Posted on 07/15/2005 9:10:53 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
The recent picture of the president walking hand-in-hand with Saudi Prince Abdullah prompted a torrent of juvenile jokes. Left mostly unasked were important questions, however, about Saudi Arabia’s role in fomenting and supporting militant Islam.
A recent controversial book asks these questions—not only about Saudi Arabia, but the Islamic world as a whole. The book is The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith by Irshad Manji.
Manji calls herself a “Muslim Refusenik,” a politically loaded term. “Refusenik” was originally used to describe Soviet Jews who refused to go along with the “mind control” and “soulnessness” of Soviet Communism.
Her provocative use of the term mind control sends a clear message: Manji raises subjects that you normally don’t bring up in polite Islamic circles. Interestingly enough, she credits evangelical Christianity for some of her willingness to do this. A few years after her family immigrated to Canada, her parents left her at a local Baptist church while they worked.
The South Asian who taught her Bible class made Manji believe that “[her] questions were worth asking.” So, she asked more—so many, in fact, that she won “Most Promising Christian of the Year” award when she was eight. That’s when her father “plucked” her out of the church school and enrolled her at a madrassa.
The contrast between the two schools left Manji convinced that the problem with Islam is not that the religion has been “hijacked” by extremists, as many said following September 11. Rather, it’s that the extremists, the Koranic literalists, comprise what she calls “the intellectually atrophied and morally impaired mainstream” of Islam.
Which brings me back to Saudi Arabia. In her book, Manji asks a question that infuriates mainstream Muslim groups: “Who is the real colonizer of Muslims—America or Arabia?” According to Manji, many of mainstream Islam’s worst features, like its treatment of women and its “deep-seated anti-Semitism,” are the product of “Arab Imperialism.”
Within the Islamic world, being a “real” or “good” Muslim means being more Arab. Thus, while Christians aren’t required to learn Hebrew and Greek to read the Scriptures and pray, Muslims must do both in Arabic.
And it isn’t only language. It is culture as well. The Saudi-funded madrassas and other religious institutions are not spreading an abstract version of Islam. They are spreading what one Egyptian writer calls the “Islam of the Desert.” The influence of Saudi money and the institutions it creates makes it difficult if not impossible to separate Islam from what Manji calls the “harsh habits of the desert.”
As you might expect, her views haven’t made Manji many friends in Islamic circles. One professor at my alma mater, Brown University, called her a “racist” and an “imperialist.” She has received more than a few death threats.
You don’t have to agree with everything Manji writes or think that her proposals to “reform” Islam are plausible in order to understand the importance of her work. Her “open letter” asks the kind of questions that must be asked in the Muslim world. Here’s hoping it gets an honest reading and the discussion it deserves.
Well, I've written on Muhammad's early military campaigns, and I can tell you that calling the product of the madrassas "the Islam of the desert" is like calling orthodox Judaism "the Judaism of Moses." Once he had an army, Muhammad was done with the peace and love racket. Other than that, I like these points, and I like this woman having the pluck to use the term "refusenik."
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I've read Irshad Manji's book. Great read. The brave woman is under constant bodyguard protection - in Canada! One can only imagine what it's like for refuseniks in Muslim lands.
It says a lot about Islam when any criticism is met with death threats.
Bump hope her life insurance is paid and she needs to stay out of ROP countries.
That picture is going to haunt Bush down the ages.
The other day a friend sent me a list of things the NEA has funded, and though some of them were just plain foul, most of them were attacks on Christianity. She asked what would happen to these government funded "artists" if they had put out similar attacks against Islam.
To expand on that, I imagine that if Christians reacted to criticism the way Islamists do, there'd be about three leftisits alive in the whole world. Oh wait, Leftists are cowards, so if we lost our minds and started killing a few of them they'd all clam up right away and maybe even pretend to convert.
It will not happen unless a miracle comes, but Islam needs to be banned world wide, for it is to the good of no human being. They call "evil" "good". The people are so brainwashed that they are not good to have around.
That picture is going to haunt Bush down the ages.This one?
Agree with your assessment.
It will not happen unless a miracle comes, but Islam needs to be banned world wide, for it is to the good of no human being. They call "evil" "good". The people are so brainwashed that they are not good to have around.
Yep, worse than if Chamberlain was hugging Hitler.
Or it will grace the cover of his post presidency resume.
bump
Where possible - Iraq, Lebanon (already a large Christian community there) - we shouud be fostering missionary efforts. They won't even let you bring a Bible into Saudi and proselytizing is a capital crime, but there must be clandestine efforts we could make.
And Islam, just like the regimes in the countries where it is the state religion, brooks no competition. When the regimes go down, a lot of the imams' authority will too.
You can spray all of the air freshener you want but if there's t*rds in the toilet it's gonna stink. The only way to get rid of the smell is to flush.
In some Arab countries it is customary for men to hold hands, as a jester of good will, much like one always wipes their behind with their left hand, and therfore extends a hand shake with one's right hand. Ha ha, of course one may well be holding a knife in their left hand. Now notice what hands are being used by the two individuals. But that all aside.
The fact remains we need Saudi oil and refined products. Tis that simple. We can rant and rave, on and on, but until we find alternative "reliable" sources, to replace the percent we get from the Saudis, we must play along. And as far as my limited knowledge goes on that issue, Saudi Arabia is a key player in OPEC, due to their huge reserves, so unless a clean break was some how arranged, one still would have to deal with others within the OPEC structure. And probably for the most part, the royal family could if they wanted arrange for all the mid east countries that extract, refine into oil based products, and petrochemicals etc., as well as natural gas, to make things super tough on the US.
So give GWB a bit of slack as he tip toes through the tulips,and be tougher on all the lib/environmental wackos that prevent the Alaskian fields and other sources to open up.
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