Learning to Walk

My Aunt Pauline shows how hard raising a new baby doll can be in these days of religious pluralism:

I was shocked and had to gasp:

"Gasp!"

I also had to explain my gasp:

"That doll is wearing a hijab! This is exactly how Islamization begins."

But warnings trickle through our heads like water through a sieve . . .

Kuwaiti Cleric Othman Al-Khamis On Dealing With Unbelievers: Convert, Die, or Pay Protection Money

Islamist Live
Working On
Anagrammatical
"I Am Evil" Lists?

Kuwaiti Cleric Othman Al-Khamis Makes the Evil Lists (as MEMRI tells us on January 30, 2019):

A person who leaves Islam is killed (unless repentant).

Such a person is punished because apostasy is tantamount to scorning Islam, and he is therefore punished as if he cursed the Prophet Muhammad or Allah. This is why an apostate is killed. It's not that we're trying to force Islam upon him. Islam does not need or want mercenaries. We don't say: "Turn Muslim or we will slaughter you."

Only infidels (non-Muslims) may be enslaved.

If we capture an infidel, he becomes a slave. In such a case, he is forced into slavery. Since he refused to willfully become a respected slave [of Allah], he shall become a despicable slave against his will. This is the way things go with people who do not worship Allah. Don't feel sorry for them. They are infidels who refuse to worship Allah. They refuse to obey Allah. They are hostile toward Allah and they curse Him. People should not be blinded by mercy towards them . . . . Muslims must not be enslaved. Only infidels may be enslaved.

Do not be ashamed of your religion (Islam).

I ask people not to be ashamed of their religion and to refrain from saying: "No, this was only in the past, Islam does not call for this . . . ." No! Be firm in your religion, proclaim it, and say: "Yes, this is my religion!" Those who do not want to worship Allah should be enslaved, be forced to pay the jizya poll tax (protection money), be converted to Islam, or be fought against . . . . If an infidel (non-Muslim) refuses to either worship Allah or pay the jizya, we say to him: "We have no choice but to fight you." So we fight him for that reason.

The infidels (non-Muslims) are always the aggressors, according to Othman Al-Khamis. Their very infidel existence is a crime against Allah. Their infidel life is an insult to Allah. Their infidel refusal to convert is an affront to Allah. That's how Islamists see things, and they state their case very clearly, that all might see and understand what lies in store for the defeated infidel.

French Manifesto

Logo

In a Memri posting (August 20, 2018, Inquiry and Analysis Series No.1413), we find an important manifesto directed to Muslims. Many French public intellectuals and political leaders recently signed this manifesto against Islam, criticizing the hatred in some Qur'anic verses directed toward Jews, Christians, and unbelievers and urging Muslim authorities to disavow such verses as obsolete:

"Therefore, we urge that the Quranic verses calling to kill and punish Jews, Christians and non-believers be declared obsolete by the theological authorities."

Needless to say, this didn't go over well with those aforementioned "theological authorities":

The signatories to the manifesto, they said, were simply ignorant and harbored racist sentiments towards Muslims . . . . "[The] Quran does not contain a single verse that calls to kill Jews and Christians, nor is there any room for such barbarity and cruelty in that book." . . . Mentioning Quran 2:256, which states that "there is no coercion in religion," [the question is] asked: "Why should the Quran call to kill Jews and Christians? . . . How can any reasonable person make such a claim?" . . . "No to freezing a single letter of the Quran. Whoever demands this can go to hell . . . . [If] they rely on their own faulty understanding, then to hell with them and their demands."

This sort of response goes on and on for page after page, denial after denial. No attempt is made to engage the manifesto's criticisms.

As the Islamic authorities surely know, there are verses in the Qur'an that are understood to refer to Jews and Christians, for instance, in Surah 1:7, which says, "Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful [the Jews], nor of those who are astray [the Christians]."

Islamic tradition has understood verse 7 to refer to the Jews as those with whom Allah is angry and to the Christians as the people who have gone astray. One sees how Allah's attitude toward Jews and Christians could lead to believers' violence against them.

As for the widely quoted verse about no coercion in religion, it is widely held to be abrogated, namely, that it was espoused when Islam was weak but does not apply when Muslims gain power.

And we see that anyone calling for reform of Islam by suspending verses in the Qur'an can simply go to hell.

One can see why the French signatories are alarmed. More here.

Islam, Islamism, and Radical Islam: Differences?

Bill Vallicella

I had a brief conversation with my old friend Bill Vallicella over the meaning of "radical" in the expression "radical" Islam:

HODGES:

Dear Bill,

I see we're both still struggling (our inner jihad) with what to call 'radical' Islam.

