Ayatolla Khatami on Fitna: The Movie

Khatami stressed, "The fact that rather than sound logic they have begun swearing and insulting proves that the anti-Islamic figures have no sound, logical point worth proper presentation, which has accidentally been the case ever since the advent of Islam." He added, "They notice that the plans they had devised for hundreds of years have borne absolutely no fruit, which is the reason why they have begun conducting such wretched moves."

From HERE.

Section XIV: Islam and Tahriif

Section XIV: Islam and the "Corruption" of the Bible

The Arabic word referring to this corruption is "tahriif", and the teaching is that the Christian (and thus Jewish) Scriptures are profoundly flawed and are thus not reliable indications of God's will, commandments, prophets, or of the history of his people. (Note: I am particularly occupied with questions regarding Jesus' teaching--the injiil--in this article.)

Tahriif is a very wide-spread belief among Muslims today, though it is not universal. It places Muslims in a very powerful position regarding the Bible because for anything they agree with already they can say, "This is from Allah, do you see that we believe in the Prophets? Why do you not accept Allah's final prophet (Muhammad) as well?" But if they are confronted with anything that challenges Islam or the Qur'an, they can say, "Clearly the text has been corrupted, for Jesus would never have said such a thing and this goes against the Qur'an."

So how can a Christian react to this? There are several paths that come to mind, all of which have been used with some degree of success in the past, I will outline three of them for you and indicate which one I generally prefer:

a) Historical Weakness of Tahriif: The traditional doctrine of tahriif tells the following story: Prophets like Jesus and Moses received genuine verbatim revelations from God like Muhammad. But perfidious Jews and Christians later corrupted these texts to suit their purposes. Now this story is found nowhere in the Qur'an, which most Muslims don't know, but it is based on certain hadiith and most Muslims simply don't know the Qur'an very well. This story is problematic from an historical point of view and prompts raises more questions than it answers:

• The New Testament took form on three different continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), how were Christians able to collect all the valid versions of the injiil (the book Jesus received from God) given that it was recorded and spread over such a broad area?
• Languages: Sections of the NT had been translated from Greek into Latin, Syriac , Hebrew, and probably Amharic and Coptic by the end of the 2nd Century. Did the tahriif of the injiil take place before or after the translations? If before, then it must have been in the 1st Century, but there were still people alive then who had known and listened to Jesus personally, which means that there would be some record of people objecting to this corruption of the injiil. If the tahriif occurred after the translations, then we would have to believe that EVERY COPY of the true injiil which was present in three continents in (at least) half a dozen languages was destroyed.

b) Motive of Corrupters: The Gospels as we have them today give a rather unflattering picture of the Apostles. They are often foolish, proud, and faithless. It is thus unlikely that they would have "corrupted" the injiil without revising the many events which make them look foolish and weak.

It is also unlikely that one would corrupt a text without removing all the promises of persecution and familial strife, and the advocacy of poverty--hardly the kinds of things you put in a religious message if you want it to be popular. Rather, one thinks that a religious message crafted to gain popularity would include the promise of riches, women, and power--promises we do find explicitly in the Qur'an.

Moreover all the Apostles minus John were martyred for their faith. If they had corrupted the injiil and knew it to be a false message, it is inconceivable that they would all die rather than denounce it's validity. Who then corrupted the injiil? People will not die for a message they know to be corrupted. By the end of the Apostolic era the texts of the four Gospels were too wide spread and and existed in too many languages for a unified and viable tahriif to be possible.

