Spencer (And Other Critics) Respond
Robert Spencer, following the publication of my Brown Daily Herald article, has responded in a post over at his blog. Interestingly, a lot of the criticisms that I've gotten at Jihad Watch and here at FPW have to do with my alleged 'misreading' of the Quran. The Muslim holy book is much more violent than the Bible, many are suggesting, and therefore Islam is inherently based on violence and oppression.
The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that it fails to take into account the evolution of Islamic thought over the past 1400 years. As'ad AbuKhalil, alluding to the broad swath of interpretation about correct Islamic practice, mentioned to me dryly in a recent phone interview that he's "never been stoned, and no Muslim has ever taken revenge against me." Indeed, as Ali Eteraz has so eloquently outlined, there is no singular interpretation of Islamic law and practice; instead, it continues to evolve to meet modern day circumstances.
American Law with respect to racism and gender underwent reformation. Islamic Law with respect to violence against non-Muslims has also modified to fit with the world in which it finds itself.Islamic law isn't static. The world has changed since Muhammad’s day, and so have Muslims' views on what practices and beliefs are appropriate. Indeed, this type of evolution is not much different for Islam than it has been for Christianity. Jed Bartlett illustrates this point pretty well:
...Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the high Mufti of Egypt, whom Spencer in another post tries to paint as an extremist because Gomaa (like John Ashcroft) does not allow graven images in statues, recently allowed women to get hymen reconstruction surgery, as well as allowing women the right to political leadership. Other major jurists today have allowed women the right to lead prayer. Even al-Azhar University, by no means a bastion of reform, has taken a strong stance against Female Genital Mutilation which it once used to permit. Islamic Law changes. I hope that is obvious by now. The way islamic jurisprudence evolved to make rules limiting violence serves as a model of how islamic jurisprudence will evolve to give rights to women, minorities and non-Muslims.
24 comments:
Jeb,
Islam views the Koran as the literal word of Allah that cannot be changed. That's why Islam cannot be reformed. It's a hopeless religion.
See what the Vatican says about Islam: Vatican rebuffs Muslim outreach: Quran cited as the main obstacle
West underestimates the 'evil of Islam'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wPglHZQf-0
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22278311-2,00.html
By Richard Kerbaj
August 21, 2007 02:00am
THE West was still underestimating the evil of Islam, an influential Muslim thinker has warned, insisting that Australia and the US have been duped into believing there is a difference between the religion's moderate and radical interpretations.
On a two-week "under the radar" visit to Australia, Syrian-born Wafa Sultan secretly met both sides of federal politics and Jewish community leaders, warning them that all Muslims needed to be closely monitored in the West.
In an interview with The Australian, Dr Sultan - who shot to recognition last year following an interview on al-Jazeera television in which she attacked Islam and the prophet Mohammed - said Muslims were "brainwashed" from an early age to believe Western values were evil and that the world would one day come under the control of Sharia law.
The US-based psychiatrist - who has two fatwas (religious rulings) issued against her to be killed - warned that Muslims would continue to exploit freedom of speech in the West to spread their "hate" and attack their adopted countries, until the Western mind grasped the magnitude of the Islamic threat.
"You're fighting someone who is willing to die," Dr Sultan told The Australian in an Arabic and English interview. "So you have to understand this mentality and find ways to face it. (As a Muslim) your mission on this earth is to fight for Islam and to kill or to be killed. You're here for only a short life and once you kill a kafir, or a non-believer, soon you're going to be united with your God."
Dr Sultan, who was brought to Australia by a group called Multi-Net comprised of Jews and Christians, met senior politicians, including Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Labor deputy leader Julia Gillard.
Private security was hired for Dr Sultan, who left Australia yesterday, and state police authorities were also made aware of her movements in the country.
The organisers of her visit asked the media to not publish anything about her stay until she had left the country because of security-related concerns. Dr Sultan said Islam was a "political ideology" that was wrongly perceived to have a moderate and hardline following.
