Thursday, August 21, 2008

Fjordman: Why Islam Cannot Be Reformed

Fjordman’s latest essay is posted at Atlas Shrugs. Below are some excerpts:

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.
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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.

Read the rest at Pamela’s place.

7 comments:

Fjordman said...

Thank you for posting. I am behind schedule as usual, but hope to publish the Germany essay on Saturday.

Zenster said...

Taha openly supported many of the most appalling aspects of sharia, yet was still considered so controversial that he was executed as an apostate.

This alone should serve up adequate warning of what awaits all who attempt to “pacify” or “moderate” Islam. Non-Muslims continue to delude themselves over the existence of “moderate Muslims” even as innumerable imams and clerics loudly proclaim that, “There is no moderate Islam”.

The story of Mahmud Muhammud Taha is the ultimate, definitive and final proof that there is no moderate Islam.

Just as Islam is most frequently spread by force, its actual moderation will come about solely through the application of force. That which extols life by the sword can only expect to perish by it as well. Islam can be moderated only in the same way that a nuclear reaction can be moderated. Namely, by an externally imposed damping action that inhibits its rate of reaction. Military intervention—be it on a small scale to neutralize the jihadist aristocracy of Muslim leadership, or on a much larger scale to decimate the ummah—will prove to be the carbon rod that will moderate Islam’s reaction with modern civilization. There will be no Christian-style Reformation of Islam.

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.

This is one of the single most important concepts that the West continues to neglect in its dealings with Islam and jihadist terrorism. Muslims laugh themselves silly as they watch the West’s earnest attempts to fastidiously winnow terrorist chaff from Islam’s thoroughly and voluntarily contaminated grain. We struggle at this thankless and Herculean task not realizing that it is Islam’s responsibility alone to make itself compatible with modern civilization.

The elimination of violent jihad will come only when Islam’s very survival hinges upon it. We have no obligation to clean house for the world’s Muslims, least of all with any degree of delicacy. If Islam is sloth enough to merely sit back and watch unbelievers do all the work for them, then they have no right to complain if the Muslim baby gets thrown out with the jihadist bathwater.

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.

Jihad is a vehicle. Much like a plane that carries its payload of bombs. Jihad’s consignment is a far more lethal assemblage of tyrannous theocracy destined to commit Global Cultural Genocide. Nowhere on earth is there a single culture that survived Islamic ascendancy within its original borders. A Global Caliphate would likely see the death of half this world’s population and destruction of its most stellar achievements in a bonfire of Islamic vanity.

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.

There is no way to adequately stress Fjordman’s final point. The Christian notion of Reformation simply does not apply to Islam. There is no significant intersection between Islam and Christianity whereby such a concept can be shared in the same sense. Those who desire a reformed Islam have already gotten their wish. In the last few decades Islam has reformed itself. It has become more puritanical, more intolerant, more abusive to women, more aggressive and more violent.

Much like King Phyrrus of Epirus, another such Reformation will see Islam undone. It already besets itself with continuous internecine bloodshed and murder over who is the most Islamically pure. If Islam sought any greater purity, it would have to voluntarily immolate itself in a cleansing pyre of decontamination. There is no small irony in how so many writers consider this last scenario to be one of the most likely outcomes of a nuclear-armed Islam.

Zenster said...

As a footnote:

For those who doubt that an Islamic Global Caliphate would prove so lethal to our world, please consider these cocktail napkin calculations:

Extermination of the Jews—however horrible—is but a small facet of the genocide planned by Islam. Imagine the death tolls arising from the establishment of a global caliphate:

1.) Extermination of all Jews:
Some 13.5 MILLION people, world-wide would most likely die at the hands of their Muslim oppressors.

2.) Extermination of all homosexuals
I'm going to use what is called a "wildly exaggerated figure" for the sake of including the bisexual and transgender community plus other deviants who would all be put to death. Thusly, some 10% or 600 MILLION people would fall into this category. The ensuing numbers are much more difficult to quantify.

3.) Armed resistance to Muslim encroachment:
I think it's safe to say that nearly everyone here at this forum would perish fighting a Muslim attempt to overrun America. World wide, the numbers would most likely exceed that of the Jews. We'll place it at a meager 100 MILLION.

