B. K. Silverthorne's List: Islam

• I claim that Islam is not conducive to the pursuit of rational inquiry, and when  Islam asserts itself, it borrows, co-opts and ultimately, when time has passed  and memory forgotten, claims that these borrowed and co-opted things were  originated by Muslims, not by the native cultures that preceded the Muslims
• Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing to do with.  Arabic numerals? From India . The concept of zero? From Babylonia . Parabolic  arches? From Assyria . The much ballyhooed claim of translating the Greek corpus  of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian Assyrians, who first translated  to Syriac, then to Arabic. The first University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988  A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had  three departments: Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. Al-Azhar only teaches  Theology.
  
  Speaking of medicine, Muslims will claim that medicine during  the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world.  That is correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were  exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu family,  Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of doctors, who  were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for nearly 200 years.
  
• In his book How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, O'Leary's lists 22  scholars and translators during the Golden Age of Islam; 20 were Christians, 1  was a Persian, and 1 was a Muslim. This covers about a 250 year period. This  "Golden Age", incidentally, came to an end after the Caliphs had forcefully  converted enough Christians to Muslims (through the Jizya) that the Christian  numbers fell below the critical threshold needed for sustaining the intellectual  enterprise.
  
  
• According to Robert Spencer, the Muslim god, Allah, is capricious. He is not  subject to any laws and can, in fact, change laws arbitrarily without restraint.  Quoting the Pope, Spencer says:
  
  “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely  transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of  rationality.”
• He [Allah] was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and  observable laws. 'He cannot be questioned concerning what He does'" (Qur’an  21:23 ).
  
• "Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical  world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be  consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be  consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change  tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was  al-Ghazali, the philosopher that the authors of the Open Letter recommend to the  Pope, who 'denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a  blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.' He adds that 'Muslim  mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as  blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom.'  Social scientist Rodney Stark adds that 'it would seem that Islam has a  conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science. Not so. Allah  is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active  God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the  formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to  formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah’s freedom to  act.'"
  
• The New Testament is written in parables. Seldom is the point of the story  expressed directly. The reader is asked to read a parable and figure out what it  means. Reading the New Testament requires analysis, it engages the critical  thought processes of interpretation and deduction.
  
  The effort at  understanding the Mystery of the Trinity and of unraveling the meaning of  parables exercises the mind and engages the Christian not only on a spiritual  level, but an intellectual level as well. To wit, it teaches a Christian to  think.
  
• In contrast, the Koran is written in a prescriptive style. There are no  parables. The Muslim is summarily told what to do, most of the time without  explanation. The Muslim needs to read just enough to get the prescription. It's  like the directions on your drug prescription: take two pills every eight hours.  Period. No further explanation.
  
  Thus on a practical level, the act of  exercising these religions produces two different thought processes.  Christianity asks the believer to think and analyze, to interpret and deduce.  Islam asks the believer to obey blindly and without question. Indeed, the Koran  says "...follow not that of which you have not the knowledge" (Children of  Israel, 17.36).

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• "If people are not given a fresh way of understanding what it  means to be a Christian and what it means to be a Christian-based society then  something else may well take the place of all that we're used to and that could  be Islam."

• In fact,  conquered populations contributed greatly to the history of “Muslim science”  until gradually being decimated by conversion to Islam (under the pressures of  dhimmitude).  The Muslim concentration within a population is directly  proportional to the decline of scientific achievement.  It is no  accident that the Muslim world has had little to show for itself in the last 600  years or so, since running out of new civilizations to  cannibalize.

• Having said that, I want to help with Islamic reform. If we decide to divide  the Sunna into good Sunna and bad Sunna, how do we do it? We need a rational  method, not whim, taste or like/dislike.

   

   

  If we take an overview of the Trilogy, we find two organizing  principles—submission and duality. The Koran is a text devoted to submission and  duality. Submission is straightforward enough, but duality is not as familiar.  Part of the Koran's dual nature is seen in the Meccan Koran and the Medinan  Koran. They contain contradictory principles.

