From Stacy McCain, Washington Times, via email (video here):
“Welcome to the address that the Council on American Islamic Relations does not want you to hear,” Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch said Thursday, opening a speech to the Young America’s Foundation that caused CAIR to send a letter yesterday demanding “that YAF cancel the subject session.
The Washington Times obtained a text of Mr. Spencer’s speech, excerpts of which follow:
"It is a common tactic of both the Left and the Islamic advocacy groups in America: to accuse every critic of purveying hatred and bigotry. But I am not intimidated by their threats, or troubled by their smears -- because I know I do not advocate hatred and bigotry, but a realistic appraisal of the Islamic jihad threat. ...
"Look at the threatening letter CAIR's lawyers, Sandler, Reiff and Young, sent to the YAF about this very talk. This is just the latest example of a larger attempt to silence critics and those who say things about Islam and jihad that they don't like. Look at the campaigns of intimidation that CAIR has carried out against Paul Harvey, the producers of Fox's "24,' National Review magazine, and others who have said things CAIR doesn't like. ...
"This campaign of intimidation has had its effect. Many mainstream media figures, even those who think of themselves as fearless conservatives, have not wanted to discuss the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their actions. ... They fear the wrath of CAIR. ...
If CAIR succeeds in smearing and silencing all those who dare to speak about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their actions, and who dare to call upon CAIR itself and other groups to go beyond vaguely-worded condemnations of terrorism to real efforts to teach against the jihad ideology in schools and mosques, what chance do we have to resist the spread of that ideology? ..."And so I conclude today by asking the CAIR officials ... to set aside the weapons of legal threats and intimidation, and the reckless purveying of personal smears and defamation, and enter into a genuin public discussionb of the material I have presented here. ... Let's have a dialogue, or a debate, whenever and wherever you say. Or you can sue me now, or sue the YAF, and try to silence me. But you won't be able to sue or silence all the American people who are deeply concerned about what you are doing. ..."
In a brief interview with reporters before his speech to YAF’s national student conference, Mr. Spencer was asked what he hoped students would get from his speech. “I would hope that they would understand that not everything is what it appears to be,” Mr. Spencer said, saying that CAIR has “twisted” civil rights rhetoric in order to “advance their agenda.”
An interest group, given license to define it’s own narrative of authenticity by a PC culture under the thrall (often legally) of the social project of multiculturalism, presuming to use our laws to punish those of us who criticize them in ways they find troublesome by turning “tolerance” into “intolerance,” and reducing free speech to “speech sanctioned by groups deemed authentic”?
Why, whoever could have seen that coming…?
I know, I know, is the answer Ron Paul?
TW: TRuly a “whined space”
This whole islam thing is a tough one, even without Hooper. The first ammendment guarantees free exercise of religion, but the founders didn’t consider a religion that also proclaims a “proper” form of governance, especially one so opposed to the foundational principles of our nation. Requiring those who adhere to Islam to eschew a portion of their beliefs to follow certain portions of western law is in essence a violation of their rights to practice that religion, obviously many do it willingly, but we can’t set up seperate systems for various groups to live under and still have a functioning nation. Outside of telling an entire group to “take it or literally leave it” is there an option for successful integration?
Anyway CAIR = Jihadists Civil Liberties Union
Requiring those who adhere to Islam to eschew a portion of their beliefs to follow certain portions of western law is in essence a violation of their rights to practice that religion Only where their religion infringes on the inherent rights of others.
It’s the “your fist/my nose” argument.
Islam as a religion can be compatible with Western civ… as an ideology, aka as Islamism it is fully incompatible with Western civ
So the question remains on which ideology will rule America in the decades to come?
From the intimidation of CAIR (which is not without years of precedence of any “offensive” utterance to creeping Sharia, it is cause for at least a few sleepless nights.
ef – Well said, well said indeed.
