The trouble with Islam...

[Nightshade]

The Trouble With Islam
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.

BY TAWFIK HAMID
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled \"What Went Wrong?\" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western \"progressives,\" a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.

But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.

These \"progressives\" frequently cite the need to examine \"root causes.\" In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological \"rootlets\" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the \"end of days.\" The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western \"progressives\" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.

Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered \"moderates.\"

[Ford Prefect]

Not much to complain about there. Other than his using the Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq as evidence of Islamic failing. Been plenty of civil wars between other religious groups. And the list of non mid-eastern Muslim atrocities is a bit weak considering the slaughter of the innocents over the last 50 years that has occurred all over the world propagated by every known religion except maybe the Janes.
Other than that I agree that those who protest the politics of the mid-eastern conflicts too often avoid criticism of the ethical and moral ground occupied by the Muslim side.

[Ford Prefect]

Stupid double post.

[roid]

troll is copypasta

[Ferno]

crusades, inquisition...

[Bet51987]

crusades, inquisition...

Past, present...

Bee

[TIGERassault]

Hmm... TunderBunny makes a new topic...

Predicted summary of this thread.
TB makes a thread about how Islam is bad and doesn't have any proper backing to it. He doesn't post in the thread again.
A few regulars point out the flaws of the post in 5 lines per post.
Roid adds a humerous picture followed by a 5-syllable sentence.
Bettina makes a post about how Islam is satanic and should be eliminated at all costs.
Everyone else has more sense than to even look in this topic.


Edit: Roid, where's your picture? I'm dissapointed in you!

[Dakatsu]

Islam isn't a bad religion, they are just pissed off.

Why?

Because they lack kittens. Any picture you see of Baghdad, Tehran, anywhere, there are no cuddily kittens. I am sure that if we ship over boxes of kittens to those countries, they may prosper, even more than us!

The kitten formula is I=(G+K/10)/(B+K/10)

Good day to all.

[Dakatsu]

OMG Uberpost x1

[Dakatsu]

OMG Uberpost x2

[Will Robinson]

oops

[Will Robinson]

crusades, inquisition...

Past, present...

Bee

Exactly the proper response Bee. And precisely the difference between modern Christianity and todays Islamic culture that some people refuse to acknowledge at all costs.
Are they truely apologists for the islamo-fascists or just knee-jerks that are too busy trying to reject all things conservative or confrontational to realize just how wrong they are? Either way they are part of the problem and in the way of a solution.

[Shoku]

Whenever you have a religion that is created by collecting bits of doctrine from difference sources, and mold it to an ever changing creedo, you will always end up with problems, especially if the convoluted mixture of beliefs becomes your law and your duty. You then become a little less than an individual, as the religion gains more and more control, and is firmly established as the \"truth\" simply because so many have believed it for so long that any dispute is considered ridiculous.

[roid]

okokok

[Krom]

IYAAAA!!! roid turned into a tentacle monster!

[Lothar]

alrighty, cool, tentacled monster plus nobody saying anything different from last thread TB posted =