Mick Hartley

Muslim Converts

There's a fascinating discussion at Front Page between an American convert to Islam and two Muslim converts to Christianity (via Dhimmi Watch). The convert to Islam is far from being the stereotypical loner looking for confirmation of his anti-Western feelings. In fact he's surprisingly forceful in his belief that extremist mullahs should be excluded from Western countries:

It is essential that Western countries prevent this pattern and generally discourage radical sheikhs and Islamic leaders from immigrating or visiting. Western Muslims must create a new Islamic identity that is consistent with the principles and laws of their home/host state. The way to achieve this is by not allowing foreigners to over- Arabize Islam in the West. Islam can and should flourish as a moderate and peaceful force in the West, and act as a catalyst for change, an example of how Islam and Western society can successfully coexist. But until governments work harder, and Muslims accept the necessity of such measures, it is a "pipe dream". Robust immigration procedures, including questioning and investigation along the lines of Mr. Shoebat's suggestions. I would also not be averse to requiring immigrating Muslims from certain countries be required to successfully "pass" Daniel Pipes’ "do you believe in modernity test".

Part of creating a Western/Islamic identity involves creating Islamic educational institutions in the West. Currently, few exist and people are shipped off to Saudi or Pakistan to receive their education. Western governments, generally of course are incapable of monitoring the curriculum or what is propagated. These people then come back to become religious leaders. If new Islamic institutions are created in the West, this allows some form of government regulation perhaps and monitoring. I think Western governments need to take an active role in overseeing Islamic institutions to ensure that what is being propagated is not inherently extremist, violent and anti-Semitic. This however would bring up a whole slew of issues of separation of church and state, and would likely (and understandably draw some criticism).

I suppose I have put the chicken before the egg. We would first of course need to develop a "white paper" for reform (which is certainly an aspiration of mine) for American/Western Islamic institutions. This would require an enormous effort and involve wide consultation with Muslims and non-Muslims. (Both Christians and Jews have over the centuries recognised inherent problems within their religion and initiated reform. It is essential that they also have some input in the process in light of their experience in change) Developing a curriculum if you will, consistent with American/Western and Islamic values. This is certainly possible, but as Ms. Darwish and Mr. Shoebat are too painfully aware, people initially associated with this movement will be viewed as apostates.

Developing a modern, secular Islamic identity (in which I believe is possible in light of the Quran, Sunnah and historical/classical texts) would detract extremist converts, because a modern Islam would share commonalities with the other faiths of Christianity and Judaism that they so despise. If we want to stop extremist converts, we need to address the push and pull factors.

This is what we all want to hear. But Walif Shoebat, one of the converts from Islam to Christianity (any relation to Walid Jumblatt, I wonder?), pours cold water on this optimistic scenario:

"Islam can and should flourish as a moderate and peaceful force in the West, and act as a catalyst for change, an example of how Islam and Western society can successfully coexist."

The problem with this is that Islam is not simply a religion. We can say with absolute certainty that Islam is a system of government as well. No one can deny this. It would be dishonest of us who knows Islam to deny this. This is the crux of this whole problem - how do you untangle Islam from it's Jihadic and governmental principles? How do you take away Khilafa and Jihad and still call it Islam? This is why I call Jihadist as Nazis with "a religious twist".

Screening people who come in this country will solve part of the problem. But it is not difficult for extremists to explain Islam in it's true context to moderates and win them by the droves. Let's face it, most extremist Muslims once were moderates. It's a red button that is pushed and extremists can successfully make ex-moderates act as robots ready to carry out instructions.

Yes, the extremists can be controlled from entering and infecting moderates, but in today's world, with internet and world media, the instructions can easily enter in anyway.

Islam in my view needs to be viewed as a system of both "religion and government", not just "civil Sharia" but "total global Sharia". Besides its different forms of worship and moral code, Islam needs to be viewed as we view Communism. After all, this is what Islam is. Like Communism it spread by planting it's ideals first which looked pretty good on paper, then had no respect for borders, governments, and the end justified the means. be it total invasion or eradication of anyone who disagreed. Communism as well had its Jihad by the pen first, then total take over.

