Harry's Place

At this point it is perhaps worth noting that Stephen Gash is National membership secretary of the English Democrats, and has stood for them in local and Parliamentary elections.

A very good article against Anti-Islam bigotry. A pity a sector of the commenters don’t follow suit.

Islamism is a very real threat to our society,

Gash is completely correct. Islam is a very real threat full stop, and, like Nazism, it must be completely and utterly destroyed

Gash refuses to accept the very existence of a moderate Muslim

… as does no less a figure than Recip Erdogan:

“These descriptions ["moderate" Islam] are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Some Muslims who live in the West have certainly “moderated”, but most in Muslim countries would consider them apostate. They are currently moderate because they live in the West – they are somewhat more free of the fear and intimidation they would engender in the local thought police should they live in a Muslim country.

Give them or their more extreme brethren any real power (legal or otherwise), and watch them shrug off such moderation. And even the “moderates” take a very dim view of anyone in their family or community who went as far as openly rejecting Islam. But for our current Zeitgeist of cultural cringe, everyone in Britain would unequivocally condemn such attitudes. Like it or not, Gash has a point.

I was going to comment that the bigoted, simplistic, anti-intellectual and basically psychotic attitudes of Gash and the SIOE so sensibly described and decried by Alex Hitchens are mirrored daily in comments here, but it seems before I even got to note that, two of the most frequent offenders — Morgoth and Alcuin — stepped in and made the point for me. And, i might say, for Hitchens and the BMSD as well. Nicely done, lads.

What a depressing article, but well done for exposing the line between the bigots who believe that all Muslims are extremists and those like the BMSD, like Harry’s Place, who campaign, without bigotry, against Islamist extremists.

Alcuin, quoting Turkey’s Islamist prime-minister doesn’t help. Of course, he doesn’t see a distinction between Islam and Islamist; he’s an Islamist. It doesn’t prove your point that “Gash has a point”, and helps to undermine the BMSD’s position that they can be Muslims and support secular democracy.

The only long-term solution is that the BMSD, and people like them, win the argument against Islamist extremism among Muslims.

“…implies that simply by practicing their religion, Muslims are by definition extremists.”

I’d have more sympathy for him if he aimed his ire at *all* religious twats who are, to one degree or another, lunatics. Whether it’s cuddly, COE, moderate type lunacy or frothing at the mouth, ‘behead the infidels’, extreme type lunacy – it’s still lunacy.

The singling out of Muslims is, I agree, suspicious.

The English Democrats are fucking idiots. I once had a long conversation with their marketing woman who wanted me to do their advertising. Moronic, bigoted and offensive (her, not me). I told her to piss off.

Right, vildechaye.

And the wooly multi-culti appeasement idiots who think that murderous theism, which has been responsible for upwards of a billion deaths of humans and countless untold misery and hatred over the millenia of recorded history, is just tickety-boo, are out in force…

The question to vildechaye, hitchens et al is why they are traitors to the Englightenment and enemies of reason, science and progress?

I did an online interview with Stephen Gash and was shocked to find him stating:

We do not believe in moderate Muslims. We believe there are Muslims and those who want to leave Islam. Some Muslims are more active than others, but all Muslims want sharia law and Islam to rule the world. Moderate Muslims are those who watch non-Muslims being killed, but still say Allah u Akbar when the killing is happening.

Therefore, we obviously oppose Islamists because Islamists are merely Muslims, and Muslims are Islamists.

Those words really surprised me then (September).

However, I thought this comments was inspired:

Is stoning a woman to death for being raped left wing or right wing? Women are just dying to know.

There are fundamental flaws in such a blinkered and narrow interpretation of what Muslims are. I really hope Stephen Gash will take up the offer made by Shaaz Mahboob, but sadly he does not represent himself as a voice of SIOE without consulting Anders Gravers. And I think Gravers is unflinching in his assessment of the group’s aims.

The responses to my questionnaire were sent to Stephen Gash but were answered by the pair, speaking as one.

If SIOE just drew a line between Muslims who get on with their lives and vote, work, screech when they see Simon Cowell on the telly or whatever, and political Muslims/Islamists, his group could be brought into the mainstream and gain some credibility.

After the October 31 London meeting at Piccadilly, I read that Shaaz Mahboob had spoken pleasantly with an English Democrat secretary. If David Boothroyd is right, that may have been Stephen Gash.

Gash told me that SIOE is against homophobia, but if he is involved in English Democrats, there is another set of questions that spring to mind. Previously, the English Democrats fielded arch-homophobe and all round gusset-stain Garry Bushell, in Greenwich and briefly as London mayoral candidate.

I really want Stephen Gash to tread the middle way (excuse the Buddhist flashback) rather than being so intransigent. His comments on CiF are equally uncompromising (the ones that were not deleted, that is).

Adrian Morgan circa 1939:

If Churchill just drew a line between Nazis who get on with their lives and vote, work, screech when they see Vera Lynn on the telly or whatever, and political Nazis, his group could be brought into the mainstream and gain some credibility.

M*o*r*g*o*t*h
22 November 2009, 7:00 pm

The question to vildechaye, hitchens et al is why they are traitors to the Englightenment and enemies of reason, science and progress?
______________
They are not. They support the pluralism and freedom of thought that was brought about by the Enlightenment.

Whereas you seem to be one of those atheists who expect that others’ freedom to let their imaginations believe whatever they choose should be outlawed. All religionists should be treated as heretics and have their freedom of thought suppressed by your distorted and bigoted creed of “rational materialism”.

They are not. They support the pluralism and freedom of thought that was brought about by the Enlightenment.

Wrong. They seek to accommodate the enemies of the Enlightenment.

All religionists should be treated as heretics and have their freedom of thought suppressed by your distorted and bigoted creed of “rational materialism”.

“Rational materialism” brought you the computer you’re typing on. “Rational materialism” brought you electricity. “Rational materialism” brought you antibiotics and made sure you didn’t die before your first birthday in a theocratic cesspit of misery where your mother was nothing but a chattel.

Show some gratitude to “Rational materialism” you ungrateful cur.

“Rational materialism” shows us that 2+2=4. Adrian Morgan would have us think that “2+2=Gawddit!”.

Show some gratitude to “Rational materialism” you ungrateful cur.

Woof!

And maybe have Muslims micro-chipped too, so that the rationalist “powers that be” can always keep an eye on where they are. And how about keeping them all in borstals until they reach 60 and only then let them out on the world when they’re too old to cause much trouble?

All good ideas. Though if they really want to continue with their murderous bronze-age savagery build a wall round Saudi Arabia and let their precious Allah feed them with mana from heaven or something.

A theist (and I also include the collectivist forms such as socialism and communism) cannot be a productive and full member of the human race.

Just for you Morgoth -
http://sioe.wordpress.com/membership-and-donations/
You join up and you can knock SIOE into shape, woolly-minded tolerant liberals as they are.

Sterilisation? That’s a fantastic idea. And maybe have Muslims micro-chipped too, so that the rationalist “powers that be” can always keep an eye on where they are. And how about keeping them all in borstals until they reach 60 and only then let them out on the world when they’re too old to cause much trouble?

I am sure you can really help those soft-as-shite wusses at SIOE to clean up their policies.

And maybe have Muslims micro-chipped too, so that the rationalist “powers that be” can always keep an eye on where they are. And how about keeping them all in borstals until they reach 60 and only then let them out on the world when they’re too old to cause much trouble?

All excellent ideas, yes.

Morgoth, I largely agree with you in relation to religion in general, but recognising what a sustainable solution to the Islamist attack on reason would look like is not being a traitor to the enlightenment.

Saying “One solution, total destruction” on the other hand is almost a bit *religious*

Like any other ideology or religion, Islam does not sail unchanged pure and pristeen through history but instead is simply what the majority of mainstream Muslims define it to be in any generation and in any cultural context.

It follows that the problem isn’t Islam, it’s extremist Muslims and their interpretation of Islam. The BMSD don’t interpret Islam in the same way, so Gash has it exactly backwards, and is in fact supporting the extremists by imposing their interpretation of Islam upon the BMSD as they try to campaign against it.

Morgoth

Muslims, Jews, Socialists, Communists – stick a wall round them and let them starve.

Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes – from another political religion.

Well said Adrian.

Wrong. They seek to accommodate the enemies of the Enlightenment.

Morgorth, you drivelling idiot, let me make it simple for you. One of the great achievements of The Enlightenment was the rule of law, which means you treat people as criminals if they break the law, not because you imagine them hold beliefs you dislike. What YOU think moderate muslims believe is irrelevant, they will be judged by their legality of the actions. I think you’re a fucking loony, but I wouldn’t advocate locking you up unless you were certified by a shrink.

Muslims, Jews, Socialists, Communists – stick a wall round them and let them starve.

Christians, Nazis as well, don’t forget.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. All they have to do is to admit that their murderous irrationality is just that, murderous irrationality. And they can be cured and welcomed back.

Well said Adrian.

You’re really saying “well said” to a Quisling for theism?

Some “progressive” you are. My left toe is more progressive than your entire body.

Morgoth what a delightful person you are. It’s twits like you that make the Laurie Pennys of this world think that HP is a snakepit of violent racism. Read your posts in isolation and she would be right.

Gash by name, gash by nature….

Morgoth, you’re such entertaining contradiction of a poster. Ever thought of becoming a sit-com character, you’d be very funny.

And you seemed in such a good mood last night Morgoth… :)

It still boils down to the old ‘hate Islam, love Muslims’ thing doesn’t it…Gash’s argument is basically that if you consider yourself ‘Muslim’ then by definition you have automatically bought into all the manifold savageries of the Koran and the theocratic Islamic states which infest the world. Not buying that, personally. I’d call the likes of the BMSD ‘C of E’ Muslims – they wish the label but clearly do not truly believe in the tenets their religion espouses. Whereas the HP ‘editorial line appears more the opposite – Islam is a religion of peace, and only the moderates are the real believers.

All that said, I have to add that as I believe I’ve mentioned before, anyone defending Serb butchers like Karadzic just because the majority of his victims were Muslims is a sick c**t. If ever there was a genuinely ‘C of E Muslim’ nation, it was (and fortunately mostly still is) the Bosnian one.

RE: My left toe is more progressive than your entire body.

The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

racism?

Since when is a belief system an inherent biolgical part of someone like skin colour?

Grow the fuck up!

And as for Laurie Penny, she’s an incoherent tosspot of the highest order. And a traitor to her sex at that. “Politics of the Hijab”? What next? “Politics of the Swastika”? “Politics of the KKK White Pointy Hat?”

One of the reasons I chose to be agnostic was that atheists are far too religious for me. Note the anti-god fervour exhibited by Morgoth: Isn’t it more reminiscent of exclusionary religious belief than anything else? And, just like fanatically religious people, he believes that any deviation from his position is heresy. He would have made a grand inquisitor par excellence, torquemada would have nothing on this boy.

Note the anti-god fervour exhibited by Morgoth

Show me the evidence for your sky-fairy friend. Until you have *hard evidence*, that can be tested in a rigourless scientific fashion, you’re just mentally ill.

Morgoth isn’t funny & isn’t clever. He’s an embarrassing troll. Engaging with him is wasting your time. Ignore him.

He also appears to not be able to read. Not only did I state I was agnostic, the discussion isn’t about whether I or anybody else believe in g_d. The only question is whether we tolerate people who do believe in the “sky fairy,” as long as they go about their business and don’t harm anybody else. The so-called Nazi-hater would lock such folks up and throw away the key. Enlightenment values, indeed! By the way, o saviour of the enlightenment, show me one enlightenment author of any merit or repute who agrees with your absurd, reductionist, murderous position? You can’t of course, which is why you didn’t answer my question the first time and keep diverting the topic to my so-called belief in god, notwithstanding i don’t have any. pathetic arguments, really.

Morgoth isn’t funny & isn’t clever. He’s an embarrassing troll. Engaging with him is wasting your time. Ignore him.

Jealously is such an ugly emotion.

I agree with my old mucker DSD on Bosnia completely.

Of course, the so-called “progressives” here were, back then, wholesale behind Hurd the Turd’s “level-killing-field” nonsense.

I hope all you “liberals” are happy you have the deaths of thousands of people at Srebenica on your hands…

Stop trying to change the subject, vildechaye.

YOU are quite happy to tolerate mysogny homophobia, anti-intellectualism, anti-reason, anti-science, luddism and rampant bigotry and backwards savagery.

The question is: WHY?

@KB Player… yeah, but I bet Steve Coogan/Armando Ianucci could get at least 2 series of humour out of his lone internet warrior fundamentalist illiberal aethesist schtich.

oliver
22 November 2009, 8:31 pm

@KB Player… yeah, but I bet Steve Coogan/Armando Ianucci could get at least 2 series of humour out of his lone internet warrior fundamentalist illiberal aethesist schtich.
_____________
I expect for all the rabid swamp-beast bluster on the internet, in real life, he probably always has his jasmine-scented tea from bone china cups, loves looking at wisteria in the spring and helps little old ladies across the road. And in real life he is probably (methinks Morgoth protesteth too much) an……EPISCOPALIAN!

And, P.S. vildechaye I believe I was voted 3rd favourite person to have an entertaining evening and HP-threesome with, recently. After Wardytron and Old Peculiar, of course.

Sucks to be you, eh?

Toodlepip!

What’s wrong with Wisteria? Its a real cock to prune properly, but it provides a heck of a lot of bang for your buck if you want maximum floral goodness on a south-facing wall.

Though I’d always go for clematis in preference, as long as you can keep the roots cool.

P.S. stay away from Russian Vine (Fallopia baldschuanica) – its a right beast of a plant and worthless for small gardens.

P.P.S. what’s wrong with jasmine-scented tea either? Though if you try and feed me cucumber-sandwiches I’ll stab you. I’m with samuel johnson on the usefulness (or lack thereof) of that accursed vegetable. I’d rather convert to Islam than eat a cucumber sandwich.

Though if you try and feed me cucumber-sandwiches I’ll stab you.

OK, I’ll back away slowly, if you’ll gently lay that dangerous butter-knife down onto the chintz table cloth where I can see it…….

RE: Stop trying to change the subject, vildechaye. YOU are quite happy to tolerate mysogny homophobia, anti-intellectualism, anti-reason, anti-science, luddism and rampant bigotry and backwards savagery.
The question is: WHY?

1-It’s you who keeps changing the subject, not me. I don’t tolerate Islamism, hence i don’t tolerate anti-reason and everything else in your list above. The subject is whether people of faith who don’t act against the interest of humanity should be tolerated, or lumped in with the extremists, caged and exterminated (unless of course they see the errors of their ways and renounce their beliefs completely). Like most sane people, I believe the former, whereas you seem to believe the latter, with an attitude of “moral” superiority to boot. Your position is highly amusing, which may be why you “placed” in the HP contest. But i suspect it’s not a funny “haha” but funny as in “whack job.” Now go on, be a good little lad and change the subject to my own religious beliefs. That’s really funny too, since I don’t have any.
Now, while it may very well suck to be me, I still think I’ll avoid that “entertaining” evening if it involves having anything to do with the likes of a neo-nazi like you. Yes, neo nazi. Anybody who advocates caging people simply because of their personal beliefs merits being called that.

My left toe is more progressive than your entire body.

Then hand it the computer and stop talking out of your arse.

