Challenging ignorance on Islam: A ten-point primer for Americans

ArabNews, Saudi Arabia ^ | 8-19-02 | Gary Leupp, Tufts University

[Oldeconomybuyer]

"We should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Columnist Ann Coulter, National Review Online, Sept. 13, 2001

"Just turn [the sheriff] loose and have him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line." Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland security and Senate candidate, to Georgia law officers, November 2001

"Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith where God sent his Son to die for you." Attorney General John Ashcroft, interview on Cal Thomas radio, November 2001

"(Islam) is a very evil and wicked religion wicked, violent and not of the same god (as Christianity)." Rev. Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, November 2001.

"Islam is Evil, Christ is King."

Allegedly written in marker by law enforcement agents on a Muslim prayer calendar in the home of a Muslim being investigated by police in Dearborn, Michigan, July 2002.

People with power and influence in the US have been saying some very stupid things about Islam and about Muslims since September 11. Some of it is rooted in conscious malice, and ethnic prejudice that spills over into religious bigotry. But some is rooted in sheer historical and geographical ignorance. This is a country, after all, in which only a small minority of high school students can readily locate Afghanistan on the map, or are aware that Iranians and Pakistanis are not Arabs. As an educator, in Asian Studies, at a fairly elite university, I am painfully aware of this ignorance. But I realize it serves a purpose. It is highly useful to a power structure that banks on knee-jerk popular support whenever it embarks on a new military venture, at some far-off venue, on false pretexts immediately discernable to the better educated, but lost on the general public. The generally malleable mainstream press takes care of the rest.

I don't mean to suggest that the academic cognosenti, as a "class," habitually counter this ignorance and protest the imperialist interventions that Washington routinely undertakes. Some of them may indeed support the venture, cynically asserting that the advertised pretext fulfills some sort of valid function, regardless of the lies and distortions that surround it. (I think of the depiction in the media of the "Rambouillet Accords" concerning Yugoslavia in 1999 as "the will of the international community," when one Contact Group member, Russia, rejected the US-dictated plan for Kosovo outright, and several European states only signed on after their arms were twisted nearly out of their sockets. I think of the calculated, extreme exaggeration of the number of Kosovar victims of Serbian forces as the bombing of Yugoslavia began. The lies surrounding that bombing were obvious to anyone studying the situation, but even some rather progressive academics were all for "Operation Allied

Force.") American academe is---unfortunately--- whatever its right-wing critics may contend, not particularly left or anti-imperialist. In any case, such ignorance is not just a national embarrassment; it's really dangerous. Raw material for a made-in-USA version of fascism.

To understand the contemporary world, we all need to know something about Islam-beyond the inane contribution of the Attorney General cited above. So I have prepared this little primer on Islam for Americans (suitable for ages 13 and above, so appropriate for high school use), dealing not with its theology so much as its general character as an important force in the world, presently encountering unprecedented, unprincipled attack from various quarters. (Oh, and by the way, I'm not a Muslim, but what those on the Christian right revile as a "secular humanist.")

1. Islam has been around for approximately 1400 years. Established on the west coast of Arabia 900 years before European settlement in America, and spreading rapidly throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa soon thereafter, it was not designed as an anti-US movement!

The basic teachings or requirements of Islam are not difficult to grasp. They constitute the "Five Pillars of Islam": (1) profession that there is no God but God ("Allah," in Arabic), and his Prophet (the last of the prophets, the "seal of the prophets") is Muhammad; (2) daily prayer; (3) fasting during the month of Ramadan; (4) charity; and (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca. Whatever you may think of this package, it's not terribly threatening to the non-Muslim.

2. Islam's teachings are contained in a fairly compact book, the Qur'an, which Muslims believe was dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. They believe of it precisely what Jews and Christians believe of their scriptures: that is, it's the Word of God. This book, like the Bible, demands belief in monotheism; refers to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jesus, etc. (far more space is given to Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Qur'an than in the New Testament); has a substantial legalistic component reminiscent of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, and poetic content as beautifully uplifting as the Book of Psalms. For religious and secular scholars alike, it is absolutely clear that Islam stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, we should think in terms of the "Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition."

(Some fundamentalist Christians, of course, see Islam as the work of Satan, and medieval Christians in Europe saw it as a heresy rather than as "paganism. The point is---for better or worse---Muslims have a whole lot more in common with the dominant religious trends in the US than do, say, Buddhists or Hindus.)