"I am coming to the view that the qualifier 'radical' in 'radical Islam' is redundant: True Islam is radical by its very nature." (Vallicella)

"Islamism is not Islamic extremism; rather, it is radicalism at the root of Islam." (Hodges)

I'm playing with the root meaning of radical, as you know.

Yours,

Jeffery

VALLICELLA:

Hi Jeff,

You appear to be distinguishing Islam from Islamism. How would you characterize the difference?

Regards,

Bill

HODGES:

Dear Bill,

I contend that Islamism is not a form of extremism because Islamism is not peripheral to Islam. Islamism is at the root because it is the root of Islam. Islamism is usually suppressed because it is so horrible even to Muslims, but when Islam radicalizes, it is true to its root.

Yours,

Jeff

VALLICELLA:

Hi Jeff,

So you are saying that Islamism is the essence of Islam, the ineradicable root without which Islam cannot exist?

So there cannot be a moderate, an 'enlightened,' Islam?

Regards,

Bill

HODGES:

Dear Bill,

I wouldn't say that there could be no enlightened Islam - humans are pretty clever at reinterpretation - but Islam doesn't make it easy.

What I'm trying to do with my formulation - "Islamism is not Islamic extremism; rather, it is radicalism at the root of Islam" - is get people to think about the supposed distinction between Islam and Islamism.

Yours,

Jeff

And thus do things stand . . .

Mustafa Akyol: Islamism Alienating Muslims

Mustafa Akyol

Liberal reformist Muslim leader Mustafa Akyol, commenting in an NYT column  ("Islamism is driving Muslims to convert," March 26, 2018), has noticed that Islamists are inadvertently driving Muslims out of Islam, and he offers for our consideration the case of Iran:

The antigovernment protests that erupted in Iran in the last days of 2017 showed that millions of Iranians are now disillusioned with the Islamic Republic. Moreover, there are signs that quite a few Iranians are now also disenchanted with Islam itself. Often silently and secretly, they are abandoning their faith. Some opt for other faiths, often Christianity.

This is happening not only in Iran, as Akyol points out:

This trend is certainly not limited to Iran. Authoritarianism, violence, bigotry and patriarchy in the name of Islam are alienating people in almost every Muslim-majority nation.

And it is happening nor only at the state level, but also at the communal, even family level:

Authoritarianism at the communal level is also similarly self-defeating, as observed by Simon Cottee, a British scholar who interviewed dozens of ex-Muslims for his book, "The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam." The process of abandoning Islam accelerated in most cases . . . when young Muslims who had begun questioning religion faced rigid reactions from their families. "The narrow-mindedness they encountered, especially on privately airing doubts to those they trusted . . . just served to intensify their doubts."

Why is contemporary Islam so problematic? Look to Islam's past:

The core problem is that traditional Islamic jurisprudence, and the religious culture it produced, were formed when society was patriarchal, hierarchical and communitarian. Liberal values like free speech, open debate and individual freedom were much more limited. Hence Muslim jurists saw no problem in "protecting the religion" by executing apostates and blasphemers, and by enforcing religious observance. Some of them, like Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose ninth-century teachings were a precursor of modern-day Wahhabism - also championed blind faith, a notion of believing "without asking how."

This sort of Islam cannot long endure in the age of modernity:

Modern society, however, is a very different place. People are more individualistic and questioning, and have much more access to diverse views [of which Islamists keep themselves intentionally ignorant] . . . . Questions cannot be answered by platitudes, and ideas cannot be shut down by crude dictates. And those [Islamists] who insist in doing so will only push more people away from the faith . . . [that Islamists] claim to serve.

Akyol warns that continued Islamist domination of Islam will lead to mass secularization. If he's correct, then Islamism faces a dilemma: give up on political power and lose out to liberal Islam or press harder for political control and lose out to a non-Islamic future.

Saudi Arabian Spring

Mohammed bin Salman

Thomas Friedman visited the Arabian peninsula recently to look into its Saudi Arab Spring into the modern world under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly called M.B.S., who tells Friedman he wants to restore a moderate Islam:

Indeed, M.B.S. instructed me: "Do not write that we are 'reinterpreting' Islam - we are 'restoring' Islam to its origins - and our biggest tools are the Prophet's practices and [daily life in] Saudi Arabia before 1979." At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, he argued, there were musical theaters, there was mixing between men and women, there was respect for Christians and Jews in Arabia. "The first commercial judge in Medina was a woman!" So if the Prophet embraced all of this, M.B.S. asked, "Do you mean the Prophet was not a Muslim?"

More power to him, if he can bring about a more tolerant Islam. I'm watching from a tolerably respectable distance. Change will be an achievement even if - to borrow from Wittgenstein - little will be achieved.

Read the entire article, "Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last" (NYT, November 23, 2017).

"Germany must be Islamized!"

