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To: disgusted Republican
I'll tell yo uwhat Mr. DR - read the following and get back to me:

The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West by Lee Harris

Here's one of the reviews:

An important book changes your view of your world. Harris' "The Suicide of Reason" succeeds in doing this and points out serious threats to the survival of Western Civilization from the inside and the outside. Harris shows that the most important message that America's leaders have failed to grasp is that not everybody sees the world the same way. Harris' "rational actors" act to change their culture out of enlightened self interest whereas his "tribal actors" act to preserve their culture.

Nominally the conflict is presented as fanatical Islam's tribal actors versus the West's rational actors, but his paradigm applies to groups within the West as well. As you read this book you will recognize "tribal" views in many rabid Democratic Party supporters, Chicago Bear's fans and Intelligent Design advocates, among others. These people have ceased listening to any counter-positions.

The "tribal mind" dominated Earth until The Enlightenment. How did this revolutionary change come to occur? Harris invokes Hobbes, Spinoza, Condorset, Locke, Marx, Huxley, Voltaire and others to show how it took root in the time of the French Revolution and came to fruition in America.

Is it inevitable that the rational actors' democratic ideal will come to dominate the world? It looks like it will be unlikely to survive without a prompt change of direction by the West. Recent western generations have ceased acting in ways to protect their hard won culture. They are now dissipating this monumental asset in the name of political correctness. "Right thinking has replaced real thinking."

Harris' rephrased titular question, "Does reason commit suicide when it blinds itself to the reality and the power of the irrational?", presents the West's primary problem: its leaders live under the delusion that everybody looks at the world the same way. They must consider that different groups have very different perceptions of the world. All problems can't be resolved by win-win positive thinking; inevitably testosterone will enter into the equation. The most rational among us must accept that in the world of the blind the one-eyed man isn't king by divine right.

This is an exceptionally insightful book that deserves to be read by serious people seriously concerned about the survival of their political and cultural traditions into the next generation.

Then there's "The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims , Andrew Bostom.

And a review from the Amazon site:

The politically correct would have it that Islam is a religion of peace, but in this far-ranging collection of Muslim and non-Muslim eyewitness accounts, theological treatises by great Muslim scholars and jurists throughout history and historical surveys of superb historians, Islam has in fact practiced a grisly jihad campaign against non-Muslims from its earliest days, in the hope of satisfying the Prophet Mohammed's end goal---forcing the "one true faith" upon the entire world.

In 759 pages, divided into eight parts, Dr. Andrew Bostom has provided a fantastic compendium of historical surveys; jihad literature; classical Muslim scholarly treatises; historical overviews from important 20th century historians; foldout, color-coded maps; eyewitness accounts of jihad campaigns from the Near East, Asia Minor, Europe and the Indian subcontinent; historical and contemporary accounts of jihad slavery; and Muslim and non-Muslim chronicles and eyewitness accounts of jihad campaigns.

It is hard, after viewing these compelling accounts and histories, to continue to believe that radical Islamists are in fact all that radical. For Islam, at its core, seems to be a faith bent upon the conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.

In part two, Bostom collects many jihadist teachings in the Qur'an, for example, Qur'an chapter 9, verse 29, "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and his apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth even if they are the people of the book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and fell themselves subdued." These teachings fill all of two pages in the text.

But Bostom does not stop there. The third chapter is devoted to classical and modern teachings of Qur'anic commentators on Chapter 9, verse 29. Al-Suyuti (d. 1505 CE), for example, writes "Fight those who don't believe in God nor in the Last Day [Unless they believe in the Prophet God bless him and grant him peace] nor hold what is forbidden that which God and His emissary have forbidden [e.g. Wine] nor embrace the true faith [which is firm and abrogates other faiths, i.e., the Islamic religion] from among [for distinguishing] those who were given the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians] until they give the head-tax [i.e., the annual taxes imposed on them] (l'an yadinl) humbly submissive, and obedient to Islam's rule."

Also commenting on the Qur'anic chapter 9, verse 29 are al-Zamakshari (d. 1144), al Tabari (d. 923), al-Beidawi (d. 1286), Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) and al-Azhar, al-Muntakhab Fii Tafsir al-Qur'aan al-Kariim, 1985. Let no one say that Bostom has taken these teachings out of context, for the classical and contemporary commentators interpret the passage in precisely the same way as it appears.

