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

UPenn Professor Rejects Islamic Supremacism

Mar 31, 2017 8:11 pm By Andrew Harrod

“We don’t only want to be Muslim and eradicate anything before or after,” stated the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Arabic Language and Culture Program Director Amel Mili about the historical Muslim conquest of her native Tunisia. She and a fellow Tunisian offered a refreshing rebuttal of the hackneyed Islamic supremacist dogmas dominating Middle East studies at a conference in Washington, DC earlier this month.

Mili addressed a small breakout panel at the Policy Studies Organization’s Middle East Dialogue 2017. Her lecture examining a 1982 Tunisian court decision denying a woman her inheritance on the basis of sharia law shed light on the difficulty of reinterpreting Islamic scriptures for the modern world.

During audience questioning, Mili focused on Tunisia’s uniquely cosmopolitan culture within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. “In Tunisia, so far, we have this global approach of history. I am happy, even if it was through colonization, that I had the chance, for example, to master the French language and the French culture.” In post-panel communications, she added that in Tunisian history, “French language bears the ideas of equality, democracy, human rights, etc.”

Mili confirmed the sentiments of a Tunisian woman in the audience who described how in Tunisia’s cultural crossroads, “everyone met in that small country, and this is what made the rich aspect” of its “Mediterranean identity.” The “Arab or Islamic invasion” of North Africa beginning in the seventh century is merely one element of Tunisian heritage. Mili reinforced this view by noting that Islam “arrived around the seventh century, but before that we have a history, after that we have a history, and we want all this rich background.”

Tunisia’s historically authentic cultural blend contradicts its Islamic supremacist groups’ fixation on “just this time when the Arabs, they came as invaders like anyone else,” such as French imperialists, Mili pointed out. Tunisia had a “very ancient history before that and after” Islam, but the “big problem is that they don’t want to acknowledge the French history in Tunisia or what was before.” “Islam, yes, it is part of the culture, but it is an element of the culture.” She identified a wider cultural problem in MENA: “To have a different identity than the identity I have” often frightens people.

The aforementioned Tunisian audience member maintained that Tunisia benefited from the deterrent effect of the 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood. “Our Islamists were very smart in evaluating the situation in Egypt specifically. What happened to Morsi, they said, oh gosh, next time is going to be us,” and correspondingly moderated their behavior. This certainly pleased secularists like Mili, who declared that “sharia law is the work of humans; it has nothing divine, even for a believer,” particularly considering that slavery, “in Islam, like any other old doctrine, it was part of it.”  “We need this separation between religion” and state.

Mili and her fellow Tunisian offered a refreshingly non-ideological, reasoned view of their homeland. Tunisians and others can take pride in the region’s complex history and culture, a pride that includes rejecting Islamic supremacism. Other scholars should follow their lead.

Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter at @AEHarrod. This article was sponsored by  Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

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Filed Under: academia Tagged With: Amel Mili


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Comments

  1. The Confessions says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 8:20 pm

    What a breath of fresh air! Thank you for this article Andrew Harrod.

    =================================
    https://theconfessionsweb.wordpress.com

    • BINDON blood says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 5:09 am

      Sounds good. Only another approximately 500,000,000 pious Muslims to convince that they are wrong,and about 1000,000,000 Muslims who are happy to follow the 500,000,000. Shouldn’t take too long. Better get started.

      • Michael says

        Apr 2, 2017 at 2:40 am

        lolol …. BINDON thanks for a late night laugh … you’re absolutely right. As the saying goes, the journey of 1.5 billion Muslims, starts with a single Muslim … something like that, anyway!

    • David Taylor Johannesen says

      Apr 3, 2017 at 6:06 pm

      Sing the Penn song: “Drink a hi ball at nightfall, be good fellows while you may, for tomorrow may bring sorrow: tonight let’s all be gay…”

  2. mortimer says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 8:39 pm

    Amel Mili is not a naïve Pollyanna, but someone who HAS DONE THE READING, DONE THE HOMEWORK, WRITTEN THE ESSAYS, GOT THE GRADES and PASSED THE TESTS.

    She understands Islam from the INSIDE and from the OUTSIDE. She is very dangerous for the Islamic apologists because they cannot refute her. They will try, but it will be a series of AD HOMINEMS, rather than evidence-based reasoning.

    Amel Mili is the tip of the iceberg that is hitting the mullahs all over the world. That iceberg is REALITY. The reality that Islam is amoral, un-historical and self-referentially incoherent. Islam’s PRISON WALLS are crumbling and the prisoners of Islam are escaping through these breaches as Islam makes its last stand trying to hold off the inevitable collapse.

