Why Islam is Taking over America.

Beware America, I bring you news of your own death; “a pale shroud laid out by your own hand”. IDIOTICALLY, you have given religion status to an enemy invader called Islam; thereby egregiously violating the foremost principles of national security, sovereignty and warfare: An enemy invader must never (never) be classified as a religion.

Doing so is equivalent to a mad doctor injecting deadly cancer cells into a healthy patient in this case America. Look how Muslims are “shoving mosques down our throat” even at the hallowed “ground zero” of 9/11. They “thumb their noses” and jeer us, adding insult to injury. Why? Islam is “programmed” to bring down America and knows no limits. M.A. Khan in his excellently informative book, Islamic Jihad: A Legacy Of Forced Conversion, Imperialism And Slavery states:

“the perpetuation of a global Islamic rule for eternity is the ultimate goal of Allah”

Perhaps this is why Dr. Wafa Sultan has named her book A GOD WHO HATES emphasizing Islam’s God (Allah) hates all things non-Muslim and utilizes this hatred to fuel the fervor for global Islamic rule mentioned by M.A. Khan above. Needless to say, any ideology with a bigoted, hateful and murderous God should be prohibited religion status in all civilized nations. Please see my article, “Demoting Islam’s Religion Status” for further clarification.

What’s next? Don’t be surprised if Muslims demand it’s their religious right to tear down the White House and replace it with a mega mosque, give them an inch and they will take a mile. In the same way that a blood thirsty tiger cannot survive without devouring its prey. Islam cannot sustain itself without devouring other nations and ideologies. This is a fact — not an opinion – 1400 years of Islamic history prove the case a million times over. Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism gives hundreds of up to date examples verifying the dubious nature of Allah’s minions. I dare say, that those so called experts who consider Islam to be a religion are not competent in the field of ideology, philosophy, religion, history, sociology or warfare.

Rather than experts, these are “bloody fools” who cannot distinguish between a wooden nickel and a gold coin, and there are legions of them infesting our universities, the media, the state department, the justice department, the military brass, the CIA, the department of defense, the FBI, the NSA, and related government agencies.

Deplorably, the very persons who are paid to defend us are actually aiding and abetting the overthrow of America by permitting Islam to be categorized as a religion on their watch. There can be no hope for the survival of America long term unless our leaders immediately reverse course by vociferously stating that Islam is not a religion in broad daylight on a wide scale.

Verifying this epidemic of incompetence and dereliction of duty is the book entitled: Sharia The Threat To America: An Exercise In Competitive Analysis: Report Of Team B II, it states:

“This information is not even being taught at the basic level to FBI counterterrorism agents and analysts, nor is it taught at the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, The State or Defense Departments or the CIA . . . We have an enemy inside our perimeter. But for this nation, the challenge is not just the inability to distinguish friend from foe. Rather, it is an unwillingness to do so.”

Returning to our medical analogy, this means that “physicians” paid to treat “cancer” are not allowed to study anything about “cancer” or even mention the name. What a laughing stock and painful embarrassment Americas defenders have become in the face of the Islam’s ideological blitzkrieg. They might as well just all pack up and go home!

There is no doubt that Islam is an enemy invader. Its Koran shouts it, its prophet shouts it, its Imams shout it, its 1400 years malevolent history shouts it, its key texts shout it, its student organizations “shout it”, its lawyers shout it, its refusal to assimilate in governments worldwide shouts it, and its bellicose and bigoted demands for Sharia shout it!

In his insightful article, “What Is Islam” Amil Amani cuts to the crux of the matter by voicing a similar opinion:

“Islam is not a religion, but a harmful thorn; thus, we must make laws to fight this unwanted thorn growing like mushrooms in our backyards . . . Islam is not a religion by any standards. It is a militant, political and savage cult created by one man: Muhammad. It is time that we treat Islam as the greatest threat to the human race. . . Islam is a comprehensive totalitarian form of slavery, it is the opposite of freedom.”

