“Here, listen, my dear daughter, do you know that this is the last day. Tonight, you’re going to die?”
Tina responds: “Huh?”
Zein Isa replies: “Do you know that you are going to die tonight?”
The girl’s mother asks her questions about items in her schoolbag. In the midst of her conversation with her mother, Tina begins to shriek in fear.
“Keep still, Tina!” says her father.
“Mother, please help me!”
“Huh? What do you mean?” the mother says.
“Help! Help!”
“What help?” the mother responds.
Tina screams, and Maria says: “Are you going to listen? Are you going to listen?”
Screaming louder, Tina gasps: “Yes! Yes! Yes, I am!” then coughs and adds, “No. Please!”
The mother says, “Shut up!”
Tina continues to cry, but her voice is unintelligible.
“Die! Die quickly! Die quickly!” the father says.
The girl moans, seems to quiet, then screams one last time.
“Quiet, little one! Die my daughter, die!” the father says.
Tina was stabbed six times in the chest with a boning knife, which pierced her heart, one lung, and liver, investigators said.
More pavilions at Folkfest: Kids today, right? It’s like Bye Bye Birdie – The Director’s Cut. But much of the media have rushed to echo him. Canada’s Number One news anchor went to weirdly contorted lengths to avoid the word ‘strangle’: “Her neck was compressed, to the point she couldn’t breathe.”
h/t
Read this bit of utter nonsense from the Montreal Gazette:
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=1b881571-f580-40d8-8d7f-1b02e1b2978e
“Given the temper of the times, however, and the heated debate over “reasonable accommodation,” there’s a danger that we might read too much into the one difference that set Aqsa apart from most of her friends – the fact that she was and her family is Muslim. One of the major sources of conflict between them, in fact, was Aqsa’s refusal to wear a hijab, or headscarf, outside the house.
Already, the media – especially the open-line radio shows – are trumpeting this family tragedy as one more proof that Muslims don’t belong here, that their culture is too “other” to accommodate itself to Western values. One genius even suggested that Canadians boycott Muslim cab drivers, and an expert cited in the National Post suggested that this cultural conflict forced Aqsa to live a double life, dressing one way at home and another at school. Now there’s a shock: a teenager who tries to fool her parents.
All this is nonsense, of course. Murdering daughters is no more an Islamic value than murdering estranged wives is a Western one. Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something – boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.
That such clashes can sometimes lead to violence and even murder is also not a phenomenon peculiar to Muslim families, as anyone who reads newspapers attentively can tell you. But once again, some people have been too eager to jump aboard the anti-Muslim bandwagon. To judge a faith and a culture on this one squalid incident is absurd.”
==================================
The apologists at the Gazette have never heard of the term ‘honour killing’.
The media’s whitewashing of this instead of reporting the facts creates an atmosphere in which it is more likely to happen again, in other words the media will have blood on their hands when the next ‘honour’ killing occurs.
irwin daisy,
on an earlier thread, Dander directed us to a book by Seyyed Hossein Naser.
Naser is an extremely unusual author to advance in the justification of Islam as it is generally considered.
Naser was a writer in the Traditionalist movement that included Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, Marco Pallis, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and a number of others.
This puts Naser in the outlook of the perennial philosphy, also called the sophia perennis, that sees all religions as originating from one primordial source. The movement sees the differences between religions as culturally derived and divided between the exoteric and the esoteric: The esoteric being the deep primordial wisdom on which a new construction is built when a religion is founded.
Naser, for example, wrote a preface to Schuon’s Islam and the Perennial Philosphy in which he states:
“But the reality of the perennial philosphy remained eclipsed for a long time by the dominant current of profane philosophy in the West, based on the idea of the evolution of thought and “progress” toward the truth. It is only during this [20th] century — thanks to the rediscovery of tradition in the West and the binding evidence of the presence of a metaphysical doctrine at the heart of all authentic traditions, which is at once perennial and universal — the key concept of perennial philosophy has once again come to the fore… in the writings of Frithjof Schuon, which followed closely on the work initiated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, and may be said to be the most noble and complete expression of the philosophia perennis available in the contemporary world.”
Needless to say, Naser directs himself to his sympathies for Sufism in his writings, and it would be foolish to imagine that radical Islam or ‘orthodox’ Islam generally embraces a universal, esoteric good in all religions with a fondness for Sufism, which as you know has been condemned. In fact, one Sufi order has relocated to the United States and stands in opposition to the current manifestations of Islam.
Needless to say, this Dander character we presume had found inspiration in reading something that dealt with religions from the point of view of esotericism and universalism and therefore would really have little to do with Islam as we understand it.