Daniela Städter

Google Images

In an article posted in Catholic News (Katholische Nachrichten) on November 14, 2016 by Daniela Städter, "Hidden in the Refugee Centers: Everything Christians Experience" ("Unerkannt in Flüchtlingsheimen: Was Christen alles erleben"), we learn that Muslim refugees far outnumber Christian ones, which is not surprising, but what might surprise some readers is the intention of many Muslim refugees - and their Muslim translators - to Islamize Germany. Here is the German original of a passage in the report, which is based on the experience of a thirty-nine-year-old Eritrean Christian interpreter fluent in both German and Arabic, but who kept her Christian faith a secret, followed by my rough translation in English:

Sicherheitsdienstmitarbeiter und Übersetzer sind ihren Angaben zufolge fast immer Muslime. Sie machen, sagt die 39-Jährige, auf den ersten Blick einen sehr netten Eindruck: "Sie sind zumeist hier aufgewachsen, haben oft studiert, angesehene Berufe, und sie geben sich weltoffen." Doch das ändere sich, sobald sie "unter sich" seien: "Dann zeigen sie ihr wirkliches Gesicht und sagen Sätze wie 'Deutschland muss islamisiert werden'. Sie verachten unser Land und unsere Werte." Die junge Frau ist entsetzt und will es lange nicht wahrhaben. Sie verschweigt weiterhin, dass sie Christin ist, um mehr zu erfahren. Unter anderem besucht sie den Koranunterricht verschiedener Moscheen: "Dort wird purer Hass gegen Andersgläubige gepredigt. Die Kinder bekommen es hier in Deutschland von klein auf beigebracht." Ähnlich sei es in den Flüchtlingsheimen. Sie bekommt mit, wie sich muslimische Jungs weigern, mit Christen zu spielen. Die Übersetzerin versucht zu vermitteln: "Du bist Muslim, er ist Christ. Welchen Unterschied macht das denn?" Die Fünfjährigen antworten ihr: "Mit den Christen spiele ich nicht. Meine Eltern hassen die auch." Die Übersetzerin erschrickt: "Sie sind vor dem Krieg nach Deutschland geflohen und müssten doch froh sein, dass ein christliches Land sie aufnimmt."

Now for my rough translation, which is at times more of a paraphrase based on the context supplied in the original German article:

According to a 39-year-old Christian female interpreter who keeps her Christian faith secret and works with the refugees from Syria, security coworkers and interpreters are almost all Muslim. She says that they make a very nice first impression: "Most of them grew up here, often undertook higher education, work in respected occupations, and present themselves as open-minded." But all that changes as soon as they are "among themselves": "They then show their true face and say things like 'Germany must be Islamized'. They disrespect our country and our values." The young woman was shocked and for a long time couldn't accept it as true. She continues to hide the fact that she is a Christian in order to learn more. Among other things, she visits the Qur'an courses in various mosques: "In those mosques, pure hate is preached against people of other beliefs. Here in Germany, Muslim children get taught that from an early age." It's similar in the refugee shelters. She observes that Muslim boys refuse to play with Christians. She tries to mediate: "You are Muslim, he is Christian. What difference does that make?" The five-year-olds reply: "I don't play with Christians. My parents hate them, too." The interpreter is alarmed: "They fled to Germany from the war and ought to be happy that a Christian country accepts them."

So much for gratitude. I'd heard of this problem through other channels, but I was waiting for a more official report, which this one seems to be.

Mosques and churches side by side?

St. George’s Maronite Cathedral
and
Mohammad al-Amin Mosque in Beirut,
Photo by Tom Heneghan, September 13, 2012

An interesting article by Stephen Heyman, "Designing a New Future for Syria" (NYT, September 1, 2016), tells the story of how the conservative English thinker Roger Scruton came to be mentoring the architect Marwa al-Sabouni according to a plan for restoring Syria. In the course of the article, Heyman notes that in the past:

Mosques and churches sat side by side.

I often come across statements like this one in the course of reading about Muslim-Christian relations. The supposition is that Muslims and Christians can live side by side in peace - which of course they sometimes can - but I wonder if this is the salient point about mosques and churches being located side by side. More likely, I suspect, is that Islam was operating in an Islamist mode and insisting on its dominance by construction of mosques next to churches to keep an eye on Christians and remind them who's in charge.

Something to do with Islam . . .

Maajid Nawaz
Wikipedia

Maajid Nawaz, founder of the counter-extremism think tank known as the Quilliam Foundation, expresses his impatience with non-Muslim public figures who point to Islamist terrorist attacks like the recent atrocity in Nice and say that this has nothing to do with Islam:

In the wake of the Nice attacks people are already saying: "But the terrorist wasn't pious. See! It has nothing to do with Islam." Please stop. Your good intentions towards us Muslims are only making the problem worse. This is as dangerous as saying it is everything to do with Islam.

