Osama bin Laden: The Christian right's kind of enemy, says Duke prof.

The Book Standard ^ | 11/17/2005 | Max Chafkin

[culturewars]

MESSAGES TO THE WORLD: THE STATEMENTS OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

Lawrence says that bin Laden is fundamentally a “poet”—and that his fanatical ideology puts him in line with Left Behind writers Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. This, he says, is exactly why the al-Qaeda spokesperson’s “hollow” message is so attractive to angry Arabs. ...

Osama bin Laden repeatedly cites the Qur’an, but he cites it in the way that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cite the New Testament. You can make scripture fit your worldview and bin Laden had done this extraordinarily well with the Qur’an.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP

[PetroniusMaximus]

"Osama bin Laden repeatedly cites the Qur’an, but he cites it in the way that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson cite the New Testament."

I say OFF WITH THIS PROFESSORS HEAD!!!

(just kidding.)

[Onelifetogive]

I don't really detect any bias here.....Seems like a pretty even-handed assessment of the situation.....

</sarcasm*>

[Texas_Jarhead]

Another ivory tower dillhole runs his cakehole.

[dan1123]

Yeah, OBL is just the same as Robertson and Fallwel, except for that leading a Jihad to kill nonmuslims. When I started college in the late 90s, the professors said that businesses were bemoaning the fact that graduates couldn't think critically. With logic like this going around, it's no surprise.

[pcottraux]

Since when did Jerry Falwell cut someone's head off in the name of Allah?

[Just A Nobody]

bin laden's a poet and we didn't know it!

[bill1952]

Yeah, Pat Robertson always trains his faithful in hidden military camps to mass murder innocent civilians.

[bahblahbah]

http://webpages.charter.net/maxflack/LAWRENCE.htm

BRUCE LAWRENCE—ABRAHAMIC  PLURALIST AND DEFROCKED MEDEIVALIST: THE BIN LADEN CHRONICLES!

 

 

                                                                

                     * Islamic lebensraum.                                    * Nazi lebensraum.                                     * Lawrence lebensraum.

 

 

Adolph Hitler had Neville Henderson and August Kubizek and Lord Haw Haw; John Kerry had Howard Dean and Michael Moore; Robin Hood had Maid Marion and Friar Tuck and Ben Jonson and John Keats; and Osama bin Laden has Bruce Lawrence of Duke University. Lawrence is current Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Durham. He teaches comparative religion—preparatory classes for students about to embrace dhimmitude. He calls himself an Abrahamic pluralist and a defrocked medievalist. Well, as long as he keeps his pants on. Lawrence thought it would be a great idea if everybody got to know Osama bin Laden as intimately as he does. Osama is not an ogre, says Lawrence. He’s really a swell fellow, a bit more religious than Larry Flynt and Woody Harreslon perhaps but a splendid fellow. He’s somewhat on the order of Jerry Falwell—only taller. And he’s a great family man; he’s got lots of kids. And he doesn’t want to take over the whole world—that’s a crass canard. He only wants a small part of it—the dar al-Islam part, for now anyway.

 

Osama is a very busy man. He hasn’t had time to sit down and make a contribution to the literary world—bunker-busting bombs and scum-seeking missiles can be quite distracting. So far there’s been nothing—no It was a Dark and Stormy Night, no Mein Kampf. Lawrence thought he would do bin Laden’s many fans and admirers in the Middle East and in Berkeley a big favor by collecting Osama’s speeches and putting them together in a book. And the deed has been done. The result: Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden on sale at Amazon.com for $16.95, already reduced to $11.53 with Free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.

 

Could any full-blown, Allahu akbar Jihadist resist that kind of an offer? Only $11.53! Incredible! Why that’s cheaper than The Last Will and Testament of Casper the Friendly Ghost.  And what about complimentary copies? Who’s on the list for freebies? Do we see Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) who called Osama bin Laden a great builder and US Congresswoman Marci Kaptor (D-OH) who compared the Taliban to the Green Mountain Boys? And how about US Congressman James McDermott (D-WA)? Will he have to dig into his own pocket for the bin Laden Chronicles or will Howard Dean let him have a peek at his autographed tome? An enticing question!

 

Lawrence says people are mistaken about bin Laden. Jihad doesn’t mean war—it means being better at things. Of course—being better at things! How could one have been so mistaken about bin Laden! Being better at things! That makes sense. Why didn’t someone think of that before? That’s what Heinrich Himmler and Reichsfuhrer Reinhardt Heydrich said about being a Nazi. A Nazi was better at things—especially at finding lebensraum and solving the Jewish question. And to one of Robin’s Merry Band it meant being better at shooting arrows off petrified heads and dumping oafs into muddy creeks.

 

Yes, Lawrence says, Jihad means being better—“being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one’s anger.”

 

Anger? Osama has been controlling his anger? Where has Lawrence been the past twenty years? Doesn’t he watch TV; read the newspapers; go on line? Sure, he’s a college professor and an allowance can be made for that, but this is well beyond ignorance. Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe weren’t as far in the dark as this guy. Okay, let’s be fair for a minute—Gilligan and Crusoe might have been stranded on deserted islands for year after year but they were not isolated in some miserable Ivory Tower cut off from all intellectual stimulation. Somebody stick a pin in Lawrence and if he doesn’t respond in three days, call John Esposito or Noam Chomsky. He may need a blood transfusion—and make sure it’s halal blood, none of that cheap dhimmi stuff.

 

 

                                  

* The Professor’s choice.                                * And he thinks we’re going to read that crap?

