What do you say about this?

[TteFAboB]

Islam has no conspiracy.

Islam, UNIQUELY, unlike any other religion, received it's gospel directly from Allah, it must not and cannot be interpreted, there is nothing to interpret, think, discuss, think, imagine, feel, guess, figure, there are only things to DO. Mohammed concludes the word of Allah and puts a FINAL DOT on the Quran.

THIS IS UNIQUE TO QURAN AND ISLAM! No other religion has put a final dot. Christianity did not, Judaism did not, Bhuddism did not, Spiritism did not, VooDoo did not, Xintoism did not, Jedi did not, Hinduism did not, fill the rest.

Therefore, this is why Islam is UNIQUE, Islam is a religion, like other religions are also religions, but this is a particular feature of Islam.

And that's why Persia, which has had more philosophers than the entire European continent STOPPED all intellectual activity once Islam conquered it.

There was nothing more to think, invent, discover, there was no need for logic, unlike other religions which solved the issues of logic and dialetic on their own different paths, Islam discarded logic essentially. Any conflict is not a conflict, the Quran is originally correct, there was no need to interpret anything, not the world, not the Quran.

To deny this fundamental difference is to close one's eyes to reality, it's to ignore the difference from Islamic philosophers to philosophers from Europe and China, it is to ignore the shaping of the world.

That's why looking at Islam and comparing it as a historical actor with the Catholic Church is a fatal mistake which will never lead to any meaningfull understanding of the reality.

Muslims, because of this, are far less theological and seek far less reasoning their religion than other people from other religions because there is no need for them to do it, everything is already settled, and it says: conquer the world. Since they are people of peace, they don't occupy themselves with this complicated, exhaustive task and let people like the Hamas do their thing, the peacefull Muslims will only join in embassy burning when necessary to remember freedom of expression is contradictory to Islam.

Example: Islamic revolution in Iran, like the old comming of Islam to Persia which killed intellectual life, it was in Iran that the original texts of the Quran were first translated to another language, French, for the first time in history back in the 70's, the Islamic Revolution quickly stopped the work and burned the research material because there is no point in translating, researching anything, there is no point in communicating and sharing your original doctrine with the Dar al-Harb, Islam has NEVER IN HISTORY shared their original Quran with the rest of the world, and never will if Muslims continue to follow the Islamic doctrine.

This means the only conspirators are people who are in favour of debate, discussion and all those Muslims who have confronted themselves with these questions and reached the conclusions that were denied to be investigated in the past. These are conspiring against Islam.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Nothing. But according to Scandium all and everything is levelled out and undifferentiated, and thus even unconnected things in the end are not unconnected but one and the same, so when you say "up", you mean "down" at the same time, and when you say "left", you have to also say "right", you you can't say "light" without mentioning "dark", and when you feel "heat", in reality you feel "cold". To me it seems he once has red the Tao Te King and got the second verse terribly wrong, mistaking it with infinite relativism. But relativism and rejection of any differences are two different things. Or must I say: are not different things... Damn, now I am confused...

Relativism eh? Hmm. Well context matters. You'd posted what struck me as a meaningless article (since there was no analysis or anything given on it) on violence in a place that is well known for its violence. To try and provoke you into coming out with whatever point you had to make I posted an equally meaningless article about violence somewhere else. Both had youths in common as their perpetrators. If there was any point to my post it was that drawing any conclusions on Islam from this incident in Niger is about as meaningful as drawing conclusions on 12 year olds from that youth in Calgary.

This is my supposed "relativism" at work: trying to understand the phenomena of say serial killers would get you precisely nowhere if you observed that most serial killers are white and Christian (which they are; the phenomena is also a fairly modern and Western phenomena but that is neither here nor there) and equated the acts of serial killing with Christianity - and any person who tried to do so would be laughed at. Yet with Islam and terrorism this is exactly what you, and others, do Skybird and this is what Jihadwatch is all about and you ignore that acts of terrorism committed by the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are about as rare as serial killings committed by the world's population of Christians.

This is a good counterpoint to jihadwatch (but amusing in a wry sort of way instead of full of doom and gloom) from Akram's Razor:

Rule 5: It's always "jihad"

Related to Rule 4 is the fact that any event involving Muslims is always jihad. Not the concept of a peaceful personal struggle to do the right thing that most Muslims, sly foxes that they are, claim to intend when using the word. Nor is it the noble campaigns for good causes that normal, Christian people think of when they talk about "crusades". Anything a Muslim does is always violent holy war directed against everyone around them. Whether they're pinning prayers to their graduation gowns or just standing by the road licking an ice cream cone, it's jihad and you're under siege like the Viennese facing the Ottoman hordes in 1529. Don't let the social economic and political realities of near complete Muslim powerlessness in the modern, Western/Christian-dominated world distract you from the fact that you are an oppressed Dhimmi living under the yoke of Muslim tyranny.

So make sure you pepper your report with the word "jihad" and other buzzwords that remind readers of the mortal peril we all live in thanks to the existence of Islam. Don't forget to mention medieval Islamic concepts like jizya, slavery, and, everyone's favorite, houris. The fact that these concepts are about as relevant to most modern political problems as Danegeld is besides the point. And wherever context permits make hysterical allusions to Nazism since that hateful ideology developed in Germany, the heartland of Islamic civilization. (Indeed, the world still shudders at the memory of their chilling symbol, the dreaded Iron Crescent & Star.)

Finally, always err on the side of innuendo, paranoia and stereotype. Remember that if you can't think of a good reason for inserting prejudicial language now, someone else will eventually dream up a retroactive justification. And then you'll be a prophet.

http://akramsrazor.typepad.com/islam...g_t.html#jihad

[Dan D]

What is this, the beginning of another Muslim debate that in the end will turn into a pointless spiral of mutual hostility, despair and bitterness with no resolution and no escape because people are either unable or reluctant to let others know what conclusions they want to draw from their findings?