   

   

  The Koran gives a method to resolve the contradictions—abrogation. But since  every word in the Koran is from the perfect god, both sides of the contradiction  are true. It is just that the later verse is better than the earlier verse, but  the earlier verse is still true.

   

   

  This establishes an Islamic dualistic logic, which can accept both sides of a  contradiction as being true.

• One who is not reading closely may miss the fact that the “followers of those  hearsay stories” constitute the great majority of Muslims around the world  today, and that in my biography of Muhammad I was merely depicting Muhammad as  he appears in texts written by pious Muslims and accepted by most Muslims as  authoritative. But for Mr. Yuksel, “scholarly integrity requires consistency and  honesty in using sources in evaluating a historic personality,” and Mr. Warner  and I have fallen short of this, daring to “pick and choose from those books as  [we] wish.”

   

  Of course, if a book is not simply going to reproduce another book in its  entirety, some picking and choosing is necessary, and Mr. Yuksel unfortunately  provides no examples of what he finds so objectionable about the choices I made  in my book, except that I rely on early Islamic traditions about Muhammad –  traditions that he rejects. But for this also I make no apologies, as I was  trying simply to illuminate some elements of mainstream Islamic belief about  Muhammad as he is depicted in mainstream Islamic texts

• But in this Mr. Yuksel accuses me of dark motives, saying that Mr. Warner and  I “take advantage of the crazy noises created by Jingoists, Crusaders and  Jihadists, and hideously try to justify a bloody imperial Crusade with its  resurrected Spanish Inquisition mentality against Muslims” and says that he  considers “the work of these gentlemen a dishonest or ignorant attack against  one of the most progressive and peaceful leaders in human history.” Now we have  entered the realm of fantasy, since in reality I have repeatedly called on  Islamic spokesmen to acknowledge the elements of Islam that jihadists use to  recruit terrorists, repudiate those elements, and formulate some way to combat  the jihadist challenge within Muslim communities, so that non-Muslims and  Muslims may coexist as equals on an indefinite basis. That Mr. Yuksel would take  this as heralding some “bloody imperial Crusade” casts yet more doubt upon the  seriousness of his reform efforts. In that light, while I am grateful for his  invitation to attend his Atlanta Conference, and am always open to discussion  and debate (and am quite prepared to defend my work), I am unsure if he is  inviting me to speak, or simply to be the target there of more insults and  smears on my work and my integrity as a human being. If the latter, I must  respectfully decline.

• Just like the magnet, the “complete, perfect and detailed” Koran is both  religious and political and the real Mohammed is the jihadist and the preacher.  Islam uses each one when it is needed. Yuksel and Haidon need the “good”  Mohammed. But the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood presently are using the  jihadist Mohammed. North pole. South pole. Same magnet. Preacher Mohammed.  Jihadist Mohammed. Same Mohammed.

   

  So this symposium is based on the false premise that Mohammed must be one or  the other, when he is both sides of the contradiction.

   

   

  It is this dualism that lets Islam deceive the kafir. When talking to kafirs  and dhimmis, Islam presents a saintly man. The apologist dhimmis say, “Well, if  Mohammed was such a nice guy, the other Mohammed must be false.” The  shape-shifting dualism fools the dhimmis.

• All of the mentions of Mohammed in the Koran are seamless with the Hadith and  Sira. That is one of the reasons that the Sira and Hadith cannot be dismissed.  The Koran, Sira and Hadith are a unified intellectual work.

   

   

  But let’s go along with the argument that without the Mohammed of the Sira  and the Hadith, a good Islam would be a Koran-only Islam. Mr. Haidon and Mr.  Yuksel are so immersed in dualism of believer/kafir that they cannot see what a  dreadful document the Koran is for the kafir. They love it when the Koran says  that they are the “best of people”, but they cannot see how horrible it is that  I and all other kafirs are called the worst things in Allah’s creation

• I can give a criteria for a reformed Islam. Can I hear a good Mohammed joke  after reform? I am very serious. There are jokes about Jesus, Noah, Adam and  Moses (all supposed Islamic prophets of Allah). Why not Mohammed?

