Is it possible to change West’s idea of Islam?

Arab News ^ | 9-23-02 | Dr. Abdul Qader Tash

[weikel]

No damnit he really doesn't exist have you ever bought anyone elses soul as a joke. Well anyway I'd definitely be willing to sell them to the devil but he won't show up.

[fporretto]

That must be just a trifle extreme, weikel. Plus, it's a mistake to combat an idea with violence. An idea will triumph over any force placed against it, except a better idea. But it's no mistake to assume, based entirely upon their holy documents and the behavior of so many of their better known "representatives," that Muslims are not to be trusted.

The fundamental black mark against Muslims is their belief that Mohammed's authority entitles them to impose themselves temporally on the rest of us. No other major religion includes a temporal penal code. No other major religion advocates or condones conversion by the sword. And no other major religion sanctifies violence or deceit, if used to advance it over other faiths.

Once a man has accepted the authority of the Koran, whence all these things come, how can any non-Muslim trust him? His religion licenses him to subvert, suborn, and subdue the entire world, by any means expedient. He may say he opposes that part of the sacred teachings, but, as the Koran itself licenses him to lie for tactical advantage of the "infidel," how do you know he's telling the truth?

Today at National Review, Rod Dreher reviews Robert Spencer's new book Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About The World's Fastest Growing Faith, which argues that all of Islam is in true and irreconcilable opposition to the values and norms of the West. I counsel all FReepers to read the review -- and the book. You won't like the message, but you'll be impressed by the tightness and simplicity of the reasoning. I was.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[weikel]

How do you combat the idea without eliminating the ruling class in the Arab world which perpetuates it? Ann Coulter though I don't personally find her a great mind basically had the right idea kill their leaders and convert the rest. BTW Judiasm has a temporal set of laws although they are not enforced now( if they were the Pallies would not like to find themselves subject to Jewish military law LOL).

[EdReform]

"The success of efforts to change Islam’s image in the West depends on two factors. The first — Muslims themselves must be convinced of the need for real efforts to change it. Sept. 11 has reinforced the need for us to act and give the matter the attention and care that it deserves."

You Worry Me

 

The following letter was published in the Gazette Hyattsville, MD, October 11, 2001, on the Community Forum page.

You worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend anymore. I notice you, and it worries me.

I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, and professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On Sept. 11, nineteen Arab-Muslims hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.

So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to differentiate between you.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab-Muslim-Americans and the Arab-Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, etc., while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children? The answer to my own questions that it is past the time for me to try to determine this. The events of Sept. 11th changed the answer. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, if you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots? Are you willing to preserve this freedom with the spilling of your own blood? Do you love America? And if this is your commitment, then I need you to start letting me know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent (I worry who you regard as innocent) and condemnation of unprovoked attacks (I worry what is unprovoked to you.) I am not interested in any more sympathy; I am interested only in action. What will you do for America - the country -- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting Allah Bless America. I want to see Arab-Muslim young men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money and time and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole. The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Deliver them up, now.

But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisal. The few Arab-Muslim representatives that have appeared on the media are defensive and equivocating. They seem more concerned with making sure the U. S. prove who is responsible before they act, and protecting their own people from any violence directed toward them, here in the U.S. and abroad. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. Because even if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true, it matters little if large numbers of current Islamic practitioners interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion.

I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is within my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to you to show me where you stand.

Until then ... you worry me.

[Erasmus]

And the Yemen girls, with the way they smell
They knock me out when I'm down there."

Ahemm..

I trust you mean "down there, in Yemen."

[far sider]

CS Lewis said that the devil would prefer that human beings not believe in him. Then if he can't get people not to believe in him, he tries to get them to be obsessed with him. Either outcome is satisfactory to the devil.

[fporretto]

Oh, convert whoever's convertible, by all means. That's quite sensible. It will also be necessary for us to use force against despotic regimes that subject their people to an Islamic yoke. But we can't kill Islam itself by force. Islam is an idea. An idea will triumph over any opposing force known to Man, except a superior idea.

