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I’ve read your blog since you first started. I admire you and am fond of you for being a wonderful young man, but I must ask you honestly:
What would happen to you personally if you ever renounced the Islamic faith?

In a perfect world where Muslim maniacs weren’t rampaging across the globe murdering, calling for mass extermination, and waging war against all non-Muslim nations and cultures, allowing or tolerating Muslims to practice idiosyncratic versions of their religion would be no problem for most people in the West. But Muslims ARE rampaging in the name of Islam, Muslims ARE murdering in the name of Islam, and Muslims are working across the spectrum to insinuate themselves further and further into “infidel” lands and societies…

What are they doing here? WHY are they coming? This is specially curious, given that many Muslims express revulsion at our society, and claim with wagging fingers that Islam is superior in every way. Why come to the horrific “infidel” lands, lands filled with “unbelievers” in all their satanic decadence if it is so horrible here? Further, Muslims are coming and increasingly insisting that they are here in the West to stay as if we have nothing to say in the matter — as if we have no right to judge them and their religion and their culture, or as if we have no right in our own home to judge whether their values and beliefs are harmful to us or not. Where does this hideous arrogance come from among the Muslims — especially since their cultures of origin show themselves to be genocidally opposed to any beliefs which go “against” Islam.

As a collective community, from France, Canada, the USA, UK, the Philippines, Russia, India, the Muslims are lashing out — they are relentlessly proving their susceptibility to violence in support of Islam, to endless rage at our societies, rage which they concoct and use to justify more violence against us. We also see endless efforts by that Muslim community to subvert and deflect tour efforts to protect ourselves from their terrorism. When we do this, the Muslims have the gall to label US the “unbelievers” and “infidels” in our own lands, they have the gall when we are critical to label US the bigots and “Islamophobes”, they have the gal as we attempt to grapple with the nightmare they’ve brought to our homeland with their heinous primitive religion, to accuse US of being the intolerant ones! It’s just too much.

I have noticed that in response to the comments in the thread above that at his site, Drima also takes special pains to describe the posts above primarily a conflict between theists and atheists — a very deceptive characterization of most of the discussion and most of the criticism leveled at him and hist religion above.

This formulation also cleverly equates the religiosity of himself (such as it is) with that of Christians and Jews, as if all religions are equal. I consider this a grotesque distortion of the facts, and a form of amoral relativism and equivalency nonsense. The world is NOT filled with Christian and Jewish priests exhorting their followers to wage war. The world is NOT filled with millions of Christians and Jews taking to the streets to maim and behead. The world is NOT filled with Christians and Jews threatening to exterminate their enemies…

Whereas the world IS filled with Muslim world leaders and priests exhorting their followers to wage war. The world IS filled with millions of Muslims taking to the streets to maim and behead. The world IS filled with Muslims threatening to exterminate their enemies…

Again, I challenge Drima to provide what is grossly missing from his article above and from his website:

Provide an exegesis of your religion which proves that your syncretistic interpretation of Islam is an accurate interpretation of Islam, and that the so-called ” extremists’ ” interpretation of Islam is incorrect.

Until so-called “moderates” Muslims prove that they have an interpretation of Islam based on the Islamic texts and the life of Islam’s prophet which counters the literal interpretations the Jihadis use consistently to justify their murderous rampage — I will remain a complete skeptic.

Highly individual and exotic interpretations of Islam such as that apparently put forward by Drima are useless. It’s clear they have absolutely no traction among the world’s Muslims, and claims of Islam’s moderatness based on these interpretations are truly red herrings. As such — those supposedly “moderate” Muslims who claim that the extremists have “hijacked” their religion without proving HOW their religion has been “hijacked” are just blowing hot air. Worse — they are perpetuating a flim flam which has worked very well so far among many in the West — that Islam has nothing to do with all the terrorism, totalitarianism, corruption, murder, and backwardness which the world sees wherever Muslims raise their heads and proclaim their religion.

Kaffirs Be Damned.

You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m hostile to Islam, due to its specific “rendition” of the godhead and the qualities of the prophet it venerates. The fact that it has only one prophet also bothers me, but I’ll leave that to the side for the moment.

I’m enough of an armchair anthropologist to know that humanity and religion are linked together throughout history, probably inescapably. That doesn’t mean that each religion has the same value or even that there’s such a thing as “religion in general”. If there is such a thing, I’m not hostile to it, at least insofar as the things I am hostile to in Islam (such as the division of the world into the “land of the faithful” and “the land of war”) are attenuated or spiritualized in this abstract “religion in general” amalgamation of all known religions.

The founders of religions, being guided by a superior level of insight regarding human nature, knew, among other things, that people cooperating in a shared venture accomplish more than one individual. Thus, all religions start with a community, e.g., the Islamic ummah, the Jewish nation of “Israel”(in the Biblical sense). So, your idea that religion can be “mainly personal and spiritual” is actually not in keeping with the intent of any religion’s founder. I would argue that it is also unsustainable over time and that religions will inevitably (to the extent that they even survive the “personal and spiritual” phase) go back to the original intent, which was to form a community under the banner of a specific interpretation of The Divine.

This, arguably, is the intention of those groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The fact that of the four main trends I can discern in Islam (those who want to have some kind of separation of religion and politics, those who want secularism, those leaving Islam, and those who want what the Muslim Brotherhood wants) the Muslim Brotherhood is the one gaining the most ground means I must plan for a future in which the Muslim Brotherhood is the “outward” and “political” face of the countries in which Islam is predominant. Thus, as a non-Muslim, I have to be prepared to deal with Muslim polities whose policy toward my polity can be encapsulated in Koran verse 9:29, as quoted in my post above. Now, I would love it if the Muslim Brotherhood (and its analogues in the Sudan) were “reasonable” people, but to the extent that they aren’t, that isn’t my fault and it is going to have to factor into the specific means I advocate to deal with the inevitable friction that will result between us.

