Terrorism, brutality, polygamy: why it's so easy to "hijack" Islam, the so-called "re

[Simon]

I would highly recommend this book for the jewish readers of this forum.

Just reading the excerpts makes for some really interesting reading. It confirms essentially what I have been saying all along. I wont repeat my allegations against Islam or muslims. The book says it better than I can.

http://www.nrbookservice.com/BookPag...prod_cd=C6008#

Planes crashing into the World Trade Center, bombers blowing themselves up in crowded supermarkets, female genital mutilation, the imprisonment of rape victims, polygamy: the media claims that all these are results of the "hijacking" of Islam, "the religion of peace." But here at last is a book that dares to tell the truth about Islam - and to show you exactly why this religion is so easy to "hijack," and what Islamic authorities really teach about such barbarities!

Exploding dozens of PC myths, Robert Spencer goes beyond the media's shallow distinction between "true" Islam and terrorist Islam to demonstrate - in the words of Muslims themselves - that Islamic fanaticism and terrorism are rooted in the Qur'an and core Islamic traditions. He shows that since Muslim radicalism stems from elements at the religion's heart, Islamic moderates (and cowardly Western multiculturalists) will never convince the Muslim world at large that there is no place for violence in Islam.

Refreshingly free of multiculturalist cant, Islam Unveiled goes straight to Islamic sources to explain why Muslims worldwide take the violent passages in the Qur'an as marching orders for today, while Jews and Christians do not do so with similar passages in the Old Testament. Spencer also forthrightly examines the treatment of women in the Islamic world, tracing the devastating societal effects of Muslim polygamy and Islamic divorce laws.

And, since Muslims worldwide revere Muhammad as the greatest model of human behavior, Spencer explores the tumultuous life of prophet of Islam - squarely facing his violence, bloodlust and Clintonesque sexual appetites (and their unsettling implications for the contemporary international scene).

Spencer also examines the human rights records and political systems of Islamic countries, detailing why democracy has never taken root in Muslim soil - and why it probably never will. He details the titanic hurdles that secularism must overcome in order to gain a secure foothold in the Islamic world, and how Osama bin Laden and other radicals skillfully play on Muslim sensibilities in order to gain a huge following among Muslims.

Spencer's provocative and entertaining articles on Islam and a wide variety of other topics have appeared in Human Events, National Review Online, Chronicles, Crisis, and many other publications. He provides here a desperately needed antidote to the distortions and wishful thinking about Islam that have swamped the media since September 11. No American can afford to ignore the facts he provides here - if he wants to face realistically the ongoing threat from the Muslim world.

Among the startling revelations of Islam Unveiled:

What Muslim authorities worldwide really said about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

Suicide bombing: the rationale for this barbaric practice in Islamic theology

Muslim "fundamentalists": a radical fringe? Why their message has such resonance in the Islamic world even among those who will never commit any acts of violence

Wife-beating: sanctioned by the Qur'an - and by contemporary Islamic commentators! The shocking details

Rape in Islam: why, under Islamic law, it's virtually impossible to prove

The truth about Aisha, Muhammad's nine-year-old wife (plus the Muslim world's sorry record of child brides)

How the prophet of Islam came to marry his daughter-in-law - and other curious episodes in the life of Muhammad

"Temporary marriage": the facts about this strange and destructive Shi'ite Muslim practice

Jihad: does it really impose an obligation on Muslims to wage war? The facts

Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi sect: why it is (contrary to Western analyses) not the originator of Islamic radicalism or terrorism

Why jihad won't conclude with the end of the war in Afghanistan, or even the war on terrorism

Why converts from Islam in Islamic countries live in fear of their very lives

The Muslim journalist who acknowledged that "the Muslim world today is full of bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy and plain ignorance"!