But historical reasoning and evidence will generally get you nowhere at all with most Muslims because in Islamic culture the entire discipline of history has largely been subsumed as a sort of devotional exercise to prove the Qur'an is correct. Trying to argue from historical evidence that the Qur'an is not true is like me trying to convince you from the hymnal that the Bible is false.

c) Corruption in your Heart: This is by far my preferred apologetic. I like this approach because in many ways it mirrors Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the interiority of the Kingdom of God. Fasting is not about letting other people know you are fasting, it is about God knowing you are fasting, for example. Similarly, I start by explaining that tahriif is very real and it is a significant problem. We say that God knows the heart of all men, and that he is all powerful--no Muslim will disagree. Then I explain that when the Jew knows the Torah and its commands, and he disobeys it, he has corrupted the Torah in his heart. Likewise the Christian who knows the commands of the injiil and disobeys it has corrupted the injiil. And finally, the Muslim who knows the commands of the Qur'an and disobeys it, is it not true that he has corrupted the Qur'an? The answer, in my experience, is always yes. Muslims are very aware that most Muslims aren't very strict in their obedience.

In conclusion I usually ask, "Is Allah powerful or weak?" Powerful! "Is Allah wise or foolish?" Wise, the answer comes. "Yes my friend, and Allah is more powerful than the Jews and the Christians, and no one is capable of corrupting God's words to his prophets! If anyone says that his words corrupted IN THE TEXT of the Torah and Gospel, he is a man who believes that God is neither wise nor powerful. But you see that corruption is in our hearts."

This is not simply a play on words. It does accommodate the Muslim who already believes in tahriif. All you have done is to reformulate the doctrine of tahriif in a way that is very much based on Jesus' teaching. But this apologetic also gets to a very foundational weakness in the Islamic view of God. God is always connected with power in Islam--Allahu Akbar! God is the greatest. Yet the Islamic narrative proposes that Jesus was not crucified, for God would not let than happen to a prophet of his. Yet we are also told that the word God gave to this prophet was not preserved? To preserve the true injiil would have been easy for God. Why did he not do it? Why did he allow 600 years of humanity to operate under the assumption that this corrupted injiil was in fact valid and accurate? And given that even from the beginning Christianity was riven with heresies and fanatics, how is that not even one copy of the real injiil was preserved by a dissenter.

All good questions. But they are not to be used to as a weapon to assault a Muslim. Whether the tone is light and conversational, or adversarial--which is sometimes necessary--we must always speak the truth in love. It is a sign of God's love to us that his true Word is in fact his Son who came to live with us, hunger with us, eat with us, cry with us, and suffer for us. His Word is not some book that one can close and place a shelf, but one who is alive and whom death could not hold down. Because of his life we have hope for eternal life: "And this is everlasting life, to know you the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

Christians are Tri-theists

Well, we Christians can insist up and down that we believe in one God, but that doesn't matter. Muslims know what we believe better than we do. Here in fact is the proof that you (if you're a Christian) do believe in three gods, even though you don't know it.

How do you respond to the critique? And can you outline how he has misrepresented the doctrine of the Trinity?

From Answering Christianity:

Trinitarians often like to claim that they have a monotheistic belief, and that the Trinity is not the worship of 3 Gods rather it is the worship of One God. Basically they say the Trinity doctrine is as follow:

1- God is made up of 3 persons

2- The three persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

3- All three persons are distinct from each other, The Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Father etc.

4- Each person in the Trinity has a role of their own

5- Jesus is the Son in the Trinity

So basically that is the dogma of the Trinity.

Now let us show exactly why Christians do in fact worship three God's. As I said, the Trinity is made up of THREE people, these three people are all different than one another, it is basically exactly like having 3 people in an office, Tom Dick and Harry.

Now Christians say that Jesus is God, the Father is God, and so is the Holy Spirit. So therefore if you have three people, and each one of them is God then what are you left with? You are left with THREE Gods! This is logic!

If Tom Dick and Harry are each managers, how many managers do you have? You have three! Remember Trinity has THREE different persons, and each person is God, therefore you have three Gods and not one, there is no way around this mess.

Raymond Lully (Ramon Llull)

Raymund Lull (aka Raymond Lully, in Latin Raimundus or Raymundus Lullus, or in Spanish Raimundo Lulio) is one of my great heroes. There is much to read about him in terms of Christian missions, but due to his philosophical work he is considered to be a pioneer in information theory and also wrote the first novel in the Catalan language. Please read it all and gain courage from his example. In many ways his focus on preaching, conversation, debate, and the use of Islamic sources to reach Muslims, coupled with his disdain for the use of force, was and is the pattern found today among missionaries to Muslims. He was way ahead of his time.

