrary to his claim that “the slaughterers just mentioned enjoyed vocal support among some extremist groups as well as quieter, more diffuse sympathy among broader sections of the American population,” in fact they were condemned by all Christian groups, and no Christian sect teaches anything that justifies their actions.
The contrast here is stark, although Fish takes no note of it. He invokes his three so-called Christian terrorists in an attempt to establish a moral equivalence with the perpetrators of the nearly 25,000 jihad terror attacks around the world since 9/11. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that Muslims must wage war against and subjugate unbelievers; no Christian group teaches such a thing. Yet he then asks: “In the hypothetical scenario sketched here, isn’t it possible that some Christians would sympathize with terrorism against Muslims and non-Muslims who they regard as collaborators?” Hypothetical indeed: to establish the moral equivalence he desires, he has to enter the realm of fantasy.
But that is where the Left lives. In their world, Islam and the Qur’an are entirely benign, and “right-wing Christian extremists” are much more of a threat. Think about how many TV shows you have seen featuring crazed right-wing Christian villains, and how many featuring Islamic jihadists. This Washington Post story is in service of that cultural myth. And despite the rising jihad body count, Steven Fish’s clueless marks are still buying.
Georg says
Even with all the oil they have… God has a strange way of showing his favor upon them.
DP111 says
This clueless prof must be from one of those “hard” science and engineering subjects, such as Social sciences or Political sciences.
KrazyKafir says
LOL another demonstration that even simpletons with adequate memory capability can be granted the Cracker Jack joke PhD in (lol) political science. Sure dilutes, dramatically, the station of, “Professor”. What a buffoon.
Spot On says
“Fish’s reasoning here is apparently that the Qur’an’s violent passages can’t be the cause of jihad terrorism because the Old Testament contains violent passages as well.”
Typical liberal professor reasoning that doesn’t make sense. All propaganda.He distorts the context of the bible either on purpose or due to ignorance. This just proves that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. It seems there are lots of professors around like this these days.
mortimer says
Danish researcher Tina Magaard, Ph.D. concluded that Islam is the most warlike religion. After three years analyzing the original texts of ten different religions, Tina Magaard concluded that the Islamic texts stand out by encouraging terror and violence to a larger degree than other religions do. She stated that ‘Islamic texts encourage terror and fighting to a far larger degree than the original texts of other religions. The texts in Islam distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree.’
Frank Scarn says
The comments in the Wash Post are eating “Professor”(cough) Fish for lunch. Quite amusing.
They actually pay this Fish character for this stuff?
jihad3tracker says
Yes, Frank, comments made by Average Everyday People — whenever a clueless academic or privilege-guilt excuser writes and posts an “opinion” piece about how Islamic violence has no connection to the Trilogy — are almost ALWAYS vastly of the eat-him-for-lunch percentage.
And in case some readers want to direct Fish to Robert Spencer’s entire refutation above, this is a bio for contact :
http://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/m-steven-fish
RonaldB says
“And in case some readers want to direct Fish to Robert Spencer’s entire refutation above, this is a bio for contact :”
Unfortunately, this category of “intellectual” rarely exhibits either the intellectual integrity, or the courage, to examine, or even read, logical counters to their philosophy.
The more inexact fields, particularly in the very fuzzy categories such as feminism, racism, or “social justice”, but also in fields such as business, contain small cliques who review each other’s books and articles, serve on the admission committees, and refer prospective academics to each other. What are the chances of success for someone who doesn’t share the (almost invariably Marxist) point of view of the cliques?
cs says
I was to say that, I always go to these sites which got comments session to check it out, so it is not sticking anymore.
Even Zizek changed his reasoning, after he was severely booed at the guardian, for his text on the Rotherham issue, his text was appalling.
KrazyKafir says
If this dullard had been schooled in the middle east.
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/096/e/8/middle_east_political_science_major_by_conservatoons-d60nw8g.jpg
cs says
lol, they are utterly moronic.
ECAW says
Another version of the sexual frustration theme here from Boris Johnson with a bit of insult thrown in (as if porn isn’t also favoured by other young men who don’t then blow themselves up – what could be the difference?):
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/30/boris-johnson-jihadis-are-porn-watching-wankers
Just to give an idea of Johnson’s form on the subect of Islam, after the 7/7 bombings in 2005 he said:
“To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers….That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem”
In 2008, while campaigning in the London mayoral election (and presumably having been told how many Muslim voters there are in London) he said he now believed, after having researched the Koran more in depth, that it is a “religion of peace”.
voegelinian says
The story in your link reveals a fascinating welter of confusion in the public conscious of UK political culture (including Muslim “experts” who are part of the conversation); but I didn’t find any mention of what you reported in your last two paragraphs, re: the interesting about-face of Boris Johnson.
ECAW says
Voegelinian – yes, the public discussion of Islam in Britain is hopelessly confused and also conducted in great ignorance of what the teachings actually say. It’s as if there is a distaste, even a concerted effort, to ignore the facts. When I raise Islam people respond with Muslims. If you want to get your comments in a newspaper zapped just quote a couple of surahs, unless your name is Abdul and you’re proving how benign Islam is, in which case you can let rip. If you asked 100 people in Britain what is the difference between Mecca and Medina I swear 99 would just stare at you blankly.
No, I just included BoJo’s U-turn as background showing his lack of seriousness and his dishonesty on the subject. I should explain that “form” is a British term meaning a criminal’s previous convictions – we can’t just speak mid-Atlantic all the time can we?
I took it from an article in which the author uses it as a starting point to definitively prove that the Islam/Islamism split is just balls (that means nonsense):
https://ecawblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/islamism-or-islam/
voegelinian says
Thanks; I’ll take a look.
voegelinian says
Thanks, I finally read it more closely and went back to the original Spectator op-ed BJ wrote articulating the first half of that ostensible U-turn. However, I’m not so sure there was ever an actual U-turn; for it seems quite plausible that the first half does not really constitute the kind of anti-Islam stance we robust Counter-Jihad folks (at least, those of us who are not Softies) have in mind. I examined the language of that 2005 op-ed, and it’s important to keep in mind the context BJ supplies, of holding out the imperative (and the hope) of working with Islamic clerics, and even working with the “Islamists” to try to persuade them to be less… Islamist. The fact that BJ even thinks that’s feasible and portentially fruitful indicates he doesn’t really fully grasp the full horror of Islam. This is precisely why I have developed the term ‘asymptotic”, for it helps to explain (or at least gives sense to the phenomenon of) how and why someone who seems to “get it” then subsequently blurts out things that indicate no, he doesn’t really get it at all.
To me, this is more plausible than the scenario supposing that someone can truly, lucidly get it at one point; then at some later point make a U-turn. Sure, in life many people do U-turns; but not about something this massively important and deadly serious. Without a more sophisticated framework accounting for the apparent U-turn (to wit, a re-examination of the first phase that supposedly constitutes what was u-turned away from later to see that, in fact, the later u-turn was actually a logical progression given that the person, all along, was asymptotic anyway), we are tempted to reach for the conspiracy theory or the casual imputation of evil (as you implied, assuming that BJ actually changed his position on such a profoundly grave and dire issue just for votes… which would be evil in the sense of treason against one’s fellow citizens and society — if, that is, he really knew what it was, how hideously inimical it is, that he was softening his stance on later).
