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

Islamic Reform: Craig Considine’s Bridge to Nowhere

Oct 5, 2019 1:00 pm By A. J. Caschetta

In the years since 9/11, the Islamic reform movement has advanced sufficiently that two distinct camps have emerged: reformers and bridge-builders. Genuine reformers seek to transform how Islam is practiced, while bridge-builders seek to improve how Islam is perceived, mainly by non-Muslims.Reformers tend to be Muslims who fault their co-religionists from previous centuries for writing counterfeit stories about the prophet of Islam, and those alive today for believing those stories. Reformers denounce Koranic literalism.

Bridge-builders tend to be non-Muslims or converts who fault those of other faiths for their insufficient appreciation of Islam. They denounce reformers, even Muslim reformers, as “Islamophobes”—a catch-all smear designed to intimidate and silence anyone who criticizes anything about Islam.

One genuine Islamic reformer is Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, who argues that all the hadith are fraudulent and that Islam begins and ends with the Koran. Another, the Australian Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, blames Islamic militancy on “historic texts, generally written by people who never saw Mohammad, and were born centuries after him.” In 2007, the now defunct group called Muslims Against Sharia argued in a manifesto for changes to “Islamic texts, including the Koran and Hadith . . . which call for Islamic domination and incite violence against non-Muslims.” All three, albeit in different ways, refute the authenticity of certain texts, or parts of them, that call for Muslims to dominate non-Muslims.

Bridge-builders come at the issue from the opposite direction by encouraging universal appreciation for Islam and insisting that they alone are capable of deciphering the true meaning of Islamic texts. Some even promote forged texts that depict a very different prophet from the Muhammad of the Koran, Hadith, and Sirat. Not surprisingly, they are often academics.

Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, run by John Esposito, a project of the Saudi-funded Alwaleed Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, is designed to engineer mistrust for reformers and smear critics. It even maintains a “Factsheet” on Islamic Reformer Tarek Fatah.

A relative newcomer to the bridge-builders’ club is the social media-obsessed Craig Considine. According to his website, “Dr. Craig Considine is a scholar, professor, global speaker, media contributor, and public intellectual based at the Department of Sociology at Rice University.” He is also one of the most enthusiastic apologists for Islam in all of academia.

Not since Karen Armstrong pronounced that “Muhammad was not a man of violence” has there been a more dubious presentation of Islamic tradition. “Unperturbed by this historical record,” as Ephraim Karsh put it, Armstrong depicted Muhammad’s life as “a tireless campaign against greed, injustice, and arrogance,” and exaggerated his alleged feminist tendencies to an absurd extent. “The emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet’s heart,” she insisted. His embrace of polygamy was merely a way “to ensure that unprotected women would be decently married.” And in spite of critics’ objections or the historical subordination of women in much of the Muslim world, the Koran, she enthused, “was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century.”Considine, who makes much of his Catholicism, clearly admires Armstrong, herself a former nun. In an apparent attempt to out-Armstrong Armstrong, he writes, “I consider Muhammad to be a quintessential anti-racist figure because he promoted peace and equality. Without a doubt, he advanced human rights in an area of the world that had no previous experience with this practice.”

Following Armstrong’s lead in attempting to contextualize Muhammad’s behavior within seventh-century Arab standards, Considine presents him as far more progressive than his contemporaries and even compares him to George Washington. Both sidestep all aspects of Islamic tradition that don’t fit their narratives, making them guilty of the same “cherry-picking” they complain about in the work of others. Both rely heavily on obscure passages from questionable sources written centuries after Muhammad’s death. And both ignore any evidence of violence advocated in the Koran, especially the 9th Sura.