The subject is whether people of faith who don’t act against the interest of humanity should be tolerated

Faith is against the interest of humanity full stop.

Yes, neo nazi. Anybody who advocates caging people simply because of their personal beliefs merits being called that.

That sound you hear is the whooshing noise of goalposts being shifted!

Theism of all sorts has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of humans. The accurate translation of that statement by vildechaye would be “I don’t like you, thus you’re a neo-nazi!”.

P.S. funny sort of “neo-nazi” that would lock up and possibly indeed shoot every single other “Neo-nazi” that ever existed, eh?

@ Morgoth – try and see the movie “Thundercrack” if you can. There are things that Marion Eaton does with a peeled cucumber that would have given Samuel Johnson apoplexy.

OK, I’ll back away slowly, if you’ll gently lay that dangerous butter-knife down onto the chintz table cloth where I can see it…….

Good grief. Chintz? Just how middle-class do you think I am?

P.S. Graham, now that was funny. Nice one.

Apropos Thundercrack, P.S. Adrian, sometime I’ll tell you the story about the time I was followed round Sainsbury’s by store staff because I was picking out vegetables for non-eating purposes.

“Muslims for Secular Democracy”.

A huge number of Muslims, including very many ostensibly moderate
ones, would call that a contradiction in terms.

Actually, it’s you saying “you don’t agree with everything i say, therefore you’re a traitor to the englightenment.”

And I reiterate: anybody who advocates caging entire groups of people not for their actions but simply because they have religious beliefs — note: not because, how did you put it, “I dont like you” — is behaving like a Nazi.

You are very wrong. Secular Muslims? You are kidding. Vegetarians who only eat fish? You are kidding.

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Darwin

Jews are out to dominate the world, Islam is a religion of peace that accommodates all other religions and there is no compulsion in Islam:

These is some quotes from ‘moderate’ Muslims interviewed by the BBC for the World Service:

It is obligatory on Muslims that they set up an Islamic state, an independent and completely Islamic state. Iran is the main candidate for what an Islamic state would look like. Muslims are feeling both spiritually and psychologically that they have to realise the Caliphate again.
The way forward for Islam is the way back to Sharia.

Is the objective of re-instating the Caliphate which would entail conquest and conversion of the rest of the world an obligation on Muslims and is that what it will take? Answers were unanimous….Oh yes indeed…we have the concept of Jihad…striving to spread Islam in the cause of god by word and sword. So you will find every true Muslim is always a missionary. So we try to convert the world. That is our objective…one state, one religion, one Umma.

Islam splits the world in two…Islamic countries…the abode of peace and non-Islamic…abode of war…so all non-Islamic countries are potentially at war with Islam.
Now it is true that we have a state of war with the world, but it is a war of ideology. If you have a mission to convert the world then you are at war with all the ideologies which are opposed to you. If you take the idea of war in terms of converting people to the Islamic faith then that’s a tradition in Islam.

We have an obligation to pass on the message of what we believe to other people. In any non-Muslim country we feel that we should be allowed to spread these beliefs freely. If they forbade us then we would have to declare a state of Jihad against that country.
But……Christians, as People of the Book, can live in Muslim countries as long as they do not proselytise or become missionaries.

Jews and Christians…they have both perverted the scriptures entrusted to them for their own purposes….they deviated from their own scriptures and stopped following the actual commandments of God and changed their religions.

There can scarcely be a more serious offence in Islam than shirk….associating something with God that is not God as the Muslims claim Christians do with the Holy Trinity. The elevation of Christ to the position of a God is something that we cannot accept, and we do not accept it. Christ is a human being.

The Koran tells us that Christ did not die on the Cross, nor are we born with original sin….that means Christians are a living contradiction of Islam….living an account of human nature which is false.

I would be very happy as a Muslim living in England to have half the rights that the Copts have in Egypt.

What would you do supposing you are in a majority in some country where non-Muslims were living?….Here we are on sticky ground. I don’t think I can really answer that….not because I think we would have to kill them all but there must be some way it would be dealt with…..perhaps they need to pay a special tax to continue to live their own way. I don’t know how free the would be to practise their religion or what efforts there would be to convert them or to rectify their belief in a way that is acceptable to us. It is our duty to set a limit to what people are saying adversely about our creator in the way they worship him.

We have a tradition of reverent scepticism in Islam.
Any person who leaves the house of Islam and then actively pursues an ideological enmity towards Islam, his action would be defined as treason in Islamic law. There is no distinction between religious and political authority in Islam so treason and apostasy are the same crime.

Dream on. Islam will eat you alive.

I think Anjem Choudary’s internet character “alan stoddart” has outted himself….

Gash and co support Osama bin Laden’s interpretation of Islam. But most of Britain’s one million or so Muslims are interested in raising a family, having a good income, going on holiday once or twice a year, staying on the right side of the law, etc – just like the rest of us. Yes, most have some backward opinions on things like homosexuals that are incompatible with a liberal society, but violent homophobia in the UK is not related to Islam. Irrespective of some socially conservative opinions, Muslims don’t have a nefarious agenda and 99.9999% of them don’t want to blow themselves up. Anyone who has Muslim friends knows that they are ‘normal’ and anyone who has had any exposure to Muslim communities knows how diverse their attitudes are – just like the rest of society, in fact. I suspect that Gash, the BNP and other bigots wish they would – and sometimes try to incite them to do so – to kick off some war of civilisations. I find arguing with the likes of Alcuin and Morgoth and others a tedious waste of time.

Alan Stoddart

Recently when I saw your comments on New Statesman, they were rational and I supported them.

What you are quoting here are the views of the brainwashed. I don’t want to repeat what I wrote on another thread here, but I have to.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/22/AR2006052201152.html

Sadly, in Indonesia recently Din Syamsuddin of the Muhammadiyah supported the legal oppression of Ahmadi Muslims. In 2005 when a grouping of Ulamas had declared that only orthodox interpretations of Islam were valid (which had led to attacks on Ahmadis in Java and Lombok) Gus Dur had been a vociferous opponent of the fatwa.

What I feel is that Islam has had the same laws and rules since way back, but it was only with the rise of the Iranian revolution and more particularly after the Feb 14 1989 fatwa by Khomeini against Salman Rushdie that British citizens who were radical fundamentalists, who believed in killing Rushdie, showed themselves for the first time.

Such radicalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon. OK – it has precedents from the Salafists of 19th century Egypt, who felt their world was in a crisis.

And for many Muslims I think that there is a cultural crisis going on – one force pulling towards conformity, orthodoxy, and another towards liberalism.

Now, more than any other time, we must find common ground with the non-fanatical anti-Salafist Muslims. If we do not and exclude them, even though they may share all of our political values, we risk pushing them into extremism, an extremism forged from bitterness and resentments.

Screw government initiatives – these have given a platform for MCB representatives, including extremists and supporters of terrorism. Since at least 2005, Shaaz Mahboob has been consistently arguing the same points, about sexular democracy and being Muslim being entirely compatible.

Now, we need to draw people into the centre, and then real discussions can begin. And real discussion/dialogue cannot happen if we stereotype and vilify those who are trying to capture that middle ground.

“Surely they could just pretend to renounce their faith, gain Gash’s favour and then subvert his cause from the inside?”

Not if their aim is to present to the non-muslim a ‘moderate Islam’.

Ahem – “sexular democracy” was a typo. Honestly.

“Rational materialism” shows us that 2+2=4. Adrian Morgan would have us think that “2+2=Gawddit!”.

And there was me thinking that 2+2=4 was a necessary truth, one that would be so whatever the time or place, whether one lived in a “rational materialist”, or even enlightened society, or not.

On the other hand, “2+2=Gawddit” would be at best a contingent truth – rather like the number of planets circling the Sun, or even the Enlightenment, in that it might not have been so.

Incidentally, the contingency of an irrational materialism is not beyond the realms of reason or possibility. As, perhaps, Morgoth – not so admirably – has demonstrated.

Morgoth: “Theism of all sorts has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of humans.”

That would include the deaths caused by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot would it? They weren’t just accidental atheists either. They were specifically and violently anti-religion as were the nutcases in the West (like Sartre and Co) who supported them.

There is a very courageous and progressive Muslim group in Indonesia, the Jaringan Islam Liberal, who have a very interesting English-language website, here:

http://islamlib.com/en/

Hey * come down, be a little person again. There is no clean sheet of paper (on which to plan). Non acceptance of your proposition that 20% of global population is humanity’s enemy, is not appeasement. On the contrary it recognizes universal existential vulnerability. All the Muslims I know and encounter every day are by and large, good folk.

Thank you, Hugh (amongst others on this thread), for your decent common humanity.

Adrian Morgan

Now, we need to draw people into the centre, and then real discussions can begin. And real discussion/dialogue cannot happen if we stereotype and vilify those who are trying to capture that middle ground.

I think this is an excellent point and well made. I agree entirely.

DSD: Gash’s argument is basically that if you consider yourself ‘Muslim’ then by definition you have automatically bought into all the manifold savageries of the Koran

What’s wrong with that assessment? If you buy into the Koran, you buy into all of it – it’s the unalterable word of God.

———

It’s funny to note that those who think they have a nuanced view of this comples and multi-layered subject are the very same who have not studied the koran to any degree.

Rather than see for themselves just what the religion is and is accepted to be by the vast majority of its adherents and its political establishment, they prefer to fill in the blanks with their own shallow prejudices about the nature of ‘religion’ in general, iun complete ignorance of the particular when it comes to Islam.

Hate to break it to you fellows, but rather than you persuading gthe likes of the SIOE that your view is the accurate and informed one, it will – eventually – be the other way around.

And to encourage you towards the truth, whatever that may be, may i suggest you all, as a bare minimum first step, go out and purchase a copy of the koran and begin to read it and around it, using islamic sources (tafsirs etc).

It’s really not the most difficult thing to do is it in the age of the internet, especially when you profess to pontificate about ‘what Islam is’. And what’s the worst that can happen? You might even find something (though I doubt it) that backs up your position.

peter piper

If you buy into the Koran, you buy into all of it – it’s the unalterable word of God.

It is rather ironic that you buy into this position – a position that is constantly pushed by Islamists. I would argue that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between Islam and Islamism.

Internally, it is clear that the Qur’an alters itself. Islam even has a set of rules about such abrogations.

One of the tricks played by Islamism, in its passionate attempt to conflate the Islamic faith with itself, is to confuse the notion of the divine inspiration of the Qur’an with its entirely mundane interpretation.

In all, I think we need to be very careful here. There is no doubt (at least in my mind) that Islam requires a massive reformation; but the making of sweeping statements of the order that “the Qur;an is divine and thus unalterable” are neither sustainable from the point of view of proper (and calm) inspection of the text itself; nor from the point of view of simple common sense.

I wonder whether Gash thinks that the thousands of Muslims protesting in the streets of Tehran in recent months against Ahmadinejad and in many cases directly against the Supreme Leader are all putting on a show for the non-Muslim work to trick us all. And what of the million Bangladeshis, most of whom were Muslim, who died in the war to liberate themselves from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to create a secular democratic republic?

Fantastic points, Dan.

“I find arguing with the likes of Alcuin and Morgoth and others a tedious waste of time.”

That is it in a Leftist nutcase, sorry, sorry “nutshell”.

“Islam” is not a dangerous political ideology strapped in the intellectual straitjacket of religion, it is not intent on converting the planet to its murderous antihuman, anti-”progress” theology and it is a religion of peace,Stalin was not a genocidal maniac, Pot was a really nice guy, Mao was really a father christmas sort of guy, Mohammed wasn’t really a warlord who used a new religion to mask his hatred and egomania and religion is not just a childish fantasy for those who cannot accept their own mortality.

Anyone one who disagrees is simply “a tedious waste of time..”

Oh yes and a bigot, a nazi, a right wing loon, Islamophobe and every other insult ever dreamed up by the idiot left to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

Bet if it was called “stop the Americanization of Europe” the Left would be marching shoulder to shoulder with this Gash person, wouldn’t they?

Well they do have form marching with bigots and racists and homophobes and women haters and freedom haters and terrorist supporting jew hating “freedom fighters” don’t they?

Or like the winter of discontent, was the “we are all Hamas now” march merely a figment of the right wing imagination.

The Left, they are their worst own enemy.

I would actually tend to agree with you, AOS. People do have genuine and heartfelt concerns about Islam – especially in the modern and peculiar and hateful form of Islamism. We do need to address these concerns.

Principally, we need to show people that there are Muslims who are willing to stand up for democratic and secular values – who are willing and able to confront the ageless bigotries that are too often passed over as givens in the Islamic faith.

We, as Muslims, need to openly and out-loud and bloody rude shout out our own opposition to the homophobia, misogyny, racism (in particular, the anti-Semitism) and all-round bigotry that blights the Islamic faith (and the lives of too many Muslims, as well as non-Muslims). We, Muslims, need to be brave and to recall that we are enjoined to fight for justice and truth and progress and against the dying of the light.

If we do not, then we have no-one else to blame apart from ourselves for the perception that Islam is a faith of bigots, haters and fools.

“If you buy into the Koran, you buy into all of it – it’s the unalterable word of God.” PP

“It is rather ironic that you buy into this position – a position that is constantly pushed by Islamists.” Abu Faris

———-

It’s basic and fundamental to Islam Faris. Abrogation is where a later verse supercedes an earlier contradictory one. Peaceful verses in the Koran generally come from the earlier Meccan period and are superceded by the later jihadi verses.

You can’t use the existence of Koranic abrogation to try and argue that none of it means anything.

It is a tool to help you work out what the Koran DOES say, not to argue that it probably means what the abrogated (ie peaceful) verses say.

I ask you!

“especially in the modern and peculiar and hateful form of Islamism.”

Again, wrong. Islamism is not modern. Islam was political at its inception and throughout its history. There was a brief time when it had faded from view, between the end of the first world war and the almost immediate resurgence with the writings of Sayeed Qutb and the emergence of the muslim brotherhood, but that’s it. 80 years or so.

And yet here we have people affecting to ‘inform’ us islamism is a modern development.

So, you are a moderate Muslim? Precisely which parts of the Holy Koran do you not believe?

Peter piper

Thanks for the reply.

I think you have misinterpreted (!) my point about abrogation.

You point outr the distinction between Makkan and Medinan chapters. My point was that the Qur’an itself reveals itself to be organic – it changed as time passed.

This might cause some confusion for people who have a simplistic notion of divine omniscience, or omnipotence: surely the Big One would have got it right first time around!

I am not sure if that is an especially useful avenue to pursue (not everyone takes such an interest in the fine details of the Divine powers); however, the notion that the Qur’an is divine in more than its inspiration is certainly a human (mundane and non-divine) construct. The text is certainly full of double-backs, abrogations and reversals (as you concede). What is vital is that we do not fall into the trap of allowing an Islamist interpretation to represent the multiple interpretations that Muslims over the last nearly 1400 years have placed upon the Qur’an in their struggle to understand what was meant and how it is relevant to today.

I am not affecting to provide you with anything other than an interpretation that differs from yours, peter piper.

I think it is a shame that you cannot take time to be concerned about the close identities between your interpretation and the interpretations of Islamism – a trend, or cult, that you rightly otherwise oppose.

