Who the F*** is Lindsey German to tell me what ideas to love or hate?

The fascist left is replete with illiberal reactionaries like Lindsey German. With Iranians rising against anti-West despots, the leftofascists are being confined to the dust bin of history.

Good post. Nothing I can really disagree with that.

I have personally never said that Islam cannot be reformed. But it is far more difficult for Islam than other religions.

- It is very much a single vision religion, the work of one – deeply flawed – individual.

- Islam arrived fairly late in the day – and its history has been recorded in fair detail since the days of Mohammed. There is an unbroken historical record which makes it difficult for subsequent reformers to re-interpret the words of the original prophet in the way that Jews and Christians do.

- Many of its religious instructions are completely unambiguous.

Probably Sufi style mysticism is the best way to go, personalising the religion and divorcing it from its very explicit prescriptions. But it is no easy task.

We will know progress is being made when the Islamic centres of learning include voices that condemn Jihad and unequal treatment of non-Muslims.

Mohammed, according to his Islamic biographers not only ordered the murder of countless people but actually, according to these Islamic biographies killed numerous people himself. Agreed

If, as it seems to me, your view is that Most Muslims on the planet Earth don’t believe these core tenets of the Islamic faith, then you certainly have the right, indeed the privilege to express such views, well you do here, but I would however suggest you don’t attempt to express such views in any Islamic Country.

Lets say for instance you were in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, accepted by all to be the very core of Islam is it not, which I understand you have to be Muslim to be able to ‘be in’ in the first place, non muslims are not allowed to visit Mecca are they?You stand outside the grand Mosque and say

“I support your right to freedom of religion, your right not to have Islam defamed by the Islamophobes of the western imperialist non muslims, I would like to build a church, here in mecca or indeed anywhere in your Islamic kingdom to show solidarity with you, the Islamic people, because I believe that yours is indeed a religion of peace, no matter what the historical, contemporary actions and words from your leaders and followers would indicate to be a false assertion, oh yes and don’t take the words written in the koran as being true and unalterable, it’s not helping your cause, your self proclaimed message that Islam is a religion of peace, it simply makes such claims look contrived or indeed ahistorical and plainly false to all but the most credulous”.

I know that I am being a bit condescending ermintrude but I am afraid ever increasing numbers of non Islamic people don’t like what they see and read regarding all things Islam, Most intelligent people know that it statistically impossible for all muslims to be Jihadi terrorists but Islam itself does, I am afraid, extoll the virtues of war for the glory of Islam, to say it doesn’t is, as far as I am concerned, is wishful thinking in the extreme and is also a dangerously naive belief in the goodness of our Human species.

Now that is simply MY view, My understanding, My reading of the “facts” as I see them, should I then be condemned as a bigot or accused of racism or banned from commenting simply because my views don’t tally with say yours?
The shouts of racist, bigot, Islamophobe, have, because of the constant, in my view, frivolous use by those on the left, lost and continue to lose the impact, the stigma that is quite rightly attached to the views of people who really do subscribe to such illogical beliefs in their racial or theological supremacy, people who perceive Islam to be a threat may indeed be ‘Islamophobic’ but as far as I am concerned that is not a Phobia it is simply a logical position to take in the face of overwhelming evidence that Islam is indeed a religion which extolls the virtues of fighting and dying for the glory of Allah.

I could,but I cannot be bothered to respond to your latest missive to me. I have made the point I wanted to make.People like you are ruining the comments section of this site. Fortunately,your views on this matter are not given main posting rights here and as I have said, they do not even get an airing in serious neoconservative journals such as Commentary.

You and your small coterie of ideologically aligned comrades on this matter will no doubt continue to infest the comments section of this blog. Due to this, I have largely withdrawn from commenting in many thread of this site.

I now leave this thread as well.

It seems to me Ibn Arabi appears as a near equivalent to Julian of Norwich.

I would no more expect Julian Norwich to provide a guide to Catholic theology and practice in the real world than I would expect Ibn Arabi to provide a guide to Islamic ideology and practice.

Did Ibn Arabi reject Jihad or Jizyah or Shariah or women’s witness counting as half that of a man or slavery?

Unless he did I am not sure how his writings about nebulous communion with God is relevant to what we are talking about?

I’ve got news for you, Nick – most of the world’s Muslims don’t live in Leeds or Bradford.

Indeed they don’t. In addition to the 2,000 British Muslim proto Jihadi cells being tracked by the UK Intelligence services and Special Branch, 250 + Islamic terrorist convictions, the actual and foiled Jihadi attacks by British Muslims committed at home and abroad in the name of Islam over the last few years….. Globally a goodly few self identifying Koranic literalist Muslims, in the name of Islam are alas causing doggy do from to San Francisco all the way East to Sydney. They are informed by specific ideas of Jihad, martyrdom and Islamic dominance contained within Islamic religious texts. This problem is a number of orders of magnitude worse with Islam than with any other superstition.

I’m not making it up and I do not wish it were so.

Most of us, if we’re honest, know this.

No – possibly because this sentence makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

You do realise he provided examples of many occasions where Sufi Islam is actually Islamic in behaviour?

As far as I’m concerned, as soon as any Muslim rejects completely the Koran and everything in it as completely false (and the same with Christians and Religious Jews) then I don’t have a problem with him/her.