Apologists for Islam are a varied bunch – some reveal ignorance, others deploy deliberate taqiyya – but all play fast and loose with history.
Here are three examples:
Karen Armstrong on the Expulsion of the Moors
In 1492, the year that is often said to inaugurate the modern era, three very important events happened in Spain. In January, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the city of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe; later, Muslims were given the choice of conversion to Christianity or exile. In March, the Jews of Spain were also forced to choose between baptism and deportation. Finally, in August, Christopher Columbus, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and a protégé of Ferdinand and Isabella, crossed the Atlantic and discovered the West Indies. One of his objectives had been to find a new route to India, where Christians could establish a military base for another crusade against Islam. As they sailed into the new world, western people carried a complex burden of prejudice that was central to their identity.
In 1492, “the Catholic monarchs conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe.” What then should we call all those lands in southern and eastern Europe that the Ottomans were at that very moment busy conquering and seizing, including Constantinople, the richest, most populous, most important city in all of Christendom for 800 years (taken by the Turks on a Tuesday – May 29, 1453), and the Balkans (including the then-vast Serbian lands)? And what are modern-day Albania, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria? The Ottomans continued to press northward and westward, later seizing much of Hungary and threatening Vienna twice. Were these not parts of Europe, and was not a good deal of Europe, including what had been its most important city for a millennium, Constantinople, firmly in Muslim hands before Granada fell – and after?
But it would not do to remind readers that while the Muslim invaders and conquerors of Spain lost their last “stronghold” in Granada, other Muslim invaders and conquerors were busy at the other end of Europe, seizing lands and subjugating the native populations to the devshirme (the forced levy of Christian children) as well as to the jizya (the tax on non-Muslims) and all the other disabilities that, wherever Muslims conquered, were imposed, as part of a clearly elaborated system, and not merely the whim a ruler, on all non-Muslims.
Now having begun with that year 1492, Armstrong has a bit of a problem. It was that year that Jews were forced to be baptized or to leave. But though Granada had fallen, nothing then happened to the Muslims. In fact, they were treated with the same gentleness that all the Mudejares (Spanish Muslims) who had been defeated, in successive campaigns, were always treated by the Christian victors. Henry Lea, the pioneering historian of the Inquisition, who was hardly looking for ways to exculpate Christianity, describes the generosity with which the defeated Muslims were treated in Granada, and after the prior victories:
It was the Jews against whom was directed the growing intolerance of the fifteenth century and, in the massacres that occurred, there appears to have been no hostility manifested against the Mudéjares. When Alfonso de Borja, Archbishop of Valencia (afterwards Calixtus III), supported by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, urged their [the Mudejars] expulsion on Juan II of Aragon, although he appointed a term for their exile, he reconsidered the matter and left them undisturbed. So when, in 1480, Isabella ordered the expulsion from Andalusia of all Jews who refused baptism and when, in 1486, Ferdinand did the same in Aragon, they both respected the old capitulations and left the Mudéjares alone. The time-honored policy was followed in the conquest of Granada, and nothing could be more liberal than the terms conceded to the cities and districts that surrendered. The final capitulation of the city of Granada was a solemn agreement, signed November 25, 1491, in which Ferdinand and Isabella, for themselves, for their son the Infante Juan and for all their successors, received the Moors of all places that should come into the agreement as vassals and natural subjects under the royal protection, and as such to be honored and respected. Religion, property, freedom to trade, laws and customs were all guaranteed, and even renegades from Christianity among them were not to be maltreated, while Christian women marrying Moors were free to choose their religion. For three years, those desiring expatriation were to be transported to Barbary at the royal expense, and refugees in Barbary were allowed to return. When, after the execution of this agreement, the Moors, with not unnatural distrust, wanted further guarantees, the sovereigns made a solemn declaration in which they swore by God that all Moors should have full liberty to work on their lands, or to go wherever they desired through the kingdoms, and to maintain their mosques and religious observances as heretofore, while those who desired to emigrate to Barbary could sell their property and depart.
It was not until 1502, after difficulties ensued between Spanish authorities, including the famous Cardinal Ximenes (he of the Complutensian Polyglot), and the Muslims (Mudejares) that they were given the choice of expulsion or conversion. And a great many of them pretended to convert, and remained in Spain – far more Muslims were capable of engaging in dissimulation of their faith than were the hapless Jews, who were expelled, in 1492, virtually overnight. It was much later, not until the late 16th century, under Philip II, that the last of the Muslims (“Moors”) in Spain were finally expelled, having before that risen in revolt more than once, and been subject to several incomplete expulsions.
Armstrong manages to smuggle in that first, rather ineffective expulsion of 1502: “later [i.e. in a different year altogether] Muslims were given the choice of Christianity or exile.” She does not add, and may not know, that Muslims in Spain after the fall of Granada in 1492 were not under any danger of expulsion, and it was only when they showed signs of refusing to integrate as asked (and it was assumed that over time they would share the Christian faith, though at first nothing was done to demand such a sign) that they were presented with the choice of expulsion or conversion. She may not know, either, that Muslims in a Spain now everywhere ruled by Christians, asked members of the ulema in North Africa (in present-day Morocco) to determine whether under Islamic law they might continue to live in Spain under non-Muslim rule. They were told that it was not licit, that it was important for them not to be ruled by non-Muslims, and that they must, therefore, return to the Muslim-ruled lands of North Africa. Such details provide a rather different slant on what Karen Armstrong offers – she takes the real tragedy, the overnight expulsion of the hapless and inoffensive Jews, and attempts to make the reader think that the Muslims were equally inoffensive, equally harmless, and also treated with equal ferocity, as the Jews. But they were not equally inoffensive, not equally harmless, and not treated with equal ferocity. The danger of a military uprising by the Mudejares, possibly helped by Muslims from North Africa, was real, while Jews never were militarily powerful enough to pose a similar threat.
First, in 1492, comes the fall of Granada. Then, second in time, and certainly in Karen Armstrong’s indignation, came the expulsion of the Jews: “In March, the Jews of Spain were also forced to choose between conversion and exile.” Note how that “also” is dropped in, as if the real event, the main event, was the nonexistent (in 1492) expulsion of the Moors, which she had taken care to slip into her discussion of the Fall of Granada, so that she could diminish the significance of the expulsion of the Jews with that afterthoughtish “also.”
But the Muslims were invaders and conquerors, who had been resisted for 700 years of the Reconquista, and when expelled, not all at once as were the Jews, they simple went across the Straits of Gibraltar from whence they had originally come, to live again among fellow Muslims, under Muslim rule. Armstrong never says that. Nor does she point out, as she would if she were trying to compare the quite different treatments of Jews and Muslims, that the Jews of Spain never invaded, never conquered, never represented a threat to the political or social order of Christian Spain. And when they were expelled, they were not to find refuge, like the Muslims, in lands ruled by coreligionists, but again, to be scattered, both to Ottoman domains and to Christian ones, to Salonika or Amsterdam, to be treated indifferently, or kindly, or with contumely, or worse.
Under Muslim rule, despite their sometimes horrendous treatment, as recorded by Maimonides in his “Epistle to the Yemen” (Maimonides fled Islamic Spain and reported to his coreligionists in the Yemen), the Jews managed to make important cultural contributions as translators (along with Christians), as physicians, and as poets (the name Judah Halevi comes to mind). They were perfectly willing to live in Spain under Christian rule. They posed no military or political threat, in contradistinction to the Muslims. They did nothing to deserve their expulsion. But Karen Armstrong has sympathy for the Jews only insofar as that sympathy can be transferred to the real objects of her pity, the Muslims, and she will do nothing to cause readers to recognize the difference in the two cases, that of the Jews one of clear mistreatment, that of the Muslims a matter of geopolitical prudence. It took a full decade for the Spanish rulers and clerics to realize that the Muslims, though conquered, were not, as had been hoped, eventually going to convert to the Christian faith, and the signs they gave of continued insubmission could only disturb the Christian monarchs. It had taken 500 years for the Reconquista. Why should the Spanish Christians, now that they had been militarily victorious everywhere on the Iberian Peninsula, need to worry that the Muslims might rise in revolt when they could remove the problem once and for all?
And such local Muslim revolts did take place in Spain in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the Morisco revolt of the Alpujarras in Granada in 1568 that official attitudes hardened. That war lasted until 1570; at the end of it, Grenadan Moriscos were relocated to the interior, and scattered among “Old Christians,” that is, people who were not descended from Jewish or Muslim converts to Islam, and, it was assumed, were the most trustworthy Christians of them all.
But still there were worries about the failure of hundreds of thousands of Moriscos to assimilate, and the fear that they might be in contact with Barbary pirates or the Ottomans (or even Protestants!) led the Spanish monarch in 1609 to order the expulsion of the last remaining Moriscos.
Both Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain, but not on the same date, and not at all in the same way. However determined Armstrong may be to convince us (most unconvincingly) that these were identical historical events, both prompted in her modish view by the demonization of “the Other” (a phenomenon which apparently results from the peculiar psychic deficiency of Christian Europe), they were not identical. The Moors were treated by Spanish officials much more leniently than the Jews, even though they were a greater geopolitical threat, with powerful coreligionists just across the Strait of Gibraltar in North Africa, than were the Jews, who posed no threat whatsoever. The phrase “the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors in 1492” does violence to the truth, but furthers Armstrong’s desire to win sympathy for Muslims.
Armstrong has been retelling, in her inimitable fashion, the story of European Christendom’s relations with Islam and with Muslims. In her retelling, the Muslims are innocent victims, and as innocent victims, likened misleadingly to the Jews. They are also the only people who provided, in that bright shining moment of European history known as Islamic Spain, the only real tolerance and humanity to be found anywhere in Europe before the modern era, a veritable paradise of convivencia. It is a tough job, but Karen Armstrong proves equal to the task. And her real theme is not history, but to make Europeans feel ashamed of themselves for showing any signs of wariness or suspicion about the millions of Muslims who now live in Europe, having come among the indigenous Infidels to settle, but not, pace Armstrong, to settle down.