Human rights: the grim record of Islamic countries - and the roots causes of this record in basic Muslim beliefs

Science and high culture: why they virtually died out in the Muslim world - and why this is a root cause of modern Muslim resentment

Why Islamic philosophy, which once exercised enormous influence in the West, declined into insignificance

Slavery: why it exists today nowhere in the world except in two Islamic nations, Sudan and Mauritania

The Crusades: why the Western world has no need to apologize to the Muslim world

Islamic tolerance? The whole truth about non-Muslim minorities under Muslim rule

The PC straitjacket: evidence that it's easier to tell the truth about Islam in predominantly Muslim countries than in Europe and the U.S.

Demographic jihad: how population trends may allow Islam to conquer Western Europe without the setting off of a single suicide bomb

Secular Turkey: why the rest of the Muslim world is not following its example - and the constant pressure it suffers from Islamic radicals

Can Islam be secularized and incorporated into the West's multicultural mosaic? The hard facts

"In its own lively style, this book puts down a strong and significant marker to what lies ahead, as Islam and the rest of the world strive to come to terms." - From the Introduction by David Pryce-Jones, senior editor, National Review
"This is a bracing argument that can help Americans think through what might well turn out to be the greatest religious, cultural, and political conflict of this century." - The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, author, The Naked Public Square

"Spencer has explained very ably some of the misconceptions about Islam. The reader will be greatly enriched in understanding Islam and how Muslims act, in the light of the attack on America." - Dr. Anis Shorrosh, author, Islam Revealed

"Robert Spencer's attempt to unveil what most do not want to say about Islam is inspiring and informative. What do Muslims believe, and why they believe as such? Spencer's is the first successful attempt in unveiling this matter." - Daniel Ali, founder and president of the Christian-Islamic Forum

[victot]

you know, im even against being so pr that you can't say a controversial truth, once in a while...

but in my opinion, posts like the above give israel forums and jewish forums a bad name, it breeds only bad feelings.

i'm even interested in reading the book to see what it has to say, but please, if you're recommending a book which is so anti-someone else's religeon, a religeon which for better or for worse has certainly earned itself a place into human civilization, why not give a warningor something that some may find it offensive or something?

i dunno, i mention this, cuz i've seen VERY similar stuff said by neo-nazis about the talmud, it just pisses me off.

o well, peace.

[TheAZCowBoy]

Re: The Arabs high jacking of Islam?

Sorry to rain on your parade Simon, ole boy, but when you talk about how Arab terrorists have high jacked Islam for their own selfish reasons, you have only to see how Zionism has high jacked the decency of Judaism and the tsunami of anti-semitism and seething hate that the bloodiest living Jew; LIKUDNIK, Ariel Sharon has unleashed on the unsuspecting decent Jews of the world because of his polices of state sponsored terrorism, apartheid, racism, bigotry and even "human bondage" being visited against the defenseless and downtrodden Palestinian people.

The state sponsored terrorism that is currently being unleased on the Palestinian people ( including the "illegal" use of US supplied weaponry against civilians in violation of the US Arms Export Act by Israel ) who have lived in the Holy lands for centuries, by the IDF/IAF/Settlers and the LIKUDNIK criminals that abound in modern israel are a tribute to mans inhumanity to man as we saw in Slobadan Milosevics murderous behavior in the Balkans to Israel's chagrin.

Nowhere on the globe have we a small impotent country ( sans US aid ) that continues to give the world community its extended middle finger to a myraid of resolutions that have been passed over the past 54 years against Israel. ( and we point fingers at Saddam's Iraq?! ).

Israel, as the world currently knows it has little chances of existing for much longer--I believe every God fearing Jew accepts this as a holy truth---and the Sharon's, Arafat's and the other ( Natanyahu ) political thugs, bafoons, rabble rousers and unindicted mass murderers must soon step aside and make room for a peaceful solution to the problems between the Zionist "colonizers" and the Palestinian's.


The UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty Int'l and "many" others have archives full of crimes against humanity being committed against Arabs by the Zionist Jews of Israel ( Jenin, being "just" one ) and there's no reason to even debate the issue.

