Posted on 12/25/2015 10:52:44 AM PST by conservativejoy
The West's movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault.
In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have 'nothing to do with Islam'. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack last month. It is what David Cameron said after two British extremists cut off the head of Drummer Lee Rigby in London, when 'Jihadi John' cut off the head of aid worker Alan Henning in the 'Islamic State' and when Islamic extremists attacked a Kenyan mall, separated the Muslims from the Christians and shot the latter in the head. And, of course, it is what President François Hollande said after the massacre of journalists and Jews in Paris last month.
All these leaders are wrong. In private, they and their senior advisers often concede that they are telling a lie. The most sympathetic explanation is that they are telling a 'noble lie', provoked by a fear that we , the general public , are a lynch mob in waiting. 'Noble' or not, this lie is a mistake. First, because the general public do not rely on politicians for their information and can perfectly well read articles and books about Islam for themselves. Secondly, because the lie helps no one understand the threat we face. Thirdly, because it takes any heat off Muslims to deal with the bad traditions in their own religion. And fourthly, because unless mainstream politicians address these matters then one day perhaps the public will overtake their politicians to a truly alarming extent.
If politicians are so worried about this secondary 'backlash' problem then they would do well to remind us not to blame the jihadists' actions on our peaceful compatriots and then deal with the primary problem , radical Islam , in order that no secondary, reactionary problem will ever grow.
Yet today our political class fuels both cause and nascent effect. Because the truth is there for all to see. To claim that people who punish people by killing them for blaspheming Islam while shouting 'Allah is greatest' has 'nothing to do with Islam' is madness. Because the violence of the Islamists is, truthfully, only to do with Islam: the worst version of Islam, certainly, but Islam nonetheless.
Last month, a chink was broken in this wall of disinformation when Sajid Javid, the only Muslim-born member of the British cabinet, and one of its brightest hopes, dipped a toe into this water. After the Paris attacks, he told the BBC: 'The lazy answer would be to say that this has got nothing whatsoever to do with Islam or Muslims and that should be the end of that. That would be lazy and wrong.' Sadly, he proceeded to utter the second most lazy thing one can say: 'These people are using Islam, taking a peaceful religion and using it as a tool to carry out their activities.'
Here we land at the centre of the problem , a centre we have spent the last decade and a half trying to avoid: Islam is not a peaceful religion. It is certainly a religion of war and is by no means a religion of peace.
I say this not because I hate Islam, nor do I have any special animus against Muslims, but simply because this is the verifiable truth based on the texts. Until we accept that we will never defeat the violence, we risk encouraging whole populations to take against all of Islam and abandon all those Muslims who are trying desperately to modernise, reform and de-literalise their faith. And , most importantly , we will give up our own traditions of free speech and historical inquiry and allow one religion to have an unbelievable advantage in the free marketplace of ideas.
It is not surprising that politicians have tried to avoid this debate by spinning a lie. The world would be an infinitely safer place if the historical Mohammed had behaved more like Buddha or Jesus. But he did not and an increasing number of people , Muslim and non-Muslim ,have been able to learn this for themselves in recent years. But the light of modern critical inquiry which has begun to fall on Islam is a process which is already proving incredibly painful.
The 'cartoon wars', which began when the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published a set of cartoons in 2005 , are part of that. But as Flemming Rose, the man who commissioned those cartoons, said when I sat down with him this week, there remains a deep ignorance in the West about what people like the Charlie Hebdo murderers wish to achieve. And we keep ducking it. As Rose said, 'I wish we had addressed all this nine years ago.'
Contra the political leaders, the Charlie Hebdo murderers were not lunatics without motive, but highly motivated extremists intent on enforcing Islamic blasphemy laws in 21st-century Europe. If you do not know the ideology — perverted or plausible though it may be . you can neither understand nor prevent such attacks. Nor, without knowing some Islamic history, could you understand why , whether in Mumbai or Paris ,the Islamists always target the Jews.