Considine’s attempts to demonstrate Muhammad’s compassion are predicated on a series of covenants the prophet of Islam allegedly made with a variety of Christian groups towards the end of his life. Some of these texts were “discovered” and promoted by John Andrew Morrow in a book titled The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World (2013). No “covenant” texts exist in original manuscripts, only copies of copies of “originals” that no one has seen. Logical and chronological problems abound. For instance, one “covenant,” the Achtiname, concerns Egypt, which wasn’t conquered by Muslims until 639—seven years after Muhammad died. In the foreword to Morrow’s book, Charles Upton (who calls himself a “poet and metaphysician”) writes that after the Koran and Hadith, the Covenants may be considered “a third foundational source for Islam, one that is entirely consonant with the first two . . . composed by the Prophet himself during his lifetime.”

Yet Mark Durie (a theologian and acknowledged expert on the subject) expresses the dominant scholarly opinion: “I don’t know any serious scholar who believes [these texts] are genuine.” Many regard them as medieval forgeries, part of a “survival strategy of a victim to praise the abuser and become an apologist for his better side,” says Durie.Unable to defend the texts’ credibility, Considine’s contributions to this scholarly debate amount to little more than jargon-laden ad hominem attacks. For instance, he charges those who cast doubt on the authenticity of these documents with, “us[ing] ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’ to widen the gap between Muslims and Christians and to fulfill their own self-fulfilling prophecies about Prophet Muhammad.” This is history twisted to the designs of the historian.

For all his claims to understand Islam, Considine mostly avoids its most important document, the Koran, which is quite hostile towards his Catholicism but in which he sees only “compassion and mercy.” It denies Jesus was son of God (“It befitteth not Allah that He should take unto Himself a son,” 19:35). It denies his crucifixion (“they slew him not for certain,” 4:157). The Koran portrays Jesus as a true prophet whose message was corrupted by his followers, i.e., the Christians, about whom the god of the Koran says “We have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection” (5:14).

In order to accomplish his far-fetched portrayal of Islam’s prophet as an “anti-racist,” Considine ignores Muhammad’s wars against Jews, Christians, and tribal pagans and instead focuses on “Bilal ibn Rabah, a black slave who rose to a leading position within the Muslim community of 7th century Arabia.”

According to the Bukhari hadith, Bilal was owned by Umayyah ibn Khalaf, an enemy of Muhammad. After Bilal converted (or reverted, as the Koran would have it) to Islam and was tortured by his owner, Muhammad sent his friend Abu Bakr to buy the slave. After the hijra (the move from Mecca to Medina in 622) he joined the prophet’s inner circle and was asked to sing the call to prayer. To Considine, this is evidence of Muhammad’s anti-racism.

In 2015 the Arab News published an article by Abu Tariq Hijazi offering Bilal’s story as evidence of “Islam’s respect for human equality, anti-racism and social equity.” Considine again seems bent on one-upsmanship: “the Prophet preceded the words of Martin Luther King Jr., whose ‘I Have a Dream’ speech called for African Americans to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Naturally, Considine accepts the flawed convivencia narrative of a tolerant Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) where Christians and Jews allegedly lived side-by-side in harmony with Muslims who in no way oppressed them. Describing Spain, Sicily, and Portugal as having “Islamic roots” is insufficiently apologetic, so he stretches his revisionist view to the breaking point: “Islam is in their DNA.” In reality these were Christian “spaces” (to use one of Considine’s favorite terms) that were invaded by non-Christian, non-European colonizers who subsequently transformed them into Muslim “spaces,” often by converting churches to mosques. He should put down Karen Armstrong’s book and read Dario Fernandez-Morera’s The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise (2016). Perhaps he will see himself in the description of those whose “selective approach is . . . scholarly defective,” or as another in a long line of academics who “do not want to get in trouble presenting an Islamic domination of even centuries ago as anything but a positive event.”

Many of Considine’s shallow, ahistorical online videos focus on a story about Muhammad allowing Christians to pray in his mosque as if religious pluralism were a commonplace occurrence in the narratives comprising Islamic tradition. It is not.

