ISLAMIC DISTORTIONS DEFY CREDULITY

A HEIGHTENED SENSE of being deprived of food for a month encourages such demands and concessions of infidel populations. Ramadan is nothing but a "ram-it-down-your-throat" orgasm of Islamic triumphalism. Ramadan comes from an Arabic word for intense heat, scorched ground, and shortness of rations.

Oh those poor misunderstood submitters—enter your local muslim-grievance-theatrics-group, interfaith re-education, one-way-bridge-to-Islam building sessions. If only the world would simply bend to their whim, there would be peace on earth. Yeah right. The proof is in their miserable death cult. Look at the map above. Are these people victims? No, what they have been, are, and will be, are ruthless deadly aggressors against peoples and cultures, and no amount of Leftist multicultural fantasy will change that fact. After all, they don't want to change. Every statement they make to the West is couched in double entendre and outlying lying, a doctrine known as taqiyya, right out of their own so-called sacred script for world domination.

The following program at YouTube, produced by Al Jazeera, unintentionally reveals, and actually confirms what we've read in the pages at JW/DW for years. Actually, Al Jiz provides quite a treasure trove for counter jihad fodder.

For example, a recent video explains the Islamic perception of immigration from an integration vs. assimilation point of view. Let's bite. Let's define these terms:

integrate:

to (cause to) mix freely with other groups in society etc Example: The immigrants are not finding it easy to integrate into the life of our cities.

assimilate:

to take in and incorporate as one's own; absorb: He assimilated many new experiences on his European trip to bring into conformity with the customs, attitudes, etc., of a group, nation, or the like; adapt or adjust: to assimilate the new immigrants.

Check out the Al Jazeera English video Crossroads Europe. In this program, Al Jazeera reporter Elizabeth Filippouli interviews Midhat Ibrahim, a Kosovo national who immigrated to Sweden in 1952, in the main mosque at Rosengard, Malmo's poorest immigrant-populated district. Fast forward video to marker 8:20 where Elizabeth asks Midhat the following:

Elizabeth: "Do you think that Islam limits Muslims to fully integrate themselves into a Western society like Sweden?
Midhat: "Yes. Yes, I think Muslims can integrate. Assimilation, no. Integration, yes. The problem is that Christians don't know much about Islam. Muslims know much more about Christianity and Judaism."

Elizabeth continues: "Before I left, he cautioned me about the growing gulf between young muslims and native Swedes. Many people accuse Islam, and young Muslims have had enough. The conflict starts because young Muslims want to defend Islam. They want Swedes to know, they are not terrorists. It's ignorance about Islam that breeds conflict."

Integrate = invade = YES

Assimilate = become a Swede = NO (Swede can be replaced Euro national of choice)

Muslim immigrants demand Euro nationals assimilate to Islam via the slow jihad. Islam demands such assimilation around the globe—through interfaith meetings demanding the West tolerate a most intolerant pseudo religious doctrine.

In the video report, Madhat stated, "Swedish Christians don't know Islam."

Of course. Only Muslims has instant knowledge. To 'know' Islam is to accept the shahada and Islamic supremacy. When those refusing to submit i.e. "know" Islam on such terms, submitters perceive such rejection as an assault on Islam triggering violent jihad to defend Islam. Thanks for clearing that up Al Jiz.

As this relates to Ramadan and Eid...

Eid marks the end of Ramadan and was first celebrated in 624 after winning the Battle of Badr, a turning point in Muhammad's struggle with the unsubmitting Quraish in Mecca. When Muhammad entered Mecca, he celebrated a great festival with his companions and family members.

Eid = Celebration of ethnic cleansing. Think about that when the next submitter proposes another infidel concession. Technically, Muslims skip lunch during Ramadan.

Quote from Isabelle the Crusader, "I knew a family where the mother told me she had to get up at 4:30 AM during Ramadan so she could make the big meal for everyone so they could eat it before the sun came up. The process was repeated at dinnertime, after the sun went down. While it's not a cake walk to skip meals for twelve hours, the illusion that these folks are fasting for an entire month is just more taqiya. I would think this is more about sleep deprivation than food deprivation."

Thanks to Her Royal Whyness for many of the previous amalgamated comments.

IRANIAN PRESIDENT DISSED BY MULLAH

AN IRANIAN CLERIC ACCUSED President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of betraying the people and called on reformers to unite to defeat him in next year's elections, according to an interview in a German newspaper quoted by Reuters, Wednesday.

"Ahmadinejad is not complying with the will of the people," The Financial Times Deutschland quoted Grand Ayatollah Bajat Sanjani as saying. "This is a major threat, a big danger," the cleric added in an unusually direct personal attack.

The newspaper also said Sanjani accused Ahmadinejad's government of breaking the law, seriously violating personal freedom and illegally empowering the Revolutionary Guard.

Despite this latest public setback, Ahmadinejad is expected to run for a second term in Iran's next presidential election, slated to take place early in 2009. His reformist rivals are expected to attack him especially on his economic policies.

Iran suffers from a rising consumer price index, high percentage of unemployment and an inflation of 26 percent.

But don't be fooled. This utterance is almost certain merely a delay tactic to give a false impression of opposition, in hoping the West and Israel will not attack!! We should all hope we don't have to attack them physically, and pray that we can successfully and covertly undermine their plans...

But! but! Chairman Obama says that Iran is NOT world threat! So who should we believe? A top Iranian cleric, or the self-appointed Messiah? Perhaps, neither.

STOP THE JIZYA NOW!

Hugh Fitzgerald complains rightly that America should not be footing the bill for the ummah, not with all the money they have in their coffers, and especially not when bucked up by a pernicious ideology that calls for and works toward the death of the West, by any means necessary. These nations, mislabeled "allies on the war on terror" are nothing of the sort. But please read on. Despite the crushing debt load we are carrying to help bring civility to these regions dominated by totalitarian Islam, our ignorant or outright dhimmi leaders continue to betray our American future for a ridiculous pittance in their own pockets today. Stop this obscene and civilization-crippling jizya now! Fitzgerald's article:

"Gulf oil producers are expected to earn a record $562 billion in 2008…"—from this news article.

That nearly $600 billion is just this year's take. And it just counts the Gulf Arabs, not other Muslim states with plenty of oil dough to make mischief—think of Iran, or Libya. Since 1973 alone (there was plenty coming in before that, even though the real bonanza had not started for the likes of Saudi Arabia) the Muslim oil states have received—by now—about eleven billion dollars. They have done nothing, and they do nothing, to deserve this money. No hard work, no clever entrepreneurial ideas. They simply sit on top of it.