   

   

  I cannot help but notice that no Muslim can discuss Islam without criticizing  Christianity. The reason for this is found in the “complete, perfect and  detailed” Koran. The Koran is vicious about all other religions. Due to its  dualism, it has a good word in the beginning about the Jews and Christians, but  in the end, the dualism prevails and the Koran’s second view is brutal. It  demands that it, and it alone, determines the truth of all other religions. But  the Koran does not stop with religious criticism, but it always includes  political persecution of other religions. The “complete, perfect and detailed”  Koran also dictates that all other religions must politically submit in this  world. Islam is not just about religion, but politics. The Koran is a political  text that contains only negative, pejorative, hurtful, insulting words for the  kafir.
• This makes me very sad. I wish that I could believe that Islam can be reformed  and that Muslims could be convinced to stop imitating the jihadist Mohammed,  obeying the Medinan Koran and killing kafirs. Look at the results. Mao was  responsible for the deaths of 77,000,000 people, Stalin killed about 62,000,000  and Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 21,000,000. And for the last 1400  years those who imitate Mohammed and follow the Koran of Medina, have killed  over 270,000,000 kafirs. If you could bring about a reform that would negate  this effect, you and your work would be the greatest blessing to humanity in  written history

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• In al-Munqidh, al-Ghazzali informs us of  how in the prime of his life he was inflicted with a mysterious malady of the  soul, which lasted for nearly two months during which time he was a sceptic in  fact, but not in utterance and doctrine.[4] He was a student in his early  twenties at the Nizamiyyah College in Naishapur when he suffered from this  disease of scepticism.

   

  What is the nature of this  Ghazzalian doubt? Al-Ghazzali tells us that his doubt has been  generated in the course of his quest for certainty, that is, for knowledge of  the reality of things “as they really are” (haqaiq al-umur)[5]. This knowledge of the reality of  things “as they really are” is what al-Ghazzali calls al-’ilm al-yaqin, a sure and certain  knowledge which he defines as “that in which the thing known is made so manifest  that no doubt clings to it, nor is it accompanied by the possibility of error  and deception, nor can the mind even suppose such a possibility
• Al-Ghazzali’s quest for  certainty, as he defined it, is none other than this quest of the Gnostic
• • Taqlid or taqleed (Arabic تَقْليد taqlīd) is a doctrine in Islamic theology referring to the acceptance of a religious ruling in matters of worship and personal affairs from someone regarded as a higher religious authority (e.g. an 'ālim) without necessarily asking for the technical proof. Most often, this refers to the adherence to one of the four classical Sunni schools of fiqh, or jurisprudence (see madhhab).
• On the contrary, it was to lead him to the search for the inner reality of human  nature, that is, man’s primordial nature (fitrah), which on the earthly  plane becomes the receptacle for the multiplicity of religious forms and  expressions
• • What he was struggling with in his epistemology are sources of knoweldge, but these sources are about their origin, not their supra/supernational character.

• His problem was one of finding  the rightful place for each of the human faculties of knowing within the total  scheme of knowledge, and, in particular, of establishing the right relationship  between reason and intuition, as this latter term is traditionally  understood.

   

  Thus, when he was cured of this  sickness, not through rational arguments or logical proofs but through the  effect of a light (nur) which God  cast into his breast, his intellectual equilibrium was restored, and he once  again accepted the reliability of rational data of the category of daruriyyat. However, in this newfound  intellectual equilibrium, reason no longer occupied the dominant position it  used to have. In al-Ghazzali’s own words, that light which God cast into his  breast is the key to most knowledge

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• Abdullah bin Bejad al-Otaibi, one of the two writers, said he feared for his  life and called on the government to intervene. The second writer was Yousef Aba  al-Khail.