Incidentally, this Islamic strain the the Tradition came about because Rene Guenon, back in the 19th century, became interested in estoteric Islam for a variety of reasons. It is inconceivable that were he alive today, when all of the yogis, and Sufis, and magicians, and rimpoches are out there selling tickets to their talks through Ticketron, would he embrace Islam. Furthermore, the war that Islam is waging against us would have caused him to look in another direction altogether.
You know what you do with Dander when you notice a few flakes on your shoulder. One simply brushes it off.
“Welcome to Canada. Please check your “old country” horsesh*t at the door.”
We must embrace multiculteralism and be “tolerant” of the diversity and traditions that are brought to enrich our nation. Too bad someone didn’t adopt our traditions of appreciating life.
Comradely socialist brotherly love worked so well in the old Soviet Union that it has endured until today and preserved her borders.
…..oh crap, that map was printed in 1986.
I know the Canadians sometimes get frustrated because they don’t let you vote in our elections. Well, right now I’m frustrated that I can’t vote in Canadian elections.
Everyone is constantly wondering how to oppose radical Islam. And I think that Canada has an opportunity to do just that.
My view is that all of your MPs should receive overwhelming deluges of emails, faxes, and calls insisting that the homicidal maniac who murdered his own child be given the death penalty.
Moreover, Canadian politicians should not be timid about condemning honor killings, but should use this as the vanguard to express the outrage of civilized westerners against those who would sink to such primitive barbarism.
This little girl was a Canadian citizen who simply wanted to be a participant in Canadian youth culture and style. She may have read Rayme’s blog. Irritating, sure. But something every civilized person who cares for their children has to accomodate to some extent.
This could be an issue on which Canadian conservatives make their voices overwhelmingly heard.
“Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart.”
Stan,
Unbelievable. “fighting a losing battle…” He murdered her.
It’s not just Muhammed that’s an absolute monster, it’s the writer of this article.
This person should be publicly brought to task for this article. The writer has diminished the young girl’s life and death to moral and cultural relativism. That is hate.
All without mentioning that this is not an isolated case. This is a common practice in Islamic theocracies and is now invading the west with the advance of Islam.
The diseased idea of honour and shame drives Muslims to extreme attrocities throughout the world. Whether it’s in reaction to cartoons, or the ‘sins’ requiring the killing of daughters and wives.
The root is the Islamic ideology and the tribalism that it preys on and feeds from.
We must not tolerate the intolerable. Including this writer. Otherwise, the shame is extended to ourselves.
I would like to know if the writer believes in Universal Human Rights, or Multiculturalism. Because one can’t rationally hold both to be true.
How has our culture produced people such as this writer, and, more importantly, allowed their sick opinions to be published in a major newspaper?
Many great posts and special kudos to Doug, WLMR and lookout. Lookout, you mentioned Kwanzaa, so just thought I would point out that there never was an African festival named kwanza. This is a created one by Black Americans and is as authentic as esperanto.
Yes, the situation is very bad and getting worse in Canada, but I also read to-day that the Democrats who voted to approve official recognition of Ramadan just voted nay to the same for Christmas.
On the subject of this recent honour killing I heart one of the best cases to-day on the radio of moral equivalence. The host and her guest, a family counsellor, concluded that due to the closed culture (not identified), they were reluctant to seek family counselling. There were also a lot of comparasions to conflict between Canadian born children of immigrants. They gave a few examples of Greek, Chinese, and Ukranian as though it was the same situation. Muslim was never mentioned nor Islam, and of course no mention that the other identified cultures did not have a religion which condoned or even preached such things. None of this came from Muslims, the host or guest.
Greg in Dallas,
Islamic mysticism. That explains where dander was coming from.
Though, completely irrelevant to the thread and the time honoured aggressive form of Islamic hatred that the world is once again experiencing.
I didn’t know of the book, or writer. Thanks for the information.
Not that I don’t think that the entire concept of”hate crimes” is ridiculous, but, if someone who was not muslim killed this girl because she was wearing a head scarf, they would be charged with a hate crime. Shouldn’t her father be charged with a hate crime for killing her for not wearing one? Just asking.
Greg, Dander, as I saw him, was your basic Angry Man. I had the impression that he couldn’t accommodate or consider anything that didn’t fit his globalized anger. He’s so typical of so much of the left that for whatever personal reasons or intellectual ineptness, instead of reason and logic, process the world through their feelings.
I read somewhere in an US article that mom may, as has been the pattern, have assisted dad in holding this kid down during the murder(?). Want to bet none of the males in that family have clean hands? It happens on a regular basis in Mohammedland. Nothing that has crossed this planet since Auschwitz has been as repulsive as Islam and it’s treatment of humans in general.
