The book
Muhammad: The "Banned" Images
(and here)
(2009)
shows the challenge of free speech to Islam this century.
The Internet and globalisation
represent the first serious intellectual challenge Islam has ever faced
in its history
(because previously it killed or silenced all critics).
Belief in Islam will falter in this century
once young Muslims hear, for the first time ever,
alternative ideas while they are growing up.
Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali
and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas
who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of
Allah's Apostle,
'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"
- The Hadith,
Sahih al-Bukhari,
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57.
Search for more.
There was a fettered man beside Abu Muisa.
Mu'adh
asked, "Who is this (man)?" Abu Muisa said, "He was a Jew and became a Muslim and then reverted back to Judaism." Then Abu Muisa requested Mu'adh to sit down but Mu'adh said, "I will not sit down till he has been killed.
This is the judgment of Allah and His Apostle (for such cases)
and repeated it thrice. Then Abu Musa ordered that the man be killed, and he was killed.
- The Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari,
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 58.
Allah's Apostle
said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims."
- The Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari,
Volume 9, Book 83, Number 17.
The brave
Sabri Husibi,
Syrian Muslim turned atheist, forced to leave Syria because of bigotry,
moved to the US.
Like so many people who have known tyranny, he loves western freedom:
"I came here for freedom. I love this country more than any place else. ... Of all the people I've met, Americans are the best people."
For the above innocuous interview, he received
death threats
from violent Muslims.
I will stop thinking Islam is a violent, intolerant religion
when Muslims stop making death threats to apostates.
Robert Spencer
points out that Husibi does say some rubbish, such as referring to
"fundamentalist Christians like
Timothy McVeigh"
[who was not a fundamentalist Christian]
"and fundamentalist Jews who kill Muslim children in the Gaza Strip".
[What incident is he referring to?]
Western professor
Denise Spellberg
helped start up Muslim anger about the book, for reasons known only to her.
Angry Muslim fanatics in London
responded by
trying to kill the publisher, September 2008.
Their actions speak more eloquently about Islam
than any criticism of Islam could.
Her novel
Shame
(1993),
in which a Hindu family is persecuted by Muslims,
led to her first death threats from Muslim fanatics.
The book was banned in Bangladesh, and a few states of India.
She had to flee Bangladesh in 1994
due to death threats by Muslim fanatics.
She later had to leave India
due to death threats by Muslim fanatics.
She now lives in the West.
Incidentally, she and her family are refugees from the
racist mass murderer
Idi Amin.
Her main point is that the
Islamic world needs a Reformation
like the Christian one
that led ultimately to the Enlightenment,
and that the Islamic Reformation must begin
among Muslims in the West and
spread from there.
She calls on non-Muslims to
support the reformation of Islam and not to be cowed by
fear of being called racist.
"But, for all of the threats, there's good news:
I'm hearing more support, affection and even love from fellow Muslims than I thought possible.
Two groups in particular - young Muslims and Muslim women -
have flooded my Web site with letters of relief and thanks.
They are relieved that somebody is saying out loud words they have only whispered,
and grateful that they're being given the permission to think for themselves."
She thinks that
"Muslims in the West ...
are best poised to revive Islam's tradition of independent reasoning.
Why in the West? Because it's here that we already enjoy the precious freedoms
to think, express, challenge and be challenged - all without fear of state reprisal."
A true Arab hero
- Arab-American psychologist
Wafa Sultan
declares on Al Jazeera television:
"I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew.
I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural"
To the response of her ignorant Islamic cleric questioner, she says:
"Brother,
you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me.
You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern,
whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary,
or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs."
What a hero!
Such delicious disrespect to an Islamic cleric.
She is brilliant on the modern war with Islamism:
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions,
or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras.
It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages
and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century.
It is a clash between civilization and backwardness,
between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.
It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship.
It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand.
It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings."
Wafa Sultan, 4 Mar 2008,
takes on an Islamist thug who calls for attacks on the West because of cartoons.
Wafa Sultan says:
"All religions and faiths, throughout the history of humanity, have been subject to criticism and affronts. With time, this has helped in their reform and development. Any belief that chops off the heads of its critics is doomed to turn into terrorism and tyranny. This has been the condition of Islam, from its inception to this day.
...
The Muslims must learn how to listen to the criticism of others, and maybe then they will reexamine their terrorist teachings. When they manage to do so, the world will view them in a better light".
Nonie Darwish
(and here)
of "Arabs for Israel"
- an Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity and become pro-Israel.
She moved to America in 1978.
Her father was head of Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza and Sinai
in the 1950s.
He started a campaign of
terror attacks on Israeli civilians
for the thug dictator
Nasser
of Egypt.
Israel assassinated her father in 1956.
We were brought up to hate - and we do
- article on her upbringing in Egypt.
"Sadly, the way I was raised was not unique. Hundreds of millions of other Muslims also
have been raised with the same hatred of the West and Israel as a way to distract from the
failings of their leaders. Things have not changed since I was a little girl in the 1950s."
She is great.
She refers to
"the Islamo-fascist president of Iran".