"That's why the West has to monitor the majority of Muslims because you don't know when they're ready to be activated. Because they share the same basic belief, that's the problem," said the 50-year-old, who was last year featured in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Dr Sultan, who was raised on Alawite Islamic beliefs before she renounced her religion, began to question Islam after she witnessed her university teacher get gunned down by Muslim hardliners in Syria in 1979.
The mother of three, who migrated to the US in 1989, said the West needed to hold Muslims and their leaders more accountable for the atrocities performed in the name of Islam if they wanted to win the war on terror.
But while she considered the prophet Mohammed "evil" and said the Koran needed to be destroyed because it advocated violence against non-believers, Dr Sultan struggled to articulate her vision for Muslims, whom she said she was trying to liberate from the shackles of their beliefs.
"I believe the only way is to expose the Muslims to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems," said Dr Sultan, who is completing her first book, The Escaped Prisoner: When Allah is a Monster.
"Muslims have been hostages of their own belief systems for 1400 years. There is no way we can keep the Koran."
Jeb,
Thanks for this post. I think the problem lies in what people want to believe about Islam and not to know. 'I know what I believe' said Tony Blair. That is entirely true when it comes to how Islam is perceived in some radical circles in the US.
I want to tell you that Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Mustapha Abusharraf, in her many scholarly articles about FGM inisted that this was not a Muslim practice and that Imams fought it in Africa as soon as the eighteen century. I cite her in my article on Hirsi Ali.
Moreover, FGM is perpetuated by women. In one of her articles in the now defunct but excellent 'The Sciences', she explains that education about the practice has to do with transforming beliefs, the belief that men have more pleasure thanks to the practice. She interviewed men and she found that they often become unfaithful to their wives because of this mutilation.
Contrary to what Hirsi Ali want us to belive, FGM has nothing to do with Islam, submission, domination, etc...
I think changing people beliefs is a difficult matter. It is difficult when it comes to African women and African society's beliefs about what a woman ought to be. It is also difficult when it comes to convincing people in Neo-cons circles being from the left or the right that islam has been evolving as you said and that Islam is not a religion of violence, no more and no less than any other religion...
Sophia,
You make excellent points. I think the treatment of FG is an example of both progress and stagnation in Islamic thought. Al Azhar aside, Muslim leaders aren't doing enough to fight FGM in Egypt, among other states. Why hasn't the supposedly human rights- and women's rights-loving Muslim Brotherhood taken a clear stance on FGM? More surprisingly, literally hundreds of thousands of women in the United Kingdom are still at risk in part because Muslim leaders in the UK don't do enough to discourage the practice.
But FGM is also an example of a digusting and horrific act that is grounded in tribal practice, not Islam. Hence even the regressive states like Iran have much less of an FGM problem than comparatively modern ones like Egypt. Certainly, the fact that it is a North African and Arab tribal tradition makes it a Muslim practice, but not an Islamic one. Accordingly, Muslims should do more to fight it, and non-Muslims should not blame the religion or its adherants for the horrors visited on FGM's countless victims.
I hesitate to respond to the first couple of comments, as I generally don't like to engage ignorance, so I'll simply pose a brief question. Has the commenter ever met a Muslim person? Has (s)he ever met a conservative Christian? To posit that there is something inherent in Islamic religious identity that encourages violence is absurd. The commenter should get out more.
David,
First of all, I am not sure what you mean by Iran being a regressive state and Egypt a modern one. I would tend to believe the contrary and my opinion about what is regressib=ve and hwat is modern in both countries will be more nuanced.
I agree that Muslim clerics should fight the practice of FGM, and I think Jeb gave an example of this, they are doing it.
However, when it comes to Islam, people underestimate one fact: unlike the two other monotheistic religions, Islam does not speak with one voice. It does not have a unifying authority like the Pope. This makes things more complicated. At any given time, two imams can give completely different fatwas about some the same matter.
