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

Robert Spencer, PJM: Harvard Prof: ISIS Sex Slavery Is Bad, but Hey, U.S. Had Slavery

Aug 21, 2015 10:14 pm By Robert Spencer

noah-feldmanOver at PJ Media today I expose yet another sinister exercise in moral equivalence by an American academic:

One key reason why so few Americans are aware of the full nature and magnitude of the jihad threat is that the academic and media establishments labor so assiduously to cover it up.

Those who are deemed the best minds of this generation devote their energies to convincing people that the threat is not as large as it is, or that it can be neutralized by adjustments to U.S. foreign policy (particularly the abandonment of Israel), or that the West is really just as bad, so we are hypocrites for opposing the jihad.

Harvard professor Noah Feldman, last week in Bloomberg View, provided a sterling example of the latter in an egregious piece trying to mitigate the horror of the Islamic State’s practice of sex slavery.

The bio accompanying Feldman’s piece describes him as, among other things, “a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University” with “a doctorate in Islamic thought from the University of Oxford,” who “as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq … contributed to the creation of the country’s new constitution.”

Given the blood and chaos that engulfs contemporary Iraq, one might think he wouldn’t be all that proud of that particular resume item anymore, especially since in 2008 he downplayed and ignored the aspects of Sharia that have made life hell for so many of the nation’s non-Muslims.

In a lengthy exposition of Sharia that Feldman published in the New York Times, he never once mentioned the Sharia provisions mandating second-class status (dhimmitude) for Christians and conversion or death for non-Muslims not considered “People of the Book,” such as Yazidis.

Now, in his Bloomberg View piece, Feldman actually acknowledges that in taking sex slaves, the Islamic State is “following the practices of the era of the Prophet Muhammad” and wants “to go back in time, to the days of the earliest Muslims and the Prophet’s companions.”

He does not, of course, tell his readers that sex slavery is called for in the Qur’an (in the “captives of the right hand” passages, 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, and 33:50), or that sex slavery doesn’t just go back to Muhammad’s era, but was practiced by Muhammad himself, who is the supreme model for emulation for Muslims (cf. Qur’an 33:21). Muhammad did it, so it is right, and Muslims should do it as well.

Feldman compounds that omission by likening “one interpretation of classical Islamic law” — as if there were any mainstream interpretations of Islamic law that forbid sex slavery; there aren’t — to the U.S. Constitution in the course of building an argument in praise of progress.

Our horror at this self-conscious neo-medievalism should teach us a lesson about the evolution of our beliefs and what it means to be modern. Begin with the sober acknowledgment that we aren’t light years ahead of Islamic State — more like a century and a half. Slavery in the U.S. isn’t a distant relic. We’re still dealing with its aftereffects, in the form of persistent racial inequality and long-lived symbols of the Confederacy.

This is a fundamentally dishonest comparison. The U.S. Constitution is a human construct, whereas those who believe in Islamic law believe it not to be a human invention able to be amended and revised, but divine law that is perfect and unchangeable.

Mainstream Muslims would no more revise the Sharia than Jews or Christians would revise the Ten Commandments. “Progressive” Muslims in the U.S. who depart from normative Sharia interpretations don’t have any appreciable influence in the Islamic world….

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), moral equivalence Tagged With: Noah Feldman


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Comments

  1. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Aug 21, 2015 at 10:47 pm

    I read this piece in PJMedia this morning. I rate it as one of Spencer’s best essays ever, concise and irrefutable. If you need to understand what’s happening to this country and EUrabia, and how, this is the best possible way you can spend five minutes. Bravo.

    • M S case says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 12:04 pm

      The difference between Islam,s constitution,the Koran,and the U.S.constitution shows that anyone believing anything in the Islamic constitution has a severe mental disorder.

  2. Rob says

    Aug 21, 2015 at 11:56 pm

    I wonder how the Mueller family feels when they read this stuff?

  3. Political Correctness says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 2:53 am

    The humongous Harvard asked Dr Subrmaniam Swamy an eminent Indian Economist and Academic to leave its faculty for just saying in a article outside Harvard campus-
    (he was a visiting lecturer)

    that Muslims can be disenfranchised if they refuse to own up their country, telling him its Discriminatory and ‘racist’.

    ISIS sells Captured Yezhidi and christian women like cattle and kills women who refuse to rape-

    and here is a Harvard Professor supplying its propogandists a rationale in American history!

    Now this is Harvard! It is okay to justify atrocities done on minorities, women and kids
    – since after all Americans did it centuries ago!

    He is still teaching there. Bet he will still be teaching there.

    Afterall these are wonderful values that Harvard nerds must learn fast to adapt to run Dhimmi America?

  4. Joseph says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 4:34 am

    The bio accompanying Feldman’s piece describes him as, among other things, “a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University” with “a doctorate in Islamic thought from the University of Oxford,” who “as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq
    ——————————————————

    Translation……He can lie to you with a smile while twisting a knife in your gut.

