There's not a lot wrong with building dream castle in the clouds, always providing you don't take up permenant residence!?

Defeat Islamo-Nihilism? I'll have two of what he's taking!

This rabid mad dog ideology can't be defeated? just isolated and eliminated with extreme prejudice!
Alan B.

Hi Alan,

I think the author is mostly on the right track: Islamo-fascism, Islamo-nihilism, ultra-extreme-right-wing Islamism - must be defeated, and as you say, eliminated. How is the question, not just militarily - that could go on for a century in new and worse forms after ISIS is wiped out - but ideologically.

And if there are any bits in the Koran at all which might bring believers closer to the modern world, and closer to something remotely 'progressive', then I'm all for it: the author's focus on how Muslims are to deal with the 'Other' is perhaps one key:

"The question we need to ask is: what is the neighbor? Is it someone who reminds us more or less of ourselves? Or is the neighbor rather that which startles us by their unfamiliarity, their strangeness, their refusal to accommodate our expectations of the other?

"I submit that it is the latter - and if that is the case, then perhaps there is an alternative to irrational fear and hate. To fully rescue Islam from the nihilistic violence of today will mean championing an Islam that is radical in its embrace of the excluded other, that represents solidarity and non-violent resistance in the face of social inequity, oligarchy, exploitation, and injustice."

For some people, the very existence of the 'Other', anybody different, who believes different, acts different, thinks different, is intolerable. By definition, any 'Other' is Evil itself, of the devil, vile, not human, a mortal threat, to be exterminated if possible.

This raises the question: can some religious-based ideologies be psychotic ?

Whereas the modern, civilized approach - as we've seen with the welcoming of a million refugees into Europe, right or wrong for other reasons - is an embrace of the 'Other', the different, the neighbour. Maybe that 'embrace' has been a bit too enthusiastic, but the intention was honourable - and one could say progressive, a gesture of trust and hope.

Whatever can be found in the Koran which is progressive should be promoted and supported.

Cheers,

Joe

Quran (8:12) -

"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

This is contradictory to the claim by the author that the "Koran prohibits forcible conversion"

Or perhaps decapitation is not forced conversion.

But there is no evidence that the Quran contains the word of God, with so many translations and re-writes of the Quran (at least 6 rewrites have been counted, and numerous translations)

For example, the Yusuf Ali translation of verse 8.12 is

"I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."

While the Mohsin Khan translation of verse 8.12 says

"Verily, I am with you, so keep firm those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes."

http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=8&verse=12

There are various differences in this verse, and there needs to be verification of which translation actually came from God, so non-believers will know.

Hi Interactive,

Yes, it's not hard to find brutal, anti-'neighbour' - anti-'other' - verses in every edition of the Koran. It's not hard to find utterly totalitarian verses and outright psychotic verses in a book supposedly given to an illiterate trader in a desert cave (although one wonders how a trader, even in those days, could be illiterate).

And no, it's not easy to find anything which - from an unbeliever's point of view - would give any hope of a sense of common humanity between Muslims and non-Muslims, a sense of 'neighbourliness', of accepting the 'Other' and leaving him/her in peace.

But in the twentieth century, with the world's population experiencing all sorts of modern technology based on scientific principles which were and are unknown to Islamic thought and yet universally lived with, the mismatch between the totalitarianism of the book and the reality which we all live, including Muslims, surely can't continue.

So whatever can be found in the book which is, however remotely, 'progressive' should be celebrated. Otherwise, how can we live together without looking over our shoulders ?

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth

I believe Mohammad could count, and was not that illiterate.

For example, Quran 4:3 says that a man could marry two or three or four women.

So Mohammad could at least count to 4.

I have had difficulty sorting out the "progressive" parts from the "not so progressive" parts in the Quran.

For example:

Quran 4:36

"Worship Allah and join none with Him in worship, and do good to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, Al-Masakin (the poor), the neighbour who is near of kin, the neighbour who is a stranger, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (you meet), and those (slaves) whom your right hands possess."

Now everything was going along well until the last part about the slaves "whom your right hands possess."

It becomes difficult for people such as myself to somehow skip over or ignore those "not so progressive" parts in the Quran, when the vast majority of it is so totally objectionable.

Hi Interactive,

Yes, I agree: "It becomes difficult for people such as myself to somehow skip over or ignore those "not so progressive" parts in the Quran, when the vast majority of it is so totally objectionable."

"Not so progressive" is an under-statement: Islam, in the worst sense of the word, must be one of the most reactionary bodies of belief devised. One wonders why, in the minds of Muslims who have actually read the Koran, did their god even bother to create humans if he/she/it is so ready to butcher them in the most dreadful ways.

As the philosopher Frank Pledge suggests, Christians, in their exercise of free will as sanctioned by their god, may be consumed with guilt and remorse, but Muslims, having no free will since only their god has that, can only be plagued by a sense of shame and dishonour/honour, but never by a sense of guilt or remorse.

The earlier verses of the Koran, the Mecca verses, written by Muhammad and others when they were weak, are far more conciliatory than the later Medina verses, when they were powerful. And later again, of course Muhammad returned to Mecca and butchered the Jewish population which had earlier sheltered him and his few followers.

But supposedly those earlier, conciliatory verses are part of the Koran, ignoring the blatant contradictions with later verses. As such, they would be as valid as the more brutal verses about cutting off right arms and left legs, and building slow fires on people's stomachs. Perhaps it may be possible to take those as guides ?

Of course, this is all up to Muslims themselves. They can, like it or not, make the choice between the live-and-let-live verses and the brutal verses of their book, if they want to be 'neighbours' to the civilized world.

Cheers,

Joe