ECAW says
Voegelinian – I must admit I didn’t remember the other relatively undamning things BoJo also says about Islam but they never cross the neutral line into positive territory. The most positive thing I see him saying is that it could be sorted out with good will and a decent reformation.
He definitely crossed that line in 2008 calling it a “religion of peace”. I do believe it was only to suck up to Muslim voters because he gives no details of what it was he found in his research to justify it. This is only par for the course. Cameron and Milliband issue grotesquely fawning messages each year at the end of Eid thanking Muslims for the great contribution they make to Britain.
We have got to know BoJo a bit better over the years. He only got the London Mayor’s job because Londoners saw it as a non-job and thought it amusing to install an amiable buffoon in it. He only rose to public prominence appearing as just that on a comedy quiz show (Ken Livingstone got the job before him because people thought him amusing and because he kept newts, only finding out later that he was a real hard left enemy of Britain who thought Qaradawi was just great). But Johnson doesn’t think he’s a buffoon. He thinks he’s going to replace Cameron and in fact I suspect he sees himself as something like his hero Churchill, hence his inflated writing style.
voegelinian says
ECAW,
My point is that it’s arguable that BJ’s 2005 “anti Islam” stance was not really anti-Islam in the way we think of it. Once we realize there are other ways of being anti-Islam which allow for those “u-turns” without making them contradictions, we can better discriminate among the true and pseudo critics of Islam.
This isn’t a merely dry, abstract intellectual phenomenon going on here; there are psychological factors — such as the likelihood that a person like BJ (solidly ensconced in the mainstream) semi-consciously dreads the horror of Islam but cannot face it, and so channels that dread into other patterns of thought (including irrational hope for reform, or various ways of parsing out a “diversity” of Islam that allows for the illogical co-existence in his mind of a good Islam and a bad Islam; etc.).
Angemon says
voegelinian posted:
“My point is that it’s arguable that BJ’s 2005 “anti Islam” stance was not really anti-Islam in the way we think of it.”
“We”? Who made you their spokesperson? If your past actions are of any reference, you won’t consider anyone to be anti-islamic unless they buy into your “deport them all” “meme” hook, line and sinker. Anything less than that and it’s “you’re an asymptotic PC MC who fell for the taqqyiah of some muslims pretending to be kind and you’re risking the lives of innocents by playing jihad-roulette”.
ECAW says
Voegelinian – I quite see your point about people in general being unable to accept the full horror of what Islam means for the West and lashing around for comforting illusions. That can lead to believing, or trying to believe, several different and even mutually exclusive things at once (I believe our friends at the Guardian call this being nuanced). I just don’t think it applies to Johnson who I see as a cynical opportunist.
I freely admit I don’t understand your use of the word asymptotic:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/asymptotic
Personally I subscribe to the view that there is never any possibility of sharing a space on equal terms with Muslims in more than token numbers because it’s absolutely at the heart of Islam that Muslims must dominate. That goes for a country and in these days of globalisation now the world. Either Islam must shrivel and die exposed to the sunlight of the 21st century or we must either submit or fight back. I would prefer fighting back by means of legal curbs on all the Medina aspects of Islam but fear that if our leaders continue to betray us then eventually the masses will take matters into their own hands and sweep them and Muslims away in bloody convulsions. I do not advocate this but just think our leaders are making some horrible endgame all but inevitable.
Still, have a nice day.
cs says
the voters of Londonistan.
mccode says
So, to summarize and distill the insightful professor’s analysis, Islamic terrorists are just ‘sore losers’ ?
Puleeze…..
Omar BEDDALI says
What a pity you being zionist i.e. defending the undefendable: the despoliation of land. Otherwise your arguments against islam are absolutely true!
mariam rove says
What? m
JeffS says
I suggest you Mohammedians poliate all the land you’ve despoliated since the time of Mohammed OK? And stop trying to despoliate all our land in the West, India, Africa, the Philippines and everywhere else, OK?
RonaldB says
“What a pity you being zionist i.e. defending the undefendable:”
You are SOOO funny, Omar Bedpal:
You heap scorn on a country devoted to gathering and protecting Jews, while protecting the rights of virtually all other citizens. They limit the immigration of non-Jews and allow free immigration of Jews. That’s their Zionism. Because they contain uppity Jews who actually control land formerly Muslim, the Muslims and the leftists carry on a never-ending war against Israel.
How much effort, Omar, have you put into criticizing the Vatican, Ireland, and the 57 countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) who constitutionally protect Islam? How many blogs have you written to protest Saudi Arabia, which won’t allow non-Muslim in Mecca and won’t allow even private services that aren’t Muslim?
You hypocrites are a joke. There are injustices in Israel, just like in any other country. There are injustices in your country, wherever it is. Why are the injustices in Israel, consisting of a few cases involving property and water-rights, real grievances by the way, so much greater than the injustices in your neighborhood? Why do you have to join the movements trying to end the existence of Israel?
Omar BEDDALI says
I’m not antijew (I prefer this word to antisemite because arabs are semite too). But my dream is to have a secular state for jews and others in that place of the world leaving peacefuly and democraticaly. Is that thing impossible. If yes, why?
Champ says
“Because they contain uppity Jews who actually control land formerly Muslim” …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Which was formerly Jewish, just sayin’ …
Myxlplik says
This is simply how one survives in Berkley, otherwise he’d be a Fish out of water. There are good restaurants in Oakland/Berkley otherwise probably best to avoid it if you can, because rational thought/reality doesn’t survive for very long there. It’s like matter-antimatter annihilation.
Name says
“the violence in the Old Testament is descriptive, not prescriptive”
That’s childish b.s. Violence is prescribed in Tanakh against a variety of scary hobgoblins, e.g. gays and witches.
JeffS says
And there have been 24,980 deadly attacks by Jews and Christians against gays and witches since 9/11, right?
voegelinian says
Correct; the descriptive-prescriptive formula refers to supremacist-expansionist military-cum-paramilitary belligerence ensconced in a scripted blueprint given cultural and psychological primacy through fanaticism — not to laws on how to morally order society. History has borne out that in Judaeo-Christianity, these two are not joined at the hip; but in Islam, apparently they are. The inability of “Name” to perceive this distinction is the more serious “childish b.s.” here.
Angemon says
Remember when the Christians decided to create Pakistan, and move people around between India and Pakistan, and slaughtered thousands of Hindus in the process? Oh, wait, it was muslims who did that. My bad.
Richard says
Like Caesar… Blaming the Christians for the fires of Rome.
Jaladhi says
What a shame such idiots are teaching our future generations and brain washing them instead of telling the truth abouty Quran, Muslims and mo. Possibly this prof. doesn’t know himself and has learned his history from Muslims.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
In a recent book I reported that between 1994 and 2008, the world suffered 204 high-casualty terrorist bombings. Islamists were responsible for 125, or 61 percent of these incidents, which accounted for 70 percent of all deaths.
This guy has the accountancy skills of Bernie Madoff. Look for Janet Napolitano, former DHS Secretary and current president of the University of California, to reward Fish with a fat raise for his work.
Angemon says
And yet, he leaves islam out of the possible causes for islamic terrorism. Go figure…
Buraq says
Fish has swallowed the Left’s propaganda hook, line and sinker! Clown!
cs says
surah 9: 111
Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah , so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah ? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment.
