The Cool Water of the Koran (Part III)
"The war within Islam is as old as the history of Islam itself, a war brought about by those wielding the sword for worldly power by appropriating Islam to serve their ends and to subjugate Muslims and non-Muslims alike to their whims."
This is the third Letter on Islam written by Salim Mansur in response to a non-Muslim writer. Letter I is HERE. Letter II is HERE.
“Verily God does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves.” Koran (13:11)
Dear friend:
I hear you, but I am not quite sure if you hear me. You are hypnotized with the sound and fury of our era. The cacophony of the here and now drowns anyone seeking to speak, write and contemplate on what is eternal.
There are presently more than a billion Muslims in the world. There are twice as many people who are Christians. There are probably over 900 million Hindus, over 370 million Buddhists, and the Jews number around 15 million. These numbers can be read in many different ways. But surely it cannot be said that people belonging to different faith-traditions share a monolithic view of their faith. There exists greater variety of thinking and practice within each faith than is often acknowledged. Africans belonging to the Anglican Church, for instance, increasingly view American Episcopalians with suspicion if not derision.
You mention, derisively, that I belong to a miniscule and inconsequential minority among Muslims. You assume this on the basis of what I have shared with you. You also dismiss the notion of “moderate” Muslims, and insist without much reflection that Muslims are incapable of reform since their belief is false. In other words, you indicate the prerequisite of reform for Muslims is repudiating Islam.
In this letter I will confine myself to the issue of reform and your dismissal of “moderate” Muslims. You assume that I am part of a miniscule minority. All I can say to you is that I am not alone among Muslims that believe that in worshipping God – the One, Alone and Incomparable in His Majesty and Compassion – lies true freedom; the freedom of becoming and of being free from all false belief and ideology. It is this freedom, derived as God’s blessings, that provides not only peace and tranquility, but the detachment be in the world without being ensnared by its charms or repelled by its faults.
The Koran teaches that reform is an inward journey of change, transformation and transcendence in an individual. The outward reality for an individual is the community with which he is attached by circumstances or by choice. Rarely (perhaps never) is the inner reality of an individual in harmony with the outer circumstances of his life. Jesus was enmeshed in the politics of his time, as were Moses and Muhammad. Politics is without exception messy. It is the space where many interests collide.
Religion in the form given to it by humans is a human construction. We shape the vessel that holds our water. Form without faith is an empty vessel, and faith as life-giving water needs a vessel in which to be contained.
Reform is the capacity of individuals to receive and hold the water of faith, and grow. An incapacity for receiving, retaining and increasing the volume of water makes the shell hard, eventually barren. The absence of faith makes individuals into cynics.
A turning towards God is the first step in reform, and moving towards Him is the process of reform. Only a bigot will insist the first step and the process can only occur within the exclusive framework of a single religion; that God denies those who seek Him except if they come in am “approved” form.
In faith all men stand alone when contemplating, seeking and worshipping God. The quality of man’s faith is found not in his catechism but his conduct. The Koran declares that those who are dearest to God are those with the best conduct. In return God provides “for serenity in the hearts of believers so that their faith may increase with belief.”
In the realm of politics human beings confront each other individually and in groups with respect or with anger, or with all the other emotions in between that define us. Our politics is of our making — even when we fight over the meaning of God. When we quarrel over religion and maim and kill each other as a result, we are merely quarreling over the shape of the vessel.
God is not neutral in the struggle between belief and unbelief, or between freedom and tyranny. God has clearly indicated, for those with ears to hear, whose side He favours in this struggle. God has sent prophets and nurtured saints to guide us through our confusion and remind us of our responsibility. At times these prophets have succeeded in taming the passions and the evil in the hearts of men. At other times they have failed or fallen victim to the hands of unbelievers. Moses never entered the Promised Land. Jesus was crucified. Muhammad’s family massacred. Such is the nature of the struggle, and evil has often prevailed until good has paid in sacrifice to triumph over evil.
History records our successes and our failures. Civilizations have risen and then fallen. Mighty earthly powers have defied or denied God, repressed people of belief, scorned the idea of freedom and built temples to tyranny. For a little while these powers have appeared indestructible, but as we take a walk through history we see their empty, barren ruins. The water still flows.
You ask where are the “moderate” Muslims and why they have not done “enough” to defeat those jihadi Muslims dedicated to violence and bigotry? Since they have not done enough – however you measure what is enough – you conclude there cannot be “moderate” Muslims.
