Part II. A Transnational Study of Islam

By Prof Paul Eidelberg, President, Israel-America Renaissance Institute

Part II. A Transnational Study of Islam 

This installment will review what ancient and modern scholars of diverse nations have said or written about Islam. We shall now show, inter alia,
(1) that the reigning Ash’arite school of Islam, which rejected the rationalist tradition of classical Greek philosophy, has been engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Western Civilization since the ninth century;
(2) that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, did not purge this creed from the polytheism and paganism of pre-Islamic days;
(3) that Islam, cloaked in the veneer of monotheism, is not consistent with the discoverer of intellectual and moral monotheism, the Patriarch Abraham;
(4) that Islam, which now holds sway over some 1.5 billion Muslims, is utterly opposed to Judeo-Christian civilization;
(5) that Islam is fundamentally irrational, which is why it was rejected by one of the greatest Muslim philosophers al-Farabi, a disciple of Plato and Aristotle, who, to avoid punishment or death, was a Muslim in dress only;
(6) that countless scholars in the West have sacrificed their intellects by obscuring the true nature of Islam and its existential threat to Western Civilization, indeed, to civilization per se; and
(7) that the Western notion of Muslim ‘moderates’ is an escape from reality; and (8) that Islam cannot undergo a reformation without denying it as a revelation of God.

This last point touches the quintessence of Islam and must be understood to fathom why it is our deadliest and most intractable enemy. It is a quintessential principle of Islamic theology that the Qur’an was directly dictated by God, word for word in Arabic, through the Angel Gabriel to Mohammed. It is God’s literal uncreated word, without any influence on it from Mohammed as its transmitter. The Qur’an has existed coeternally with God in heaven exactly as it exists today. It is not historically, culturally, or linguistically contingent on the circumstances of its revelation.[i] It follows from this foundational and quintessential principle that Islam cannot be reformed without rejecting its deity, hence its prophet and theology.

Islam is generally regarded as one of the three great monotheistic religions. According to Catholic theologian George P. Weigel, however, “To speak of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths,” the “three religions of the Book,” or the three monotheisms, obscures rather than illuminates. These familiar tropes ought to be retired.”[ii]

Some readers, who have not examined the profound scholarship of Dr. Weigel, may attribute his above pronouncement to the bias of a Catholic theologian. But there are many scholars and scholar-statesmen who have not only expressed doubts about the authenticity of Islamic monotheism, but who also deny that Islam can rightly be called a civilization! Indeed, such doubts about Islam can be found even among many former Muslims! But here caution is necessary.

To obtain an objective and transnational as well as insiders understanding of Islam, let us consider (1) how world-renowned scholar-statesmen evaluated Islam before 1900, that is, before the emotional impact and horrors of today’s jihadism, and (2) why many learned Muslims abhor Islam and regard it as cruel and tyrannical. We begin with the world renowned nineteenth-century thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the classic Democracy in America:

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.   So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.[iii]

Compare a statement appearing in the 1899 work of Winston Churchill The River War:

Moslems may show splendid qualities, 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 civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome[iv]

Perhaps some may attribute the assessments of de Tocqueville and Churchill to imperialistic bias or even to Western racism. Indeed, since criticism of Islam exposes one to the racist canard, let us ponder the views and experience of learned Arabs and Muslims who rejected Islam and its founder. This done, we shall then probe further into the nature of Islam and why Islam is notorious for its bellicose reputation—which is not to suggest that Islam has a monopoly on ethnic violence. On the other hand, we are not going to resort to the apologetics or “political correctness” of scholars and politicians who obscure the true nature Islam by various adjectives such as “fundamentalist” or “political” or “radical” or “extremist” or some other abbreviated version of this ideology. We are going to set forth an abundance of literary and philosophical as well as empirical and even biographical evidence by which the reader can form his own judgment about Islam and why it is our deadliest enemy. To avoid the canard of racism or of ethnocentrism, we begin with the experience and views of Muslims and Arabs who risk their lives telling the truth about our deadliest and intractable enemy.