At some point, there will have to be some pushback or blowback as a result of these things. Everyday average American citizens will simply not tolerate this crap. There needs to be somebody with stones that will use the same tactics they use, and tie them up in Court. Their actions have to infringe on somebody else’s rights, in the same manner in which they claim theirs are being infringed.
“Silence or Else
The Council on American Islamic Relations demanded that one of the speakers at today’s session of a conservative youth conference here in Washington be pulled from the lineup  and threatened the organizers with legal action if they did not comply.
CAIR accuses best-selling author and terrorism expert Robert Spencer of being a  “well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry against Muslims.” It said his session must be canceled  or he must be kept from making what it calls “false and defamatory statements.”
The Young America’s Foundation  which organized the conference  replied by saying  “We will not be intimidated by radical Islamic thugs … CAIR can go to Hell and they can take their 72 virgins with them.”
Spencer did go on as scheduled this afternoon.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291935,00.html
The bright side of all this is that Ibrahim Hooper is getting plenty of air time these days, and virtually every time he shows up, he gets throttled.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, and his time seems to be up.
tw: different torture
Hey, I didn’t say it! The thing said it!
Requiring those who adhere to Islam to eschew a portion of their beliefs to follow certain portions of western law is in essence a violation of their rights to practice that religion
It all depends on what you consider to be “their religion.” Islam doesn’t have a central authority to establish doctrine, so you can have some Muslims say that it’s absolutely vital to their religion that they live under shari’a, and others who say that shari’a is a political extension of Islam that was derived from the Quran and other writings but that it’s not a fundamental element, such as praying towards Mecca or the Hajj or the Quran itself.
Dicentra – don’t forget the principle of abrogation, which produces about a dozen different crazy-quilt patterns of which part of which sura is or isn’t applicable.
“CAIR’s lawyers, Sandler, Reiff and Young…”
I have to wonder how successful CAIR would be without some greed headed American lawyers in a shark like feeding frenzy at their trough.
These ravenous law dogs who would probably eat their own hand if it held a fist full of dollars. I’ll bet their progressives.
Religion vs ideology is exactly the problem. In Islam, at least as practiced in most of the world, they are intrinsicly linked. Sure, there isn’t a central authority to declare what is or isn’t proper, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Koran ties worship in with all social interactions. You seemingly can’t seperate Islam from Islamism except by the voluntary actions of individual Muslims. That many have done so is great, but reduces it to selective application of “acceptable” texts. Now I’m absolutely not a religious scholar of any strain, but the textual arguments for West compatible Islam are hard to come by.
And that YAF reply has my vote for quote of the year.
YAF has some stones, and more people should respond in kind.
I am damn close to printing up some bumper stickers and t-shirts that read:
“100% Infidel” or “Infidel Crusader” or “American Infidel” or “Crusader Martyr in Training”
Any takers?
I’m with Infidel
Ha, ha, ha!
Stacy?
There is no debate with these prehistoric assholes. Watch your back (and your family’s back).
Debate?
Right! They will just issue a fatwah to “assassinate youre ass”.
I am truly stunned that we let these fucking Neanderthals intimidate us. At least we don’t live where they breed, and will kill your family for sticking your head above ground level. Apparently, though, it won’t be long.
Public schools drop their pants and bend over for Islam, but don’t you EVER even mention Christianity! Who the hell are these idiots that set the agenda in our education system?
They are the people who the Islamo-Nazis will kill first, nes pas?
Thank God for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who deny this reality day after day after day after day after day….Marxism is more important than your family’s welfare, isn’t it?
Time to go to bed. I am way too pissed off to continue…
Maybe what we need is statute to limit “group” access to the courts. How the hell did it become possible to sue on behalf of Scientology, or Islam or any of the rest of these self identified groups?
Or maybe our courts need to define what is beneath the dignity of the law itself (things like 13 year old boys slapping a girls ass, or a religious group whining that somebody is criticising their religion) and judges and prosecutors put under great pressure to simply dismiss cases of this ilk.
