Is there a robust zone of Muslim belief that lives up to the term "moderate?" Or is "moderate Islam" more of a hopeful Western construct? Wafa Sultan and Daniel Pipes disagree.
Bio
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a prize-winning columnist who writes for the New York Times Syndicate. His website, DanielPipes.org, is one of the most accessed internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam.
The Wall Street Journal calls Mr Pipes "an authoritative commentator on the Middle East." CBS Sunday Morning says he was "years ahead of the curve in identifying the threat of radical Islam."
For example, Pipes wrote in 1995, "Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States." The Boston Globe states that "If Pipes's admonitions had been heeded, there might never have been a 9/11."
Pipes received his AB (1971) and PhD (1978) in History from Harvard University and spent six years studying abroad, including three years in Egypt. Mr Pipes speaks French and reads Arabic and German. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the US Naval War College, and Pepperdine University.
Pipes also served in various capacities in the US Government, including two presidentially-appointed positions: vice chairman of the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships and member of the board of the US Institute of Peace. He was director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in 1986-93.
Wafa Sultan
Wafa Sultan is an author and well known critic of Islam. Sultan trained as a psychiatrist in Syria and is a U.S. naturalized citizen.
James Taranto
James Taranto (born 1966) is a Manhattan-based columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of its online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com. He is best known for his daily online column, entitled Best of the Web Today, in which he links to and comments on news stories and Web sites submitted by readers. He also appears occasionally on Journal Editorial Report.
Wafa Sultan, author of A God Who Hates, and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, discuss the threats posed by Islamic education and upbringing. Sultan argues that America is facing a huge threat from madrasas within the U.S., with Pipes advocating "special scrutiny of Muslims."
Wafa Sultan, author of A God Who Hates, argues that with respect to the United States Constitution, Islam doesn't qualify as a religion. She explains that Islam is both a religion and a state, which is incompatible with a non-Muslim government. "It is impossible for someone to be a true Muslim and a true American at the same time," she argues.
Major world religion founded by Muhammad in Arabia in the early 7th century AD. The Arabic word islam means surrenderspecifically, surrender to the will of the one God, called Allah in Arabic. Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, and its adherents, called Muslims, regard the Prophet Muhammad as the last and most perfect of God's messengers, who include Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others. The sacred scripture of Islam is the Qur'an, which contains God's revelations to Muhammad. The sayings and deeds of the Prophet recounted in the sunna are also an important source of belief and practice in Islam. The religious obligations of all Muslims are summed up in the Five Pillars of Islam, which include belief in God and his Prophet and obligations of prayer, charity, pilgrimage, and fasting. The fundamental concept in Islam is the Shari'ah, or Law, which embraces the total way of life commanded by God. Observant Muslims pray five times a day and join in community worship on Fridays at the mosque, where worship is led by an imam. Every believer is required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city, at least once in a lifetime, barring poverty or physical incapacity. The month of Ramadan is set aside for fasting. Alcohol and pork are always forbidden, as are gambling, usury, fraud, slander, and the making of images. In addition to celebrating the breaking of the fast of Ramadan, Muslims celebrate Muhammad's birthday (seemawlid) and his ascension into heaven (seemi'raj). The 'Id al-Adha festival inaugurates the season of pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims are enjoined to defend Islam against unbelievers through jihad. Divisions occurred early in Islam, brought about by disputes over the succession to the caliphate (seecaliph). About 90% of Muslims belong to the Sunnite branch. The Shi'ites broke away in the 7th century and later gave rise to other sects, including the Isma'ilis. Another significant element in Islam is the mysticism known as Sufism. Since the 19th century the concept of the Islamic community has inspired Muslim peoples to cast off Western colonial rule, and in the late 20th century fundamentalist movements (see Islamic fundamentalism) threatened or toppled a number of secular Middle Eastern governments. In the early 21st century, there were more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world.