From the Christian History Institute:

Raymond Lull would have seemed an unlikely person to remind the church of its missionary vision. A court gallant (that is, a fashionable ladies' man) and poet, he squandered his life in frivolity, romantic stories, love poems, and seduction. He was thirty before that changed.

But Jesus Christ, of his great clemency,
Five times upon the cross appeared to me,
That I might think upon him lovingly,
And cause his name proclaimed abroad to be...

It is reported that Lull's conversion was precipitated by a shock. He tried to lure a beautiful woman into a few moments of pleasure in bed with him. With quiet dignity, the woman revealed her breast to him--cancer-eaten. In a flash, he saw the futility of his lusts, and later transferred his love to the eternal Christ.

Born in Majorca, Spain, five years after the Island was freed from Saracen rule, Lull drank in Jewish and Islamic lore. He was the first Christian philosopher to study the Jewish Kabbalah (a book filled with mystical and occult knowledge) and one of the first to read the writings of the Islamic mystics known as Sufis. He developed a passion to win Moslems to Christ and took up the challenge of the Grand Mufti of Bugia: "If you hold that the law of Christ is true and that of Mohammed false, you must prove it by necessary reasons,"--that is, by air-tight logic.

Convinced that true reason could produce no results contradictory to true faith, Lull poured his intelligence into philosophy. The result was a philosophy of "combination" by which he thought all knowledge could be derived by combining every idea with every other idea. Although admired for centuries because it was clever, his Ars Magna ultimately proved to be a dead end. But Lull went beyond mere philosophy. His passion was too deep to stop with scholarly games.

The first crusades had failed. Lull crisscrossed Europe, urging kings, popes, and cardinals to develop mission schools and evangelize Islam. "Missionaries will convert the world by preaching, but also through the shedding of tears and blood and with great labor, and through a bitter death," he said. His three-point plan was simple. First, missionaries must obtain a comprehensive knowledge of Arabic and other mid-eastern languages. Then they must study Islamic literature until they could refute any Muslim argument. Finally they must give their lives in witness to Christ. He convinced the pope to allow Christian universities to teach the Jewish and Islamic languages and literature.

Lull followed this plan himself. He established a missionary school and personally studied Islamic lore. Three times he sailed to Islamic countries to reason with Islamic scholars. The first time he was exported just when he had won several Imams (Moslem religious leaders) to request baptism. The second time he was imprisoned for six months. On this day August 14, 1314, when he was in his eighties, he sailed a third time for Islamic North Africa. For a year he preached Christ and the Trinity openly but then was brutally stoned. Christian merchants carried the broken man aboard their ship. Probably he died in sight of Majorca.

Islamdom Rising in UK

Abu Daoud: And you thought terrorism was not working, but it is! The more Islamic terror in the UK, the more the government goes out of its way to destroy itself and its great educational traditions to pacify a group that is so violent that even when everyone is Muslim (Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen) violence only grows even further. Pathetic leadership in the UK.

But aside from the rant, Islamic education is very weak. No more will people be able to wonder...'Hmmm, that Muhammad guy having sex with a nine-year old girl--maybe that was, like, bad.' Haram! I don't even want to get started. Suffice to say there is no place for criticism or analysis in Islamic education. Creativity and critical thoughts are simply not values within the culture.

Report on the Teaching of Islam in Universities
Barnabas Fund

A recent government report on how Islam is taught in British universities signals another step towards the Islamisation of Britain and its education system. It was launched by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the opening of the “Islam and Muslims in the World Today” conference sponsored by Cambridge University on 4 June 2007. Should this report be implemented, education will be handed over more and more to Muslims who will train and shape the next generation. This means a further move towards the establishment of Islam in the UK as a religion of state.