Perhaps there is some psychological significance to Considine’s failure to acknowledge the concept of dhimmitude—the second class status granted to Jews and Christians (“people of The Book”) who dutifully humbled themselves before their masters and paid the protection money demanded of them. His obsequious, Christian-deprecating hyperbole recapitulates the bowing of a dhimmi before his master. With only vague references to “the jizya, or poll tax for non-Muslims,” and no contextual explanation, he avoids the word “dhimmi.” As Robert Spencer describes it, Considine’s scholarship relies on “a very simple method: ignoring what doesn’t fit his thesis.”

As one who believes Israel is an occupier of “Palestine,” even in Gaza where there are no Israelis, Considine has established camaraderie among various Palestinian Christians who have found a particularly useful idiot in the Catholic professor who supports the anti-Semitic BDS movement and is willing to spread propaganda about Israel’s alleged settler-colonialism and apartheid wall. (About that wall: Considine decries those who build walls—Israel and Trump—yet longs for the day that he can visit the Vatican, blissfully unaware, it seems, that the Vatican is protected by a wall.)

An unskilled polemicist, Considine relies heavily on straw men, particularly “Islamophobes” he imagines are conspiring against him. In one particularly fawning piece in the Huffington Post where “Islamophobia” seemed insufficient, he offers “Islamoracism.” No matter that Islam is not a race, he says, because “scientific research proved long ago there is no such thing as ‘race’ or ‘races.'”

Considine’s writing is unconvincing and immature, but his social media is even worse: whiney, emoji-filled, narcissistic tweets that end with self-satisfied jabs like “Know your facts” and “Know your history”; preening, groveling videos on Twitter and YouTube; plus an embarrassing parade of “selfies” and other millennial-esque over-sharing.

Worse, he ridicules the killers of Muslims but makes excuses for Muslims who kill Christians. As Giulio Meotti points out at Gatestone, “In the same week as the awful attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand … more than two hundred Christians were killed in Nigeria. There was hardly any mention of the latter in the news.” Nor was there any mention in Considine’s social media.

His work embodies the intellectual shortcomings of contemporary Middle East studies: an apologetic approach to his subject; error-laden puffery masquerading as scholarship; and intolerance for opposing views based on rigorous research.

Craig Considine calls himself a “social media influencer.” The extent of his influence on anyone other than his students (pity them) is unclear, but one thing is certain—that influence is bad. It might just be bad enough to land him a job at Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative, where he would fit right in.

A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsburg-Ingerman fellow at the Middle East Forum, a fellow of the Forum’s Campus Watch project, and a principal lecturer in the Department of English at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Follow him on Twitter @MEForum.

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Filed Under: academia, Islamic reform, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Craig Considine


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Comments

  1. Walter Sieruk says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 1:23 pm

    One the subject of “reforming Islam” is specific and well founded view on the topic On the topic of having “a reformation within Islam,” this had been explain by the Christian, Nabeel Qureshi ,who was in the past was a Muslim .He wrote in his book which is entitled ANSWERING JIHAD wrote about the suggestion “that Islam needs a reformation .What they may not realize is that radical Islam is the Islamic reformation. This might sound shocking, but consider: Just as the Protestant Reformation was an attempt to raze centuries of Catholic tradition and return to the canonical text, so radical Islam is an attempt to raze centuries of traditions of various schools of Islamic thought and return to the canonical text of the Quran and Muhammad’s life.

    This desire to return to the original form of Islam can be seen not only in the words of Sayyid Qutb, but also in his method. He focused almost entirely on references to the Quran. it is true also of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS today, whose publications and proclamations are punctuated by references to the Quran and hadith literature. Radical Muslim organizations are explicit in their aim to reform Islam.” page 75. Further on pages 79,80 the author makes his case clear by writing that “Radical Islam is the Islamic reformation . The endeavor to modernize Islam and make it relevant to the twenty -first century is called progressive Islam. Progressive Muslim thought leaders, though few in number and limited in influence are present and are working to recreate Islam’s religious framework from within. Indeed, that is what it would take for Islam to become devoted to peace – not reformation

