Just one problem: 1,400 years of history and present-day reality show that it doesn’t. My latest in Human Events:
While claiming, in a recent interview on the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that Islam forbids the production and use of nuclear weapons, Duke Professor Omid Safi offered this whopper:
“What the Koran has, and what the Islamic tradition has had over the last 1,400 years is a clear emphasis on what it calls the sanctity and the dignity of human life.”
Pull my other leg, Omid.
The Egyptian reformist Islam Behery was more honest when he said this on June 6th on Al-Hurra TV:
“The caliphates throughout the ages, starting with Yazid Ibn Mu’awiya – let’s not get into an argument about all those who preceded him – and all the way to the end of the Ottoman state, had been terrorist caliphates. Terrorist states ruled the people and perpetrated all the same things ISIS does. ISIS burns people, and this happened in the past. ISIS rapes women who are considered slave-girls, and this happened in the past. ISIS wants to establish a state that will spread all over the world, by means of swords, bombs, and fire… All of this has happened in the past. ISIS accuses all the people on Earth of heresy. This has happened in the past. What would you call the massacre of the Armenians by the Ottoman state? These were ages of a terrorist caliphate. The terrorism was organized by the establishment.”
He is quite right, as is illustrated abundantly from Islamic sources in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.
Yet, as Safi’s nonsense illustrates, there persists in the U.S. and Europe the prevailing notion that regardless of whatever the Qur’an says and Muhammad is said to have done, in practice the rule of Islam has been benign, magnanimous and tolerant.
There was in reality no period since the beginning of Islam that was characterized by large-scale peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims. There was no time when mainstream and dominant Islamic authorities taught the equality of non-Muslims with Muslims, nor the obsolescence of jihad warfare.
There was no Era of Good Feeling, no Golden Age of Tolerance, no Paradise of Proto-Multiculturalism. There has always been, with virtually no interruption, jihad, everywhere Muslims and non-Muslims have lived in close proximity with one another.
Islam “has had over the last 1,400 years is a clear emphasis on what it calls the sanctity and the dignity of human life”?
Sure, as long as you weren’t a non-Muslim (particularly a Jew), or a woman (particularly an infidel pressed into service as a sex slave), or a member of any of the other groups for which Islamic law prescribes institutionalized discrimination.
These truths, however, are forbidden to be spoken nowadays. For those who dare to enunciate unwelcome facts about Islam, Pakistan has its blasphemy laws; the United States, meanwhile, has deplatforming, vilification, and the branding of the truth-teller as a “hate group leader.”
Meanwhile, smooth liars like Omid Safi are given plum positions at universities and are feted and celebrated everywhere for doing the political and media elites the grand favor of telling them what they want to hear, no matter how fantastical.
What Safi can’t deliver, however, is an Islam that actually does have a “clear emphasis on what it calls the sanctity and the dignity of human life.” That means that the elites who shower honors on him and his deceptive and disingenuous ilk will someday discover to their dismay that all the comforting half-truths and detours he has been feeding them about Islam were just that, lies.
Read the rest here.

mortimer says
Where is the sacredness of the life of a KAFIR in Islam? Nowhere.
Omid Safi knows full well that Muslims are required to LOVE DEATH.
The kafir’s life, ‘blood’, honor and property are MUBAA … ‘licit’ to the Muslim for plundering. They are not ‘sacred’ to a Muslim. They are “MUBAA” (licit) whenever a Muslim is displeased with anything a kafir does or says.
Mohammed said that only the lives of practicing Muslims are sacred to him … dirty kafirs may be robbed, slandered, enslaved, murdered and raped:
Dr Mark A. Gabriel is a former teacher of Islamic history at Al Azhar University. He asked his academic mentor: “Why is our (Islamic) history such a river of blood?” He was told by his mentor not question it … to be silent.
MARK GABRIEL said : Mohammed “… led more than 27 or 28 battles by himself. This man wiped the entire community of Jewish people out of Arabia after they rejected Islam. I saw the history of Islam is nothing but a RIVER OF BLOOD as a result of the deeds and the teachings of the founder of this religion.”
Sahih Bukhari (84:59) – “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their BLOOD AND PROPERTY will be SACRED to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah.’”
Conclusion: Mohammed offers safety from plunder and murder only to practicing Muslims.
ASLIM, TASLAM !
-“Submit to Islam, and then you will be safe, for if you don’t, you should know that I have come to you with an army of men that LOVE DEATH, as you love life.” —Caliph Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s Successor
mortimer says
Students and audiences should challenge Omid Safi on his OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS.