The Crusaders weren't pious. But they had something to do with Christianity, right? Right? That something was the desire impious religious peasants had for martyrdom and the religious promise of redemption that Pope Urban II gave them. Now switch out white Christians with brown Muslims and kindly cease with this bigotry of low expectations. This has something to do with Islam.

I agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Nice attack had rather quite a lot to do with Islam, which is why I call Islamism "radicalism at the core of Islam." And a jihadist need not have been previously pious, for the act of jihad resulting in martyrdom cleanses from a multitude of sins, a cleansing extended even to distant family members, as the jihadi martyr, the shahid, can intercede on behalf of seventy relatives! But back to Nawaz:

So please stop denying the nature of jihadism. Please stop ignoring the narratives which drive these attacks. Instead of aiding extremists who insist Islam today is perfect, perhaps you should aid us beleaguered reformist Muslims who are attempting to address this crisis within Islam against all the odds. (Maajid Nawaz, "Please stop saying the Nice attacks have nothing to do with Islam," The Telegraph, July 15, 2016)

I'd like to know those narratives, for we need to understand why some Muslims radicalize while others do not.

Shi'ite Cleric Sabah Shabr: "Islam Was Spread by the Sword, So What?!"

Sabah Shabr
Google Images

The Memri report for October 13, 2015, Clip No. 5486, shows Shi'ite Cleric Sabah Shabr proclaiming: "Islam Was Spread by the Sword, So What?!"

Sabah Shabr: Most Muslim countries were conquered violently, by force. Few are the countries conquered any other way. The people of Medina converted to Islam voluntarily. When the Prophet Muhammad made his hijra to the city, Islam was already prevalent there. It was not conquered by force. But Mecca was conquered by force. Iraq was conquered by force, and so were Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and the countries of north Africa. Most Islamic countries were conquered by force . . . . Some may claim that Islam was spread by the sword. That's true. Islam was spread by the sword. So what?! Allah's true religion should be spread by the sword, by force. If you cannot talk people into converting to Islam, they should be made to convert by the sword. Such is the command of Allah. There is no need for all the sycophancy, and all the attempts to appease the Jews and the Christians, by saying: "Islam was not really spread by the sword. We had no other choice" . . . . [It is not that] they had no choice. They conquered the . . . countries by force. This is our duty according to the shari'a. This is the meaning of voluntary Jihad. What does voluntary Jihad mean? That the Islamic army marches on the lands of the infidels, and proposes that they convert to Islam. If they agree to become Muslims - fine. If they refuse, they are told that they should pay the jizya tax, if they are from the People of the Book. If they refuse to pay the jizya, they should be fought. If they are not from the People of the Book, they don't even get a chance to pay the jizya - either they convert to Islam or they are killed. There is nothing wrong with this . . . . [So, let] Islam be spread by the sword. There is nothing wrong with Allah's true religion being spread by the sword. The Christians and the Jews who live in Muslim countries must pay the jizya poll tax. They pay it annually, but the Islamic ruler can tell them to pay it monthly, or every six months. They pay in accordance with their financial capabilities. They cannot live in the lands of the Muslims for free.

Aside from these being the actual words of a Shi'ite cleric, this could easily have been uttered by the Sunni Islamic State! Remember these words: "If you cannot talk people into converting to Islam, they should be made to convert by the sword." In other words, if you can't win an argument rationally, use violence!

Thus Spake Sore Loser!

No Muslim Prayers for Souls of Non-Muslims?

Belgian Imams
Smallmindedness?
Memri

According to a Memri transcription of Clip No. 5418, "Belgian Imams Refuse to Pray for Souls of Non-Muslim Victims of Brussels Attacks" (March 26, 2016). Apparently, to pray for non-Muslims is forbidden by Islamic law (sharia)! But the Council of Belgian Imams were somewhat flexible on this issue, as we see from the summary that Memri provided:

According to the UAE-based Al-Ghad Al-Arabi TV channel, the council of Belgian imams rejected a recent initiative to pray for the souls of the victims of the Brussels terror attacks on the grounds that praying for non-Muslims ran counter to Islamic law. In the report, which aired on March 26, Sheikh Abdelhadi Sewif, Chief Imam of the Great Mosque of Brussels, said that one could get around this by avoiding the word "prayer" and calling it a show of solidarity with the families.

As indicated, here are some excerpts provided by the Al-Ghad Al-Arabi TV channel:

Voice of reporter: Once again, Belgian mosques find themselves in the midst of a controversy, following an initiative by an official institution to hold a prayer for the souls of the victims of the Brussels attacks. This initiative was rejected by the council of imams, on the grounds that this runs counter to the Islamic shari'a,and that such a prayer can be held only for the souls of Muslims.

