Posted on 07/14/2005 4:33:42 PM PDT by CHARLITE
After the 7/7 London bombings many have raced to renounce the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” A London Anglican priest named Paul Hawkins said in a sermon: “We can name the people who did these things as criminals or terrorists. We must not name them as Muslims.” It may seem odd to deny to the likely perpetrators of the bombings the name that they themselves prize above all others, but such are the politically correct dogmas that prevail in most contemporary public discourse. No one is better versed in those dogmas, or more relentless in her pursuit of any dissenters from them (with a fury that the most ruthless Inquisitor would envy), than Karen Armstrong.
Armstrong, through her books Islam: A Short History and Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet and a steady stream of articles, propagates a tendentious version of Islam -- as benign as Quakerism and as expansive as the most liberal form of Anglicanism. As rescue workers continued to dig bodies out of the rubble in London, she took up the cudgels again, arguing against use of the term “Muslim terrorism.” Yet Muslims commit acts of terrorism, by their own account, because of core Islamic teachings. Saying that we are supposed to ignore that is tantamount to saying that we must ignore what the enemy tells us about himself, who he is, what he wants, and why he is fighting. Which is tantamount to saying that we should surrender. We cannot defeat an enemy we are afraid to name.
Yet Armstrong says that “our priority must be to stem the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida, instead of alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral violence.” Armstrong here seems to be saying that if we ignore the elements of Islam that give rise to terror, they will stop giving rise to terror. On the contrary, if we are to have any hope of stemming “the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida,” it can only come from speaking forthrightly about what it is in Islam that makes young Muslims flow into such organizations. No problem can be fixed by denying that it is a problem.
Armstrong would not accept that it is a problem in the first place: “Like the Bible, the Qur’an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion.” In the Bible there are indeed aggressive texts, but there is no open-ended and universal command to all believers to make war against unbelievers, a la Qur’an 9:29. Islam, unlike Christianity, has a developed doctrine sanctioning and calling for this warfare. There is no doctrine like this in any other major religion.
Armstrong continues with another canard: “We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings ‘Catholic’ terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign.” But of course the IRA was not claiming to blow things up in the name of their religion or justifying their actions by reference to Christian scripture. The jihad terrorists today, however, explain that they are acting in the name of Islam, and quote Qur’an copiously. Nor was the IRA an international movement with a program calling for the subjugation the world under its system of laws. Islamic terrorism is.
“There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam,” complains Armstrong, and she notes that “precise intelligence is essential in any conflict.” Quite right. And she is right again when she says that “by making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.” Yet ironically, it is clear from her own obfuscations and distortions of Islam that she herself has not made this disciplined effort. Her continuing influence, however, is just one indication of why it is so crucial today that other, less-biased analysts do so, and do so quickly.
Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company) and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance (Prometheus).
Yes, of course.
The next time a bomb goes off in a subway or pizza parlor, or the next time an airliner is flown into a building, the authorities should round up the Jews, Catholics, Methodists and Presbyterians.
How do these twits even get published?
The Brit media, in general, ESPECIALLY the BBC, has become a wimpering bunch of terrorist apologists. What a sad lot, now paying the price for letting in the very enemy that has them puckered up. Not the fighting Brits of WW2, that is for sure. They are long gone.
Easy, there is always some anti-American, jew hating, left wing, treasonous scum just waiting to buy it.
Old Testament or New Testament? I am SURE he's read both the Bible and the koran...NOT.
Then again, we are not exactly the fighting Yanks of WW2 either, I am sad to say.
Yea, those damned bibles are pretty vicious. One of them attacked me the other day for no reason at all.
Very good and all too true!
Coming up next on Fox: "When Bibles Attack!"
That's the "Question of the Day," Westbrook. I suppose we could ask the same question about how could anyone pay money to see Fahrenheit 9/11, or how could the Comm. of MA. continue returning Kennedy and Kerry to the U.S. Senate, or how did CA. voters continue to vote for Barbara Boxer & Nancy Pelosi.......or Nevadans for Harry Reid.......the list of total nitwits, numbskulls (like Patty Murray, now that I think of it)..........is an endless list and a total mystery to me.
Thanks for posing a great, but unanswerable, question!
Char :)
Doesn't matter. Half of them are name Muhammed anyway. By naming them as individuals, we name their religion.
The dimwit's name is Karen Armstrong. I think that's probably a woman.. a "her"...
Maybe you didn't really read the post...
The only one that is physically impossible. The crescent moon and the star inside it and they wonder why the world doesn't trust them??
*sigh*
here we go again... time to uncrate the Standard Response:
oh, joy: yet another round of the moral-equivalency tango.
Christianity and Islam are not significantly different in their holy texts, eh?
OK, try this on for size:
You tried to equate Christianity with Islam. This is why I ask you to find even one passage, relating to religion and treatment of others, which fulfills the following requirements:
1. in the "catholic" post-Nicaea Christian testament (but I'll gladly throw it open to the Jewish book)
2. a literal...
3. plain-text...
4. indisputable...
5. ongoing present-tense (as opposed to a one-shot past-tense record of history/folklore - ie: Joshua)...
6. commandment from God (not a pope or a bishop or some >a-hem!< televangelist)...
7. as a directive to the believer to take literally and actively in the temporal realm
8. to do any or all of the following:
-a. to slay the heretic and non-believer,
-b. to forcibly convert the heretic and non-believer,
-c. to enslave the heretic and non-believer,
-d. to persecute the heretic and non-believer,
-e. to wage holy war upon the heretic and non-believer
9. Directly analogous to the dozens thereof in the Koran.
(so you know, things like II Thessalonians 1:8,9 don't count - that is God kicking ass, not his faithful doing so for him. An important distinction equivocators seem to like to sweep under the rug.)
Now, turnabout:
Find JUST ONE passage in either the Koran or the Sunnah which is the direct analogue of the Parable of the Samaritan, or the directive to the witness to leave an unbeliever in peace - to "knock the dust of his home from their soles as they leave" - rather than butcher him in zealous fury, or to the believer contained in I Cor 7:12-17, or I Cor 10:32, or II Cor 6:14-18, or Ephesians 6:10-12, or... do you get the point?
Find JUST ONE comparable passage in the Koran or the Sunnah.
Good luck - I have been looking for over a year and have not found any such analogues.
Good point. If someone calls himself a Muslim, who am I, a non-Muslim, to argue with him?
Of course, if other Muslims disagree, it is up to them to say so. That is, if they oppose the crimes being committed in the name of Islam, they are the first ones who should object.
The orphaned child should be taken from the wife of the suicide bomber and raised in a Christian foster home. Fact that it's being done with great fanfare, but exact placement kept secret.
Ignorant Apostate B*tch - thank you to the liberal seminaries for idiots like this one
This idiot must be grabbing his ankles for the jihad vermin..
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