Amish kids are given incredible latitude as teenagers. (Heads up to the next misinformed lefty that wants to play the conservative/right equivalence card.)
irwin, you’ve been a stalwart in speaking truth to stupidity.
The way I see it, the Powers That Be in government and in the Media are not being silent because they think Muhammed Parvez was justified in killing his lippy daughter. They think he’s a monster.
They are silent because they think the Average Canadian is just SO much worse. Its the “backlash” concept. Lawless gangs of White men roving towns and killing, raping and burning everything Muslim. Inevitable result of too much media coverage. Hush it up, keep the rubes at home.
Hey, if it only costs a teenager or two now and again, small price to pay to prevent the murderous White hordes right?
The crowning glory is that our money pays these pigs. I’m friggin’ scunnered.
If anybody bothered to read michaels statement, posted above, he claims that Mohammad was liberating Muslims from oppression. This is a typical tactic of Muslims, ‘the perennial victims,’ in order to justify military aggression, attrocities and piracy.
In actual fact, according to their own writings, the Mecca period were Mohammad’s soft years, when he was establishing his creed and doctrine (a fairly difficult thing to do for an illiterate, I’d imagine, a lot of second hand writings on leaves, rocks and such, which is the historical case). Indeed he had one hundred followers, or so, at that time.
Mohammad’s cult didn’t gather steam until his aggressive and political Medina period (the verses in the Quran that abrogate the earlier, “there’s no compulsion in religion” period). At that time, based on his promise of war booty, including bounty from the slave trade, he was able to build the base of his cult to ten thousand adherents, before his death.
Such is historical Islam. The Islam we are once again understanding today.
Lest anyone think that is is exclusively a father on daughter crime, let me remind folks that several months ago, in Calgary, a mother, recent immigrant from Chechnya, killed her daughter under similar circumstances. More ‘teenager troubles’ I guess.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/02/27/murder-calgary.html
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070228/calgary_murder_charge_070228/20070228?hub=Canada
imethisguy,
So, it’s not racial, or even tribal, it’s ideological?
irwin,
you better be careful for soon you may again face the “wrath of ET” – Islam rose in response to the agragarian expansion of Christian/Roman empire, it’s the environment of the ME, tribalism, everything boils down to materialism, Islam has nothing to do with the Arab/Israeli conflict, etc
speaking of honor killings:
from an article written in 2004 about EU: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3828675.stm
Police are re-opening murder files related to families of Turkish, Middle Eastern, Asian, Arabic and Eastern European origin over the past 10 years.
Many victims of “honour killings” are women involved in relationships their family felt brought dishonour on them.
Experts say such killings are on the rise in Europe, but as the issue remains largely hidden from public view, exact numbers are unknown.
Detectives from London’s Metropolitan police are examining murder files going back 10 years – 52 in the capital and 65 in other parts of England and Wales.
The police are concerned about the high proportion of honour killings which end in convictions for manslaughter rather than murder, the BBC’s crime correspondent Neil Bennett reports from The Hague.
Oh but I forgot all ideas are equally valid and it would be wrong to pass judgement
penny said:
irwin, you’ve been a stalwart in speaking truth to stupidity
May I second that penny? Yes indeed, irwin daisy has done his homework on Islam and has provided many terrific posts on the topic! Thank you irwin daisy.
Actually, ex-liberal, my view, which I came to independently, from a knowledge of the ecology of the area, the nature of social structures, and a reading of the Islamic texts, is supported by a prominent historian of the ancient ME and Arabian Peninsula.
Patricia Crone’s articles and books on the rise of Islam, argues, as do I, that it originated in a nomadic tribal system, as a nativist movement in reaction to the encroaching agricultural settlements and domination of the Byzantine (Roman Christian) empire. That’s exactly my point.
You may scoff, but I think that your rebuttal ought to have some facts rather than sneers in it. Again, it helps to take into consideration the pre-Islamic economic and social organization of the area, the ecologies of the whole area, the results of Roman settlements and resultant demographic changes – and then, you can see why Islam emerged and took hold in the area.
No, Islam has nothing to do with Israel-Palestine. Islamic fascism is a result of the Arab states’ refusal to move out of tribalism and into a civic mode of governance, and a refusal to enable the devt of a middle class. You don’t understand or know anything about the structure of a tribal society and the difference between it and a civic structure. Sneering isn’t constructive; you might try to explore the differences and see why the Arab states and their refusal to change, has led to extremism and utopianism (aka, Islamic fascism).
