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Shaukat Khawja is blogging, I think, about how he proud to be an Islamic radical. Oh, he doesn’t really mention himself, per sé, but he does attempt to deflect the typical stigma that is attached to the term “radical” when it is used in reference to the false religion of Muhammad.

One famous biblical “radical” was Jesus (as), who challenged and opposed the evil power of Rabbinical class, and condemned them for distorting the Laws of Moses. For that Jesus was projected as “radical” and a grave threat to Roman colonial empire. Another famous “radical” was Lord Buddha, who challenged the repressive hegemony of Brahmin upper-caste minority. Nelson Mandela was another “radical”, because he upset the status quo - and challenged the racist Afrikan regime. When Senator Cheney called him “radical”, the western world and Zionist entity rejoiced - including his supporters, though, for him being “honoured” as a freedom-fighter.

Same goes for Malcolm X and Rev. Martin Luther King. Both were dubbed “radicals” because they sought to subvert and overturn the racist political culture that had been institutionalized in the US for the benefit of a small minority of elites - most of whom take orders from Israel Lobbying groups (AIPAC, ADL, AJC, etc.).

The best and living example of progressive, emancipatory radicalism can be found in the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) - who, like Moses and Jesus - challenged the existing religious and political doctrine of his time. Islamic message too, can be called “radical” because it conclusively rejects all forms of caste, Racism, class oppression, usury, exploitation, abuse of the law and dehumanization of human beings.

Shaukat is something of a fan of the Iranian Ayatollahs, and so we can presume from his having said the above that Islam’s rejection of the dehumanization of human beings is, in part, predicated on the assumption that women are not human beings, since women in Iran do suffer no small degree of dehumanization, exploitation, and abuse. The same can be said for women in many Islamic nations, and perhaps we ought to be thankful that the blogger at RehmatPedia is being honest in what he has omitted from his article.

As to his sense of history, I observe that with typical flair, Shaukat has infused his lesson with no small measure of anti-Jewish sentiments, as is his custom. As to whether Jesus opposed the evil power of the Rabbinical class, I can’t say (having not been there personally) — most accounts of Jesus’ life suggest, however, that the Pharisees weren’t evil so much as they were hypocritical and wrong-thinking. Nobody could honestly deny the ardent faith of the rabbis — Jesus’ issue with them was that the way they lorded their faith over others was also the antithesis of the faith that they held.
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Guy links to, and distills, a list of notable Muslim inventions throughout history. What is telling, I think, is that most of the entries on the list all date back several hundred years:

Astrolabes: 9 inventions. The last one in the 12th century. Not 21, but 12!!!

Analog computers: 8 inventions, last one in the 15 century.

Globes: 3 inventions, last one in the 16 century.

Mural Instruments: 7 inventions, the last one is in the 11 or 12 century.

Other instruments: 6 inventions, the last one in the 11 century.

Aviation: 4 inventions, the last one in the 17 century. Two research projects were in the 20th century. Think about that one: of the tens of thousands of aviation research projects during the 20th century, they participated in only two and neither one is particularly notable.

Camera technology: 2 inventions, both many centuries ago.

Chemistry: 10 inventions, all during the 8 and 9 centuries.

Laboratory apparatus: 9 inventions, the last one in the 12th century.

Chemical industries: 21 inventions, the last one in the 9th century.

Industry: 27 inventions, the last one in the 12th century, except for shampoo in the 18th century.

Civil Engineering: 7 inventions, including one in the 16th century and, holy cow, one actually in the 20th century. We got one! Yes! There really IS an Islamic invention in the 20th century. Where’s the champaign?!

Clock technology: 16 inventions, including one in the 16th century and all the rest before the 12 century ended.

Industrial Milling: 14 inventions, all before the end of the 10th century.

Mechanical Technology: 18 inventions, and only one after the 12 century (it was in the 16 century).

Other Mechanical Devices: about 40, all invented centuries ago.

Medicine: 26 inventions, all centuries ago.

