There was no confusion over Paris’s approach it was as clear as day, the multiculturalists of the Anglosphere simply did not want their boats rocked, they obviously could not fully close Macron down with the standard race-hate charge. Almost laughable how the dubious prop of cultural differences (in this case multiculturalism/secularism) between the Anglosphere and France are being portrayed as a greater divide than the cultural differences between the Anglosphere and Islamism by the multiculturalists.
We in the US have religious groups who edge off into terrorism from time to time and in any case preach and try to practice political domination, usually pretty explicitly. Their ideologies usuall aren’t explicitly racial, but the groups, especially those more fond of violence, do seem to be self-consciously ‘White’. They are rather like the Islamists as described here, although they’re home-grown. Confronting the problem they pose, our ruling classes seem to have adopted multiculturalism and capitalism as an alternative to race and religious war, because they want to keep their stuff and would prefer not to rule over the kind of slums or behavioral sinks the religious and racial fanatics turn their countries into. The French approach — to abandon liberalism — does not seem to have worked out well in practice. Recall that the anti-liberal political groups of France in the 1930s led to an inability to resist Nazi German in 1940, even though France had a larger and better-equipped military and was fighting as the home team.
Liberalism or anti liberalism had nothing to do with France not being able to resist the Nazi invasion. It was a strategic military miscalculation.
And comparisons with the US aren’t helpful in this case.
The point here being that islamism often blends socialist economic ideologies with religious ultra-conservatism in a way that wouldn’t be compatible with American or European models of either multiculturalism or capitalist democracy.
David George
3 years ago
The modern iteration of political Islam, of Jihad, may well be linked to 20th century political parties (an OTT reaction to former colonisation?) but it’s scarcely different to the centuries long mission beginning with the prophet himself. The deaths of untold millions of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus throughout the (formerly) Holy Lands, the Middle East and large parts of Europe, Africa and Asia suggest a rather aggressive approach to religious conversion.
Millions of Muslims were killed and expelled from their land recently, in the 19-20th century in Europe and Asia after the fall of the last (real) Caliphate (Ottoman Empire). However, you are telling stories from the era of the Crusades to justify and justify the aggression that was recent. Hypocrisy! Athens, Belgrade, the Northern Black Sea region and the North Caucasus have been Muslim lands for 500 years. Where is their legacy? Everything was destroyed, removed from historical memory. How many mosques, how many Muslims are there in Greece and Serbia? Nothing! Or do you mean that for 500 years there has been no Muslim heritage? But, I repeat, Muslims do not need revenge in Europe. All is lost, the fight is lost. But Jerusalem is a wound that will never heal. As long as there is Israel, as long as you support the occupation of Palestine, the war with the West will not end.
The Roman occupation of Britain is a wound that will never heal. Sheesh!! What a silly argument you make. Israel is a democracy Ask the those of Arab heritage if they wish to live in ‘Palastine’ Before 1967 Jerusalem was a closed city. Its now open to all irrespective of belief or culture. How do minorities fare in. Muslim majority countries?
A little sarcasm: ‘The Roman occupation of Britain is a wound that will never heal….’
Well, actually, the Romans seem to have integrated themselves pretty well with the Britons (Celts) of the time. The invasion and occupation that hasn’t healed yet was the Anglo-Saxon one that destroyed Roman Britain. That conflict comes down just about to the present and has manifested itself in the various wars and troubles in (Celtic) Ireland in the 20th century — still linked religiously with Rome, as it happens — and the movement among the (Celtic) Scots to secede from the United Kingdom. I’ll leave it up to the English here to explain what the problem is. I don’t think we can blame it on Islam.
That is far too simplistic and binary a history. The Welsh and Irish are Celts, but actually even that is a gross distortion, but they did both in historic times speak mainly Celtic languages. However of course there were pre-Celtic peoples in Britain and Ireland who contributed hugely to modern populations as genetic studies have shown. The Celtic ruling class displaced them and gave their language, which is rather similar to the Anglo Saxon ‘invasions’.
There is a simplistic and in fact almost racist view about the Germanic speaking invaders of the 5th and 6th centuries on the one hand, and the Celtic speaking predecessor populations. They are deemed ‘baddies’ and ‘goodies’ respectively, despite the fact that both peoples were in many ways similar, having about the same level of technological and cultural development etc, and despite many Celtic peoples being equally warlike.
The medieval Scottish kingdom was an amalgam of Gaels, Picts, Angles and Norse elements.
Apart from that it is difficult to understand what the point is here – that England, Scotland and the various other peoples of these Isles fought a long series of conflicts? If so that is pretty much like every other European and indeed worldwide state we know of.
The relevance of this to the conflict between secular Western societies and Islamism, which is a clash of fundamental values, is rather obscure.
Someone above said ‘But Jerusalem is a wound that will never heal.’,and others derided that statement. I was pointing out that the past affects the future, or so it seems, and keeps doing so for a long time. Certainly the conflicts between England and Ireland go back several hundred years, and are felt keenly enough on all sides to call forth people willing to kill and die for their various causes.
I am pretty sure the Protestants and Catholics in England and Ireland thought they were fighting over fundamental values. Indeed, I was carefully told this as a child by my Anglophilic relatives. (Which was funny, because a good many of them were Irish and French if you go back far enough.) The Protestants were supposed to be for freedom and equality, and the Catholics for abject submission to a worldly, corrupt, totalitarian authority, the Pope. Hence Mussolini and Hitler, to say nothing of Lucrezia Borgia and her relatives. What would Cromwell say?
I’m sorry you find my comments too succinct. In the future I shall try to be more prolix.
I think Ron Bo’s point is, ‘ get over it’ cos every land on earth has been conquered at some point. The west seems to move on and learn from their colonial past (and masters..think about roads, infrastructure, art etc..) but, for some reason, other regions of the globe want to mourn and hold grudges. Perhaps that’s what holds them back from becoming progressive. Sadly, the Aboriginal community in Australia suffer from the same doomed mind set and are therefore forever trapped.
Athens, Belgrade, the Northern Black Sea region and the North Caucasus were Christian lands long before Islam came along and conquered them and enslaved or massacred the Christian inhabitants. In the 19th and 20th century, millions of Greeks and Armenians were killed and expelled from lands they had occupied since before Islam was invented. In the 20th Century Jews were eliminated from all Muslim lands and in the 21st Century most Christians have been ethnically cleansed from Muslim lands and that process is still occurring and has extended to areas in Africa like northern Nigeria. Jerusalem is not a Muslim city – Mohammed never visited it (he may have dreamt that he did, of course) and it only came under Muslim control by violent conquest. Muslims do not have the right to continue the slaughter.
The Greeks did not spontaneously choose Islam, they were conquered by Turkey and occupied for centuries before restoring their freedom in 1821. Try reading some well documented Greek history to see its contribution to humanity pre-Islam. It’s well documented.
Very well put David Lawler. The hardly suppressed anger and hatred of Hamit Kabay pours from his writin. The flagrant denial of the Muslim world as to its backwardness and brutality against its own people as well let alone others is glaringly obvious. Most people in Europe resent the permanent state of insulted pride most Muslims display They came to live here and many behave as if they were trapped behind enemy lines.
They came to live here seeking a better life now they want turn our country into the religious dump they came from. Call me a racist, call me an islamist, I really don’t care anymore.
There is no such country as Palestine. It has never been an independent state. It has been owned through recorded history by the Romans,Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire and British Empire in that order until 1948. Palestine was a word coined by the Romans to describe a geographical entity. As long as Arabs threaten to drive Jews out of Israel, Israel will defend itself vigorously – and has the right to do so. Jews will not be driven like lambs to the slaughter as happened in Nazi occupied Europe during WW2. Strangely enough, very few Arab states in the Middle East seem keen to accept Palestinian Arabs as refugees. So no solidarity there between co-religionists.They are just used and trotted out as useful idiots by the likes of Hamas and other organisations when it suits their propaganda purposes.
This is the myopia of muslims. They have no real interest in what happened before Islam. Their world starts and ends with Islam. There is nothing worth knowing beyond Quran. Quran is the perfect word of God, and God has provided all the necessary knowledge in it.
I don’t see that. The Abrahamic religions, at least in their earlier states, seem to postulate a rather cranky old Guy in charge of everything and occasionally blowing his stack and killing off a great many of his helpless, ignorant creatures, or ordering them to kill one another. When did Christians generally stop killing one another over their favorite fables? Doesn’t seem that long ago in historical time. Give Islam time, a few more centuries?
I’m not at all anti Islam, and its civilisation did reach some great heights, especially under the Abbasid caliphate in the 9th and 10th centuries, but also those of Islamic Spain.
But at that point there was a real interest in non Islamic thought from Greece, Persian, India and even China. That is what has been lost in more recent Islamic civilisations. The Ottomans were by no means anti Christian fanatics but were much more inward looking, being very suspicious for example of the printing press. Only a tiny fraction of the books printed in Europe were ever translated and printed into Turkish and Arabic.
The Muslims were avid borrowers and plagiarists, and their invented “religion” a pick-and-mix of various cultural and religious influences in 7th and 8th century Arabia, cherry-picked to suit their purposes as triumphant conquerors. That so-called “high cultural level” is a propaganda myth. What was achieved was on the supine backs of the civilisations they conquered. As Islam became less expansionist and turned more inward, that “high culture” soon fossilised and decayed.
I think recognizing, adopting, and preserving the good stuff from other people, other places and other times is a sign of civilization and intelligence. The question is why the Islamic world turned inward. The same seems to have happened in China. And now many seem to be recommending this path for the West.
Vilders, I was responding to the question of what stopped muslim innovation. Muslims themselves say that the Mongol devastations caused muslim civilisation to turn inward and scarred their progress.
And other Muslims, no doubt, say something different. The historical facts are clear: the invasions of Spain from Morocco put an end to the Golden Age of Muslim Spain, and any “innovation” that might have originated there.
The Muslims were avid borrowers and plagiarists, and their invented “religion” a pick-and-mix
In many ways Islam mirrors Christianity, not least in the way the anonymous gospel writers of Matthew and Luke plagiarized from gMark who in turn used the Old Testament to draw inspiration as a number of parallels demonstrate.
When religious adherents are finally able to acknowledge that the foundational tenets of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim holy texts (sic) are based on nothing but geopolitical myth and walk away from such rubbish then there will be three less major reasons for them to behave like arseholes.
actually it’s your assertions that are propaganda, perpetrated by people who want to pretend that because we are in a war with Islamic extremism now, Islam has always been extreme and never tolerant. Until the 11th century, it was. That’s simply historical fact, authenticated by all serious historians, who I suspect know alot more about this than you do.
The high culture was achieved in the ancient cities that already were centres of past civilisations, while the actual birthplace of Islam, the Arabian plateau remained mired in obscurity. Mecca and Medina were not the centres of Muslim civilisation. Cairo, Baghdad, Istanbul, even Tabriz took that honour. Also, until fairly recent times, there were loads of Christians and Jews left in the middle east to help the civilisational process along. They worked as translators and midwived the transition of knowledge from the Europe to the middle-east. Imperial projects often have a diversity of populations, plentiful slaves and war loot to build ‘high culture’.
I was disagreeing with Vijay Kant’s contention that for Muslims ‘Their world starts and ends with Islam. There is nothing worth knowing beyond Quran.’ That evidence-free assertion is contradicted by the high achievements of Muslim civilization, even if it was largely ‘borrowing and plagiarism’, does it not?
You are probably correct about the Mongol invasions. Although some countries managed to resist them they certainly devastated a good part of the Middle East. Still, many of the victims of the khans eventually recovered.
Both Baghdad and Cairo were essentially founded by Islamic forces. Neither existed as cities before Islam, though there were a some villages in the general area of each. Constantinople had nothing to do with the early development (or tolerance) of Islam as it was Christian until 1453. And the first “capital’ of Islam outside Arabia was Damascus (Ummayad).
True. I had a Muslim student at university who openly told me that. Any history before Islam did not exist and would not attend lectures or study it!!!!! Just as mad as the Christian family Bible we had which said the world began in 4004 BC!! LOL
Actually the Bible does not say the world began in 4004BC; you cannot quote me a verse which says that. It was Bishop Ussher’s calculation, making certain assumptions.
Trauma bonded humans under siege in a religion soaked with violence and coercion. The penalty for leaving it is death, prison, lashings, in many countries and that doesn’t count what happens if your family gets ahold of you first. It’s an absolute brain virus replicated by bloodshed both in the domestic sphere and on the battlefield, that’s why they have to threaten death on people who want to leave. In any race, tribe, or geographic location humans will react this way to violence, for example the FLDS in the western US. It happens to be islam, but it could be anyone.
You seem practiced in the art of lies and deception. Jews have lived in Israel for more than 3000 years. They are not “occupiers”. Moslems are invaders, as they have been since their desert warlord instructed them to start killing in 632. More recently, you allied with Hitler for your “final solution”. We see you for what you are.
Yes the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem made a brief pact with the Nazis during WW2 as they both hated Jews and saw the UK empire as an enemy! But the Arab didn’t quiet fit the image of the blue eyed, blond haired Aryan.
Although the Mufti himself was blond, blue eyed, something Hitler himself noted. Hitler of course admired Islam, expressed regret that “Aryans” had chosen Christianity over something so obviously war like.
You’re full of it! I’ve been to Belgrade, the Serbian capital and seen a working mosque there. I agree with everything Mark McCaffrey said in his comments. For Orthodox Christians it is a terrible sorrow that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, but most of them don’t consider it a wound that will never heal. They live in the real world. Grow up, and start acting like an adult.
Tito was the heavy hand that maintaned order. I remember hitch hiking through the former Yugoslavia in 1968 from north to south and the people seemed very happy.
Indeed. We must control the site of the ancient Israelites’ capital and the site of its two temples. Otherwise how will the faithful know we are the successor religion? They say the Jews built the place and made its reputation, but we know that there was nothing before Islam.
Athens, Belgrade the Northern Black sea region and the North Caucasus may have BEEN Muslim lands once, but that was down to Muslim conquest. Then, as the world turns, the native populations in those areas revolted and became independent. Too bad. As for Palestine, the longer this “war with the west” goes, the past 70 years clearly shows that the trajectory for Israel is up, up and away. Good luck with your vicious dreams.
There was an agreed, if no doubt often brutal exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. Both populations were expelled. As others have pointed out, all those formerly Christian lands were conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th to 16th centuries. Most mosques fell into disuse with no Muslim population to use them, the same applied to Christian churches in Turkey.
All the other things you say sound pretty fanatical and through not showing any possibility of compromise, unfortunately just confirming everything the article says about political Islam.
Not that the Quran is a book of integrity, but if you happen to think it is, there is a passage in the Quran that refers to Jews as ‘the children of Israel’. As such, according to the book, Jews belong in Palestine / Israel, so who do the Muslims think they are disagreeing with their prophet / god?
The Night Journey fable has Mohamed ascending to heaven on a winged steed from Jerusalem, from the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount – allegedly the Quran’s ‘farthest mosque’. But the Quranic passage (17.1) clearly indicates that the Farthest mosque is the destination of the journey, and that was Heaven, where Mohamed saw his signs of heaven – not a stopping point in Jerusalem. Ergo, there are no Quranic grounds for a Muslim claim on Jerusalem.
Further, Muslims have Mecca and Medina the birthplace and burial place of Mohamed – no one else is interested in those places, must they also claim the holiest city for the Jews and the Christian too?
Mehdi Hasan stated on Q Time, as a panel member, that he believed Mohamed actually did ascend to heaven on a winged steed from the Dome (the night journey fable). That an intelligent, ‘moderate’ Muslim can commit to the Quran in this way is a tell as to the reality of the concerns in the west.
Millions of Muslims were killed and expelled from their land recently
I think by “their” land you actually mean the land that they captured in their extensive conquests of Christian and other lands. See youtube v=I_To-cV94Bo
Hamit, Long Live Israel! And before that little theocracy was born in the obscurity of Arabia there was no such thing as Islam. Was there? Jerusalem had nothing to do with you and your cronies. You were nomads and unfortunately you kept conquering with a combatant ideology to support you based largely on plagiarism. That’s it.
“a rather agressive approach to religious conversion”. Bless your heart.
castlecob
3 years ago
bang on the money…The UK’s attachment to stupid and asymmmetrical muticulturalism has to be jettisoned.Be British ,be proud of your country ,institutions and religion…Beware the trojan horse of Islam.
Are you therefore disowning the violent terrorists amongst the Muslim faith. In which case, give them up.
Muslim terrorists live amongst Muslim communities. Muslims know who they are, they don’t operate in a social vacuum.
Whether by intimidation, violence or desire, there is a conspiracy of silence. The ‘peaceful’ compulsion would be to rat them out, grass them up, or simply starve them of support.
But that doesn’t happen, does it?
Indeed, you are correct, there is no compulsion in Islam, no moral compulsion to stamp out the disease within the Muslim community.
I would agree altho the author has not clarified. In any event Im increasingly finding that contributors generally tend not to recognise satire / irony / sarcasm unless it is tattooed on their eyeballs (as someone once said).
The religion of peace was abrogated after Md went to Mediina and started violent Jihad. Soon got plenty of folloeres through submission or death. Some choice!
That’s as funny as saying Christianity “is the the religion of peace”. All my life I have seen the erosion of Christianity authority impacting on how I live my life in all its forms. Thankfully the job is almost done. Sadly we now have this Islam crap to deal with. Macron is correct in trying to nip it in the bud.
I’m an atheist, but do not deny a persistent religious impulse in humanity. That said, post-Enlightenment Christianity is preferable to Islam… or socialism, for that matter.
The founder of Christianity preached peace, and all his early followers exemplified peace in a savage world. Contrast that with the founder of Islam and his early followers.
The practice of peace requires self-discipline, courage, faith, generosity, and adherence to strict moral values – is that what you mean by Christian “authoritarianism”?
In his famous novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes, “For even those who have renounced Christianity, and attack it, still follow the Christian ideal. And neither their subtlety, nor the ardor of their hearts, has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.” All human systems of both justice and compassion crave the dignity, beauty, and order of Christ but desire to do so without Christianity, sometimes without religion of any sort. What remains is a soulless counterfeit, a cadaver without a beating heart. Once God is ousted in favour of a humanist worldview, there is no bottom. When a society divorces itself from God’s laws, there is no limit to the atrocities that are to come ““ all of them, of course, in the name of progress, equality, safety, and even love. Any number of virtuous spins can be applied to wars waged against God’s design for humanity. We are seeing this now.
There has always been compulsion in Islam to this day. The choice is given – convert or be killed (sometimes reduced to slavery). What about the schoolgirls in Nigeria who have been kidnapped and focibly converted, raped and enslaved? Peace? You need some education.
Indeed – and the young Christian girls in Pakistan who are currently being abducted, raped and forcibly married to their rapists and forced to “convert” to Islam? This behaviour is recommended towards the “infidel” in the Quran, by the way, and illustrated in the hadith accounts of the deeds of Mohammed.
And simultaneously the muslim grooming gangs that are exploiting vulnerable British girls in parts of England (because of course the muslim girls are to be left with their virginity intact for their husbands. We can skip calling it ‘compulsion’ with regard to females and just call it rape and enslavement, which is being carried on to this day.
When religious texts give permission for this kind of behavior something has gone far afield…perhaps it’s a hint that is was never a ‘religion’ to begin with, but a form of gov’t imposed on a religious people who couldn’t absorb conquest without the invention of deities to underwrite their enslavement
Micah, It started as a hoax invented in Petra** by a certain famous merchant later warlord. After his death a “folk-Islam” grew up among people who did not know the warlord and could not read his Qur’an, and so they believed that he must have been a really kind man and his book really peaceful. That latter “folk Islam” could reasonably be considered a religion. The problem is that it is founded on a serious factual untruth such that its members often revert to the genuine hateful original, as seen in endless outbreaks of Sudden Jihad Syndrome. The only cure for the terrorism is to expose the falseness of the originating book and “prophet”. If the useless people like in Downing Street would get out of the way and uphold proper free speech, that would be even easier achieved. (**Petra was also called Becca, and the difference in Arabic script between Becca and Mecca is just a tiny extra bit. For the first hundred years the mosques were aligned with Petra, not surprising considering Mecca didn’t exist at the time.)
Yes, I’ve heard of the abrogation of older passages in the Koran by newer ones, typically more violent and less tolerant than the ones they abrogated. The non-compulsion in religion section, for instance, was replaced by passages calling for the execution of polytheists (which could be interpreted to include most Christians due to the Holy Trinity), by the imposition of the jizya on non-Muslims, and that truly awful chapter prophesying that the rocks would tell Muslims where Jews were hiding so that the Islamic warriors could kill them.
BTW, I think – as does Vilde Chaye – That Ron Bo’s comment was sarcastic, or at least facetious. But I don’t know for sure.
Of course there is no compulsion. Islam means submission. Everything it does, and is done in its name, is therefore voluntary. There lies the difficulty.
But liberalism and, one might say, multiculturalism, are very much part of the Anglosphere’s institutions, religions, and culture, especially its North American department. France may have a uniform culture, but the United States and Canada were formed from hundreds of native and immigrating ethnic groups. These states had trouble enough just maintaining political coherence without imposing a uniform culture and religion on their inhabitants. Given the common European national histories of race war and ethnic cleansing, which seems to be the alternative, one might think tolerant liberalism was the better choice. In spite of its difficulties.
I was thinking of the various wars involved in creating more or less single-ethnicity states in England, France, Spain, and many others, going back to the breakup of the Roman Empire, and continuing to almost the present — for example, the destruction of Yugoslavia. If you consider Armenia and Azerbaijan to be part of Europe, as some do, then to the present, period.
And who brought the “Trojan Horse” Mr Millington? Some people are under the impression that Muslims invaded Europe while in reality they were invited to come in. By whom you may ask? Well by the NEOLIBERAL RIGHT, the industry captains who wanted a cheap labour force with no class awareness. As opposed to Southern Europeans, Muslim migrants would not join unions and would not assert their rights.
Yes, Islam poses immense challenges to Europe but the real fifth column is the Western European elite who sold its people and culture for cheap labour and goods.
Yes they will understand what they have done at the time of getting their throiats cut and the Islamist demography outnumbers them. As Dr. Bill Warner says ‘in Islam even the womb is a weapon’!
Tom Hawk
3 years ago
History shows that islam is at odds with multiculturalism. The few “enlightened” islamic rulers who allowed the practice of non muslim faith have always been replaced by fundamentalist and intolerant ones.
History shows that islam spreads its influence via the sword. Convert of be murdered is an effective way of filling the mosques.
It is difficult to make a sweeping statement like this. Islam, at least at times, was tolerant to non-muslim faiths. Survival of Large Christian populations in Middle East even to this day is a proof.
In the golden age of Islam this was mainly due to the tax collected from non-muslims. When large scale conversions to Islam happened in the Middle East, the Islamic conquerers were unhappy simply because the tax revenues were reduced.
The same was true also in Ottoman Turkey. In return of paying a tax, non-muslims were exempt from military and were free to organise the domestic issues of their congregation.
There is a subtle but big difference between being tolerant and tolerating other faiths for selfish financial gains. The latter is the fabled ‘tolerance of islam’ which way too often is withdrawn on the flimsiest of pretexts. Leaving aside history, the recent fates of Druze and Coptic Christian communities in the Middle East are great examples of how ‘tolerant’ moslem societies really are towards those at their mercy.
We are talking about 8th century here. Within that context Islam was tolerant. Even in Ottoman Turkey many centuries later, the attitude was tolerant. Don’t forget, this was the time of religious wars in Europe.
There are about 15 million Christians in the Middle East. Yes, the number is reduced from about 20% by the beginnkng of 20th century but the dynamics behind the exodus is different and probably more a result of nationalist movements than religous oppression.
“Yes, the number is reduced from about 20% by the beginnkng of 20th century” And what happened at the beginning of the 20th century? Specifically to Armenians.