Barack Obama on Jefferson’s “Iftar Dinner” and Muslims In America
“The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.” — Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the “Annual Iftar Dinner” at the White House
Really? Is that what happened? Was there a “first known Iftar at the White House” given by none other than President Thomas Jefferson for the “first Muslim ambassador to the United States”? That’s what Barack Obama and his dutiful speechwriters told the Muslims in attendance at what was billed as the “Annual Iftar Dinner,” knowing full well that the remarks would be published for all Americans to see. Apparently Obama, and those who helped write this speech for him, and others still who vetted it, found nothing wrong with attempting, as part of the administration’s policy of both trying to win Muslim hearts and Muslim minds and to convince Americans that Islam has always been part of America’s history, to misrepresent that history. For the dinner Jefferson gave was not intended to be an Iftar dinner, and his guest that evening was not “the first Muslim ambassador…. from Tunisia,” but in using such words, Obama was engaged in a little nunc pro tunc backdating, so that the Iftar dinner that he gave in 2010 could be presented as part of a supposed tradition of such presidential Iftar dinners, going all the way back to the time of Jefferson.
But before explaining what that “first Iftar dinner” really was, let’s go back to an earlier but even more egregious example of Obama’s rewriting: the speech he delivered in Cairo on June 4, 2009. In that speech, he described Islam and America sharing basic principles:
I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
And then for his Muslim guests he segued into a flattering lesson in History. First he described Western Civ., which, he said, owed so much of its development to Islam:
As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities — (applause) — it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. (Applause.)
And Islam played — according to Obama — a significant role in American history, too:
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library. (Applause.)
We could go through those paragraphs accompanied by such keen students of history as Gibbon, John Quincy Adams, Jacob Burckhardt, and Winston Churchill, all of whom had occasion to study and comment upon Islam, their remarks rebutting proleptically Obama’s vaporings with their much more informed and sober take on the faith — but that is for another occasion. We can note, however, that when Obama in his Cairo speech talks about “the light of learning” being held aloft at places like Al-Azhar, he misstates: some Greek texts were translated into Arabic and thereby “kept alive” instead of being lost to history, but the translators were mostly Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews, not Muslims, and the work of translation went on not at Al-Azhar but at the courts of Cordoba and Baghdad. The word “algebra” is certainly Arab, but algebra itself was a product of Sanskrit mathematicians. The printing press was not a Muslim invention, and its use was accepted in the Muslim East only long after it had been in use in Western Christendom. Indeed, in Islam itself the very notion of innovation, or bida, is frowned upon, and not only, as some Muslim apologists have claimed, in theological matters. And so on.
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco.
The picture Obama paints by implication, of Muslims being deeply involved in the grand sweep of American history practically from the time of the Framers (at least he didn’t make the mistake of the State Department flunky who claimed Muslims accompanied Columbus on his voyages) is simply false. The first mosque in North America was a one-room affair in 1929; the second mosque was not built until 1934. The first Muslim to be elected to Congress was Keith Ellison, less than a decade ago. The Muslim appearance in America is very late. As for Morocco being the first country to recognize the United States in a treaty, Morocco also soon violated that very treaty and became the first country to go to war with the young Republic. That is something Obama’s advisers may not have told him.
When Obama quotes that single phrase from John Adams, made at the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, a treaty designed to free American ships and seaman from the ever-present threat from the marauding Muslim corsairs in the Mediterranean that attacked Christian shipping at will (and when America became independent, it could no longer count on the Royal Navy to protect its ships), he wants us to think that our second president was approving of Islam. But that is to misinterpret his statement, clearly meant to be taken to have this meaning: we in the United States, have a priori nothing against Islam. Rhetoric designed to diplomatically please. But based on his subsequent experiences with the North African Muslims, including his experiences with them after various treaties were made and then broken, Adams came to a different and negative view of Islam, a view that was shared by all those Americans who, whether diplomats or seized seamen, had any direct dealings with Muslims. America’s first encounter with Muslims was that with the Barbary Pirates, from Morocco to Algiers to Tunis to Tripoli, and their behavior rendered Adams’s initial “the United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims” null and void. And it was not John Adams himself, but his son John Quincy Adams (our most learned President), who studied Islam in depth, and it was he to whom Obama ought to have turned to find out more about Islam. For he would have found, among other piercing and accurate remarks by J. Q. Adams, the following:
The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.
Isn’t it amazing that not a single American official — and not just Obama — has ever alluded to the study of Islam that one of our most illustrious presidents produced?
Again, Obama, with a jumble of Jefferson, Ellison, and Holy Koran:
And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library.
When Obama notes that Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Qur’an in his “personal” library, he is subtly implying that Jefferson approved of its contents. Keith Ellison did much the same when he ostentatiously used that very copy of the Qur’an for his own swearing-in as the first Muslim Congressman. But Jefferson, a curious and cultivated man, with a large library, had a copy of the Qur’an for the same reason you or I might possess a copy, that is, simply to find out what was in it. And we might note in passing that it was not the “Holy Koran” that Jefferson possessed and Ellison borrowed, but an English translation by George Sale of the “Koran.” According to Muslims, the epithet “Holy” can only be attached to a Koran written and read in the original Arabic. White House, for the next time, take note.
There is not a single American statesman or traveler or diplomat in the days of the early Republic who had a good word for Islam once he had studied it, or had had dealings with Muslims or had travelled to their countries. Look high, look low, consult whatever records you want in the National Archives or the Library of Congress, and you will not find any such testimony. And the very idea that an American President would someday praise Islam to the skies in Obama’s fulsome manner would have astounded them all.
And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance.
Also sprach Obama. But Islam is based on an uncompromising division of humanity into Muslims and Non-Muslims, Believers and Unbelievers, and Unbelievers, at best, can be allowed to live in a Muslim polity — be “tolerated” — only if they accept a position of permanent and humiliating inferiority. It would be fascinating if Obama could name even one example of Islam demonstrating through words and deeds “the possibilities of religious tolerance.”
But let’s return to Obama’s assertion about Jefferson’s “Iftar Dinner,” or rather, to that dinner that Barack Obama would have us all believe was the first “Iftar Dinner” at the White House, way back in 1805.
Here is the background to that meal in 1805 which not Jefferson, but Obama, calls an “Iftar Dinner”:
In the Mediterranean, American ships, now deprived of the protection formerly offered by the Royal Navy, suffered constant depredations by Muslim corsairs, who were not so much pirates acting alone but were officially encouraged to prey on Christian shipping, and at times even recorded the areas of the Mediterranean where they planned to go in search of Christian prey. Under Jefferson, America took a more aggressive line:
Soon after the Revolutionary War and the consequent loss of the British navy’s protection, American merchant vessels had become prey for Barbary corsairs. Jefferson was outraged by the demands of ransom for civilians captured from American vessels and the Barbary states’ expectation of annual tribute.
The crisis with Tunis erupted when the USS Constitution captured Tunisian vessels attempting to run the American blockade of Tripoli. The bey of Tunis threatened war and sent Mellimelli [Sidi Soliman Mellimelli] to the United States to negotiate full restitution for the captured vessels and to barter for tribute.
Mellimelli was not, pace Obama, “the first Muslim ambassador to the United States” — there was no official exchange of ambassadors – but a temporary envoy with a single limited task: to get an agreement that would set free the Tunisian vessels and come to an agreement about future payment – if any — of tribute by, or to Tripoli. At the end of six months, that envoy was to return home.
The Muslim envoy made some unexpected personal demands in Washington:
Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli’s request for “concubines” as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison. Jefferson assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to “pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers.
Some readers will no doubt be reminded by this request for “concubines” of how the State Department has supplied female companions to much more recent Arab visitors, including the late King Hussein of Jordan.
Mellimelli proved to be the exotic cynosure of all eyes, with his American hosts not really understanding some of his reactions, as his “surprise” at the “social freedom women enjoyed in America” and his belief that only Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed were acceptable “prophets” to follow, for they lacked the understanding of Islam that would have explained such reactions:
Despite whispers regarding his conduct, Mellimelli received invitations to numerous dinners and balls, and according to one Washington hostess was “the lion of the season.” At the president’s New Year’s Day levee the Tunisian envoy provided “its most brilliant and splendid spectacle,” and added to his melodramatic image at a later dinner party hosted by the secretary of state. Upon learning that the Madisons were unhappy at being childless, Mellimelli flung his “magical” cloak around Dolley Madison and murmured an incantation that promised she would bear a male child. His conjuring, however, did not work.
Differences in culture and customs stirred interest on both sides. Mellimelli’s generous use of scented rose oil was noted by many of those who met him, and guards had to be posted outside his lodgings to turn away the curious. For his part, the Tunisian was surprised at the social freedom women enjoyed in America and was especially intrigued by several delegations of Native Americans from the western territories then visiting Washington. Mellimelli inquired which prophet the Indians followed: Moses, Jesus Christ or Mohammed. When he was told none of them, that they worshiped “the Great Spirit” alone, he was reported to have pronounced them “vile hereticks.”
So that’s it. Sidi Soliman Mellimelli installed himself for six months at a Washington hotel, for which the American government apparently picked up the tab including, very likely, that for the requested “concubines.” He cut a dashing figure:
The curious were not to be disappointed by the appearance of the first Muslim envoy to the United States – a large figure with a full dark beard dressed in robes of richly embroidered fabrics and a turban of fine white muslin.
Over the next six months, this exotic representative from a distant and unfamiliar culture would add spice to the Washington social season but also test the diplomatic abilities of President Jefferson.
During the time Mellimelli was here, Ramadan occurred. And as it happens, during that Ramadan observed by Mellimelli, President Jefferson invited Sidi Soliman Mellimelli for dinner at the White House. The dinner was not meant to be an “Iftar dinner” but just a dinner, albeit at the White House; it was originally set for three thirty in the afternoon (our founding fathers dined early in the pre-Edison days of their existence). Mellimelli said he could not come at that appointed hour of three thirty p.m., but only after sundown.