  2. FYI says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 1:25 pm

    Craig Considine’s idiotic mirth-inducing tweets {like that other islamic apologist,the ‘mehical’ doctor Zakir Naik*}are always good for a laugh[and are usually brilliantly demolished by the superb ex-muslim commentator the Apostate Prophet:you can access Twitter via this JW site and see..The AP knows the TRUTH about islam,the TRUTH that the wilfully blind pro-islam academic apologists choose to ignore}

    No doubt many of these pro-islam apologists are converts to islam so it is no surprise they defend something which they have foolishly chosen to invest in;the cult of a Pagan Arab god.

    “He welcomed strangers.He loved his neighbors.He worked for the good of all people.
    He believed we are all part of one family.
    Who is he?
    If you answered Jesus,you are correct.
    If you answered muhammed,you are correct
    They are companions,kindred spirits,bonded souls”
    Dr. Craig Considine
    tweet 4 0ct 2019

    Really?

    So muhammed did all that,did he now?

    Ehm..Did the scholar MISS Abu Dawud 4390{muhammed MASS MURDERING JEWS}
    OR Sahih Muslim 3901{“and he sold them for ..TWO OF THE BLACKS”:muhammed’s African Slave Trading..}?

    Did muhammed welcome JEWS and Christians and love his infidel neighbors?
    Did he work for the good of his BLACK AFRICAN SLAVES he brutalized ,the women he beat{including his child bride,9 year old Aisha}and RAPED?
    Did muhammed think INFIDELS and muslims are all part of one happy family?
    {“oh ye who believe!take not the Jews and Christians for friends” k5:51}

    Only a wilfully obtuse academic or a convert to islam would spout such nonsense.

    *An islamic “genius” who once famously said that ..
    “I would rather kill myself than commit suicide”
    BTW Wise folk are never so insecure that they have to emphasise their Academic credentials…
    .

    • FYI says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 1:39 pm

      And I see he has a book called “the prophet of love: a catholics note on prophet muhammed”

      Oh dear,oh dear..where to begin..

      It should be “the False prophet of HATE” to be accurate

      • James C. says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 7:42 pm

        This sounds reminiscent of Reza Aslan’s attempt to Christianise Mohammed, and Mohammedanise Christ.

        Mohammed’s “revelations” deny the Gospels at several points; he can be seen as continuing the Preaching of Jesus only if one knows nothing of the Gospels.

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 5, 2019 at 7:55 pm

          Yes–Aslan tried to present Jesus as a “Palestinian” terrorist in his book Zealot. Just grotesque.

  3. mortimer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 1:28 pm

    Craig Considine should be forensically audited. There is nothing besides bribery to explain his support for a mysoginistic Death Cult that targets Christianity for extinction.

    If Considine were convinced by his own arguments and ad hominems, he would challenge Robert Spencer to a debate about the supposed ‘benignness’ that he sees in Islam.

    His refusal to have his ideas challenged in a scheduled debate proves that Considine is a fraud.

    Frauds like Considine should not have a job teaching in a college.

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 7:57 pm

      Not everyone acts due to money. “Political correctness” is also a big motivator.

  4. mortimer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    Considine knows he is paid con artist. Considine knows that Islam is 1) amoral and opportunistic 2) non-historical and without provenance 3) riddled with errors and self-referentially incoherent. Considine knows Mohammed was a warlord, slaver and genocidist and that the Koran is collection of Mohammed’s ranting, hate-filled sermons. Thus, Considine knows full well that Islam cannot be defended using an intellectual argument. Nor does Considine have any intellectual arguments. He merely uses ad hominems to distract his audience and convince them to dismiss anyone with a valid, fact-based criticism of Islam. Considines endless search for ‘benign Islam’ is a big con.

    That is why he cannot risk being exposed in a proper, scheduled debate.