————-
Where it says this in the Torah? Never found it. Does it say in the New Testament?
So that’s why Mohammed say our Scriptures are corrupted??
Salah says
Such “academics” should be brought to justice for high treason. They are in bed with the enemy. They are the *enemy within.*
Bezelel says
It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood, wouldja be my neighbor? islamic terrorism, can you say that?
Wellington says
I always know I’m dealing with either an ignorant person or a mendacious one when, as a way of mitigating Islamic terrorism and instructions for said terrorism in the Koran, the person points to violent passages in the Old Testament. As Robert Spencer pointed out above, and has pointed out innumerable times, the OT is often merely descriptive and the Koran has been totally prescriptive down to the present day. No school of Islamic theology, Sunni or Shiite, has averred otherwise. A greater difference would be hard to find. And yet this particularly egregious example of the fallacy of tu quouqe reasoning is repeated again and again by people like M. Steven Fish.
Stunning. Exasperating. Stupid.
ECAW says
Indeed. I’ve come to realise, after arguing the toss with these people in comments columns, that there must be some organisation that issues them with a standard kit which includes Leviticus (or sometimes Deuteronymy), the Westboro Baptist Church, the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the Ku Klux Klan and Timothy Mcveigh. So frustrating.
mortimer says
Clue to your ‘standard kit’…he mentions Karen Armstrong…bingo.
Karen Armstrong makes up her own facts, including the opinion (no evidence) that Islam is ‘really’ Gnosticism, which is Armstrong’s personal religion.
deja vu says
Agree wholeheartedly – IRA, Hitler, abortion clinic attackers – it’s all so predictable.
Add to that the ludicrous assumption that Western nations are automaticaly ‘Christian’ – that ‘Christians’ won big. What about freedom over slavery won big, democracy over tyranny won big, light over darkness won big, love of life over love of death won big?
Reminds me of a Leftist of our acquaintance, a retired university lecturer in commercial subjects, who thinks he knows everything about everything, especially the metaphysical, which he denies exists.
mortimer says
The only reason that mullahs are quoted ‘speaking out’ (if it may be called that) about jihad, is when they are telephoned by a reporter who needs to ‘BALANCE’ the news story with a comment from Islam.
Invariably, a mullah will give a blanket statement such as ‘This (terrorist act) has nothing to do with Islam’, by which they often mean ‘We are Amaddiya Muslims who have a totally different interpretation of every normative, Sunni doctrine’.
The sleight of hand is never checked or caught. Anwar Awlaki was approached for comments about various terrorist acts that he always condemned, at least until he got to Yemen where he never saw a terrorist act he didn’t love!
mortimer says
M. Steven Fish is so deficient in his understanding of Islam it’s hard to know where to start.
Like many non-religious Western academics he start from the view that Islam is easy to understand, while his own (regime change) is ‘difficult’.
His statement “”Muslims are not inclined to favor the fusion of religious and political authority”…is nothing short of totally delusional.
The caliphate is precisely “the fusion of religious and political authority”. The caliphate is favored by 65% of all Muslims worldwide.
What does this guy do? Make up his own facts and say, ‘Believe me because I’m a university teacher’ ???
Academics need to pop Fish’s hot air balloon.
somehistory says
How many *degrees* in stupid are there? Professing knowledge, showing ignorance. Teaching others such foolish ideas.
This trying to equate islam’s atrocities and constant war with ancient wars fought so long ago and putting the *responsibility and blame* for the current state of endless killing for a satanic cult on Christianity, is old and tiring, but not unexpected. The beast and its image must be worshipped by many before the day is done.
“God chose the foolish things of the world to put the wise to shame (! Cor.1:27)” This guy is living proof of someone who should be ashamed to claim he knows something worth imparting to others.
Sheik yer mami says
There need to be consequences for wackademic frauds like this .
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Can’t. It’s called tenure, which was established to ensure a variety of opinions being expressed and taught in academe without fear of reprisal for stuff like hate speech.
gary fouse says
Ordinary murders (of other Muslims) are punished severely. Killing non-Muslims for the jihad is another story.
The missing reason that Fish cannot seem to find is……..
Islam.
Another Berkeley professor smoking his socks.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Off topic, but I encountered in Andrew McCarthy’s essay today over at PJMedia the term radical Islamist. Uh, does that mean there is such a thing as a *moderate* Islamist? He was quoting Newt Gingrich’s use of the term, by the way.
Me, the term Islamist comes closest to my liking of all terms commonly used for Moslems and Islam because “ist” means to practice the noun to which it is appended. So an Islamist is one who practices Islam, in other words, a Moslem. But even this word is deficient, because not all Moslems are mujahidin. A better term is Islamic activist. My best preference is Moslemist, which captures not only the concept but also the hairball(s) to which it is attached.
The Holy Ko-Ran has a chapter in which Allah specified the rules for when a Moslem may not participate in Jihad. It was eerie, but the chapter read like something made up by the Holy Prophet Mo-Hammed for recruiting purposes.
voegelinian says
As for Prof. Stanley Fish, with his cardigan sweater and haplessly decent expression, he looks to be on the brink of breaking out into
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
— to be sung, of course, to Muslims in order to stave off their “radicalization”.
Bezelel says
@Voeg, That is my take on it and it goes downhill from there.
Odious Truth says
Surely the whole point is that, according to the Qur’an, it is Muslims who will win “big”
[Quran 40:51] Most assuredly, we will give victory to our messengers and to those who believe, both in this world and on the day the witnesses are summoned.
Hardly surprising, then, that Muslims get so upset when they see the Christians winning instead.
Odious Truth says
Surely the whole point is that, according to the Qur’an, it is Muslims who will “win big”
[Quran 40:51] Most assuredly, we will give victory to our messengers and to those who believe, both in this world and on the day the witnesses are summoned.
Hardly surprising, then, that Muslims get so upset when they see the Christians winning instead.
Thomas Paine says
What Westerners (not co-extensive with Christians) “won big” was adopting proper and correct moral philosophy based on the Lockean Rights of Man to life, liberty, and property and applying human reason based on Aristotelian logic and objective observation of reality.
The mistake Muslims made was uncritically adopting without question, analysis, or thinking (i.e., based on faith) the morally evil ideas in the Koran.
Enlightenment and the Age of Reason ideas are morally superior to Dark Age totalitarian admonitions in the Koran that encourage savagery and barbarism (e.g., slavery, rape, censorship, theft such as the jizya, conquest over trade, pedophilia, illiteracy, etc.).
The first and most important action needed to enlighten Muslims is to eliminate all immoral prohibitions against blasphemy and other free communication of ideas. Removal of these evil, forcible restrictions on the minds of men would allow men to perform the moral act of thinking by challenging and questioning the veracity, the moral premises, and the faulty logic in the Koran.
Thomas Paine says
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
— Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine says
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
— Thomas Jefferson
Islam, and in particularly its immoral dictates against blasphemy, is a form of tyranny over the mind of man. Islam’s vile blasphemy persecutions are used to protect and excuse morally bad and logically weak ideas. These pathetic ideas would collapse under their own contradictions and irrationalities under the bright sunlight of free speech and open human reasoning and critical questioning.
