NZ Centre for Political Research

Why don't the Americans release those arab blokes on trial in Gitmo for 9/11 into New York City, then we will see some real justice!!

Or this? You couldn't make this stuff up!!!

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/04/egypt ... s-not.html

Or this?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/04/raymo ... eturn.html

How about this?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/05/non-m ... oid-t.html

Non-Muslim female attorney for 9/11 plotters says all women in courtroom should wear hijab to avoid tempting her clients

Cheryl Bormann has clearly imbibed the Islamic idea that the responsibility for men resisting temptation lies entirely with women. Men have no responsibility to control themselves at all. "Attorney in hijab defends call for other women at 9/11 hearing to wear 'appropriate' clothing," from FoxNews.com, May 6:

The defense attorney who wore a traditional Islamic outfit during the rowdy arraignment of the accused Sept. 11 terrorists is defending her courtroom appeal that other women in the room wear more "appropriate" clothing to the proceedings -- out of respect for her client's Muslim beliefs.

Cheryl Bormann, counsel for defendant Walid bin Attash, attended the arraignment Saturday dressed in a hijab, apparently because her client insisted on it. She further requested that the court order other women to follow that example so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes "for fear of committing a sin under their faith."

At a press conference Sunday at Guantanamo Bay, Bormann said she dresses in a hijab at "all times" when she meets with her client "out of respect" for his beliefs. Asked why she requested other women do the same, Bormann said, "When you're on trial for your life, you need to be focused."

Bormann, who is not Muslim, claimed the issue came up several years ago, when a paralegal wore "very short skirts" and it became a distraction for the defendants. She said that on Saturday, "somebody" was also dressed "in a way that was not in keeping with my client's religious beliefs."

"If because of someone's religious beliefs, they can't focus when somebody in the courtroom is dressed in a particular way, I feel it is incumbent upon myself as a counsel to point that out and ask for some consideration from the prosecution," she said. "Suffice to say it was distracting to members of the accused."

The clothing request was just one of several unusual moments during Saturday's lengthy and chaotic hearing.

The court hearing for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants should have taken a couple of hours at most. Instead it lasted almost 13 hours, including meal and prayer breaks, as the men appeared to make a concerted effort to stall Saturday's hearing.

They knelt in prayer, ignored the judge, wouldn't listen to Arabic translations over their head sets and one even insisted on having the more than 20 pages detailing the charges against them read aloud, rather than deferred for later in their case as the judge wanted, which added more than two hours to the proceedings....

How about this?

1400 Years of Inbreeding..Very Enlightening!

A huge Muslim problem: InbreedingBy Bryan Fischer

Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who has done extensive research into a little-known problem in the Muslim world: the disastrous results of Muslim inbreeding brought about by the marriage of first-cousins.

This practice, which has been prohibited in the Judeo-Christian tradition since the days of Moses, was sanctioned by Muhammad and has been going on now for 50 generations (1,400 years) in the Muslim world.

This practice of inbreeding will never go away in the Muslim world, since Muhammad is the ultimate example and authority on all matters, including marriage.

The massive inbreeding in Muslim culture may well have done virtually irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including extensive damage to its intelligence, sanity, and health.

According to Sennels, close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred. In Pakistan , the numbers approach 70%. Even in England , more than half of Pakistani immigrants are married to their first cousins, and in Denmark the number of inbred Pakistani immigrants is around 40%.

The numbers are equally devastating in other important Muslim countries: 67% in Saudi Arabia , 64% in Jordan , and Kuwait , 63% in Sudan , 60% in Iraq , and 54% in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar .

According to the BBC, this Pakistani, Muslim-inspired inbreeding is thought to explain the probability that a British Pakistani family is more than 13 times as likely to have children with recessive genetic disorders. While Pakistanis are responsible for three percent of the births in the UK , they account for 33% of children with genetic birth defects.

The risk of what are called autosomal recessive disorders such as cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy is 18 times higher and the risk of death due to malformations is 10 times higher.

Other negative consequences of inbreeding include a 100 percent increase in the risk of stillbirths and a 50% increase in the possibility that a child will die during labor.

Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of consanguineous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social abilities develop much slower in inbred babies. The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being classified as "retarded," increases by an astonishing 400 percent among children of cousin marriages.(Similar effects were seen in the Pharaonic dynasties in ancient Egypt and in the British royal family, where inbreeding was the norm for a significant period of time.)

In Denmark , non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army.

Sennels says that "the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world." He points out that the Arab world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone does.

In the last 1,200 years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out of 10 Turks have never even read a book.

Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. "A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success in our high-tech knowledge societies."

Only nine Muslims have ever won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were for the "Peace Prize." According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific research measured by articles per million inhabitants.

In Denmark , Sennels' native country, Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51% to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an immigrant background. Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64% of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high schools is twice that of the native-born.

Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity may explain why more than 40% of patients in Denmark 's biggest ward for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant background.

The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, "One study based on 300,000 Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income, are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole."

Sennels concludes:

There is no doubt that the wide spread tradition of first cousin marriages among Muslims has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims' religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevents them from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages 1,400 years ago are most likely massive. (This has produced) overwhelming direct andindirect human and societal consequences.