    Every Muslim in the world knows at least a dozen apostates… and they go silent when you point that out. Amel Mili is an apostate with the strongest arguments imaginable against Islam: verifiable facts.

    • ElderlyZionist says

      Mar 31, 2017 at 10:21 pm

      I hope you’re right. It feels good to occasionally have hope.

    • gravenimage says

      Mar 31, 2017 at 11:29 pm

      Unfortunately, Mili is the one who cannot reconcile her civilized views with Islam itself.

      I wish she could.

      • BINDON blood says

        Apr 1, 2017 at 5:14 am

        No one can. Has she left the “faith”? “Moderate” Muhammedans still follow a murdering,robbing,torturing,sex mad peadophile and a god who hates infidels,wants them killed and suffer diabolic tortures in the after life. Sounds like a complete re-write is needed,or just leave it as a hopeless case.That’s facing up to reality.

        • Jeanette says

          Apr 1, 2017 at 12:12 pm

          And there’s always the possibility that she is practicing taqiyya, aimed at keeping the infidels quiet until they can be overcome by Islam.

        • pandainc says

          Apr 1, 2017 at 12:47 pm

          “We don’t only want to be Muslim and eradicate anything before or after,” Doesn’t this indicate that they have additional wishes as well as being muslim and getting rid of all else?

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 4, 2017 at 5:46 pm

          All sadly true, BINDON blood.

  3. Emilie Green says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    Mili reinforced this view by noting that Islam “arrived around the seventh century, but before that we have a history, after that we have a history, and we want all this rich background.”

    *****

    I get the “before part” that Tunisians had a history before the Muslims. But she talks about the “after part.” That puzzles me. Aren’t the Mussies still running the show in Tunisia?

    • Kate says

      Mar 31, 2017 at 10:10 pm

      Yes, they are. However, Mili referred specifically to the fact that the islamic supremacists don’t want to acknowledge the French history in Tunisia. In their eyes nothing but islam should be a recognised part of any muslim country, both before and after their bloody arrival. Unfortunately the current leftist/PC attitude to colonialism supports this view and they will never say that anything good ever came from colonialism. Mili recognises and acknowledges that Tunisia’s French colonial history made positive contributions to Tunisians’ culture.

      • Isabellathecrusader says

        Apr 1, 2017 at 2:15 pm

        Hmmmm…must be a very insecure “religion” that can’t bear to have anyone else’s history taught side by side with it. I wonder what they don’t want people to know?

    • ElderlyZionist says

      Mar 31, 2017 at 10:24 pm

      It seems that by the “after part” she means the French colonial era, which the Islamists would like to blot out. She says she appreciates the Enlightened Western culture that the French brought to Tunisia, and doesn’t want to lose it. I hope her view wins out in Tunisia and elsewhere.

    • BINDON blood says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 5:44 am

      Yes.What is so “rich” about jihad,slavery,oppression,stoning,mutilation and dhimmitude? What are these “educated” people talking about? If she thinks that Islam is a lot of bo—cks , have the integrity to say so. Don’t try to defend the indefencible.

      • Michael says

        Apr 2, 2017 at 2:44 am

        Exactly. As Jeanette said, she may likely just be practicing their beloved and oh so effective taqiyya … Let me hear of profound shifts from imams and those who preach in mosques. Let me hear a denouncement of Sharia law, of rape, of beatings of women because they are women, of the commands in the Koran to kill all infidels.

        We shall never that … and until we do, and see such change, we should not believe a word of any of it. They lie, through and through and through. To them, of course, it is not lying. It is warfare, conducted with any and all means.

        • carol says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 9:18 pm

          Michael…so much to read and so little time! I was surprised to run across the box subject titles on this page (scroll down about 1/4 way). It seems a lot of efforts to fight for women’s rights are being undertaken in various Muslim-dominant countries and feminists especially should find the links of much interest:
          https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2015/1/14/still-a-long-way-to-equality-for-tunisian-women

        • Michael says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 9:25 pm

          Carol, thank you for the links! I shall read them tonight! Anything that gives hope, I welcome, and need to read!

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 9:23 pm

          Carol, Muslim feminists are never going to get very far, because sadly they have no answer to the assertion that equal rights for women is un-Islamic and goes against the model of the “Prophet”.

  4. Terry says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 9:19 pm

    I guess that Reza will not hire her for his CNN series, and Georgetown U. will not hire her either.
    Will the l U of Penn keep her- I mean, she broke the orthodoxy of academia- Islam is good

  5. abad says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 9:57 pm

    Well Tunisia did have a rich history before the Muslims took over and destroyed it: Carthage, an economic boom under Roman rule, art, religion (pagan)….then the lunatic asylum Muslim invaders destroyed it all.