Jefferson, a courteous man, simply moved the dinner forward by a few hours. He didn’t change the menu, he didn’t change anything else, he did not see himself as offering an “Iftar Dinner,” and there are no records to hint that he did. Barack Obama, 200 years later, is trying to rewrite American history, with some nunc-pro-tunc backdating, in order to flatter or please his Muslim guests. But he is misrepresenting American history to Americans, including schoolchildren who are now being subject to all kinds of Islamic propaganda, in newly-mandated textbooks, that so favorably depict Islam, and present it as so integral a part of American life.
Now there is a kind of coda to this dismal tale, and it is provided by the New York Times, which likes to put on airs and think of itself as “the newspaper of record,” whatever that means. The Times carried a front-page story on August 14, 2010, written by one Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and no doubt gone over by many vigilant editors. This story contains a predictably glowing account of Barack Obama’s remarks a few days before at the “Annual Iftar Dinner.” Here is the paragraph that caught my eye:
In hosting the iftar, Mr. Obama was following a White House tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson, who held a sunset dinner for the first Muslim ambassador to the United States. President George W. Bush hosted iftars annually.
Question for Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and for her editors at The New York Times: You report that there is a “White House tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson.” I claim that you are wrong. I claim that there is no White House Tradition of Iftar Dinners. I claim that Thomas Jefferson, in moving forward by a few hours a dinner that changed in no other respect, for Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, did not think he was providing what he thought of as an “Iftar Dinner,” but simply a dinner, at a time his guest requested. And to describe as a “White House tradition” and the first of the “Annual Iftar Dinners” that, the New York Times tells us, has since Jefferson’s non-existent “Iftar Dinner,” have been observed “sporadically,” has absolutely no basis in fact.
When, then, was the next in this long, but “sporadic” series of Iftar dinners? I can find no record of any, for roughly the next two hundred years, until we come to the fall of the year 2001, that is, just after the deadliest attack on American civilians ever recorded, an attack carried out by a novemdectet of Muslims acting according to their orthodox understanding of the very same texts — Qur’an, Hadith, Sira — that all Muslims rely on for authority. It was President George W. Bush who decided that, to win Muslim “trust” or to end Muslim “mistrust” — I forget which — so that we could, non-Muslim and Muslim, collaborate on defeating those “violent extremists” who had “hijacked a great religion,” started this sporadic ball unsporadically rolling. And he did what he set out to do, by golly, he did. He hosted an Iftar Dinner just a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center, on the Pentagon, on a plane’s doomed pilots and passengers over a field in Pennsylvania.
And thus it is that, ever since 2001, we have had Iftar dinner after Iftar dinner. But it was not Jefferson or any other of our learned Presidents who started this “tradition” that has been observed only “sporadically” — unless we were to count as an “Iftar dinner” what was merely seen, by Jefferson, as a dinner given at a time convenient for his exotic guest.
George W. Bush, that profound student of history and of ideas, kept telling us, in those first few months after 9/11/2001, that as far as he was concerned, by gum, Islam was a religion of “peace and tolerance.” He and Obama agree on that. And just to prove it, by golly, he’d put on an Iftar Dinner with all the fixins. And that’s just what he did. And that’s how the long “tradition” that Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and her many vetting editors at the newspaper of comical record, The New York Times, referred to, began. It’s all of fourteen years old now, having survived and thrived through the differently-disastrous presidencies of Bush and of Obama.
Craig Considine on Religious Pluralism and Civic Rights in a “Muslim Nation”: An Analysis of Prophet Muhammad’s Covenants with Christians
According to The Daily Mail article about him, Craig Considine is a “professor,” but of what is not specified. This might lead an unsuspecting reader to conclude that his “professorship” must surely be in the field about which he now publishes in the popular press — to wit, the history of early Islam. How surprising, then, to discover that his doctoral thesis, completed just last year, is not about the history of early Islam, but about Pakistani immigrants in the West: “Family, Religion, and Identity in the Pakistani Diaspora: A Case Study of Young Pakistani Men in Dublin and Boston,” a subject having nothing whatever to do with covenants supposedly entered into by Muhammad with Christians before 632 A.D. And he turns out to be not a professor of Islamic studies, but a lean lecturer in sociology.
Considine promises readers of this “covenants with Christians” paper that he will “share….what I have learned about Muhammad and how his legacy informs my understanding of Islam. Muhammad’s beliefs on how to treat religious minorities make him a universal champion of human rights, particularly as it pertains to freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, and the right for[sic] minorities to have protection during times of strife.” In other words, we are about to discover a Muhammad-we-hardly-knew-ye kind of Muhammad, an interfaith-healing Muhammad, whose fondest desire is to protect freedom of religion and to be a “champion of human rights.”
And then begins his magical-mystery-tour through early Islam. Considine starts by assuming the historical truth of a document which Muhammad purportedly made with the Christian monks at Mount Sinai:
Muhammad initiated many legal covenants with Christians and Jews after establishing his Muslim community. For example, in one covenant with the Christian monks at Mount Sinai, Egypt, Muhammad called on Muslims to respect Christian judges and churches, and for no Muslim to fight against his Christian brother or sister. Through this agreement, Muhammad made it clear that Islam, as a political and philosophical way of life, respected and protected Christians.
All very fine, were there sufficient evidence to support any of it, but as Robert Spencer showed in a devastating review, this “covenant” must surely be a forgery, very likely made by the monks themselves, in order to ensure their good treatment by Muslims on the invoked authority of Muhammad.
The document to which Considine is referring, the Achtiname, is of even more doubtful authenticity than everything else about Muhammad’s life. Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632; the Muslims conquered Egypt between 639 and 641. The document says of the Christians, “No one shall bear arms against them.” So were the conquerors transgressing against Muhammad’s command for, as Considine puts it, “no Muslim to fight against his Christian brother or sister”? Did Muhammad draw up this document because he foresaw the Muslim invasion of Egypt? There is no mention of this document in any remotely contemporary Islamic sources; among other anomalies, it bears a drawing of a mosque with a minaret, although minarets weren’t put on mosques until long after the time Muhammad is supposed to have lived, which is why Muslim hardliners consider them unacceptable innovation (bid’a).
The Achtiname, in short, bears all the earmarks of being an early medieval Christian forgery, perhaps developed by the monks themselves in order to protect the monastery and Egyptian Christians from the depredations of zealous Muslims.
Considine doesn’t mention any of the questions about the Achtiname’s authenticity. Instead, he just piles on more:
Similarly, in the Constitution of Medina, a key document which laid out a societal vision for Muslims, Muhammad also singled out Jews, who, he wrote, “shall maintain their own religion and the Muslim theirs… The close friends of Jews are as themselves.”
Spencer:
Here again, both the Treaty of Maqnah and the Constitution of Medina are of doubtful authenticity. The Constitution is first mentioned in Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad, which was written over 125 years after the accepted date for Muhammad’s death. Unfortunately for Considine, Ibn Ishaq also details what happened to three Jewish tribes of Arabia after the Constitution of Medina: Muhammad exiled the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir, massacred the Banu Qurayza after they (understandably) made a pact with his enemies during the pagan Meccans’ siege of Medina, and then massacred the exiles at the Khaybar oasis, giving Muslims even today a bloodthirsty war chant: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.” Funny how we never hear Muslims chanting, “Relax, relax, O Jews, the Constitution of Medina will return.”
What responsibility did Considine have to his readers? He had at least to recognize that Western scholars of Islam have known for a long time about all four the covenants he dealt with in his paper (Spencer discussed three of them):
Considine said documents have been located in obscure monasteries around the world and books that have been out of print for centuries.
It almost sounds as if he, Craig Considine, lecturer in sociology, had located them himself and been responsible for their recent unearthing.
Considine had a responsibility to present the arguments impugning the authenticity of the documents and to attempt to refute them. He does not have to accept the arguments, but surely he owes readers a duty to discuss thoroughly the issue of authenticity.He does do some of this, but not nearly enough. He surely knew what Spencer wrote, for example, about the problems with the dating of the Achtiname, a document which would have had to have been written before Muhammad’s death in 632 A.D., which makes provisions for the good treatment of Egypt’s Christians by Muslims. Such provisions would only be needed after a Muslim invasion, and the Muslim invasion of Egypt did not take place until 639. That’s only one example of hysteron-proteron, or cart-before-horseness, in Considine’s chronology.
He preens himself on his own learnedness, and presumes to pass judgment on the scholarship of others. Yet he writes about the historian and diplomat Paul Ricaut: “It is also worth pointing out that he [Ricaut] himself used the phrase ‘On dit’, which is Latin for ‘It is alleged'” — thereby unwittingly making us aware that he, Considine, is at home in neither Latin nor French, for “on dit” is not Latin, but one of the commonest of French phrases, meaning “it is said” (the Latin would be “dicitur”), rather than the doubt-casting “it is alleged.”
Considine’s paper is based almost entirely on one source, “The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad” by John Andrew Morrow, and like Morrow, Considine presents not so much an overlooked historical truth as a forlorn hope that Islam could be other than it is, based on these “covenants” of doubtful authenticity. The goal may be laudable – convincing Muslims to be kinder to non-Muslims, and for that both Considine and Morrow know you need to ground your appeal not on human decency but on Muhammad’s authority – but the evidence adduced for such covenants remains unconvincing. As Robert Hunt wrote in a review of Morrow’s book:
these documents [the covenants] represent not the aspirations of the Prophet Muhammad, but of those religious minorities who fell under the rule of his successors.
And, continues Hunt, “what are the chances that any Muslim, including those who endorse this book [or Considine’s paper], will give these documents, completely unattested by proper isnad, the status of even the weakest hadith? None. So they will remain to the Muslim community historical curiosities with no religious authority whatsoever.”