No football today and I am on holiday, so I will join in, if you don't mind.

Originally Posted by mapuc

In Denmark it's allowed to burn the danish flag and the holy bible.

But it's not allowed to burn the holy Quran

Markus

Who says that? Let me guess, it is the same people that puff up their cheeks and seriously claim that forced marriages are not outlawed by the English criminal law?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=94243

God may protect children, drunks and also crackpots but the criminal law does not.
An excuse such as "exquisite silliness" is unknown to the law. No matter if you try to shoot down a passenger plane with an airgun or try to poison your wife by pouring salt instead of sugar in her coffee each day because you read in the newspaper that salt is unhealthy, you will be held liable for your actions, if not the men in white overalls think that you better spend your time in a lunatic asylum anyway. That is because even morons may have a bright moment sometimes and they may find better ways to take down a passenger plane or to poison the wife.

With regard to forced marriages, people consider it to be unethical when someone compels others to commit, acquiesce or omit an act by using force or menaces without justification. It is called "coercion" in Chinese. You see, you can't force others to kiss your feet, to give you the parking space or even worse: to marry you, not even in England. That is so obvious, that you can not claim, you did not know that(Ignorance is no excuse).
If JihadWatch wants their voice to be heard in the muslim debate and wants to be taken seriously, they really have to work on their reading skills. In the article that is the subject of the controvery it is clearly stated that the legal debate in England is not, whether forced marriages should be outlawed or not. They are outlawed already. The question in debate is, is there is a problem of insufficient laws or is there is a problem of efficiency of law enforcement or both. In other words, is there need for new laws or is it just that the existing laws need to be applied more efficiently.
So it is either laziness or intellectual dishonesty. JihadWatch will probably become a target of DummieWatch.

A little message to the embassy and flag-burning thugs:
The opening statement, that you can burn flags in Denmark is misleading.
You are not allowed to burn other people's property. People don't like that.
For the same reason you can not burn down embassies because they belong to someone else.
You can not buy them in shops, btw.

If you want to burn flags, bibles, korans, please bring your own.

Supposed it were true, then it can not be tolerated that in Denmark you are allowed to burn your own bible but at the same time you are disallowed to burn your own koran. Futhermore, I think, if Christians are allowed to burn their holy books, then this can't be denied to Muslims. They have the equal right to burn their holy books.

I am well aware, that I can go on denouncing Danish Government's violation of the religious freedom of koran-burning muslims in the internet until I am blue in the face to no effect.
Therefore I have decided to do something about it and I will found an activist group to support the Danish Muslims struggle for a right to burn korans in accordance with the principle of religious freedom as it can be found in the Danish Constitution since 1849.
Thank you.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Caseless comment.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922041.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872964.html

Please take note of the overall oil production capacity of Venezuela and Canada, and the difference between potential ressources in Canada, and their actual production, and export, and then tell us again that these two are sufficient to feed the hunger of the greatest ouil consumer there is (not to mention all Wetsern industry nations together).

I was right and wrong: right that Canada is the #1 foreign supplier of oil to the US, but wrong that Venezuela is #2 (they're actually #4); Mexico is #2, and Saudi Arabia is in fact #3. Though that changes nothing of the substance of my post. Here are the relevant figures:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...nt/import.html

Of the 12.2 million barrels/day of oil the US imports, only 1.5 million barrels comes from Saudi Arabia.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by scandium

Relativism eh? Hmm. Well context matters. You'd posted what struck me as a meaningless article (since there was no analysis or anything given on it) on violence in a place that is well known for its violence. To try and provoke you into coming out with whatever point you had to make I posted an equally meaningless article about violence somewhere else. Both had youths in common as their perpetrators. If there was any point to my post it was that drawing any conclusions on Islam from this incident in Niger is about as meaningful as drawing conclusions on 12 year olds from that youth in Calgary.

This is my supposed "relativism" at work: trying to understand the phenomena of say serial killers would get you precisely nowhere if you observed that most serial killers are white and Christian (which they are; the phenomena is also a fairly modern and Western phenomena but that is neither here nor there) and equated the acts of serial killing with Christianity - and any person who tried to do so would be laughed at. Yet with Islam and terrorism this is exactly what you, and others, do Skybird and this is what Jihadwatch is all about and you ignore that acts of terrorism committed by the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are about as rare as serial killings committed by the world's population of Christians.

This is a good counterpoint to jihadwatch (but amusing in a wry sort of way instead of full of doom and gloom) from Akram's Razor:

Rule 5: It's always "jihad"

Related to Rule 4 is the fact that any event involving Muslims is always jihad. Not the concept of a peaceful personal struggle to do the right thing that most Muslims, sly foxes that they are, claim to intend when using the word. Nor is it the noble campaigns for good causes that normal, Christian people think of when they talk about "crusades". Anything a Muslim does is always violent holy war directed against everyone around them. Whether they're pinning prayers to their graduation gowns or just standing by the road licking an ice cream cone, it's jihad and you're under siege like the Viennese facing the Ottoman hordes in 1529. Don't let the social economic and political realities of near complete Muslim powerlessness in the modern, Western/Christian-dominated world distract you from the fact that you are an oppressed Dhimmi living under the yoke of Muslim tyranny.