And they are supposedly loyal to fellow Muslims, so one would think that they would share that wealth. But of course they don't. Or rather, some of the rich Arabs and Muslims "share" the teeny-tiniest amounts for very specific purposes. For example, sums are raised to supply a little money to those paladins of the most immediate neighborhood Jihad, the suicide bombers in Israel. But save for one or two ostentatious transmittals of money—say, to Hariri's party in Lebanon—there is no sharing of wealth with poorer members of the Umma. Instead, the rich Arabs have been able to inveigle the world into ignoring their incredible greed.

And Saudi Arabia, according to J. B. Kelly, has for decades carefully inflated its population numbers in order to lower the published per-capita income figures as well as to engage in a little froggy throat-swelling. The rich Arabs deflect calls for wealth-sharing within the Umma, and most amazing of all, they convince the Western world, that is, the Americans and the Western Europeans, that it is they who should be shelling out aid to Egypt, to Pakistan, to Jordan, to the "Palestinian" warlords and "authorities."

Egypt is not an "ally," no matter how often that noun is misapplied. It is a world center of antisemitism that ran on state television a series based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." It is a country that makes life hell for its Christian Copts. It is a country that runs diplomatic interference for the Arab regime in Sudan, all the while pretending to be "applying pressure" to it, and to utter, for Western ears only, an occasional cluck-cluck of fake disapproval. It is a country where the corrupt Mubarak, with his Family-And-Friends Plan, continues to batten on American aid shelled out by those whose notion of an Arab ally these days—the definition keeps shifting, but it is always a ludicrous one—is any country that is not openly allied with Iran and that does not call for Israel's immediate destruction, preferring the Slow Jihad as more certain and less dangerous to itself.

Why has Egypt, whose Muslim Arabs so dislike the West (even if they would delightedly flood into the West if they could), received $70 billion from the Americans and who knows how many more billions from Europeans, when the Saudis, the Emiratis (especially Dubai and Abu Dhabi), the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, are all dripping with gold, and the money just keeps piling up, with no end in sight, even as they buy up as much as they can, at firesale prices, American companies or American stocks or American real estate?

And then there are the billions shelled out for Afghanistan, a country which might better be handled through local proxies, who can deal as they wish with those whom we identify as enemies at far less expense, and with far less tensions caused among NATO members. They are in a much better position than Western forces to fight, and know whom to fight—while the NATO forces have yet again apparently been fooled into bombing an anti-Taliban group, thinking they were the enemy. They may not have American weaponry, but such weaponry is not really needed. Long knives against long knives, Tadzhik and Uzbek in the north holding fast against Pushtuns, Hazara armed sufficiently to protect themselves from the uber-Sunni Taliban, and so on, with shifting patterns of (most temporary) Western weapons drops and supplies.

And let's not forget Iraq, where the Americans removed a monster, and for five years have been moving heaven and earth to make Iraq a decent place—which means ignoring the inshallah-fatalism, and the victor/vanquished dualism, that Islam encourages and that helps explain why the American effort, no matter how prolonged, and no matter how many men, how much money, how much materiel is expended or rather squandered, will not succeed in building a different Iraq, something recognizably advanced and Western. If there were a million Mithal al-Alusis, it might happen, but there is only one, or at best, only a handful. And it is this that General Petraeus and the "counter-insurgency manual" colonels from Leavenworth keep forgetting, or rather never knew, because they haven't deeply felt what they cannot see—and Islam, in the minds of men, cannot easily be seen. You have to study it. You have to study the texts and tenets and then what Muslims have done with those texts and tenets over time and through space—how they have behaved toward Infidels. But you can't just "see" it. And that is why the Americans have now squandered nearly two trillion dollars in Iraq.

And what has Saudi Arabia done? Has it paid for the Sunni Awakening? Has it paid to keep the Americans somewhere in the area to help protect those Sunnis, or to protect Sunni regimes from Iran-sponsored Shi'a aggression? No, not a cent. And not only that, but it is only the Infidel states that have forgiven nearly one hundred billion dollars in Iraq's pre-2003 debt, while neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait has done so, and the Emirates have only done so in part. Why is that, do you think, that only the Infidels have cancelled in any major way the debt of a Muslim debtor state, and not fellow Muslim states?

Oh, we could go on, with a tour of the globe, showing how here, and how there, Infidels end up footing the bill. Who paid for relief in Muslim Aceh, in Indonesia? Not the Saudis. Who pays for Muslim relief everywhere? Not the Saudis, not the Kuwaitis, not the Emiratis, not the Qataris. No, it's always the Infidels.

This has to stop. There has to be screaming, all over the Western world, to demand that members of the Umma start showing their "loyalty" to fellow members of the Umma in ways other than giving grants to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. They have all the money in the world. The more they contribute to poor Muslims, the less they will have to conduct those well-financed campaigns of Da'wa and propaganda in the West, the fewer Western hirelings they will be able to hire, the fewer mosques and madrasas spewing hate they will be able to build all over the West.

Why is the State Department, why is Congress, why is the President himself incapable of demanding that others, fellow Arabs, start paying us back for our efforts everywhere to make things better in Iraq and Afghanistan? And pay us, as well, for the "insurance" policy we provide to oil tankers in the Gulf? There is no reason for the Americans to foot the bill for all that. It is the oil sellers who should be paying. And at the very least, why are all other oil-consuming nations off the hook—such as China—leaving America to finance and do the whole job?

It makes no sense. But then, so little of what is going on does. And because it is so absurd, most people cannot quite believe it and assume there is something behind it, some modicum of sense, if only we knew. We are, they think, being kept in the dark as to the real reasons for such on-the-face-of-it idiocy.

No, I'm afraid. That idiocy on its face is just that—idiocy.

IRAN'S NEW VOICE

The moxy media team of Middle East Youth, the pro-Western freedom-seeking network with a quite encouraging all-inclusive presence on MySpace, has created a hilarious new video called Iran's New Voice. This satirical video, based on the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi, and President JFK depicts an Iran where women are granted equality, religious and ethnic minorities are granted full citizenship and where individual rights are respected.

THE DIABOLICAL MYTH OF A MODERATE ISLAM

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Another well-researched well-crafted essay by the European writer called Fjordman...

I DO NOT BELIEVE that there is such a thing as a moderate Islam, and have been quite clear about that since I started writing. I disagree with observers such as Dr. Daniel Pipes on this particular point. I'd like to say to Pipes that I enjoy much of his work. I have linked to it a number of times before and intend to do so in the future as well. However, I get increasingly disturbed by how many people keep repeating the mantra of reaching out to "moderate Islam" when I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that a moderate Islam actually exists.