At his website, Craig Considine tells the world about himself: “My passions include thinking, teaching, writing, speaking, traveling, and fostering peace.” Perhaps his thinking has been a bit too wishful, and that peace he fondly fosters too much a peace that passeth understanding.

brian464 says
Propaganda is a powerful thing and our government’s propaganda was so powerful that according to gallup, 85% of Americans approved of the atom bombing of Japan which resulted in christian nuns and thousands of christian children being burned alive in the center of Japanese Christianity, which was Nagasaki:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/17677/majority-supports-use-atomic-bomb-japan-wwii.aspx
So polling muslims should not be surprising that some support the propaganda of muslim leaders but not nearly as high in number as the US government’s propagandas as seen by the 85% number above.
Even though Islam is at its fundamental stage of development (equivalent to 15th century Christianity ), since Islam only started in the 7th century ( compared to Judaism that had a 2000 year head start over Islam and Christianity had a 600 year head start over islam ),
nevertheless, Islam is reforming at a much faster rate as seen in the presence of numerous muslim countries that are secular and/or progressive (example : Muslim Malaysia during its independence allowed all minorities and women to vote while America during its independence only allowed white male landowners to vote ).
While 15th century christianity did not have any secular states and even though Islam is still in its fundamental stage which is equivalent to 15th century christianity, below is a list of secular muslim countries, which shows islam is reforming at a much faster rate :
Albania
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Burkina Faso
Chad
The Gambia
Guinea
Kazakhstan
Kosovo
Krygyzstan
Mali
Northern Cyprus
Nigeria
Senegal
Palestinian West Bank
Syria
Lebanon
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Tunisia
Uzbekistan
No matter what the religion, its adherents are the ones who interpret the texts and the Jews long time ago gave up on genocide (Deuteronomy 20:16 ) and
Christians gave up on Jim Crow laws in the 60s and lynchings in the 20th century and
even though 85% of Americans in a gallup poll approved of the terror bombing against the center of Japanese christianity which was Nagasaki which resulted in nuns and thousands of christian children being burned alive, more recently,
christians have begun to regret the terror bombing of Japan ( Hiroshima and Nagasaki and scores of Japanese cities that were subject to incendiary bombs )
and the reason both Jews and Christians have given up on genocide ( Deuteronomy 20:16 ) and the 1940s terror bombing of innocent civilians (as an instrument of war) is because
both religions evolved and started concentrating on texts that emphasized love and affection towards strangers and
the overwhelming majority of muslims, even though their religion is still in the fundamental stage ( Islam right now is the equivalent of 15th century Christianity, since Islam only started in the 7th century ) ,
the overwhelming majority of muslims emphasize, just like the Jews and Christians, they only emphasize the loving parts of the Koran.
Notice in the following 8/2/11 gallup poll, since Mormons are still in their fundamental stage of their development, they are the most pro-terrorist and Jews are the most evolved ( of the non-muslim religions ) since their religion is the oldest.
Gallup asked whether targeting civilians was justified and here are the results :
Muslims : 21% said it was sometimes justified
No religious affiliation : 43%
Jews : 52 %
Christians : 58%
Mormons : 64%
Please refer to :
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/Muslim-Americans-No-Justification-Violence.aspx
mortimer says
brian464 wrote: “Islam is reforming at a much faster rate”
Islam cannot be reformed because of the doctrine of ‘bida’ (innovation). Whatever is bida is error and must be punished as apostasy. If the Muslim heretic is unrepentant he is executed.
Bida is basically the following: Kufrul-Kurh – Disbelief out of detesting any of Allaah’s subhanahu wa ta’ala commands or it is Kufrul-Istibdaal – Disbelief because of trying to substitute Allaah’s Laws.Substituting Allaah’s laws with man-made laws.-made laws.
brian is obviously disinforming us intentionally or he actually knows little about Islam. I believe he is disinformationist.
Mark Swan says
I think it would be Preferred that we accept this assemblage of Googled Information
For it‘s intent; I am Sure Karen Armstrong would agree it’s so much easier than
any type of work in coming up with a conclusive writing. This appears to be
a pretty good example of what Mr. Fitzgerald has tried to address above.
BC says
In any case the comparison is false as in 1945 USA and its allies had waged a costly struggle
against an implacable enemy who military were willing to die for their Emperor. The prospect of invading the Japanese mainland was appalling in terms of human lives on both sides. I have long struggled with the justification of the A bombs, and feel it could have been demonstrated in other ways, vaporising an island for example and I think it was unjustified to drop two initially.
Of course nobody really knew the effects on people of radiation and there was the prospect of the USSR on the horizon.
As for the implied ‘progress’ of Islam there is much more knowledge available now than in the Renaissance plus means of communicating ideas. Islam seems determined to fight against progress, except of course when it readily takes advantage of the work of Western democracies.
Plamen says
Mortimer,
Could you possibly provide me here with a link to a publication on ‘bida/h’?
Article, pdf, report, whatever.
I only found wikipedia and it speaks of ‘good’ and of ‘bad’ bidah.
I need a better explanation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid%E2%80%98ah
As for brian464:
Ongoing islam reform in those countries is a pure lie, aside from that reforming islam is impossible the way you mentioned it.
Azerbaijan already had killings for ‘apostasy’ and for ‘insulting’ the prophet past 2-3 years. It never happened 2-3 decades ago.
Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkey and many more swarm with radicals, with fighters for the islamic state (‘professional’ beheaders among them) or mass protests against cartoons of the ‘prophet’ or Charlie Hebdo. It never happened 2-3-4 decades ago.
Angemon says
Are you Brian Boatman from answeringmuslims.com?
http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2016/02/muhammad-white-prophet-with-black-slaves.html
I’m asking because you seemingly copy/pasted from there.
“Propaganda is a powerful thing and our government’s propaganda was so powerful that according to gallup, 85% of Americans approved of the atom bombing of Japan which resulted in christian nuns and thousands of christian children being burned alive in the center of Japanese Christianity, which was Nagasaki:”
What “propaganda” would that be? Why is it “propaganda” to begin with? Was there any reason to disapprove the use of the bombing? Nope, nothing to justify your claim. You’re just trying to guilt-trip Americans because civilians died during a strike on military installations of an enemy nation at war with the US. You’re standing in the graves of those civilians and using their tragic deaths to further your own agenda. Shame on you.
Also, is it the same Gallup that recently settled a suit and had to pay millions of dollars?
“So polling muslims should not be surprising that some support the propaganda of muslim leaders but not nearly as high in number as the US government’s propagandas as seen by the 85% number above.”
Ah, false equivalence – always popular. Trying to equate divinely sanctioned commands based on islamic scriptures with alleged American propaganda. Tsk tsk…
“Even though Islam is at its fundamental stage of development (equivalent to 15th century Christianity ),”
Citation needed. Why can’t muslims learn from Christians? Or Jews? Or Buddhists? Or any of the world religions, both younger and older than islam, that don’t teach their adherents to wage warfare against non-believers because of their religion? Why didn’t those other religions went around brandishing their books and using them to justify polygamy, sex slavery, stonings, etc?
“since Islam only started in the 7th century ( compared to Judaism that had a 2000 year head start over Islam and Christianity had a 600 year head start over islam ),”
Again, a false equivalence. Muslims gloat that islam changed nothing since it came into scene. But here you are, trying to have us believe that islam is on par with 15th century Christianity. Because f*** what muslims say about their religion, right? Al-Azhar University? What do they know?
“nevertheless, Islam is reforming at a much faster rate”
Citation needed.
“as seen in the presence of numerous muslim countries that are secular and/or progressive”
Nope. This is just wrong. Supposedly secular or “progressive” muslim countries are relics of the big, bad European Colonialism, not result of islamic reformation.
“(example : Muslim Malaysia during its independence allowed all minorities and women to vote while America during its independence only allowed white male landowners to vote ).”
Muslim Malaysia has muslim groups in it saying that sharia law – stoning of adulterers. chopping the hands of thieves, etc. – should be applied to everyone, not just muslims. Were Americans during their independence period stoning adulterers or chopping hands of thieves? Of course they weren’t – this is just another attempt to guilt-shame Americans.
“While 15th century christianity did not have any secular states and even though Islam is still in its fundamental stage which is equivalent to 15th century christianity,
Citation needed.
““below is a list of secular muslim countries, which shows islam is reforming at a much faster rate :”
No, it shows that European colonial nations spread secularism. It does not show that islamic nations developed secularism.
“Northern Cyprus”
You mean Turkey-occupied land belonging to the Republic of Cyprus. Because that’s what it is according to everyone but Turkey. You know, the invader and occupier.
“Nigeria”
Nigeria has several legal systems, including sharia law.
“Palestinian West Bank”
“Palestinian” law says that the principles of islamic Sharia law are the main source of legislation.
“Turkey”
You mean re-islamizing Turkey.
Those were from the top of my head. I really don’t care enough to go and check country by country, seeing how secularism in muslim-majority nations came not from within but from the outside. But such is the islamic way – claim credit for the work of others. Case in point “arabic” numerals…
“No matter what the religion, its adherents are the ones who interpret the texts”
And again, muslims tell us that islam hasn’t changed a bit since the 7th century.
“and the Jews long time ago gave up on genocide (Deuteronomy 20:16 )”
Which is irrelevant to muslims and islam. Be cause they still believe in genocide. On account of the religion of non-believers.
“and
Christians gave up on Jim Crow laws in the 60s and lynchings in the 20th century”
Again, falsehoods – were ALL Christians in favour of Jim Crow laws or lynchings? Or was it only a very, very, verysmall part of Americans? The KKK were opposed by Christians because they went against Christian principles. Trying to ham-fist the idea that Jim Crow laws or lynchings were based on Christian doctrine won’t cut it at this level. Of course, facts are not on your side, so you’re trying to appeal to feelings and guilt-trip Americans into cutting murderous rapists some slack – they’re just doing what their faith orders them, and some Christians did some bad things centuries ago, so on harm done, right?