Again, Islam is not a system for moral application only. For us to say it is would be absolutely dishonest and would disregards the facts.

Now, regarding reformation of Islam as we did in the Judeo-Christian movements.

While I agree that reform was successful in the Judeo-Christian culture, yet most of the success came as a result of following the text and not doing away with it. The reformation came as a result of reviewing the institutions that abused its authority and didn't adhere to the manuals. This you can never apply to Islam.

The opposite is true when it comes to Islam. Peace started when we made it illegal to follow the text and ultimately de-fanged Islam from Jihad and government as we did to the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

We can find nothing in the tenants of the Christian or Jewish books that comes even close to Islam's way of government. The Judeo-Christian faith has nothing to do with government aside from a Messianic hope, and only when "He" comes with the heavens folding as a scroll, that this theocratic kingdom can take place.

This hasn't happened yet.

Also, the Bible clearly stated to "obey the laws of the land" making it clear that the biblical God is not about enforcing a theocratic government on earth by the sword of any mortal being, be it vicar or king. The Old Testament either with it's Temple system, judges, kings, had no place in it that called for expanding Israel.

This is why we can never compare the reforms in the Judeo-Christian culture with reforms in Islam.

Besides this discussion, may I add that I always hear this term "Islamic democracy". To me it's absurd, it's like saying "Capitalistic Communism". Is there such a thing? So why try to create an oxymoron?

Islam is a moral code, Khilafa, civil law, and a global government. Can anyone honestly say that this is not Islam?

Dawkins the Intellectual

If we've got to have public intellectuals, then we could do a lot worse than Richard Dawkins. Here (via Butterflies and Wheels) he's interviewed by the Beeb:

Do you get tired of being asked about the debate between science and religion - do you think it is time to move on?

We can't move on as long as more than 50% of American voters believe the entire universe began later than the Middle Stone Age, and Tony Blair encourages such teachings in English schools on grounds of "diversity in education".

I agree with him that Tony Blair's enthusiasm for faith-based schools is unfortunate, but it's interesting - and entirely typical - that his major concern as far as religious fundamentalism goes is with Christian fundamentalism in the US. I wonder if, post 9/11, he might consider that there's an elephant in the room which he's just not seeing.

Down MEMRI Lane

The depth of anti-semitism in the Arab media, as documented by MEMRI, continues to astonish. Here they translate an article by Dr. Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, director of the "Jaffa Research Center" in Cairo and columnist for Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, which is the Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party's paper:

"The Zionist enterprise on the land of Palestine succeeded by means of lies and myths, from the myth of the 'Chosen People' and the 'Promised Land' to the lie about the burning of the Jews in the Nazi gas chambers during World War II. When these means were scientifically examined, it was proven that they were untrue, that their reasoning was weak, and that they cannot withstand the test of solid fact.

"What interests us here is that this lie [about] the burning of the Jews in the Nazi crematoria has been disseminated throughout the world until our time in order to extort the West and make it easier for the Jews of Europe to hunt [sic] Palestine and establish a state on it, in disregard of the most basic principles of international law and the right of peoples to independent life without occupation. [This lie] was raised [also] so that [the Jews] would receive financial, technological, and economic aid from the West. [...]

"[The number] of victims as a result of World War II, due both to the crimes of the Axis countries and the [crimes of] the Allies, are, according to a few versions, about 50 million, whether as a result of the war or of Hitler's crimes. Of these, 18 million were Germans. Among the victims of this war were Jews, like other members of the human race, as war and cannon shells and planes are incapable of distinguishing between Jew and non-Jew.

"Similarly, Hitler was against all nationalities that were not pure German, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. He was a fanatical German nationalist whose nationalism, which was against everything except Germany, included, of course, both Jews and non-Jews.

"Objective essays by Zionist authors prove the lie about the burning of the Jews in gas chambers. Of these it is possible to mention, for example, Josef Ginzburg, a German [Jew] who lived under Nazi rule and fled with his family to America and from there went to Israel - about whose establishment he was enthusiastic. But after experiencing what he called its racist Nazi essence, he quickly left Israel and returned to Germany in the 1950s. There [in Germany] he wrote a number of important books about the 'holocaust,' denying that there had been gas chambers designed for burning the Jews. He said: 'This is nothing but a great lie, by means of which the extremist Jews wanted to extort Europe - particularly Germany - and to plunder the homelands of others.' And that is exactly what happened in occupied Palestine.

