Comments on: UPDATE II: “Inside [John Esposito’s] Islam”

By: Stephen W. Browne

Stephen W. Browne — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:46:30 +0000

I thought that was the point I made.

By: Robert Glisson

Robert Glisson — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:54:46 +0000

I have to admit that I really do not know anything about Islam itself. I tried to read the Koran. After reading the book of the Red Cow, I decided not to punish myself further; however, I’ve found no one writes about the religion’s tenants or rather the worship of Muslim’s god or who he is. All writers (Muslims included) write about Mohammad or Sharia law.
Everyone knows the basics of Christianity, Buddhism, Hindu, belief. I can even tell you the similarities of Christian and Japanese Shinto beliefs; Jewish and Christians similarities; even how Calvin’s Christian Law corresponds to Sharia Law and the Laws of Moses. I know the attributes of different Hindu gods or Buddhist ‘Karma’. Odin, Diana, even Baal; but other than Muslim meaning ‘to submit’ it’s a mystery. I think that if the religion has no real substance, but only consists of oppressive laws and rules with examples of the life of a sixth century prophet; it is like slippery Socialism, an easily manipulated force for evil.

By: einszweidrei

einszweidrei — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:54:52 +0000

Esposito is a disgrace to the profession:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/05/who-speaks-for-islam-how-esposito-and-mogahed-cooked-their-data-to-increase-the-number-of-muslim-mod.html

Cooked books doesn’t even begin to cover it.

By: Deignan

Deignan — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:46:37 +0000

Derbyshire is excellent. I did not know until just reading that he had political opinions as well as his interest in mathematics. I made his Prime Obsession my leisure reading in Iraq when the dust storms had me sidelined.

Happy New Year! I am glad to see that you are writing and doing well.

I am not so pessimistic. It seems to me that government and Islam have one principle in common. As you noted, they (government and by implication Islam) are participants in a zero-sum game. In such games it is easy for causality to be reversed because there is no exogenous input upon which to gain by good predictions. They are like eddies in a river. Ultimately, in the stream of time, they form meanders which cut themselves off and become disconnected backwaters in the tides of history. The dysfunctions of government and the perversities of pseudo religions only exist in stagnation zones.

The pool is becoming less stagnant due to globalization.

By: irongalt

irongalt — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:30:16 +0000

“professional researchers” – the standard alias under which the government’s shamans operate.

The American public by in large have become cult followers of the “experts”…instead of applying reason and logic to the original data, they say “a PhD knows more than any of us mere mortals…he must be right”.

Islam is a prepackaged method of gaining and maintaining world domination…it’s not a religion or a faith: it’s a legal system…if you follow the Shari’a law, then you’re a Muslim.

By: Stephen W. Browne

Stephen W. Browne — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:47:04 +0000

One question about the “Muslim mentality” I’ve wondered about for a while.

Granted not all Muslim countries are dominated by the extreme Wahhabists. I saw a far more easy-going culture in Tunisia than Saudi Arabia for example.

But… it has long been left-liberal orthodoxy that sexual repression makes people crazy. Meaning traditional Christian conservatives mostly.

But strange they never apply this standard to Muslims raised under sexual repression that makes fundamentalist Christians look like libertines.

I had students in the Kingdom who had literally never spoken to, or seen the face of a woman who was not their mother or sister. Or the only unrelated women they’d ever spoken with were prostitutes in Bahrain.

They want to find “root causes” of suicide murderers in “poverty” or “western imperialism”? How about a brutal sexual repression that drives a critical number of them literally psychotic?