The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy

Rating:
Summary: An Apology for Terror
Review: Besides a vicious, wholly inaccurate, hateful polemic by Edward Said, long time member of a Palestinian terrorist organization and friend of that organizer of genocide, Abu Ammar (Yassir Arafat's criminal alias), and so aptly labelled as the "Professor of Terror" against Samuel Huntington. As usual, Said never lets a fact get in the way of his hatred for all things Western and American. And this nutcase is a professor at Columbia. Yet another demonstration of the cesspool into which American Academe has fallen.

If Islamophobia exists at all it is because, for thirteen hundred years, Muslims have attacked, enslaved, invaded, occupied, raped, robbed and tried to conquer Christians and the West (the Turks last laid siege to Vienna in 1683!). For over a century they occupied the Alpine passes between France and Italy murdering and robbing Christian pilgrims to the Eternal City.

They invaded France in 732, only to be crushed by Charles Martel (Charlemagne's grandfather, the latter also began the "Reconquista" with his invasion and liberation of Catalonia from the Muslim yoke). So if there IS "Islamphobia" it because of thireen centuries of nearly constant Muslim attacks against the West and Christians.

(For much more detail on the consequences of Islamic hatred and attacks on Medieval Europe, see Henri Pirenne's incomparable "Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe; wherein Pirenne proves it was the Muslims who caused the Dark Ages by destroying the Medittarranean economy that had survived Rome's Western collapse until the eight century).

Ask Mr. Said, an Arab Christian, why he and the vast majority of Arab Christians (excepting the Egyptian Copts, protected by the Mubarak regime) have left the Arab world for Europe and the US. Guess life must really be hell in the Arab world for Christians if they have to flee and endure the Arab "hating" West.

In this book we are presented with nothing more than an apology for terror and genocide couched in the modern Western idiom of victimology and ethnic grievance groups (e.g. the viciously racist Mexican-American hate group Mecha). And remember, the Crusades were stimulated by Muslim atrocities against Christian in the Holy Land.

But the biggest problem is that the book is essentially "desinformatzia", the KGB coined term for disinformation (e.g. the rumor planted in an obscure Turkish magazine that AIDS had been created by the CIA; to this day many Muslims believe this).

The book's thesis is entirely backwards. There is no "hatred" toward Muslims in the West. (The French situation is unique because Muslims now make up 10% of the Gallic population which agitates traditional French anti-semitism, in the broadest sense).

The hatred is FROM the fundamentalist/Islamist Muslims. And what else SHOULD we call people who call themselves by these labels?

Besides that, Muslims' holy book itself, unlike the Gospels, calls for all out and total war against the "Hosue of War" (i.e. the non-Islamic World) until that world converts to Islam or accepts Islamic rule and become people who have no political, judicial or human rights(no non-muslim can testify in a Muslim court and no Muslim woman's testimony is accepted against a Muslim male's).

Another of the endless examples of Arab hatred of Christians, when Phillip III of Spain expelled the superficially and forcibly Christianized Arabs from Spain in 1609, a majority fled to North Africa where the Muslims there murdered large numbers and allowed large numbers to die of want and privation because they had (been forced it should be remembered) to apostasize from Islam by the Spanish Monarchy. No matter. They were Muslims who'd converted to Christianity. They, in the eyes of the Magreb Arabs, had committed the ultimate sin and they were murdered and enslaved and starved to death for it.

But the real problem is the fact that Islamists hate the West because of our liberty, religious toleration and our treatment of women as human beings.

Even in relatively civilized Muslim countries such as Jordan, women are still murdered by their families for being raped (though for accuracy's sake, this is NOT a universal Muslim or Arab custom, just as female genital mutilation is not universal, or limited to, Egypt or Africa). Such women are often housed in jails to protect them from their OWN families.

And, lastly, it was NOT fanatic Christians who flew airplanes into Al-Azhar Mosque/University or the biggest office building or Mubarak's residence or the Egyptian Parliament in Cairo or the Grand Mosque in Mekkah. Yet this book would, in its flood of unproven generalizations, have you believe that the attacks were actually the fault of the "evil" West! Rather than Muslims who murdered thousands with prayers on their lips.

The usual "US support for Israel" is trotted out ad nauseum (the disgusting supporter of murdering babies, Said, has made a career of anti-Americanism and anti-Jewish hate) as the justification for the murders of thousands of non-Muslims. His "denunciations" of terror ring about as true as another liar's claim about the owner of a certain blue dress.

As Bibi Netanyahu (a man who has fought and personally suffered loss at the hands of "peace-loving" Muslims) so eloquently put it: The Islamists don't hate the West because of Israel, the hate Israel because it's Western. There is only ONE moral choice and that's supporting Israel against the gang of thugs committing genocide against the Jewish state.

Finally, Gallup polling has shown that 90%+ of Palestinians find murdering Israeli babies perfectly acceptable. What more proof do you need that there's no reason to concoct an Islamic enemy. You need only visit New York City and look at the giant whole in the ground to tell you who the real villain is.

Even if only ten percent of Muslims (that's 90 million people; thankfully there are only 900 million Muslims, 50% less than the number of Roman Catholics whose faith is growing, again thankfully, far faster than Islam) are "bin Ladenized" it's appalling. There is no ten percent of Americans with similar views about Muslims. And...