(Full report from www.isic-centre.org)
Source article [Link]


The report was initiated by Bill Rammell, Minister of State for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning in the Department for Education and Skills, DfES. Rammell appointed Dr Ataullah Siddiqui, Senior Research Fellow at the Islamic Foundation, Leicester and Director of the Markfield Institute of Higher Education linked to it, to write the report.

It is well known that the Islamic Foundation is an Islamist institute founded by high ranking members of the Pakistani Islamist party, Jama’at-i Islami. However, in answer to questions in the House of Commons about possible links between Ataullah Siddiqui and Jama‘at-i-Islami, Rammell stated that “Dr Siddiqui has assured me categorically that he has no links to the Jamaat-e-Islami Party.” He also stated that neither the Islamic Foundation nor Markfield had any organizational links to Jama‘at-i-Islami. This reveals that Rammell does not understand how Islamists use dissimulation (taqiyya) to hide their real goals while claiming to be moderate and liberal.

Some of the report’s recommendations:

1. Universities should employ Muslim scholars to teach Islamic theology: “Students should be given the opportunity to learn from competent traditionally trained Islamic scholars in at least those parts of the syllabus that directly inform everyday practice of Islam.”

2. All universities must employ Muslim chaplains or advisers to deal with the growing number of Muslim students on campus. More prayer rooms for Muslims should be provided.

3. Islamic Student Societies should be better recognised and encouraged.

4. Universities should cooperate with Islamic schools (madrassas) and colleges (dar al-ulum) to break down the divisions between British society and the Muslim community. Universities should help madrassas and dar al-ulum because they play a key role in Muslim communities and in the training of future community leaders. They need a formal link to higher education qualifications.

5. Islamic studies should be linked to job opportunities such as teaching, chaplaincy and Islamic banking.

6. Universities should provide add-on modules in Islamic studies for all students.

7. Guidance should be given to all universities on Friday prayers, Ramadan and halal food. All university staff should receive awareness training on Muslims and Islam.

An analysis of these recommendations reveals that the report is in fact asking for a privileged position for Islam in the universities. It would seem to aim at transforming Islamic studies in Britain into a Muslim monopoly, a Muslim enclave in which the vast majority of staff and students are Muslim. It is implied that non-Muslim scholars cannot teach Islam because they do not unquestioningly accept its basic premises regarding the revelatory nature and divine authority of Qur‘an and hadith. Should these premises be accepted, the teaching faculty would be limited to traditional Muslim and Islamist lecturers. It is most likely that censorship would develop, affecting choice of staff, teaching methods and acceptable subjects for research and publication.

Islamists have long argued for an Islamisation of all Western academic studies by the introduction of basic Islamic concepts into all branches of knowledge. The aim is to expand Islamic domination into all spheres. The whole system of Western academic education must, say the Islamists, be recast and remoulded on Islamic lines as it is tainted by Christian and pagan influences.

The strengthening of Islamic student societies furthers this aim of Islamisation. Islamic student societies tend to follow radical Islamist and Wahhabi ideology. They usually take strongly anti-Western and pro-Islamist stands on most issues, including anti-Semitic views that regard all Jews as enemies of Islam. Many Muslim students are radicalised during their student years by these societies.

Implementing these recommendations, as the British government has promised to do, would be likely to narrow the scope of university Islamic studies and make them more intolerant and radical. Academic freedom of expression would become limited. Once fully Islamised, there would be little scope for free questioning, doubt and argument, the keys to real advances in knowledge. Muhammad and the Qur’an would be out of bounds as far as questioning their authority and historical development is concerned. This would be an alarming departure from established academic principles of disinterested inquiry. British institutions will come to resemble the Islamic universities in the Muslim world. These are described by Shabbir Akhtar, a well known British Muslim academic and author, who taught for three years at the International Islamic University of Malaysia. As a result of his experiences there, he is now opposed to Islam as a political ideology. The attitude of the Malaysian university authorities was that the West is opposed to Islam and that true Muslims have nothing to learn from Western academic scholarship since God has already revealed the whole truth in Islam. Akhtar experienced how, in Islamic universities, students and faculty alike are focused very much on defending Islam against Western Christian and secular liberal paradigms. He found they had little awareness of history and they unquestioningly accepted all Islamic theological dogma and claims.

