Bush praises Islam for its 'morality'

President Bush yesterday removed his shoes, entered a mosque and praised Islam for inspiring "countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality."

For the second time since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the president yesterday visited Washington's oldest mosque, the Islamic Center, where Muslims from 75 nations gather to worship. Mr. Bush marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by praising Islam as a hopeful religion of mercy and tolerance.

"Islam affirms God's justice and insists on man's moral responsibility," said the president, flanked by a half-dozen imams. "Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind." The overture to Muslims came four days after religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Mr. Bush "ignores history" by not acknowledging that Islam is "violent at its core."

In an interview with The Washington Times last month, Mr. Robertson said he understood the president's political need for support from the Muslim world in the war on terrorism, but said the president should not speak about Islam as a religion and that he "is not elected as chief theologian." The conservative commentator accused the president of succumbing to "political correctness" by praising the religion of terrorists who attacked America on September 11.

Mr. Robertson repeated that accusation on ABC's "This Week." The host, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos called the disagreement "a theological dispute which is driving a political wedge between President Bush and some of his conservative Christian allies."

That characterization was disputed yesterday by the White House. "This may be an area where they disagree," a senior administration official said of Mr. Bush and his conservative Christian allies. "But there are areas of agreement."

The director of the Islamic Center, Abdullah Khouj, praised the president's visit and told him that it demonstrated "the value of human tolerance, a virtue taught by Islam and practiced here in America."

The president's visit came one day after a Pew Foundation poll found widespread anti-Americanism in some Muslim nations. With the United States preparing for war with Iraq, the administration is eager to mitigate rising tensions on the "Arab street."

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Mr. Bush "acknowledged the United States has a job to do and we have to bring people together between the United States and the Muslim world."

To that end, Mr. Bush praised American Muslims for "upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace." "Millions of our fellow Americans practice the Muslim faith," said Mr. Bush, a born-again Christian. "They lead lives of honesty and justice and compassion."

Mr. Robertson first criticized Mr. Bush in The Washington Times interview last month. When Mr. Stephanopoulos reminded him of this quote, Mr. Robertson refused to back down from his assessment of the president's view of Islam. "It ignores history," he said. "Any student of history knows that it's not a peaceful religion." "It's violent at its core," he said. "There is absolute virulent hatred of Jews, and the idea that every Jew has got to be killed before the culmination of the age. That's what Islam teaches, and I think that's violent."

Other conservative religious figures have spoken out in recent months against Mr. Bush's frequent statements about the peaceful nature of Islam, including the Rev. Franklin Graham and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the latter of whom called Islam's prophet Muhammad a "terrorist."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan disagreed. "The president believes that America is a nation that welcomes people of all faiths — Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and many others," he told The Times. "He's made it very clear that the war on terrorism is not a war about religion. It's a war about good vs. evil."

Mr. Bush is not the only administration official making overtures to Muslims in recent weeks. Others who have participated in Ramadan events include National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill.

For those of you who don't realize how much the Islamic world has advanced mankind, I suggest you pick up a few books, starting with the "The History of Civilization" by Will and Ariel Durant...begin with "Our Oriental Heritage."

Unfortunately for you, I have this book on my shelf and I just took a look at it. (The) Muhammed isn't indexed at all. Islam is in a few places, and all or most all of the references might get Durant a fatwa (That's such a nice word, isn't it?) were he still alive. He talks about the poor treatment of women. He talks about the bloodthurstiness of the men. The only neutral treatment Islam gets is when Durant considers Akbar the Great. ("He had quite discarded the dogmas of Islam." Maybe that's what made Akbar great?) So this is your first misrepresentation. There is nothing that I recall, or that I could easily locate, in Our Oriental Heritage that in any way touches on "how much the Islamic World advanced mankind."

To be fair, I should point out that Durant's major treatment of Islam occurs in The Age of Faith which is the fourth volume in his Story of Civilization series. There's probably some nice things said about Islamic Scholarship, Science, Medicine, Philosophy, Literature, Art, and Music (all ToC topics) but I couldn't find them when I skimmed that section quickly.

Now since you seem to like to read, maybe you might try La Fallaci's Rage and Pride. It's a quick read. You'll learn some things.

Especially amazing is the initial spread of the Islamic Empire throughout the Middle East, Africa, Andalusia(Spain), Asia, and eastern Europe. It spread just as every other great Empire (the Roman, British, French) spread. ...

Now it's interesting that you mention this. I am in the habit of sitting in on classes at one (and soon two) of the nation's top universities. Last year I sat in on a Western Civ Lecture which just happened to be about the spread of Islam that day. The professor started off by comparing the spread of Islam to the spread of Christianity, 100 years vs 300 years to become well established. After he was done with the real students, he and I chatted for about a half hour mostly about this idea. The reason Islam spread so much faster than Christianity, I suggested, is that Islam was spread via the Sword. Christianity was spread via the Word. (That missing S makes a BIG difference.) The professor largely agreed with me. Comparing Islam with political empires on your part, which are usually military empires, just reenforces the point.