I confess that at times I to feel that Muslims have not taken sufficient responsibility for themselves to defeat the jihadi Muslims who have defiled Islam. The nature of any such engagement is, however, in the realm of politics, and all you need to do is pause and consider what is really taking place in the greater Middle East and beyond where Muslims constitute a majority population within a country.
Since September 11, 2001 the general population in the West, in America in particular, has awakened to varying degrees to the war raging within Islam that has spilled over beyond the borders of the Arab-Muslim world. The war within Islam is as old as the history of Islam itself, a war brought about by those wielding the sword for worldly power by appropriating Islam to serve their ends and to subjugate Muslims and non-Muslims alike to their whims. In recent history this war has been fought between countries with Muslim majority population. It has been fought within these countries across sectarian or ethnic divisions as is now being fought in Iraq.
The war within Islam is not unique. Christian Europe was involved in similar warfare spread across centuries, as recently as the two world wars that left Europe in ruins. The wars among Christians spread and endangered the wider world and which then became involved, took sides, and eventually prevailed over those forces most bigoted and hostile to the general peace of the world.
As with these wars, the wider world must now agree that to achieve peace and freedom the most bigoted elements within the Muslim world – the jihadi Muslims and their allies – need to be irrevocably defeated.
Unless the wider world unites against jihadi Muslims to crush them, they will continue to seek to take advantage of the cracks and divisions among non-Muslims to consolidate their own power. They will wage their war in as many ways they can, openly and by deceit, and ruthlessly repress any dissent among Muslims and non-Muslims wherever they prevail. This the world must realize.
In the midst of the current turmoil, as in past wars, “moderate” Muslims seek space for their faith and surcease from the demands of politics. Muslims, as the Koran instructs, are required to be a temperate people, a people of the middle eschewing extremes, a people who seek and work for what is just. It is in moderation an individual and a community can create harmony between the realms of faith and of politics.
People of moderation are not responsible for making wars. When wars begin such people seek distance, and when this is denied they have often taken side of lesser evil and paid the price.
“Moderate” Muslims within the Muslim world remain discreet given the nature of power-holders in their society. But they constitute the vital element of the population, by inclination and by numbers, if segments of the Muslim world and in particular areas within the greater Middle East are to make the transition from tyranny to democracy.
If “moderate” Muslims are not to be found, or do not exist, there can be then no expectation of such a transition. The West logically will be required then to re-colonize the Muslim world as the measure needed for preventing wars within Islam that endanger peace and security elsewhere. Because of this fact, those who revile Islam and scorn “moderate” Muslims need to answer how they intend to wage an endless war of occupation within the Muslim world.
By the same token, the “Moderate” Muslims who make their home in the open, free and democratic societies of the West, in particular the United States, bear great responsibility in defending the freedom they enjoy. They need to be more forthcoming in the effort needed to defeat jihadi Muslims.
But the obverse of insufficient effort of “moderate” Muslims in the West against jihadi Muslims is the extent of confusion and denial present among non-Muslims.
The degree to which the West is internally divided about the perils of jihadi Muslims and their allies, and confused about the nature of the war that the West (or more narrowly the United States) finds itself locked into since September 11, 2001, inevitably influences the role of “moderate” Muslims. Greater unity and decisiveness in the West in this war will bring “moderate” Muslims to do the right thing, as Islam itself demands of them, by aiding the forces of freedom and moderation against the extremism of jihadi Muslims.
Through the long decades of the Cold War “moderate” Muslims were on the side of freedom and opposed to Communism. It is too readily forgotten that during this time the West embraced tyrannical regimes of the Muslim world in the war against Soviet communism.The price of this anti-communist Cold War alliance was paid by “moderate” Muslims.
How the Muslim world will engage in reform and advance the process of transition from varying degrees of authoritarian rule to democracy remains an open question. The process of such change across the Muslim world will not be uniform. But the process itself will be still-born if “moderate” Muslims are non-existent or Islam is, according to those non-Muslims spewing their own bigotry, false, unchanging and monolithic in form and expression.
“Moderate” Muslims are the key for the eventual success of democratic reforms of Muslim societies and for world peace. They are also the key allies for the West in defeating jihadi Muslims. The success in making and sustaining this alliance will be the measure of statesmanship for political leaders in the West.
Those in the West for reasons of their own indulge in bigotry by reviling Islam are the inverted image of jihadi Muslims, and equally reprehensible as enemies of freedom.