Bottom line: Islam is not simply a benign and morally equivalent alternative to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Sennels points out, the first and biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. Simple Judeo-Christian compassion for Muslims and a common-sense desire to protect Western civilization from the ravages of Islam dictate a vigorous opposition to the spread of this dark and dangerous religion. These stark realities must be taken into account when we establish public polices dealing with immigration from Muslim countries and the building of mosques in the U.S.

Let's hope the civilized West and the North Americans wake up before a blind naivete about the reality of Islam destroys what remains of our Judeo-Christian culture and our domestic tranquillity.

Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay- ... eding.html
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2010/ ... eding.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ydDe19KM0
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=9914

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD - THE ENEMY WITHIN

http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com:80/the-course/

The Muslim Brotherhood In America. A Free Course
In 10 Parts Presented by Frank Gaffney.
Frank Gaffney was a former assistant to the secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan. He is currently president of the Centre for Security Policy in Washington D.C. He has spent his entire adult life addressing challenges to American National Security.

How the Brotherhood have infiltrated deceived and subverted America from within.
I have watched part 5 so far (35m.34s) and found it eye-popping material, figuratively
speaking. THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY TARGETING THE CONSERVATIVE RIGHT.

A 14m.59s overview to the above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfSpolVao4w

DONRO

http://jihadwatch.us1.list-manage.com/t ... aae6c5e8c5

Robert Spencer interviews Nicolai Sennels:

"Muslims are taught to be aggressive, insecure, irresponsible and intolerant"

Nicolai Sennels regularly contributes to Jihad Watch, with articles on psychology and translations of Scandinavian and German news. To help you get to know Sennels better, we decided to do an interview.

Nicolai Sennels (born 1976) is a Danish psychologist. His first appearances in the Danish media concerned his unorthodox therapy methods that he developed as the only psychologist at Sønderbro, the youth prison (see here, here, here, here and here). He taught the young prisoners about mindfulness meditation and developed a special program on anger management. Sennels also developed a psychotherapeutic method that focused on teaching criminals with a low understanding of emotions and empathy how to take responsibility for their own behavior. In 2008, the prisoners of Sønderbro voted the facility as the best prison in Denmark. The leader of Social Services in the Copenhagen municipality concluded that this was due to the work of Nicolai Sennels (Amagerbladet, November 3, 2008).

At a conference on immigrant crime in 2008, arranged by the Copenhagen municipality, Sennels said that one should not use the term “criminal immigrants,” but “criminal Muslims,” since the majority of criminal immigrants have Muslim backgrounds. Seven out of ten inmates in the Danish youth prisons have immigrant backgrounds, and almost all of them are Muslims. Sennels was threatened that if he were to discuss his experiences, he would risk losing his job. This story developed into a national debate on the freedom of speech and became a widely discussed topic in the Danish media (please see here and here), and the Minister of Integration joined the discussion.

Sennels decided to publish a book on his experiences, Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality, which was well received in both the official Psychologists Union's magazine and the newspapers. He found himself a new appointment at the Danish Ministry of Defense, and now once again he works as a psychologist for children and teenagers.

Sennels consulted on the case against Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist serving in Guantanamo. He also contributed a chapter to the Dutch book Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion, along with Raymond Ibrahim, Hans Jansen, Michael Mannheimer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or and other renowned critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.

Spencer: Nicolai, people know you mainly for your articles on the psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners (please see here and here). You have also contributed your professional insights in the case against the Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr. You wrote several articles, as well as a book on your conclusions. Could you give us a brief account of your findings?

Sennels: There are many differences between people brought up as Muslims and those who are brought up as Westerners. I identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims. They concern anger, self-confidence, the so-called "locus of control" and identity.

Westerners are brought up to think of anger as a sign of weakness, powerlessness and lack of self-control. "Big dogs don't have to bark," as we say in Denmark. In Muslim culture, anger is seen as a sign of strength. To Muslims, being aggressive is in itself an argument and a way of gaining respect. But we should not be impressed when we see pictures of bearded men hopping up and down, shouting like animals and shooting in the air. We should take it for what it is: the local madhouse passing by.

In Western culture, self-confidence is connected with the ability to meet criticism calmly and to respond rationally. We are raised to see people who easily get angry when criticized, as insecure and immature. In Muslim culture it is the opposite; it is honorable to respond aggressively and to engage in a physical fight in order to scare or force critics to withdraw, even if this results in a prison sentence or even death. They see non-aggressive responses to such threats and violence as a sign of a vulnerability that is to be exploited. They do not interpret a peaceful response as an invitation to enter into a dialogue, diplomacy, intellectual debate, compromise or peaceful coexistence.

"Locus of control" is a term used in psychology, and relates to the way in which people feel that their lives are controlled. In Western culture, we are brought up to have an "inner locus of control," meaning that we see our own inner emotions, reactions, decisions and views as the main deciding factor in our lives. There may be outer circumstances that influence our situation, but in the end, it is our own perception of a situation and the way we handle it that decides our future and our state of mind. The "inner locus of control" leads to increased self-responsibility and motivates people to become able to solve their own problems. Muslims are brought up to have an "outer locus of control." Their constant use of the term inshallah ("Allah willing") when talking about the future, as well as the fact that most aspects of their lives are decided by outer traditions and authorities, leaves very little space for individual freedom. Independent initiatives are often severely punished. This shapes their way of thinking, and means that when things go wrong, it is always the fault of others or the situation. Unfortunately, many Westerners go overboard with their self-responsibility and start to take responsibility for others' behavior as well. The mix of many Westerners being overly forgiving, their flexible attitude, and Muslim self-pity and blame is the psychological crowbar that has opened the West to Islamization. Our overly protective welfare system shields immigrants from noticing the consequences of their own misbehavior and thereby learning from their mistakes and motivating them to improve.

