The Truth About Mohammed (Brigitte Gabriel's Review of Robert Spencer's New Book Alert)

FrontPageMag.com ^ | October 30, 2006 | Brigitte Gabriel

[goldstategop]

“Freedom of inquiry and speech, the quest for truth, should not be cowed into silence by violent intimidation or the acceptance of half-truths and propaganda meant to appease freedom’s enemies. One thing is certain: if no one is willing to take such risks, freedom of speech will swiftly become a relic of history.”

These are the words of author Robert Spencer, who is risking his life to educate Westerners about the life of the founder of Islam. He has just come out with a new book, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. In this biography, Spencer tells the story of the founder of Islam -- a story that many Muslims themselves apparently either do not know about or do not want non-Muslims to hear.

Yet it's strange that any Muslim would react with anger to Spencer's book, since he bases it strictly on Islamic sources, all written by pious and serious Muslims. No critic can rightly say that anything Spencer has said about Muhammad in this book is inaccurate. But the problem Muslims find with it is that Spencer doesn't treat Muhammad as if he were the highest moral standard.

Within the Islamic world, by contrast, Muhammad is considered untouchable. Spencer demonstrates that the Qur’an and Islamic tradition are clear that the Prophet is the supreme example of behavior for Muslims to follow. And today, no hint of criticism of any of his acts or teachings is tolerated.

This stifling of speech is now beginning to affect the West, within which non-Muslims are becoming increasingly frightened to say anything critical about Islam and its founder. Indeed, at even the mildest criticism, either by the Pope or in lightly satirical newspaper cartoons, Islamic nations erupt in a frenzy of blind anger. Furious Muslims take to the streets, burn churches and temples, kill innocent civilians, and threaten violence against the non-Muslim world.

Spencer warns that for the West to be intimidated into silence by this behavior is dangerous. He writes, “to place Muhammad and Islam beyond criticism and even beyond lampooning would be just as dangerous for a free society as the idea that the “Beloved Leader” of North Korea and dialectical materialism is above criticism. Indeed it would be death for a free society.”

Spencer accordingly presents the truth about Islam’s founder clearly. His story is backed up by solid scholarship and research. So the key question becomes: who is the man whom the Qur’an states is “an excellent model of conduct” (33:21)?

Spencer begins by introducing the historical Muhammad as well as the books and writings that make up the religion of Islam. This is crucial for all to understand, because it is not only the Qur’an that influences Muslim opinion, but also accompanying religious literature, including the hadith (traditions of Muhammad recorded by his followers) and the Sira (the biography of Muhammad).

Spencer goes on to explain how Muhammad became a prophet, and how he tried at first to spread his message by peaceful means -- including attempts to convince Jews and Christians that he was a prophet in the line of the Old Testament prophets and Jesus (whom he considered a prophet, not the Son of God). When his efforts failed to bring them, along with the pagan Arabs of his native tribe, into his new religion, he became a warlord -- killing, slaughtering and beheading in order to convert others or to force them to submit to him and to the religion given to him by Allah.

Spencer shows how the Prophet Muhammad, the perfect model for human behavior according to Islam and any professing Muslim, perfected the arts of assassination, deceit and taking booty. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 detail the warrior Muhammad’s battles with pagans, Jews and Christians. He told them that their lives and property would be safe only if they became Muslims. In many places, we can see clearly how he serves today as an example for Muslim behavior: at one point Spencer writes,

“Muhammad addressed them (the Jews) in terms that have become familiar usage for Islamic Jihadists when speaking of Jews today …. ‘You brothers of monkeys, has God disgraced you and brought His vengeance upon you?’ The Qur'an in three places (2:62-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166) says that Allah transformed the Sabbath-breaking Jews into pigs and monkeys.

Jihadists today routinely refer to Jews as "pigs and monkeys" -- not just a term of abuse, but an imitation of the holy prophet's example.

The author also sheds a light on the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, the ten-year truce (Hudna) Muhammad signed with the pagan Quraysh tribe. By breaking this treaty, Muhammad again set a precedent: Muslims can sign a treaty but can break it at anytime, when doing so is to their advantage. The purpose of Hudna is to allow weakened Muslim forces to gather strength to fight again later more effectively. This is an extremely important principle for the West to understand today, since it shows the difference between what we perceive as a cease-fire and what believing Muslims think it is.

Chapter 10 explores in a carefully balanced and restrained manner the personal life of Muhammad, allowing the reader to make his own informed decision based on the facts. Spencer presents frightening facts that call into serious question the wisdom behind the Islamic tradition that has dubbed Muhammad “al-insan al-kamil,” or the Perfect Man: his marriage to a child (which is widely imitated in the Islamic world today), his polygamy, his calls to subjugate Jews and Christians, and more.

