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The Best Thing I’ve Read About Contemporary Islam, Ever
From The (London) Spectator. There’s so much excellent here, but here’s a telling story:
The night after the Charlie Hebdo atrocities I was pre-recording a Radio 4 programme. My fellow discussant was a very nice Muslim man who works to ‘de-radicalise’ extremists. We agreed on nearly everything. But at some point he said that one reason Muslims shouldn’t react to such cartoons is that Mohammed never objected to critics.
There may be some positive things to be said about Mohammed, but I thought this was pushing things too far and mentioned just one occasion when Mohammed didn’t welcome a critic. Asma bint Marwan was a female poetess who mocked the ‘Prophet’ and who, as a result, Mohammed had killed. It is in the texts. It is not a problem for me. But I can understand why it is a problem for decent Muslims. The moment I said this, my Muslim colleague went berserk. How dare I say this? I replied that it was in the Hadith and had a respectable chain of transmission (an important debate). He said it was a fabrication which he would not allow to stand. The upshot was that he refused to continue unless all mention of this was wiped from the recording. The BBC team agreed and I was left trying to find another way to express the same point. The broadcast had this ‘offensive’ fact left out.
I cannot imagine another religious discussion where this would happen, but it is perfectly normal when discussing Islam.
And this:
We might all agree that the history of Christianity has hardly been un-bloody. But is it not worth asking whether the history of Christianity would have been more bloody or less bloody if, instead of telling his followers to ‘turn the other cheek’, Jesus had called (even once) for his disciples to ‘slay’ non–believers and chop off their heads?
And this:
We have spent 15 years pretending things about Islam, a complex religion with competing interpretations. It is true that most Muslims live their lives peacefully. But a sizeable portion (around 15 per cent and more in most surveys) follow a far more radical version. The remainder are sitting on a religion which is, in many of its current forms, a deeply unstable component. That has always been a problem for reformist Muslims. But the results of ongoing mass immigration to the West at the same time as a worldwide return to Islamic literalism means that this is now a problem for all of us. To stand even a chance of dealing with it, we are going to have to wake up to it and acknowledge it for what it is.
And this, at the bottom of the piece, somehow strikes me as the saddest and most infuriating thing I’ve read in the past 12 hours:
This is an updated version of an article that was published in The Spectator on 17 January 2015.
Almost a year ago. After the last attack in Paris by literalist Muslims. After the last round of lies we were told, and that some of us told ourselves.
Published in General
What is the rate of active terrorists among the world’s 1 billion Muslims? Pretty small I would say, as a percentage.
Your analogy would be fitting if the NRA handbook included passages endorsing the slaughter of those who don’t believe in the Second Amendment and polls of NRA members revealed a significant amount of sympathy with the lunatics.
Richard, why is it so difficult to write Palestinians and include the Christian Arabs with the Muslim Arabs?
I don’t believe it. They would have to choose.
Not by itself. I would want more. I would want to statement agreeing to be bound by the laws of the United States above sharia, that religions other than Islam are entitled to equal respect, that women and homosexuals are entitled to equal protection of the law, and probably some additional commitments that others could think of that are equally apposite. A Muslim who can’t make these basic commitments is too dangerous to be allowed to stay.
Most Christians from the Middle East that I know are not fond of Israel but that doesn’t mean that they like Muslims. They were second class citizens after all as dictated by Sharia. This is the thing that most Muslims in the United States want, a little detail that shouldn’t be forgotten.
It is amazing to me that most neocons don’t support the Palestinian right of return. They seem to be so enthusiastic to remake the demographics of the West but seem to shy away from that objective when most of their arguments would be the same for Israel. It is odd that they feel so, well, conservative about Israel but have none of the same feelings for their home country. That is a real conundrum.
Source?
Sure MWTA – I think there are other reasons as well, but I don’t have any intention of arguing that Muslim majority countries treat minorities as they should. In fact most of them don’t even treat majorities as they should.
It might also say something about comparative birth rates as well as differing migration rates out of rich and poor territories. Has the Arab Muslim population in Israel risen as well? How about the Haredi population?