   

  "My articles have been met with fatwas before but it never got to this level  of directly inciting murder or directly accusing someone of no longer being a  Muslim," he told Reuters

• Perhaps no Western media outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion  more regularly than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester’s  top imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death penalty  for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock—and the BBC, in a dispatch headlined  imam accused of “gay death” slur, spun the  controversy as an effort by Casson to discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its  story with comments from an Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who  equated Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality with those of “other orthodox  religions, such as Catholicism” and complained that focusing on the issue was  “part of demonizing Muslims.”
• Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of  2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim  neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before  many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized  the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for  instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration  over economic injustice.

• Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown  a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying  Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural  anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel  rape in Oslo by exhorting women to “realize that we live in a multicultural  society and adapt themselves to it.”

• With the press, the entertainment industry, and  prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s  not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a  tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early  2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in  Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on  Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the  embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a  government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams  whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that  terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward  allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that  capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then  traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the  murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf  al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid  al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a  right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”

  • Comprehensive article on media blindness to the threat of Islam, so much so that they actually act as apologists for it.

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• It is the dualism of Islam that gives it such power. It has the entire good  cop/bad cop psychology built into its very DNA. There have been other groups  with dualistic ethics, the KKK for instance. But a member of the KKK hates all  blacks all the time. There is a certain bald-faced honesty in the hatred of the  KKK. But Islam has the good cop face to the world most of the time. The bad cop  is held in reserve the same way that a police detective carries a hidden weapon.  

   

  The ethical dualism means that Islam does not take part in the shared  reciprocity of altruism. As an example, Islam is very big on charity, but  Islamic charity only goes to Muslims. When Saudi Arabia sent money to New  Orleans after hurricane Katrina, the money only went to Muslims, not to  suffering kafirs.

• It makes an attempt to seem like an egalitarian world history book, but on  closer inspection you find that seven (not all are titled so) of the chapters  deal with Islam or Muslim subjects," wrote the parent, whose name was being  withheld, in a letter to WND.

   

  "The upsetting part is not only do they go into the history (which would be  acceptable) but also the teaching  of Islam," she said. "This book does not really go into Christianity or the  teachings of Christ, nor does it address religious doctrine elsewhere to the  degree it does Islam."

   

  She said the book's one page referencing Jews "is only to convey that they  were tortured by Crusaders to get them to convert to 'Christianity.' (It fails  to mention that the biggest persecutors of Jews throughout history and still  today are Arab Muslims). It gives four other one-liner references to the Jews  being blamed for the plagues and problems in the land. It does not talk about  the Jews as making a significant impact on the culture at large."

• "Among the textbooks examined, the editorial caution that marks coverage of  Christian and Jewish beliefs vanishes in presenting Islam's foundations. With  materials laden with angels, revelations, miracles, prayers, and sacred  exclamations; the story of the Zamzam well; and the titles 'Messenger of God'  and 'Prophet of Islam' the seventh-grade textbooks cross the line into something  other than history, that is, scripture or myth."

   

  Among the lessons public school students must learn from the various  books:

   
   
  • Muhammad "taught equality"
    
     
  • Fasting reminds Muslims of people who struggle to get enough food
    
     
  • Muhammad told his followers to make sure guests never left a table  hungry
    
     
  • Arab traditions include being kind to strangers and helping needy
   

  "These effusive formulations stop just short of invention and raise questions  about the sources of information," the report said.

• "While Christian belligerence is magnified, Islamic inequality, subjugation,  and enslavement get the airbrush," said the report, which also found  inaccuracies in teaching about sharia religious law, women's rights and  terrorism, especially the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington and  Pennsylvania, which killed nearly 3,000.

• "The Modern World" says, "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, teams of  terrorists hijacked four airplanes on the East Coast. Passengers challenged the  hijackers on one flight, which they crashed on the way to its target. But one  plane plunged into the Pentagon in Virginia, and two others slammed into the  twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York…"

   

  "The flatness and brevity of this passage are dismaying. In terms of content,  so much is left unanswered. Who were the teams of terrorists and what did they  want to do? What were their political ends? Since 'The Modern World' avoids any  hint of the connection between this unnamed terrorism and jihad, why September  11 happened is hard to understand," the report said.

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