Thursday, November 16, 2017

JAMES ARLANDSON - THE QURAN ATROCITIES are still happening

PRAY FOR THE PERSECUTED CHRISTIAN!

"We are witnessing an astonishing escalation in Christian persecution, like we have rarely seen since the first century," writes Johnnie Moore in his new book called The Martyr’s Oath: Living for the Jesus They’re Willing to Die. 

What’s all the fuss about? If only we threw off our secular ignorance, religious ignorance and fearful ignorance, then we could interpret the Quran wisely and rationally; then we could reach this conclusion: “The religion of the Quran is ...


The Happy, Harmless Quran

What’s all the fuss about? If only we threw off our secular ignorance, religious ignorance and fearful ignorance, then we could interpret the Quran wisely and rationally; then we could reach this conclusion: “The religion of the Quran is a religion of peace.”
So says Garry Wills on p. 140 in his book What the Quran Meant: And Why It Matters.
Really?
But we can skip over his first three chapters on the three kinds of ignorance mentioned above. It seems no challenge can be rational, by definition, since peace and good will dominate the Quran, and it is actually misunderstood by the ignorant. The rest of his book is intended to correct the hysterics.
Instead, let’s analyze chapter 7 on peace, chapter 8 on jihad, chapter 9 on shariah, and chapters 11-13 on women’s issues.
Chapter 7
Apparently the Quran extols an almost global family of believing Jews, Christians, and Muslims, living in harmony and tolerance. Great for Western utopians, as leftists tend to be.
However, he neglects to mention Muhammad’s atrocities against the Jews, when he ordered 900 men and pubescent boys to be slaughtered and the women and girls to be enslaved, after he conquered them outside Medina, which the Quran approves of (33:26-27). Was the atrocity a one-off? Islamic history says Jews and Christians suffered death and persecution and second-class treatment, as Muslims waged aggressive and unprovoked jihad for centuries. (See chapter 8, next).
The Quran calls Jews “apes and pigs” (7:166, 2:65, and 5:60). One could place those verses in their historical context to soften the extreme rhetoric, but for centuries now they have opened the door to deep prejudice.
As for apostasy, he casually brushes aside its punishment by equating biblical Christianity with quranic Islam, not mentioning the fact that the first generations of Christians never executed anyone for leaving the faith (nor does the New Testament order this), while Muhammad and his earliest caliphs certainly did, on the authority of the Quran and his example.
Chapter 8
As for jihad, it is clear that he does not understand the chronology of the Medinan chapters, for he repeats this tiresome stock misinterpretation: “The Quran never advocates war as a means of religious conversion, since ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (2:256)” (p. 132). However, that verse was written when Muhammad first arrived in Medina and was weak. But as soon as he grew in military might, he compelled all sorts of people to convert or die (polytheists), or convert or die or pay a second-class citizen tax (Christians and Jews) in 9:29. (A prejudicial tax based on religion does not even squeak by as tolerant, one more contradiction of his utopian chapter 7.)
Further, he omits an adequate discussion of qital, which exclusively means war, slaughter, and killing. In light of that, his long analysis of 2:191-94 (an early Medinan passage) overlooks one key clause about fighting for the Kabah shrine back in Mecca: “Fight [qital] until… worship is devoted to God.” Clearly Muhammad says here that he would never let the Meccans rest until he made it a place devoted (only) to Allah. And in fact that is what he did from 623 until 630, when he finally conquered Mecca with 10,000 jihadists and kicked out or killed the unclean polytheists (9:28).
The most egregious oversight in his book, as noted, is the missing analysis of Quran 9:29, which is an open-ended call to qital inside and outside of Arabia. Ever since Islam’s prophet marched north with 20,000 jihadists to Tabuk in late 630 to fight the Byzantines, who never showed up, Muslims have been waging the same aggressive jihad/qital for over 460 years before the pope called the first crusade. Wills should know this; instead he seems to assume that Muslims peacefully acquired the lands they now hold, and the crusaders unjustly picked on them. Yet 9:29, reflecting the Tabuk jihad, set the institutional genetic code from then until now.
Chapter 9
This chapter on shariah is better because he discusses the harsh punishments in the Quran, but the Old Testament is worse, he is quick to point out to justify the Quran, an ineffective, distracting ploy.