So make sure you pepper your report with the word "jihad" and other buzzwords that remind readers of the mortal peril we all live in thanks to the existence of Islam. Don't forget to mention medieval Islamic concepts like jizya, slavery, and, everyone's favorite, houris. The fact that these concepts are about as relevant to most modern political problems as Danegeld is besides the point. And wherever context permits make hysterical allusions to Nazism since that hateful ideology developed in Germany, the heartland of Islamic civilization. (Indeed, the world still shudders at the memory of their chilling symbol, the dreaded Iron Crescent & Star.)

Finally, always err on the side of innuendo, paranoia and stereotype. Remember that if you can't think of a good reason for inserting prejudicial language now, someone else will eventually dream up a retroactive justification. And then you'll be a prophet.

http://akramsrazor.typepad.com/islam...g_t.html#jihad

What you simply refuse to realize, although it cannot be laid out to you even more clearly and obvious, is the simple fact that certain types of violance are ORDERED by Islam (Islam on the basis of Koran and Muhammad, which is the only ideolgy that is valid to be called Islam), that this is a duty EVERY Muslim is called for to obey, that it is encrypted in their scriptures, that this is what makes it forever totally different from the teachings of Jesus, that it is preached by many of their preachers, and more important: the majority of the really highranking clerics and international representives (the mayor of Medina for example, the president of the highly influential Anzhar academy, and so on) - and that the overwhelming majoirty of the Muslims you would describe as the more reasonable ones does not stand up against this, does not help by deeds to overcome this, does not force those that "abuse" their faith for violant goals to step down, does not take care to make their claims on religion an object of examination, does actively resist the idea to monitor "radical" muslims in their middle, does not take care of these "radicals" themselves, etc. etc. etc. you said it yourself one or two days ago: judge them by their deeds or non-deeds. and that's what I do. What Muslim communities actually do contradicts what you think about them. But you simply do not care and stick to your selfwritten storyboard of what islam is: it is equal to us, and is about the same God, and just mirrors the same lights and shadows of christianity, which is not at all any different from the politics of the church. Here the point is reached where it become useless to talk to you. You simply do not want to hear the truth as told by facts from history, scripture, practice, preaching, and that is all about your position.

You also do ignore that what you accuse the mediaval West of - still is contemporary practice in almost all Muslim countries - not of the past, but TODAY.

Next, you ignore or I suppose: you do not know the reality at schools in the West. In Germany, THE MAJORITY os students from Muslim colonist families since many years had a massive revival of orthodox beliefs. They hail honour murders, and the beating of wifes. A great ammount of their girls agree to the boys on these issues. Now ignore this, too. It's a reality at German schools. Also is it a reality, that turkish ultra-nationalism is not on the march, but on a rushing storm at German schools. Sharia, of course, in their Rucksacks.

And - surprise, surprise - the deeds of the radicals are to be found in congruency with their scriptures (Koran, Hadith), and these radicals accuse the moderates (that try to convince us that Islam is all that NOT) of being no true Muslims anymore - and thus attack them as well. The hostility of Bin Laden towards Saudi Arbaia is just the most famous example.

All your political and theological thinking is noice and well, it is complex, and well-meant and ambitioned - but is based on a fundamwent that ignored simple facts of Islam. Facts that you continue tomignore and declare instead that it is equal to christinaity (without even solving the copntradiction between "church" and "Christianity").

You cannot be helped. But once you realize that you were wrong, be advised that this will mean the arrival of an Islamic socieity that doe snot tolerate opinions like yours. Metaphorically spoken, you will end up like the communists and socialists that also found it clever to help Khomeni to install islam in iran again. they were the first that Islam hund up in the streets. Because what you believe is true Islam, in the understanding of true Islam is an afffront to Islam, and thus needs to be destroyed. you even do not realize that it is not Islam you try to support, but an abstract self-construction.

unfortunetaly the damage opinions like yours are doing can never be repaired again. That's why people like your are so dangerous in their ignorance. you are defending somehting - that in the form you describe it simply does not exist, whereas the real body behind your claims - is of lethal hostility toewards your attitude. they will remain silent as long as the door is not completely open, or their is still a chance that it will be shut again. Once that is no more, you'll get eaten up.

[SUBMAN1]

Simple solution - just Nuke Islam. Next subject please! :p

[TteFAboB]

Dan D, I'll tell you the point.

As I've said, Islam comes as a complete finished package.

The comparison with Christianity persists, very well, then let's compare:

Again, since the Quran is the object of a prophecy, it was brought to the world by a prophet, Muhammad, this prophecy is the main event.

Christianity spreaded as a news of something that has happened. There was a guy there, he said he was the son of God, he did a bunch of miracles and died and then reappeared. What else did he said? Some say he said this, some say he said that.

There were alot of versions of that event, and because of these many different versions, each of them had to be examined and compared. And so only very slowly and gradually the Christian doctrine came to be and Christianity spreaded as only the news of a fact that took place.

In the Islamic world that's not how it happened, the event is not transmitted as a narrative of a fact, it's an already complete, prepared book, and the Author placed the final dot after dictating the last sentence, you cannot touch the text anymore. That's why there is no substantive variation between any version of the Quran since the 7th century. To avoid any doubts, the first successor took the version the people closer to Muhammad considered most trustworthy and burned every other version, and everything to this date must be copied from there to avoid any problems, Sunni and Xiite. This means the phenomenon of prophecy and the phenomenon of the holy book are the fundamental events in Islamic history.

Naturally, this became the object of philosophical reflection and for centuries you had exactly what Skybird calls "Muhammetism", a philosophy of prophetology that remained almost entirely ignored in the Occident untill the 20th century.

Now that we finally started to study it and compare it, some are quick to accuse us of anti-Islam and anti-etc.?! What is suggested? That we ignore Islam and let the 25th century investigate it instead? Let's live our normal lives without thinking, using our brains hurt too much? Let's suppress intellectual activity because the conclusions might offend somebody?