When asked about where to find a moderate Islam, Daniel Pipes has repeatedly referred to the late Sudanese scholar Mahmud Muhammud Taha, whose ideas are available in English in the book The Second Message of Islam. Taha's disciple and translator Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'Im, author of the book Toward an Islamic Reformation, has this to say about the ideas of his teacher:

"[T]he Medina message is not the fundamental, universal, eternal message of Islam. That founding message is from Mecca. So, the reformation of Islam must be based on a return to the Mecca message. In order to reconcile the Mecca and Medina messages into a single system, Muslim jurists have said that some of the Medina verses have abrogated the corresponding earlier verses from Mecca. Although the abrogation did take place, and it was logical and valid jurisprudence at one time, it was a postponement, not a permanent abrogation."

Because of this, An-Na'Im thinks that "The Mecca verses should now be made the basis of the law and the Medina verses should be abrogated. This counter-abrogation will result in the total conciliation between Islamic law and the modern development of human rights and civil liberties. In this sense we reformers are superfundamentalists."

I have read the books of both Taha and An-Na'Im closely. I find that their writing sounds better the first time you read it than it does the second time. For instance, Taha suggests that the reason why Muhammad and the early Muslims "had to" murder so many people was because these individuals didn't accept Islam peacefully. Not only does Taha not indicate that he thinks this was wrong, he describes armed Jihad as a "surgical tool" which can be used to implement true Islam. He hints that this hopefully won't be needed now because people are "mature" enough to know that Islam is good for them and will submit without coercion.

What happens to those who don't like Islam and have no intention of submitting? Taha doesn't say, but judging from his writings, he seems to believe that violence is justified against such people. It is hard to see in what way this is supposed to represent a "reformist" way of thinking. According to orthodox Islamic theology, Muslims are not allowed to physically attack non-Muslims unless these have first been invited to embrace Islam yet have failed to do so, in which case they are fair game. In other words, Muslims should try to convert people peacefully first and then start killing them afterwards if they refuse. Taha thus advocates a traditional concept of Jihad, one not qualitatively different from that espoused by Jihadist terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

Although Taha resembles an apologist for Jihadist violence, he was still considered so unorthodox by traditional Muslims that he was executed as an apostate. Besides, his ideas are built on questionable "truths" about the Koran. Consider what the German professor Christoph Luxenberg claims in his pioneering work:

"In its origin, the Koran is a Syro-Aramaic liturgical book, with hymns and extracts from Scriptures which might have been used in sacred Christian services. In the second place, one may see in the Koran the beginning of a preaching directed toward transmitting the belief in the Sacred Scriptures to the pagans of Mecca, in the Arabic language. Its socio-political sections, which are not especially related to the original Koran, were added later in Medina. At its beginning, the Koran was not conceived as the foundation of a new religion. It presupposes belief in the Scriptures, and thus functioned merely as an inroad into Arabic society."

In other words, if Mr. Luxenberg is correct, what we now call the Meccan chapters of the Koran are peaceful precisely because they aren't "Islamic" at all, they are based on Christian texts. The "authentic" texts related to Muhammad and his companions, whoever the historical Muhammad really was, are the much more violent and aggressive chapters we classify as Medinan. This is precisely the opposite of what Taha and An-Na'Im suggest. From a secular point of view, their ideas are thus extremely vulnerable to historical criticism, and from an Islamic point of view, it's difficult to see how their ideas can be implemented.

After reading through much of the literature on the subject, I would divide "Muslim reformers" into three categories. The first, and by far the largest category, consists of liars, opportunists and taqiyya artists; people who want to infiltrate our societies rather than reform Islam. The second category consists of people who may be well-meaning but simply don't understand the issues involved. Irshad Manji, for instance, is not a bad person, but she just doesn't know very much about Islamic history. The third and smallest category consists of people who are knowledgeable and genuinely desire reform. The German-Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi could be placed here. I find some of his work interesting, but even he is incoherent and unconvincing in presenting the case for how a moderate Islam should look like.

Where does Taha belong in this picture? Frankly, I suspect it's among category 1. He is theologically unconvincing, and some of the passages he writes are outright disturbing if you read them closely and analyze what he's actually saying. The following quotes, with page references, are from the book The Second Message of Islam by Mahmud Muhammud Taha.

Page 74:
"Reciprocity (al-mu'awadah) in the case of fornication is a fixed punishment (hadd) of either stoning to death or whipping. Since the fornicator sought easy pleasure without regard for Shari'a, he is made to suffer pain in order to recover his senses. An individual tends to lean more towards pleasure than towards pain. By pulling the self to pain, when it succumbs to prohibited pleasure, he reestablishes a certain equilibrium and avoids recklessness and folly. The fixed punishment for drinking alcohol is based on the same principle. A person who takes alcohol wishes to numb his mind, thereby trying to escape reality. The pain of whipping is intended to bring him back to face bitter reality, so that he may use his clear mind to improve this reality."'

Page 75:
"Islam, in its essence, is not a religion according to the common meaning of the word, but rather a science, its dogma being merely transitional to its scientific stage."

Page 130:
"We have said that the Qur'an was divided between al-iman and al-islam, as well as being revealed in two parts as Meccan and Medinese. The Meccan Qur'an was revealed first. In other words, people were invited to adopt Islam [in the ultimate sense] first, and when they failed to do so, and it was practically demonstrated that they were below its standard, they were addressed in accordance with their abilities."

My comment: What Taha means by this quote, as he makes clear in other passages, is that Muslims during the early Mecca phase invited people to accept Islam. When some of them refused to do so, Muslims had the right to start killing people and force them to accept Islam. Taha indicates that this principle should apply now, too. He also makes it perfectly clear that his definition of "freedom" is identical with sharia, and that those who abuse their freedom by not living according to sharia should face armed Jihad until they do. It's for their own good.

Page 134:
"In this way, all the verses of persuasion, though they constitute the primary or original principle, were abrogated or repealed by the verses of compulsion (jihad). This exception was necessitated by the circumstances of the time and the inadequacy of the human capability to discharge properly the duty of freedom at that time."