"Josef Ginzburg was murdered by the Jews when he went to visit his wife's grave in Munich's Jewish cemetery, in retaliation for his attempt to expose their falsification."

Other holocaust deniers get a mention, including of course our very own David Irving.

"No matter what details and proof emphasizing the lie of the burning of the Jews in Nazi crematoria we present, they [the Jews] and the statesmen of Europe who trade in the Holocaust will never believe us. On the contrary - it is almost certain that they will accuse us of antisemitism...

Well he's not wrong there...

Elsewhere, MEMRI look at a critique of the Arab press by Dr. Mamoun Fandy, columnist and expert on the Arab media, in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:

"'There are no journalists in the Arab world,' the editor of one of the Arabic papers said to me when I asked him why [his paper] was not covering a particular journalistic story. I heard the exact same complaint from one publisher who said, 'We have authors, but no journalists.'

"[Judging by] the Arab media coverage of events such as the trial of Saddam and the situation in Iraq in general, this lack of [Arab] journalists is embarrassingly obvious. We know little about Saddam, who ruled Iraq for over 30 years, except for a single hackneyed story about a doorman or greengrocer in Egypt, where Saddam lived in his youth. If only this story was true! This greengrocer has already changed his story more than once.

"It is interesting to know why Arab journalists have not succeeded in conducting hundreds of interviews with people who knew Saddam up close, or with entire families that were victims of the Saddam era. Weren't some 300,000 Iraqis buried in mass graves? Or is this, too, an American lie? Didn't [the victims] have families and relatives who can be interviewed, or aren't their pain and their lives important? [...]

"Senior Arab officials do not respect the press as a means for conveying information. The responsibility for [conveying information] lies partly with the journalist and partly with the senior government official. The journalist's part is that no [Arab] journalist can make the official respect him. An official's respect for a journalist can come only from the journalist's respect for his own profession... The journalist can make the official respect him if he is well-versed in the subject about which he is talking - and doesn't just position the microphone in front of the official and let him say whatever he wants...

"But even our officials behave differently [than officials in the West]. Instead of rebutting the author of an article by [writing another] article, he picks up the telephone and talks to the newspaper's owner to [have him] silence the author.

"The main [problem] is that we still have no professional journalists. The proof of this is [first], that the [media] coverage of [events in] Iraq to date have given us nothing but many slogans, [and second], that the [Arab] officials do not respect the press."

More on Islamic Apostasy

Further to my post earlier this week on Islamic apostasy, I see (via Dhimmi Watch) that a petition on this issue has been delivered to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:

Religious rights campaigners, buoyed by a UN call for an end to repression of minorities by majority religions, today urged the world body to tackle persecution of ''apostates'' in Muslim countries.

The move came as humanist groups hailed the UN's 2004 Human Development Report for declaring that ''individuals must be free not only to criticise the religion into which they are born, but to reject it for another or to remain without one.'' The campaigners' appeal -- in the form of a petition signed by nearly 90,000 people in 32 countries, including present and former Muslims -- was delivered to new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

It said Muslim religious leaders and organisations should make a clear public call for reinterpretation of Islamic law ''so that Muslims who change their faith will not have to face intimidation, harassment, persecution or death as a result.'' The petition, launched by British-based Christian group The Barnabas Fund, called on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, governments and international bodies to speak out on the issue and raise it ''as a matter of urgency'' with Muslim groupings.

According to a comment at Dhimmi Watch, citing Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not A Muslim, the UN Declaration of Human Rights used to include a reference to the right to change one's religion, but in November 1981, under pressure from Muslim countries, this was removed.

North Korean Refugees

Another large group of North Korean defectors have arrived in Seoul:

About 220 North Koreans have been flown to South Korea from an unnamed third country for the second day running. The defectors arrived at Incheon International airport on a plane charted by the South Korean government.

