>>55755876
please bump and discuss and read

>WHILE my argument in this book is aimed at faith itself, the differences
between faiths are as relevant as they are unmistakable. There
is a reason, after all, why we must now confront Muslim, rather
than Jain terrorists, in every corner of the world. Jains do not believe
anything that is remotely likely to inspire them to commit acts of
suicidal violence against unbelievers. By any measure of normativity
we might wish to adopt (ethical, practical, epistemological, economic,
etc.), there are good beliefs and there are bad ones—and it
should now be obvious to everyone that Muslims have more than
their fair share of the latter.

>Of course, like every religion, Islam has had its moments. Muslim
scholars invented algebra, translated the writings of Plato and
Aristotle, and made important contributions to a variety of nascent
sciences at a time when European Christians were luxuriating in the
most abysmal ignorance. It was only through the Muslim conquest
of Spain that classical Greek texts found their way into Latin translation
and seeded the Renaissance in western Europe. Thousands of
pages could be written cataloging facts of this sort for every religion,
but to what end? Would it suggest that religious faith is good, or
even benign?

>>55756168
>It is a truism to say that people of faith have created
almost everything of value in our world, because nearly every person
who has ever swung a hammer or trimmed a sail has been a
devout member of one or another religious culture. There has been
simply no one else to do the job. We can also say that every human
achievement prior to the twentieth century was accomplished by
men and women who were perfectly ignorant of the molecular basis
of life. Does this suggest that a nineteenth-century view of biology
would have been worth maintaining? There is no telling what our
world would now be like had some great kingdom of Reason
emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the credulous multitudes
of Europe and the Middle East. We might have had modern
democracy and the Internet by the year 1600. The fact that religious
faith has left its mark on every aspect of our civilization is not an
argument in its favor, nor can any particular faith be exonerated
simply because certain of its adherents made foundational contributions
to human culture.

>>55756188
>Given the vicissitudes of Muslim history, however, I suspect that
the starting point I have chosen for this book—that of a single suicide
bomber following the consequences of his religious beliefs—is
bound to exasperate many readers, since it ignores most of what
commentators on the Middle East have said about the roots of Muslim
violence. It ignores the painful history of the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza. It ignores the collusion of Western powers
with corrupt dictatorships. It ignores the endemic poverty and
lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world. But I
will argue that we can ignore all of these things—or treat them only
to place them safely on the shelf—because the world is filled with
poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of
terrorism, indeed who would never commit terrorism of the sort
that has become so commonplace among Muslims; and the Muslim
world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women,
suffering little more than their infatuation with Koranic eschatology,
who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake.
>We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign
policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this
fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war
with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by
extremists.

We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed
to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the
Prophet. A future in which Islam and the West do not stand on the
brink of mutual annihilation is a future in which most Muslims
have learned to ignore most of their canon, just as most Christians
have learned to do. Such a transformation is by no means guaranteed
to occur, however, given the tenets of Islam.

>>55756355
>>>A Fringe without a Center
Many authors have pointed out that it is problematic to speak of Muslim
"fundamentalism" because it suggests that there are large doctrinal
differences between fundamentalist Muslims and the mainstream.
The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamentalist"
in the Western sense of the word—in that even "moderate"
approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and
inerrant word of the one true God. The difference between fundamentalists
and moderates—and certainly the difference between all
"extremists" and moderates—is the degree to which they see political
and military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In any
case, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension of
human existence, including politics and law, are now generally called
not "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists."
The world, from the point of view of Islam, is divided into the
"House of Islam" and the "House of War," and this latter designation
should indicate how many Muslims believe their differences
with those who do not share their faith will be ultimately resolved.
While there are undoubtedly some "moderate" Muslims who have
decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion,
Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout
Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels
have been converted to Islam, subjugated, or killed. The tenets of
Islam simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of
power with the "enemies of God."

>>55756424
>Like most other religions, Islam has suffered a variety of schisms.
Since the seventh century, the Sunni (the majority) have considered
the Shia to be heterodox, and the Shia have returned the compliment.
Divisions have emerged within each of these sects as well, and
even within the ranks of those who are unmistakably Islamist. We
need not go into the sectarian algebra in any detail, apart from noting
that these schisms have had the salutary effect of dividing the
House of Islam against itself. While this mitigates the threat that
Islam currently poses to the West, Islam and Western liberalism
remain irreconcilable. Moderate Islam—really moderate, really critical
of Muslim irrationality—scarcely seems to exist. If it does, it is
doing as good a job at hiding as moderate Christianity did in the
fourteenth century (and for similar reasons).

>>55756562
>The feature of Islam that is most troubling to non-Muslims, and
which apologists for Islam do much to obfuscate, is the principle of
jihad. Literally, the term can be translated as "struggle" or "striving,"
but it is generally rendered in English as "holy war," and this
is no accident. While Muslims are quick to observe that there is an
inner (or "greater") jihad, which involves waging war against one's
own sinfulness, no amount of casuistry can disguise the fact that the
outer (or "lesser") jihad—war against infidels and apostates—is a
central feature of the faith. Armed conflict in "defense of Islam" is
a religious obligation for every Muslim man. We are misled if we
believe that the phrase "in defense of Islam" suggests that all Muslim
fighting must be done in "self-defense." On the contrary, the
duty of jihad is an unambiguous call to world conquest. As Bernard
Lewis writes, "the presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue,
interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts
the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule."
>There is just no denying that Muslims expect victory in this world, as well as in the
next. As Malise Ruthven points out, "The Prophet had been his own
Caesar. .. . If imitatio Christi meant renouncing worldly ambition
and seeking salvation by deeds of private virtue, imitatio Muhammadi
meant sooner or later taking up arms against those forces