AOS: I hate to break it to you, but many of the folks who don’t want to tar all muslims with the Islamist brush are not of the “left.” They are, rather, of the “reasonable,” “sensible,” “unbigoted,” etc., irrespective of where they fall on the left-right political spectrum. Pity you’re too blinded by ideology to see that.

“We, as Muslims, need to openly and out-loud and bloody rude shout out our own opposition to the homophobia, misogyny, racism (in particular, the anti-Semitism) and all-round bigotry that blights the Islamic faith (and the lives of too many Muslims, as well as non-Muslims).”

But many have. There has been condemnation of anti-semitism, there have been Muslims who have said that while homosexuality may be seen as un-Islamic that violent attacks cannot be condoned and I think it is fairly well established among the Muslim clergy (and at the sermons I’ve attended, this has been emphasised to the congregation) that British law must be respected and obeyed. The trouble is that for extreme opponents of Islam, there’s nothing Muslims can do or say to change their minds. They prefer to listen to the rants of Anjem Choudhury,a marginal figure who cannot muster more than a couple of dozen fanatics on his demonstrations. The majority of Muslims are just not interested in politics or even religious debate. They go to prayers to get together with friends and get away from the workplace and family, in the same way as non-Muslims may go to the pub. They are so far removed from any ideology that they feel completely distant from all these demonstrations about their religion.

Nodrog

So, you are a moderate Muslim? Precisely which parts of the Holy Koran do you not believe?

A perfectly reasonable question.

I would suggest that it is not so much a matter of belief as interpretation.

Clearly, I am not comfortable with aspects of the Qur’an. As little as (I should imagine) moderate (or modern) Christians are happy about those sections of the Gospels which explicitly blame the Jews for the death of Christ – or perhaps many Jews are unconcerned by the violence sometimes carried within their Holy Texts.

No, there is not the soaring moral beauty of parts of the Jewish Scriptures, or the vast and timeless values encapsulated in the teachings of Jesus as a moral judge – the Qur’an is an intrinsically very difficult book. It makes me think. It makes me wonder. It makes me grapple with issues (including the language in which the Qur’an sometimes articulates very important, still pressing issues).

You want to know what I reject? It is very simple – hate. Our capacity to devalue and reduce each other. And not just in the Qur’an.

Dan

The majority of Muslims are just not interested in politics or even religious debate. They go to prayers to get together with friends and get away from the workplace and family, in the same way as non-Muslims may go to the pub. They are so far removed from any ideology that they feel completely distant from all these demonstrations about their religion.

These are fair and true observations.

That would include the deaths caused by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot would it? They weren’t just accidental atheists either. They were specifically and violently anti-religion as were the nutcases in the West (like Sartre and Co) who supported them.

Mao and Pol Pot were theists. Their deities were Marx, not Yahweh. Same thing, spelled differently.

Abu Faris
22 November 2009, 10:27 pm

I am not affecting to provide you with anything other than an interpretation that differs from yours, peter piper.

———-

Surely you cannot seriously believe – or expect anyone else to – that Islamism is a recent phenomenon and implicitly a ‘perversion’ of the ‘true’ Islam?

“The text is certainly full of double-backs, abrogations and reversals (as you concede).” I don’t CONCEDE because I have never disagreed with that part of the argument, in fact it forms part of mine. Of course the message of the Koran changed during the currency of Mohammed’s lifetime – specifically it became more strident, political and warlike as Mohammed gained political ascendancy in the Arabian peninsula.

Thereafter, its message was interpreted until the closure of the gates of itjihad (interpretation/exegesis), when the tafsirs claimed to codify it in the 12th and 13th centuries. ‘There is no changing the word of God’ and ‘Allah knows best’ are the familiar repeated refrains.

“We, as Muslims, need to openly and out-loud and bloody rude shout out our own opposition to the homophobia, misogyny, racism (in particular, the anti-Semitism) and all-round bigotry that blights the Islamic faith (and the lives of too many Muslims, as well as non-Muslims).”

Listen Faris, I’m not going to patronise you… Why don’t you just leave that primitive, extremely bigoted and harmful belief system instead of trying to twist it into something palatable? I mean, what’s to like?

“We, as Muslims, need to openly and out-loud and bloody rude shout out our own opposition to the homophobia, misogyny, racism (in particular, the anti-Semitism) and all-round bigotry that blights the Islamic faith (and the lives of too many Muslims, as well as non-Muslims). We, Muslims, need to be brave and to recall that we are enjoined to fight for justice and truth and progress and against the dying of the light.”

Indeed Mr Faris, I agree 100%.

I am an Atheist, I believe in my ‘unbelief’ as strongly as any religious person believes in their ‘God’.

I don’t care if someone wants to believe in a creator, so long as it doesn’t encroach into my unbelief, each to their own up to a point, that point being that it doesn’t threaten my way of life, I don’t know you Mr Faris but I am certain you are a gentleman and as such I am loathe to criticize muslims such as yourself but unfortunately for all of us, Islam the religion is perceived by literally millions of people on this planet as an existential threat, it is a fact, the lefts refusal to accept this and even worse their embracing of people who are supporters of this murderous whabbi type political ideology is simply pouring petrol onto the fire.

Its the Lefts hypocrisy that irks me, their ideological bigotry is blinding them to reality, the reality being that millions of the worlds muslims support the ideology of the Bin Laden type muslims, simply saying these millions are not real muslims isn’t going to cut the mustard.

As far as Pakistan is concerned al qaeda and the taliban have been there for years now, I feel that people such as myself are entitled to ask the question, what took them so long to act against these apostates of Islam, if it’s cartoons or books or teddy bears then the Islamic world becomes outraged but murderous maniacs killing in the name of Islam and there is what appears to be a snails pace of reaction.

“If we do not, then we have no-one else to blame apart from ourselves for the perception that Islam is a faith of bigots, haters and fools.”

I think you could also some on the Left to that “blame” list.

I hope people such as yourself prevail Mr faris, I really do.

You want to know what I reject? It is very simple – hate. Our capacity to devalue and reduce each other. And not just in the Qur’an.

————–

So you concede there is hate in the Koran. You also say – surprisingly for a muslim – and my apologies if i have misunderstood you here, that you believe it to be man made?

Assuming then you don’t believe in its having come direct from God, and having admitted a laerge part of it is predicated on hatred for and a wish to subjugate the Other, why believe in it or follow at all?

peter piper

It is a fairly well acknowledged fact that Islamism and Islam are distinct concepts. One does not have to like either to concede the distinction.

And writing of “concede”…

I don’t CONCEDE because I have never disagreed with that part of the argument, in fact it forms part of mine.

That is what “concede” means in the context, peter piper. So we are agreeing with each other over something over which I had already conceded we were agreeing.

The term “Allah knows best” (in Persian, Khoda hafiz, for example) has a distinct meaning from the one you want. In Arabic, it is strongly connected to the phrase “insh’allah” – God Willing. It reflects upon the partiality and imperfection of human knowledge.

Listen Faris, I’m not going to patronise you…

So, please do not.

Incidentally, “Faris’ is my son’s name. “Abu” means “father [of]“.

Perhaps, we should leave it there.

Islam as an ideology may threaten some, but Muslims as people have basic rights as citizens, rights to be treated as equals and not be vilified.

The actions of a few political Muslims and genuine extremist fanatics, combined with the ridiculous tokenism and partiality of this government, have created an environment where schools, councils, libraries and government departments have engaged in wholesale appeasement – not to “Muslims” and not to “Islam”, but to Islamism.

And consequently all Muslims have become labelled as potential fanatics. Even that silly bovine creature Jacqui Smith, when she banned Geert Wilders, did so because she was accepting a stereotype that Muslims were potentially violent and uncontrollable.

I hate seeing this country having its democratic values bypassed by undemocratic acts of tokenism. I despise the idiots in schools who patronisingly think that they have a right to think “for” Muslims and censor and ban things, “just in case” Muslims might get offended. e.g. changing Roald Dahl’s “Three Little Pigs” into Three Little Puppies”, calling Christmas “Winterval” etc.

Those actions by stupid white middle class kaffir morons, who do so like colonialists considering the needs of the “childlike native” with no consultation, have not only helped to destroy our country’s integrity, but have cast a massive tree trunk onto the rails of social progress.

Muslims have been typecast as either demanding of changes that they never bloody asked for, on account of these patronising racist do-gooders like Jacqui Smith, school teachers who force kids to write out the Shahada as a bloody hand-writing exercise. They think they are being “inclusive” but they are trivialising and demeaning real Muslims, and acting for them like they are incapable of asking for things themselves.

If they would stop and consider – a lifetime vow of commitment to a higher authority (of any faith) should never be tivialised to the point of a ***king handwriting exercise. That is not showing respect or “inclusion” – that is pissing on Muslims.

Muslims are citizens, and they have rights as citizens, and deserve no privileges.

Those Muslims who do share our culture’s goals are the silent unheard minority, and the bloody patronising tits who enact social engineering make common UK non-Muslims feel that those Muslims who should be our neighbours are mistrusted, seen as plotters, seen as intruders – even when they were born here, pay tax, and contribute to the community.

Just because a minority of Muslim Brotherhood-influenced and Jamaat-e-Islami influenced manipulators from the MCB have been running around claiming to be community “leaders” and have pushed a pliable and directionless political elite into conforming to their plans and suggestions.

F*** community leaders – they are always self-appointed turds. I worked for several in Hackney in the 1980s, and they did Sweet Fanny Addams for the communities they claimed to represent.

In a democracy, we elect our leaders.

We have a complete mess in Britain, and the actions of the stupid patronising appeasers have done more damage to the Muslims of this country than any Islamists have. These appeasers have made many Muslims run around playing victim – like Shabina Begum who demanded Denbigh High school allowed her to cover herself up rather than wear a school uniform, and was supported in her legal battles by Cherie Blair. Or Bushra Noah who decided she had the right to sue a hair stylist who did not employ her because she refused to show her own hair under a hijab.

The appeasers – far more worryingly 0 have created a situation where Muslims have become vilified, and when you are vilified you are less likely to want to fit in. This patronising society and government has pushed numerous ordinary young Muslims into extremism.

And those who still want to claim that all Muslims are Islamists or of one type are doing the same bloody thing.

It must stop. Let us treat each other as equals under the same law – and then we can work together to “out” the real extremists.

peter piper

Assuming then you don’t believe in its having come direct from God, and having admitted a laerge part of it is predicated on hatred for and a wish to subjugate the Other, why believe in it or follow at all?

I think you have fundamentally misunderstood the claims I was making.

“Islam as an ideology may threaten some, but Muslims as people have basic rights as citizens, rights to be treated as equals and not be vilified.”

They have exactly the same rights as anyone else, and maybe considerably more in practice given our earnest attempts to show how tolerant we are of it.

And they have no more right not to be vilified than any other member of a nasty backward racist ideology. While Islam does not differentiate in terms of race, it does consider itself a ‘people’ – the Ummah. And it considers those outside of itself – the Kuffar – as being a filthy ignorant people to be made war on and subjugated.

Thanks, Anaximanders other sandal -

Always one of my favourite pre-Socratic philosophers, incidentally.

“As far as Pakistan is concerned al qaeda and the taliban have been there for years now, I feel that people such as myself are entitled to ask the question, what took them so long to act against these apostates of Islam”

You are quick to blame “the Left” – from what you describe, the SWP rump and a few oddballs from the left of the Labour party – for Islamism. But don’t you think that there should be some acknowledge that Britain’s role in the partition of India with the invention of Pakistan and the US’s role in shoring up the Pakistani military to create the proto-Taliban groups that helped spawn Al-Qaeda had some role to play? The “Left” has had little role to play in the geopolitical games in South Asia. Islamism is a monster of the modern world, not of the Quran. It is a product of imperialism, social and economic backwardness and the chaotic and corrupt leadership in the Muslim world.

Abu Faris
22 November 2009, 11:00 pm

Thanks, Anaximanders other sandal -

Always one of my favourite pre-Socratic philosophers, incidentally.
__________
One of the first people to describe evolution of higher animals from fish – but sadly only as a philosophical exercise, and unable to back it up with scientific evidence.

Dan

Islamism is a monster of the modern world, not of the Quran.

Quite. I agree with that.

It is a product of imperialism, social and economic backwardness and the chaotic and corrupt leadership in the Muslim world.

Yes, to quite a large extent. However, and (in a very limited way) to agree with peter piper here, Islamism is also a product of definite authoritarian strands in traditional Islam itself. Perhaps the analogy with individually inert substances that, bought together, become explosive might serve (rather elliptically) motivate what I mean here.

Adrian Morgan

Always a pleasure to meet a Welshman educated in the ways of philosophy

:)

Diolch

Abu Faris, great posts

“Islamism is a monster of the modern world, not of the Quran. It is a product of imperialism, social and economic backwardness and the chaotic and corrupt leadership in the Muslim world.”

That is what the Left thinks, that is what the Left always thinks and that is the problem, for the left everything is the fault of “imperialism” Western imperialism that is, no mention of Islamic imperialism or the imperialism of any other civilizations, no everything is down to “western imperialism”.

Why are the most fanatical Islamic maniacs always well educated? Doesn’t really fit with the poor uneducated backwardness hypothesis, does it?

I think the left are wrong, maybe I have read different history books but as far as I am concerned their analysis is wrong.

Adrian Morgan, a very cogent description of the current state of play.

One thing however, “It must stop. Let us treat each other as equals under the same law – and then we can work together to “out” the real extremists.”

What if some people don’t want to live under the same law, what do you do? Deport them? Lock them up? Expose them and then what?

Thanks, tevya.

“Islamism is also a product of definite authoritarian strands in traditional Islam itself”

Well, traditionally Shi’ism has advised against the involvement of religious clergy in politics, yet we have the Islamic Republic of Iran. I think it’s when any religion asserts itself in the political sphere is when it gets problemmatic. Islam is not unique. Some of the worst Sinhalese chauvinists in Sri Lanka are Buddhist monks and Hindu chauvinists slaughtered 2,000 Muslims not so long ago in Gujarat, some of them armed with trishals. We should all, both religious and non-religious, be standing up for secularism and the strict exclusion of religion from public life.

Mrs AoS has just given me a final warning, if I don’t at least suspend my “love affair” with Harry’s Place and take her to an exotic tropical island for a while then she will go by herself to some exotic tropical island and start her own “love affair”.

As much as I like HPs it is not really that difficult a decision.

Keep up the good work HPs, you are the voice of reason.

P.S. It must be an Island without the internet, not sure I will cope but what the mythical hell, a man has to do what is wife tells him to do.

See you.

Well, traditionally Shi’ism has advised against the involvement of religious clergy in politics, yet we have the Islamic Republic of Iran. I think it’s when any religion asserts itself in the political sphere is when it gets problemmatic. Islam is not unique.

I agree completely. In terms of (Twelver/Imami) Shi’a Islam, the arguments continue between those who reject as bid’a (harmful innovation) Khomeini’s construct of the “rule of the jurist” (and that includes followers of the late Ayatollah as-Sistani) and those who support the same.

Shi’a Islamism has, to underscore, my earlier point, its roots in definite trends in Usuli interpretations of Twelver beliefs. Ironically – but perhaps unsurprisingly (given that Islamism is quintessentially a politically interested religious ideology), Usuli theo-political views emerged in support of the monarchic regime in 18th – 19th Century Iran. As I wrote above, one cannot (and should not) shear modern Islamism from definite germs in earlier, authoritarian, tendencies in Islam.