"Some Muslim scholars believe that Islamic wars were purely defensive wars, a mistaken belief prompted by their keenness to refute claims by the Orientalists that Islam spread by means of the sword. In fact, the sword was used to curtail the abuse of freedom. Islam used persuasion for thirteen years in propagating its clearly valid message for the individual and the community. When the addressees failed to discharge properly the duties of their freedom, they lost this freedom, and the Prophet was appointed as their guardian until they came of age. However, once they embraced the new religion and observed the sanctity of life and property, and the social claims of their kith and kin, as they had been instructed, the sword was suspended, and abuses of freedom were penalized according to new laws. Hence the development of Islamic Shari'a law, and the establishment of a new type of government. In justifying the use of the sword, we may describe it as a surgeon's lancet and not a butcher's knife. When used with sufficient wisdom, mercy, and knowledge, it uplifted the individual and purified society."

Page 135:
"Suffering death by the sword in this life is really an aspect of suffering hell in the next life, since both are punishments for disbelief. Whoever adds to his own disbelief by inciting others to disbelief or to shun the path of God must be suppressed before he takes up arms in the cause of disbelief."

Page 136:
"Islam's original principle is freedom. But the Islamic religion was revealed to a society in which slavery was an integral part of the socioeconomic order. It was also a society that was shown in practice to be incapable of properly exercising its freedom, and therefore its individual members needed guidance; hence the consequent enactment of jihad. In Islamic jihad, the Muslims first had to offer to the unbelievers the new religion. If they refused to accept it, they had the second option of paying jizyah and living under Muslim government, while practicing their own religion and enjoying personal security. If they also refused the option of jizyah, the Muslims would fight them and if victorious take some of them as slaves, thereby adding to the number of those already in slavery."

"If an individual is invited to become the slave of God but refuses, such refusal is symptomatic of ignorance that calls for a period of training. The individual prepares to submit voluntarily to the servitude of God by becoming the slave of another person, thereby learning obedience and humility, which are becoming of a slave. Reciprocity (al-mu'awadah) here rules that if a free person refuses to become the slave of God, he may be subjugated and made the slave of a slave of God, in fair and just retribution: 'And whoso does an atom's weight of evil will also see it.' (99:8)"

My comment: The above passage is one of the most disturbing quotes from the entire book. Taha was from the Sudan, a country where chattel slavery is still being practiced today. If Taha had said that slavery once existed in most human societies, I could perhaps have accepted that. But he goes further than that. He indicates that slavery can in fact be morally good because it is a "training period" for becoming a slave of Allah, as all human beings should be. Let's imagine for a moment that Mr. Taha had been a white Christian, not a black Muslim. What if, say, Robert Spencer in his next book stated that slavery in the United States was good because it taught the slaves obedience and humility. Does anybody believe he would then have been hailed as a great example of a moderate and tolerant Christianity? Somehow, I doubt it. But there is apparently nothing "extremist" about supporting slavery if you are a Muslim. Extremists are nasty Islamophobes such as Geert Wilders.

Page 149:
"Being so supreme, Islam has never been achieved by any nation up to the present day. The nation of muslimin has not yet come. It is expected to come, however, in the future of humanity."

My comment: Apart from sharia, Taha likes Communism, but he thinks the road to perfect Communism goes through sharia. Sharia is the key to global equality, eternal peace and warm apple pie. Unless they have banned warm apple pie by then, I don't know whether it's halal or not. It could be part of a Zionist plot:

Page 155-156:
"The key here is that no one should be allowed to own anything that permits the exploitation of one citizen's labor to increase the income of another. Individual ownership, even within such narrow boundaries, should not be ownership of property as such, but rather ownership of the benefits derived from property, and all property remains in the ownership of God and the community as a whole. As production from resources increases, the equity of distribution is perfected, and differences are reduced by raising both minimum and maximum incomes. But the gap between minimum and maximum incomes is gradually narrowed in order to achieve absolute equality. When such absolute equality is achieved through the grace of God, and as a result of abundant production, we shall achieve communism or a sharing of the earth's wealth by all people. Communism thus differs from socialism in degree, in the sense that socialism is a stage in the development towards communism. The Prophet experienced ultimate communism."

Page 156-157:
"…as the Prophet said, 'Justice shall fill the earth in the same way it was previously full of injustice.' This is what Marx dreamed of, but failed to find the way to achieve. It can only be achieved by al-muslimin who are yet to come, and then the earth shall enjoy a degree of fulfillment of the verse: 'The God-fearing are in gardens and springs. They will be told: Enter therein, in peace and security. We cleansed what was in their breasts of hatred, so they became brothers sitting together, never to feel hardship or be removed therefrom.' (15:45-48) This is the degree of communism to be achieved by Islam with the coming of the nation of muslimin, whence the earth shall light up with the Light of its Lord, and God's Grace is conferred upon its inhabitants, when there shall be peace, and love shall triumph."

All things summed up, I agree with Daniel Pipes: Mahmud Muhammud Taha is indeed an interesting case, but for precisely the opposite reason of what Mr. Pipes claims. Taha supports the idea of slavery on a moral basis, not just as an historical fact. "Freedom" is identical with sharia and being a slave of Allah. Those who don't want to accept Islam or Islamic rule should face armed Jihad, and the sword should be used as a "surgical tool" to cut them off from the body of society. And this is moderate…..how, exactly?

If Taha is the great hope for a moderate Islam, we can conclude that a moderate Islam supports slavery, stoning people to death for adultery, whipping those who enjoy a glass of wine or beer and massacring those who disagree with the above mentioned policies. Taha openly supported many of the most appalling aspects of sharia, yet was still considered so controversial that he was executed as an apostate.

The story of Mahmud Muhammud Taha is the ultimate, definitive and final proof that there is no moderate Islam. There never has been and there never will be. It's a myth. We should not base our domestic or foreign policies on the existence of a moderate Islam just like we should not base them on the existence of other mythical creatures such as the yeti or the tooth fairy.

It is unpleasant to conclude that Islam cannot be reformed. I don't like it either, and would much have preferred a different answer. But I see no practical indications that a tolerant Islam is emerging and have great difficulty in envisioning how such an entity could look like. There are several ways Islam could conceivably be reformed, yet none of them are very likely to succeed.

I have reviewed and criticized Irshad Manji's work before. Although she never says so explicitly in her book, I get the impression that Manji largely agrees with the mantra that "Islam is whatever Muslims make of it." I don't share this view. Why do those who behead Buddhist teachers in Thailand, burn churches in Nigeria, persecute Hindus in Pakistan or blow bombs in the London subway always "misunderstand" Islamic texts? Why don't they feel this urge to kill people after reading about, say, Winnie the Pooh?

