On 9/11, an inter-faith reality check -PART II DISCUSSION

57 thoughts on “On 9/11, an inter-faith reality check -PART II DISCUSSION”

1. Just add your comment!

2. An opinion from a Westerner that has spent time in Saudi Arabia

   http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/09/observations-on-arabs.html

   Granted these comments are just opinions and observations from one person. I can attest that I have read and heard comparable observations from other Westerners in the MIddle East.

   However, I would invite Dean to at least read what this gentleman has to say. He doesn’t seem like a demented, hate-filled character. He seems like a reasonable normal gent. Give him a listen.

   Note, I disagree that “we cannot share this world in peace.” We can share the world but the Western countries have to act together to establish very firm rules of conduct and apply them to Muslims within our borders without special treatment and limit or terminate the influx of any further Muslims. We need to defend our institutions and our culture and not allow their destruction by neglect.

   12) Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.

   Another culturally-imposed blindness we have is the notion that everybody can get along with enough good will. There is absolutely no evidence to support this and a great deal to oppose it. Can the subjugation of women coexist with Western Civilization with Western media ubiquitous throughout the world? Can a pluralistic and tolerant society be governed by Islamic law? Can a modern economy exist where interest is forbidden and many forms of business risk-taking are considered gambling, and thus forbidden? Can a society that educates its young men by a process of rote recitation produce critically thinking, technically educated men to build and operate a modern economy? Can you even teach elementary concepts of maintenance to a people who believe that anything that happens is inshalla (As God will it)? To compete, or even just survive in the world they must become more like us and less like themselves – and they know this.

3. I saw a little squib on a new program last night that the Turkish Army is getting restive with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey. They have in the past overthrown governements who went too far down that road. Anybody else seen or heard anything?

4. Missourian, I would love to have some sort of peaceful co-existence with the Muslim world especially the Muslims inside the U.S. But how can there be?

   Our only model is the Cold War, but communism is a top-down materialist ideology that never did elicit the emotions of the masses to any great degree. Islam is much more de-centralized and founded on genuine (if mistaken) belief that is not simply materialistic. What is our belief in the Dis-Untied States other than “every person for oneself” (It is not, after all, politically correct to say every man for himself)? There is not even a coherent definition of person as for some it does not include infants and the infirm, but does include some animals. Even among Orthodox Christians, there is no common vision with Patriarch Bartholomew once again playing the dhimmi card. Corruption, licentiousness, and violence reign and the violence is more and more directed at women and children.

   We have no will to defend ourselves in part because we have no idea what we would be defending. We cannot even muster the will to make a unified, cogent defense of the West against Islam on an intellectual level without all sorts of attacks from others in the West against the person who has the temerity to not “be nice” to the Muslims. It’s almost like a domestic abuse situation in which we are the abused constantly enabling and defending our abuser.

   When the conversations on the war in Iraq first got started, I asked repeatedly of Dean and others if they thought our country were worth defending, or had it gotten to the point that they were so disgusted with it that it should not be defended. Of course, as with any substantive question, no answer was given—only emotional harangues based upon egalitarian relativism with some Gospel bunting.

5. Note 5, Some silver linings

   Michael, I find myself in agreement with much of your note but I am not hopeless.

   I will agree that it is a truly it is a discouraging time. It seems that the West cannot pull together to protect itself and Americans cannot pull together to protect their country.

   I would direct your attention to a small ray of sunshine, that is, a recent poll that shows that belief in God is shared by many in America and that many still support a church organization regularly. I know that the American religious scene is a theological circus but still I think that America’s core values are deeply cherished by most Americans.

   My perception of the British (very subjective admittedly) is that too many decades of the Nanny State has bred the “spine” out of them.

   I do not have that perception of Americans. I think the American public is ahead of the poliicians and the elite. I think there are many in the American public who are roused to defend America.

   The open violence of the Muslim mobs in response to Salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh, Pym Fortyn, the Danish cartoons and now Pope Benedict XVI reveals a very clear pattern. Americans are beginning to understand that this is about control and intellectual intimidation by the Muslim world. All the PC blather int he world from the academics will make no difference.

6. Where are the leaders? Can you think of one person who might have will and the ability to genuinely lead?

7. Note 7, Michael, just hope right now.

   I don’t know as yet where the leaders will come from. I wouldn’t venture to name anyone just yet. I can’t fully support my sense of hopefullness but I suppose I just believe in the American people. I think/hope/pray that within the next two years we will coalesce and come together. I can always hope that Guiliani returns to an orthodox version of his original Roman Catholic faith.

   It seems as if there are some stirrings of intellectual resistance in Europe, such as the statements of Angela Merkel. Pope Benedict XVI seems to be a man of real courage. I think that “Pope Rage” really clarified the issues for many Americans. It was a “rage” too many. Remember it was “touch and go” before the Battle of Vienna and many other turning points.

   I guesss this sounds sappy but I just believe in the good sense of the American people and their coming healthy impatience with inaction. As I noted more and more people are coming to understand the demands of Islam and Americans will not, I truly hope, give up free speech without a fight.

8. Marine Corp Hymn commenmorates America’s first war with Islam

   I know Dean has the Marine Corp hymn memorized but it contains a reference to “the shores of Tripoli.” This makes reference to the Tripoli pirates that prayed upon non-Muslims and enslaved millions of white Europeans, as well as Black Africans, over the centuries. The Islamic raiders attacked England, Siciliy and even on one expedition went up the Tiber to sack Rome and its sacred structures. They would raid a sea coast village in the U.K. and take its population to the slave centers of North Africa. See “White Gold” a book about one particularly lucky Englishman who was captured, sold into slavery and who finally escaped back to England.

   It was the relatively new American government that decided to take on the pirates and to refuse to pay jizya as the European governments had been paying. My how history repeats itself.

   So, maybe standing up to these jerks is in our historical DNA and we will truly and directly confront them again.

9. Winston Churchill said that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing after they have done all the wrong things first.

10. Note 6. Michael, leaders rise when circumstances call them. I agree with Missourian. I’m not despairing, although the current state of affairs seems bleak.

11. Michael made the following comments:

    When the conversations on the war in Iraq first got started, I asked repeatedly of Dean and others if they thought our country were worth defending, or had it gotten to the point that they were so disgusted with it that it should not be defended. Of course, as with any substantive question, no answer was given—only emotional harangues based upon egalitarian relativism with some Gospel bunting.

    Is our country worth defending? Yes. Is what we now call ‘Western Civilization’ worth defending? No. Not in its present form, it isn’t. It needs to be restored first to a point in which it is worthwhile.

    The point I have always made is that Islam must be combatted as a religion. We have to preach to them, but we can’t preach to them and love them and show them Christ if we ourselves don’t believe. The Christians in Lebanon are pointing the way in this. Even though many of them fought Muslims in the Civil War, they are actively sharing the love of Christ with refugees and even taking them to church.

    But, at the same time, the Christians in Lebanon aren’t about to let themselves get rolled either. They are willing to fight, and have done so in the past. This is a tough row to hoe. We have to cleanse our own culture and restore it. We have to simultaneously reach out to the Muslims and oppose the religion. We have to give them food and water, but prevent them from seizing our land. This is a complex endeavor that will not be easy.

    But it is the calling of our generation and the ones to come.

12. Inter-“faith” dialogue should be based on clear understanding: Pope Benedict

    Here is a link to an amazing article which addresses the difference between the Christian and the Muslim conception of God. This is very crucial to understand.
    No “inter-faith” dialogue can bear fruit unless the participants understand the differences between Christianity and Islam.

    http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=95902

    Q: At Regensburg, Benedict XVI highlighted the Christian understanding of God as Logos. How does the idea of God as Logos differ from an Islamic conception of God?

    Father Schall: The Holy Father posed the fundamental question that lies behind all the discussion about war and terror. If God is Logos, it means that a norm of reason follows from what God is. Things are, because they have natures and are intended to be the way they are because God is what he is: He has his own inner order.

    If God is not Logos but “Will,” as most Muslim thinkers hold Allah to be, it means that, for them, Logos places a “limit” on Allah. He cannot do everything because he cannot do both evil and good. He cannot do contradictories.

    Thus, if we want to “worship” Allah, it means we must be able to make what is evil good or what is good evil. That is, we can do whatever is said to be the “will” of Allah, even if it means doing violence as if it were “reasonable.”