Even in the Islamic world Muhammetism was ignored because of the specific conditions under which religious and philosophical activities develop inside the Islamic context. Because of the simple fact the book was already completed, from Day 1 a doctrine was established that outlawed questioning, and allowed only to question the interpretation of the doctrine. You cannot compare and examine, question, if Jihad is necessary AT ALL when the days of tribal wars are gone, you must either accept it or simply ignore the fact Jihad exists and pretend it to be a spiritual struggle for self-improvement.

Scandium picked a Muslim crying over Jihad. Jihad is a fact, are we going to face it or pretend it's irrelevant? You cannot pick some elements from one religion and drop others. That is heretical, if you don't accept the religion as a block, and include Jihad and it's significance and meaning, then it is no longer Islam we're talking about. Compare: When Catholicism is not accepted as a whole block, you get Protestantism, Lutherans, Anglicans, when somebody believes there must be a focus on re-incarnation, you loose Catholicism and get Spiritism. To ignore Jihad and pretend it doesn't mean what it means, it's not what it is, and isn't called what it's called, is to deny Islamic doctrine and therefore heretical.

Anyway, the same ready-book phenomenon does NOT happen in the Christian world. To reach a more or less stable text was already a very complicated problem, so the text itself became the object of discussion. There is no such thing in the Islamic world. Therefore, from the beginning it is formed, with greater ease, an Islamic moral and an Islamic Law, an Islamic jurisprudence, by the direct application of the word of the Quran.

Compare: In the Christian world it took centuries and more centuries to reach a Christian moral and a Christian Law. It was in the 18th century that St. Alphonsus Liguori started the first sistematical formulation of the Christian moral. He was the confessor of Priests so he managed to discover each Priest was teaching a completely different moral, and this in the 18th century! This problem never existed in the Islamic world because everything came organized from inside the principle.

Because of this phenomenon of a unified Islamic Law from the beginning, the Islamic society organized from day one based on a large moral and juridical cohesion, on a very rigid orthodoxy, which means the possibility of free intellectual investigation was problematic in this context.

What was the solution found? The solution was to consider groups of investigators, be them mystical or philosophical, as special human types that conducted their activity inside their own club in such a way that this shouldn't interfere at all in the order of things. This means the deeper discussion activity was considered limited to a specialized circle and the rest of the society didn't had to even understand such things. From then, quasi-monastical orders were formed to discuss with each passing generation those same subjects only for their own eyes and ears and without any tendency of influencing the rest of the society. This right was granted as long as they didn't change the right itself, the moral, because everything was fixated.

This means in most Islamic countries all this mystical and philosophical tradition is totally ignored by the population and in many cases the entire material, the internal discussion, is passed from generation to generation, for centuries, as a simple manuscript that nobody ever thought about copying or editing to the outside world.

In 1930, by an accidental coincidence, French ambassador to Iran, Henry Corbin, became interested in translating this material, and he released it in French first, and later Persian. But as I've said, the Aiatolahs not only stopped this research, but destroyed the translated material.

What do we do? Leave it at that? Cry too bad? Ignore all this history and reality? Deny? Close our eyes?

We need to SOLVE THIS CONFLICT!

In the Occident we reached logic, the Orient also reached it without ever reading Aristotle, Plato or Socrates. For example, in China and India the Vedanta and Bhuddic logics are exactly the SAME logic discovered through entirely different ways.

The Aristotle tradition works with the linear idea of identity, if it's yes, it's yes, if it's no, it's no. Dialectical science developed very little compared to logic, but it's where the conflict between yes and no is present.

In these other contexts it is called Logic the study of what we call identity with its 3 possible denials. If it is, it is, if it isn't, it isn't. If it is and isn't at the same time, that's a dialectical problem, the confrontation of contraries. In the Bhuddist world this is also, however, called Logic. The Bhuddist admits 4 possibilities: what is, what isn't, what is and isn't, and what isn't nor is.

We must not silence, nor listen to the voices who are quick to pull hate, prejudice anti-this and anti-that flags to accuse us because only through this discussion and only if we continue to investigate Islam, pick up from where it was dropped, and reach the same conclusions a Muslim who is interested in his philosophical and mystical material will also reach, otherwise we are doomed to this conflict because Islam is what it is, in essence, nature, name and meaning, and it will not tear down the barriers that separates it from Dar al-Harb if the folks from the Iranian Revolution continue to run the show.

Unless you want to ignore the reality, ignore all this history, unless you want to do like Scandium and his Muslim and pretend it's all an economical issue. All this philosophical difference I shared with you means nothing, it's all because they are poor, rich Muslims don't practice terrorism, rich Muslims integrate, rich Muslims vote for moderate candidates, discussion is the only way.

I'll learn what Islam is to be able to speak with Islam and with the Muslims who dropped Jihad and formed their own new heretical religion. You can go live your normal life and pretend it's all about poverty, the fact Persia has had more philosophers than Europe is irrelevant and what not. But since it's not only through Aristotle that you can develop logic, it's perfectly possible for Muslims to turn Islam upside down not just personally, it is necessary to break the cohesion, the bond that keeps them all glued to each other, and draw the line, on this side Jihadists, on the other side all who despise the entire concept of Jihad, do not accept it, submit to it or believe in it.

The problem is exactly the lack of mystical and philosophical study by the Muslim society in the Muslim world, silencing debates just like they were silenced and kept to minimal in the Islamic world through the centuries will only serve to maintain the status quo.