4.) Women denied access to medical care:
This is a huge number because under Islamic law women would only be able to be seen by female doctors—an exceedingly small fraction of this world's medical practitioners. I’ll use the figure for global female cancer deaths as an example of how reduced early intervention will escalate avoidable deaths, especially among women. That figure will be more than 3 MILLION per year.

5.) Execution of political prisoners:
Toss in another 10 MILLION.

6.) Execution of those who refuse to convert:
I’m going to use the world’s population of Catholics as a figure representing those who would adamantly refuse to convert or cooperate and be put to death. While the number would likely be much higher, this figure would approach over 1 BILLION.

We now have a total of 1.726 BILLION people who would die within the first year of Islam establishing its global caliphate. Millions more would die each year due to Islam’s heavy-handed shari’a law and its demands for capital punishment. Women would keep dying in droves due to the unavailability of female doctors. Emerging homosexuals would be killed as with many other deviants, be they political, religious or otherwise.

Do the math. The global caliphate would rise upon dead bodies numbering greater than this world’s entire Muslim population. My Iranian friend Ray agrees with me that the number who would perish would be closer to HALF this world’s population but that is far more speculative than the conservative numbers I’ve posted above.

So, the question remains:

HOW MUCH LONGER ARE WE TO PUT UP WITH AN IDEOLOGY WHOSE ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO BRING ABOUT THE DEATH OF MORE PEOPLE THAN ITS OWN NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS?

We've already seen an ideology do this exact same thing. It was called Nazism.

I’ve stated before that if Muslims cannot abandon their quest for a global caliphate, then I would just as soon see all of them perish rather than the larger numbers who would ultimately die by Islam’s brutal hand. The numbers—approximate as they might be—do not lie.

Profitsbeard said...

Islam's fundamental document, the al-Qur'an ["The Recitation"] is a farrago of intolerant, misogynistic, terroristic superstitions and vicious proclamations and can only produce horrors if taken seriously and practiced accurately.

To reform it would mean to expunge its heartless core and defang its hate-filled ideology and derail its endless impulse to theocratic imperialism.

Which would leave nothing worth "believing" in for those who relish such a sanctimonious guidebook for global tyranny.

Better that Islam fades from the historical scene, like earlier nightmare cults, than to begin any hopeless attempts to retool a preposterous monstrosity.

heroyalwhyness said...

Bravo Fjordman!

Zenster, perhaps the figures you provide would go up if you consider the compounding issue provided in points 1. extermination of Jews and 4.Women denied access to medical care:

A large percentage of female doctors would dead from the first point alone - exacerbating the death toll of infidel women again adding a detrimental demographic impact.

Zenster said...

heroyalwhyness: ... perhaps the figures you provide would go up if you consider the compounding issue provided in points 1. extermination of Jews and 4.Women denied access to medical care:

A large percentage of female doctors would dead from the first point alone - exacerbating the death toll of infidel women again adding a detrimental demographic impact.


You could not be more right. My brief summary is both superficial and conservative in the extreme. One glance at the MME (Muslim Middle East) reveals a plethora of needless suffering and death due to simple resource mismanagement.

Examples abound: Gaza's sewage flood. The annual Haj tramplings. Iran's insane policy of khodkafa'I (or self-sufficiency). When one superimposes the drastic constraints of Islamic law and culture upon modern civilization, the result is not so much a straitjacket but an iron maiden.

Horrific, in and of itself, would be the epidemic of suicidal depression—already seen among Muslim women—resulting from enforced FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).

[smacks self on forehead]

Gah! I left out the expanded practice of "honor murders". I'm quite confident that Muslims would be all to happy to snuff the promiscuous Infidel tennybopper next door as a favor to their beleaguered and dishonored neighbors. Toss in the multitude of women who didn't survive being gang-raped or the subsequent PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and the number skyrockets.

Between the foregoing three factors alone—FGM, "honor murders" and gang rapes—another few millions could be added to the yearly death toll.

And yet, once again, this is still just the iceberg's tip. The malignant and toxic nature of Islam is so far-reaching that even half of the world's population perishing starts to sound like a conservative estimate.

Thank you, heroyalwhyness. I may well need to recalibrate some of the numbers and make a few new entries in my Global Caliphate fatalities list.

Robert said...

A google search of the term "Iore Dea" might be fruitful.