    Otherwise, we would “limit” the “power” of Allah. This is what the Pope meant about making violence “reasonable.” This different conception of the Godhead constitutes the essential difference between Christianity and Islam, both in their concept of worship and of science.

    This is a breathtaking concept. Allah is not synomous with good. Allah is not limited to the good. Allah is simply an uncontrollable free agent with power and will that we must fear.

    Please tell me about “how much we have in common” now. Allah is truly pagan, as pagan as the gods of the ancient Egyptians, Mayans and Babylonians.

13. Note 13, How much will “doing all the wrong things” cost us

    Great Churchill quote, Father Hans.

    I just hope that “doing all the wrong things” will not cost us too much. Like an entire city’s population or worse.

14. Dean claims my quotes are cherry picked, Examine this quote from a leading Islamic scholar at Egypt’s largest Islamic University

    Sheikh Mustafa al-Shaka, from Al-Azhar’s Center on Islamic Research, accused Hanafi of being a “marxist” for “uttering such nonsense totally divorced from Islam.

    “If apostasy is proven, he who becomes an ex-Muslim should be executed,” Shaka said. In Hanafi’s case, however, “he deserves medical treatment, because he has a psychiatric problem”.

    Dean claims that the quotes I have produced from Islamic scholars, theologians and politicians “distort” Islam and that I cherry pick quotes from “extremists.” Never mind that I have quoted the top imam of the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia, the closest Sunni Muslims have to a Pope. Here, again, I quote an entire article. Please note that the death threats and harassment of the scholar is coming from established academics at the world’s most prestigious Islamic University: Al-Azhar.

    Dean, has absolutely no grounds for classifying the professors as Al-Hazar as “extremists.” The are mainstream and orthodox Sunni Islam.

    Egypt professor compares Koran to supermarket

    Hanafi’s remarks about Islam’s holy book spark fierce demands from his fellow Muslims he retract them.

    By Alain Navarro – CAIRO

    An Egyptian professor has stirred up a hornet’s nest among his fellow Muslims by comparing the Koran with a supermarket where you can find whatever you are looking for.

    Hassan Hanafi’s remarks, made at a seminar organized by the Alexandria Library, have sparked a fierce response, from demands that he retract them to suggestions that he might be mad.

    Hanafi, who teaches philosophy at the University of Cairo, said Islam’s holy book is often contradictory.

    The Koran “is a supermarket, where one takes what one wants and leaves what one doesn’t want,” he told an audience at the seminar last month on freedom of thought.

    In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, critical interpretation of the Koran can land you in hot water.

    In 1993 another professor, Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, was convicted of apostasy for his writings, including one entitled “A Critique of Religious Discourse”. A court ordered that he be forceably divorced from his wife, and the couple, fearing for his life, fled to exile in the Netherlands.

    A more prominent case was that of Nagib Mahfuz, who died last month.

    The only Arab ever to receive a Nobel literature prize, he was stabbed in the neck in 1994 by a man angered by his work. His injuries caused him pain for the rest of his life, and prevented him from using his right hand to write.

    In 1959, his “The Children of the Medina” was banned as blasphemous by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most authoritative seat of learning in the Sunni Muslim world.

    The allegorical work featured ordinary men representing Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed who struggled in vain to make the world a better place. It drew the authorities’ ire because one of them predicted the death of the divine.

    Abdul Sabur Shahine, a teacher of Sharia, or Islamic law, at Cairo University, figured prominently in the case against Abu Zeid and has slammed Hanafi’s remarks.

    “His despicable words should be condemned without appeal — he should retract them without delay,” Shahine said.

    Sheikh Mustafa al-Shaka, from Al-Azhar’s Center on Islamic Research, accused Hanafi of being a “marxist” for “uttering such nonsense totally divorced from Islam.

    “If apostasy is proven, he who becomes an ex-Muslim should be executed,” Shaka said. In Hanafi’s case, however, “he deserves medical treatment, because he has a psychiatric problem”.

    Hanafi, who received his doctorate from the Sorbonne and has taught in Europe and the United States, was close to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in his youth. After passing through a phase of leftist leanings, he became one of the leading thinkers in the contemporary movement that posits a revolutionary political activism rooted in study of the Muslim scriptures.

    Rarely do other thinkers publicly side with him, but one of them is Gamal al-Banna, a Muslim reformist and, ironically, younger brother of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.

    “I have to say it wasn’t very intelligent comparing the Koran with a supermarket but, in the end he’s not wrong,” says Banna, asserting that “one finds different opinions in the Koran”.

    Some of the holy book’s verses are “very dense and confusing expressions” that require interpretation, he says, calling for a “return to the Koran”, interpreting it where necessary in the light of the whole corpus of Islamic theological writing.

    Banna himself has been at the receiving end of criticism by traditional Muslim scholars.

    His book “The Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State in the Modern Age”, in which he suggests ways for Muslim communities in non-Islamic societies to merge better with their environment, was banned in Egypt.

    In his book, he said that if a woman feels uncomfortable wearing a traditional veil in Europe, then a hat would be permissible.

    He recently came under fire for suggesting that smoking during the holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, is permissible, sparking a spate of attacks against him by more traditional jurists.

    Like Hanafi, Banna and other Islamic reformists have continued to be sidelined in the religious discourse, with their views either being belittled as liberal babble or in extreme cases, being declared apostates.

    For now, Hanafi has chosen to remain silent in the face of his critics.

    “It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “It is in the heart of the university that these things should be debated.”

15. “Dean, has absolutely no grounds for classifying the professors as Al-Hazar as “extremists.” The are mainstream and orthodox Sunni Islam.”

    Ah, but he will. It does not fit into his world view. This is why I call him an idealist (not a rigorous acedemic definition I know). Reality is rebuffed again and again in an attempt to find the “moderate” Muslim…

16. Note 14. Missourian quotes Sheikh Mustafa al-Shaka, from Al-Azhar’s Center on Islamic Research:

    “If apostasy is proven, he who becomes an ex-Muslim should be executed,” Shaka said. In Hanafi’s case, however, “he deserves medical treatment, because he has a psychiatric problem”.

    This is exactly what the Soviets did. If someone resisted Marxism, rather than put the resister on trial and risk public criticism, they shut him up in a mental hospital.

    This is what “hate crime” legislation can morph into in America as well given the right circumstances.

17. The key is to persuade Muslims to feel comfortable under more secular governments such as the one in Turkey. This task is made easier if the Islamic world is not made to feel as if under attack or siege from the West.

    There are certainly serious problems with Islam as it presents itself in many parts of the world, especially the intolerant and hateful variant of Islam promoted by the Wahabbi sect based in Saudi Arabia. But as Christians we shouldn’t descend to their level, boasting that “our God is better than their God”.

    In the pages of St. Paul we see religion advancing to a higher and more mature level. In the early Old Testament the God of the Jews is depicted as a sort of vengeful tribal diety, enjoining the Chosen People from killing each other, while urging them on to kill and enslave non-Chosen peoples like the Caananites or Philistines. St. Paul on the other hand, announces a Cosmic Christ who came to save all the children of God, be they Greek or Jew, Free or Slave, Male or Female, bushmen of the Kalahari, fishermen on the Baltic Sea, or Yak herders on the steppes of Tibet.

    Psychologist Carl Jung wrote of a collective unconsciousness shared by all human beings, while Professor of Mythology Joeseph Campbell wrote of mythological themes and motifs that appear among all human cultures. Ancient literature and mythology tell us that human beings, thousands of years ago, in places as far away from each other as Sumeria, India, Palestine and the Black Hills of South Dakota felt the presence of a Divine Being, of God.

    In primitive and immature religions God was a sort of tribal protector, a wooden head affixed to the top of a totem pole. In more spiritually developed religions God is universal and transcendant, and spiritual progress, was dependant on behavior that was altruistic and compassionate. There are clear parallels between the selfless behavior required for enlightment in Buddhism for example, and the selfless behavior required for salvation in Christianity. While I doubt Saint Paul knew very much about Far-Eastern religion, he was clearly describing a universal and transcendant God of goodness and compassion, and not a vengeful national or local tribal deity.