    • Cecilia Ellis says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 4:37 am

      “He can lie to you with a smile while twisting a knife in your gut.”

      Joseph, do you think maybe he learned how to do that when he was a kid . . . with a teddy bear . . . ?

      • Pathfinder0100 says

        Aug 22, 2015 at 11:28 am

        LOOOOL Cecilia Ellis

      • Joseph says

        Aug 22, 2015 at 1:02 pm

        WOW! ! ! Wish I thought of that one. 🙂

  5. Sam says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 5:23 am

    These liberals or communists, they are the same to me, will not see the truth even when their infidel throats are cut off by their “moderate” Moslem friends. Discussing Islam with a liberal is like talking to yourself. They are not there.

    Evil has always been defeated by force not by discussion.

    • Cecilia Ellis says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 5:40 am

      “Evil has always been defeated by force not by discussion.”

      Exactly!

  6. Stephanie says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 5:54 am

    Oh, the BIG relativization of a Harvard Prof(!!),

    ISIS Sex Slavery Is Bad (to Allah’SS Qur’an in the “captives of the right hand” passages, 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, and 33:50),
    but Hey, U.S. Had Slavery”

    Muhammad had sex with a young child
    — but Hey 🙂 … the Catholic church ALSO has many pedophiles 🙂

    “I wrote the Koran. I slept with a 8 year young girl.”—pedo muh. Q65:4

  7. Stephanie says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 6:05 am

    ISIS also amputate hands of theives, crucifies people (5:33), flogging adulterers 24:2, beheads 8:12, 47:4 people … ,

    Love™ & compassionate™ allah, 5:38(-40) “AMPUTATE hands” (without ? anesthesia)
    (vs. German Constitution Art 2, 2 ‘Everyone … right of PHYSICAL INTEGRITY’)
    http://quran.com/5/38-40

    … but Hey 🙂 other countries also (have) amputate hands 🙂

    On which gumball machine has he pulled his ‘Prof’ title?

    http://192.96.206.71/isis-beheads-soldier-of-assad-with-sword.html

  8. duh_swami says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 7:57 am

    A fine education and lots of degree’s does not guarantee a decent human being…’Protecting the image of Islam at all cost, or any cost’, is not the act of a decent human being…

    • EYESOPEN says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 5:13 pm

      Bingo, duh_swami!

  9. jewdog says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 8:06 am

    This is like saying that the Nazis weren’t so bad since we practised genocide against Native Americans. It’s the old tu quoque chestnut meant to deflect honest discussion. It’s also a great example of cultural moral equivalence which is the twisted sister of anti-racism.

    • mortimer says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 8:47 am

      Agree. ‘Tu quoque’ doesn’t work for him, because this Ph.D. conveniently and dishonestly forgot how much American blood was shed fighting AGAINST slavery. As well, Feldman is dishonestly comparing DIVINE law (Sharia) with human law (US constitution). Today in 2015, ALL Muslims support slavery (or they have left Islam), but NO Americans support slavery.

      However, Allah commands ETERNAL SEX SLAVERY in his most important message to humanity…the Koran. He commands Muslims to ‘enjoy’ sex slavery…it is a ‘gift’ from Allah! If Muslims ever fight against sex slavery, they are fighting Allah’s ETERNAL COMMANDMENT that they enjoy it. They are suggesting Allah is wrong.

      A huge portion of the Sharia law manual is concerned with slavery.
      No Muslim religious leader has spoken out about the error of enslavement.

      • g says

        Aug 23, 2015 at 6:53 pm

        Agree. ‘Tu quoque’ doesn’t work for him, because this Ph.D. conveniently and dishonestly forgot how much American blood was shed fighting AGAINST slavery.
        …………………..

        *Very* true, Mortimer.

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 23, 2015 at 6:53 pm

          “g” is “gravenimage”.

  10. mortimer says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 8:24 am

    Tens of thousands of Americans have fought and died to STOP slavery. Tens of thousands of Muslims have fought and died TO SPREAD SLAVERY! That’s the difference.

    Feldman forgets important distinctions. Even Fathers of the American Revolution knew that slavery was wrong, and they expected it would eventually be abolished.

    Would Feldman also agree that Hitler had some good ideas as well even though he may have gotten a bit ‘carried away’?

    The American Constitution’s 13th Amendment was paid for by the lives of Union soldiers and Americans who worked and fought for freedom and equality.

    No Muslim warriors ever fought to stop slavery. Muslim countries were forced to stop slavery by America and the United Kingdom.

    • Bukkdem Jizheads says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 2:44 pm

      A very good point. Even if it is fair to time-travel and use long-discarded cultural mores to condemn living Americans, there was an incomparable difference between Christian and Muslim slavery.

      Muslims massacred and burned villages to take slaves and harems. Christians bought or captured them and took them elsewhere to work. But they wanted them to thrive, not serve as sex-slaves and cannon fodder.