“so yes, islam does mean peace…”
Posted by: micheal at December 13, 2007 3:26 PM
Really, michael?
Tell it to these people
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
So, that makes two of you, ET.
Thanks Penny and Me No Dhimmi. I attempt to do my part.
ET,
A hint: You fail to recognize historical context.
For example – do you understand why Ishmael is so important in the Islamic triology?
perhaps you are engaged in it to some degree and have justified your deconstructing activism as being progressive.
Some people are just naturally contrarians and act as Devil’s Advocate because they get a kick out of others’ reactions and are starved for attention. Wait, doesn’t this describe the MSM (need attention for money), dubious protesters (need attention for validation of their non-mainstream opinions/lifestyles) and screechers (need attention for, well, whatever it is that they screech about)?
I do believe that to be the most chilling thing I’ve ever read.
ET,
I guess it did sound like a “sneer”, but I was trying to re-state your position. Sure the tribes of the Arabian peninsula may have been ripe for unification under a single banner in the 7th century, but that does not explain Islam’s complete brutality, misogyny, and desire to do away with the “people of the book” (ie Christians and Jews).
Irwin Daisy again hits the nail on the head. Just go and look at the story of Ishmael and it becomes apparent why they say that Jews lied in their book. But I am sure that has nothing to do with why Muslims hate/want to destroy the state of Israel.
off topic: By the way, I did an undergraduate degree in anthropology (some 25 years ago), before becoming a molecular biologist, and the take home message I got was “white Christian Europeans bad; patriarchy bad; Bible bad”.
ex-liberal, yes, I’m aware of the leftist bias in the majority of anthropology and sociology programs(heck, in all the social sciences and humanities). It’s ignorant rubbish and best forgotten.
You are ignoring what I’ve said – that the Islamic ideology emerged in reaction to the expansion of the Byzantine settlements into the tribal territories. That’s why Islam emerged. Islam is, first and foremost a tribal ideology. That’s obvious from the texts, and, from an understanding of the type of economy that could possible subsist in that ecological domain.
Its militant nature is both a characteristic of tribalism, which must defend its vacant land base, but above all, a reaction to the Byzantine encroachment. That’s why it is so violent. You are ignoring the context, that incursion of settled agriculture into nomadic land requirements.
The problem now, is that the ME tribalism hasn’t transformed to enable a modern civic society. The elite in the tribes don’t want to release power to the population; that’s led to Islamic fascism.
No, irwin daisy, I totally and completely disagree with your view of Islam. I disagree with your focus on it as evil.
When someone points this out to you, you deny it. For example, when it is pointed out to you your hatred of Islam, you reply:
“Hatred? I don’t feel hatred. Other than towards the ideology of Islam. Understanding, then exposing and criticising Islam for what it is, isn’t hatred.”
Note the contradiction. You say that you don’t feel hatred. Then you immediately state that you DO feel hatred. Towards the ideology of Islam.
I don’t think that you understand the ideology of Islam. You are the one who rejects historical context. All you focus on is one person, Mohammed, ignoring that the written text, done years after his death, can’t replicate his oral statements, and ignoring the historical reasons for the emergence of a militant ideology. You put it down to one person; that’s nonsense. Unless the ideology was ‘speaking’ to the realities of the current historical situation (the Byzantine empire’s incursions) – that one person’s words would have been ignored. So, you have to examine why this ideology emerged and was accepted.
If you want to understand Islam, then, you have to know the historical realities of the era. You don’t; you completely ignore them. You don’t understand that the peoples there were already tribal – and for sure, you don’t understand a tribal social structure.
Did you know that, all over the world, peoples who lived within pastoral agricultures, all set up social systems that were more or less, similar? No contact with each other, but, if the economy was similar then the social ideology was the same. No need for any Great Man to tell them how to live.
It’s the same with other economies – peoples all over the world, with no contact with each other, if they have the same economy, will have similar social structures. And these structures differ; an economy based on settled market agriculture, as was the Christian-Roman (Byzantine)will set up very different social structures than one based around pastoralism. The latter is heavily patriarchal and patilineal – and militant.
Your focus on the individual (known as the Great Hero method) ignores historical, economic, ecological context. You reject that Islam can reform; your only comment on it is how evil it is. I’ve asked you before – since you have these views, then, what is your solution to the billions of people who believe in it? What should be done? Apart from telling us to stop all immigration to Canada from Muslim countries?
Yes ET, I do hate an ideology that has inspired 1400 years of the most violent and vile attrocities the world has ever known.
An ideology that is the impetus to the violence going on today.