    Those Muslims who divide the world into a Realm of Light (believers) and Realm of War (unbelievers) degrade their image of God down to that of a tribal totem pole-head. They are manifesting a more primitive and immature form of religion, like the Christian Crusaders who cried “Deus Volt” (“God wills it”) before slaughtering their Muslim enemies, a thousand years ago.

    So basically I think it’s important for Christians to behave like a mature religion and avoid a more tribalistic manifestation of our faith, instead realizing that other cultures worship the same universal God as we do, even if they do so in drastically different ways.

    I’m sorry I didn’t respond sooner. I spent the last four daysin the hospital with a gravely ill parent for whom I would ask your prayers. Thank you.

18. Dean wrote:

    “So basically I think it’s important for Christians to behave like a mature religion and avoid a more tribalistic manifestation of our faith, instead realizing that other cultures worship the same universal God as we do, even if they do so in drastically different ways.”

    First of all, prayers for your parent. May the Triune God grant His tender mercies upon your parent.

    Second of all, you mention that St. Paul preached that Christ was the universal Savior for all people, be they Greek or Jew or Yak herder. That is certainly true. Notice, of course, that you are mentioning ethnicities here. God is God of all, not just a particular nationality or ethnicity.

    Egyptian and Jordanian are nationalities. Arab is an ethnicity. But Islam is a religion. God created the Arabs and He loves them just as much as anyone else. Islam, however, is a different matter. The concept of Allah is not analogous to our God. You are correct about the ‘totem’ like quality of Allah with his will that can be done by killing Christian children in Iraq in the name of Jihad.

    You are wrong to believe, however, that the Wahabbi sect is all that novel. The idea of ‘political’ Islam pre-supposes that there is some kind of ‘non-political’ Islam. Aside from Sufism, there is no such animal. Islam and the state are joined at the hip, because Islam requires brute force for the purpose of enforcing Muslim Law. There is no separation envisioned between public and private in the Muslim religion.

    You cite Turkey as an example of secularism, but surely you see that Turkey is a less than stellar model. And that, outside of Syria and pre-war Iraq, is the best that there is. Not a very splendid accomplishment, is it?

    I agree with you that secularist governments in the Muslim world are important, even critical. Elections undermine secularism by giving the faithful a voice. Therefore, I support leaving Assad and Mubarak alone. I prefer to co-opt rather than fight, so I certainly do support ratcheting down the public vitriol while taking steps (behind the scenes) to improve the chances for apostate Muslims and Christians to play a greater role in society.

    But we mustn’t kid ourselves. I don’t understand how liberals can be so clear on the danger of Christian fundamentalists to life and liberty, while so blind on the threat posed by sheer Muslim numbers and voting. Do you really believe that Jerry Falwell is a threat to the Constitution, but that hundreds of thousands or millions more Muslim immigrants will all become good Democrats? Do you really believe that?

    Liberals should be at the forefront of ending Muslim immigration to the United States. The Muslim religion is a political force that if allowed to flourish in the U.S. will sweep aside everything the Democrats claim to care for.

    Reduction in U.S. posturing in the Middle East, more modest aims, reduction in military commitments, more behind-the-scenes diplomacy, and greater assistance to Christians and apostates (‘moderates’) are all worthy foreign policy goals.

    But domestically, a significant reduction in Muslim immigration is essential if one is to prevent what is currently the national nightmare of every Western European nation.

    Why aren’t the liberals in the front of this fight? Bush isn’t doing it, and that opens the field for any liberal that wants to seize the initiative.

19. Dean, may the peace of our Lord be with you and your family!

20. Dean, best wishes to you and your family

    I hope that your family will be blessed richly in this time of trouble.

21. Dean, the point of Note 12 was that Allah does not equal Yahweh

    The precise and entire point of my Note 12 was that Allah does not equal Yahweh. Allah and Yahweh have different characteristics and behave differently as understood both by Muslims and Christians.This is point is agreed upon by Muslim and Christian theologians. Muslim theologians agree that Allah is fundamentally different than the Yahweh that Christians worship. They believe that they have the correct description of the Being who is the Almighty Creator.

    You stated in Note 17

    So basically I think it’s important for Christians to behave like a mature religion and avoid a more tribalistic manifestation of our faith, instead realizing that other cultures worship the same universal God as we do, even if they do so in drastically different ways.

    In order to operate with intellectual clarity, Christians must understand what Pope Benedict was trying to explain. It is not true that “other cultures worship the same universal God as we do.” This is false. Buddhists do not worship a God which could be described as a Person at all. Islam and Christianity do not worship the same God. Allah is a completely different entity than Yahweh.

    This is what I have described as syncretism in Dean’s thought. We do not all worship the same God. The very concept of an Almighty Being varies across religions and doesn’t really exist in Buddhism at all.

    . Help me out here Fr. Hans and fellow posters. Is this not syncretism?

    I think somewhere in the Bible it states that Christians should be prepared to explain and defend the Gospel. Granted it should be done in a kindly manner, but, declaring the Gospel frequently involves distinguishing the Gospel from other religions or secular ideologies. Distinguishing the Gospel from such other thought systems is not “braging’ is it propounding Truth to the best of our ability.

    I do find Allah to be unworthy of worship, willful and arbirtary. I am entitled to that opinion and I don’t plan on giving up my freedom of thought quite yet. I doubt many proponents of “inter-faith” dialogue in “mainstream” Protestant churches have a glimmer of how Muslims describe Allah. If they did , they would be shocked.

22. Note 17, Dean, you cannot address the status of secular government without understanding the teachings of Islam

    The key is to persuade Muslims to feel comfortable under more secular governments such as the one in Turkey. This task is made easier if the Islamic world is not made to feel as if under attack or siege from the West.

    Where to start with this paragraph.

    a)Islam has a very clear teaching regarding the relationship of mosque and state. The desired arrangment is called a “caliphate.” To ignore the centrality of the union of religion and the state in Islam is like ignoring the centrality of the First Amendment to American political life.

    b) Turkey’s so-called “secular” state is now headed by a person from a Islamist party. The drift towards more intense Islamification of the country has been noted by its own military. I think Glen noted that if Turkey is the most secular state that Dean can reference in Islam, then we have problems.

    c) The Islamic world is not under attack and pandering to its psychologically unhealthy and morally unhealthy habit of hiding under a false cloak of victimhood does not assist the Islamic world.

    d) The comment regarding the Islamic world being “under attack” is an direct inversion of the declared truth. OBL and many from the Muslim Brotherhood have made many open statements that they are attacking the West in the name of Islam.

    Repeat afte me, it is the West that is under physical attack not Islam.

    Dean’s analysis is simply detached from the “facts on the ground” yet again.

23. My impression is that there are fragments of a mature and positive religion within Islam, for example the emphasis on acts of charity, fasting and prayer. However, among too many Muslims these positive aspects are subordinated to the hateful message of militant jihadism, a message originating in the most removed and isolated quarters of the Islamic world where Muslims are taught to hate and fear the West.

    The hoped for antidote to this militancy is the possibility that a more secularized and Western-oriented segment of the Islamic world will view militant jihadist confrontation as an obstacle to their people’s economic and social progress. Not every Islamic country is blessed with oil reserves or poppy fields. Some will have to develop trade and lure investment in order to raise standards of living for their people. Ideally, secularized and Western-oriented Muslim leaders would seek to advance a more benign, modern version of their faith, emphasizing it’s positive, rather than negative and confronational aspects.

    Islam wasn’t always implacably hostile to non-Muslims, Ottoman Turkey, valuing and depending on the skills of it’s Christian and Jewish subjects recognized the Orthodox Patriarch and Chief Rabbi as State officials of the Empire. Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain were invited to settle in the Ottoman Empire and Greek Christians served as Dragomans, or Ambassadors of the Sultan. Tensions between Turkey and it’s Christian neighbors today are more nationalistic, than religious in nature. The Greek invasion of Turkey in 1922, intended to wrest away a piece of western Anatolia containing a large Greek population and join it to a Greater Greece remains an important chapter for the Turks in the story of their nationhood.

    While the current Turkish President Tayip Erdogan, began his career as an Islamist he has now fully embraced Attaturks secularist vision.

