Dean's World

In a speech requesting tolerance and understanding of religious beliefs, Pope Benedict quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"

al Jazeera reports:

The pope provoked anger after criticising Islam and its concept of jihad on Tuesday during a six-day visit to his native Germany, citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who said that Prophet Mohammed had brought the world "evil and inhuman" things.

A statement issued by the Vatican on Thursday, saying the pope had never meant to offend Islam, failed to resolve the furore.

"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam,"

Turkey's ruling Islamic-rooted party joined a wave of criticism of Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, accusing him of trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades with remarks he made about the Muslim faith. A Turkish lawmaker said the pontiff would go down in history "in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini" for his words.

Muslim leaders elsewhere in the world also expressed dismay, with Pakistan's parliament unanimously condemning the pope.

Our hands are outstretched and our religion calls for peace, not for war, for love not for hatred, for tolerance, not for fanaticism, for knowing each other and not for disavowing each other.

We condemn this and we want to know the explanation of this and what is intended by this. We call on the pope, the pontiff, to apologise to the Islamic nation because he has insulted its religion and Prophet, its faith and Sharia without any justification."

When Jihad becomes an Individual Duty, as when the enemy seizes the Muslim territory, a woman becomes entitled to take part in it alongside men. Jurists maintained that: When the enemy assaults a given Muslim territory, it becomes incumbent upon all its residents to fight against them to the extent that a woman should go out even without the consent of her husband, a son can go too without the permission of his parent, a slave without the approval of his master, and the employee without the leave of his employer...

...To conclude, I think the committed Muslim women in Palestine have the right to participate and have their own role in Jihad and to attain martyrdom.”

The full text of the Pope's speech is here, including this part of the conclusion:

In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.

From the AP:

Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely regrets" offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman," the Vatican said Saturday.

But the statement stopped short of the apology demanded by Islamic leaders around the globe, and anger among Muslims remained intense. Palestinians attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza over the pope's remarks Tuesday in a speech to university professors in his native Germany.

History really just insists on presenting surprises, doesn't it?

The Vatican's ultimate problem is the one Stalin identified: "How many divisions does the Pope have?" The joke ended up being on Uncle Joe. John Paul II vanquished communism via its Polish soft spot as much as any one man.

But the Reds were pushovers. Radical Islam is something else altogether. Now that European Christendom has essentially extinguished itself, how would the Church and its billion-plus of faithful, largely rooted in the poorest countries of the Southern Hemisphere (could Africa be a flash point if Muslim - Catholic tension doesn't disperse?) deal with concentrated Muslim anger?

The Vatican has long been hostage to Nuvo-Euro conceptions of political correctness, one of which — the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People — might, for ten minutes or so, be a little shakey. And not just that one:

[T]he pope's words only seemed to fan rage. ...

Mohammed Bishr, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member in Egypt, said the statement "was not an apology" but a "pretext that the pope was quoting somebody else as saying so and so."

"We need the pope to admit the big mistake he has committed and then agree on apologizing, because we will not accept others to apologize on his behalf," Bishr said.

There was no indication whether the pope would do so. His first public appearance since his return from Germany was set for Sunday, when Benedict planned to greet the faithful at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence in the Alban Hills near Rome.

Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican on Saturday to protest the pope's "offensive" remarks, and Afghanistan demanded the pope apologize.

Even putative adults are acting like babies over the Prince of Rome's refusal to follow the other crowned heads of Europe and submit politically to Islam:

Turkey cast some doubt on whether Benedict could proceed with a planned visit in November in what would the the pontiff's first trip to a Muslim nation.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the pope apologize to the Muslim world, saying he had spoken "not like a man of religion but like a usual politician."

Erdogan has actually got it exactly backwards. What the Pope was said was consistent with his being the leader of the Roman Catholic church; what they want him to say is the usual political pap. Of course, Erdogan himself, a moderate chap, is looking over his own shoulder at the suicide belt crowd. He's got little choice; he was probably already in hot water with those cats over a papal visit to Turkey. Now his back is to the wall.