Islam Cannot change because:
for over a thousand years. . .
their MEN have been selectively bred to be aggressive & without conscience
and their WOMEN have been bred to be docile & submissive.
It's in their DNA . . Only Aggressive Men & Submissive women SURVIVED (a la Darwin) in Islam. And now, the ISLAMIC culture is replete with aggressive warrior men who KILL, MAIM, BEHEAD, STONE, HANG, AMPUTATE, MUTILATE, RAPE ETC.
and SUBMISSIVE women who COWER, are BEATEN, LASHED, ABUSED, RAPED, are DOCILE, MUTILATED, COVER UP & SHUT UP.
Islam cannot change.
Muslims with "a conscience" should choose a religion that allows them to have "a conscience".
Islam is just Nazi-ism under another name. The Nazi's believed that everyone that didn't follow them was to be killed, just like islam. They lie when they say islam is about peace. They don't want peace, they want you under their thumb. Islam is just another bullshit religion that people will use to do something so awful that years from now people will wonder how it could have happened in the first place. Religion is nothing more than a mental disorder.
Wafa is sting, to me, the obvious, but unstated; Islam is a polity not a religion. Could we and did we attempt to redefine Communism or Fascism to make them domestically consumable?
We must declare war, and attack any Islam anywhere as the political enemy of democracy.
No one can deny WAFA, She speaks from experience this I beleive. The rest of the people grew up in front of the Mickey mouse club! Thanks Fora tv, Wafa is Right. Nothing more to say! EDL knows this!
She is right everytime, Islam is dangerous to people who wish to be free, at least free from ISLAM, stop mosques and madrassas, keep muslim religion in their own homes.
Seems to be no other way, 1900 mosques and 2.35 million Muslims in the USA.
Mr. Pipes is not arguing that moderate islam exists. He agrees, it does not exist. Therefore,moderate islam is a myth. Mr. Pipes is arguing that moderate islam may exist. I don't know, but I find it highly improbable.
What do we mean by moderate islam? I think an Islam compatible with basic universal human rights. The quran would have to be rewritten.
~~~ That is because she believes that no peaceful alternative can exist for a religion with aggression at its core .
~~~ The problem with this thinking is that the violent surrahs (Medinan) were written later than the peaceful surrahs (Meccan). All Muslims know this but because the Quran is arranged by size of surrah, the timeline represented in the book is misleading to non-Muslims. Finally, there's the Quranic exegetical device called 'abbrogation' which requires that any later surrah written after an earlier contradicting surrah has primacy in textual exegegis.
Lary9
[QUOTE=far_spam;40432].
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Wafa Sultan wrote for the neo-conservative website Hudson New York,
As an Arab woman who suffered for three decades living under Islamic Sharia , it is clear to me that Islam’s political ideology and Sharia must be fought relentlessly by Western civilization to prevent its application in a free society.
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She has a medical degree from the University of Aleppo in Syria.
Does the Taliban in Syria let women get medical degrees?
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In an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times (June 25, 2006) and titled “Islam’s Ann Coulter,” Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, who attended a fundraiser for a local Jewish organization where Sultan was a speaker, wrote, “ The more Sultan talked, the more evident it became that progress in the Muslim world was not her interes t…. She never alluded to any healthy, peaceful Islamic alternative.”
The rabbi mentioned that Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, “was one of the few voices of restraint and nuance heard that afternoon. In response to Sultan’s assertion that the Koran contains only verses of evil and domination, Pearl said he understood the book also included ‘verses of peace’ that proponents of Islam uphold as the religion’s true intent. The Koran’s verses on war and brutality, Pearl contended, were ‘cultural baggage,’ as are similar verses in the Torah.”
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Originally Posted by Lary9
This is how you Ascertain_the_Truth? I see it's the lengthy, bombastic version.
Very tiring to read Ascertain_the_unTruth's posts. He repeats the same clap trap in every post in every thread.
More and more people in the West are finally learning about the ugliness of Islam and are not afraid to talk about it.