The Problem With Reforming Islam: It's Most Likely Impossible
I've written about this before:
How the Quran is said to be the word of Allah, and is thus claimed to be perfect -- unchangeable and unquestionable. That's the biggest failsafe of all -- and makes the Quran different from the Bible, which is seen as a historical document and allegory, and not as directions.
Jews, for example, aren't commanded to go out and slaughter the Mideonites as Muslims are by their Quran and hadith to go kill infidels, and especially Jews -- that nice hadith with the rocks and trees telling the Muslims where the Jews are hiding.
How the Quran verses that are all nicey-nicey -- the Mecca Quran -- are "abrogated" (erased) by the evil, violence-commanding verses in the Medina Quran (after Mohammed gained power).
How, under Islam, Mohammed is to be emulated -- Mohammed who took a little girl as his bride (Aisha at 6, and had sex with her when she was 9); Mohammed who mass-murdered, looted, and told his men they could rape the women they captured; Mohammed who, as Bill Warner points out, was a failure until he figured out jihad and started having his men attack and loot and rape and murder.
Bill Warner lays out why Islam is impossible to reform -- but includes the actual Quranic references and explains it more eloquently than in my jottings above.
A bit from the history of Mohammed's life. (MYTHS are live links at the link.) We pick up kind of in the middle:
The year that Muhammad fled Mecca for Medina was 622, which marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.Medina and the Genesis of Jihad
Stinging from the rejection of his own town and tribe, Muhammad's message become more intolerant and ruthless - particularly as he gained power. Islam's holiest book reflects this shift. Later parts of the Quran add violence and earthly defeat at the hands of Muslims to the woes of eternal damnation that earlier parts of the book promised those who would not believe in Muhammad as a prophet.
At Medina the relatively peaceful religion, which borrowed heavily from Judaism and Christianity, was supplanted by the militant and totalitarian form of political Islam that is now called Islamism. During these last ten years of Muhammad's life, infidels were evicted or enslaved, converted upon point of death and even rounded up and slaughtered as expediency allowed.
To fund his quest for control, Muhammad first directed his followers to raid Meccan caravans in the holy months, when the victims would least expect it. This despite the fact that the Meccans were not bothering him in Medina (see MYTH: Muhammad and his Muslims were Persecuted by the Meccans at Medina).
Muhammad provided his people with convenient "revelations from Allah" which allowed them to murder innocent drivers and steal their property (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 426). The people around him gradually developed a lust for things that could be taken in battle, including material comforts and captured women and children. (See also MYTH: Muhammad Raided Caravans to Retrieve Stolen Property).
Often the people captured in battle would be brought before the self-proclaimed prophet, where they would plead for their lives, arguing, for example, that they would never have treated Muslims that way. The traditions portray Muhammad as mostly unmoved by their pleas: ordering their deaths anyway, often by horrible means. In one case, he orders a man slain, telling him that "Hell" will take care of the poor fellow's orphaned daughter (Ishaq 459). (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Killed Captives)
The raids on caravans preceded the first major battle involving a Muslim army, the Battle of Badr. This was the spot where the Meccans had sent their own army to protect their caravans from a Muslim raid. Although today's apologists like to claim that Muslims only attack others in self-defense, this was clearly not the case in Muhammad's time. In fact, he had to compel his reluctant warriors with promises of paradise and assurances that their religion was more important than the lives of others. (See also MYTH: The Battle of Badr was Defensive).
The Consolidation of Power
Muhammad's defeat of the Meccans at Badr emboldened him to begin dividing and conquering the three local Jewish tribes at Medina.
...Although the Qurayza surrendered peacefully to the Muslims, Muhammad determined to have every man of the tribe executed, along with every boy that had reached the initial stages of puberty (between the ages of 12 and 14). He ordered a ditch dug outside of the town and had the victims brought to him in several groups. Each person would be forced to kneel, and their head would be cut off and then dumped along with the body into the trench.
Between 700 and 900 men and boys were slaughtered by the Muslims after their surrender.