This Islamic Empire changed forms throughout the years, but in its height in the form of the Ottoman Empire, it held lands greater than Rome and easily toppled the Eastern Roman Empire, almost taking Europe along with it if it weren't for the brave slew of Europeans warriors from Russia, Serbia, Austria, Germany, and France.

Holding territory, again, is an evidence of military strength. I am not aware of any region that willingly accepted Islam without compulsion.

The sciences and politics benefited the most from a large Islamic Empire, which one could argue was far more tolerable of other religions than Western society was before the United States. Leaps in Astronomy, Medicine, physics, mathematics, chemistry, art, language, and music all were brought in from the Islamic world to our own.

Gee. Really? I know they named many of the stars, but what else did they do? I have degrees in the sciences, and many courses I took started out with an historical overview. I just don't rememeber anyone ever crediting an Arab for anything. Music? Please! Don't they kill people for singing?

One of Ronald Reagan's favorite men to quote, Ibn Khaldun, was probably one of the greatest political minds to ever live. I suggest you people read more about him, too.

I never heard of Khaldun. (Not even during any of the dozen or so political philosophy classes, I sat in on during the past few years.) Is he like Aristotle? I'll try to check him out, but I hope you'll understand my negative attitude going in.

Take it easy, and realize that while we have a lot to be proud of, other societies have contributed much to our own, and that the MAJORITY of Muslims are not bad people.

I prefer not to take it easy when I am being attacked. Other societies have contributed to ours, but it's hard to think of any other historical group which has contributed less than the Muslims have. (Okay. Maybe the Hittites? But I've seen it suggested that the Hittites never existed, which would seem to put them at a big disadvantage.) You suggest the the majority of Muslims are good people without a scintilla of evidence. I suggest that the majority of politically active Muslims are active enemies of ours. I say this based upon the ease with which one can find "Death to America" type websites, and the near impossiblity of finding Islamic websites that think it might be okay we retained our English-Judeo-Christian heritage.

ML/NJ

I should also amend my rant to mention that significant non-christian/jewish scholars were also misappropriated by the Islamic Empire from other cultures and religions.

When pro-Islam spokesmen talk about the achievements of Islam, the speech is always preceded by the phrase, "Eight hundred years ago..." If Islam was conducive and promotive of intellectual advancement, it would never have regressed backwards to the barbarism we see today. We instead should have seen perpetual progress and stimulation and intellectual ferment, such as in the Western Renaissance.

What we in fact find is that the oft-touted achievements of Islamic civilization are all on the far corners of the Muslim world, and were products either of non-Arab peoples long ago(the mosques of Sinan in Turkey; the poetry and painting of Persia; the Taj Mahal in India) or in synthesis with other peoples (as with the Muslim/Christian/Jewish culture of Moorish Spain). "Arabic numbers" are a misnomer, are actually of Indian/Hindu origin, inclusive of the concept of 'zero'. Arabs merely provided the 'bridge' to the West, after having invaded both cultures by force.

For those of you who don't realize how much the Islamic world has advanced mankind...

If there were even the slightest bit of truth in that idea then islamic societies (of which there are many) would not be some of the most backward, medieval, and cruely inhuman societies on earth. All are restricted and held back by one common demominator: islam. Healthcare, sanitation, jurisprudence, social and political conditions, in islamic societies all of these are screaming proof that islam is a burden and a hindrance to human advancement. Your claim has as much validity as one who would say that having AIDS makes one healthier. Look around, you can probably find a book or two that says it. Most of the contributions to ancient society claimed by muslims were actually contributions by the Persians, who are not arabs, and who were advanced themselves by interaction with other non-islamic peoples, such as Jews and Greeks. Their few contributions were made in spite of islam, not because of it.

As the different tribes and nations of people who were living throughout the land were conquered, their taxes were lowered, they were given a stable common currency...This is the guiding principle of Supply Side economics.

Their taxes were lowered IF they converted. If not, additional taxes were levied on those that weren't murdered. That doesn't sound like supply side economics to me. BTW, Silver and Gold had been stable common currencies long before islam tried to enslave the world.

Leaps in Astronomy, Medicine, physics, mathematics, chemistry, art, language, and music all were brought in from the Islamic world to our own.

Nazism can claim more contributions to all these things than islam can and how long was it around? Oh come on, some mathmatical theories of the Persians can be honestly claimed, along with a few Persian astronomical concepts, but that's about it. ART? yeah, right. Islam has destroyed and hindered art more than any despotic blight that ever cursed the face of the planet. Just ask all those greek statues that had their noses broken off. Just ask all those paintings and tapestries that were destroyed and forbidden to be recreated. Islam is the ultimate enemy of ART. The only contributions ever made by "islam" were PERSIAN contributions, not islamic contributions. And those would not have happened either, if the Persian empire had not interacted with so many different cultures BEFORE falling victim to islam.

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