Finally, identity plays a big role when it comes to psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners. Westerners are taught to be open and tolerant toward other cultures, races, religions, etc. This makes us less critical, impairs our ability to discriminate, and makes our societies open to the influence of other cultural trends and values that may not always be constructive. Muslims, on the other hand, are taught again and again that they are superior, and that all others are so bad that Allah will throw them in hell when they die. While most Westerners find national and cultural pride embarrassing, Muslim culture's self-glorification, massive use of inbreeding, the rule that only Muslims can marry Muslims and their all-pervading social control function as self-protecting mechanisms on the levels of culture and identity.

In general, Westerners are taught to be kind, self-assured, self-responsible and tolerant, while Muslims are taught to be aggressive, insecure, irresponsible and intolerant.

Spencer: That reminds me of my interactions with the likes of Reza Aslan, Salam al-Marayati, Moustafa Zayed, Ahmed Rehab, Mohamed Elibiary, Ahmed Afzaal, Omid Safi, Ibrahim Hooper, Caner K. Dagli, Haroon S. Moghul, Nadir Ahmed, and so many others. Can you give a psychological explanation as to why so few Muslims integrate into our societies?

Sennels: Integration is dependent on motivation, freedom and intelligence. In other words, immigrants have to want to integrate, be allowed to by their family and friends, and mentally have to be able to do this.

People coming from cultures that are aimed mainly at physical survival, and in which religious practice and adherence to cultural traditions give more social status than having a good education and being self-supporting, usually are not very productive if they can live on the state. If on top of that, they can live in closed communities among others with the same culture and language, there is very little reason for them to get involved in our society. The only solution is to make the lack of integration so unpractical and economically non-beneficial that the only attractive choice is to receive our offer of state-sponsored repatriation.

As history and Muslim societies have show us time and time again, there is no need for more bloody examples before the majority does as expected. Muslim societies only have to kill, rape, incarcerate, kidnap and beat a few, before the rest "voluntarily" prefer Sharia to integration.

Thirdly, handling intellectually demanding jobs in our high-tech societies, is not easy for people brought up to believe that the Qur'an and Hadith, not school and science, has the answers. Being brought up in a Muslim family also makes it difficult to adapt to Western social conduct at workplaces, including contact between the sexes and emotional control. The fact that almost half of all Muslims are inbred, often many generations in a row, also does not increase cognitive abilities. In most cases, our workplaces demand that the employees are able to take initiative and be creative and self-responsible, which are all human qualities that are not welcomed among people who are first of all expected to blindly submit and who live in surroundings that punish independent thinking and behavior, sometimes even with death.

Spencer: As a psychologist, what is your explanation as to why Muslims oppress women?

Sennels: I see two psychological explanations for the oppression of women in Islam.

John Adams, the USA's 2nd president, said that he studied warfare so that his children could study agriculture and their children could study art. Abraham Maslow formulated a similar idea, the "hierarchy of needs," which shows how we aim toward a state of full development, possessing complete inner and outer freedoms, spontaneous playful creativity and love for all.

While Adams's and Maslow's views describe the goals and aims of our Western society beautifully as the full development of an individual’s potential, they do not apply to Islam or Muslim tradition. The aim of Islam and Muslims is dominance, not self-realization. Islam and Muslim culture is an aggressive movement, and giving space to female qualities such as sensitivity and empathy would be a hindrance, since it would allow for less aggressive human tendencies to emerge. Diplomacy, compromise, tolerance, democracy, compassion, sensitivity and empathy have to be locked away both on an internal and external level. On the outside, the oppression of women limits their influence, and their aversion against femininity in the outer world helps Muslims to also repress it inside themselves on the psychological level. Oppression of women is thus a psychological method of hardening a culture on the outside and people on the inside.

The other reason why Muslims oppress women and female sexuality, is the fact that women are simply stronger when it comes to sex. And it does not work for omnipotent, jealous and insecure Muslim macho-men that they in the most naked and vulnerable situation of all are the weaker party. Muslim men compensate this by oppressing their women and locking them up in apartments and ugly clumsy garments. The more embarrassing it is for the man that the woman is stronger in this essential aspect of life, the more he must dominate her in daily life. I had contact with two prostitutes who both said that Arab men did not last very long in bed. In many Muslim societies, a women's ability to enjoy sex is simply destroyed by a knife or a piece of glass. The jealous fantasy of the man not being able to satisfy his lustful wife, who therefore looks down on him and may even go to other men to gain satisfaction, is an ongoing source of torment for the wanna-be almighty Muslim man.

True love can only exist on the basis of respect and equality. Muslim societies are therefore full of men and women who never experienced true, satisfying and giving love. The emotional and sexual frustration that results from the inequality of the sexes and being forced to marry a partner that one does not love surely contribute to the aggression and emotional immaturity that Muslims display whenever they are numerous enough to feel that such behavior is acceptable. As one said, "forced marriage is the earthquake and what follows is a tsunami of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child protection issues, suicide and murder."

Spencer: Why do you think that Muslims living in the West are statistically more criminal and violent than others?

