You find lying apologists for Islam even in the jungle

Sunday, June 15

You find lying apologists for Islam even in the jungle

In response to several threadbare lies in defense of Islam from a "review" at Amazon.com of Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace, Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, found here.

Faruk Ekmekci is subtle. Unfortunately for him, his half-truths and other falsehoods are effective only with the ignorant and gullible, and their numbers thin every day.

In attempting to defend Mohammed, he attacks Moses and Spencer. Rather than addressing what the prophet from hell actually said and did, he engages in ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments (that seems familiar!).

Alleging that both Islam and Christianity/Judaism have "obscure sides" -- as if the commands of YHWH and His Christ are morally equivalent to the utter depravity of Mohammed and his allah -- is absurd.

He argues:

"But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.)" Exodus 14 [sic]

That was a command for Ancient Israel under Moses, not a universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam (and it's not Exodus 14).

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you may nations...then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy." Deuteronomy 7:1-2 [sic]

A judgment against those nations for their evil and limited to that time, place, and people. Again, not a universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam.

"...do not leave alive anything that breaths. Completely destroy them...as the Lord your God has commanded you..." Deuteronomy 20:16

Same as previous; It should be noted that Israel itself faced the same judgment for adopting the same evil practices. Still, this is not a universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam.

"And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males." Numbers 31:7 (estimated 100,000 Midianites were killed in just one war)

That was war in retaliation for Midian's attacks against Israel when it was helpless. It was also to prevent future apostasy by Israel. Still no universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam.

"Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;" / "And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart." I Kings 1,3.

Recording Solomon's sin is not an endorsement of it. Clearly, his behavior was contradicted by Divine law.

The Texts also record Solomon's worshiping false gods; does that mean that the Bible wants us to worship false gods?

"If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, `Let us go and serve other gods,' . . . your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people." Deuteronomy 13:6-9

For Ancient Israel under the Mosaic Law only; not a universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam.

"...and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you." Genesis 3:16

Descriptive, not prescriptive, and not the institutionalized brutalization and degradation of women and girls found in Islam's core texts.

"If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel. / "If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, / then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you." Deuteronomy 22:22-24

Again, only for Ancient Israel under the Mosaic Law, not a universal, open-ended command for offensive warfare against Gentiles to make the world Hebrew, as is found in Islam

To conclude, assuming the textual accuracy of the Bible, and even assuming the correctness of Spencer interpretations, Muhammad would still be an average Biblical prophet. It does not make sense to me, therefore, to welcome Biblical prophets and curse Muhammad.

That is an outright lie.

No prophet of YHWH claimed that their sin was His revelation. On the other hand, whatever perverse, reprehensible, or bloodthirsty impulse Mohammed had, he always received a convenient revelation justifying or requiring it.

We have to understand that the problem is common. Extremism in general is the enemy, not the jihad of a specific people. Let's face and address it sincerely and without bigotry.

By "bigotry," Mr. Ekmekci means "looking at the evidence," and the problem is "common" -- among Muslims, since it is Mohammed who commanded the faithful to "slay the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5).

"Extremism" following Christ would result in Christians loving their enemies, doing good to others, and truth-telling. "Extremism" following Allah gets slavery, slaughter, pedophilia, and rape. In other words, "extremism" in a religion just gets you more of what its god commands.

As a final note on Spencer besides his inconsistency, he is also a twister of facts, and convenient ignorer of counter data.

Mr. Ekmekci can provide (mostly accurate) citations of Biblical passages (even as he misrepresents their meaning), but he can't demonstrate specifically where Spencer has erred?

Just like Mohammed.

How convenient.

On the fall of Constantinople

"[...] the great church of Hagia Sophia was filled to capacity. Thousands of people were moving towards the church. Inside, Orthodox and Catholic priests were holding liturgy, the last Christian service after almost 1,000 years. People were singing hymns, others were openly crying, others were asking each other for forgiveness [...].

"Bands of Ottoman soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city markets were looted. Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped; many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on [...].

"The great doors of Hagia Sophia were forced open, and crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the city [...].

"Thousands of civilians were enslaved, soldiers fought over young boys and young women [...] the invaders broke the heads of those women who resisted on the floor of the churches and they raped them dead. The famous icon of Apostole Loukas was totally destroyed.

"The sultan asked for the young sons of Duke Loukas Notaras. Their father refused and Mehmed was ready to take their heads. Notaras asked him to kill him after his sons so that he was sure that they were dead and not disgraced from the pervert sultan.

"And this is what happened."

Black Tuesday, The Last Day of the World, the twenty-ninth of May, anno Domini MCDLIII

On American Liberty

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson Washington, Mar. 23, 1801

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

The truth about Mahomet

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Winston Churchill, Churchill, Winston S. (1899), The River War, First edition, Vol. II, pp. 248-250

A war of twelve hundred years

"And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man, was the early object of his mission; and the authoritative demonstration of the immortality of man, was that, which constituted the more than earthly tribute of glory to God in the highest [...] The first conquest of the religion of Jesus, was over the unsocial passions of his disciples. It elevated the standard of the human character in the scale of existence. [...] On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE.

[...]

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE

[...]

"Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant. [...] While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

John Quincy Adams, Blunt, Joseph (1830),The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9, pp. 268-269

Impossible Islamophobia

Nearly one and one-half millennia of slavery, rape, and slaughter in Allah's name ...

80% of American -- not Pakistani, not Saudi Arabian, not Iranian, but American -- mosques teach jihad/Islamic supremacism ...

Nearly twenty-seven thousand documented jihad attacks since 9/11 alone, and ...

Islam's "Ideal Man" Muhammad -- Allah's "beautiful pattern of conduct" for those who want to please it -- preached and practiced genocide, pedophilia, rape, slavery, torture, mutilation, anti-Semitism, theft, extortion, arson, wife-beating, polygyny, religious and gender apartheid, sedition, treason, deceit, and blasphemy and warned his devotees that "Allah made me do it, and you will too, or else!"

No, "Islamophobia" is impossible. Merely pointing out simple facts regarding a genocidal, malevolent, and totalitarian ideology is neither phobic nor intolerant. It is highly rational and moral.

We are in only the latest phase of an ancient and existential struggle, Allah's war against humanity.

Speaking the truth in love

Never surrender

"we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone [...].

"we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end [...] we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender [...]."

Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940