More than 200 people flew to Seoul on Tuesday - in what was the largest single batch of defectors from the hunger-stricken Communist North.

They all apparently escaped through China to what has been officially called "a South East Asian country".

Seoul reportedly stepped in when the country, thought to be Vietnam, threatened to send them back to China.

Meanwhile the BBC gets to talk to North Korean asylum seekers in Beijing:

Their names have been changed as they fear reprisals against family members still living in North Korea.

They looked thin and malnourished, but they were marshalling their strength as they prepared to try to seek asylum - the culmination of a long journey through China.

Ms Na, a pretty young woman with a shy smile, left North Korea two years ago when the outside world believed the worst of the food shortages were over.

"I left because there was no food, but also because I wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to live how I wanted to live," she said.

"It was very difficult in North Korea. I saw people dying on the streets, people starving, people whose faces were wasted away from the lack of food. I didn't want that any more."

Despite a constant barrage of propaganda telling North Koreans their country is doing fine, many think otherwise.

The North Koreans told me most people in the Hermit Kingdom now disliked their leader, Kim Jong-il, and blamed him for the lack of food.

15 Minutes of Fame

The front page of the paper version of the Times today is dominated by a picture of an attractive young woman. Who is she? Catherine Phillips, a novelist (here's the online version, but alas no pic). And her claim to fame? Well, the lead story is on the current epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, and it turns out that Catherine had a diagnosis of chlamydia four years ago. How thrilled Catherine must be to hit the headlines in such dramatic fashion.

The Cult of the Mujahedin

Amir Taheri reviews "Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel" by Masoud Banisadr, about the author's allegiance to the Mujahedin and its leader Masoud Rajavi. Cults are cults the world over, and this has a familiar ring:

Masoud Banisadr, our memoirist, was roughly the same age as Masoud Rajavi. He was better educated than Rajavi because he had completed his university course, obtained a PH.D, and learned English. He had also more practical political experience because he had organised a student union , managed fund-raising events, and lobbied British parliamentarians, journalists and trade union leaders. And yet, Masoud Banisadr regarded Masoud Rajavi as almost a god. He was ready to lie, cheat, betray and even kill for Rajavi.

Banisadr was not alone.

Almost all the Mujahedin cadres were better educated and more experienced than Rajavi. But Rajavi was able to play with them like toys. He would order them to divorce their wives and they would do so without protest. He would tell them to hate each other and use abusive language against their closest comrades, and they would do so with zeal. He would ask them to laugh or to cry, and even, quite literally, to dance for him and they would do so like circus bears.

So: who was it who had a problem?

Rajavi or those who helped build his personality cult?

Lacking education and experience, Rajavi acted on animal instinct. He realised that the revolution, which many had dreamed of but few had really wanted, had produced large numbers of rootless people looking for a measure of certainty.

Rajavi was clever enough to know that only well-educated individuals could be deceived in a big way. Ordinary people, the illiterate peasants and semi-literate workers, could be deceived in small matters, but never on big ones, if only because they lacked the imagination needed to believe big lies. For example, no Iranian peasant shed a tear when Stalin died in 1953 while many Iranian poets wrote qasidas to mourn the Soviet dictator. No Iranian peasant or worker joined the Khomeinist movement until after the Shah had shown that he was no longer able to play the role of the " father."

At one point in 1988 Rajavi boasted that the Mujahedin were the only organisation in which people with university degrees were a majority. He was more right than he had imagined. His sect included famous poets, writers, entertainers, footballers, and scientists.

Our Road to Auschwitz

Most fatuous Nazi comparison of the week - indeed most fatuous paragraph of the week - from Michael Gilmore, via Butterflies and Wheels:

Some in the White House today believe that they “have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality.” Why, God even talks to them. The administration’s “absolute knowledge” has been the basis of many of their claims, including: the weapons of mass destruction, the Hussein-al Qaeda link, the Hussein-9/11 link, and the evidence for the uranium from Africa to Iraq. Such “absolute knowledge” ensured that the Iraqi people would welcome our solders and establish a secular democracy. Such knowledge never existed. This “absolute knowledge” now provides for the Bush “faith-based” missile defense, to be deployed prior to testing. It appears that this sort of pseudoknowledge is a key ingredient for much of what the present administration has set itself to do. With such “knowledge” the road to Baghdad is becoming our road to Auschwitz. A road paved with arrogance, dogma, secrecy, ignorance, lies, and a “deliberate deafness to suffering.” The suffering shown so starkly in the haunting photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib.