Sennels: Well, there are several reasons. Firstly, the Islamic scriptures teach them that attacking and robbing non-Muslims is completely okay. Muslim culture's degrading view of non-Muslims functions in the same way as war propaganda. By hearing again and again how evil, disgusting and unworthy the enemy is, empathy is removed, aggression is strengthened, and the step towards harming the perceived enemy becomes smaller. The Qur'an and the Hadith are criminal books that allow and even force people to undertake criminal acts.

The psychological differences that I mentioned before also play a role when it comes to the high crime rate among Muslims. Our diplomatic and tolerant attitude is simply perceived as weakness and exploitable vulnerability. We may not like it, but we Westerners must abandon our peaceful, dialogue seeking and politically correct ways if we hope to communicate with Muslim society. Otherwise, they will think we are too scared to risk a conflict. They simply do not respect to or understand our preferred ways of communicating.

Finally, most Muslims are unable to earn real respect from us. Their immature behavior, their lack of contribution to the community and their lack of success makes them look like real losers in the eyes of civilized modern people. And it is not easy to belong to Allah's chosen people, who are supposedly better than the rest of the lot, when in fact they come in last every time. So, because of the lack of well-earned respect, and because of not being able to discriminate between the two, they try to be feared instead. It is Muslims, not Westerners, who invented the word Islamophobia. They want us to be afraid. But we are not. We feel sick of all their parasitism, violent behavior and mistreatment of their women. We have Islamonausea.

Spencer: Is there a psychological explanation as to why political correctness is still so widespread, in spite of the obvious evidence that Islam is an aggressive ideology and Muslim immigration is eroding our societies and destroying our economy?

Sennels: Yes, there is. As I already mentioned, we Westerners are brought up to think that tolerance and openness are positive human qualities. For a long time, we did not have to be aware that such qualities are only a strength as long as nobody wants to harm us. In our meeting with Islam and Muslim immigration, our biggest strength -- our willingness to be open towards the new, that made us so curious and inventive and therefore knowledgeable and rich -- has become our worst enemy.

In my article "Psychological explanations of Political Correctness," I go through the most important social psychological explanations on irrational herd behavior. The most important are the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance.

The bystander effect is when a person uses another reaction to assess a situation. If others do not react, it is interpreted as a sign that the situation is not serious and that there is no need to act. That is why we need more people to act, and in good style.

Pluralistic ignorance appears when people know that there is a problembut feel that it would be embarrassing to point it out. Leftists screaming "racist," the general view that it is impolite to point out obvious weaknesses in others and our culture's definition of good people as being open and tolerant, makes many people keep their mouths shut and even doubt their own sense and senses. When a majority of people, as a result of insecurity and wanting to be a "good person," do not speak their mind, the result is pluralistic ignorance. The famous Danish fairytale about the Emperor's New Clothes is an excellent example.

In the end, it comes down to cowardliness and wanting to be a good person in the eyes of others. Compassion for 700 million women who cannot chose their own sexual partners, clothing or lifestyle, as well as an openly declared war on our values and countries, the quick decay of our big cities into Sharia colonies, and the destruction of our economy as a result of Muslim immigration apparently do not count.

Spencer: Besides writing about psychology, you also write and translate articles on Muslim criminals, politics etc. Are you just a critic of Islam who happens to be a psychologist?

Sennels: No, I am a psychologist who through his work with Muslims became aware of how big a mistake it is to allow Muslim immigration and the spread of Islam in our societies. Together with overpopulation, which should be taken care of by using the enormous amounts of foreign aid to pay people who have less money, this problem is the most dangerous threat to world peace today. It has now been several decades since we passed the stage at which the problem could be solved without blood, sweat and tears.

I have dedicated my life to making people aware of the danger that is already gnawing off big chunks of our cities, economy and freedom.

The most embarrassing thing I can imagine is that the only place in this universe with intelligent life will end as a planet-sized khalifat floating around in space. Just like the bad guys in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and other archetypal stories of good and evil, Islam does not strive for freedom, happiness and love. Islam strives for the submission of Muslims to Allah and of non-Muslims to Muslims -- a dark, cold and humorless world where men are forced to mistreat their women and everybody is a slave to a god whose only wish is the enforcement of Sharia down to the very last comma. They do what they can to reach their final solution, and we must do what we can to prevent it from happening.

Spencer: You have several years of experience in writing and debating on Islam. You have participated in intellectual debates on Danish national TV and national radio about Islam and Muslim immigration. Many people are critical of Sharia and immigration, but do know dare to speak out -- or they are not sure how to express their views. Do you have any advice to people who feel like that?

Sennels: If we have compassion, people will feel it. Criticizing Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we are not intellectual sadists. We are worried about the freedom of our women and the future of our children, and about our constitutions. And we know that the first and in many cases also the biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. We do not even have to use words like Islam or Muslims. We can just say that religions that oppress women and start holy wars make us sick. If you know that you are right, you do not have to be nervous or ashamed of yourself. Know that our politicians and media aim for the soft middle in society in order to be reelected and to sell newspapers and ads, and it is therefore up to ordinary people to protect our values, society and constitution.

Inform yourself and spread what you find out via email, social media, blogs and letters to the editor and to our politicians and journalists. When among others, the most important thing is that you do not force your view upon them and are happy and relaxed when you express your opinions. Only share your knowledge and your feelings when it feels natural -- wait until others mention the topic and use only a few words unless people really ask you several times what you think. If you are good, you can even use humor.

