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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion (review) |
| 2006-10-19 |
| By William Tucker The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion By Robert Spencer (Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95) "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." -- James Joyce If you want to spend a depressing afternoon, try flipping through Robert Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad. It's not a long read, but when you're through you'll have an idea of the monumental task awaiting the West. Unlike the founders of other religions, whose lives are often shrouded in legend and mystery, Muhammad's rise took place -- as 19th century French scholar Ernest Renan put it -- "in the full light of history." Muhammad himself dictated the Koran. There are numerous other accounts of his life, both from people who knew him personally and from the hadith, a collection of "sayings of the prophet" that scholars collected shortly after his death. There is no great mystery about who Muhammad was or what he stood for. The only mystery is why the West has so much difficulty in recognizing it. Muhammad was a warlord, pure and simple. He roused a disorganized group of nomadic tribes into a ruthless, fearless army. During his lifetime, he conquered the Arabian Peninsula and his followers eventually extended those conquests from Spain to India. By all rights, he should take his place in history among of Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, and Tamerlane the Great as early history's great military leaders. The difference is that Muhammad was also a prophet -- or maybe just a bit of a psychopath. Probably illiterate, he was nevertheless extremely familiar with Jewish and Christian doctrines that prevailed throughout the Middle East. Realizing that people would not be won over unless they abandoned their religion, Muhammad reinterpreted these faiths, styling them all as forerunners and himself as the "Last Prophet," come to replace both. Beginning in middle age, Muhammad heard the voice of god -- Allah -- almost daily. His followers took notes and these transcriptions were eventually compiled into the Koran. As Spencer points out, Allah's dictates often went into strange detail and had an uncanny way of aligning themselves with The Prophet's desires. When Muhammad decided to take his own son's young bride for his wife, for example, Allah expressed approval. When several of Muhammad's wives ganged up on him because of his philandering, Allah gave him permission to divorce them -- a Koranic passage that still governs divorce in Muslim societies today. But it's worse than that. Where Allah and Muhammad occasionally disagreed, Allah was actually more harsh -- a kind of Freudian superego regurgitating the grim fantasies of early childhood. In several instances, Muhammad was ready to forgive his rivals and enemies but Allah wouldn't let him. Instead, they had to be beheaded. What has survived from Muhammad's eventful life, then, is not just a record of his conquests but a philosophy, a religion, a set of personal attitudes that prevails among more than a billion people of the world today. Those attitudes are not very friendly. Briefly, they prescribe that might makes right, that forgiveness is a sign of weakness, and that no fate is too vile for those who reject the wisdom of The Prophet. Jihadists beheading their captives still quote Koranic scripture -- accurately -- today. More than anything, Spencer's detailed analysis is a remarkable endorsement of Thomas Carlyle's idea that "History is the elongated shadow of great men." Say what you will about social and economic circumstances, about natural resources and geography, or even -- if you are to believe Jared Diamond's bizarre ramblings -- that climate is the determining factor of history, the fact remains that the ethos of every civilization can be traced to the historical actions of a few individuals. Confucius was a hermetic scholar who set China on a path of family loyalty, submission to authority, and respect for learning. The authors of The Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita were Brahmin scholars who preached supreme detachment and caste divisions. Buddha was the Indian Prince Siddhartha who rebelled against the Hindu caste system but taught extreme patience and withdrawal from the world. Moses was a lawgiver who led his people out of bondage. Jesus was a prophet who taught personal responsibility and the forgiveness of sins. Muhammad was a warrior who led armies into battle and taught that the sword was a proper instrument for converting the unbelievers. Granted, each of these founders often contradicted himself and the message of each has not always survived in its original purity. But each of these prophets set the tone of a civilization that still reverberates today. The tone of Islam, from its very beginnings, has been intolerance, conflict, and conquest. As a result, Islam now finds itself at war, not just with the West, but with every civilization on its borders. Of course this is everyone else's fault. Muslims are like the boy fighting with everyone in school whose mother comes to the principal's office wanting to know why everyone in the school is fighting with him! Spencer uses one example after another to bring home the point. In a story from the 9th century hadith of Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Bukahari, for example, Muhammad confronted a group of Jews about to punish a couple that had committed adultery. Asked to expound their own law, one of the rabbis then began to read from the Torah, but skipped a verse mandating stoning, covering