Sheikh Abdelhadi Sewif, imam of the Great Mosque of Brussels: We cannot pray over the souls of non-Muslims, but if we do this, we don't have to call it a prayer. We can call it something else: "solidarity with the families of the victims." We can stand by them and support them . . .

Imam Mohammad Ghali: There is disagreement about this among the scholars and the public. [Some] say that it is prohibited to pray for the souls of non-Muslims. But since this was a general event, in which Muslims as well as non-Muslims [were hurt], we address all of the victims, and wish them peace, mercy, and health.

This prohibition on prayers for non-Muslims is odd, for I know that many imams raise Christians and Jews up to Allah during Friday prayers. Oh, hold on. That's when radical Imams pray for Allah to curse Christians and Jews and destroy them.

But notice that the Imams got around the prohibition by not calling the ritual a "prayer."

If only Islamic law were ever so flexible . . .

Kamel Daoud: Sexual Misery under Islam

Kamel Daoud
Wikipedia

Kamel Daoud is a columnist for the newspaper Quotidien d’Oran and is author of the novel The Meursault Investigation, a recent response to The Stranger, the famous short novel published in 1942 by Albert Camus. This article of his, "The Sexual Misery of the Arab World," was translated from the French by John Cullen for the New York Times (February 12, 2016). In it, Daoud argues that the Muslim separation of women from men poisons men's minds about sex, about love, about the afterlife, and especially about how to treat women in this quotidian world:

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed . . . . [S]ex is a great paradox in many countries of the Arab world: One acts as though it doesn't exist, and yet it determines everything that's unspoken. Denied, it weighs on the mind by its very concealment . . . . These contradictions create unbearable tensions. Desire has no outlet, no outcome; the couple is no longer a space of intimacy, but a concern of the whole group. The sexual misery that results can descend into absurdity and hysteria . . . . [O]ne hopes to experience love, but the mechanisms of love - encounters, seduction, flirting - are prevented: Women are watched, we obsess over their virginity.

Daoud notes the choice constructed by Muslims in pitting the West against Paradise:

One result is that people fantasize about the trappings of another world: either the West, with its display of immodesty and lust, or the Muslim paradise and its virgins . . . . [For Muslims in Islamic lands, o]rgasms are acceptable only after marriage - and subject to religious diktats that extinguish desire - or after death. Paradise and its virgins are a pet topic of preachers, who present these otherworldly delights as rewards to those who dwell in the lands of sexual misery[, that is, in the lands of Islam]. Dreaming about such prospects, suicide bombers surrender to a terrifying, surrealistic logic: The path to orgasm runs through death, not love . . . . [Now], with the latest influx of migrants [to Europe] from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship . . . with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe . . . . [in] a clash of cultures playing out on the West's very soil . . . . People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.

Such is Daoud's analysis, and it looks rather spot on to me. A Muslim such as Daoud had to be the man to offer this analysis because Muslim men are the problem here, and political correctness bars a Western man from pointing to the depth of Muslim sexism, or bars the Western man if he doesn't want to be accused of 'racism' - as if the religion Islam were a race!

Now that the issue has been broached by a Muslim man, however, someone like me can join in on the discussion without having to be concerned about inviting pee-cee condemnation, for I'm just asking questions about a point made by someone else,

Samuel Helfont on Islam and Islamism

Samuel Helfont

FPRI

Regular readers know that Islam and Islamism are two terms I've often discussed and distinguished, using the rule of thumb that "Islam" is the religion and that "Islamism" is the political use of Islam. This distinction, however, is problematic, as we shall see. But first, let's read what the Islam expert Samuel Helfont offers as his views on "Islam and Islamism: A Primer for Teachers and Students" (FPRI Footnote, Vol. 20, No. 9, August 2015):

Disputes over Islam and Islamism continue to rage in the Islamic World and in Muslim communities in the West. Islamists often refer to themselves simply as Muslims and they claim that those who oppose their ideas also necessarily oppose Islam. They root their ideas in a particular reading of history. If Muhammad combined political and religious authority, then how could Muslims disavow the role of politics in Islam? This is a powerful argument.

Agreed, the fact that Muhammad is a moral exemplar for Muslims makes the distinction between Islam and Islamism problematic and weighs in favor of Islamism as the true Islam, for if Muhammad combined the two roles of religious leader and political leader (not to mention military leader and highest judge), then how can one separate Islam from politics?

Nevertheless, Helfont brings as much nuance to bear against Islamism as he can find in Muslim sources and history, and he thereby provides important information on politics and Islam throughout history.

A Muslim and a Christian were talking . . . but seriously, folks . . .