And do not fear to lose a few politically correct friends on the way. They will thank you in the end.
Posted by Robert on April 2, 2012 8:22 AM | 38 Comments

With all due respect you should have added atheists in there, 'Muslims like Christians like Atheists can believe what they like in their own "homes" but it must not threaten me.'

Leaving aside why it 'must not threaten me', it just doesn't take account of reality. Life is not confined to "homes' and what one believes is not confined to "homes" either - or the space between our ears. What we believe affects the outside of our "homes" and because we believe different things...like: What is a human being? On what basis do we determine right and wrong - if such things exist? Is any one responcible for anything and if so why?...there is conflict over any rules for what occurs outside our homes. By what authority are rules made to order society? By what standard are they set?

Socialist atheists believe they with their beliefs have the right to control what everyone does both outside and inside our homes, and even in the space between our ears. And so they ban parents from correcting their kids, force builders to be licenced to do restricted work or be liable to fines ups to $20000, shove down the throats of kids, family planning sex ed classes where they're taught about sex amorally, make laws to kill unborn kids legally, teach kids all the PC, socialist propaganda in schools, etc, etc, and then tell me I can believe what I like so long as I keep it between my ears. Well how considerate of them to leave me a space for my beliefs to function in...which effective means they don't function at all.

I don't buy confining my beliefs to my "home"...

Genesis 1, Excellent. “ At some times in history their 'humanity' with its 'rationality', may have had greater prominence than their doctrines and so produce different results...ones more ammenable to us... “

That is the core issue. “ one more amenable to us ” Muslims like Christians can believe what the like, and act how they like in their own “homes,” but it must not threaten me. Muslims achieved it once and it can be achieved again. That is my argument.

You can read p36 The Closing of the Muslim Mind to see the sort of society that was once, and is possible again.

“The period of al Ma’mun’s reign (813-833) is often referred to as the golden age of Islam for its extraordinary intellectual openness and richness. Science writer Frances Luttikhuizen atates in Christanity and Science that “ al Ma’mun, strongly influenced by the Mutazilitr movement, was the greatest patron of philosophy and science in the history of Islam.” By any standard the person of al-Ma’mun and his court in Bagdad are among the most notable in history. “

Similar words have been written about Muslim cities in Spain and Sicily.

My conclusion.

"But it was not always like that."

That is the point of issue.

Are you saying that Mo, with his supposed visions from Gabriel, and his god Allah, were basically hellenised and thus accomodated 'reason' from the word go? But that at a point a couple of centuries later were dehellenised?

I don't accept, and nor do I think Reilly's use of the term 'dehellenization' requires it. The conflict which saw Greek thought chucked out of Islam occurred in the 10th Century. This gives 300 + years for Greek thought to influence Islam and for a reaction to build against it. Islam did not reflect Greek thought originally and the 'dehellenization' which occurred in the 10th Century was the removal of something that had been added to the original and threatened to change it, and the return of Islam to its original idea of god.

My copy of the book is on loan and the guy who has it is away, so I can't access it...

Genesis 1 You wrote

“ The same applies to Muslims. Even though their basic philosophy is irrational due to the nature of their god..”


This applies to Islam today. But it was not always like that. That is what you refuse to recognize.

P 3 The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

" The dehellenization of Islam had it roots in a particular idea of God….

Read the rest for yourself.

Nope, I haven't read the book but I have read other stuff that calls into question its thesis...and the review posted, with the comments following agree, with what I've read. And I'm not sliding off the argument by my other comment, just making an observation...

Back to whether 'Islam can be fixed'.

Seeing your claim that Christianity 'was fixed up' ('accomodated reason') was wrong (it never needed to accomodate reason because reason is an inherent fundamental aspect of the Biblical worldview), perhaps your wrong here also. Perhaps Islam at its core - because of its view of allah - does not have any place for reason, and if it 'accomodates reason' as you suggest it should, then it is no longer Islam, but something else.

I mean...can atheism 'be fixed'? Specifically can AR's atheism 'be fixed'? As she starts with some sort of materialism and not consciousness, then 'reason' is not that from which the universe came and has no part in it. If it's said that it can be fixed by making consciousness rather than material primary, then it is fundamentally changed and is no longer atheism but some sort of theism...

Now...of course, humans are what they are, whether what they say they are is consistent or not with what they actually are. As I would say that 'what humans actually are' are creatures made in the image of their Maker - and thus are rational and moral beings, then I expect all human being to exhibit in their lives both rationality and morality - which is the case. Thus any who in their philosophy have no adequate grounds for rationality and morality (materialists/atheists) will still exhibit rationality and morality because 'what they actually are' conflicts with 'what they think they actually are', and 'what they actually are' largely trumps 'what they think they actually are' in every day life. This shown by those who philosophically deny meaning, yet use words with meaning to say there is no meaning. It's self-refuting...shooting oneself in the foot. Or saying there are no absolutes, which is an absolute. Reality hems us in, regardless of our philosophy...

The same applies to Muslims. Even though their basic philosophy is irrational due to the nature of their god (as I understand it to be), never the less they are rational beings and you expect to see evidence of that - more or less. At some times in history their 'humanity' with its 'rationality', may have had greater prominence than their doctrines and so produce different results...ones more ammenable to us...

But...at core it is unfixable...just as atheism is unfixable...

