The Diversity of Islam?

real-time-bill-maherOnly thirteen years after 9/11, the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck kerfuffle has broken the media logjam preventing open discussion of whether Islam is a uniquely violent religion, and finally brought that question into the mainstream of the public discourse. The mainstream media and Leftist intelligentsia, badly rattled by Maher’s defection, is circling the wagons with a series of articles about how Maher is wrong, ignorant, bigoted, and after all just a comedian anyway – including a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof (a bit player in the Maher/Affleck brawl), predictably entitled “The Diversity of Islam.”

Islam’s glorious diversity, of course, is something that we are all supposed to acknowledge and celebrate, on pain of charges of “Islamophobia” and “bigotry.” For Leftists and Islamic supremacists, it is a cardinal sin to essentialize Islam – that is, to dare to suggest that it actually teaches and stands for anything in particular. It is even worse to say anything that might give anyone the impression that Islam is a monolith. The political and media elites insist that we must see Islam as a marvelously diverse, multifaceted thing – as long as we don’t whisper anything to the effect that its diversity includes mass murderers and rapists acting in accord with mainstream understandings of its texts and teachings.

One irony (among many) of all this is that Islam is, in point of fact, one of the least diverse entities on the planet. A few years I came across a group photo of a summit meeting of Southeast Asian government officials. The Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Burmese and Chinese officials all had names indigenous to their nations; the Malaysian and Indonesian ministers had names like Muhammad and Abdullah – names indigenous to Arabia. Converts to Islam the world over give up a bit of their cultural diversity to take on Arabic names, and in many cases feel compelled to adopt the dress of a seventh-century Arab. This is not diversity, it’s homogeneity.

Nor is there, despite numerous claims to the contrary, significant diversity in the understanding of Islamic law, Sharia. Wherever Sharia is fully implemented around the world today, from Sudan to Saudi Arabia to Iran, it looks largely the same: freedom of speech is restricted, women and non-Muslims are denied basic rights, apostates from Islam are ostracized or even killed, “heretics” and “blasphemers” are hounded by legal authorities and/or lynch mobs. The four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree on 75% of all rulings, and those matters upon which they differ are not central to Islamic faith or practice.

Nonetheless, the diversity of Islam is a key number in the liberal hymnbook, and Kristof gives it a game rendition in last Wednesday’s Times. The goal, of course, is to buttress Affleck’s claim that it is “gross” and “racist” to suggest that there is anything particularly violent about Islam – well, there are those jihad terrorists, yes, but the whole thing is so diverse, you see.

Kristof attempts to illustrate this by asserting that “historically, Islam was not particularly intolerant, and it initially elevated the status of women.” This is a common myth; that Kristof would retail it indicates he is unaware of, or unwilling to confront, the unpleasant facts of the institutionalized oppression of dhimmitude that made for the violent oppression of religious minorities in the Islamic world until they were abolished in the mid-nineteenth century.

But what about tolerant, pluralistic al-Andalus? The philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked,

You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us….No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have….We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.

Kristof follows up this wishful thinking with a frankly bizarre sentence: “Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.” “Christian/Nazi/Communist”? “Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist”? These conflations render Kristof’s argument utterly incoherent. Islam is not “the bloodthirsty religion,” but “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” is? Is “Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe” a religion? Is it any single thing at all?

The real question is whether Islamic teachings are uniquely “bloodthirsty,” as opposed to “Christian/Nazi/Communist” teachings or anything else. And so Kristof addresses that point: “Likewise, it is true that the Quran has passages hailing violence, but so does the Bible, which recounts God ordering genocides, such as the one against the Amalekites.” Kristof doesn’t mention that this command is not an open-ended one directed to all believers (such as is found in the Qur’an), but is, rather, a specific directive given to Saul regarding one group only, the Amalekites. If you are neither Saul nor an Amalekite, it doesn’t concern you. Nor can Kristof adduce even a single example of a Jew or a Christian committing an act of violence and justifying it by referring to the order given against the Amalekites.

Nor does Kristof mention that neither Judaism nor Christianity, in any of their forms, have now or have ever had any doctrines equivalent to the Islamic doctrine that the Muslim community “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians …until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax” (‘Umdat al-Salik O9.8). The quotation comes from a manual of Islamic law certified by the most prestigious and influential institution in Sunni Islam, al-Azhar, as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.”