    Erdogan’s (prison) sentence apparently had a transformative effect. He now appears to embrace without qualification Atatürk’s vision of Turkey as a secular democracy. He maintains that religion is a private matter divorced from state affairs and that, although Islam governs his personal conduct, Turkey’s staunchly secular constitution is his political reference. His handling of the head scarf issue exemplifies his transformation. To rally support among traditional Turks during the campaign, Erdogan argued against the ban on wearing head scarves in government offices and schools. But since assuming office, he has not moved to lift the restrictions. Symbolically associating himself with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the military leadership (who once refused to participate in a “national sovereignty” reception attended by a member of parliament and his covered wife), Erdogan visited the Atatürk mausoleum on Turkey’s 80th anniversary in 2003 accompanied by women without head scarves.

    Turkey’s Dreams of Accession, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004

    This article concludes:

    Turkey’s accession to the EU is an unprecedented chance both for the country to fulfill its potential as a successful modern democracy in the Muslim world and for the West to strengthen a precious ally in the fight against terrorism, deepen its commitment to diversity, and foster liberalization in the Islamic world.

24. Dean wrote,

    “Islam wasn’t always implacably hostile to non-Muslims, Ottoman Turkey, valuing and depending on the skills of it’s Christian and Jewish subjects recognized the Orthodox Patriarch and Chief Rabbi as State officials of the Empire. Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain were invited to settle in the Ottoman Empire and Greek Christians served as Dragomans, or Ambassadors of the Sultan. Tensions between Turkey and it’s Christian neighbors today are more nationalistic, than religious in nature.”

    Dean, you might want to check out the history of the Janissaries. You are probably aware of them, but in case you aren’t, here is the low down:

    Elite corps of the Ottoman Empire’s army from the late 14th to the early 19th century. Its original soldiers were prisoners of war, but a system soon was developed (the devsirme) wherein Christian youths were levied from Balkan vassals, converted to Islam, and-though paid a regular salary-inducted into the ranks of the sultan’s slaves. They were, for the most part, infantry troops conscripted to replace the often-unreliable Turkish tribal cavalry (spahi). Strict early rules of behaviour, including celibacy, were later abandoned, and the Janissaries became active in court politics. In 1826 they rebelled rather than accept the reform of the army along European lines. The revolt was violently put down, and most of the Janissaries were killed.

    The entire military structure of the Ottoman Empire at its height depended on Christian children who were forcibly conscripted, castrated, and then raised as fanatical Muslim warriors.

    This is your model, Dean? The Muslim religion is not so much as a religion as a methodology for seizing land and subjugating the people currently living there. There may be some nice features to it, all borrowed from the Bible, but in the final analysis it is a system for forced subjugation.

    Sure, Christians served the Ottoman Empire. Some willingly, some forced. The Ottomans depended on Christians the same way that every Muslim state has. Christians tend to form the elite of every Muslim society.

    The Ottoman record is one of implacable military expansion, which was stopped twice at great cost (once at Lepanto and once at Vienna). It was a state which was capable of horrendous repression such as visited on the Albanians. It is a state dripping in Christian (Greek and Armenian) blood.

    Actually, it really isn’t even that a-typical.

    Recognizing all of this is not the same as advocating Bush’s policies. That is why liberals are driving me nuts. Just as JFK and other Cold War liberals recognized the threat of the Soviet Union, liberals today can recognize the need for a structured set of responses to Islam and the Muslim migration to the West.

    Problem is, liberals seem to be intent on white-washing the historical record and pretending there is no problem. That is not the way to get anywhere.

25. Note 24. Glen, the reason liberals don’t respond to the Muslim threat is that they have left off Christianity. You cannot understand another religion if you disdain your own. Not all Democrats are secular of course, but the leadership certainly is, and the intellectual centers of liberalism (if you can call it that), particularly in the current captivity to the hard left, is definitely secular, even anti-Christian in places. If morality is solely a social construct, the notion of Islam as a religious force is incomprehensible in any meaningful way.

26. Note 23, Dean, within the last year the Turks allowed attacks on Orthodox seminary buildings

    Within the last twelve months, the police of Istanbul stood by and virtually guarded mobs which threatened and threw stones at an Orthodox seminary building. Orthodox remain in a precarious position in Turkey. Turkey represses its native Kurdish population and is responsible for attempting to sabotage the northern and peaceful territories of Iraq near Mosul.

    The Turkish military has stated that it is alarmed by the resurgence of Islamism in the present government and it has stated that it is ready to take steps to protect what is left of a secular state.

    Islam is obviously a Judaeo-Christian heresy, it therefore, will contain some elements of Judaism and Christianity, however, if the very OBJECT of ITS WORSHIP is NOT GOD, then nothing good can come from it in the long run.

    Today, non-Muslims run the oil industry in Saudi Arabia. As pointed out by Glen, Muslims have a long history of drafting the brightest of its conquered peoples to do work. As noted in the column that I gave a reference to, the column written by a Westerner in Saudi, Saudis do not revere work, Islam is a slave society, where work is done by inferiors.

27. The implacable hostility of Islam

    All Muslim know of Mohammed’s last sermon. Near his death Mohammed stated that he had been commissioned to “fight until every person and every country acknoledged the supremacy of Allah.” The language used made clear that “fight” was not a metaphor for strenuous effort.

    Dean has concocted an Islam that he prefers over the real Islam, a Turkey that he prefers over the real Turkey and an Allah he prefers over the real Allah.
    This whitewashing betrays the suffering of other Christians and non-Muslims in the Muslim world and open a crack for “dawa” disguised as “inter-faith dialogue.”

    If the object of worship is not Jesus Christ then it is an exericise in falsehood and lies cannot bear good fruit.

28. Asserting, as Dean does, that other cultures worship the “same universal God as we do” is heretical and non-Christian

    This is from Note 17 from Dean. It is in direct contradiction to the point made by Pope Benedict XVI, that being, that Allah is not Yahweh.

    I submit that this is syncretic heresy. As I noted earlier I don’t think Dean actually accepts traditional Christology. I was pilloried for that assertion. I consider Note 17 to stand as adequate proof of my previous assertion, that Dean is a syncretist with a weak Christology. This accounts for his Islamic apologetics even as Orthodox in Muslim lands suffer horribly for their faith and non-Muslims suffer for their intellectual and religious refusal to accept Islam.

    Dean also takes the position that recognizing the truth about Islam blocks fruitful negotiations. Reagan engaged in fruitful negotiations with the Soviets without denying the truth about them. Denying the truth never leads to a good result.

    I doubt that Dean will respond to this any more than he has responded to numerous citations I have provided to current Islamic theologians, current Islamic political leaders and Islamic history over 1400 years.

29. Note 17. Dean writes:

    Those Muslims who divide the world into a Realm of Light (believers) and Realm of War (unbelievers) degrade their image of God down to that of a tribal totem pole-head. They are manifesting a more primitive and immature form of religion, like the Christian Crusaders who cried “Deus Volt” (”God wills it”) before slaughtering their Muslim enemies, a thousand years ago.

    Dean, you don’t understand Islam. There is no “image of God” as such in Islam. There is no “image of God” in Christianity either except Christ (See: Colossians 1:15). What you really mean to say is their “idea of who God is”. But here too you don’t understand Islam. Consider what Pope Benedict said in the controversial speech:

    But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry. Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.

    You position all historical religions on a kind of quantitative evolutionary scale of social progress but fail to recognize that the concepts that give that scale its meaning are excusively Judeo/Christian in origin. These concepts are both philosophical and moral and include linear time, progress, critique of violence, etc. Put more simply, you put the cart before the horse.

    My read is that you value religion for its social utility above all else. Hence the belief that Muslims can be “reasoned” into moderation. In reality, religion is the root of culture, not its fruit.

30. Missourian writes: “I doubt that Dean will respond to this any more than he has responded to numerous citations I have provided to current Islamic theologians, current Islamic political leaders and Islamic history over 1400 years.”

    The problem I have with your posts is that I have nothing with which to compare them. If you go to certain atheist or anti-Christian web sites, you can find similar essays proving, with a flood of historical and modern anecdotes and quotations, that Christianity is the scourge of the earth, somewhere between the plague and nuclear winter. There are whole books written about that. At least with Christianity I have enough of a context be able to discern the legitimate from the bogus points.

    What has been missing from this discussion is the moderate Muslim point of view. Absent that, what we have had is the Muslim point of view as generally interpreted by those who oppose that point of view. So far the discussion has been all prosecution and little defense. That’s makes it difficult to form a responsible point of view.