This is rooted in the history of the religion. In its history Islam covered a multicultural space from East to west and it was able to do so thanks to the religion being able to adapt to local customs, beliefs, and tolerate them.
I think when one expresses criticism of Islam, one has to have in mind that there exist many Islams and not just one.
Sophia,
I strongly disagree that Christianity and Judaism "speak with one voice." My church, for example, recognizes gay couples' unions as marriage. I have friends who practice Reform Judaism who don't keep kosher, and live and practice their religion very differently from my Conservative friends, to say nothing of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. And don't forget, the Pope speaks for roughly half of the world's 2.1 billion Christians.
As for Islam, I agree with you that the trends and beliefs encompassed by the religion are diverse, and you make an interesting point about Imams being able to issue contradictory fatwas (even though many of those Imams would label those who disagree as flat out wrong, or worse, kafirs). And importantly, Muslims have a wide range of beliefs about the meaning and value of 'jihad,' and other major components of the religion. But it behooves us to recognize broad trends that span the Muslim Middle east, and unfair condemnation of Jews, anti-Americanism, homophobia, anti-science, and anti-woman tendencies, though not universal, are among them.
I'm not suggesting we should fault a religion or a country for these trends, but we should recognize them so they can be addressed. And if we find, as I think is the case, that there is a non-causal correlation between regressive, menacing beliefs and the practice of Islam, we benefit from that knowledge, as we can encourage Muslim leaders to use their influence, and indeed Islam itself, to enlighten their communities. FGM is a great example, especially in light of how pathetic and paltry the efforts of religious leaders in Egypt have been to combat it, despite what you say (again, where is the MB on this issue?).
And as for Iran, Egypt, etc., I'd be curious to hear your nuanced definition of a reressive state. I'm not defending the lack of freedoms in Egypt, but I think Iran's disregard for international law, lack of a judiciary, severe repression of women, and explicitly and exclusively religious governance puts it a notch below Egypt.
-Dave
David,
I think you are counfounding here individual practices of religion, which can be diverse in all religions, and the official position of a religion on a certain issue. I know the Pope does not speak for all Catholics and that not all Catholics agree with him but he does speak in the name of one doctrine. There is no such a thing in Islam.
As for Iran and Egypt, I don't want to give you personal opinion, I will digg some articles for you. I don't agree for example that Iran disregards particuarly international law, not more than any other country that work for its own interest. israel disregards international law, adn so the US on Torture. I don't hear many voices calling to bomb israel and the US for their disregard for international law.
I may appear a bit cynical, but what international law means when the US invades illegaly a country on false premices and stay the course ? What does international law means when Israel bombs the hell out of lebanon, destructs its infrastructure and kills more than a thousand civilians and declares that it wants to put the country 20 years back and nobody lifts a finger ?
So the point you're trying to make is that Islam is reformable.. for the good. That within Islam is the capablity of rejecting the doctrine of Jihad and emnity between Muslims and Non-Muslims. That all the Muslim-supremisism in the Sunnah will theologically be scrapped and replaced with teachings promoting co-existance with non-Muslims.
And as evidence of this, you site some clerics who are against FGM.
Well THANK THE HEAVENS. It took One Thousand Four Hundred Years for that advancement to come.
But really now.... FGM isn't even in the Sunnah. It's a cultural practice that has latched itself onto Islam's barbaric treatment of women.
Sorry but they get no points from me for taking what is basically a no-brainer: Reconfiguring a woman's genitals so that they turn into a pinata is wrong.
It's to Islam's discredit that they are finally saying this.
And you raise this up as if it's something positive?
What will the next reform in Islam be? Maybe in the year 3407 Muslims will be allowed to have dogs for pets?
But then what is the problem in the world today? Is it FGM? No.. it's the Jihadist threat of Islam.