    • Robert Crawford says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 1:28 am

      A Gothic Kingdom, Byzantine rule…

    • lebel says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 1:30 pm

      Carthage was utterly destroyed by the Romans.

      Selective history, the jihadwatch way.

      • Suburbanbanshee says

        Apr 1, 2017 at 11:34 pm

        Actually, Carthage was destroyed, but the good parts of Punic culture survived. St. Augustine’s mother Monnica was from a Punic-speaking family, which was one of the reasons the citizens of Hippo in North Africa grabbed him to be their bishop. The rebuilt Carthage was a great city in the middle of the North African breadbasket. A lot of great early saints, martyrs, and theologians were Punic — heck, even St. Isidore of Seville and his family were of Punic heritage.

        Tunisia was also the stomping grounds of the Cahena, the Bedouin lady who fought against the Muslim invasion.

        Yes, North Africa had plenty of history.

        • Kepha says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 7:51 am

          Actually, I was under the impression that Monica the mother of Augustine was of Amazigh heritage (the indigenous, pre-Punic folks).

      • Historian says

        Apr 1, 2017 at 11:41 pm

        Pagan Romans bragged that they “destroyed” Phoenician Carthage was when it was conquered by them in the last Punic war c. 146 BC. This is exaggerated rhetoric. But in any case, after that Roman conquest, Carthage was revived as a large Roman city (predominantly Latin-speaking until the Vandal conquest, then both Greek and Latin after Justininian’s reconquest from the Vandals).

        Just before the Islamic conquest Carthage was both intellectually and economically vital to the (Christian) Eastern Roman Empire. In fact its conquest at the very end of the seventh century caused major disruption to the Byzantine economy because Constantinople depended on grain exports from Carthage.

        You don’t know what you are talking about.

      • gravenimage says

        Apr 2, 2017 at 2:53 am

        Of course, Muslim apologist lebel has no problem with this horrors of Muslim conquest.

        • lebel says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 11:36 am

          Actually I do but I’m not sure its possible to talk with you without hyperbole since you seem to have made up your mind on Islam and Muslims a long time ago. Happy to give it a try without being called a pedo worshipper etc

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 2, 2017 at 9:44 pm

          lebel, I can never recall your offer anything here except for apologia for Islam–although, of course, it is possible that I have missed some of your posts.

          Yes, I have realized for some time that Islam is violent and oppressive and that it presents a threat to any Infidels, including the free West. If you have evidence to show that I am incorrect, I will examine the evidence with the greatest care.

          In fact, I would *love* to be wrong about Islam presenting a threat. If it is benign and all 30,000+ Jihad terror attacks are hoaxes, I would love to know.

          And when have I ever called anyone here a “pedo worshipper”?

          But is it possible to refute that the Prophet Muhammed is described–not by “Islamophobes”, but by his own devout followers in the Hadith–as having married and raped an underaged girl, and having molested several young boys, as well?

          Is it not also the case that millions of young Muslim girls all over the world are suffering because of the model that the “perfect man” of Islam is understood to present?

          Is that something you are claiming is untrue? I would love to see your arguments.

          I certainly eagerly await your response.

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 4, 2017 at 5:51 pm

          lebel, still waiting for your reply.

      • Don Foss says

        Apr 2, 2017 at 8:49 am

        And the United States took a nice handful of the American Southwest from Mexico, but it wasn’t because of religious fanaticism or religious supremicism, fighting “the enemies” of Jesus. Of the 56 OIC counties, only two (Malaysia and Indonesia) were not conquered by jihadis in the name of Allah.

        • Keith says

          Apr 4, 2017 at 3:38 am

          I think you are wrong on that, they were conquered by Jihadis but it was by civilizantional jihad and not violent jihad. If there were good quality historical records we would most likely find that the civilizational jihad was accompanied by violent outbursts as we are now seeing in the west today (of course using the weapons of the time).
          Either way it amounts to the same thing Islam is now the dominant part of society and slowly but surely everything else will die out.

  6. gravenimage says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:21 pm

    UPenn Professor Rejects Islamic Supremacism
    …………………..

    Kudos to Amel Mili for rejecting Islamic supremacism–grimly rare at any of our universities–and kudos to Andrew Harrod for this story.

    Unfortunately, Amel Mili has to reject most of Islam itself to take this stance–which means there are apt to be few like her.