Navid Kermani and Martin Mosebach
Photo by Julian Baumann
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin

The Catholic journal First Things has published an interview by Tobias Haberl with a Muslim and a Catholic - Navid Kermani and Martin Mosebach, respectively - that the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin first printed in German.

The English translation is by Kevin Gallagher, who rendered the title "'Of Course Religion is First and Foremost a Duty': Navid Kermani and Martin Mosebach on Christianity, Islam, and Art" (January 20, 2016).

The interview is sort of interesting, though I must confess to having skimmed much of the text. I should read the interview more closely, I realize, and try to learn more about the two since they're both successful writers. I did pay closer attention when the topic was visits to mosques and churches, and the interviewer asked the Catholic Mosebach this question:

Do you pray in mosques, Mr. Mosebach?

Mosebach answered:

Naturally.

To which he added, by way of clarification:

Do you know the Jesuit joke? "May one smoke while praying? No. May one pray while smoking? Of course."

This joke alone made my time spent with the article well worth the effort, for me, anyway. Maybe I should read the whole article more closely . . .

Andrew C. McCarthy: "The Problem with Islam . . ."

Google Images

Andrew C. McCarthy tells us that "The Problem with Islam Is Aggressive Scripture, Not Aggressive 'Traditionalism'" (National Review, January 16, 2016):

Islam . . . is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of conquest that was spread by the sword. Moreover, it is not only untrue that jihad refers "mainly" to the individual's internal struggle to live morally; it is also untrue that the Islamic ideal of the moral life is indistinguishable from the Western conception . . . . [Any struggle over the soul of Islam] would be over doctrine, [for] the backwardness and anti-Western hostility . . . [are] function[s] of cultural inhibitions [that] . . . . are direct consequences of Islamic scripture and sharia, the law derived from scripture . . . . [We may want] Islam to be moderate, but its scriptures won't cooperate . . . . Scripture . . . does not [evolve] - not in Islam as taught by over a millennium's worth of scholars and accepted by untold millions of Muslims. Mainstream Islam holds that scripture is immutable. The Koran, the center of Islamic life, is deemed the "uncreated word of Allah," eternal. (See, e.g., Sura 6:115: "The Word of thy Lord doth find its fulfillment in truth and justice: None can change His Words: For He is the one Who heareth and knoweth all.") . . . . Islamic doctrine . . . simply is not moderate. Looked at doctrinally, the challenge for "moderate Islam" is . . . Islam.

McCarthy makes a rather impassioned case. Read it in full on your own to see why McCarthy felt driven to write this article. And ask yourself if he's right that the problem is based on scripture, and that the problem is: Doctrine! Doctrine! Doctrine!

Note that McCarthy's reference to "scripture" in Islam is a reference to the Qur'an, and that's correct, as is his reference to "sharia" as "the law derived from scripture," but he does not refer in his article to hadith (traditions about the Muslim prophet) or sira (biographies of the Muslim prophet), from both of which sharia is also derived.

Make what you will of that.

Jihadi Culture: "a highly seductive subculture"?

Thomas Hegghammer
Website

Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, has written an insightful piece titled "The Soft Power of Militant Jihad" (NYT, December 18, 2015), because Jihadis aren't always fighting. Here's an excerpt:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to the Islamic State, . . . became known in jihadi circles as the Slaughterer[, but few] people in the West are aware that he also went by the nickname He Who Weeps a Lot. Mr. Zarqawi was known for weeping during prayer and when speaking about Muslim women’s suffering under occupation . . . . [This dichotomy helps explain why] tens of thousands of people from around the world [have] chosen to live under the Islamic State's draconian rule and fight under its black flag . . . . To understand this phenomenon, we must recognize that the world of radical Islam is not just death and destruction. It also encompasses fashion, music, poetry, dream interpretation. In short, jihadism offers its adherents a rich cultural universe in which they can immerse themselves . . . . To really understand a community, we need to look at everything its members do. Using autobiographies, videos, blog posts, tweets and defectors’ accounts, I have sought a sense of the cultural dimensions of jihadi activism. What I have discovered is a world of art and emotions. While much of it has parallels in mainstream Muslim culture, these militants have put a radical ideological spin on it[, and as] the West comes to terms with a new and growing threat - horrifically evident in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. - we are not only confronting organizations and doctrines, but also a highly seductive subculture. This is bad news. Governments are much better equipped to take on the Slaughterer than they are He Who Weeps a Lot.

This is why a rival religious subculture often has more success in attracting these radicals, which might explain why the apostate-Muslim atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has suggested that Christianity, with its own "highly seductive subculture," could meet the spiritual needs of Muslims while also providing a rather more peaceful expression of religious fervor.

Alain Finkielkraut on French Laicity . . .