“but the founders didn’t consider a religion that also proclaims a “proper†form of governance, especially one so opposed to the foundational principles of our nation. Requiring those who adhere to Islam to eschew a portion of their beliefs to follow certain portions of western law is in essence a violation of their rights to practice that religion…”
Actually, the founders did consider that, which is why they put that amendment in there: to prevent the government establishment of an official religion. They didn’t want another Church of England dictating laws. What they didn’t consider is the populace would become too stupid to understand that, and would lack enough sense of self-preservation to do anything about it.
While I understand what you are saying B Moe, I don’t think the comparison to western state religions properly addresses Islam. European rulers declared an official religion, but the form of government that went with it wasn’t dictated by the Bible. Following Christianity, even at the direction of the state, does not necessitate adopting a particular legal code. Islam, practiced with or without the endorsement of the state does do that and that’s what creates the conflict. By refusing to allow Islamic legal practices to be adopted, because the constitution requires that we don’t, we are denying those practitioners from fully following the requirements of their religion, which the constitution requires that we do. That central conflict doesn’t exist in other religions.
TW: law-suit easiest, that’s the problem
EF –
The conflict you describe does exist for some religious belief systems other than Islam, but many of them tend to be more of the fringe cult variety. We do not allow worshippers of Kali to practice thugee, nor do we tolerate human sacrifice from a group looking to appease Quetzalcoatl. On a more realistic level, I believe there have been numerous court decisions in the past that have clearly placed limits on actions taken in the name of religion, and they have withstood challenges on first amendment grounds.
TW: friars clearing
They better
Last I checked, the Driuds weren’t strangling the year-king at winter solstice anymore, either.
Pity, that.
SB: conceit potestas
Oddly, a large number — around half — of the Thuggee professed to be Muslim. Sleeman was quite surprised that someone could proclaim there was “only-one-God-Allah-and-Mohammed-is-his-prophet” and then proclaim their allegiance to Kali.
Not that that’s apropos to the topic at hand, but I thought it was interesting…
CAIR: Council of Arabist Identity Racketeers.
The “Convert, Submit, or Die” part of Islam always struck me as being a wee bit incompatible with our current system of government. I’d kinda prefer a few more choices.
TW: direct, refused
Damn, this thing is good!
Would that be DNC General Counsel Joseph E. Sanders?
Hey, but they keep on telling me that there’s no compulsion in Islam? Sure, I DON’T have to convert, but my other two choices are lacking, too. I don’t want to die, for sure. And I don’t want to be considered second class or inferior. Sure, I can take that shit from people that have no power over me and can laugh at their impotence, but, the thing about true Islam, is that there is NO separation of the church (mosque) and the state. CAIR’s Islam is THAT Islam. No matter how much their useful idiots continue to say to the contrary.
If you do a site search, you’ll find a few posts on the proposal by some Germans to indict the Koran as incompatible with secular government and law.
Had we not gone through several decades of boutique multiculturalism, we wouldn’t be grappling with these kinds of problems, because we would have already made the line clear that we are a nation of (secular) laws around which religious worship must conform. You simply don’t get to set up your own theocratic state inside the US and declare it above US law.
It’s time that was made abundantly clear — and yet, politicians and businesses and universities simply don’t have the stones to do it. Instead, they gave to grievance demands, because they’ve been conditioned to do so. And they’ve been conditioned to do so because they don’t want to fight prolonged legal battles.
The Islamic lobbying and interest groups have learned that all it takes to game our system is money and will. Hell, we can’t even get congressional Democrats to protect “John Doe” from the threat of well-financed legal retaliation (or retaliation of other kinds, potentially) for reporting unusual behavior.
Either we are at war with Islamic fundamentalists who we know operate inside the countries that they attack, or we are not. We are going to have to decide.
The decision thus far has been, it seems to me, pragmatic: there is little chance of an Islamic revolution within the U.S., so we can afford, statistically speaking, to allow certain behaviors to continue, sacrificing potential safety on the altar of “civil liberties.”