Respectfully,
Salim Mansur
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a syndicated columnist in Canada and the United Kingdom. A Muslim native to Calcutta, India, and a noted Islamic scholar, Prof. Mansur has written extensively on Islamic extremism and the challenges facing contemporary Islam.
Thank you for the series.
Alas, too many seculars hate all religions because they make us know our true selves and recognize out need to submit to God, and they want to do their own thing.
And those who worship “religion” instead of God won’t believe you.
I question Professor Mansur’s sincerity. He implies that the two world wars had Christian theological disputes as their cause. This is, on its face, incorrect. So he is willing to foist a falsehood to slide his case forward.
But Mansur may be correct that Islam is at war with itself. So be it. The West should do everything in its power to keep that (one-sided) civil war where it belongs–in the fetid back alleys of the Arab-Muslim world. Not in Europe, not in the Americas, not in Australia or East Asia or in Israel. Thus: proscribe immigration from affected quarters, aggressively pursue a policy of selective deportation, ban Sharia law in the democracies…
…and find something to replace oil. Without petrodollars to fuel it, the civil war will fall off to what it was in the declining Ottoman years. Thus reduced, it will pose no further threat.
Hmmm…Was Mohammed a moderate? Put another way where would Mohammed’s sympathy lie in today’s struggle? Would he be counsuling the Jihadists or talking to the President to find a way to stop the violence?
Would he be pleased to see the “moderate” nation of Indonesia in 2003 show a majority of 56% in a Pew poll backing Bin Laden after the horrific strikes against the US? Would he remain pleased when two years later that majority would dip “all” the way down to 36% believing the same thing? How would he explain those polls to those of us in the US who used to believe that our President was on to something when he stated that Islam had been hijacked?
Would Mohammed simply say that Islam was not Christainity and turning the other cheek was not demanded of Muslims? Would he be laughing at us for believing that Islam was not a threat? Would he be angry at his followers for being so faithless as to NOT be a threat to us?
More extensive questions for Mohammed
Professor Mansur,
I have read the Qur’an, biographical accounts of Muhummad and the history of Islam. It’s hard to miss that jihad is a core aspect of Islam, starting the Muhummad himself. Otherwise, how does one explain the Islam’s military conquest of a third of the known world within a century of Muhummad’s life?
Your words are lovely and comforting, but like others here I question your ability to regard your faith honestly, preferring instead to complain about Westerners who see what you insist on ignoring.
In a recent poll Gallup found that 7% of Muslims consider the events of 9-11 to be “completely justified.” I can’t imagine any other religion that could provide such a horrific statistic.
Take a good look in that mirror, Professor, and explain to us what you see.
I hear you, but I am not quite sure if you hear me. You are hypnotized with the sound and fury of our era. The cacophony of the here and now drowns anyone seeking to speak, write and contemplate on what is eternal.
So, everyone who disagrees with you is a superficial captive of the Zeitgeist? There are plenty of philosophical reasons to oppose the idea that Islam contributes any positive value to life in general. Let’s start right at the top, with the idea that Allah wants us to submit to him. My version of god wants me to stand up for myself to the point of even fighting against god in my own mortal way if my conscience demands it. Does that make me a person deluded by the “cacophony of the here and now” or does it make me a student of the possible configurations of god and our relationship as mortal men with an eternal god? My conception of god is just as profound as the Muslim’s conception, it’s just diametrically opposed. Diametrical opposition is only possible when the things being set in opposition exist at the same level in the cosmic hierarchy. So, stop your arrogant claiming to the moral high ground.
In other words, you indicate the prerequisite of reform for Muslims is repudiating Islam.
You say this like it’s a bad thing. Draw up a “pros and cons” list. Let’s see, you won’t have to worship a false god, you won’t be subject to the “Five Pillars” of Islam, you won’t have to believe that as long as your political leaders are divinely inspired they are legitimate (“rightly-guided caliphs”), you won’t have to believe that women are inferior to men and non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims, you won’t have to worry about being sent to Hell for impiety. Yeah, seems like actually if Muslims had any common sense, they would want to repudiate Islam.
Since they have not done enough – however you measure what is enough – you conclude there cannot be “moderate” Muslims.
How’s this for a measure: When Muslim terrorism occurs at the same or lower per capita terrorism rate among all other religions, then it will be rational to conclude there are enough “moderate” Muslims out there to make a difference. Your subtle accusation here appears to be that we who make claims about the relative numbers of “moderate” Muslims haven’t a leg to stand on with our claims. Well, professor, I can explain to you very exactly what we are doing: We are making a deduction about the number of “moderate” Muslims based on the number of terrorist actions being taken by “radical” Muslims. The logical link is that the higher the number of “moderates” the lower the number of terrorist incidents the “radicals” will execute. Anyone who understands group dynamics will be able to validate this logic, yet you seem to be claiming that Muslim groups are immune to it, yet you offer no proof of how the Muslims have escaped this logic of group dynamics.