Further, he is wrong to believe that only the Islamic State imposed them. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, for example, have done so and still do. Various websites like Amnesty International and Jihad Watch (which Wills sniffs at) keep track of them.
And no, it is not wise to allow any part of shariah into our legal system. Numerous harmless religious laws, like washing or praying five times a day, are irrelevant to the law, except to protect these practices. But the Quran’s punishments and domestic and commercial laws, for example, are out of date and must not be allowed in the West (or anywhere else).
Chapters 11-13
His three chapters on women’s issues are actually very solid in most places, like divorce and the few verses that respect womankind. Maybe the Muslim feminists whom he lists can indeed make something of those positive verses. However, the problem is not the abstract positive verses, but the concrete oppressive ones.
His discussion on wife beating, for example, is thorough, except his odd comment about a husband using a tooth stick to strike his wife. “I think a modern Muslim who threatened his wife with a toothbrush might become guilty of killing her -- with laughter” (p. 189). In the seventh century tooth sticks could be long and inflict injury. And why be so cavalier about a husband raising his hand against his wife, at all?
Many traditions indeed report through Aisha herself that she was betrothed to Muhammad at six and the “wedding” was consummated at nine, immediately afterwards. So Wills is wrong to plead ignorance about her age at consummation (p. 186, note 3). Unsurprisingly, he does not bring up 65:4, which assumesprepubescent girls are fair game.
To wrap up, since Wills takes many shots at the Bible, as Western scholars delight to do (though none or hardly any shots at the Quran), here is a thought experiment: If everyone on the planet were to follow the teachings of the four Gospels and epistles to their fullest, the world would be much better off, such as no more wars, no legal mutilations, love for womankind and humanity generally, and a lot of grace.
Following the Quran to its fullest would produce these results, to name a few: too many bruises and not enough equal legal rights for womankind; no religious freedom to critique Islam and Muhammad; no grace (a missing doctrine in the legalistic Quran); legal floggings and mutilations; jihad/qital might not cease (Muslims still wage war on Muslims).
Rather, Wills reassures us that the troublesome verses in the Quran are simply misunderstood and just fine as they are or maybe after minor interpretational adjustments.
But we are not the ones who are ignorant of what it really says. The fault lies not in our “confusion,” but in the Quran itself, whose extreme verses are clear enough.
Ironically, too often he is the one who seems ignorant of unfavorable evidence in the Quran, so his short book comes across mostly as a condescending and shallow exercise in special pleading and unfounded puffing.
No need to buy his book.
James Arlandson’s website is Live as Free People, where he has posted Thirty shariah lawsTen shariah laws that oppress women.

Koran 2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".

How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight

By Lyn Julius

Vallentine Mitchell, 360 pp.

Hardcover, ISBN: 1910383643, $24.00
http://smile.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1910383643/centerforimmigra

Book Description: Who are the Jews from Arab countries? What were relations with Muslims like? What made Jews leave countries where they had been settled for thousands of years? What lessons can we learn from the mass exodus of minorities from the Middle East? Lyn Julius undertakes to answer all these questions and more in Uprooted, the culmination of ten years of work studying these issues. Jews lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for almost 3,000 years. Yet, in just 50 years, their indigenous communities outside Palestine almost totally disappeared as more than 99 percent of the Jewish population fled. Those with foreign passports and connections generally left for Europe, Australia, or the Americas. Some 650,000-including a minority of ideological Zionists-went to Israel. Before the Holocaust they constituted ten percent of the world's Jewish population, and now over 50 percent of Israel's Jews are refugees from Arab and Muslim countries, or their descendants. This same process is now repeating in Christian and other minority communities across the Middle East. This book also assesses how well these Jews have integrated into Israel and how their struggles have been politicized. It charts the growing clamour for recognition, redress and memorialization for these Jewish refugees, and looks at how their cause can contribute to peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Muslim world.

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