3. Muslims are about 20% of the world's population; Christians, about 30%. (The US Muslim population is estimated between 5 and 8 million; US Jews between 5 and 6 million). The global Jewish population is statistically quite small, so one can say the Judeo-Christian-Islamic population is roughly half the world's total. The consequences of a protracted religious war, pitting Christians and Jews against Muslims, are highly unpleasant to consider.

4. The Qur'an depicts Jews and Christians as "People of the Book," meaning that they have their own scriptures bestowed upon them by God (Allah is simply the Arabic world for God, related to the Hebrew Elohim; we should see it as analogous to the German word Gott, the French Dieu, or the Spanish Dios. It's not the personal name of a deity within a pantheon, like Thor, Aphrodite or Siva.)

Muslim scripture counsels respect for these communities, and indeed, in the history of Islam, within Islamic societies Jews and Christians have fared FAR better than non-Christians in Christendom. Muslims ruled all or part of Spain from around 800 to the late 15th century, when Columbus' great patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella "drove the Moors (Muslims) out of Spain," forced everybody to embrace Catholic Christianity (or be killed), and promoted the exquisite Christian tortures of the Inquisition. Under Muslim rule, Christian and Jewish communities generally flourished from Spain to Iraq. On the other hand, until recent times, Christian intolerance prevailed throughout Europe.

5. The Qu'ran does NOT call upon Muslims to KILL all non-Muslims. It calls for the destruction of "infidels," meaning principally Arabs who, during the time of Muhammad, practiced idolatry and polytheism. Again: this is a seventh-century book, produced in a specific historical context! It, and the Muslim religion, should be studied and understood objectively, dispassionately. Islam emerged very quickly, and within decades united under its banner-the banner of monotheism---the various tribes of Arabia. Its violent rejection of idolatry, however offensive to the modern, secular, humanist mind, is hardly unique. It can be compared to the ferocious suppression in Christian Europe of paganism (often associated with witchcraft).

And for perspective, while the Qu'ran does call for the extermination of "infidels," the Old Testament is replete with its own exhortations to genocide. According to the Biblical narrative (of dubious historicity, but believed by hundreds of millions), the Hebrews under Joshua's leadership, invading Canaan from Egypt, killed twelve thousand "men and women together" in the town of Ai-because God wanted them to (Joshua 8:25). The Hebrews put all the people of Hazor to the sword (they "wiped them all out; they did not leave one living soul." Judges 11:14). The poetics of hatred are as conspicuous in the Bible as in the Qu'ran. A personal favorite of mine, from Psalm 137, refers to the Babylonians: "A blessing on him who takes and dashes your babies against the rock!" Such references are characteristic of Judeo-Christian-Islamic literature, and are best examined in historical perspective.

6. Islamic "fundamentalism" is not a species apart from other fundamentalisms, including the Christian, Jewish, and Hindu varieties. They are all anti-modern, anti-science, anti-intellectual, rarely harmless and potentially (if not necessarily) fascistic. They demand belief in received dogma, inscribed in texts, rather than open-ended scientific inquiry. They either legitimate the existing order, or call for a return to a past social order in which class and gender relations were properly sorted out in line with the Divine Will.

Some (including non-religious people in or from Muslim countries) criticize Islam (appropriately, in my view) for what they consider backward and reactionary features. This is not the place to deal with such criticisms, nor am I the right person to do it. I will merely observe what many others have observed: Christendom underwent the Enlightenment-an evolution towards secularism, rationalism, and scientific thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-which the Islamic world, in general, has not yet experienced. To become "modern" (more specifically, to become capitalist), the West had to become more ideologically tolerant (i.e., less religious), and allow a freer market in ideas than had been possible when the Church monopolized learning. If mullahs monopolize education in much of the Muslim world, they serve a function identical with that of Europe's medieval Catholic clergy.

But our own Enlightenment is not irreversible. Top US officials reject the theory of evolution in favor of the ludicrous "theory" of "creationism," and seek to criminalize abortion on the grounds that a fetus is a human being created by God. Recent changes in US law (allowing the use of vouchers to support religious schools at taxpayer's expense), and the failure of the courts to prosecute behavior which plainly violates the constitutional separation of church and state, demonstrate that medieval thinking and fundamentalism retain a strong hold in sections of US society, and are well represented in the Bush administration. The American people are, I submit, far more threatened by Christian fundamentalism than its Islamic counterpart. And for a Pentecostalist Christian like John Ashcroft, who believes every word of the Bible literally, to inveigh against Islam (as he has) is (to use the English proverb) the "pot calling the kettle black."