[Skybird]

It seems this has just been written for Scandium. From the "Patriotist" (the source is not so important, the content is what counts):

Politically-Correct Islam

After only three weeks, political correctness has obscured the nature of the terrorist threat we face. First, Reuters has dropped the term 'terrorists' in favor of 'alleged hijackers' in a overly-fastidious attempt to not prejudge the matter of legal guilt, as though this were a matter of crime, not war. Then, careful to not offend the sensitivities of the 6 million Muslims living in the US, and mindful of our dependence on moderate Moslem nations in building an anti-terrorist coalition, the President has advised that we should avoid describing terrorists as 'Islamic,' stating "The people who did this act on America, and who may be planning further acts, are evil people. They don't represent an ideology, they don't represent a legitimate political group of people. They're flat evil." Then both the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense solemnly told the public that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. And when Italian Premier Berlusconi was so insensitive as to state that the values of Western civilization , with its tradition of respect for human political and religious rights, was superior to those of Islamic countries, which lack that respect, his remarks were treated with either shocked silence or righteous indignation and denouncement by his fellow Europeans.
True Islam, we are constantly being told by moderate American Moslems, means submission to God; it is a religion of peace, equality, and tolerance. Typical was Muslim doctor Al-Hazmi, quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that the 11 September attacks were 'insane' crimes which have "nothing to do with any religion and it has nothing to do with Islam. The teaching of Islam is totally against violence" Another Times article informs that "Muslims don't proselytize," and quotes Nasreen Haroon, a Muslim who regularly speaks at churches and schools: "They [the terrorists] are not practicing Islam. ...Islam is a peace-loving religion." We are also informed that the concept of Jihad [struggle or holy war for Allah] is really a personal war for self-mastery, having nothing to do with waging war against others. In sum, we are being told that the 'alleged hijackers' were not True Muslims, but deranged and aberrant members of some fringe cult foreign to Islam.
None of these depictions correspond with the facts.
While there is no dispute that these barbarians are evil, they are not insane. They are cunning, implacable, fanatic, and ruthless. They most certainly represent a specific ideology, albeit a minority one, within Islam. It is a view that is shared by some 165 million other Muslims [of 1.2 billion] in an arc running from Lebanon through Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan to Indonesia, who are busy burning American flags and pronouncing Jihad against us. That ideology is Islamism, a fanatical fundamentalist revivalist movement seeking to establish a theocratic Islamic Nation over all Moslems, one nation at a time. The first was Iran in 1979, when an Islamic fundamentalist religious revolt toppled the pro-western Shah in reaction to his 'White Revolution' which allowed women to vote and hold jobs, built large cities, and created a more secular society with Western freedoms, much as Kemal Attaturk had done in Turkey beginning in the 1920's. After the Shah, an Islamic Republic under the Ayatollah was created; he promptly called the US 'The Great Satan,' and Western-type freedoms disappeared. Shortly thereafter, mobs seized the US embassy and its staff, holding them hostage for two years. In 1996, Afghanistan followed a similar repressive path under the Taliban. The goal is to eventually unite all Muslim states into one Islamic Nation, ruled as an Islamic anti-democratic and totalitarian theocracy. This ideology finds expression through many organizations whose names have become all too familiar - Islamic Jihad, Al-Quaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, Moslem Brotherhood, Abu Sayyaf , Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya - and a host of others less well known but with similar objectives in every Moslem country. Their enemy is secular society, secular governments, and Western civilization, which they see as corruptive and destructive of Islamic values. They scorn 'moderate' or secular Moslem governments such as Turkey and Egypt and even Saudi Arabia; there are active terrorist movements in all such countries seeking overthrow of the governments They are committed Moslems, praised in mosques across the world for their devotion to Islam and to the concept of the Khilafah, a term referring to restoration of the Caliphate abolished by Attaturk in 1924 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and which has been defined as the total rulership of Muslims all over the world in a centralized unitary state that implements the Islamic Shariah [Koranic law] and carries Islam to all people as a global ideology.
The Islam of history began in violence, was expanded in violence, and even now practices violence. Three of the first four Caliphs or Khalifah [deputy of the Prophet or leader] were murdered. The fourth was Mohammed's son-in-law Ali, whose brief rule was marked by constant civil war. The forced abdication and mysterious death of his son Hasan and the subsequent defeat and massacre of the second son Hosain and his army, led to the great schism between the Sunni traditionalists and the minority Shiites [partisans of Ali] who believe that only the familial line of Mohammed could be the ruler or Caliph. They revere Ali as a saint; the anniversary of Hosain's death is observed as a day of mourning. Politically defeated and and persecuted, the Shiites became an underground movement marked by suffering and protest. They adopted an esoteric interpretation of the Koran, finding a hidden level of meaning beneath the explicit and literal meaning of the Qur'an [Koran] known only to the Imam [religious leader,] who can reveal it to chosen followers. Modernly, Shiites are the majority in Iran , with large populations in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan.
Within 100 years of Mohammed's death in 632 AD, Muslim armies had swept across North Africa, the Middle East, and India, bloodily conquering from the Atlantic almost to the Pacific, and into Spain and France where they were finally stopped at the battle of Poitiers. At that time, the Muslim empire was the largest the world had ever known. They remained in control of Spain until the 15th century, and, under the Ottoman Turks, laid siege to Vienna as late as the 17th century after the fall of Constantinople and occupation of the Balkans in the 15th and 16th centuries. This amazing military conquest arising out of Arabia over centuries was done in the name of religion. As Ibn Khaldun, the great Islamic historian of the 14th century wrote: "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."
As for tolerance toward Christians and Jews, known as "the People of the Book," Ibn Khaldun wrote "It is for them to choose between conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax, or death." And the 14th century Imam and Islamic scholar Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya wrote, "...jihad is obligatory until the word of Allah reigns supreme, and until all are of the religion of Allah, until the religion of Allah triumphs over all religions and until they pay the poll tax while in a state of inferiority." Those in this state of inferiority were called dhimmis [protected minority,] and were required to wear a distinctive garb so Muslims would know not to treat them as equals. As Ibn Qyyim notes "The dhimmis are the most disobedient of His command and contrary to His word; consequently it befits them to be humiliated by distinguishing them from the comportment of the Muslims whom Allah has exalted through their obedience to Him and His Prophet above those that have disobeyed Him. These He has humiliated, belittled, and rendered abominable so that the sign of contempt is manifest upon them, so that they can be distinguished by their appearance." The imprisonment and trial of two American girls among eight Christians charged by the Taliban for speaking of Christianity is typical of Islamic tolerance to other religions.
Nor is the concept of self-martyrdom or suicide killings new to Islam. In the 9th through the 12th centuries, the secret Shiite orders of the Karmathians and Assassins disposed of their enemies by ruthless murder. The Devotees were marked by unquestioning obedience and by a fanatic disregard for their own safety. Self-martyrdom was sought as a guaranteed admittance to Paradise.
Modernly, Islam is at war with Hindus in Kashmir, with Christians and animists in Sudan, with Catholics in the Philippines and Indonesia, with Coptic Christians in Egypt, with Christians in Nigeria, and of course, with Jews in Israel. As the Ayatollah Khomeini stated: "We shall export our revolution, to the whole world. Until the cry 'Allahu Akbar' resounds over the whole world. There will be struggle. There will be Jihad...Islam is the religion of militant individuals...Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Quran will prevail all over the world...This is the duty that all Muslims must fulfill..." Now, I assume that Muslim citizens and residents of the United States do not share the foregoing views, and are fully supportive of this nations' traditions of equality and religious and political freedom. Many if not most may have come here specifically for the freedoms that have been denied in the countries from which they fled. No one wishes to denigrate or insult Muslims or their religion. We must practice the tolerance that we preach and respect the rights and persons of Muslims. But so must the Muslims who are telling us how peaceful Islam is and denouncing terrorism as not part of Islam. They should be telling, not the American public, but the Arab, Iranian, Pakistani, Afghanistani, Indonesian public - all the Muslims of the world, all the Moslem countries - that to abandon the Islamic principle of peace is a desecration of their religion. That to endorse self-martyrdom or suicide bombings anywhere is a betrayal of the Koran and a defamation of Islam. American Muslims should be insisting that every Imam in every mosque in the world speak out against terrorism, mass killing, and jihad against our civilization as a perversion of the Islamic ideal of peace and equality. They should insist that Islam abandon its fiery rhetoric which only encourages more terrorism, and that Moslem countries cease their oppression of other religionists. When those messages are resounding around the world, then it will be time to praise Islam as peaceful.


