“I do not accept the mendacity of the so-called Moderate Islam. I do not believe that a Good Islam and a Bad Islam exist. Only Islam exists. And Islam is the Koran. And the Koran says what it says.” –Oriana Fallaci, 2006
I can sympathize with the atheists. With what is going on in the world today—the wars, the revolutions, the terrorism, the mass executions—in the name of religion, who wouldn’t be just a tiny bit disgusted with the very idea of adhering to a religion, any religion, that commands a subjugated silence for its potential opponents and dissenters? However, if one looks closely, one can readily notice that there is only one religion that exists today as the common denominator behind these recurring human tragedies: Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, “Much as the apologists dislike hearing it, Islam is giving all religions a bad reputation. Not all of this violence is explicitly motivated by religion, but a great deal of it is. I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself.”
Neil Kressel referred to Islam as being “infected” with antisemitism. I disagree with this viewpoint. This is to suggest that Islam, in its very essence, is salubrious and absolutely good for mankind and that its manifestations of anti-Jewish hatred and hatred of all others came afterward, as if by chance and coincidental. Ayaan Hirsi Ali refutes such facilitative theories when she writes, “As I see it, the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts. It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. The killers of Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali promotes the idea, as do I, that “Any serious discussion of Islam must begin with its core creed, which is based on the Quran…”
I don’t pay much attention to those whose arguments in defence of Islam are presented by way of “context dropping,” to use Ayn Rand’s terminology. It’s quite obvious to me that, in the Western narrative, the way we are always too accommodative for our own good, Muslim antisemitism is neatly omitted from discussion of all things Islamic. This omission has become so shameless and so commonplace that Muslims today, both clerics and laity, even those who boast of intellect and education, equate honest criticism of their conspicuously violent behaviour to the persecution suffered by Jews at the hands of the Nazis. The irony in this insouciantly false comparison—an irony which continually escapes notice—is that the Muslim today replaces the Nazi of yesterday as the anti-Jewish oppressor. The “moderate” Nazis of 1933 were those who voted Adolf Hitler into power.
Western society is being bombarded with a primarily Arab propaganda that insists we finally accept the view, despite our conscientious objections and refusals, that the Jew, according to certain Quranic sources, really is evil and quite deserving of our scorn. As Robert Wistrich writes, “Arab and Muslim antisemitism is the Trojan Horse designed to undermine the West’s belief in its own values.” Even Prof. Khaleel Mohammed, of San Diego University, that most timid of sophists, concedes that, “Antisemitism has become an entrenched tenet of Muslim theology, taught to 95 percent of the religion’s adherents in the Islamic world.”
There is only Islam. And Middle Eastern history is glaring proof that “jihad” is not a defensive ideology. The problem is, and remains, that the same Islam we are told honours the “people of the Book” is the same Islam that, apparently, does more to inspire Muslims to murder them in their beds. As I have written elsewhere, I have never expected to find that elusive Islam promised by its apologists. I don’t see it, although I’ve never stopped searching for it. The proofs against their promises of its existence have become a reductio ad absurdum. Or as Bertrand Russell once noted, “…more cranks take up unfashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.”
And how can we expect, with any measure of confidence, these apologists and sophists to admit to such tragic untruths when their religion, the Islam that exists (as opposed to the Islam promised us), has instructed them, by weight of conscience, that those hyperbolic boasts of their Quran obsolesces all other peoples and paths to paradise and proscribes against, with the threat of death, all other metaphysical considerations? But I find in their boasts—and especially in their refusal to prove the worth of those boasts—, to borrow from Primo Levi, “…the true, the possible and the fantastic were intermingled in a varied and inextricable tangle.”
Oliver says
And apologist and Nobrainer want Israel to agree to a 2 state solution ( which was agreed to 3 times from 200 or 2001 onward, but which MUSLIMS always objected to, because of de facto recognition of Israel.
And Abbas is someone “Israel can live with”. And AP ( should be APP–ANAL PORE PRESS) questions Israeli democracy. Not that of Jordan; Saudi Arabia; Bosnia; Nobrainers 57 sstates, etc.
Islam is evil. No question about it.
Wally says
There are seven prophets.
First 6 devolved to… Religion
only the creation…the primal wellspring of all vitality is real, and the Creation does not need prayers.
Think about that…pretend you are the universal consciousness of all love.
See. Figu.org. The 7 th and last.
citycat says
“and the creation does not need prayers”
Prayers are part of creation, aren’t they?
Jim says
All religions are an outrage to common sense. It feels like we have been dragged back to the era of the great skeptics such as Voltaire, Thomas Paine and the like when religious fervor and zealotry came under the microscrope, and thus revolutions ensued.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
All religions are an outrage to common sense.