If you add up all the murders commited by Arabs against Jews even since the '72 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, including "the roadside murders," and the massacre of the "children of Ma'lott," you will find that they don't even add up to 10% of Israel's murder of lebanese and Palestinian's in the summer of 1982 invasion of Lebanon by LIKUDNIK killers Menechem Begin, Arik Sharon & company...

Nuff said.

[Mediocrates]

PS: I know how criticism of Israel and Jews "always" ends up being defined as "Anti-Semitic" drivel by you Jews---but let me ask you Simon: "What is more anti-Semitic that the daily murder, maiming and displacement of Semitic people---the Palestinian's?

Fact: Most European Jews. the Kahzars that went to Europe from the Cacasus and Black sea areas in AD 570 were not even Semitic people!


Wingnut!

[danholo]

Actually this Khazar theory is not a fact. Yes, the Khazars mostly adopted Judaism, but it hardly makes European Jews descendants of them. I was worried about this "fact" until I rounded up enough info. Although genetics has nothing to do with Judaism, genetics itself has proved that most Jews are genetically related to each other, both Sefardim and Ashkenazim. Also, if you would be knowledgeable in geography, the Caucasus and Black Sea areas are hardly a big part of Europe. The best explanation was, from a site especially dedicated to Khazars that Khazarian Jews mixed with Russian Jews that had come from the west.
After being expelled from Western European countries, many Jews fleed to Poland or other Eastern European countires. The Khazarian descent is a VERY small percentage to say the least and is mostly mixed with Semitic "Jewish blood". So much for your facts...

BTW, this AZ cowboy reminds me of a guy on another forum who thoroughly claimed the Khazar theory being true and the Talmud being racist. I hope we don't get the same utter ******** from this guy.

[Simon]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...roduct-details


These are some of the reviews of the book Islam Unveiled.


To answer Victot's post:

I dont mind if a person were to read this book and refute its findings based on factual evidence. However, just because the book is critical of Islam and (seeks to) prove that Islam indeed incites hatred, does not make it any less useful reading.

In fact, the book may serve to dispel several absurd politially correct notions about Islam.

From a hindu perspective, this book is important to me. Just yesterday, muslims entered a temple in the Gujarat state of India and brutally murdered some 30-odd people. Included was a pregnant women who was shot in the back while trying to save herself and her baby. Also included was a little boy.

So, for me the book is very useful. It outlines exactly why muslims are killing my fellow hindus.

Regarding, respecting the feelings of muslims: Do they care about mine as a hindu? I am a kuffar, aint I?

What about the feelings of that pregnant woman?
Or the 58 hindu men, women and children burnt to death in India by muslims? Ooops, sorry, they are dead. Who gives a damn about their feeling, right?

Only now are hindus fighting back. After the train burning incident, Gujarat, incidentally the home state of Gandhi of the non-violence fame, went on a rampage and the retaliatory attacks by hindus, for one of the few times in the recorded history of communal riots in India, killed more muslims than hindus. It would be very useful for my fellow hindus to understand what drives muslims and this book is a step in that direction. If I had the resources, i would have bought a million copies and distributed them in India. Understanding the origin of the hatred that muslims feel for hindus would be invaluable in countering the muslims in India. Burying ones' head in the sand and pretending that the murders are committed by a small fringe of muslims is not going to get us anywhere.


As an analogy, I am posting some links by Daniel Pipes who has made it (one of his) mission to counteract the Goebbelsian propaganda of CAIR-the council of american-islamic relations. Note that CAIR considers Daniel Pipes to be a muslim-hating bigot

What do you think Victot, of Daniel Pipes efforts to expose CAIR? You think Daniel Pipes is a bigot too? For telling the truth?

http://www.danielpipes.org/cair.shtml
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/394
http://www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html
(CAIR writes: Throughout his career, Daniel Pipes has exhibited a troubling bigotry toward Muslims and Islam.)