...its just that simple.

Rating:
Summary: An impressive achievement
Review: Distinguished intellectuals offer in this extremely important not to mention timely book a much needed analysis of islamophobia and its lingering implications for international peace and security. These leading political commentators explain why hatred towards Islam still pervades Western societies. Nowhere is overgeneralization so evident as when it comes to Islam. Muslims are frequently portrayed by mass media as intransigent extremists whose values are completely incompatible with those of the westerners. One of those who strongly assert that Islam poses a grave threat to the West is Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, presumably best known for his "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. Huntington suggests in his book that a peaceful co-existence between the West and the Arab world is an impossibility. By describing Muslims as a homogenous entity, Huntington's analysis becomes seriously flawed because he fails to take into account a number of important factors such as the fact that there are over 1 billion Muslims worldwide who have different cultures and speak different languages. Needless to say, failing to even consider these factors is indicative of spurious scholarship. One of the principal objectives of this book is to offer a rebuttal of Huntington's thesis. Edward Said's contribution in this book is a devestating critique of Huntington's assertions. Unfortunately, as has frequently been the case in the past, there is a tendency in the West to award writers who defame and misrepresent the true messages of Islam, as in the case of Ivo Andric who was awarded Nobel Prize for his book The Bridge on the Drina. Andric depicted Bosnian Muslims as atavistic people and treacherous converts who did not belong in Bosnia. Clearly oblivious to the fact that the majority of Bosnian Muslims were secularized individuals for whom religion played a rather insignificant role in social life, I can corroborate that from personal experience, Andric claimed that Bosnian Muslims were a serious threat to Christianity. In point of fact, Bosnian Muslims were and still are much less religious than their Serb and Croat counterparts. Paradoxically, many western experts spoke of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia and displayed a flagrant disregard for extremely well documented Serb nationalism and mythology which subsequently enabled the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. According to Michael Sells' and Norman Cigar's brilliant analyses, Serb mythology played a pivotal role in the extermination of Bosnian Muslims and yet no one talked of the Orthodox Christian fundamentalism and the other adjectives commonly employed for describing Muslims only. Christians who commit abhorrent crimes are rarely if ever referred to as Christian extremists but rather as lunatics in need of psychiatric care. Nonetheless, when a few extremely unstable individuals knowingly misinterpret the Quaran, they are immediately labelled religious fanatics. Note that the careless (in my view deliberate) use of the word Islam such as in the "Islamic fundamentalism" implicitly suggests that Islam condones terrorism and unjustifiable killing of innocent civilians. This unwarranted and unjustified use of the word Islam in similar contexts helps foster islamophobia in the West. There is and there always will be extremism on all sides but as long as we keep focusing on one side only, there will never be justice. I recommend this extremely well argued and extraordinarily well written masterpiece to all who believe that justice must apply to all. This is irrefutably one of the most important books ever published.

Rating:
Summary: Necessary antidote for reading on Islam or the US "Crusade"
Review: Serious readers about Islam and US policy should reflect on most of the essays in this book. It is a necessary antidote to all the simplifications and hidden agendas in the press, policy, and publications by "popular" writers on Islam who so often seem driven by hate, profits, or noteriety. Read here to reconsider the "Huntington Thesis" and it Lewis 'roots'. Reflect on the implications for Bush's "Crusade". The essay on Christian Serb terrorism and the manipulation of hatred is valuable for its general lessons as well. How think tanks and best sellers sway policy among those with limited depth of knowlege is worth considering -- especially when there seems to be an intellectual "Gresham's Law" of punditry. The continued importance of history and memory is highlighted. A variety of authors with considerable knowlege and depth offer valuable insights into where we are and how we got there - about myths and reality that are central to the what has been dubbed "the war on terror" and is often seen by Muslims with some justification as a "war on Islam" -- a Crusade.

Rating:
Summary: A clarion call against the dangerous simplification of Islam
Review: The New Crusades is a timely collection of essays that deals with a dangerous myth - the inherent violence of Islamic civilisation. The editors provide a useful introduction on the ideological shaping of the new Muslim enemy. They point out that the real fundamentalists are those who refuse to see the multiple identities that claim overlapping allegiances in the territorial bounds of the Arab and Muslim world. In support of diversity, the contributors included in the collection are heterogeneous - they range from first-rate scholars and Islamicists like Roy Mottahedeh of Harvard University to well-known journalists like Ahmed Rashid who have written popular accounts of militant Muslim movements. Edward Said is included in this collection, which makes the Post-Orientalist political bent of this volume clear enough (e.g. Bernard Lewis is mostly on the receiving end. but through reasoned argument, it must be said). There is a particularly illuminating essay by Mottahedeh that elegantly dispatches with Huntington's clash of civilisation thesis in the manner of a master historian dealing with a sophomore's essay. Another contributor demolishes the dangerous and bigoted simplifications of Islam contained in the work of V.S. Naipaul. But there are also the sounds of axes grinding in this collection and "ancient hatreds" between feuding academics and rival disciplines in the study of Islam, Muslims and the Arab world. One world sees all of Islam as potentially violent. The other sees potential violence arising from the demonisation of Islam.
Indeed, after reading many of the essays, you will come to the depressing conclusion that the crusades of the East of the 11th to 13th century are still very much alive in the 21st century.