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Video: “Robert Spencer on Why Islam Waxes and Wanes”

Apr 28, 2020 5:00 pm By Robert Spencer

Here is a useful encapsulation of the Middle East Forum webinar I hosted recently.

“Robert Spencer on Why Islam Waxes and Wanes,” by Gary C. Gambill, Middle East Forum, April 27, 2020

Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, addressed the question “Is Islam Globally Waxing or Waning?” in a Middle East Forum webinar (video) on April 10.

Spencer began by recounting the following:

Sometime ago … a Muslim leader arose who claimed that the Islamic authorities were corrupt and had strayed from authentic Islam. His group gained control of some territory, and he proclaimed himself the leader of all the Muslims. In its domains, his group instituted strict observance of Islamic law, Sharia, including the sexual enslavement of infidel women, and oppressed the non-Muslims.

This description, he explained, could equally apply to both ISIS and the Almohads (Arabic for monotheists), a movement that took power in North Africa in 1147 and over the next 25 years seized much of what is now Spain, known in Arabic as Al-Andalus. “[W]e see this phenomenon throughout Islamic history … periods in which the influence of Islamic teachings is paramount and supreme, and periods in which that interest wanes.”

“The Quran teaches that if you obey Allah, you will prosper in this world, and that if you do not obey Allah, you will be punished in this world, as well as, of course, in the next,” explained Spencer. “So this has led throughout Islamic history to various kinds of misfortunes being ascribed to a lack of piety, and to the rise of revivalist movements that promise to turn away Allah’s wrath by restoring the people to the proper and full observance of Islamic regulations.” However, “human nature is everywhere the same, and the great majority of Muslims don’t want to live under Sharia [Islamic law] any more than anybody else does,” so “when Sharia restrictions become too onerous, they’re relaxed … and a period of moderation follows, until some misfortune triggers a new revival movement that ascribes the troubles, once again, to a lack of Islamic rigor.”

Today, according to Spencer, one can find both phases of this wax/wane cycle in the Islamic world. In Iran, people have lived under Sharia for four decades and are “tired of living this way,” with growing numbers calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. By contrast, in Turkey, coming off of decades of secularism after the fall of the Ottoman empire, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “is working hard to dismantle Turkish secularism and even to restore the Ottoman caliphate.”

So long as “the fundamental principles of Islam remain the same, particularly in regard to the punishment in this world for disobedience,” this cycle will persist. So the answer to the question “Is Islam globally waxing or waning?” according to Spencer, is “yes.”

Asked about the influence of ethnicity, Spencer noted that non-Arab Islamic revivalists “tend to become even more fanatical than the Arabs”:

Islam is in many ways a vehicle for Arab supremacism. If you convert to Islam, you generally take an Arabic name, you have to pray in Arabic. The leading figures are of course Arabs, the Caliph of the Muslims and Sunni theology has to be a member of the Quraysh Arab tribe, and so on, and so on. So if you’re a Pakistani non-Arab, or an Iranian, there’s a tendency to try to out-Arab the Arabs, by being even more Islamic than they are. And this is I think, one reason why we see such a virulence in Islamic practice in Pakistan in particular, as well as in some other areas that are not Arab, like Afghanistan as well as Iran.

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: Featured, Robert Spencer Tagged With: Middle East Forum


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Comments

  1. Conrad says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 5:26 pm

    Find and watch the film ‘Silent Conquest’ ‘the end of freedom of speech in the West.’ by W.Fishman. An extremely difficult film to watch.

    • Reziac says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 9:49 am

      It’s on Youtube, but as pay-to-watch.

  2. Conrad says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 5:28 pm

    Addendum. It is from 2016 and by A. Fishman not W.Fishman.

  3. gravenimage says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 8:19 pm

    Video: “Robert Spencer on Why Islam Waxes and Wanes”
    …………….

    No Islamic polity can ever be *Islamic enough* for the truly devout Muslims.

  4. Relic says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 10:12 pm

    Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

  5. mortimer says

    Apr 28, 2020 at 11:37 pm

    Robert Spencer sets forth the ISLAMIC GAME PLAN, namely, 1) obey the decrees of Allah 2) apply discriminatory Sharia law rigorously upon society 3) fight jihad against neighboring territories that are not yet conquered by the caliphate.

    You might simplify this mindset to one slogan : “SHARIA IS THE ANSWER”.

    However, rigorous Sharia where it has been tried has led only to an enormous slave industry, backwardness, poverty, ignorance and disease.

    Is Islam waning or waxing. It is both. However, I think that the internet is destroying Islam and as a result when a large number of Muslims come out of the closet, Islam will suddenly collapse cataclysmically within 20 years.

    • Ada Taiber says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 5:22 pm

      Hi, sadly, I think the internet helps the spread of Islam as too many people are listening and seeing the full of lies and incitement videos of backward, hateful imams and Muslim leaders!

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 5:37 pm

      You are both right. The internet ca be used both to spread the truth about the threat of Islam *and* spread the horrors of Islam itself.

      Sites like Jihad Watch are one for the good guys.

  6. tim gallagher says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 12:17 am

    I often wonder who is winning this 1400 year long war between barbaric islam and the more civilised, non-Muslim people of the world. I hope Mortimer is right in his comment, just above, that Islam will collapse. I think that, without the big lottery win where Muslim countries got lucky and found oil, which we all need,(well, the USA apparently is now self-sufficient in oil), Islam would be losing big time. All that oil money funds terrorism and all sorts of other evil rubbish from Islam. Some people would still want to let Muslims into their countries because they know nothing at all about Islam’s evil nature, but I think a lot of countries would tell Muslims to get lost, we don’t need anything that you have to offer and we aren’t interested in any of your rubbish. Islam would definitely be on the wane under such conditions. I think it is only the huge amount of oil money that gives Islam any power in the world.

