My latest in PJ Media:
The propaganda is all so drearily predictable. The establishment media seems to have made it a foremost priority to do everything it can to absolve Islam of all responsibility for crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings. And so it came as no surprise when Yahoo News on Sunday ran a piece by Mark Fathi Massoud, a professor of politics and legal studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz titled “Don’t blame Sharia for Islamic extremism — blame colonialism.” Of course. Really, by now we all know that everything bad in the world is the responsibility of white males. We just need Yahoo News and its colleagues to fill in the details once in a while.
Meanwhile, would Yahoo News ever dare to run a piece explaining how Sharia, across all Islamic sects and schools of jurisprudence, teaches the necessity for the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the hegemony of Islamic law? Come on, man! Yahoo News wonks wouldn’t dream of publishing something that “Islamophobic”! But they have no bar against presentations such as Massoud’s that amplify their narrative, no matter how howlingly absurd they may be.
Yahoo helpfully supplies a map to go along with Massoud’s article, showing the rapacious reach of European colonialists into the hitherto pure, innocent, unsullied Islamic world. The map is a bit confusing in itself, because its color for Spanish colonies is quite similar to the color it uses for countries that were never colonized at all, and the latter are not marked as such. So at first glance, you might get the idea that Spain conquered all of Europe, as well as Iran, Afghanistan, Arabia, and more, but once you get past that, the map has more serious flaws. It shows, for example, that Iran and Saudi Arabia were never colonized by the West. But if colonialism is the cause of “Islamic extremism,” what, then, explains the Islamic Republic, which finances jihad terror groups such as Hizballah and Hamas? What explains the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 jihad attackers were Saudis?
What explains jihad activity that went on for centuries before colonialism? The History of Jihad shows that beginning in the mid-seventh century, Arab armies poured out of Arabia and, with astonishing force, rapidly conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. By a hundred years after the date Islamic tradition states as the death of Muhammad, the Arab empire stretched from Spain to India. Was all this because of the Western colonialism that was not to dawn upon the world until centuries later? When the Ottomans came West from central Asia and waged jihad for centuries against the Christian Byzantine Empire, steadily diminishing its holdings and eradicating it altogether in 1453, was this because of the colonialism of Western powers that was still several centuries away?
There is more. Read the rest here.
Donovan Nuera says
Saladin was a shariah-law hardliner who loved to execute infidel POWs and rape captured Christian nuns, virgins, etc. when he conquered Jerusalem…….. and the Copts in Egypt. Good article recently in The Religion of Peace website about how the West still thinks Saladin was a “moderate” nice guy!
mortimer says
What Massoud is doing is called ‘revisionism’. However, historical revisionism works only when new research uncovers new documents or new archeology which suggests the standard historical narrative to be in error. Massoud has not done that. He merely asserts a claim based on the assumed authority of his title.
Massoud’s revisionism is unsupported, because Sharia law manuals were written in the late middle ages before the start of the European colonial period. As well, jihadism is clearly found in Islam’s primary source texts written between 700 and 900 AD, over 600 years before the start of the European colonial period. Moreover, historically, the imperialism of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties came 700 years before the start of the European colonial period, prior even to the collection of the Islamic source texts.
So, Mark Fathi Massoud’s claim fails on several grounds, chronologically, factually and foundationally-historically.
A college prof cannot simply make up a groundless claim on the basis of his title at a university or college. That is the fallacy called the fallacy of an appeal to authority.
The egg of the Islamic source texts and the first great era of jihad come hundreds of years before the period of European colonialism.
mortimer says
He says, ““Don’t blame Sharia for Islamic extremism — blame colonialism.” Is Prof. Mark Massoud correct?
So, what, actually, do SHARIA LAW MANUALS SAY ABOUT JIHAD???
Reliance of the Traveller says :
– “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians … until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) …” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).
The leading Hanbali Sharia law jurist, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), stated:
– “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”
The leading scholar of Maliki Sharia law, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), stated:
– “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”
Mark Fathi Massoud is clearly contradicting the leading Muslim authorities on Sharia law and therefore his contention that Sharia law doesn’t teach jihadism is totally contradicted by the facts.
Such a statement disqualifies Mark Fathi Massoud from any serious discussion about Sharia law. He clearly has no use for facts. His claims are totally inaccurate and groundless.
The students of Mark Fathi Massoud are paying for nonsense. The university is cheating them.
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Dhimmi says
Corect, the fault of Christianity because allowed a platform for him
gravenimage says
Dhimmi, you are mistaken in believing that UCSC is a Christian college. It is part of the University of California system, and is supposed to be secular (its whitewash of Islam here notwithstanding).
Dhimmi says
Of course they are not Christians as an institution but these universities were founded and financed and developed as centers of learning and reasearch by a Christian population who allowed in this case its enemies to benefit and use that platform to their own advantage . Muslim countries due to backwardness have no comparable institution
gravenimage says
Woke California Prof Claims Jihad Terrorism Is (What Else?) All Our Fault’
…………………..
Mark Fathi Massoud is a dhimmi tool. His Christian family fled persecution in Sudan, but he has clearly internalized both dhimmi self hatred and now the prevasive self-hatred in the West. And now he is spreading these falsehoods to his students and others–and using our universities to do it. *Ugh*.
mortimer says
Europeans sought new ways to reach the east because of a Muslim chokehold on the route to the Orient. The European powers totally IGNORED the Muslim countries in the colonial period leading to their economic collapse. The Second Great Jihad of the Ottoman Empire was an example of unprovoked MUSLIM AGGRESSION which was soundly repelled by the Europeans at the Siege of Vienna and the naval Battle of Lepanto. With the Ottoman Islamic caliphate chopped down to size, the period of European colonialism was able to proceed.
Part of the gradual defeat of the Ottoman power was due to the American navy which crippled the Islamic extortion racket in Tripolitania which a vassal to the Sultan.
The first foreign war of the new United States was war against jihadic pirates licensed by the Caliphate of All Islam. The shocked emissaries of United States (Adams and Jefferson) learned that jihad had been already declared against the American ships because they were KAFIRS, and that it was written in the Koran to do so.
I am sorry to be the one to inform Mark Massoud that America’s first foreign war was a response to an unprovoked JIHAD against American ships entering the Mediterranean.
nicholas tesdorf says
Jihad Terror is all our fault because we (and all the other non-Muslims) are there and will not submit to Islam and Sharia. If we (and all the other non-Muslims) were not there or would submit to Islam, there would be no problem at all….
gravenimage says
Yep…
Walter Sieruk says
What balderdash that PC/Woke guy had spoken.
Attempting to shift the blame to the victim is an old excuse, and lame excuse ,at that.
PRCS says
Per the “Professor”:
“These political debates – which cite terrorism and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society – reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized.
They also reflect ignorance of Sharia, which is not a strict legal code. Sharia means “path” or “way”: It is a broad set of values and ethical principles drawn from the Quran – Islam’s holy book – and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, different people and governments may interpret Sharia differently.”
Therein lies THE issue.
The strictest “interpretation” of that totalitarian theocracy’s various texts–by so-called extremists–is as valid as the least.
More so, of course.
somehistory says
https://www.glennbeck.com/glenn-beck-podcast/welcome-to-anarchism-glenn-michael-malice-ep-121?utm_source=glenn-dailyPM&utm_
Anyone who has ideas about the university system should listen to this guy speaking with Glenn Beck. Mr. Michael Malice has made some really good points about what is happening, in government, media, social media and the university system.
James Lincoln says
Thanks for the link, somehistory.
somehistory says
You are welcome, James L.