Genesis1, Copying a review and comments is a substandard way of answering. If you are genuinely interested you should read it for yourself. I have read the book and so am in a position to judge it content. If you have become skeptical that is your problem.

You keep trying to slide off the argument. This is not about “ modern Islam can do no wrong - Christianity can do no right mentality”


I presented this references, and I could recommend more, because you claimed that Islam couldn’t be fixed. The reference may have errors but it confirms that there was a Golden Age of Islam at a time that Europe was known as the Dark Ages. The book contains an extensive bibliography.

It confirms that Islam has like the Western world has been subjected to historical ideological changes and so it is possible that this could happen again and so Islam can be fixed.

I've read enough about Islam over the past few years to be sceptical of claims about how wonderful Islamic culture and influence was in the past and how it was so far superior to Europe etc, etc. Such claims seem to come from the same sort of stable that the modern 'Islam can do no wrong - Christianity can do no right' mentality of western elites who are selling us down the river, and because of their utterly blinkered ideas, threaten to hand the West to Islamic dominance within a relatively short time. Europe seems to already be past the point of no return on this...

Below find a critical review of the book you mentioned, with interesting comments following...

Friday, March 27, 2009
“The House of Wisdom” by Jonathan Lyons: A Brief Review by Fjordman
The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

Stephen O’Shea of The Los Angeles Times has reviewed the book The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons. I will publish a longer and more thorough rebuttal of this book at some point in April, either at Jihad Watch or at Atlas Shrugs. I will publish a review of John Freely’s related book Aladdin’s Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World next week at The Brussels Journal.

I have read both of them, and Freely’s book is the best of the two, or the least bad, since he at a minimum has some understanding of the history of science, which Mr. Lyons in my view does not. That doesn’t mean that I would recommend buying his book; there are better and more balanced titles available on the market. Stephen O’Shea in his very positive review claims that “Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons’ lively new book of medieval history.” I strongly disagree. I consider The House of Wisdom to be a bad case of poor scholarship.

Lyons’ book is 200 pages long, Freely’s Aladdin’s Lamp 255 pages. Neither of them mentions the terms ‘Jihad’ or ‘dhimmi’ even once in their books about Islamic culture. This says a great deal about the current intellectual climate. I didn’t notice these words while reading the books and they are not listed in the indexes. The authors certainly don’t devote much time to debating the violent aspects of Islamic expansionism through the Islamically unique institution of Jihad, or the fates of the conquered peoples. Is it a coincidence that whatever useful work that was done in the Islamic world happened during the first centuries of the Islamic era, while there were still large numbers of non-Muslims living in the region? We don’t know because the question is never debated by these authors, but it deserves to be.

While we should give credit to scholars in the medieval Islamic world when they made real contributions, we should not forget the huge debt they owed to earlier cultures, to the Indians and the Chinese, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians and above all to the ancient Greeks. Mr. Lyons talks extensively about the astrolabe, yet he does not mention the name of the man who is by many considered the likely inventor of that instrument, or at least a strong contributor to its development, namely the ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus from the second century BC. He was the greatest of all Greek astronomers next to Ptolemy, and even Ptolemy, whose astronomy ruled Europe until the sixteenth century and the Middle East even longer, owed much to him. Hipparchus is simply too important to ignore.

What’s worse is that Lyons doesn’t even mention Ibn al-Haytham, or Alhazen. I searched in vain for his name, which is not listed in the index. It is embarrassing for a book written specifically to criticize Westerners for their lack of appreciation of ‘Islamic science’ to completely fail to mention arguably the greatest scientist ever born in the Islamic world with a single word. It’s like writing a history of European science without mentioning Newton or Galileo. By saying that I do not mean to imply that Alhazen was of the same stature as Newton or Galileo. He was not. No scientist of that stature has ever been born in the Islamic world. But Alhazen was a competent scholar who did have a significant influence in optics.

Another omission, though not as bad as Alhazen, is Ulugh Beg, who was one of the best observational astronomers in the medieval Islamic world. He, too, is totally ignored. I find it a bit odd that I, being a notorious Islamophobe and thus one of the persons Mr. Lyons keeps warning against, have to lecture him on which Muslims scholars deserve to be mentioned.

On page four of his book, Jonathan Lyons writes the following:

The arrival of Arab science and philosophy, the legacy of the pioneering Adelard and of those who hurried to follow his example, transmuted the backward West into a scientific and technological superpower. Like the elusive ‘elixir’ — from the alchemists’ al-iksir — for changing base metal into gold, Arab science altered medieval Christendom beyond recognition. For the first time in centuries, Europe’s eyes opened to the world around it. This encounter with Arab science even restored the art of telling time, lost to the western Christians of the early Middle Ages. Without accurate control over clock and calendar, the rational organization of society was unthinkable. And so was the development of science, technology, and industry, as well as the liberation of man from the thrall of nature. Arab science and philosophy helped rescue the Christian world from ignorance and made possible the very idea of the West. Yet how many among us today stop to acknowledge our enormous debt to the Arabs, let alone endeavor to repay it?