Pity Rome. There's really only one Christian power left in the world, though it isn't a Catholic one. And that one is already at war with these perpetually "raging" charmers, having gotten precious little support from the world's tiniest, and also its largest, state. It is hard to imagine the Pope staying the course on this one, but so far, he has.

UPDATE: Summing up all of the above, I see where yesterday James Taranto asked, "How many suicide bombers does the Pope have?"

Tim Blair's got a roundup of muslims throwing temper tantrums.

It's always moving when you respond to someone suggesting that your religion has sometimes been violent and done evil things by throwing a temper tantrum and becoming violent and threatening to do evil things.

These barbarians are sickening. The cream of the crop has to be the Taliban's demand that the Pope aplogize. The Taliban! Words definitely fail.

I asked last night:

[C]ould Africa be a flash point if Muslim - Catholic tension doesn't disperse?

The answer came fast:

An Italian nun was shot dead at a hospital by Somali gunmen Sunday, hours after a leading Muslim cleric condemned Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam and violence.

The nun, who was not immediately identified, was shot in the back at S.O.S. Hospital in northern Mogadishu by two gunmen, said Mohamed Yusuf, a doctor at the facility, which serves mothers and children. The nun's bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed, doctors said.

The world we know is just peeling like an orange.

Freeman Hunt points out (hat tip to Foremost Freeman Fan Instapundit):

While reading about the "Muslim fury" over the Pope's recent quoting of a 14th century emperor, I clicked into the picture of some supposedly furious Muslims.

Look at them. Everyone is laughing and smiling. It's a bunch of guys having a great time burning stuff. Yes, it's under the guise of a protest over the Pope, and yes, that is an effigy of the Pope smoldering on the ground, but by the faces in the crowd, it looks like quite a party.

Getting you hungry? If you like a good burger, it's not surprising. Here's what I wrote, on Likelihood of Confusion:

Is this good for McDonalds' branding (click here for my personal favorite URL)?

I'm not so sure it's that bad. Having your trademark publicly desecrated by the perpetually unhappy — the people, as Jonathan Rosenblum puts it, "for whom life itself is an insult" — because your mark is the happy symbol of American convenience, hospitality, tasty enjoyment and, well, let's say free enterprise — isn't the worst thing that can happen. (Via Instapundit.)

By the way, notice how the "angry" guy's friends are cracking up as he does his performance for the cameras. Five will get you ten that he's doing this to impress a girl. Chicks love this stuff.

Yes, the cross-cultural stuff is confusing, isn't it?

UPDATE: I didn't mean to suggest there's anything fun, or funny, about murder, which I address separately in the "turns ugly" post linked to below. I do mean to suggest that it is all political theater. I recommend, by the way, this link to Josh Trevino for a quality Catholic perspective.

As is well-known, Pope Benedict made a tremendous speech about secularism and human reason. He spoke of Logos and faith. It was really an erudite, reasoned, and intellectual piece about secularism that any believer in God would do well to take note of, and appreciate.

However, the Pope also threw in a gratuitous swipe at Islam, which was mostly tangential to the main thrust of the argument and (as the Pope's own defenders concede), could have been readily omitted without undermining the speech as a whole.

The Pope has since apologized, saying that the views of Emperor Manuel II towards Islam do not reflect his own, and that he sincerely regrets the offense he caused. I accept this apology unreservedly.

I also remind fellow muslims that we take great exception to the moving goalpost syndrome that our own condemnations of terror invariably attract, and so we must as a matter of principle take the Pope at his word.

But we should also be very realistic about the probable intent of the Pope's original remarks, and the true consequences.

The riots and tragic murders that the Pope's remarks set off are tragic, foolish, and yet more evidence of the profound vacuum that exists at the center of the muslim world's discourse. But riots and murder in the name of insult to religion are hardly limited to Islam. My aim is not to engage in tu quoque but rather to illustrate that violence in the third world is worthless as a metric. Such violence is the product of professional thugs who exploit the lack of civil order in their societies, and seek any pretext upon which to wage chaos. Their efforts are barbaric, and they are transient, and they are ultimately futile.