Military: 13 inventions, the last in the 16 century.

Navigation: 10 inventions (including such greats like “Mecca-centered map), the last one in the 17th century.

There are about a dozen other inventions listed, all of which are centuries ago.

Islam may be, as Shaukat Khawja (the blogger at RehmatPedia) assures us, “nothing but nature,”, but evidently that nothingness also applies to genuine intellectual and academic achievement. What technological sophistication seems to exist in predominantly Muslim nations is not the product of years or decades of intense, successful research as much as it is a demonstration of people rather parasitically living off of the academic capital of Western nations.
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Raw courage from a group of Danish priests:

84 priests in the Danish church wrote an open letter, about the contrasts between Islam and Christianity. They say the two Religions don’t have much in common. The letter follows a letter written by the Danish Church Council in response to a ‘call for dialog’ from Muslim organizations.

The parish priests stress that Christians and Muslims don’t talk about the same God. The signatories think that the council’s letter had gone too far concerning the theological and ethical bands between Christianity and Islam, and say that the two religions are rather opposites of each other.

Theologist Katrine Winkel Holm and parish priest Jesper Bacher, both members of the Islam-critical Network (Islamkritisk Netværk), were the initiators of the new open letter. There are different opinions on coexistence between Christianity and Islam among Danish theologists. The signatories on the new letter come from across the religious spectrum.

As to whether Allah (in the Islamic sense) and God (in the Christian understanding) are actually the same divinity, I remain undecided (although I suspect that the “yes” answer will bear out).

Looking at the issue purely based on the respective theologies, though, there is no way anyone can conclude that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and it’s great that these priests have seen fit to bring that truth to light, even if the Koran does have a few lies and half-truths about Jesus within its pages.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

But don’t take my word for it, O Reader. Rehmat says so, so it must be true!

US$5 million film depict Islamic view of Jesus, son of Virgin Mary - A great prophet of Allah, speaking parables and moving through soft light and angelic chants among a group of zealot and conspiring Jews (Pharisees). The narrative are borrowed from the Gospel of St. Barnabas, which was not cannonized as part of Christian Bible, The New Testament (NT). However, NT, do contain five books of Jewish Bible, The Old Testament (OT).

Got that? The Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — which also comprise the Jewish Torah) are a part of the New Testament.

The stupid makes me laugh sometimes.

At least Shaukat, the blogger at RehmatPedia, is at least admitting that the Koran is based on false, erroneous texts (like the Barnabas “gospel”)! Still, does anyone else get creeped out at the fact that such a hateful Islamist bigot as Shaukat has nevertheless managed to secure employment at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Facility?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Update: Apocalypse: Shaukat responds!

Talmudic hacker, Ken, has questioned my statement that five books of Jewish Bible (OT) are part of Christian Bible.

The Old Testament (OT) has 39 books and the New Testament (NT) has 27. (There are 66 books in the entire Bible). Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are the five books of OT, which were incorporated into NT – to show that Christianity is another extension of Judaism. However, the great majority of present-day Jewish population of world (13.5 million) don’t follow the OT – but Talmud, which was written by Rabbis over one century after the Crucification – and contains Jewish hatred toward Jesus’ his mother and rest of Christians:

Sanhedrin 106a . Says Jesus’ mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” Also in footnote #2 to Shabbath 104b it is stated that in the “uncensored” text of the Talmud it is written that Jesus mother, “Mary the hairdresser,” had sex with many men.

It’s hard to believe the guy who blogs at RehmatPedia is the same age as my wife, isn’t it? Based on the information he gives here concerning his date of birth, he should be on the order of 24 years old…nearly 25. Reading him, one would think he’s about ten years younger.

And he works in a nuclear power plant.

Anyhow, I love how in his attempt to clarify his blatant error, he has only reinforced it. Perhaps he has never actually opened the Bible to see the order of books in it, but were he to do so he would observe that the five books of the Torah — the Pentateuche — are the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament.