Have the experts in Islamic jurispudience directed their focus on any of that, or are they still working out the basics regarding destroying the body parts of people?
i find it odd that you would include FGM as the sole example of the great liberalization of Islamic law since you introduced your example with this
>Islamic Law with respect to violence against non-Muslims has also modified to fit with the world in which it finds itself
What does FGM have to do with violence against non-muslims?
>The way islamic jurisprudence evolved to make rules limiting violence serves as a model of how islamic jurisprudence will evolve to give rights to women, minorities and non-Muslims.
Ok, so at the rate of reform the're going , maybe in the year 34,927 they will finally say that beheading the kaffir is not a good way to foster community relations.
Lest you think I'm saying that ALL Muslims are one way or another, I am not.
However, notions for co-existance , tolerance etc do not come from within the holy texts of Islam, so I ask... how can those Muslims who do not want to wage a jihad convince other Muslims that what they are seeing in the Sunnah should no longer be acted upon.
That's the problem we face.
What WITHIN the Sunnah can be used to teach the violent Muslims that the violent portion of the Sunnah is no longer valid?
It hasn't happened in 1,400 years, and it's absurd to think it's going to happen sometime in the next 1,400 years.
I'm typing this on a laptop which is almost a form of physical abuse, so forgive any typing errors please.
Vincep1974,
You're getting a few key facts wrong. First, FGM is not an Islamic practice, it is a North African and Arab practice that, because the region's people are Muslims, is mostly practiced by Muslims. Your simplistic argument makes me wonder if you understand the difference between a "Muslim" practice and an "Islamic" practice. Here's a harmless analogy: lox and bialies are not Jewish foods, they're foods predominantly eaten by people who are also Jews. Get it? By the same token that, if you wanted to do away with lox and bialies, you might seek help from Jewish community leaders, Muslim leaders are in a great position to help fight FGM.
Make no mistake, I'm dissapointed by how little the MB, and other Muslim leaders in Egypt have done. But do you really think Islamic practice is no different now than it was 1,400 years ago? That begs the question, and forgive me if this seems snide, what are your sources on Islamic history and jurisprudence? With all due credit to the simplistic-yet-true notion that ending ijtihad was a major setback in the evolution of Islam, how can you possibly think the religion is no different now than it was in the 7th century, or for that matter, at the beginning of the 20th? I can say little other than to encourage you to read more, and the badly researched media reports you cite on your blog aren't what I mean by 'reading.'
As I've said in other comment forums, stagnation in Islamic practice in the traditional Muslim world is the result of failed education systems, and a deficient marketplace for ideas. As for regressive tendencies among Western Muslims, any expert will tell you that radical Imams get a lot of mileage out of arguing that non-Muslims are hostile to Islam. If you're actually worried about radicalism in the West, you might consider how you're contributing to the problem by giving those Imams all the rhetorical fodder they need.
David,
As promised. If you have an hour and a half, sit and watch this excellent BBC produced video on the Islamic republic.
http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rageh-omaar/
As for Egypt, I suggest you visit regularly The Arabist, it is a journalist blog from Egypt, it is in my blogroll (in the category influential) It chronicles the human rights abuses of the egyptian regime as well as the absence of democracy in Mobarakland.
David,
If you can read French, a new book by demographer and political scientist Emmanuel Todd suggests that Islam in genral, and Shia in particular are on their way of secularisation as other religions did before. His analuses are based on scitific data, brith rates, education of women, etc...
>You're getting a few key facts wrong. First, FGM is not an Islamic practice
I didn't get it wrong. I stated that very thing.
I said:
+ FGM isn't even in the Sunnah.
I'm assuming you know that the Sunnah comprises of the written Islamic texts.. Koran, hadith, sira.
So I was saying that FGM isn't found anywhere in the foundational documents.
+ It's a cultural practice that has latched itself onto Islam's barbaric treatment of women.
Here I was stating that FGM is a cultural tradition.