>>55756629
which seemed to threaten Islam from within or without."
While the Koran is more than sufficient to establish these themes, the literature
of the hadith elaborates:
>Jihad is your duty under any ruler, be he godly or wicked.
>A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's Cause in the forenoon
or in the afternoon is better than the world and whatever is in it.
>A day and a night fighting on the frontier is better than a month
of fasting and prayer.
>Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter)
would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the
whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing
the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the
world and get killed again (in Allah's Cause).
>He who dies without having taken part in a campaign dies in a
kind of unbelief.
>Paradise is in the shadow of swords.

>>55756747
>Many hadiths of this sort can be found, and Islamists regularly
invoke them as a justification for attacks upon infidels and apostates.
Those looking for ways to leaven the intrinsic militancy of Islam
have observed that there are a few lines in the Koran that seem to
speak directly against indiscriminate violence. Those who wage jihad
are enjoined not to attack first (Koran 2:190), since "God does not
love aggressors." But this injunction restrains no one. Given the
long history of conflict between Islam and the West, almost any act
of violence against infidels can now be plausibly construed as an
action in defense of the faith. Our recent adventures in Iraq provide
all the rationale an aspiring martyr needs to wage jihad against "the
friends of Satan" for decades to come. Lewis notes that one who
would fight for God is also enjoined not to kill women, children, or
the aged, unless in self-defense, but a little casuistry on the notion
of self-defense allows Muslim militants to elude this stricture as
well. The bottom line is that devout Muslims can have no doubt
about the reality of paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as
a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness
of killing people for what amount to theological
grievances. In Islam, it is the "moderate" who is left to split hairs,
because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, subjugate,
or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world.

Bump. ..

>>55756848
>The imperative of world conquest is an interesting one, given that
"imperialism" is one of the chief sins that Muslims attribute to the
West:

>Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Middle Eastern
>and more especially the Islamic case against the West. For
>them, the word imperialism has a special meaning. This word is,
>for example, never used by Muslims of the great Muslim
>empires—the first one founded by the Arabs, the later ones by
>the Turks, who conquered vast territories and populations and
>incorporated them in the House of Islam. It was perfectly legitimate
>for Muslims to conquer and rule Europe and Europeans and
>thus enable them—but not compel them—to embrace the true
>faith. It was a crime and a sin for Europeans to conquer and rule
>Muslims and, still worse, to try to lead them astray. In the Muslim
>perception, conversion to Islam is a benefit to the convert and
>a merit in those who convert him. In Islamic law, conversion from
>Islam is apostasy—a capital offense for both the one who is misled
>and the one who misleads him. On this question, the law is
>clear and unequivocal. If a Muslim renounces Islam, even if a new
>convert reverts to his previous faith, the penalty is death.6

>>55757082
>We will return to the subject of apostasy in a moment. We should
first note, however, that Lewis' comment about not compelling the
conquered to embrace the true faith is misleading in this context. It is true that the Koran provides a handbrake, of sorts, for Muslim
"moderates"—"There shall be no compulsion in religion" (Koran
2:256)—but a glance at the rest of the Koran, and at Muslim history,
reveals that we should not expect too much from its use. As it stands,
this line offers a very slender basis for Muslim tolerance. First, the
Muslim conception of tolerance applies only to Jews and Christians—"People
of the Book"—while the practices of Buddhists, Hindus,
and other idolators are considered so spiritually depraved as to
be quite beyond the pale.7
Even People of the Book must keep to
themselves and "humbly" tithe (pay the jizya) to their Muslim
rulers. Fareed Zakaria observes,8
as many have, that Jews lived for
centuries under Muslim rule and had a relatively easy time of it—
but this is only compared with the horrors of life under theocratic
Christendom. The truth is that life for Jews within the House of
Islam has been characterized by ceaseless humiliation and regular
pogroms. A state of apartheid has been the norm, in which Jews have
been forbidden to bear arms, to give evidence in court, and to ride
horses. They have been forced to wear distinctive clothing (the yellow
badge originated in Baghdad, not in Nazi Germany) and to avoid
certain streets and buildings. They have been obliged, under penalty
of violence and even death, to pass Muslims only on their left
(impure) side while keeping their eyes lowered. In parts of the Arab
world it has been a local custom for Muslim children to throw stones
at Jews and spit upon them

>>55757177
These and other indignities have been
regularly punctuated by organized massacres and pogroms: in
Morocco (1728,1790,1875,1884,1890,1903,1912,1948,1952, and
1955),

in Algeria (1805 and 1934), in Tunisia (1864,1869,1932, and
1967),

in Persia (1839, 1867, and 1910),

in Iraq (1828, 1936, 1937,
1941,1946,1948,1967, and 1969),

in Libya (1785, 1860,1897,1945,
1948, and 1967),

in Egypt (1882, 1919, 1921, 1924, 1938-39, 1945,
1948,1956, and 1967),

in Palestine (1929 and 1936),

in Syria (1840,
1945, 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1967),

in Yemen (1947), etc.10

Life for Christians under Islam has been scarcely more cheerful.

>>55757299
OKAY. I'm done posting that introduction.

Please go to the pdf in the original post and read and make sure to share with libkeks.