The violence is a red herring; far deeper damage has been done.

First, the needless propaganda gift to our enemies - the enemies of all civilization, Islamic, Western, whatever label you choose. Marc Lynch illustrates in detail why the Pope's comments amounted to a gift for bin Laden - he minces no words in describing the comments as "strategically dumb." He summarizes:

To put it another way: It is just really dumb to "fight radical Islam" by handing it rhetorical weapons and then doing everything you can to drive ordinary Muslims - the vast majority of which have no truck with al-Qaeda's ideology - in their direction. The point should be to drive al-Qaeda farther away from the Muslim mainstream, not to try to force them together. The sorts of confrontational statements that some folks seem to consider to be courage or moral clarity or whatever aren't.. they're just strategically dumb. They actively help al-Qaeda and hurt al-Qaeda's opponents, whatever the intent behind them.

But the damage is far worse than just a PR gift to al-Qaeda. The Pope's comments also were disastrously timed with respect to the critical struggle for women's rights in Pakistan, the face of whom is Mukhtar Mai. True reform has been proceeding in minimalist, incremental fashion. And now, the fate of reform hinges upon the judgment of Pervez Musharraf.

However, Musharraf is in a delicate balance between the wealthy elite and the Islamists. And now with the outrage over the Pope's needless highlighting of thousand-year-old insults to Islam, the pressure on him from the Islamists will be tremendous. Think of the opportunity that has been lost. Pope Benedict could have lent moral support to Musharraf. The bully pulpit of the Papacy, coupled with the eloquent appeal to Logos, would have given great power to the reformers in the muslim world - and the Christians who abide therein.

Why would the Pope, noted for his mastery of language, have sought to open an old wound of rivalry between the faiths at such a critical time? Victory in the war on Terror requires that we give the reformists succor, not undermine them. One possible answer is that the Pope's speech was aimed at multiple targets, Catholicism's "chief competitors for souls" - Islam, Protestants, and secularists alike. I think however that a better answer lies in this rather fair-minded article in the Telegraph (via Bill Cork), that goes into some detail about Benedict's perceptions of Islam:

For no pope in history has made a deeper study of Islam. Having explored every verse of the Koran, and engaged in long debates with Muslim scholars, he rejects the simplistic notion held by fundamentalist Christians, and by the Roman Catholic Church until the middle of the 20th century, that Islam is evil. Yet he is convinced that some of its doctrines are morally indefensible.

In Benedict's view, a profound ambiguity about violence lies at the heart of Islam, arising from the Prophet's belief that faith can be spread by the sword. Mohammed, after all, was a general whose troops beheaded hundreds of enemy captives.

Asked recently whether he considered Islam to be a religion of peace, the Pope replied: "Islam contains elements that are in favour of peace, just as it contains other elements." Christianity, by contrast, he sees as a religion of pure peace which is why he adopts a near-pacifist approach to conflict in the Middle East.

(with regards to that last sentence, Razib points out that Benedict's view of Christianity benefits from the unique and different geopolitical landscapes into which Christianity and Islam expanded into. Razib summarizes, "In short, the fact that Islam has bloody borders is a natural consequence of its expansion into cultures which need no civilizing and have religious ideologies which are naturally resistant to marginalization and offer compelling narratives to elites.")

The article continues, drawing an important difference between Benedict and his predecessor:

John Paul II hoped that prayer could bring Christians and Muslims closer together, and famously prayed alongside Islamic leaders at Assisi in 1986. He also reassured Muslims that "we believe in the same God".

Benedict would emphasise that the Islamic understanding of God is radically different from that of Christians.

In a sense, JPII saw muslims as brothers in Abrahamic faith, whereas Benedict sees them as truly Alien. Note that the default understanding of Christianity for a muslim is that we are indeed heirs to the same tradition. In that sense, John Paul's passing and Benedict's ascension represented an easily-foreseeable souring of Christian-muslim relations.

The Telegraph article continues,

"The Koran is a total religious law," he wrote in 1996, "which regulates the whole of political and social life." Therefore, a devout Muslim living in the West must aspire to live under sharia law. A multi-faith society "is not consistent with Islam's inner nature".