  7. Caleb McInerary says

    Mar 31, 2017 at 11:49 pm

    If the Muslim Conquest of Tunisia was not meant to stamp out everything non-Islamic it certainly did end up doing a good job of that. Went from 0% Muslim to 98% Muslim. Similar stories for all of North Africa, Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan. Pakistan was 20% non-Muslim at independence. Now 99% Muslim.

    • Westman says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 10:37 am

      It’s amazing what the “no compulsion in Islam”, of, “join up, pay up, or die”, currently expressed as, “limiting the opportunities of the unbelievers”, can accomplish. Let’s call it BDS on unbelievers.

  8. Manny says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 3:32 am

    She has made a good start in seeing how Islam is built on power. Next her heart needs to come to Jesus Christ and see how Christianity is built on love. May all Muslims reject Isalm.

  9. BC says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 6:00 am

    I can never understand why all those smart lib lefties who hate colonialism so much but are unable to comprehend the Arab Empire which happened long before any European empires were begun,
    about 7 centuries in fact. Of course that was a non white Empire so it would be racist for them to take notice of it I assume

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 2, 2017 at 2:57 am

      They assume anyone who is non-Western is a victim of colonialism…

  10. SmackDaddy says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 8:48 am

    If you out lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig! Sharia law was is the work of humans, and so was everything Muhammad preached. Some would argue he was not devine since when he had revelations he foamed at the mouth. Today, as was in the past, people would think that was demonic possession. Not something I would be proud of as part of my culture.

    • patriotliz says

      Apr 1, 2017 at 1:33 pm

      What perplexes me are those seemingly intelligent Westernized Muslim “reformers” like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Why don’t they just reject Islam in toto now that they are free and living in a non-Muslim totalitarian society?

      • gravenimage says

        Apr 2, 2017 at 2:58 am

        Jasser does a lot of whitewash of Islam.

  11. Florida Jim says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 10:44 am

    Can anyone believing in the Caliphate, Sharia, Jihad, Taqiyya live anywhere but an Islamic society, I think not. Beheadings always soon follow.

  12. patriotliz says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 1:28 pm

    “Tunisians and others can take pride in the region’s complex history and culture, a pride that includes rejecting Islamic supremacism.” Well, that sounds really civilized. But what’s w/ all these Tunisians seeking ‘asylum’ in Europe and why is Tunisia refusing to take them back?
    https://youtu.be/Ey3NMajje30
    https://youtu.be/0WiIOIxZGvw
    https://youtu.be/cvR8LPvi6tg

  13. Rob says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 2:42 pm

    Who was it said: ‘The problem with Islam is Muslims’.
    This Muslim woman can accept historical truths and plurality – why can’t others, especially the ones let into Western countries?
    The Mili doctrine should be outlined to every would-be Muslim migrant as the basic entry conditions to the West.

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 2, 2017 at 3:01 am

      Because it is un-Islamic.

  14. NabiRasch says

    Apr 1, 2017 at 8:43 pm

    Awful that just because imbecile politcians and letards welcomed them we’re now entrapped in all their shi’ite.

  15. Thomas says

    Apr 2, 2017 at 4:24 pm

    I have worked with several Muslims who educated me to the fact that they belonged to sects deemed heretical by the sunni/ shia mainstream. As they have an interpretation much milder than than the mainstream sects, it is conceivable that they would be a starting point for a reformed western islam. Imagine if Pres.Trump stopped the importation of salafist/ wahhabism imans and the saudi money supporting jihad and founded an American Reformed Islam madrasa teaching a form of islam compatible with civilisation.Trump could end up as an islamic saint, civilise islam and piss off the dems in one move!

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 2, 2017 at 10:00 pm

      Alas, Thomas, any sect that is not orthodox Islam is deemed “heretical”, and its adherents oppressed or worse.

      Additionally, with the exception of the Ahmadis, even more “moderate” Muslim sects, such as the often touted Sufis, accept violent Jihad.

      And even the Ahmadis accept the horrors of Shari’ah law–they just want to see it imposed by vote, and not by terrorism.

      I’m afraid this is not all that civilized, either.

    • carol says

      Apr 2, 2017 at 10:52 pm

      Thomas…compromise may sadly be a more realistic outcome but objective outsiders/the real victims are inclined to firmly believe that all Mohammad’s creed really rates is the trash heap of history. Why drag it out? It will only reemerge like Freddy Kreuger.
      Al-Shawkaani said:
      The words “do not leave any raised grave without leveling it” means that the Sunnah is that a grave should not be made very high, and there should be no differentiation between those who were virtuous and those who were not virtuous.
      AND LET THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU MOHAMMAD.

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