Islamicist regimes must be opposed diplomatically and militarily. Islam itself must be opposed morally and intellectually. That's my only point.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[browardchad]

From Dreher's review of "Islam Unveiled" --

To be sure, Spencer's despairing view is not shared by many scholars, even one as reliably critical of radical Islam as Daniel Pipes. In his recent Militant Islam Reaches America, Pipes emphatically denies that radical Islam is the same thing as traditional Islam. He insists that drawing the distinction and encouraging moderates within Islamic societies is an imperative for the West, though he offers scant evidence for this conclusion. And he admits that Muslim moderates are "weak, divided, intimidated and generally ineffectual. Indeed, the prospects for Muslim revitalization have rarely looked dimmer than at this moment... ." One gets the feeling that Pipes would rather light a candle for the unlikely hope of a peaceful revolution within Islam, not because the alternative — one-sixth of humanity, many of whom are already living among us, as implacable enemy of the West — is unrealistic, but because it is unthinkable.

I just finished Pipes' new book, and as much as I respect his years of warnings about Militant Islam that went unheeded until 9/11, Dreher's comments on the book are accurate. The evidence is also scant for other arguments Pipes makes, such as using Mike Tyson (not a joke) as an example of an African-American who has been helped by conversion to Islam. There are excellent chapters however, such as an those on how Islamics plan to replace the Constitution with Sharia law; on how the US Government has, in many instances, supported the Islamic goals through support of organizations such as CAIR; and the "discrimination" fraud perpetrated by CAIR, AMC, etc., as a tactic in achieving their goal of privileged status for Islam in the U.S.

Dreher's description of "Islam Unveiled" sounds like a secular version of "Unveiling Islam" by Caner and Caner. The Caner brothers are former muslims of Turkish ancestry who converted to Christianity, and both are now Baptist theology professors. Their view of the intractability of Islam is valuable, since they can speak from the vantage point of those who lived the religion, and while they share Spencer's view that Islam itself is the problem, they believe the solution is to convert Muslims to Christianity (a long and torturous process, to say the least). Even for those who are not religious, there's much valuable information in their book.

[WileyC]

Politicians and thinkers from those times regarded Islam as a threat to the West. This same tendency is evident today in works by Zingenio Bergensky, “Crescent of Ages”, Bernard Lewis in “The Resurgence of Islam”, Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History” and finally in Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”.

Sounds like I have four more books to add to the reading list!

[Delbert]

NO!

[nravoter]

I trust you mean "down there, in Yemen."

LOL--have to admit, that possible inference hadn't occurred to me at the time I wrote that post!

[sheik yerbouty]

Only if the West goes on a steady diet of Jimson weed..

[MEGoody]

While I would agree with your contention that we need to rid the world of terrorism, you may want to backtrack on that last statement of yours. Outlawing 5 times a day prayers? Outlawing veils? As long as people are participating in these things voluntarily and are not posing a physical threat to anyone else, then it's not our place to outlaw such things. The next beliefs on the chopping block could be yours.

[weikel]

Im normally pretty libertarian but Ataturk did those things in Turkey thats why Turkey is sane. Im basing my program on what Ataturk did.

[MEGoody]

If that's true, then in that last point, Ataturk was wrong.

[weikel]

Im not sure he had the death penalty for it but he insisted that all outward signs of Islamic worship were to be proscribed. No I don't think he was wrong I think as a military man he recognized what was neccasary to defeat the enemy of fundamentalist Islam and did it. Yes Im aware it violates general libertarian principles.

[lavaroise]

No, it's not possible to change our views until the terrorists stop. It is not our fault, it is the terrorists. End of story.

[weikel]

The clergy and religious police are to Islam what comintern members, commisars, and propagandist were to communism they need to be killed to a man.

[Pagey]

Far too much anti-Islamic writing and sentiment is being spread in the name of such principles as openness, democracy, freedom of expression..."

Freedom of expression?In what universe does this guy reside?National TV commentators refuse to use the word "Terrorists",I haven't seen any negative things in my newspaper regarding Islam in the last year,Imam's in the USA refuse to speak out against the radical Muslims who perpetrated 9/11---and he wants to talk about freedom of expression.That is completely laughable.

[Conservative4Ever]

Couldn't have said it better.

Red