31. “This is what I have described as syncretism in Dean’s thought. We do not all worship the same God. The very concept of an Almighty Being varies across religions and doesn’t really exist in Buddhism at all.

    Help me out here Fr. Hans and fellow posters. Is this not syncretism? ”

    It is. I have to REALLY question Dean’s Orthodoxy here, and for that matter his Christianity. Note 17 is a modern psychological (i.e. religion as a psycho-social phenomena – an event in space time that “matures” in a progressive way – no different from the progressive view of history). I simply can not see how one can hold to such a view, and be so blatantly ignorant of a traditional Christians take on such a philosophy. Holding up Jung and Campbell as people who can give us insight on the essential nature of God and Revelation???? Has he actually ever READ these guys???? Sadly, Dean appears to be a nominal Orthodox Christian…

32. “My read is that you value religion for its social utility above all else. Hence the belief that Muslims can be “reasoned” into moderation. In reality, religion is the root of culture, not its fruit.”

    This thread he has said explicitly what so much of his writing has said implicitly – he is a nominal Christian (i.e. in name only). Until his conversion, all this electronic ink spilt in the details of this or that is in vain…

33. Note 32. I don’t know if it is fair to say if Dean is a nominal Christian. I simply don’t know if that is true or not. I think it is fair to say that Dean doesn’t understand some important dimensions of his Orthodox faith.

    Note 31. Syncretism is basically a mix and match of different religions. And yes, Budhism can’t fit into this at all given that it is basically a denial of self, a blending into the cosmic energy. It reminds of a man who came to visit me once, a one man ecumenical council. He told me he was Protestant (he was, from a high-toned, non-denominational Church), a Muslim (because he kept the Ramadan fast), and he wanted to become Orthodox too. I told him that was not possible and he left in a huff accusing me of continuing the rift between religions.

34. Jim wrote,

    “What has been missing from this discussion is the moderate Muslim point of view. Absent that, what we have had is the Muslim point of view as generally interpreted by those who oppose that point of view. So far the discussion has been all prosecution and little defense. That’s makes it difficult to form a responsible point of view.”

    The moderate Muslim point of view is able to come through in nations like Syria or Iraq whose ruling element has a worldview shaped by a secular ethos rather than Islam.

    Jim – the historical record is quite clear. While Christian nations moved towards separating citizenship from religious affiliation, thereby clearing a ‘secular’ space, the Muslim nations have not. With the exception of the Ba’athist regimes, for a variety of reasons, and there the results are also mixed.

    Absolutely, you can cherry pick quotes from Christian nutcases. (I include Falwell in that category.) But the Christian nutcases are not in danger of taking over a nation. They are a minority within a minority, just like the Jihadists such as Bin Ladin. Al Queda isn’t about to take over a nation either.

    However, just look at the facts. If the Muslim religion does not accept a difference between state and religion, then even a more moderated Islam than in Saudi Arabia is still an incredibly dangerous thing for the West. If the Muslim religion expects others to live in accordance with Muslim law so as to not ‘offend’ Muslims, then even a tone-down version of that faith (should it take power) is likely to play Hell with religious minorities.

    Where are the free Christians under Muslim rule? The freest are in Syria, and there only secular, socialist dictatorshp provides some measure of protection.

    As I have said before, Jim, one doesn’t have to be a raving Bush supporter to understand that there are huge problems with turning over your society to a Muslim majority. The bonehead Republicans are focused on terrorists, when in reality, terrorism is not going to amount to much.

    You don’t have to hate Muslims to recognize that 10 million, 20 million or 30 million Muslims voting in even relatively weak accordance with the faith as practiced in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and (sadly, now) Iraqi is going to mean Hell on Earth for you, me, and Dean.

    Certainly you can see that? Can’t you? After all, as I said before, you see the danger from Christian Reconstructionism and those people are a small little sect of nuts. If they make you nervous, then why don’t millions and millions of Muslims voting in favor of standard Muslim positions on such things as freedom to practice Female Genital Mutilation (as in Egypt) or requiring the veil in public, or any other such things?

    Why, Jim? Even if they vote in a toned-down fashion, a watered-down Sharia is still more than I could take.

35. Glen writes: “The moderate Muslim point of view is able to come through in nations like Syria or Iraq whose ruling element has a worldview shaped by a secular ethos rather than Islam.”

    There are also Muslims who do not live in Middle Eastern countries — the U.S. for example.

    Glen: “However, just look at the facts. If the Muslim religion does not accept a difference between state and religion, then even a more moderated Islam than in Saudi Arabia is still an incredibly dangerous thing for the West.”

    That also is my impression of Islam as practiced among the Saudis.

    Glen: “If the Muslim religion expects others to live in accordance with Muslim law so as to not ‘offend’ Muslims, then even a tone-down version of that faith (should it take power) is likely to play Hell with religious minorities.”

    Given that “if,” yes. What I would like to understand is what has happened with Islam in various historical settings. Please understand that I’m not questioning what you are saying. But there is a difference between taking someone else’s opinion vs. knowing something for oneself.

    Glen: “You don’t have to hate Muslims to recognize that 10 million, 20 million or 30 million Muslims voting in even relatively weak accordance with the faith as practiced in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and (sadly, now) Iraqi is going to mean Hell on Earth for you, me, and Dean.”

    I don’t think your position is unreasonable. And interestingly, it is a position that is also held by people who are not Christians, in particular Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith.

    But let me give you an example. I have been called to jury duty several times. A couple of times I ended up on cases in which the defendant’s attorney was very weak. This made those of us on the jury feel very uncomfortable, because we felt that the case for the defense was not being made with the appropriate vigor. In other words, a juror WANTS a strong defense, because you want to feel that you have heard the best arguments on both sides.

    That’s how I feel about Islam. I feel like I have heard a great case for the prosecution, both from the Christian and non-Christians perspectives. What I haven’t heard is the defense. I think it would be extremely interesting were a couple of Muslim moderates invited to this venue in order to respond to the various allegations levelled against Islam. Frankly, I would have a couple of questions myself.

    I remember in July 2005 a gathering of North American Muslim scholars issued a fatwa declaring that the killing of innocent people through terrorist attacks was not permitted. At first, I thought that was a good thing. Upon reflection, I thought “what kind of religion is it in which scholars have to declare that killing innocent people is a bad thing. I had that figured out a long time ago, and I’m not even a Muslim scholar!” So yes, I would definetly have questions.

    More recently, Christiane Amanpour of CNN reported that bin Laden had received a fatwa giving him permission to kill up to ten million (yes 10 million) Americans in a nuclear attack:

    “Michael Scheuer, who once headed the CIA’s bin Laden unit, says bin Laden has been given permission by a young cleric in Saudi Arabia authorizing al Qaeda to “use nuclear weapons against the United States … capping the casualties at 10 million.”

    “He’s had an approval, a religious approval for 10 million deaths?” I asked him.

    “Yes,” Scheuer responded.

    http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/22/amanpour.binladen/index.html

    So, you know, that kind of spoiled breakfast for me. Yes, I would have questions.

36. Note 35, Jim, you are just going to have to do some reading

    Jim, you are just going to have to do some reading. You will have to read quite a few sources until you see a pattern. I did, I can’t do that for you. Time for you to do some intellectual work instead of simply blowing off my posts. Yes, Dean has not responded to my posts, yet he seems to adopt the intellectual posture as “scholar of Islam.” From whence this knowledge came no one knows. In fact, most of what I post is consistent with the writings of Bernard Lewis, a name you should know.

    Here are some points that may assist you:

    Islam is not a mystery. Islam is a very well documented, legalistic political and religious system. Islam law is based on the Koran, on the Hadith and the Sunna. Taken together this is quite a volume of literature. Islamic theologians/scholars spend their time organizing and harmonizing this body of material.

    There exist modern institutions which have undertaken to compile summaries of Islamic law. You can get them on Amazon. Read with Muslims say about Islam in books they consider to be scholarly compilations of Mohammed’s teachings.
    Have you ever checked out “Reliance of the Traveler?” Probably not, I fear. Read more than one or two. See what Muslims say about themselves.

    There are at least two major subdivisions within Islam: Sunni and Shiia, some peopel list a third Sufi. Sunnis represent 80% to 90% of all Muslims. Sunnis have four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, however, for Western purposes there isn’t a great deal of difference between the four. They would all be miserable to live under. Much of the differences between Sunni and Shiia concern issues of succession from Mohammed. They remain in agreement in many of the fundamentals of the “faith.”