Of course, some people are willing to give up a few of our rights. There seems, as Rose says in his book on the Danish cartoons affair,The Tyranny of Silence, some presumption that a diverse society requires greater limitations on speech, whereas of course the more diverse the society, the more diverse you are going to have to see your speech be. It is not just cartoons, but a whole system of inquiry which is being shut down in the West by way of hard intimidation and soft claims of offence-taking. The result is that, in contemporary Europe, Islam receives not an undue amount of criticism but a free ride which is unfair to all other religions.
There may be some positive things to be said about Mohammed, but I thought this was pushing things false prophet mohammadtoo far and mentioned just one occasion when Mohammed didn't welcome a critic. Asma bint Marwan was a female poetess who mocked the 'Prophet' and who, as a result, Mohammed had killed. It is in the texts. It is not a problem for me. But I can understand why it is a problem for decent Muslims. The moment I said this, my Muslim colleague went berserk. How dare I say this? I replied that it was in the Hadith and had a respectable chain of transmission (an important debate). He said it was a fabrication which he would not allow to stand. The upshot was that he refused to continue unless all mention of this was wiped from the recording. The BBC team agreed and I was left trying to find another way to express the same point. The broadcast had this 'offensive' fact left out.
I cannot imagine another religious discussion where this would happen, but it is perfectly normal when discussing Islam. On that occasion I chose one case, but I could have chosen many others, such as the hundreds of Jews Mohammed beheaded with his own hand. Again, that's in the mainstream Islamic sources. I haven't made it up. It used to be a problem for Muslims to rationalise, but now there are people trying to imitate such behaviour in our societies it has become a problem for all of us, and I don't see why people in the free world should have to lie about what we read in historical texts.
We may all share a wish that these traditions were not there but they are and they look set to have serious consequences for us all. We might all agree that the history of Christianity has hardly been un-bloody. But is it not worth asking whether the history of Christianity would have been more bloody or less bloody if, instead of telling his followers to 'turn the other cheek', Jesus had called (even once) for his disciples to 'slay' non–believers and chop off their heads?
This is a problem with Islam , one that Muslims are going to have to work through. They could do so by a process which forces them to take their foundational texts less literally, or by an intellectually acceptable process of cherry-picking verses. Or prominent clerics could unite to declare the extremists non-Muslim. But there isn't much hope of this happening. Last month, al-Azhar University in Cairo declared that although Isis members are terrorists they cannot be described as heretics.
We have spent 15 years pretending things about Islam, a complex religion with competing interpretations. It is true that some Muslims live their lives peacefully. But a sizeable portion (around 15 per cent and more in most surveys) follow a far more radical version. The remainder are sitting on a religion which is, in many of its current forms, a deeply unstable component. That has always been a problem for reformist Muslims. But the results of ongoing mass immigration to the West at the same time as a worldwide return to Islamic literalism means that this is now a problem for all of us. To stand even a chance of dealing with it, we are going to have to wake up to it and acknowledge it for what it is.
A read of the Satanic Koran will turn up 111 individual commandments to kill the unbeliever, strike them at the neck (behead) or enslave them. Not only does it command murder and the enslavement, Islam’s creator and fantasy generator, Mohamhead, is OK in his book with pedophilia.
There is violence in the Old Testament too. But, there is a new covenant with God in the New Testament of redemption that does not condone murder. Rather, it commands its followers to love one another. Love, a word totally absent in the devil’s workbook, the Koran.
History is just validation of their books.
I never read Mein Kampf, but as I understand, people who read it should not have been surprised at what transpired in Nazi Germany.
Thanks for sharing. Hadn’t seen that.
Another, as he says,lazy answer” “and abandon all those Muslims who are trying desperately to modernise, reform and de-literalise their faith”.
To change Islam for the good would be to turn it into something else that isn’t Islam.
Nobody KNOWS the history of Islam, or if they do, and still claim divine inspiration was behind the writing of the Koran, they are the world’s most pop-eyed, apoplectic and apocalyptic apologists. (Bearded men with burning eyes)
There is no way to reconcile the words of the Koran with any of the earlier Scriptures or sacred writings of ANY legitimate religion. Sure, terrible things have been done in the name of other major religions, but those religions went through the necessary reinterpretations and reorganizations to become genuine representations of divine thought and mercy, and as a basis for true justice among men.
