We
need a politically incorrect and radically new multi-disciplinary and
multinational understanding of Islam.
To
speak of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths” or as
the “three religions of the Book,” or, more significantly, as the “three
monotheisms,” obscures rather than illuminates.
These familiar tropes, says
theologian George Weigel, ought to be retired.
The
eminent French scholar Alain Besançon agrees. He writes, “The Abraham of
Genesis is not the Ibrahim of the Qur’an; Moses is not Moussa. As for Jesus, he
appears, as Issa, out of place and out of time, without reference to the
landscape of Israel. His mother, Mary, or Mariam, identified as the sister of
Aaron, gives birth to him under a palm tree. Then Issa performs several
miracles, which seem to have been drawn from the apocryphal gospels, and
announces the future coming of Muhammad.
Alain
Besançon takes us deeper into the heart of the matter. He draws this
theological distinction between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and
Islam, on the other:
Although
Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing from the list, but
central to the Jewish and even more so to the Christian concept of God, is
“Father” — i.e., a personal God capable of a reciprocal and loving relationship
with men. The one God of the Qur’an, the God who demands submission, is a
distant God; to call him “Father” would be an anthropomorphic sacrilege. The
Muslim God is utterly impassive; to ascribe loving feeling to Him would be
suspect. If God is not “Father,” then it is difficult to imagine the
human person as having been made “in the image of God.”
Now,
let us admit that Islam has, over the centuries, given meaning and purpose to
hundreds of millions of lives that have been decently lived. It is also true,
however, that today, throughout the world, Islam finds itself in the midst of
what Besançon aptly describes as “a long-delayed, wrenching, and still far from
an accomplished encounter with modernity.”
Indeed,
Islam continues to divide mankind into two groups, the faithful on the one
hand, and creatures Islam calls “pigs” and “dogs” on the other, an attitude
that fosters Islamic terrorism.
To
clarify matters further, in 1985, note well that Iran’s delegate to the United
Nations, Said Raja’i-Khorassani, declared that “the very concept of human
rights was ‘a Judeo-Christian invention’ and inadmissible in Islam.”
The
indiscriminate nature of Islamic terrorism can be explained by these words of
Catholic theologian George Weigel: “The notion that there are ‘no innocents,’
that the enemy is ‘guilty’ simply by reason of drawing breath – logically
entails a strategy of open-ended mayhem based on the radical dehumanization of
the ‘other.’”
Dehumanization
describes the terrorist acts of the Palestinian Authority. This
consortium of Muslim-led terrorist groups reduces Jewish children to body parts
by exploding the busses in which they ride to school. There is no essential
difference between these Muslim terrorists and those that perpetrated the
bloodbath in Paris, in Nice, and in Orlando.
Alain
Besancon, quoted by Dr. Weigel, exposes another obscure aspect of Islam:
“Although Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing among the list
is ‘father’ – i.e., a personal God capable of a reciprocal and loving
relationship with men. If God is not our ‘father,’ then it is difficult to
imagine the human person as having been made ‘in the image of God.’” Small
wonder that Muslims liken “infidels” to “pigs” and “dogs,” and harbor no qualms
about using their own children as human bombs to explode Jewish schools busses,
thus reducing Jewish children to body parts.
The
social philosopher Lou Harris offers a broader assessment of Islam in Civilization
and Its Enemies. Contemptuous of the cultural relativism propagated by
American colleges and universities, Harris means by civilization a standard of
behavior that can be applied across cultures and across history. He sees
civilization as having four prerequisites: a stable social order, the
co-operation of individuals pursuing their own interests, the ability to
tolerate or socialize with one’s neighbors, and a hatred of violence.
Clearly,
Islam lacks three of the four prerequisites of Harris’ definition of a
civilization. What is remarkable is that Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa
Sultan arrived at the same conclusion. She denied a clash between the West and
Islamic civilization because, in her view, Islam is not a civilization!
Egyptian-born
scholar Bat Ye’or agrees. She defines Islam as a culture of hate, and one can
cite several former Muslims who renounced Islam for this very reason.
That
said, I have collected several essays by renowned scholars and statesmen who,
even though they represent different nations and even different periods of
history, nonetheless agree about the egregious nature of Islam, which justifies
the title of Harris’ book Civilization and Its Enemies.
Part I. Introduction
Part II. Identifying the Enemy
Part III. A Former Muslim Shows How to Combat the Enemy
Part IV. An Insider’s View of ‘Moderate’ Muslims
Part V. Beyond Multicultural Relativism
Part VI. The Theological Basis of Today’s Crisis
Part VII. Islamophobia: Facts and Fictions
Part VIII. Islamic Bellicosity and Blood Lust
Part IX. Blood Lust (cont’d)
Part X. Iran and Necrophelia
Part XI. Islamic Imperialism
Part XII. Islam: A Cult of Hatred, Especially of Jews
Part II. Identifying the Enemy
Part III. A Former Muslim Shows How to Combat the Enemy
Part IV. An Insider’s View of ‘Moderate’ Muslims
Part V. Beyond Multicultural Relativism
Part VI. The Theological Basis of Today’s Crisis
Part VII. Islamophobia: Facts and Fictions
Part VIII. Islamic Bellicosity and Blood Lust
Part IX. Blood Lust (cont’d)
Part X. Iran and Necrophelia
Part XI. Islamic Imperialism
Part XII. Islam: A Cult of Hatred, Especially of Jews
Prof.
Paul Eidelberg is President, Israel-America Renaissance Institute