Thanks for telling the truth, I can’t believe what I’m reading in these comments. The plight of Coptic Christians and others surrounded by islamist populations in modern times speaks to us about how it must have been historically for families of other religious since the dawn of islamofascism; either pay these exhorbitant taxes or be killed. Those are your choices.
“Non-Muslims we’re exempt from military”(sic). Really? What about the notorious Ottoman Devshirme? Where did the Janissaries such as Mimar Sinan come from?
Were they, by chance, forcibly conscripted from Christian male children?
Before you castigate others for making a “sweeping statement”, you must check your facts, if don’t wish to appear to be an idiot.
There is no need to call names. If we are going to discuss this on a civilised manner let’s do so.
You are approaching this anachronistically. In 16th century giving a son to become a devshirme was considered differently than 21st century. But that’s not the issue here, we are talking about the overall attitude within the islamic civilisation towards non-muslims which was in general relatively tolerant.
So, the duty is on everybody. Muslims should practice their religion freely while allowing the same freedom to others. Non-muslims should also respect the religous freedoms of muslims. And most importantly both sides should refrain from turning this to a clash of civilisations. Radicalism is fed by this friction.
I gather from your syntax and composition that English may not be your first language?
So “don’t get your knickers in a twist” as we say. I was not calling you an idiot, but indicating others might think so, because of your sweeping statement ” in return of paying a tax, non- muslims were exempt from military” (presumably service), which is patently untrue! QED?
However, all three Abrahamic faiths suffer from the concept of exclusiveness, “the chosen people” etc. This breads manic intolerance of others, and is well illustrated by the litany of barbarism that has triumphed since the fall of Ancient Rome.
Fortunately, the concurrent history of China shows that it is not axiomatic that such barbarism needs to be religiously driven. Insatiable greed is the greatest motivator of all, and probably always has been.
Then muslims need to repeal all blasphemy laws and laws against apostasy. All forms of religious compulsive ‘covering’ for females need to be done away with, if we are talking about freedom. Parents need to stop killing their female children over so-called “honor”. Female children need to stop being mutilated in their pubic region. So many traditions of islamofascism are abhorrently brutal by western democratic standards that to not vocally oppose them is immoral.
I’m not sure that statement is entirely accurate. Muslim armies were comparatively small, between 10,000-20,000 are possible estimates for the numbers in the armies which conquered Syria and Iraq, probably fewer in Egypt and Iran in the 7th century. To be sure, more Arab Muslims emigrated from Arabia to settle in the newly conquered areas but even so the Arab Muslims were a likely small minority, perhaps only 10% of the population of Egypt and perhaps 20% of the most densely settled area, Iraq. In these circumstances, forcing large numbers of unwilling people to convert would be logistically very difficult without modern weaponry and a large bureaucracy.
There were also clear fiscal incentives not to encourage the spread of Islam. The Quran had laid down that the unbelievers should pay taxes, called ‘jizya’, which was originally a generic name for tribute of all sorts. By the period in the late 8th century when the Muslim fiscal system reached its maturity, it had been established that the ‘dhimmis’ should also pay a poll-tax. All landowners were now obliged to pay the land tax but the ‘dhimmis’ suffered under extra fiscal burdens. The produce of the ‘jizya’ was very useful because it was paid in cash. This became specially valuable in the years when structure of caliphal finance collapsed. Land tax became much more difficult to collect and was often assigned away to bureaucrats or soldiers.
Petty rulers and warlords could still collect the ‘jizya’ in cash money. There were, in short, clear reasons why Muslim governments would not want to encourage conversion to Islam. They were in most cases effectively unable to prevent conversion but they certainly had good fiscal reasons not to use force to achieve it.
There are also a few specific examples of the active discouragement of conversion to Islam. One of the clearest of these can be seen in then account of the trial of Afshini. 840 AD. Afshin was one of the leading generals in the army of the caliph al-Mu’tasim and he was also hereditary ruler of the small mountain principality of Ushrusana, southeast of Samarkand. In 840 AD, a conspiracy of his enemies caused him to be arrested and put on trial. The charge was apostasy, that is to say abandoning Islam because it was a charge that carried the death penalty.
One of the accusations was that he had forbidden the preaching of Islam in his domains, though he of course was a Muslim himself. Two witnesses were produced, pious men who had gone to these wild areas to preach. They showed the court the wounds that they bore as a result of the flogging that Afshin’s men had inflicted on them and Afshin was obliged to admit that he had indeed ordered their punishment for he had an agreement with his people that he would not allow Muslim missionaries in.
Another indication that compulsion were not widespread can be seen from the very small numbers of Christian martyr stories dating from the early years of Islam. If there had been compulsion, with punishment meted out to those who would not abandon their faith, their heroism would certainly have been remembered and recorded. The martyr narratives we do have mostly come from Syria and Palestine. The martyrs fall into fairly specialised groups. There were apostates from Islam, and converting from Islam to another faith was always regarded as worthy of death.
The other group were victims of random violence. Perhaps the most notable of these were the 40 martyrs of St Sabas. They, and a number of other holy men in the Judaean desert, were killed by Bedouin in the disturbed years which followed the death of Harun al- Rashid in 809 AD. In this case there was no implication that they were slain because they refused to convert to Islam: they were simply killed because the Bedouin wanted to steal their property and take over their land.
But that did not mean that military force played no part in the spread of Islam. The Arab conquests of the 7th century established Muslim government over large areas of the Middle East. But they did not make Islam into a majority religion. The process probably began quite slowly and gathered pace in the 9th and 10th centuries. In any age there will always be people who change their religion, convert from one to the other, purely on a wave of pious enthusiasm and religious inspiration. It is not perhaps too cynical to suggest that there were many others who have more mixed motives.
Islam was the elite religion. By converting to it, a man could, in theory at least, become a member of that elite. Conversion offered both career/social advantages. At a stroke it meant freedom from the hated poll-tax. It often gave the opportunity to move from the static and stifling environment of the village to one of the expanding towns. The Muslim authorities may not have forced people to convert but the structure of Muslim government did encourage people to make that choice. Islam may have not spread by the sword but without the sword it would not have spread.
Its seems a paradoxical answer but look at it this way. It is unlikely that Islam would have enjoyed the dominant role it had in the Middle East if the Arab conquests of the 7th century had never taken place. No matter how appealing Islam’s teachings may have been to people of the 7th century, I think it’s extremely unlikely that it would have made a lot of headway under the Byzantine/Sassanid Empire.
In both these empires there was a state supported religious institution to which anyone with pretensions of elite status would be expected to belong. Under the Byzantines there were certainly Jews, Samaritans, and prob a few pagans. But if u wanted a post in the govt/army, you had to be a Christian. And the right sort of Christian, one who accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (451). The large number of people who did not were excluded almost entirely from positions of power/influence.
Would Muslim missionaries have been permitted to preach? I find it unlikely in the extreme.
The Sassanids were certainly more pluralist. The Persian elite were all Zoroastrians but there were large numbers of Christians, Jews, Mandaens and others. But they would never have been allowed to challenge the position of Zorostrianism as the dominant faith. Muslim missionaries might have been allowed to preach but never against the position of Zoroastrianism among the Persians.
It was only the military/political victory of Islam in the 7th century that allowed for the ascendency of Christianity and Zoroastrianism to be challenged.
The Battle of Tours (732 AD) carries tremendous significance for the far-Right. The terrorist who killed 51 people at 2 mosques in New Zealand painted slogans on his guns including ‘Tours 732’ and ‘Charles Martel’.
The reality is that the Ummayad Caliphate in the 8th century were able to capture some areas along the southern French coast and launch raids into the interior of southern France. In 732 AD one of these raids was repelled by the Frankish leader Charles Martel.
Some view this as a turning point for Muslim expansion of the 7th-8th centuries. But a more prosaic view is that the Ummayads were after booty rather than conquest/mass conversions. According to the Chronicle of Fredegar, their motive was the wealth of the Abbey of St. Martin of Tours, the richest and holiest shrine in western Europe at the time.
The insignificance of Tours can be realised from the fact that historians like al-Tabarī and Ibn al-Qūtiyyah totally omit any account of the battle and stress the defeat at Constantinople. The Franks encountered little more than a band of raiders thousands of miles from home.
Like all the monotheistic religions forced conversions is a part of Islam’s history. What I was arguing is that there doesn’t seem much historical evidence to support the view of mass conversions after the Arab invasions of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Iran in the 7th century, that’s all.
Christianity did not spread through forced conversions. On the contrary, Christianity developed and won converts through successive waves of violent persecution by non-Christian states. Only in later centuries did Christian missionaries follow on the heels of politically-motivated military conquests. Judaism has never at any time practised forced conversions. Islam is unique among the “monotheistic religions”. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
I disagree. During the Saxon Wars (772-804 AD), Charlemagne (748-814 AD) forcibly converted the Saxons from paganism by way of warfare. The Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae (785 AD) prescribed death to those who refused to convert to Christianity. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity by the Crusaders in Lorraine, on the Lower Rhine, in Bavaria and Bohemia, in Mainz and in Worms in 1096. There were also forced conversions of Jews in southern Italy in the 13th century, which were carried out by Dominican Inquisitors but instigated by King Charles II of Naples (1254-1309)
During the Northern Crusades (1147-1410) against the pagan Balts and Slavs, forced conversions were a widely used tactic, which received papal sanction. These tactics were first adopted during the Wendish Crusade (1147) but became more widespread during the Livonian Crusade (1198-1290) and the Prussian Crusade (1217-1274), in which tactics included the killing of hostages, massacre, and the devastation of the lands of tribes that had not yet submitted.
Most of the populations of these regions were converted only after the repeated rebellion of native populations that did not want to accept Christianity even after initial forced conversion; in Old Prussia, the tactics employed in the initial conquest and subsequent conversion of the territory resulted in the death of most of the native population, whose language consequently became extinct.
Forced conversions of Jews also took place under Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521). In December 1496, it was decreed that all Jews either convert to Islam or leave the country without their children. However those expelled could only leave on ships specified by the king. When they arrived at Lisbon, clerics and soldiers used coercion in order to baptize them and prevent them leaving.
During the European colonization of the Americas in the 15th century forced conversion of the continents’ indigenous, non-Christian population was common, especially in South America and Mesoamerica, where the conquest of large indigenous polities like the Inca and Aztec Empires placed colonizers in control of large non-Christian populations.
After Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the Khanate of Kazan (1552) the Muslim population faced slaughter, expulsion, forced resettlement and conversion to Christianity. The Portuguese practised religious persecution in Goa, India in the 16th and 17th centuries. The natives of Goa, most of them Hindus, were subjected to severe torture and oppression by the Portuguese rulers and missionaries, and forcibly converted to Christianity.
During World War II, Orthodox Serbs were forcibly converted to Catholicism by the UÅ¡tase. On 3 May 1941 a law was passed on religious conversions, pressuring Serbs to convert to Catholicism and thereby adopt a Croat identity
Under Judaism forced conversions occurred under the Hasmonean Dynasty (147 BC-37 BC). The Idumeans were forced to convert to Judaism, by threat of exile or death. As the historian Attridge pointed out “these were not isolated instances, but that forced conversion was a national policy, is clear from the fact that Alexander Jannaeus (around 80 BC) demolished the city of Pella in Moab, ‘because the inhabitants would not agree to adopt the national custom of the Jews.'” (Josephus, Antiquities. 13.15.4.)
Maurice Sartre has written of the “policy of forced Judaization adopted by Hyrcanos, Aristobulus I and Jannaeus”, who offered “the conquered peoples a choice between expulsion or conversion,”. William Horbury has written that “the evidence is best explained by postulating that an existing small Jewish population in Lower Galilee was massively expanded by the forced conversion in c.104 BC of their Gentile neighbours in the north.”
Forced conversions of Jews also took place under Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521)
Excellent piece, Mr. Creed.
My wife is Portuguese, her maiden name is de Pinho.(Pine) I was once told that many Jews living in Portugal at this time who converted to Christianity adopted similar surnames that represented trees – d’Oliveira (Olive) being another one – to identify each other and remember their heritage, I don’t know how much truth there is in this tale but it makes a good story!
The astounding military success of Mohammed and his immediate successors is valorised in Muslim history as divine sanction and itself indicative of the superior nature of the muslim faith. The swords on the flag of Saudi Arabia are not whimsical affectations. When there lingers the powerful concept of jihad, holy warfare, the question that begs answering is – to what purpose is such a concept needed in a religion?
I know muslims who are very proud of the martial character of their faith. “We do not turn the other cheek,” they say scornfully.
I dont dispute your account. What is more real than distant history is a people’s imagined history of themselves. That explains the ISIS and Al qaeda types setting off from all corners of the earth to engage in the glorious rape and pillage of the poor infidel sods in the Iraq and Syria.
I’m not trying to glorify ‘jihad’ at all. Like all 7th century wars, the Arab conquest had its fair share of brutality and atrocities. But it strikes me that understanding this history can help the West to know ISIS and predict its behavior.
In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a commitment to returning society to the 7th century. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early 7th century Islam.
Muslims can reject ISIS; the vast majority do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led many countries to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the ISIS’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, or better still destroy it.
“But it strikes me that understanding this history can help the West to know ISIS and predict its behavior.”
Except ISIS is not relying on a secular reading of 7th century muslim Arab expansion. They are inspired from the bloodthirsty accounts from the hadiths and the sira of Mohammed where there was wholesale slaughter of enemies like the Jewish tribes of Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir and the distribution of women as sex slaves. Now western scholars like Patricia Crone may have doubts about the actual historicity of these events but the muslim masses don’t and you are never going to persuade them. This is the reality that western scholars and governments have not addressed.
The muslim masses may have rejected ISIS but they haven’t rejected the theology and imagined history of their faith. The one muslim who responded upthread with his litany of grievance and expressed retribution, especially against Israel, is clearly familiar with what his faith teaches him.
aahh but an army of 15,000 in the 7th century with an estimated world population of 250 million represents an army of 420,000 in today’s world pop of 7 billion. Use statistics at your peril.
Yes indeed Kevin. If you take that further you get some astonishing results.
For example the catastrophic Roman defeat at Cannae, in the year 216 BC, as you would call it, cost the lives of about 50,000 Romans. The estimated population of Italy at time was perhaps 6 million.
So to equate that with today, means multiplying by ten, giving a figure of 500,000 Roman dead. More than the combined total for the initial blasts at Hiroshima & Nagasaki. (129,000-226,000).
Predictably, the Roman suffered a short outbreak of ‘lack of moral fibre’ and resorted to human sacrifice to appease the Gods, (a favourite ploy of most religions when in crisis, incidentally).
On this occasion the Gods were ‘satisfied’ with the burial alive, of two Gauls and two Greeks (note no Romans).
However the Gods noted this parsimony, and the Romans had to wait another 14 years for final victory at Zama in 202 BC.
Why do you assume people in the 7th century went unarmed? Population estimates in the 7th century are difficult at best. But Roman Egypt had an estimated population of 8 million. Greater Syria estimated at 4.8 million. The Maghreb at 6.5 million. The Arab army that invaded N. Africa numbered approx. 16,000. The Byzantines probably numbered around 30,000. The Arabs didn’t win thru overwhelming military strength. They won because the Byzantine Empire was exhausted at this time after 28 years of war with the Sassanids. And they won because they gained the friendship of the Coptic Christians.
I’m talking in the context of the Arab invasion of Egypt between 639-646 AD, not what came afterwards. The head of the Coptic church Cyrus of Alexandria entered into a treaty with the Arab leader Amr ibn al-As recognising Muslim sovereignty over Egypt and insisted they would honour the terms even if the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius repudiated it. Cyrus was stripped of the viceroyship by the emperor but still insisted the Coptic Christians would honour the treaty. As the Copts were native Egyptians, the treaty gave a strategic advantage to the Muslims.
Furthermore, when the exiled Coptic Patriarch Benjamin returned to Alexandria, Amr treated him with respect and he was asked to resume control of the over the Coptic church. Amr also arranged for the restoration of the monasteries in the Wadi Natrun which had been destroyed by the Chalcedonean Christians.
As the historian Hugh Kennedy pointed out “the pious biographer of Coptic patriarch Benjamin presents us with the striking image of the patriarch praying for the success of the Muslim commander Amr against the Christians of the Cyrenaica. Benjamin also prayed for Amr when he attempted to take Libya”
Very interesting ““ more of an essay than a comment.
I assume your point Is that Islam, once established (by conquest surely), attracted converts for diverse reasons, pragmatic and otherwise. Accepting (or paying lip-service to) the established order and seeking to prosper within it is typical of human nature. We see it all around us. Conversion by the sword not required in the long run.
However, if unbelievers were a valuable source of revenue for the dominant muslim elite there must surely have been a measure oppressive force used ““ to say the least. No one likes paying taxes ““ least of all to a conqueror.
I would take this ‘free will conversion’ theory with a grain of salt, it contradicts everything I’ve ever read. He may be focusing on men but what the ISIS did to the Yazidi population is a great example of muslim conquest of territory; execute the males, rape and enslave the women. Mohammed made a living at this and he was proud of it.
For sure, like in all empires. We know for example that the poll tax was hated. A coptic Christian, John of Nikiû who lived after the Arab conquest of Egypt vividly records the terror that gripped the country in the aftermath of the invasion. There were also atrocious committed against the Coptic Christians and there were reports that the taxes were so burdensome some families were forced to sell their children into slavery. Oppressive force was definitely used, I would agree with that.
Very interesting detail on 7-9th century Islam – but that is a snapshot of a long a protracted history.
As M Fraser points out – an army of 15,000 in this era is rather large.
Later in the 12-14th centuries we see Islam come close to pushing Christianity out of the Iberian Peninsula. Onwards we see various battles such as Lepanto (C.16) and Vienna (C.17) which stem the tide against expansion.
Early Islam (in parts) was largely progressive for its era within its borders, but nevertheless was as brutal as Christianity in its spread.
In latter modern day history the Islamic world became less relevant and globally quite backwards. This was changed by three major factors: large proportions of the world’s oil supplies were found in the middle east, large scale immigration occurred into Western societies and the populations in poorer (Muslim) countries grew at a faster rate than Western ones.
Now that it is more relevant the more archaic cultural elements of these societies are creating friction with Western ones.
your dates are wrong. Islam DID push Christianity out of most of spain after 711. By the 13th and certainly the 14th century, the reconquista was well underway, and within another century or two Muslim Spain would disappear entirely.
Very true. I was looking at the Arab invasions of the 7th century not the whole 1,410 years of Islam.
I’m not sure Fraser is entirely correct. Perhaps in comparison to Western Europe. But even then its easy to forgot that “Charlemagne..could muster for simultaneous major campaigns perhaps 150,000 men. Individual armies of 35,000 to 40,000, though hardly common, were not unknown” (G, Parker, Cambridge History of Warfare, 2005).
Compared to the armies of the Near East, 15,000 was not an especially large number. Justinian had an estimated 300,000-350,000 soldiers. Even at the height of the 7th century crisis, the Byzantine army stood at around 129,000 men. The Sassanids field armies could easily reach 45,000-50,000 men, possibly even 100,000-130,000.
I would suggest that 20,000 armed soldiers who were quite happy to kill any civilian without a moment’s thought was enough to terrorise even large populations. Remember how Justinian ordered his troops to kill 30,000 people in the Hippodrome to quell a riot. They didn’t mess about in those days.
The problem is that we have historical sources for the massacre in the Hippodrome (532 AD). Its mentioned by Procopius (Wars, 1. 24) and also the Chronicon Paschale. We have no historical evidence of large-scale mass forcible conversions in the aftermath of the Arab invasion of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt in the 7th century.
They did force people to convert and their religious writings give men permission in battle to rape women and take sex slaves and this is a form of conversion if the “women” were old enough to survive the sexual violation without bleeding to death. We regularly hear about child brides who bled to death on their wedding night rapes and this is most likely a fraction of what actually takes place, historically muslims have been known to execute males and take women for rape/slavery in conquest just as they did the Yazidi recently.
Islam spread through a combination of factors – military conquest, strategic marriages among elite ruling families (mass conversion followed the ruler’s conversion), and trade.
Yes, and the death penalty for apostasy – or at the very least in these days, total rejection by one’s family and community who will take your children from you, is a very effective way of keeping them filled.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Macron is quite often right about things, but has enormous difficulty in terms of rectifying a given situation or problem. Not that there is really anything he can do about the inevitable and inexorable Islamisation of Europe. That is the future that our demented and despicable politicians have chosen for us.
Agreed, but Europe’s multiculturalism and liberal approach to mass immigration and social security has been its weakness and the enabling foundation of the longer term, gradual and less obvious strategy of out-breeding us. Islamism sees liberal democracy as an opportunity to infiltrate and outnumber non-Muslims. This is well under way, particularly in France and Germany.
Eh? Last time I looked Christianity, while perhaps weakened, was far from destroyed. Of anything pertaining to its evident decline, capitalism (a very broad term) is marginally culpable. Has it destroyed Judaism? Hardly. Capitalism seems pretty strong in the Gulf states too.
I mean destroyed it as a dominant political force. I’m thinking of capitalism as the economic system of liberalism. I think the same thing will happen to Islam; in fact, I think this is what has riled the Muslims up — the sureties of the old dispensation are slipping away.
Huh? Islam is the ultimate merchantile religion, apart from its prohibition of usury (easy get arounds exist!), there is nothing remotely anti-capitalistic about it.
It absolutely does. But watching leftists fail to see it is like watching a farmer lead a fox into his chicken coup for the night and tell it to take good care of his chickens.
It’s worse than that – it seems to be a deliberate and conscious policy of seeing & hearing nothing / no evil. This blind eye approach results in the rising terrorist activity across Europe and paedophile gangs in northern English cities. But, hey, multiculturalism trumps all…
Mark M
3 years ago
Quote ““ “most Islamists are not monsters. They are often educated, compassionate, articulate and charismatic individuals.” So were many Nazis. They were still monsters. So are these so-called Islamists. Because some of them may be suave and sophisticated doesn’t excuse them. After all, Hitler liked dogs and children, but that doesn’t make him a nice person.
Alice Miller makes a great case for the results of extreme violence in childhood causing an authoritarian populace in her books “For Your Own Good” and “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware”. A Swiss psychoanalyst, she places Hitler in the context of his day, when child-rearing was incredibly brutal, and documents an entire culture of trauma-bonded authoritarians dissociating from their terror, trained to project negative feelings from severe brutality in childhood onto an ‘other’ whether it be a racial minority, females, or animals. This is very textbook, only when it infects entire cultures like Nazi Germany or Islamist nations do we get curious about the underlying reasons.
m pathy
3 years ago
Bravo, one of the best articles on Islamism I have read. Most western commentators, even the so-called Islamism or terror experts are utterly lost when it comes to this topic.
David Jory
3 years ago
Who do I believe: a journalist in the West or the Koran and President Erdogan? The last said that there is no fundamentalist Islam just Islam. Please read the Koran if you have not. It doesn’t take long, and the murderous nature of its teachings are clear.
Peter KE
3 years ago
The French and Austrian’s are correct in their approach to these murderous criminals. The failed experiment is multiculturalism in the west and especially that of the U.K. promoted by blair and phillips. Hopefully the French can bring this situation under control.
I don’t think you can argue that French universalism is any more or less than a success or failure than is multiculturalism. Numbers count for most – and France has the largest number of Muslims in Europe
Christin
3 years ago
Macron is right to be concerned although it’s rather late in the day. And the author errs in placing any faith at all in any distinction between islamism and islam. Just ask Erdogan. “These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ” Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. He would know. He assisted ISIS, and still does.
dorothywebdavies
3 years ago
I resent the author talking about “the anglosphere” as if all in Britain and America were as stupid as some of our leaders (notably the multiculturist politicians) are. Most people I know in my part of Britain would applaud Macron, saying “At last! He sees sense.”
Albert Kensington
3 years ago
“The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic.”
