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Hirsi Ali: "Islam Is Not A Religion Of Peace"
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in the WSJ about why Islam needs a reformation (which I believe is highly unlikely to happen, due to the failsafes built into the Quran: how it is said to be infallible and unquestionable, as it is the word of Allah):

In 2013, there were nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks world-wide. The lion's share were in Muslim-majority countries, and many of the others were carried out by Muslims. By far the most numerous victims of Muslim violence--including executions and lynchings not captured in these statistics--are Muslims themselves.
Not all of this violence is explicitly motivated by religion, but a great deal of it is. I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace.

When I assert this, I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself.

It is not just al Qaeda and Islamic State that show the violent face of Islamic faith and practice. It is Pakistan, where any statement critical of the Prophet or Islam is labeled as blasphemy and punishable by death. It is Saudi Arabia, where churches and synagogues are outlawed and where beheadings are a legitimate form of punishment. It is Iran, where stoning is an acceptable punishment and homosexuals are hanged for their "crime."

As I see it, the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts. It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been "hijacked" by extremists. The killers of Islamic State and Nigeria's Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.

She calls on those of us in the West to do what I have been doing since I started reading the Quran and other Islamic texts and Islamic commentary (just after 9/11): challenging and debating the "very substance of Islamic thought and practice" and holding Islam "accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts."

That is absolutely what we need to do, from the top down, as in, no more wishful or "diplomatic" thinkers (like the President) pretending in their public speeches that Islam is "a religion of peace."

A little something to understand from her piece:

Any serious discussion of Islam must begin with its core creed, which is based on the Quran (the words said to have been revealed by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad) and the hadith (the accompanying works that detail Muhammad's life and words). Despite some sectarian differences, this creed unites all Muslims. All, without exception, know by heart these words: "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah; and Muhammad is His messenger." This is the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.
The Shahada might seem to be a declaration of belief no different from any other. But the reality is that the Shahada is both a religious and a political symbol.

In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door in Mecca trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah's messenger.

After 10 years of trying this kind of persuasion, however, he and his small band of believers went to Medina, and from that moment, Muhammad's mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.)

She points out something few non-Muslims (and even probably few Muslims) know: about the Mecca and Medina halves of the Quran and how the looting, slaughtering, raping, enslaving psychopath Mohammed grew more vicious and horrible to non-Muslims as he gained power. What many non-Muslims and even many Muslims don't know is that the later, violence-demanding part of the Quran, the Medina Quran, abrogates (cancels out)the earlier, more interfaith'y sounding statements from before Mohammed got power.

Islam, as I've mentioned before, is actually a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion. And that is what we need to challenge. As do the "moderate Muslims" I hear so much about. You can't really blame them -- vis a vis the commands to slaughter detractors and such a Jesus-like "prophet" to emulate:

Muhammad executed his critics as quickly as he could obtain the power to do so. His biographers list numerous citizens who were murdered merely for mockery or criticism, particularly poets - the media artists of the time. One was a mother of five, who had her child pulled from her breast before she was run through with a sword.

And, happily, a number of modern Muslims are managing to keep up the Mohammed's great humanitarian work!

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Comments

Regardless of how rigid a supposed sacred text is people will find ways of cognitively somersaulting around verses so it will fit their needs. That being so, I agree that the Qur'an is not a blueprint for equal rights, democracy, and peace. However, if Islam makes a mess out of its own house (much like medieval Catholicism did), then it's only a matter of time before a reformation of some sort occurs.

Andrew Hall at March 21, 2015 3:52 AM

What's your prediction on when? And consider that most of the world's Muslims are not like the middle-class Western Muslims who grew up in American suburbia. Last time I looked at the stats, maybe five years ago, a reported 70 or 80 percent of the world's Muslims were illiterate.

Amy Alkon at March 21, 2015 6:22 AM

How does one reform the literal word of Allah?