The surviving children of the men became slaves of the Muslims, and their widows became sex slaves. This included the Jewish girl, Rayhana, who became one of Muhammad's personal concubines the very night that her husband was killed. The prophet of Islam apparently "enjoyed her pleasures" (ie. raped her) even as the very execution of her people was taking place.
In some ways, women were much like any other possession taken in battle, to be done with however their captors pleased. But Muslims found them useful in other ways as well. In fact, one of the methods by which Islam owed its expansion down through the centuries was through the reproductive capabilities of captured women. In addition to four wives, a man was allowed an unlimited number of sex slaves, with the only rule being that any resulting children would automatically be Muslim.
Muhammad ordered that a fifth of the women taken captive be reserved for him. Many were absorbed into his personal stable of sex slaves that he maintained in addition to his eleven wives. Others were doled out like party favors to others. (See MYTH: Muhammad was an Abolitionist)
At one point following a battle, Muhammad provided instructions on how women should be raped after capture, telling his men not to worry about coitus interruptus, since "Allah has written whom he is going to create." (See also MYTH: Muhammad Never Approved of Rape)
Following the battle against the Hunain, late in his life, Muhammad's men were reluctant to rape the captured women in front of their husbands (who were apparently still alive to witness the abomination), but Allah came to the rescue with a handy "revelation" that allowed the debauchery. (This is the origin of Sura 4:24 according to Abu Dawud 2150).
A bit more:
The Legacy of Islamic ImperialismMuhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.
Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to "embrace" Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad's empire at the expense of the prophet's own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to witness his son and grandson kill off Muhammad's own grandchildren and assume control of the Islamic empire.
Muhammad's failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.
Infidels fared no better. Through Muhammad's teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.
Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam's political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who practiced and promoted subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion.
In Muhammad's words: "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them..." (Bukhari 8:387)
It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.
As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it, "If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule."
But read the whole thing at the link.
> I've written about this before:
Yeah.
So, like, you're really upset about all these people.
All of them.
Kinda wondering what you expect anyone to do about it, because we understand that you're terribly upset.
With all of them, not just the little white dot people.
Crid at May 25, 2017 10:54 PM
Here, Crid. That site I got the Mohammed history from is really fantastic with references and explanations.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/games/all-muslims-would-be-violent.aspx
I enjoy when your comments sneering at any criticism of Islam are quickly debunked. I have to get writing, so it's helpful today, especially.
Next?
Amy Alkon at May 26, 2017 5:30 AM
A tweet:
https://twitter.com/corybernardi/status/868061578796556288
Amy Alkon at May 26, 2017 5:34 AM
"He became radicalised reading books and websites in his bedroom."
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/uk-muslim-plotted-jihad-massacre-targeting-railway-line-with-bomb-of-christmas-lights-and-pressure-cooker
Amy Alkon at May 26, 2017 5:36 AM
> Next?
Next, you can answer the query... What do you want to DO, other than citing blowhard texts about how you think their lives work?
What do you want people to DO? To SAY? Are there economic
Fuckit, we've been at this for years. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIVE, because this isn't about Islam.
Crid at May 26, 2017 6:50 AM
Geez, Crid, how dense can you be?
The point of bringing this up repeatedly is to counter the presentations made elsewhere, which urge people to "coexist" or allow them to do the usual on Facebook: cry, post in solidarity, blame the West, then do absolutely nothing but wait for the next attack.
You have read a lot of this and remember it as repetitive, but here's a shocker: it's not about you.
Her blog. She posts what she wants. She wants to let people know that liars present Islam as peaceful, and that it is not just her opinion.
That these posts do not call for action explicitly should not surprise you. Our "Wite-out™" redhead isn't inconspicuous or all that hard to find (none of us are). You want her to come up with every detail on how to solve a ridiculous problem which includes the relentlessly naîve? And not get hurt?
I am surprised I have to explain such things. Again.