    His twitter sign is @CraigCons. His ‘cons’ are easily spotted by the learned. Shameful.

    • James Lincoln says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 2:57 pm

      mortimer says,

      “Considine knows he is paid con artist.”

      That is true and that is what is most unforgivable. Disseminating Islamic propaganda to naïve college students.

      Absolutely despicable…

      • mortimer says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 3:11 pm

        Considine also knows (having read this) that many people also know he is a con man.

        Considine, we have OBSERVED you.

  5. mortimer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 2:00 pm

    A. J. Caschetta is correct that the Koran is hostile to catholic doctrine. The Creed of Athanasius (a monument of Trinitarian orthodoxy) was written hundreds of years before Mohammed, and yet, the Koran contradicts this official catholic creed on every point.

    Considine knows this as well or he is no scholar, but a hansomely paid propagandist. Ockham’s Razor suggests that he is that, and for that reason, I hope law enforcement will audit him forensically.

    • mortimer says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 2:10 pm

      Message to Considine: the Athanasian Creed begins thus: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.”

      Nothing could be more contradictory of this than the Koran.

      • FYI says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 6:29 pm

        “We worship ONE God in Trinity,and Trinity in unity”
        Christians are MONOTHEISTIC.

        Yet….

        In koran 4:171 allah says “Cease!say not ‘three’ it is better for you.allah is only one god.Far is it removed form his transcendent majesty that he has a son”

        muslims WRONGLY think Christians are Polytheistic.
        {Even when I was an atheist I knew Christian Theology about the Trinity was monotheistic,never polytheistic.The Trinity is NOT 3 completely separate gods}

        So,by denying the Trinity, not only does allah tell muslims NOT to believe in Jesus Christ{Denied in k4:157}but ALSO it is the denial of God’s Holy Spirit!

        And allah insists muslims do not know about God’s Wisdom:”it is better for you”.Thus they remain in ignorance about God;allah prefers they rely on his false pagan Arab Wisdom instead.

        BTW Biblical Prophecy comes from the Holy Spirit{Both in the OT AND NT}
        There is no Holy Spirit in islam or the koran and so islamic “prophecy” is false.

      • James C. says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 7:51 pm

        FWIW, the Athanasian Creed is not his. It is a Latin creed, and has been attributed – on what grounds, I do not know – to St Fulgentius of Ruspe (died 543).

        That weakens the point about the age of the AC a bit, but not crucially – the AC remains respectably pre-Islamic, and the Koranic understanding of orthodox Christian theism remains wrong.

  6. Lloyd De Jongh says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    This was a much needed article on this seeming fraud. On Facebook he has adoring Muslims who hang onto his every word, and many ‘Christians’. In many of his quotes one can read further and find passages that are violent and completely contradict his propaganda, so how is it he misses them if not deliberately?

    He must be a Muslim convert, and must be well aware of the incompatibility between Christianity and Islam, of the dim view that orthodox Islam has of Christians and Jews. Recently he wrote “Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Noah, & Abraham. These five prophets are kindred spirits. They graduated from the *School of God.*
    Muslims, Christians, & Jews are one big family that constitutes over four billion people worldwide. Let us liven our hearts & deepen our bonds. Peace.” — Jesus was a ‘prophet’ like Mohammed? Is that a Catholic belief?

    My response was to say “Jesus was the Son of God, Craig. In Islam he is viewed as merely a prophet, however in Christianity (and you do claim to be a Christian), Jesus is divine, the Messiah, born of a virgin, died on the cross for all and resurrected. Islam denies these fundamental tenets of Christianity, and in doing so declares it to be false. ”

    He must know he lies.

    • Joe says

      Oct 6, 2019 at 5:36 am

      The whole Bible was written before Mohammed. In the Bible, Jesus declares that He is God many times. How is it that a holy prophet, Jesus, is always lying according to Mohammed? Mo says that the Bible is incorrect, but he offers no other source of info other than his own dreams which were converted to visits by Gabriel after Mo’s death.