That would be...oh, yeah, blasphemy.

I R A Darth Aggie at March 21, 2015 6:49 AM

Exactly, I R A Darth Aggie.

Amy Alkon at March 21, 2015 7:03 AM

I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that, in the end, it's going to be either the West OR Islam that survives.

I also suspect that we'll win, in the end, but what it will do to the West is going to be VERY ugly. . .

Keith Glass at March 21, 2015 7:06 AM

> Islam, as I've mentioned before,
> is actually…

Amy has mentioned it before!

Amy has done the reading! On this! Islam!

MOOZLIMS!

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 21, 2015 7:12 AM

Also, it's been difficult to take AHA seriously since she married that guy.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 21, 2015 7:12 AM

Crid, you seem so satisfied knowing little or nothing about Islam and, all the while, crowing like you understand the whole of it.

As somebody tweeted back to me:

@BlaBluebBlib79
@amyalkon Anyone talking about Islam without knowing the concept of "abrogation" should shut up. It's the death blow to a defense of Islam.

Look up "abrogration" in Islam, Crid.

Amy Alkon at March 21, 2015 8:06 AM

"you seem so satisfied knowing little or nothing about Islam and, all the while, crowing like you understand the whole of it."

You don't learn anything about actual Christianity and how it is practiced by a thousand different sects by reading the bible.

You also don't learn anything about Arabs, or Muslims by reading the Koran.

Nor do you learn Jewish culture or history by reading the Torah.

Crid doesn't understand everything about Islam. He doesn't need to. He understands people, culture, and history which is much more useful.

Just suppose that I was to stipulate, for the sake of an argument that *Islam* is the problem.

I don't believe that for one second, but suppose I did?

What is the solution? Is there one? And if there is, why are we not discussing that as opposed to running around screaming the sky is falling Chicken Little style, while you rant on about Muslims?

Isab at March 21, 2015 8:23 AM

Look up "pretension," Amy.

Look up "posturing." Also, "pomposity." Look those up.

A little something to understand! Because teenage sarcasm! Remember An Inconvenient Truth? It's like that!

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 21, 2015 8:26 AM

And besides-- You'd have to be a blithering illiterate to imagine that I've ever defended Islam.

Amy, this is not about Islam. This is about you. This is about all the little ways you want to imagine yourself as a heroic figure on the basis of a shallow beliefs which happen to be your own. And anyone who has questions is "defending Islam," as if your heroism were affirmed.

No.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 21, 2015 8:38 AM

Goddammit, do you see that "little" at 8:38 AM?

You've got me doing it.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 21, 2015 9:38 AM

Hirsi Ali:

Here are the five areas that require amendment:
1. Muhammad’s semi-divine status, along with the literalist reading of the Quran.
Muhammad should not be seen as infallible, let alone as a source of divine writ. He should be seen as a historical figure who united the Arab tribes in a premodern context that cannot be replicated in the 21st century. ... The Quran’s eternal spiritual values must be separated from the cultural accidents of the place and time of its birth.

I agree with her shoulds and must but I also think these things are as likely to happen as Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee marrying each other. For one thing, I think very few "Mecca Muslims" are going to be able to change their view of Muhammad and the Quran and, among those few who are able to do this, fewer still would be willing to be public about it out of the very reasonable fear of violent reprisals from their extremist brethren.

After noticing it at the library, I just finished reading The Trouble With Islam by Irshad Manji. I'd never heard of her before and it's a good read. She's basically on the same page as Hirsi Ali.

JD at March 21, 2015 12:33 PM

Isab: You also don't learn anything about Arabs, or Muslims by reading the Koran.

Au contraire. You would learn that, as Hirsi Ali states, "the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam" and, as she puts it, "the theological warrant for intolerance and violence [is] embedded in [Islamic] religious texts."

So what you learn about violent extremist Muslims is that they're not just pulling things out of their ass when they call for, and practice, intolerance and violence.