In other words, the Pope subscribes to a version of the "clash of civilisations" theory, which sees a fundamental incompatibility between Western and Islamic cultures. In his opinion, the primary aim of Christian-Muslim discussion is to avoid conflict.

(emphasis mine). That the Pope subscribes to the "clash" thesis - and rejects the idea that both Islam and Christianity have anything in common or have any common cause (against secularism, for example), is hardly surprising. The former Cardinal Ratzinger was known for his hardline stances. He is a religious partisan first and a spiritual leader second; the previous Pope (partly due to his role in articulating the universality of Enlightenment values against Communism during the Cold War) was the exact opposite.

But then why provoke that clash?

How could a man who is so notoriously careful with words have committed what, in the eyes of liberal society, is a diplomatic blunder? The answer may be that underlying Benedict's nuanced world view is a deep-seated fear of Islam, which crops up in the daily conversation of Italian Catholics and stretches as far north as his Bavarian homeland.

He does not believe that the Koran condones terrorism; he bears no animosity towards peace-loving Muslims; but he is worried that the aggressive ethos of authentic Islam may provoke a crisis in Western society. And if the price of making that point is a "diplomatic blunder", then so be it.

And here I think we have the true answer. Fear of Islam - literally, "Islam phobia". Rather than a race for souls, he fears that Islam will destroy all of them. The Pope sounded an alarm against secularism in the short run, but Islam is the threat on the horizon. Perhaps his words were even deliberately intended to provoke, to better prove the point.

What is truly tragic about Benedict's world view is that the fear he holds towards Islam could be largely mitigated if he followed the footsteps of John Paul II, and helped use his influence to bring Enlightenment values to the Islamic world. Helping Musharraf rather than hindering him would have been a truly momentous start. It is the liberalization of the muslim world, a liberalization that was not even fully completed in the West until August 26, 1920. It is not too late for women's rights in Pakistan. We must stop talking about the Pope and start talking about this instead. There is only so much media oxygen and the Pope affair has consumed almost all of it until now. Muslim bloggers are relatively powerless in this regard, however - what is needed is the alliance of non muslims to bring pressure upon the mass media, to shine a spotlight on Pakistan and to speak the language of human rights and tolerance rather than demonization and fear. Muslims and Christians together must join forces and pressure Musharraf for true reform of the hudood laws.

So, I was going around this thing we call the “worldwide global hyper interweb” and I got lost amongst links. I was just curious to see where I would end up. I find a page I like, look around a bit, find a link that looks good and I go. I do this a few times and I end up at a place I probably would have never found otherwise.

Sure, a lot of the time one could expect to strikeout but I just happened to find a page, a blog, which I liked so much right away I immediately added it to my del.icio.us links. No, you cannot see my del.icio.us links. I don’t know you that well. We just met and dinner was great and you’re a fantastic dancer but I’m not that kind of gal.

Anyway, I happen across a blog called, “Penraker,” and he’s (at least I assume it’s a ‘he’) talking about Islam and the War on Terror and what Bernard Lewis thinks about it all.

Now, I’ve never heard of Bernard Lewis. No idea who this bloke is. Do you know? Wikipedia seems to think he’s all kinds of awesome. I don’t know but he seems to have some interesting things to say that I think need to be heard.

Can Islamofascists destroy us? Penraker and Mr. Lewis think it could be possible. As Penraker notes:

If you understand Islam and its history, you know that it has an imperial streak a mile wide. They did not sweep across the whole of North Africa in the seventh century, and conquer almost all of Spain because their doctrine was sheepish and pacific. They did not end up taking over parts of India because they were off practicing the jihad of the soul, working to better themselves.

Modern day terrorists are simply the newest version of this Islamic tradition. As I’ve said in many different places; Violence is at the core of the Islamic faith. A cursory glance at the actions of the faith’s founder throughout his lifetime attest to this simple truth.