I regret if I wasn't clear enough in trying to make the point that FGM isn't Islamic per se.
As I stated in my first message.. you were trying to build a case for the process of updating Islamic teachings particularly in the area of violence toward non-Muslim, I'm confused as to why you would choose FGM as an example of that , as FGM isn't necessarily Islamic and has nothing to do with Non-Muslims in this context.
As you went to great lengths with analogies and everything in your response to me to distance FGM from Islam in order to somehow prove me ignorant.. I wonder why then if they are so unrelated why did you bring FGM up at all?
>how can you possibly think the religion is no different now than it was in the 7th century, or for that matter, at the beginning of the 20th?
There's two ways this could be viewed.
Type 1 - The cultural manifestation of the religion as it's actually practiced by people
Type 2 - The 'general consensus' view of the dogmas expressed in the Holy Text, even if it’s understood that they are not being adhered to.
I was talking about case 2.
I'll repeat what I said:
>However, notions for co-existence , tolerance etc do not come from within the holy texts of Islam, so I ask... how can those Muslims who do not want to wage a jihad convince other Muslims that what they are seeing in the Sunnah should no longer be acted upon.
>That's the problem we face.
>What WITHIN the Sunnah can be used to teach the violent Muslims that the violent portion of the Sunnah is no longer valid?
It doesn't matter how many of Type 1 Muslims there are in the world, if the Holy Texts can be used to support the notion of Jihad. If the Jihad concept in type 2 Islam is never repudiated then Type 2 Islam is always laying in wait to rekindle the fire of the jihad.
And that is exactly what has happened with folks like Wahab , Qutb,Banna, Khomeini.
They looked at the Muslims around them and lamented at how far off the track of Original Islam the Muslim world was.
So all the Jihad groups today see themselves as having to start over from the beginning just as in the time of Mohammed when there was no Islam state.
The jihadis view the world right now as not having the true Islamic state anywhere.. and they are working on all fronts to reestablish it, to revive Islam as it was way back then and obliterate the evolved cultural Islam that they view as not orthodoxy.
So it doesn't matter how diverse cultural Islam is today, because cultural or secular Muslims do not have anything in the holy texts to repudiate the Jihadists.
And that's exactly what we're seeing today around the world... silence from the "moderates" to the radicals.
With the big public outrages towards IFAW, David Horowitz,etc.. Muslims have shown themselves to have no problem angrily confronting people who they view as putting down their religion.. well where are they doing that to their co-religionists?
Do these Muslims think the rest of us are somehow inventing motivations for the terrorists?
Absurd... every Islamic terrorist group operates in the name of Islam.. I want to see all these loud college Muslims confront that.
But they won't.
They're either afraid (which I doubt) or they have nothing to say.
I hope I expressed myself better, and I'm glad I was able to correct the misconceptions you had of my first message.
In this article you stated:
>Islamic Law with respect to violence against non-Muslims has also modified to fit with the world in which it finds itself.
This is very true. Islamic jurisprudence allows for a lot of flexibility as a nascent Muslim community finds itself evolving from a very small minority in a host country into a sizable political force/bloc.
And interestingly enough the framework establishes a pattern whereby the new Muslims ensure that no harm come upon them and they do this by NOT making waves, by getting along with everyone else.
As the community grows and gets more established, an Islamic Identity forms and once this Identity becomes instilled in the Muslims, the enmity grows. The divide happens.
The "alienation" that everyone likes to blame on the West is a result of a deliberate plan of separateness. And once distrust takes hold, then jihad emerges.