Our leadership urgently needs to heed the wise consul of Amil Amani. Surely the “experts” can only be considered competent to the extent they agree with him. Amil Amani is not alone in his convictions. Author Rebecca Bynum in her book , Allah Is Dead: Why Islam Is Not a Religion states a similar theme:

“Islam is a recipe for perpetual war . . . I believe Islam to be the duck-billed platypus of belief systems . . . If however, Islam continues to be classified as a religion and given the full protection and benefits religions receive in America, then we will be helpless to contain it . . . That is why Islam cannot remain in the religion category . . . “

Rebecca Bynum clearly states that Islam as a religion cannot be contained. The evidence is blatantly apparent; Muslims make up only 1 to 2 percent of our population but look at the enormous amount of havoc, disruption, and chaos they reek upon our society.

Under the cover of a religion Islam has been given a free pass to sabotage America from within, and has made enormous progress since 9/11, increasing geometrically, becoming more pugnacious, belligerent and demanding. This means 9/11 has caused America to cower down ideologically and submissively roll out the red carpet to Islam; all this, because we have given an obvious enemy invader the privileged and protected status of a religion. “How stupid can you get?” Author Craig Winn in PROPHET OF DOOM has attempted to wake us up by declaring:

“The Qur’an condemns all non-Muslims — Christians and Jews and those who worship many gods and no gods. It is an equal opportunity hater. . . In fact, the Qur’an was written to justify some of the most ungodly behavior the world has ever known. . . The simple truth is: good Muslims are bad people.” Our homegrown America born Jihadist, the “Fort Hood Shooter”, Major Nadal Malik Hassan proved he was a good and devout Muslim by murdering 13 and wounding 32 unarmed innocent colleagues inspired by his hateful God Allah.

Now ask yourself, how can any ideology that is referred to as an “equal opportunity hater” and rightly so, ever be given the privileged status of a religion in the civilized world. The truth be told, Islam is the epitome of a barbarian invader, bigoted, totalitarian, pillaging and enslaving. Paraphrasing the wisdom of Winston Churchill, “Islam is the most retrograde of forces.”

Once something has been labeled a religion, no American will question, challenge or think objectively about it. Call yourself a religion and Americans turn into zombies letting you do anything you want, even “kill them”. The greatest military power in world history lays supine, lily livered, gutless and enfeebled, and it’s all because we have wrongly given Islam the protected status of a RELIGION. “Good Bye America it’s been nice knowin ya” Surely, this is the bleakest hour in American history when our nation cannot tell friend from foe, nor religion from invader.

There is no doubt that we Americans suffer from a collective mental illness, mental block, emotional imbalance, and psychological disorder, precipitated every time we hear the word religion. Let’s call it schizo-religionitis. Mention the word “religion” and we immediately become deaf, dumb and blind, suspending all rational thought and common sense. Here is the childishly insane logic Americans apply to their criteria for a religion:

Apple juice is a liquid and drinking a cup is good for you; therefore drinking a cup of hemlock must be good for you because it is also a liquid.

The absurd conclusion is that drinking a cup of anything liquid is good for you whether it be apple juice or poison. Just hang out a sign with the word religion on it and Americans will instantly “drink up” any poison you feed them.

In other words, it’s “one bullet” to the back of our head, with the “kill shot” coming from our own servile leadership. I am harping on this point because the wall of denial is extremely thick, marked by an “epidemic” of shallow mindedness, apathy, flagrant intellectual dishonesty and rampant monetary corruption; the whole quagmire tainted by middle east oil money engulfing our entire military industrial complex, intelligence community, political leadership, media, academic and religious communities. Christopher Logan has written a brilliantly insightful satire called “United States Department of Jihad!” revealing the subversion of our own leadership.

The best thing all Americans can do is tell the truth that Islam is an enemy invader — not a religion. Doing otherwise is equivalent to “cutting the throat” of America, which our leaders and citizenry do on a daily basis, while “sitting up” for Muslim oil money like puppies doing tricks for doggie biscuits.