I agree entirely that if any religion intrudes into the realm political then problems arise. That is a principle reason why I am a secularist.

For Tevya:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032012/

Anaximanders other sandal

No. You must not leave HP!

AOS wrote:

“What if some people don’t want to live under the same law, what do you do? Deport them? Lock them up? Expose them and then what?”

I am not sure if invoking acts of treason or sedition would work – this would create martyrs.

However, for some who argue for the state to be overthrown while living off benefits – their benefits should be removed. And those who plan for their kids to become suicide bombers – as with the Irish-born Al Muhajiroun member recently mentioned in the Times – then they should perhaps have their kids taken away.

Someone like Abu Izzadeen who in 2005 declared that he did not “want to die in my bed like an old woman” and declared that he wanted to see his feet in one place and his head in another, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz – then that is not rational behaviour.

If anyone else said such a thing, they would be placed in a looney bin. And many fanatical Islamists like Izzadeen do display signs of mental disorder. Seriously people who think they are – like Annie Wilkes in “Misery” – only going to be judged by a higher power, are borderline lunatics.

Many Islamist extremists are misfits – seriously disturbed individuals. Omar Bakri Mohammed deliberately chose youths with drug problems or those who had been rejected by their families – all the better to exploit their alienation and hone it to a pitch of near-lunacy.

Treating socially aberrant behaviour for what it is, rather than turning a blind eye and justifying that position by thinking one is being “culturally tolerant” would set a good example, and may act as a deterrent.

Give Anjem Choudary lots of Olanzapine and several injections of Haloperidol in his arse, and he would become a model citizen in no time.

AOS: Please read what I wrote, not what you want to read. I also said that corrupt leadership in the Muslim world has helped create Islamic extremism. But to suggest that the problem of Islamic extremism in South Asia has nothing to do with the involvement of the British and Americans in creating Pakistan, reinforcing the power of its military establishment and encouraging its involvement in the Afghan Mujahideen is just plain moronic. The British opted for the Islamic Republic, we armed it and encouraged it. The House of Al-Saud, which has overseen the propagation of Wahhabist ideology, owes its power to the British who portioned out the Arabian Peninsular to its favourite tribal leaders. And we continue to arm it, to the extent that we are prepared to be corrupted by it ostensibly ‘for British jobs’ although really for BAe profits (after a tiny commission for the politicians they employ). The only role the “Left” has played is impotently trudging around the streets with placards a couple of times a year in ‘anti-imperial solidarity’ with the very forces that imperialism encouraged and set in motion. If you want to blame anyone, blame the establishment not some spotty students from the SWP.

The trouble with Islamism is that there are at least two main strands. The Wahibi one may be in some senses “traditional” (at least in the sense that it goes back to 1802) but Al Banna’s (and Qutb’s) muslim brotherhood (influenced by the Nazis and Stalinism) most certainly is not.

That is a very interesting point, Graham. It also sets a considerable pride (?) of cats amongst a huge flock of pigeons!

Well you know I have always liked cats.

Of course I am waiting for the argument that says imperialism was also responsible for nazism – then we will know where we are and where we are going.

Graham
22 November 2009, 11:38 pm

The trouble with Islamism is that there are at least two main strands. The Wahibi one may be in some senses “traditional” (at least in the sense that it goes back to 1802) but Al Banna’s (and Qutb’s) muslim brotherhood (influenced by the Nazis and Stalinism) most certainly is not.
___________

As Dan stated, the British set up Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, who had conquered all of “Saudi” Arabia by Sept 22, 1932. The Al-Saud had taken in Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, after the irate inhabitants of Medina and Mecca had chucked him out for being a nasty fanatic. He in turn, had been influenced by Ibn Taymiyyah. If Wahhab had not been taken in by the Al Saud’s in their date plantations, and if the British had not taken Abdul-Aziz’s side, Wahhabism would never have become the official religion of Arabia.

And on Hassan al-Banna, he founded the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in 1927, before Nazism. And originally the MB acted as a social group for youths, only becoming fully political during the war and afterwards, especially when the state of Israel was founded in 1958. Then, for the first time, the MB was involved in bombing campaigns at home, and sending fighters to Transjordan/Israel to confront Irgun/Haganah.

Someone like Abu Izzadeen who in 2005 declared that he did not “want to die in my bed like an old woman” and declared that he wanted to see his feet in one place and his head in another, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz – then that is not rational behaviour.

And thinking there’s a giant sky fairy who will punish you if you eat a bacon sandwich is rational behaviour?

LOL (cats)

Graham,

As I am sure you are already apprised:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

One of my favourite sites -
http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl

And I am aware that Israel was founded in 1948, not 1958.

And thinking there’s a giant sky fairy who will punish you if you eat a bacon sandwich is rational behaviour?

Perhaps not.
But under current law, and Sectioning a person under the Mental Health Act, the criterion of whether a person is likely to harm him/herself or to harm others is the one used.

A wannabe suicide bomber ticks both boxes.

And on Hassan al-Banna, he founded the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in 1927 before nazism

I think you will find what became the Nazi party got going in 1919. Al Banna was a great admirer of them I believe letters from him to Hitler and Mussolini still exist.

Ibn Taymiyyah

One of my pet hates.

But under current law,

Current Law is clearly not adequate then

Not just an admirer, Graham. Al-Ikhwaan (MB) in Egypt actively worked for the Nazis during WWII. More than one Axis spy was uncovered (especially in the dark days before el-Alamein) amongst their ranks.

Often the response to the vulgar anti-imperialists of the extreme left is a denial that any contemporary problems are rooted in the actions of imperial powers that were short-sighted, naive, self-interested and/or manipulative. To this day, the British government regards Al-Saud as an ally that it can work for British interests, when this tribe arguably represents a greater danger than the Pashtuns of South Waziristan. Get real. Britain is part of the problem, not because of a large and largely placid domestic Muslim population but directly due to the way in which foreign policy has been conceived for the last century.

Indeed Abu. Even before the war Al Banna had gone a little overboard in his sympathies for the Brown Shirts (mind you he also liked the Boy Scouts and the YMCA) but as my claim is merely that his movement were a modern creation with western influences, I think any of those will do.

*thinks of getting pet cat – but all her are the colour of the sand and have very big ears*

“These comments are shameful. BMSD are working very hard, often at their own personal risk, to promote anti-Islamism amongst Muslims.”

Why do they have to work so hard? And why do they have to take any personal risk?

Surely, in an overwhelmingly moderate islamic population, there is no risk to take, and precious little work to do.

Often the response to the vulgar anti-imperialists of the extreme left is a denial that any contemporary problems are rooted in the actions of imperial powers that were short-sighted, naive, self-interested and/or manipulative.

True. I always blame me grandma when I buy a drink. I never met her but she was certainly short-sighted, naive, self-interested and manipulative so it must be her fault.

directly due to the way in which foreign policy has been conceived for the last century.

No. Indirectly, perhaps; and foreign policy has not been a seamless sameness over the last 25 years, let alone a century. In fact, it is often an near anarchic bloody mess of sectional and conflicting interests.

I like a cat to have fairly big ears. Cats with small ears look like Guinea pigs impersonating bulldogs.

“but Al Banna’s (and Qutb’s) muslim brotherhood (influenced by the Nazis and Stalinism) most certainly is not.”

…a new way of pursuing the same goals

Abu Faris
22 November 2009, 11:59 pm

Ibn Taymiyyah

One of my pet hates.
________________
Strange to think that Ibn Taymiyyah considered himself to be a Sufi. And also Tamerlane the Great of Uzbekistan, who used to leave towers of rotting skulls outside the gates of the cities he pillaged, was also a Sufi.

And @ Graham – you are right. I apologise.

These are the cats once mummified by Pharaohs and the like. Sandy, with big ears and very bright. I am keen on them.

Like any other ideology or religion, Islam does not sail unchanged pure and pristeen through history but instead is simply what the majority of mainstream Muslims define it to be in any generation and in any cultural context.

It follows that the problem isn’t Islam, it’s extremist Muslims and their interpretation of Islam

The problem with flat Earthers, is that they believe the Earth to be flat, it’s fuck all to do with ‘interpretation’. Islam IS Koranic literalism – by definition, with the attendant problems of re-proofing writ large in blood since the 7th century.

We didn’t get all touchy feely and look at ‘moderating’ folk’s Flat Earthism because we were terrified of them chopping our heads off and blowing us up. Flat Earthism just became completely ridiculous.

We must stop being cowardy-cowardy-custard and tell Muslims unequivocally, in clear, and often, that Islam is total and utter shiite, really nasty shiite at that…and they should just stop doing it!

Thank you for your input, Nick.

He’s a bloody imperialist, I tell you, Adrian. They only got big ears because they were colonially oppressed. It’s bloody obvious!

I am most certainly the Mrs Slocombe of Harry’s Place.

Graham
23 November 2009, 12:09 am

I like a cat to have fairly big ears. Cats with small ears look like Guinea pigs impersonating bulldogs.
_____________
Please sir!

Graham’s saying RACIST things about cats!

Enough of your pussy, Graham!

:)

Meaning “cat” – naturally.

During the Napoleonic wars the serried ranks of infantry would be sitting ducks for sharpshooting riflemen firing from beyond musket range. They would therefore be protected by a forward screen of highly mobile skirmishers to keep enemy snipers at a distance.
People like Abu Faris, Muslims who are the very epitome of sweetness, light and reason, perform much the same function on behalf of the rest of the umma. Their versions of an ideal Islam would be anathematised by the scholars of el Azar and Qom, and would probably get them killed if they pronounced them too loudly in any Muslim country. It’s essentially charlatanism on their part to claim to speak for any but a disorganised and politically impotent group within the Muslim world. They do, however, perform the function of creating among those infidels who make the effort of enquiring on the subject, feelings of at least some benevolence towards the religion of the sword. The Islamic canonical texts are toxic. The example of the religion’s founder (regarded as the touchstone of human moral excellence for all time – and that’s official) is appalling.
Anyone who has signed off on the shahada is inevitably beyond redemption as regards the possibility of their living in a state of equality and mutual tolerance on an indefinite time basis with those of other faiths or of none. The implications of this for a Europe with a growing Muslim demographic presence might therefore be the cause of some alarm: people like Faris pere carry out the task (whether consciously or unconsciously doesn’t really matter) of keeping these concerns dampened down. Mohammed found it expedient to make (comparatively) nice noises until he got some real power.

We must stop being cowardy-cowardy-custard and tell Muslims unequivocally, in clear, and often, that Islam is total and utter shiite, really nasty shiite at that…and they should just stop doing it!

I cannot. I want to see Islam adapt and move on, and reform the parts that are violent and warlike.

If you look at the Koran the most violent passages were placed at the start. The beautiful poetic parts were dumped at the end by Abu Bakr.

The arrangement of the Koran is not the order in which it was revealed. If the words came from Allah, then it was political action by Abu Bakr that caused the book to be assembled in its current order, and not a decision by Allah.

Bakr spent most of his 27 as Caliph months fighting backsliders who had apostasised after Mohammed’s death, and I am sure that this background (The Ridda Wars or Wars of Apostasy) informed why the warlike verses were placed at the start of the book.

wally,

Their versions of an ideal Islam would be anathematised by the scholars of el Azar and Qom, and would probably get them killed if they pronounced them too loudly in any Muslim country.

I write (quite extensively – click my name, above), from a Muslim country, as it happens. If it gets me shot, that would be a shame – however what must be said must be said.

I do not doubt your honesty because of your beliefs. Please do not doubt mine – they are at least as heartfelt as yours.

Thanks.

Adrian: I seem to remember you previously mentioning Connaught Waters. I’m in Loughton – are you anywhere near?

The arrangement of the Koran is not the order in which it was revealed.

Quite true. It is organised so that it moves from longest section (surah) to shortest, with no regard for time of revelation.

Perhaps accidentally this means that some of the more stunningly beautiful (both in terms of Arabic language and moral import) are actually towards the end of the Qur’an (I would, for example recommend Surat ul-’aSr, one of my favourites).

Indeed, the various verses (ayat) within the section (surah) may themselves come from different times. It’s a pickle – as all religious texts are, in my (admittedly) limited experience of the same.

My translation of a surah:

By the dying of the day’s light!

Truly, we are lost,

Save those who believe and do good deeds, and recommend one another to the truth and abstain from all kinds of evil deeds and recommend to one another patience.

Dan
23 November 2009, 12:35 am

Adrian: I seem to remember you previously mentioning Connaught Waters. I’m in Loughton – are you anywhere near?
_________
Well-remembered. I used to live in Stamford Hill and then Clapton, but I frequently used to go to Epping Forest to enjoy nature. As it states in Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge up there, Engels once said that Epping Forest was, for the working people of East London what Brighton was for the upper classes.

Sadly I no longer live there – I had to give up everything I had in London in 1998 when my mother developed Alzheimers. I couldn’t see her chucked in a home so I moved to the wilds of Gloucestershire. I looked after her until February this year when she died.

I hope you are well after your loss, Adrian.

*thinks of getting pet cat – but all her are the colour of the sand and have very big ears*

mmmmm… cats.

I have two fuzzy overlords of my own (actually technically my missus’s). Say what you want about the mass murdering paedophile warlord gangster Mohammed, at least he was kind to cats.

As a spot of exegesis (and returning to my point about interpretation) – consider this phrase from the surah I translated, above:

Save those who believe…

An Islamist will want this to mean: “those who believe in Islam”. Yet, cannot it mean “those who believe that moral value should prevail”; or, still, “those that believe that we can be better than we have so far proven to be”, without the overall thrust and sense of this piece of writing failing?

What I am arguing is that Islam needs to develop a similar sense of the richness of its own Scripture. I got trained how to exercise so over Jewish and Christian texts. I suppose I cannot help bringing the same to the Islamic texts. It seems to me they deserve at least as much as the crude exegeses I might provide.

And here is something else: God moves in mysterious ways, we are told. Nothing more mysterious as ourselves, I do reflect.

Adrian: Shame you are not nearby. Loughton is a difficult place to find people who can hold an intelligent conversation.

Indeed, Morgoth. In fact, he nicknamed one of his first followers, “The Father of the Kitten” – Abu Hurairah.

There is a Hadith that a woman is in Hell because – instead of letting a cat be free to eat insects (ick!) – she tied it up until it starved. Mohammed apparently said that it was all right to drink from the other side of a bowl that a cat had drunk from.

I have seen what parts of himself that my cat washes, and – much as I love him – I would never let him share my drinks.

And @ Abu – thank you. I am fine, but I found out that my mother did not value me highly in the will. My sister’s family – who had hardly seen her during her illness, were the main beneficiaries. My mother left more to my brother-in-law than myself. So that is a big mess…..

My masters, Harvey, Claudius, and Charlotte the harlot (who has settled down a lot nowadays) have a couple of questions.

——-

“These comments are shameful. BMSD are working very hard, often at their own personal risk, to promote anti-Islamism amongst Muslims.”

Why do they have to work so hard? And why do they have to take any personal risk?

Surely, in an overwhelmingly moderate islamic population, there is no risk to take, and precious little work to do.