In Persia, this was the pattern:
More Moslems came, and soon a small mosque was built, which attracted yet others. As long as Zoroastrians remained in the majority, their lives were tolerable; but once the Moslems became the more numerous, a petty but pervasive harassment was apt to develop. This was partly verbal, with taunts about fire-worship, and comments on how few Zoroastrians there were in the world, and how many Moslems, who must therefore posses the truth; and also on how many material advantages lay with Islam. The harassment was often also physical; boys fought, and gangs of youth waylaid and bullied individual Zoroastrians. They also diverted themselves by climbing into the local tower of silence and desecrating it, and they might even break into the fire-temple and seek to pollute or extinguish the sacred flame. Those with criminal leanings found too that a religious minority provided tempting opportunities for theft, pilfering from the open fields, and sometimes rape and arson. Those Zoroastrians who resisted all these pressures often preferred therefore in the end to sell out and move to some other place where their co-religionists were still relatively numerous, and they could live at peace; and so another village was lost to the old faith." Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism, pp. 7-8;
Now listen to the words of Patrick Sookhdeo as he describes what's happening in the UK today, he is responding to a question about how did things in UK come about:
BEGIN QUOTE
I think, firstly British policy of successive governments followed a policy of multiculturalism. It was politically driven and effectively enshrined Islam. Which meant, it was politically acceptable. It was allowed to develop socially and culturally. I think that’s a very big area, the multicultural. I think the second where the majority of Muslims came from, they came from the Indian sub-continent. British policy during the days of the hiraj was to allow the Muslims a degree of autonomy in terms of ‘how’ they could live out their religious lives, known as communalism. And so, when they came here, although initially they were part of society, gradually they began to develop much more, this communal position furthered by a British policy of multiculturalism. And I think that in the last forty years, Islam has rediscovered its roots. Classical Islam has rediscovered the Qur’an, the hadith, it’s Sharia and they have discovered an Islamic identity. I think these things together has projected them very much into a community which is distinctive.
Q: So you would say that they have, not a choke hold but a strong hold in the UK.
A: They have created blocks, you could say power blocks from which they can influence. And those power blocks are geographical. Where, in areas they form the majority — also in society, where they can lead a society in matters of government, where they can seek to shape government policy. So, I would say that they are present in many different aspects of British life.
Q: How did they do that? What was their strategy? It wasn’t by accident, certainly?
A: No no. It was very well thought out and fortunately, many had not done work on this. Back in 1979, there was the Islam in Europe conference, and one of their basic strategies that arose was that Muslims should NOT integrate as individuals in society but rather as communities. So they emphasized the development of Muslim communities — in other words, they would become majority in given areas and then they would go to the next stage which was to engage the political bodies in that area. If you had to reduce their strategy over the past 30 years it would firstly the creation of an Islamic consciousness, and all Muslim women would wear the hijab, everyone eats halal meat — those very basic things that gives visibility to the Muslim community. They know “who” they are. And their Sharia, their law, it now becomes operative within. Secondly, to create organizations and institutions. For example, an Islamic Woman’s Society, an Islamic legal society, an Islamic educational society… now, each of those societies sits down and works out its principles and sets “what are our objectives”, “where do we want to go”, “how are we going to get there”, “how does Islam fit within this”, and “where does our law come in”. Once they have that in place, they move to the third stage which is to say to their local authority “look, we have lots of Muslim children in school, should not the school cater for our children, in terms of dress, in terms of Ramadan, in terms of food, in terms of education ?” They’d say, politically, we’re here, should we not be present on national days, should we not be a part of everything. So what has happened is they’ve engaged the political structures at local, regional and national levels. Islam has now been accepted and brought into the center. That engaging also had to do with the media, social, cultural, religious bodies all operating in tandem so their presence was known, it was felt. And then there is the final stage which is the threat. If you don’t give way to what we want, then we are not to blame if you are attacked. Now in England, we have had our 7/7 and sadly, Muslim leaders came out and said, “It’s really British government policy is to blame because you/we are in Iraq killing Muslims. You can’t blame our young people. In other words, they are saying to the government, “ you have got to follow our foreign policy. We will tell you what to do”. So you’ve got that fourth stage which is where violence is threatened or utilized.