JD at March 21, 2015 12:50 PM

Isab: You also don't learn anything about Arabs, or Muslims by reading the Koran.

So what you learn about violent extremist Muslims is that they're not just pulling things out of their ass when they call for, and practice, intolerance and violence.

Posted by: JD at March 21, 2015 12:50 PM

Let me correct that. You don't lean anything useful about Arabs or Muslims from reading the Koran.

Where this leads you is into a 6th grade level intellectual circle jerk where no discussion of what to do has any relevance beyond *islam bad*.

If the Koran was anywhere near as influential and pervasive as you think it is, there would not be five or six different sects trying to kill each other with another hundred or so keeping their heads down, because unlike you idiot Americans who think speech is actually *free* except on college campuses, they know that opening your mouth pins a big target on your back.

Does the name Anwar Sadat ring any bells with the juice box generation?

Didn't think so.

Isab at March 21, 2015 3:12 PM

[Crid:] Amy has done the reading! On this! Islam!
MOOZLIMS!

Perhaps you could be more specific — what, exactly, has Amy gotten wrong?

(I think her estimate of Muslim illiteracy is too high, but even the lowest rates I could find are easily awful enough.)

[Isab:] Crid doesn't understand everything about Islam. He doesn't need to. He understands people, culture, and history which is much more useful.

Crid, and you, apparently, understand causeless effects.

Just suppose that I was to stipulate, for the sake of an argument that *Islam* is the problem.
I don't believe that for one second, but suppose I did?

What is the solution?

It takes a great deal of reality avoidance to avoid concluding that Islam is, if not the entire problem, at least a goodly part of it.

Then it takes an even greater effort to pose the nihilistic rhetorical question "What is the solution?"

Perhaps you think that solutions are ideally found without any understanding of the problem. I'm with Amy: that is nonsense.

[Crid:] And besides-- You'd have to be a blithering illiterate to imagine that I've ever defended Islam.

And I'd have to also be a blithering idiot to think you've ever posed a substantive objection to anything Amy has said.

Everything you have written here objecting to Amy's take on Islam elevates, in effect, your opinions over Ms. Ali's. Call me shallow, but with regard to Islam, I think she is rather more authoritative than you:

Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate — a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism." In this interview, she said, "Violence is inherent in Islam – it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.

But hey, compared to yours and Isab's intellectual awesomeness, what the hell does she know?

Jeff Guinn at March 21, 2015 8:49 PM

Why are Somali women so beautiful?

And the other question, why is it when they mix with white guys their kids sometimes come out looking like really good looking mixed Asians? The human genes are an amazing thing.

Ppen at March 21, 2015 9:41 PM

Ppen: See All the Trouble in the World, P.J. O'Rourke:

Somali women are mainly beautiful: tall, fine-featured, and thin even in fatter times than these. They are not overbothered with Muslim prudery. Their bright-colored scarves are used only for shade and not to cover elaborate cornrows and amazing smiles. Loud cotton print sarongs are worn with one shoulder bare and wrapped with purposeful imperfection of concealment. There is an Iman doppelganger carrying every milk jug. You could do terrific business with modeling agencies hiring these girls by the pound in Somalia and renting them by the yard in New York.

See also.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 1:02 AM

Jeff, I could do the long answer, but I've done it a couple dozen times now. She won't ever acknowledge that she even read it.

She's essentially gaslighting. Now, people are often mute when rhetorically cornered. But consider the Singh thing a few weeks ago: I noted that she's loudly fond of a trivial statistic, and she replied: "it's always dismaying when dismiss things simply because they aren't the right flavor to be acceptable to you." As if I gave a fuck. As if the topic were the factoid, not over-reliance upon it.

By gum, she knows the exchange she wants to have, and she's going to have it whether or not anyone offers it to her. She's fighting heroically on behalf of science itself, and the credulosphere can't handle her real-keeping, man.... It's like being cast as the heavy in a Casper cartoon. It's childish, not learned and wizened. If this weren't so blindingly apparent, I'd feel stung.