7. Islamic fundamentalism (or what some, including CNN Moneyline's Lou Dobbs calls "Islamism," meaning a specifically political Islam) has NOT, historically, posed a great threat to Western interests (by which I mean corporate, oil, and geopolitical interests) but rather been exploited to SERVE those interests. Remember Lawrence of Arabia? What was his objective other than to forge a British alliance with the Hashemites, who would certainly qualify as "Islamists" by Lou Dobb's standards, during World War I? Later, the British boosted the Saudi royal family (patrons of the Wahhabi school of Islam, usually described as among the most conservative, embraced by Osama bin Laden as well as the Saudis in general) into power. The US inherited Saudi Arabia as a client state after World War II, and we all know how well US oil companies have done there ever since. (Aramco alone, prior to its nationalization in the mid-1980s, yielded some $ 3 trillion from the Arabian reserves.)

The US helped create, recruit, and finance the fundamentalist Mujahadeen, including some 30,000 young volunteers who came from throughout the Muslim world to fight "godless Communism" in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The US encouraged them to view their war as a jihad (in the sense of a "Holy War," a meaning the term usually does NOT carry), and put many in contact with young Osama bin Laden, then an ally. The Reagan administration was in love with fundamentalist Islam, so long as it served its purposes.

The California-based company Unocal was cordially negotiating right up to Sept. 11 with Afghanistan's Taliban for an oil pipeline through Afghan territory, State Department official and oilman Zalmay Khalilzad was arguing up through 1998 that the Taliban were friendly, potential business partners who did "not practice the anti-US style of fundamentalism practiced in Iran."

8. Muslims of the world have many thoroughly LEGITIMATE reasons to resent US policy. Nearly absolute support for the settler state of Israel in its relationship with the indigenous Palestinian people. Imposition of brutal sanctions on Iraq, contrary to logic and morality. Maintenance of bases throughout the Persian Gulf, in defiance of local sensibilities and interests. Support for brutal regimes, including that of the Shah of Iran and that of Indonesia's Suharto (who unquestionably has more blood on his hands than even that arch-villain and former US buddy Saddam Hussein).

9. Muslims typically DO NOT hate the US as an abstract concept, reject US culture in toto, or seek the destruction of American civilization. Many are, indeed, uncomfortable with some aspects of American behavior, as are most people in the world, from Central America to Japan. But a Zogby International poll, released June 11 of this year, shows that in nine Muslim countries, including Bangladesh and Malaysia, the most admired foreign country is the US

10. Muslims and Jews in Palestine/Israel have NOT always hated one another, and the current Middle East conflict does NOT go back many centuries. Rather, it began with the influx of foreign Jews into the region after World War I, which became a flood as a result of the Holocaust, and with international support resulted in the formation of Israel as a specifically Jewish state in 1948. Jewish settlement and terrorism (well-documented by the Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe) resulted in the displacement of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs (including both Christians and Muslims). The Arab-Israeli conflict is not, fundamentally, about Islam, or a clash between Islam and other faiths, but about this-worldly land grabbing, settlement, dispossession and oppression that has enraged the Muslim world, as it should enrage any thinking, moral human being. Unfortunately, fundamentalist Christians in this country tend to depict this history of injustice as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and they will brook no dissent when it comes to the Zionist cause that they have embraced as their own. ("God gave them the land, so don't bother me with historical details. End of discussion.") Hard to imagine a delusion more injurious to world peace and to the cause of justice.

Finally: In understanding Islam, Americans should give some thought to one of the pivotal episodes in world history, the Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, that ripped up the Holy Land between 1096 and 1291. During these two centuries, European Christians seeking to "win back for Christendom" territory that had fallen to the Muslim Turks-territory that had been ruled by Muslims since the early seventh century anyway, on terms generally agreeable to Jews and Christians as well as Muslims-committed unspeakable atrocities. In July 1099 Jerusalem was conquered, the Roman Catholic soldiers massacring all the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, including women and children. Nor was the Crusaders' zeal exhausted upon non-Christians; frustrated at lack of success in Palestine in 1204, they instead sacked Constantinople (modern Istanbul), then the center of Eastern Orthodoxy. In comparison, the behavior of the Muslim armies was chivalrous, the twelfth-century Kurdish leader Saladin in particular winning high praise from Christians and Muslims alike for his humanity.