Personally, I think that’s the coward’s way out. But our legal system is weighted toward those who can finance challenges. Perhaps what we need to do, rather than give to political candidates, is to form legal interest groups that are well financed to raise challenges of our own to the kind of behavior that games the courts by bullying opponents into legal submission.
The argument about freedom of religion vs governmental authority is rooted in the scriptures of both Christianity and Islam.
BMoe has it right: The founders were clearly concerned with the excesses of and apologies for the monarchy that existed within the structural constraints of the royal church-state theocracy. However, ef is also correct when, in effect, he points to the fact that the governmental apparatus is found clearly deliniated in Islamic scripture. The founders were concerned with the religiously/divinely justified monarch as the core of their insistance on seperation from government, for that justification allowed for tyranny. This idea was deeply rooted in the reality that divine providence for the monarch allowed the religious state to define treason as any criticism of the king or any other government official acting in the king’s name. One of the driving forces behind Puritan emmigration was their inconvenient practice of publishing and posting tracts proclaiming a certain official’s corruption. Juries were practically forced to convict the writers; not on the basis of truth or falsehood but on the stark declaration of the criticism itself.
Islam has no scriptural or historical concept or reality for any seperation of church and state. Attaturk didn’t even bother, to any great degree, to make an argument for it. He merely proclaimed a new, modern concept in Turkey for a secular state that still honored Islam as a religion of choice. Unlike Christians, who have both Jesus’ “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and Paul’s declarations in Romans 13 that “Everyone must submit themselves to the governing authorities…”, muslims are left with no definitive narrative that allows them to easily slip those parts of their religion and its traditions that are at odds with liberal western politcal values. While Christians are free to manuever within the authoritarian construct muslims are forced to make compromises that involve not just reinterpreting Quranic and historical doctrines, but outright ignoring many, especially the traditionally compelling application of Sha’ria law.
Ultimately it comes down to assimilation. Where this country has stood and should continue to stand is on the traditions of a unified vision of liberty and accountability as expressed in the Constitution and against any watering down of those notions by any religion attempting to shoehorn their own practices under the cover of religious freedom.
Now it’s up to us to hold the fort against this sort of legal three card monty and defend those politcal democratic values whcih support those liberties we hold dear. Surely they are worth more than whether or not defense of them constitutes a “phobia,” “libel” or a “hate speech.”
But then again, as a “cancerous” conservative I may find myself scalpeled and excised for the sake of
meek accomodationmulti-culturalism. And maypoles.tw: 1923 dependable Like the stock market…
It’s instructive to note the Mormons used to sanction polygamy. I have no difficulty with our government reaching a similar accomodation with sharia. End it. There is no else, here.
Outside of a constitutional ammendment, is there anything that is likely to hold up in court against an establishment of Islamism, either within or without the government? As long as the the free practice of religion is guaranteed, any statements indicting the Koran would seemingly be toothless.
Can you imagine running simultaneous gay marriage / anti-islamism constitutional ammendments. Libs’ heads might just explode from outrage.
tw: quarrel strictly, man this thing is on a roll.
I don’t recall polygamy being a divine commandment. More of something that followed after for some less official reason. Banning it isn’t therefore on quite the same level as sharia.
BJtexs: This is one key point – both Traditionalists and Liberals of the Christian faith can break free of the system of monarchy. There is much old-testament writing regarding the prominence and importance of Kings, but, BUT, if we are to have agreement not just across space but across time, we may find that Christians at the time (1700’s) only recently in the Christianity’s History began to regard scripture as authorizing a divine right for kings. ‘Ecumenism over Time’ as the Orthodox say, requires us to look back – ‘ressourcement’ – and determine not only how the New Testament writers regarded different tracts but also how the early church did.
Liberals could break free by arguing the oppression and damage caused by it, and the Traditionalists could argue that ‘Divine Right of Kings’ was a private interpretation invented to reinforce the system of state-church property control.