Part XIII: The Gospel According to Muhammad

In this thirteenth section of my presentation on Islam I want to address the question of what Muslims believe about the Gospel, for they do indeed believe in the Gospel--but the meaning attached to that word for Muslims is radically different than what it means for Christians.

First though I think it would be useful to outline what exactly Christians believe about the Gospel. We actually use the word in several different ways. Often we simply use it to refer to the four books in the New Testament that record the events and teachings of Jesus' life: they include things like miracles, healings, sermons, short sayings, genealogy, events surrounding his birth, crucifixion, resurrection and his commissioning of the Apostles to carry forth his preaching.

We also use it very generally to refer to the central proclamation of how all those events relate to us, namely that we can be reconciled to God through Jesus, and that we can receive forgiveness of sins in his name. Of course, the initial proclamation of Jesus was simply borrowed from his cousin John the Baptist: Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! But the focus on the Kingdom of God for various reasons is not used by our churches today. Rather, different Christian churches emphasize different ways of articulating the Gospel (atoning sacrifice, adoption as sons, sharers in his divinity, and so on), but the message always revolves around or centrally features the forgiveness of sins in and through Jesus.

But as to Muslims: the word Gospel in Arabic is injiil, which is actually derived (via Syriac) from the original Greek word found in the New Testament: euangelion. Muslims reject what we call the injiil because it does not match their criteria for a prophetic message. In Islamic though there is no cooperation between the prophet and God as we find in Judaism and Christianity. In the latter two religions the prophet is inspired by God's Spirit but nevertheless puts the message into his own words, using his own expressions, talents, backgrounds, phrases, and so on. This is also true for the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) of the New Testament.

In Islam God causes a message to descend from heaven, via an angel, to his prophet, who then utters verbatim the dictation he has received from the angelic mediator. (The exception to this is Moses/Musa whom the Quran says spoke to God face to face, as to a friend.) Thus the Quran teaches that God caused the injiil to descend to Jesus/Issa. This is clearly not the picture that we find recorded by the four Gospel-writers of the New Testament. They are simply giving their recollections of Jesus' ministry, and who can say if they are even trustworthy? Thus the true Gospel was revealed by Jesus who was a good Muslim prophet, as were interestingly his disciples, according to the Quran. Jesus was not crucified, but he was taken back into heaven by God with his revelation--the injiil. Thus the true Gospel/injiil is in heaven with God, preserved by him there. It is certainly nowhere present on earth, and the best that one may hope is that parts or portions of it continue to exist in the four Gospels. They are, though, generally judged by Muslims today to be untrustworthy and not worth reading.

Such is the general explanation given by Muslims today, but the questions that this explanation provokes are numerous: why would God send Jesus, begotten of a virgin, working great miracles, who ascends into heaven, and not protect his message from corruption? This is, I think, a difficult question for Muslims to answer. A few have agreed that the four Gospels of the NT are valid, but by and large that is a minority position. One seems to end up with a weak God who is unable to safeguard his revelation to his prophets from corruption (tahriif) by nefarious Christians. Or with a God who allows centuries of pre-Muslim Christians to believe in a counterfeit injiil for no good reason. For Muslims do teach that pre-Islamic Christians could be true believers for they were living within the light that had been revealed to them--but according to this account that light was in fact darkness.

Some also propose that the true injiil was preserved, but that it was later (after Jesus' ascension) corrupted, but where is the manuscript or historical evidence of this? Extensive parts of the New Testament had spread through three continents in more than four or five different languages by the third century. When and where and how did this corruption of the Gospel happen? Who did it? There is no historical evidence for this position at all.

Such is the account of the Gospel according to Muhammad: it is hidden and unknown, its prophet great and worthy, but his message unknown to us today.

Salaam min al Rab ma3kum. Peace from the Lord be with you.