And no, I don’t hate Muslims. Although, like any rational human being, I am disgusted by the violent actions of the Muslims carrying out attrocities in the name of their god. There is nothing contradictory about that.
That one person, Mohammad, the ‘perfect man,’ is who Muslims are commanded to emulate in every way. Obviously, you don’t understand what that means.
“Unless the ideology was ‘speaking’ to the realities of the current historical situation (the Byzantine empire’s incursions) – that one person’s words would have been ignored.”
What is this statement all about? A ‘what if’ scenario? Is this how you’ve built your argument? Ridiculous.
Do you understand how a toxic ideology with built in survival methods can unite tribes in a sacred god given quest for dominance through absolute violence and destruction?
“Did you know that, all over the world, peoples who lived within pastoral agricultures, all set up social systems that were more or less, similar? No contact with each other, but, if the economy was similar then the social ideology was the same.”
That statement is utter rubish. Some tribes joined Mohammad’s terrorist army for the allah sanctioned war booty, slaves and the thrill of killing. Others joined on pain of death. Others did not join and were either butchered, or enslaved as dhimmis.
As I’ve stated before, your petrie dish theories are nonsense. They have nothing to do with historical reality.
You do make some good points on other topics. This one, though, blows all your credibility, in my opinion.
It’s a good thing you didn’t teach history, or ME studies.
irwin daisy – you simply don’t understand societies or social systems. Or history. And you are quite wrong; I did teach historical changes in societies.
1) If one person starts to spout a particular ideology, that ideology will be ignored UNLESS it is relevant to the contextual realities of the local population. You don’t understand this. Someone could, here, stand on the street corner and, spout off ideas about The Good Society, and he’d be utterly ignored.
Your focus on Mohammed ignores the fact that his ideology was accepted and taken up by others. Why? That’s what you are ignoring.
2) You are ignoring history. You ignore the intrusion of the Byzantine settlements into the pre-Islamic tribal pastoral grounds. You don’t understand a pastoral economy, which requires a large land base. And, you certainly don’t understand tribalism as a social structure.
3)You don’t ask, why would a population move into violence? Why don’t you ask this question? I’m pointing out the economic and ecological stress that moved them into a militant ideology. You totally ignore this economic and ecological reality.
4) My statement that a tribal social structure is the same all over the world isn’t ‘utter rubbish’. It happens to be fact. A horticultural economy is also, socially, the same all over the world. You don’t have any knowledge of different ecologies or different economies and different social structures – and you are therefore totally missing the point.
5) Ask yourself. WHY did a set of similar economies, all operating within pastoralism, and therefore, within a tribal mode of organization, why did they become militant in the 7th century? To declare, as you do – that it’s ‘all due to one man’ is nonsense. If the context for militancy wasn’t already there – he’d have been ignored. So, ask yourself – what was going on that moved these populations into a militant ideology?
That exploration into the context of the emergence of Islam – that’s what you are failing to explore. Once you examine the context, you can then see what happens when the context changes, but the ideology remains! (Happened to the West in the 12th century). That problem (context vs ideology) is the one that the Muslims are now facing.
I have not and am not ignoring time, place and historical tribal realities.
You, however, are ignoring the ideology that has enjoined these tribes in hatred and manipulated them into perpetual violence. All sanctified by their god.
You ignore how honour is manipulated by Islam. How absolute immorality becomes sanctified moral behaviour. How all manor of moral behaviour is turned opposite, to what is rationally acceptable.
You either did not read, or did not understand my post.
Excerpts from an article at the ME Forum:
“Tribal Influence on the Rise of Islam”
It is against this backdrop of tribal interaction that Muhammad’s actions should be considered. Prior to Muhammad’s ascendancy, the tribes of northern Arabia engaged in raiding and feuding, fighting among themselves for livestock, territory, and honor. Muhammad’s genius was to unite the fissiparous, feuding Bedouin tribes into a cohesive polity. Just as he had provided a constitution of rules under which the people of Medina could live together, so he provided a constitution for all Arabs, which had the imprimatur not only of Muhammad but also of God. Submission—the root meaning of the Arabic term islam–to God and His rules, spelled out in the Qur’an, bound into solidarity Arabian tribesmen, who collectively became the umma, the community of believers.