END QUOTE
The pattern is similar to what happened in Persia and what is happening now in Paris, in Amsterdam, in Brussels.
These trends are so similar and so obvious.
I know in today's world, to speak ugly truths is the biggest crime in some circles. Somehow some people will say that I'm the problem for noticing things.. as if an observer is responsible for what is being observed.
So tell me where is the "evolution of Islamic thought over the past 1400 years"?
They're doing today what they did in Persia.
Looking at the seriousness of the situation I really have to question Dryer's motivations.
Offering episodes of the West Wing and making silly snide jokes against John Ashcroft might tickle the Leftist fancy but it's not really addressing what is going on is it?
Dryer: Please tell me when the enlightened Muslims you allude to are going to start having a perceptible impact on the fundamentalists.
And can you point out any grand initiatives that the moderates are targeting toward the fundamentalists?
The only time I see moderates vocal and passionate about anything is when they are lecturing us NonMuslims for noticing what the fundamentalists are doing.
There's a big PR campaign right now in UK to fight "Islamophobia" by propagandizing the issue so that people who are rightly concerned about Islam are delegitimized by equating their concern with racism.
A most cynical and disgusting ploy, and it betrays the loyalties of the moderates..because if the moderates actually did want to protect the image of Islam it would go after the real reason why Islam is viewed so poorly ... the people who are acting in its name.
But instead the moderates go after the same people the jihadis go after.. the Non-Muslims.
I don’t trust them, they give me no reason to. I have to ask... why in the world would a smart man like yourself trust them and defend them?
, and while we're waiting for this impact to happen, shouldn't the rest of us work to understand the true nature of the Islamist movement so that we are no longer under any delusions.
You give much credence to As'ad AbuKhalil. I found this performance:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/07/1458210
Fluff: Thanks for that link.
All of you folks out there... please I urge you, watch the video of the debate or read the transcript.
Then re-read Dryer's article here and how Dryer purports AbuKhalil to be a credible witness on Islamic tolerance.
AbuKhalil showed absolutely no respect to the other guest and is quite the strident ideologe. He insulted her as often as he could.
Plus he seems obsessed with Fox News. And he robotically refused any suggestion that the Muslim protests were counter-productive.
That this guy should be a Professor is icing on the cake.. for only in the university system could someone so completely out of step with reality thrive.
Dryer's choosing him as an ally , to me, is very damaging to Dryer's crediblity.
If universities are dominated by people like this then I am very glad I didn't spend a lot of time in one, being a computer programer and having to use my brain to logically solve problems, I had very little use of the International Brotherhood of Know-Nothing Do-Nothing Hate-Everything Workers Socialist Collective.
Is it any wonder that it seems like the longer one remains in a University, the dumber one gets?
Anyone interested in the truth please go to Jihad Watch and read any of the articles there that contain original analysis (as opposed to a copy/paste of a news story) and read an article on here..
Which one is the better written one? Which one has the best logic.. etc.
To me when I see Dryer assert that Islam does indeed reform sharia law and then choose FGM , which he admits has nothing to do with Sharia, as the example... it's like trying to say that he's going to show us how a car engine works and he does this by swiping his credit card at the Pay at the Pump reader. Yeah.. i guess you buying gasoline is somewhat related to the car engine but really has nothing to do with what you said you were set out to prove.
Dryer, perhaps you should humble yourself and check your premises, you are no Robert Spencer.
What's interesting about the transcript is that Abukhalil mirrors the Islamists. There are
1. Straw men ("You are trying to say... there’s some genetic incompetence or inequality, and that’s because Jews and Christians are genetically superior to Muslims). Huh?
2. The complete lack of identification with a woman whom (you would think) he'd see as akin (and a kin) to him in some ways. What's love got to do with anything, anyway?
3. Attacks based on the other person's lack of knowledge of Arabic (else, says he, we would know about what is -- [I suspect] -- a very circumscribed defense of minority religious sensibilities in Arab countries, though he suggests this is an important phenomenon).