This is to say, looking at both Jesus and Paul, you will see that the Old Testament is ‘reinterpreted’ or ‘transinterpreted’ wherein the literal meaning is preserved while new layers of meaning are pulled out ‘between the words’ or so to speak. For instance, when the ‘King’ is referenced, it is obvious that in the original Jewish scripture their earthly authority was being referenced. But, deeper meaning is ascribed, combined with a historical development (the incarnation) that moves the scripture into literally a different meaning through time. Thus it was likely that references to the King in old testament scriptures were either fulfilled or reinterpreted to now refer to Jesus.
Thus a fundamentalist reading such as to impute a Divine Right to Kings could be defeated both from a perspective of Tradition and from that of Reason. In Christianity you cannot arbitrarily ‘abrogate’ a scripture or verse – to do so takes a series of tests which are based in reason. Attempts to do so otherwise (such as abrogating old testament positions against homosexual acts) are generally looked down upon and always fall apart under real scrutiny.
Islam, however, does not seem to have this dynamic. Spencer’s analysis is good because it reveals the weakness of their scripture as well as the arbitrariness of their tradition. It is only this that will probably save them; they must arbitrarily decide – from some position of authority – that this path is madness. From there it will only take them abrogating choice verses with others to at least ideologically undo what they’ve gotten themselves into.
My only fear is that the real radical branch will declare these moderates apostates (finally, I guess) and break off formally from the faith.
No sparkling clean endgame, I’d wager, but hopefully one that stops Wretchard’s Analysis from coming true.
CAIR’s membership, by the by, plummeted after 9/11. I don’t know where they are now getting their money, but it is not from a large number of American Muslims.
I was at Barry University back in 1994, when Nihad Awad, proclaimed his loyalty to Hamas, and it seemed strange then; the fact that he’s gotten
any traction, for his pro-jihadi views is somewhat bizarre.
River:
Excellent analysis that fills out my poor attempt.
Islam actually does have an extensive history of self analysis with the Hadiths. Many of the more liberal aspects of these writings have been used to justify a less fundamentalist approach to the faith. I think the fact that so many national theocracies exist as well as those who give enormous amounts of money to fund Salafi Wahabist Madrassa schools *cough* Saudis *cough* has created a disconnect from much of their traditional scholarship.
Well maybe not so much a disconnect as a drowning out of the more moderate hadiths. Iran has really screwed the pooch by connecting radicalized Shia Islam to peasant revolution, covering their theocratic fascism in common man empowering. Toss in Israel as the penultimate whipping boy, stir in the corrupting influence of Western culture along with a permanant droning of victimization and voila, self reflection is replaced all too often by raw fanaticism.
Protestants and (eventually and to some extent) Catholics embraced the nobler precepts of the Enlightenment. Ultimately, the founding fathers were able to move past the Christian essential of “fallen man, dead in his sin” and expouse the the rather radical notion that all men are, inspite of said condition, imbued by their creator with “rights” to live free and accountable, no better or worse than anyone else regardless of heredity or title. The basic concept of submission/slave in Islam simply doesn’t allow, without some creative mental gymnastics, that very same doctrine to take hold, as the individual is ultimately unimportant in Allah’s grand design.
Those hadiths that may have expoused some of these more moderate doctrines are constantly shouted down in a sea of originalism. This is why it’s so critically important to resist any attempt to import any Islamic practice that violates out fundamental constitutional freedoms.
tw: prosperity rose But only for Dhimmis (heh)
“An interest group, given license to define its own narrative of authenticity by a PC culture under the thrall (often legally) of the social project of multiculturalism, presuming to use our laws to punish those of us who criticize them in ways they find troublesome by turning “tolerance†into “intolerance,†and reducing free speech to “speech sanctioned by groups deemed authenticâ€Â?
There you go. CAIR in the full. (likely still raising money for jihad under the penumbra of “charity” )
Oh, and the Outrage for terrorism justified in the name of Islam ?