      In short, we have written testimony from numerous authors who testify what Jesus said. Then we have an illiterate man who likes to tell stories. That is the historical Mohammed. No “scholar” is going to run with the latter.

      The fact that we debate such things is an insult to the human spirit.

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 6, 2019 at 6:17 pm

        Muslims claim that Jews and Christians “corrupted” the Bible with passages like loving your neighbor and God’s love for mankind.

        Never mind that there is no evidence for this fantasy Bible that was–supposedly–just like the vicious Qur’an.

  7. mortimer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    The brilliant editor and translator of Arabic works, Dr. David Samuel Margoliouth, wrote the following description of Mohammed’s character:

    “The character attributed to Muhammad in the biography of Ibn Ishaq (The Sira) is exceedingly unfavorable. In order to gain his ends he recoils from no expedient, and he approves of similar unscrupulousness on the part of his adherents, when exercised in his interest. He profits to the utmost from the chivalry of the Meccans, but rarely requites it with the like. He organizes assassinations and whole-sale massacres. His career as tyrant of Medina is that of a robber chief, whose political economy consists in securing and dividing plunder, the distribution of the latter being at times carried out on principles which fail to satisfy his followers’ ideas of justice. He is himself an unbridled libertine and encourages the same passion in his followers. For whatever he does he is prepared to plead the express authorization of the deity. It is, however, impossible to find any doctrine which he is not prepared to abandon in order to secure a political end. At different points in his career he abandons the unity of God and his claim to the title of Prophet. This is a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion, and it cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy; and though Ibn Ishaq’s name was for some reason held in low esteem by the classical traditionalists of the third Islamic century, they make no attempt to discredit those portions of the biography which bear hardest on the character of their Prophet.”

    (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, volume 8, p. 878.Dr. Margiolouth)

    • elee says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 4:42 pm

      Thanks for the well-written excerpt above. CI do note that most of the incidents referenced occurred after he left Mecca. A pivotal time, it seems, and reformers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali sometimes hold out the possibility that less barbarous Muslims might want to declare themselves Mecca Muslims. Was there some pivotal incident that didnt get recorded, that sent him down the road of pillage and massacre? Do you know of anyone who has explored this possibility?

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 8:00 pm

        The “Prophet” was not very successful until he began his career of pillage, rape, and mass murder. He wanted to start over in Medina as a violent war lord.

  8. Walter Sieruk says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 2:51 pm

    For yet another take of the topic of the idea of “reforming Islam ” is the following essay.

    The idea and quest to attempt have a “reformation of Islam” trying to do so is a waste of time and effort. This is because “reforming Islam” is not actually possible, it’s an action of futility. For It should be noted that Islam can’t be changed from violent and deadly to non –violent and peaceful because the very core essence of Islam is that of violence and killing. As found in the Qu ‘ran 9:121, 5:33, 9:5, 111, 47:4. The very best that may be realistically hoped for would be a watered-down type of Islam is mild and non-violent.

    This is in contrast to hard core Qu’ ran based Islam which is the violent and murderous Islam practice Muslim jihad terror organizations, as ISIS ,Al Qaeda , Hezbollah ,Hamas and so forth .
    To put this in another way, the Bible informs its reader “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.” Ecclesiastes 1 :15. [N.K.J.N.]

    Therefore this verse may be understood when applying it to the idea of folly of “reforming Islam” As in, “What is crooked cannot be made straight in. “The violent nature can’t be straightened to be made non-violent” and “what is lacking cannot be numbered” may be understood as “Such a violent and hate-filled religion is lacking in love and compassion and thus can’t be numbered or counted as a truly peaceful religion.”

  9. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 3:06 pm

    Craig Considine exemplifies how self-rewarding it is to deny a difficult reality. Especially wrapped in warm metaphor blankets like bridge building. So he says everything’s cool, except for those who don’t buy his denial of reality, who by implication are bigots. A nice, neat little package that deposits directly into both his bank account and his ego.