[Simon]

On another personal note: I would not be discussing islam or muslims if at the time of Partition our "great" leaders had done the needful and ensured a complete exchange of populations. All hindus, sikhs, jains, buddhists in India. All muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

If that had happened, I would wager that India would have been far ahead of even China by now. And instead of reading Robert Spencer's book, I would have been trying to triple our IT exports or trying to ensure safe drinking water to even the remotest village in India or trying to ensure gender equality, or trying to ensure that every indian was educated.

Unfortunately, that was not so. I am not discussing Islam/muslims because I want to. I have to. Because my country, India, the only homeland of hindus, sikhs, buddhists, jains is in mortal danger.



To illustrate this point: Do you ever hear of the Chinese caring about muslims/islam? They dont give a damn because they dont have much of a muslim population. The ones in Xinjiang (the Uighurs) are so effectively suppressed that an Uighuir cannot even take a leak without the Chinese police finding it out.

Would Israelis have cared about the finer points of Islam if your very existence was not threatened by muslims?

[TheAZCowBoy]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
PS: I know how criticism of Israel and Jews "always" ends up being defined as "Anti-Semitic" drivel by you Jews---but let me ask you Simon: "What is more anti-Semitic that the daily murder, maiming and displacement of Semitic people---the Palestinian's?

Fact: Most European Jews. the Kahzars that went to Europe from the Cacasus and Black sea areas in AD 570 were not even Semitic people!


Wingnut!

Response from: TheAZCowBoy

Same ole Jewish "caca" response, huh folks?

Silence and more silence when the "Anti-Semitic" behavior is in the Jews corner.

Pslam 124:20 explains much of what is to be expected Zionist Israel......

"Jehovah is guarding those that love him---the evil ones he will annihilate!"

[NewsGuy]

Originally posted by TheAZCowBoy
PS: I know how criticism of Israel and Jews "always" ends up being defined as "Anti-Semitic" drivel by you Jews---but let me ask you Simon: "What is more anti-Semitic that the daily murder, maiming and displacement of Semitic people---the Palestinian's?

Actually, the Palestinians are nothing more than squatters brutally occupying parts of the Jewish homeland.

Still, there is no "daily murders" as you know very well. The war on terrorism is not murder, it's self-defense of course.

We can't say that reacting to the Arab terrorists of al Qaeda is murder, just like reacting to groups like Islamic Jihad or Hamas is considered anything but self-defense.

But speaking of murder, we need to ask ourselves why someone living in the U.S., after seeing the Arab attack on America of 9/11 in which 3000 Americans were mass murdered, would still support Palestinian terrorism. The only answer is that person wants to see more Jews and more Americans slaughtered at the hands of the Arabs, i.e., an traitor to this country and a vile anti-Semite to boot.

And let's take a closer look at the anti-American traitors:

The 'players' are an interesting lot. From the right we have the 'faceless' anti-Semitic parasites who come in force to defend their murderous brethren in Iraq, Arafatistan and Saudi Arabia.

Then there come the plastic self-appointed 'pseudo-intellectuals' and cut-n-paste experts like we've seen here by the droves.

Then come the "vociferous" contributors, and finally we get down to the basic 'shoot-the-Zionist-and-American-bastards-in-the-groin,' types, like ( smiling ) TheAZCowBoy. (These are his very own words, btw).

* * *

But, it's still generally recognized that the Palestinians and their Iranian and Saudi bankrollers have sent a tsunami of anti-Semitism around the world and over the long term they will discover that the "eternal" victims have lost their place in the world's sympathies.

In the end, good triumphs over evil, and the "axis of evil" of extremist IslamiNazis will go down in history as primitive savages who were overcome by Western values and progress.

[minusthejihad]

AZCowgirl,

Cookoo, cookoo.