Building on the tribal system, Muhammad framed an inclusive structure within which the tribes had a common, God-given identity as Muslims. This imbued the tribes with a common interest and common project. But unification was only possible by extending the basic tribal principle of balanced opposition. This Muhammad did by opposing the Muslim to the infidel, and the dar al-Islam, the land of Islam and peace, to the dar al-harb, the land of the infidels and conflict. He raised balanced opposition to a higher structural level as the new Muslim tribes unified in the face of the infidel enemy. Bedouin raiding became sanctified as an act of religious duty. With every successful battle against unbelievers, more Bedouin joined the umma. Once united, the Bedouin warriors turned outward, teaching the world the meaning of jihad, which some academics today say means only struggle but which, in the context of early Islamic writing and theological debates, was understood as holy war.
The Arabs, in lightning thrusts, challenged and beat the Byzantines to the north and the Persians to the east, both weakened by continuous wars with one another. These stunning successes were followed rapidly by conquests of Christian and Jewish populations in Egypt, Libya, and the Maghreb, and, in the east, central Asia and the Hindu population of northern India. Not content with these triumphs, Arab armies invaded and subdued much of Christian Spain and Portugal, and all of Sicily. Since the Roman Empire, the world had not seen such power and reach. Almost all fell before the blades of the Muslim armies.
Conquest of vast lands, large populations, and advanced civilizations is a bloody and brutal task. Most accounts of Islamic history glide over the conquests, as if they were friendly takeovers executed to everyone’s satisfaction. Boston University anthropologist Charles Lindholm, for example, wrote, “The Muslim message of the equality of all believers struck a cord with the common people of the empires, who, theoretically at least, were liberated from their inferior status by the simple act of conversion. The rise of Islam was both an economic and social revolution, offering new wealth and freedom to the dominions it assimilated under the banner of a universal brotherhood guided by the message of the Prophet of Allah.”[7] It may have been the best of all possible worlds, so long as one had not been one of the slain, enslaved, expropriated, suppressed, and degraded.
There are some accounts that address the Islamic conquests more frankly. Andrew Bostom, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University who edited a collection of primary source descriptions of jihad, provides lengthy quotes from major Islamic authorities, ancient and modern, verifying the obligation upon all Muslims to make holy war against infidels.[8]
The Arab and Islamic conquests were not unlike tribal raids against distant, unprotected peoples, but on a much larger scale. One of the main characteristics of the Arab empire was the enslavement of conquered peoples.[9] During conquest, men were commonly slaughtered while women and children were taken in slavery. Muslim invaders spared men who willingly converted but still enslaved their wives and children. In conquered regions, Muslim troops often took children from parents while along the periphery, it was normal to raid for slaves.
Bostom and other scholars provide historical accounts of such jihad.[10] One Greek Christian account describes the Arab invasion of Egypt as “merciless and brutal.” Not only did the Muslim invaders slay the commander of the Byzantine troops and his companions, but they also put to the sword all who surrendered including old men, babes, or women.[11] Similar slaughters occurred across Palestine and Cyprus. Muslim troops were particularly brutal toward non-Muslim religious institutions. During the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid, many Christian monks were put to death. One Muslim historian estimated that Arab armies destroyed 30,000 churches throughout Egypt, Syria, and other central lands.[12] An Armenian historian reported that, following a rebellion in 703, General Muhammad bin Marwan invaded the province, massacring and enslaving the populace. He wrote a letter to the nobility, giving guarantees of safety in return for surrender. They surrendered, at which point the Arab invaders shut them in churches and burned them alive.[13]
While writers today depict the Muslim civilization in medieval Spain as tolerant, a Grenadan Muslim general from the late thirteenth century wrote that “it is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden, if it is not possible for the Muslims to take possession of them.” He further advised razing cities and doing everything to ruin non-Muslims.[14] Muslim generals instituted similar practices in Afghanistan and India.