In your comment tonight, you've shown more engagement with the topic than Amy has ever demonstrated. I've offered quizzes, facts, resources, demographics, geography, conjectures… Amy acknowledges none [!] of it, and says only 'I know more about this than you do!' Isab repeats the question I've presented dozens of times: What do you want? The reply is always 'I know more about this than you do!'

That's what she wants… All she wants… To say 'I know more about this than you do!'

'Sucks, but at least we can acknowledge this is the first topic here to toddle so clumsily under the pretense.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 1:27 AM

Isab: Let me correct that. You don't lean anything useful about Arabs or Muslims from reading the Koran.

Graeme Wood doesn't see it that way. And I agree with his view, not yours.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.
Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

JD at March 22, 2015 11:40 AM

This is always how Amy's gaslighting starts:

> But pretending that it […] [whatever]

Seriously, if you ever start a sentence that way, don't finish it. It's a sign from Our Celestial Creator that you're wasting your time. Just reach up turn & off your computer & unzip your pants and go nuts. Give yourself a reason to remember the moment.

"Get acquainted with intellectual genealogy"? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

I keep "foolish schemes" in my ballsack: That Amy
and this goofball Graham Wood have failed to engage the history of Western involvement in the Middle East is a metaphysical certainty. Wood is a fucking CANADIAN, for Chrissake.

Jesus, people.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 12:08 PM

Isab: If the Koran was anywhere near as influential and pervasive as you think it is,

Let me return to what Hirsi Ali wrote: "the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam" and "the theological warrant for intolerance and violence [is] embedded in [Islamic] religious texts."

I don't think those elements of the Quran are pervasive. Well, specifically the element of violence. Neither does (I think) Amy. Neither does Hirsi Ali ("The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims.")

But influential? To Islamic extremists, absolutely. You think I overestimate how influential those elements are and I, in turn, think you underestimate how influential those elements are. (Fortunately, because neither of us is an Islamic extremist, we can disagree without either of us getting our head sawed off by the other.)

JD at March 22, 2015 12:15 PM

Hey JD!

Without looking it up, could you answer two question? Just two, and short ones:

Which nation has the largest Muslim population?

Do you think the Koran teaches us things about that nation?

Because it would be fucking amazing if it did. Just a few words in your reply, OK? Short sentences will be fine.

Ah. Only now do I recognize Wood as author of that gassy Atlantic piece from a couple weeks ago.

It was published in February, but that article practically has a lock on 2015's Most-Turdlike Thinkpiece award. And competition promises to be fierce!

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 12:19 PM

Someone said this while pretending to be serious:

I call them Mecca Muslims.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 12:21 PM

1. Which nation has the largest Muslim population?

Liechtenstein.

2. Do you think the Koran teaches us things about that nation?

Yes. Liechtenstein has no airport. Liechtenstein has won more Olympic medals per capita than any other nation. And Liechtenstein is the largest producer of false teeth in the world.

JD at March 22, 2015 1:10 PM

Right. Your head's up your ass.

Woekay then! We appreciate the full constellation of informed opinion on this blog!

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 1:12 PM

Do you call them Vatican Catholics?

Do you call them Lynchburg Baptists?

Do you call them Hemet Scientologists?

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 1:14 PM

"influential? To Islamic extremists, absolutely. You think I overestimate how influential those elements are and I, in turn, think you underestimate how influential those elements are. (Fortunately, because neither of us is an Islamic extremist, we can disagree without either of us getting our head sawed off by the other.)"

No, I don't think you overstate how influential the religious elements are.

I think you can't recognize the difference between the cheerleaders, and the team, why they play, and what they are fighting for.

Arab Persian tribal culture is a warfare culture.
They were primarily killing each other until two things happened, Israel was officially establised, forming a focal point for Arab dissatisfaction with their cultural prestige, and tremendous wealth poured into the region in the form of petro dollars.