However, things are changing for the better. As they become exposed to liberal democracies faithful Muslims reexamine what they believe through clear eyes. The Jews have done it. Christians have done it. Now it’s Islam’s turn to enter into a kind of reformation. But this thing cannot happen without freedom. Only freedom in Islamist nations will defeat terrorism.

The Crusades began with Islamic imperialism. They almost defeated the West. There’s little reason to think they couldn’t do it again if we play soft at bringing freedom to this region. And, to do that, we need to be unapologetic in how we engage our enemy. We are not fighting people who have hijacked a religion. We are fighting people who are obeying the tenants of their faith as demonstrated by the founder of the faith.

Moderate Muslims should not be offended by this statement. Just as I am not offended by the mentioning of atrocities committed by the Church in the name of Yeshua. Why should I be? The events did clearly transpire. There’s no denying that. However, I can retort by pointing out how far the Church has come since those dark days. Moderate Muslims (and it’s strange that I need to preface this word with an adjective) need to get to the point where they can do the same. Recognize the foundation of their faith and say, “We’ve moved past that.”

It may seem like I’m talking about two different things here but in my mind they’re inexorably intertwined. The West needs to call our enemies what they are and treat them accordingly to win this war but they cannot do that when it seems like every Muslim on the planet gets into an uproar when uncomfortable truths about their faith are targeted for criticism. The winning or losing of this war will mean a redefinition of what Islam is. Is Islam the faith of its founder or has it grown into something more? If it’s the latter then we shouldn’t be afraid to bring the sins of the past to the light. If it’s the former, well, I will die for my faith then.

We need to bring freedom to the Middle East if we’re to win this war. We cannot bring freedom until we are allowed to define our enemies as they’ve chosen to define themselves: The true followers of Allah.

After we wipe the “true” followers from the map the rest of ya’ll can go ahead and use it for yourself if that’s what floats your boat.

According to the Daily Mail, A London lawyer said that the Pope must die.

A notorious Muslim extremist told a demonstration in London yesterday that the Pope should face execution.

Anjem Choudary said those who insulted Islam would be "subject to capital punishment".

His remarks came during a protest outside Westminster Cathedral on a day that worldwide anger among Muslim hardliners towards Pope Benedict XVI appeared to deepen...

...Choudary's appeal for the death of Pope Benedict was the second time he has been linked with apparent incitement to murder within a year.

The 39-year-old lawyer organised demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in February in Denmark. Protesters carried placards declaring "Behead Those Who Insult Islam".

Yesterday he said: "The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and that must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet.

"Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said of his comments: "We have had no complaints about this. There were around 100 people at the demonstration. It passed off peacefully and there were no arrests."

The blogger Catholic Londoner took photos of protesters holding signs that said May Allah Curse the Pope, Trinity of Evil: Pope go to hell as he walked out of the Cathedral. Most of the protesters were masked.

Gee, do you think they're trying to scare us?

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian wrote that "Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect. Martin Amis calls it horrorism. It's not clear who has inspired the tactic of modern terrorism more - Sayyid Qutb or Creepshow. It's nearly all special effects, and cheap ones at that. Osama and his ilk have been waging bargain basement terrorism lately, threats via videotape. A blank cassette goes for what, 19 cents?

As Ron pointed out here, our enemies manufacture fear and outrage with the same skill that McDonald's uses to churn out hamburgers. Kill a few people, burn a few effigies, get on CNN and terrify the world. Over 5 billion served.

The only question is, why are we buying it? Martin Amis says:

Suicide-mass murder is astonishingly alien, so alien, in fact, that Western opinion has been unable to formulate a rational response to it. A rational response would be something like an unvarying factory siren of unanimous disgust. But we haven't managed that. What we have managed, on the whole, is a murmur of dissonant evasion...

...Osama bin Laden's table talk, at Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan, where he trained his operatives before September 2001, must have included many rolling paragraphs on Western vitiation, corruption, perversion, prostitution, and all the rest. And in 1998, as season after season unfolded around the president's weakness for fellatio, he seemed to have good grounds for his most serious miscalculation: the belief that America was a softer antagonist than the USSR (in whose defeat, incidentally, the 'Arab Afghans' played a negligible part). Still, a sympathiser like the famously obtuse 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh, if he'd been there, and if he'd been a little brighter, might have framed the following argument.