Alain Finkielkraut

Taki's Magazine

In a recent blog entry, Bill Vallicella directed readers' attention to a quote of Alain Finkielkraut that has been translated from the French and posted online by Amy Sterzinger, and I was so taken by the same quote that Bill quotes that I've posted it here:

Laicity is the solution that modern Europe found in order to escape its religious civil wars. But contemporary Europe doesn't take religion seriously enough to know how to stick to this solution. She has exiled faith to the fantastic world of human irreality that the Marxists called "superstructure" thus, precisely through their failure to believe in religion, the representatives of secularism empty laicity of its substance, and swallow, for humanitarian reasons, the demands of its enemies.

Bill offers a cogent explication of Finkielkraut's brilliance in this quote, and my reading follows Bill's.

Basically, France adopted "laicity" - a strict version of secularism - when the French still took religion seriously and knew that believers really do believe what they say they believe. French laicity forced religion out of public life and made it a purely private affair. This was a solution so long as believers and atheists both took religion seriously, but as atheism gradually 'forgot' the radical passion of religion and relegated religious fervor to a Marxist "superstructure," analyses of religions and religious motives grew superficial.

Religious beliefs were now always dismissed as epiphenomena, not to be taken seriously, false representations of some more basic, economic reality, and religiously based upheavals thus came to be seen as rebellion against economic conditions, rebellion with a potential for revolutionary uses, such that a hope for martyrdom and the reward of celestial virgins was never about a divinely promised paradise - which even the Muslims couldn't truly believe in, or so said the atheist analysts - but, rather, was about some misperceived earthly utopia to be realized in the future, through material, not spiritual means.

Big mistake.

Origin of "the religion of peace"

Mark Durie
IJ

We're so often reassured by various experts on Islam - you know, people like George W. Bush back in the day - that Islam is a peaceful religion, and we hear this so often because it so often needs to be said because we so often see Islam implicated in violence, leaving us in doubt about its peaceableness, so we need the reminder day after day or else the counter-evidence might seem too strong, but having heard the phrase so often, necessarily so often, one might wonder where the phrase "the religion of peace" originated.

Well, wonder no more, for Mark Durie knows and tells in his article "Anyone Using The Phrase 'Islam Is A Religion Of Peace' Needs To Read This" (Independent Journal, December 17, 2015), so let's read:

One may well ask how 'the religion of peace' became a brand of Islam, for the phrase cannot be found in the Qur'an, nor in the teachings of Muhammad.

Islam was first called 'the religion of peace' as late as 1930, in the title of a book published in India by Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi. The phrase was slow to take off, but by the 1970s it was appearing more and more frequently in the writings of Muslims for western audiences.

Interesting. For more on this, go to the linked article, which explains that the word "Islam" is more semantically connected to the term for "safety" than the one for "peace." But that meaning turns out less reassuring than one might hope for . . .

Bernie Sanders on Defeating ISIS

Bernie Sanders
Wikipedia

Since Senator Bernie Sanders is still in the running to become the Democratic nominee for president, I took a look at his views on the Islamic State and found quite a bit in his 'socialism' speech, "Democratic Socialism in the United States" (November 19, 2015), which I found on the Sanders website:

[T]he United States must pursue policies to destroy the brutal and barbaric ISIS regime, and to create conditions that prevent fanatical extremist ideologies from flourishing . . . . We must create an organization like NATO to confront the security threats of the 21st century – an organization that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration to defeat the rise of violent extremism and importantly to address the root causes underlying these brutal acts. We must work with our NATO partners, and expand our coalition to include Russia and members of the Arab League . . . . [T]he fight against ISIS is a struggle for the soul of Islam, and countering violent extremism and destroying ISIS must be done primarily by Muslim nations – with the strong support of their global partners . . . . A new and strong coalition of Western powers, Muslim nations, and countries like Russia must come together in a strongly coordinated way to combat ISIS, to seal the borders that fighters are currently flowing across, to share counter-terrorism intelligence, to turn off the spigot of terrorist financing, and to end support for exporting radical ideologies . . . . Wealthy and powerful Muslim nations in the region can no longer sit on the sidelines and expect the United States to do their work for them. As we develop a strongly coordinated effort, we need a commitment from these countries that the fight against ISIS takes precedence over the religious and ideological differences that hamper the kind of cooperation that we desperately need . . . . [O]ur priority must be to defeat ISIS. Nations all over the world . . . must make the destruction of ISIS the highest priority. Nations in the region must commit – that instead of turning a blind eye — they will commit their resources to preventing the free flow of terrorist finances and fighters to Syria and Iraq. We need a commitment that they will counter the violent rhetoric that fuels terrorism – rhetoric that often occurs within their very borders . . . . While individual nations indeed have historic[al] disputes – the U.S. and Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia – the time is now to put aside those differences to work towards a common purpose of destroying ISIS . . . [W]e must work with our partners in Europe, the Gulf states, Africa, and Southeast Asia – all along the way asking the hard questions whether their actions are serving our unified purpose . . . . ISIS must be destroyed . . . . A new and effective coalition must be formed with the Muslim nations leading the effort on the ground, while the United States and other major forces provide the support they need.

