With thanks to friends Mona, Mohamed, Karim, Nazem, Nagati, Ahmed and SherriJoyce. They shared with me below illuminating, matter-of-fact and hopeful articles, write-ups and videos in regards the Muslim world, the Arab world and the West; religion and Islam.
I in turn share with you this valuable material, six articles, in no particular order.
- A short 5-minute English-subtitled video (below) that examines past and present hypocrisy and bankruptcy engulfing the Arab World vis a vis the West.
- A German, Dr. Emanuel Tanya's insightful view on Islam's fanatics.
- A Saudi, Shams Bandar is asking: why do we pin all our problems on the West?
- An Egyptian, Dr. A.K.Shaalan's
take on religion, together with comments he received and his response. - A Syrian, Dr. Mahmud A. Faksh, on the crisis of Islam, with a supporting article by a Damasceen, Dr. Mohamed Habsh, who teaches Islamic Law and Theology.
- An American, Michael Brendan Dougherty's article outlining with logic and clarity that there is no easy solution to "The intractable, insidious conflict between Islamism and the West."
Hussein
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2. A German's Insightful View on Islam
Dr. Emanuel Tanya's below explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation is one of the best I have read. His references to past history are accurate and clear. Dr. Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist, a man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates.
When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
Emanuel Tanya's take on Muslim fanatics
"Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."
"We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam."
"The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers."
"The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people."
"The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?"
"History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world Will have begun."
"Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late."
"Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in."
"In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores."
"In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law."
"As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life."
"Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."
"We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam."
"The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers."
"The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people."
"The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?"
"History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world Will have begun."
"Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late."
"Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in."
"In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation's shores."
"In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law."
"As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life."
3. Saudi-born singer Shams Bandar: Why Do We Pin All Our Problems on the West?
4. A.K.Shaalan's Take on Religion
WHAT WE REALLY NEED TO SET OUR WORLD STRAIGHT
Let’s first agree on what we really don’t need: we don’t need, neuro-psychologists, sage-theologists, political-methodoligists, socio-behavioroligists, cosmo-scientologists, meta-physical philosophist etc..etc... They haven’t been successful in the past nor are they likely to succeed in the future to help answer the question “why we persistently behave the way we do and why we stubbornly hold on to senseless beliefs and keep repeating the same disastrous mistakes over and over again.”
Undeniably, our current prevailing problem is Islam, However Jews and Christians are in no position to castigate, because they too have histories of barbaric acts done in the name of their religion. In fact, every major religion has blood on its hands.
Religion is an ideology that has been with humans since ancient times when people turned to Gods to make sense of the world whenever they couldn’t; so they relied a lot on faith. Faith is defined as belief without evidence while science is belief in the presence of evidence.
So what we really need is a new approach to teach future generations how to overcome their faith and to think like scientists and behave like humanists, while at the same time follow the medical dictum ‘primum non nocere’ - first, do no harm.
We need to create a new generation of ‘Street Epistomologists’, (
The street epistemologist is in fact a philosopher and a fighter. He/she is equipped with an array of dialectical and clinical tools and actively goes into the streets and communities to help people rethink their beliefs and superstitions and embrace reason. He/she is savvy and street smart that comes from understanding the hard facts of life.
This work will pay off by helping billions of people fill the religion gap by developing, encouraging, and cultivating the kind of social and psychological infrastructure by which human beings can meet their needs and live in a better world. Most believers have been brainwashed into thinking that religion is necessary for happiness and contentment. This flies in the face of the fact that the happiest, healthiest, most content societies are the least religious.
Comments Dr. Shaalan received and his response
I find this statement condescending, narrow-minded and without merit. I lived a fulfilling life as a physician dedicated to caring for patients and advancing healthcare. Religion never interested me other than its beneficial effect it had on many of my patients in coping with their life problems. Only when I began to see its significant deleterious impact on world events that I took an interest in studying it, and that only occurred after retiring from my profession at the age of 70.
2. “atheism is a belief just like theism”
That couldn’t be any further from the truth. Atheism is most definitely not a belief like theism. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is, basically, the lack of belief in God(s). Frankly, in my opinion, the term “atheism” as it stands, doesn’t make sense simply because “theism” doesn’t make sense. Atheism is best understood as a null position, as a term that shouldn’t exist and hopefully, eventually will not exist. It would be a sad state of affairs if anyone would limit his identity to a negative, which is exactly what the term atheism is. It simply means not having enough evidence to warrant a belief in a God or Gods. It is best to avoid the use of the word especially in places where it carries a security risk. “Nonbeliever” is sufficient. In the US they are now classified as “nones”.