I challenge Nicholas Kristof to provide a quotation from any Jewish or Christian authority comparable to al-Azhar, calling upon believers to make war against and subjugate non-believers. He does not do so in this article; instead, he spends the balance of his article retailing anecdotes about non-Muslims who were scoundrels and Muslims who were wonderful people, which proves exactly nothing about the teachings of Islam and whether they have any unique capacity to incite believers to violence. Human beings all have a variety of influences and priorities; Christian villains and Muslim heroes indicate nothing about Christianity or Islam unless their actions are related to their religion’s teachings; Kristof makes no attempt to do so.

Kristof concludes by asserting that “the great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.” Times readers who read this ringing phrase with satisfaction over their morning lattes doubtless didn’t pause to try to name any Jewish or Christian intolerant zealots who committed mass murder on the scale of 9/11 and justified it by pointing to their scriptures. Mere details. Islam is diverse, Islam is peaceful, and stubborn skeptics can always be silenced with shouts of “Tim McVeigh” and “the Crusades” as the great march of tolerance and diversity moves confidently forward.

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  • Naresh Krishnamoorti

    I would go further and say that Islam is not a religion at all. Sufism is a religion. Islam is a purely temporal and materialistic ideology, like communism or Nazism. There IS diversity in Islam, but it’s similar to the diversity between Trotsky and Lenin, between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

    The difference between a religion and an ideology is that a religion starts out with the premise that there is truth and meaning in human life, and goes about searching for it. An ideology presupposes that there is no truth or meaning in human existence. In Islam, the will of Allah is infinitely malleable. This is pure voluntarism, which extinguishes the possibility of truth or meaning. Ideologies are nihilistic. That is why the Left loves and embraces Islam. The Left loves and embraces Islam because of their philosophical congruence, and no argument about the illiberalism of Islam will affect the Left.

    Any ideology can be dormant or ascendant depending on various circumstances. Islam was dormant when pan-Arabism was ascendant. But ultimately, ideologies are contrary to human nature and the soul’s natural search for truth and meaning. If communist indoctrination, enforced by gulags, purges, and informants, can be relatively easily undone, as it was undone by efforts like Voice of America, so too can the Islamic indoctrination financed by the Saudis.

    There needs to be a global effort to undo Islamic indoctrination comparable to anti-communist efforts during the Cold War.

    • Hank Rearden

      Well said!

    • Bamaguje

      ” The Left loves and embraces Islam because of their philosophical congruence” – Naresh Krishnamoorti.

      Other than hating the West, there’s no “philosophical congruence” between the godless Left and Islamists. Ideologically, they are actually diametrically opposed to each other, but only ally with each other to bring down their common enemy – the capitalist West.

      If either of them acquires power, it will exterminate the other.
      The defunct Soviet Union had no stomach for Islamists, and crushed them in Central Asia (Kazahkstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan etc).
      The Communist Chinese are also relentlessly brutal against Muslims in Uighur.

      Conversely, after the Mullahs took over in Iran’s 1979 revolution, they hunted down and exterminated the leftists who helped them overthrow the Shah.

      • Demetrius Minneapolis

        Liberals/leftists of today’s west should not be compared with the liberal in Iran, circa.1979. Two completely different animals.

        • Bamaguje

          They were exterminated nonetheless.

      • joe kulak

        The Islamists and the “godless left” share the insistence upon blind submission to an authoritarian entity. They are diametrically opposed only as one proton is repelled by another.
        The two great competing natures in human beings and their societies are Totalitarianism and Libertarianism (not meant in a purely political sense) — the desire to lose one’s individuality in the whole versus the single ego that seeks sovereignty of the individual.

        • punditwannabe

          I believe that’s why America is so blessed, and important. If we give up the “sovereignty of the individual”, so despised by Liberals (I saw a university professor froth at the mouth talking about “WHITE HOT INDIVIDUALISM!” and it’s discontents) we become vulnerable to cult leaders (you name um: Islam, Charles Manson, et al). Is it odd or sinister that every single one of them want to suppress the individual for the good of the whole?

          • Bamaguje

            With leftist political correctness compelling everyone to fall into line, America’s individualism is waning.
            Free expression is being demonized as hate speech, Islamophobia, racism or irrational opposition to “settled science.”