Elisha says
“But the Old Testament does so as well. For example, it reports Joshua’s conquering armies massacring entire captured cities — putting sobbing children to the sword, hanging people on trees and carrying off the plunder and booty”
This guy is as original as buttered toast. Maybe the hippie “professor” has short term memory loss from too many bongs. His Marxist heroes are good for hundreds of millions of deaths in LESS than 100 years! I’d say in the last 40 years, there have been well over 100 million defenseless, unborn children executed in the Western world alone. God only knows how many in Red China, Nth Korea, et al. No tears there, however.
He is a typical leftist- an ignorant, hateful, treasonous coward that shares the spirit of the satan with his temporary friends of demonic islam. How hard is it to understand the PRESCRIPTIVE verses of the quran, hadiths and sira?
Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors. – 2:193
Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not. – 2:216
And as for those who disbelieved, I will punish them with a severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and they will have no helpers.” – 3:56
Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures. – 98:6
O Prophet, strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination. – 66:9
Bukhari (52:269) – “The Prophet said, ‘War is deceit.'”
Bukhari (49:857) – “He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar.”
Reliance of the Traveler (p. 746 – 8.2) – “Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (i.e., when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory… it is religiously precautionary in all cases to employ words that give a misleading impression.”
But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. – 2 Corinthians 4:3-4
They will NEVER stop, until, that is….
Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. – Revelation 1:7
Praise His Mighty Name!
Champ says
Amen, Elisha!
Mo says
@ Elisha
Double amen!
Mo says
It’s not just college professors who pull this stunt. It does not matter where the topic is brought up, whenever Islam is mentioned, its atrocities (and more importantly, its teachings) are ignored, and they go to, “BUT CHRISTIANITY!” I have seen this over and over and over again. They used to wait until the discussion had a little back and forth. Now they start off that way.
The insufferable part is that most of these fools have never read the Bible OR the Quran, and have no idea what either religion teaches. This ignorant professor knows nothing about the book of Joshua. Nor does he care. If he did, he wouldn’t be saying such stupid things. The book of Joshua has nothing to do with open ended commands for Jews or Christians to commit violence against unbelievers. (Especially since Christians didn’t EXIST in the Old Testament!) It’s an account of God’s JUDGMENT on wicked people.)
How these ignorant liars and blasphemers sicken me. That said, I am not committing violence, calling for violence or condoning violence against them.
SallyA says
Muslims read the Koran and, in the words of Mo above, believe they are called by its words to enact their god’s “JUDGMENT on wicked people,” those who disavow or fail to bow to Allah, their supposed god. Descriptive versus prescriptive may be a less compelling distinction between Bible and Koran than that most of modern Christianity and Judaism (Buddhism and Hinduism too) do not interpret their scriptures as literal guides or infallible models for conduct. Most of Islam apparently still does, or at least those Muslims not enacting terrorist acts against non-Muslims are cheering on their fellow Islamic believers who do.
The whole world, if we want to survive, will hopefully move past fundamentalism and literal interpretations of “holy” books in all the male-dominant monotheistic religions, Islam being at the far worse and most vile and violent end of the spectrum of course. El-Sisi of Egypt will hopefully stay alive long enough and outside the fatwa zone to influence some of his fellow Muslims to lighten up and stop reading the Koran literally.
Anybody who wants sincerely to ask Muslims to take their religion’s key scriptures non-literally might consider the need for all religious observers to do the same, to set a good example. It may be a small thing to some (usually males or their female cheerleaders in churchianity) who follow Jesus, but to others of us the literal male-dominant prescriptions of the bible have led in our family settings to a scriptural excuse for sex-based emotional and mental oppression of ourselves and our daughters, if not physical and/or sexual harm. Just saying that bible-inerrantist Christians ought to be sure they aren’t being oppressive in the name of their book (the “Word”) and the name of their “Lord” if they want to criticize Muslims for literally following their own book. Not — definitely not — saying that any Christians in the 21st century to my knowledge are even as misoygnist as the so-called moderate Muslims (except perhaps renegade polygamists not in mainstream Mormonism and non-birth-control Catholics subjecting their wives to brood-sow repetitive pregnancies).
Of course this comment may draw the usual claims that I’m shallow or whatever. It typically happens here when I say the “m” word (misogyny). It only proves my point about misogyny, which is everywhere and which women expect to be everywhere without usually mentioning anything about it, instead making their end runs around it wherever possible in order to live, because misogyny is ubiquitous, tokenism rampant and backlash chronic. Islam most appallingly shows misogyny’s deepest darkest evil on the global scene currently, and women are wise if they take notice and consider how to protect themselves, where to live, how to know to select real and not illusory allies. And yes, Islam is awfully violent against men, too, a male-invented system of violent conquest, mainly men against men, mainly men against women and children, masquerading as a religion in the name of a monotheistic male god.
Marcus Borg and other theologians progressively interpreting Christianity, also Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza at Harvard (author of “In Memory of Her” from the seldom taught passage of two biblical gospels), provide biblical and extra-biblical scholarship for honoring Jesus as a Wisdom (Sophia) teacher. Jesus didn’t write and leave a book. Instead, may we exercise Wisdom eternal and evolving in our universe, on our small planet, as humans who deserve more spiritually than authoritarian and domineering words from ancient texts. We, Muslims and Christians alike, deserve more than the words of old books that, while of literary and historical relevance, are no match for the vibrant, living Creator who creates anew every day in us, if we allow it to happen.
Mo says
@ SallyA
“The whole world, if we want to survive, will hopefully move past fundamentalism and literal interpretations of “holy” books in all the male-dominant monotheistic religions,
“Male-dominant monotheistic religions” – LOL!
Please do not compare Christianity to Islam, as they have only very superficial similarities. Thank you.
As to “literal interpretations”, so you want those who hold to Judeo-Christian principles to move past literal interpretations like, “You shall not murder” or “You shall not steal” or “You shall not commit adultery”? How, exactly, would that work?
” Islam being at the far worse and most vile and violent end of the spectrum of course.”
I am gong to ask you for the second time to NOT compare Christianity and Islam, as they teach directly OPPOSITE things.
“Anybody who wants sincerely to ask Muslims to take their religion’s key scriptures non-literally”
Can you tell me who here is asking Muslims to not take their religion’s key scriptures non-literally?
Can you tell me how that’s done with the Koran?
” might consider the need for all religious observers to do the same, to set a good example.
More moral equivalency nonsense.
Stop lumping all religions together. It is only ISLAM that has open-ended commands for believers to oppress and/or murder nonbelievers. That’s why it’s MUSLIMS committing such acts all over the world, on a regular basis, in obedience to those commands. So stop with your assumptions that all religions teach and all followers do the same things!
That’s as far as I read of your screed here because every sentence is making me more angry than the last.
Let’s see if you even bother to answer what I’ve asked.
Champ says
Marcus Borg denies the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza is a feminist theologian. And what SallyA is suggesting sounds a lot like new-age garbage, to me. No, thank you! I do not share any of SallyA’s *ideas*.
Champ says
SallyA wrote:
Marcus Borg and other theologians progressively interpreting Christianity, also Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza at Harvard (author of “In Memory of Her” from the seldom taught passage of two biblical gospels), provide biblical and extra-biblical scholarship for honoring Jesus as a Wisdom (Sophia) teacher. Jesus didn’t write and leave a book. Instead, may we exercise Wisdom eternal and evolving in our universe, on our small planet, as humans who deserve more spiritually than authoritarian and domineering words from ancient texts. We, Muslims and Christians alike, deserve more than the words of old books that, while of literary and historical relevance, are no match for the vibrant, living Creator who creates anew every day in us, if we allow it to happen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I did some more research and learned more startling information about “Marcus Borg” …he does not believe in the deity of Christ, either–so of course this reveals a lot about HIM!