Should we? A fairly cursory look at the Koran would strongly suggest otherwise
If Islamic and Islamism were synonymous, all religious muslims would support sharia, if not Islamist terror tactics. But they don’t. There IS a distinction, and it’s important to make it, unless you want to play identity politics and essentialize every devout Muslim.
Fiona E
3 years ago
“While we can object to Paris or Vienna’s prescriptions to deal with the problem, we have much to learn from the diagnosis.” Who is this ‘we’? I’m quite certain ‘we’ the ordinary people are largely in agreement with Paris and Vienna while ‘we’ the politicians, media and others with influence (i.e. those who shout the loudest) who prevaricate and make excuses for a political ideology that hates liberal democracy as much as Communists and Fascists did, may ‘object’. It’s quite simple for ‘ordinary people’ – extreme ideologies (Communism, Fascism, Islamism) should have no place in western countries. People (of any race or religion) who appreciate freedom of conscience, thought, expression and religion should be welcome here, anyone who doesn’t should find somewhere else to live – there are plenty of illiberal, intolerant, countries to move to.
I think there is a difference between freedom from religion and freedom of religion. I would say that the former is not possible (the growing churches in China and Korea are witness to this) and, since freedom from religion is not possible, people should be allowed to follow the religion of their choice.
I think there is also a difference between Islamism and Islam. The militant nature of the former is based on early original texts (Nabeel Qureshi wrote about this in ‘Answering Jihad’) while many Muslims do not know this and speak out against Islamism. Others, like the liberal followers of any faith, play pick and mix with their holy books.
While no-one can be born a Christian, it must be a conscious decision, one can be born Jewish for instance. Therefore, one cannot stop being Jewish but can, of course, be a secular Jew, atheist Jew or a messianic Jew. I know about the words whispered in the ear of a newborn in a Muslim family but do not know if this makes them a Muslim or if they need to accept beliefs.
The pick and mix is a good observation. People railing against the Koran as a book of war and conquest, handily forget all the parts of the Christian bible that get quietly dropped as they become incompatible with daily life. People are ‘born’ Christians though, or at least become it very fast through involuntary baptism. You “cannot stop being Jewish” – is that true? Surely you can stop believing any imaginary story you like. Do you mean genetically ?
Yes, you stop believing but you cannot stop being a descendent of Abraham. People have been trying to stop being Jewish throughout the centuries.
Which parts of the Bible do you mean when you mention being ‘handily forgotten’? Much of the Old Testament, for example laws such as not having tattoos or not wearing mixed fabrics, are superseded by the incarnation of Christ although the moral law, the 10 commandments, continues.
I think that baptism is a sacrament that is a symbol and it does not make anyone believe. Belief is innner but baptism is an outward.expression.
I understand that proofs are generally reserved for things like maths? Evidence, however, or rather a total lack of, is a different matter entirely. To this end, I am inclined to accept the scholarly consensus on such matters, much in the same way as I accept things like evolution or the Human Genome Project refuting such nonsense as a single original breeding pair of humans as described in Genesis.
However, if one wishes to accept tales regarding figures such as Abraham and Moses and even the veracity of the story of Noah and his incestuous family being the progenitors of the second phase of humanity once the global flood had receded, after Yahweh/Jesus obliterated most life as we know it then who am I am to gainsay such beliefs? But please, let’s just try not to indoctrinate children with this nonsense. Thanks.
You mean evidence (or lack thereof) surely? Are you unaware of the scholarly consensus surrounding/ regarding this issue? Along with the tale of Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood and Moses and the Exodus. It holds that the Pentateuch is historical fiction, part of the Jewish geopolitical foundation myth, and has been the scholarly consensus for at least a couple of generations. Google is your friend!
I am unaware of any secular historian or archaeologist who puts any store in the historicity of either Abraham or Moses. Many of those of a religious leaning also recognise that these two characters and the tales they are part of are merely part of geopolitical foundation myth. But I am fully open to evidence to the contrary. If you have something … anything, I would appreciate a link. Thanks.
Why wouldn’t you ”go there”? There is no evidence whatsoever for the character Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the gospels. One can hardly expect to retain any vestige of credibility if one chooses to assert that the Lake Tiberius pedestrian is anything but a work of narrative fiction.
As for an Itinerant preacher; someone called Yeshu, perhaps, who was crucified by the Romans for sedition? Sure, why not? Josephus mentions several types, and Yeshu /Joshua was a common enough name. However, the character Jesus of Nazareth as featured and described in the bible; divinely conceived and born of an underage virgin, a carpenter’s adopted son; the miracle working Lake Tiberius pedestrian who, according to the story, was raised from the dead after three days and then floated off into space. Nah! This character is a work of narrative fiction that no serious scholar or historian considers historical for one second. Just as well, too! Imagine if proper historians granted such a fantasy character genuine historical status. Good grief!
The character Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the bible is an obvious work of narrative fiction. That there may have been an itinerant 1st century rabbi called Yeshu is a possibility. Josephus mentions a few, I believe.
He mentions more than one person called Jesus, but only one who would be the historical Jesus, as in the one killed by Pilate, and he mentions him twice. As I said no serious scholar believes that Jesus didn’t exist. The internet though is different, but the the flat earth society is popular enough on the web.
What I find interesting but not surprising is that the people who oppose the idea of a historical Jesus don’t come up with a counter argument as to the founder of Christianity and don’t think they have to. It’s worth asking then – who invented the fictional Jesus, and why and when?
Counter argument? Well, Saul/Paul is the likely go-to culprit. And as there is no mention of this character in the historical record outside of Christian circles one could be forgiven that he too is a work of narrative fiction.
His supposed letters – in themselves are, in places, regarded as somewhat of a smorgasbord of redaction, did not surface until Marcion ”collected” them and turned them over to the Church, apparently.
As Saul/Paul’s version of Christianity is based on his ”vision” there is enough doubt to consider Yeshu/Jesus to be a narrative construct.
Tacitus, Annals 15:44 for the best reference. Oddly, Pilate is referred to as the Procurator, whereas the archaeological evidence (the Pilate Stone) names him as Prefect of Judea.
Incidentally I think executed by Pilate fits better than “killed by Pilate”.
Are you aware that there are two sections of the “Christian bible”, and the bit that actually involves Christ, the New Testament, advocates non-violence and is supposed to have priority over the pro-conquest passages of the ‘Old’? But over and above that argument, the Bible in any case comprises bits and pieces that were produced by many different people over many centuries, and trying to make it yield any one message consistently never works. Whereas the Koran was produced by one man at one time in a peculiar mental state, and is all too consistent.
Yes I am aware that the Christian bible has an original version and a sequel. I am pretty confident that nowhere in the New Testament does it actually say that it supercedes the Old. There are many Christians out there who believe it’s more of a supplemental document.
The Koran is as open to interpretation as the Bible is. If it wasn’t there would be a single Islamic faith that would probably be at actual permanent war with unbelievers. Luckily the vast majority Muslims apply moderate interpretations. The Koran is also supplemented by hundreds of hadith, which are a field of study in themselves. You might have heard of a book called The Satanic Verses which deals with an even further complication to the religion.
The religious texts for both religions are a dog’s breakfast of bolted together parts. I don’t buy an argument that Muslims have a better instruction manual. (Though if they did, you’d have to wonder if they didn’t also have the better God)
None. Thats the difference, not what’s IN the holy books, but how they are followed today. Christianity and Judaism stopped taking the violent bits in their bible seriously a century or two ago. Muslims haven’t done so yet. Maybe they will, maybe never.
human affairs are far too complex to be so binary. Yes jews are an ethnicity, but with a religious license. Yes it makes no sense, but neither do lots of other things and institutions humans create and deal with every day.
“no-one can be born a Christian” Whatever the theological niceties, I was effectively informed I was a Christian as a child, before I had any idea what it meant.
I have no issues with the moral — and every other — superiority of the West. And it’s true, there aren’t many ex-Muslims in Pakistan. However, this discussion is about Muslims in Europe. And there are plenty of ex-Muslims there.
There is a difference, and many devout Muslims in the West and elsewhere believe in freedom of, and from, religion.
Scott Powell
3 years ago
The core of Islam, like Christianity, is conquest. Except, Christianity gave up the conquest game a long time ago. True Islamists still want every knee to bend to Allah, and however that is achieved is fine. To say this is ‘incompatible’ with Western values is plainly, obviously true, but no one in leadership has the balls to make it categorical.
Christianity gave up the conquest game a long time ago? In 2001, US President Bush talked of a Crusade against ‘a new kind of evil.’ It seems to be ongoing.
He used the word ‘crusade’. If you live in a part of the world with American boots on the ground, why wouldn’t you believe him? We put our armed forces where it suits us to put them. Whether it’s in the name of Christendom or petroleum probably feels like semantics to the locals.
The core of Islam is conquest – quite unlike Christianity. Many Christian leaders played the conquest game, but they did so in direct contradiction to the message of their founder, who said ‘Turn the other cheek’ and ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.
Sure, Christians did a lot of conquering, and often did it in the name of Christ, but I’d challenge you to find anything in Christ’s teachings that actually justified it.
Sure, this has been said for centuries, mainly with regard to the Catholic Church.
Various Protestant sects come closer to the teachings of Jesus, in my view: simplicity, humility etc.
But that most Christians fall far, far short of their role model has been obvious for ages. Few Christians give up all their worldly possessions, for one thing.
You won’t find much intersection between, say, the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed, so the separation goes back at least to before 325. The Evangelicals in the US may not think the Creed is authoritative, but their reliance on the scriptures instead is curious, since regardless of Jesus’s pacifistic admonitions, 75% of them voted for G. W. Bush in 2004 in spite of his aggressive warmongering and lying. I think we’re left with marginal groups like the Quakers, Hutterites, Dukhobors, and so forth. Mainstream Christianity is not burdened much by the direct, plain-spoken teachings of the person they are supposed to regard as God, so these seem irrelevant to the political and military behavior of the Christian world.
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago
“The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic. As was explained by two of France’s leading scholars, Bernard Haykel and Hugo Micheron, failing to make this differentiation only confirms Islamist and far-right presentation of events.” “It is a comprehensive political theory, albeit one with a religious basis: Islamists seek a fundamental reordering of society and the establishment of a state governed in accordance with the shar’ia.” 23% of British Muslims support the introduction of Sharia Law. Islamism may not be the same as Islamic, but one flows from the other. It’s a mistake to think otherwise.
Daniel, if 23% of British Muslims support the introduction of sharia, 77% don’t. Your own quote from Liam pretty much says that Islamism from Islam. It would be strange if it did not. However, I agree with Liam that in attacking Islamism British political leaders should always make the distinction between the two. Otherwise, many British Muslims who aren’t Islamists now may be pushed in that direction.
23% admit to supporting Sharia law. A large proportion will be “don’t know”. One poll has an even higher figure of 43%, and just 22% actually opposed. Of course it’s inevitable politicians are too afraid to criticise Islam, and understandably risky. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a dangerous ideology.
23% admit to supporting Sharia law. And that’s more than 1 in 5. A large proportion will be “don’t know” or “prefer not to say”. One poll has an even higher figure of 43%, and just 22% actually opposed. Of course it’s inevitable politicians are too afraid to criticise Islam, and understandably risky. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a dangerous ideology.
Yes but it tends to be vocal and committed minorities who make the revolutionary changes, who make history. Puritans were a small minority in English society in the 1630s – yet they exerted influence in Parliament and the City out of all proportion to their numbers. In the next decade they sparked a revolution, overturned the Royal Gov’t and chopped off the king’s head.
Same situation in Russia – how many committed Communists were there before the Revolution? Few I’d wager.
We live in interesting times, we face what is a systemic economic crisis, it would not be suprising if it turned into a collapse
A more interesting question would be how many are against the imposition of sharia.
Michael North
3 years ago
If Macron just drops the “-ism”, he’ll be on the right track.
Sidney Eschenbach
3 years ago
Seems the comments have gone far afield, as the article essentially engages a couple of simple questions; first, can a polity governed by a democratic system be successful and workable within the reality of tolerant multiculturalism, and second, can any secular pluralist democratic system survive a fanatical subculture which seeks to subvert the majority society within which it lives. My read is that Macron’s answer to the first is yes, but to the second, no… and therein the distinction between Islamism and Islamist.
My own view is that the answer to both the first and second questions is no. Multiculturalism, by definition, cannot function in within the realities of democratic, one person one vote governance, and that when you add into that difficult proposition the fact that certain of the ‘multi-cultures’ are dedicated to dominating the others, the answer is definitely no.
I applaud Macron, both politically and socially. Politically, because he co-opts the central thesis of the far right, and socially, because, as Abraham Lincoln so aptly put it, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. The US proved it with a civil war, and hopefully Macron and other enlightened leaders in the west can right the ships of state before far worse divisions become manifest.
RE: can any secular pluralist democratic system survive a fanatical subculture which seeks to subvert the majority society within which it lives
Don’t know why you’re so certain. there’s no historical evidence for this, and given that Western institutions are more adaptable than those of the “fanatical subculture”, I would venture that the most the fanatics are capable of is outbursts of violence that are personally calamitous for their victims and their families, but don’t affect society as a whole much at all (911 excepted).
No evidence? I’d put the US as example #1, and cite the Civil War as prima facie evidence. Indeed, I can make a very good case that that war and the attempt of a fanatical subculture that supported it is still going on. today. There are others, but…. that’s a pretty good one.
apparently the U.S. managed to survive the “fanatical subculture” of the civil war South very well; it became the predominant power in the world and the world’s richest country.
Macron belongs to a school of thought (economic liberalism) that is responsible for France’s current woes. In the 1960s and 70s, lobbied by industry captains, French governments invited hundred of thousands of African immigrants (most of whom were Muslims) to come in. African migrants had the advantage to represent a serviceable workforce with no class-awareness. Eventually, their children and grand children
If Macron was serious is his will to reign in radical Islam, he would get rid of France’s lax family reunification laws, reinstate border checks, expel irregular migrants and would stop taking 25 000 refugees every year. But he’s not gonna do that because entire segments of the French economy rely on cheap labour.
Unless France tackles the issue of immigration, nothing will change, and I say that while being myself the son of a Tunisian immigrant.
Ebtihej, migrants can definitely be a threat, but only if they insist upon creating the place they left. Obviously, we cannot change what we are… but it’s as crazy to migrate to another country only to try to turn it into what you left as it is to visit a friends house and tell him/her how to behave in their house. A sizable minority of people are migrants, and having lived 50 of my 72 years in countries other than my own, I always respect the fact that I’m a guest in another’s home. What Islamists appear to want is to change the host country to their liking, and that is something that simply cannot be accepted in France, where I too live, or any other. Otherwise, migrants can be a hugely beneficial influence on their new country, and contribute great energy and achievement to it.
crediniente
3 years ago
I’ve been watching this situation in the United States for so long I’m bored with it. Ex-muslim apostates to read and support are Ayaann Hirsi Ali, Maryam Namazie, Sarah Haider, Yasmine Mohammed, Kacem El Ghazzali, Rahana Sultan, Kunwar Khaldune Shahid, Ensaf Haidar, Armin Navabi, and that’s just a short list of progressive thinkers, writers, and activists. Also please support the movement to have Ensaf Haidar’s husband Raif Badawi removed from prison in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy. There are many more progressive muslims and ex-muslims but these are the people whose writings and activism will help westerners get cognition about why we are not bound to, nor should we, support a stone age patriarchal religion soaked in conquest and toxic masculinity. The reasons for the repeated violence from islamism have nothing to do with race or religion but the inherent violent traditions of misogyny, spousal abuse, and child battery. It’s that simple. It is a cultural ideology that deranges a portion of its populace through violence and that percentage is significant enough to make it inherently destructive and oppressive.
What irritates me most about trying to have conversations about the topic in the U.S. is that because we have a binary political system you are perceived racist if you don’t sign off on Islam in general. As a feminist, a real one, I never will. I grew up in violent conservative patriarchal religion and I will never bow down to lick the bootstraps of another one. I know misogyny and toxic masculinity when I see it and I don’t care what geographic region, race, culture, or country it springs up in, it’s all the same to me and it’s all from the same root, domestic violence in all its forms and flavors from child rape to animal cruelty to wife beating and whatever other way males have of being malignant and destructive. Most patriarchal religions do not derange quite as significant a fraction of their populace in order to be consistently self-annihilating, but this one does. Maybe Islam is an over-achiever, I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s time people stopped flinging around the words ‘bigot’ and ‘islamophobia’ at people who are far more educated, deeper thinkers, and more wise than they are, because they are too lazy and frightened of their own inherent racism to take a very brave and dangerous stand against the destructiveness of this ideology. Great article.
Micah… BRAVO! Well said. I have no truck with either the American Evangelicals, the Jewish Fundamentalists, the Hindu nationalists, the Islamist jihadis or any other religious zealot. As an American living in France, I strongly support what Macron is trying to do. Multiculturalism in a secular democracy simply cannot work, and I think while he may not be as intolerant of tolerance as I… he’s getting there. Also, along the way, he’s taking the raison d’etre from the right, hopefully buying himself another 6 years in 2022 (the left here, LePen and Melonchon, is over). He’s been a bridge of sanity for the west, along with Merkel, while both England and the US lost their collective heads. Too bad about England, they’re damaged for years… but the US can return to a strong Europe just in time due to Macron’s work over the Trump years.
Once again, congratulations on a brief but eloquent crier du coeur. Couldn’t agree more.
I agree with what you’re saying about the need to support moderate Islam. But I don’t understand the part about it being nothing to do with religion, but instead is a ‘cultural ideology’. I don’t see there’s a distinction. The Koran is full of messages of intolerance and violence, which many seem to implicitly accept, even if they don’t act on them. Moderate Muslims can thus be easily attacked for not being the true voice of religion by both Western bigots and the fundamentalists. My point is that the intolerance does have to do with the religion and that, as a priority, Islam needs an overhaul by credible authorities within the faith. It is not the same as other faiths. Proof of that is which single religious figure you’d be actually afraid to draw.
Evidence suggests that the cultural traditions of genital mutilation did predate Islam. But ‘cultural traditions’ are not forcing anyone to hold down an infant and slice her genitalia off while she screams. I do not believe that this is about religion per se, as I stated, I believe that what is driving Islam like a mind-virus that replicates without control is domestic violence, and child abuse. I GUARANTEE YOU, I promise you, even though it can’t be proved, if all corporal punishment of children, FGM, circumcision and wife-beating within Islam stopped tomorrow, they would shed their apostasy laws like water off a ducks back and their religious extremism would cease to exist. Child abuse causes brain damage, and domestic violence is the most harmful childhood trauma that has been proven by the largest study of its kind ever done to affect the mental and physical health of those affected throughout the entire lifespan of the victim (by that I mean child witnesses along with those being battered). This is the study of almost 20k people over lifespan that demonstrated that. https://www.cdc.gov/violenc… I followed apostates for a decade though and saw so much video gore of what goes on within Islamic communities that I finally had to ban myself from observing it any longer. It is a religious culture of unbelievably toxic masculinity and corporal punishment of children, wives, and household staff that would land people in western societies long prison terms. I had to see this stuff to believe it, though it is not for the faint of heart because it can’t be unseen. Western leftists and liberals desperately need to LISTEN to the stories of apostates of Islam and respect what they are telling us about this religion and its culture of violence toward women and children. In the United States and other western democracies where there are Muslim populations female children are STILL having their genitalia cut off, albeit more likely at a doctors office under anesthesia. They may have changed the method but the mutilation is still ongoing. What I’m saying is that the culturally accepted endemic violence in Islam intentionally creates authoritarianism, and authoritarianism replicates itself by brain damage through violence into one generation after another after another.
Winston Churchill
3 years ago
Degradations such as these, ie: Islam and Islamism are mostly fictional and serve certain political expediency or even an attempt to obscure the obvious and to appease the intolerant ideology of a Theocracy which is Islam itself. The fact that there is not a single democracy to be found across the Islamic countries should tell you a lot and alert you to even more. In the end it’s about whose side you’re on. I’m on the side of a nation that has given so much to the Western civilisation and to our Democratic values. Vive La France.
I’m no fan of Islam… indeed, an equal opportunity atheist, so no fan of Taoists, Catholics, Buddists, Jews, Hindus… all predatory systems. In any event, yes there are Muslim democracies, albeit struggling; namely Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Albania, Bangladesh and Senegal. Lots of others, very limited democracies. Just FYI.
As to your last ‘Vive la France’, couldn’t agree more. I live here.
aemiliuspaullus
3 years ago
Interesting and intelligent article. I have always thought the French experience was in some ways unique. France became the target of neo-salafi terrorist networks like the GIA as early as the 1980’s. But because France is one of the most policed states in the world (approx. 394 police/100,000 population) they rolled up this terrorist network very quickly. It also helped that while highly centralized under the Interior Ministry, the gov’s counter-terrorism function is not placed under a particular department. It is spread among a half-dozen police/intelligence agencies each entrusted with a specific mission.
Have also wondered whether western Intelligence Agencies could exploit the divisions within the Salafi movement. Quietist salafis are focused on perfecting prayer, ritual, and hygiene, and are at odds with ISIS. ISIS loathes them and frequently mock them as ‘Salafis of menstruation’ for their obscure judgements about when women are ‘clean’. Quietist Salafis are considered ultraconservative even by most Muslims, but could they be persuaded to provide intelligence about those who wish to commit violence? That’s something a counter-terrorism expert could answer.
I think the article falls short in its understanding of closed schools of thought versus open ones. The orthodoxy of islamism is the same as that of modern western leftism/marxism. There is only one truth, which is subjective and known only to the true believers. There is no such thing as reason, science or logic. Humanity is at best so stupid it must be ruled by a totalitarian leviathan, and at worst so evil it must be punished or killed by the same. Though not perfect the enlightenment era republics – France and USA, represent a move forward from the fallacy of the leviathan. Its up to Britain and the Anzac countries to decide if we want to join them going forward or continue either in stasis or reverse. Granted Biden on paper is a threat to the USA’s founding principles but with a good seperation of powers it remains to be seen what his puppet masters can achieve. As for the man himself with a history of anti-bussing, pro imprisonment of blacks and pro fracking he makes Trump look like Jeremy Corbyn.
I’ll take our nice parliamentary system in the Anglo Commonwealth countries over those in the U.S.A. or France any day. France, in particular, seems more prone to the leviathan, if the past is any guide, than Canada, the UK or Oz/NZ.
Vijay Kant
3 years ago
The fact that Islam at its core is a political ideology disguised as a religion has now slow begun to be understood by the West. The partition of India in 1947 on religious ground should have rung the bell for the British! But may be British were just as guilty of dividing India as were Islamists. Perhaps that is why Britain underestimates the global ambition of Islamists.
Andrew Russell
3 years ago
Surely Macron should wheel out some hippy-type bozo to give us rousing versions of “Imagine”, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Kumbaya” as European leaders stand shoulder-to-shoulder to protest against this sort of thing? It’s always worked before.
Andrew, I think you lost the plot, as that is exactly what Macron is NOT doing, while is is precisely what Anglophile opinion shapers are urging be done.
Irony: The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. Dear God.
Adrian Smith
3 years ago
The big problem with attacking Islamism is, whilst it is not the same as attacking Islam, the underpinning cultural root of many Muslims is tribalism with very long running blood feuds that they will put aside to unite against an outside foe on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle. Basically you know when they feel no real larger threat when they get back to settling the 2 centuries’ old blood feud with the family in the next village.
In short, whilst you can be as clear as you can be that you are attacking Islamism and not Islam, the vast majority of Muslims won’t see it that way and will react accordingly and very soon your war on Islamism will become a war on Islam, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
Tad Pringle
3 years ago
Reading articles on Islam and then the comments below them (when sites have the courage to provide the opportunity) always leads me to conclude that (some) readers are searching for truth and that many (most) writers have an agenda. The currently fashionable one is to shield Islam by writing word-salads on “Islamism”. The question “what are you afraid of?” doesn’t require an answer.