The road to Baghdad is becoming our road to Auschwitz. Really, there's nothing to say to that level of idiocy.

Anti-Drug Drug

Via Samizdata, this sounds like an April Fool, except it's July. If it's genuine it's horrifying:

A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

The Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special project to investigate ways of using new scientific breakthroughs to combat drug and nicotine addiction.

A national anti-drug immunisation scheme is one of the proposals being put forward by the Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs project, an expert committee of scientists appointed by the Government earlier this year.

Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March.

David Nutt - perfect.

Islamic Apostasy

I'm late coming to the debate initiated by Marc Mulholland with his line that "Liberal Islamaphobia is, in my opinion, the most dangerous prejudice we now face" (via Harry's Place). It seems to me precisely the other way around: a significant concern is the way that many liberals believe any criticism of Islam is somehow racist, as though Islam were an ethnic-type sensibility that one mustn't offend. But of course Islam is a creed, a set of beliefs, and given the atrocities committed in its name it is surely a liberal duty to subject it to criticism.

This is exemplified for me by a subject of crucial importance which I don't think has been given the attention it deserves: that is, the Islamic belief that apostates, Muslims renouncing the faith, should be killed. It's easy enough to find scriptural justifications for this, both in the Koran and in the Hadith (the canonical tradition of Islam). Is it then official Islamic doctrine? Ah well, that's the problem. Who's to say? No doubt it could be argued that it's only believed in by fundamentalists: those following a Wahhabi-style school of Islamic thought. Maybe it's true that the overwhelming majority of Muslims would deny that they believed the killing of apostates to be justified. But if so it's not because they're following a more enlightened tradition of Islam which stands in opposition to fundamentalist Islam, because, as far as I understand the situation, there isn't one. Liberalism (I'm using the term here in a broad sense, as the ideals of the Western Enlightenment) arose out of the reformation in Christian Europe, where the rights of the individual conscience were established. As has been said often enough, in Islam no such reformation has taken place.

Islamic apostates are as rare as hen's teeth. The author of the book "Why I Am Not A Muslim" published under a pseudonym. Consider the following hypothetical scenario. A famous Western rock star converts, publicly, to Islam. Year later, he recants. Perhaps the reaction of the average Muslim would be a shrug, unconcern. But all it would require would be for one Muslim cleric to issue a fatwa against the man, as the authorised punishment for abandoning the true faith. Would that happen? I don't know, but it seems to me, in the present circumstances, a strong possibility. And the awareness of that strong possibility on the part of the rock star would be enough to dissuade him from opening his mouth in public.

My question is, then: to what extent can a liberal society tolerate a set of beliefs where apostasy spells death? I would have thought the answer was clear: not at all. A liberal society can tolerate - indeed does tolerate - organisations which impose highly restrictive, illiberal modes of conduct on its members. But it is absolutely crucial for the existence of such an organisation within a liberal society that any member can leave voluntarily should they wish to do so. An organisation may maintain its own internal discipline: if you subscribe to a set of established beliefs, you are thereby committing yourself to certain forms of rules and rituals, including possibly the proscription of certain behaviours, and if you then breach those proscriptions it is legitimate for the organisation you've joined to have the authority to expel you. But that's as far as it goes. A sentence of death for holding certain opinions, including the belief that the organisation you joined and are now leaving is in some ways incorrect, is totally contrary to the most fundamental principles of a liberal society. People in an organisation which holds such views are simply not free. Their views are forced on them, even if they may assert that they hold those views voluntarily, because they are not free to disavow them.

I don't know the solution to the problem, but it seems to me a crucial one when it comes to a discussion of the place of Islam in a modern Western culture. But maybe I'm just being Islamophobic.