Shari’ah Law allows for none of that.
Islam remains rooted in 7th century tribalism and never had a Reformation or an Enlightenment, cultural changes that shaped modern Christianity. The teachings of Jesus are not based on violence, revenge or temporal punishment for disbelief. Certainly Christianity had its Inquisition and persecutions, but these excesses have not continued to be incorporated into its teaching. There may be peaceful Muslims, but that radical jihadism continues unabated in mosques around the world is evidence that many rank and file Muslims to one degree or another support jihad if not actively, but through doing nothing to oppose it. Until I see these radicals driven from the mosques, everyday Muslims denouncing this extremism and Islamic leaders actively rooting out these jihadists, I see little hope for Islam surviving what will soon become a global war resulting in the utter destruction of Islam.
Bflv
We, as Americans, must admit that we had our first ‘jihadi’ attack, with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by an Arab named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, in the 1960’s!!!!
No literate unbeliever can read the koran and then invite a muslim into his/her home. I don’t want people in my country who I won’t have in my home.
All true.
And in the West, relativism rules the day.
A lazy and superficial understanding or misunderstanding of those differences by a seemingly increasing number of fools and tools are driving the false narrative with the force of a “Politically Correct” Government and media.
It goes way beyond the “Emperor having no clothes”.
It’s more than willful ignorance.
It’s becoming “Forced ignorance”.
Most muslims had an ancestor who was forced into islam at the point of a sword.
Great piece, thanks for posting.
>>Islam is not a peaceful religion. It is certainly a religion of war and is by no means a religion of peace.
Even this misses the real truth: that Islam is not simply a religion, but also a totalitarian political/legal system.
It is interesting the way socialists approach theological concepts but when it comes to Islam they are not the only ones who refuse to approach the issue. That even includes leading Christian clergy including Pope Francis.
Followers of Mohammed not only claim, but truly believe that God has authorized them to kill those who refuse to submit to their version of Gods will.
That is a basic tenet of that religion. A claim which goes unchallanged. While it is understandable for atheists which most socialists are, not to approach that claim on a theological basis but by bombing and killing those who believe in it will not end its practice.
Islam as construed with its portrayal of a mercyless evil deity approving using deception and deceit is an abomination which must be discredited and condemed. And that can only be done by attacking its assertions and tenets. Certainly not by deying they do not exist. .
It is bewildering why many Christian clergy concerned about quote, political correctness, unquote, refuse to address what an insult to God it is and worse yet are unable to condem, then convince and convert its advocates and adhearants they are followers of an evil creed .
The Koran which was not given to Mohammed by God but by some angel .Demanding enforcement of sharia law which draws heavily from the Torah.It is a pseudo religious concoction using monotheistic selected texts, taken and misconstrued from the old (bible) and new testaments.
Both of which cite the Almighty has granted free will to accept or obey his laws and God is the final judge not man: Sodom and Gormora ,and Let he who is without sin cast the stone, are outstanding examples from both books. One deals with sin and Gods decision toward a group the other to an individual, neither is left to man.
Yet followers of Mohammed under the severest of penalties are forbidden to read either which would refute that assertion in a creed which institutionalizes disgusting arab pagan tribal mores,observances,and customs.
Claiming adhearants are authorized by our Creator to demand submission to it or suffer an ignominious death administered by followers of Islam simply because they answer the call to prayer 5 times a day.
http://www.theusmat.com/islamandfreewill.htm
Most muslims had an ancestor who was forced into islam at the point of a sword.
The future must not belong to those who deny the true nature of Islam
John Quincy Adams on Islam
In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).
Thomas Jefferson sent the Marines to deal with jihadis in the early 1800’s
I know this, you know this.
But, how is it even possible that not only so many don’t know, but are militantly opposed to anyone knowing, in and of itself?
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