Now would be a good time to strike, John would tell Osama, because the West is enfeebled, not just by sex and alcohol, but also by 30 years of multicultural relativism. They'll think suicide bombing is just an exotic foible, like shame-and-honour killings or female circumcision. Besides, it's religious, and they're always slow to question anything that calls itself that. Within days of our opening outrage, the British royals will go on the road for Islam, and stay on it. And you'll be amazed by how long the word Islamophobia, as an unanswerable indictment, will cover Islamism too. It'll take them years to come up with the word they want - and Islamismophobia clearly isn't any good. Even if the Planes Operation succeeds, and thousands die, the Left will yawn and wonder why we waited so long. Strike now. Their ideology will make them reluctant to see what it is they confront. And it will make them slow learners.

This isn't an ideological war, it's a war between militarily weak lebensraum-seekers vs. Westerners who'd rather ignore the whole bother while they can, settle down with a good glass of wine and watch a rerun of the Evil Dead.

It's pointless to decry the 'radicals' for their actions. They know that they're at war with us and most of the world. They're just doing their job.

We're not doing ours. We refuse to acknowledge that men like Anjem Choudary are at war with us. We refuse to acknowledge an enemy combatant, even when he's shouting in our face.

Speaking of not doing one's job, of the police reaction to the 'protest' in front of Westminster, a Catholic Londoner says:

There were about 100 police around and about keeping an eye on things and video recording the protestors. I asked if they'd be prosecuted, and the policeman sounded edgey. He said they'd been warned about their behaviour already but arresting any of them might just fuel them up ever more.

Oy vey. The world seems full of silly people today. First, it was Kevin D. and his ridiculous slander of Muhammed (see "A (Re)Definition of Terms" below), and now I see Bryan Preston has an even sillier, and far more pretentious bit of Islamophobic tripe. I should know by now not to engage people who take Robert Spencer seriously, but what the heck.

Bryan: I grew up Christian, and studied theology for many years. I'm a secularist now but you're foolish to think I don't understand your Sunday School homilies about some scriptures abrogating others. You think you're dispensing wisdom there? I understood simple concepts like that before I even made it through my Presbyterian Confirmation classes when I was 13. Yeesh.

Furthermore, it is fundamentally wrong to say that a scripture that was written later necessarily takes precedence over verses written earlier. That's utter mumbo-jumbo, and isn't even a Biblical principle let alone a Koranic one. Neither, for that matter, is it biblical to state that the only source of authority in Christian theology is the New Testament. I won't even get into Bryan's hopelessly-lost guess about how Jews view the Law, which is even more off-base.

Bryan would have gotten an "F" from my Freshman year High School theology teacher (who was an Augustinian monk).

My objection to those who point to specific verses in the Koran that seem to endorse violence is that they're often quoted out of context. Christians who do that to their own Bible are annoying enough; those who do it to the holy works of other faiths are often practicing slander.

There is absolutely nothing anywhere in the Koran which says that it's okay to kill civilians in the name of Jihad--indeed, that's strongly forbidden. And it absolutely forbids suicide, with no exceptions made for warfare. Which means that everything that suicide bombers do, or that the 9/11 hijackers did, is completely contrary to the plain text of the Koran.

People like Bryan like to claim that we can't defeat Islamofascist terrorism if we don't understand the minds of Muslims. Well I'd agree with that to a point. But the key to learning the minds of Muslims is to talk to Muslims, befriend Muslims, and enter into dialogue (not "debate," dialogue) with Muslim scholars.

I would further state that you cannot know the minds of Muslims by simply reading, as an outsider, the Koran. You need to know what the people who actually consider it a holy book think about what the various verses within it mean, within the greater context of their faith as a whole.