If any text was infinitely elastic, we could replace the Koran with any other book and get the same result. That's obviously not the case. If you have a text that repeatedly calls for killing, death and mayhem, more people are going to "interpret" this text in aggressive ways. Islam is the most aggressive and violent religion on earth in practice because its texts are more aggressive than those of any other major religion, and because the example of Muhammad is vastly more violent than that of any other religious founder. If you return to the original Islam, which Manji claims to seek, you get Jihad, since that's what the original Islam was all about.

The dozens of explicit Jihad verses in the Koran won't all magically disappear. As long as they exist, somebody is bound to take them seriously. And since any "reformed" Islam must ultimately be rooted in Islamic texts, this probably means that Islam cannot be reformed.

The process of change is anyway not our job. Muslims should do that themselves. They are adults and should take care of their own problems just like everybody else does. For this reason, I dislike Manji's suggestion that infidels should spend money on sponsoring Muslims.

Muslims will not feel much gratitude if we fund their hospitals or schools. To them, everything good that happens is the will of Allah. Infidels are supposed to pay the jizya to Muslims anyway, so many of them will see payments from us as a sign of submission. They will thus become more arrogant and aggressive by such acts rather than feeling grateful.

As long as infidels keep bailing them out, Muslims have no incentives to change. They will only reform or abandon Islam once they are forced to deal with the backwardness brought by Islamic teachings. For this reason, we need a strategy for containment of the Islamic world. It's the very minimum we can live with. If Muslims need money, let them ask their Saudi brothers for it. If the Saudis have to finance hospitals in Gaza or Pakistan, this means they have less of it to finance terrorism, which is good. I agree with Hugh Fitzgerald on this one.

It is possible that some schools or branches within Islam are more tolerant than others. Yes, there are theological differences between Sunnis and Shi'a Muslims. These can be significant enough for Muslims, but for non-Muslims they are usually not important. Shia Islam is not more peaceful than Sunni Islam, nor is it more tolerant, with the possible exception of the Ismaili branch, but they are far less numerous than the adherents of Twelver Shi`ism. Since the Shi'a constitute a tiny minority of the world's Muslims, the Ismailis are a minority of a minority and quite marginal in the greater scheme of things.

My view is that as long as you start out with the texts used by orthodox Muslims—the Koran, the hadith and the sira—it is more or less impossible to come up with a peaceful and tolerant version of Islam. In principle it might be possible to change things by either adding more religious texts or ignoring some of those that already exist. Both options are problematic.

Since Muhammad was supposed to be final messenger of Allah, the "seal of the prophets," any person later claiming to bring new revelations to mankind will invariably be viewed as a fraud and a heretic by orthodox Muslims. This is what happened to the Ahmadiyya movement, who are viewed as unbelievers by most others Muslims, including many in "moderate" Indonesia.

Another example is the Bahá'í faith, which is indeed more peaceful than mainstream Islam, but their view of history, where the Buddha is seen as a messenger alongside Muhammad, differs so radically from traditional Islam that it is usually classified as a separate religion. Bahá'ís are ruthlessly persecuted in the Islamic world, particularly in Iran where the movement originated. They are viewed as apostate Muslims since they challenge the concept of the finality of Muhammad's prophethood. Ironically, their supreme governing institution is situated in Haifa, in the evil, racist apartheid state of Israel. So they get persecuted by "tolerant" Muslim, yet are treated with decency by the "intolerant" Israelis.

There are also the "Koran only" Muslims, who, from what I can gather, currently constitute a very small group of people. They advocate that Muslims should ignore the hadith and the sira and rely solely on the Koran for guidance. In order to achieve this, they will first have to defy mounting opposition from other Muslims who will have some rather powerful theological arguments in their favor. The Koran itself says repeatedly that you should obey both the Koran and the example of Muhammad. But the personal example of Muhammad and his companions, his Sunna, is mainly recorded in extra-Koranical material such as the hadith and the sira. If you remove them, you remove the main sources of information for how to conduct prayer, pilgrimage etc., which is usually not recorded in any great detail in the Koran.

"Koran only" reformers, and indeed all aspiring reformers, will have to face the possibility of being branded as heretics and apostates, a crime which potentially carries the death penalty according to traditional sharia law. On top of this, there are more than enough verses in the Koran itself advocating Jihad and intolerance for this alternative to remain problematic, too. For these reasons, it is unlikely that a "Koran only" version of Islam can ever constitute a viable long-term reform path.

A researcher from Denmark, Tina Magaard, has spent years analyzing the original texts of different religions, from Buddhism to Sikhism, and concludes that the Islamic texts are by far the most warlike among the major religions of the world. They encourage terror and fighting to a far larger degree than the original texts of other religions. "The texts in Islam distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree. There are also straightforward calls for terror. This has long been a taboo in the research into Islam, but it is a fact that we need to deal with," says Magaard. Moreover, there are hundreds of calls in the Koran for fighting against people of other faiths. "If it is correct that many Muslims view the Koran as the literal words of God, which cannot be interpreted or rephrased, then we have a problem. It is indisputable that the texts encourage terror and violence. Consequently, it must be reasonable to ask Muslims themselves how they relate to the text, if they read it as it is," she says.

It has been suggested that some regional versions of Islam, for instance "Southeast Asian Islam," are more peaceful than "Arab Islam." First of all, in this age of globalization and international sponsorship of conservative theology by Saudi Arabia and others, regional interpretations are likely to diminish, not increase. And second of all, I'm not convinced that Southeast Asian Islam is more tolerant than other forms of the religion.

It is true that Muslims in some parts of Indonesia have perhaps been less strict than Muslims in, say, Egypt, but this was because Indonesia was Islamized at a later date and still contained living residues of its pre-Islamic culture. In such cases, we are dealing with "less Islam" or "diluted Islam," which isn't quite the same as "moderate Islam" even if some observers claim that it is. Moreover, numerous churches have been burnt down or destroyed in that country only during the last decade, which hardly indicates that Indonesia is a beacon of tolerance.

In Thailand and the Philippines, where Muslims constitute a minority, non-Muslims have been murdered or chased away from certain areas by Islamic groups who wage a constant Jihad against the authorities. The city-state of Singapore is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims and can only manage to avoid outside attacks by curtailing the freedom of speech of its citizens and banning public criticism of Islam.