In the Art Of War translated by John Minford, Sun Tzu remarks, “He who knows neither self nor enemy will fail in every battle.” Today America exhibits a catastrophic failure because it knows neither self nor enemy and stands as helpless as a kitten against the onslaught of Islam’s ideological offensive.

One thing is certain, every Imam in the United States is putting on a smiling face and speaking in a sickeningly sweet voice while touting the immaculate splendors of Islam, as they guide their flock to infiltrate and trash this nation” by hook or by crook” as emphatically commanded by the Koran which is irrefutably a manual of war and blood thirsty totalitarian conquest rather than a sacred and holy book.

Martel Sobieskey has 40 years research experience in the field of religious conditioning and its relationship to warfare, and is greatly alarmed by our leaderships failure to recognize the deeply entrenched Jihadist conditioning inherent in all of Islam, moderates included.

THE KORAN INSTRUCTS MUSLIMS TO FIGHT CHRISTIANS, JEWS AND CONQUER THE WORLD FOR ISLAM:
(The following are only a few of the verses commanding
Muslims to fight)

WARFARE IS ORDAINED FOR YOU, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. (2.216)

“AND FIGHT THEM UNTIL THERE IS NO PERSECUTION , AND RELIGION SHALL BE ONLY FOR ALLAH 2:193

Believers must fight for Allah. They must kill and be killed , and are bound to do so by the Torah, Gospel, and Quran. But Allah will reward them for it. 9:111

Fight those among the People of the Book [i.e. Jews and Christians] ... who do not profess the true religion, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued. (9.29)

THE KORAN PROMISES COUNTRIES TO CONQUER AND THE SPOILS THERIN:
Sura 33 “And he bequeathed to you their lands, their homes and their possessions, together with land you have never trodden” (33.27) .

MUSLIMS ARE INSTRUCTED IN THE KORAN TO BE STILL UNTIL THEY HAVE THE NUMBERS IN THE COUNTRIES THEY HAVE INVADED:
“Be patient with unbelievers until you have strength” (86.17).

THE KORAN INSTRUCTS MUSLIMS TO BE DECEPTIVE:
Quran 3:28 Don’t have unbelieving friends unless it is to deceive them. Remember the final goal is to Allah.

SHARIA LAW MUST RULE THE WORLD

Allah’s law (Sharia) is binding to all…4:135

Allah accepts only Sharia and no other laws…7:29, 57:25

Allah is the Law-giver; He appointed Muhammad to implement the only correct laws (Sharia laws)…45:18

Quran 9:33 ISLAM WILL PREVAIL OVER ALL RELIGIONS

THE FOUNDER OF CAIR HAS TOLD US PLAINLY OF ISLAM’S OBJECTIVE IN AMERICA:

“ISLAM ISN’T IN AMERICA TO BE EQUAL TO ANY OTHER FAITH, BUT TO BECOME DOMINANT.
The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth. Everthing we need to know is in the Koran. We don’t need to look somewhere else.”

OMAR M. AHMAD, CHAIRMAN OF CAIR, the mainsteam Muslim advocacy group.

Islam talks and ex-Muslims warn, but is the West listening?

By Barbara J. Stock

About two years ago, I received a letter from an ex-Muslim and within was a very disturbing prediction of the end of the world as we in the West know it. He explained that he had left Islam when he realized what an evil and murderous belief it really is, but he offered little hope of stopping the massive force that Islam has become. He felt the average American was simply too naïve and gullible to withstand the Islamic onslaught ahead. Hamstrung by morals and the Western rules of war, he believes Islam will slowly tear America and Europe to pieces.

This ex-Muslim laid out the plans of Islam and how it would carry out its takeover of the world. He gave me the blueprint of the murderous Islamic political and war machine and how it would use America’s kind and generous nature against it.

I have recently revisited that letter and was shocked at how accurate and prophetic this man has been.

