Posted on 02/02/2007 7:22:49 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe, which has "given up efforts to maintain its culture, said world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis.
Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, told the Jerusalem Post that soon the only important question regarding Europes future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?"
Lewis, whose many books include the recent "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, said the Islamic takeover of Europe would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he added, Europeans had given up.
"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement, political correctness and multi-culturalism.
Turning to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Lewis said the Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction, which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using nuclear weapons, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. "For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. If [Iran's ruling ayatollahs] kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming.
Lewis said Israel and the West should work to strengthen moderate forces within Iran via an aggressive propaganda campaign.
"All the evidence is that the regime is extremely unpopular with their own people," he told the Post. "I am told that the Israeli daily [radio] program in Persian is widely listened to all over Iran with rapt attention."
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
If you omit the parts of sharia law that are incompatible with our form of democracy, there isn't much left. Subjugation of women and infidels seem to be the heart of Sharia law. Why bother? Walking around in a costume from the sixth century is not even part of Sharia law. It was an invention of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamic group.
No, if you eliminate Sharia law and conquering and subjugation
of the infidel, you get Judaism.
I don't think the "heart" of Sharia or Islam in general is subjugation of women or infidels, I think it is Arab unity under one ruler.
No, the fundamental heart of Islam may not be the subjugation of women and infidels. That's not what I said. Islam is a political philosophy that uses religion to unify its adherents , behind the belief in the superiority of the believer and the need to spread the doctrine throughout the world. If you remove the hate and the subjugation of women and infidels, along with sharia law, you get Judaism. Mohammed added nothing new to Judaism, but the hate, and the Arabs in all the starring roles. It's as if Mohammed was the first post modernist, deconstructing the metanarrative of Judaism to reflect the Arab persecution. There is nothing new under the sun.
"It's as if Mohammed was the first post modernist, deconstructing the metanarrative of Judaism to reflect the Arab persecution."
- Not a wrong way to put it. Regardless of what notions Mohammed had concerning what we today call narratives or metanarratives, he probably couldn't stand the Weltanschaung of the surrounding Jews at his time as their beliefs interfered with his visions of military dominance of the Mid East (and especially the Arabic Peninsula).
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.