Abu Daoud

A Fatwa Free-for-all in the Islamic World

What is a fatwa exactly? It is a legal ruling. Since in Islam there is no separation between civil and religious rule, the fatwa can address almost any facte of life, from real estate, to jihad, to dietary rules, to travel rules, and so on.

Do Christians have anything equivalent to the fatwa? Not really. Sunni Islam is much like Protestantism in that there is no central authority, and just as Protestants and evangelicals divide into new denominations on a daily basis, you find the same thing in the Muslim world. The proliferation of fatwas is a result of this process.

CAIRO: First came the breast-feeding fatwa: It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times. Then came the urine fatwa: It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.

For the past few weeks, the breast-feeding and urine fatwas have proved a source of national embarrassment in Egypt, not least because they were issued by representatives of the highest religious authorities in the land.

"We were very angered when we heard about the Danish cartoons concerning our Prophet," wrote Galal Amin in the newspaper Al Masry Al Yom, referring to the 2005 publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that caused an international uproar. "However, these two fatwas are harming our Islamic religion and our Prophet more than the cartoons."

For many Muslims, fatwas, or religious edicts, are the bridge between the principles of their faith and modern life. They are supposed to be issued by religious scholars who look to the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad for guidance.

Read it all HERE.

Racism or Security?

This sort of question will become more and more important in the future.

Officials should proclaim a moratorium on all visa applications from Muslim countries, since there is no reliable way for American authorities to distinguish jihadists and potential jihadists from peaceful Muslims. Because this is not a racial issue, these restrictions should not apply to Christians and other non-Muslim citizens of those countries. Those who claim that such a measure is "Islamophobic" should be prepared to provide a workable way for immigration officials to distinguish jihadists from peaceful Muslims, or, if they cannot do so, should not impede basic steps the U.S. should take to protect itself. And Muslims entering from anywhere -- Britain, France -- should be questioned as to their adherence to Sharia and Islamic supremacism. This is not because anyone will expect honest answers, but so that answers proven false by the applicant's subsequent activity can become grounds for deportation.

The problem in the West is that we continue with this nonsense view that Islam is a religion. What Islam is--a civilization--is simply beyond the categories of what Western language is able to describe. During the Cold War the USA was warry of communists because of their political commitments. Islam is profoundly political. Can the countries of the West not treat Islam as a form of politics--which is what is suggested here? Or is that racism? Or is it Islamophobia, which the worst form of terrorism?

The entire article is worth a read, it is here.

Apologetics and Objections

Fascinating post Here.

The author is often quite critical of Islam (I am as well, though I think our styles are quite different). He has listed what he considers to be the most common objections to his criticism. I think the list is very enlightening. Much of our work here consists of whitttling down the list so I can gain a hearing. Once a Muslim realizes that you know Arabic, and know the Quran, and know the ahadiith (pl. of hadiith), and that you are a religious person (which unlike the West, is a good quality here), then you have earned, maybe, a chance to speak and be listened to.

Here is his list:

1. He's taking verses out of context
2. He's an Islamophobe/racist/bigot
3. He doesn't know Arabic, and you can't understand the Qur'an unless it's in Arabic
4. He's not an expert on Islam/he has no credentials
5. The Qur'an, the mind of Muhammad, and Islam in general are too complex and mysterious for infidels to understand
6. What about the Crusades (and other violent Christian actions of the past)?
7. What about the violent verses in the Bible?
8. Those Muslims are not “real” Muslims
9. Only Muslims can address the tough topics

Good summation. I can add from the Young Muslims site:

10. He's lying

11. If you prove him wrong from Qur'an and Hadith, you just get ridiculed

And another I've seen now and again:

12. He has been refuted hundreds of times, and thoroughly discredited

Well, read it all at his blog and see what you think about his responses.

Apologetics for Muslims is difficult because the Middle Eastern mind does not operate alongg the lines of logic that folks in the West are used to. For example: two opposite things can not be true at the same time. This seems clear to us. But not to the Muslim mind. Thus Islam can and is a peaceful religion while being a violent religion. Just one example, but read his article and judge for yourself.