Chapter 4 is then devoted to jihad in the Hadith, with commentary from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Part 3 presents the classical writings of Muslim theologians and jurists on jihad. This 110-page section spans the entire history of Islam, beginning with commentators from the 8th century and continuing through the 20th century. Bostom has gleaned writings of Malik B. Anas (d. 795) from the Muwata, as well as a 1915 Ottoman Fatwa.

He also includes several works translated into English for the first time. For example, Ibn Qudama (d. 1223), writes, "Legal war (jihad) is an obligatory social duty (fard-kifaya); when one group of Muslims guarantees that it is being carried out in a satisfactory manner, the others are exempted." Almost everywhere in this text, the author is belligerent. "It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to bombard them with mangonels [an engine that hurls missiles] and to attack them without declaring battle (du'a)."

Similarly, the renowned Sufi master al-Ghazali (d. 1111) writes (now in English for the first time), "One must go on jihad (i.e. Warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year... one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and drown them." The marriages of slaves, al-Ghazali continues, are automatically "revoked. One may cut down their trees.... One must destroy their useless books." This belies the notion that Sufism is peaceful.

Al-Hilli (d. 1277) appears for the first time in English on the traditions concerning the tax on certain infidels, who have not been enslaved or murdered. And the Persian scholar Muhammad al-Amili (d. 1621) has been translated from Farsi concerning Jihad holy war: "Islamic holy war against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam or pay the poll tax."

The 117-page Part 4 includes overviews of Jihad by important 20th century scholars, including Edmond Fagnan, on jihad according to the Malikite school, Roger Arnaldez on the holy war according to Ibn Hazm of Cordova, Clement Huart on the law of war, Nicolas P. Agnides, on the classification of persons under Islamic law and John Ralph Willis on the jihad ideology of enslavement.

As Ibn Warraq notes in the forward to this monumental study of Islamic jurisprudence and prosecution of war, Dr. Bostom (a non-specialist from the field of clinical medicine) is the first scholar to have had translated from Arabic into English the works of al-Bayadawi, al-Suyuti, al-Zamakhshari and al-Tabari, as well as works by Sufi master al-Ghazali, Shiites al-Hilli and al-Amili. He also includes representatives from the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence-Averroes and Ibn Khaldun (Maliki), Ibn Taymiya and Ibn Qudama (Hanbali), Shaybani (Hanafi), and al-Mawardi (Shaafi).

Ibn Warraq continues: Some contend that Dr. Bostom is right to expose history hitherto denied, but this was not the right historical moment to do so. But, as Isaiah Berlin once noted, from the ideologue's willingness to suppress what he suspects to be true has flowed much evil.

What you come away wit his a profund understanding that "Radical Islam" is not the problem: it is Islam itself. You lucked out, pal - that's all. From it's inception, cruelty, atrocity, enslavement and impoverishment have been written into Islam's DNA. History, bloody awful history is my witness. Islam has left death, starvation and destruction everywhere it has gone, with atrocities and slaughter that makes the likes of Old Adolph, Mao and Pol Pot look like amateurs. And if you think that's hyperbole, think again. The truth is more awful than I can describe.

I have said that Islam cannot reform itself to accommodate our Western ideals - equal justice and individual liberty - for then it would cease to be Islam. The concept of freedom doesn't even exist within the confiens of Islamic thought.

Islam is the perfect self-replicating meme that by its very nature innoculates itself from any possibility of 'reform' or real change. It is in fact very much like a cancer that has metastasized and is now spreading throughout the world in via the revival of Jihad.

If we in the West care about preserving our civilization, then we must treat Islam like the disease that it is. With everything that implies. You don't negotiate with cancer. You can't bribe a malignant tumor, not if you want to survive.

You destroy it.

67 posted on 07/31/2008 7:55:43 PM PDT by Noumenon (Time for Atlas to shrug - and pick up a gun.)
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To: Noumenon
Islam is the perfect self-replicating meme that by its very nature innoculates itself from any possibility of 'reform' or real change. It is in fact very much like a cancer that has metastasized and is now spreading throughout the world in via the revival of Jihad.

The situations in the UK and other European countries should have served as sufficient warning for the US, but nobody in DC seems to have a clue.

Our enemies within, in both parties, have held the door open for them.

80 posted on 07/31/2008 8:43:51 PM PDT by meadsjn (Socialists promote neighbors selling out their neighbors; Free Traitors promote just the opposite.)
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To: Noumenon

BRAVO!!!
GREAT POST.


94 posted on 07/31/2008 9:47:56 PM PDT by patriot08
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