Negative view of Islam.

This reply is posted in the main section rather than as a comment following the one made by The Guerilla on 3/1/06:
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Thank you for your suggestion. I looked briefly at the first episode of the documentary to which you referred me and look forward to watching all three episodes. I promise you that I will do that.

I must say that my initial impression from even the short portion that I did watch was not good, The film seemed to propagate a false concept of Islam in referring Islam as the "Empire of Faith." I think it is more accurate to say that it is the "Empire of Conquest," at least where one speaks of Islamic areas other than those in Asia and the Pacific.

I will reserve judgment, nonetheless.

You are correct that I have a very negative attitude toward Islam.

This has not always been the case.

In my university days in the early 1960s I was friends with a Muslim gentleman who was most intelligent and not at all given to fanaticism. He had an desire to return to Pakistan and hoped that he would be able to contribute the skills he was learning to better any community he might live in. He mixed freely with non Muslims and was both sophisticated, intelligent, and good natured.

I should say, I don't think he was a fanatic. Not political fanaticism, anyway. He did have extreme views on the issue of status of women. Upon returning from Pakistan with his wife after an arranged marriage, he remarked that he would not have married her if he knew that she had worked for even 15 minutes outside the home. She held a masters degree in chemistry, if my memory serves me.

Still, she seemed to be reasonably free to do as she wished after she arrived (not including working, I assume). Neither he nor she ever returned to Pakistan to live. Whether he retained his earlier affiliation with Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan in later years I do not know.

Nothing I learned from my friend caused me to be suspicious of Islam or to contemplate that there could never be harmony between Islam and the West.

Not a day has gone by since I last saw him but that I was more and more convinced that there is a deep pathology in Arab culture, that Muslim culture in general is not likely to make an effective adaptation to (the best parts of) modernity, and that Muslims are likely to act out a violent psychological drama based on their frustration with being unable to compete on equal terms with the West.

If a camel in Carnak has fleas, it is the fault of the Jews.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has written something that is, so far, the most accurate summary of my views:

No one is saying for a moment that Muslims are violent. Most Muslims live lives like you and me, devoted to their families and attempting to impart proper values to their children. But the collective entity of Islam as represented by those who consistently speak in its name or take to the streets to fight its battles, are violent, and they are the new face of Islam."

Source.

Not only do the fanatics speak in the name of Islam, the moderates of Islam, of which my friend may have been one, have proved to be completely ineffective in opposing the fanatics. They are there, yes, but they are irrelevant.

I further believe that even moderates actively sympathize with the extremists. Minor examples here, here, and here.

Even when that is not the case, moderates who do oppose the fanatics are terribly vulnerable to assassination and beatings. The recently published Manfesto has undoubtedly dramatically increased the danger to those brave souls who signed it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali already must sleep at Dutch military bases and prisons to keep from being killed like Theo van Gogh.

Where were the expressions of outrage from Muslims over that act of naked slaughter? Answer: there was none.

It does not increase my respect for Islam that there is so much doctrinal support for the fanatics who threaten to name any person who deviates slightly from the impenetrable, overly rigid schemes of interpretation in Islamic doctrine a blasphemer, apostate, or polytheist.

I do not know whether Wahhabism is an aberrant doctrine in your eyes but it certainly seems to be ubiquitous and the primus inter pares of doctrines, if not the regnant doctrine, thanks to the egregious Saudi financing of its propagation around the world.

Even so, all schools of interpretation of jurisprudence, ancient or not so ancient, to my knowledge, are adamant that the penalty for apostasy is death. I cannot adequately express my contempt for this evil doctrine that is so wildly inconsistent with concepts of human rights as they have developed in the West in the last 1,000 years. Many non Western nations have approved of the concept of human rights as expressed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights so this concept is not supported only by parochial Westerners.

The sharia also places all powers in the hands of so-called clerics. (I call them "so-called clerics" because they so often seem to act like politicians instead of men of religion. Imam Moktada al-Sadr should more accurately be Brigadier Moktada al-Sadr.) What educated person can look upon the history of theocracy in the world and say it should not be relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history? Yet it is immutably integral to the sharia this very second.

Integral? It is a bedrock principle.

I am mindful, too, as I have said in several places in this blog, of the contempt that the Koran and other Muslim doctrinal sources express for kuffar.

I am also aware of the web site of His Eminence Grand Ayatullah al-Sayyid Ali al-Hussani al-Sistani in Iraq, which site clearly states that I, as a kafir, am no better than excrement.

Similarly, the elegant web site of Witness Pioneer publishes nonsense such as:

Every Muslim personally believes and you too must be surely believing alike, [that] a Muslim's rank is higher than of a Kafir.

Source.

I refuse to ignore such clear expressions of contempt from important religious leaders. Nowhere have I ever read of any Muslim who has renounced the concepts of kuffar as najis, kuffar as haram, kuffar as inferiors to Muslims, or kuffars as being unworthy of friendship with Muslims (Koran, 3:28).

Why? Because this is state of the art Islamic doctrine! And nothing more than a variant of the fundamental Islamic concept of the dhimmi.

Furthermore, the clearly expressed intention of Muslim leaders that Islam shall rule the world and/or kill all the Jews does little to inspire respect. The world saw at least two such madmen in the last century. That is more than enough for the next 1,000 years!

The recent display of "outrage" over the Danish cartoons filled me only with contempt for the foolish or evil people who killed and burned in the process. This was 100% a creation of Muslim leaders. Over nothing. Yes, nothing compared to the offenses of Islam, the conquest, the killing, the plunder, and, now, the raising of terror to an art form.

Why would I not have a negative attitude toward Islam?

Islam must change radically and religious leaders relegated to a suitable role not involving direct participation in either the courts, the legislature, or the executive of any country. Sadly, this is an impossible precondition for the advancement of Muslim countries. Perhaps Asian Islam will find a way out of the thicket of fanaticism, though recent anti-Buddhist killings in Thailand, recent anti-Christian killings in Indonesia, and the long-standing insurrection of the Moros in the Philippines are not causes for optimism.

People who want to live life as though nothing at all has happened since the seventh century are simply deranged and the savagery they employ in the service of their efforts to do so will be resisted to the end. Were it not for oil revenue, such mad schemes would die of starvation.

When Muslims are willing to stop mixing politics with religion I will be happy to return to a more benign view of Islam.

Any non Muslim who still believes Islam is benign as it currently operates in the world is a fool or a traitor to his own kind.