Still waiting for it to match the delicate manipulation of the (grotesque) aspects of PC American culture by organizations like CAIR.
Look, much Muslim literature is very precise in the various stages of takeover of a culture.
The process (3 stage ?) is laid out in no uncertain terms. First you’re nice and appear to fit in, then you get people elected into the system (like the dope in the House of Reps. who wanted to be sworn in on the Koran) or you agitate for Shari’a to exist alongside civil law (see Canada) or you focus your energies on being “outraged at insults” (see CAIR, see imams at airports, which public praying demonstrations in airports don’t happen in Muslim countries)and you gradually erode what you construe to be a weak and corrupt culture.
And you procreate (see Europe) where Europeans themselves are barely reproducing, eventually (not even too eventually) you are in “the majority”.
And so on. It has all been spelled out repeated times by Islamic individuals with this agenda. It is not a secret, but must be terribly amusing to some that it meets some success under the eyes of the weak and brain dead infidels.
All according to Allah’s will which must, necessarily, meet with success, being straight from the Main Man.
This is the first time I’ve been on this site or blog..somehow got here from the “Hot Air” blog.
Somewhere in this list of comments Scientology was compared to Islamists.(as far as lawsuits are concerned). I’m a conservative and have been a Scientologist for 35 years. The Scientology philosophy is the complete opposite of what you find in Islam. In my experience,any of the lawsuits filed by Scientology were filed due to actual defamation and falsehoods designed to injure the Church. And those defaming the Church, generally are those special interests that most of us on this blog have issues with. I would ask anyone on this blog who is a person of goodwill but has formed an unfavorable opinion of the Church to go to the official site at http://www.scientology.org, (not the smear sites) to find out who we are and what we actually do. You might just find yourself pleasantly surprised! It is important, especially in the world we live in today,that we are able to separate the good guys from the bad. We have all seen how easy it is for the media to blur that distinction.
Scientology afficionado Jenna Elfman thought it would be funny if her liberal hippy sitcom character became a wacky good-humored victim person – you could tell she was a victim cause you could see the wheelchair right there on your tv. What Jenna Elfman found out was that acting like a victim just made people stop watching her and before you know it she was doing voice work for Clifford’s Really Big Movie.
Suing people (or threatening them or killing them) for talking bad about your religion is just plain stupid. There is no rational defense for doing it.
[…] Spencer speaks. Posted by Ian S. […]
RiverCocytus;
BJTexs;
If I read you both correctly, concluding that Jihad is the One True Islam, a) does not explain everything, or even sufficient (thinking of Daniel Pipes’ criticisms of Clash of Civiliazations in his entertaining takedown of Ken Livingstone) and b) bolsters jihadis support, whereas ‘The Religion of Peace is the One True Islam’ is easily knocked down. So what remains is explaining there are ways one can interpret Islam, and there are consequences. Perhaps why those commited to reform tend to frame it thus; ‘making an Islam that is peaceful, tolerant, and compatible with individual rights’. Perhaps the decentralized nature of Islam will turn against the jihadis.
The alternative to relativism seems to shed little light and offer few solutions. So is this why Mark Steyn is all gloomy and apocalyptic nowadays?
Mark Steyn is never gloomy or apocalyptic.
He just calls it like a person with common sense and a sense of humoUr.
“The Hadiths” have evolved over the 1400 years since Mohammed lived as variations on “the control impulse” of Islam depending on who was writing what when. Mo’ himself knew no-thing of “the Hadiths”.
(Mo’ had actually been dead 100+ years when “The Koran” was written down, in its blessed and sanctimonious and obscure Arabic which, of course, Allah speaks)
Anyway, any way you slice the cake, “The Hadiths” can’t be attributed to Allah but to mortals throughout the eons with sundry agendas.
Somebody, somewhere, sometime needs to get real on this stuff and stop obscuring it.