Refreshing to hear that from an Arab Muslim woman.
And some lefties say "Islamo-fascist" is a
"racist"
term that we cannot use.
Interview:
"I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. I attended Gaza elementary schools where I learned hatred, vengeance and retaliation. Peace was never as an option; it was considered a sign of defeat and weakness. Those who wanted peace and compromise were called traitors. Jews were described as monsters, apes and pigs and the enemies of God from the pulpits of mosques.
...
The teachers filled our hearts with fear of Jews, which made hatred come easy and terrorism tolerated. The propaganda of jihad, hatred and anti-Semitism was everywhere and not just in schools; it was in mosques, newspapers, movies, by politicians, in the arts and in many Jihadist songs over the radio."
"I moved to America in 1978 and was glad to leave the culture of jihad, dictatorships and police states behind."
Nonie Darwish on
CBN.
She makes the point that the global Islamic jihad has a dynamic of its own,
and wars with free peoples because it must,
not because of anything the free peoples have done.
"There's something every American must understand,
after 9/11 especially.
There is nothing that America has or has not done
that causes terrorism."
Muhammad's example
(also here),
Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
August 2005.
She calls on the west to help Muslims reform:
"They know that Muhammad calls for the slaughter of infidels;
they know that the open society rightly condemns the slaughter of innocents.
They are caught in a mental cramp of cognitive dissonance and
it is up to the west to support the reformers in trying to ease them out of that painful contradiction.
...
The western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticising Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims,
rob Muslims of an opportunity to review their own moral values.
...
this attitude betrays Muslim reformers who desperately require the support
- and even the physical protection
- of their natural allies in the west."
The left-leaning liberals of
PEN,
Ron Chernow
and Philip Gourevitch
have extreme difficulty with the concept, the very existence, of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
She defines herself as an ex-Muslim atheist.
She is so wonderfully optimistic:
"Perhaps thinking of the Iraq war, Mr. Gourevitch suggested that a foreign Enlightenment
can't be fast-tracked onto another culture. Ms. Ali replied smoothly that the Arab world
has managed to borrow many things from the West, such as cars and clothing styles,
so she saw no reason why they couldn't borrow values as well."
She understands the west, and the left, so well:
"'My criticism of the West, especially of liberals, is that they do take freedom for granted,'
Ms. Ali responded. She noted that Western Europeans born after World War II are unused to conflict.
'They have lost the instinct to recognize that there can be such a thing as an enemy
or a threat to freedom'".
Some people complain that because ex-Muslims
like Ayaan are now atheists,
they will play no role in the reform of Islam.
But this discounts what happened with Christianity.
It was the
pressure from years of ex-Christian and semi-Christian
deists, agnostics, atheists, dissenters, and freethinkers
of all sorts, that made Christianity liberal and tolerant,
almost as much as any liberal movement within orthodox Christianity.
Christians did listen to ex-Christians and lapsed Christians,
and did change their actions in response.
So that today Christians have a firm belief in freedom of religion
whereas once they opposed it.
So the ex-Muslims, if they are allowed to speak (and live),
will have a major role to play in forging a more tolerant Islam
that we all hope to see.
"The western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticising Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims, rob Muslims of an opportunity to review their own moral values. ... this attitude betrays Muslim reformers who desperately require the support - and even the physical protection - of their natural allies in the west."
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Dutch anti-jihad politician
Geert Wilders
(an atheist, who was in the same political party as Ayaan Hirsi Ali).
"Fitna",
a short film criticizing the Quran, Mar 2008.
Wilders is clearly non racist.
He wants to liberate Muslims from Islam:
"Islam deprives Muslims of their freedom. That is a shame, because free people are capable of great things, as history has shown. The Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Indian, Indonesian peoples have tremendous potential. It they were not captives of Islam, if they could liberate themselves from the yoke of Islam, if they would cease to take Muhammad as a role model and if they got rid of the evil Koran, they would be able to achieve great things which would benefit not only them but the entire world."
There is clear water between me and Wilders:
Wilders has said the Koran "incites hatred" and
"promotes violence" and
should be outlawed in the Netherlands.
The first part of the above seems obviously true, but
I disagree that the Koran should be banned,
on the grounds of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
There are no grounds on which you could ban the Koran
that would not also
ban the hate-filled, bloodthirsty
Old Testament.
Wilders, Apr 2009, says:
"We should also stop pretending that Islam is a religion, sure, it has religious symbols, but it's not a religion. It is a totalitarian ideology and the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam."
I absolutely reject this idea.
Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of the West.
We should not toss it away lightly.
I would agree with
The Jawa Report on Wilders:
"Geert Wilders appears to be stuck with the same European mentality which wishes to ban any movement that it sees as dangerous or antisocial.
...
What we need in the fight against political Islam are not laws making us less free.
... We didn't ban the CPUSA, yet we won the Cold War anyway."
Geert Wilders speech in London, Mar 2010. Most of it is fine, except then he says he wants to ban mosque building:
"Fifth, we will have to forbid the construction of new mosques. ... there should be a mosque building-stop in the West."