Where is the RESPECT for the dignity of the KAFIR in the following declarations by ISLAM’S LEADING SCHOLARS ??? Does Omid Safi DISAGREE or AGREE with the following :
-Imam Abdul-Latif ibn Abdur-Rahman Rahimullah said, “It is not possible for someone to realize Tawheed (Islamic faith) and act upon it, and yet not be HOSTILE against the mushrikeen (i.e. wrong worshippers). So anyone who isn’t HOSTILE against the mushrikeen, then it cannot be said that he acts upon Tawheed nor that he realizes it.” [ad-Durar as-Saniyyah 8/167]
-“The doctrine of al Walaa wal Baraa is the REAL IMAGE for the actual practice of this faith.” – source “Al Walaa wal Baraa According to the Aqeedah of the Salaf”, by Sheikh Muhammad Saeed al Qatani, authoritative Saudi Sharia lawyer and imam at the Abu Bakr and Al Furqan Mosques in Mecca. – https://islamfuture.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/al-wala-wal-bara-according-to-the-aqeedah-of-the-salaf-parts-123/
-Shaykh Ahmad ibn ‘Atiq said:
“There isn’t in the Book of Allah the Exalted – after the issue concerning the obligation of tawheed and the forbiddance of its opposite (kufr=wrong belief)- any issue which has as so many proofs, nor so clearly explained, than the issue of al-walaa’ and al-baraa’.” (W-B is ‘Islamic apartheid’)
– Dr. Muhammad Saeed Al-Qahtaani said: “Thus, it is clear that Al-Wala’ Wal-Bara calls on Muslims to “love” their fellow Muslims and hate the non-Muslim (or Kafir).”
– from Sufi scholar Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624): “The honour of Islam lies in INSULTING kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims… The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to HUMILIATE them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain TERRIFIED and TREMBLING. It is intended to hold them under CONTEMPT and to uphold the honour and might of Islam.”
– from ibn Taymiyya, “Book of Emaan”: “… true believers show ANIMOSITY and HATRED towards disbelievers and NEVER support them.”
AGREE? or DISAGREE?
Peter says
The sacredness of life, as muslims see it, is confined to muslims since they consider any who are NOT muslim, less than human and not deserving of that same sacredness.
mortimer says
Kafirs are wrong-worshippers, who, because they worship incorrectly, are slandered with many demeaning epithets in the Koran, such as ‘the worst of beasts’.
WORST? Is that lower than snakes and cockroaches? A pest to be crushed underfoot and exterminated? ‘Dignity’, you say, Safi? What dignity is there in being a cockroach?
Not only is the kafir not given ‘HONOR’ by Islam, Mohammedans are commanded never to even praise kafirs. Omid Safi is blatantly lying.
The Koran says, “Lend not support IN ANY WAY to those who reject Allah’s Message.” This is bigotry.
Thus no empathy or real friendship may be given to kafirs (those who reject Islam), nor may Muslims even socialize with them.
To underline this compulsory apartheid by Divine Command, the Koran in 14 places denies Muslims the right to befriend non-Muslims. Dignity? The opposite!
– from Sufi scholar Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624): “The honour of Islam lies in INSULTING kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims… The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to HUMILIATE them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain TERRIFIED and TREMBLING. It is intended to hold them under CONTEMPT and to uphold the honour and might of Islam.”
gravenimage says
Spot on, Peter and Mortimer.
nicholas tesdorf says
“A lie repeated often enough becomes accepted truth.” This statement has been attributed to Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler but it could have been said first by Muhammed.
Antiislamicman says
Islam has now started comedy
mortimer says
lebel, kindly quibble about OPERATION SEARCHLIGHT which your coreligionists perpetrated in East Pakistan. You see, lebel, GENOCIDE is normative Islam and recent history too.
Hindus suffered an attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971, when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because) of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims.
Nandan Vyas (“Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan”, Young India, January 1995) has argued convincingly that the number of Hindu victims in the 1971 genocide was approximately 2.4 million, or about 80%. In comparing the population figures for 1961 and 1971, and taking the observed natural growth rhythm into account, Vyas finds that the Hindu population has remained stable at 9.5 million when it should have increased to nearly 13 million (13.23 million if the same growth rhythm were assumed for Hindus as for Muslims). Of the missing 3.5 million people (if not more), 1.1 million can be explained: it is the number of Hindu refugees settled in India prior to the genocide. The Hindu refugees at the time of the genocide, about 8 million, all went back after the ordeal, partly because the Indian government forced them to it, partly because the new state of Bangladesh was conceived as a secular state; the trickle of Hindu refugees into India only resumed in 1974, when the first steps towards islamization of the polity were taken. This leaves 2.4 million missing Hindus to be explained. Taking into account a number of Hindu children born to refugees in India rather than in Bangladesh, and a possible settlement of 1971 refugees in India, it is fair to estimate the disappeared Hindus at about 2 million.
jarmanray says
Mortimer, One could say that the un-holy Koran teaches that there will true peace when only one man is standing. Not only do the Sunnis and the Shias hate each other but when one village has more than the other fighting breaks out. Libya in some ways highlights that there can be no peace in a country consisting of Islamic tribes who all wish to be the king of the hill and believe that they are the most like Muhammad. It took a monsters like Hitler and Stalin to bring Europe to a realization that respect for each other is a requisite for peace and even that is being strained by the invasion of the sub-human cult from the Middle East and Africa.
mortimer says
Yes, Muslims play the game of ‘I’M MORE MUSLIM THAN THOU’.
The last man standing proves he is ‘MORE-MUSLIM-THAN-THOU’.