1. Aryan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali became a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands. She helped produce Submission, a film with director Theo Van Gogh which criticized Islam’s ill treatment of women. For producing this film Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim who pinned a note to Van Gogh’s chest threatening Hirsi Ali. She made her way to the United States, and has since written two books critical of Islam: Infidel and Nomad: From Islam to America, and A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations.

2. Wafa Sultan

Born and raised in Syria, Dr. Wafa Sultan trained as a psychiatrist. On February 21, 2006, she took part in an Al Jazeera discussion program, arguing with the hosts about Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory. A six-minute composite video of her response was widely circulated on blogs and through email. In the video she criticized Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently, and for not recognizing the accomplishments of Jews and other non-Muslims. The video was the most-discussed video of all time with over 260,000 comments on YouTube.

3. Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq was born in India to Muslim parents who migrated to Pakistan after the partitioning of British Indian Empire. Warraq founded the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is the author of seven books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim and Leaving Islam. He has spoken at the United Nations “Victims of Jihad” conference organized by the International Humanist and Ethical Union alongside speakers such as Bat Ye’or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Simon Deng (of whom, more below).

4. Francis Bok

Born in Sudan, Francis Piol Bol Bok was a slave for ten years but is now an abolitionist and author living in the United States. On May 15, 1986, Bok was captured and enslaved at age seven during an Islamic militia raid on the village of Nymlal. Bok lived in bondage for ten years before escaped imprisonment in Kurdufan, followed by a journey to the United States by way of Cairo, Egypt. Bok’s autobiography, Escape from Slavery, chronicles his life from his early youth and his years in Islam’s captivity, to his work in the United States as an abolitionist.

5. Nonie Darwish

Nonie Darwish, now an American, is the daughter of an Egyptian general whose family was part of President Nasser’s inner circle. Darwish founded Former Muslims United with Ibn Warraq, an organization dedicated, in part, to helping Muslims reject the inherent intolerance, violence, and supremacism in Islam. Darwish She is the author of two books critical of Islam, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, and Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror. She is an outspoken critic of Sharia law.

6. Brigitte Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel is a Christian Arab born in Lebanon. She watched her country become an Islamic state. She made her way to America only to find, to her horror, that her newly adopted country has been invaded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Deciding to warn her fellow Americans about the dire results from appeasing Islam, she founded ACT! For America, a grassroots organization dedicated to educating the public about Islam. Gabriel is the author of two books, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, and Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.

7. Mark Gabriel

Born in Egypt, Mark Gabriel grew up immersed in Islamic culture. He attended  al-Azhar, Islam’s most prestigious university. After graduating, he was offered a position as a lecturer. During his research, which involved travel to Eastern and Western countries, Gabriel became more distant from Islam, finding its history, “from its commencement to date, to be filled with violence and bloodshed without any worthwhile ideology or sense of decency. I asked myself ‘What religion would condone such destruction of human life?’ Based on that, I began to see that the Muslim people and their leaders were perpetrators of violence.” On hearing that Gabriel had “forsaken Islamic teachings,” the al-Azhar authorities expelled him from the university and asked for him to be released from the post of Imam in the mosque of Amas Ebn Malek in Giza city. The Egyptian secret police seized Gabriel and placed him in a cell without food and water for three days, after which he was tortured and interrogated for four days before being transferred to Calipha prison in Cairo and released without charge a week later. He escaped Egypt and has since written several books, including, Islam and Terrorism.

8. Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat, an Arab immigrant to the United States, is a former PLO terrorist! He was born in Bethlehem. In 1993 he converted to Christianity after studying the Jewish Bible. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Shoebat began to criticize Islam publicly. He has appeared on mainstream media around the world and has been an expert witness on a number of documentaries on Islam. Shoebat argues that parallels exist between radical Islam and Nazism: “Secular dogma like Nazism is less dangerous than Islamofascism that we see today … because Islamofascism has a religious twist to it; it says ‘God the Almighty ordered you to do this’ … It is trying to grow itself in fifty-five Muslim states. So potentially, you could have a success rate of several Nazi Germanys, if these people get their way.”