And I also discovered that what SallyA essentially stated, above, is known as “process theology”, and the Bible clearly states that process theology is false …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Question: “What is process theology?”
Answer: Process theology is based on the philosophy that the only absolute which exists in the world is change. Therefore, God, too, is constantly changing. The Bible clearly states that process theology is false. Isaiah 46:10 is unequivocal regarding God’s sovereignty and unchanging nature: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.’” Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, is equally unchanging: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The Bible is clear that His plans do not change according to the whims of mere men (Psalm 33:11). He “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). But process theology does not consider the Bible to be inspired or to be our final authority.
The Bible expresses many attributes, qualities, and characteristics of God. These include His holiness (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8); sovereignty (1 Chronicles 29:11; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 37:20); unity (Deuteronomy 6:4); omnipresence (Psalm 139:7-10); omniscience (Job 28:24; Psalm 147:4-5); omnipotence (Job 42:1-2); self-existence (Exodus 3:14; Psalm 36:9); eternality (Psalm 90:2; Habakkuk 1:12); immutability (Psalm 33:11; James 1:17); perfection (Deuteronomy 32:3-4); infiniteness (Job 5:9; 9:10); truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 86:15); love (1 John 4:8, 16); righteousness (Psalm 11:7; 119:137); faithfulness (Deuteronomy 7:9; Ps. 89:33); mercy (Psalm 102:17); graciousness (Exodus 22:27; Nehemiah 9:17, 31; Psalm 86:15; 145:17); justice (Psalm 111:7; Isaiah 45:21); and freedom (Job 23:13; Proverbs 21:1). God uses these in the world and actively exercises all of these today. God transcends all of His creation, yet He is personal and knowable.
Process theology denies the deity of Jesus Christ, saying that Jesus has no intrinsic difference from any other man. Additionally, the humanistic philosophy of process theology teaches that mankind does not require salvation, while the Bible is clear that without Christ, man is hopelessly lost and doomed to hell for eternity. Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ is God (Isaiah 9:6-7; Matthew 1:22-23; John 1:1, 2, 14; 20:28; Acts 16:31, 34; Philippians 2:5-6; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8; 2 Peter 1:1) and that without His death on the behalf of sinners (Romans 3:23; 6:23; 2 Corinthians 5:21) no one could ever be saved (John 1:12; 3:18; 3:36; 14:6; Acts 4:10-12; 16:30-31).
Here: http://www.gotquestions.org/process-theology.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow SallyA is one mixed-up person promoting false teachers, and such.
My husband and I co-lead a marriage workshop with our senior pastor at our church, and a group of us meet once a week to work on and discuss the Biblical marriage; and I can tell you that what SallyA is stating is absolutely **false** about what the Bible teaches regarding marriage and the husband and wife relationship. The Bible is clear that husbands are to love their wives!!! …and yes, some Christian husbands abuse the word of God and do not follow God’s directives. But their failure not to follow God’s plan and *not* to love their wife is their fault, and NOT the fault of the word of God. Period. And I can tell you that my husband makes loving me God’s way a priority, and he helps other husbands to do the same. I am sooo blessed and fortunate to have such a loving husband who desires to please God!
And God is the same yesterday, today and forever …so His “old book”, as SallyA describes the Bible, is relevant for *all* time!
Foolster41 says
So if we stop interpreting our bible literally (which gives no commands to do the things the Qouran commands), the Muslims will see the good example and stop interpreting their scripture which does command murder and subjugation?
I don’t see how slitting my own wrist will stop them from slitting our throats. This is incredibly silly.
John says
There’s a few flaws in articles theory, one: Christians were more in control 100+ years ago, when Britain, France and many western countries were in control of many Muslim countries, and guess what, no terrorism.
Here’s another theory: 80 years ago Saudi Arabia gains independence. As the years go by, with the popularity of cars and planes, Saudi Arabia becomes increasingly wealthy thanks to selling oil. 30-50 years ago leaders in SA realise a way to become a true world power, more powerful than the US, Russia or China, they start constructing schools in Islamic 3rd world countries that offer free education, food and lodging; which also teach their extremist idealology. They build mosques around the world, construct a PR machine and propaganda, encourage suffering Muslims to emigrate to western countries to improve their lives. The goal? To spread their extremist idealology and terrorism, to then control the world, Muslims through faith, the west through oil (via the US) and everyone else through fear of terrorism. What we are seeing now is the fruits of SA’s labour, 20 years of grooming their invisible army.
Could be wrong, it’s just a theory, but then, so is this article.
Joe Shmo says
I always find these articles interesing when I find them, not for the text itself, but the comments below. I’m fascinated and curious to see how many people are still buying what these idiots are selling. I remember reading the comments of a Guardian article a while ago (something loopy I can’t remember what it was), and some wag pointed out that the Guardian online is the inverse of the internet, the comments are generally more intelligent than the article! That made me laugh.
Silvia says
“But the truth is, in the contemporary world, Christians won big. And the frustration and humiliation that Muslims now feel as a result can help explain terrorism. That frustration and humiliation is rooted in politics rather than sex and in modern experience rather than deep history. And it has little to do with the Koran.”
I actually agree with that. Islam facilitates the behavior but think about it. They have been promised everything wonderful in this world. They are told they are the best creatures on the planet and the only worthy ones. And then they look around. They live in poverty, violence, backwardness, hopelessness – with no end in sight. Meanwhile, their enemies, the pigs and apes, Christians and Jews are doing brilliantly!!! Not only that, other infidels are also doing much better – the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists – everybody’s better off than them!!!
Of course, for any smart person, the next logical step would be – there’s something wrong with Islam if it happens mostly to muslims, but most don’t.
John JOhn says
At some point, it matter not “why.”
SallyA says
Muslims read the Koran and, in the words of Mo above, believe they are called by its words to enact their god’s “JUDGMENT on wicked people,” those who disavow or fail to bow to Allah, their supposed god. Descriptive versus prescriptive may be a less compelling distinction between Bible and Koran than that most of modern Christianity and Judaism (Buddhism and Hinduism too) do not interpret their scriptures as literal guides or infallible models for conduct. Most of Islam apparently still does, or at least those Muslims not enacting terrorist acts against non-Muslims are cheering on their fellow Islamic believers who do.
The whole world, if we want to survive, will hopefully move past fundamentalism and literal interpretations of “holy” books in all the male-dominant monotheistic religions, Islam being at the far worse and most vile and violent end of the spectrum of course. El-Sisi of Egypt will hopefully stay alive long enough and outside the fatwa zone to influence some of his fellow Muslims to lighten up and stop reading the Koran literally.