Robin P
3 years ago
There is no such thing as “Islamism”. It is Islam, the faith founded by a well-documented warlord who assassinated anyone who did not go along with his commands, and the faith whose followers revere (unknowingly or otherwise) the most hate-filled, most violence-inciting book in history. If “Holocaust Denial” is not acceptable, then Jihad Denial, denial of the 1400 years of unholy war (in which the 9-11 attacks were just a small blip) must be far more unacceptable. And yet we see it right here on this page. What a disgrace to the memory of the many millions (and more every day) of victims of this misguided ideology. Shame.
Well, yes, but all informed and intelligent people have known this for years.
Andrew Hallett
3 years ago
“..that it is only a means to a utopian end..” wouldn’t “dystopian” be a better word?
Bill
3 years ago
Excellent article. Someone with the appropriate connections should send this to the President-elect Biden.
Otto Christensen
3 years ago
Lian Duffy is asking questions the answers to which are not long winded dissertations about who invaded where and when. ( I get very discouraged when Comments veers off topic into pedantic debates.) Rather questions are being raised as to what the desired outcomes should be for a Universalist modern Republic and if the methods being by employed by Macron to achieve that goal are justified? Questions are being asked about the meaning and value of secularism in the context of the separation of Church and State and whether Universalism rather than Multi Culturalism serves in the long term to protect the individual? Questions like is 300 murdered the magic number before the State intervenes to protect its fundamental beliefs?
Philip MINNS
3 years ago
“Islamism is a real phenomenon and a serious challenge to France, both in terms of violent radicalisation and social cohesion.”Having lived in France for the past 40 years, I find this article excellent and, I hope, en eye-opener for many. Terrorism and murder hit the headlines all too often but the long march through the institutions by Islamic radicals is just as dangerous in the long term. One of the less reported aspects about the murder of Samuel Paty for instance was the visit to the headmistress of the school where Paty taught by the father of a pupil who untruthfully claimed to have been present in the class in which Paty showed the famous cartoons, accompanied by a local Muslim worthy. They came to protest about the cartoons being used in a class on freedom of expression, From what we know, the headmistress sent them packing but it is also alleged that the Muslim community leader was in touch with the assassin on social media. All this will come out in the investigation and eventually the trial of the assassin’s accomplices, whether they knew or suspected his intentions or not.
Where will it all lead ? Anybody looking for clues would do well to read Michel Houellebecq’s novel “Submission” – one possible scenario among others. But it is clear to me that unless French society can offer an attractive “Republican” alternative to so many disaffected young men, the long march through the institutions by these “well educated and charismatic” Islamic figures will continue.
Jonathan Nash
3 years ago
I agree that Islamism in our societies has to be countered with direct action of the kind advocated by Macron, but also with an intellectual argument about the success, and morality, of our values. If we don’t also voice our values, the field will be left to those who can easily point to the gluttony, addiction and pornography of much of Western popular culture. If you think I am exaggerating have a look at the video just released promoting Miley Cyrus’s new song “Prisoner”, a duet with Dua Lipa, and reflect that it is aimed at pre-teen and teenage girls.
Roland Powell
3 years ago
An excellent explanation. Will our rather brexocentric rulers “get it”?
Phil Bolton
3 years ago
It’s an interesting discussion piece which highlights the issue with Western liberal societies, but offers very little by way of solutions. “Islamist imagination is incompatible with modern liberal democratic nation-states, which extend rights and protections based on citizenship rather than religion.” So what do we do ? Accept that Islamists will be unhappy living in Western countries but should like it or lump it, and we accept that there will be the occasional terrorist incident ? Neither force will be giving way so maybe we should just accept the status quo as it is today. I’ve seen many enlightened comments but no realistic solutions.
‘I’ve seen many enlightened comments but no realistic solutions.’
In 1,400 years nobody has found a realistic solution to Islam. And you say they are ‘unhappy living in Western countries’, but they are not unhappy living in Western countries because they know those countries will, in time, be Islamic countries.
Based on 1,400 years of Islamic expansion they believe, quite rationally, that Islam will come to dominate Europe. In a sense it already dominates Europe because the number one or two concern of all European governments – Covid aside – is working out how to address the problems caused by Islamic terrorism.
Islam hasn’t been expanding for 1400 years, and certainly not into Europe. Total nonsense. Islam began to contract in Western Europe in the 12th or 13th century, and in eastern Europe after 1683. By the 1800s the Ottomans were the “sick man of Europe” which had lost virtually ALL of its European territory, first Greece, then Montenegro, Serbia, etc. and eventually all except the tiny sliver of territory that Istanbul sits on.
A 50 megaton bomb, on Cairo, Riyadh, Islamabad, and Mecca should “do the trick”. What do you think?
Pete Kreff
3 years ago
Islamists are not simply religious conservatives ” indeed they are opposed to many traditional cultural practices
I’m not sure that line of argument works. They are against traditional cultural practices because they aren’t specifically endorsed by Islamic scripture.
Lyn Griffiths
3 years ago
My feelings are of the spiritual, and that we continue a path of learning until we reach the goal of good over many lifetimes. Man made religious input over thousands of years has in my view become corrupted to suit the leader of the day. So if temperament and psychological leanings are off centre in that time. Tradition will still insist in its cultural/traditional/ religious need up to and seen in modern day. Why? Unsure but could be based on laziness or timidity for change. But one thing every human being is aware, death is final. To kill to compensate for individual or group inability is murder and to place it under a veil of a religious cause is cowardly and evil.
Every human being is aware that death is final? Many Buddhists believe in reincarnation, so for them death is definitely not final, while Muslims and Christians often think they’ll wind up in Heaven or Hell when this life is over, perhaps making death a final change, but still not exactly final.
They don’t care if death is final for the body. If you’ve drunk the kool aid that this earth is a brief waiting room before paradise and your 27 virgins, then what the hell. You might as well strap on the suicide vest and get there sooner.
emmamaysmith3
3 years ago
The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic.
This is a wonderful rhetorical fork and should be repeated endlessly to the defenders of multiculturalism: if you do not believe that Islamism is the same as Islamic then you cannot object to rooting out Islamism as being against that religion; yet if you believe Islamism is the same as Islamic then you must believe in rooting out of all Islam. The only way out of the fork is to deny that Islamism is a problem, which would condemn them to defending the most hideous beliefs and acts in modern history.
About time Macron gave a lead in Europe over this cursed religion of Islam. Islam is more than a religion and their lies the problem. It is a political creed also. It eats into every aspect of the individuals life. It demands complete submission to the ravings of a medieval pedophile warlord who took sex slaves and killed the kafirs by the thousands as well as Jews, gays and apostates of his religion. There has surely been enough blood spilt over the centuries in persuit of Islam’s global Umma to realise that it will never reform or integrate into western secular societies and indeed demands ‘submission’from them. it has been going on for 1400 years. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
alex bachel
3 years ago
Macron is a leading globalist, a fervent supporter of open borders and cultural diversity so it is difficult to believe his current stance. is this his real opinion or is it merely his way of negating Le Pen and thus win re-election. I hope it is the former but my head believes it is the latter.
Open borders? In the EU, yes. Otherwise, not so much. Cultural diversity? Hmm… yes, as long as within France they don’t attempt to subvert French culture and historical norms… which is precisely what his recent decree’s are about. To end that.
When can we retire this nonsense trope that there is a cabal of ‘fervent open borders supporters’ run by the left/deep state/ bankers/ Jews/woke/lizard-people ?
Macron favours free movement within the EU. It’s supposed to be part of the deal if you’re a member. He has consistently talked about the need for border controls to enter the EU.
I’m tired of hearing the right bleat about ‘open borders’ as if they it was anyone’s credible objective or policy. It’s the type of lazy strawman guff that you’d hear in the golf club bar.
jacquilayton29
3 years ago
As Noor Bin Laden points out in her interview with Paul Joseph Watson, you cannot separate political islam from the religious, it’s a pipe dream. https://youtu.be/VFa3EEvRwuA
Iain Hunter
3 years ago
Our ancestors knew what to do about Islam – keep it out of Europe. It seems we now have to learn the lessons of history all over again. A Jan Sobieski or a Charles Martel will arise.
theognis2
3 years ago
Tiens! So M. LePen was right after all….
apauranik
3 years ago
The fault lines between Hindus and Muslims and consequent strains are not part of discourse in western intellectuals. What France and Europe is realising now has been the pain and loss for India over many centuries and got accentuated when the British left us, succumbing ( or may be conniving) with demands of Muslims for a separate state based on demography. The salami slicing tactics still go on, some large like Kashmir and some piecemeal where smaller parcels of districts in India gradually get Muslim majority ( Assam, Bengal, Kerala,). Yes, Macron is right in using the phrase ‘ Islamist separatism’. We the Hindus in in the Indian subcontinent have had the first hand experience, where not only large swaths of Hindu land has been lost, but the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan has been decimated, while the Muslims in India enjoy all the equal rights of citizens which the democratic liberal secular state ensures
Fritz Wunderlich
3 years ago
While the Austrian government hit hard at MB structures in Austria, the German government is pouring new and big money into structures supporting Islamism and hate of Israel under the umbrella of anti-racism and diversity. Why does the German government covertly ally with Islamists and Antisemits?
“The political ideology that feeds terrorist violence cannot be explained away by religion or colonial history.” Does that apply equally to the political ideology behind the terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior that killed Fernando Pereira?
“Once Western governments engaged with ” and even funded ” Islamists in the hope of providing a bulwark and moderating influence against “homegrown” jihadist radicalisation.” And in the hope of destabilising Afghanistan via Operation Cyclone, when Islamist jihadi terrorists – the Mujahaddin – were funded and trained by Western governments.
Bit leftfield, how many years ago was that? And, IIRC, the French Secret Service agent felt so bad about the death (there was supposed to be no-one on-board) she admitted publicly that it was her. So, finding it difficult to see what your point is…
There was supposed to be nobody on board? First I’ve heard of that excuse; I think you’ve got your facts wrong there. OK, so one of the footsoldiers involved felt bad. Did they get ten years of jail time? No, they got French jail time and they were let out early, after New Zealand was threatened with effective EU boycotts of its products if it jailed the terrorists there. The masterminds of the operation got off scott-free, apart perhaps from some temporary political embarrassment. My point? All this tortuous looking for the roots of terrorism in the nature of Islam and Islamism is a deliberate red herring. The French state is happy to wage terrorism when it feels like it, but objects when the carnage reaches its own soil. Hence its dishonest and incoherent critique of Islamic political violence. We won’t understand these phenomena by pretending our nations don’t do terrorism.
We don’t pretend our nations don’t do terrorism. They do it, occasionally, in an attempt to defend our security, our liberal pluralism and our comfortable post-industrial lifestyle. The Islamists do it to attempt to achieve a totally Islamic society ruled by sharia. Is that the kind of society you would like to live in?
The chap that died was the only person on the ship when the bomb exploded. He was a photographer. There were a group of possibly 3-4 DGSE operatives, 2 of which the NZ Police captured whilst trying to get out of the country. They were sentenced to 10 years, but served only 2.
The French blew the RW up because of their nuclear testing.
Islamists blow things up because they’re ******* insane nutters hell bent on introducing Sharia Law globally.
You have may have a point in regard to the funding of terrorism (CIA etc..), i just don’t think you make it using the above example
“The chap that died was the only person on the ship when the bomb exploded.” More wishful thinking. “At 23:45, the second bomb went off. Pereira drowned in the rapid flooding that followed, and the other ten crew members either safely abandoned ship on the order of Captain Peter Willcox or were thrown into the water by the second explosion. The Rainbow Warrior sank four minutes later.” Admittedly that’s from Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source, but it chimes with everything else I’ve read about the incident. And what’s this about French state-sponsored terrorists doing it for noble reasons like wanting to explode nuclear weapons, while ‘Islamists blow things up because they’re ******* insane nutters’? I’m certainly not impressed by such hypocritical double standards. Until France renounces its terrorist past, it’s just a bully complaining that it got hurt.
No, it is a country attempting to re-assert it’s own identity, one that appears to have been lost to insane ideas of “multi-culturalism” and identity politics. France is no saint and never has been.
The female despite being in ‘close arrest’ was allowed a conjugal visit from her husband, (@ French taxpayers expense), they duly copulated, and bingo! She was pregnant and had to return to France to give birth.
The whole farce was authorised by the late, loathsome, ex Vichy, Francois Mitterrand.
All the ten or so participants are retired, smugly living on very generous state pensions, and happy they didn’t have an appointment with Mr Albert Pierrepoint, and the ‘nine o’clock’ walk.
Thanks for clearing that up. My memory is getting a bit like Homer’s memory, if I have to remember something new I have to forget something old. It’s just too full…
Let’s get a sense of proportion here. In 2011 a Norwegian nutter called Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 innocent, mainly young people.
Norway’s population is about 5.3 million, France’s about 66 million. Had that miserable event occurred in France the ” butchers bill” would have been very close to 1000!
First of all, Islam has a lot more. And I really dislike these stupid “if it had happened in France, it would have been 1000” arguments. If it happened in Luxembourg, it would have been only 7… so what?
“First of all, Islam has a lot more”.(?)What exactly does that incoherent outburst mean?
I also find it tedious that you are incapable of making any comparative analysis, no doubt because you are blinded by your blatant animosity?
However enough of that. One really irritating feature of Islamic terrorism, on which I’m sure we agree, is its really shocking incompetence and stupidity. Do they really believe that slaughtering the innocents in Paris, Madrid,Manchester,Tunisia etc etc will have any positive outcome whatsoever? Not only are these bovine attacks cowardly, they are immensely counterproductive.
If they wish to get anywhere they should look to history and try to emulate their predecessors, the Nizari Isma’ili sect known as the Assassins, who operated very successfully from their mountain castles in Syria and Persia from the late 11th century to the late 13th century.
Failing that, and for a contemporary example, they should learn from Mossad and its predecessors. The murder of Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944, by the Stern Gang, being but one example of a bespoke, high profile killing, regardless of personal cost. If they were to execute an ongoing, remorseless attack, on the leaders of the Western Word, and only the leaders and their immediate entourage, they might conceivably get somewhere. If not they will fail and end up in the dustbin of history.
Unfortunately they’re not the same. ‘Mad’ implies irrational behaviour outside the bounds of your society’s rules. If you’re raised somewhere where everyone believes the rules are the word of god and he wants you to kill unbelievers, then it’s the completely sane thing to do.
Christopher Barclay
3 years ago
Political leaders can be extremely petty. Macron is an upstart jerk who has pissed off other upstart jerks, so there a lot of leaders who are pleased to see him in difficulty.
Kevin Ryan
3 years ago
The conversation is often about whether the UK multicultural model or the French universal one is better. Is society less divided, and less prone to terrorism, when cultures live side-by-side or when they’re all forced to conform. My perception is that the American model is better than both. There seems to be a willingness by people to take pride in being American first, then religion/cultural/heritage second. I suspect that, at least in the past, America has done a better job of welcoming it’s immigrants and not making them feel like second class citizens.
Did you not notice the largest riots in 50 years that just took place? More Americans died from the riots in the US this year than were killed by terrorist attacks in France.
I think it’s a complete non sequitur. The BLM protests aren’t by people trying to impose different cultural values and religions. They all self-identify as Americans. You’re conflating the integration of 1st/2nd generation immigrants, with black Americans whose families date back to the founding of the country. Your comment says more about what colour you think Americans are.
Fraser, you can’t just keep saying stuff like this as unfounded assertions. If BLM openly advocates for the destruction of the West, it won’t be hard for you to provide links to prove that
it certainly advocated for the destruction of the nuclear family. I read it myself on their web site, though i’m told they’ve quietly taken down that part now.
Your idea that America integrates its population is belied by the fact that you haven’t integrated people who have been there for 400 years. It’s clearly harder to integrate new immigrants. And harder still to integrate religions that are hostile. Catholic immigrants from Mexico, Hindu immigrants from India, secular or mildly religious Asians are not the same as radicalised Muslims.
In fact all these groups immigrate to Europe as well, and integrate. See Priti Patel or the Indian guy who was Irish PM.
This applied until the Obama years, when thousands and thousands of muslims made their way to Minnesota. Ilhan Omar, their deeply corrupt representative in Congress, hates America.
The US has received pretty well educated Muslims who are in fact comparatively liberal. Meanwhile some if not most of the radicalism of islam in Europe is due to the sheer insanity of the US actions in the region and the fact that we import the poorest and least educated, often fleeing from your wars.
As for US integration it looked like your cities have been burning all year because a drug addict was killed by a policeman.
you just go on believing that Islamic radicalization in Europe is the result of American actions. It’s classic agency removal from the culprits while blaming others for their actions.
Of course it isn’t the only reason but it’s the main reason. In fact Muslim immigrants were integrating pretty well in the 50s and 60s, secularising and integrating. Even today older Muslims in France are more tolerant. The US actions in Iraq, Syria etc have inflamed the area, and destabilised the entire region.
As well as that, and back to the topic, the US media then has to audacity to whine about attempts by European nations, France in particular to integrate Muslims.
can’t argue about the U.S. media’s “audacity”, in fact I think you’re being kind. But America’s actions didn’t prompt the overthrow of the Shah (unless you go back to 1953), and U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria (not that they did much at all in Syria) were preceded by the WTC/Pentagon attacks. I think they were pretty “inflamed” already.
The US wars in Libya and Syria generated impoverished migrants, but that doesn’t explain why the EU let so many in so suddenly and often illegally, which continues to this day. And it doesn’t really follow that folks angry at the US for bombing their country would take it out on Europeans who are very generously helping them recover their lives.
Hamit Kabay
3 years ago
Islamism is a reaction to Zionism. Stop supporting the colonial conquest of Palestine, stop tabooing discussion of the outrageous “primordial right of Jews from Europe to have their own state in Palestine,” return Jerusalem. Then Islamism will disappear. Long-term hypocrisy, lies, duplicity of the Western world, support for Zionism – this gave rise to Islamism. As long as there are double standards, lies, injustice, hidden and explicit support for Jewish fascism, there will be a reaction of desperate people, outraged by injustice. Muslims don’t need Europe. You can keep it for yourself. Muslims want Jerusalem, which was taken from them by force of arms 100 years ago. Muslims did not have a “Jewish question”. Christians were at enmity with Jews. Europe killed Jews and moved the “Jewish question” to Muslims.
No, historically Israel and Jerusalem were Jewish land. The Christian attachment to Jerusalem would not exist were Jerusalem not the centre of the Jewish faith, temple and all. That’s why Christians and Muslims insist on claiming it for themselves, though Christians have a better claim — after all Jesus was arrested and crucified there. Yet both are predicated on the Jewish religion putting Jerusalem and Israel front and centre.
And Islam got started in the 7th century, not the 9th. (or whatever).
If Muslims don’t need Europe how does it happen that so many millions of Muslims are happily and peacefully settled Europe, living their lives as modern Europeans and holding their faith? As for Israel, every state in the world is founded on and resulted from, invasion in historic or prehistoric times, including the United States and the various countries of the Islamic world. Human history is that of successive waves of invasion. Revenge is futile.
Jews have more right to the assets of middle-east than any other religion or group simply because they were there before anyone else. Palestine is an invented issue created by Islamists to acquire a victim status. It brings in donation money. This same strategy is used in Kashmir and Rohingya. Islamists abuse the West’s sense of fairness, tolerance and humanity to attack the critics of political Islam and label them Islamophobe. The Guardian readers and Labour voters may be naive enough to fall for their tactics, but Macron is a straight talker.
Muslims don’t hate us for what we do but for what we are. Their attempts to conquer the world started more than a millennium before the founding of Israel. They have no concern for the Palestinian population other than as an excuse for terrorism.
The Jewish people are surrounded by people that are hell bent on their destruction, they deserve our support and best wishes. Regardless, your hatred of Israel and the Jews shouldn’t blind you to what’s happening elsewhere with Islamist terrorism. Much of it is within Muslim majority territories and directed at fellow Muslims for some reason or other. Blowing up a bus load of school girls for the crime of going to school. That sort of thing.
el crocko. Iran revolution because of “zionism”? Osama bin Laden came about because of “zionism”??? Iran-Iraq war down to “zionism”? Lebanese unrest for the past 50 years down to “zionism”? ISIS taking over half of Iraq and Syria and murdering fellow Arabs all down to “zionism”? Libyan civil war down to “zionism”?
There was no confusion over Paris’s approach it was as clear as day, the multiculturalists of the Anglosphere simply did not want their boats rocked, they obviously could not fully close Macron down with the standard race-hate charge. Almost laughable how the dubious prop of cultural differences (in this case multiculturalism/secularism) between the Anglosphere and France are being portrayed as a greater divide than the cultural differences between the Anglosphere and Islamism by the multiculturalists.
We in the US have religious groups who edge off into terrorism from time to time and in any case preach and try to practice political domination, usually pretty explicitly. Their ideologies usuall aren’t explicitly racial, but the groups, especially those more fond of violence, do seem to be self-consciously ‘White’. They are rather like the Islamists as described here, although they’re home-grown. Confronting the problem they pose, our ruling classes seem to have adopted multiculturalism and capitalism as an alternative to race and religious war, because they want to keep their stuff and would prefer not to rule over the kind of slums or behavioral sinks the religious and racial fanatics turn their countries into. The French approach — to abandon liberalism — does not seem to have worked out well in practice. Recall that the anti-liberal political groups of France in the 1930s led to an inability to resist Nazi German in 1940, even though France had a larger and better-equipped military and was fighting as the home team.
Liberalism or anti liberalism had nothing to do with France not being able to resist the Nazi invasion. It was a strategic military miscalculation.
And comparisons with the US aren’t helpful in this case.
The point here being that islamism often blends socialist economic ideologies with religious ultra-conservatism in a way that wouldn’t be compatible with American or European models of either multiculturalism or capitalist democracy.
The modern iteration of political Islam, of Jihad, may well be linked to 20th century political parties (an OTT reaction to former colonisation?) but it’s scarcely different to the centuries long mission beginning with the prophet himself.
The deaths of untold millions of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus throughout the (formerly) Holy Lands, the Middle East and large parts of Europe, Africa and Asia suggest a rather aggressive approach to religious conversion.
Millions of Muslims were killed and expelled from their land recently, in the 19-20th century in Europe and Asia after the fall of the last (real) Caliphate (Ottoman Empire). However, you are telling stories from the era of the Crusades to justify and justify the aggression that was recent. Hypocrisy!
Athens, Belgrade, the Northern Black Sea region and the North Caucasus have been Muslim lands for 500 years. Where is their legacy? Everything was destroyed, removed from historical memory. How many mosques, how many Muslims are there in Greece and Serbia? Nothing! Or do you mean that for 500 years there has been no Muslim heritage? But, I repeat, Muslims do not need revenge in Europe. All is lost, the fight is lost. But Jerusalem is a wound that will never heal. As long as there is Israel, as long as you support the occupation of Palestine, the war with the West will not end.
The Roman occupation of Britain is a wound that will never heal.
Sheesh!!
What a silly argument you make.
Israel is a democracy
Ask the those of Arab heritage if they wish to live in ‘Palastine’
Before 1967 Jerusalem was a closed city. Its now open to all irrespective of belief or culture.
How do minorities fare in. Muslim majority countries?
Very badly, imho!
A little sarcasm: ‘The Roman occupation of Britain is a wound that will never heal….’
Well, actually, the Romans seem to have integrated themselves pretty well with the Britons (Celts) of the time. The invasion and occupation that hasn’t healed yet was the Anglo-Saxon one that destroyed Roman Britain. That conflict comes down just about to the present and has manifested itself in the various wars and troubles in (Celtic) Ireland in the 20th century — still linked religiously with Rome, as it happens — and the movement among the (Celtic) Scots to secede from the United Kingdom. I’ll leave it up to the English here to explain what the problem is. I don’t think we can blame it on Islam.
That is far too simplistic and binary a history. The Welsh and Irish are Celts, but actually even that is a gross distortion, but they did both in historic times speak mainly Celtic languages. However of course there were pre-Celtic peoples in Britain and Ireland who contributed hugely to modern populations as genetic studies have shown. The Celtic ruling class displaced them and gave their language, which is rather similar to the Anglo Saxon ‘invasions’.
