Defending Islam against Muslims

There is a strange tendency among Westerners to defend Islam against Muslims.  So, when Muslims do horrific things, the Westerners, who themselves know nothing of Islam, will instantly rise to the defense insisting, "Oh, this is not the correct interpretation of Islam."  Or, they will say there are many interpretations of Islam and this is not the canonical one.  As if they would recognize the canonical interpretation when they see it (it will look remarkably like Methodism, in their eyes).  Essentially, they claim to know Islam better than the Muslims.

Specifically, they know Islam better than Osama bin Laden knew Islam.  They know Islam better than the Caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or even the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  And better than the millions and millions of Muslims who see things just the way these gentlemen saw them and whose lived experience of Islam comports entirely with their views.

The enormity of this claim still leaves me speechless.  Recently, however, my discussion with a friend centered on one specific point:  apostasy in Islam.  It is widely understood that apostates from Islam must be killed by Muslims, but my friend was certain---certain, you understand---that this could not possibly be true.

It's true.

As with every religion, much of Islam remains debatable.  Even the apostate is debatable in Islam, but not in the way naive Westerners might imagine.  The doctors of Muslim law (the "ulema") dedicate much thought to apostasy and the issue is discussed all over the ahadith (the words and deeds of Muhammad) and fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence).  In several verses, the Koran is highly suggestive, but the definitive ruling comes from the ahadith,

Sahih Bukhari (52:260) "The Prophet said, 'If somebody discards his religion, kill him.' "

There are several other such verses that specifically state that a person who leaves Islam must be killed.  But Sahih Bukhari (52:260) is the verse that introduces uncertainty.  This verse does not restrict apostasy to Islam.  So, there is no doubt about what must happen to a Muslim apostate, but the gravamen of the debate among the ulema is whether a Christian should be killed, by the Muslim authorities, for leaving Christianity or if a Jew should be killed, by the Muslim authorities, for leaving Judaism.

The conclusion is a tad complicated.  After all, Islam invites converts, so it would be strange indeed if a Christian were to accept the invitation to Islam and then be killed for leaving Christianity.  Furthermore, while Christians and Jews have Koranic standing as "People of The Book" and are tolerated (under certain social and legal disabilities) in Muslim society, most other religions, especially polytheistic religions like Hinduism, are intolerable.

So, the basic Muslim position on apostasy is this.  A Muslim who leaves Islam must die.  Polytheists must convert to Islam or die.  Christians and Jews who convert to any religion other than Islam should probably die, but Muslims may not care enough about that.  That is, Muslims can't get too exercised if a Christian converts to Judaism or a Jew converts to Christianity.  I.e., in most times and most places, Muslims saw that as merely a pointless act and nothing more, but sometimes it would have been a dangerous act.

The discussion necessarily continues.  How do you know when a person is a Muslim and how do you know he has apostasized?  Must there be an official adjudication?  Is there a process?  Who is obliged to take action?  And so on.

These are not questions I will explore to any length, but I leave you with an outline.  In most cases, it is easy to know if a person is an apostate from Islam.  He can declare his apostasy in words or reveal his apostasy in actions.  An apostate must be invited back to the sharia (the righteous path) three times.  If he declines a third time, his life is forfeited.

Responsibility is a matter of debate as we might understand the concept.  In matters of religious law, Islam separates personal responsibility and communal responsibility.  For example, offensive Jihad is strictly a communal responsibility while defensive jihad, while certainly a communal responsibility, is also a personal responsibility.

In the matter of apostasy, one tradition places the responsibility squarely on the individual.  If you believe I am an apostate, you must make a definitive judgement and invite me back to the faith three times.  If I decline a third time, it is your personal responsibility to cut my throat.  A more liberal interpretation prefers the involvement of the state in this matter.

I hope you agree all these issues are mere quibbles.  In Islam, in one way or another, an apostate's life is in danger.  Apostates are going to be secretive, and that is why it is hard to know just how many Muslim apostates there are.  There are reasons to believe the numbers are much larger than is generally acknowledged.  And that is why death is the answer in Islam.  Islam is such an obviously perverse ideology it is widely believed, even among Muslims themselves, that if death were not the punishment, Islam would have long since evaporated.  Islam is the original "bucket of crabs."

In other words, these people are not just gratuitously crazy.  Death for apostates is one of the earliest, most persistent, and clearest tenets of Islam.  And it is one---and only one--of the several reasons I believe Islam is a fragile religion.  If the West, itself, were not so culturally weak at this moment in our historical development, we might have seen the end of Islam as we know it, in our lifetimes.

After the Republic

Marxists make much of the "contradictions" in capitalism.  Turns out their notion of contradiction is trivial, if not vacuous.  However, in his long-ish but fascinating, and depressing article, After the Republic, Professor Angelo Codevilla makes me think of the real contradiction in American democracy.

The foundational idea of the American experiment is that individuals should mind their own business and government should mainly stay out of the way.  If this idea was ever valid, it was valid for only a fairly narrow slice of the population that existed at the time of the American Revolution.

Please remember that the American Revolution was really the first American civil war.  Fully half the population remained loyal to the English crown, there was considerable internecine fighting, and a significant portion of the population decamped to Canada, mainly southern Ontario, where the Loyalist heritage is still remembered.

In other words, lots of people, maybe most people, want to be slaves.  For example, there is an entire civilization, of some 1 1/2 billion people, predicated on the notion of abject submission.  Now, it is one thing to be born into Islam, quite another to see Westerners voluntarily converting to a religion in which they are promised slavery, most especially women.

The will to slavery reveals itself in many other ways.  Socialism is nothing but a cri de coeur of the large mass of the people who want somebody else, the government, to run their lives for them.