Malaysia has been a moderate economic success story because it has had a large and dynamic non-Muslim population and only recently became majority Muslim. This corresponds to some extent to the early phases of Islamization in the Middle East. The Golden Age of Islam was in reality the twilight of the pre-Islamic cultures. The scientific achievements during this period are exaggerated, and those that did take place happened overwhelmingly during the early phases of Islamic rule when there were still large non-Muslim populations. When these communities declined due to Muslim harassment, the Middle East, home to some of the oldest civilizations on earth, slowly declined into a backwardness from which it has never recovered.

Lebanon was a reasonably successful and civilized country while it still had a slim Christian majority, but has rapidly declined into Jihad and sharia barbarism in recent decades due to higher Muslim birth rates and non-Muslims leaving the country. It is possible that something similar will happen to Malaysia, as Muslims become more confident and aggressive.

Lastly, you can try to constrain Islam and keep it down by brute force. This kind of muscular secularism, enforced with methods no Western country would even contemplate supporting at the present time, has been tried under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. Yet Turkey has never been a beacon of tolerance, and the very few non-Muslims who remain in the country still face harassment. Kemalism has kept Islam at bay but has never really reformed it. Even after almost a century, Islam is in the process of making a comeback. There are serious cracks in the façade of secularism, and some observers fear an Islamic revolution in the country.

The Turkish example is not altogether promising. We should remember that Iran, too, was perceived as a moderate and modern country until the revolution brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. The lesson we can draw from this is that Islam can lie dormant for generations, yet strike again with renewed vigour when the opportunity arises.

The debate about a "reformed" Islam is inappropriately colored by a Western historical perspective, with references to the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth century Europe. This indirectly implies that there is some form of equivalence between Christianity and Islam. I don't think there is, even though I am not a Christian. Christianity with its concept of the Trinity is akin to soft-polytheism from an Islamic point of view. The religious texts are clearly different, not to mention the personal examples of the founders of the two religions, Jesus and Muhammad. Islam became a major world religion through armed conquest and the creation of an empire. Christianity became a major world religion by gradually taking over an already established empire, the Roman Empire.

Christianity's slow growth within a Greco-Roman context made it possible for Christians to assimilate Greek philosophy and Roman law to an extent that never happened among Muslims, even in the Mediterranean world which had been dominated by the Romans. This had major consequences for further scientific and political developments in Europe and in the Middle East. Exposure to Greek and other scientific traditions did lead to some advances in the earliest centuries of Islamic rule, but Greek natural philosophy was never accepted into the core curriculum of Islamic madrasas as it was in European universities.

When the American Founding Fathers in the eighteenth century discussed how the shape of their young Republic should be, they were influenced by, in addition to modern thinkers and the British parliamentary system, descriptions of democratic Athens and the Roman Republic, through Aristotle's political texts and Cicero's writings. None of these texts were ever available in Arabic or Persian translations. They were rejected by Muslims, but preserved, translated, and studied with interest by Christians. The artistic legacy of the Greeks was also largely rejected by Muslims. In short, Westerners have no shared "Greco-Roman legacy" with Muslims. They cared mainly for one part of this great legacy, the scientific-philosophical part, and even that part they failed to assimilate.

The theological differences between Christianity and Judaism vs. Islam are huge. As Robert Spencer explains in his excellent little book Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, in Christianity the central tenet is that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). While acknowledging that any human being is capable of evil, the Koran says that Muslims are "the best of peoples" (3:110) while the unbelievers are the "vilest of creatures" (98:6). In such a worldview, it is easy to see evil in others but difficult to locate it in oneself. The Koran also says that the followers of Muhammad are "ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another" (48:29), and that the unbelievers are the "worst of created beings" (98:6). One may exercise the Golden Rule in relation to a fellow Muslim, but according to the laws of Islam, the same courtesy is not to be extended to unbelievers.

Yes, you can find violent passages in the Hebrew Bible, such as in the book of Joshua regarding the conquest of Jericho, but "throughout history, rather than celebrating such biblical passages, Jews and Christians have regarded them as a problem to be solved. While interpretations of these passages differ widely among Jews and Christians, from the beginning of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity one understanding has remained dominant among virtually all believers: these passages are not commands for all generations to follow, and if they have any applicability, it is only in a spiritualized, parabolic sense."

As Spencer says, "the consensus view among Jews and Christians for many centuries is that unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, these biblical passages simply do not apply to you. The scriptures record God's commands to the Israelites to make war against particular people only. However this may be understood, and however jarring it may be to modern sensibilities, it does not amount to any kind of marching orders for believers. That's one principal reason why Jews and Christians haven't formed terror groups around the world that quote the Bible to justify killing non-combatants."

The main problem with Islam isn't that it is a stupid religion, as some people say, but that it is a violent and aggressive one. I consider Scientology to be an incredibly stupid creed, but I haven't heard about many people living in fear that Tom Cruise will cut off their head while quoting poems of L. Ron Hubbard and then post a video of the deed on the Internet.

Yes, religions do evolve. Stoning people to death was once practiced by Jews, but they progressed and left this practice behind because they considered it to be cruel, which it is. The problem is that there are literally dozens - more than one hundred, depending on how you count - verses calling for Jihad in the Koran, and additional ones in the hadith. Any "tolerant" form of Islam would have to reject all of these verses, permanently, in addition to the personal example of Muhammad and his followers as well as a large body of secondary literature by more than a thousand years of sharia scholars. That's a tall order. We should also remember that Jihad is not the end goal of Islam. Sharia is. Jihad is a tool used to achieve sharia and the rule of Islamic law extended to all of mankind.

As I have explained in my earlier essay Do we want an Islamic Reformation? and in the online booklet Is Islam Compatible With Democracy?, the question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy largely hinges upon your definition of "democracy." If this simply means voting, with no freedom of speech or safeguards for individual rights or minorities then yes, it can, as a vehicle for imposing sharia on society. But such a "pure" democracy isn't necessarily a good system even without Islam, as critics from Plato to Thomas Jefferson have convincingly argued.

Likewise, the question of whether or not Islam can be reformed largely hinges upon your definition of "Reformation." I usually say that Islam cannot be reformed, and by "reformed" I thus implicitly understand this as meaning something along the lines of "peaceful, non-sharia based with respect for individual choice and freedom of speech." In other words: "Reform" is vaguely taken to mean less Islam.

However, Robert Spencer and others have argued that there are similarities between Martin Luther and the Christian Reformation in 16th century Europe and the reform movement started by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century. Wahhab's alliance with regional ruler Muhammad bin Saud and his family later led to the creation of Saudi Arabia. There was another modern "reform" movement, the so-called Salafism of 19th century thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh. Whereas the former was an internal reform movement triggered by calls for removing "corruption" from society, the latter was clearly a response to external, Western pressures.