——–

Surely such an avowedly peaceful population would present no risk, and incubate no terrorists. We wouldn’t even be talking about this.

Adrian: If it makes any difference, my 95 year old grandmother is absolutely vile to my mother as a result of dementia. She moved to a nursing home in Belgium where some family live and ever since has been embarrassingly nasty to my mother whenever she visits for absolutely no reason. The human brain may be the most complex thing in the known universe, but it doesn’t behave rationally when it misfires and causes an emotional mess.

It is not that SIOE do not understand the claimed distinction between Muslims and Islamism, it is very clear from their website that they do not believe that one actually exists at all.

That is a viewpoint that, whilst anathema to many of those on the left, is one that is yet to be proved or disproved. Certainly there is plenty of evidence to suggest that when it comes to Jew hatred in particular it is often hard to distinguish the views of the alleged extremists from the alleged moderates.

Monty

Surely, in an overwhelmingly moderate islamic population, there is no risk to take, and precious little work to do.

I agree, Monty. Money for old rope, then.

On the other hand, convincing those who assume that regardless of how many hoops of fire through which non-Islamist Muslims may jump, they are all practising taqiyya, our work is surely cut out. As I am sure you will agree.

when it comes to Jew hatred in particular it is often hard to distinguish the views of the alleged extremists from the alleged moderates.

And emphases should be placed on the phrase alleged moderates here.

There should be no compromise with anti-Semites, of whatever stripe or faith.

To Abu Faris, The Wise, The Emollient.
‘Save those who believe and do good deeds’ like flying a 757 into a skyscraper; like beheading captives; like stoning young women to death; like hanging homosexuals from cranes.
Yes, we know the meaning of ‘good deeds’.

Nodrog

Yes, we know the meaning of ‘good deeds’.

Are you sure? That is, rather, the point.

Assumptions of a cut-and-dried order rather strike me as exactly the sort of thing within which Islamists do engage.

It always strikes me as rather sadly amusing how the very worst enemies of Islamism mirror their appalling cut-and-dried, back-and-white certainties and simplifications of things.

I assume that “good deeds” means exactly that.

Please call me naive, at the very worst.

“I cannot. I want to see Islam adapt and move on, and reform the parts that are violent and warlike.”

It will not, just as nazism didn’t. It is on a collision course with the rest of the world, much as we would wish it otherwise.

I cannot help feeling, peter piper, that you are rather keen on such a collision – to be frank.

Well thank you everyone for a great and stimulating conversation – I must respond to the call of my bed.Thanks Abu, Graham, Dan, Morgoth et alia. Talk soon.

My masters, Harvey, Claudius, and Charlotte the harlot (who has settled down a lot nowadays) have a couple of questions.

Ours are Mithras and Clause. They’re almost 10, big fat and lazy (he said out of earshot of them). They’re currently downstairs on a windowsill hogging a radiator. We had a third, Avalon, but she passed away a few years ago.

Abu Faris:

“On the other hand, convincing those who assume that regardless of how many hoops of fire through which non-Islamist Muslims may jump, they are all practising taqiyya, our work is surely cut out. As I am sure you will agree.”

Sorry but I don’t agree.

You are facing criticism which is entirely rational, from the outsiders. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that the criticism is warranted in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Here in the western world, we want to see a popular evidence based rationale for pacific islam as a personal spiritual moral code, respectful of dissent and apostasy. We have not found it. There is no such constituency.

We have found a handful of muslims who abhor islamism. I am glad you are one of them. But you don’t get to carry the others.

I cannot. I want to see Islam adapt and move on, and reform the parts that are violent and warlike.

So many ‘liberals’ of various hues right from the Gallowasque faux liberals to the Kosher, David T types of this World, bend over backwards defending something they don’t personally think is true. They are so condescending in their attempted social engineering. Because they don’t think Muslims can cope with being told in clear, that these erstwhile ‘Liberal’ supporters actually think Islamic beliefs are a crock of shiite.

Wake up folks Islam isn’t true – in any shape or form, be it Koranic Literalism, faux moderate or kosher moderates…all of it involves belief in incredible supernatural realms.

Now lots of people believe in shit that clearly isn’t true in any meaningful sense of the word. But of all the un-trueisms commonly believed – alternative medicine, alien abductions, astrology, wicca, lay lines and all the other religions, Islam is right up there in the league of most dangerous and nasty.

It shouldn’t be encouraged, it shouldn’t be tolerated any more than Flat Earthism.

peter piper

Enjoining good means promoting, consolidating and expanding the Islamic state and implementing sharia, God’s law, a ‘gift for all mankind’.

No, it does not, peter piper. It means (simply) enjoining that which is morally correct.

Without wishing to come across as glib, if you were to make the Testament of Faith, you might have a glowing career in the Muslim Brotherhood or Hizb ut-Tahrir with views such as yours!

“Save those who believe and do good deeds, and recommend one another to the truth”

‘Enjoining good’ – amr-bil-maroof – is one of Islam’s biggest problems, which means it is necessarily Islamist. Enjoining good means promoting, consolidating and expanding the Islamic state and implementing sharia, God’s law, a ‘gift for all mankind’.

Thanks for the response, Monty.

Clearly, I am not going to agree with your pessimistic evaluation of an entire faith community.

I think that may be the point: to emphasise that you are dealing not with simply a “faith”, but with a living community of its Believers.

Now, I agree – Muslims are faced with a mountain of criticism – and it would be wrong to argue that even some of it was without cause, or was irrational.

You write:

Here in the western world, we want to see a popular evidence based rationale for pacific islam as a personal spiritual moral code, respectful of dissent and apostasy. We have not found it. There is no such constituency.

I think this is untrue, with respect. I think you are moving to such a position yourself. You latterly argue:

We have found a handful of muslims who abhor islamism. I am glad you are one of them.

Now, what you consequently write is of importance:

But you don’t get to carry the others.

My response would be, if the door – however weighty – shifted for me, then surely there is the chance it will shift for others too.

I hope, I pray, I have faith it will be so,

Let is be so.

Thanks for the response, Monty.

Clearly, I am not going to agree with your pessimistic evaluation of an entire faith community.

I think that may be the point: to emphasise that you are dealing not with simply a “faith”, but with a living community of its Believers.

Now, I agree – Muslims are faced with a mountain of criticism – and it would be wrong to argue that even some of it was without cause, or was irrational.

You write:

Here in the western world, we want to see a popular evidence based rationale for pacific islam as a personal spiritual moral code, respectful of dissent and apostasy. We have not found it. There is no such constituency.

I think this is untrue, with respect. I think you are moving to such a position yourself. You latterly argue:

We have found a handful of muslims who abhor islamism. I am glad you are one of them.

Now, what you consequently write is of importance:

But you don’t get to carry the others.

My response would be, if the door – however weighty – shifted for me, then surely there is the chance it will shift for others too.

I hope, I pray, I have faith it will be so,

Let is be so.

{It appears, peter piper, that our comments have become mixed up. I hope you can follow me}

Not sure why that double-posted. Apologies.

BMSD are working very hard, often at their own personal risk, to promote anti-Islamism amongst Muslims.

Stop right there. Consider that assertion. Answer this one question: from whom are they at risk?

Now here’s another question. Are there any Christians at risk from promoting anti-Christianism? Jews from promoting anti-Judaism-ism? Hindus from promoting anti Hinduism-ism?

Why has Islam got an -ism, when none of the others have? Notice, by the way, that no Muslims self-identify as Islamists. And isn’t self-identification one of the laws of the left.

Islamism is a fiction, pure and simple. It is wishful thinking on the part of gullible Westerners, who kid themselves. The problem is Islam. Most Muslims in the west are apathetic or ignorant, but all Muslims are Islam-positive, and any Muslim can get full-blown Islam at any time for any reason.

Abu Faris: you sound terribly nice. What muslim country are you in, by the way? Would you be punished if you made public your views on the immutable Koran, or would they lead to a lively discussion in the press or tv etc? Do you honor Muhammad as the Perfect Man and the Model for all Human Behaviour? Sharia prescribes death for those who criticize the Prophet; what is your interpretation of this incident from His life:
“A raiding party led by Zayd set out against Umm in Ramadan. During it, Umm suffered a cruel death. Zyad tied her legs with rope and then tied her between two camels until they split her in two. She was a very old woman. Then they brought Umm’s daughter and Abdallah to the Messenger. Umm’s daughter belonged to Salamah who had captured her. Muhammad asked Salamah for her, and Salamah gave her to him.” Tabari VIII:96? Thanks.

Stephen Gash may be quite extreme, but he is not so bad. He is driven by fear, not hate. This is an important distinction. Furthermore, despite his fears he is open to talk and accepts those who disagree with him.

The cold hard reality is that if we foster a *much bigger* moderate Muslim movement in the UK, then the ‘right’ will no longer have such a following.

We have much more important fish to fry than SIOE, who are incidentally against the far more dangerous BNP (and affiliated groups).

In other words, stop complaining about groups like SIOE, and start listening to the fundamental reason they exist: A lack of a significant, powerful and mainstream *truly* moderate (not relatively moderate) Muslim organisation which openly and unequivocally denounces Islamists, terrorism and repression all conducted in the name of their religion.

If you don’t want groups like SIOE to exist, solve the problem of the lack of moderates.

M*o*r*g*o*t*h
As for thought police, we have been there, done that and seen the consequences. It’s history now. Some of us have learn’t something from it. Let’s not go back there again.

I don’t have time to read all these comments, but I do want to say about the first few who seemed to be saying that the BMSD are really closeted apostates:

Well of course! And how do you expect to end sectarianism if you don’t support those who are secularizing (or representing secularization within) the Muslim community?

Ok, maybe there is no room in Islamic dogma for democracy tolerance and peace, so what? People WANT democracy tolerance and peace, so are you going to help the people who make a way for Muslims to support these things that or are you going to denounce them?

Dan

I wonder whether Gash thinks that the thousands of Muslims protesting in the streets of Tehran in recent months against Ahmadinejad

Why is it impressive for Iranian Muslims to protest their own treatment? It is impressive when a society protests not in its own interest, but in the interest of its minorities. How many protests have there been in Tehran against Persians’ murderous treatment of Azeris, Baluchis, and Bahai? In fact, when has any Muslim country had popular demonstrations to protest the tretment of minorities?

And what of the million Bangladeshis, most of whom were Muslim, who died in the war to liberate themselves from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to create a secular democratic republic?

Are you hallucinatng? Bangladesh, secular? democratic? Bwahahahaha!
http://www.opinionjournal.com/wsj/?id=110009088

Edward Stone, that’s incredibly depressing. Bangladesh has learned nothign from the war of independence/genocide

I haven’t read all these comments and apologise for probably repeating what many have said. Muslims are endlessly being criticised for not standing up to Islamist extremists. Now some are doing just this – and they are being criticised as hypocrites or told they are not *real* Muslims.

Haven’t time to read all the replies. I ask “Who is moderate Muslim?” My answer is that it depends on the situation in which you expect a moderate or neutral response.

Many Muslims don’t want to implement Shariah in the UK – but then wouldn’t exactly go out of their way to stop it (some will)

Then I wonder how many “moderate Muslims” will utter “fucking Jews” under their breath.

“Moderate”, to me, depends on the scenario.

Ok, maybe there is no room in Islamic dogma for democracy tolerance and peace, so what? People WANT democracy tolerance and peace, so are you going to help the people who make a way for Muslims to support these things that or are you going to denounce them?

As long as they claim to be Muslims, and don’t reject the quran and Mo as the perfect example, they should at least have to explain how all these things doctrinally fit within a honest and mainstream interpretation of Islam. They should not be lauded for supporting secularism, if their support is based on a distorted history of “Islamic tolerance”. If someone claims to support secularism and humanism, and his only way of justifying it is going through white lies and historical revisionism, he is dishonest and likely not on our side.
True Islamic reformation is laudable , but reformation should be based on an honest assessment of reality and history not on white lies and deception. I very much doubt that you’ll find more than a handful of “secular” Muslims, who can pass the honesty test. If they aren’t 100 % honest about history, doctrine and Mo’s example, they aren’t likely to convince their fellow Muslims of anything.

What is happening here is the working out of a world historical moment. Islam, traditionally defined by community as much as it was ever by theology (Islam is not a single faith and like Judaism and Christianity has had for long ‘internal’ problems) is being pressured by the impact of technological advances which have altered the relationship between people and the world. In myriad ways westerners do not live the same kind of lives of even recent ancestor’s, which has almost entirely been the result of structural change brought about by technology.

Under pressure from the spread of these transformed relationships internationally, Islamists seek to re-build the House of Islam to protect ‘ancient values’ as if electromagnetism had not been explored and developed and flying was left to birds. This is impossible and even where it holds sway, tribalism and violence are necessary to maintain exclusion. No developed society, ones where a concept of individuality is a necessary component of existence is possible under these circumstances. Islamists see the solution to this problem much as Puritans once did. Salvation in denial.

The contradictions are manifold and for those in transitional societies or western polities, near schizophrenic.

I believe I was voted 3rd favourite person to have an entertaining evening and HP-threesome with, recently. After Wardytron and Old Peculiar, of course

I wouldn’t be too pleased, it’s not as if the competition’s all that fierce. I mean, so long as your conversation doesn’t consist of saying how terrible it is that some unheard-of student union has invited some unheard-of Islamist to appear at some tiny meeting that no-one will attend and won’t ever have any consequences then you’re guaranteed a top 5 spot.

In fact, you wonder what an entertaining evening and HP-threesome would consist of. “Have you seen any anti-semitism this week, wardytron?” “No.” “Well clearly you haven’t been looking hard enough. “Well actually, I haven’t been looking at all.” “WHAT?“

the wilful denial of so many multi-culti posters at HP, simply pathetic. Yes there is much to criticise Gash for, but at least he gets it on Islam, Islam is not and can never be moderate despite what Hitchens and his head in the sand followers including here at HP like to think. What Gash should have said, is that there can be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate, and moderate Muslims are not actually following the letter and spirit of the MAINSTREAM dogma that is Islam, and yes plenty of moderate Muslims are engaging in taqiyya and kitman.

Hitchens’s comments on taqiyya and his argument that Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan could be accused of being just as guilty of practising it as the BMSD (as pretend apostates) is so idiotic and nonsensical that I cannot begin to express how moronic Hitchens actually is here. The fact that all the multi-culti twits here at HP don’t have any probem at all with Hitchens’s remarks on Hirsi Ali and Sultan and taqiyya, which are simply screamingly laughable, means that you are so far far gone into ‘we are the world let’s all hold hands and sing Imagine’ parallel universe idiocy, that you are beyond help.

If you do not get that the label Muslims for Secular Democracy is inherently oxymoronic, you don’t get it at all. Gash gets it, bravo to him (he needs to express and articulate himself more thoughtfully), all hope is not lost for the Dead Isle. It’s the idiots like Alex Hitchens and his fawning praise-singers (at HP included) that are part of the fucking problem and want to drag Britian to hell as quickly as you can get there, because the god of mulitculti liberalism (or Leftism of whatever stripe if you prefer) is the god you sacrifice to, and if that means sacrificing whatever is good and noble that remains of Western civilisation before the altar of the god of PC, then so be it. You would rather drag us into unending chaos and catastrophe then face up to basic yet ugly facts.