Radwaste at May 26, 2017 7:05 AM
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/australian-imam-make-no-mistake-islamic-scripture-commands-beheadings-massacre-people
I R A Darth Aggie at May 26, 2017 7:13 AM
Is brutality the answer to stopping jihadism? One veteran apparently thinks so.
Conan the Grammarian at May 26, 2017 7:41 AM
> The point of bringing this up
> repeatedly is to counter the...
Rightright, blahblah.
1.7 Billion, 1.6 if yer stingy.
1.7 billion is a lot of people.
What does she want to DO about them? To them? For them? With them?
Where does this pretense of expertise pay off, except as a pretense of expertise?
This now exceeds the weirdness of the waste-to-hips ratio.
Crid at May 26, 2017 8:34 AM
"...what do you expect anyone to do about it...not just the little white dot people ?"----Crid
I expect that the non-extremist muslims get mad that the extremists are hijacking their religion and do something about it, like raising an army and not just fighting them, but...KILL THEM ALL. Then the non-extremist muslims can return to peace. And all of us can have a smile on our faces.
Nick at May 26, 2017 8:44 AM
I suppose one thing we can do is vet candidates for entry somewhat more thoroughly than we did the Tsarnaev clan.
We can insist that they not be allowed no-go zones as in some large cities in Europe. If it takes mech Infantry and a good many dead assholes, do it. We can decide not to turn away from crimes on the grounds of multiculturalism...see Rotherham.
Richard Aubrey at May 26, 2017 9:00 AM
Except that, by the premise of the original post and the link, extremism is not the problem, Islam itself is the problem.
Conan the Grammarian at May 26, 2017 11:32 AM
Crid at May 26, 2017 8:34 AM said:
> What does she want to DO about them? To them?
> For them? With them?
Banning all Muslim immigration is a good start, and really is the logical conclusion of all of Amy's articles on Islam, although she would not agree to that.
Snoopy at May 26, 2017 12:18 PM
Banning all Muslim immigration is a good start, and really is the logical conclusion of all of Amy's articles on Islam, although she would not agree to that.
Snoopy at May 26, 2017 12:18 PM
Im afraid it wouldn't be constitutional, unless a democratic president did it. An unlikely event.
No Amy like some others on this board is looking for a magic wand solution.
No one wants to confront actual terrorists, so a nice safe substitute is carping about a 1400 year old book and the 1400 year dead religious leader that inspired some of the radical mullahs and the Pan Arab nationalists who inspired today's terrorists.
I don't know which I find more pathetic. The scrreching about 1.6 billion people, most of whom can't read or write, or the fools with no skin in the game proposing a closer inspection of and education about Islam as some sort of first step to a *solution*
Isab at May 26, 2017 4:15 PM
It's not merely inane; it's pathetic. It's the opposite of learnedness.
Crid at May 26, 2017 6:58 PM
> Banning all Muslim immigration
> is a good start
Right; exactly. Minds like yours will read Amy's trite little quotations and and say "Banning all Muslim immigration is a good start," as if such an outcome were possible in political or practical or moral terms. You imagine saying: 'The United States will simply disregard 20% of the human species, because dem Moozlims is cooties!'
Next, you ban all that hydrogen that's wafting through the air in our nation's precious grade schools! Because You're through putting up with that shit, Man!!
Grr! Moozlims! Grr!
Crid at May 26, 2017 10:39 PM
> not just fighting them,
> but...KILL THEM ALL.
Oh, my little muffin...
This obviously means so much to you! You're so certain that it's important, and you see the desirable outcome so clearly! So...
You first. You know what needs to be done, and it's more important than any particular government policy, right? So go ahead, start your killing.
Except that you'll do no such thing. It's ludicrous on its face, and everyone knows that.
There are a few idiotic, socially incompetent teenage boys out there who will take your foaming, inarticulate fury (and Amy's to heart, and will lash out violently, choosing the side of their attack almost incidentally… But those incompetents were always going to have to be dealt with.
The clumsiness of the rhetoric on this page is more easily deflated: You guys aren't for real, else you wouldn't be so grandiose.