Anybody who wants sincerely to ask Muslims to take their religion’s key scriptures non-literally might consider the need for all religious observers to do the same, to set a good example. It may be a small thing to some (usually males or their female cheerleaders in churchianity) who follow Jesus, but to others of us the literal male-dominant prescriptions of the bible have led in our family settings to a scriptural excuse for sex-based emotional and mental oppression of ourselves and our daughters, if not physical and/or sexual harm. Just saying that bible-inerrantist Christians ought to be sure they aren’t being oppressive in the name of their book (the “Word”) and the name of their “Lord” if they want to criticize Muslims for literally following their own book. Not — definitely not — saying that any Christians in the 21st century to my knowledge are even as misoygnist as the so-called moderate Muslims (except perhaps renegade polygamists not in mainstream Mormonism and non-birth-control Catholics subjecting their wives to brood-sow repetitive pregnancies).
Of course this comment may draw the usual claims that I’m shallow or whatever. It typically happens here when I say the “m” word (misogyny). It only proves my point about misogyny, which is everywhere and which women expect to be everywhere without usually mentioning anything about it, instead making their end runs around it wherever possible in order to live, because misogyny is ubiquitous, tokenism rampant and backlash chronic.Of course this comment will draw the usual claims that I’m shallow or whatever. It only proves my point about misogyny, which is everywhere and which women expect to be everywhere without usually mentioning anything about it, because it is ubiquitous and backlash is chronic. Islam most appallingly shows misogyny’s deepest darkest evil on the global scene currently, and women are wise if they take notice and consider how to protect themselves, where to live, how to know to select real and not illusory allies. And yes, Islam is awfully violent against men, too, a male-invented system of violent conquest, mainly men against men, mainly men against women and children, masquerading as a religion in the name of a monotheistic male god.
Marcus Borg and other theologians progressively interpreting Christianity, also Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza at Harvard (author of “In Memory of Her” from the seldom taught passage of two biblical gospels), provide biblical and extra-biblical scholarship for honoring Jesus as a Wisdom (Sophia) teacher. Jesus didn’t write and leave a book. May we exercise Wisdom eternal and evolving in our universe, on our small planet, as humans who deserve more spiritually than authoritarian and domineering words from ancient texts. We, Muslims and Christians alike, deserve more than the words of old books that, while of literary and historical relevance, are no match for the vibrant, living Creator who creates anew every day in us, if we allow it to happen.
SallyA says
Page refresh glitch caused double posting and text duplications of comment above; my apologies!
Kepha says
I will guess that Mo nailed it above. I also suspect that Dr. Fish’s invocation of Old Testament warfare underscores his theological ignorance.
I will be the first to admit that violence is innate in human nature, at least since Adam ate the forbidden fruit. But I think that Islamic doctrine also fuels the great resentment against the West’s “winning big”. I suspect that Islam’s foundational texts has any internal coping mechanism for dealing with defeat or subjugation.
Since Fish invokes the Old Testament, let me ask where the Qur’an and Hadith admit that “the best of people” may actually be given over to their enemies for their sins? I honestly and sincerely wish to know. I see in the Bible the low side of the cycles recurring throughout the times of the Judges and the Babylonian captivity. However, all that I can see in Islam’s textual sources is an unalloyed triumphalism.
And to bring in the New Testament (aka the post-Messianic appendix), there must necessarily be a great theological gulf between a religion whose Number Two or Three authority next to Jesus himself calls on us to seek peace with all men, as much as it is up to us (Romans 12:18) and one in which unabashed warfare for conquest, plunder, and enslavement is a “pillar” of the faith.
If your holy book insists that your team invariably must win, it cannot but rankle that the superseded and inferior religion and/or its heirs appears to be on top.
profitsbeard says
I don’t think the Christians driven out of the Middle East and Egypt and the rest of North Africa and Spain for 7 centuries and Constantinople and the Balkans or the Buddhists in Afghanistan or the Hindus slaughtered in India and Malaysia/Indonesia or the animists and other “pagans” and polytheists in all of these places consider themselves to have “won big”. They lost country after country to the murdering invaders of Mohammad.
Islam’s centuries of imperialistic depredations and slaughter as it marched across the globe are blithely ignored by the author (of course) because History is “only what fits your narrative,” not what actually occurred.
Also ignored are Islam’s stated Koranic goal of a global gulag run by terrorizing theocratic tyrants.
(Murder rates in prisons are lower than the general non-prison population’s, also, making such a statistic about Muslim nations being “relatively more peaceful” trite and meaningless in this context, unless the author’s advice is that we would be “safer” in a nation-state’s jail subjected to Sharia Terror?)
Phil says
Is this a valid representation of the current state of American academia? There are so many things wrong or at least unsubstantiated in Professor Fish’s work that I scarcely know where to begin!
Imprimis, given the poor state of policing in the most populous Muslim countries, assertions about murder rates are likely false. The classic example is the Islamic Republic of Iran – well policed and under rigid intrusive authoritarian control by a Shi’ite theocracy. With a current population of 77.45 million as compared to 23.13 million in Australia (approximately 335% greater than Australia), Iran has publicly acknowledged (for which read executed) four times as many serial killers (I give you Bijeh and Hanael as two of the more egregious examples). Of course we cannot possibly admit this fact as it would automatically prove one to be a vile Islamophobe! Mind you, if you look at the appallingly inaccurate Wikipedia listing you would think Iran had only ever had two serial killers (apparently Mahin Qadri and Ali Reza Kordiyeh aren’t serial killers according to Wikipedia as they didn’t get listed – I could list many more, but it would be superfluous). Pakistan doesn’t even bear comparison. How do you collate murder figures in the all-but lawless Northwest Frontier? As for the “controlling for political regime in statistical analysis” – applying specious (Western) culturally-mandated discriminators in the analysis is dubious at best – Indonesia comes across as a democratic country under the rule of law, but try explaining that to the relatives of the slain Moluccan islanders or the Dayaks in Kalimantan (or the estimated minimum 102,800 dead from The Indonesian occupation of Timor Leste, using the conservative official figures quoted by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor) – and a flight of fancy at worse. And as the inestimable Robert Spencer points out, deaths from Jihad violence and communal killings are not counted as murder – which must be a great comfort to those killed by Muslim mobs.
The assertion that Christians “won big” is specious. We “won” because we developed a society open to new ideas which adapts itself to new challenges (albeit not always successfully). The Dar al-Islam has been an intellectual desert for the last 8 cneturies. The formal adoption of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali’s anti-rationalist thesis spelt the end of any real intellectual development in Islam. It was not merely his “Incoherence of the Philosophers”, which Averroes adroitly but unsuccessfully rebutted a century later – his “Revival of the Religious Sciences” proved just as disastrous for freedom of thought. The so-called Islamic ‘Golden Age’ lasted a mere 250 years, and mostly extended the works of classical science – it was not and never could have been the trigger for the Renaissance. Arguably the only truly revolutionary thinker among the lot was al-Hazen (ibn Huthaym) and his work on optics, and his work was rejected by the Muslim Umma. The crowning tragedy of this can be seen in Jal Singh’s Delhi Observatory (Jantar Mantar) where in the eighteenth century Muslim astronomers used huge construction to observe the heavens which were little more than oversized astrolabes and sundials – yet at the same time Christendom was using a Newtonian Heliocentric model to investigate the solar system. The pathos is incredible. And it isn’t that Muslims (somehow) didn’t have access to Western knowledge – they were happy enough to learn western military technology and apply it.