There is a simplistic and in fact almost racist view about the Germanic speaking invaders of the 5th and 6th centuries on the one hand, and the Celtic speaking predecessor populations. They are deemed ‘baddies’ and ‘goodies’ respectively, despite the fact that both peoples were in many ways similar, having about the same level of technological and cultural development etc, and despite many Celtic peoples being equally warlike.
The medieval Scottish kingdom was an amalgam of Gaels, Picts, Angles and Norse elements.
Apart from that it is difficult to understand what the point is here – that England, Scotland and the various other peoples of these Isles fought a long series of conflicts? If so that is pretty much like every other European and indeed worldwide state we know of.
The relevance of this to the conflict between secular Western societies and Islamism, which is a clash of fundamental values, is rather obscure.
Someone above said ‘But Jerusalem is a wound that will never heal.’,and others derided that statement. I was pointing out that the past affects the future, or so it seems, and keeps doing so for a long time. Certainly the conflicts between England and Ireland go back several hundred years, and are felt keenly enough on all sides to call forth people willing to kill and die for their various causes.
I am pretty sure the Protestants and Catholics in England and Ireland thought they were fighting over fundamental values. Indeed, I was carefully told this as a child by my Anglophilic relatives. (Which was funny, because a good many of them were Irish and French if you go back far enough.) The Protestants were supposed to be for freedom and equality, and the Catholics for abject submission to a worldly, corrupt, totalitarian authority, the Pope. Hence Mussolini and Hitler, to say nothing of Lucrezia Borgia and her relatives. What would Cromwell say?
I’m sorry you find my comments too succinct. In the future I shall try to be more prolix.
It’s nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxons. It’s the Normans wotdunnit. The Conquest sparked the Great Land Theft.
I think Ron Bo’s point is, ‘ get over it’ cos every land on earth has been conquered at some point. The west seems to move on and learn from their colonial past (and masters..think about roads, infrastructure, art etc..) but, for some reason, other regions of the globe want to mourn and hold grudges. Perhaps that’s what holds them back from becoming progressive. Sadly, the Aboriginal community in Australia suffer from the same doomed mind set and are therefore forever trapped.
None Muslims don’t get anywhere in Muslim lands unless they sunmit and become one of them and then maybe a lowly dhimmie.
Athens, Belgrade, the Northern Black Sea region and the North Caucasus were Christian lands long before Islam came along and conquered them and enslaved or massacred the Christian inhabitants. In the 19th and 20th century, millions of Greeks and Armenians were killed and expelled from lands they had occupied since before Islam was invented. In the 20th Century Jews were eliminated from all Muslim lands and in the 21st Century most Christians have been ethnically cleansed from Muslim lands and that process is still occurring and has extended to areas in Africa like northern Nigeria. Jerusalem is not a Muslim city – Mohammed never visited it (he may have dreamt that he did, of course) and it only came under Muslim control by violent conquest. Muslims do not have the right to continue the slaughter.
The Greeks did not spontaneously choose Islam, they were conquered by Turkey and occupied for centuries before restoring their freedom in 1821. Try reading some well documented Greek history to see its contribution to humanity pre-Islam. It’s well documented.
I never expected the comment section to be so funny, you guys are cracking me up. “Well-documented”…
The sooner you savages are purged from the civilised world, the better.
Very well put David Lawler. The hardly suppressed anger and hatred of Hamit Kabay pours from his writin. The flagrant denial of the Muslim world as to its backwardness and brutality against its own people as well let alone others is glaringly obvious. Most people in Europe resent the permanent state of insulted pride most Muslims display They came to live here and many behave as if they were trapped behind enemy lines.
They came to live here seeking a better life now they want turn our country into the religious dump they came from. Call me a racist, call me an islamist, I really don’t care anymore.
I agree. I never bothered much about islam until I researched it and scared me shitless. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
That is not my experience of the many Muslims I work with and who are my neighbours.
Complete fantasy.
There is no such country as Palestine. It has never been an independent state. It has been owned through recorded history by the Romans,Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire and British Empire in that order until 1948. Palestine was a word coined by the Romans to describe a geographical entity.
As long as Arabs threaten to drive Jews out of Israel, Israel will defend itself vigorously – and has the right to do so. Jews will not be driven like lambs to the slaughter as happened in Nazi occupied Europe during WW2.
Strangely enough, very few Arab states in the Middle East seem keen to accept Palestinian Arabs as refugees. So no solidarity there between co-religionists.They are just used and trotted out as useful idiots by the likes of Hamas and other organisations when it suits their propaganda purposes.
This is the myopia of muslims. They have no real interest in what happened before Islam. Their world starts and ends with Islam. There is nothing worth knowing beyond Quran. Quran is the perfect word of God, and God has provided all the necessary knowledge in it.
Not God, as we Christians know Him, but Allah, a very different being.
I don’t see that. The Abrahamic religions, at least in their earlier states, seem to postulate a rather cranky old Guy in charge of everything and occasionally blowing his stack and killing off a great many of his helpless, ignorant creatures, or ordering them to kill one another. When did Christians generally stop killing one another over their favorite fables? Doesn’t seem that long ago in historical time. Give Islam time, a few more centuries?
Problem is it is still stuck in medieval times. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Didn’t Yahweh tell the Jews they could have Canaan and to destroy the Canaanites in the process?
So how do you explain the high cultural level achieved by Muslims in what the West thinks of as the late Middle Ages?
I’m not at all anti Islam, and its civilisation did reach some great heights, especially under the Abbasid caliphate in the 9th and 10th centuries, but also those of Islamic Spain.
But at that point there was a real interest in non Islamic thought from Greece, Persian, India and even China. That is what has been lost in more recent Islamic civilisations. The Ottomans were by no means anti Christian fanatics but were much more inward looking, being very suspicious for example of the printing press. Only a tiny fraction of the books printed in Europe were ever translated and printed into Turkish and Arabic.
Here is some info of the ‘golden age ‘ of Islam. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
The Muslims were avid borrowers and plagiarists, and their invented “religion” a pick-and-mix of various cultural and religious influences in 7th and 8th century Arabia, cherry-picked to suit their purposes as triumphant conquerors. That so-called “high cultural level” is a propaganda myth. What was achieved was on the supine backs of the civilisations they conquered. As Islam became less expansionist and turned more inward, that “high culture” soon fossilised and decayed.
I think recognizing, adopting, and preserving the good stuff from other people, other places and other times is a sign of civilization and intelligence. The question is why the Islamic world turned inward. The same seems to have happened in China. And now many seem to be recommending this path for the West.
Look up the mongolian invasions circa 13th century and you will get your answer.
It started before. For example, the Mongols had nothing to do with the Almoravid and Almohade invasions of Spain in the 12th century.
Vilders, I was responding to the question of what stopped muslim innovation. Muslims themselves say that the Mongol devastations caused muslim civilisation to turn inward and scarred their progress.
And other Muslims, no doubt, say something different. The historical facts are clear: the invasions of Spain from Morocco put an end to the Golden Age of Muslim Spain, and any “innovation” that might have originated there.
I recently read an article that said that much of the quran was cribbed from Old Syric Christianity texts.
In many ways Islam mirrors Christianity, not least in the way the anonymous gospel writers of Matthew and Luke plagiarized from gMark who in turn used the Old Testament to draw inspiration as a number of parallels demonstrate.
When religious adherents are finally able to acknowledge that the foundational tenets of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim holy texts (sic) are based on nothing but geopolitical myth and walk away from such rubbish then there will be three less major reasons for them to behave like arseholes.
Well put.
no it’s BS. Assigning negative qualities to your adversaries is one thing; rewriting history to suit today’s narrative is quite another.
actually it’s your assertions that are propaganda, perpetrated by people who want to pretend that because we are in a war with Islamic extremism now, Islam has always been extreme and never tolerant. Until the 11th century, it was. That’s simply historical fact, authenticated by all serious historians, who I suspect know alot more about this than you do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
You are right. Don’t let pretend “scholars” intimidate you.
The high culture was achieved in the ancient cities that already were centres of past civilisations, while the actual birthplace of Islam, the Arabian plateau remained mired in obscurity. Mecca and Medina were not the centres of Muslim civilisation. Cairo, Baghdad, Istanbul, even Tabriz took that honour. Also, until fairly recent times, there were loads of Christians and Jews left in the middle east to help the civilisational process along. They worked as translators and midwived the transition of knowledge from the Europe to the middle-east. Imperial projects often have a diversity of populations, plentiful slaves and war loot to build ‘high culture’.
I was disagreeing with Vijay Kant’s contention that for Muslims ‘Their world starts and ends with Islam. There is nothing worth knowing beyond Quran.’ That evidence-free assertion is contradicted by the high achievements of Muslim civilization, even if it was largely ‘borrowing and plagiarism’, does it not?
You are probably correct about the Mongol invasions. Although some countries managed to resist them they certainly devastated a good part of the Middle East. Still, many of the victims of the khans eventually recovered.
Both Baghdad and Cairo were essentially founded by Islamic forces. Neither existed as cities before Islam, though there were a some villages in the general area of each. Constantinople had nothing to do with the early development (or tolerance) of Islam as it was Christian until 1453. And the first “capital’ of Islam outside Arabia was Damascus (Ummayad).
‘Some villages’ like Memphis and Heliopolis in the general area?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
True. I had a Muslim student at university who openly told me that. Any history before Islam did not exist and would not attend lectures or study it!!!!! Just as mad as the Christian family Bible we had which said the world began in 4004 BC!! LOL
Actually the Bible does not say the world began in 4004BC; you cannot quote me a verse which says that. It was Bishop Ussher’s calculation, making certain assumptions.
Trauma bonded humans under siege in a religion soaked with violence and coercion. The penalty for leaving it is death, prison, lashings, in many countries and that doesn’t count what happens if your family gets ahold of you first. It’s an absolute brain virus replicated by bloodshed both in the domestic sphere and on the battlefield, that’s why they have to threaten death on people who want to leave. In any race, tribe, or geographic location humans will react this way to violence, for example the FLDS in the western US. It happens to be islam, but it could be anyone.
You seem practiced in the art of lies and deception. Jews have lived in Israel for more than 3000 years. They are not “occupiers”. Moslems are invaders, as they have been since their desert warlord instructed them to start killing in 632. More recently, you allied with Hitler for your “final solution”. We see you for what you are.
Yes the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem made a brief pact with the Nazis during WW2 as they both hated Jews and saw the UK empire as an enemy!
But the Arab didn’t quiet fit the image of the blue eyed, blond haired Aryan.
Although the Mufti himself was blond, blue eyed, something Hitler himself noted. Hitler of course admired Islam, expressed regret that “Aryans” had chosen Christianity over something so obviously war like.
You’re full of it! I’ve been to Belgrade, the Serbian capital and seen a working mosque there. I agree with everything Mark McCaffrey said in his comments. For Orthodox Christians it is a terrible sorrow that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, but most of them don’t consider it a wound that will never heal. They live in the real world. Grow up, and start acting like an adult.
Tito was the heavy hand that maintaned order. I remember hitch hiking through the former Yugoslavia in 1968 from north to south and the people seemed very happy.
I’m not fan of communism but given a choice of a communist dictatorship past or present I’d choose Yugoslavia. I’d keep my head down though, mind you.
Remind me, how did Jerusalem become Muslim? How did North Africa become Muslim? How come southern Spain was Muslim?
It wouldn’t have been by conquest, would it?
The fact you overlook is that Islam was violently expansionist ever since its inception.
Indeed. We must control the site of the ancient Israelites’ capital and the site of its two temples. Otherwise how will the faithful know we are the successor religion? They say the Jews built the place and made its reputation, but we know that there was nothing before Islam.
Athens, Belgrade the Northern Black sea region and the North Caucasus may have BEEN Muslim lands once, but that was down to Muslim conquest. Then, as the world turns, the native populations in those areas revolted and became independent. Too bad. As for Palestine, the longer this “war with the west” goes, the past 70 years clearly shows that the trajectory for Israel is up, up and away. Good luck with your vicious dreams.
There was an agreed, if no doubt often brutal exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. Both populations were expelled. As others have pointed out, all those formerly Christian lands were conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th to 16th centuries. Most mosques fell into disuse with no Muslim population to use them, the same applied to Christian churches in Turkey.
All the other things you say sound pretty fanatical and through not showing any possibility of compromise, unfortunately just confirming everything the article says about political Islam.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Not that the Quran is a book of integrity, but if you happen to think it is, there is a passage in the Quran that refers to Jews as ‘the children of Israel’. As such, according to the book, Jews belong in Palestine / Israel, so who do the Muslims think they are disagreeing with their prophet / god?
The Night Journey fable has Mohamed ascending to heaven on a winged steed from Jerusalem, from the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount – allegedly the Quran’s ‘farthest mosque’. But the Quranic passage (17.1) clearly indicates that the Farthest mosque is the destination of the journey, and that was Heaven, where Mohamed saw his signs of heaven – not a stopping point in Jerusalem. Ergo, there are no Quranic grounds for a Muslim claim on Jerusalem.
Further, Muslims have Mecca and Medina the birthplace and burial place of Mohamed – no one else is interested in those places, must they also claim the holiest city for the Jews and the Christian too?
Mehdi Hasan stated on Q Time, as a panel member, that he believed Mohamed actually did ascend to heaven on a winged steed from the Dome (the night journey fable). That an intelligent, ‘moderate’ Muslim can commit to the Quran in this way is a tell as to the reality of the concerns in the west.
re: Must they also claim the holiest city for the Jews and the Christians too?
I think that was the point originally and why Jerusalem became #3.
I think by “their” land you actually mean the land that they captured in their extensive conquests of Christian and other lands. See youtube v=I_To-cV94Bo
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Hamit,
Long Live Israel! And before that little theocracy was born in the obscurity of Arabia there was no such thing as Islam. Was there? Jerusalem had nothing to do with you and your cronies. You were nomads and unfortunately you kept conquering with a combatant ideology to support you based largely on plagiarism. That’s it.
Athens was under Ottoman rule for about 370 years not 500. It hardly makes it Muslim lands. Is Hebron an Israeli land since Israel controls it?
“a rather agressive approach to religious conversion”. Bless your heart.
bang on the money…The UK’s attachment to stupid and asymmmetrical muticulturalism has to be jettisoned.Be British ,be proud of your country ,institutions and religion…Beware the trojan horse of Islam.
Repeat Islam is the religion of peace, there is no compulsion in Islam.
“Islam is the religion of peace”
Are you therefore disowning the violent terrorists amongst the Muslim faith. In which case, give them up.
Muslim terrorists live amongst Muslim communities. Muslims know who they are, they don’t operate in a social vacuum.
Whether by intimidation, violence or desire, there is a conspiracy of silence. The ‘peaceful’ compulsion would be to rat them out, grass them up, or simply starve them of support.
But that doesn’t happen, does it?
Indeed, you are correct, there is no compulsion in Islam, no moral compulsion to stamp out the disease within the Muslim community.
it was sarcasm.
I would agree altho the author has not clarified. In any event Im increasingly finding that contributors generally tend not to recognise satire / irony / sarcasm unless it is tattooed on their eyeballs (as someone once said).
The religion of peace was abrogated after Md went to Mediina and started violent Jihad. Soon got plenty of folloeres through submission or death. Some choice!
and Republican terrorists lived among Irish Catholics. Am I as an Irish Catholic therefore tarred with the same brush?
That’s as funny as saying Christianity “is the the religion of peace”. All my life I have seen the erosion of Christianity authority impacting on how I live my life in all its forms. Thankfully the job is almost done.
Sadly we now have this Islam crap to deal with. Macron is correct in trying to nip it in the bud.
I’m an atheist, but do not deny a persistent religious impulse in humanity. That said, post-Enlightenment Christianity is preferable to Islam… or socialism, for that matter.
The founder of Christianity preached peace, and all his early followers exemplified peace in a savage world. Contrast that with the founder of Islam and his early followers.
The practice of peace requires self-discipline, courage, faith, generosity, and adherence to strict moral values – is that what you mean by Christian “authoritarianism”?
Who, Constantine?
In his famous novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes, “For even those who have renounced Christianity, and attack it, still follow the Christian ideal. And neither their subtlety, nor the ardor of their hearts, has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.”
All human systems of both justice and compassion crave the dignity, beauty, and order of Christ but desire to do so without Christianity, sometimes without religion of any sort. What remains is a soulless counterfeit, a cadaver without a beating heart.
Once God is ousted in favour of a humanist worldview, there is no bottom. When a society divorces itself from God’s laws, there is no limit to the atrocities that are to come ““ all of them, of course, in the name of progress, equality, safety, and even love. Any number of virtuous spins can be applied to wars waged against God’s design for humanity. We are seeing this now.
I had similar thoughts.
There has always been compulsion in Islam to this day. The choice is given – convert or be killed (sometimes reduced to slavery). What about the schoolgirls in Nigeria who have been kidnapped and focibly converted, raped and enslaved? Peace? You need some education.
Indeed – and the young Christian girls in Pakistan who are currently being abducted, raped and forcibly married to their rapists and forced to “convert” to Islam?
This behaviour is recommended towards the “infidel” in the Quran, by the way, and illustrated in the hadith accounts of the deeds of Mohammed.
And simultaneously the muslim grooming gangs that are exploiting vulnerable British girls in parts of England (because of course the muslim girls are to be left with their virginity intact for their husbands. We can skip calling it ‘compulsion’ with regard to females and just call it rape and enslavement, which is being carried on to this day.
When religious texts give permission for this kind of behavior something has gone far afield…perhaps it’s a hint that is was never a ‘religion’ to begin with, but a form of gov’t imposed on a religious people who couldn’t absorb conquest without the invention of deities to underwrite their enslavement
Micah, It started as a hoax invented in Petra** by a certain famous merchant later warlord. After his death a “folk-Islam” grew up among people who did not know the warlord and could not read his Qur’an, and so they believed that he must have been a really kind man and his book really peaceful. That latter “folk Islam” could reasonably be considered a religion. The problem is that it is founded on a serious factual untruth such that its members often revert to the genuine hateful original, as seen in endless outbreaks of Sudden Jihad Syndrome. The only cure for the terrorism is to expose the falseness of the originating book and “prophet”. If the useless people like in Downing Street would get out of the way and uphold proper free speech, that would be even easier achieved.
(**Petra was also called Becca, and the difference in Arabic script between Becca and Mecca is just a tiny extra bit. For the first hundred years the mosques were aligned with Petra, not surprising considering Mecca didn’t exist at the time.)
Ever heard of “abrogation”?
Yes, I’ve heard of the abrogation of older passages in the Koran by newer ones, typically more violent and less tolerant than the ones they abrogated. The non-compulsion in religion section, for instance, was replaced by passages calling for the execution of polytheists (which could be interpreted to include most Christians due to the Holy Trinity), by the imposition of the jizya on non-Muslims, and that truly awful chapter prophesying that the rocks would tell Muslims where Jews were hiding so that the Islamic warriors could kill them.
BTW, I think – as does Vilde Chaye – That Ron Bo’s comment was sarcastic, or at least facetious. But I don’t know for sure.
It was 100% sarcastic.
Of course there is no compulsion. Islam means submission. Everything it does, and is done in its name, is therefore voluntary. There lies the difficulty.
But liberalism and, one might say, multiculturalism, are very much part of the Anglosphere’s institutions, religions, and culture, especially its North American department. France may have a uniform culture, but the United States and Canada were formed from hundreds of native and immigrating ethnic groups. These states had trouble enough just maintaining political coherence without imposing a uniform culture and religion on their inhabitants. Given the common European national histories of race war and ethnic cleansing, which seems to be the alternative, one might think tolerant liberalism was the better choice. In spite of its difficulties.
Eh? The European histories of race war and ethnic cleansing? Are you confusing Europe with the US.
I was thinking of the various wars involved in creating more or less single-ethnicity states in England, France, Spain, and many others, going back to the breakup of the Roman Empire, and continuing to almost the present — for example, the destruction of Yugoslavia. If you consider Armenia and Azerbaijan to be part of Europe, as some do, then to the present, period.
And who brought the “Trojan Horse” Mr Millington? Some people are under the impression that Muslims invaded Europe while in reality they were invited to come in. By whom you may ask? Well by the NEOLIBERAL RIGHT, the industry captains who wanted a cheap labour force with no class awareness. As opposed to Southern Europeans, Muslim migrants would not join unions and would not assert their rights.
Yes, Islam poses immense challenges to Europe but the real fifth column is the Western European elite who sold its people and culture for cheap labour and goods.
Yes they will understand what they have done at the time of getting their throiats cut and the Islamist demography outnumbers them. As Dr. Bill Warner says ‘in Islam even the womb is a weapon’!
History shows that islam is at odds with multiculturalism. The few “enlightened” islamic rulers who allowed the practice of non muslim faith have always been replaced by fundamentalist and intolerant ones.
History shows that islam spreads its influence via the sword. Convert of be murdered is an effective way of filling the mosques.
It is difficult to make a sweeping statement like this. Islam, at least at times, was tolerant to non-muslim faiths. Survival of Large Christian populations in Middle East even to this day is a proof.
In the golden age of Islam this was mainly due to the tax collected from non-muslims. When large scale conversions to Islam happened in the Middle East, the Islamic conquerers were unhappy simply because the tax revenues were reduced.
The same was true also in Ottoman Turkey. In return of paying a tax, non-muslims were exempt from military and were free to organise the domestic issues of their congregation.
Treating a population as slaves is not being “tolerant”. Your post is a gross corruption of the English language.
What large Christian populations in the Middle East.
There is a subtle but big difference between being tolerant and tolerating other faiths for selfish financial gains. The latter is the fabled ‘tolerance of islam’ which way too often is withdrawn on the flimsiest of pretexts. Leaving aside history, the recent fates of Druze and Coptic Christian communities in the Middle East are great examples of how ‘tolerant’ moslem societies really are towards those at their mercy.
We are talking about 8th century here. Within that context Islam was tolerant. Even in Ottoman Turkey many centuries later, the attitude was tolerant. Don’t forget, this was the time of religious wars in Europe.
There are about 15 million Christians in the Middle East. Yes, the number is reduced from about 20% by the beginnkng of 20th century but the dynamics behind the exodus is different and probably more a result of nationalist movements than religous oppression.
Please, refrain from commenting until you educate yourself A.K.
“Yes, the number is reduced from about 20% by the beginnkng of 20th century”
And what happened at the beginning of the 20th century? Specifically to Armenians.
Thanks for telling the truth, I can’t believe what I’m reading in these comments. The plight of Coptic Christians and others surrounded by islamist populations in modern times speaks to us about how it must have been historically for families of other religious since the dawn of islamofascism; either pay these exhorbitant taxes or be killed. Those are your choices.
All those Christians in Iraq?
“Non-Muslims we’re exempt from military”(sic).
Really? What about the notorious Ottoman Devshirme? Where did the Janissaries such as Mimar Sinan come from?
Were they, by chance, forcibly conscripted from Christian male children?
Before you castigate others for making a “sweeping statement”, you must check your facts, if don’t wish to appear to be an idiot.
There is no need to call names. If we are going to discuss this on a civilised manner let’s do so.
You are approaching this anachronistically. In 16th century giving a son to become a devshirme was considered differently than 21st century. But that’s not the issue here, we are talking about the overall attitude within the islamic civilisation towards non-muslims which was in general relatively tolerant.
So, the duty is on everybody. Muslims should practice their religion freely while allowing the same freedom to others. Non-muslims should also respect the religous freedoms of muslims. And most importantly both sides should refrain from turning this to a clash of civilisations. Radicalism is fed by this friction.
I gather from your syntax and composition that English may not be your first language?
So “don’t get your knickers in a twist” as we say.
I was not calling you an idiot, but indicating others might think so, because of your sweeping statement ” in return of paying a tax, non- muslims were exempt from military” (presumably service), which is patently untrue! QED?