Throughout the book, we learn how Muhammad treated women and how his words and actions have inspired generation after generation of Muslim men to look at women as nothing more than property. As Spencer notes,

“The Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: ‘Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will’ ” (2:223).

That's bad enough, but there is much more. Spencer’s work details example after example of Muhammad’s teaching about women and how to treat them: beat them if they are disobedient, deny them the right to testify in cases involving sexual crimes, deny their inheritance rights, and deny their rights in numerous ways. And as the historical record has shown, his teachings have sentenced millions of women into a life of oppression, misery and depression.

Readers will learn a great deal from this book, as I did. Spencer also offers constructive suggestions and solutions if we ever want to win this war on Islamofascism. Some of them include:

* Stop insisting that Islam is a religion of peace.

* Initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources.

* Make Western aid contingent upon renunciation of the Jihad ideology.

* Call upon American Muslim advocacy groups to work against the Jihad ideology.

* Revise immigration policies with the Jihad ideology in view.

This book is a must read for all to understand the roots of radical Islam. It arms non-Muslims and Muslims alike by illuminating what needs to be targeted in order to weaken Islamic extremism and the oxygen which they need to breathe.

Get it and be informed.

[lentulusgracchus]

the evaporation of Mecca and their stupid moon rock

I don't think we want to lead with that offer. Offend all Moslems over the offenses of (so far) a minority?

Keeping that minority minor ought to be a major objective of all our policies.

[lentulusgracchus]

The power of this idea is that the quantity of foreign oil that would be licensed to import would go to *zero* at a date certain in the future.

Not necessary, to keep the price reasonable, and adversary political leverage at a minimum.

You can still import -- even from Moslem countries -- without encouraging that kind of behavior.

[metmom]

I thought you might be interested in this, too.

[Mad Dawg]

Ala insane, a la camel. Yes

ANd it's in the Queeran! Indiputable!

Actually, there appear to have been a number of good Muslims in history --Ahmad Shah Massoud being one of my heroes, but one has to think it was in spite of, not because of, their religion.

---

[JimRed]

* Make Western aid contingent upon renunciation of the Jihad ideology.

Sounds great, but the renunciation would most likely be as truthful as Bill Clinton's "middle class tax cuts". The policy of taquiyyah (sp?), lying for the advancement of Islam, precludes belief of any such renunciation. That is, unless the Islamic government involved actually starts killing Jihadis in more than token numbers.

[Eastbound]

Looking ahead, banishment, isolation, and quarantine is the only remedy for containing the survivors who cling to this radioactive sub-human belief system.

The civilized world flirts with its own demise by accomodating this blight on the human race.

[theBuckwheat]

It is clear that money flows into the jihadist coffers from oil. At the very least the Saudi government itself is funding thousands of Wahhabist mosques and schools around the world.

The simple question is this: if it doesn't cost us any more, are we better off if we keep oil production at home? I would argue that we are. Liberals love to scold the rest of us that we are not paying the "full price" of oil, by which they demand to account for the additional cost to the taxpayer in the form of maintaining a military force to protect our foreign flow of oil. If we keep as much of our oil production at home, we keep the money and the jobs at home too.

And more to the point about national security, it means we become immune from foreign blackmail like was attempted twice in the 1970s.

Oil (like healthcare) obeys the laws of supply and demand just as much as any other commodity we buy. We should buy oil from the lowest bidder, in normal, peaceful times. But in doing so, we place ourselves at the mercy of chance and forces that want to destroy the US.

If we say these forces don't matter, and the only thing that matters is paying the lowest price, then why the continual call for a "Manhattan Project"? I say it has become such a matter of national security that price must no longer be the primary measure of national policy. We can address the security aspect by heavy-handed, clumsy and wasteful government (and the first Manhattan Project had more than its share of all three!), or we can allow the natural forces of the free (domestic) market to solve the problem. We only need the right policy framework in which to allow this to naturally occur.

[Gritty]

[YdontUleaveLibs]

I will be looking for this book today. But, I don't need a history lesson to tell me Islam is evil. I remember the hostage crisis in 1979, Robert Dean Stethem being killed then thrown on the tarmac, I read about Leon Klinghoffer, being killed and thrown overboard from a cruise ship wheelchair and all. I grew up hearing about countless suicide bombings. The only thing that changed on 9/11, was the name of the enemy was now widely known.

[Tax-chick]

Book review of one of the Robert Spencer books.

[TexasRepublic]

Spencer warns that for the West to be intimidated into silence by this behavior is dangerous. He writes, “to place Muhammad and Islam beyond criticism and even beyond lampooning

We should compile jokes for a MoHamHead Jokebook. Being anonymous on the Internet, what mudslime could intimidate or stop us?

[jigsaw]

Brigitte Gabriel

[Utah Girl]

Ping

[chitteryman]

Hate to be a sexist pig, but how beautiful are the face and eyes of a woman whose mind is so clear and focused.