This isn’t serious scholarship; it is myth-making. Muslims clearly owe vastly more of science and technology to Westerners than we owe to them. Perhaps it’s time they start repaying their debt to us, not vice versa. I’m not suggesting that there was no good scholarly work done in the Islamic world. There are a few Muslim scholars from the medieval period whom I respect. Their contributions should not be ignored, but nor should they be inflated beyond all proportions, as Lyons does. If the Western scientific and technological contribution to the world is the size of an elephant then the Muslim one is the size of a squirrel, or a Chihuahua at best. There’s no shame in that. I like squirrels, but I would never confuse one with an elephant.

I will conclude by recommending some serious books which people can read instead of The House of Wisdom or Aladdin’s Lamp. About Islam I recommend essentially everything written by Robert Spencer. Bat Ye’or’s books are groundbreaking and important, though admittedly not always easy to read. The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew Bostom should be considered required reading for all those interested in Islam. It is the best and most complete book available on the subject in English, and possibly in any language. Ibn Warraq’s books are excellent, starting with his Defending the West . Understanding Muhammad by the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina is also worth reading, as is Defeating Jihad by Serge Trifkovic.

If you are looking for books about the history of science, I recommend everything written by Edward Grant. The Beginnings of Western Science by David C. Lindberg is very good, though slightly more politically correct than Grant when it comes to science in the Islamic world. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West by Toby E. Huff is excellent and highly recommended. These books are easy to read for an educated, mainstream audience.

For books that are excellent, yet more specialized and slightly more difficult, I can recommend Victor J. Katz for the history of mathematics and The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy by James Evans for the history of pre-telescopic astronomy up to and including Kepler. Evans’ book is extremely well researched and detailed, almost too much so on European and Middle Eastern astronomy, but contains virtually nothing on Chinese or Mayan astronomy. For a more global perspective, Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology by John North is good and not too difficult to read.

Posted by Baron Bodissey at 3/27/2009 05:05:00 PM


8 comments:

xoggoth said... 1

They claim everything. Was reading some "proofs" of the truth of the Qu'ran recently where divine guidance was demonstrated by the fact that it contained things that science has only much more recently discovered, eg:

That the Earth is round (a theory advanced by Pythagorus in 3rd century BC)

That the universe separated from a single mass. (Believed by the ancient Egyptians 4000 years before)

The medicinal properties of honey. (also known to the ancient Greeks)

The important role water plays in life (apart from being bleeding obvious, part of various belief systems including that of American Indians)
3/27/2009 5:47 PM

Fjordman said... 2

As I wrote, the book Aladdin's Lamp is significantly better, but still not good enough. Author John Freely doesn't explain why Europeans did so much more with the same Greek material than Muslims did, and he says virtually nothing about how Muslims have for 1400 years wiped out Greek-speaking communities across the Eastern Mediterranean, a process which has continued on Cyprus until the twenty-first century. If we are going to talk about how much Muslims have "preserved," shouldn't we also talk about how much they have destroyed, in Europe, Asia and Africa? How are the few Christian communities still left in Anatolia, now called "Turkey," treated, and what happened to what was once a Greek-speaking region? What happened to the Greek-speaking community in Alexandria, Egypt?

It is true that Muslims translated many Greek scientific works, which provided the basis for much of the scholarly activity that they did have. But these works were based on Byzantine originals and were not "lost" in the first place. Moreover, the author largely fails to explain why there was no Copernicus in the Middle East, and no Kepler. After all, Europe and the Islamic world had essentially the same, Ptolemaic Greek starting point during the Renaissance. Through the work of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Kepler, European scholars had broken free of Ptolemaic astronomy even before the telescope had been invented. Why was there no similar breakthrough in the Middle East? Toby Huff is the man to ask about this, or Grant. Frankly, Western astronomy and mathematics owes much more to the pre-Islamic Middle East, especially to Babylonian planetary astronomy, than we owe to the Islamic Middle East.

He calls al-Azhar an Islamic university, which it was not. The modern university is a European invention. He says virtually nothing about the 1400 years of continuous warfare against the non-Muslim communities on several continents, of which Greek-speaking communities were often at the front lines. The word “Jihad” is not listed at all in the index of his book; neither is the word “dhimmi.” As far as I can see, it is not mentioned once in a book of several hundred pages specifically dealing with Islamic history.

The first chapters about the Greek scientific legacy are not too bad. I disagree with a few details here and there, as well as with the relative emphasis on various scholars, but all in all this section is worth reading. The problem is that you can get this information from other books which do not suffer from the same shortcomings. He correctly indicates that some of the key translators of scientific works such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq and Thabit ibn Qurra were non-Muslims, and he includes a chapter on the translation movement from Byzantium to Italy and Western Europe. These are redeeming qualities, but the overall balance is dishonest, as he fails to explain why "Islamic science" declined and how the pre-Islamic cultures and non-Islamic communities of the region shrank. Their shrinking overlapped to a significant degree with the decline of “Islamic science.” Is there a connection between the two? Why are the last remaining Christians in Turkey under siege now?
3/27/2009 6:44 PM

ChrisLA said... 3

Excellent review. Perhaps Fjordman, or someone else who has read the book, could post a review of "The House of Wisdom" on Amazon.com Their reader reviews have become an invaluable tool in discerning the good books from the mediocre ones.