Like everyone, Sanders wants to "address the root causes underlying these brutal acts" committed by ISIS, and he seems to understand that these causes are ideological, not economic, for he says that Muslim nations must help to "counter the violent rhetoric that fuels terrorism – rhetoric that often occurs within their very borders." He has no chance of winning the nomination, let alone becoming president, but if he's indicative of which way the Left is turning - toward more responsible views on Islamism - then we may be making some progress in this fight.

But what would Sanders do if Muslim nations don't cooperate because our "Islamism" sounds too much like their "Islam"?

George Packer on "the suburbs of Paris [as] incubators of terrorism"?

George Packer
Wikipedia

My friend Sperwer sent me a very long but interesting article by the American journalist, novelist, and playwright George Packer in the New Yorker, "The Other France: Are the suburbs of Paris incubators of terrorism?" (August 31, 2015). I offer a conversation between a moderate Muslim and a non-Muslim - Ben Ahmed and Valerie Tabet, respectively - over Islam as a factor in the creation of jihadists:

One evening, Ben Ahmed prepared dinner at the house of his next-door neighbor, Valérie Tabet, a widowed piano teacher whose daughter attends the same school as Ben Ahmed's kids. The two families are close. Tabet, who has pale skin and short, dark-blond hair, told me that it’s no longer safe for young children to be out alone on the streets of the 93, and Ben Ahmed has become a kind of father figure to her daughter. While Ben Ahmed poured crêpe batter onto a griddle in the Tabets’ dining room, he and Valérie discussed how someone becomes a terrorist.

Ben Ahmed said, "I have the impression in fact that it's rather simple, how these people can flip from one day to the next."

"It isn't from one day to the next," Tabet said.

"For me, it's a question of people who either are psychologically ill, maybe a little crazy," Ben Ahmed said. "These people are very fragile, and at a given moment they're recruited by people—"

"There's too many jihadis for me to agree with you," Tabet interrupted. "The Kouachi brothers were fragile in their makeup - a lack of bearings, a lack of education, a lack of a vision of life, and later that leads to violence - but I don't agree that they were nuts."

Ben Ahmed said that this wasn't what he meant. In addition to the psychiatric cases, there were the psychologically weak, like the Kouachis: "These people would have got in a fight on the street for nothing, for a parking place." He added, "Coulibaly, he scares me a bit, because his family life was more normal." Somehow, Coulibaly was indoctrinated, and then he found it all too easy to find weapons.

"It's very easy to get them," Tabet agreed. "But there's a lot of people who are made fragile by society, because there's not enough work for everyone, because of social problems and all that. But what I see is that there's a point in common among those people - they're Muslims." She added quickly, "And it's not to point a finger, because I mean the potential terrorists. But the problem for me is what they hear in the mosques, in small groups." She spoke of radical imams preaching hate.

Ben Ahmed said that Tabet was simply repeating what she'd heard in the media.

"But someone indoctrinates them."

"The people who do that are in a network, but not in a network you would call Muslim," Ben Ahmed said. "Not in the mosque." He searched for the name of Coulibaly's recruiter in jail. "Djamel Beghal. He isn't an imam."

"You can't say that there aren't people who use religion to attract these youths."

"You say 'people,' sure, but you also said 'imams.' I'm not saying they don't exist, but you're generalizing from the exception."

"I'm saying there are many reasons, and the point in common is these are young Muslims. And that means something - it means that they're using religion."

Ben Ahmed seemed to be afraid that if he accepted Tabet's view he would end up vindicating the Islamophobes. He couldn't cross that line. The two friends were on the verge of an argument that might inflict lasting hurts.

"Your opinion is interesting," Ben Ahmed said. "The thing is, I’m convinced that this doesn't really happen in the mosques. It's in prison."

"Yes, that's certain," Tabet said.

"And there are people who come to the mosques to talk with some of them and succeed in capturing them, on the side."

"Voilà."

They had found just enough common ground to move on.

An interesting, if unsatisfying conversation. Tabet raised a good point. What the terrorists have in common is 'Islam.' Surely that must mean something. But the common ground shared by Ahmed and Tabet is riven with cracks, and we never quite entirely find out if the suburbs of Paris are "incubators of terrorism."

I'm thus still stuck with the narrow distinction between Islamism and Islam . . .