      Christian slave ownership was actually a bad business model since you had to take care of children, elderly and sick.

      Under Christianity, moral intolerance of slavery swept Europe and then the Americas and ended it without war in the late 1800s. Except in America, where a conniving, despicable president had 600,000 men die over having just 8% of all African slaves, which would have resolved itself. The unthinkable social upheaval and plunder of the South is still a raw sore, while Muslims still enslave, rape and destroy the dwellings of their victims, with impunity.

      The professor is profoundly contradicted by facts.

  11. mortimer says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 8:53 am

    Sex with the “war booty” captives was considered by Mohammad to be a much-deserved reward for the jihadists:

    Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 637:

    Narrated Buraida: “The Prophet sent ‘Ali to Khalid to bring the Khumus (of the booty) and I hated Ali, and ‘Ali had taken a bath (after a sexual act with a slave-girl from the Khumus). I said to Khalid, “Don’t you see this (i.e. Ali)?” When we reached the Prophet I mentioned that to him. He said, “O Buraida! Do you hate Ali?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you hate him, for he deserves more than that from the Khumus.””

    Feldman should read this ten times as his homework and make the correct conclusion. No Muslim may say Mohammed was wrong about sex slavery…and live.

  12. Henricus says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 9:17 am

    I wonder who might be ‘paying the piper’ here.

  13. Pathfinder0100 says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 11:25 am

    So, with this idiot Proff. 2 wrongs make a right and Islamist can go ahead with slavery because of our PAST transgression?? How in hell do these Idiots get to be teachers?/ I do pity what’s happened to my beloved Country that was once the Greatest Country in the World BO (before obama)!! God Bless America!!

  14. Michael McCallion says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 12:03 pm

    Just wondering if the total concern of the “Intelligencia” is an awareness the “jig is up”, sometimes the term is “pulling back the curtain”. I like the truism; “those who can-do; those who can’t-teach”-or-become political pundits.

    We’uns know the reality is somewhere in the saying “Intellectuals are those who have been educated beyond their intelligence”. However the truth is the people who have been putting their hands into our pockets to pull out the money for their Rice Bowls have been in the Ordinary Citizen’s Sovereign Face too much and for too long.

    It used to be the time when the Peasants/Peons/Coolies would grap their farm implements and storm the Castles/Mansions/Temples and rearrange the agenda. Now we have the vote and hopefully will use the remaining power, we as Sovereign in the “New World-North America” will rearrange the Agenda.

    This Continent was developed into the bedrock of Civilization after Millennium of neglect by the passers-by who sometimes stayed in a General Area; conducted Turf Wars; killed and totured their enemies; and raped and enslaved the women of their conquests.

  15. Angemon says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 3:14 pm

    Slavery in the U.S. isn’t a distant relic. We’re still dealing with its aftereffects, in the form of persistent racial inequality and long-lived symbols of the Confederacy.

    Thanks to a certain political spectrum that insists on flogging that dead horse.

  16. Babs says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 4:29 pm

    Hmmm….
    Wonder how much Muslim money shores up Harvard?

  17. Uncle Vladdi says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 7:33 pm

    Criminal (“liberal”) favorite critical thinking logical fallacy, the Argumentum Tu Quoque:

    “ISLAM ISN’T AN EVIL CRIME BECAUSE WE (i.e: you) ALL DO OR DID IT, TOO! WHEE!”

    But ask yourself, libtard: WHERE did the Americans get all their black slaves from?
    (Did a bunch of pasty white guys armed with flintlock pistols, really hack their way through malaria-infested jungles, and somehow manage to enslave entire villages of peaceful African tribesmen?)!?

    NO! The ancestors of todays’ Germans, French, and Americans got all of their black slaves from the muslims, of course!

  18. Champ says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 7:36 pm

    Great comments! And of no real importance, he looks like Benedict Cumberbatch. Just sayin’ …

  19. ploome says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 10:15 pm

    I think Noah Feldman has issues and may be unbalanced

  20. Mega Kovalan says

    Aug 23, 2015 at 3:30 am

    Wilder (Joe Pesci) is right, Harvard produces more garbage ( With Honors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImTi03FPBr8 )

  21. tgusa says

    Aug 23, 2015 at 4:53 am

    There is no reasoning with the insane left in America. The only way to our survival is a national divorce. A two state solution, as the left loves to say. One Republic, the USA, the other a freak show mob ruled democracy, the USSA. Let them sink or swim on their own.

  22. BC says

    Aug 24, 2015 at 11:24 am

    This so called professor is ignorant of history, the fight to end slavery was led by British Christians, the British navy waged a campaign to stop slaves being carried by sea, and the USA fought a terrible civil war to end slavery. Can anybody in their wildest imaginings see any such actions being taken by Islamic nations? Muslims treat their servants like slaves even when the are residing in Western countries.

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