Although Abduh's ideas were continued in a secular direction by individuals such as Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, clearly the most successful strands were those developed into what was later termed "Islamic fundamentalism" in the 20th century. Muhammad Abduh's pupil Rashid Rida inspired Hassan al-Banna when he formed the Muslim Brotherhood. Rida urged Muslims not to imitate infidels, but return to the Golden Age of early Islam, as did Abduh. Rida also recommended reestablishing the Caliphate, and applauded when the Wahhabists conquered Mecca and Medina and established modern Saudi Arabia. The two reform movements thus partly merged in the 20th century, into organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The fact that two initially separate calls for reform, started under different circumstances and for different reasons, produced somewhat similar results is worth contemplating. Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin also called for returning to the Golden Age of early Christianity. Although the Reformation was a turbulent period while it lasted, it did pave the way for more tolerance and religious freedom in Christian Europe in the long run. This was, in my view, at least partly because Christians could return to the example, as contained in the Gospels, of an early age where the founder of their religion and his disciples led a largely peaceful movement separate from the state. Muslims, on the other hand, can find a similar example only in the Mecca period. As long as the writings from the violent Medina period are still in force, a return to the "early, Golden Age" of Islam will mean a return to intolerance and Jihad violence.

Some Western observers are searching for a "Muslim Martin Luther" who is expected to end the resurgent Islamic Jihad. But one could argue that we already have a Muslim Martin Luther: He's called Osama bin Laden, deeply inspired by the teachings of Muslim Brotherhood thinker Sayyid Qutb. If "reform" is taken to mean a return to the historical period of the religious founder, Muhammad, and his followers, it will lead to an inevitable upsurge of Jihadist violence, since that was what Muhammad and his followers were all about.

The question of whether Islam is reformable is an important one. But perhaps an even more crucial one is whether an Islamic Reformation would be desirable from a non-Muslim point of view, and the likely answer to that is "no."

NONE SO BLIND

WHO WROTE THE KORAN, and why? Don't tarry, read what one ex-Muslim has to say on this most idiosyncratic theme. Some say Allah was the author. Others say it was Gabriel the archangel. Others maintain that Muhammed himself dictated it to his scribes. The more truthful answer may surprise certain readers.

Don't take this infidel's word. Read what the rational apostate Abul Kasem has revealed in his own search for clarity.

And while we are at it, how about some statistics to put some autumn chill in the late August air.

The CIA World Fact Book (2007) indicates that as long as the Muslim population remain a distinct minority, i.e. less than 2% in any country they inhabit, they are peace-loving and not a threat. At 2%+ they begin as if on signal to rear their ugly heads and begin to proselytize. Testing the reactions of host country, they then spew venom in their mosques against host country natives.

From 5% onward they begin to push for everything halal, demand separation in schools, institute the hijab, begin the setting up of islamic schools with the introduction of Islam in native education curriculum, demanding mosques for prayers when in actuality it is to have a mass of several thousand ready to murder the natives at the given signal, and hassle for recognition and implementation of Sharia, first on their own Muslims but in reality to convert the whole world to Sharia.

When these sex maniacs (95% of rapists in the West jails are Muslims) reach 10% of the population, lawlessness is naturally increased as a right to perceived offense resulting in threats, property damage, placard carrying, burning cars and buildings/embassies as an allah-given decree.

When Europe's Muslim parasites reach 40% natives should willingly enjoy widespread massacres, terror gangs, rapes of women, girls, and babies in the open. Maintain your silence lemmings with multi-culti political correctness. At 60% forced conversions begin. Accept the slap that will be given to you when you pay jizya and do it with a smile.

At 80% expect ethnic genocide. Then nearing 100% the West can get the peace they got suckered into by their loony leftists, whacky liberals who would by then either have their throats slit ala Theo Van Gogh who was a leftist, or would have embraced the murderous cult and metastasized into "soldiers of Islam" hunting down their own brethren and kin in a bloodbath of terror. Think that this is not possible in the West? Just recall the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution. And Nazi Germany. Fear is a powerful motivator.

Once Islamicized, then you'd start killing each other in a race to prove oneself more Islamic than your neighbor. Note the terminal Shia-Sunni divide.

To their favor, Russia and China, despite their own penchant for totalitarian control, understand full well the death knell of the cult called Islam and do not resort to this namby pamby so-called political correctness that stymies the West but identifies each threat, confronts it, and snuffs it. Along with India, these two regimes embrace the 21st century and all that is in front of them. On the other hand, the West seems to prefer to slide into suicide through self-hatred, hatred of country, culture, religion and allow themselves to be ushered back to 7th century.

Be warned. The future is clear, if the blind continue to insist on coddling this self-declared enemy.

BESLAN REMEMBERED

LET US NOT FAIL TO RECALL, nor long forget Beslan either, as we seek to save the world from enemies that live among us, some that look like sheep, and some that look like the ravenging wolves that they are. Here's a tasteful link to the tragedy.

And here's a gem of writing by a poster over at Jihad Watch. Thanks to "dumbledoresarmy."

I have just got my copy of Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism".

Part One, entitled 'Islamic Antisemitism: Jew-Hatred in Islam', which is the overview and distillation of all his research, makes for riveting—and terrifying—reading.

If every Christian priest or pastor, and every Jewish rabbi, had to read just that portion of Bostom's book, during their training, and show evidence of having understood it, before their ordination, we would be spared many of the more embarrassing displays of Useful Idiocy that we are forced to witness today from our spiritual leaders. The nonsense about 'three Abrahamic religions' that we hear so much about, would cease.

If our journalists and political leaders also read Bostom's damning report, and truly understood and believed it, much Western reporting and diplomacy vis a vis 'the Middle East situation' would be radically different.

If every Jewish member of the Knesset read, learned, marked and inwardly digested what Bostom has discovered, they would *know* the mind of the enemy that they face every day. They would *know* exactly where the hate is coming from. They would know that no concession, no negotiation, no bribe, no talks, no nothing, is going to achieve 'peace' with the Arab Muslims, or indeed, the entire Muslim world: only Jews all dead, or Jews reduced to a terrified, powerless, tormented and despised remnant of dhimmi near-slaves, will ever be enough for the Muslims.

Read part one of Bostom's latest book, David England. You wrote: "It is sometimes said that the radical islam of today is fascistic. What is not talked about is how it may have grown out of Nazi fascism directly".

No it didn't. I see Nazism and Islam more as cases of 'convergent evolution'. And they hopped into bed with each other so quickly, and borrowed ideas and strategies so eagerly, because they were kindred spirits before they ever met.