Westman says
That makes Islam the official religion of war.
mortimer says
1971 BANGLADESH GENOCIDE … an example of Islamic Emphasis on the Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life’ ??? No ! RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED GENOCIDE from Islam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
The genocide in Bangladesh began on 26 March 1971 with the launch of Operation Searchlight,[5] as West Pakistan began a military crackdown on the Eastern wing of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination rights.[6] During the nine-month-long Bangladesh War for Liberation, members of the Pakistani military and supporting Islamist militias from Jamaat-e-Islami[7] killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000[4][8] people and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women,[8][9] according to Bangladeshi and Indian sources,[10] in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape.[11][12] In December 2011, a BBC News report cited unnamed “independent researchers” as claiming that between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed. The actions against women were supported by Jamaat-e-Islami religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (Bengali for “public property”).[13] As a result of the conflict, a further eight to ten million people, mostly Hindus,[14] fled the country at the time to seek refuge in neighbouring India. It is estimated that up to 30 million civilians became internally displaced.[8] During the war, there was also ethnic violence between Bengalis and Urdu-speaking Biharis.[15] Biharis faced reprisals from Bengali mobs and militias[16] and from 1,000[17] to 150,000[18][19] were killed. Other sources claim it was up to 500,000.[20][21]
There is an academic consensus that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted a genocide,[22] and warrant judicial accountability.
(… tell us it wasn’t a genocide, lebel)
Students should ask Omid Safi if the BANGLADESH GENOCIDE 1971 is an example of the emphasis on the sanctity of Hindu lives.
Jaladhi says
Ha, ha,.. this is the case of “who you gonna believe – me or your lying eyes – I am telling you Islam is peaceful” – my foot!!
This is in the face of Muslims committing genocide of Hindus, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, .etc the world over. Historians say more than 300 million non-Muslims, more than 80 million in India alone, have been killed by Muslims in last 1400 years and the genocide continues – just the places of genocide keep on shifting from country to country!!
karmi says
Seems like it’s always what they DON’T tell you about Islam that’s fatal.
CRUSADER says
Duck U should have former Al-Azhar imam-trained Egyptian
convert to Christian pastor Mark Gabriel speak at campus…
and then see how Islam become revealed as the deception
and destroying conception that it really is!!!!
DiploNerd says
Dar al-Ifta, the official, Egyptian-government-supported “House of Fatwas” issued a fatwa a couple of years ago stating that Muslim majority countries were REQUIRED to obtain nuclear weapons, if they were able to do so, pointing to the Qur’an Chapter 8 verse 60 which instructs Muslims to “prepare the steeds of war.”
mortimer says
DIGNITY OF KAFIRS ? Or ‘treat them like dogs’?
– Sheikh Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624), Islamic scholar, Hanafi jurist, and member of the Naqshbandī Sufi order wrote:
“Shariat can be fostered through the sword. “Kufr and Islam are opposed to each other. The progress of one is possible only at the expense of the other and co-existence between these two contradictory faiths is unthinkable.”
“The honor of Islam lies in INSULTING kufr and kafirs. One who respects kafirs, dishonors the Muslims. To respect them does not merely mean honouring them and assigning them a seat of honor in any assembly, but it also implies keeping company with them or showing considerations to them. They should be KEPT AT ARM’S LENGTH LIKE DOGS.
… If some worldly business cannot be performed without them, in that case only a minimum of contact should be established with them but without taking them into confidence. The highest Islamic sentiment describes that it is better to FOREGO that worldly business and that NO RELATIONSHIP should be established with the KAFIRS.”
Angemon says
That didn’t stop Pakistan, nor is it stoping Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of wahabism, the purest, most unadulterated, form of islam…
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer in Human Events: Duke Prof: Islam Has ‘Clear Emphasis on the Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life’
……………..
Only if Omid Safi means that only Muslims are human beings–as Islam says–and that they derived “dignity” from persecuting and murdering unbelievers.
elee says
Right, they’re keen on the sanctity of muslim male life. As for the rest of us they can only kill us once. Bring it on.
CRUSADER says
Well, at least Islam allows for “protection” for Dhimmies…
— not each cockroaches get that much consideration!
Wouldn’t want to be a kafir that couldn’t be deemed a Dhimmi!
(What am I saying? To hell with Islam!!!!)
Ade Fegan says
Islam Has ‘Clear Emphasis on the Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life”
(as long as they are muslims)
Linde Barrera says
I called the office number of Dr. Omid Safi and got off the phone with him at 11:13 am EST. He answered the phone and asked me how I got his office number. I told him I found his number on the Duke University website. I told him I read his quote “The Koran has a clear emphasis on what it calls the sanctity and dignity of human life” featured on Jihad Watch. I also said “While I have nothing against any Muslim because all people are children of God, I suggest you read ‘The History of Jihad from Muhammad to Isis’ by Robert Spencer.” He thanked me, wished me a good day, and said good-bye.
He is a prime example of a learned and intelligent person who protects Islam and does not want to take any other viewpoint about Islam except the one that advances the agenda “Islam is a religion of peace.” 😈
I will pray for Dr. Omid Safi that the Holy Spirit touches him and makes him see the Triune God.
gravenimage says
He sounds angry that you dared to contact him, Linde.