Much is often made, for example, of the fact that Muhammed was a warrior for part of his career. Those who point this out rarely note that almost all of Muhammed's campaigns were defensive in nature; that the one time he endorsed something that we'd consider an atrocity (the murder of the men of a Jewish tribe that had attacked the Muslim community repeatedly) was less horrible than things that Moses endorsed when he was a military leader in the Bible; that all Muhammed's military campaigns were marked by very strict rules against killing innocents; and yes, some were given the choice to become muslims or die, but only those who had repeatedly attacked muslims and violated treaties with muslims were ever forced to make such a choice. In his entire 10 year career as a warrior, Muhammed's body count was probably well under 1,000 total, almost all of it defensive. And once he took control of Mecca from those who'd been attacking his followers, his military career promptly ended. That is what most muslims believe, anyway, and most historians I've read see little reason to dispute it.

Therefore it is not right to say that Islam is inherently violent, and inherently seeks to convert people by the sword. Only by carefully cherry-picking out-of-context quotes, like Osama Bin Laden does, can you justify a worldview which says you're a "martyr" if you blow yourself up to kill civilians.

So I would agree: getting to know Muslims is the key to understanding The Enemy. Because while The Enemy at the moment is a Muslim, most Muslilms (the vast majority) are not The Enemy. And I think that if my 8 year old son can understand that distinction (and he can) then it shouldn't be too much to ask adults to make that distinction.

In fact, here is one Muslim's view on The Enemy. Can people like Bryan explain to me why I should ignore her? Can Bryan explain why he ignores people like her, when they are not hard to find at all in the blogosphere?

Update: See also Bill's reply.

Update 2: It occurs to me that Bryan is doing the same thing to secularists like me, Bill Ardolino, and Andrew Stuttaford as he does to Muslims: he presumes to tell us what we think and believe and understand, rather than just, y'know, asking us.

Update 3: Have the folks at Hot Air ever considered adding a Muslim co-blogger? Just curious.

This post first appeared on Ali Eteraz's blog--Dean

Religious rulings by Muslim clerics, called fatwa, have often been cited as one impetus for terrorism. The infamous fatwa issued by Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial book The Satanic Verses, is a prime example. In the West, the word fatwa has come to be viewed with universal dread.

Yet there have been literally dozens of fatwas issued against terrorism by high-ranking sheikhs in the years since 9/11. An incomplete list of them can be found here. (Also here and here, oh, and here too. Wow, that’s a lot.) For critics who claim that mainstream Islamic authorities have been silent on the issue of terrorism, your humble servant hopes this is a sufficient mouthful to keep you occupied for awhile. Have your cake, and eat it too.

The problem, then, is not silence on the issue of terrorism. By now most Muslims are beginning to realize that as many Muslims are killed by terror as hostile outsiders, and that most of the ‘hostile outsiders’ end up being harmless tourists who pour money into otherwise faltering economies. Your humble servant lives in the Middle East, and she can tell you with authority that there are actually commercials against terrorism aired on television, ending with threats of an afterlife in the fiery furnace for the irhebiyeen. That’s irhebiyeen, terrorists (singular irheb), not shahideen, martyrs. The one running now shows a sorrowful mother placing black ribbons across the photographs of her three children, all claimed in terrorist attacks. For inhabitants of countries like Jordan and Egypt, in which terrorism has killed far more resident Muslims than non-resident non-Muslims over the last decade, terror attacks are the furthest thing from a source of pride.

So: documented resistance to terrorism by media and clerical bodies in the Muslim world.

Why hasn’t it worked?

It hasn’t worked because our much-lauded Islamic law is far less powerful than it seems, and far far less powerful than the militants would like you to believe in the West. The reach of any given sheikh goes only as far as his charisma; even in countries where Shari’a is the law of the land, a cleric with state-appointed powers has no authority beyond those powers. A militant group working outside the law certainly isn’t going to stop its activities because of a few decrees by sheikhs working for the law. Fatwas are strictly temporal decrees; no sheikh has the authority to speak for God, thus, any attempt to convince terrorists to give up their pipe bombs using the tools of Islamic law is likely to end in failure. If they don’t like what you have to say, they are well within their rights as Muslims to listen to someone else. Someone who is already saying what they want to hear.