9. Walid Phares

Walid Phares, a Lebanese Christian, earned degrees in law, political science and sociology. He immigrated to the United States in 1990 and has testified before committees of the U.S. State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments, the United States Congress, the European Parliament, and the United Nations Security Council. His writings expose Islam’s political doctrine and seek solutions to the problems present in the West. His books include, The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad, and The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy.

10. Magdi Allam

Magdi Allam was born in Egypt and raised by Muslim parents. He became a journalist and outspoken critic of Islam. In 2005, he published an article calling for a ban on building mosques in Italy. He accused mosques of fostering hate and claimed Italy is suffering from “mosque-mania.” Allam charges that Islam is inseparable from extremism. Criticizing Islam itself, rather than Islamic extremism, Allam argued: “I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a ‘moderate Islam,’ assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that … beyond … Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam.”

11. Khaled Abu Toameh

Khaled Abu Toameh was born in the “West Bank” in 1963 to an Israeli Arab parents. He received his BA in English Literature from the Hebrew University and lives in Jerusalem. Toameh was formerly a senior reporter for The Jerusalem Report, and a correspondent for Al-Fajr, which he describes as a mouthpiece for the PLO. He has produced several documentaries on the “Palestinians” for the BBC, Australian, Danish and Swedish TV, including ones that exposed the connection between Arafat and payments to the armed wing of Fatah, as well as the financial corruption within the Palestinian Authority. One of Toameh’s more famous articles is, “Where Are the Voices of ‘Moderate’ Muslims?”

12. Tawfik Hamid

Tawfik Hamid was born in Egypt and became a member of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. Hamid started to preach in mosques to promote a message of peace, which made him a target of Islamic militants who threatened his life. Hamid migrated to the West where he has lectured at UCLA, Stanford University, University of Miami and Georgetown University against Islamic fundamentalism. In a 2009 Wall Street Journal Article, Hamid challenged Islam to prove it’s a religion of peace, and called on Islamic scholars and clerics, “to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and that killing apostates is a crime.” Hamid has written opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal, including “Islam Needs To Prove It’s A Religion Of Peace,” “How to End Islamophobia,” and “The Trouble with Islam.”

13. Simon Deng

Simon Deng was born in South Sudan. One day the Muslims Arabs came and Deng was captured and enslaved. He eventually escaped and immigrated to the United States. Deng, who lectures across the country, warns of the horrors of unchecked Islam and Sharia. His most important revelations appear in a speech he delivered at the New York DurbanWatch Conference of September 22, 2011:

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II… Everybody at the UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. The UN dedicated a separate agency, UNWRA, to provide for them. While the UNWRA treats them with special privilege, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved …

The Islamist regime in Khartoum declared jihad and legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery. The UN knew about this brutal enslavement from the early days of the conflict. Human Right Watch issued extensive reports about the issue. These reports gathered dust on UN shelves. As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped outside the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo looking for mercy. Instead, the United “do-nothing” Nations closed their doors and left the helpless women and children at the mercy of the ruthless Egyptian security forces who brutally slaughtered at least twenty six of them…..

Arab racism is the same, whether it is in Khartoum or in Cairo. So [the Sudanese] continued looking for a shelter and they found it in Israel….When I asked the refugees about the treatment they receive in Israel, their response was absolutely the opposite of what the UN alleges. They were welcomed and treated like human beings. Compared to the situation in Egypt, they described their lives in Israel as “heaven.” No-one called them “abid”—an Arabic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and other Arab nations….

The Three Stages of Jihad Quoting the Qur’an and the Sayings of Mohammad.

[i] I am here indebted to Robert R. Reilly (in email correspondence) for this observation.

[ii] George Weigel, Faith. Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Acton (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 17.

[iii] Cited in Ibn Warraq, Why I am Not a Muslim (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 208, originally published in 1995, hence before 9/11.

[iv]Winston Churchill, The River War (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899 1st ed.. vol. II, 248-50.