Tribesmen can treat non-members with disdain. Tribal identity coalesces in opposition to the “other.” Common Muslim attitudes toward non-Muslims reflect the influence of these tribal values. The historical evidence for the degradation of Christian and Jewish dhimmi [subjugated religious minority] in Muslim lands is overwhelming, both in quantity and near unanimity in substance. Much is documented in Bat Ye’or’s Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide.[15] In eleventh-century Al-Andalus, for example, Abu Ishaq, a well-known Arab poet and jurist of the day, expressed outrage at the presence of a Jewish minister in the court of the ruler of Granada. He argued that the Muslim leaders should “[p]ut [the Jews] back where they belong and reduce them to the lowest of the low … Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them.” Soon after his call, local residents slaughtered approximately 5,000 Grenadan Jews.[16] Such sentiments were not exceptions limited in time and scope. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat spoke in closely parallel terms to Abu Ishaq’s when, on April 25, 1972, he declared, “[The Jews] shall return and be as the Qur’an said of them: ‘condemned to humiliation and misery.’ … We shall send them back to their former status.”[17]
Arab Muslims frequently subjugated their non-Muslim brethren across the width and breadth of the Muslim world. The Spaniard Badia y Leblich traveled in Morocco at the end of the nineteenth century as a Muslim named Ali Bey and reported the Jews there to be “in the most abject state of slavery.”[18] William Shaler, the U.S. consul in Algiers from 1816 to 1828, described the Jews of Algiers to be “a most oppressed people,” not even permitted to resist any violence from a Muslim and subject to conscription for hard labor without notice.[19] Contemporaneous chroniclers describe the Jews of Tunis and Benghazi similarly.[20]
Such treatment is rooted in the Muslim belief that Islam was God’s word and God’s way and any other religion or belief was false. Muslims believe Judaism and Christianity to be superseded by Islam. All non-Muslims were infidels who should be subject to Islam. Jews and Christians were to be allowed to live as inferiors and subordinates, dhimmis, but with obligatory, legally-mandated humiliation; other infidels, such as Hindus and pagans, could choose between conversion to Islam and death although, in practice, many Muslim conquerors preferred to derive economic benefit from their enslavement.
The theological foundation of the Arab empire was the supremacy of Islam and the obligation of each Muslim to advance its domination.[21] The relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is thus defined by Islamic doctrine as one of superiority versus inferiority and of endless conflict until the successful conquest of the non-Muslims.
For Arab Muslims confronting Jews, the opposition is between the dar al-Islam, the land of Islam, and the dar al-harb, the land of the infidels. The Muslim is obliged to advance God’s true way, Islam, in the face of the ignominy of the Jew’s false religion. Islamic doctrine holds that all non-Muslims, whether Christian or Jewish dhimmi or infidel pagans, must be subordinate to Muslims. Jews under Qur’anic doctrine are inferior by virtue of their false religion and must not be allowed to be equal to Muslims. For Muslim Arabs, the conceit of Jews establishing their own state, Israel, and on territory conquered by Muslims and, since Muhammad, under Muslim control is outrageous and intolerable. As Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University and an expert on Arab politics explains, “Underneath the modern cover there remained the older realities of sects, ethnicity, and the call of the clans.”[23] There is no way, in this structure, to reach beyond the Arab versus Israeli and Muslim versus Jew opposition to establish a common interest, short of an unimagined attack on both Arabs and Israelis by some group more distant. In this oppositional framework, it is impossible to seek or see common interests or common possibilities. Israel will always be the distant “other” to be disadvantaged and, if possible, conquered.
The conflict between Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, is not the only major conflict between Muslims and others. On the contrary, military contests along the borders of lands dominated by Muslims are pervasive. Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political scientist, observed, “The overwhelming majority of fault line conflicts … have taken place along the boundary looping across Eurasia and Africa that separates Muslims from non-Muslims. While at the macro or global level of world politics, the primary clash of civilizations is between the West and the rest, at the micro or local level it is between Islam and the others.”[27] Among the conflicts enumerated by Huntington are the Bosnians versus the Serbs, the Turks versus the Greeks, Turks versus Armenians, Azerbaijanis versus Armenians, Tatars versus Russians, Afghans and Tajiks versus Russians, Uighurs versus Han Chinese, Pakistanis versus Indians, Sudanese Arabs versus southern Sudanese Christians and animists, and northern Muslim Nigerians versus southern Christian Nigerians.
Indeed, everywhere along the perimeter of the Muslim-ruled bloc, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors. Muslims may only comprise one-fifth of the world’s population, but in this decade and the last, they have been far more involved in inter-group violence than the people of any other civilization.
Philip Carl Salzman is the author of Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007), on which this excerpt is based.
I just worked a flight where the born and raised in pakistan flight attendant is going through the same ordeal as the poor 16 year old toronto girl.She wants to marry her indian[punjabi] boyfriend.Her father and brother are dead set against it,the parents of the boy are terrified because they know what these nutjobs are capable of.She has not spoke to her father in 6 months but is returning for the holidays.I fear for this girl’s life,and such a nice person,these people make me want to join the army again just so I can help rid the world of these barbarions.
I was on the sentancing jury for the trial of the mother in that case….I recognized the dialog immediately. It chills me to this day. You should have seen Tina’s sisters and in-laws smirking while it was played. The tone of the father’s voice and the sound of the girl drowning in her own blood still wake me at night.
I was on the sentencing jury for the trial of the mother in that case….I recognized the dialog immediately. It chills me to this day. You should have seen Tina’s sisters and in-laws smirking while it was played. The tone of the father’s voice and the sound of the girl drowning in her own blood still wake me at night.
irwin daisy – so, as you pointed out when I referred to a scholar of the ME, I’ll do the same with you; that’s one interpretation. That’s all.