Shari' and the Limitations on Jihad

It is often said that Jihad is only defensive, and that since this is
true (which, in theory, at least right now in history, is), that well,
you draw your own conclusions.

Folks are expected to think that things like 9/11 (USA) or 7/7 (England) or 3/11 (Spain) are thus not really jihad. But not so! First of all, Spain is part ofIslamdom, since what used to belong to Islamdom belongs to it forever (Israel anyone?) Thus every civilian in Spain is in fact a target of jihad--they are all occupying forces.

But what of the USA and England? And here we see OBL's genius: Since they are funding the Zionists in Israel, they too are in fact part of the economic defenses of the anti-Muslim world. So in WWI for example, trade with Germany was curtailed militarily, and I mean things like food here, because that was part of the economic foundation of Germany (the enemy).

OBL reasons that even children and civilians pay taxes to the government, and since Islamdom is under such dire peril these days, drastic times call for drastic
measures. Thus the targeting of civilian children is in fact a defensive measure, and is thus required of all Muslim believers.

Keep it in mind next time you hear about jihad being only 'defensive'. Al Qaida agrees with the statement entirely.

A quote from here:

London, Asharq Al-Awsat- Speaking from his prison in Egypt, founder of Al-Jihad Organization and Al-Qaeda ideologue, issued a call urging all jihadist and Islamist movements in the world to ensure that their jihadist operations are carried out in accordance with the rules of Shariaa.

The Arabic Language and Philosophy

A brilliant quote from here:

"In modern analytical philosophy, there is hardly anything in
Arabic or any other Islamic tongue. Philosophical discussion is best
conducted in English. Owing to the grammatical limitations of
Arabic, it is impossible to express most philosophical claims with an
acceptable degree of rigour and clarity. Moreover Arabic is a
devotional language lacking the vocabulary requisite for detached
discussion of controversial matters."

Muslim philosopher, Shabbir Akhtar who taught at the International
Islamic University in Malaysia

Interpretation and the Quran

The doctrine of the infallibility of the consensus, far
from allowing some liberty of reasoning as one might have expected,
worked in favour of a progressive narrowing and hardening of doctrine.
By the beginning of 900 C.E., Islamic Law became rigidly fixed because
Muslim scholars felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly
discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established
itself to the effect that henceforth no one might be deemed to have
the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and
that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation,
application, and, at most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had
been laid down once and for all. This closing of the gate of
independent reasoning, in effect, meant the unquestioning acceptance
of the doctrines of established schools and authorities. Islamic Law
became increasingly rigid and set in its final mould.

Ibn Warraq. From Islam-watch

Great article for those who think that the Quran and the ahadiith (plural of hadith) can be reinterpreted in a way that will be more amenable to life in the 21st Century. Islam cannot be reinterpret. There is no room for interpretation. Period. An attempt to reinterpret is to transgress the boundries of Islamic orthodoxy.

BTW, the Islamic word for interpretation of the Quran is ijtihaad. It is a gerund, and is actually derived from the same trilateral root as the word jihad.

The Logic of Islam

I found this interview to be quite fascinating, though it does contain some errors. Specifically:

"Warner: Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to. The total time for annihilation takes centuries, but once Islam is ascendant it never fails. The host culture disappears and becomes extinct."

Actually, Spain was entirely regained for Christendom upon the completion of the Reconquista in 1492 (special year, wasn't it?) Also, parts of the Balkans (like Greece) were purged of Islam--though both came at a great price. Also, both purgings were military in nature, so there are ethical questions involved. Finally, the loss of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was not due to a religiously-motivated jihaad, but to illegal infringements on commerce by the Christian governer of what is now Karak in Jordan. Saladin was protecting his commercial routes. (BTW, Saladin was not even an Arab.)

Nevertheless, the strongest section of the interview is about the two different kinds of logic at play in Islam and Western thought. Because of there are two kinds of logic dialogue is often entirely fruitless

Interview_with_Bill_Warner