“and
even though 85% of Americans in a gallup poll approved of the terror bombing against the center of Japanese christianity which was Nagasaki which resulted in nuns and thousands of christian children being burned alive,”
Again, more silly, ham-fisted attempts to guilt-shame Americans into cutting murderous savage rapists some slack. Japan was at war with the US. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were strategic targets. There was no terrorism involved, especially when the Japanese were given the option to surrender before the first bomb dropped. They refused. They were given the chance to surrender when the second bomb dropped. Again, they refused. Were it not for an unprecedented intervention by the Japanese Emperor, the war would have carried on. And even then, a group of officers tried to stage a coup and prevent the surrender message from being broadcast.
All in all, the atomic bombs allowed the Emperor to save face.
It’s funny how islamo-apologists worry more about the people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than most Japanese do. Where’s the same level of empathy for the German civilians killed by conventional bombings, for example, in Dresden? Or the British civilians killed by German bombings? Why, there isn’t any, of course, much like there’s no actual respect or empathy for the civilian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – they’re just handy tools to hammer Americans with. It’s a gross disrespect, that’s what it is. But what does “brian464” care? The Japanese are as much of kuffar as the Americans.
“more recently,
christians have begun to regret the terror bombing of Japan ( Hiroshima and Nagasaki and scores of Japanese cities that were subject to incendiary bombs )”
Citation needed. But are Christians regretting or not? I’m getting mixed messages from you. And the question should not be whether Christians nowadays regret the use of atomic weapons in the 40’s. The question should be, “Was it Wrong to Drop the Atom Bomb on Japan?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmIBbcxseXM
“and the reason both Jews and Christians have given up on genocide”
Not muslims, though.
“( Deuteronomy 20:16 ) and the 1940s terror bombing of innocent civilians (as an instrument of war)”
Now you’re contradicting yourself.
“is because
both religions evolved and started concentrating on texts that emphasized love and affection towards strangers and”
Citation needed. Also, New Testament, dumbass.
“the overwhelming majority of muslims, even though their religion is still in the fundamental stage ( Islam right now is the equivalent of 15th century Christianity, since Islam only started in the 7th century ) ,”
Again, citation needed. Also, why aren’t Scientologists running around and murdering non-Scientologists? It’s a fairly new religion, after all…
“the overwhelming majority of muslims emphasize, just like the Jews and Christians, they only emphasize the loving parts of the Koran.”
False comparison. Also, citation needed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TAAw3oQvg
“Notice in the following 8/2/11 gallup poll, since Mormons are still in their fundamental stage of their development, they are the most pro-terrorist”
Citation needed. Also, Mormonism started around 200 years ago – why aren’t we seeing Mormons acting like ISIS, seeing how they, by your logic, are the equivalent to 9th century muslims?
“and Jews are the most evolved ( of the non-muslim religions ) since their religion is the oldest.”
Ah, must be why muslims hate them so much.
“Gallup asked whether targeting civilians was justified”
In military attacks, not terrorist attacks.
“and here are the results :
Muslims : 21% said it was sometimes justified
No religious affiliation : 43%
Jews : 52 %
Christians : 58%
Mormons : 64%”
Are the 3 or so million muslims in the US representative of the 1.5 billion muslims worldwide? And why is it that Mormons – which, according to you, are the most pro-terrorism group – are not going around planning and executing terror attacks against America civilians? Because muslims are. You almost can’t go a week without hearing about a muslims attacking a non-muslims in the US.
There’s this thing called “preference falsification”. Look it up.
Shmooviyet says
@Angemon: TY VERY MUCH for answering @Brian much better than I could.
And, everyone, keep in mind: “islam is reforming at a much faster rate”, as Brian twice points out: Judaism and Christianity had all those centuries on islam, after all!
Oh, and one more: America was being the big bully on the playground when it Terror Bombed all the ‘christians’ in Japan into eventual UC surrender; and we’ve simply swallowed the “propaganda” of our American and British fathers and grandfathers, who were just dumb enough to be fooled into attacking innocents.
gravenimage says
Excellent post, Angemon.
Kepha says
Brian, on behalf of the social studies teaching profession to which I belong, I apologize to you for my colleagues’ giving you a lousy education and leaving you with such an inaccurate notion about how religions develop. There’s no such thing as the “fundamental stage of development” for any religion. It either sticks to its ideals, or it doesn’t (and, in the latter case, dies, or becomes something else, or both). In case you got your rather bizarre chronological determinist view of religion from journalism or the history channel, my apology still stands.
First of all, the Old Testament’s warrant for genocide of the Canaanites is a one-shot deal applicable only to the conquest of the land–and it is accompanied by covenantal curses which warn israel of a similar fate should they practice certain abominations of the Canaanites (especially the immolation of the firstborn son). You read the Old Testament histories and the prophets, and you will see how these covenantal curses worked out, ending with the Babylonian Exile. Hence, a Scripture common to both Judaism and Christianity gives an extended warning about the consequences of rebellion and faithlessness–emphatically NOT a warrant to congratulate oneself on being allowed to massacre whomever is in your way (in stark contrast to the open-ended Islamic jihad against all Kuffar). Sure, go ahead and chuckle at the wittiness of Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Don Marquis, and all those other canonized scoffers, but understand that they missed the point in their readings of the Bible, and missed it badly (I, for one, see such writers not as enlighteners, but as supporters of what has become a studied ignorance).
As for Christians and black slavery/segregation, kindly inform me where in the Old or New Testaments I am commanded to keep someone with a dark skin in a state of servitude or second-class citizenship (I am mostly white myself, and I assume, perhaps wrongly, that you see Christianity as a white man’s religion). I’ve read the Bible cover to cover countless times since I was converted to Christ in young manhood (over forty years ago), and can nowhere find such a “fundamental” admonition. Further, if I read the New Testament aright, I cannot find a single passage where I am enjoined to violence against the unbeliever or hastening him on his way to Hell. I even hold a Master of Divinity degree from a very conservative Calvinistic institution, but I was never taught that blacks are anything other than part of a single human race, among whom are both elect and reprobate persons. I even had black classmates there from both my own USA and the African continent. So, please, tell me where my Scripture and even my tradition (which, in my system of doctrine, admittedly stands under the scrutiny and criticism of the Bible) commands me to either enslave or segregate my black neighbor, and abandon my honoring the memories of such men as Fransisco de Vitoria, Samuel Sewall, William Wilberforce, and all those others who felt queasy about the African slave trade and tried to abolish it.
Please inform me, and I am all eyes and ears if you have some bibliographic citations.
As for justifying attacks on noncombatants in warfare, your polls seem to have accounted for neither (a) persons influenced by relatives, elders, or friends who may have been war veterans nor (b) systems of casuistry found in all serious intellectual and spiritual traditions. Nor do they consider how much or how little history respondents may know.
By the way, are you aware that Buddhists, Hindus, Daoists, and Confucianists have also persecuted “others”? And do you know that in the 20th century alone, enlightened people furthering scientific worldviews (at least in their own opinions) killed, imprisoned, expelled, and ruined more people than suffered for the wrong kind of Christianity or none at all in the 15 centuries between the conversion of Constantine and Napoleon’s ending the Spanish Inquisition? Or, am I to suppose that the evolutionary materialists are still in the “fundamental” stage of their religion; and perhaps we would be wise to suppress them lest they unleash a few more Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots, or those “scientificos” like Plutarco Calles who pushed the Catholic peasantry of western Mexico to rebel in the 1920’s on the rest of us?
To be completely serious, one thing I hope might happen as a result of the current furor islamicus is that people would seriously consider that theological and spiritual traditions matter; and that there is no such thing as generic “religion”. Unfortunately, our major media, academic, and political leaders are not helping us.
Hermes says
To Brian 464
You make some good points. However, some comments…
The approval of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, correct me if I am wrong, was not the official policy of American churches. And having just finished Dr. Warner’s study guides to the Koran and two major Hadith, and compared them, to my equally superficial familiarity with the Bible, I think you will find some er, *substantial* differences between the lives of Jesus of Nazareth, the apostles and the New Testament versus the life of its messenger, his Companions.and any of the trilogy of Islamic scriptures.
“Muslim Malaysia during its independence allowed all minorities and women to vote while America during its independence only allowed white male landowners to vote”
Malaysia was granted its independence from UK in 1957, USA in 1776. As far as I know slavery was not common in the world (except in Muslim North Africa) 59 years ago. And the specific human right you mention, universal suffrage (at least technically, for women, though certainly not for blacks), was adopted in 1920 in USA. I just looked at a Wikipedia entry (true, not the best source) and counted 73 nations, USA is 30th along sequentially, Of the 15 countries that recognized womens’ right to vote, all are European except one – Azerbaijan (and it is transcontinental like Turkey, about 9% of Azerbaijan is in Europe). If instead I measure by those nations adoption of universal suffrage versus female suffrage, there are 29 nations before USA sequentially. Of those 5 are Muslim or have significant Muslim minorities.
Also, Malaysia is a poor example of a progressive Muslim nation. I speak from experience having lived there at length. For example, non-Muslims have quasi-dhimmi status. Just try getting into medical school or getting a non-Islamic house of worship built. And I know personally of a Hindu man who had to convert to Islam or the government of Malaysia would not permit him to legally marry a Muslim woman.
Regarding secular states, some no doubt are. But among one on your list, I have visited one. I spent two months in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. While there a Muslim acquaintance took me on a walking tour and pointed out a mosque that was run by an unapologetic Islamic terrorist group – with the Bangladesh’ government’s full knowledge. There is *talk* about removing Islam as the official religion of the nation, but pending a court case (a week from now), it is still.
You give Turkey as an example of having reforming Islam. Are you serious? I won’t even go down that road. According to what I read, Uzbekistan always was marginally Muslim, being one of the few places in the world where men toast with wine to the health of Mohammed!
I see that the gallop poll did not poll members of Dharmic religions, that is Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, etc, but only members of Abrahamic religions.
DFD says
To Kepha: Re your response to Brian464:
Your reply was most excellent, as it was beautiful. With the respect due to you, I consider myself to have it cosigned.