http://www.patriotist.com/miscarch/cp20011119.htm

[tycho102]

I'm in favor of nuking everyone that posts more than 50% of their text in a color other than white or light grey.

Jesus wept.

[Skybird]

Okay then come over and tell me how to post those more than 50% of that text in black or white (not too mention that these two colours only fits the need of users of one forum layout, not the other). THE DEFAULT COLOUR DOES NOT WORK WHEN I INSERT EXTERNAL TEXT!!!!! I am as annoyed by this as you are. I have not turned that posting into red and white colour, I just selected ONE colour,and then in editing mode tried red, light blue, green and light blue green, as well as black and white. Black resulted in black on black, and white resulted in white and red.

Please do not nuke me.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You cannot be helped. But once you realize that you were wrong, be advised that this will mean the arrival of an Islamic socieity that doe snot tolerate opinions like yours. Metaphorically spoken, you will end up like the communists and socialists that also found it clever to help Khomeni to install islam in iran again. they were the first that Islam hund up in the streets. Because what you believe is true Islam, in the understanding of true Islam is an afffront to Islam, and thus needs to be destroyed. you even do not realize that it is not Islam you try to support, but an abstract self-construction.

unfortunetaly the damage opinions like yours are doing can never be repaired again. That's why people like your are so dangerous in their ignorance. you are defending somehting - that in the form you describe it simply does not exist, whereas the real body behind your claims - is of lethal hostility toewards your attitude. they will remain silent as long as the door is not completely open, or their is still a chance that it will be shut again. Once that is no more, you'll get eaten up.

You think Canada and other Western countries are in danger of becoming Islamic theocracies. You call my doubt of this prediction "ignorance" but I think such predictions unwarranted hysteria. I simply think that there are enough real, tangible problems in our society to deal with that we don't need to be preoccupied by phantoms. Boogeymen are for children (and the guy making a tidy profit on Jihadwatch and his 5 books selling fear of Islam).

[Skybird]

And again you have ignored several pieces of simple references to ongoing present events, as described by me and others. simply ignoring anything that does not have a place in your view of things, insisting that your view is right, without founding that claim. It's the boogeyman, it's hysteria, it's Islamophobia - then it should be very easy for you to pick apart every argument people like me are giving, since they al,l are not real, and not based on any real facts. Should be very easy to destroy such arguments. Instead we get evasive phrases, vague references, changes of categorial levels, distractions. This is my last direct reply to you. Talking to a wall is not interesting.

Muhammad unfortunately was no boogeyman. He was a reality. So are his teachings thnat you prefer to ignore, which have survived almost unchanged until today, and who are the unquestioned, living, undoubted basic of any Islam there could be, every Muslim agreeing on that. You will not find any musolim in the world who tells you that the koran could be changed and certain chapters could be erased. You will not find a simpole Musli9m that doubts that Muhammad, a bandit, warmonger and mass murder, was a very great and peace-bringing man. You will not find a single muslim who agrees that something that does not stand on the basis of Koran, Hadith, muhammad and medina-Model could ever be "Islam".

