And So The 'Moderates' Enable The Extremists

On March 28th, the white march in honor of Mireille Knoll brought together thousands of people in Paris.

Credit: LP / Guillaume Georges

PressTV-Anti-Islam 'manifesto' sparks outrage in France

A letter signed by 300 French public figures, including ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy and three former prime ministers, calling on Islamic leaders to publicly reject the more violent passages in the Qur'an which call for the murder and punishment of Christians, Jews and non-believers, has been met with outrage by the very people who profess to condemn terrorism and proclaim it to be "pas a mon nom" (not in my name).

According to a report in Middle East Eye the letter entitled Manifesto "against the new anti-Semitism” published in Le Parisien, has been condemned as "Vile, racist, contemptible, Islamophobic, provocative..."

The unjust and delirious accusations of anti-Semitism levied against French citizens of Muslim faith and against the Islam of France in this column presents the patent risk of pitting religious communities against one another.

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris.

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Attributing anti-Semitism to Islam almost constitutes blasphemy, as two-thirds of the Quran’s prophets are Jewish! This makes no sense.

The Quran does not call for murder, it calls for fighting back against hostile people. This is the same misinterpretation made by a number of ignorant Muslims, delinquents who pick and choose texts depriving them of their historical context.

Tareq Obrou, rector of the Great Mosque of Bordeaux.

A typical lay reaction was

The problem with your argument is that you assume the Quran is just another religious book. It is the literal words of our creator, and therefore not subject to any revision. A correct interpretation is essential. I suggest you actually read a translation of the meanings with competent explanation.

'Adam F'

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Forced conversion, although I do not doubt it has happened, is Not part of Islam. The Quran is not just another book, find ONE error....you cannot because there is not one.

'Adam F'

Les Français veulent réécrire le Coran ? Pourquoi pas, mais alors qu'ils commencent par réécrire le violent hymne national français.
Les petites têtes blondes françaises ne chantonnent-elles pas à chaque occasion "Marchons, marchons ! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons !" ? https://t.co/vQxkLG3dzy

— Ali Lmrabet (@Alilmrabet) 23 April 2018

The 'Manifesto' drew attention to the fact that:

However, the denunciation of Islamophobia - which is not anti-Arab racism to fight - conceals the figures of the Ministry of the Interior: the French Jews are 25 times more likely to be attacked than their fellow Muslims. 10% of the Jewish citizens of Ile-de-France - that is to say about 50,000 people - were recently forced to move because they were no longer safe in some cities and because their children do not could attend the school of the Republic more. This is a low-noise ethnic cleansing in the country of Emile Zola and Clemenceau.

Semantic arguments about the precise interpretation from the classical Arabic of the sixth century Hijaz does not hide the fact that many Islamic radicals, encouraged by their fundamentalist clerics, interpret 'fight back' as 'go and kill' in the context of the Middle East conflicts between Israel and Palestine in which Israel, and anyone who supports Israel, is seen as the enemy.

And Qur'an 8:12 seems unequivocal:

Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.

Qur'an 8:12 (Interpretation: Yusuf Ali)

The problem here is the same as the one I highlighted some time ago with reference to the dispute between Richard Dawkins and the journalist Mehdi Hassan in Why Faith is Dangerous. It is perhaps the fundamental belief of Islam that the Qur'an is the literal word of Allah as revealed to Mohammad and is therefore perfect and complete in every minute detail. I remember discussing religion with an Egyptian Muslim cardiac surgeon who worked in the UK but whom we met on holiday in Istanbul. He was highly intelligent and a delight to be with as we toured the mosques and churches and spent an afternoon at the Topkapi Palace, but he was unshakeable in his belief that the Qur'an came from God and was the only perfect thing in the Universe.

To ask a devout Muslim to modify even one letter (see 'Adam F' above) would be to ask them to abandon this faith and comit the 'blasphemy' of presuming to know better than Allah, or at least to question what Muhammad had remembered. So, Mehdi Hassan must believe that Muhammad literally flew to Heaven and back on a magic flying horse, and the rectors of the French mosques must believe that a Muslim should 'fight back' against the unbelievers and Allah wants unbelievers to be decapitated. The best they can say is what the Christian moderates say about the brutal parts of the Bible - they are 'out of context'; they only applied then in that situation; they need to be read and interpreted with a deep understanding, etc, etc. They are the literal and perfect words of God - but they mean something else

What they can never do is say they were wrong or have become obsolete and should be disregarded in a modern setting. In Islam, even more so than Christianity, religion acts as a drag on the moral development of society and seeks to hold it back in some primitive, more brutal time, so kill the infidel, persecute the homosexuals and demonise the women who want control of their own lives.

Instead, they confirm they are the literal, perfect words of Allah which every true Muslim is mandated to follow and obey. And so the 'moderates', hamstrung by the dogmatism of their sixth century Arabian desert morality, can only throw up their hands in horror when their co-religionists do obey the 'literal and perfect words of Allah', and disclaim any responsibility for them with "pas a mon nom".

'via Blog this'

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