Referring to B464’s notion, if one wish to call it that, instead of taqyia. Namely about Islam being in our time frame in the 15th century, that is about as erroneous as it gets. Yes, we had our problems, as is well known. On the other hand we also had a trial for church mice, if they had a right to the donations for the poor. The court ruled “yes”, on account that they too were God’s creatures and should not be killed for merely being hungry. That is Christendom at its heart.
Islam is not near that by Parsecs, never mind light years, and given its fundamentals, it cannot and will never be. As an example, a few years ago there was a fire in a school in Saudi Arabia, the religious police drove the girls back into the flames for lack of wearing suitable cover. That is Islam at its heart.
—- PS: I put the two paragraphs above in my reply to you instead of responding to B464 directly. The reasons being that I do not think he merits a reply, nor do I believe that he’d actually care about such reply.
Kepha says
Gee, thanks, DFD. This was, I believe, the first time anyone wanted to cosign one of my comments.
I remember that Sa’udi incident being reported. In Luke 14:1-5, Jesus justified to the Pharisees his healing of a man with dropsy on the Sabbath by pointing out that if any of them had an ox or ass falling into a pit on the Sabbath, he would pull it out–implying that the human life and well-being was worth more. Indeed, it was a staple of Puritan casuistry that works of mercy and necessity might be done on the Lord’s Day in good conscience–and they appealed to the text above. That’s what I thought about when I heard how those poor girls were driven back into a burning building because some hadn’t put on their hijabs.
Which raises a question for me: is there anything in official, unvarnished Islamic ethics comparable to the matters you and I have raised in this mini-dialogue? For the sake of charity, I’d really like to know.
I wrote my reply to Brian because I have a hope, perhaps a vain one, that he and others like him might rethink the kind of foolish popularization of the 19th century Religionsgeschichte school he presented to us.
Pong says
Kepha.
This silly story (Luke14:1-5) makes anybody, even with superficial knowledge of Judaism, very skeptical about the gospels. Whoever wrote that story obviously had no knowledge of Judaism. There are 613 commandments. Some are positive, some are negative. If they come into contradiction, the positive one is always supersedes the negative. In this case pharisees could not criticize breaking negative command, to fulfill the positive one. NT is full of similar mistakes.
DFD says
Pong replies to .. Kepha….: “This silly story (Luke14:1-5) makes anybody, even with superficial knowledge of Judaism, very skeptical about the gospels. Whoever wrote that story obviously had no knowledge of Judaism. There are 613 commandments. Some are positive, some are negative… NT is full of similar mistakes.”
Pong, you are contradicting your own argument. As you indirectly point out, Jesus emphasized the good commandments, relegating the negatives to irrelevancy. Thereby, by his actions and his answers, defeating the arguments of the Pharisees, as well as defeating their attempts to trap him on pointless arguments, such as the large chunk of the 613 commandments you mentioned. He clearly won by his actions and answers against all the Pharisees present.
To call that a mistake in the NT begs a redefinition of the terms ‘logic’ and ‘mistake’. Perhaps also the of the term ‘full’.
He won, clearly. To make that even more comprehensible, in case it needs to, could you explain how it possible for a boxer, first round begins, and he flattens his opponent with a single blow, right in the first few seconds. No other boxer dares to take him on, they all leave. Can you explain how that would constitute a ‘silly’ victory? And how that would make people skeptical about the boxer’s ability? I’d love to know that.
BTW, the NT is *not* about Judaism, it’s about Christianity. In case that needs an explanation, believe it or not, Jesus was the first Christian. Isn’t that amazing? And he was, and is, so important that a new testament, was added, separately – practically a new Bible. Stunning, isn’t it?
Pong says
“Thereby, by his actions and his answers, defeating the arguments of the Pharisees”
My pöint,which you ignored completely, was that the pharisees could not present such an argument, as it was in contradiction to their own teachings.
“BTW, the NT is *not* about Judaism, it’s about Christianity.” There wouldn’t be Christianity without judaism. NT is about judaism in its new form. Early christians, to become ones, had to convert to judaism first
“Jesus was the first Christian. Isn’t that amazing?” Ít is, but you have to argue about it with C.S.Lewis, who didn’t think that Jesus was a christian.
DFD says
Pong says: ““Thereby, by his actions and his answers, defeating the arguments of the Pharisees”… “My pöint,which you ignored completely, …”
Hmh, maybe we were taking past one another. Does happen.
Greetings 🙂
Mark says
Islam is full of manipulation and tricks to fool people they fooled and jammed many of Egypt’s Christians to Islam during the past centuries including the use of threats such as killing after conquering through manipulation. Relax we Arabs are here to save you from Roman rule ok cool. Then once the Arabs win against 900 years of Roman rule in Egypt it’s time to threaten the native population with Islam, convert to Islam or die. A lot did in a slow lengthy process while some paid jizya to maintain there culture rather than having foreign belief and influence while of course many were hiding in Upper Egypt without paying jizya.
Shane says
Islam will never be transformed into a religion of peace because the founder of Islam was a bloodthirsty warlord, murderer, rapist, pedophile, liar, and a slave trader, and he is held to be the perfect example fot Muslims to emulate. I still support the bombing of those 2 Jap cities because the alternative was an invasion in which millions of Japs would have dies and hundreds of thousands of American military men would have died. Screw you!
Shmooviyet says
Thanks to you as well, Shane, and all who responded so perfectly to @Brian.
Western Canadian says
Amazing. a few hundred words, and not one of them the truth!! You must REALLY be a good muslim, and appallingly bad at everything else!! History, for one.
RL Robison says
Brian464….It is not difficult to understand why “85% of Americans approved of the atom bombing of Japan”. The U.S. government envisioned over a million U.S. military deaths and millions of Japanese civilian deaths should the Japanese mainland be invaded. So while the deaths of the prisoners of war and Japanese civilians (Christians or otherwise) who died in the atomic blasts are sad, it can be appreciated that those thousands died so that millions could live.
gravenimage says
Ah, yes–the “Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, ergo it must be 600 years behind” canard.
Several problems with this–firstly, Muslims themselves do not believe this. They think Islam has been around since the beginning, and is not younger than Christianity at all.
And then, it is a falsehood that all religions start out violent and take over 1000 years to civilize. Were this true, then Unitarians and Scientologists would be running wild in the streets, raping and pillaging. Of course, they are not.
This witless trope ignore the fact that the tenets of some religions are violent, and some are not. Islam is horrifically violent, both in its texts and in the model of its “Prophet”. Christianity–and most other faiths–are not.
Another problem for those like “brian464”–the Christian West of 600 years ago could, no doubt, be a violent place–but it was also undergoing the astonishing Renaissance, an unprecedented revival of art, letters, and science–where it there anything similar happening in the chaotic and intellectually arid Muslim world today?
And finally–there is no indication that Islam is reforming into something more civilized at all.
In fact, the revival of Islam going on today just reaffirms its vicious tenets of waging violent Jihad, imposing brutal Shari’ah law, and mass-murdering and enslaving Infidels.
Only someone like the appalling “brian464” would consider *this* some kind of step forward.
Vikram K Chatterjee says
Longest Fitzgerald piece in a while!
For those interested in the Islamic details, this excellent paper on taqiyya among the Moriscos (Muslims who remained in Spain after the fall of the Caliphate’s power there), consult this excellent 45 page, peer-reviewed paper by the renowned academic scholar of Islam, Devin Stewart, entitled “Dissimulation in Sunni Islam and Morisco taqiyya”. The paper amasses an unanswerable mountain of evidence for Sunni taqiyya.
https://vkchatterjee.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/dissimulation-in-sunni-islam-and-morisco-taqiyya.pdf
Angemon says
Moriscos were islamic converts (some true, others false) to Christianity. The name given to muslims who remained in Spain after the expel of the moors was “mudejar”
RodSerling says
Thanks Vikram, that’s a good reference.
mortimer says
Argument: If, for instance, the CEO of Philip Morris is not a smoker and a heavy smoker at that, then why should I use his product? It is not good enough for the CEO himself. What does he know that I don’t about his product? Same with Islamic apologists.
Karen Armstrong and Maurice Bucaille (MD) both wrote books extolling Islam, but they both refused to become Muslims. Why not if Islam is as wonderful, miraculous, scientifically proved (as they said)? Something does not add up.
We must conclude they were mercenaries writing the praises of Islam, not of conviction, but for money.
Craig Considine follows a debunked,dhimmi philosophy: the common Abraham fallacy. It is fallacious because there are three different versions of Abraham in Jewish, Christian and Islamic writings. Considine is just telling us to become dhimmis and accept the Muslim version in which Abraham calls for bigotry and honor killing.
If Considine cannot see the problem with the Muslim version of Abraham, he is a supporter of all the Islamic genocides since Mohammed.
jewdog says
That Considine guy sounds like just the sort that Obama would want to appoint to high office, maybe to head up a “Department of Blind Leadership”, so the blind can lead the blind.
Bob Ingersoll says
Karen is a fool. Only in America could such a doofus garner any “respect”. A faux scholar, apologist for every religion she can imagine. A sick puppy, in fact.
mortimer says
B.I. wrote: ” Karen (Armstrong) is a fool.”
It doesn’t add up. She seems to be an apologist. No one can read the hadiths and Sira and have respect for Mohammed, unless they are Emotionally ill (your theory) or a paid mercenary apologist. I don’t believe she’s ill. I believe Armstrong is a mercenary, writing those things for hire. No decent person can read about Mohammed and believe he was ethical. An ethical person is consistent. There is no ethical consistency in Islam.
Keys says
That’s what I think, mortimer. Money is at the root of her muddling.
She is a a traitor to her country, her heritage, her sex, and the truth.
It’s 30 pieces of silver season for so many.
DFD says
Bob Ingersoll says: “Karen is a fool. Only in America could such a doofus garner any “respect”…”
Only in America? I beg to differ, in Europe we have lots of them, we call them ‘newspapers and TV’. Though, by now they are losing respect, more and more so.