However, all three Abrahamic faiths suffer from the concept of exclusiveness, “the chosen people” etc. This breads manic intolerance of others, and is well illustrated by the litany of barbarism that has triumphed since the fall of Ancient Rome.
Fortunately, the concurrent history of China shows that it is not axiomatic that such barbarism needs to be religiously driven. Insatiable greed is the greatest motivator of all, and probably always has been.
plenty of barbarism before the fall of rome as well.
Then muslims need to repeal all blasphemy laws and laws against apostasy. All forms of religious compulsive ‘covering’ for females need to be done away with, if we are talking about freedom. Parents need to stop killing their female children over so-called “honor”. Female children need to stop being mutilated in their pubic region. So many traditions of islamofascism are abhorrently brutal by western democratic standards that to not vocally oppose them is immoral.
Of course. Completely agree. We need to fight against the radical interpretation of islam.
The religion of islam does not mean islamism. This article differentiates between islamism and islam very well.
The moment we turn the fight towards islam it will fuel more and more radicalism. This is a trap and it must be avoided.
Can the religion really be divorced from its theocratic impulses? Consider me a sceptic.
I’m not sure that statement is entirely accurate. Muslim armies were comparatively small, between 10,000-20,000 are possible estimates for the numbers in the armies which conquered Syria and Iraq, probably fewer in Egypt and Iran in the 7th century. To be sure, more Arab Muslims emigrated from Arabia to settle in the newly conquered areas but even so the Arab Muslims were a likely small minority, perhaps only 10% of the population of Egypt and perhaps 20% of the most densely settled area, Iraq. In these circumstances, forcing large numbers of unwilling people to convert would be logistically very difficult without modern weaponry and a large bureaucracy.
There were also clear fiscal incentives not to encourage the spread of Islam. The Quran had laid down that the unbelievers should pay taxes, called ‘jizya’, which was originally a generic name for tribute of all sorts. By the period in the late 8th century when the Muslim fiscal system reached its maturity, it had been established that the ‘dhimmis’ should also pay a poll-tax. All landowners were now obliged to pay the land tax but the ‘dhimmis’ suffered under extra fiscal burdens. The produce of the ‘jizya’ was very useful because it was paid in cash. This became specially valuable in the years when structure of caliphal finance collapsed. Land tax became much more difficult to collect and was often assigned away to bureaucrats or soldiers.
Petty rulers and warlords could still collect the ‘jizya’ in cash money. There were, in short, clear reasons why Muslim governments would not want to encourage conversion to Islam. They were in most cases effectively unable to prevent conversion but they certainly had good fiscal reasons not to use force to achieve it.
There are also a few specific examples of the active discouragement of conversion to Islam. One of the clearest of these can be seen in then account of the trial of Afshini. 840 AD. Afshin was one of the leading generals in the army of the caliph al-Mu’tasim and he was also hereditary ruler of the small mountain principality of Ushrusana, southeast of Samarkand. In 840 AD, a conspiracy of his enemies caused him to be arrested and put on trial. The charge was apostasy, that is to say abandoning Islam because it was a charge that carried the death penalty.
One of the accusations was that he had forbidden the preaching of Islam in his domains, though he of course was a Muslim himself. Two witnesses were produced, pious men who had gone to these wild areas to preach. They showed the court the wounds that they bore as a result of the flogging that Afshin’s men had inflicted on them and Afshin was obliged to admit that he had indeed ordered their punishment for he had an agreement with his people that he would not allow Muslim missionaries in.
Another indication that compulsion were not widespread can be seen from the very small numbers of Christian martyr stories dating from the early years of Islam. If there had been compulsion, with punishment meted out to those who would not abandon their faith, their heroism would certainly have been remembered and recorded. The martyr narratives we do have mostly come from Syria and Palestine. The martyrs fall into fairly specialised groups. There were apostates from Islam, and converting from Islam to another faith was always regarded as worthy of death.
The other group were victims of random violence. Perhaps the most notable of these were the 40 martyrs of St Sabas. They, and a number of other holy men in the Judaean desert, were killed by Bedouin in the disturbed years which followed the death of Harun al- Rashid in 809 AD. In this case there was no implication that they were slain because they refused to convert to Islam: they were simply killed because the Bedouin wanted to steal their property and take over their land.
But that did not mean that military force played no part in the spread of Islam. The Arab conquests of the 7th century established Muslim government over large areas of the Middle East. But they did not make Islam into a majority religion. The process probably began quite slowly and gathered pace in the 9th and 10th centuries. In any age there will always be people who change their religion, convert from one to the other, purely on a wave of pious enthusiasm and religious inspiration. It is not perhaps too cynical to suggest that there were many others who have more mixed motives.
Islam was the elite religion. By converting to it, a man could, in theory at least, become a member of that elite. Conversion offered both career/social advantages. At a stroke it meant freedom from the hated poll-tax. It often gave the opportunity to move from the static and stifling environment of the village to one of the expanding towns. The Muslim authorities may not have forced people to convert but the structure of Muslim government did encourage people to make that choice. Islam may have not spread by the sword but without the sword it would not have spread.
Nice. Islam may have not spread by the sword but without the sword it would not have spread
Its seems a paradoxical answer but look at it this way. It is unlikely that Islam would have enjoyed the dominant role it had in the Middle East if the Arab conquests of the 7th century had never taken place. No matter how appealing Islam’s teachings may have been to people of the 7th century, I think it’s extremely unlikely that it would have made a lot of headway under the Byzantine/Sassanid Empire.
In both these empires there was a state supported religious institution to which anyone with pretensions of elite status would be expected to belong. Under the Byzantines there were certainly Jews, Samaritans, and prob a few pagans. But if u wanted a post in the govt/army, you had to be a Christian. And the right sort of Christian, one who accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (451). The large number of people who did not were excluded almost entirely from positions of power/influence.
Would Muslim missionaries have been permitted to preach? I find it unlikely in the extreme.
The Sassanids were certainly more pluralist. The Persian elite were all Zoroastrians but there were large numbers of Christians, Jews, Mandaens and others. But they would never have been allowed to challenge the position of Zorostrianism as the dominant faith. Muslim missionaries might have been allowed to preach but never against the position of Zoroastrianism among the Persians.
It was only the military/political victory of Islam in the 7th century that allowed for the ascendency of Christianity and Zoroastrianism to be challenged.
It absolutely did spread by the sword. If you want to understand the spread of Islam look no further than what Iraqis did to the Yazidi.
How do account for the armies of Islam reaching Poitiers in the 700s or forced conversion of Christians to Islam in the Balkans? The issue is clear.
The Battle of Tours (732 AD) carries tremendous significance for the far-Right. The terrorist who killed 51 people at 2 mosques in New Zealand painted slogans on his guns including ‘Tours 732’ and ‘Charles Martel’.
The reality is that the Ummayad Caliphate in the 8th century were able to capture some areas along the southern French coast and launch raids into the interior of southern France. In 732 AD one of these raids was repelled by the Frankish leader Charles Martel.
Some view this as a turning point for Muslim expansion of the 7th-8th centuries. But a more prosaic view is that the Ummayads were after booty rather than conquest/mass conversions. According to the Chronicle of Fredegar, their motive was the wealth of the Abbey of St. Martin of Tours, the richest and holiest shrine in western Europe at the time.
The insignificance of Tours can be realised from the fact that historians like al-Tabarī and Ibn al-Qūtiyyah totally omit any account of the battle and stress the defeat at Constantinople. The Franks encountered little more than a band of raiders thousands of miles from home.
Like all the monotheistic religions forced conversions is a part of Islam’s history. What I was arguing is that there doesn’t seem much historical evidence to support the view of mass conversions after the Arab invasions of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Iran in the 7th century, that’s all.
Christianity did not spread through forced conversions. On the contrary, Christianity developed and won converts through successive waves of violent persecution by non-Christian states. Only in later centuries did Christian missionaries follow on the heels of politically-motivated military conquests. Judaism has never at any time practised forced conversions. Islam is unique among the “monotheistic religions”. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
I disagree. During the Saxon Wars (772-804 AD), Charlemagne (748-814 AD) forcibly converted the Saxons from paganism by way of warfare. The Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae (785 AD) prescribed death to those who refused to convert to Christianity. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity by the Crusaders in Lorraine, on the Lower Rhine, in Bavaria and Bohemia, in Mainz and in Worms in 1096. There were also forced conversions of Jews in southern Italy in the 13th century, which were carried out by Dominican Inquisitors but instigated by King Charles II of Naples (1254-1309)
During the Northern Crusades (1147-1410) against the pagan Balts and Slavs, forced conversions were a widely used tactic, which received papal sanction. These tactics were first adopted during the Wendish Crusade (1147) but became more widespread during the Livonian Crusade (1198-1290) and the Prussian Crusade (1217-1274), in which tactics included the killing of hostages, massacre, and the devastation of the lands of tribes that had not yet submitted.
Most of the populations of these regions were converted only after the repeated rebellion of native populations that did not want to accept Christianity even after initial forced conversion; in Old Prussia, the tactics employed in the initial conquest and subsequent conversion of the territory resulted in the death of most of the native population, whose language consequently became extinct.
Forced conversions of Jews also took place under Manuel I of Portugal (1469-1521). In December 1496, it was decreed that all Jews either convert to Islam or leave the country without their children. However those expelled could only leave on ships specified by the king. When they arrived at Lisbon, clerics and soldiers used coercion in order to baptize them and prevent them leaving.
The forced conversion of Muslims was also implemented in Castile from 1500″“1502 and in Aragorn in the 1520s. After the conversions, the so-called “New Christians” were those inhabitants (Sephardic Jews or Mudéjar Muslims) who were baptized under coercion and in the face of execution, becoming forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and “secret Moors”) or from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos).
During the European colonization of the Americas in the 15th century forced conversion of the continents’ indigenous, non-Christian population was common, especially in South America and Mesoamerica, where the conquest of large indigenous polities like the Inca and Aztec Empires placed colonizers in control of large non-Christian populations.
After Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the Khanate of Kazan (1552) the Muslim population faced slaughter, expulsion, forced resettlement and conversion to Christianity. The Portuguese practised religious persecution in Goa, India in the 16th and 17th centuries. The natives of Goa, most of them Hindus, were subjected to severe torture and oppression by the Portuguese rulers and missionaries, and forcibly converted to Christianity.
During World War II, Orthodox Serbs were forcibly converted to Catholicism by the UÅ¡tase. On 3 May 1941 a law was passed on religious conversions, pressuring Serbs to convert to Catholicism and thereby adopt a Croat identity
Under Judaism forced conversions occurred under the Hasmonean Dynasty (147 BC-37 BC). The Idumeans were forced to convert to Judaism, by threat of exile or death. As the historian Attridge pointed out “these were not isolated instances, but that forced conversion was a national policy, is clear from the fact that Alexander Jannaeus (around 80 BC) demolished the city of Pella in Moab, ‘because the inhabitants would not agree to adopt the national custom of the Jews.'” (Josephus, Antiquities. 13.15.4.)
Maurice Sartre has written of the “policy of forced Judaization adopted by Hyrcanos, Aristobulus I and Jannaeus”, who offered “the conquered peoples a choice between expulsion or conversion,”. William Horbury has written that “the evidence is best explained by postulating that an existing small Jewish population in Lower Galilee was massively expanded by the forced conversion in c.104 BC of their Gentile neighbours in the north.”
Excellent piece, Mr. Creed.
My wife is Portuguese, her maiden name is de Pinho.(Pine)
I was once told that many Jews living in Portugal at this time who converted to Christianity adopted similar surnames that represented trees – d’Oliveira (Olive) being another one – to identify each other and remember their heritage,
I don’t know how much truth there is in this tale but it makes a good story!
Thank you ! Glad you enjoyed it !
The astounding military success of Mohammed and his immediate successors is valorised in Muslim history as divine sanction and itself indicative of the superior nature of the muslim faith. The swords on the flag of Saudi Arabia are not whimsical affectations. When there lingers the powerful concept of jihad, holy warfare, the question that begs answering is – to what purpose is such a concept needed in a religion?
I know muslims who are very proud of the martial character of their faith. “We do not turn the other cheek,” they say scornfully.
I dont dispute your account. What is more real than distant history is a people’s imagined history of themselves. That explains the ISIS and Al qaeda types setting off from all corners of the earth to engage in the glorious rape and pillage of the poor infidel sods in the Iraq and Syria.
I’m not trying to glorify ‘jihad’ at all. Like all 7th century wars, the Arab conquest had its fair share of brutality and atrocities. But it strikes me that understanding this history can help the West to know ISIS and predict its behavior.
In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a commitment to returning society to the 7th century. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early 7th century Islam.
Muslims can reject ISIS; the vast majority do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led many countries to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the ISIS’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, or better still destroy it.
“But it strikes me that understanding this history can help the West to know ISIS and predict its behavior.”
Except ISIS is not relying on a secular reading of 7th century muslim Arab expansion. They are inspired from the bloodthirsty accounts from the hadiths and the sira of Mohammed where there was wholesale slaughter of enemies like the Jewish tribes of Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir and the distribution of women as sex slaves. Now western scholars like Patricia Crone may have doubts about the actual historicity of these events but the muslim masses don’t and you are never going to persuade them. This is the reality that western scholars and governments have not addressed.
The muslim masses may have rejected ISIS but they haven’t rejected the theology and imagined history of their faith. The one muslim who responded upthread with his litany of grievance and expressed retribution, especially against Israel, is clearly familiar with what his faith teaches him.
I dont have issues with the rest of your reply.
aahh but an army of 15,000 in the 7th century with an estimated world population of 250 million represents an army of 420,000 in today’s world pop of 7 billion. Use statistics at your peril.
Xerxes I had an army of 400,000 in 480BC. Rome had armies in excess of 100,000. Fail to understand history at your peril.
Yes indeed Kevin. If you take that further you get some astonishing results.
For example the catastrophic Roman defeat at Cannae, in the year 216 BC, as you would call it, cost the lives of about 50,000 Romans. The estimated population of Italy at time was perhaps 6 million.
So to equate that with today, means multiplying by ten, giving a figure of 500,000 Roman dead. More than the combined total for the initial blasts at Hiroshima & Nagasaki. (129,000-226,000).
Predictably, the Roman suffered a short outbreak of ‘lack of moral fibre’ and resorted to human sacrifice to appease the Gods, (a favourite ploy of most religions when in crisis, incidentally).
On this occasion the Gods were ‘satisfied’ with the burial alive, of two Gauls and two Greeks (note no Romans).
However the Gods noted this parsimony, and the Romans had to wait another 14 years for final victory at Zama in 202 BC.
Will 20 unarmed people argue with the man with a machete?
Why do you assume people in the 7th century went unarmed? Population estimates in the 7th century are difficult at best. But Roman Egypt had an estimated population of 8 million. Greater Syria estimated at 4.8 million. The Maghreb at 6.5 million. The Arab army that invaded N. Africa numbered approx. 16,000. The Byzantines probably numbered around 30,000. The Arabs didn’t win thru overwhelming military strength. They won because the Byzantine Empire was exhausted at this time after 28 years of war with the Sassanids. And they won because they gained the friendship of the Coptic Christians.
“the friendship of the Coptic Christians” which is why the Coptic Christians are almost extinct.
I’m talking in the context of the Arab invasion of Egypt between 639-646 AD, not what came afterwards. The head of the Coptic church Cyrus of Alexandria entered into a treaty with the Arab leader Amr ibn al-As recognising Muslim sovereignty over Egypt and insisted they would honour the terms even if the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius repudiated it. Cyrus was stripped of the viceroyship by the emperor but still insisted the Coptic Christians would honour the treaty. As the Copts were native Egyptians, the treaty gave a strategic advantage to the Muslims.
Furthermore, when the exiled Coptic Patriarch Benjamin returned to Alexandria, Amr treated him with respect and he was asked to resume control of the over the Coptic church. Amr also arranged for the restoration of the monasteries in the Wadi Natrun which had been destroyed by the Chalcedonean Christians.
As the historian Hugh Kennedy pointed out “the pious biographer of Coptic patriarch Benjamin presents us with the striking image of the patriarch praying for the success of the Muslim commander Amr against the Christians of the Cyrenaica. Benjamin also prayed for Amr when he attempted to take Libya”
Very interesting ““ more of an essay than a comment.
I assume your point Is that Islam, once established (by conquest surely), attracted converts for diverse reasons, pragmatic and otherwise. Accepting (or paying lip-service to) the established order and seeking to prosper within it is typical of human nature. We see it all around us. Conversion by the sword not required in the long run.
However, if unbelievers were a valuable source of revenue for the dominant muslim elite there must surely have been a measure oppressive force used ““ to say the least. No one likes paying taxes ““ least of all to a conqueror.
I would take this ‘free will conversion’ theory with a grain of salt, it contradicts everything I’ve ever read. He may be focusing on men but what the ISIS did to the Yazidi population is a great example of muslim conquest of territory; execute the males, rape and enslave the women. Mohammed made a living at this and he was proud of it.
For sure, like in all empires. We know for example that the poll tax was hated. A coptic Christian, John of Nikiû who lived after the Arab conquest of Egypt vividly records the terror that gripped the country in the aftermath of the invasion. There were also atrocious committed against the Coptic Christians and there were reports that the taxes were so burdensome some families were forced to sell their children into slavery. Oppressive force was definitely used, I would agree with that.
Very interesting detail on 7-9th century Islam – but that is a snapshot of a long a protracted history.
As M Fraser points out – an army of 15,000 in this era is rather large.
Later in the 12-14th centuries we see Islam come close to pushing Christianity out of the Iberian Peninsula. Onwards we see various battles such as Lepanto (C.16) and Vienna (C.17) which stem the tide against expansion.
Early Islam (in parts) was largely progressive for its era within its borders, but nevertheless was as brutal as Christianity in its spread.
In latter modern day history the Islamic world became less relevant and globally quite backwards. This was changed by three major factors: large proportions of the world’s oil supplies were found in the middle east, large scale immigration occurred into Western societies and the populations in poorer (Muslim) countries grew at a faster rate than Western ones.
Now that it is more relevant the more archaic cultural elements of these societies are creating friction with Western ones.
your dates are wrong. Islam DID push Christianity out of most of spain after 711. By the 13th and certainly the 14th century, the reconquista was well underway, and within another century or two Muslim Spain would disappear entirely.
A bit like the Christians pushed the Jews out of Spain shortly afterwards.
Very true. I was looking at the Arab invasions of the 7th century not the whole 1,410 years of Islam.
I’m not sure Fraser is entirely correct. Perhaps in comparison to Western Europe. But even then its easy to forgot that “Charlemagne..could muster for simultaneous major campaigns perhaps 150,000 men. Individual armies of 35,000 to 40,000, though hardly common, were not unknown” (G, Parker, Cambridge History of Warfare, 2005).
Compared to the armies of the Near East, 15,000 was not an especially large number. Justinian had an estimated 300,000-350,000 soldiers. Even at the height of the 7th century crisis, the Byzantine army stood at around 129,000 men. The Sassanids field armies could easily reach 45,000-50,000 men, possibly even 100,000-130,000.
Interesting thanks! My knowledge of this era is more focused on Britain so interesting to hear.
I would suggest that 20,000 armed soldiers who were quite happy to kill any civilian without a moment’s thought was enough to terrorise even large populations. Remember how Justinian ordered his troops to kill 30,000 people in the Hippodrome to quell a riot. They didn’t mess about in those days.
The problem is that we have historical sources for the massacre in the Hippodrome (532 AD). Its mentioned by Procopius (Wars, 1. 24) and also the Chronicon Paschale. We have no historical evidence of large-scale mass forcible conversions in the aftermath of the Arab invasion of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt in the 7th century.
They did force people to convert and their religious writings give men permission in battle to rape women and take sex slaves and this is a form of conversion if the “women” were old enough to survive the sexual violation without bleeding to death. We regularly hear about child brides who bled to death on their wedding night rapes and this is most likely a fraction of what actually takes place, historically muslims have been known to execute males and take women for rape/slavery in conquest just as they did the Yazidi recently.
Islam spread through a combination of factors – military conquest, strategic marriages among elite ruling families (mass conversion followed the ruler’s conversion), and trade.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Yes, and the death penalty for apostasy – or at the very least in these days, total rejection by one’s family and community who will take your children from you, is a very effective way of keeping them filled.
Macron is quite often right about things, but has enormous difficulty in terms of rectifying a given situation or problem. Not that there is really anything he can do about the inevitable and inexorable Islamisation of Europe. That is the future that our demented and despicable politicians have chosen for us.
It’s not inevitable.
Agreed, but Europe’s multiculturalism and liberal approach to mass immigration and social security has been its weakness and the enabling foundation of the longer term, gradual and less obvious strategy of out-breeding us. Islamism sees liberal democracy as an opportunity to infiltrate and outnumber non-Muslims. This is well under way, particularly in France and Germany.
Have faith in capitalism. It will destroy Islam as it has destroyed Christianity.
Eh? Last time I looked Christianity, while perhaps weakened, was far from destroyed. Of anything pertaining to its evident decline, capitalism (a very broad term) is marginally culpable. Has it destroyed Judaism? Hardly. Capitalism seems pretty strong in the Gulf states too.
I mean destroyed it as a dominant political force. I’m thinking of capitalism as the economic system of liberalism. I think the same thing will happen to Islam; in fact, I think this is what has riled the Muslims up — the sureties of the old dispensation are slipping away.
Huh? Islam is the ultimate merchantile religion, apart from its prohibition of usury (easy get arounds exist!), there is nothing remotely anti-capitalistic about it.
It absolutely does. But watching leftists fail to see it is like watching a farmer lead a fox into his chicken coup for the night and tell it to take good care of his chickens.
It’s worse than that – it seems to be a deliberate and conscious policy of seeing & hearing nothing / no evil. This blind eye approach results in the rising terrorist activity across Europe and paedophile gangs in northern English cities. But, hey, multiculturalism trumps all…
Quote ““ “most Islamists are not monsters. They are often educated, compassionate, articulate and charismatic individuals.” So were many Nazis. They were still monsters. So are these so-called Islamists. Because some of them may be suave and sophisticated doesn’t excuse them. After all, Hitler liked dogs and children, but that doesn’t make him a nice person.
The writer would benefit greatly from reading “the banality of evil”.
Alice Miller makes a great case for the results of extreme violence in childhood causing an authoritarian populace in her books “For Your Own Good” and “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware”. A Swiss psychoanalyst, she places Hitler in the context of his day, when child-rearing was incredibly brutal, and documents an entire culture of trauma-bonded authoritarians dissociating from their terror, trained to project negative feelings from severe brutality in childhood onto an ‘other’ whether it be a racial minority, females, or animals. This is very textbook, only when it infects entire cultures like Nazi Germany or Islamist nations do we get curious about the underlying reasons.
Bravo, one of the best articles on Islamism I have read. Most western commentators, even the so-called Islamism or terror experts are utterly lost when it comes to this topic.
Who do I believe: a journalist in the West or the Koran and President Erdogan? The last said that there is no fundamentalist Islam just Islam.
Please read the Koran if you have not. It doesn’t take long, and the murderous nature of its teachings are clear.
The French and Austrian’s are correct in their approach to these murderous criminals. The failed experiment is multiculturalism in the west and especially that of the U.K. promoted by blair and phillips.
Hopefully the French can bring this situation under control.
I don’t think you can argue that French universalism is any more or less than a success or failure than is multiculturalism. Numbers count for most – and France has the largest number of Muslims in Europe
Macron is right to be concerned although it’s rather late in the day. And the author errs in placing any faith at all in any distinction between islamism and islam. Just ask Erdogan. “These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ” Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. He would know. He assisted ISIS, and still does.
I resent the author talking about “the anglosphere” as if all in Britain and America were as stupid as some of our leaders (notably the multiculturist politicians) are. Most people I know in my part of Britain would applaud Macron, saying “At last! He sees sense.”
“The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic.”