it with his hand. Abdullah bin Salam, a rabbi who had converted to Islam, saw the trick. "Lift your hand!" Abdullah cried, and the verse duly read, Muhammad exclaimed, "Woe to you Jews! What has induced you to abandon the judgment of God which you hold in your hand?" And he asserted: "I am the first to revive the order of God and His Book and to practice it." Muhammad ordered the couple to be stoned to death; another Muslim remembered, "I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones." Compare this to Jesus' prescription in an almost identical situation: "Ye who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." Muhammad's story belongs to a period when, to quote Mark Twain, "History was one damned battle after another." Most of the world has left this era behind. The rise of civilization has been the history of people learning to live in peace and cooperate with each other on a wider and wider scale. All this requires that people forgive and forget, letting old grudges eventually recede into the past. Islam not only nurtures old grudges, it celebrates them. The Sunni and the Shi'ia are still fighting over the death of Hussein, Muhammad's grandson, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D. The fruit of Jesus' teaching of tolerance and forgiveness is that Western Civilization has been able to prosper while Islam remains locked in an era of primordial combat. Certainly we have had our wars and religious conflicts, but the overall trend has been toward cooperation and civilization -- especially in America, a land where much of history is virtually forgotten. Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the great Eastern religions are also proving that they can prepare people for the modern world. So why can't we make it clear to Muslims that it is time to forget the desert morality of the 7th century? For one thing, the people defending Western Civilization don't seem very familiar with its accomplishments. Last week the New York Times recounted how the Dutch government is introducing Muslim immigrants to Western values by showing them a DVD of "topless women and two men kissing" ("Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center," October 11). What would you think of a country that introduced itself by flaunting its pornography? Does the word "decadent" come to mind? Robert Spencer has outlined the situation very clearly: The words and deeds of Muhammad have been moving Muslims to commit acts of violence for fourteen hundred years now. They are not going to disappear in our lifetimes; nor can they be negotiated away. Islam is just as violent and conquest-oriented as the jihadists say it is. The question is not whether Islamic values are incompatible with ours. The question is whether we are going to assert our own values -- or let decadence and submission lead the way. William Tucker is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #20 A canal dug by slave labor is not comparable to water powered trip hammer in a German principate hammering out sheet metal for armor. That you don't seem to understand that one is an example of oppression, inefficient use of human capital, and low productivity while the other is an example of relative freedom, capital deepening and increasing productivity says volumes about you and your world view. You remind me of the socialists in the 30's who when pressed would admit that Stalin was a rat bastard, but that he needed to be one to build the Moscow Metro and the Volga canal and develop the Donbass and weren't those great things? You also cite the Mongols as an example of power projection. Yet the Mongols could never adapt their tactics to the European woodlands and within two generations their khanates were disssolving. 200 years after the Mongols, the Europeans were successfully adapting their tactics to steppe, jungle, deserts, mountain highlands, i.e. everywhere in the world. And their empires lasted centuries. You seem like the type who is attracted to big men, ideas and events. My advice to you is look at the little men, little things and little events. Find the places where the narrative breaks down and the premises are unsupported. If you apply those tests, you will find that the "those backwards Europeans lucked into it" hypothesis is false. A foundation was being laid centuries before the age of conquest and colonization. How it was laid is not as exciting as a water power empire building a grand canal, but it is the basis of our civilization. As we become ever more forgetful of how the foundation was laid and the people who built it, we are in ever increasing danger of losing our civilization. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-10-19 23:30 |
| #19 I worked on an archeological dig in England that dated from the 13th Century - around 1250AD (the Raunds Area Project). We found that a lot of supposition about the early Middle Ages was less than accurate. One of the things that was mentioned during my work on the dig was that the plague was not responsible for "killing" West Cotton or the other settlements we worked on, but because feudal landlords decided to move everyone into the larger towns and villages for easier management. There is every indication of a "middle class" and early commercialism from local brewing. We know less about the so-called "Dark Ages" than we think we do. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-10-19 23:26 |