Muslim jihadist hatred of Jews is a good example. Bostom's book shows that Muslims did NOT need Nazis to teach them to hate Jews, they already did that quite thoroughly and comprehensively, all by their little selves.

Furthermore Ibn Warraq, when he identified a whole string of congruences between Islam and fascism was not talking about anything that modern Islam has *learned* or *copied* from European fascism: the Islam he had in mind was classical mainstream Islam, what Hugh [Fitzgerald] calls "'Islam, Islam, Islam", Islam of Qur'an-Sira-Hadith, Islam as it was expounded by Muslim jurists and theologians, and practised by Muslim despots and Muslim mobs, for over a millennium before European Fascism was ever a gleam in a philosopher's eye.

PLAIN AND SIMPLE, AMPLIFIED

THE GREAT DANE linguist, Tina Magaard, has nailed it well (from Fjordman):

"Islamic texts encourage terror and fighting to a far larger degree than the original texts of other religions, concludes Tina Magaard. She has a PhD in Textual Analysis and Intercultural Communication from the Sorbonne in Paris, and has spent three years on a research project comparing the original texts of ten religions. “The texts in Islam distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree. There are also straightforward calls for terror. This has long been a taboo in the research into Islam, but it is a fact that we need to deal with," says Tina Magaard.

Moreover, there are hundreds of calls in the Koran for fighting against people of other faiths. “If it is correct that many Muslims view the Koran as the literal words of God, which cannot be interpreted or rephrased, then we have a problem. It is indisputable that the texts encourage terror and violence. Consequently, it must be reasonable to ask Muslims themselves how they relate to the text, if they read it as it is," says Tina Magaard."

INTERVIEW WITH TIM FURNISH

By Rick Shenkman

Timothy R. Furnish, the author of Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden (Praeger, 2005), teaches history at Georgia Perimeter College, Dunwoody, GA. He was interviewed by email by Rick Shenkman, the editor of HNN.

I was surprised to learn that before you were a historian you served in the military. What's your military background?

4 1/2 years enlisted in Army Intelligence (Arabic linguist/interrogator), following college (it paid off my student loans) in the mid-80s. In the late-90s I was commissioned as a chaplain candidate in the Army while I was doing my doctorate at Ohio State, since I had also obtained an M.A. from Concordia Seminary. But when it came to finishing my dissertation or doing chaplaincy full-time, I opted for the former and in fact I was just discharged as an O-3 (Captain) a few months ago.

Has your military experience shaped the way you do history?

Probably not all that much, other than determining my specialization.

How did you decide to choose Islamic history?

Well, partly out of interest and partly out of utilitarian motives. Having joined the Army in 1983 hoping to learn Russian, I knew little of Islam or the Middle East when I wound up in Arabic training at the Defense Language Institute. But it sparked my interest in that religion and region, and when my enlistment was up I decided to go into graduate school in Islamic history, since I already had the primary research language under my belt.

Has 9/11 affected your scholarly work? That is, has it caused you to change the focus of your studies?

Not all that much. I was already working on Mahdism and the nexus between it and Islamic fundamentalism, and in all honesty 9/11 was not a big surprise to me.

Do you find that Americans have serious misperceptions about Islamic history?

One big one in particular: that the Islamic world has always been a victim at the hands of the West. I find this particularly prominent among the intelligentsia in the country, whose knowledge of Islamic/Middle Eastern history goes back, at best, to the early 20th c. Very few, in my experience, know of the imperial reach and power of, say, the Abbasids, Fatimids, Mughals or even Ottomans.

Conservatives like David Horowitz claim that Middle East Studies programs in the United States are dominated by anti-Israel liberals. Do you agree?

Liberals, yes; but anti-Israel ones, not necessarily. I do think that the field can be defined, largely, in terms of Saidians (devotees of Edward Said's "Orientalism" thesis, which sees the Arab world as victim of the West) and Lewisians (devotees of Bernard Lewis, who disagree). I fall into the latter camp. As mentioned earlier, I think the tendency (sometimes, insistence) to see the Arab, or even the entire Muslim, world as victimized by the West is rampant in the field, and insofar as Israel is seen as, if you will, the "tip of the spear," many academics dislike Israel.

Why did you write your book, Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden? And please tell us what a Mahdi is.

"al-Mahdi" is "the rightly-guided one" who, according to Islamic hadiths (traditions), will come before the End of Time to make the entire world Muslim (with a little help from the returned prophet Jesus). I did my doctoral dissertation on Mahdist movements throughout history and that book is the expansion thereof. I was asked to write the book by Greenwood/Praeger after an article I'd published, not long after 9/11, speculating on whether Usama bin Ladin might attempt to claim the Mahdiyah for himself.

It's hard to write about Islamic history without getting caught up in current controversies, I would think. Have you found it difficult to maintain proper historical perspective in your work?

Sometimes. Any discussion of Islam and the violence done in its name today is fraught with danger (so far, only rhetorical). If I had any hair left, I'd pull it out with frustration over the extremists of both the Left and Right who see only the aspects of Islam which they wish to: the former just parrot, over and over, "Islam is a religion of peace" without, it seems, ever having bothered to read the Qur'an or study Islamic history; the latter, on the other hand, fall off the horse on the other side and emphasize nothing but the undeniably real violent strain in Islam, but never seem to notice (or admit) that moderate Islam (Sufism) and moderate Islamic states (the Ottoman Empire) can exist. However, at this juncture in history, I do think that the Left's denial of the undeniably violent, albeit minority, strain of Islam is the greater threat.

If you had five minutes with President Bush what would you tell him he needs to remember about Islamic history?

That the Muslim proponents of moderate Islam as a "religion of peace" will not gain the upper hand until the Islamic world undergoes its own "enlightenment" and, like the predominantly-Christian West, officially abandons its dream of a one world religious state. Admittedly, this took Western civilization centuries to do, and it had one major advantage the Islamic world does not: the tradition, going back to Jesus himself, of separation of church and state ("give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," Matthew 22:21).

Islam has been, almost since its inception, as much a political as a religious movement. And a military one. Islam will have to be reconfigured such that it can co-exist in minority status without having to seize the reins of power. That will be difficult to do, and it will have to be done primarily by Muslims themselves, but quite frankly the global community cannot allow one belief system to demand obeisance from the others. We in the West can, and should, help moderate Islam to win out over the jihadists, but in the final analysis Muslims themselves must do the heavy lifting there.