Should we? A fairly cursory look at the Koran would strongly suggest otherwise
Typical of the “centrist” writers at UnHerd to talk such nonsense.
If Islamic and Islamism were synonymous, all religious muslims would support sharia, if not Islamist terror tactics. But they don’t. There IS a distinction, and it’s important to make it, unless you want to play identity politics and essentialize every devout Muslim.
“While we can object to Paris or Vienna’s prescriptions to deal with the problem, we have much to learn from the diagnosis.” Who is this ‘we’? I’m quite certain ‘we’ the ordinary people are largely in agreement with Paris and Vienna while ‘we’ the politicians, media and others with influence (i.e. those who shout the loudest) who prevaricate and make excuses for a political ideology that hates liberal democracy as much as Communists and Fascists did, may ‘object’. It’s quite simple for ‘ordinary people’ – extreme ideologies (Communism, Fascism, Islamism) should have no place in western countries. People (of any race or religion) who appreciate freedom of conscience, thought, expression and religion should be welcome here, anyone who doesn’t should find somewhere else to live – there are plenty of illiberal, intolerant, countries to move to.
What happens when you want to deport your citizens to an illiberal, intolerant country, but you can’t find one that’ll take them?
We have become weak minded in the West.
Islam is ok, but Islamist bad.
Why are you trying to differentiate between the two?
Either you believe in freedom from religion or you do not.
I think there is a difference between freedom from religion and freedom of religion. I would say that the former is not possible (the growing churches in China and Korea are witness to this) and, since freedom from religion is not possible, people should be allowed to follow the religion of their choice.
I think there is also a difference between Islamism and Islam. The militant nature of the former is based on early original texts (Nabeel Qureshi wrote about this in ‘Answering Jihad’) while many Muslims do not know this and speak out against Islamism. Others, like the liberal followers of any faith, play pick and mix with their holy books.
While no-one can be born a Christian, it must be a conscious decision, one can be born Jewish for instance. Therefore, one cannot stop being Jewish but can, of course, be a secular Jew, atheist Jew or a messianic Jew. I know about the words whispered in the ear of a newborn in a Muslim family but do not know if this makes them a Muslim or if they need to accept beliefs.
The pick and mix is a good observation. People railing against the Koran as a book of war and conquest, handily forget all the parts of the Christian bible that get quietly dropped as they become incompatible with daily life. People are ‘born’ Christians though, or at least become it very fast through involuntary baptism. You “cannot stop being Jewish” – is that true? Surely you can stop believing any imaginary story you like. Do you mean genetically ?
Yes, you stop believing but you cannot stop being a descendent of Abraham. People have been trying to stop being Jewish throughout the centuries.
Which parts of the Bible do you mean when you mention being ‘handily forgotten’? Much of the Old Testament, for example laws such as not having tattoos or not wearing mixed fabrics, are superseded by the incarnation of Christ although the moral law, the 10 commandments, continues.
I think that baptism is a sacrament that is a symbol and it does not make anyone believe. Belief is innner but baptism is an outward.expression.
How does one even start to be a descendant of a ficticious character?
People do that all the time. It’s a wise child that knows its father.
The same way 2 billion people around the world believe another fictitious character was the “son of God.”
So, we are not talking about Brian of Nazareth then? 😉
Wasn’t he “a very naughty boy “?
I seem to recall this had something to do with that Welsh tart. Judith.
I gather she went on to be Mayor/Mayoress of Aberystwyth!
Indeed she did! I’d forgotten about that.
Perhaps Lawrence Fox will make it to PM?
“Beam me up,Scotty”!
…and what actual proof do you have that Abraham was fictitious? How do you know exactly?
I understand that proofs are generally reserved for things like maths?
Evidence, however, or rather a total lack of, is a different matter entirely.
To this end, I am inclined to accept the scholarly consensus on such matters, much in the same way as I accept things like evolution or the Human Genome Project refuting such nonsense as a single original breeding pair of humans as described in Genesis.
However, if one wishes to accept tales regarding figures such as Abraham and Moses and even the veracity of the story of Noah and his incestuous family being the progenitors of the second phase of humanity once the global flood had receded, after Yahweh/Jesus obliterated most life as we know it then who am I am to gainsay such beliefs?
But please, let’s just try not to indoctrinate children with this nonsense.
Thanks.
You mean evidence (or lack thereof) surely?
Are you unaware of the scholarly consensus surrounding/ regarding this issue?
Along with the tale of Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood and Moses and the Exodus. It holds that the Pentateuch is historical fiction, part of the Jewish geopolitical foundation myth, and has been the scholarly consensus for at least a couple of generations.
Google is your friend!
that’s only partially true, and a view held by only some historians, at least with regard to Abraham.
Which part is only ”partially true”?
The parts about Abraham and especially, Moses.
I am unaware of any secular historian or archaeologist who puts any store in the historicity of either Abraham or Moses.
Many of those of a religious leaning also recognise that these two characters and the tales they are part of are merely part of geopolitical foundation myth.
But I am fully open to evidence to the contrary.
If you have something … anything, I would appreciate a link. Thanks.
The same could apply to Jesus of Nazareth. I wouldn’t go there if I were you.
Why wouldn’t you ”go there”?
There is no evidence whatsoever for the character Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the gospels.
One can hardly expect to retain any vestige of credibility if one chooses to assert that the Lake Tiberius pedestrian is anything but a work of narrative fiction.
Literally no serious scholar believes that Jesus wasn’t historical.
Well, no, not literarlly ”no serious scholar”.
As for an Itinerant preacher; someone called Yeshu, perhaps, who was crucified by the Romans for sedition? Sure, why not? Josephus mentions several types, and Yeshu /Joshua was a common enough name.
However, the character Jesus of Nazareth as featured and described in the bible; divinely conceived and born of an underage virgin, a carpenter’s adopted son; the miracle working Lake Tiberius pedestrian who, according to the story, was raised from the dead after three days and then floated off into space.
Nah! This character is a work of narrative fiction that no serious scholar or historian considers historical for one second. Just as well, too! Imagine if proper historians granted such a fantasy character genuine historical status. Good grief!
The character Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the bible is an obvious work of narrative fiction.
That there may have been an itinerant 1st century rabbi called Yeshu is a possibility. Josephus mentions a few, I believe.
He mentions more than one person called Jesus, but only one who would be the historical Jesus, as in the one killed by Pilate, and he mentions him twice. As I said no serious scholar believes that Jesus didn’t exist. The internet though is different, but the the flat earth society is popular enough on the web.
What I find interesting but not surprising is that the people who oppose the idea of a historical Jesus don’t come up with a counter argument as to the founder of Christianity and don’t think they have to. It’s worth asking then – who invented the fictional Jesus, and why and when?
Counter argument? Well, Saul/Paul is the likely go-to culprit. And as there is no mention of this character in the historical record outside of Christian circles one could be forgiven that he too is a work of narrative fiction.
His supposed letters – in themselves are, in places, regarded as somewhat of a smorgasbord of redaction, did not surface until Marcion ”collected” them and turned them over to the Church, apparently.
As Saul/Paul’s version of Christianity is based on his ”vision” there is enough doubt to consider Yeshu/Jesus to be a narrative construct.
Tacitus, Annals 15:44 for the best reference.
Oddly, Pilate is referred to as the Procurator, whereas the archaeological evidence (the Pilate Stone) names him as Prefect of Judea.
Incidentally I think executed by Pilate fits better than “killed by Pilate”.
“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
Are you aware that there are two sections of the “Christian bible”, and the bit that actually involves Christ, the New Testament, advocates non-violence and is supposed to have priority over the pro-conquest passages of the ‘Old’? But over and above that argument, the Bible in any case comprises bits and pieces that were produced by many different people over many centuries, and trying to make it yield any one message consistently never works. Whereas the Koran was produced by one man at one time in a peculiar mental state, and is all too consistent.
Yes I am aware that the Christian bible has an original version and a sequel. I am pretty confident that nowhere in the New Testament does it actually say that it supercedes the Old. There are many Christians out there who believe it’s more of a supplemental document.
The Koran is as open to interpretation as the Bible is. If it wasn’t there would be a single Islamic faith that would probably be at actual permanent war with unbelievers. Luckily the vast majority Muslims apply moderate interpretations. The Koran is also supplemented by hundreds of hadith, which are a field of study in themselves. You might have heard of a book called The Satanic Verses which deals with an even further complication to the religion.
The religious texts for both religions are a dog’s breakfast of bolted together parts. I don’t buy an argument that Muslims have a better instruction manual. (Though if they did, you’d have to wonder if they didn’t also have the better God)
Actually, the Koran is split between pre-abrogation and post-abrogation sections, and the two are not all that consistent.
Thanks for correction – yes
How many priests openly preach the violent parts of Christian Bible in non-Christian countries?
None. Thats the difference, not what’s IN the holy books, but how they are followed today. Christianity and Judaism stopped taking the violent bits in their bible seriously a century or two ago. Muslims haven’t done so yet. Maybe they will, maybe never.
Jews are an ethnic group.
You can convert to Judaism, which seems to disqualify it for ethnicity.
human affairs are far too complex to be so binary. Yes jews are an ethnicity, but with a religious license. Yes it makes no sense, but neither do lots of other things and institutions humans create and deal with every day.
You can convert to the religion, but that doesn’t mean that Jew is not an ethnic category as well.
“no-one can be born a Christian”
Whatever the theological niceties, I was effectively informed I was a Christian as a child, before I had any idea what it meant.
Then you were fortunate : you can always change your mind later. had your family been muslim, you would not have that option.
Nonsense, the large number of ex-Muslims in the West belies your assertion.
Could this be evidence of moral superiority of the West? Not many ex-muslims in Pakistan, I think.
I have no issues with the moral — and every other — superiority of the West. And it’s true, there aren’t many ex-Muslims in Pakistan. However, this discussion is about Muslims in Europe. And there are plenty of ex-Muslims there.
Precisely.
There is a difference, and many devout Muslims in the West and elsewhere believe in freedom of, and from, religion.
The core of Islam, like Christianity, is conquest. Except, Christianity gave up the conquest game a long time ago. True Islamists still want every knee to bend to Allah, and however that is achieved is fine. To say this is ‘incompatible’ with Western values is plainly, obviously true, but no one in leadership has the balls to make it categorical.
There is no political element to Christianity nor a call to jihad in its message . The cores are antithetical.
Christianity gave up the conquest game a long time ago?
In 2001, US President Bush talked of a Crusade against ‘a new kind of evil.’ It seems to be ongoing.
Bush has never lead a crusade in the name of Christendom.
He said he was a ‘man of God’. The religious side of G. W. Bush was always explicit and often cited by his Evangelical followers.
He used the word ‘crusade’. If you live in a part of the world with American boots on the ground, why wouldn’t you believe him? We put our armed forces where it suits us to put them. Whether it’s in the name of Christendom or petroleum probably feels like semantics to the locals.
He used the word “crusade.”
Oh the horror.
And the Crusaders were a great band.
Yes he did, but he was/is a brain dead moron, is he not?
I always used to like when Bush would declare “I am a merkin.”
The core of Islam is conquest – quite unlike Christianity.
Many Christian leaders played the conquest game, but they did so in direct contradiction to the message of their founder, who said ‘Turn the other cheek’ and ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.
Er, no.
Sure, Christians did a lot of conquering, and often did it in the name of Christ, but I’d challenge you to find anything in Christ’s teachings that actually justified it.
The teachings of Jesus don’t seem to have much to do with the religion founded in his name.
Sure, this has been said for centuries, mainly with regard to the Catholic Church.
Various Protestant sects come closer to the teachings of Jesus, in my view: simplicity, humility etc.
But that most Christians fall far, far short of their role model has been obvious for ages. Few Christians give up all their worldly possessions, for one thing.
You won’t find much intersection between, say, the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed, so the separation goes back at least to before 325. The Evangelicals in the US may not think the Creed is authoritative, but their reliance on the scriptures instead is curious, since regardless of Jesus’s pacifistic admonitions, 75% of them voted for G. W. Bush in 2004 in spite of his aggressive warmongering and lying. I think we’re left with marginal groups like the Quakers, Hutterites, Dukhobors, and so forth. Mainstream Christianity is not burdened much by the direct, plain-spoken teachings of the person they are supposed to regard as God, so these seem irrelevant to the political and military behavior of the Christian world.
“The Anglosphere should know by now that Islamism does not mean the same as Islamic. As was explained by two of France’s leading scholars, Bernard Haykel and Hugo Micheron, failing to make this differentiation only confirms Islamist and far-right presentation of events.”
“It is a comprehensive political theory, albeit one with a religious basis: Islamists seek a fundamental reordering of society and the establishment of a state governed in accordance with the shar’ia.”
23% of British Muslims support the introduction of Sharia Law. Islamism may not be the same as Islamic, but one flows from the other. It’s a mistake to think otherwise.
Daniel, if 23% of British Muslims support the introduction of sharia, 77% don’t. Your own quote from Liam pretty much says that Islamism from Islam. It would be strange if it did not. However, I agree with Liam that in attacking Islamism British political leaders should always make the distinction between the two. Otherwise, many British Muslims who aren’t Islamists now may be pushed in that direction.
23% admit to supporting Sharia law. A large proportion will be “don’t know”. One poll has an even higher figure of 43%, and just 22% actually opposed. Of course it’s inevitable politicians are too afraid to criticise Islam, and understandably risky. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a dangerous ideology.
23% admit to supporting Sharia law. And that’s more than 1 in 5. A large proportion will be “don’t know” or “prefer not to say”. One poll has an even higher figure of 43%, and just 22% actually opposed.
Of course it’s inevitable politicians are too afraid to criticise Islam, and understandably risky. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a dangerous ideology.
Yes but it tends to be vocal and committed minorities who make the revolutionary changes, who make history. Puritans were a small minority in English society in the 1630s – yet they exerted influence in Parliament and the City out of all proportion to their numbers. In the next decade they sparked a revolution, overturned the Royal Gov’t and chopped off the king’s head.
Same situation in Russia – how many committed Communists were there before the Revolution? Few I’d wager.
We live in interesting times, we face what is a systemic economic crisis, it would not be suprising if it turned into a collapse
A more interesting question would be how many are against the imposition of sharia.
If Macron just drops the “-ism”, he’ll be on the right track.
Seems the comments have gone far afield, as the article essentially engages a couple of simple questions; first, can a polity governed by a democratic system be successful and workable within the reality of tolerant multiculturalism, and second, can any secular pluralist democratic system survive a fanatical subculture which seeks to subvert the majority society within which it lives. My read is that Macron’s answer to the first is yes, but to the second, no… and therein the distinction between Islamism and Islamist.
My own view is that the answer to both the first and second questions is no. Multiculturalism, by definition, cannot function in within the realities of democratic, one person one vote governance, and that when you add into that difficult proposition the fact that certain of the ‘multi-cultures’ are dedicated to dominating the others, the answer is definitely no.
I applaud Macron, both politically and socially. Politically, because he co-opts the central thesis of the far right, and socially, because, as Abraham Lincoln so aptly put it, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. The US proved it with a civil war, and hopefully Macron and other enlightened leaders in the west can right the ships of state before far worse divisions become manifest.
RE: can any secular pluralist democratic system survive a fanatical subculture which seeks to subvert the majority society within which it lives
Don’t know why you’re so certain. there’s no historical evidence for this, and given that Western institutions are more adaptable than those of the “fanatical subculture”, I would venture that the most the fanatics are capable of is outbursts of violence that are personally calamitous for their victims and their families, but don’t affect society as a whole much at all (911 excepted).
No evidence? I’d put the US as example #1, and cite the Civil War as prima facie evidence. Indeed, I can make a very good case that that war and the attempt of a fanatical subculture that supported it is still going on. today. There are others, but…. that’s a pretty good one.
apparently the U.S. managed to survive the “fanatical subculture” of the civil war South very well; it became the predominant power in the world and the world’s richest country.
Macron belongs to a school of thought (economic liberalism) that is responsible for France’s current woes. In the 1960s and 70s, lobbied by industry captains, French governments invited hundred of thousands of African immigrants (most of whom were Muslims) to come in. African migrants had the advantage to represent a serviceable workforce with no class-awareness. Eventually, their children and grand children
If Macron was serious is his will to reign in radical Islam, he would get rid of France’s lax family reunification laws, reinstate border checks, expel irregular migrants and would stop taking 25 000 refugees every year. But he’s not gonna do that because entire segments of the French economy rely on cheap labour.
Unless France tackles the issue of immigration, nothing will change, and I say that while being myself the son of a Tunisian immigrant.
Ebtihej, migrants can definitely be a threat, but only if they insist upon creating the place they left. Obviously, we cannot change what we are… but it’s as crazy to migrate to another country only to try to turn it into what you left as it is to visit a friends house and tell him/her how to behave in their house. A sizable minority of people are migrants, and having lived 50 of my 72 years in countries other than my own, I always respect the fact that I’m a guest in another’s home. What Islamists appear to want is to change the host country to their liking, and that is something that simply cannot be accepted in France, where I too live, or any other. Otherwise, migrants can be a hugely beneficial influence on their new country, and contribute great energy and achievement to it.
I’ve been watching this situation in the United States for so long I’m bored with it. Ex-muslim apostates to read and support are Ayaann Hirsi Ali, Maryam Namazie, Sarah Haider, Yasmine Mohammed, Kacem El Ghazzali, Rahana Sultan, Kunwar Khaldune Shahid, Ensaf Haidar, Armin Navabi, and that’s just a short list of progressive thinkers, writers, and activists. Also please support the movement to have Ensaf Haidar’s husband Raif Badawi removed from prison in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy. There are many more progressive muslims and ex-muslims but these are the people whose writings and activism will help westerners get cognition about why we are not bound to, nor should we, support a stone age patriarchal religion soaked in conquest and toxic masculinity. The reasons for the repeated violence from islamism have nothing to do with race or religion but the inherent violent traditions of misogyny, spousal abuse, and child battery. It’s that simple. It is a cultural ideology that deranges a portion of its populace through violence and that percentage is significant enough to make it inherently destructive and oppressive.
What irritates me most about trying to have conversations about the topic in the U.S. is that because we have a binary political system you are perceived racist if you don’t sign off on Islam in general. As a feminist, a real one, I never will. I grew up in violent conservative patriarchal religion and I will never bow down to lick the bootstraps of another one. I know misogyny and toxic masculinity when I see it and I don’t care what geographic region, race, culture, or country it springs up in, it’s all the same to me and it’s all from the same root, domestic violence in all its forms and flavors from child rape to animal cruelty to wife beating and whatever other way males have of being malignant and destructive. Most patriarchal religions do not derange quite as significant a fraction of their populace in order to be consistently self-annihilating, but this one does. Maybe Islam is an over-achiever, I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s time people stopped flinging around the words ‘bigot’ and ‘islamophobia’ at people who are far more educated, deeper thinkers, and more wise than they are, because they are too lazy and frightened of their own inherent racism to take a very brave and dangerous stand against the destructiveness of this ideology. Great article.
Micah… BRAVO! Well said. I have no truck with either the American Evangelicals, the Jewish Fundamentalists, the Hindu nationalists, the Islamist jihadis or any other religious zealot. As an American living in France, I strongly support what Macron is trying to do. Multiculturalism in a secular democracy simply cannot work, and I think while he may not be as intolerant of tolerance as I… he’s getting there. Also, along the way, he’s taking the raison d’etre from the right, hopefully buying himself another 6 years in 2022 (the left here, LePen and Melonchon, is over). He’s been a bridge of sanity for the west, along with Merkel, while both England and the US lost their collective heads. Too bad about England, they’re damaged for years… but the US can return to a strong Europe just in time due to Macron’s work over the Trump years.
Once again, congratulations on a brief but eloquent crier du coeur. Couldn’t agree more.
I agree with what you’re saying about the need to support moderate Islam. But I don’t understand the part about it being nothing to do with religion, but instead is a ‘cultural ideology’. I don’t see there’s a distinction. The Koran is full of messages of intolerance and violence, which many seem to implicitly accept, even if they don’t act on them. Moderate Muslims can thus be easily attacked for not being the true voice of religion by both Western bigots and the fundamentalists. My point is that the intolerance does have to do with the religion and that, as a priority, Islam needs an overhaul by credible authorities within the faith. It is not the same as other faiths. Proof of that is which single religious figure you’d be actually afraid to draw.
Evidence suggests that the cultural traditions of genital mutilation did predate Islam. But ‘cultural traditions’ are not forcing anyone to hold down an infant and slice her genitalia off while she screams. I do not believe that this is about religion per se, as I stated, I believe that what is driving Islam like a mind-virus that replicates without control is domestic violence, and child abuse. I GUARANTEE YOU, I promise you, even though it can’t be proved, if all corporal punishment of children, FGM, circumcision and wife-beating within Islam stopped tomorrow, they would shed their apostasy laws like water off a ducks back and their religious extremism would cease to exist. Child abuse causes brain damage, and domestic violence is the most harmful childhood trauma that has been proven by the largest study of its kind ever done to affect the mental and physical health of those affected throughout the entire lifespan of the victim (by that I mean child witnesses along with those being battered). This is the study of almost 20k people over lifespan that demonstrated that. https://www.cdc.gov/violenc… I followed apostates for a decade though and saw so much video gore of what goes on within Islamic communities that I finally had to ban myself from observing it any longer. It is a religious culture of unbelievably toxic masculinity and corporal punishment of children, wives, and household staff that would land people in western societies long prison terms. I had to see this stuff to believe it, though it is not for the faint of heart because it can’t be unseen. Western leftists and liberals desperately need to LISTEN to the stories of apostates of Islam and respect what they are telling us about this religion and its culture of violence toward women and children. In the United States and other western democracies where there are Muslim populations female children are STILL having their genitalia cut off, albeit more likely at a doctors office under anesthesia. They may have changed the method but the mutilation is still ongoing. What I’m saying is that the culturally accepted endemic violence in Islam intentionally creates authoritarianism, and authoritarianism replicates itself by brain damage through violence into one generation after another after another.
Degradations such as these, ie: Islam and Islamism are mostly fictional and serve certain political expediency or even an attempt to obscure the obvious and to appease the intolerant ideology of a Theocracy which is Islam itself. The fact that there is not a single democracy to be found across the Islamic countries should tell you a lot and alert you to even more. In the end it’s about whose side you’re on. I’m on the side of a nation that has given so much to the Western civilisation and to our Democratic values.
Vive La France.
I’m no fan of Islam… indeed, an equal opportunity atheist, so no fan of Taoists, Catholics, Buddists, Jews, Hindus… all predatory systems. In any event, yes there are Muslim democracies, albeit struggling; namely Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Albania, Bangladesh and Senegal. Lots of others, very limited democracies. Just FYI.
As to your last ‘Vive la France’, couldn’t agree more. I live here.
Interesting and intelligent article. I have always thought the French experience was in some ways unique. France became the target of neo-salafi terrorist networks like the GIA as early as the 1980’s. But because France is one of the most policed states in the world (approx. 394 police/100,000 population) they rolled up this terrorist network very quickly. It also helped that while highly centralized under the Interior Ministry, the gov’s counter-terrorism function is not placed under a particular department. It is spread among a half-dozen police/intelligence agencies each entrusted with a specific mission.
Have also wondered whether western Intelligence Agencies could exploit the divisions within the Salafi movement. Quietist salafis are focused on perfecting prayer, ritual, and hygiene, and are at odds with ISIS. ISIS loathes them and frequently mock them as ‘Salafis of menstruation’ for their obscure judgements about when women are ‘clean’. Quietist Salafis are considered ultraconservative even by most Muslims, but could they be persuaded to provide intelligence about those who wish to commit violence? That’s something a counter-terrorism expert could answer.
Aha. Found you, John Creed…..
Anyone care to explain ….