One sees this in everything incoherent and nonsensical that the mulitcultis write on Islam and Muslims, including this ‘Islamist’ crap. Islamist is a western trope for the most part, invented out of PC desperation to pretend a difference between Islam and extremism, a difference that isn’t there. Have you ever read of the Islamist conquests of North Africa, the Middle-East, Asia and Spain during the Middle-Ages and the rise of the Muslim Empire? It’s the Muslim Empire, the Muslim conquests, not the Islamist Empire, or the Islamist jihads, yet all of a sudden in the modern age it becomes Islamist jihad blabla – how absurd and ridiculous.

Hey HP multiculti posters, how come your PC take on Islam and your contempt for posters like myself and others who tell it like it is on Islam (you know who you are) is no different to the Guardian and BBC brigade with their endless whitewashing of Islam’s barbarity in the world today, their moral relativism, their hatred of Jews/Israel? HP likes to pretend itself the decent Left, it proves the contrary, there is no decent Left, the Left is either supportive of the Jihad (BBC, Independent, Guardian, SWP etc) or apologising for the Jihad (Harry’s Place and plenty others) and apologetics for Islam is apologetics for the Jihad, since Islam is Jihad, whether Muslims want to face that fact or not.

Edward Stone 23 November 2009, 6:40 am

And what of the million Bangladeshis, most of whom were Muslim, who died in the war to liberate themselves from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to create a secular democratic republic?
Are you hallucinatng? Bangladesh, secular? democratic? Bwahahahaha!
http://www.opinionjournal.com/wsj/?id=110009088
____

No he was not hallucinating – Abu was right. Bangladesh was officially secular at independence. Sadly the current head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in Bangladesh – Motiur Nizami – was held responsible for the massacre of Hindus and others. Additionally, Jamaat-e-Islami party members were said to have taken young girls from villages that opposed separation and gave them to soldiers of the Pakistani army, to be used as sex slaves.

Admittedly, this situation of Bangladesh starting life as a secular state gradually disappeared. Take the case of Taslima Nasreen and what she had to endure. In 1994, in the same year that she won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, a Bangladeshi state court ordered that she was to be detained for her writings detained for writing in her fifth book (Llaja – or “Shame”) about the plight of women and Hindus. She fled to Sweden.

When she returned in 1998, she was accused of blasphemy, for the contents of her book “Nirbachinto Kolumn” or “Selected Column”. In January 1999 she was again forced to leave Bangladesh because her name was found in a hitlist that had been found by Islamists.

The last coalition government (of the BNP, Islami Oikya Jote, Jamaat-e-Islami and Ershad) allowed further erosions of freedom of thought, with the Ahmadiyyahs being targeted. They were banned from producing books.

But please, before you accuse Abu of hallucinating, check your facts. Bangladesh after independence was a secular state. Similarly, when Pakistan gained Independence on August 11, 1947 it was also a secular state. Jinnah gave a rousing speech about the equality of all people in the new state, irrespective of their religion. He was in power for only 13 months and died, and within a few years the secular constitution was changed to insist that Islam was the state religion.

Anyone who has spent much time around Sufi Muslims will know them to be amongst the most peaceful, enlightened and delightful people you could hope to might.

I share the broad position of HP in their opposition to the political creed of Islamism, but groups like EDL and SIOE appear to have a true agenda that amounts to a witch-hunt against all Muslims, and this is unacceptable.

Larry Moonsong
23 November 2009, 10:26 am
“means that you are so far far gone into ‘we are the world let’s all hold hands and sing Imagine’ parallel universe idiocy, that you are beyond help.”

Absolute rubbish.

I think the people on this thread would like to put on our kaftans (made out of the best Laura Ashley fabrics, hand-picked by Morgoth), stand on a hill-top while clutching our Coca-Cola bottles and belt out a few rounds of “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony.”

Accusing us of that Michael Jackson nonsense? We on this thread are much more retro than that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOEU87SBTU

And if you carry on with such allusions, you might get pelted with Coke bottles…..

“How many protests have there been in Tehran against Persians’ murderous treatment of Azeris, Baluchis, and Bahai? In fact, when has any Muslim country had popular demonstrations to protest the tretment of minorities?”

As someone who has been involved in Iranian minority rights advocacy, I agree that it is depressing that the demonstrators in Tehran have yet to acknowledge the suffering of minorities on the country’s periphery. But it’s really an issue of information and news coverage. The only time they hear about the Balochis, Ahwazi Arabs and Kurds is when a group from these minorities starts killing policemen and Bassijis. There is little understanding of the depth of anger. But I don’t think the demonstrators in Tehran can be held accountable for this, nor should the Persians be regarded as a murderous people.

“Are you hallucinatng? Bangladesh, secular? democratic? Bwahahahaha!”

Bangladeshis fought a war of independence on the basis of Bengali identity and secularism. The Jamaat-e-Islami won two seats in the Bangladeshi parliamentary elections last year and that too on the coat tails of Khaleda Zia. The country may have a problem with corruption and instability but since 1990 it has had elections and changes of government, barring a two year period before the 2008 elections when the military and some bureaucrats attempted to straighten out the political system but gave up. That’s more than can be said for most other countries in the region. It would be good to see an end to the handbagging nonsense that goes on between Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, but that’s democracy for you. Life is very tough in Bangladesh; it is a country with the population of Russia squeezed into an area the size of Greece that is constantly prone to flooding and has some of the world’s worst human development indicators. It is amazing that Bangladesh manages to muddle through and has not become a dangerous failed state. On the whole, the vast majority of Bangladeshis have shown they want civilian rule and they have turned their backs on Islamist parties and they are prepared to sacrifice their lives for it – some estimates put the lives lost during the country’s war of independence at three million. Has any country paid the huge price Bangladesh has paid to fight for independence and secular democratic government?

Islam is an ideology of total combination of state and religion, which does not allow for an inch of tolerance or freedom.

Shaaz Mahboob and all at BMSD, I would like to point out to you that you cannot be a Muslim and at the same time be supporting secular democracy.

Gerrit Smith
23 November 2009, 11:46 am
Islam is an ideology of total combination of state and religion, which does not allow for an inch of tolerance or freedom.
Shaaz Mahboob and all at BMSD, I would like to point out to you that you cannot be a Muslim and at the same time be supporting secular democracy.
______

I am not going to bother trying to explain why I think that is wrong – perhaps you can peruse the less silly comments above and find some arguments against your rather sweeping assertions of Islam as a monolithic unchanging ideology.

But what I want to highlight here is – what does your statement really mean, when mapped onto the real world of UK demography and politics?

We have up to 3 million Muslims here in Britain, who live in our (mostly) secular democracy, and most are citizens. In a democracy, citizens are entitled to believe whatever they believe.

Your assertion – when extrapolated, would suggest that of these nearly 3 million people, they are by your definition “not allowed” to make free choices politically, nor are they ever able to fully partake in our society while they remain Muslim.

Ultimately, your argument suggests that they have no rights to be British citizens, because you have decided for them what their religion permits.

What would you suggest that Britain does with 3 million persons who can never be part of our democracy? Kick them out? Force them to convert?

If that should happen, would we still be living in a secular democracy?

And another thing that alarms me is that – no matter what one may think about Islam the ideology – you are essentially stereotyping a whole group of people who come from a diversity of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Does that not make your assessment rather prejudicial against these fellow citizens who have a religious ideology that you distrust?

@Gerrit Smith – explain how islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd, an expert in islamic theology, exposed secularism within an islamic context then?

or are you another Islamicist hiding behind a kuffir username

“Islam is an ideology of total combination of state and religion, which does not allow for an inch of tolerance or freedom.”

How many Muslim countries have an Islamic system of government? How many have adopted Sharia as a system of jurisprudence? Only Iran and Saudi Arabia have built their governments around religion, while Pakistan, Sudan and Libya have introduced laws derived from Sharia. Although, Iranians, Saudis, Sudanese and Libyans were never given a vote on what kind of political system they wanted to live under. Most of the rest of the Muslim world has not adopted systems of government based on the Quran and Haditha and former colonies have tended to adopt variants of the political systems of their former imperial masters, namely parliamentary democracy. So it is not true that being a Muslim is incompatible with democracy – most Muslims choose it over theocracy.

Suffolk Booy wrote: “I share the broad position of HP in their opposition to the political creed of Islamism, but groups like EDL and SIOE appear to have a true agenda that amounts to a witch-hunt against all Muslims, and this is unacceptable.”

Please note that in the CiF comments Gash distances the SIOE from the EDL on the grounds that the EDL are ‘too moderate’. There is no EDL witch-hunt against all muslims, they very specifically protest against islamic extremism.

Bert Preast
23 November 2009, 12:50 pm

Please note that in the CiF comments Gash distances the SIOE from the EDL on the grounds that the EDL are ‘too moderate’. There is no EDL witch-hunt against all muslims, they very specifically protest against islamic extremism.
_______

Then if that is true, then Stephen should try to moderate his comments and remember what the possible consequences of his actions could be – demonisation of innocent Muslims, and anyone who may look like a Muslim.

And if EDL are genuinely “very specifically… against islamic extremism,” then they should not be linking up with SIOE (as they did on September 11 outside Harrow Mosque), as that is going to send a message that they are against Muslims.

The last person I would consider as enlightened is Morgoth; he is more of an absolutist and confuses this with Enlightenment. He might be quite surprised if he read some of the texts of the period of Enlightenment.

Have to go, alas! or per fortuna.

Read this one the CIF article by Shaaz, makes absolute sense.

“Please distinguish between the extremist and conservative fringe elements running the mosques and those who have no other choice but to use it as a service, just as they’d use the corner shop on a given Sunday evening when everything else is shut and they’ve run out of milk!”

“Please distinguish between the extremist and conservative fringe elements running the mosques and those who have no other choice but to use it as a service, just as they’d use the corner shop on a given Sunday evening when everything else is shut and they’ve run out of milk!”

If theocrats wouldn’t try to foist their bullshit “sunday is a day of rest” theocratic fascism on everyone thwn the corner shops would be open on Sunday Evening.

The last person I would consider as enlightened is Morgoth; he is more of an absolutist

I plead guilty to being an absolutely for science, reason, logic and civilisation and being absolutely against superstition, homophobia, ignorance, mysogny, savagery and racism.

Unlike the wooly apologists for brown-skinned clerical fascists that infest this thread.

Adrian – the EDL did not link up with SIOE at Harrow Mosque. That protest was SIOE. Again, Gash points this out in the CIF comments:

“The demonstration outside Harrow mosque on 11th September was organised by Stop Islamisation Of Europe – SIOE, not by the English Defence League. I know because I organised it.”

As he also points out:

“People have to recognise they are being lied to by the media. The English Defence League is a separate to SIOE and a younger organisation that sprung up following the protests by Muslims against the Anglian Regiment as they paraded through Luton on their return from Afghanistan”

Quite right. Though I’m unsure as to whether the media are actually lying, or just don’t bother checking facts these days.

Now you are being obtuse, Mr Morgoth.

Morgoth: Apart from some nutcases, religious people are not opposed to science and reason. Both my dentist and my doctor are Muslims. They have not attempted to heal me and members of my family by praying to Allah or seeking my conversion. They use science, reason and logic to carry out their jobs. Rumi wrote: “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel” – which means, faith alone cannot carry you through life and no level of belief will change the basic facts about how the world works.

“I plead guilty to being an absolutely for science, reason, logic and civilisation and being absolutely against superstition, homophobia, ignorance, mysogny, savagery and racism.”

Mr MORGOTH’s view of CURRENT AFFAIRS is informed by a naive SCIENTISM which renders him bewildered when topics are beyond the scope of SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY. His answer to SOCIAL PROBLEMS is to rendereth all into a TESTUBE and BOIL until the essence evaporteth.

Abu Faris:

“My response would be, if the door – however weighty – shifted for me, then surely there is the chance it will shift for others too.

I hope, I pray, I have faith it will be so,

Let is be so.”
———

I very much appreciate your sentiments Abu Faris, I’m sure you are very sincere. But until this miracle happens, what are the rest of us supposed to do in the meantime?

It is the doctrine that has to be reformed Abu Faris. This notion that the quran is the unalterable word of god, applicable to all men for all time, is key to the violent oppressive nature of islam. It has been remarked on many occasions, and by many muslim moderates, that if you took all of the violence, hatred, oppression, warfare, extortion and slavery out of the book, there would be precious little left. But if the book was enshrined as a narrative account of a desert people, with a flawed prophet (as they all are, being only human), and their search for an understanding of god, you would have something you could build on. And what you could build would be much more open to personal spirituality, than mindless gangsterism.

Of course you will tell me that such a thing is impossible.

Adrian

But please, before you accuse Abu of hallucinating, check your facts.

You have your facts wrong. It was Dan not Abu, who made the comment. And Dan was halucinating.

Bangladesh was officially secular at independence.

A few words, a superficial, failed secularity, is not secularity. By those standards, the USSR was a worker’s paradise and Nazi Germany was socialist.

Further, it’s not at all clear the driving force behind Bangladeshi independence was so noble as a desire for “freedom and democracy.” Ethnic tensions (Bengali v Punjabi) and resource allocation are a more honest explanation.

Such issues as secularity and democracy are decided not by words but by actions. Bangladesh independence and subsequent elections showed popular support not for secular democracy, but for Rahman. In other words, a cult of personality far from the institutional,social, and cultural values representing secular democracy.

With emergency declared within one year, it should be clear that any Bangladeshi “secular democracy” existed only on paper.

Oh, and don’t tell us about “elections”. Venezuela has elections, too.

Hallucinating? Yes, you are.

Monty

This notion that the quran is the unalterable word of god, applicable to all men for all time, is key to the violent oppressive nature of islam.

I have already argued against this position, above. The Qur’an is quite clearly not the unalterable word of God. It is divine in its inspiration.

It has been remarked on many occasions, and by many muslim moderates, that if you took all of the violence, hatred, oppression, warfare, extortion and slavery out of the book, there would be precious little left.

I am not completely at ease with this depiction of the Qur’an; however, the moral difficulties of the text are exactly what (again as I argue above) what makes the book somethig that is to be worked with in search of an understanding – and yes, even to struggle with sometimes. Faith should not be something easy, surely.

[I]f the book was enshrined as a narrative account of a desert people, with a flawed prophet (as they all are, being only human), and their search for an understanding of god, you would have something you could build on.

In some respects, at at least one level, this is, of course, already what the Qur’an is about.

Of course you will tell me that such a thing is impossible.

I have neither told you that such a thing is impossible; not do I accept that this must be some sort of foregone conclusion. Indeed, I think I might have suggested that exactly this is the sort of thing which is possible, plausible and morally useful.

*at at least one level*

should, of course be:

*on at least one level*

Abu Faris: Your eirenic tone sounds a little too goody-goody to be true for one inculcated in the teachings of Islam from birth. I suspect you’re not a cradle-Muslim, but a fervently pious revert from … maybe, Anglicanism? Just curious.

Well if I am hallucinating – I can’t wait to meet those giant lobsters that chased Jean-Paul Sartre down a Parisian street after his 1930s mescaline encounters.

My life is rather boring and a change of routine – even if it means dodging homicidal crustaceans – sounds nice.

“a cult of personality far from the institutional,social, and cultural values representing secular democracy.”

