Bernard Lewis on Jihad: Egregiously Misleading New Statements

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/03/08/bernard-lewis-on-jihad-egregiously-misleading-new-statements/print/ ^ | Andrew Bostom

[ventanax5]

Lewis’s Claim (1):

What we are seeing now in much of the Islamic world could only be described as a monstrous perversion of Islam. The things that are now being done in the name of Islam are totally anti-Islamic. Take suicide, for example. The whole Islamic theology and law is totally opposed to suicide. Even if one has led a totally virtuous life, if he dies by his own hand he forfeits paradise and is condemned to eternal damnation. The eternal punishment for suicide is the endless repetition of the act of suicide. That’s what it says in the books. So these people who blow themselves up, according to their own religion - which they don’t seem to be well-acquainted with - are condemning themselves to an eternity of exploding bombs.

[ml/nj]

He should give the old man a break. After all how many "Nazi scholars" are there? Lewis has devoted his whole life to studying Islam. Sometimes he does get it right, but in the end he just cannot come around to see that there is nothing but those "sometimes."

ML/NJ

[Biggirl]

That is why I like to read stuff from Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, ete., because they bring it a 21st century thinking approach to this Islam/jihad issue.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[ml/nj]

Just so you know I heard Lewis talking in NYC before GWB took us into Iraq and Lewis basically said then that we should go in now. If we didn't we would have to do it in five years and then it might be too late; and then he said we should have taken care of Iraq five years earlier. He may have blinders about the general nature of Islam, but it was pretty clear to me that he understood what was going on.

ML/NJ