3. “All beliefs restrict our horizons & therefore damaging"
I am in full agreement with that statement except that I would add: “all beliefs based on insufficient evidence”. I would also like to state that all religious-based beliefs are in fact without sufficient evidence. They spread like a virus if allowed, and they infect their hosts with tremendous tenacity when they goes wrong, which seems to be always the case if given enough time. If our intellectuals are not aware of that, we have a problem.
4. "Dear Abdelkarim, you're blowing in an Erba maktoo3a, i.e., in a punctured balloon, 80% of the Abrahamics have a low I.Q. So religions will prevail no matter what. It is a devout..devout..devout world. Keep hoping...and keep Smiling"
No response.
Dr. Faksh is Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Southern Maine, US.
"I wanted to share with you friends below damning article of the state of Islam today 'كلنا شركاء', written by a leading Damasceen Muslim scholar, Dr. Mohamed Habsh, who moved to the UAE where he teaches Islamic Law and Theology!"
"For years, I have maintained that Islam is in crisis, and more so today than ever before! Of course, we all know that the crisis of Islam started with the encounter between a declining Muslim world and a rising Modern West early in the 18th century, only to exacerbate in later years as the West became the dominant cultural, educational, scientific and military force worldwide."
"Throughout, Muslims stuck to their traditional narrative as the Best of People God Created on this Earth, refusing to take heed of the changing times and refusing to establish a synthesis by reconciling Islam with modernity! All along, they were unable and/or unwilling to face the crisis and undertake a reconstruction of religious thought in Islam!"
"Indeed, ever since the banning and banishing the Mu'tazilla, the first liberal rationalist thinkers in Islam in the 9th century, followed by the closing of the gate of Ijtihad (free thinking), with the crystallization of the 4 schools of Islamic jurisprudence in the 10th century, the Muslim mind has atrophied and Muslims have barricaded themselves behind a wall of blind orthodoxy and dogma. Reason untethered from faith, and faith was reduced to mere Naql (unquestioned acceptance of taqleed, tradition). Muslims became frozen in time (jumud) unable to liberate Islam form its Medieval state to become relevant in today's world."
"What Islam is in need most today is to have its Muslim Martin Luther to lead a rebellion against blind Orthodoxy and the traditional Ulamas authority and give a new rendering of the religious Texts that is in tandem with today's world."
November 17, 2015
When al Qaeda struck at the United States in 2001, its targets were hard symbols of American power and decision-making: the Pentagon, the Capitol, and the financial capital. When ISIS struck Paris on Friday, its targets were soft symbols of Western lifestyle: sport, restaurants, a secular concert. People eating, drinking, and laughing at night for their own pleasure.ISIS knows our thinking. It knows how to make us afraid.
In response, so many in the West seem to have an easy solution to our renewed terrorism problem. Just hold our Sunni-state allies accountable
and demand that they don't fund ISIS and other terrorist groups. Or just get better at integrating Muslims into the European community. Or just
stop admitting Syrian refugees into the U.S. Or just expel the Islamists
from Europe. Or just admit it, Islam itself is the problem.We reach for "just [something]" solutions like these because we are appalled and, let's be honest, frightened. These solutions seem comforting. But none are satisfying.
If we lash out in Syria, or against Muslims here at home, we simply prove the extremists' argument correct, that we are wicked infidels who hate all Muslims, and that we must be stopped by any means necessary.
If we appease or wriggle our way out of confrontation, we prove another of their arguments correct, that we are a weak civilization, unwilling to protect or avenge our sons and daughters. A civilization so pitiful is asking for the sword.
So let's face this hard truth: There is no easy "just [something]" solution because the West inadvertently co-authors Islamist terrorism.
We know this is true on a basic level. In but one small example: ISIS used American arms to establish its caliphate. It steals them from the Iraqi army
we made to fill in the chaos left behind after we smashed the Iraqi state. It steals them from "moderate" rebels we covertly armed in Syria.But the West also inadvertently abets Islamist terrorism at a deeper level, simply by being itself. The West has created a world order that is, in many ways, indifferent or hostile to Islamic society. This Western world order's very existence is an affront to Islamic theology, and its humiliations reach deep into the Islamic world itself.
In that sense, there is no way to militarily defeat Islamist terrorism, because Islamist terrorism is a plausible, if horrifying, response by a small number of extremist Muslims to the historical and theological crisis of Islamic civilization's defeat and humiliation over centuries, first at the hands of secular states from Christendom, and more recently at the hands of a tiny Jewish state.
