Posted on 06/05/2006 8:05:04 AM PDT by kellynla
The week following the Muslim protests in London against the Danish cartoonswith marchers carrying signs calling for the beheading of infidelsother Muslims demonstrated to claim that Islam really meant peace and tolerance. While their implicit recognition that peace and tolerance are preferable to strife and bigotry did these Muslims personal honor, the claim regarding Islam was both historically and intellectually preposterous. Only someone ignorant of the most elementary facts could believe such a thing. From the first, Islam was a religion of pillage, violence, and compulsion, which it justified and glorified. And it is certainly not the evident truth of the doctrine itself, to quote Gibbon with regard for what, with characteristic irony, he called the primary reason for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the civilized world, that explains the exponential growth of the Dar-al-Islam in its early history.
It is important, of course, to distinguish between Islam as a doctrine and Muslims as people. Untold numbers of Muslims desire little more than a quiet life; they have the virtues and the vices of the rest of mankind. Their religion gives to their daily lives an ethical and ritual structure and provides the kind of boundaries that only modern Western intellectuals would have the temerity to belittle.
But the fact that many Muslims are not fanatics is not as comforting as some might think. Consider, by way of illustration, Eric Hobsbawm, the famous, much feted, and unrepentantly Marxist historian. No one would feel personally threatened by him at a social gathering, where he would be amusing, polite, charming, and accomplished; if you had him to dinner, you wouldnt have to count the spoons afterward, even though he theoretically opposes the idea of private wealth.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
All I wanted to know about Islam; I learned on 9/11!
Semper Fi, Kelly
bump for later reading
They know islam is evil & violent, among other nasty, repulsive & repressive ancient behaviors.
They are part of the problem.
And always will continue to be the death cult committed to the end of western society and values. How do you say "burn baby burn" in Arabic?
Why do ignorant people insist on continuing to write about islam, without having grasped the most central and essential quality of it?
Islam is not a "doctrine" or religion.
Islam is not a system of government.
Islam is not a system of "personal (pathological) behavior" control of the minutest part of a practicioner's life.
It is all three simultaneously and inseperably. That is the only way this typical muslim statement makes sense:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism." --- PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein on March 31, 1977
Just grasp the concept of Umma and it all falls into place. The overriding concept in islam is the constant reaffirmation that islam is one and that the concept of "country" and national sovereignty does not exist.
The Umma oversees all.
Excellent piece, highly bump-worthy.
bttt
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