Because of this fact, those who revile Islam and scorn “moderate” Muslims need to answer how they intend to wage an endless war of occupation within the Muslim world.
“Occupation” is not the only method. Fortunately, the West is strong enough, should it find the will, for a “Containment” strategy. Othewise, it’s probably going to end in “Annihilation”. Since “Occupation” isn’t my goal, I don’t find I have any need to provide a blueprint to how it would work. Blueprints for “Containment” can be found in, e.g. Diane West’s articles on how to defuse the threat jihadis in the West represent.
I don’t think Orwell had Islam in mind, but think about some of the common themes…
“True freedom is slavery to Allah.”
“Obedience to sharia and arbitrary decisions of imams is knowledge.”
“Eternal war leads to eventual peace.”
“in worshipping God – the One, Alone and Incomparable in His Majesty and Compassion – lies true freedom; the freedom of becoming and of being free from all false belief and ideology. ”
Dr. Mansur clearly has a perverted sense of freeedom from that defined in the West… The only freedom he avers is one which exists within the blood drenched hatred filled prison of Islam. NO THANKS, Dr. Mansur. Keep your twisted notion of freedom to yourself. Your definition of “freedom” is one of the main ingredients in the Jihadist’s vile creed of murder for the sake of “the truth” according to Muhammad.
We in the West believe an individual must have the freedom to choose. And, by the way, that “cacophony of the here and now” which you seem to utterly abhor is the very essence of the freedom we cherish and enjoy.
We call it “Free Speech”. Get used to it. Your monotony of Islam is the antithesis of this freedom.
“Reform is the capacity of individuals to receive and hold the water of faith, and
grow. ”
This, again, is the epitomy of a type of mindset among religious fanatics. If you don’t tow the line according to their definition of “truth” or “religion” or “belief” or “freedom”, then they do not feel obligated to respect your views, since they consider them devoid of “truth” “freedom” and “belief”.
Kindly keep this kind of narrow minded fanatical bigotry to yourself, Dr. Mansur. Again, it’s part of the problem with all the triumphalist arrogant Jihadi murderers which Islam is disgorging into the world. It’s pure filth. And it’s dangerous.
Finally, “A turning towards God is the first step in reform, and moving towards Him is the process of reform. ”
More triumphalist Islamic propaganda cloaked in moderate sounding but extremely sinister language.
Clearly Islam is an inferior system. It limits the choices and imaginations of its adherents. It impedes the progress of the conscience, and strives to replace true free thought and true free speech and true freedom with a doctrine of control, limits, and immutable laws. Dr. Mansur’s twisted notion of “reform” shows how true reform as we think of it in the West will probably never happen in the Islamic world. We will never see Islam shed its snake skin of violence, treachery, and expansionist triumphalism. These qualities, and many other dark notions lie at the heart of Islam. Dr. Mansur has deftly sidestepped all of these ugly and inconvenient aspects of his “religion” in order to proffer a sanitized version of Islam. If Dr. Mansur is the best example of “moderation” which Muslims have to offer, then fasten your seatbelts — we’re in for a bumpy ride…
Far more ominously, if we believe what our eyes tell us rather what this “moderate” Muslim has attempted to put forth in “Cool waters of the Koran pts. I II & III, Bin Laden clearly has the upper hand among the world’s 1 billion Muslims. Our Dr. Mansur, like all of his ilk, spends all of his time trying to convince and fool we non-Muslims of the wrongness of our observations vis-a-vis Islam. By refusing to take on the rhetoric and Islamic reasoning of his more ardent (and I might add purist and observant) brothers in Islam like Bin Laden of Al Qaida (Sunni) and Nasrallah of Hezbollah or Ahmadinijad of Iran (Shia), he’s turning his back on the realities of our time. It’s not the “infidels” as he defines it who need persuading… It’s all the millions upon millions of murdering Muslim maniacs who need the persuading. Underlying his entire thesis is the notion that if we were only to understand Islam as he does, then there would be no more “extremism” necessary.
Dr. Mansur, it is not WE who are transgressing here — It’s the Muslims who are transgressing against us. And buried in your deflections and your non-arguments are the sinews and currents which feed the very sam Islamic Jihad which is assaulting us from all sides.