Muslims believe that God granted the Prophet and his followers astounding military victories as a sign of his favor. But this expansion was eventually halted and reversed. There was the reconquest of Spain in the 15th century, the defeat of Muslim forces at Lepanto in the 16th century, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. According to Islam's religious tenets, Islamic civilization's defeats, reversals, and retreats are not just unfortunate turns of history, but can be viewed as signs of apostasy and a need for reform of the ummah. It is not a coincidence that after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Salafist and Wahhabist Islam grew. Wahhabism, for instance, grew out of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence, which advocates a constant return to the sources of Islam as a source of renewal and purification for the faithful.
Today, many Muslims experience their own governments as pretender authorities. The Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria have long been run by exclusive factions, or gangs. Many believe that Islam calls the residents of these states into a brotherhood that transcends their divided nationalities, and it bids them toward a noble life of piety, hospitality, and prayer. Islam also acts as a constant critique of these states, which in turn helps Muslims to endure the indignities of these regimes, while they await the true community of the Prophet to come into being.
Living in these regimes is nothing like living under a Western government. In the West, governments have a more legitimate authority and a greater claim on our loyalty. Western governments institutionalize opposition, conciliation, and critique. Western governments also announce that they exist to protect freedom of speech (freedom to blaspheme), freedom of religion (freedom of unbelief), and freedom of choice (freedom to sin).
This strikes a certain type of fundamentalist as damnable hubris. Especially when these liberal ideals are sent into the Islamic world through popular entertainment, through the coercion of international bodies and treaties, through the work of NGOs, and the attempts to win "hearts and minds" during the occasional war. Consider this quote from someone who was educated in the West.
"If one allows the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on Earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus, if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their [corrupting] activities, we have indeed done them a service. For their eventual punishment will be less. To allow the infidels to stay alive means to let them do more corrupting. [To kill them] is a surgical operation commanded by Allah the Creator." [Ayatollah Khomeini, 1984]
English philosopher Roger Scruton, commenting on Khomeini's reaction to the West, says of his sentiments:
"[T]hey are a vivid testimony to the fact that the virtues of Western political systems are, to a certain kind of Islamic mind, imperceptible — or perceptible, as they were to Qutb and Atta, only as hideous moral failings. Even while enjoying the peace, prosperity, and freedom that issue from a secular rule of law, a person who regards the shari'a as the unique path to salvation may see these things only as the signs of a spiritual emptiness or corruption. [Roger Scruton]
The virtues of Western governments are equally imperceptible to many Muslims who are not radicals. It's not hard to see why. Consider the descendant of Algerian immigrants to France who cannot find work and confronts racism and poverty in a country that demands not just his obedience to authority, but his respect and esteem. Or the descendant of Turks in Germany, living in a society that tries to seduce him while constantly telling him that he is merely an object of toleration, a person not for himself, but only worth anything as a testimony to Western liberality.
The alienation and desire for negation these men feel may be closer to nihilism at first, but nihilism and religious radicalism are not so far apart in their despair over a phony, compromised, and compromising world.
What is so frightening about the religious energies that have built an Islamic state in Iran and now work to establish a Sunni caliphate around Raqqa are the way they have exalted martyrdom to a new place in this extreme version of the Islamic religion. The determination to commit yourself to a suicide attack is to announce your power over the world — and your power to lay down your life. It is to finally stand above the others who merely tolerate you, who go out on a Friday night for pleasure and later run screaming from the danger that you have become.
And so there is no "just [something]" solution. The West and Islamism are trapped in a set of interlocking hostilities. European nations have found no sure way of integrating their large and growing Muslim populations, no way of making them part of the institutionalized bargains that underpin the Western order. Their societies are thus machines for creating alienation. Meanwhile, Islamic reformers have not found a way to make various strains of Islamism more liberal and tolerant in spirit while Islamic civilization remains marginal as a global geopolitical force. And the process of globalization, brought on by Western power, brings Western offenses to the Islamic world, and offended Muslims into the Western world.
If we are looking for a "just [something]" solution, the something has got to be much, much bigger. A revolution within Islamist theology and self-conception. Or a complete change of character and ideology for European nations.
We may get these, but at what price? And after how many cycles where war, anarchy, and theocracy overflows in the Middle East, creating refugees, terror plots, overreactions, and the effacement of the liberality of the West?
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"Humanity is starting to become civilized when a single human life is as sacred as God" Aly Sadek