    • Jayell says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 3:58 am

      In the parable of the Sower, the seeds of good and evil are allowed to take root in fertile ground. They grow together, and then everyone can evemtually see what them for what they are. The oil money was the ‘fertile ground’ for islam, and we all see what islam has done as a result. Cue the reaper. When he coming?

      • tim gallagher says

        Apr 29, 2020 at 5:46 am

        Thanks for the comment, Jayell. Yes, the Muslim Arab countries got lucky with the riches that flow from oil. Just dumb luck really. I’m a Christian so I’m familiar with the parable you mention. I always tend to think that such parables are about the afterlife when God will judge the actions of all people. So I guess I think the reaper is coming for each of us when we die and face judgement, and then, when the world ends, some kind of judgement for everyone who is still alive then. Islam is so evil, with its terrorist murders, rape gangs, honour killings and all the other garbage that it condones that I think Muslims are going to face a very harsh judgement from the Christian God. Islam does so much evil. I do think we can defeat Islam just with our own efforts. I certainly hope that we can. Life will be terrible for all of us non-Muslims if Islam wins this long war.

      • gravenimage says

        Apr 29, 2020 at 7:04 pm

        Yes–I don’t think Islam would be as big a threat as it is now without that unearned oil wealth. But this is giving Muslims less of an edge all the time now.

    • peter says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 7:48 am

      I agree .But also the compromising attitude of the popular press and many politicians in the west including one of the most popular presidents in US in the past who had very little understanding of Islam ,led to this catastrophe .I would gladly accept communism when compared to Islam which is nothing but concocted tyranny and dictatorship of the most evil man in the world for his own selfish ends !

      • Reziac says

        Apr 29, 2020 at 9:52 am

        If the press were to present Islam much as they did, say, the Vietnam War, Islam would be banned overnight. However, that won’t happen because, per the Bender affidavit, the media is largely controlled by Qatar:

        https://www.docdroid.net/DtiLYBH/bender-affidavit-pdf

        • mortimer says

          Apr 29, 2020 at 10:17 am

          Reziac, the internet is full of discussion of the ideological, textual and ethical problems within the primary, Islamic source texts.

          These are very serious and damaging discussions that are undermining the credibility of Islam. Many thoughtful Muslims are realizing that Islam has no intellectual basis.

          The Muslims cannot continue to use the threat of violence to silence all academic research into Islam. More and more Muslims want real answers that traditional Islam cannot provide and which it suppresses.

          Rote learning and submission to obscurantism is no longer tenable for modern Muslims.

        • gravenimage says

          Apr 29, 2020 at 7:12 pm

          Mortimer, what are you basing your claim that “modern” Muslims have rejected violence? Doesn’t the skyrocketing nature of Jihad question rather belie your assertion?

    • Ada Taiber says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 5:28 pm

      Wishful thinking but reality shows otherwise…. They are spreading and getting stronger with the help of the Media and Internet together with Immigration. Nobody fights them and the west is giving in without fight. Sadly the stupid blind left help them win their goals….

  7. Mario Alexis Portella says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 6:54 am

    Keep up the good work, Mr. Spencer!!! Thank God this blog exists!

    • mortimer says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 10:20 am

      We’re glad you exist too … 🙂

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 29, 2020 at 7:12 pm

      +1

  8. OLD GUY says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 9:16 am

    Robert Spencer is right again, Islam is the religion of granting power to the muslim leaders that gain power through heavy handed use of islamic sharia laws. They all have the vision of greatness that they can lead the world through the use of Allah and sharia. Same old story of evil money and power, trying to rule the rest of us, somethings never change.

  9. mortimer says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 10:27 am

    As Robert Spencer points out, Arab supremacism is the result of all Islamic culture. Indeed, the initial phase of Islam was to replace the empires of Persia and Rome with an Arab empire complete with an Arab version of Caesar (i.e. the Caliph).

    A caliphate is no different than the system of Caesars of the Roman Empire. The most conniving SOB becomes Caesar, by seizing power from the other candidates and then holding on to it through suppression and persecution of all the other candidates. During the reign of the caliph or Caesar, the people are bribed, brainwashed and bullied to think the caliph is the best caliph since sliced bread.

  10. mortimer says

    Apr 29, 2020 at 10:29 am

    The mission of Islam found in the intitial phases of Islam was to make the Quraysh tribe of Arabs the rulers of the world. That really hasn’t changed, nor can it change, because Allah’s perfect book is eternal.

  11. Kiwi says

    Apr 30, 2020 at 7:04 pm

    Jihad in New Zealand through academia. A must read:

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2020.1747503

  12. Walter Sieruk says

    Apr 30, 2020 at 9:04 pm

    One of the ways “moderate Islam”defined is that what many Westerners call “moderate Islam” is ,in reality, watered down form of “Islam” stripped of much of it’s murderous violence and harsh oppression of women.

    The reason that this mild watered down form of “Islam” is put in quotes is because the hard core Quran based Muslims will , if honest, explain that this watered down “Islam” is not actuary real Islam but an apostate false “Islam.”

    Seen with the information found in the Quran those Muslims who say this do have a valid point.

  13. Walter Sieruk says

    Apr 30, 2020 at 9:52 pm

    Robert Spencer did have a good valid truth based point when he wrote that “The great majority of Muslims don’t want to live under Sharia [Islamic law] any more than anybody else does…”

    This is because Sharia law is terribly extremely , harsh, brutal, cruel and oppressive.

    All this is a reflection of truth of the Bible which informs the reader “All the days of the oppressed are wretched.” Proverbs 15:15. [N.I.V.]

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