Wellington says
Always best to remember that, per pc/mc, Islam merely spreads while the West ravishingly conquers.
William says
In the response to Karen Armstrong’s depiction of the expulsion of the Jews and the Moslems, I agree that the Spanish rulers had very little choice when they expelled the Moslems. They were a real and continual threat to Spanish rule due to unstable nature of Moslem governance, particularly, when they are ruled over by non-Moslems. And the Spanish rulers recognized the presence of the Mohammedans across the sea was clearly a potential ally to their rebellious co-religionists remaining in Iberia.
Although it may seem to us the expulsion of the Jews perplexing, could it be that the Spanish rulers remembered the part Jews played in the Moorish conquest of the peninsula? During Visigothic rule, there were conflicts between the Jews and the Spanish rulers before the Moorish invasion. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity, though some continued to practice their religion in secret, while others chose to go flee. When the Moors invaded, Jews within country welcomed the invaders, and along with newly arrived Jews from North-Africa, assisted in the defeat of the Visigoths. They fought alongside the Moors and some were rewarded by the conquerors. Did the Spanish rulers believe the Jews would remain resistant to conversion to Christianity and also untrustworthy?
mgoldberg says
except of course, had the christians been able to simple let the jews pray as jews and be as jews without humiliating and or tormenting them, there would have been no ‘bias’ on the parts of jewish communities to allign themselves emotionally with whomever might give some cover or protection from the continual oppressions and onslaughts. You might enlarge your view as to how much of this went on and how deep it went.
Hermes says
More long articles by scholars please. i enjoyed this work by Mr. Fitzgerald.
RodSerling says
Great article by Hugh.
“[Considine’s] goal may be laudable – convincing Muslims to be kinder to non-Muslims,”
Considine is delusional enough that he probably thinks Muslims already are kind enough to non-Muslims. His audience is almost entirely non-Muslims. He probably believes that they are not sufficiently kind to Muslims, that they are in the main ignorant of and hateful towards Muslims. His goal as I understand it to “educate” non-Muslims, so that they will adopt more positive views of Muslims. His engaging in these apologetics about early Islam and Muhammad is one step in that direction.
Rob says
“It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. ”
Wasn’t it an Al Azhar professor who recently announced that rape of captive women was justified as it is the best way of ‘humiliating them’
Clearly didn’t listen to BHO 8 years previously.
‘Light of Learning’ indeed!
Michael Copeland says
Al Azhar also helpfully clarified that:
“eating dead Jews, Christians and non-believers
is halal (permissible by Islam) if it is a necessity”.
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/al-azhar-textbook-eating-dead-jews-christians-and-infidels-%E2%80%98halal-if-necessary
Sam says
Al Azhar are known for twisting Islamic laws and teachings, cannibilism is prohibited in Islam. However, Cannibilism is practised in Christianity as the blood and body of Christ is eaten evey Sunday to absorb his qualities as Christianity is very close to the Ancient Egyptian faith but in a different God.
Paul McGregor says
All Egyptians have cannibal tendencies both Muslims and Christians as you know there was a big famine in Egypt in 1201 everyone in Egypt was practicing canibilism to survive and to fulfil there fantasies as it is mentioned on the site below even nuns in zenana and people from monestries such as monks practicised cannibilism. http://www.heretical.com/cannibal/egypt.html
gravenimage says
Sam wrote:
Al Azhar are known for twisting Islamic laws and teachings
…………………………
Uh huh. Never mind that Al Azhar is the largest, most prestigious seat of orthodox Sunni learning. In what way are they “twisting” Islamic laws and teachings”?
More:
cannibilism is prohibited in Islam. However, Cannibilism (sic) is practised (sic) in Christianity as the blood and body of Christ is eaten evey (sic) Sunday to absorb his qualities as Christianity is very close to the Ancient Egyptian faith but in a different God.
…………………………
Is *this* the best this Muslim apologist can do? Whether one considers the sacrament symbolic or literal, clearly no one is harmed in the taking of communion.
Would that one could say the same for the endless, bloody stream of Islamic savagery.
Sam says
They say that out of fear by twisting Islamic ideologies because Coptic Christians who are native Egyptians use to be cannibals. Al Azhar is a foreign institute built by the Fatimids in Egypt. LOL learn psychology and be smart like Mohammed as he was a master in psychology, but over all cannibilism is prohibited in Islam.
Tom says
I believe Sam as some Muslims are known for lying and being corrupt. A Quran can say not to do this such and so such as drinking alcohol then you find a Muslim from al Qaeda ending up drinking alcohol then commiting jihad after against infidels or non Muslims like what happened in the Ivory Coast tourist beach attack.
ECAW says
Considine is spreading a dangerous false version of Mohammed which needs countering by us all in whatever small way we can. That is why I pored over Morrow’s book and criticised it here:
https://ecawblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/mohammeds-apocryphal-covenants/
I also challenge him on his blog since he allows (most) contrary posts. I wish more people from JW would deploy their erudition there for the benefit of his readers. You can see from the comments here that he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the difference between truth and falsehood:
https://craigconsidinetcd.com/2016/02/27/video-a-christian-view-of-prophet-muhammad/
I also challenge his and Morrow’s claims wherever else I see them. This is an interesting example – I commented on his university’s website:
http://news.rice.edu/2016/03/14/freedom-of-religion-civic-rights-were-important-components-of-a-muslim-nation/
The comment was deleted and I remonstrated with them by email. There followed several views of the relevant blogpost in America that day and I was invited to resubmit the comment. I like to think that it went round the management and someone said “This guy’s got a point, publish the comment” so perhaps free speech isn’t entirely dead in US academia.
citycat says
Whoever conceived of God probably had no idea of the evil that would follow.
The Religions differ.
So rather than one being correct and the rest being incorrect, i think it is more feasible that they are all incorrect.
Like there’s no fun in Islam there’s no logic in Religion with respect to the existance of God, although there’s lots of logic with respect to the history of the religions wars, and the building of places of worship, etc.
Well done God, you’ve made a nice job of Earth.
Dear God, do you know that many people are being brutally killed in your name?
God almighty, what am i saying? You already know everything, and in Islam you control everything.
Oh well, i guess all will be well then. But that might be an excuse to do nothing, which allows evil to further.
So i’m gonna have to take the law into my own hands, i guess. The leaders are messing tings up, perhaps you could sort them out then, sudden evolutionary leap maybe. Ok
Western Canadian says
You really are an ignorant @ss, just in case no one has reminded you of it lately. You are as pathetic as any devout muslim.
Sam says
After reading this article and comments I am convinced that Islam is a religion of peace. Yes I am a liberal.
Keys says
@Sam, you posted: “After reading this article and comments I am convinced that Islam is a religion of peace. Yes I am a liberal.”
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic, or not.
gravenimage says
Sam wrote:
After reading this article and comments I am convinced that Islam is a religion of peace. Yes I am a liberal.
…………………….
Given that you think taking communion constitutes “cannibalism”, this idiocy scarcely surprises me.
Plamen says
“Islam has brought light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment”
Gosh!
I fell down from my chair reading it.
Inner voice say otherwise:
“Our (Islamic world) only way of consoling ourselves is to reminisce and to recall (our Medieval philosophers and researchers like) Al-Razi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicena), Al-Kindi, Ibn Rushd (Averoes), Ibn Khaldun, and others. We do so in disregard of the fact that most of these people, in whom we take pride for human and cultural reasons, were not Arab, and most of them were stoned [to death] or imprisoned, and some had their books burned or were accused of heresy…
http://www.alghad.com/articles/913057-احذروا-السيارة-ترجع-إلى-الخلف!
Al-Razi speaks of Islam (and of other religions): “The prophets—these billy goats
with long beards—cannot claim any intellectual or spiritual superiority. These billy goats pretend to come with a message from God, all the while exhausting themselves in spouting their lies, and imposing on the masses blind obedience to the “words of the master.” The miracles of the prophets are impostures, based on trickery, or the stories regarding them are lies. The falseness of what all the prophets say is evident in the fact that they contradict one another—one affirms what the other denies, and yet each
claims to be the sole depository of the truth…”.
Plamen says
” Islam has always been a part of ‘America’s story’ ”
Doesn’t that have the sub-taste of ‘America’s essence/identity’?
Plamen says
“Islam is to a man is as rabies to a dog”
Winston Churchill
billybob says
This was a fascinating read – both the main article and all the comments that followed. Hugh Fitzgerald wrote a wonderful piece, and his subtle sense of humour carried me all the way through, along with the device he devised to give his piece some suspense – how he teased us with delaying full revelation of Jefferson’s “Iftar Dinner”.
So nice Fitzgerald inspired brian464 to reveal his agenda as a progressive liberal Islam apologist, and to see his thesis subsequently ripped to shreds. Though that now has been eloquently rebutted, I would add my own two cents: brian464 presents the thoroughly discredited “False Equivalence” argument to which I have my favourite response, which goes like this…
The “progressive liberals” and their contrived “False Equivalence” will exhaust you with their arguments that go on endlessly trying to bring all religions down to the level of Islam. There is something that bugs me when people say “Christianity used to be this” or “Christianity used to be that”, this or that being something awful and usually comparable to the awful things in Islam…
Please refrain from pointing out the teachings of the Old Testament. They are irrelevant to the discussion. Christ never wrote the the Old Testament, and the only valid comparison can be between the teachings of Muhammad and the teachings of Christ, both of whom espoused a vision of Man’s relationship
with God.
In the first place, if you want to compare Christianity with Islam, you need to compare the words and deeds of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, with Christianity’s prophet, Christ.
Let us objectively compare these competing visions…
Christ’s words are quoted in the New Testament, which basically overturned the Old Testament and delivered a new imperative of peace and “Love thy neighbour” and “Do unto others”, etc. Everybody knows this. The example of Christ’s life makes it abundantly clear. If you read his teachings, you will get an overwhelming sense that he was a man of humility, compassion, peace and love who spoke of a “Kingdom in Heaven”.