He carefully listed exactly how Islam will defeat the West and how the liberals will help Islam along the way.

“Constitution for the new Islamic Republic of EU and USA is under construction.

We will fight the infidel to death.

Meanwhile American laws will protect us.
Democrats and leftist will support us.
UN (United Nations) will legitimize us.
CAIR will incubate us.
ACLU will empower us.
Western universities will educate us.
Mosques will shelter us
OPEC will finance us
Hollywood will love us.
Annan will pass politically correct sympathetic statement for Jihadists.”

It is frightening to see that his predictions are becoming a reality.

In the two years since I received this letter, Europe has been subjected to attacks, riots, embassy burnings, increased crime, and parades of Muslims on the nightly news carrying signs with messages such as: “England, your 9/11 is coming,” and “Islam will rule the world,” and “Behead those that slander Islam.”

The Council on American/Islamic Relations (CAIR) already has plans to replace our Constitution with the Quran and states it openly and clearly: The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” CAIR Co-founder Omar Ahmad.

Because we are a country of laws, Islam is protected here. Democrats are fighting to hand over Iraq and Afghanistan to Islamics and even threaten to impeach one of the few men that has stood up to Islamic terrorism. All the leaders of Islam must do is to remain patient and the far left will hand them a victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leftists support of Islam is demonstrated with the recent news that the far-left Internet news search engine — Google — now seems to be systematically hunting down any sites that post columns remotely unkind to Islam and labeling any criticism of Islam as “hate-speech.” When did the truth become “hate speech?”

CAIR monitors radio and televisions programs and quickly threatens lawsuits if anyone dares to speak badly of Islam. Avenues that expose the truth about Islam are being closed. But this is a free country, for now, and Google can censure whomever it chooses to censure. Google seems to have chosen not to censure the many Islamic hate sites that are found on Google.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) makes no secret of its ingrained hatred of Christianity. While it monitors American schools with a passion resulting from that hatred, this religion-has no-place-in-our-schools group remained silent when Islam was forced down the throats of California school children under the guise of “history.”

In Ohio, the ACLU gave the Ohio chapter of CAIR its Liberty Flame Award “for contributions to the advancement and protection of civil liberties.” CAIR is supported mostly by Saudi Arabia which practices Wahhabism, the most violent sect in Islam. Within the Saudi kingdom, women are second class citizens, Christians are imprisoned and tortured for daring to pray in their own homes, and no other belief other than Islam is allowed. In fact, to be a Saudi citizen, one must be Muslim.

CAIR and ACLU joined forces to sue the federal government for monitoring certain mosques and clerics believed to have preached violent behavior after 9/11. Did the Nazi groups in America have the protection of a group like the ACLU during World War II? It would be bordering on suicidal not to observe those who live on American soil who often preach and teach the overthrow and destruction of the American culture.

The revelation that Yale University had invited the former spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, to audit classes caused a bit of an unexpected uproar. A man with a fourth grade education and a history of supporting the crushing oppression that is Islam was being heralded by the Yale administration as progressive and modern. Many of the alumni didn’t see it that way. Harvard was unhappy that it had missed its opportunity to snap him up. The irony is that Yale has banned the military from its hallowed halls by claiming our military is anti-gay and sexist. Islamics, such as Hashemi, ordered women beaten for showing their hair and homosexuals were simply hung if caught. For some odd reason, Yale does not find offensive a man that supports this.

American mosques are everywhere. There are only approximately 6 million Muslims in America, a country of 300 million people. One has to wonder why the Saudis and other OPEC countries keep sending money to build more. Using our laws, the call to prayer now bellows out five times a day in many American cities starting at dawn. The Islamics claimed they had the same right as Christian churches whose bells ring a few times on Sunday morning. Entire neighborhoods are being taken over by Muslims as non-Muslims flee to quieter and safer areas, and so more mosques are built and the population expands. Within those mosques, anti-American sentiment is often preached. The worshipers are reminded that they are Muslim, and should be loyal only to Islam, not America.