Even when we will have lost all and everything, our identity, our history, our culture, our homes and our values, and when we will have become strangers in our own forefather's heritage, you still will argue that Islam has nothing to do with it. In forty years, by the single logic of birthrates, roughly a 60-70% majority of French population will be Muslim, from families that never had any link to european peoples and tribes. No problem for you. The same fate will be suffered by Germany, and then the other european countries. European culture and historical identity as we know it today and since the last centuries - will be completey wiped out and it's remains distorted until they could not be recognized in roughly 80-120 years - due to the simple charm of birthrates of already existing colonies in europe. we have more urgent problems in society, you say. I wonder what that could be, becasue Islam will take care of all this, in it's own ways. Possible that we will not like to see how it deals with it. It will deal with it in the same way it dealt with such problemsa in the past 1400 years, and that led to the societies of the muslim nations we have today. And we even do not talk about additional immigration levels in this, we just talk on the basis of already existing Muslim population sizes in Europe.

but you say all that is no problem, and we have more important things to adress. I start to wonder if maybe you are a Muslim propagandist yourself, being so eager to help Islamization of the West at all cost and so stubbornly. At least Islam loves you - you also assist it'S 1400 years old ambitions with all your determination, you not only perfectly suit it's needs, you also perfectly obey it's demands (written down black on white, btw, and obeyed by over one billion people worldwide). And you even do not realize it - that is the real joke in it.

Before questioning the reputation of Robert Spencer, better make sure that you can compete with his competence on the matter - and that this could be the case I do not see even by way of a hint. That way you damage not his but only your own reputation.

From his biography:
Spencer (MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980. He is an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, and his monographs on Islam are available from the Foundation: An Introduction to the Qur'an; Women and Islam; An Islamic Primer; Islam and the West; The Islamic Disinformation Lobby; Islam vs. Christianity; and Jihad in Context.
His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, Canada's National Post, FrontPage Magazine.com, WorldNet Daily, Insight in the News, Human Events, National Review Online, and many other journals. He has consulted with United States Central Command on Islam and jihad, and has discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism on the BBC, CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, PBS, C-Span, and Croatia National Televison (HTV), as well as on numerous radio programs including Michael Savage's Savage Nation, The Alan Colmes Show, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Neal Boortz Show, The Michael Medved Show, The Michael Reagan Show, The Larry Elder Show, The Barbara Simpson Show, Vatican Radio, and many others.

There certainly may be even more educated guys out there, writing even more significant books, but you cannot even challenge this one! Only saying "I don't believ it!" Your only weapons so far has been "I don't care for facts and ignore them, I simply do believe different, it cannot be what shall not be". And that is too thin for me. But it makes me angry, for you help to destroy what I prefer to see surviving without being Islamized. I have been in Islamic countries, anf for quite a logner while, and not in tourist hotels, but in the reality of poor villages and forgotten countrysides, conflict zones in eastern Turkey and religiuous corelands in iran, the unknown countrysides where you see the real face of the country, the people, their believings. This is the side of Islamic culture you almost never see in the TV news, and in evening-filling docus. I don'T like that world a bit, because it represents where Europe mentally was - a thousand years ago.

If you happen to understand written German, get copies of H.-P. Raddatz : "Von Gott zu Allah?", "Von Allah zum Terror?" and "Der Schleier Allahs." These books, a trilogy, are some of the most fundamental literature I ever red about Islam (which was quite some, btw.), they are scary, although a bit difficult to read, since they are overloaded with informations and cross-references. Because they uncompromisingly and straight present simple facts in Islamic scriptures, compare them simply to present practice, and compare to history again, so far critics have found it extremely tough to argue with their content - they tend to ignore and bypass them instead. All info can be easily checked by yourself in any history book you want to pöick up for that purpose, and in present national statistics which are available via internet. No way to evade that information, his ammount of straight references and his encyclopedic knowledge simply are too overwhelming. Needless to say that Muslims since years try to kill him, and Europe is glad that it got rid of him (he finally fled to America).

[Skybird]

The last word goes to Robert Spencer whose credibility you try to undermine holding him guilty of being biased, somewhat:

Q: Why should I believe what you say about Islam?
RS: Because I draw no conclusions of myself, and I do not ask anyone to take anything on my word. Pick up any of my books, and you will see that they are made up largely of quotations from Islamic jihadists and the traditional Islamic sources to which they appeal to justify violence and terrorism. I am only shedding light on what these sources say.
It is amusing to me that some people like to focus on my credentials, when I have never made a secret of the fact that most of what I know about Islam comes from personal study. It is easier for them to talk about degrees than to find any inaccuracy in my work. Yet I present the work not on the basis of my credentials, but on the basis of the evidence I bring forth; evaluate it for yourself. As this site has shown, I am always open to new information.

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

And again you have ignored several pieces of simple references to ongoing present events, as described by me and others. simply ignoring anything that does not have a place in your view of things, insisting that your view is right, without founding that claim. It's the boogeyman, it's hysteria, it's Islamophobia - then it should be very easy for you to pick apart every argument people like me are giving, since they al,l are not real, and not based on any real facts. Should be very easy to destroy such arguments. Instead we get evasive phrases, vague references, changes of categorial levels, distractions. This is my last direct reply to you. Talking to a wall is not interesting.

Your view of Islam and its followers is deterministic and monolithic. Monotholic because you lump all the branches of Islam into the same neat and tidy little category, ignoring any differences among them, and deterministic because you take this already flawed and simplified perspective and project from it the views and actions of its 1.2 billion adherents and even the future of Europe and the world while ignoring all other variables outside the Koran and related Islamic dogma. To me this is hysteria of the highest order since its completely irrational to predict that France will resemble say Saudi Arabia based on current birthrate data. This is nuts, plain and simple.