| #18 #12 Procopius2K - I really don't give a flying f*ck who did what to whom 1,000 years ago. That was then - this is right now. What I do care about is what the islamonazis and their fellow-travelers the lefties and the Dems (but I repeat myself) are trying to do now to the life we in the West have. And they're following Mo's playbook. Fuck them and the camels they rode in on. I will not give up, I will not give in, and I will not be a burkha-wearing dhimmi. Before that happens, I'll be dead - and so will quite a few of them. Pfui. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-10-19 23:17 |
| #17 While the good Christian Crusaders were ‘taking back’ Jerusalem, they were also engaged in their own conversion by the sword in the Baltic against Prussians, Lithuanians, and Rus. Ah yes. "Peregrino expectavit pedes meus in cymbales" and all that. (Apologies if I messed up the Latin, no time to go look it up and Latin's not one of my languages. Barbarian, I am.) And perhaps the Teutonic knights did expect to return triumphantly. St. Alexander Nevsky foiled those expectations on the winter ice, however, to the great joy of latter Orthodox christians. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-10-19 22:35 |
| #16 I need to hit the sack, but I'll mention that the Crusades started about 1099, and were unprecedented, and repeated, long distance projections of power in and of themselves. Most of the problems the crusaders encountered were obviously traceable to intelligence failures due to language barriers, and IIRC, a Byzantine city was sacked when the Venitians misdirected one of the later Crusades. The more things change... However, keep in mind that there were repeated provocations from Muslims long before 1099, starting less than 100 years after Mohammed's death with the invasion and overrunning of Spain. Charles Martel turned back the Muslims at Tours, France in the 8th century. Rome was sacked by Muslim navies in the 9th (IIRC). I don't think there is any doubts about Chinese technological prowess: When the Chinese navy stopped at Madagascar, the size of the Junks exceeded those of the West that arrived several years later by a factor of three or four. Again, however, its not as much the technology you have as how willing you are to use it, as the Israelis recently re-learned WRT Hezbollah in Lebanon. Oh, and Procopius, the Chinese COULDN'T invent moveable type because their entire language was ICONIC, not composed of words drawn from a fixed alphabet that allows phonetic reconstruction. Readin' and Writin' was vastly easier in the West, creating the demand that the printing press fed. Your complaint about the Bible being the first book printed is pure sour grapes, diverting attention from the very real fact that the Renaissance emerged from a patently Christian Milleu. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-10-19 22:29 |
| #15 Mo was a puss |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-10-19 22:01 |
| #14 Back to topic. The review William Tucker is a freaking parrot. Muhammad never heard shit from any god. He was a con artist through and through. His hordes were funded by stolen goods and promises of young boys and virgin girls for sex. A pedophile for profit if you will. Enough of this pussy footing around. |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2006-10-19 21:58 |
| #13 Someone else respond, please. LOL. By the time I type mine out, 5 or 6 will have done one. |
| Posted by: Brett 2006-10-19 19:32 |
| #12 Wrong in fact the Middle Ages was LESS violent than the pre-AD era despite the assimilation of the very violent heritage from Berbaric Gertman tribes. I don’t see where I stipulated just violence. I’m stipulating knowledge, commerce, etc. When you give up Roman sanitation, the environment for the Plague becomes all the more possible. A quarter of the entire European population is a damn heavy pile of bodies in anyone’s book. And that sanitation would elude Europe as late as the Great Plague of London in 1666. Contraily to popular belief it was not so easy to get burned by the Church My goodness the long list of stuff we bury. While the good Christian Crusaders were ‘taking back’ Jerusalem, they were also engaged in their own conversion by the sword in the Baltic against Prussians, Lithuanians, and Rus. “ The conquest of Prussia was accomplished with much bloodshed over more than 50 years, during which native Prussians who remained unbaptised were subjugated, killed, or exiled.“ We sort of skip over things like that don’t we. Or when the Plague hits you get things like this: “Christian mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351, sixty major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred.” I’m sure we could continue to build the list all week with examples. The point is that it has only been a few hundred years that Christianity has turned away from institutions which were tolerated to spread or reinforce the faith by force. Really, if the Chinese were so advanced why is that they didn't invent printing? Why is that theuir vessels were unable to trans-ocean travel? They did invent printing. They didn’t invent movable type. Didn’t have a need. You forget the first book done by Gutenberg was the Bible. There was no such icon so salient to the culture that required such a device in China. Simple postings and proclamations didn’t require an elaborate mechanism. The next series of printings were of rare classical publications, but China never suffered the lose of its classics as Europe did with the fall of Rome. So, again the need to distribute the information wasn't a motivator. If you clicked on the link provided in the original posting you’d seen that the Admiral made it as far as Madagascar. That is certainly ocean going travel in my book. Could be that the Chinese civilization was unefficient? What I said was “ the cultural arrogance and anti-mercantile attitude of the Chinese system insured that it was the West and not the East