    There are many publications by Muslims available in English. Many of their sacred writings have been translated for purposes of “dawa” converting others.
    Just google a bit on the web and you will find “dawa” literature. It is very revealing. It is particularly interesting to read essays by Muslims which they think would have the effect of attracting a Wester to Islam.

37. It may well be that the outlook for peaceful relations with the Islamic world is as gloomy as some people on this blog are saying. That does not change however, the fact that the teachings of Jesus Christ create a moral duty to work for peace healing and reconcilation in the world. How else are we to intepret statements from the founder of our faith that, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, “Love your enemies”, “Turn the other cheek”, and “Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword”?

    These teachings do not require pacifism under all situations. At some point we have to pick up a sword and defend ourselves and our loved ones from annihilation at the hands of a determined and unwavering aggressor. Christian doctrine does require that we work for peace as long as it is remotely feasible. We have to make the effort for peace, we have to try.

    Just war doctrine states that a state is morally justified in its use of force if it meets all of the following four factors:

    (1) The damage inflicted (or threatened) by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.

    (2) War should be waged only as a last resort.

    (3) There must be serious prospects of success.

    (4) The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

    http://www.intel-dump.com/archives/archive_2006_09_10-2006_09_16.shtml#1158269302

    We are not there yet. If there are reasonable, moderate Muslims who want peace we have a duty to seek them out and help them. Throwing in the towel on peace and resigning ourselves to conflict, at this point, is an abdication of our moral duty as Christians.

    (Anything un-Christian about that comment, Christopher?)

38. Dean, care to reveal your sources on Islam?

    Given that you have expressed many opinions about Islam, I would like to know who or what you consider to be authoritative sources of information about Islam.

    My quotes have all had sources. What are your sources?

39. Missourian writes: “Asserting, as Dean does, that other cultures worship the ‘same universal God as we do’ is heretical and non-Christian. This is from Note 17 from Dean. It is in direct contradiction to the point made by Pope Benedict XVI, that being, that Allah is not Yahweh.”

    Perhaps you can mention the specific quote. I don’t recall anything like that in the pope’s comments. He does note that the view of God is different in Christianity and Islam, especially in regard to whether God acts in accordance with human rationality: “But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”

    Interestingly, if you talk to fundamentalist Christians, many of them also believe that God has no obligation to act in accordance with rationality or even morality.

    But the pope also notes that “For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

    Now if the pope believes that Christianity, Islam, and other religions are utterly incompatible and populated by different gods, then it is hard to know how the “great experiences and insights” in other religions would have any value at all.

40. Jim, the Islam’s intellectual and spiritual “choke-point” is Mohammed

    Islam may be unique in the extent that it depends on one evaluation;that evaluation is “Was Mohammed an agent of the Creator God of the Universe.” Stated another way, “Did the Creator God of the University contact Mohammed and direct him to communicate to humankind?”

    Case I: Mohammed was contacted by the Creator God of the Universe
    If so, Mohammed is a true prophet and the Koran contains Divine Truth. If you are convinced that Mohammed is a true prophet THEN you are compelled to give sacred authority to the Koran.

    If you given sacred authority to the Koran you must reclassify the sacred authority of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures. As I have noted many, many, many times, the Koran makes explicit and unambiguous reference to both the Hebrew Scriptures (Torah) and the Christian Scriptures and declares them to be perversions of the message previously sent by the Creator God of the Universe. Devout Muslims will not voluntarily touch a Jewish or Christian Bible because they are taught that it contains heresy.

    Case II: If Mohammed was not contacted by the Creator God of the Universe that he is simply nothing more than a narcissistic megalomanic who was probably suffering from epilepsy during a time when that disease was not understood. His visions were probably elileptic seizures IMHO. It is also possible that he was a conscious dissembler who discovered, as many others have, that claims of prophecy and religious insight can be the road to power and riches.

    If Case II is in fact correct. I have nothing more than a historical interest in anythying that Mohammed said or did. I have no more interest in him than in the what Jim Jones taught, or the Mayans Sun-God, or the Egytian Gods, these people are of cultural and historical interest only.

    Not reading anything is a real drawback, Jim. You want to debate matters concerning the Constitution, the Koran and Christianity, yet I see no effort on your part to read anything. Check the Koran out of the library if don’t want to spend your own money. There are many English translations which are considered to be reliable by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars.

    Do some heavy lifting, guy.

41. Note 40, Sorry that is “Creator God of the Universe” not “University”

    Unintentional funnyism.

42. Jim, Claiming special religious status can make you rich, not all claims are worthy of respect or consideration

    Leading a cult can make your rich, famous and allow you sexual license you wouldn’t otherwise “enjoy.”

    Jim, you do remember Jim and Tammy Faye Baker? Their religious status literally made this rich celebrities. At one time, Jim Baker lived in a house with gold fixtures in the bathroom. I kid you not: gold fixtures.

    Do you remember Jim Jones in Guyana? This gentleman started him own sect in Southern California. He was charismatic enough to attracit about 400 to 500 followers. TThey believed that Jones was a true prophet and had really recieved communications direct from the Creator God of the Universe. Jones ended up taking his people to Guyana where nearly all of them committed suicide by drinking poisoned kool-aid. Hence the common expression about “drinking the kool-aid.”

    Do you remember the space alient cult which believed that its members were about to be picked up by aliends from other worlds. Unfortunately, some members castrated themselves and nearly all members ended up committing suicide. Sad case of many unnecessary deaths.

    Do you remember David Koresh? He claimed prophethood. Somehow his prophethood meant that he could sleep with all the young girls in his group while others couldn’t. Convenient I would say.

    Do you understand that the great pyramids of the Mayan civilization were used to sacrifice living human beings to their Sun Gods. Do you know that archaelogists have conclusive proof, disputed by no one, that Mayans carved the hearts of our living humans as a sacrific. There is evidence that as much as 20,000 human beings were sacrificed at one central location. Archaelogists have found the bones.

43. The “Divine Prophet” of Islam engaged in cruelty after cruelty.

    Mohammed was not only a warlord, he was a cruel destroyer of anyone who contradicted him.

    Quayash Tribe: The Quayash Tribe of Saudi Arabia surrendered to Mohammed’
    s forces and put their entire city in his hands. Mohammed then controlled the men, women, children and riches of the Quayash Tribe. Their sin was that they did not recognize Mohammed’s Prophethood. Mohammed personally lined up hundreds if not thousands of unarmed men and chopped off their heads. This was done at his command, in his direct presence. No Muslim scholar disputes this account.

    Women are booty: One of Mohammed’s wives was a renowned beauty, the daughter of a Jewish tribe. Mohammed consummated his marriage to this woman on the same day that he killed her father and his brothers. I am sure that she was very happy to embrace the man who killed her father and brothers after they were defenseless and could not fight back. In other words, Mohammed routinely killed defenseless prisoners of war and took their women as war booty.

    Suppression of freedom of speech: There existed a female poet who wrote poems mocking Mohammed’s claim of prophethood. Mohammed sent a secret assassin to her tent and killed her by slashing her throat as she slept with her child.

    Systematic destruction of pre-Islamic culture. Mohammed did not respect any other culture. Everything prior to Mohammed is described as the “period of darkness.” This includes the great civilizations of ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and the Indus Valley. The Indus Valley produced many of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world. The Muslim conquest of India has been described as one of the bloodiest in world history. Mohammed taught that the religious sites of conquered people should be either destroyed outright or turned in to stables or garbage dumps or used as a base for a Muslim temple.

    In Jerusalem the “Dome of the Rock” was built on the site of Soloman’s temple as a daily reminder of the humiliation of Jews and Christians who revered the site. Muslim invaders of the Indus Valley sought out the most prominent Hindu temples and either destroyed them or converted them to mosques. The Hindu temples represented a very high level of architectural accomplishment even by today’s standards and this policy destroyed forever a part of world cultural inheritance.

    Read something, Jim. Read the biography of Mohammed revered by Muslims as nearly sacred. Do some heavy lifting for a change.

    Why would you want to revere anything that a tyrannical, blood thirtsy, killer and torturer did or said? Pleaes explain that to me?

    If this puts me in disagreement with Pope Benedict, so be it.

