Author: Amber Pawlik
Publication: www.faithfreedom.org
Date: March 24, 2004
URL: http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/AmberPawlik40324.htm
Ever since 9-11, Islam has been
a topic of debate in many circles. President George Bush announced that
Islam is a "religion of peace." Leftists, though, in particular have convinced
us that to criticize Islam is to be "intolerant." This has created a culture
unwilling to call Islam for what it is. Here is a list of common debate
arguments in defense of Islam, usually given by leftists, and quick rebuttals
to them, proving otherwise.
You are a racist if you condemn
Islam.
As soon as you go to criticize Islam,
the first response you always get hit with is "you are a racist." This
is not true. Islam is an ideology not a race. You can criticize Islam in
the same way that you can criticize communism, liberalism, feminism, etc.
In fact, the biggest victims of
Islam are Muslims themselves. Every Muslim I have ever met is bright and
hard working. It is unfortunate that Muslims are under the spell of Islam,
which prevents them from making the kind of scientific and technological
progress they clearly could otherwise make.
Christianity can be just as violent
as Islam.
When you point out the verses in
the Koran which call for the murder of Christians and Jews, etc., or point
out that Muslims are killing people in the name of Allah, the instant response
you get is, "Christianity has violent passages too, and people have killed
other people in the name of Christianity too."
All I have to say is: and? If people
are using Christianity as a reason to kill innocent people, guess what:
they are wrong too. You can't excuse one evil by pointing to another evil.
Besides that, there are no Christian
nations right now that are responsible for killing 3000 Americans or 200
Spaniards. It is the Islamic nations and organizations that are.
It's the wrong interpretation of
Islam that is the problem.
Leftists insist that the Koran isn't
bad; it is the "wrong interpretation" of the Koran. I'm not sure
how anyone can fail to correctly interpret statements like,
They long that ye should disbelieve
even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose
not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah;
if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye
find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them, Surah 4:89,
Nobel Koran) but I guess that's just me.
When leftists say it is the "wrong
interpretation" of Islam that is wrong, really what
they mean is "why can't Muslims
just ignore the bad parts of the Koran?" Leftists don't understand the
psyche of the person who takes things literally. To them, things are just
suggestions not commandments - even the law, as evidenced by the San Francisco
mess.
It's not the wrong interpretation
of the Koran that produces terrorists; it is an exact interpretation of
the Koran that produces terrorists.
Most Muslims are nice people.
The more emotional appeal is that
most Muslims are nice, hard working people and criticizing Islam is to
criticize these nice people. Of course most Muslims are nice people. The
problem is in the leadership, i.e. people who are responsible for taking
the Koran seriously and literally, not the naïve followers.
It is not limited to leadership
in the Middle East either. Representative Peter T. King said publicly while
promoting his book Vale of Tears that he estimates 80- 85% of the Muslim
leadership in America supports "Islamic fundamentalism."
Islam is not benign. To ignore this,
being politically-correct, is to ignore a very large, deadly pink elephant
in the room.
Islam has produced scientific achievements.
Lots of people insist that Muslim
culture has produced various scientific achievements. The biggest "Muslim"
achievement that they point to is that they supposedly discovered Algebra.
This isn't true. It wasn't Muslims or even Arabs that invented Algebra:
it was the Iranians. The Iranians have had a very enlightened culture -
one that radical Muslims have waged a war against, in an effort to Islamicize
them (which you will never hear leftists condemn). The Iranians also
had their own religion, Zoroastrian, which was as opposite as you can get
from Islam.
Something else Islam defenders might
point to as proof that Islam can produce scientific progress is a man named
Razi, who they say was Muslim. Razi made several findings in medicine.
But Razi, again, was not Arab or Muslim but Iranian. In fact, he
was so hostile to Islam that he wrote several books denouncing faith and
upholding reason, and became a heretic. Razi, an enlightened Iranian, was
to the Muslim world what Galileo or Copernicus was to ours. After treating
these men of scientific achievement as heretics forced to live like gypsies,
claiming them as proof that Islam can produce scientific achievement is
a bit much.
There is my short list of common
arguments regarding Islam. This brings me to what I believe is the biggest
issue of our time and one of the largest hypocrisies.
Leftists try to claim they are enlightened,
sophisticated people, supporting the mind not faith - therefore denounce
religion, especially Christianity. Yet it is these very leftists that are
most sympathetic to Islam: one of the most faith-based and anti-enlightened
religions that has ever existed.
Despite their theatrics, announcing
they are intellectual, leftists are not enlightened or intellectual. Genuine
enlightenment came when men discovered reason and reality. It started with
one man: Aristotle. Accepting that reality was firm and external to man
and that men can use reason to understand and explore it allowed for an
explosion of scientific progress, technology, and civilization, as we know
it.
This is not what leftists advocate.
They advocate that reality is unknowable and that reason is impotent. You
can sit in any university classroom and find this out. Leftists are
not secular. They are just as mystical as any primitive religion, if not
more so, which is why they can easily sympathize with a religion like Islam.
The person who created the crop
of intellectuals opposed to intellect is Immanuel Kant. Kant is evil because
he destroyed reason in the name of reason - by manipulating the definition
of reason. Reason is the process by which man understands and discovers
reality through his own five senses and mind. Kant said that reason was
"a priori," which means "without experience." Therefore, "reason" is just
a person who, essentially, thinks about things with no sensory data fed
to him. This undercuts reason at the root. How can enlightenment come if
man is completely cut off from reality? What scientific progress can come
from the chemist who doesn't study chemicals or the biologist who doesn't
study animals? Immanuel Kant is to the primitives known as leftists/liberals
of today what Mohammed is to Islam.
Given leftists have been smearing
reason in the name of reason; secularism in the name of secularism; enlightenment
in the name of enlightenment, I have a fear. Since "secularism" has
been defined consistently as feminism, liberalism, communism, etc. as opposed
to reason, progress, technology, etc., people might turn their back on
anything "secular." Then, they will turn towards not just religion but
religion in its pure form - influenced by nothing except what is in the
text of the Bible or the Koran. We are ripe for a Dark Age.
Leftists defending Islam is the
height of hypocrisy. On all fronts - in the areas of human rights, tolerance,
reason, science, progress - Islam comes up consistently as one of the most
evil scourges to have hit the face the earth. It is not a religion of peace;
it is a violent religion. Wherever it rears its ugly head, it creates for
oppression, tyranny, and a lowered standard of living. A person who truly
values reason, tolerance, and science would completely and unequivocally
denounce Islam. But leftists don't. Perhaps because they do not stand for
any of those things.