A cult of personality can still be secular and the Bangladesh war of independence had not one element of Islamism – on the contrary, Hindus participated and India’s military action helped end the carnage. Now, is Bangladesh a democracy? Bangladesh has had successive changes of government through an electoral system, it is not a one-party state. I think Bangladeshis want it to be a better democracy. The Islamist parties that would like to turn it into country run on Islamic law receive the same proportion of vote as neo-Nazis receive in the UK. The Jamaat has just two seats in parliament. What Bangladeshis want is an end to corruption and the military-backed interim government attempted to do this by chucking out the country’s two most corrupt politicians: Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. It was not successful, sadly, but at least it accepted a transition back to civilian parliamentary rule. Compare it to neighbouring (mostly Buddhist) Burma or (mostly Hindu) Nepal and, even with all its problems, (mostly Muslim) Bangladesh has for nearly 20 years avoided civil war, military dictatorship and political extremism.

Brainwashed?…of course they are…from cradle to grave they are force fed Islam. That is why it is important to close faith schools, especially Muslim ones, which reinforce what they learn at home and isolate Muslims from the rest of society.

Are all Muslims Muslim? No, of course not…they are ‘forced’ to be Muslim by their family and community. To leave the religion has serious consequences. They therefore go through the motions, practising the rituals and going to the Mosque on Friday but not believing.

These are the people you call ‘moderate’ Muslims…they are not Muslim at all in reality. You cannot reform the Koran whatever Tariq Ramadan might insinuate.

To be a Muslim is to follow the rules. To be a footballer you have to follow the rules, unless you are French. You cannot write your own:

When they say: ‘Give us a different Koran, or change it.’
Say: ‘It is not for me to change it of my own accord. I follow only what is revealed to me, for I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the punishment of a fateful day.’

Pretty clear, to me.

Islam has no place to accommodate ‘moderate Muslims’. All Muslims are, by definition, ’slaves of Allah’; that is to say, they do the bidding of Muhammad and the Quran without question. Islam may be dilluted by Western ideas and values but it cannot be changed.

Magnus Nielsen

All Muslims are, by definition, ’slaves of Allah’; that is to say, they do the bidding of Muhammad and the Quran without question.

No, that is not the definition of a Muslim.

Nor is it the case that we do the bidding of a man, Muhammad, nor a book, the Qur’an.

Equally, I rather hope that I may have demonstrated, at least in a small way, that this faith does not require or want unquestioning obedience.

Micheál Tierney

Your eirenic tone sounds a little too goody-goody to be true for one inculcated in the teachings of Islam from birth.

Apologies for sounding a little too goody-goody, Micheál, that was not my intention.

Perhaps you need to meet more Muslims?

Abu Faris:

” Indeed, I think I might have suggested that exactly this is the sort of thing which is possible, plausible and morally useful.”

More than that, it is necessary and urgent. If islamic reform does not take off as a popular mass movement, it will be impossible to establish the other social and political aspects of progress among muslims. Things like respect for civil rights, secular democracy, education, science, the arts, will be forever vulnerable to islamic revivalists declaring themselves “real” muslims, and capitalising on the passive acquiescence of mainstream muslims.

Monty

I would agree wholeheartedly with your last comment.

‘Muslim life and belief are based absolutely on the Qur’an. Muhammed and his first companions are regarded as the first living commentators on the Qur’an, exemplifyingwhat it means in practise.’
Islam means acceptance and submission to the will of God.

Should have stayed awake in the madrassa Abu.

With respect, Alan, your quotation is fundamentally at odds with Magnus’ definition of Islam.

I do not think there is any need for your level of combativeness, either.

I would also reject the definition of Islam you offer – both your quotation and your earlier extremely hostile and partial commentaries.

Poor Abu

You are the most reasonable and worldly-wise Muslim that I have come across on web discussions, and you always have to field comments that express narrow and prejudiced conceptions of your faith.

I really think you are wasted on blog chats – you should be in a think-tank or policy-making body. Or writing books.

Yes, we’re all absolutely charmed by Abu, but Peter Mandelson is just as reasonable and wordly-wise..and yet, and yet….

I have another Abu you should meet, or at least consider….Abu Ben Adhem…the one who loved his fellow man before he loved his God. And was loved by God therefore all the more.

A lesson all reasonable men should take to heart before calling others Kufaar perhaps and teaching their children to hate.

Combative? Pious platitudes get you nowhere…Obama scuttles home from Asia with his tail between his legs not having learnt his lesson from the Middle East where he received a sound kicking from Iran and Israel.

The truth hurts. I could say lovely things about Islam, but I’d be lying. And you know that. Islam was designed to conquer, it was designed to trap people into the religion, it was designed to subordinate the ‘believers’ to the will of one man, not one God.

One God? Why? Only Mohammed could talk to him. Guidance came from the Qur’an. Only Mohammed had the Qur’an revealed to him. Only Mohammed therefore could ‘guide’ his followers. How convenient.

Alan Stoddart

I think you do your intelligence a grave injustice with the following:

I have another Abu you should meet, or at least consider….Abu Ben Adhem…the one who loved his fellow man before he loved his God. And was loved by God therefore all the more.

Yes, yes! I agree entirely. I am sorry if you failed to notice that this was exactly my point!

There is a Persian poem (I cannot recall the author, it may have been Shirazi) which argues, to paraphrase:

Drink wine, whore, even burn down the Holy Ka’aba
But never, ever hurt one another

That was written by a Muslim too.

A lesson all reasonable men should take to heart before calling others Kufaar perhaps and teaching their children to hate.

I can, I assure you, do neither.

Incidentally (since you want to get rather personal), who taught you to hate so well?

Try to be nice.

Adrian,

Thanks for the compliments. I enjoy and respect your comments as well.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

Proverbs 15:1

Abu Faris – You certainly set an example of politeness and patience to some of the boorish bigots that comment here.

None of us here on CH expect to be kow-towed to, we do not believe we are always right and we appreciate a good meaty argument. I am more than happy to have commenters disagree with me and say so, with reasons.

I am not, though, happy to be ‘spoken to like that’, to be bullied, abused, sworn at and name-called. I may well be wrong about any given subject, but I am not an idiot, a twerp, brainless, a silly cow, a fascist/leftie/middle-class moron and I object to being treated as such. If a single one of the people who came to my author-events had spoken out in the way people feel free to address me and other bloggers here they would have been asked to leave. Why is this behaviour thought to be more acceptable in the virtual world than it is in the real one?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/susanhill/5561163/real-life-and-virtual.thtml

Thanks, KB Player. I liked that article by Susan Hill to which you linked. I think the paragraph following the ones you quote is very useful.

[W]hy are people so rude? In large part, I think it is because they are angry. There is a great deal of pent-up rage abroad and not only among the young and drunk. People are angry because they feel helpless and disenfranchised.They are angry with politicians, with those who do not allow them a say in matters that affect and even change their own daily lives. They have had enough – enough of being bossed about by their inferiors, patronised and taken for fools, enough of being lied to and misled, enough of being unemployed, harassed, of having money-worries or of being time-poor, over-scheduled, working over- long hours and not having space to be quiet and alone and free to do nothing, to think, to rest, to pray, to breathe – to be.

Your quotation from Proverbs is wonderfully apposite.

Abu Faris – hmm, I beg to disagree about my quotation from Proverbs. Sometimes a soft answer does not turn away wrath but makes the wrathful more and more angry. I have a feeling that your politeness and patience has really annoyed some of the people on this thread.

KB Player

If it is the case that my manner has upset anyone, then I should apologise immediately.

I try to state things as I see them. I see no reason to be rude, abrasive or rebarbative in my dealings with people – especially with those with whom I disagree.

Make straight the path for thy feet, and all thy ways shall be established.

Abu – after being consistently reasonable and considerate, don’t you ever get to a point that you just want to thump a cushion or stamp your foot? Or hurl a plate at a wall?

Why do you think Abu wants a cat?

Abu – after being consistently reasonable and considerate, don’t you ever get to a point that you just want to thump a cushion or stamp your foot? Or hurl a plate at a wall?

I am in awe of your self-control. I can be reasonable for short periods, but then my emotive side takes over, and on blog discussions my language slips into ranting and expletives.

You have patience and dignity. Great qualities.

This is Democracy Abu, the rough and tumble of Free Speech and Freedom of Thought. I know it must be difficult, as a Muslim, for you to comprehend this despite your undoubted intelligence but struggle on, you know, internal Jihad. It is good, therefore, that you have your fan club, rather fawning and abject, but no doubt keeping your spirits up in adversity.

It must be disagreeable for you to have people disagree with you but either you need to be educated about your own religion or you are dissembling.

Perhaps you can discuss the essential question…what is the difference between Islam and Islamism, and then get back to me.

Not sure whether your previous attempts to answer were mere fillibusters or a cover for a lack of understanding. Your rather lofty rhetoric and espoused ideals seem at odds with the reality of your rather incoherent intellectual pretensions. A fatal blow to your arguments that thence resolve nothing.

Alan Stoddart, in my 8 years of reading blogs and forums to try to understand Muslims (since 9/11/01 of course) Abu Faris is the first Muslim I’ve run into who can hold up his own end and do so reasonably and well in an extended argument. Give credit where it is due.

Well perhaps Ali Eteraz comes in second here.

The fact is that only a moderate is capable of reasonable argument.

Oh God, I remember arguments with real fanatics – from the hate spewing to the ones who defended such notions as that Islamic slavery is a more just institution than prison in an infidel country. Amazing arguments those were.

[E]ither you need to be educated about your own religion or you are dissembling…

Not sure whether your previous attempts to answer were mere fillibusters or a cover for a lack of understanding. Your rather lofty rhetoric and espoused ideals seem at odds with the reality of your rather incoherent intellectual pretensions.

I am not sure, in my turn, if such recourse to what amounts to ad hominem attacks on someone’s personal or intellectual honesty or worth serves your position especially well, Alan.

Perhaps you can discuss the essential question…what is the difference between Islam and Islamism

Is that not what I have been doing all along, Alan?

and then get back to me

I have.

Thanks.

Graham
23 November 2009, 11:24 pm
Abu – after being consistently reasonable and considerate, don’t you ever get to a point that you just want to thump a cushion or stamp your foot? Or hurl a plate at a wall?
Why do you think Abu wants a cat?
_________
OMG – that is wicked Graham. But funny.

Thanks everyone for an extremely interesting discussion.

Islamism is a very real threat to our society

Islam is a threat to every society. “Islamism” is a red herring.

Stop whimpering Abu.

I did doubt your credentials as a Muslim but your descent into victimhood and the use of grievance as a debating tactic confirms you truly are Muslim.

The ‘middleway’ is a euphemism for fence sitting.

Either renounce Islam or defend it.

There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim or a semi-practising Muslim. Islam is not a contingent truth. It just is. Islam is Islam.

Stand up for your principles. Why is Thatcher the only living PM to be immortalised in the Palace of Westminster and in No 10….because she had principles and stuck to them with sincerity and conviction.

Don’t cry like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.

Stop whimpering Abu.

Sorry, but this (and “Faris”) is getting a tad bothersome. His handle is “Abu Faris”, and should be treated as one word, like a hyphenated phrase. It is an Arabic konya or moniker, and literally means “Father of Faris”. Read: Father-of-Faris.

So not only is addressing him as “Faris” wrong, addressing him as “Father” (or even more absurdly as “Father of”) is ridiculous.

(Perhaps Abu Faris should help you lot out by inserting a hyphen?)

Stop whimpering Abu.

I did doubt your credentials as a Muslim but your descent into victimhood and the use of grievance as a debating tactic confirms you truly are Muslim….

Don’t cry like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.

Does any of this actually have a point – other than crude insult – Alan?

How tiresome for you having nothing better to write.

Alan

I have seen hints of this behaviour elsewhere, being expressed by Muslims. But I have never seen it so well-expressed.

Abu Faris is not whining at all – so I think your comment “Don’t cry like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.” is a bit useless. It was originally said by someone’s mother. So perhaps we can call you “Sultana Ayelsha” from now on.

But Abu Faris is playing an exceptionally sneaky game here. He lets you savage him, insult him and try to make him responsible for anything bad that has ever happened in the name of Islam. And then – and this is the real devious part – he does not fight you and does not insult you. That shows highly developed cunning and conniving evil, of a level that demonstrates how absolutely inhuman he is. This cordiality that he expresses must be the Islamists’ latest weapon.

What a wicked, devious person this Abu Faris is. He is so expert at this, he must have had a lot of practice. Is it a new form of taqqiya? As far as wicked sneaky passive-aggressors go, Abu Faris is the arch-demon.

What do you say, Sultana Ayelsha?

Hello Adrian!

Drat, my fiendish plan for world domination exposed!

Back to the drawing board…

Don’t cry like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzjbV-yTomY

Either renounce Islam or defend it.

What good would that do? You think everyone can renounce Islam? How many Egyptians can renounce Islam?

That shows highly developed cunning and conniving evil, of a level that demonstrates how absolutely inhuman he is.

Almost cat-like.

Adrian, Thought you were the master of wit and the barbed comment, but clearly not. You need to raise your game above schoolboy humour to play here.

Highly impressed by your almost canine loyalty and affection for Abu, but think you are barking up the wrong tree.

That’s a wrap for me, but you carry on, we shall no doubt cross swords again.

Internally, it is clear that the Qur’an alters itself.

It does no such thing. It purports to be a record of revelations, delivered over a period of about twenty three years, some of which appear to be in conflict.

Islam even has a set of rules about such abrogations.

As hermeneutic devices for halakhic determinations, yes.

The fact remains, however, that there will be no further revelations. The entire process ended with Muhammad, the Final Messenger. Consequently, there will be no more abrogations. The contents of the Qur’an are final and unalterable.

Which reputable Islamic scholars do you know who say otherwise?

There is no doubt (at least in my mind) that Islam requires a massive reformation; but the making of sweeping statements of the order that “the Qur;an is divine and thus unalterable” are neither sustainable from the point of view of proper (and calm) inspection of the text itself; nor from the point of view of simple common sense.

I’m sorry, but this is just verbiage.

Simple common sense says that the Qur’an is a historically bound, completely human, and utterly mundane document. The only reason to bother with it at all is that it is the particular fetish of a significant fraction of humanity. And so what concerns us is the nature of the fetish, not what it could otherwise be in some idealized world.

Geert Wilders’ film Fitna ends with a view of an open Qur’an fading out to blackness, followed by the sound of a page being torn out.

Would you try explaining why the suggested action is, or would be, or maybe even should not be, profoundly shocking and offensive to Muslims? That would put some perspective on the alterability of the Qur’an, no?

Would you try explaining why the suggested action is, or would be, or maybe even should not be, profoundly shocking and offensive to Muslims? That would put some perspective on the alterability of the Qur’an, no?

Not necessarily. Even a moderate Christian would be upset to seeing the Bible ripped up, a Catholic would be upset if the host was desecrated and Americans hate seeing their flags being burned. People hate seeing something sacred to them being destroyed with malevolent intent.

qidniz

That would put some perspective on the alterability of the Qur’an, no?

I am not sure how any such act would have any bearing on the question of the alleged unalterability of the Qur’an.

I think we have had this discussion (of sorts) elsewhere.

Incidentally, to recap my position:

The Qur’an evidences its own alterations;

Evidently, interpretations change; to this extent the understanding of the text alters.