This is also the message of CAIR’s Co-founder Omar Ahmad who stated: “Those [Muslims] who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant.” Islam’s plans are public for all to see, but many Americans still try to ignore it all, hoping it will just go away. Many Americans cling to the idea that Islam is peaceful because the alternative is too horrible too contemplate.

Hitler did not “go away” and neither will Islam. This is a fact that the West must realize very soon. Canada is now fending off Sharia law in some areas. In England, a London Telegraph poll showed that 40% of London’s Muslims wanted to discard British laws and be ruled by Sharia law. When Muslim voters outnumber the non-Muslim ones Sharia law will be enacted, just as predicted by the ex-Muslim who continued his warning:

“On the camera:
We will always say, ‘Islam is the religion of Peace.’
We will say: ‘Jihad is actually inner Jihad.’
Moderate Muslim will say there is no link between Islam and terrorism and the West will believe it because the West is so gullible.
Moderate Muslim all over the world will incubate Jihadists by their talk — by defending Islam.
Using [the] Western legal system we will assert our Sharia Laws, slowly but surely.”

The Islamic plan is in motion for all to see just as this ex-Muslim has predicted. Is the West listening?

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/stock/060604

Another suggested read is “Allah is Dead. Why Islam is not a religion.” by Rebecca Bynum.

Here is a review by A. Millar:

Books on Islam are a saturated market, an editor friend of mine told a few months ago. At the time I thought she might be right. I had only recently read a couple of works that, for want of a better description, read like second-rate Bruce Bawer. Maudlin and self-absorbed, these books (which shall remain nameless) tell us more about the authors than they do about radical Islam. Former boyfriends, Holland in the Springtime, and hints that the Pulitzer Prize went to the wrong author, are punctuated with references to female genital mutilation, terrorist acts, and hook-handed radical preachers.
It is as if one were wandering around an Impressionist exhibition only to discover someone has scribbled images of Palestinian terrorists in thick black marker pen all over the Monets. Yes, the juxtapositions is jarring, but the average person living in the West is assaulted by contradictory messages every day, whether on the stream of billboard adverts he passes on the way to work or in an evening’s television-watching. Consequently, such books fail to shock, and, indeed, to force us to see the crisis of the West as an existential threat. Our jaded culture, and cultural relativism, allows us to believe that the graffiti might be the real art. And one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter anyway. So what’s the problem?

It’s this kind of cultural relativism, and cultural suicidal tendencies, that Rebecca Bynum confronts in Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion (New English Review Press). At 152 pages, this work is slimmer than those like the aforementioned, but it is denser and far more challenging. Few, if any, will agree with everything that is said. But this book was not written to be agreed with. It was written to shake things up, and push the reader outside of his comfort zone. An engaged mind is more important to Bynum than a nodding head.

Western culture is in sharp focus throughout Allah Is Dead. Sometimes a crack in the dam of the West is spotlighted — from promiscuous notions of equality to churches that want to rethink Christ so as not to offend Muslims. At other times it is contrasted with Islam. As such, Allah Is Dead is in the vein of Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam by Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera, and, to a certain extent, Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics and Gnosticism. But the pace is different.

More complex, more academic, more confrontational, drawing on the Bible, Tocqueville, and Milton, as well as contemporary intellectuals, reading Bynum’s work is like taking a white-knuckle ride with Jesus, drag racing against Islam and Western sell-outs, and slamming into any car with a politically correct bumper sticker. There are plenty of those on the road, it turns out. But there are no pleasant side roads to lead us from the ghettos, on fire with rioting, to that cozy wine bar off the Champs-Élysées. All escape routes are blocked. For Bynum, there is no Wahhabi, Shiite, Sunni, or Sufi Islam. There is only Islam. People like me who insist on differentiating between Islam and Islamism are sissy learner-drivers who need to get off the road — I paraphrase, but you get the picture.