44. The Divine Prophet’s record on torture and murder

    Kinana: This gentleman was the leader of a Jewish settlement at Kheibar in the Arabian peninsula. Kinana had a fortune in gold hidden somewhere and Mohammed ordered him tortured until he revealed its hiding place. His executioners tied him down on the ground and lit a fire on his chest until he nearly died. When Kinana finally died under torture, Muhammed ordered his head to be cut off and went to bed with the victim’s widow, Safiya, 17 who later become one of his eleven wives (lucky girl that!)

    Torture and Death of the Camel Thieves: Several tribesman who had been granted hospitality by Mohammed were found to have stolen camels. The Prophet order their hands and feet to be cut off and their eyes to be pulled out. They died as a result of the bleeding.

    Abu Sufyan: an enemy of Mohammed. Mohammed assigned a semi-professional assassin to track Abu Sufyan down and murder him. The assassin was unable to reach Abu Sufyan but did bring back to Mohammed the heads of three other enemies.

    Now, you may say that this behavior was common in 7th century Arabia, fine, I’ll accept that. But I won’t accept that the Creator God of the Universe endorses this conduct and chooses a torturer as a prophet.

    Sources: Peter Frigosi: Jihad Muir’s famous biography of Mohammed.
    See further footnotes in that book.

    I do not choose to give this person holy status. I have nothing but a historical interest in what he taught as he gained riches, power and wives in his battles with those who did nothing wrong except stand in his way.

45. Jim, reading list

    Muir: Life of Mohammed:

    Pre political correctness from a British Victorian writer

    Paul Fregosi: Jihad

    Modern retelling of the story of Islamic conquest across the ages. Note the extreme difficulty the author had in finding a publisher

    Crone, Patricia: noted modern expert on Islam, anything she has written

    Bostom, Andrew: Jihad, a history.

    Bostom provides translations of some classic Muslim sacred histories and literature that were previously unavailable to the Western public

    Bernard Lewis: anything by, Lewis is considered the Dean of American scholars of Islam. Go to Amazon and enter his name in the “author” segment.

    Runciman: Leading scholar of the Crusades, author of a multi-volume history of the Crusades which is the starting point for any serious scholarly approach to the topic. Runciman documents the atrocities of both sides.

    Islamic apologist: Karen Armstrong: presents the Crusades as an unprovoked and imperialist attack on Muslims, omits discussion of 400 years of aggressive expansion by Muslims and their mistreatment of the people’s they conquered

    Islamic apologist: Esposito: leading Islamic apologist. Prior to 9/11 he wrotes books and articles claiming that Islamic extremism was nothing to worry about. Why he has a job I have no idea. Again, like Armstrong, he claims that the Crusades were nothing but Western imperialism

    Islamic apologist: Edward Said. Goebbels would have admired this gent. He launched and quite successfully prosecuted an intellectual psy/ops war agains the West. He is the primary advocate of the concept that the West may not apply its standards to Islam. He claimed that it was immoral for the West to protest the treatment of women, the lack of free expression, or the treatment of non-Muslims in the Middle East. Very effective approach alongn the lines of “the best defense is a good offense.’ A breathtakingly effective advocate for the concept that Muslims are in no way responsible for the abject state of their own societies and everything can be blamed on the West

    Each of these books has bibliographies to persue. Start reading

46. Mohammed ” I have been ordered by Allah to fight and kill all mankind until they say “No God except Allah and Muhammed is the prophet of Allah” Hadith Salih

    I believe Jesus taught that we should “preach to all the world” not kill until everybody gave up and accepted our viewpoint of religion. Here a discussion of that famous quote, known to all Muslims the world over, by a Muslim Islamic scholar.

    Source: Rocky Mountain News

    Speakout: Muslims must both denounce, renounce their violent hadiths

    Dr. Tawfik Hamid
    October 6, 2006

    Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 man, leader, last month announced that Americans must choose: Convert to Islam or continue to receive acts of terror.
    Al-Zawahri was reiterating a fundamental concept of Salafi Islamic teaching, the fountainhead of extremist thinking. Yet the authors of the American government’s recent intelligence report on terrorism’s spread seem not to have been listening.

    Zawahri’s threat is based on a saying of the Prophet Muhammad as written in Sahih Al-Buchary, a central book of Salafi Islamic teaching. This hadith, or fundamental concept, states: “I have been ordered by Allah to fight and kill all mankind until they say, ‘No God except Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah’ (Hadith Sahih).”

    Based on this hadith, early Muslims used the sword to spread Islam throughout the world. The same hadith inspires contemporary Islamic terror including this summer’s thwarted London airplane explosions. Other rationales that terrorists use to justify terrorism – the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s involvement in Iraq – are simply useful propaganda cover stories, not the actual causes or goals of terrorists’ actions.

    Americans must be wary of political leaders who accept the propaganda explanations. To win the war on terror, America’s leaders must recognize the powerful role of the Islamic religious principle of jihad, Islam’s belief that it must conquer the world, which derives from the above hadith. Belief in jihad is what causes so many Muslims worldwide to cheer terrorist acts such as 9/11, European subway bombings, and Hezbollah and Hamas attacks against Israel.

    Allowing jihadist teaching to continue is like allowing cancer cells to survive in a human body.

    The human immune system demonstrates that nurturing normal cells and respecting their variance sustains life. A healthy body nourishes cell diversity. A healthy body politic, similarly, must value respect for different beliefs. At the same time, if an immune system shows any tolerance whatsoever for cancer cells, the latter will terminate that body’s life. The immune system of a body politic must have a similar zero tolerance for beliefs that incite violence against its citizens.

    Cancer can be overcome if an individual has a strong immune system that acts to triumph over the killer cells. Similarly, the cancerous teachings of Salafi Islam could become insignificant if the majority of Muslims were to vocally oppose them.

    Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of Muslims, Islamic organizations and Islamic scholars have not publicly objected to these teachings. There have been no powerful Muslim demonstrations to denounce Osama bin Laden and not a single fatwa by top Islamic scholars or organizations to consider bin Laden an apostate – as was done to Salman Rushdie just for writing a novel.

    Because the teachings continue, a significant proportion of the world’s Muslims have become passive terrorists, peaceful citizens whose sympathy in their hearts and support with their purses enable terrorism’s spread.

    If Islamic scholars and organizations in America disapprove of jihadist teachings, they must speak out against them. Americans should consider Muslims to be moderates, and Islam a peaceful faith, only if, in English and in Arabic, Muslims clearly denounce their violent hadiths and strike them from the books that educate their next generation.

    In addition to internal immune reactions, externally applied interventions also can destroy cancer cells. Like cancer-fighting chemotherapy, strongly applied military might can reduce large tumors. America eliminated al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, but the verdict is not yet in on whether Israel this past summer similarly decimated Hezbollah.

    To conquer the metastases of extremist Islam, however, words may be the most potent weapons. Outspoken condemnation of the theological sources of terrorism by American intellectuals and politicians, reinforcing the self-examination of Muslims themselves, could make a vital difference.

    Addressing the theological wellsprings of Islamic terrorist motivation is essential if America is to succeed in its war against terrorism. Pope Benedict XVI has begun leading the way. Neither political correctness nor Muslim outrage must be allowed to prevent further realistic talk about the religious underpinnings of Islamic violence. Otherwise Islamic teaching will continue to spread jihad’s cancerous beliefs.

    Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian physician, Islamic scholar and former extremist, is the author of The Roots of Jihad (www.rootsofjihad.org). Hamid will be speaking in Denver at the University of Denver on Monday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students.blockquote>

47. Dean wrote,

    “It may well be that the outlook for peaceful relations with the Islamic world is as gloomy as some people on this blog are saying. That does not change however, the fact that the teachings of Jesus Christ create a moral duty to work for peace healing and reconcilation in the world. How else are we to intepret statements from the founder of our faith that, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, “Love your enemies”, “Turn the other cheek”, and “Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword”?

    Dean –

    You’ve seriously got to de-couple a lot of things or you are in the same danger as the Bushies when it comes to delusionally lumping all things together.

    There are multiple issues here, most of whom have to be dealt with separately, even though they all deal with Muslims:

    1) Muslim immigration to the United States. Bad, in my opinion, because it is no different than importing hundreds of thousands of rapid Puritans. You wouldn’t want to do that, you shouldn’t be in favor of importing Muslims by the score either.