      • Naresh Krishnamoorti

        I don’t think your examples disprove philosophical congruence. They merely demonstrate that totalitarian power will not tolerate any potential sources of rival power. When you see factions fighting against one another within the Muslim world, this does not demonstrate philosophical or ideological opposition.

    • joe kulak

      We need to start with the “near enemy”–the apologists in our midst. That is why the emotional arguments of dhimmis like Affleck and Kristoff must be vigorously refuted.

  • camp7

    Nicholas Kristof is a follower. He needs to be accepted by the political correctness of his peers. Islam is what Islam does and it can’t be contrived into anything better. The Kristofs of our time are nothing more than apologists for an effed-up ideology that parallels the same twisted effed-up thinking of modern statist leftism.

    Interesting how thousands are slaughtered, raped and oppressed by Islam, and freaks like Kristof are grasping for straws to defend their barbaric tribalism. Just proves that liberal atheists and religio-fascism are one in the same. They both deny the truth and live the lie. God is their enemy.

    • Bamaguje

      The Nicholas Kristofs are only fooling themselves if they think anyone outside their lamestream leftist circles takes their Islamic apologetics seriously.
      With over 23,000 Jihad terror attacks (and counting) since 9/11, most non-Muslims have the common sense to see Islam for the barbaric evil it clearly is, rather than the make-believe whitewashed Islam of willfully blind Jihad deniers like Kristof.

      • punditwannabe

        You know who believe it? Young high school and college grads who have been fed this poison year upon year. Try arguing with one.

        • JacksonPearson

          It’s not so much as who you argue with, as it is being well prepared with the right kind of, and enough information. I don’t like Bill Maher, but that’s why he skunked, and buried Ben Affleck in their debate. For centuries, Islam has been a treacherous, and murderous cult.

  • http://onfollowingchrist.wordpress.com Paul B.

    Please don’t excuse the likes of Maher, Stewart, and the rest as mere “comedians”. Johnny Carson was a comedian. Can you picture him holding forth on politics the ways today’s stars do? No. In fact, he was a lifelong democrat, yet no one knew it until he had passed away.

    Maher, et. al. get away with murder by being able to hit the comedic escape key whenever their ideology gets caught in a jam. Their poison ideological pill (except for the topic of islam, in which Maher is dead-on) goes down smoothly due to its honey coating.

    It’s time we stopped giving them a pass as if they’re simply entertainment. They’re commentators as well, and wield a tremendous amount of clout, as evidenced by the fact that NBC was willing to mortgage the house to get Stewart to host Meet the Press, of all things.

  • Hank Rearden

    Bill Maher is not a good guy on many many counts. But he is taking point on Islam. It is a courageous thing to do on many levels. He is a real warrior on this critical subject.

  • Biff Henderson

    Another surgical vivisection of a mutt on a leash.

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    It is really not understandable how these college educated,well healed respected writers have attained the bravado they so richly don’t deserve. These pulpit preachers of falsely defined liberalism, have for decades espoused policies in every area of government that has impounded the people of limited thought into a cage of supposed Americanism of atrociousness. How’s that Dr. Kissinger ?

  • johnlac

    So deep is the hatred of many leftists for Christianity that many of them firmly believe that if given the chance, Christian fundies as they call them would eagerly slaughter nonbelievers on the order of the ISIS savages. Even when other religion-hating lefties like Bill Maher point out to them that belief is a crock, many lefties persist in their delusions.
    They can’t name any large bodies of Christians or members of other religions slaughtering nonbelievers in the name of their religion like Muslims do, so they have to exaggerate religious “oppression” such as being forced to buy their own birth control pills. Clearly, that is as huge a crime as stoning “adulterous” women to death or cutting off the clitorises of female Muslims. (smirk)

    • Sigi

      Why “(smirk)?”

  • Virgil Hilts

    Kristof’s comments bring to mind the comments made to the Warden in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, How can you be so obtuse?”

  • djf

    Mr. Spencer, I generally agree with you, but you’re mistaken about the biblical command to make war on the Amalekites. It is in chapter 17 of Exodus, and is a command given to all Israel. (In Samuel, Saul is chastised for failing to carry out the command.) It would be supportive of your point, however, that the command concerning Amalek was directed against only one particular tribe, not the entire universe of non-Israelites (i.e., not the Moabites, Midianites, Edomites, etc.), and that tribe had already disappeared in ancient times (although Haman, the Persian villain of the Book of Esther, was traditionally identified as a descendant of Amalek).