Bynum’s work is provocative from the first page — actually, the cover. As she was undoubtedly aware, few people would worry about reading a book in public with a title as, say, The God Delusion or God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Exchange “Allah” for “God” and “Islam” for “religion” and one is liable to feel considerably more nervous. Nietzsche’s “God is dead” fails to get a reaction, but a title like Allah Is Dead will, as we know, will send shockwaves through the “equalities”-educated class. We can already hear liberals howling “racism” and “Islamophobia”, although “God is dead” would not provoke even a single charge of self-loathing or Christio-phobia. Why? And how did it come to this?

Throughout Allah Is Dead, we are forced to face why the West appears so effete in confronting Islam, not to mention its own pathologies. Bynum makes a number of keen observations about the situation in which we find ourselves. Our perceptions of religion, spirituality, and politics are all critiqued.

Having thrown out Christianity, Bynum says

[M]oderns are left with no outlet for their natural, inborn religious impulse and so religion soon reverts back to magic and charms as we see so prominently displayed in the “New Age” movement, or the religious impulse may continue to revert even further to fetishism and taboo as in Islam. (p. 17)

Voegelin noted the rise of neo-paganism in pre-Nazi Germany (it was, at that point, far-Right, although, today, neo-paganism is today mostly Left-wing and pacifistic). The notion that Islam and the New Age might exhibit similar tendencies (particularly “fetishism”) is, I think, a new idea, but one well worth contemplating. Even leaving aside the nature of Islam, clearly, as a minority religion attracting primarily White female converts, in Britain at least, it is clearly appealing as a kind of “alternative” religion. (Perhaps unorthodox spiritual beliefs, widely held, act as a receptacle for more virulent and intolerant ones.)

Toward the end of the book, Bynum observes that many in the modern West have “turn[ed] on the faith which sustained [their] ancestors for centuries and label religious individuals ‘crazy’“ (p. 137.) The “latest effort to destroy God is also a religious act, though [it is] unrecognized as such”, she says.

If we consider that spirituality is, for many people, concretized in a (political) multiculturalism that embraces all of the religions as expressions of a universal truth, Bynum’s assertion appears to be accurate, although perhaps it is not always “unrecognized”. In the political multicultural worldview, morality is represented through “anti-racist” and anti-religious-hatred legislation that often appear to be used or misused to attack the established culture and religion. Take, for example, the case of the Christian evangelists who were threatened for arrest for preaching from the Bible in a “Muslim area” in Britain.

“Many people”, Bynum says, “fear a resurgent Christianity as much or more than they fear a resurgent Islam” (p. 53). Apparently so. She notes the words of one theologian who did not wish to offend Muslims by claiming to believe in the Lordship of Jesus. “The definition of God”, she tells us, “goes to the very core of this struggle, for it in turn defines the nature of civilization. The question is: shall we allow Christ to define himself as the historical record of his life and teachings indicate, or shall we allow Muslims to define him for us as Isa, the ‘Palestinian Muslim,’ divorced from Judaism, with no historical foundation for this assertion whatsoever?”

This phenomenon is of crucial importance, especially in relation to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic militancy. Like the Palestinians, the Nazis also remade Jesus in their image — in the latter case, as a Germanic hero who rejected the Jews. But the notion of Jesus as a Palestinian “freedom fighter” is far more innocuous, and regurgitated by fashionable Left-wing students in the West.

Bynum contrasts Mohammed with Jesus, noting that the latter “did not repudiate the Jewish scriptures”. (The Koran portrays Islam as the authentic Abrahamic faith and Judaism and Christianity as corruptions or “schisms” of Islam.) This, and Jesus’s “historical Jewishness” are essential components of Christianity, and, thus, of Western civilization, Bynum suggests. As such, she reasserts the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, the very notion of which we find attacked in the media for not including Islam as an “Abrahamic faith.”