    2) Muslim immigration to Western Europe. Not something we can stop, but I think the results are plain. These people aren’t Jihadis. They are sincere Muslims, many of whom wish to live according to the Sharia and not have anyone offend Islam. Guess what? That makes life suck for everyone else. I have no desire to import this problem into my own nation.

    3) Iraq War. Dumb move. Shouldn’t have happened. Here your comments on Just War are on target. Simply because Islam shouldn’t be allowed to overrun our nation doesn’t mean that we have carte blanche to go around the world knocking over countries and killing people. However, the fact that you are on-target on point 3 doesn’t give you the rigth to ignore problems 1 and 2.

    4) Democracy as the foundation stone of U.S. policy. Dumb idea, and is already being abandoned. Secular regimes in power today will remain so. No more voting is going to happen. This is a good thing.

    5) Transnational Jihad of the Al Queda variety. These people are dreamers and zealots committed to the Umma. They are, thankfully, not so common as one might imagine. These are the guys who travle thousands of miles to hit a target.

    6) Local Jihadis of the Hezbollah variety. Some of these groups have something approaching legitimate beefs. In fact, some of these groups would almost be sympathetic if they weren’t Muslim. When a group of people in a military conflict have a local and legitimate greivance, then I say here them out. Sometimes they are Muslims, and if judged objectively to be on the right side of the conflict, their religion shouldn’t disqualify them. Everytime a Muslim force anywhere gets mixed up in a local conflict, we seem to be lumping them into the Al Queda camp. This is bad policy.

    There it is Dean. At least six different angles to be concerned about. I sometimes get the impression that all roads lead back to Iraq. They don’t. Iraq is a blunder, and immoral, and anything else you want to call it.

    It still doesn’t mean that millions more Muslims voting in U.S. elections is a good idea. It still doesn’t mean that there are millions of Muslims actively committed to our destruction. Even, of course, as millions of others aren’t.

    I want smart, decisive policy that attacks all the angles. From both sides I get moralizing platitudes and PC idiocy.

    Not enough, I’m afraid.

48. Glen, abahdoning the rational

    Glen, Dean said that he opposed limiting Muslim immigration becaue it “wouldn’t be kind.” This means that he has abandoned rationality. You and I see national policy as a process of examining the facts on the ground to obtain the most realistic picture we can, then making a choice among the feasible alternatives, taking into account both short-term and long-term consequenes. We don’t expect to achieve perfect solutions, just the best possible under all the circumstances. Most of the time, this require making difficult choices, but, still making choices and moving ahead.

    Dean wants to use the United States as a platform for his social work project on the Muslims. He believes that inviting Muslims into the United States will prompt them to “stop being Muslims.” We have discussed that in great detail.
    He doesn’t like the wife-beating, the gay killing, the polygamy, the gender apartheid, etc. He just believes that these aspects of Isalm will “fade away” as soon as Muslims come to the U.S. While I agree that some Muslims will apostasize, most will not, and those that do not are well funded by Saudi Arabia and well organized and are working hard to bring more Muslims into the United States.

    The United States is not doing a great job assimilating Muslims. Half of the Dearborn Arab population came out in support of Hizbollah, the proxy army of Iran and the sworn enemy of the United States. Michigan is being colonized by Muslims, Michigan is not assimilating Muslims, it is getting assimilated. Roman Catholics and other Christians lost a battle to prevent a loud, public call to prayer in Arabic five times a day in Hamtranck, Michigan, once the home to a strong Polish Roman Catholic community. Now the residents cannot escape daily dawa. Lucky them, of course, this means that the Christians will be gradually driven out of the territory and replaced by Muslims. That is the precise intention of the Muslims with the public call to prayer. It is like a dog marking its territory.

    We have given so much protection to religion that we cannot cope with something markedly different, a politico-religious movement designed to dominate the world (and doing a rather good job for a 7th century ideology)
    The world is being conquered by a bunch of Beduoins because it cannot rouse itself to defend itself against real barbarians.

49. Note 37. Dean writes:

    How else are we to intepret statements from the founder of our faith that…

    Christ is not the “founder” of Christianity. He is the fullfillment of Israel, the Messiah. Gentiles have been grafted into this commonwealth through Christ.

50. Dean and Jim,

    Again, I opposed the Iraq War, still do and will continue to do so as a waste. But we have to understand that Muslim victimology is a strong and unifying force, and that Muslims inside the U.S. are dangerous not because of their bombings but also their cultural influence. They are at complete variance with us on well, everything. Take this Article from The American Muslim on the Pope Benedict quotes:

    It was Benedict’s quotation of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, the last-but-one of the Byzantine emperors, which has caused so much hurt to the world Muslims and triggered a wave of protests from Morocco to Indonesia. It wasn’t that Benedict thought of quoting Manuel II at the spur of the moment. The quotation formed the crux of his argument against Islam being a civilized, humane and peace-loving religion, and had obviously been picked out to buttress his own thesis to maximum effect………….

    Surely, Benedict must hold Manuel II in reverence and awe, or else he wouldn’t have prefaced the emperor’s remarks by complimenting him for his erudition.

    Students of history would know how deep-rooted and avuncular is the Church of Rome’s infatuation with Byzantine-cradle of Christianity until the Turks from Central Asia snuffed it out in 1453. With the fall of Constantinople, modern Istanbul, exactly 28 years after the death of Emperor Manuel II in 1425, a formidable Christian bastion disappeared-a loss the Catholic Church hasn’t quite stomached, to date. Incidentally, Manuel II had been held captive by the Turks in his childhood and became an inveterate enemy of the Muslim and Turks in his formative years.

    The Crusades were unleashed because of an unholy and calculated axis between the Church of Rome and the Byzantine Empire, based in Constantinople.

    The valiant Seljuk Turks had overrun Anatolia by the middle of the 11th century and driven the Byzantium to the walls of Constantinople. It was one of Manuel II’s predecessors, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118) who sent an SOS to Pope Urban II, then holding the Church of Rome in his thrall, to come to his aid and save the Byzantium from the ‘heathen Muslim hordes.’

    Urban II was from France. So, just as Benedict chose his native Germany to launch his own offensive against Islam in the 21st century, Urban II, in the 11th century, also decided to move to his home turf in France to send out his call for the Crusades, or ‘Holy Wars.’

    Appealing to the fanatic sentiment of an adoring home audience on that last Tuesday of November, 1095, in the southern French city of Clermont, Urban II opened his incendiary discourse with this sentence: “ A race absolutely alien to God has invaded the land of ChristiansŠ” This was as blatant a travesty of history as only a Pope presiding over a dark and ignorant Europe could conjure up. Mischievously papering over the fact that Muslims had been ruling over the Holy Land since the first half of the 7th century, Urban implied as if Muslims had just recently overrun ‘the land of Christians.’

    Building further on his opening gambit, Urban painted as gory a picture of Muslims in Palestine as he could to inflame religious frenzy in his audience and caricatured the Muslims as ‘savages’ whose ‘oppressive rule’ had made life hell for Christians living there, negating the historical truth that both Christians and Jews had lived in complete harmony and security under the Muslim rule since Jerusalem was captured from the Byzantines in the reign of the Second of the Four ‘Enlightened Caliphs’ in 636 A.D.

    You can read the rest of it here:
    http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the_popes_byzantine_connection/0011084

    The American Muslim bills itself as moderate, and claims to be supporting peaceloving Muslims.

    Just look at the reasoning in the article. Islam is peaceloving, even though the article directly refers to multiple military conquests carried out by Muslims. Those, you see, are valiant campaigns. The Byzantines and the Catholics are presented as being part of some vast, anti-Muslim conspiracy. Even though, of course, the Christian world was riven with problems. The military conquest of Israel by a divinely inspired Caliph was God’s justice, the Crusade to retake it was an act of criminality.

    The Muslim mind, ‘moderate’ or not, seems almost impervious to self-analysis. Only truly dye-in-the-wool secularists in the Muslim world (who have usually been Arab nationalists/socialists) have any capacity for dealing with reality.

    Read that article again, and process their view of history. How can you ever square it with our own?

    By the way, I’m talking equally to Bush supporters who essentially believe that Islam is the same as Christianity and that all the Muslim world needs is more elections to fix things up.

    Wrong.

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