[minusthejihad]

But speaking of murder, we need to ask ourselves why someone living in the U.S., after seeing the Arab attack on America of 9/11 in which 3000 Americans were mass murdered, would still support Palestinian terrorism. The only answer is that person wants to see more Jews and more Americans slaughtered at the hands of the Arabs, i.e., an traitor to this country and a vile anti-Semite to boot.

I think he is just a wimpy little neo-nazi skinhead from AZ, who is too scared to espouse his real hatred and seeks the warm, safe comfort of his mouse and keyboard in his attempt to annihilate Jews. Either that or he his just cookoo, cookoo.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by TheAZCowBoy
Actually the flow was from east Europe to the west---the Khazarian Jews drifted into Ukraine, Russia and Poland and eventually began to dominate in Western Europe until the guy with the funny mustache decided he had had enough of the Jewish domination and humiliation of the German people.

And you will end up in the same place he did.

[MGB8]

LOL Cowboy...

a couple of points to rebut your ignorant and clearly racist dribble...


(1) Israel was asked to go into Lebanon by Christians who were being Murdered by "Palestinians" and other Arabs - they had just been expelled from Jordan and Syria after trying to start uprisings there and caused the Lebanese Civil War. Without Israeli action, there would be no Christians left in Lebanon.

(2) To a large extent, Zionism IS Judaism. Every Jew who prays prays towards Jerusalem, and prays "next year in Jerusalem" and calls him/herself part of the People of Israel - meaning not just the decendents of Jacob but also the historic NATION of Israel. We mourn the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem.

(3) you use a lot of harsh-words, without any facts to back them up. LOL..."state terrorism," "crimes against humanity," "criminals" ..... DEFINE THE TERM AND BACK IT UP WITH FACTS! You can't though, can you. Other than too site the UN, which FINALLT Colin Powell or some US Senator pointed out IS JUST A GROUP OF NATIONS (mostly not even representing their people but just petty despots) WITH THERE OWN SELFISH INTERESTS. World community? How about the French in Sierra Lione...

As for Israel being "impotent" and not lasting much longer...keep dreaming. Each year Israel grows stronger. We won against horrid odds, and now we have nuclear weapons. The day Israel is destroyed is the same day that the rest of the Middle East becomes a Radioactive wasteland.

Israel will exist for the rest of human time...get used to it.

Originally posted by TheAZCowBoy
Re: The Arabs high jacking of Islam?

Sorry to rain on your parade Simon, ole boy, but when you talk about how Arab terrorists have high jacked Islam for their own selfish reasons, you have only to see how Zionism has high jacked the decency of Judaism and the tsunami of anti-semitism and seething hate that the bloodiest living Jew; LIKUDNIK, Ariel Sharon has unleashed on the unsuspecting decent Jews of the world because of his polices of state sponsored terrorism, apartheid, racism, bigotry and even "human bondage" being visited against the defenseless and downtrodden Palestinian people.

The state sponsored terrorism that is currently being unleased on the Palestinian people ( including the "illegal" use of US supplied weaponry against civilians in violation of the US Arms Export Act by Israel ) who have lived in the Holy lands for centuries, by the IDF/IAF/Settlers and the LIKUDNIK criminals that abound in modern israel are a tribute to mans inhumanity to man as we saw in Slobadan Milosevics murderous behavior in the Balkans to Israel's chagrin.

Nowhere on the globe have we a small impotent country ( sans US aid ) that continues to give the world community its extended middle finger to a myraid of resolutions that have been passed over the past 54 years against Israel. ( and we point fingers at Saddam's Iraq?! ).

Israel, as the world currently knows it has little chances of existing for much longer--I believe every God fearing Jew accepts this as a holy truth---and the Sharon's, Arafat's and the other ( Natanyahu ) political thugs, bafoons, rabble rousers and unindicted mass murderers must soon step aside and make room for a peaceful solution to the problems between the Zionist "colonizers" and the Palestinian's.


The UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty Int'l and "many" others have archives full of crimes against humanity being committed against Arabs by the Zionist Jews of Israel ( Jenin, being "just" one ) and there's no reason to even debate the issue.

If you add up all the murders commited by Arabs against Jews even since the '72 Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, including "the roadside murders," and the massacre of the "children of Ma'lott," you will find that they don't even add up to 10% of Israel's murder of lebanese and Palestinian's in the summer of 1982 invasion of Lebanon by LIKUDNIK killers Menechem Begin, Arik Sharon & company...

Nuff said.

[Simon]

http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher092302.asp

September 23, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Not Peace-Loving, After All Is Islam itself a threat?

Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer (Encounter, $24.95) 170 pages.



Most Americans have a benignly positive attitude toward religion, one that holds faith to be a good thing for the commonweal, regardless of sectarian particulars. Norman Rockwell's famous "Freedom of Worship" painting captures this nicely, while Eisenhower's remark — "I believe every American should have a religious faith, and I don't care what it is" — does so a little more clumsily. That tolerant, pro-religion view has served America well over time, but one cannot help wondering if our civic piety, allied with political correctness, is blinding us to some hard questions about Islam — questions upon which the survival of our civilization depends.

I don't know many non-Muslims who believe President Bush's politically necessary but theologically nonsensical proclamation that, "Islam means peace." But there are many more who take comfort in the belief that the threat to America comes not from Islam itself, but from an extremist form of the religion espoused by terrorists and their small but vocal band of supporters. That's certainly the line taken by the mainstream media, who seem so afraid of sparking American bigotry against Muslim citizens that they have largely resisted critical analysis of Islamic writings, practice, and history.

What if they are wrong? What if the threat is not extremist Islam, but Islam itself? That's the view set out by author Robert Spencer in his new book, Islam Unveiled, a relatively short, plainspoken analysis of the Islamic faith and the challenge it poses to pluralist democracy. Warns Spencer, "The culture of tolerance threatens to render the West incapable of drawing reasonable distinctions. The general reluctance to criticize any non-Christian religion and the almost universal public ignorance about Islam make for a lethal mix."

This is a deeply unsettling little volume, because it offers scant hope that the West can live at peace with Islam unless the religion changes radically, and even less hope that that is possible. Still, the questions Islam Unveiled poses and the answers it provides are hard to dismiss, and given the urgency of the times, necessary to ask. As Spencer writes, "This is not in order to incite thugs to attack Muslims on the street, but to look squarely at what the West is up against."

If Spencer is right, the West faces a primitive, violent, and fiercely chauvinistic religion whose followers, to the extent that they are pious adherents to its teachings, cannot be reasoned with, only resisted. Islam is at its core inimical to democracy and human rights as we in the West understand them. To expect Muslims to drop their belligerence toward the West, which has existed since Islam's founding in the 7th century, is to expect them to jettison core values of their faith — something for which there is no precedent in Islamic history.

The Koran, writes Spencer, is more central to the Islamic faith than the Bible is to Christianity. Muslims believe it was revealed directly from God to the Prophet Muhammad. A pious Muslim may consult an imam or spiritual leader for guidance, but he will also read the Koran himself. He will find there many divine instructions to make constant war on the infidel, who is only to be given the choice of conversion, slave-like subjugation (in historian Bat Yeor's word, dhimmitude) — or death. And throughout Islamic history, that's exactly how Muslim societies have behaved toward non-Muslims, who are by the very fact of their unbelief not considered innocents in the eternal, divinely mandated conflict.

Undeniably, Christians have in the past committed many despicable acts in the name of God, but they did so in violation of scriptural teaching, not in fulfillment of it, as in Islam. Though the Bible testifies to violence committed at the command of God, and they the few if any Christians or Jews today believe that this is how God expects man to live today. "Islam, by contrast, generally rejects the idea of a historical progression in revelation, and allows little latitude for allegorical interpretation of the martial verses in the Qu'ran ," Spencer writes. "A book [that claims] literal perfection tends to resist any interpretation that diminishes the literal truthfulness of any of its statements."