Conversely, there are a few people with a "will to power", which brings up the other part of the American contradiction.  One can imagine a government of limited power, but it is harder to think of individuals who voluntarily decline power.  George Washington, the towering figure of the American Revolution, did something that, if not unique, most certainly is very rare in the human experience.

After the victory over the British, Washington was offered the crown.  He was, actually, invited to become king of the United States.  A lesser man would have accepted.  Washington replied something like, "Thanks, but I'd rather go fishing."  And for nearly 100 years, the U.S. was true to its ideal of private property, limited government, and rule of law.

But George Washington was exceptional in almost every way imaginable.  What you have to imagine now is a POTUS who wants less power not more, senators who want less power not more, congressmen and judges who want less power not more, etc.  Friends, this is not the way of the world.  And that is the American contradiction:  the powerful few want power and most people want to be slaves.  The mystery is that the American Experiment lasted as long as it did.

I am glad to have lived in it for a time.  I am very sorry to see it wither away.  And I am very sorry for the America our children will inherit.  If Donald Trump is elected president, it may wither slower;  if Hillary Clinton, then faster.  But the withering seems inevitable.  I suspected this in 2008 with the election of the fatuous and vacuous Barack Obama.  President Hillary Clinton would bring certainty.

Your Move, FIDE

The WaPo, coming late to the party, reports on the boycott, led by the unfortunately named Nazi Paikidze, of the Women's World Chess Championship because it is to be held in apartheid Iran.  Since the WaPo article is all I know about her, I cannot tell if Nazi is a political moron or a political genius.  She may well be a political genius.

Of course, I approve her move wholeheartedly.  But, listen to her explanation,

A message to the people of Iran: I am not anti-Islam or any other religion. I stand for freedom of religion and choice. I'm protesting FIDE's decision not because of Iran's religion or people, but for the government's laws that are restricting my rights as a woman.

She is distinguishing between the government of Iran and the religion of Islam.  But, Iran is a theocracy and nobody there is confused on this point.  Any attack on the government is, per force, an attack on Islam and that is how Iranians see it.  Some, probably many, Iranians may even welcome such an attack, but an attack it surely is, in their eyes.

On the other hand, Westerners are deaf, dumb, and blind to any religious motivation.  The writer Sam Harris makes much of this point.  For example, Westerners have no trouble understanding that Europeans enslaved Africans out of economic self-interest, but they are wholly incapable of believing that Muslims were murdering Yazidis in anticipation of the eternal pleasures of a heavenly whorehouse.

Nazi Paikidze is not, strictly speaking, a Westerner.  An ethnic Georgian, she may be far more alert to Islam than most of us.  Having spent some years in the U.S., studying at the university of Maryland, she may also be fully aware of Western deafness to religion.  Therefore, on the one hand, her explanation may be just another sad manifestation of the suicidal Western ignorance of Islam.

On the other hand, Nazi's statement, gibberish on its face, may be a brilliant exercise in political double-entendre, worthy of a chess grand master.  Her attack on the government of Iran can be understood by shallow, naive Westerners as a political statement while, at the same time, the Iranians will hear it as the attack on Islam that it should be.  If this is, in fact, what she intends, then

Well played, Nazi Paikidze.

Why We Hate You

Here is the July, 2016 issue of "Dabiq", the magazine of ISIS, containing the article, "Why We Hate You".  They give six reasons,

1. First and foremost because you are disbelievers;
2. Because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things He has permitted;
3. We hate atheists;
4. Because you mock Islam, insult Muhammad, burn the koran, and reject sharia;
5. Because you kill Muslims;
6. Because you invade Muslim lands.

They sum it up,

What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you. No doubt, we would stop fighting you then as we would stop fighting any disbelievers who enter into a covenant with us, but we would not stop hating you.

Now do you understand why the incomparable Wafa Sultan entitle her book, "A God Who Hates"?

The Limits of Panditry

Ooh!  A swing and a miss!  Just when I think the NY Times pandit, Nicholas Kristof, has finally caught a clue, he strikes out looking.  Early in his essay on the Saudi funding of terrorism, Kristoff writes,

"For decades, Saudi Arabia has recklessly financed and promoted a harsh and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world in a way that is, quite predictably, producing terrorists."

Reckless?  Well, if it's so obvious to Kristof, why can't the Saudis see it?  Are they stupid people?  Or, is it not more likely the Saudis know exactly what they are doing?  Is it not more likely they understand it much better than Kristof?  Later in his essay, Kristof clearly shows he is out of his depth,

"It’s particularly dispiriting because much of the extremist funding seems to come from charity: One of the most admirable aspects of Islam is its emphasis on charity, yet in countries like Saudi Arabia this money is directed not to fight malnutrition or child mortality, but to brainwash children and sow conflict in poor and unstable countries."

Krisof is referring to the "Five Pillars of Islam":  the credo, prayer, charity, Ramadan fast, and pilgrimage to Mecca.  But, if your knowledge of Islam comes from Wikipedia, there is no way to know that Muslim charity is not the same as Christian charity.

In fact, Islam is generally sympathetic to charity, but not all charity satisfies the requirement of "zakat".  For charity to satisfy the Muslim requirement, it must satisfy a Muslim objective;  it must advance Islam.  Thus, giving charity to relieve the suffering of poor Jews is laudatory, but it does not discharge the religious obligation.  Giving money to support dawah (prosyletizing) will do that.  Giving money to support jihad (holy war) will do that.

Thus, giving money to relieve the suffering of Jewish poor is good.  Giving money to support the killing of a Jewish girl in her own bed is better.  And if Nicholas Kristof studied more, he would be surprised less.