Regarding the Arab world's squirrel-sized contribution to Twenty-first Century scholarship, it was interesting to read in former King Saud University Professor Sami Alrabaa's book, "Karin in Saudi Arabia," that the aspiring Saudi lecturers have their scholarly papers ghost-written by Egyptians, or they translate parts of foreign-language textbooks into Arabic and claim authorship. I hope these purloined acorns aren't counted as Arab contributions to science and culture.
3/27/2009 8:33 PM

Robert L. said... 4

Fjordman- I'm wondering if you're familiar with the work of Stanley Jaki? Hungarian-born physicist and priest (with PhD's in both theology and physics), he's an historian of science. One of the things for which he is reviled by the "politically correct" is his perennial assertion- it's practically a theme throughout all of his books- that all cultures that preceded and were outside of Christianity were only capable (at best) of giving "still births" to science. The self-perpetuating nature of science- i.e., as a continuous, evolving, cumulative enterprise over the course of generations- is something that occurred only in Christian civilization (for complicated reasons having ultimately to do with the belief in the reality of matter, and that this is somehow linked to "Truth becoming incarnate," i.e., Christ. I know, sounds terribly hair-brained by giving such a quick description, but one has to read Jaki to grasp the point).
3/27/2009 9:04 PM

Fjordman said... 5

ChrisLA: If somebody wants to publish this review at Amazon or other venues they have my blessing to do so. I would even encourage them to do so, so that people are not fooled to buy this bad book.
3/27/2009 9:22 PM

Fjordman said... 6

Robert L.: Yes, I am familiar with Jaki. His views are related to those of Rodney Stark. I'm not sure I always agree with him, but then I am not a religious man.

The world view of senior Western scientists during the early modern era could be described as “God meets geometry,” the idea that the universe could be described mathematically and rationally. Muslims shared the concept of a universe created by a single God, but their particular version of God wasn’t helpful in this regard. The Koran is deeply inconsistent. The notion that Allah is incomprehensible and provides no correlation between cause and effect had a serious impact on the development of empirical sciences in the Islamic world. In contrast, for Jews and Christians, God has created the universe according to a certain logic, which can be described and predicted. Kepler firmly believed the solar system was created according to God’s plan, which he attempted to unlock. Sir Isaac Newton was passionately interested in religion and wrote extensively about it. Even Albert Einstein, who was certainly not an orthodox, religious Jew, still retained some residue of the idea that the universe was created according to a logic which is, to a certain extent, comprehensible and accessible to human reason: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

As I've mentioned before, I would claim that out of all the scholarly disciplines I have read about, the European global leadership position was strongest in mathematics. Before the Italian Renaissance we assimilated some outside influences via the Middle East, prominent among them the Hindu numeral system as well as some advancements in algebra made by Muslim scholars. However, after that, from about the fourteenth to the twentieth century, Europe outperformed all other civilizations in mathematics. By that I don't just mean that Europeans outperformed all other civilizations individually, but combined.

The same was true of the sciences. The ancient Greeks made great advances in science and in mathematics. The Romans after them contributed virtually nothing to science and virtually nothing to mathematics. The correlation between mathematics and science is obviously quite strong. The question is why.

I admit this is the most challenging dilemma for those of us who are not religious: Why can nature be described mathematically and rationally, if it has not been created by a rational Creator? If the language of nature is written in mathematics, as Galileo famously said, do we decipher that language when we develop mathematics, or do we invent it? The question has huge philosophical and religious implications.
3/27/2009 9:47 PM

Robert L. said... 7

Indeed, it is a challenging dilemma- like you, I'm not a religious believer (I've simply found Jaki to be an incredibly fascinating writer). The way I've tried to think about these things- i.e., how can the world be rational be described in mathematics if it is not the product of a god of ultimate creativity- has been to understand that metaphysics is not primary, indeed that metaphysics does not precede things like, say, politics (in the comprehensive sense of the term of politics. Politics = what the individual holds to be right/just, or the right course of action).

Harry Jaffa (I hope no one shrieks at my mentioning his name) actually gets at this very point, in his subtle/prudent way, in his dispute with the Intelligent Design people: "Who Owns the Copyright to the Universe?" which you can read here. Intelligent design does not automatically imply an intelligent designer.
3/27/2009 10:20 PM

Profitsbeard said... 8

Islam paralyzed itself mentally with their medieval decree that Allah is irrationlistic and unpredictable and that the scientific method is thus arrogating Allah's position as the sole "creator" and "orderer".

Why Islam failed to take advantage of the science they stole is the true unspoken subtext in all of these egregregiously-selective-in-their-evidence paens to Mohammedan "advancement" over the "Dark Age"-stultified West.

The West lost far more to the depredations of Islam (lives, libraries, inventions, history, art, music, literature) than what its puling apologists~ in our academic class~ ever dare admit.

Thanking Hitler for the Volkswagen and the autobahn would be as rational a historical point for a book to make about the Nazi holocaust as this fulsome praise for Islam is by these authors, who ignore the centuries of Islamic genocidal warfare and intolerant theocratic tyranny in order to present this slanted vision.

To glibly gloss over the centuries of monstrosities in favor of over-emphasizing some borrowed glory by the Koranic conquerors is perverse "scholarship".
3/29/2009 2:15 PM

Genesis 1, I suggest another reference. The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons.

This looks at the Islamic culture during the time Augustine ideas dominated Europe. The Dark Ages.

As he states. “ Arabs could measure the Earth’s circumference (a feat not matched in the West for eight hundred years); they discovered algebra, were adept at astronomy, medicine and navigation “ etc.

The sub title “ How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization.”

Again it provides evidence that Islam can be fixed.

Hope you find the reference helpful.