The books of the New Testament begin with the four Gospels, proceed through various epistles and letters, and end with the apocalyptic texts of Peter, John, Jude, and Revelation.

Notice how he contradicts himself? He begins by asserting that there are 39 books in the Old Testament (there are actually 47, but nevermind that just right now), but then in the following sentence claims that the Pentateuche are “the five books” (in English, the use of “the” in that context is meant to suggest exclusivity) of the Old Testament.

So which is it, Shaukat? Thirty-nine? Forty-seven? Five?

Even more confusingly, he then goes on to assert that the sole five books of the New Testament, according to him, were then “incorporated into the [New Testament]“. So after narrowing the Old Testament down to five books, Shaukat then tells us that those five books were included in the New Testament canon.

So why even mention the Old Testament? Apparently, it’s empty!

Of course, Shaukat’s anti-Jewish sentiments are well known (how confusing, in light of his recent apparent conversion to said religion!), and bear no commenting on. But isn’t it lamentable, O Reader, how incorrect this young man in Ontario is about something which is so easily verifiable? And he works at a nuclear power plant?

My advice: if you live in Pickering, move. Based on what we learned from Chernobyl, it would be best to put at least 100 km between yourself and the plant.

Joel writes in again with some additional commentary. While I usually excerpt messages in their entirety, I’m going to respond to this one in a more “interlinear” fashion, as it covers several points in brief, and I feel these would be best responded to “in the moment.”

Here’s sort of my point.

I’m not a car guy. If you tell me technical things about your car, I probably don’t care and don’t udnerstand. Mileage, sure, but cam shafts? Nope.

This is a fair enough standpoint for as far as it goes, but there are certain limitations to it as well. I too, O Reader, am not a “car guy” — as long as the car gets up and runs, I’m not all that interested in the technical details of what is under the hood. On the flip side, I am a “computer guy” — I’m obsessive about the ins and outs of computers. I am also a “camera guy” — I’m obsessive about the inner workings of all manner of digital imaging devices, cameras first and foremost. I love Photography.

The astute Reader will note that, in keeping with my interests and areas of expertise, I often discuss computers and cameras on this site. The Reader will also note that I never discuss cars on this site. That is because I do not wish to be caught up in an obvious attempt to exceed my “academic authority”; I don’t want to discuss things I have not made at least some attempt to become familiar with at a level above “basic.”

Reciprocally, if I enter into a discussion about something on another person’s website, I take pains to become familiar with the issue at hand at a higher level than “passing familiarity” — I try to learn at least a few “technical things” before I begin to comment on a subject.

It would, I think, be more than a little boorish and arrogant to enter into a higher-level discussion at The Car Blog without first taking pains to become somewhat familiar with the inner workings of an automobile, or at least the ins and outs of the auto industry. Similarly, it is more than a little boorish and arrogant to enter into a higher-level discussion of religion on a blog that is open about its religious foundation if one is not prepared to discuss, in detail, the distinctions between different Religions or denominations thereof. Especially when the discussion is, in part, about the validity of a religious conjecture and its application to everyday life.

Bitching about Fords because one’s Chevolet blew a gasket is meaningless, silly, and irrational. Bitching about religion without bothering to engage or acknowledge the substantial differences in “technical details” between religions or religious denominations is likewise meaningless, silly, and irrational.

That Joel is opting for an approach which I have just finished describing as meaningless, silly, and irrational is somewhat disappointing, especially because Joel himself seems to be a nice enough guy as far as correspondence goes. One hates to speak in generalities, but this sort of presumptive arrogance — the assumption that one can freely and openly pronounce all manner of things about religion while at the same time refusing to engage such technical details as, say, the differences between the Mu’tazilah and Ash’ari schools of Islamic theology — is something one has come to expect from atheists.

In some contexts, I might care about the distinctions between Mormons and Catholics and so on. For example, if we were debating how best to alter relationships between governments and various christian denominations, the centralized power of the catholic church versus the more decentralized authority of protestants (if I’m getting that
right) might be relevant.