  10. mortimer says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 3:10 pm

    Craig Considine’s approach is to draw happy faces on the story of Mohammed … which proves nothing.

    Islam stands or falls on the character of Mohammed. One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a womanizer, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life in documents written by Muslims is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is a ‘decree of Allah’ to have sex with still-married captives and enslaved “right hand possessions” (Koran 4.24 and 33:50) He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way. Muhammad was a narcissist like Hitler or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. (‘His eye wept for no one.’) He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big … world conquest … and as a narcissist, he honestly believed he was entitled to do as he pleased and commit all manner of crimes and that his evil deeds were justified.

    • FYI says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 3:20 pm

      ABU DAWUD 4390…

      {muhammed BEHEADED 800 Jewish men and…BOYS}

      This ONE teaching alone completely demolishes the likes of apologists like Considine and Karen Armstrong.

      muhammed was a MASS MURDERER of Jews: a mass-murderer cannot be a morally good person and especially,given the central role given to Jews[“it is from the Jews that salvation comes” John 4 v 22:the Words of JesusChrist},a mass murderer of Jews is no prophet of the True God.You may as well say that hitler was a prophet in that case.

      And this{ABU DAWUD 4390}.. is according to official islamic teachings.

      Just because somebody claims to be a prophet doesn’t mean he really is a prophet.
      david koresh,jim jones…muhamed were all self-proclaimed “prophets” and they were all FALSE;they didn’t obey ANY of God’s Official Commandments{The 2 chief laws+Exodus 20{ten}}did they?

      • elee says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 4:31 pm

        Indeed lots of the Muslims who knew the Prophet wanted to defect when he died, and another man decided this Prophet of al Lah business was a good gig and hed take over where Mohammed left off. In both instances Muslims persuaded the heretics by their prescribed method of theological disputation, i.e., they killed them.

      • James C. says

        Oct 5, 2019 at 7:57 pm

        Mohammed reminds me of Joe Smith, and Brigham Young. It may be no coincidence that Mo was favourably regarded by Smith:

        https://www.hope-of-israel.org/2ndMuhammad.html

  11. elee says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    I couldnt read past the early ppart about Saudi funding, Im sorry, Ill have to go try again. But of course theyve found a useful idiot to promote this taqiyya. Any Muslim would know that proposing any innovation gets you killed quickly.

  12. elee says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 4:23 pm

    QAll right, I gagged my way through the rest of the article. Do note that the notion that the man Mohammed seems to have been a man at times rather more gentle than the mainstream of his 7th-century Arab culture is by no means new; it was entertained by William Muir and persuasively championed by Glubb Pasha (Sir John Glubb). Well, then again, what about massacreing the 800 Jews? Or the fatwas attributed to him? Well, these were Yathrib (Medina) occurrences. And of course the Medina portions abrogated all the earlier kind and tolerant verses. Oh and there are no discrepancies in the reported utterances of the Prophet. K 4:83.

  13. Angemon says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 4:23 pm

    Considine, the censor-in-chief, always making sure that his students who go to his blog don’t see anything even remotely critical of islam or his posts…

  14. Flavius Claudius Iulianus says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 4:55 pm

    Verse 5:3 (“This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion.”) combined with the ‘fallout’ from Aisha’s lost necklace guarantees that Islam is irredeemable and not reformable.

    Islam should be regarded as a virulent contagion and thus isolated in order to contain it. The best form of containment is geographic, thus protection using national, fortified borders is needed.

  15. Lotus says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 7:20 pm

    The Saudis and Qataris are establishing Islamic studies departments in Western universities. By this means, they try to make Islam respectable. It is yet another tactic in their neo-gramscian campaign to infiltrate Western culture.

    There is fierce competition in academia for tenured positions. To get such a post that is paid for by the Arabs, the candidate must already be pro-Islam or willing to stifle any critical views he or she might have.