France is not a Monarchy, it is not a theocracy, it does not have the same cultural heritage as Saudi Arabia, nor does it have the same demographics and it is foolishness to extrapolate from current birthrates that it ever will. You, correctly, realize that immigrants do impact the culture of their host country but fail to realize the other side of it which is that they in turn are impacted by it as well and that these changes may not manifest themselves overnight.

Even when we will have lost all and everything, our identity, our history, our culture, our homes and our values, and when we will have become strangers in our own forefather's heritage, you still will argue that Islam has nothing to do with it. In forty years, by the single logic of birthrates, roughly a 60-70% majority of French population will be Muslim, from families that never had any link to european peoples and tribes. No problem for you. The same fate will be suffered by Germany, and then the other european countries. European culture and historical identity as we know it today and since the last centuries - will be completey wiped out and it's remains distorted until they could not be recognized in roughly 80-120 years - due to the simple charm of birthrates of already existing colonies in europe.

This is unwarranted hysteria because birthrates are not static and you're drawing conclusions from them that are not warranted by the data - not to mention so far fetched as to come across, to me, as pure lunacy.

I start to wonder if maybe you are a Muslim propagandist yourself, being so eager to help Islamization of the West at all cost and so stubbornly.

More lunacy . I'm a person with an opinion that is informed by 4 years of studying sociology and such in university; this doesn't make me any kind of "expert" but I am hardly a "Muslim propagandist" (whatever that is).

At least Islam loves you - you also assist it'S 1400 years old ambitions with all your determination, you not only perfectly suit it's needs, you also perfectly obey it's demands (written down black on white, btw, and obeyed by over one billion people worldwide). And you even do not realize it - that is the real joke in it.

Right... because I have an opinion and I share it here. That is the terrible thing you know about universities and democracies: the one encourages critical thinking and skepticism while the other encourages you to share it. Probably we would all be better off without universities and democracy, since then we wouldn't have the means to develop independent thoughts of our own (lest sharing them would get us labled a "Muslim Propagandist" if we dare disagree with such luminaries as Robert Spencer). It never ceases to strike me as ironic just how rigid your thinking and insistence that others conform to it (lest the big bad boogeyman get them) resembles the theocratic demands of your enemy - same **** different dogma.

Before questioning the reputation of Robert Spencer, better make sure that you can compete with his competence on the matter - and that this could be the case I do not see even by way of a hint. That way you damage not his but only your own reputation.

Had already read it, and being myself a product of academia I'm not terribly impressed by someone's M.A. since an M.A. is not guarantee of infallibility, nor does it even necessarily make one an "expert" when their thesis is not even based on that which they claim their expertise in (naturally Spencer takes issue with anyone who points this out, since serious scholars tend to base their work upon a community of scholarship, citing other experts and what not, whereas Spencer substitutes anecdotal evidence and obscure dogmatic references as though they were the same thing - and they are not the same thing). I doubt any serious social scientist would wipe their asses with his popular literature (which is what it is) but being popular literature it never the less has its rabid following who eat it up as though his were the definitive work on Islam.

And no, I haven't written anything of my own but that is the luxury I suppose of being a critic and a skeptic. Spencer, on the other hand, has found his niche and is getting his two minutes of fame - all the more power to him since many gain far more with far less than an M.A. But, as I said, an M.A. doesn't mean you should be taken uncritically or even regarded as any kind of "expert". Generally for that to happen your peers have to review your research and findings and then cite it in their own works or at least mention it in their own academic writings. Where is the peer review Skybird? The guy's written 5 books so if he's at all credible than other experts in this field (if Spencer is indeed an expert) should be discussing his findings somewhere. Show me the discussion (and no, his blog "Jihadwatch" is not peer review in any academic sense of the term).

[Skybird]

Peer review. That guy says himself that he smiles that people focus so much on his academical credits, and that he openly admits they are low-ranking. You better educate yourself a bit in Islam's view of itself, and the content of it's teachings, and the going of it'S history, and the figure of muhammad, and then check what Spencer is saying yourself. He says it himself:he is picking up what Islam is saying himself, and reprints it. That simple.

Judge yourself. but no, that would lead you to perspectives that do not match what you want it to be, and what believe you know about it. Instead cling to wishful thinking, and flawed perceptions.

At the end of that History of Islam-essay of mine (no peer review for that as well, I apologize), I have given a short list of books, that I especially payed attention to in recent years. the list is far from complete, but go through these books only, and when you have done that, you can come back and tell us you have learned a bit about Islam's theology, history, self-perception and the figure of Muhammad. Until then, you are only defending selfmade illusions and talk of something you have no clue of, sorry. Believing to know something, and actually knowing, are two different things. i also recommend you try to arrange yourself a longer stay, let's say 4-6 months somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa, and do a little travelling offside the metropoles and tourist centres, and try to get your nose into people's lifes in small communities, and tribes. this is the face of these countries there vast majorities do live in. Here you find the the man-material that determines Islam's future acting - not in its Westernized tourist traps. Check your elf, check your own perspectives for a change. So far you always demand others to proove the views differing from you, and when someone points you at something, or gives you a solid info, or comes with a logical argument, and it happens to be not what you want to hear - you ignore it, label it as absurd and wipe it off the table with big gesture, and hold the others responsible for doing what actually you do yourself. But you do not come up with solid data and argument that would destroy these flawed and heavily mistalen arguments and information confronting your opinion. Test your own knowledge, for a change. Test if your political correctness really is that much correct.

Done here.