But in the context of this discussion (who proseletyzes and who doesn’t) the various denominations are virtually identical. You all believe in a supernatural sky-god and his divine son. Whether christ rose bodily or only in spirit are not particularly relevant (as an
example).

This is, O Reader, exactly what I’m getting at — the second paragraph, in particular, drips with all manner of presumptive arrogance that describes absolutely nothing about the reality of the situation.

To his credit, Joel does note a key difference between most flavours of Protestantism and Catholicism — Catholic teaching flows through a centralized office of doctrine, whereas Protestant teaching tends not to have any such central doctrinal body.

But any credibility that suggestion might have leant to his argument is all but destroyed by the paragraph following it (to quote XKCD: “while the author’s wildly swerving train of thought did at one point flirt with coherence, this brief encounter was more likely a chance event…”).

It would be enough to simply laugh off as inconsequential any argument that attempts to framework an objection to religion by beginning with the observation that “the various denominations are virtually identical” (despite the fact that in my previous response to Joel, I pointed out how seemingly minor differences between some Christian denominations are, in fact, rather large gulfs of difference when considered in light of what Christ actually taught. Add in even a brief consideration of religious denominations from other, non-Christian religions, and the absurdity of Joel’s claim becomes readily apparent.

As to specific beliefs, as I have pointed out, these are the most important thing at issue in the discussion of who proselytizes, because virtually every Western philosophy proselytizes (including, as I have noted, atheism). Several Eastern philosophies do likewise. And when everyone proselytizes, the issue of who does it becomes less relevant than the issue of what each evangelist is offering — in terms of philosophy, teaching, and doctrine — to those he or she is attempting to convert.

I don’t believe in a “sky god,” for example; I believe in a God who transcends the physical limitations of our empirical Universe. Nor do I believe God is wholly “invisible” any more than I am invisible. That I do not always see God no more means He is invisible than it means that I am invisible because some farmer in Africa cannot see me with his own eyes. If I cannot see God, it is because I lack the capacity to see Him, not because He cannot be seen.

And here Joel again demonstrates the fundamental illogic at the center of his argument, for already he has made an assumption that is incorrect. Were I a Hindu attempting to win a friend over to my faith, I would not regale him or her with tales of a solitary sky god. Hinduism is a polytheistic faith (or, perhaps more accurately, a henotheistic faith); my discussion with my friend would center primarily on the supremacy of Ishvara, but would also verge into discussions of Brahma and Vishnu, and perhaps even into talk of Shiva, the destroyer. We would talk about Dharma, Samsara, Karma, and Moshka.

And even if we only talked about Ishvara and his primacy as God, above other deities, we would still not be talking about a “sky god,” because Ishvara is, alternatively, interpreted as being without a fixed realm of any kind, or as incorporating all creation into his realm (Hinduism, then, also flirts with pantheism and panentheism at times).

Moreover, were a Muslim attempting to evangelize me, he or she would run into a major brick wall by insisting that God is unary and solitary (that is, arguing that there is no God but Allah, and that the Christian Trinity is actually a form of polytheism — that’s something which is specifically stated in the Koran). Muslims say “God is One” while Christians say “God is One but also Three.” It’s not the same thing, despite the fact that from the outside it all looks like monotheism.

To say nothing of the fact that were I not a Christian, my evangelism would have absolutely nothing to do with Christ or the notion that He died and rose from the dead, except perhaps in the sense that I would be attempting to refute that claim.

To briefly summarize, then: we’re not a third of the way through Joel’s one sentence, and already there are gaping holes in the logic.

Continuing on, Joel is right: I do believe in God’s divine Son, Christ Jesus, who died and rose again. Joel seems to dismiss as a minor issue the debate as to whether Christ rose literally or only in spirit, and in so doing betrays his ignorance yet again. For as St. Paul reminds us, if Christ did not literally rise from the grave then the Christian faith is meaningless, and Christians are fools who are to be most pitied. Victory over death in spirit alone is no victory at all.