Shari’a law is not all-powerful. Shar’ia law, today, is almost useless. Saint Ali, grandson of Muhammad, said it best: “Shari’a only functions in a just society.” If nothing else, the state of the Muslim world today is ample proof that in an unjust society, it functions not at all. If we’re looking for a stick with which to beat sociopaths who rent porn the night before they fly planes into buildings for God, we should look elsewhere. Fatwas are useless against madmen.

This post first appeared here.--Dean

They are Very Angry.

Correction: They be quite angry betwixt the anger and the anger, mateys!

Quoted:

The chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, has said that Muslims are obligated to accept Pope Benedict XVI's apology according to Islamic teachings.

"As long as it (the Pope's remarks) was made out of negligence, we are obliged to accept the apology," explained Hasyim Muzadi at a religious conference Monday in Jakarta.

"If the rage continues, perhaps what the pope said is true," he added.

He's the head of an organization of over 45 million Muslims. More right here.

Austin Bay describes the "CBS (Coordinated, Blood-Spilling) Ambush," meaning the way that terrorist groups and the international press co-ordinate their efforts:

Executing a CBS ambush requires the implicit cooperation of sensationalist media -- media that delight in emotional slights and rarely probe beyond the superficial. Until that implicit cooperation ends, the Islamo-fascists will continue to exploit this productive stratagem, achieving propaganda victories designed to ignite a "clash of civilizations" and brutally intimidate their Muslim and non-Muslim opposition.

Read the whole thing right here.

Quoted:

Al Qasemi College , which was founded in 1989 as the first institute of Islamic higher education in Israel, is trying to export revolutionary openness and liberalism to the wider Islamic world, leaders of the faculty told educators, Jewish leaders, and local Muslims during a four-day visit to the Boston area that ended yesterday.

Speaking at campuses, mosques, and the homes of Muslims, the Al Qasemi faculty said that it is time for Muslims to quit blaming others and examine their own responsibility for the troubles of Islamic civilization; time for Arab Israelis to call themselves Israelis, not Palestinians; and, above all, time for women to have full equality with men in the Muslim world.

And:

Enrollment in the school has increased steadily, from 40 students in 1989 to 1,600 students today. And it could be much larger if the school's administration wanted it to be, according to Essawi. The college accepts only about one in eight applicants.

Al Qasemi primarily educates teachers for Arab schools in Israel. It also trains Arab women for technology-based careers such as engineering that are difficult for them to pursue because of the expectations of the traditional communities in which the women are raised.

Essawi and 10 members of the Al Qasemi faculty spoke with faculty at Hebrew College and at Harvard University. They met Boston-area Muslims at Friday prayers at the mosque of Islamic Center of Boston , in Wayland, and at an organized discussion Saturday night at the Westwood home of a Muslim participant in the region's oldest Muslim-Jewish dialogue group.

And:

Faculty at Hebrew College who met the visitors said they were impressed by the Israeli Arabs' views on Islam and their willingness to go against conventional thinking.

``The major change that we need" in Jewish-Muslim relations ``must start with what children are taught," said Rabbi Or Rose , instructor in rabbinic studies at Hebrew College.

``They are very brave to be doing this in the hotbed of the Middle East," he added.

He said faculty members at the Newton school are discussing the possibility that they and the school's rabbinical candidates might visit and study with the Israeli Muslim faculty when the candidates go to Israel before ordination.

Probably they're just practicing "Al-Taqiyya" and waiting for their pre-programmed compulsion to kill to kick in. Either that or they're deep in the process of divorcing themselves from the evil, wicked wicked pervert fiend devil Mohammed. Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket.

Anyway, read the rest of the story of the futile dialogue with the deceitful bloodthirsty Mohammed-loving killbots right here.

(Thanks again, Martin.)

They're angry in Pakistan again:

I'm sorry, but don't these guys look like they're smiling?

Who is the joke on, exactly?

All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

1. More rage (yawn) on the Muslim street
2. Al Qasemi College
3. CBS Ambush...
13. Violent Temper Tantrums
14. The Pope stands firm, sort of
15. Here we go again...