The Islamic world remembers the Crusades; George Bush, like many Americans, is clueless about them. Hence his amazingly dim-witted reference to the "War on Terrorism" as a "Crusade" last September 16-a statement that produced immediate, widespread outrage in the Muslim world. No offense intended, no doubt. But such ignorance, in action, in a world where religious prejudice generates idiotic action from Belfast, to the Balkans, to Gujarat, to the Moluccas, is perilous ignorance indeed.

Gary Leupp is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University and coordinator, Asian Studies Program He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu

[Oldeconomybuyer]

I wonder if the good professor would change his viewpoint if his beloved university was hit by islamist terrorists?

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Listen to this politically correct nonsense and a lot more innocents will die. The guy is writing on the basis of wishful thinking. Radical Christians and Jews are not flying airliners full of innocents into tall buildings full of innocents. Islam is a dangerous religion. Ten per cent (100 million) of its adherents take its "destroy all infidels" literally and are directly responsible for violence against non-Muslims in every country in the world where the religion is dominant except Turkey which has a secular government that does not put up with it.

[Captain Shady]

I wonder if the good professor would change his viewpoint if his beloved university was hit by islamist terrorists?

Guess he would. However, he'd probably change his mind on Amish also ,if they hit his university.

[Cacique]

I bet the saudis puit a nice check into his bank account so he could write this trash.

Coming next week; Why Josef Stalin was missunderstood by the West and should be proclaimed a Saint by the Russian Orthodx Church.

Also on the darwing boards: Adolf Hitler anti-semite or missunderstood artist?

[dennisw]

d>

Gary Leupp Associate Professor of History

Back to Faculty List

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Email: gary.leupp@tufts.edu
Tel: (617) 627-2426

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Education

• B.A. University of Hawaii (1978).
• M.A. University of Hawaii (1980).
• Ph.D. University of Michigan (1989).

Major Publications

• Servants, Shophands, and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan (1992).
• Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (1995).

Research in Progress

• Weaving Workshops in Tokugawa Kyoto
• Urban Gang Violence in Tokugawa Japan
• Ethnic Consciousness and Race-Mixing in Early Modern Japan

Courses

• History 47 - Japan from Prehistory to 1868
• History 48 - Japan from 1868 to the Present
• History 133  - Japanese History from Literature
• History 134  - Tokugawa Japan
• History 135  - Gender and Sexuality in Japanese History
• History 182GL  - Religion in Japanese History

 

[WhiteGuy]

When they talk about Muhammed, are they talking about that old boxing guy who's lost a few of his marbles?

Just wondering

[Alouette]

Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe

This nutso, a card-carrying Communist, is a darling of neo-nazis and revisionists, along with fellow nutsos Noam Chomsky and Israel Shahak.

[alisasny]

With all the Japanese classes he teaches and all the Japanese research he does you would think he would at least write an article about what is in store for the Muslim world if they dont stop terror.

I guess better to make up history than teach real history.

[fporretto]

Somewhere in the Bible is the admonition to judge a tree by its fruit. That's applicable here, no?

As someone has already noted, we don't see Christian or Jewish fundamentalists homicide-bombing shopping centers and pizzerias, nor flying airliners into office towers. Nor does Christian sacred literature ever counsel Christians to treat any human being, of whatever faith, with deceit and violence, as the Koran does -- no matter what marginal adjustments Professor Leupp wants to make to our interpretation of "infidel."

Whether Islam is the root cause -- a phrase leftists love -- of violent Islamic expansionism, or whether it's just the dominant rationalization for something these savages would do anyway, it is demonstrably an unworthy religion that fails to meet the universal temporal standard of justification for all religious creeds: curbing the excesses of its adherents.

For more thoughts along these lines, please see:

Present Enemies, Future Wars

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[dennisw]

He also seems to interested in homosexuality and "gender" in Japanese historic Japan. Makes you go hmmmmmmmmm.........

His last name seems Chinese but he's likely a mix if he's from Hawaii.

[Sir_Humphrey]

The American people are, I submit, far more threatened by Christian fundamentalism than its Islamic counterpart. And for a Pentecostalist Christian like John Ashcroft, who believes every word of the Bible literally, to inveigh against Islam (as he has) is (to use the English proverb) the "pot calling the kettle black."

Typical left wing scare tactic. They want to equivicate conservative Christians with the terrorists who murdered 3000 innocents on 9-11. The point of this artice isn't to enlighten his students about Islamisists, it's to scare them away from conservative Christians by equating the two.