which would form the world”. How much of the great inventions in Europe were achieved by men of privilege, rulers, and religious authorities? How much was achieved by what we’d referred to as middle class, mercantile, entrepreneurs? The Chinese bureaucracy tolerated their merchant class. Initiative was frowned upon. The culture told the peasant that life was tough endure it, because struggling only made it worse. Sounds like some Medieval Christian perspective as well. However, the Europeans obviously didn’t accept that. That class in Europe become the engine for change which China would not see except in short bursts before the bureaucracy would shut it down. Now ebetween the things theChurch did and you don't acnledge for it: That was not my issue. My issue is to accredit solely Christianity for affording the West the basis for its advancement that other cultures and civilization seem to have been unable to achieve. By the 1200's, Christendom was ahead of the rest of the world in metallurgy, agriculture, waterpower, naval architecture and navigation, literature, etc. Must be reading different books. In the 1200’s the superpower on the Eurasian continent was the Mongol/Yuan Empire. It was capable of projecting force unmatched till the 20th Century to include kicking butt of the European armies assembled in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungry. They were employing impressed Muslim and Chinese engineers to take down walls and shooting rockets into both cities and armies in the field. Gun powder in the form of rockets in the 1200-1300's. So backward. Yeah lead the world - how about a Yuan Grand Canal “During the Yuan, Ming (1368-1644), and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, the Grand Canal served as the main artery between northern and southern China and was essential for the transport of grain to Beijing. Although it was mainly used for shipping grain, the waterway also transported other commodities. The area around the Grand Canal eventually developed into an important business belt. Records show that every year more than 8,000 boats transported 4 to 6 million dan (200,000 to 300,000 tonnes) of grain to Beijing*. The convenience of transport also enabled the rulers to lead inspection tours to southern China. In the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Kangxi and Qianlong made 12 trips to southern China, on all occasions but one reaching the south terminus in Hangzhou.” Where was constuction like this in Europe at the time? [*And so much for those inefficient Chinese farmers.] |
| Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-10-19 18:56 |
| #11 An no less an authority than Victor Davis Hanson has stated, in Carnage and Culture, that a culture truly serious about implementing Christianity becomes a culture incapable of fighting effectively, if it ever chooses to fight at all. By the way, Michael Crichton's latest book, Timeline, documents, in novel form, and in his unique fashion, the new understanding that historians are gaining about the world and culture of the Middle Ages in Europe: Most of the hype about it being the "dark ages" apparently were from Renaissance boosters doing "Liberal/lawyer crap-speak" to put down the previous age to make themselves look better. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-10-19 18:20 |
| #10 Let's not forget the Magna Carta either. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-10-19 17:39 |
| #9 Let's not forget the incredible engineering achievemnt who was the gothic cathedral: 100 m tall and slim, elegant and with large windows (ie they could afford the luxury to have parts who didn't contribute to support the building). There is no equivalent in Islamic or Chinese architecture. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-10-19 15:44 |
| #8 Amazon link for Mr. Spencer's book. I've ordered one. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-10-19 14:55 |
| #7 Yes to what JFM said. By the 1200's, Christendom was ahead of the rest of the world in metallurgy, agriculture, waterpower, naval architecture and navigation, literature, etc. The visual arts were still a bit crude, but also ready to overtake the rest in a few generations. I'm so tired of the "dumb Europeans got lucky" revisionism. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-10-19 14:29 |
| #6 Thank You JFM, for doing such a thorough job of debunking the myth of the big bad Christian faith and it's historical evils. Saved me the time and trouble. Oh, BTW, Procopius2k, you took exception with the statement "The fruit of Jesus' teaching of tolerance and forgiveness is that Western Civilization has been able to prosper while Islam remains locked in an era of primordial combat." That statement is absolutely true. If I practice Christianity to the hilt, it will make me a more living, kind, generous, faithful, honorable and decent human being. The abuses of the Inquisition and other times occurred precisely because men FAILED to practice their religious ideals, not because they practiced them more vehemently. Contrast that with Islam. Practice it to the hilt, and you produce Bin Laden and his ilk. They're not distorting a 'great religion'. They're simply practicing it accurately and faithfully. If you can't see the difference, perhaps you should read the texts and review your history. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-10-19 13:28 |
| #5 Procopius2K: Per Mark Steyn, 150 years of the Spanish Inquisition resulted in the deaths of less people than does one year of the current muzzie jihad. On it's worst day Western Civ is superior to anything the muzzies have concocted in the past 1350 years. Deal with it. |
| Posted by: Mark Z 2006-10-19 12:08 |