But it is significant to history that some religions are the source of civilization. First along came Judaism, which was later joined in its praise of Yahweh by Christianity. Whether someone is an atheist matters not at all to the fact that the civilizational framework in which he lives was formed by Judeo-Christianity, which was and is the root of our shared concepts of freedom, equality for women so they too are free, freedom of speech, thought and choice, human rights, property rights, and the Ten Commandments, all of which make perfect common sense.
Bruce says
“[T]he civilizational framework in which [we live] was formed by Judeo-Christianity…” Absolutely not, although this idea gets repeated constantly, without, apparently, any thoughtful reflection. To take your “shared concepts” one by one: the Bible, Old Testament and New, supports slavery, not freedom, and was one of the main moral justifications for it in the U.S. The Bible is horribly misogynist, starting with Genesis, and was the foundation of at least one bloody civil war, when the Vatican supported Stephen over Matilda, solely on the grounds that he was a man. Freedom of speech, thought, and choice didn’t exist, even as ideas, before the Enlightenment, and grew directly out of that movement, not religion. Human rights and property rights are closely linked, historically and philosophically (a huge subject), but they, too, were derived largely from the Enlightenment, especially the English Enlightenment, and were certainly not an outgrowth of religion. I don’t know where people get the idea that the Ten Commandments have anything to do with Western law. They range from banality through silliness to outright evil; and to suggest that the Romans had no law before Christianity is ludicrous. Our laws were derived from Roman law, Germanic law, and careful reasoning through centuries of trial and error. Only the worst parts, largely superseded now, came from the Bible (such as slavery, misogyny, witch burning, etc.)
Having said all of that, I certainly agree with the article, that the problem today is Islam. Even if you agree with Reza Aslan, that “religion is what you bring to it,” the fact is that Islamic doctrine has not shed the evil intent of its scripture, and Muslims bring some very nasty ideas indeed to their belief system – and then sanctimoniously justify their behavior by “quoting” their “prophet,” much of whose history was clearly made up out of whole cloth.
Ken D says
Hear, Hear! Well spoken, Bruce!
Succinct, to the point, and most necessary.
Thanks.
PRODOS says
Alarmed Pig Farmer writes: “… Whether someone is an atheist matters not at all to the fact that the civilizational framework in which he lives was formed by Judeo-Christianity, which was and is the root of our shared concepts of freedom, equality for women so they too are free, freedom of speech, thought and choice, human rights, property rights, and the Ten Commandments, all of which make perfect common sense.”
I agree, but would add the Hellenic tradition to this. i.e. the Ancient Greeks and their emphasis on Reason.
Bruce writes: “… the Bible, Old Testament and New, supports slavery, not freedom …”
That’s not my reading of these books.
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) seems to be a historical progression from barbarity to freedom and rights. For instance, when Abraham plans to sacrifice his son … this was not uncommon or criminal at the time. That he does not go through with it and that child sacrifice henceforth was prohibited by the Jews is a startling and controversial moral advancement.
Bruce says that the Bible was “…. was one of the main moral justifications for (slavery) in the U.S. …”
Prior to 750 AD, the Christians had almost eliminated slavery. It seems to have been revived after the invasions and conquests of the Muslims. That suggests that parts of the Christian world may have allowed themselves to be influenced by Islamic customs and methods. Maybe.
Also, even if some people referred to Biblical passages to justify slavery in the USA, it’s also true that many, many Christians — using the Bible as one of their guides — argued and fought against slavery. I think that’s significant.
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia
Bruce says
I could quibble with some of your historical interpretation, but I don’t think that we’re all that far apart. Whatever caused the tapering off of slavery in the late Empire (I would argue that the slave system collapsed because the entire system collapsed), it started up again in late medieval times, largely because of sugar cultivation (“sugar” is a word derived from Arabic, and I’m happy to blame Islam for any evil, but I’m not aware of any evidence that the reintroduction of slavery was linked to Islam).
My point about scripture versus doctrine is simply that slavery was justified by Biblical scripture – even specifically race-based slavery – and that Christians found a way to use that scripture to create a very self-serving “religious” doctrine that allowed them to keep slaves. You’re right that there are also passages in scripture that can be interpreted as anti-slavery, and, as the abolitionist movement grew, Christian abolitionists naturally worked to put “God on their side.” But if the rejection of slavery had been intrinsically part of Christianity, then slavery would never have gained purchase in the first place. People had to work out what was right and what was wrong from experience, observation, and moral reasoning, and I would say that the impetus for that came from the Enlightenment.