About Cair’s lawyers, especially Mr. Sandler,
“From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Sandler served as staff counsel for the Democratic National Committee, with responsibility for delegate selection, campaign finance, federal and state election law matters, including campaign finance legislation and rulemakings, and legal oversight of political operations. He was general counsel of the Rules and Credentials Committee for the 1988 Democratic National Convention….From February 1993 until May 1998, Mr. Sandler served on the staff of the DNC as general counsel. He continues to serve in that position through his law firm. In this capacity, Mr. Sandler has been responsible for all legal matters affecting the national party…The 2007 edition of the Chambers USA guide to U.S. law firms names Mr. Sandler as one of eleven leading attorneys practicing political law in the country. He is the author of chapters on congressional ethics and the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act for The Lobbying Manual published by the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association.”
Hmmm, any doubt about the politics of this firm and if hurting this administration in any way possible might be just an itsy bitsy consideration?
CAIR(its co founder Nihad Awad and its various spokespeople) are obviously dedicated to the proposition that…America is Out To Destroy Islam.
They don’t believe it themselves (you can see it in their faces and hear it in their words), but it is the only justification by which they can continue to secretly advance the Islamic agenda.
Just for the record, the Mormon doctrine of multiple wives was a “divine commandment” in the sense that the order to practice it was revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith. (Rumors that it was to cover Smith’s libidinous indiscretions are belied by the fact that he was spiritually married to 30 woman, yet none of them bore him offspring. [He had plenty of kids with first wife Emma.])
However, not everyone was required to practice it (the plural marriages were performed to take care of a surplus of women), and it is considered to be a viable alternative to monogamy, which the Book of Mormon says is the default arrangement. It’s not vital that you be a polygamist to be saved, in other words.
Mormons did not give up polygamy until the government clamped down hard, threatening to seize our properties, including our temples, sending armies against us, imposing electoral disenfranchisement, and denying statehood to the territory.
Despite all of the persecutions, lies, slanders, murders, beatings, theft of land, injustices, etc., we have never brought a lawsuit against someone for telling lies about us. It’s not our way. And despite the misconceptions that still abound because of those lies, we thrive and grow.
No religious group should sue for defamation: it doesn’t actually clear your name, it doesn’t stop people from lying about you or criticizing you in the future, and it forces you into the role of either victim or bully  take your pick.
If your religion can’t stand to be criticized, that’s pretty pathetic. You should take it as a sign that you’re doing something right and let God take care of it in the next life.
Thanks, dicentra. I wasn’t sure if I remembered the extra women part correctly and decided to just skip it altogether.
Curious line of thinking arose from the Allah speaks arabic comment…. If Islam is an Abrahamic religion, and therefor Allah is the same God of the Jews, why did he spend so many centuries chatting with them in anything but arabic? At the very least, while he had Moses up on mount Sinai, he could have added an “oh by the way, chisel out number 11 thusly: Thou shalt speak arabic as thy native tongue”
I’m not proclaiming that the Islamist brand of Islam is the true and correct Islam. I haven’t studied it. It is certainly the Islam we are faced with here and abroad in varying levels of intensity. Without a mass shift toward sectarianism we are left with the issues so far discussed.
As an after thought, I’m not sure god would have used thusly.
TW: packer sighing, it’s about that time of year.
“I’m not proclaiming that the Islamist brand of Islam is the true and correct Islam.”
I don’t think there really is such a thing. So you needn’t worry about investing a lot of time to figure it out.
Some (not many, thankfully) adherents of modern Islam purport to believe that they’re ordered by Allah Himself to destroy you and take over your lands, instituting the one true Allah given Law.
If you’re kept alive, your function (as an unbeliever) would be to work and pay taxes…(hmmmm, sounds like the Democrats…)
Other adherents of modern Islam have no such agenda.
The Koran wasn’t even written down until Mohammed had been dead 150 years or so.
And since THAT time, about 14 centuries of elaboration and layers have been laid down by the people of those successive eras.
The notion of “religious scholarship” just might be the biggest joke of all.