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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
I’m not either.
But, we can’t believe strongly in different facts. The Palestinians have just gamed the media and this tempest in a teapot has been artificially kept alive in the minds of the WHOLE WORLD and is used by the left exclusively for their own way to divert attention from real problems.
Not officially.
Could it be……….?
….No, it was the Arab Revolt and its aftermath.
A graph of population changes in Palestine:
And a wiki article on the Arab Revolt.
Aljazeera’s Nakba series also cites discusses the impact of the Arab Revolt on what happened in Mandatory Palestine and in 1948.
Agree, disagree, it’s good to know what forms the other side’s views. (Hints: not arglebargle, but see for yourself.)
Often claimed, never proved and irrelevant to their rights as civilians under the Geneva Conventions (signed by Israel, I know, don’t ask me why.)
Surely you aren’t suggesting that Israel used the Arab refugees it created to try and extort a political settlement from the Arab countries? And if was about Muslims, why not let the Christian Arab refugees return?
I think you over-emphasize the role of religion and under-emphasize the role of property loss and ethnic nationalism. Overtly irreligious regimes (like Hafez Assad’s Syria) remained opposed. And Lebanon coming on side was never that enthu, and didn’t last that long. (I mean look at where the Mr Aoun hangs his hat these days.)
Your approach also occludes the damages caused to Christian Arabs by the Nakba, which I think is a bit manipulative.
This is simply a left-wing media flexing of muscles. It has almost no real issues any more. But, people who are in thrall to the media and to the left are obsessed with this issue but not other more important ones. They are playing into the hands of truly evil people. It shows the moral decay of people in the world today that they simply cannot get past simple things but slide right by really big ones. Straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
You are confusing States (which can lose territory) and the rights of civilian populations (which are less easily taken away lawfully).
What makes Jerusalem different?
Mark, I really don’t think the people who go and live in the Settlements have any intention of abandoning them willingly, or indeed of making peace with the Palestinians if that is the price for it.
Do they vote? Do they influence government? Do they influence how law and order deals with the Palestinians and with their own misdemeanors?
Judging by the outcomes they’ve been pretty successful.
You keep insisting that it’s the Jewish part that matters –imho because it matters to you.
I think it’s the ethnic cleansing part that matters more to the Palestinians – something that’s supported by initial secular (PLO) resistance dominating.
And yet we do.
Larry – what would convince you that the point of view I am setting out is true?
What kind of source?
What kind of evidence?
Or are you really not convincable, no matter what the evidence and source?
I recommend that we not give Zafar any more oxygen — he works from a different set of “facts” generally and pretends that the facts that we agree on are much more important than they are. This would all die a quiet death if people in the middle east weren’t getting so much money and attention for it. Many people are in this dilemma with Israel because the world’s media constantly beats the drum and keeps it alive to divert from other more important issues that affect real people who really do need help. The Palestinans are beyond our help — they are wholly owned by the world’s left. In a way, they are like the North Koreans — beyond our ability to change nor to help because they are behind a wall of lies.
Nothing will convince me that this is an issue spending any time on — except to protect the victim of the left’s malice, Israel.
Because they didn’t want to get into that whole “Who’s a Christian?” thing? Spain tried kicking out all the Muslims and Jews after the Reconquista. They ended up with the Inquisition.
Okay, it’s still really hard. But at least understandable.
And allow me to nitpick.
What about the ones that were born in Palestine? Don’t they have a right to be there too? What about the ones who have lived there for decades? Why should they have to leave?
Except Palestinian Muslims are descended from Arabs (from various places), Christians (local and Crusader), Jews (who remained and didn’t flee), Italians (Romans), Greeks (Byzantines), etc.
Palestinian Christian descent is probably similarly multi-religious.
If inheritance is personal, then what you believe or your ancestors believed is irrelevant.
It works well in Australia and Canada. As for India….it’s not a Hindu State, it remained secular (multi-religious) by political choice. And it (mostly) works because legal rights are not dependent on religious belief or lack thereof.
Which should be familiar to Americans.
Thanks for being so honest about this. Peace.
I don’t understand your argument here or how it relates to my previous comments to which you are responding.
No I think you’re wrong. The apostles all died a martyrs death without resistance. And even subsequent to the apostles early Christians all went to their deaths without resistance. There was no Christian upheaval against the Romans, no matter how they were persecuted. And while “turn the other cheek” is meant to imply more than the literal, I have never heard anyone say Christ did not mean it. Quite the contrary, I think there is much reason to think it literally. I have never read any theologian say otherwise.
I’m making an argument from rhetorical consistency. Many things Jesus said are clearly not taken literally. I listed a couple. Why the turning of the other cheek is meant literally when other statements are not is not clear to me.
There was a Jewish upheaval against the Romans. I agree that this was not something Jesus desired. It happened about 40 years after his death. He was arguing against it during his life. He knew it was coming.
I’m Catholic as well, and I believe the Church’s magisterium teaches the authentic interpretation of Christ’s teachings, so when the Church teaches just war criteria, it means that is fully consistent with the body of teachings Jesus entrusted to his disciples. You seem to be saying that Jesus taught pacifism, but that was just too difficult to follow, so eventually the Church watered down his teachings by inventing the just war tradition.
So far that sounds like any number of Catholic dissenters or Protestants who say the Church has modified the original teachings of Jesus to suit its own agenda, but the part that really throws me for a loop is where you say you are not a pacifist either — basically you think Jesus himself got this one wrong? That’s an… unusual thing for a Christian to say. Am I misunderstanding you?
I do think the Church had to compromise based on reality. The just war theory didn’t come about until the 4th century when Catholicism was the official religion of the Roman empire, not from the apostles or even the early church fathers. Christ’s dictum is not workable. Jesus did not get this wrong. He does not mean it to be workable. There is nothing workable about giving up all your money either, as He says elsewhere. Have you given up all your money? It’s a broken world. We are all sinners. Including myself.
But Christians didn’t need a just war theory until then. First century Christians has no authority, no influence in worldly affairs. It was only after there were Christian emperors and kings that priests and confessors had the novel pastoral problem of what to tell a head of state who comes seeking advice on how to live out his vocation as a Christian.