Anybody whose been in college within the past 30 years can spot this phony-ness a mile waya.

[arthurus]

Christianity and Judaism did not "thrive" under Islam. They survived. A tiny number of Christians and Jews were the physicians and advisors of rulers because of their knowlege and talents which were extremely rare among the Moslems, but the great majority lived under highly straitened circumstances with heavy extra taxes and disabilities. The physicians and advisors sometimes converted in order to stay alive or when a ruler would capriciously ordain that henceforth only Moslems could hold any office. These Jews and Christians and ex-Jews and ex-Christians were the source of the great "flowering" of culture and science and pereservation of knowlege.

[tsomer]

Does anyone know what sort of grants or fellowship funds are bankrolling this clown's "research?"

[sharkdiver]

Excuse me but did not the nations of the religions of Islam start a crusade by invading parts of Europe including Spain and murdering thousands upon thousands? This articles states "The consequences of a protracted religious war, pitting Christians and Jews against Muslims, are highly unpleasant to consider." Once again excuse me but I seem to recall Locerbie, the embassies in Africa, the killing of jewish atheletes at the olympics, 9/11, the bombing of the world trade center in the early 90's. It would seem to me that the Arab nations and religion of muslims have been fighting a protracted religious war against the west and Christians for decades. We are now taking the fight back on their own turf.

[Savage Beast]

In this article, Gary Leupp has presented nothing new about Islam or history. All the information he has given is well known. And he has explained nothing that is not already widely and thoroughly understood by the American public.

However he has presented rather well the dominant "Liberal" paradigm.

This is a paradigm that is widely accepted as fact by millions of Americans. It is a delusional system, based largely on denial and false premises, and dangerous because it ignores reality.

"Some...criticize Islam (appropriately, in my view) for what they consider backward and reactionary features. This is not the place to deal with such criticisms, nor am I the right person to do it."

Leupp is definitely not the right person to do this because he can not see the realities, blinded as he is by delusion, denial, and paradigm paralysis.

However, this article is the place to deal with such criticisms.

Leupp obviously cannot see and denies the importance of the backward and reactionary features inherent in and basic to Islam. The September 11 massacre stripped away the illusions that millions of people had about Islam and Muslims--i.e. they became disillusioned--but Leupp experienced no such epiphany.

Islam is a imperialist movement, committed to world domination, to intolerance, and to violence and war as strategy. Leupp is unable or unwilling to recognize this, and evidently so are the millions of "Liberals" who are deluded by the same "Liberal" paradigm.

"Christendom underwent the Enlightenment-an evolution towards secularism, rationalism, and scientific thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-which the Islamic world, in general, has not yet experienced. To become "modern" (more specifically, to become capitalist), the West had to become more ideologically tolerant (i.e., less religious), and allow a freer market in ideas than had been possible when the Church monopolized learning. "

This is an extremely important point.

Leupp obviously does not recognize its importance.

His mind immediately jumps to the brutality and intolerance of Christians centuries ago--witch hunts, the Inquisition, even the Crusades, which for most people in the West are ancient history, hardly relevant in today's world.

The point that is overriding in its importance is that in contemporary Western Civilization, the fruits of the Enlightenment are taken for granted. They are accepted. Secularism, rationalism, and scientific thought--freedom of religion, freedom of speech, seperation of religion and state, a free market of ideas, tolerance--are the accepted norm in the West.

This is not true in the Islamic world.

The Church has not monopolized learning in the West for centuries.

Leupp is so horrified by the residual currents of Christian fundamentalism in Western society, that he cannot understand the relative impotence and unimportance of such fundamentalism in the West and the strength, power, and importance of fundamentalism in the Islamic world. He cannot resist equating the two. He cannot bring himself to believe the obvious truth: that Christian fundamentalism is of practically no threat but that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is real and cannot be overemphasized.

"If mullahs monopolize education in much of the Muslim world, they serve a function identical with that of Europe's medieval Catholic clergy. "

Here again, Leupp cannot see the reality of the situation.

He compares the control of religious fundamentalists in contemporary Islamic theocracies with the control of the Catholic clergy in medieval Europe. The two are centuries apart.

He cannot see the effects of the Enlightenment on Western Civilization. And he is blind to the absence of such effects in the Islamic world.