And none of this makes Israel-Palestine a Jewish-Muslim issue. Logically. Does it?
Um, folks were throwing around 15% of Muslims previously: (“But a sizeable portion (around 15 per cent and more in most surveys) follow a far more radical version.”) – not terrorists necessarily, but not anyone you want in your world.
It’s not. Israel conquered the territory in a series of wars/battles with the Arabs. They’re willing to cede some of the conquered territory for the purposes of creating an independent Palestine. The Palestinian leaders do not want a two-state solution – they want the “right of return” which translates into a single state w/o Jews – and, I suspect, w/o Christians.
Depending how you word that I and lot of Christians might hesitate to sign it, given that the Supreme Court deems that equal protection requires the right to marry. See also the anti-discrimination law recently defeated in Houston.
What sort of precedent would your law create for future liberal administrations to enact whole new categories of thought crimes?
Michael Curtis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University.
The point is that they are not leaving Israel in droves as they are from the Palestinian controlled territories.
Or, for that matter, as Jews have been forced to leave all Arab and/or Muslim countries.
Much of it is. The Muslims hate the Jews much more than the Christian Arabs do. Look at the Temple Mount dispute. I don’t know of any Jewish-Christian disputes about holy places. Not that lead to bloodshed.
The Christians do not teach their children to hate the Jews in quite the way the Muslims do, at least so far as I know. The New Testament does not exhort Christians to kill Jews wherever they find them.
Thanks very much for the link. Wonderful was that lecture. He must have been quite a man, that Archbishop of Rome.
I don’t want to quibble about details like homosexual marriage. I’m more concerned with them not being hanged from construction cranes, and the women taken as sex slaves.
Anyway, no one is asking you to sign it because you don’t subscribe to a political program dedicated to replacing the secular government with one run by your religion.
It could be constructed to avoid that problem by being a self-contained amendment that by its terms does not apply beyond the category of Muslims and treason. You are right to worry, and the wording would have to be carefully considered.
Yes, it is. Let’s step back for a minute. For centuries in this region of the world Jews and Christians were together second class citizens under Muslim domination. Muslims pitted Jews and Christians against each other as each sought to gain favor with their rulers. Jews finally broke free of this oppressive colonial situation with the creation of Israel while Christians were left on their own with their Muslim oppressors. With this development many Christians reemphasized their differences with Jews in order to show the dominant Muslims that they could still be tolerated as reliable second class citizens. Not that it helped them much as the diminished numbers of Christians in the Arab Muslim world demonstrates. So, yes this is a Muslim-Jewish conflict based upon Muslim refusal to ever recognize a Jewish state because of the damage it would do to its world view.
MWTA, here is a fuller discussion of Palestinian Christian demographics and migration, from which:
Now I think the author probably has a bias, but so does Michael Curtis.
Wrt Jerusalem – I think the argument over the Dome of the Rock is a symptom, not a cause. It’s about about one side taking away what the other perceives as its patrimony. In this case a religious structure, but in the majority of cases houses, land and political rights.
You’re right, Palestinian Christians are discriminated against – but mostly by those who have power in the land. Insisting that it’s otherwise doesn’t seem realistic – or rather, seems like an answer looking for a question.
Perhaps – but now it’s Muslim and Christian Arabs who are in that situation.
It is just not credible to argue that Palestinian Christians are totally fine with being dispossessed and occupied by Israel. Or that this is not their primary problem, but rather alleged discrimination against them by Muslim Palestinians.
How are the outcomes of this discrimination measured? Educational attainment? Economic status? Christian Arabs, across the region, have higher levels of education and economic success than Muslim Arabs. It’s true in Israel, in the West Bank, and in Jordan. That’s what makes Christians more able to immigrate to the first world.
I do not agree that’s it’s about Israel a Jewish State rather than Israel being created by dispossessing Arabs. If Israel had been created in Alaska (for eg) I doubt most Arabs would care either way. If a Southern Baptist State had been created by dispossessing Arabs in Palestine you would see the same opposition to it as you do to Israel.
It may be a religious issue for Jews, for Palestinian Arabs it’s primarily about dispossession.