    The Saudis don’t expect to hear any criticism from people like John Esposito. As far as they are concerned, he is bought and paid for.

    As for this Islamic apologist Considine, he is betraying his Catholic faith. If he thinks Islam is so great, he should just convert and be done with it. If not, he should stand up to the greatest enemy the Catholic Church has ever confronted: Islam.

    Next week (10th October) is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours. How can we compare the true Christian hero Charles Martel with this waterweed Considine and his like? There is no comparison. Considine is not fit even to water the horse of Martel.

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 6, 2019 at 6:21 pm

      We should *not* be allowing Muslim infiltration into our institutes of higher learning.

  16. gravenimage says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 8:04 pm

    In the years since 9/11, the Islamic reform movement has advanced sufficiently that two distinct camps have emerged: reformers and bridge-builders. Genuine reformers seek to transform how Islam is practiced, while bridge-builders seek to improve how Islam is perceived, mainly by non-Muslims.Reformers tend to be Muslims who fault their co-religionists from previous centuries for writing counterfeit stories about the prophet of Islam, and those alive today for believing those stories. Reformers denounce Koranic literalism.

    Bridge-builders tend to be non-Muslims or converts who fault those of other faiths for their insufficient appreciation of Islam…
    …………………………..

    Thank you, A. J. Cashetta–nice to see you contributing to Jihad Watch again.

    Then there are the Taqiyya artists, who pretend that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’, and hope the credulous Infidels believe them–as they so often do.

  17. Lotus says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 8:10 pm

    And what do Islamic apologists have to say about the anti-christian behaviour of Muslims we foolishly let into our countries? Their silence is deafening.

    Here’s a recent article by Raymond Ibrahim about Muslims destroying crosses and attacking Chrisitians.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/muslims-destroying-christian-crosses-all-over-the-world-and-no-one-reports-it

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 6, 2019 at 6:22 pm

      Thanks for that grim link.

  18. Lotus says

    Oct 5, 2019 at 9:50 pm

    An informative article from American Thinker on the ties that Muslim front organisations have with anti-semites and terrorist supporters.

    We need to burst the bubbles of respectability these organisations create to dupe Westerners. Bring them to light and expose them is the best tactic.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/the_muslim_educational_cultural_center_of_america_and_extremism.html

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 5, 2019 at 10:05 pm

      Thanks for that link.

  19. Tom_X says

    Oct 6, 2019 at 2:59 am

    There is only one point to make… There is no such thing as Islamic Reform, or Transformation. This is a belief system built entirely on the precept, that a bloodthirsty-pedophile-rapist-warlord is the ideal man who is to be worshipped and emulated, and who is only second to “God”. When you figure that out, there is no other argument to be made for Islam; that is the foundation of Islam, and without it, there is no Islam. Thus, in the most basic truth, you are either good, or evil, and your belief system is a direct representation of that fact. So, if you choose a belief system that worships someone who embraced and promoted evil through the entirety of their life… Well, the only way to reform that is to abolish it.

    • tim gallagher says

      Oct 6, 2019 at 6:01 pm

      Very well said, Tom_X. I agree with every word you’ve written. And I thought that nothing in Islam is to be changed, it’s all meant to be perfect and the last word on everything from their satanic version of what god is. So I’d say that reform has got no chance whatsoever. This article was very interesting. It summarised well what various liars, like Armstrong and others, have written. There’s no excuse for people like that. I agree, Tom_X, Islam has to be abolished. My own rule is that I only have the time of day for people who leave Islam. If they remain in the evil, barbaric ideology, then I have no time for them. I can’t find anything good or worthwhile in Islam.

  20. Sky Blue says

    Oct 6, 2019 at 6:33 am

    If Islam is religious of peace ,the World no need any goodness at all.
    and
    Jesus says :
    We know the tree by it’s fruit ” .
    this is all about to investigate matters !

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