And were I, a Catholic, attempting to evangelize someone, the literal nature of Christ’s resurrection would be a very big issue indeed, if in fact it came up as a subject for debate. One cannot deny the bodily resurrection of Christ and be a Christian…not, that is, if one is honest with oneself.

*shrug* again, my basic point was, and remains, Christians run the U.S., as a rule, if there’s a crossing of church and state, it involves some flavor of christianity. My atheism may hold all religions in much the same light (at least in that I believe they are
all equally delusional), but its Christianity that most often causes problems here. On a global scale, certainly, in this timeframe, radical Islam is a much bigger threat.

As I have before, O Reader, I observe that in a nation where over 70% of the population is Christian, it should come as no surprise that Christians should have a high level of participation in an elected, ostensibly “representative” government. That’s not to say that Christians “run” America, however…at least, not in the sinister, “implication of looming Christian theocracy” sense of the term that Joel’s statement would seem to be implying.

If one went to Sweden and complained that white people “run Sweden,” or that one’s objection to white people in government was in any way based on the fact that the majority of Swedish politicians were white, one would rightly be derided as a laughingstock. Sweden is a Caucasian nation — it is really only to be expected that its government would have a lot of white people in it.

Similarly, it is meaningless to complain about the quantity of Christians in government in a nation where most people are Christian, unless one is openly advocating that only persons of a secular bent should be allowed to govern a nation. In a nation like the U.S., which prides itself upon its representative democracy, such a notion is unthinkable.

I do, though, believe that all religions should be treated equally. In the U.S., for example, I don’t believe that schools should have Hannukah celebrations but not Xmas ones, etc.

That’s about as open-minded as anyone could be asked to be; personally, I do see value in people learning about the traditions of other religions. I would agree that all religions should be treated equally, for the most part — I disagree, obviously, that all religions are equal. And for the record, I include atheism in the previous sentence when I say “religion,” because it is as much a metaphysical conjecture as is my own Catholicism.

Sorry if this email seems random, its something of an unfortunate and scattered day here.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that. I will pray that Joel will find the strength to move past the pitfalls and confusion of today, and I encourage the good Reader to do the same.

RightGirl puts in a comment on Islam that I admit gives me pause:

It used to be easy for me to say that if you want to live under 7th century Sharia, go back to Crapistan and do it there. After all, why come to the free West, right? But I now realize that the whole point of coming here was to take over. Our touchy-feely naiveté leads us to believe they are “escapees” and “refugees”, running from oppression. But in fact they have sought out free lands in order to spread that oppression in the name of the devil Allah.

Even up to very recently I believed that the women of Islam were oppressed and that they should be freed. This, I have come to learn, is utter hogwash. On more than one occasion we have seen the women take up arms, the women strap on explosives, the women preach jihad to their sons and husbands. Enough is enough. Our leaders - be they political or religious - are too wrapped up in politically-correct doublespeak to be able to defend us from this insidious evil. It saddens me that it’s up to a bunch of bloggers and cartoonists to save the world from the new Caliphate, but I have seen more guts come from Dutch filmmakers than I have from my own government, who no longer even believe in freedom of the press.

I cannot advocate open season on Muslims in the street. But I think for our own sakes we make ready for the coming onslaught, and brace ourselves to fight them. Not in Afghanistan and Iraq, but in London and Toronto and Detroit. And the first way we can fight them - a way that will not cause bloodshed by any act of our own hands - is to say NO. No to Sharia. No to Islamic banking and trade. No to muzzeins screeching at dawn. No to polygamy and incestuous marriages. No to welfare for those perfectly capable of working - like our Khadr family here in Toronto. No to visas and citizenships for terrorists. No, no, no.

I’m reminded of Lenin’s (at least, I think it was Lenin) observation that capitalism would sell the rope to hang itself with to the communists. In a perverse sort of way, I think the same may be true of the tendency toward multiculturalism in most Western nations — that is the rope that we may well end up hanging from. It’s really just a question, I suppose, of whether the hangmen will be Sunni or Shia.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!