I think the article falls short in its understanding of closed schools of thought versus open ones. The orthodoxy of islamism is the same as that of modern western leftism/marxism. There is only one truth, which is subjective and known only to the true believers. There is no such thing as reason, science or logic. Humanity is at best so stupid it must be ruled by a totalitarian leviathan, and at worst so evil it must be punished or killed by the same. Though not perfect the enlightenment era republics – France and USA, represent a move forward from the fallacy of the leviathan. Its up to Britain and the Anzac countries to decide if we want to join them going forward or continue either in stasis or reverse. Granted Biden on paper is a threat to the USA’s founding principles but with a good seperation of powers it remains to be seen what his puppet masters can achieve. As for the man himself with a history of anti-bussing, pro imprisonment of blacks and pro fracking he makes Trump look like Jeremy Corbyn.
I’ll take our nice parliamentary system in the Anglo Commonwealth countries over those in the U.S.A. or France any day. France, in particular, seems more prone to the leviathan, if the past is any guide, than Canada, the UK or Oz/NZ.
The fact that Islam at its core is a political ideology disguised as a religion has now slow begun to be understood by the West. The partition of India in 1947 on religious ground should have rung the bell for the British! But may be British were just as guilty of dividing India as were Islamists. Perhaps that is why Britain underestimates the global ambition of Islamists.
Surely Macron should wheel out some hippy-type bozo to give us rousing versions of “Imagine”, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Kumbaya” as European leaders stand shoulder-to-shoulder to protest against this sort of thing?
It’s always worked before.
Andrew, I think you lost the plot, as that is exactly what Macron is NOT doing, while is is precisely what Anglophile opinion shapers are urging be done.
Irony: The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Dear God.
The big problem with attacking Islamism is, whilst it is not the same as attacking Islam, the underpinning cultural root of many Muslims is tribalism with very long running blood feuds that they will put aside to unite against an outside foe on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle. Basically you know when they feel no real larger threat when they get back to settling the 2 centuries’ old blood feud with the family in the next village.
In short, whilst you can be as clear as you can be that you are attacking Islamism and not Islam, the vast majority of Muslims won’t see it that way and will react accordingly and very soon your war on Islamism will become a war on Islam, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
Reading articles on Islam and then the comments below them (when sites have the courage to provide the opportunity) always leads me to conclude that (some) readers are searching for truth and that many (most) writers have an agenda. The currently fashionable one is to shield Islam by writing word-salads on “Islamism”. The question “what are you afraid of?” doesn’t require an answer.
There is no such thing as “Islamism”. It is Islam, the faith founded by a well-documented warlord who assassinated anyone who did not go along with his commands, and the faith whose followers revere (unknowingly or otherwise) the most hate-filled, most violence-inciting book in history. If “Holocaust Denial” is not acceptable, then Jihad Denial, denial of the 1400 years of unholy war (in which the 9-11 attacks were just a small blip) must be far more unacceptable. And yet we see it right here on this page. What a disgrace to the memory of the many millions (and more every day) of victims of this misguided ideology. Shame.
you should try reading a bit of Rumi
Well, yes, but all informed and intelligent people have known this for years.
“..that it is only a means to a utopian end..” wouldn’t “dystopian” be a better word?
Excellent article. Someone with the appropriate connections should send this to the President-elect Biden.
Lian Duffy is asking questions the answers to which are not long winded dissertations about who invaded where and when. ( I get very discouraged when Comments veers off topic into pedantic debates.) Rather questions are being raised as to what the desired outcomes should be for a Universalist modern Republic and if the methods being by employed by Macron to achieve that goal are justified? Questions are being asked about the meaning and value of secularism in the context of the separation of Church and State and whether Universalism rather than Multi Culturalism serves in the long term to protect the individual? Questions like is 300 murdered the magic number before the State intervenes to protect its fundamental beliefs?
“Islamism is a real phenomenon and a serious challenge to France, both in terms of violent radicalisation and social cohesion.”Having lived in France for the past 40 years, I find this article excellent and, I hope, en eye-opener for many. Terrorism and murder hit the headlines all too often but the long march through the institutions by Islamic radicals is just as dangerous in the long term. One of the less reported aspects about the murder of Samuel Paty for instance was the visit to the headmistress of the school where Paty taught by the father of a pupil who untruthfully claimed to have been present in the class in which Paty showed the famous cartoons, accompanied by a local Muslim worthy. They came to protest about the cartoons being used in a class on freedom of expression, From what we know, the headmistress sent them packing but it is also alleged that the Muslim community leader was in touch with the assassin on social media. All this will come out in the investigation and eventually the trial of the assassin’s accomplices, whether they knew or suspected his intentions or not.
More generally, as reported by the “Canard Enchainé”, newspaper, there are too many local politicians who subsidise sporting and cultural association, authorise the building of mosques etc.in exchange for votes and then turn a blind eye to what is really going in such associations or whether hate speech is being proffered at Friday prayers. The French government has now finally understood why it is necessary to wind up some associations and close down some mosques.
Where will it all lead ? Anybody looking for clues would do well to read Michel Houellebecq’s novel “Submission” – one possible scenario among others. But it is clear to me that unless French society can offer an attractive “Republican” alternative to so many disaffected young men, the long march through the institutions by these “well educated and charismatic” Islamic figures will continue.
I agree that Islamism in our societies has to be countered with direct action of the kind advocated by Macron, but also with an intellectual argument about the success, and morality, of our values. If we don’t also voice our values, the field will be left to those who can easily point to the gluttony, addiction and pornography of much of Western popular culture. If you think I am exaggerating have a look at the video just released promoting Miley Cyrus’s new song “Prisoner”, a duet with Dua Lipa, and reflect that it is aimed at pre-teen and teenage girls.
An excellent explanation. Will our rather brexocentric rulers “get it”?
It’s an interesting discussion piece which highlights the issue with Western liberal societies, but offers very little by way of solutions. “Islamist imagination is incompatible with modern liberal democratic nation-states, which extend rights and protections based on citizenship rather than religion.” So what do we do ? Accept that Islamists will be unhappy living in Western countries but should like it or lump it, and we accept that there will be the occasional terrorist incident ? Neither force will be giving way so maybe we should just accept the status quo as it is today. I’ve seen many enlightened comments but no realistic solutions.
‘I’ve seen many enlightened comments but no realistic solutions.’
In 1,400 years nobody has found a realistic solution to Islam. And you say they are ‘unhappy living in Western countries’, but they are not unhappy living in Western countries because they know those countries will, in time, be Islamic countries.
ridiculous. they don’t “know” anything. They simply believe, rather foolishly, that Islam will dominate, based on very little.
Based on 1,400 years of Islamic expansion they believe, quite rationally, that Islam will come to dominate Europe. In a sense it already dominates Europe because the number one or two concern of all European governments – Covid aside – is working out how to address the problems caused by Islamic terrorism.
Islam hasn’t been expanding for 1400 years, and certainly not into Europe. Total nonsense. Islam began to contract in Western Europe in the 12th or 13th century, and in eastern Europe after 1683. By the 1800s the Ottomans were the “sick man of Europe” which had lost virtually ALL of its European territory, first Greece, then Montenegro, Serbia, etc. and eventually all except the tiny sliver of territory that Istanbul sits on.
A 50 megaton bomb, on Cairo, Riyadh, Islamabad, and Mecca should “do the trick”. What do you think?
I’m not sure that line of argument works. They are against traditional cultural practices because they aren’t specifically endorsed by Islamic scripture.
My feelings are of the spiritual, and that we continue a path of learning until we reach the goal of good over many lifetimes.
Man made religious input over thousands of years has in my view become corrupted to suit the leader of the day. So if temperament and psychological leanings are off centre in that time. Tradition will still insist in its cultural/traditional/ religious need up to and seen in modern day. Why? Unsure but could be based on laziness or timidity for change.
But one thing every human being is aware, death is final. To kill to compensate for individual or group inability is murder and to place it under a veil of a religious cause is cowardly and evil.
Every human being is aware that death is final? Many Buddhists believe in reincarnation, so for them death is definitely not final, while Muslims and Christians often think they’ll wind up in Heaven or Hell when this life is over, perhaps making death a final change, but still not exactly final.
Irrespective of what they believe, there is no question that death is final for the body. Who knows about all that other man-made stuff….
They don’t care if death is final for the body. If you’ve drunk the kool aid that this earth is a brief waiting room before paradise and your 27 virgins, then what the hell. You might as well strap on the suicide vest and get there sooner.
This is a wonderful rhetorical fork and should be repeated endlessly to the defenders of multiculturalism: if you do not believe that Islamism is the same as Islamic then you cannot object to rooting out Islamism as being against that religion; yet if you believe Islamism is the same as Islamic then you must believe in rooting out of all Islam. The only way out of the fork is to deny that Islamism is a problem, which would condemn them to defending the most hideous beliefs and acts in modern history.
good point.
About time Macron gave a lead in Europe over this cursed religion of Islam. Islam is more than a religion and their lies the problem. It is a political creed also. It eats into every aspect of the individuals life. It demands complete submission to the ravings of a medieval pedophile warlord who took sex slaves and killed the kafirs by the thousands as well as Jews, gays and apostates of his religion. There has surely been enough blood spilt over the centuries in persuit of Islam’s global Umma to realise that it will never reform or integrate into western secular societies and indeed demands ‘submission’from them. it has been going on for 1400 years. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Macron is a leading globalist, a fervent supporter of open borders and cultural diversity so it is difficult to believe his current stance. is this his real opinion or is it merely his way of negating Le Pen and thus win re-election. I hope it is the former but my head believes it is the latter.
Open borders? In the EU, yes. Otherwise, not so much. Cultural diversity? Hmm… yes, as long as within France they don’t attempt to subvert French culture and historical norms… which is precisely what his recent decree’s are about. To end that.
OPEN BORDERS !😱
When can we retire this nonsense trope that there is a cabal of ‘fervent open borders supporters’ run by the left/deep state/ bankers/ Jews/woke/lizard-people ?
Macron favours free movement within the EU. It’s supposed to be part of the deal if you’re a member. He has consistently talked about the need for border controls to enter the EU.
I’m tired of hearing the right bleat about ‘open borders’ as if they it was anyone’s credible objective or policy. It’s the type of lazy strawman guff that you’d hear in the golf club bar.
As Noor Bin Laden points out in her interview with Paul Joseph Watson, you cannot separate political islam from the religious, it’s a pipe dream. https://youtu.be/VFa3EEvRwuA
Our ancestors knew what to do about Islam – keep it out of Europe. It seems we now have to learn the lessons of history all over again. A Jan Sobieski or a Charles Martel will arise.
Tiens! So M. LePen was right after all….
The fault lines between Hindus and Muslims and consequent strains are not part of discourse in western intellectuals. What France and Europe is realising now has been the pain and loss for India over many centuries and got accentuated when the British left us, succumbing ( or may be conniving) with demands of Muslims for a separate state based on demography. The salami slicing tactics still go on, some large like Kashmir and some piecemeal where smaller parcels of districts in India gradually get Muslim majority ( Assam, Bengal, Kerala,). Yes, Macron is right in using the phrase ‘ Islamist separatism’.
We the Hindus in in the Indian subcontinent have had the first hand experience, where not only large swaths of Hindu land has been lost, but the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan has been decimated, while the Muslims in India enjoy all the equal rights of citizens which the democratic liberal secular state ensures
While the Austrian government hit hard at MB structures in Austria, the German government is pouring new and big money into structures supporting Islamism and hate of Israel under the umbrella of anti-racism and diversity. Why does the German government covertly ally with Islamists and Antisemits?
Diversity and anti-racism 100 millions. € in 2017
https://www.dw.com/en/are-g…
Diversity and anti-racism 1 milliard € in 2021
https://frauenstandpunkt.bl…
“The political ideology that feeds terrorist violence cannot be explained away by religion or colonial history.”
Does that apply equally to the political ideology behind the terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior that killed Fernando Pereira?
“Once Western governments engaged with ” and even funded ” Islamists in the hope of providing a bulwark and moderating influence against “homegrown” jihadist radicalisation.”
And in the hope of destabilising Afghanistan via Operation Cyclone, when Islamist jihadi terrorists – the Mujahaddin – were funded and trained by Western governments.
Bit leftfield, how many years ago was that?
And, IIRC, the French Secret Service agent felt so bad about the death (there was supposed to be no-one on-board) she admitted publicly that it was her.
So, finding it difficult to see what your point is…
There was supposed to be nobody on board? First I’ve heard of that excuse; I think you’ve got your facts wrong there.
OK, so one of the footsoldiers involved felt bad. Did they get ten years of jail time? No, they got French jail time and they were let out early, after New Zealand was threatened with effective EU boycotts of its products if it jailed the terrorists there. The masterminds of the operation got off scott-free, apart perhaps from some temporary political embarrassment.
My point? All this tortuous looking for the roots of terrorism in the nature of Islam and Islamism is a deliberate red herring. The French state is happy to wage terrorism when it feels like it, but objects when the carnage reaches its own soil. Hence its dishonest and incoherent critique of Islamic political violence. We won’t understand these phenomena by pretending our nations don’t do terrorism.
We don’t pretend our nations don’t do terrorism. They do it, occasionally, in an attempt to defend our security, our liberal pluralism and our comfortable post-industrial lifestyle. The Islamists do it to attempt to achieve a totally Islamic society ruled by sharia. Is that the kind of society you would like to live in?
The chap that died was the only person on the ship when the bomb exploded. He was a photographer.
There were a group of possibly 3-4 DGSE operatives, 2 of which the NZ Police captured whilst trying to get out of the country.
They were sentenced to 10 years, but served only 2.
The French blew the RW up because of their nuclear testing.
Islamists blow things up because they’re ******* insane nutters hell bent on introducing Sharia Law globally.
You have may have a point in regard to the funding of terrorism (CIA etc..), i just don’t think you make it using the above example
“The chap that died was the only person on the ship when the bomb exploded.”
More wishful thinking. “At 23:45, the second bomb went off. Pereira drowned in the rapid flooding that followed, and the other ten crew members either safely abandoned ship on the order of Captain Peter Willcox or were thrown into the water by the second explosion. The Rainbow Warrior sank four minutes later.” Admittedly that’s from Wikipedia, not always the most reliable source, but it chimes with everything else I’ve read about the incident.
And what’s this about French state-sponsored terrorists doing it for noble reasons like wanting to explode nuclear weapons, while ‘Islamists blow things up because they’re ******* insane nutters’? I’m certainly not impressed by such hypocritical double standards. Until France renounces its terrorist past, it’s just a bully complaining that it got hurt.
No, it is a country attempting to re-assert it’s own identity, one that appears to have been lost to insane ideas of “multi-culturalism” and identity politics.
France is no saint and never has been.
The female despite being in ‘close arrest’ was allowed a conjugal visit from her husband, (@ French taxpayers expense), they duly copulated, and bingo! She was pregnant and had to return to France to give birth.
The whole farce was authorised by the late, loathsome, ex Vichy, Francois Mitterrand.
All the ten or so participants are retired, smugly living on very generous state pensions, and happy they didn’t have an appointment with Mr Albert Pierrepoint, and the ‘nine o’clock’ walk.
Thanks for clearing that up. My memory is getting a bit like Homer’s memory, if I have to remember something new I have to forget something old. It’s just too full…
Sadly, I always tend to recall the excruciating details of such yummy moments of national humiliation!
I must seek professional help someday, according to my Chief of Staff.
Corbynista alert.
Let’s get a sense of proportion here.
In 2011 a Norwegian nutter called Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 innocent, mainly young people.
Norway’s population is about 5.3 million, France’s about 66 million. Had that miserable event occurred in France the ” butchers bill” would have been very close to 1000!
Islam has its nutters, but, sadly so do we.
First of all, Islam has a lot more. And I really dislike these stupid “if it had happened in France, it would have been 1000” arguments. If it happened in Luxembourg, it would have been only 7… so what?
“First of all, Islam has a lot more”.(?)What exactly does that incoherent outburst mean?
I also find it tedious that you are incapable of making any comparative analysis, no doubt because you are blinded by your blatant animosity?
However enough of that. One really irritating feature of Islamic terrorism, on which I’m sure we agree, is its really shocking incompetence and stupidity. Do they really believe that slaughtering the innocents in Paris, Madrid,Manchester,Tunisia etc etc will have any positive outcome whatsoever? Not only are these bovine attacks cowardly, they are immensely counterproductive.
If they wish to get anywhere they should look to history and try to emulate their predecessors, the Nizari Isma’ili sect known as the Assassins, who operated very successfully from their mountain castles in Syria and Persia from the late 11th century to the late 13th century.
Failing that, and for a contemporary example, they should learn from Mossad and its predecessors. The murder of Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944, by the Stern Gang, being but one example of a bespoke, high profile killing, regardless of personal cost.
If they were to execute an ongoing, remorseless attack, on the leaders of the Western Word, and only the leaders and their immediate entourage, they might conceivably get somewhere. If not they will fail and end up in the dustbin of history.
RE: Islam has its nutters but so do we.
response: Islam has a lot more.
response: incoherent.
Really? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
As for your tedium: yawn.zzz.
Bang on cue, Mossad have executed a perfect assassination, as I have outlined below.
Islam should take note.
The man who lost the plot somewhere.
You’re missing the difference between ‘nutters’ and ‘religious fundamentalists’… and it makes all the difference.
I’m sorry, but to me they are the same thing : mad.
Unfortunately they’re not the same. ‘Mad’ implies irrational behaviour outside the bounds of your society’s rules. If you’re raised somewhere where everyone believes the rules are the word of god and he wants you to kill unbelievers, then it’s the completely sane thing to do.
Political leaders can be extremely petty. Macron is an upstart jerk who has pissed off other upstart jerks, so there a lot of leaders who are pleased to see him in difficulty.
The conversation is often about whether the UK multicultural model or the French universal one is better. Is society less divided, and less prone to terrorism, when cultures live side-by-side or when they’re all forced to conform. My perception is that the American model is better than both. There seems to be a willingness by people to take pride in being American first, then religion/cultural/heritage second. I suspect that, at least in the past, America has done a better job of welcoming it’s immigrants and not making them feel like second class citizens.
As long as they weren’t black! Or are you blind?
Did you not notice the largest riots in 50 years that just took place? More Americans died from the riots in the US this year than were killed by terrorist attacks in France.
I think it’s a complete non sequitur. The BLM protests aren’t by people trying to impose different cultural values and religions. They all self-identify as Americans. You’re conflating the integration of 1st/2nd generation immigrants, with black Americans whose families date back to the founding of the country. Your comment says more about what colour you think Americans are.
‘The BLM protests aren’t by people trying to impose different cultural values and religions.’
BLM openly advocates for Marxism and the destruction of the nuclear family and the West.
Fraser, you can’t just keep saying stuff like this as unfounded assertions. If BLM openly advocates for the destruction of the West, it won’t be hard for you to provide links to prove that
it certainly advocated for the destruction of the nuclear family. I read it myself on their web site, though i’m told they’ve quietly taken down that part now.
Your idea that America integrates its population is belied by the fact that you haven’t integrated people who have been there for 400 years. It’s clearly harder to integrate new immigrants. And harder still to integrate religions that are hostile. Catholic immigrants from Mexico, Hindu immigrants from India, secular or mildly religious Asians are not the same as radicalised Muslims.
In fact all these groups immigrate to Europe as well, and integrate. See Priti Patel or the Indian guy who was Irish PM.
Oh they sure are trying to impose different cultural values. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
This applied until the Obama years, when thousands and thousands of muslims made their way to Minnesota. Ilhan Omar, their deeply corrupt representative in Congress, hates America.
The US has received pretty well educated Muslims who are in fact comparatively liberal. Meanwhile some if not most of the radicalism of islam in Europe is due to the sheer insanity of the US actions in the region and the fact that we import the poorest and least educated, often fleeing from your wars.
As for US integration it looked like your cities have been burning all year because a drug addict was killed by a policeman.
you just go on believing that Islamic radicalization in Europe is the result of American actions. It’s classic agency removal from the culprits while blaming others for their actions.
Of course it isn’t the only reason but it’s the main reason. In fact Muslim immigrants were integrating pretty well in the 50s and 60s, secularising and integrating. Even today older Muslims in France are more tolerant. The US actions in Iraq, Syria etc have inflamed the area, and destabilised the entire region.
As well as that, and back to the topic, the US media then has to audacity to whine about attempts by European nations, France in particular to integrate Muslims.
can’t argue about the U.S. media’s “audacity”, in fact I think you’re being kind. But America’s actions didn’t prompt the overthrow of the Shah (unless you go back to 1953), and U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria (not that they did much at all in Syria) were preceded by the WTC/Pentagon attacks. I think they were pretty “inflamed” already.
The US wars in Libya and Syria generated impoverished migrants, but that doesn’t explain why the EU let so many in so suddenly and often illegally, which continues to this day. And it doesn’t really follow that folks angry at the US for bombing their country would take it out on Europeans who are very generously helping them recover their lives.
Islamism is a reaction to Zionism. Stop supporting the colonial conquest of Palestine, stop tabooing discussion of the outrageous “primordial right of Jews from Europe to have their own state in Palestine,” return Jerusalem. Then Islamism will disappear. Long-term hypocrisy, lies, duplicity of the Western world, support for Zionism – this gave rise to Islamism. As long as there are double standards, lies, injustice, hidden and explicit support for Jewish fascism, there will be a reaction of desperate people, outraged by injustice.
Muslims don’t need Europe. You can keep it for yourself. Muslims want Jerusalem, which was taken from them by force of arms 100 years ago.
Muslims did not have a “Jewish question”. Christians were at enmity with Jews. Europe killed Jews and moved the “Jewish question” to Muslims.
But Islam didn’t exist prior to 875 or whenever it was, Jerusalem had been Christian for the previous several centuries.
So, what is your point?
Historically, all the lands of the Middle-East were Christian lands, not Muslim. All depends on where you start the clock from…
about 600, but your point stands.
For Muslims, the world history began with Islam. They have no care, respect or curiosity for the pre-Islamic world or culture.
No, historically Israel and Jerusalem were Jewish land. The Christian attachment to Jerusalem would not exist were Jerusalem not the centre of the Jewish faith, temple and all. That’s why Christians and Muslims insist on claiming it for themselves, though Christians have a better claim — after all Jesus was arrested and crucified there. Yet both are predicated on the Jewish religion putting Jerusalem and Israel front and centre.
And Islam got started in the 7th century, not the 9th. (or whatever).
If Muslims don’t need Europe how does it happen that so many millions of Muslims are happily and peacefully settled Europe, living their lives as modern Europeans and holding their faith?
As for Israel, every state in the world is founded on and resulted from, invasion in historic or prehistoric times, including the United States and the various countries of the Islamic world. Human history is that of successive waves of invasion. Revenge is futile.
Jews have more right to the assets of middle-east than any other religion or group simply because they were there before anyone else. Palestine is an invented issue created by Islamists to acquire a victim status. It brings in donation money. This same strategy is used in Kashmir and Rohingya. Islamists abuse the West’s sense of fairness, tolerance and humanity to attack the critics of political Islam and label them Islamophobe. The Guardian readers and Labour voters may be naive enough to fall for their tactics, but Macron is a straight talker.
Are we referring to the Canaanites?
seen any canaanites lately?
Weren’t they pals with the Midionites? Or was it Hittites? 🙂
Muslims don’t hate us for what we do but for what we are. Their attempts to conquer the world started more than a millennium before the founding of Israel. They have no concern for the Palestinian population other than as an excuse for terrorism.
The Jewish people are surrounded by people that are hell bent on their destruction, they deserve our support and best wishes.
Regardless, your hatred of Israel and the Jews shouldn’t blind you to what’s happening elsewhere with Islamist terrorism. Much of it is within Muslim majority territories and directed at fellow Muslims for some reason or other. Blowing up a bus load of school girls for the crime of going to school. That sort of thing.
el crocko. Iran revolution because of “zionism”? Osama bin Laden came about because of “zionism”??? Iran-Iraq war down to “zionism”? Lebanese unrest for the past 50 years down to “zionism”? ISIS taking over half of Iraq and Syria and murdering fellow Arabs all down to “zionism”? Libyan civil war down to “zionism”?
Nutcase.