He assumes that the Islamic world will experience such effects ("an evolution towards secularism, rationalism, and scientific thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-which the Islamic world, in general, has not yet experienced") as he completely ignores the possibility that the Islamic world has no intention of experiencing such effects, may never do so, and is openly determined to reverse such effects once it conquers the West.

"The American people are, I submit, far more threatened by Christian fundamentalism than its Islamic counterpart."

This is the crux of Leupp's argument and its basic fallacy.

Thought he is correct that "our Enlightenment is not irreversable", he cannot see the vast improbability of that.

The fruits of the Enlightenment are deeply intreanched in Western Civilization and have replaced religious fundamentalism though not religion.

In fact--this is quite close to the crux of the conflict between Islam and the West.

It is true that Muslims would like to replace Christianity and all other religious with Islam, but it is equally important for them to replace the Enlightenment with fundamentalism!

Leupp's article is a good explanation of the warped thinking of contemporary "Liberals".

Blinded by delusions and denial, obsessed with the brutality and intolerance of Christians centuries ago, they cannot see the vast differences between the "Enlightened" West of the 21st century and the intolerant, imperialist, Dark Age world of contemporary Islam.

Of even more importance, blinded as they are by the "Liberal" delusional system, they cannot comprehend the serious threat that Islamic imperialism poses to the entire world.

They ignore the superiority of Western Civilization to Islam and the need to defend and protect it.

They ignore the determination of Muslims to overthrow Western Civilization, constitutional government, liberty, and the Enlightenment--along with all other religions--and to replace it all with a worldwide Islamic fundamentalist theocracy, with the Koran as its only constitution and the sharia as its law.

Because of the delusional "Liberal" paradigm--which blinds "Liberals" to the dangerous realities of the 21st century--"Liberals" and "Liberalism" constitute the single greatest threat to the world today. They are the enablers of those--notably though certainly not exclusively Muslims--who would reverse the Enlightenment and destroy Western Civilization.

Unwittingly, Gary Leupp has explained the delusional "Liberal" paradigm rather well. In doing so, he has revealed the foolishness of this "Liberal" paradigm and those who accept it and just why those who think clearly and are willing to see reality overwhelming reject this foolish paradigm and are way ahead of "Liberals" and far superior to them in evaluating the reality of the dangerous world in which we all live today.

[mel]

BOOKMARK for later reading.

[Tancred]

In understanding Islam, Americans should give some thought to one of the pivotal episodes in world history, the Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, that ripped up the Holy Land between 1096 and 1291.

Okay, I gues that means those Arab armies heading into France in 732 were just looking for some cheese to go with their wine, that the conquest of Sicily and the sack of Rome in the 9th century by Arabs was just something we should get over, that Moslem pirates on the coast of the Riviera were really misled by their travel agent, that the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by the Turks some decades before the First Crusade is just an example of urban renewal, and that the descendants of all the Christians and Africans enslaved by Arabs and Turks for over a thousand years will soon get reparations.

Ha! This guy call himself a professor of history? So the Crusaders are the bad guys after all this? You don't think that they might have been provoked? Does he really think that it's okay for Arabs and Moslems to do whatever they want to infidels? Is Western Civilization not perfect enpough for his refined sensibilities? Would he have preferred that we just surrender, have Charles Martel hand over the keys to the city, keep the Ottomans from all the wasteful spending on cannons by opening the gates of Constantinople, let John Sobieski use his Polish cavalry to batter down the gates of Vienna so the Turks can have a nice visit, just give Spain back to the Arabs and have Columbus find the New World for those nice people (who would never hurt or enslave anyone, unlike the Spanish), and send over American sailors to the Barbary Coast so we can improve their navy for them and then they wouldn't be tempted to raid our ships?

It's not us; it's them!!!! For the last ten thousandth time, they have the problem, professor, not us!!!!

[Savage Beast]

This man's inability to see the vast difference between the secularized West and the fundamentalist Islamic world says nothing about his powers of perception and everything about the distorting effects of his delusional system and the magnitude and totality of his denial.

If he were an isolated example of foolishness, he could be dismissed--and, in fact, this particular man can be.

However, millions of Americans have also locked themselves into the same "Liberal" paradigm and are blind to the truth outside it.

"Never underestimate the power of denial."

Alan Ball. American Beauty. Directed by Sam Mendes. Dreamworks. 1999.

[MEGoody]

Hmmmm. . .this guy's area of 'expertise' seems to be Japan. So why is he opening his mouth about Islam? Obviously, he's no expert. LOL