Not Hateful Comments, Just Facts

In my post entitled The Reason to Support Israel I made certain statements about Arab culture. While they were not meant to offend anyone, I did intend to tell the truth, even if it was not politically correct. And that, by itself, could offend, if the offendee is not willing to see himself and his culture in bright light. Here is a portion of a comment left on that post:

"...to call all Arabs barbarians is simply disgusting and outrageous. While there are more than certainly extremists, it is no excuse to belittle a nation who has contributed much to the world (have you not learned about the Islamic expansion not to mention the niceties they gave to the Jews and Christians living under their rule). I would look at our (Jewish) religious extremist too..."

What can I say? Of course there are exceptions; the exceptions (as in most cultures) are mainly the ordinary people – the ‘little guys’- who just want to raise their families and live their lives in peace. But we don't hear very much about these people rising up against or protesting the violence and terror perpetrated by the radicals. In fact, one barely even hears any Muslim leaders denouncing this behavior. What do we hear? We hear of riots by Muslim youth in Europe, and suicide bombers, of kidnappings and beheadings, and yes-even among the ordinary folk, we hear of ‘honor killings’ and other atrocities, many against women and girls.
Disgusting? Yes, these acts, by civilized standards, are disgusting and outrageous. I am calling them by what they are.

One judges a People not merely by its holy texts and written tenets, but by its actions, based on those texts. Judging by the latter, and comparing it to our Western civilization which values the life and rights of the individual, there is no doubt that Arab culture in general is primitive and barbaric. Any student of history can see that. It is why Islam was able to take a hold among the Arab and Bedouin tribes in the 6th and 7th centuries. The word “Islam” itself means “submission to the will of Allah.” This is fine, if you are a Muslim and want to live in your own religion and culture and abide by its rules. The problem with this is that the Islamists want to forcibly convert you and me to their religion and culture. Today's Islam seems to be a resurgence of the militant Islam of centuries ago, which through violent warfare conquered much of the world - and it needs to be recognized as such.

There is an excellent site called Islamic Expansion and Decline which the author calls a "paper" on the theory of Islamic Expansion, etc., gleaned from many reliable sources on Islamic history, subjectively both pro and con, which he quotes and documents extensively. He writes for example that what we attribute to Islam as "Arab contributions to the world" are really mainly those of their conquered peoples, to wit:

"What we therefore call ‘Arab civilization’ was Arabian neither in its origins and fundamental structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects. The purely Arabian contribution in it was in the linguistic and to a certain extent in the religious fields. Throughout the whole period of the caliphate the Syrians, the Persians, the Egyptians and others, as Moslem converts or as Christians and Jews, were the foremost bearers of the torch of enlightenment and learning. … The Arab Islamic civilization was at bottom the Hellenized Aramaic and the Iranian civilizations as developed under the aegis of the caliphate and expressed through the medium of the Arabic tongue."

Why don't you read the entire chapter, entitled The Parasitic Civilization.

As for the "niceties they gave to the Jews and Christians living under their rule," the author terms that a myth, stating in the Chapter Myth and Reality:

"A number of misconceptions regarding Muslim history prevail in the West. Probably the most important of these myths concerns the alleged toleration Muslim society had for practitioners of other faiths. Since it is undeniable that Islam, like other monotheistic religions, is less tolerant than the faiths practiced in India and East Asia, the proponents of this view usually fall back on the idea that, at the very least, Islam is more tolerant than Christianity. "

You might also want to read that chapter carefully, as it is still widely believed that non-believers were tolerated and had good lives under Islam. The author goes on to say:

"The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum."

I never ever said that there are no extremists among the Jews; if you read my blog you know that I abhor extemism as exhibited among some Haredim, and have written several posts about the subject. The difference is that our extremism is directed towards our own people: we do not try to force others to submit to our laws or foibles; on the contrary:

"The religions of Judaism and Hinduism, whose adherents have for the most part avoided proselytizing, have a number of violent episodes recounted in their root sacred books. In the case of early Judaism these tell how the Hebrew tribes had to war against Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and others in order to establish themselves in the land promised them by God. However the offensive wars described in this quasi-historical account are limited to one territory and a brief historical period. The scriptures do not provide an ongoing justification of these actions for all time and all places. Nor was there any scriptural imperative to conquer and convert other peoples to the Jewish religion. On the contrary, Judaism has usually discouraged even voluntary conversion."

Again, I quote once more what the author himself quotes from the writings of the historian Herbert Muller, (emphasis mine):

"For the sake of understanding … I should say flatly that these high-minded apologists for Islam are talking about a fiction or a dream. The religion preached by Mohammed, and thereafter practiced in his name, is quite different from the Islam they describe. The prophet had nothing of the scientific outlook, and demanded absolute obedience to the law that he alone laid down. Islam never produced a democracy or a state in which the people were actually sovereign. In all states, past and present, economic inequality has been glaring. Its holy wars fought on principle, its degradation of women, and its formal acceptance of slavery make nonsense of its theoretical principle of equality, or any profession of universal human brotherhood."

In conclusion, even though I don't agree with everything he says about all subjects, here is the last word on Islam as stated by British comedian Pat Condell:

'Nuf said.