This literalism has profound consequences for the way Muslims live. Unlike in Christianity, there is no scriptural mandate for separation of church and state in Islam, making secular democracy an alien and hostile concept. Women have few rights over and against their husbands, who may legally beat them, and men in general. (Spencer, quoting from Islamic sources, demonstrates that Muhammad, considered the ideal man for all time, treated women cruelly by contemporary Western standards.) Enslaving infidels and raping infidel women are justified under Koranic law (and still occur in some Muslim lands). Grotesque punishments for crimes — beheadings and the like — are not medieval holdovers, writes Spencer; "On the contrary, they will forever be part of authentic Islam as long as the Qur'an is revered as the perfect Word of Allah."

Spencer does not believe that Islam can be tamed. While Muslims in the West live in peace, prosperity and religious liberty, Christians and other non-Muslims are persecuted, sometimes unto death, throughout the Muslim world today. Turkey is the only Muslim country that could be called democratic, and that's a stretch; its example shows that secularist values can only be imposed on Islamic societies by force, and will therefore remain tenuous. Because Islam demands death for heretics, moderate Muslims will always risk their lives by offering more liberal interpretations of their faith.

And most crucially, in his view, Islam cannot be other than a religion of violence. "Of course, most Muslims will never be terrorists. The problem is that for all its schisms, sects, and multiplicity of voices, Islam's violent elements are rooted in its central texts," Spencer writes. His final verdict on Islam is sobering, particularly when one considers the rapidly increasing Islamic presence in Europe, the cradle of Western civilization: "It would be too pessimistic to say that there are no peaceful strains of Islam, but it would be imprudent to ignore the fact that deeply imbedded in the central documents of the religion is an all-encompassing vision of a theocratic state that is fundamentally different from and opposed to the post-Enlightenment Christian values of the West."

To be sure, Spencer's despairing view is not shared by many scholars, even one as reliably critical of radical Islam as Daniel Pipes. In his recent Militant Islam Reaches America, Pipes emphatically denies that radical Islam is the same thing as traditional Islam. He insists that drawing the distinction and encouraging moderates within Islamic societies is an imperative for the West, though he offers scant evidence for this conclusion. And he admits that Muslim moderates are "weak, divided, intimidated and generally ineffectual. Indeed, the prospects for Muslim revitalization have rarely looked dimmer than at this moment... ." One gets the feeling that Pipes would rather light a candle for the unlikely hope of a peaceful revolution within Islam, not because the alternative — one-sixth of humanity, many of whom are already living among us, as implacable enemy of the West — is unrealistic, but because it is unthinkable.

"Nowadays, nothing seems less tolerated than what people call pessimism — and which is often in fact just realism," says Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Is Islam Unveiled pessimism, or realism? We can only know for sure if we have a serious public discussion of the issues Spencer raises in this important (but unsatisfyingly brief) book — issues that stand to be ignored by the media, for fear of trading in anti-Muslim bigotry. If Islam Unveiled, which is published by Encounter Books, Peter Collier's imprint, becomes the bestseller it deserves to be, it will be through talk radio and word of mouth by Americans who believe that post-9/11, America cannot afford the moral disarmament of indulging in multicultural platitudes.

Spencer may be wrong — I doubt it, but I'd like to hear a convincing refutation of his arguments — but he is asking questions that few others have the courage to . And until we hear from this supposed vast silent majority of peace-loving Muslims, the answers Spencer gives go a long way to explain the hatred, violence, backwardness, and fanaticism endemic to the Islamic world.

[Simon]

IBrodsky/NewsGuy/Mediocrates: Can anyone of you please change the title of the thread to "Islam Unvelied: A Book by Robert Spencer." That would be a more accurate title.