FBI had Hassan’s e-mails to Al-Awlaki long before the attack. He should have been up on charges of conduct unbecoming. At the very least, a court-marshal would have tossed him out of the Army.
One percent of a billion is ten million. And many of the Muslims who don’t commit terrorist acts make excuses for those who do. Some do so on this site.
I don’t have a problem with Arab Christians living anywhere they want to in the Middle East. They’re not the ones who go around blowing people up.
Indeed, and if there were 10 million terrorists in the world we’d have attacks like Paris in every country on a daily basis. So the rate must be a whole lot lower than one percent.
Have you discussed Israel with them?
I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure they would be too. Seriously.
You can oppose radical Islam (or jihad, or call it what you will) and still find the creation of Israel deeply unfair to the Palestinians on completely non-religious grounds.
It’s not a meaningful litmus test.
The biggest thing inhibiting the number of “active” terrorists is money. There are a lot of people in that population who would happily be terrorists – if they could get to places where they could terrorize people.
The rise of ISIS shows what happens when you get a partially-radicalized population with easy access to weapons and a vulnerable population of non-radicals who can be victimized.
You don’t need a lot of foot soldiers when a significant percentage of your normal population is already in agreement with most of the aims of the bad guys. Sure, a typical Islamic country would only have that ten percent of extremists – but the other 90% or so are “mainstream Islamist” enough that they wouldn’t come into conflict with the worst of that sort in their daily lives.
See Also: Germany, 1933.
Actually no, consider what’s happening in Israel right now. Acts of terror with kitchen knives. That’s all they need.
If it isn’t happening world-wide it tells you something about how many people are willing to do it.
Like these
The one side (Muslim Arabs) didn’t like Jews from the time of Mohammad. They created the need for partition of Palestine by making it clear that Jews would always be second-class citizens, as the Koran dictates, and would always be in danger for their lives, as the many Arab uprisings proved. They launched a war of annihilation against Israel on day one, and lost. Then during the next 19 years they forbade Jews from visiting the holy sites. They launched another war and lost, and they lost the holy sites. Yet Israel allows them extensive control over those sites. Still, they run around stabbing people over rumors that Jews might want to pray there. What savages.
Of course law abiding Muslims abhor the violent tactics of radicals, but what exactly can they do? They are intimidated by the jihadis and their associates so they keep a low profile. It’s up to us to deal with the worst of the worst. We (the government?) have ways of infiltrating cells in our midst. There are informants, etc. But the fear of retaliation or being ostracized is powerful in Muslim neighborhoods in the West. In Muslim countries it’s far worse. Others in this thread have spelled out solutions, like cutting off immigration, beefing up attacks on fanatics in Syria, etc. If we start to show more balls, maybe these so-called moderates will feel empowered to act. Maybe.
These percentages of good and bad Muslims seems speculative. It takes a support staff to outfit, arm and plan a suicide mission. Then there’s the cheering section twittering away after the act and quiet acquiesence by the larger audience. Who knows? Hey, it’s their religion, and we are infidels. In my opinion, our governments don’t have the resolve to fight back effectively.
We should give them a reaction of fire to purge the middle east of this infection, such that it never again rises to kill anyone in the West. It will not stop until following it becomes too deadly. Just like Fascsim.
Arabs were dispossessed? Gee, how did that happen? Maybe by launching a genocidal war and losing it? Perhaps they could have returned to their “patrimony” if they hadn’t been so intent on killing every Jew as soon as they got back. Perhaps some accommodation could have been reached if they hadn’t made it part of their national charter to destroy Israel and kill the Jews. Perhaps if they hadn’t committed thousands of acts of terror against Israel. Perhaps even today if they could just bring themselves to promise that they don’t want to kill all the Jews. But I’m dreaming.
Did Jews come in to Arab villages like mafiosi and take land by force from Arabs? Did Arabs suffer from numerous Jewish uprisings? How many Jews are there in Arab-run countries? When will they realize that they lost, and should sue for peace, not demand everything they ever had back as if there had been no war?
Israel = Part of my Tribe
Arabs = Part of Another Tribe
It is very basic, and cuts through any mess about who was there first, and who did what.