Allah Is Dead takes aim at Christian leaders as well, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury (sometimes nicknamed the “Grand Mufti of Canterbury”) for his speech in which he suggested that Britain accommodate some aspects of sharia. Speaking of the Archbishop and others of a similar mental ilk, Bynum tells us that “The history of the decline and fall of Eastern Christianity is filled with such well-meaning fools” (p. 61). Nevertheless, Bynum is also rightly perturbed by the secularization and misuse of Christ’s injunction to turn the other cheek, which has transformed the sentiment into a fetish for cultural masochism.

Hence, if Bynum sees Islam as a politics, she is no less scathing about the fusion of Christianity and politics in the West. Unusually — and refreshing in her consistency — she objects not only to those on the Left (such as the Archbishop of Canterbury) but to those Churches in the US which have allied themselves with the Republican Party. “Both sides, to a greater or lesser extent”, she says, “have abandoned the primary mission of religion, and the care and fostering of individual spiritual growth” (p. 84) Some of these churches even indulge in a form of “disguised voodoo” (p. 85), soliciting donations with the promise that it will be returned several times over — miraculously.

The West is hollowing itself out from the inside, confusing politics with religion, and even belief with unbelief. Atheists, not Christian students, she observes, are the most likely group on campus to believe in the paranormal (the embrace of Islam by socialists is undoubtedly another example of this confusion). “This unconscious manifestation of a religious drive is difficult to locate let alone criticize”, she says, “So rather than benefiting from honest criticism, religion is manifesting itself as an unexamined force which is changing our world in ways we do not fathom” (p. 87). Taken as a whole, Bynum’s argument suggests that this “unconscious manifestation” is acting as the perfect receptacle for Islam.

Certainly the tradition of critiquing scripture and belief, inherent to all profound religious tradition, is denied by the vogue for fetishizing religion. Like the primitive who believes that a spirit or god is literally present in his statues, so the West has come to believe that there is a format to religion — i.e., that it has a founder, holy book, a notion of God, heaven, etc. — that proves it valid. The actual teachings are irrelevant to the culturally relative. The widespread belief that the “holy book” of one religion is, by virtue of being regarded as a holy book by its devotees, the equivalent of another, shows a profound dumbing-down of the intellect. Does anyone belief that the books of Jacques Derrida are the equivalent of those of John Locke, simply because they are both works of philosophy? Or that one can understand the works of Goethe by studying those of Shakespeare, just because great literature deals with the same themes of life and death, relationships, sickness, and human emotions, etc.?

If an amorphous spirituality appears to have soaked through Western society, Bynum nonetheless diagnoses a certain insensitivity to the transcendent both in one aspect of the West and in Islam. (Such a contradiction might seem implausible if we were unaware of atheist believers in the paranormal and Marxist admirers of Islam.) “Like Western materialism there is no effort to differentiate the tangible and intangible in Islam”, she says. “Worship itself is brought down to the material level, being thought of as the equivalent of obedience to Islam [i.e., as sharia]” (p. 123). Later, in the final chapter, where she lays out why she believes that Islam is not a religion (at least as the West has traditionally understood it), she asserts that “Islamic rituals, as elaborate as they are, have little or no symbolic meaning beyond [emulating Mohammed]” (p. 147). Although I suspect that mystical Sufi Muslims in particular would reject Bynum’s diagnosis, it is certainly true that many Wahhabis do seek to emulate Mohammed in every way, from wearing trousers of a particular length to the manner in which he cleans his teeth, although these do not have any symbolic value.

All in all, Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion is a complex and challenging book, but one that tackles the crisis of the West and the Westward push of Islam thoughtfully and seriously. One is unlikely to agree with Bynum on everything — and perhaps one might even firmly disagree with her on some things — but this is, on balance, more of a positive than a negative. Far too many books are written to avoid controversy. In contrast, Bynum succeeds in making us think through our situation, and rethinking our response to it. This might prove uncomfortable at times, but it is also essential. Rebecca Bynum’s Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion.

Link here: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/02/westward-push-of-islam.html

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.