4. A tendency to change the subject when the tender point is touched -- the tender point in this case being an inferiority that is not at all genetic. (Does Abukhalil want to be mocked as a genetic inferior, so that he can self-righteously argue the point?).
Given Abukhalil's behavior, I'd be interested if he wrote an essay on why leftists and Islamicists make good bedfellows. My current theory is that the marriage is possible because the leftists don't really take seriously the religiosity of their partners. But I feel there's more to the story; and an anti-American born into the vapors of Islam might be able to tell.
Out of curiosity, who is AbuKhalil? I ask because, contrary to what you suggest above, I don't know who you're talking about, let alone discuss him in a post.
Or did you mean to refer to someone else above ("Then re-read Dryer's article here and how Dryer purports AbuKhalil to be a credible witness on Islamic tolerance"... "Dryer's choosing him as an ally , to me, is very damaging to Dryer's crediblity")?
I'm not being sarcastic; I'm really wondering if you've just misquoted me, or if you were interpreting something I've said incorrectly. Please let me know.
Thanks,
Dave
Out of curiosity, who is AbuKhalil? I ask because, contrary to what you suggest above, I don't know who you're talking about, let alone discuss him in a post.
AbuKhalil is the man you are talking about in the 2nd sentence of your 2nd paragraph.
Purportedly, you spoke to him on the phone.
"As'ad AbuKhalil, alluding to the broad swath of interpretation about correct Islamic practice, mentioned to me dryly in a recent phone interview that he's "never been stoned, and no Muslim has ever taken revenge against me." "
The essay was by Jeb Koogler.
Fluff:
Oh my.
Dave: I'm sorry. I made an error in thinking you wrote the introduction.
So that part of my diatribe should have been directed to Koogler not you.
I apologize for mischaracterizing you. For the entire time I been involved on this thread, I was under the false notion you were the author of this article.
Vincep1974,
I'm glad that's cleared up (I hadn't reread the original post in so long, I actually confused), and I'm even more glad that the comments forum is generating enough debate for us both to have lost track of who is arguing what!
One question about your take on Abukhalil: since he is an atheist, and even his cultural practices have been shaped by secular trends, isn't your problem with him political and philosophical, rather than religious?
I think it's an important distinction, since you say that your problem is with Islam itself, but it seems more like an ideology that came from Abukhalil being raised in Lebanon is the issue, not religion.
<< I think it's an important distinction >>
There are many examples of non-supporters of Sharia from the Middle East arguing for a position that in some way mirrors the Islamic. Consider the plight of the Christian "Palestinian" who is as likely as not to speak bitterly of the Israelis. To what extent can we attribute that opinion to a wish to avoid the ire of their Muslim neighbors, or even an inability to see beyond what is (to their neighbors) acceptable to see? (Do you say, "none"? I doubt it.) Haven't they been warned, by the Muslims and by their own parents, to beware of what they say; and even more that that sort of restiction... haven't the oppressed in majority-Muslim situations taken on some of the socialization burden from the oppressor?
We are all restricted in some ways by the assumptions of those who have power over us. We see this less among Lebanese Christians, who until the 1970s were in the majory and so were not injured in the same way as those who lived in majority-Muslim environments for generations.
As I've said, Hugh Fitzgerald at jihadwatch.org is worth reading. He sometimes writes of "the atmospherics" of Islam. Aside from obedient Christians, relatively secular Muslims toe some part of the Islamic line. Abukhalil may be a rebellious son, but (as is often true of people who rebel), he reproduces some of the emotional content of the worldview he explicitly rejects.
Maybe the distinction you make is important (we can only hope that Muslims reject aspects of their religious heritage, and reject it in a way that prevents the passage of those aspects to their descendants); but we need to be aware of the tendency to reproduce egotistical blindness in a different form.
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