Given my belief that all of the good things about Islam can be found in other religions and/or modern social philosophies such as classical liberalism, and all of the bad things about Islam aren’t found in any other extant religions (although Islam doesn’t have a monopoly on them, it’s just that the religions that held to simplistic social philosophies similar to Islam’s died out, for the most part, prior to the modern age), or any extant religion with Islam’s “numbers”, what do you think my opinion on the response to the Islamic challenge will be? Islam creates nothing but “costs” for me, without any attendant “benefits”. Seriously, can you name one benefit for me, a non-Muslim who doesn’t want to be a Muslim, that Islam creates or even could create in a best case scenario? That’s the difference between it and other religions. Christian fundamentalists create no costs or benefits for me, nor do Orthodox Jews or Hindus. And I’m sure there are millions of people in the West who have that very same experience and, as productive and law-abiding citizens ourselves, we’re getting just about completely fed up with everything Muslim. All these costs and no benefits. Hmmm, what to do about that? I know what happens in the business world when a product is all cost and no benefit.

Thank you very much for both an interesting initial commentary and for a useful and valid follow-up. I am impressed by your sincerity and your ‘values’ and as I said, you probably have to ‘be’ in any one place to truly appreciate the subtleties of that place.

Perhaps it’s all just a matter of ‘bad press’.

But— with all respect two minor little quibbles do continue to give me pause. And these are directly from your two recent citations.

How many people actually protested in the UK about the asinine behaviour of the ‘few’ Sudanese extremists ? Was it thousands or merely a handful ? And were there protest marches in Khartoum about this obscene hi-jacking of a ‘tolerant’ religion ? Did the ‘extremists’ get put in their proper place by the Sudanese people ? Are they like the loons who march in neo-Nazi rallys in Western cities in 2007 ? Or are they more like the loons who marched in Nazi rallys in 1934? You imply the former but forgive me if I still suspect the latter.

Which brings up my second reservation. You cite a comment in a Sudanese Newspaper as evidence of a prevailing mood in the country. Quite apart from the fact that ‘elite’ opinions tend to be very divergent from the values of the street, we still have the telling fact that is quoted directly in the very opinion piece you cite.

“The current rulers of Sudan” are the ones making and enforcing the RULES. Did we judge the values of the Reich by consulting with some powerless sophisticate in Berlin or by the actions of the leadership ? Should we not evaluate both Sudan and Islam in Sudan by the same criteria?

If you and your friends that are offended and humiliated by your ‘current’ Regime, are not enforcing the Rules nor for that matter even making the rules that are enforced, are you the driving or the driven forces in Sudan ?

In short while I sincerely appreciate your insights, I remain unconvinced that you are driving HISTORY in the area. And I remain unconvinced that the ‘small minority of extremists’ are either that small a minority, or that un-representative of the prevailing culture.

There have been some polls lately that indicate a Muslim backlash against the violent insanity of those who have become the public ‘face’ of the faith. But I am nor really sure of the WHY behind this development. I would very much like to believe that it is all due to an intellectual revulsion to fanaticism and extremism. But a small voice keeps whispering something about it being merely a matter of a ‘ strong horse, and a weak horse.

I guess we both live in hope that the small voice is wrong and that what we see as REALITY in the Sudan will soon become more reflective of what you say IS the reality of the Sudan.

But all that aside, thanks again for your insights into a country so far removed from my own. Very much appreciated and valued.

I cannot and will not deny the evidence. I look at Lebanon and the Balkans today and see enough to realize Islam should receive no benefit of any doubt in the West. When Mecca’s doors open as wide as the Vatican’s and a person is not thrown into a Saudi jail for carrying a Bible, we might be able to talk, But until then there is no point in engaging with Islamic hypocrisy, double standards, and taqiya. The ball is entirely in the Islamic ‘moderates’ court id such ‘moderates’ do exist. Until they make tangible reforms, the door is shut in my mind. It is not our burden in the West to understand them on our turf.

As Thomas Mann once said, “Tolerance Becomes a Crime When Applied to Evil “

Being a cautious American in a post 9/11 world is a good thing. There are indeed Muslims practicing Taqiyya when dealing with Americans and non-Muslims.

Being super paranoid is something else all together. Draw the line somewhere.

MikeM, the following two articles will answer your questions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7122562.stm
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24988

You said:
“They don’t seem to have taught their children the meaning of their religion.”

Islam and its various aspects mean different things to different Muslims.

swassociates, most Sudanese Muslims in Khartoum ignored the spectacle since they believed it to be utterly silly and not worth their time.

venividivici, it seems that you’re hostile to faith in general. If someone lives by an interpretation that is personal and mainly spiritual, I don’t see why you
should be but hey, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Morton Doodslag, I understand that for you it’s hard to tell whose interpretation is right or wrong. Well let’s just say this, you’ve got the crazy rigid types and
you’ve got liberals, seculars, reform-minded, moderates etc. All your stance does is reaffirm the interpretations of the former as valid while ours as “fake”.

That isn’t helpful, constructive or even strategic.

Little Much, you may want to check out these two links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7122562.stm
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article24988

dougf and David W. Lincoln, see my reply to Morton Doodslag.