Unearned weath that rapidly destroyed both their values, and their work ethic, and exacerbated the tensions between groups that benefited from the petroleum windfall and those that still lived in grinding poverty.

It isn't any more *the Koran* that they fight for, than the American GI fights for the flag, or the Chinese communist soldier fights for Mao's little red book.

As Crid, and I have both said, time and time again, Islam, however brutal it is, is not some sort of unique evil.

History has seen worse, and will see worse again.

Isab at March 22, 2015 2:33 PM

[Crid:] 1. Which nation has the largest Muslim population?
2. Do you think the Koran teaches us things about that nation?

Malaysia.

(I promise I didn't peak)

Since the Koran isn't about nations, then nothing.

But if the only thing I knew about Malaysia was that it is a Muslim majority country, then I would predict it would have strict laws on blasphemy, apostasy, homosexuality, the practice of other religions, and would have problem with domestic Islamist terrorism.

And I'd be right.

Okay, when I said I didn't peak, I was kind of cheating. I didn't google anything.

But I've been there a dozen or so times, so there's that. And I can attest from first hand experience that Islam in Malaysia is far more relaxed than anywhere between Pakistan and Morocco.

However, the one thing I wouldn't necessarily have predicted is that the impositions that come along with Islam have gotten worse there.

But you knew that already, right?

Jeff Guinn at March 22, 2015 4:33 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/hirsi-ali-islam.html#comment-5920246">comment from Crid [CridComment at Gmail]

I call them Mecca Muslims.

These would be "moderate Muslims" -- which you would know if you spent more time reading Islamic texts and less time mocking other people's knowledge of them.

Amy Alkon at March 22, 2015 8:14 PM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/03/hirsi-ali-islam.html#comment-5920257">comment from Jeff Guinn

Jeff Guinn gets it:

In this interview, she said, "Violence is inherent in Islam – it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder. But hey, compared to yours and Isab's intellectual awesomeness, what the hell does she know?

Amy Alkon at March 22, 2015 8:18 PM

Amy, DON'T PRETEND TO BE TAKING PART IN THE DISCUSSION.

You don't have the courage.

And Lord God knows you don't have the clarity.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 8:35 PM

Or are you answering questions?

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 22, 2015 8:56 PM

... peak ...

Twice. I hang my head in shame.

Crid, what, precisely, is Amy getting wrong?

Jeff Guinn at March 22, 2015 10:32 PM

Two things.

Firstly, the part where she says "I know all about Islam," yet can't answer even mundane questions, or take part in discussion which doesn't flatter her (imaginary) expertise.

Secondly, the part where she says others know "little or nothing about Islam" for noting that her citations are trite and alarmist.

She's been wrong before, and kinda defensive, but never so proudly… This is new.

And it ain't Malaysia, not by a long shot: You were only close geographically. And even if it were, we'd probably not be too worried.

It's weird how you guys offer these cites as proof of a perspective which has no name. (Besides Moozlims!) You're not asking anyone to do anything. There's never any policy recommendation or anything. It's a sheeple cry without even the Wake up part. A Muslim grabs the entree fork for the salad, and off you go: How to deal with the hundreds of millions who might grab the wrong fork tomorrow is something you don't really know how to address.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 23, 2015 12:29 AM

Also, peak for peek is always forgivable; Peak for pique is a crime.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 23, 2015 12:37 AM

Mecca Muslims!

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 23, 2015 1:30 AM

Crid, it's pretty obvious you loathe Amy. Why do you spend so much time here?

Comment Monster at March 23, 2015 3:01 PM

Naw, I loathe it when she's silly and condescending too.

Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 23, 2015 3:13 PM

I think you have a creepy crush on Amy.

Comment Monster at March 23, 2015 6:56 PM

Well, on her blog, maybe... But a lot of that's from her boyfriend, which would be gay. So no.