It’s possible that Islam, as wretched as its scripture is, could put together a more or less civilized doctrine that the rest of us could live with, but Islam has never gone through an Enlightenment, and their doctrine seems to be headed in the wrong direction today. There are those who say that they are going through an Enlightenment right now, but I see little evidence that it’s happening – do you? Robert Spencer has argued that what is needed is for decent Muslims (and, let’s be fair, there are some) to confront the Jihadists, and wrest the narrative of Islam away from them.
I hope that that can happen, but I fear that the problem runs deeper than we have acknowledged. My own sense is that the source of aggressive Islamic supremacism is not so much their primitive, brutal scripture, which may have been made up long after the fact to justify what they were doing. What makes them feel justified and vindicated when they insist that all others must submit to them is their spectacular record of conquest, especially in the 7th and 8th centuries. The glow from those victories has lasted right down to today, and restoring that world of triumphant Islam marching to world conquest is the explicit goal that we hear them pronounce daily. I suspect that the only way to turn Islam in a different direction will be to deliver a crushing, game-changing military defeat to them. I hope that RS is right, and that I’m wrong.
PRODOS says
Greetings.
A very interesting article.
Michael Devolin refers to … “the Islam that exists (as opposed to the Islam promised us)”
This reminds me of a video I watched wherein Zuhdi Jasser (American Islamic Forum for Democracy) said something like: “If Mohammed was alive today he’d be in favour of separation of Mosque and State”
Oh brilliant, Zuhdi.
And I suppose if Jesus was alive in 7th Century Arabia he’d have been a mass murderer, rapist, plunderer, and enslaver?
If Stalin were alive today … If Churchill had been born in Austria … If Psychopaths A, B, and C were alive in Ancient Greece …. and if pigs could fly, what a wonderful world it would be.
Michael Devolin writes: “I have never expected to find that elusive Islam promised by its apologists. I don’t see it, although I’ve never stopped searching for it. ”
When I first started studying Islam, years ago, it was because I had heard of something called “ijtihad” …. which some Muslims and non Muslims said was this long-lost tradition of openness to reason, dissent, and general enquiry.
Instead, I found something very different. Worse than anything I had ever imagined in something claiming to be a Religion.
Live and learn.
Best Wishes,
PRODOS
Melbourne, Australia
Krishan Bhattacharya says
It’s simple false to say that “there is only one Islam”. It’s glaringly obvious that Islam is not united and never has been.
ECAW says
“It’s simple false to say that “there is only one Islam”. It’s glaringly obvious that Islam is not united and never has been.”
Not true. Islam was united right up until Mohammed’s death. At that point there was only one Islam, Allah having declared it perfected shortly before. Since he was infallible and the Koran is timeless, that must still be true today. It’s just a question of which of the “73 sects” most accurately reflect it. My candidate is IS.
Ras Israel says
All religion is rooted in the devil’s mystery Babylon religious $hit$tem. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. – all of it is a corrupted form of Yah Word. Islam is currently the most insidious, but all of it spreads lies and confusion that works toward keeping the masses divided, conquered, and enslaved to the fallen one. The only complete source of Truth is recorded in The Old and New Testaments – Yah Word. We must abandon a belief in
the World’s false religions and turn to Yah Word for true peace and salvation. Know The Truth and The Truth shall set us free!
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: 5And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”
Revelations 17:4-5
Ephesian says
Well said! Amen to that!
citycat says
It’s a tangle looking for definitive good and bad in Islam
It’s a fourteen year old vampiric mess
Best a muslim can do is get out
Ed says
When Muhammad went to Medina, it was a Jewish-majority city. Thousands of member of its three major tribes had lived there in prosperity for perhaps hundreds of years. Within ten years of his arrival they were all dead or exiled. Muslims claim Muhammad was justified in exterminating the Jews from Medina because they were “his enemies”, but all they did was refuse his claim to be a Prophet, and seek to defend themselves when he began to attack them.
mortimer says
Oriana Fallaci had it right in 2006.
She saw jihad as the prime directive of Islam:
“I do not accept the mendacity of the so-called Moderate Islam. I do not believe that a Good Islam and a Bad Islam exist. Only Islam exists. And Islam is the Koran. And the Koran says what it says.”
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Only Islam exists. And Islam is the Koran. And the Koran says what it says.
– Oriana Fallaci, 2006
These wise words were later echoed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who, disturbingly, is now poised to sit at the trigger of nuclear tipped ICBM missiles.
What we learned from Oriana is that speaking the truth can be a felony. She took that path even before Mark Steyn got slapped up side the haid with a global warming affirmer’s hockey stick, federal grant money not included.
Perhaps fortunately for her and the Italian authorities, Oriana died before the Italian authorities could convict and jail her for telling the truth. Telling the truth is generally regarded as a good thing in Italy, the country in which the Vatican sits, but telling the truth about Moslems is mightily frowned upon.