As for the claim all the violence spreads from the Western redrawing of the political maps – that is rot. Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines is happily murdering infidels, openly supported by the MLF with a blithe disregard for the historical limits of Muslim influence in Mindanao. The recent civil war in Cote d’Ivoire is an even more blatant case in point – the population was historically Christian and Animist – large Muslim populations started migrating from neighbouring countries in the latter half of the twentieth century – they were not the native indigenes (of course France happily sells out the Christians – mustn’t let anything come between the Fifth Republic and its accommodation to the Muslim masses, must we? – zut alors, it could interfere with the mission civilisatrice!).
Violence in the Old Testament is limited to a specific locale, a particular time and a specific tribe. Also there are far more frequent references to violence in the Quran, Hadiths and Sirah taken as a corpus than in the Bible. Nowhere are Jews or Christians incited to follow the example – the violence is descriptive, not prescriptive. And I’m sure that Fish knows that.
Sorry for the rant – but this piece that got my goat.
voegelinian says
“The formal adoption of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali’s anti-rationalist thesis spelt the end of any real intellectual development in Islam. ”
Not to mention that even if there was any real intellectual activity & development we can accurately call “Islamic” during that or any other period, we know it is not relevant to whether the Islamic society manifesting it is, or is not, violent in the typically and normatively Islamic manner involving supremacist-expansionist hatred, paranoia, and fanaticism. As Andrew Bostom has shown persuasively, the so-called “Mutazilites”, a movement in medieval Islam supposedly evincing the virtues of rationality and a critical, open mind, went part & parcel and hand in glove with the whole wonderfully charming kit & kaboodle of Mohammedan… well, let us let Roget (PBUH) flesh out the gory details through his thesaurus:
KILLING &c. v.; homicide, manslaughter, murder, assassination, trucidation [obs.], occision [obs.]; effusion of blood; blood, bloodshed; gore, slaughter, carnage, butchery; battue [F.]; bomb explosion, electrocution, shipwreck; gladiatorial combat; lapidation.
MASSACRE; fusillade, noyade [F.]; thuggism, thuggee, thuggery; saturnalia of blood, sacrifice to Moloch; organized massacre, pogrom [Russia].
WAR, warfare, “organized murder,” horrida bella [L.], crusade, jihad or jehad [Moham.]; battle; war to the death (warfare) [See Warfare]; Armageddon; gigantomachy; deadly weapon (arms) [See Arms].
DEATHBLOW, finishing stroke, coup de grâce [F.], quietus; execution &c. (capital punishment) [See Punishment]; judicial murder; martyrdom.
SUFFOCATION, strangulation, garrote or garrotte; hanging &c. v.
SLAYER, butcher, murderer, Cain, assassin, cutthroat, garroter or garrotter, bravo, Thug or thug, Moloch, matador, sabreur [F.]; guet-à-pens [F.]; gallows, executioner (punishment) [See Scourge]; man-eater, Apache, hatchet man [U. S.], highbinder [U. S.], gunman [colloq., U. S.], bandit, lapidator [rare].
regicide, parricide, fratricide, infanticide; feticide or fœticide, aborticide; uxoricide, vaticide [these words ending in -cide refer to both doer and deed].
********************************
For more, see my essay:
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-myth-of-golden-age-of-islam.html
MKG says
He’s a professor at UC Berkely. Any questions?
No Fear says
According to the moral equivalence of the Professor there are two groups who should be really worried at this point: non-muslims (due to the eternal imperative of the Quran to subjugate non-muslims) and the Amalekites (due to Joshua).
I am sure the Amalekites are worrying themselves sick as I write this.
jewdog says
This is a good example of the left’s orthodoxy of cultural moral equivalence. This guy twists himself into laughable knots trying to show that Islamic culture is just as bad or good as Western culture. He even drags out the Old Testament nonsense, a basic error that is shocking for an alleged scholar.
I’m sure that neither he nor his colleagues really believe that Muslim countries are safe; as though being beheaded or killed in a terrorist attack is only a footnote to the overall murder rate.
As for the allegation that terror stems from bitterness over Christianity’s winning: his allegation itself shows that he understands that Islam inculcates a drive for victory in its adherents, so inadvertently he admits that terror stems from frustrated Islamic supremacism.
mortimer says
After reading Armstrong (a Gnostic who sees Gnosticism everywhere), Fish is an expert, even though he hasn’t read and studied the hadiths, Sira and Koran.
His knowledge of the subject is second or third hand, yet he coasts on his scholarly credentials, rather than doing the research himself.
The fatal fallacy in his article is that he takes effects as causes. Wrongo. The causes are the Islamic sources texts that he hasn’t yet read.
Johnd says
This professor is nothing but a moron. What a flawed fantasy of an argument. I used to consider myself leftist but reading these flat earthers on Islam makes me ashamed of their treachery and moral cowardice. How odd in these times to see all these high minded intellectuals stripped to reveal just straw and plastic and assorted rubbish inside.
danny says
My question to the prof: when last did the Jews attacked the amalekites?
Northstar says
Perhaps the good professor should travel to ISIS headquarters and explain to them the ‘REAL” reason that they are angry and committing slaughter? I am sure they would listen intently, with thanks, as they put him in an orange jumpsuit, demand ransom and prepare to behead him.
duh_swami says
Hmmm scripture is the problem or rather blind belief in it. I wonder what the world would be like if there were no scripture? Scripture has the power to cause intelligent, educated people to believe in the impossible, and improbable.
If you are already a decent person, you do not need a book to tell you how to behave, or what to do. You don’t need a god standing over you cracking a whip.
The last thing a decent person needs is sharia law based on scripture. Islam is simply a prison without bars. ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’…a life sentence short of apostasy. Decent people also do not need Christian preachers threatening his congregation with hell if they don’t believe or donate..
Some scripture has some value for some people for some reason, but reading and studying should be limited to serious researchers with a sound mind.
Making it available to the loonies has not worked out very well…
Brian Hunter says
To conflate Judeo-Christian scripture with the Koran is to make the same error the author does. Do men pervert scripture for their own gain? Regrettably, yes. Sinful men have corrupted the truth since the beginning. However, that does not negate its truthfulness. The US was founded by men steeped in scripture. It is the finest attempt at governance ever conceived. Over time, progressives have disengaged from the truth, preferring instead to “lean on their own understanding”. The logical end can be seen in Marxism and it’s gulags, past and present.
Aussie Infidel says
Swami, I couldn’t agree more.
When I was a young man, I was persecuted on numerous occasions by pious Christians of all stripes, because I had no religious beliefs. Although at the time it seemed like hell on Earth, in comparison with the violence suffered by many at the hands of militant Muslims, they were merely temporary irritations.
We know from anthropology, that Early humans lived by tribal and clan laws and customs, long before any of today’s religions were invented. No doubt some fractious individuals broke those rules and were driven out of their communities to live as hermits, or die premature deaths. Over the millennia, those laws evolved within Jewish, Christian, and other religious communities, and during the Enlightenment period, into those we have today.
In a previous post – http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/i-asked-him-is-it-good-to-kill-people-he-said-if-theyre-not-muslim-yes?utm, Robert wrote about a Kosovan jihadist:
“Muslim becomes devout and then turns to violent jihad. Does this mean that every devout Muslim will become a violent jihadist? Of course not. But despite attempts to deny and obscure this, every violent jihadist is a devout Muslim. Bland assurances that jihad terror doesn’t have anything to do with Islam don’t do a thing to address or remedy this fact.”