    • Bamaguje

      Since there are no Amalekites today, and Jews aren’t going around slaugthering innocents on account of any Biblical verse, why do mor0ns like Kristofs bring it up?
      Just a cheap propaganda shot that does nothing to address the menace of today’s Jihadist violence and intolerance.

      • djf

        I agree, but Spencer should still correct his inaccurate statements about the Bible. Exodus ch 17 contains the command to B’nei Yisrael to “blot out the memory of Amalek” shortly after the crossing of the Red Sea, generations before Saul’s lifetime in the bibilical narrative.

        • Bamaguje

          How did that “blot out memory” work out, since we are now talking of Amalekites today.

  • Gee

    Malaysia has gone as far as to require all non-Muslims also change their names to Muslim names

  • punditwannabe

    Hey, don’t confuse them with the facts. The “fact” they stick to is the meme you mentioned at the end (Crusades and abortion doctor killers and McVeigh), and that’s good enough for them. The fact that there just may be a correlation between what a religion actually teaches and what the followers do, cannot be computed by their biased minds.

  • roder59

    In a moral and rational world Robert Spencer should be a strong candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize…but alas; Intelligence, stamina, courage and logical thinking is not the rigeur these days, especially not amongst the sc intelligentia.

  • djf

    Are you suggesting that executing Eichmann qualifies as genocide?

    • 8ball

      He’s suggesting he’s incoherent.

    • mollysdad

      Executing Eichmann was punishment for genocide, which is the characteristic crime of Amalek.

  • Lee

    Thanks Mr.Spencer. A favorite tactic of just about every Islamofascist is to claim there is such an incredible diversity within the term “Islam” that Islam is in essence defined out of existence.

    This is of course a crude manipulation. After all, if we can’t define Islam (because with such a myriad diversity of branches, schools and sects etc it can mean *anything* including hippies making daisy-chains), then it can’t be spoken about in any meaningful way. This means it can’t be critiqued, can’t be reformed, can’t be defended against, can’t be shamed out of existence.

    But in fact Islam does mean something. Islam has only *one founder*. Only *one Koran* that he dictated. And *one set of values* with regard to his treatment of Muslim apostates, gays, atheists, adulterers, blasphemers, infidels, women etc. The things Muhammad did, and preached, are agreed upon, approved, and acted on.

    Kristof could simply go to any Islamic country and publicly announce that he isn’t a Muslim because he doesn’t believe Muhammad’s claims – he would find a remarkable *consistency* of response to the sincere views of a non-Muslim.

    As to Kristof’s claims about Muhammad “elevating the status of women” – well, he’s had too many years to be ignorant of the actions and teachings of this rapist, enslaver, and murderer of women. Kristof is human scum.

  • USARetired

    Islam is not religion, but is ‘Raciest Ideology’, and cannot coexist with democracy !

  • 8ball

    Jesus commanded his followers not to kill and to love our enemies, so you are lying. Molly must be ashamed of you.

    • mollysdad

      As God, Jesus has the right to destroy human life on any scale He sees fit. As King, He has the power to do it according to His lawful mandate for holy war against Amalek.

      • 8ball

        You’ve obviously not read the New Testament. Jesus killed no none. Jesus was a man of peace. He makes it very clear that we have free will and punishments will come on Judgement Day.

        • mollysdad

          I have read the New Testament, and it is clear to me that Jesus is God. He ends human lives all the time by divine power. That is His right. Sometimes He ends human life through the agency of the civil authorities who have, from Him, the lawful power on earth to kill malefactors.

  • Peter Castle

    The Left refuses to acknowledge that adherents of Islam are the source of the terrorist threat which seeks our destruction. Islamic jihadists (not Christians, not Jews, not Buddhists, not Hindus) have launched a war on America and Western Civilization. Failure to admit the truth prevents us from facing and defeating the enemy.

    See “Terror Strikes America – Again!” at http://t.co/nurkdy0GI6.

  • Peter Castle

    Moreover, by redefining terrorism as a Christian conservative behavior instead of speaking the truth of Islamic inspiration and aspiration, we are prevented from defending ourselves against the real enemy.

    See “OK Beheading? Must be Tea Party Christians!” at http://t.co/JeE8yIckeC.