You clearly don’t accept “freedom” as we define it — you want desperately to change its definition.
You clearly don’t accept “reform” as we define it — you want desperately to change its definition so your Islam can remain intact, and so you can demand that we change to accommodate it.
Your are conducting Dawa. You are lying. You are conducting Jihad.
The spread of Islam, or Jihad, can happen just as well by frightening people to death, murdering them, or selling little baked goodies at the local Mosque. It’s also Jihad to spend time on blogs inventing convoluted arguments which keep the infidels distracted so Islam can further its relentless creep.
It’s ALL Jihad. ALL Muslims engage in it. It is a primary obligation of every Muslim — to be a good Muslim one must do everything in their power to spread Islam and to enforce Islam’s law over mankind.
No thanks.
I only hope and pray enough of us wake up to the utter poisonousness of your evil creed before you drag the rest of the world down into your hellish sewer of Islam.
I was going to post a comment here after reading The Cool Waters Part III but I cannot think of anything better than what VeniVidiVici recounted in his reply. Excellent logic, effective writing…very good job.
A wise man once said (paraphrased):
“There is nothing in Islam that has not existed before in other religions; if Islam were to vanish tomorrow, no important moral precept would be lost.”
Cool waters are found in the teachings of those that practiced peace and justice to all mankind, regardless of belief. I have read the Koran. I have read the Hadith Bukhari and Muslim. Nowhere in them does true justice exist. Every good deed is countered by a hundred affronts against the Divine.
Muslims are harsh against nonbelievers and kind to believers, saith the Koran. Mohammed would have passed the wounded man by. Islam creates the antithesis of the good Samaritan – and the antithesis of humanity. If you truly believe in peace and justice as you claim to, Dr. Mansur, Islam is not the place to find it.
Some questions for Mr Mansour.
1) Why not publish this letter from a non-muslim that you are replying to? How do we know that your response/reaction to it is fair? How can we judge whether or not your argument is toppling a paper tiger if we cant see the original source for ourselves?
2) If Islam is God’s final and perfect revealation which he has supposedly protected from all error in transmission etc, then how could it possibly be hijacked in spite of his active protection? Why has Islam proved so easy to hijack that literally millions upon millions of people are currently Islamists of one stripe or another? Don’t say that it is all about Saudi money either. How could money overcome the moderate majority in many places if that moderate majority was the product of a true understanding of islam in the first place as some try to claim? How could people with a true moderate or traditional understanding be so easily fooled into an extreme form unless the faith was inherantly susceptible to extremism?
3) How can the Islam of this modern age be excused when it is the beneficiary of the learning process of the civilizations and religions that came before it, in fact several thousands of years worth of civilization? Does it today exist in a vacuum like Christian Europe did for long periods of time? The whole world of today including the muslim world has the benefit of millenia of history, experience and civilization which previous faiths had to learn the hard way as the way had not been so easy when they experienced their internal wars. How is it that in this age, as opposed to prior less connected and less educated ages, that islam alone is at war with itself and the rest of the world?
4) How is it that islam alone of all the faiths must be forced from without to reform. Christianity corrected itself with its own resources?
5) How is it that Christianity was able to overcome and redeem the barbaric cultures of Europe so that you dont have Christianized Vikings still creating havoc and yet in 1400 years, Islam has been unable to overcome so-called cultural practices like the oppression of women or the so-called remnants of pre-islamic Arab culture that are blamed by many muslims for the bad behavior of so many muslims. How is it that in its birthplace, where the purest islam should be found, that it has had the least success in leading the world in culture and modernity?
It seems to me that it has neither the power to overcome these things or else it does not have the power to hang on to progress.
What it amounts to is much ado and contrived ecstacies about some Arab poetry. Maybe it is all the rhythmic rocking and chanting of the verses that have clouded your judgement. Looks like self-hypnosis to me.
Funnily enough, the Bible’s poetry is impressive no matter the language and without the special recition techniques….
Mr Mansour and all others who may be interested,
I would also appreciate it if you would take a look at my comment, made rather late last week, to the second part of your letter re: equating the place of the Koran in Islam with the place of Jesus in Christiantity. I have my doubts that anyone saw it but I put some effort into it so I would rather not see it wasted. Thanks.
It is very painful, when Mansur makes a case for a peaceful Islam to another Muslim, to read angry and distrusting comments that, while also making a case that Islam needs reform, contemptuously dismiss the possibility. It is a slap in the face of an ally.