Crid at May 26, 2017 10:49 PM
@ Conan: "Is brutality the answer to stopping jihadism?"
That veteran is ignoring one salient difference: numbers. There were only about 100 million Japanese in the 1940's, and the USA alone outnumbered them by about 50 million. There are at least 1.6 billion Muslims; that's several times the total population of the western nations, and if we drafted all our young mena and sent them to wipe out Islam in a battle to the death, with M4 carbines against (mostly) knives, our guys would need more ammunition than they could carry.
Or more realistically, if the Muslims all united in a Jihad against the rest of the world, the USA plus allies could restrict them to their own countries - if we and our allies became willing to be far more brutal than any of us have been in the last 70 years. But to wipe them out in their countries would need nukes, and no one sane is willing to do that. Short of nukes, we could destroy their military and cripple their economy. If we re-opened the bomb factories and built more B-52's, we could destroy their cities - but that would leave about a billion embittered rural survivors.
The only thing that would work would be a long campaign of targeted extreme brutality, until the survivors changed their beliefs. That has been done before, and even to a Muslim sect: the Ismailis, once feared for their Assassins and headquartered in a supposedly impregnable fortified mountain, became pacifists after getting the Genghis Khan treatment. But we are unwilling to be that brutal, and even if we were, I doubt you can select your targets accurately enough from the air.
markm at May 27, 2017 6:31 AM
For what might happen, whether it would "work" or not, see Wretchard.
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
I can't find any reason that the first doesn't lead to the second inevitably, nor that there is any reason the second doesn't lead inevitably to the third.
The takeaway is that it would be well for the Muslims to get a handle on this before the sequence described above is complete. Nobody else can do it, and if they won't or can't, we're all screwed, but some worse than others.
Richard Aubrey at May 27, 2017 9:23 AM
Oh, he's ignoring several things.
The ability of the Japanese to hurt significant portions of the American civilian population in the 1940s was minimal.
The ability of the world to keep up with events in distant places was almost non-existent in the 1940s. So, a concert bombing in Manchester rated only a few column inches on the next to last page of the evening rag, not top story status on every television broadcast in the world.
He also ignores the fact that bombing cities and factories deprived the Japanese of their ability to wage war. The jihadis are not organized like that. Their weapons factories are small shops. Their command and control is the Internet. Their frontline troops are already in the shopping malls and suburbs of the West. They're stainless steel rats inside concrete walls.
But he may also have a point. When one side views the conflict as winnable, it will continue. Beating the ever-loving shit out of a stubborn opponent can, and usually will, dispossess him of the notion that he can win.
Conan the Grammarian at May 27, 2017 10:18 AM
What should we do about it? How about stopping Islamic immigration for starters.
Like I've said before, in an Islamic population, there will be a portion, maybe a small portion, of it willing to commit murder and mayhem. Since the US is more successful at assimilating Muslims than other countries, maybe the rabid remnant will be proportionately smaller in our case. But due to the commands to do evil in the Koran, that radicalized remnant will be there, and it is already active.
Just witness Faizal Shazad, the Boston bombers, etc.
mpetrie98 at May 27, 2017 7:01 PM
Reform of Islam is not "most likely impossible," it's already been done.
When the Mongol Horde destroyed the Islamic forces opposed to it, the Muslims began a period of self-examination. Why did Allah let them lose? What did they do to no longer deserve Allah's beneficence? Why were they no long victorious?
And they decided it was because they'd strayed from the example of Mohammed, who lived a life so holy and pure that Allah made him His messenger.
The hadiths became even more important in Islamic scholarship.
As a result of this self-examination, Muslims became more fundamentalist, more strident in their religious outlook. Later reformers took Islam to even more fundamentalist extremes.
Islam has been reformed.
Conan the Grammarian at May 28, 2017 9:07 AM
I'm looking forward to the inevitable decline and eventual disappearance of this bloodthirsty religion.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 28, 2017 10:46 AM
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