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

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

[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]

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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