I happen to disagree with your (and his) perspective; it’s the Big Hero tactic, that focuses on ONE individual. I’m completely against that approach to historical analysis and prefer ‘la longue duree’ approach (Braudel), which examines the deeper infrastructure of the economy.
I’m only examining the emergence of Islam, which took place amongst pastoral economies that were already organized in a tribal mode. The later imperialistic mode, in conflict with the equally imperialistic mode of Christian Europe, from the 9th through 16th centuries, operates within a different economic agenda.
Both realms, the Christian and Islamic moved out of small scale tribal economic modes (horticulture in Europe, pastoralism in the ME) and into a larger market economy. This put the two imperialistic economies against each other for the mediterranean trade. But then, the Islamic world reified, it went intellectually ‘stone dead’.
This was a serious problem because the increasing population base of the 10-15th c, couldn’t be checked by wars, famine or disease. The economy had to change to support these population increases. To change the economy, you have to develop new technology, and that requires individual free thought.
The ideology of the Islamic world trapped itself; it said that it had reached ‘utopia’ perfection, and could not change its ideology. Christian thought was also ‘dead’ in the 10th century, but, individualism emerged and fought its way through, to the Reformation and Renaissance. So, the West was able to technologically innovate and develop the ability to support increased populations.
The Islamic world, trapped in an ideology that rejected reason, individualism, free thought, went dead and remained in tribalism.
That’s where it is now, and Islamic fascism is the ‘expression’ of its entrapment. It has to modernize, free its adherents, and allow individual and free thought.
Irwin Daisy – your rants, and I call them that, against Islam, reject any capacity for change. What is your advice? How does one deal with such a situation? Both within the Islamic world and without?
“The Islamic world, trapped in an ideology that rejected reason, individualism, free thought, went dead and remained in tribalism.’
Er, so it is the ideology?
“That’s where it is now, and Islamic fascism is the ‘expression’ of its entrapment. It has to modernize, free its adherents, and allow individual and free thought.”
Islamic fascism is the expression of its ideological supremacist and imperialist goals. It is also an expression of absolute intolerance towards individual choice, freedom, every other religion and political system.
The application of reason creates apostates.
Islam can slowly, but surely be destroyed through exposure, criticism and shame. This seems to be what the Islamist leaders fear the most. They are furiously attempting to shut down free speech with regards to criticism of Islam in the west.
In the meantime, western countries would be wise to shut down immigration from Islamic theocracies and those countries practicing Sharia law in any form.
CSIS, for example, has said that they are overtaxed and underfunded, and cannot keep up with more Muslim immigration.
As well, why should citizen taxpayers fund immigrants that adhere to a hostile political ideology? Why should taxpayers fund more security and the incumbent hassles? Where’s the benefit? There is none.
As well, applicable laws should be enforced against the political side of Islam, abhorent customs, and the preaching of hate in mosques and schools.
The Quran, Hadith and Sira should be examined as hate literature. And if found to be, the offending parts should be banned.
People like the murdering father of that girl should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and held up as an example. No quarter should be given.
We must not tolerate the intolerable. That is madness.
Frankly, ET, your rants are boring, off base and offer nothing of value.
Personally I can not accept ET’s anthropology which when you shave the porcupine comes down to ‘mankind is simply a victim of circumstance and happenstance’. I have often noted that you can take two individuals and put them in almost identical circumstances and you will get two diametrically opposing results.
Two equally well educated immigrants will land in the same city at the same time, one will immediately spring into action and in short order, be very wealthy. The other will languor, feel sorry for himself and wind up penniless in an equally short time.
What’s the difference? Some would call it drive, others call it ability I call it human spirit. What the person believes about his universe and his place in it; what a person believes about himself and his abilities; what a person believes about his God and his relationship with that God is far more determinate in the eventual outcome of the individual and that individual’s society than circumstance and eventualities.
If you plant a society and base it on Roman Catholicism the resulting society will be different than a similar human grouping based on Evangelical Christianity or Judaism, or Islam or Buddhism etc.
A society that expresses its love for God through its love of humanity is a far different society than one that places acts of individual righteousness above all else. The former is going to go out of its way to look after the least in its midst, the latter is going to allow the killing of anyone or anything that may taint the righteousness of the individual. A society that is based on the unmerited gift of righteousness is going to far different than a society that is based on the constant currying of God’s favour through acts of ‘righteousness’.
A society that prays to its God (Christianity – Judaism) is a different society from that which prays for its God (Islam).