A ban on any more Muslim immigration for 10 to 20 years, until the current Muslims integrate better, would be perfectly reasonable, and I would vote for it.
But any restriction on the religious freedom of Muslims who are already in the West would be totally illiberal.
Fitna is not a bad film, but it muddies the waters,
as Wilders does,
by presenting this as a war with all of Islam.
I deny this.
The situation is not as hopeless and desperate as that.
Only Islamism has to be defeated, not all of Islam.
Here is the film:
Wikileaks:
(Note that for some reason Wikileaks insists on bundling "Fitna"
with an ignorant, pathetic Saudi Muslim reply called "Schism".)
Google Video:
YouTube:
Liveleak:
Dailymotion:
Metacafe:
Downloads:
Taliban kill Dutch troops
in response to Fitna:
"The Taliban were so offended that Wilders linked Islam to violence, that they killed two Dutch troops over it.
Proving definitively that Islam is in no way, shape or form an inspiration for violent actions."
Sam Harris:
"The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced.
...
The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that
we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it. As Ibn Warraq .. said in response to recent events:
'It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore works such as Wilders' film, Fitna.
How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism?' "
Oliver Kamm:
"Wilders's populist and nativist politics are exactly opposed to my own views, and entirely beside the point. ...
Mockery and denunciation of what others hold literally sacred will inevitably cause anguish and outrage. And faced with mental suffering on the part of some of its citizens,
a free society must do nothing at all. No one is entitled to restitution for hurt feelings: not now; not ever."
They want to make it illegal to compare
Islam
to
Nazism.
Should it also be illegal to compare Christianity to Nazism?
As I say above, I do not agree with everything Wilders says.
But all of it should be legal in a free society.
Comment
on the double standards:
"the reason he's being prosecuted is because his critics reacted violently".
Wilders is charged with saying:
That the Koran is like Mein Kampf.
Not only should this be legal to say, but evidence could even be found for it.
For example, the Koran has probably inspired more,
not less, killing of innocents.
Anyway, even if the statement is nonsense, it still should be legal.
That Islam is a fascist religion.
Not only should this be legal to say, but evidence could even be found for it.
For example, Islam is
one of the main oppressors of human rights in the world today.
Anyway, even if the statement is nonsense, it still should be legal.
That the Koran should be banned.
I disagree,
but saying this should be legal.
As Mark Steyn says, 14 Jan 2010:
"I don't happen to agree with banning either the Koran or Mein Kampf. .. But, once you accept the principle that it is acceptable to ban certain books (as Mein Kampf is banned in many parts of Europe), why should it be a crime to propose additional titles?"
That Moroccan youth are violent.
Well it was a Moroccan youth
that killed Theo van Gogh.
Also, the actual
crime figures
show a problem with crime and violence among Moroccan youth in Holland.
That Dutch borders should be closed to all non-western immigrants.
I disagree with this (the West should let in non-Muslims, and Muslim liberals and dissidents),
but saying this should be legal.
That Holland needs to end "the Islamic invasion".
Most people in the West would agree that Islamic immigration should be scaled back
until Muslims integrate better.
As Mark Steyn says:
"In other words, this court is explictly attempting to criminalize the political opinions of a large swath of the Dutch electorate. That doesn't seem a smart move. Whatever it does to Wilders, it risks delegitimizing the state itself. Even by European standards, the Low Countries have too narrow a political discourse, and whenever somebody comes along to broaden the discussion, they either get killed (Pim Fortuyn), banned (Belgium's Vlaams Blok), or prosecuted (Geert Wilders)".
Interviewer: "You said that the Wilders Trial reminds you of justice in your country of origin, Iran. Is that not somewhat exaggerated?"
Afshin Ellian: "The Netherlands, of course, is not comparable with Iran, but it's about perception. If you cannot say that Islam is a backward religion and that Muhammad is a criminal, then you are living in an Islamic country, my friend, because there you also cannot say such things. I may say Christ was a faggot
and Mary was a whore, but apparently I should stay off of Muhammad."
Douglas Murray, January 28th, 2010. The trial:
"is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.
...
The whole thing is so farcical that it would be funny. If it weren't for the fact that it is real. The most popular elected politician in Holland is on trial for saying things which the Dutch people are clearly, in large part, in agreement with. Things which, even if you don't agree with them, must be able to be said.
Whichever way the verdict goes, it can't do anything but good for Wilders's poll ratings. But it is a terrible day for democracy. A political class so intent on criminalising the opinions of its own people cannot last very much longer."
I don't agree with Wilders. But making his speech illegal?
That is sharia.
"There are people who claim that democracy is incompatible with Islam. But the truth is that democracies, by definition, make a place for people of religious belief. America is one of the most -- is one of the world's leading democracies, and we're also one of the most religious nations in the world. More than three-quarters of our citizens believe in a higher power. Millions worship every week and pray every day. And they do so without fear of reprisal from the state.
In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam.
Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection."
-
Speech by President George W. Bush in Egypt, May 2008.
Wilders has a new film,
Islam Rising (2010).
Since 1995.