Rather, it might suggest that you are unable to distinguish between the acceptably provocative and the unacceptably offensive, qidniz.

Nor am I going to get into the game of trading Islamic “authorities” with you, qidniz. I am sure that you can list (at great length) literalists to support your claims. I might point to the long traditions of non-literalism (in particular to the influences of neo-Platonism, Illuminationism and intellectual Sufism) to bolster my claims. To what advantage to either of us, however, entirely escapes me.

I note that in your equation of Islam and Islamism (the latter allegedly a “red herring”), you have either not read, or have entirely discounted my views on the same, above, rather than engaged with the same. I think that is a shame, frankly, as you clearly have a lot to say about such matters here and elsewhere.

Thanks

Well done Abu.

Chuck the puritan/deobandi analogy back at him and mention how not all Muslims (just like not all Christians) are literalists. Maulana Abul Kalum Azad (who was a theolgian who disagreed with the Deobandi’s and also a member of the leading Indian secularist political party might help.

Oh. I think we may be on the way to doing a seperation of Islam and Islamism (for eejits.)

Clearly, I am not comfortable with aspects of the Qur’an.

That has already been anticipated in the Qur’an.

the Qur’an is an intrinsically very difficult book.

The difficulties are entirely due to its fetishization, of course. As Salomon Reinach has written

From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innnumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time absorbing it.

What really matters is the “message” of the Qur’an: what its manifestly hortative nature urges on the Believers.

And that is hard to miss.

You want to know what I reject? It is very simple – hate. Our capacity to devalue and reduce each other. And not just in the Qur’an.

Which reputable Islamic scholar do you know who denies that the Qur’an must be accepted in its entirety, and allows that you can pick and choose the parts you like?

Abu Faris: I don’t know why this question has been removed three times now: I am sure you are not a cradle-Muslim..? What religion were you before your reversion to Islam? You sound rather Anglican – or, for some strange reason, Church of Wales! – to me. What country are you living in now? These things matter.

Maulana Abul Kalum Azad (who was a theolgian who disagreed with the Deobandi’s and also a member of the leading Indian secularist political party might help.

You think? You probably don’t know that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad opposed partition for exactly the same reason as Maulana Abul ala Maududi. They both feared that partition would retard the long term prospects of Islamizing the entire subcontinent.

qidniz
24 November 2009, 5:40 pm
The fact remains, however, that there will be no further revelations. The entire process ended with Muhammad, the Final Messenger. Consequently, there will be no more abrogations. The contents of the Qur’an are final and unalterable.

Which reputable Islamic scholars do you know who say otherwise?

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad?

And anyway, Mohammed predicted the Mahdi, who would be descended from his daughter Fatima. The Mahdi would be a “prophet”, and would have to be accepted as such, would he not? If he did not, the prophecy of Mohammed would be wrong.

People hate seeing something sacred to them being destroyed with malevolent intent.

It’s hard to imagine missing the point more comprehensively.

The suggestion in the movie was to remove the “hateful” verses in the Qur’an. In other words, to edit the “malevolent intent” out of the Qur’an.

HTH.

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad?

The Mahdi legend is apocryphal, but even if it were granted, no where in the legend is it stated or promised that the Mahdi will provide revelations. And, as it happens, in the Islamic scheme, revelations are brought by a Messenger (rasul), who is a special kind of Prophet (nabi’). (This distinction conveniently finessed the objection that Muhammad had not met the standard criteria of a Jewish Prophet.: because he was a Messenger instead, d’uh!)

They both feared that partition would retard the long term prospects of Islamizing the entire subcontinent.

Not that it would make the make the slightest bit of difference to my point if he had – any more than a Catholic hopes for the reunification of the church in Europe (but thanks for attacking sub-points rather than the main one) but here is Azad:

Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam.

(That’s a man who stayed with multi-cultural India and reformed the entire education system)

Meanwhile Maudadi was ranting at other members of his political religious party Jamaat-e-Islami for wanting Pakistan to be a muslim state rather than an Islamic one.

Rather a large difference I think you will agree. Do try harder you are so desperate to construct muslims as one monolithic bloc that you have blinded yourself to even the simplest attemt at logic.

Do try harder you are so desperate to construct muslims as one monolithic bloc that you have blinded yourself to even the simplest attemt at logic.

I would hazard that others might accuse you of quite as much, qidniz.

Curiously, your attempt to conflate Islam and Islamism (or Muslim theology as solely literalist in form and content) might be construed as exactly the sort of construction of Muslims “as one monolithic block” to which you object to in others.

Apologies, Graham. I got that last post mixed up. It comes from multi-tasking on the bloody computer, flitting between work and the pleasures of HP.

Of course, apologies to qidniz, too.

The Qur’an evidences its own alterations;

Evidently, interpretations change; to this extent the understanding of the text alters

Actually, no. the inference is that, at best, circumstances change.

(The classical exegetes were very careful in making such an argument, however, as a text purported to be relevant for the rest of eternity could not really afford to have temporally bound or inherently “transient” material. And thus the argument that the changes in circumstances were themselves part of the grand plan of revelation, i.e. not accidental but teleological.)

After 1400 years, it may be high time to change some understandings, but that has no bearing on the fact that it’s the historically attested and established understandings which matter.

Not that it would make the make the slightest bit of difference to my point if he had

Your point was that Azad was not a “literalist”. You are wrong.

A literlaist would not work with “heathens” never mind set up an education system for them.

Next?

The classical exegetes were very careful in making such an argument

Ah. A literalist reading of an exegesis.

That’s kind of cute.

When context changes so do interpretations. Most Christians, Muslims and actually even Marxists get this. To not do so is to be a literalist, to seek to return to the literal interpretations of a text.

So congratulations you are showing you have a lot in common with an Islamist.

Hello Adrian, how nice to see you on here!
Some of our lot are going to Trafalgar Square this Saturday to see if we can talk him out of doing this demo at Harrow. Wish us luck!

xx

and when I say “him”, I mean Stephen Gash and his SIOE lot.

xx

And to encourage you towards the truth, whatever that may be, may i suggest you all, as a bare minimum first step, go out and purchase a copy of the koran and begin to read it and around it, using islamic sources (tafsirs etc).

The ancillary sources are important, because to a kafir a linear reading of the Qur’an from beginning to end is not likely to be useful, much less enlightening.

I suggest this. It rearranges the material of the Qur’an according to the Noldeke-Schwally chronology and intersperses extracts from Sira (Ibn Ishaq via Guillaume, Al-Tabari via the SUNY series, Muir) and Hadith (Bukhari, Muslim) to flesh out the contexts. A summary epilogue adds some extra material, such as this

LOVE AND THE KORAN

While there are over 300 references in the Koran to Allah and fear, there are 49 references to love. Of these references, 39 are negative such as the 14 negative references to love of money, power, other gods and status.

Three verses command humanity to love Allah and 2 verses about how Allah loves a believer. There are 25 verses about how Allah does not love unbelievers.

This leaves 5 verses about love. Of these 5, 3 are about loving kin or a Muslim brother. One verse commands a Muslim to give for the love of Allah. This leaves only one quasi-universal verse about love: give what you love to charity and even this is contaminated by dualism since Muslim charity only goes to other Muslims.

There is not a verse about either compassion or love of an unbeliever, but there are 14 verses that teach that a Muslim is not a friend of the unbeliever. There are 99 names for Allah and not one of them is love.

A literlaist would not work with “heathens”

Not too familiar with the Indian context, are you?

never mind set up an education system for them.

Eh? You mean being the first Education Minister? Like most of the ministers, other than sitting there and looking pretty, he did nothing.

Next?

Please, after you.

Not too familiar with the Indian context, are you?

Familiar enough to know that a “literalist” wouldn’t work with “heathens”

Like most of the ministers, other than sitting there and looking pretty, he did nothing.

Ah I see. I am arguing with a nutcase.

Ahem:

Azad gave speeches to large crowds encouraging peace and calm in the border areas and encouraging Muslims across the country to remain in India and not fear for their safety and security. Focusing on bringing the capital of Delhi back to peace, Azad organised security and relief efforts, but was drawn into a dispute with the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel when he demanded the dismissal of Delhi’s police commissioner, who was a Sikh accused by Muslims of overlooking attacks and neglecting their safety.[17] Patel argued that the commissioner was not biased, and if his dismissal was forced it would provoke anger amongst Hindus and Sikhs and divide the city police. In Cabinet meetings and discussions with Gandhi, Patel and Azad clashed over security issues in Delhi and Punjab, as well as the allocation of resources for relief and rehabilitation. Patel opposed Azad and Nehru’s proposal to reserve the houses vacated by Muslims who had departed for Pakistan for Muslims in India displaced by the violence.[17] Patel argued that a secular government could not offer preferential treatment for any religious community, while Azad remained anxious to assure the rehabilitation of Muslims in India.

Azad remained a close confidante, supporter and advisor to Prime Minister Nehru, and played an important role in framing national policies. Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrollment of children and young adults into schools, in order to promote universal primary education. Elected to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha in 1952 and again in 1957, Azad supported Nehru’s socialist economic and industrial policies, as well as the advancing social rights and economic opportunities for women and underprivileged Indians. In 1956, he served as president of the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi. Azad spent the final years of his life focusing on writing his book India Wins Freedom, an exhaustive account of India’s freedom struggle and its leaders, which was published in 1957.

Some literalist fundamentalist that!

Next?

Seriously. Do you really not know what a literalist is? When Bin laden argues that even the leaders of Saudi Arabia should stop usuary and never allow foriegn troops on their soil he is being a literalist. He is differentiating even them from his literal interpretation so God alone knows what he would make of some of the Muslims I know.

Seriously. Do you really not know what a literalist is?

Apparently our understandings differ.

To me a literalist is any scholar who denies that the essential meaning of the Qur’an is (or has to be) esoteric: that the words mean what they say. (In contrast to some secatarians, who make much of the distinction between zahir and batin, and many Sufi mystics.)

Using Bin ladin as a convenient caricature is not likely to do your understanding much good.

*instead, that the words mean what they say

Ah I see. I am arguing with a nutcase.

To repeat, he did nothing for education except sit there, look pretty, make speeches and show up for inaugurations, ribbon cuttings and the like.

So let’s try and understand that:

To me a literalist is any scholar who denies that the essential meaning of the Qur’an is (or has to be) esoteric: (instead) that the words mean what they say.

I see a literal reading of literalism.

Bin Laden is not a caricature. Bin Laden is a literalist who actually believes (or pretends to believe) that the words of the koran mean what they say. That is (literally) why he is generally resident in places where life has not changed that much in centuries. In contrast most Muslims live in a world where it is quite obvious that the contexts have changed and therefore that Sura’s which invoke (for example) ” a she-camel of Allah!” need a slightly different interpretation when you live in Neasden.

This surely should be obvious to a five year old.

The reason that you cannot see beyond literalism is that you are yourself a literalist.

To repeat, he did nothing for education except sit there, look pretty, make speeches and show up for inaugurations, ribbon cuttings and the like

Stubbornly repeating a silly point in the face of evidence to the contrary just makes you look like a child I’m afraid.

Apparently our understandings differ.

You mean we have different interpretations of “literalism”?

But this is a schism!

Shooter
24 November 2009, 9:50 pm
Hello Adrian, how nice to see you on here!
Some of our lot are going to Trafalgar Square this Saturday to see if we can talk him out of doing this demo at Harrow. Wish us luck!
xx
__
Hi Shooter

Good luck with that. I think there are other moves being made as well to try to persuade him to not repeat the Harrow thing. Those ventures also need a lot of luck.

I can’t think why Harrow is singled out as so important – it does not appear to have any extremist/Islamist links.

Stubbornly repeating a silly point in the face of evidence to the contrary just makes you look like a child I’m afraid.

What evidence? Fluff from Wikipedia? “Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrollment of children and young adults into schools, in order to promote universal primary education.” This is pablum, and you know it.

Haha that’s just funny. Dismiss evidence, produce none of your own.

Come on at least drag out some postmodern biography to demolish.

But this is a schism!

That’s much too civilized. You were supposed to deliver a blood-curdling takfir.

Dismiss evidence, produce none of your own.

Hmmm, we may need a reprise of Adrian’s Latin here…

One content-free sentence from Wikipedia is “evidence” worthy of nothing but dismissal.

And anyway, there were no “national programmes” until the mid-50s, by which time Azad had retired from politics to write his memoirs and other books.

One reason for the “delay” was that education schemes were inherently regional rather than national. The reorganization of states on linguistic lines paved the way for regional boards to be set up that could regulate and monitor instruction in the vernaculars.

With two exceptions, education policy in Azad’s time was all talk.

One was the establishment of the UGC (University Grants Commission), a bureaucracy that is only now coming to the end of its life. All it did back then, though, was to declare three “national universities” (Delhi, Aligarh Muslim, Benaras Hindu, later Sagar was added as a fourth) and some bumpf about pay scales.

The other was the first IIT at Kharagpur, the result of a collaboration between the West Bengal Government (basically, Bidhan Roy and some educators who had his ear) and the Sarkar Committee. The Committee’s report led to the establishment of four more IITs before the end of the 50s. Azad’s contribution to all this? Zero.

I see a literal reading of literalism.

Sigh. Idle word mongering like this would have gotten you plonked posthaste on usenet. I’m sorry, but you really have to do better if you want to be taken seriously.

Bin Laden is not a caricature.

He is a caricature because he is not a scholar.

In contrast most Muslims live in a world where it is quite obvious that the contexts have changed and therefore that Sura’s which invoke (for example) ” a she-camel of Allah!” need a slightly different interpretation when you live in Neasden.

You are being flippant because you haven’t the faintest clue of what you’re talking about. You hope that your style will deflect attention from your ignorance.

The fact of the matter is that, as far as orthodox mainstream Islam is concerned, ordinary Muslims are not free to indulge their personal interpretations of the Qur’an. All schools of Islamic Law are unanimous in requiring Muslims to defer to qualified scholarship. So the issue is which interpretations command significant support among the ulama, because they are the only opinion makers who have any authority or credence in the Muslim world.

Everything else is leftard wishful thinking. And worse, perverse obfuscation, when there is a crying need to grasp why militancy has such widespread sympathy and support, even among the Vast Majority of Moderate Muslims(TM) so beloved of the wrist-wringing face-fanning bien pensants on this blog.

I can’t think why Harrow is singled out as so important – it does not appear to have any extremist/Islamist links.

It does, but the reason seems to be that there are plans to expand the Harrow mosque into a much larger facility.

qidniz
25 November 2009, 4:51 am
I can’t think why Harrow is singled out as so important – it does not appear to have any extremist/Islamist links.

It does, but the reason seems to be that there are plans to expand the Harrow mosque into a much larger facility.
_____________

Thank you qidniz. I am aware of nothing tangible that has been brought up by SIOE or Stephen Gash to suggest such extremism. I am grateful that you have brought that Spittoon article to my attention. The importance of bringing people to talk with each other is vital. The mosque leaders at Harrow were prepared to talk with SIOE at the time of the SIOE September 11 demonstration and, as far as I can see, Stephen Gash did not have the discussion that thy wanted.

I want to see bridge-building (where possible) between groups. As far as I can see I am not aware that SIOE knows this information, and I am wondering if BMSD is aware of it.