“It is a slap in the face of an ally.”
Really? Several of the insightful posts above which cause you pain call into serious question alliances with the likes of Dr. Mansur.
It will do us no good whatsoever to pine and yearn for ‘dialogue’ with ‘moderate Muslims’ when and if it’s revealed that they are anything but moderate.
Dr. Mansur sidesteps quite a few deeply troubling aspects of his ‘religion’ in order to make his thesis stand up. Posters above have challenged him.
Rather than finding it painful — you might educate yourself about Islam. Then you too could see some of the glaring errors in his three letters. Then you too may not be so gullible or credulous as to fall for this kind of false dialogue.
He is a Jihadist. He is promoting Islam, not a ‘dialogue’. And just so I’m perfectly clear, he is a GOOD MUSLIM – for this is exactly what Islam requires of him. Never criticize Islam. Proselytize for Islam. Use any means at your disposal to adhere to Islam, and to spread Islam. Wage Jihad. Tell sweet nothings if you must. Lie if you must — but SPREAD ISLAM until the world becomes peaceful under its cool waters.
Get a clue. These people are out to destroy everything we hold dear. And fatuous and lazy Westerners who want easy answers, or who refuse to educate themselves about this evil violent “religion” are making the job of the Jihadis that much easier!
“If “moderate” Muslims are not to be found, or do not exist, there can be then no expectation of such a transition. The West logically will be required then to re-colonize the Muslim world as the measure needed for preventing wars within Islam that endanger peace and security elsewhere. Because of this fact, those who revile Islam and scorn “moderate” Muslims need to answer how they intend to wage an endless war of occupation within the Muslim world.” – well, there’s always the unfortunate option of “glass parking lot”. unless moderate muslims start making their voices clear, this option may become reality.
Since, there are no answers yet to my questions, let me offer one likely possibility for Question 2.
Why has islam proven so easy to hijack?
Lets draw a picture. In the wild, a prowling lion will seek out and target the weakest animal in the herd.
Now lets say that all religions are like that herd. They have some common features, yes. But under the same conditions, results will differ depending on the health, strength and soundness of the animal, or in this case the religion. Now imagine that the devil, or whatever you would want to call the power of evil in the world, is the lion. I believe that what we are seeing is the aftermath of his hunt among the religions. We all live in the same world, we are all subject to the same temptations to evil and only Islam has fallen. The rest of the fleet herd has taken off, some with startled leaps and stumbles, and are even now reorienting themselves and are working out how to deal with the new reality in a way consistent with their natures ( I see this all the time in my own Christian faith as we for the most part grow more determined all the time to solve the problem by means of winning non-combatant muslims with love and truth and always separating the person (precious) from the belief (false)) Meanwhile, Islam is helplessly devoured more and more each day, overcome without any effective resistence, overcome by mere money.
Crisis has proved to bring out the worst in Islam. I believe this is the true test of any religion. What happens when times are hard? When things dont go its way? When success turns to ashes?
Well what did Mohammed do when faced with supreme crisis? He fought. He started wars and raided and robbed to save islam. Is it any wonder that in an unprecedented time of crisis when the religion that is believed by its adherants to be the divine formula for success is clearly not successful while other supposedly backwards faiths are spiritually doing much better, that muslims would result to paranoia and conspiracy theories and resort to the most extreme measures to save their faith from destruction? Isnt that the excuse that Mohammed gave?
Whereas, Christianity really began with a failure. Our founder was gone within three years. Within years of his death, so were all of his disciples. So were many other martyrs. Christianity was founded on a peaceful response to existential threats. It can return to that example and has always done so whenever it has gone off the rails before. Other faiths also enjoyed hundreds of years of peaceful development at their foundings in spite of threats that could have easily destroyed them. They have strong foundations. Islam didnt (and so it doesnt) and so had to be preserved by resort to war to get it through its first several hundered years. Islam alone has violence and war in its foundational years. Now the foundation is finally giving way.
PS. And just to avert one very popular excuse. No, you can’t just count the first few years that islam wasnt violent as its foundational years. If it had to resort to war in order to survive then those war years must be included in its crucial formative years. If it was too weak to survive without war then it was not yet properly established. “A tree with deep roots will not be touched by the frost” Islams formative years include the wars, the raids, the killing, the murdering, the beheading and the slave taking with Mohammed making out the best of all. This is fact or else you live in lala land.
All these enraged critics, please give me some evidence from Mansur’s other writings that he is a proselytising jihadi.