The story of this young man’s radicalization, is one of the most important lessons for all humans. We need to understand the power of religious indoctrination to change a person’s attitude and mindset, to such an extent that it can be all consuming – which is why I detest proselytism. While most religions are relatively benign, Islam with its condemnation and hatred of Jews, Christians and other unbelievers, its commandments to wage jihad or holy war against them, and promises of Paradise to impressionable young minds, can have a more profound effect. This young man became a suicide bomber, and died a martyr. And all for a God who isn’t there!
With all due respects to the many ‘good’ religious people on this blog, I must repeat the words of the Nobel prize winning physicist, Steven Weinberg, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” And Islam is the most evil of all the religions.
In dealing with the curse of Islam, we don’t need counter arguments from other religions. We need cold, hard, rational logic, and critical thinking and decision making, or the only god our grandchildren will worship will be Allah.
Mo says
@ Aussie Infidel
“When I was a young man, I was persecuted on numerous occasions by pious Christians of all stripes, because I had no religious beliefs. ”
LOL! What did those monstrous Christians do to you? Say that they would pray for you? (Or pray for you right then?) Invite you to church? Give you a flyer/pamphlet with verses on it, in order to encourage you to repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness before it’s too late? OH, THE HORROR!
“Although at the time it seemed like hell on Earth, in comparison with the violence suffered by many at the hands of militant Muslims, they were merely temporary irritations.”
How vile. I’ll bet anything those Christians didn’t threaten you or hurt you in any way. And if they did, they were lying about being followers of Christ, since the Bible neither commands nor condones any such behavior. (And you know it.)
The seething hatred anti-theists like you have for Christ, His teachings and His followers is both shocking and appalling.
But guess what? We still won’t kill you over it. Pity you can’t seem to make that distinction.
Mirren10 says
Good post, Mo !
People like ‘Aussie Infidel’ make me tired.
I have been visited by Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fundamentalist Christians, all offering me what they believe to be salvation.
I certainly never felt ‘persecuted’, these people were always polite, friendly, and warm, and when I responded with ”thank you for your concern, but I cannot accept your doctrines”, they never responded with threats to murder me, crucify me, rape me, or any of the other horrors proffered by mohammedans.
In fact, I have often had very interesting conversations with such folk (*not* mohammedans 🙂 ), and whilst I am sure they are convinced I will end up in hell fire, they are not doing anything to harm me *now*. And that is the vital point.
Mo says
@ Mirren10
“Good post, Mo !”
Thanks.
“People like ‘Aussie Infidel’ make me tired.”
You and me both.
“In fact, I have often had very interesting conversations with such folk (*not* mohammedans 🙂 ), and whilst I am sure they are convinced I will end up in hell fire, they are not doing anything to harm me *now*. And that is the vital point.”
Yep.
Notice how there was no response as to what those awful Christians did to him that he considers “persecution”? Even if they told him he needed Christ’s forgiveness and salvation to avoid going to hell, that’s not persecution. It’s the same ol’ biblical doctrine that’s been preached for 2,000 years!
If saying this is the case, then I guess Jesus was persecuting people in his day as well!
ECAW says
Mirren10 – The correct response to all these doorsteppers is “Yes, I’m a Satanist. Come in”.
Aussie Infidel says
Mo, Your reply is simply an ad-hominem attack. Please don’t accuse me of things I haven’t said or done.
I don’t have a “seething hatred … for Christ, [or] his teachings.” In fact, I applaud some of the things Jesus purportedly said and did, but in no way do I believe that he had any ‘divine’ origins. I do however, have a hatred of Muhammad, because he was a sociopath, a bigot, a misogynist, a supremacist, a narcissist, an ego-maniac, a liar, a thief, a murderer, a warlord, a rapist, and a pedophile, who had no morals or remorse for his actions.
I don’t tar all religious people with the same brush. I have many religious friends – Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, and even a few ex-Muslims – some of whom were also driven out of their homelands by Muslim jihadists.
What should I repent and ask forgiveness for? For not believing in some hypothetical, supernatural being, for which there is no real evidence? I know many Christians regard that as the ultimate sin; but if you want to believe in magic, that’s your prerogative.
Did you not even notice that I mentioned our laws had derived from Judeo-Christian as well as Humanist ethics?
As for the hurt – to keep it very brief: On one occasion it cost me a relationship. On two other occasions it cost me jobs which were major setbacks to my career. On another occasion, I was evicted from my lodgings (by a member of my own family) for speaking about some scientific discoveries – which were ‘verboten’ in his narrow-minded view of the world. There were others too, which I won’t bore you with; but as I said, “they were merely temporary irritations.”
I also understand that nowhere in the Bible (at least the NT) are there any calls for violence against ‘unbelievers’; and even in the OT (as Robert has often pointed out), the violence (eg in the Book of Joshua) is set in an historical context. Jews and Christians are not commanded to “Fight in the way of God” (Q 2:190), or “kill the unbelievers wherever you find them” (Q 9:5), and Jesus didn’t say, “I have been made victorious with terror”, as Muhammad did. (Bukhari 4:52:220).
What’s more, I have used these arguments for years in many debates AGAINST OTHER ATHEISTS. Some local Christian pastors here are also just as dhimmified; engaging Muslims in farcical ‘Interfaith dialogue’ and dawah sessions, and even inviting them to speak in their churches. Apparently these fools haven’t learned any of the lessons of history.
Mirren10 says
ECAW said:
”Mirren10 – The correct response to all these doorsteppers is “Yes, I’m a Satanist. Come in”.
Well, I must admit to have been guilty of saying to Jehovah’s Witnesses that I’ve just come back from donating blood … 🙂
stephen says
Thanks for an excellent, well reasoned critical review Robert
BC says
Muslims are not violent people. Oh yes? Show me a non Musllm country where are person has been beaten to death for some imagined offence against religion. It happens in Pakistan on a quite regular basis. Even in the riots over the police killings in USA nobody was actually beaten or killed, except of course for the two policemen murdered by a Muslim. I think you will also find Prof.Fish that the murder rate in the so called Islamic Caliphate is extremely high, not to mention rape and enslavement.
The vilest of creatures says
More leftist elitist narcissism. So intellectually superior do they see themselves, that the ‘hypothetical’ scenarios they construct become reality for them simply because they have uttered the words.
Infovoyeur says
I skimmed an earlier book by Dr. Fish on Muslims and an issue; a statistical approach. Readers here are thinking of him as liberal, leftist, progressive, hence deluded, etc. But I believe in the book his first name, here abbreviated as M., is–well you fill in the blank. But of course even to notice, let alone state, this possible clue–I said possible not even probable for sure–is to get thought shut down as it occurs more and more. World War IV continues in serpentine fashion among the jungle’s mists and fogs. (WW III was of course the Cold War with Communism.)
Jack says
This guy is an ethnocentrist because he believes people react to what we do to them. I however am treating them equally, because I think everything they do is based on what’s written in a book…
I’m sorry, what kind of logic is this? We’re engaged in a non-debate. Obviously there is a religious element to the islamic terrorism. Obviously there is also a contextual element to it. People who chose one side are exaggerating the importance of the other, or even straight up denying the involvement of their side. This is a debate of agendas, and you are clashing at each other pretending to be in a factual debate. You aren’t.