I read this yesterday. I tend to agree more with Spencer than McCarthy. This debate interested me because when McCarthy joined Team Romney in 2008, I thought maybe Romney wouldn’t be so bad if he ended up being forced down our throats. But Romney is a real squish on Islam.
The money quote, IMO.
Excellent.
I couldn’t agree more.
Kind of a stupid argument. Within each religion or denomination there are real differences from congregation to congregation that aren't advertised by signs out front.
ltr
like Commies....watch what they (Islam) DO, NOT what they SAY....
I’m in the Spencer camp. Islam has been an insane murder cult bent on world domination since Mad Mo crawled out of the bat cave. “Moderate” muslims are just the advance scouts and trojan horses for the jihad. It’s a strategy they have perfected over 1,400 years. It works. Look at a globe, then and now.
I suspect that it may be without a concerted military defeat at the hands of a conquering competing religion.
I believe that the reason that Islam is so unchanging and so successful is that it turns all of a man’s vices in to virtues and consecrates them as laws of Allah.
One of the primary vices that Islam holds high is a man’s desire to have many women. Islam holds that a man may have multiple wives and that if he desires to have other wives than those he has he can divorce his unwanted wife with only 3 repetitions of the phrase “I divorce thee”.
Islam also appeals to a man’s chauvinism as in his distrust of those not like him and to hold his culture as the highest culture. Islam teaches that it is godly to force others to accept Islam or kill them.
Islam also holds as acceptable to god that a man can take as slaves those who are not followers of Islam and to lie, cheat and steal from those who are not followers of Islam.
Islam also makes godly mans war like nature. Islam holds that it is a direct path to paradise to die in the name of Allah.
Islam also appeals to the inherent bias in a man’s nature that he is superior to the female sex. It is a part of Islamic law that the testimony of a woman is only worth half that of a man.
Most other religions have had as their primary goal to tame man’s nature and mellow man’s vices to make it possible for men to live peacefully together so that they may prosper. Not so with Islam.
Islam was started by a war lord and it canons show the marks of that warrior's character.
Contrary to Andy’s characterization of my views, I am not saying that no distinctions can or should be made among Muslims (not referring to “denomination”). I am observing that Muslims themselves don’t make this one, and that no good comes from non-Muslims’ making it.
Using the term “Islamist” for the dominant, mainstream, and traditional understanding of Islam, as if it were the non-traditional minority offshoot, deceives in precisely that way.
But it is not up to us to separate them from Islam. That is up to the sincere Muslim moderates upon whom Andy places so much hope, but whose power, influence, and numbers are actually so sparsely in evidence.
but the fact is that throughout its history, and in all its theological, legal, and sectarian manifestations, Islam has always been supremacist and political. Acknowledging that is simply acknowledging reality. Pro-Western Muslim reformers have to start there. In Christian history, the Protestant reformers did not pretend that Church doctrine was other than what it was. They confronted and refuted portions of that doctrine.
All good points.
Imo, as expressed in recent FR thread regarding McCarthy’s article, moslem are individuals. Individuals can pick and choose. But, whether *Islam* permits individualism & choice as they relate to Islamic doctrine is another matter.
I think key issues are threefold: 1. Whether Islamic doctrine permits reform. Since it also demands submission to Allah, Mohammad and the Quran; and claims to "perfect or complete" all preceding religions. 2. What that reform will consist of; what is (are) the proposed alternative(s). 3. Whether mainstream moslems around the world see a genuine need for reform; and are willing to fight & die for it, if/when necessary.
There are similarities, yet, “Church doctrine”, and the history of Christendom from its inception, have notable differences compared to Islam.
Btw, Jasser lives in the US. Don’t know how vocal he is in moslem countries & how much support he has from moslems outside the US. Abdurrahman Wahid died in 2009. I’d be interested to know more about Abdullah Saeed. Otherwise, ”Saeed offers an exegesis of the Qur’an that challenges the traditional Muslim interpretation without ever explaining why his is a minority, non-traditional understanding of the text.” is somewhat common among ‘moderate’ moslems.
Since the Quran is viewed as immutable, 'moderate' moslems tend to find ways around it, for example, by saying the violent parts are incorrectly interpreted. Or somehow rationalize/justify their existence, in certain circumstances. Is that reforming Islam?
I’m not saying Robert Spencer is a bigot and one of the best friends the Islamic terrorist have....but he does a very good impersonation of one.
Islam + weapons = Islamist
This is so full of holes in the first couple of paragraphs that it’s hard to read the rest
The greatest anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-individual, anti-life collective in the history of civilization.
Fislam
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/06winter/win-ess.pdf
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/DIME/documents/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2007/10/terrifying-brilliance-of-islamic.html
http://thereligionofpeace.com/