An objective reading of the Quran, Sunna, and Hadiths bears out that Islam is a dangerous supremacist ideology, unlike any other major religion. Islam is unique. Islam is the only religion that advocates a supremacist ideology promoted and defended by violence.
The Quran is the work of one man, named Muhammad, who started the religion of Islam. Muhammad was a despicable warlord who committed murder, rape, enslavement, and pillage. He began his militant career raiding camel caravans, went on from their to slaughter Jews by the hundreds in Medina, and from there to conquer the entire Arabian Peninsula. Do you see any parallel with Christ in that?
Furthermore, if great violence was done in the name of Christianity in the past, it didn’t derive its inspiration from Christ’s teachings. That would be a ridiculous notion. It derived its inspiration from greed and the desire for power that has been a part of human nature since the beginning of time.
On the other hand, if you read Muhammad’s message, it is entirely different. He was a violent warlord who sought to establish his kingdom on earth. The violence committed in the name of Islam is directly inspired, incited, and even commanded by the words of their prophet Muhammad. No other motivation is required other than the Quran itself.
“Christianity” never went through a reformation if you define Christianity as following the teachings of Christ. Rather, it _was_ the reformation in itself, of antiquated earlier texts. The religion preached by Catholic Church went through a reformation though, because it had become corrupt and did not follow the teachings of Christ. When Christianity is defined as following the teachings of Christ, it remains with exactly the same imperative it had from the beginning: “Love thy neighbour” and “Do unto others”, etc.
The reason I make this point is that whatever was done by people or institutions who followed their own ambitions instead of Christ was not inspired by anything Christ said or did. There was never a time in history when an individual or an institution who were faithfully implementing Christ’s teaching ever did anything even remotely wrong. That is because Christ never promoted any wrong. His message was all good.
This is very, very different from people who faithfully follow Muhammad. These people do evil things because Muhammad was an evil man and advocated that people do evil things.
Laura says
Yeshua did not come to overturn the Law, but to fulfill it. Matt 5:17
Michael Copeland says
JESUS WAS BORING
A personal view by A. Warner
Quite frankly, to an adventure-seeker like me,
Jesus was boring.
Look at the things he did NOT do.
I mean, he did not:
have a favourite sword with its own name,
make dawn raids on unsuspecting villages,
take prisoners,
demand ransom money,
take booty,
behead anyone …….
More at
https://www.facebook.com/LibertyGBParty/posts/499505160166601
asunagullo says
I am sorry to correct you, but it is not that “But still there were worries about the failure of hundreds of thousands of Moriscos to assimilate, and the fear that they might be in contact with Barbary pirates or the Ottomans (or even Protestants!) led the Spanish monarch in 1609 to order the expulsion of the last remaining Moriscos.”, actually our king Felipe III orderd the expulsion of moors, 300,000 people, for the following reaslons:
1- The Alpujarras rebelion in which it was preoved that moors didn’t accept the Monarchy or laws of the country and therefore were a risk to the country’s security.
2- They were constantly helping berber pirates, who CONSTANTLY, -it is a fact not a possiblity-, atacked the shore of Spain, made sort of mini-invasions. speedy attck-get-in- steel-withdrawl, Moors helped them, light fires to guide them and used to cheer each time the pirates came in our towns, with their wake of theft, white slave trading and violence.
3- They were helping the Turks, the great danger of the time, becoming spies for them. Turk was an expansionist power which threatened all Mediterranean and had alreadyconquered Chiprus,
4- They became in some way allies of France in an attempt to harm the Reign and there contacts between them and the French who could provide them weapons in an attempt to start a rebelion.
5- They were becoming a bigger number of people, due the the number of kids they had.
lebel says
“They were perfectly willing to live in Spain under Christian rule. ”
Nonsense, they had already started escaping to evil Muslim North Africa in the 1300s becayse of the pogroms in Catalonia, Valencia etc.
By 1830 Algiers was at least 15% Jewish/
gravenimage says
The nasty lebel wants us to forget what Maimonides had to say about Jews having to live under the Muslim heel.
Plamen says
Quoted quote by J. Q. Adams has its continuation, which is even more amazing:
“The precept of the Koran …. by fraud, or by force.”
It is, as follows:
“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Adam’s capital letters)….Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”
Pong says
“My passions include thinking, teaching, writing, speaking, traveling, and fostering peace.”
Just one sentence gives away intellectual level of a person.
Enjoyable reading, thanks. The part about Spain is exceptional. The best part of being an “Islamophob” is that sometimes we get to read something special.
Moshe Akiva says
Considering Considine’s paper I think it doesn’t really matter if the Achtiname is authentic or not. According to Koranic rules always the latter “commandment” of Mohammed is that matters if there is contradiction. So, even if for some reason Egyptian Christians were looking for Mohammed’s grace before they knew Egypt will be conquered Mohamed’s last commandments -among them the killing or subjugating of all kufars – is the law still today.
Memridotorg says
Excellent piece
Keys says
Another aspect of this type of “disinformation” to falsely glorify Islam is in science, math, inventions, etc. This has been addressed before, but is worth recalling, I think.
CNN(2010), Huffington Post (2015), and many others have extoled the marvelous contributions of Islamic Civilization to the world for which we all should be forever grateful for keeping us all out of the Dark Ages. Some, like Fitzgerald here in History, have examined the claims in science, etc. more closely. Here is just a start, if you are interested:
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/How_Islamic_Inventors_Did_Not_Change_The_World
Does Obama know the “i” in Apple’s iPhone stands for Islamic in honor of the Muslim inventor? sarc/off
Shmooviyet says
@Keys:
Your comment is a fantastic wrap to one of the best articles, and sets of comments, I’ve read here.
the “i Phone”– would that he could make the claim.
Keys says
@Shmooviyet
Spa-cee-ba, tavarish.
gravenimage says
Karen Armstrong on the Expulsion of the Moors
In 1492, the year that is often said to inaugurate the modern era, three very important events happened in Spain. In January, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the city of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe
…………………………………
No mention here that the Spaniards were *taking back a Spanish city” that Muslims had overrun. As Karen Armstrong would have it, this was–somehow–Christian aggression against Muslims, instead of what it actually was–Infidels daring to take back what Mohammedans has seized from them.
More:
Barack Obama on Jefferson’s “Iftar Dinner” and Muslims In America
“The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.” — Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the “Annual Iftar Dinner” at the White House
…………………………………
More rot, of course. No mention that the Tunisian “ambassador” was only there because the Barbary Pirates had been pirating our ships and enslaving our crews. Jefferson was accommodating enough that he was polite to this thug, and so moved the time of the dinner a few hours later until is was after sundown so that he could participate.
But this was no “annual Iftar dinner”–this would not, in fact, be held again in the White House again until the Clinton administration, 191 years later.
More pandering:
it was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities
…………………………………
What rot. The era Islam helped usher in in Europe was not the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, but the *Dark Ages*, as Europe was cut off from the Mediterranean and its traditional centers of learning, destroyed by Muslim conquest and its piracy at sea. The barbarian invasions and fall of Rome started the Dark Ages–but it was the Muslim conquests that set back any hope of recovery for centuries.
This Muslim piracy would only end, in fact, when the young United States broke the Barbary Pirates–see that first “Iftar dinner” for reference.
The only hand Islam had in the Renaissance was the flood of Greek-speaking scholars into Europe fleeing the terrible Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453. This deepened the revival of classical learning in the West–but no thanks to the Muslim conquerors, who were busy destroying Byzantine books and artifacts and butchering Christians there.
More:
And Islam played — according to Obama — a significant role in American history, too:
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”
…………………………………
All this proves is that Americans are not vengeful people–it’s not in our character, and never has been. We certainly could have been, since Muslims were selling our crews into slavery despite our paying them “tribute”. But as soon as they stopped, we were willing to treat them as civilized human beings. This says a lot of good things about the United States–not about Islam.
The only reason Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the “Holy Koran” is because he wanted to see what drove these barbarians to think they could pirate and enslave us with impunity. It was not out of any respect for the foul creed.
Here, in fact, is the true story of this Muslim “ambassador”:
In 1786, Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain. They asked this ‘diplomat’ by what right his nation attacked American ships and enslaved her citizens and why the Muslims held such hostility toward this new nation, with which neither Tripoli nor any of the other Barbary Coast nations had any previous contact. The answer was quite revealing. Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja (the ambassador) replied that Islam:
“Was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
In fact, the only real hand Islam had in our early history was forcing our hand in creating a navy so that we could protect our commercial shipping.
More:
Indeed, in Islam itself the very notion of innovation, or bida, is frowned upon, and not only, as some Muslim apologists have claimed, in theological matters. And so on.
…………………………………
This is all very true. The first public clock in the Muslim world wasn’t installed until the late 19th century, by a Westerner in Constantinople. It’s presence was roundly condemned by Muslim clerics who feared Muslims would use it to calculate prayer times.
More:
The Muslim appearance in America is very late.
…………………………………
This is quite true. After having defeated the Barbary Pirates with the belated help of Britain and France, we were thankfully little troubled by that vile creed until the late 20th century.
More:
Mellimelli proved to be the exotic cynosure of all eyes, with his American hosts not really understanding some of his reactions, as his “surprise” at the “social freedom women enjoyed in America”
…………………………………
Yes–so much for the ludicrous frequently heard bs that women enjoyed more freedom under Islam than they did in the West until just a few decades ago.
More:
Craig Considine on Religious Pluralism and Civic Rights in a “Muslim Nation”: An Analysis of Prophet Muhammad’s Covenants with Christians
…………………………………
Too bad all of these “covenants” are forgeries, done by terrified Christians at a later date hoping–usually vainly–to deflect Muslim savagery.
An excellent article from Hugh Fitzgerald enumerating the kind of vacuous whitewash of Islam we now find from “academics” and what pass as political leaders.