| #4 And spanish inquisition only executed "relaps" (ditto) people too, even though no one expected the spanish inquisition, even back in those days. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-10-19 10:21 |
| #3 Contraily to popular belief it was not so easy to get burned by the Church: As an example in her trial for heresy and witchcracy Joan of Arc was NOT sentenced to be burned. Much to the chagrin of the English she was only sentenced to a life of reclusion and penance. That was the law. The death penalty was handled later for being "relaps" (don't know the English word) ie for reinciding a second time in her "errors" (ie pretending again whe was receiving divine orders to fight the English). Had she not reincided she would have died of old age. By the way the much feared Spanish inquisition had on average 35 persons executed per year for the whole of Spain (12,000 persons divided by 350 years of existence). Most of the accused got away with minotr sentences. For example St Theresas' grand father was sentenced to walk across the city wearing an infamy garment for a dozen consecutive sundays. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-10-19 10:05 |
| #2 Ah, come on, lets be honest here. It took nearly a thousand years to start to turn the boat around from the collapse of the Roman Empire to get things really rolling again Wrong in fact the Middle Ages was LESS violent than the pre-AD era despite the assimilation of the very violent heritage from Berbaric Gertman tribes. During that time, far too many in power used the name of ‘Jesus’ to kill, burn, and destroy those they considered non-believers, heretics, witches, etc. Wrong again. Contraily to popular belief it was not so easy to get burned by the Church: Mediaval Inquisition offered more gurantees to the accused as regulat criminal courts. Its founders also warn,ed strongly against the use of torture, who was commonly used in regular courts (probably a heritage from the germanic practice of the ordeal). Europe didn’t advance much beyond China till the late 17th Century Really, if the Chinese were so advanced why is that they didn't invent printing? Why is that theuir vessels were unable to trans-ocean travel? Why is that the productivity of their peasants was so inferior to Europe's? Why is that half a dozen Portugeuise vessels were able to blmow away entire Chinese fleets? All of this takes place in the XVth or XVIth and mostly with technology developped in the "Church age". Also did you notice that despite having much more peole and thus much more people for inventing things China had been unable to outpace Europe technologically even during the Middle Age? Could be that the Chinese civilization was unefficient? Had Zheng He or any follow on Chinese Admirals made European contact before the European Age of Discovery, He didn't to begin with. Oh and if Zhen He had doiscovered America he would have ended with his heart torn apart on an Aztec altar. Now ebetween the things theChurch did and you don't acnledge for it: ending slavery (replaced by serfdom but serfs have rights while the Romanb slave was a mere thing, notice that the post-Colombian slave is worse tha the serf but still has a minimum of rights unavailable to the Roman slave), the idea of separation between Church and state (even if at time Popes struggled for power Church never got the same involvement in staet matters than in say Islam, in part because the Christic words 'Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar and to God what belongs to God), destruction of the extended family by forbdding marriages betwen people even very slightly releted (to the 6th or 7th degree): this meant that it led to a society of individuals and the prerequisite for Democracy and rule of law is that you are voted, vote, do business or are judged according to your merits instead of ebacuse the other guy belongs to the same tribe than the judge. BTW that is why I have ever been sceptical about democratizing Arab societies. They could get elections abut until they don't learn to vote as individuals basing on a politician's ideeas instead of for the guy of their tribe (meaning that the guy with the most numerous tribe ever gets elected) they will be unable to get real democracy. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-10-19 09:52 |
| #1 The fruit of Jesus' teaching of tolerance and forgiveness is that Western Civilization has been able to prosper while Islam remains locked in an era of primordial combat. Ah, come on, lets be honest here. It took nearly a thousand years to start to turn the boat around from the collapse of the Roman Empire to get things really rolling again. During that time, far too many in power used the name of ‘Jesus’ to kill, burn, and destroy those they considered non-believers, heretics, witches, etc. It took a Protestant revolution with a very bloody Counter-Reformation to exhaust enough of the key players and weaken Church influence to finally settle down to environment which allowed the ’maturing’ of the primary Western religion. Europe didn’t advance much beyond China till the late 17th Century and then it was because of technology developed not in Rome but in those areas which permitted examination into areas deemed off limits by the Church. Had Zheng He or any follow on Chinese Admirals made European contact before the European Age of Discovery, I seriously doubt the world would look so Western as it does today. However, the cultural arrogance and anti-mercantile attitude of the Chinese system insured that it was the West and not the East which would form the world we know today. |
| Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-10-19 07:39 |