 

Lawrence is also author of Shattering the Myth. It’s obvious he prefers publishing to perishing. Islam is neither monolithic nor violent says Lawrence. He blames Islam’s woes on the usual suspects—poverty, the Crusades, colonialism, imperialism, American foreign policy; that damn Thomas Jefferson! The fact that Islam’s woes preceded the various isms seems not to matter. The vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists he says. And what do they call Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible? Fundamentalists, isn’t it? And Muslims who do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Qur’an are what? Heretics? That’s a good guess. Lawrence must have confused a hadith with John’s Epistle to the Corinthians. That’s not unusual for a defrocked medievalist.

 

The Muslim silent majority is ready for democracy he says, for capitalism, the rule of law—abridged when necessary by the shari’a—tutti-frutti ice cream and an interfaith dialogue that promotes Islam, condemns Zionism and relegates Jesus Christ to little more than a cheerleader for Mohammed. This is the kind of deal Neville Chamberlain would have accepted from Hitler. It’s a replication of the same sorry cultural surrender made by France and Germany in the ‘70s and ‘80s to keep the good times rolling—oil, Muslim immigration, Wahhabism in; building contracts, trade goods and self-respect out. It was a conquest for Islam, cultural suicide for Europe and the birth of Eurabia.

 

Lawrence wrote a prayer for HarperSanFrancisco on behalf of peace during the First Gulf War titled, appropriately enough, A Prayer of Peace Among the Children of Abraham. It’s on the homepage of Lawrence’s website. The last paragraph is worth quoting, not because it has any literary merit or because it is particularly profound or perceptive—it isn’t—but because it is sort of frightening. It says, “In Islam is the abode of peace. Let it expand and expand engulfing all claimants to Abraham’s faith—be they Jews, be they Christians, and also, Your mercy, be they Muslims.”

 

Well, that does it! There’s no place for Bill Maher or Michael Newdow in Aldous Lawrence’s Brave New World. Nor will there be any room for John Travolta or Hop Sing. And the Abrahamists have been silent of what they intend to do with the gypsies, and eventually the Jews, but one can imagine.

 

There are hundreds of historical figures more worthy of admiration than Osama bin Laden—Jefferson Davis and Al Capone come to mind. Only an Abrahamic pluralist and a defrocked medievalist would have picked Osama bin Laden.

 

 

 

* I’m really sorry, Hop Sing, but there’s no room for you in an Abrahamic pluralistic society.

[penelopesire]

"Lawrence says that bin Laden is fundamentally a “poet”—"

Too bad Lawrence is fudamentally an idiot. Just read the whole article and it is just another example of how the left is undermining this country at our universities. Every single 'Islamic Studies' course at our American universities are infiltrated with this kind of nonsense.

Hell, even our world religion courses are leaving out Christianity with it comes to the syllabuses. My son took a World Religion course at a Christian University, taught by a Muslim, and all they studied was Islam the entire semester!! He told the students they already knew enough about the Christian religion and when I called to complain..the DEAN said the Professor was right to design his class as he saw fit!!..GIVE ME A BREAK!!

[Sterm26]

It's disgusting how the Left compares the Christian Right to the Islamic fanatics. Last time I checked, Robertson never sent any of his followers on a suicide bombing mission.

If the Left hates religion so much, why are they siding with the Islamo-fascists, who make Robertson look like Madeline Murray O'Hair?

[Cronos]

Lawrence says that bin Laden is fundamentally a “poet”—and that his fanatical ideology puts him in line with Left Behind writers Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson

Ok, the Left Behind books were kind of junk reading, but they seemed to have really ticked off the author of this piece! I guess they really are like binL --> they tell people to fly planes into buildings and kill 1000s of innocents and beheading them....

[Cronos]

He blames Islam’s woes on the usual suspects—poverty, the Crusades, colonialism, imperialism

weally??? How come he forgets the 300 years before the Crusades when the slammies were rampaging over the middle east?

[cowboyway]

I’ll concede that, in the long run, bin Laden could be as dangerous and as evil as Hitler, but I don’t want to have World War III.

Nobody asked the terrorist their opinion on this. They've already started WW3. Our only option is to finish it.

Lawrence says that bin Laden is fundamentally a “poet”

[Forte Runningrock]

"Lawrence says that bin Laden is fundamentally a “poet”—and that his fanatical ideology puts him in line with Left Behind writers Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson."

The problem with this uneducated "wanna be" writer's statement is, Osama Bin Laden quotes the Koran word for word, where as La-Haye, Jenkins, Falwell, and Robinson only state their personal wishes, which are in some cases in violation of the word of God.

Osama Bin Laden's words, which are words being shouted out around the world in the name of "Allah" (the rock god of Islam), by the Clerics of Islam, the most knowledgeable people who represent the cult of Islam, are the true words of their god. Kill all Jews, Kill all those who don't believe in a rock named "allah" ( al-ilhah, the god most high)

[tophat9000]

Look Lawrence I'll worry about Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other Christian when they stat flying airplanes in to building... till then shut the f--- up!

Oh and by the if Christians do start making terrorist attacks you folks on the left will then start to support Christians like you do Islam now...right?

[sagar]

Lets not compare Bible to Quran. Bible is a piece of literary work, shedding some light on historical events with supernatural stories, worthy of teaching in philosphy classes.

Quran, however, is a murderous piece of garbage designed for angry nomadic criminals of desolate deserts, fit to be banned and burned.

[AZ_Cowboy]

It's disgusting how the Left compares the Christian Right to the Islamic fanatics

It ain't just the left. There exists constituency on here who does the same exact thing.

[Sterm26]

I haven't seen it. But then again, I don't frequent the overtly religious posts.

Even though I am not a religous person, I can see the difference between Christianity and Islam. I'd much rather live in the USA with religious freedom than any Islamic toliet country. It amazes me that the left doesn't seem to feel the same way.