This is a deeply unsettling little volume, because it offers scant hope that the West can live at peace with Islam unless the religion changes radically, and even less hope that that is possible. Still, the questions Islam Unveiled poses and the answers it provides are hard to dismiss, and given the urgency of the times, necessary to ask.
If Spencer is right, the West faces a primitive, violent, and fiercely chauvinistic religion whose followers, to the extent that they are pious adherents to its teachings, cannot be reasoned with, only resisted. Islam is at its core inimical to democracy and human rights as we in the West understand them. To expect Muslims to drop their belligerence toward the West, which has existed since Islam's founding in the 7th century, is to expect them to jettison core values of their faith - something for which there is no precedent in Islamic history.
The Koran, writes Spencer, is more central to the Islamic faith than the Bible is to Christianity. Muslims believe it was revealed directly from God to the Prophet Muhammad. He will find there many divine instructions to make constant war on the infidel, who is only to be given the choice of conversion, slave-like subjugation (in historian Bat Yeor's word, dhimmitude) - or death. And throughout Islamic history, that's exactly how Muslim societies have behaved toward non-Muslims, who are by the very fact of their unbelief not considered innocents in the eternal, divinely mandated conflict.
Undeniably, Christians have in the past committed many despicable acts in the name of God, but they did so in violation of scriptural teaching, not in fulfillment of it, as in Islam.
This literalism has profound consequences for the way Muslims live. Unlike in Christianity, there is no scriptural mandate for separation of church and state in Islam, making secular democracy an alien and hostile concept. Women have few rights over and against their husbands, who may legally beat them, and men in general.
Enslaving infidels and raping infidel women are justified under Koranic law (and still occur in some Muslim lands).
Spencer does not believe that Islam can be tamed. While Muslims in the West live in peace, prosperity and religious liberty, Christians and other non-Muslims are persecuted, sometimes unto death, throughout the Muslim world today.
Because Islam demands death for heretics, moderate Muslims will always risk their lives by offering more liberal interpretations of their faith.
And most crucially, in his view, Islam cannot be other than a religion of violence. "Of course, most Muslims will never be terrorists. The problem is that ... Islam's violent elements are rooted in its central texts," Spencer writes. His final verdict on Islam is sobering, particularly when one considers the rapidly increasing Islamic presence in Europe.
Is Islam Unveiled pessimism, or realism? We can only know for sure if we have a serious public discussion of the issues Spencer raises in this important (but unsatisfyingly brief) book
Spencer may be wrong - until we hear from this supposed vast silent majority of peace-loving Muslims, the answers Spencer gives go a long way to explain the hatred, violence, backwardness, and fanaticism endemic to the Islamic world.
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42 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
Disturbing Truths, May 4, 2003
By lecudedag "lecudedag" (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
Once again we find an author with guts to tackle a controversial topic. The difficulty with criticising Islam is that it's believers maintain that it is 'perfect' that the Koran is the unaltered word of their god. So, to criticise their beliefs, you are criticising their god.
However, this author tackles issues that need to be confronted, and he does so logcially. One negative reviewer stated that he does not put polygamy into historical context. This kind of relativism, that one person doing bad should be accepted because other people have done bad, simply does not work.
You either accept that these things are bad, or you don't. Muslims don't, end of discussion. If you believe polygamy (that is, only a man marrying many women - why not a woman marrying many men), is equable, then you will have difficulty with this book's arguments. If, however, you believe that men shouldn't sleep with underage girls (as Muhammed did), or that women should be treated equally (Islamic courts say that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man), then this book will be one you will want to read.
This book explores these issues so that non-believers can find out what exactly Islam stands for. Many Muslims will say that Islam gives rights to women. Yes, it does, but these are so limited it's almost not worth mentioning. A case in point; property rights. This author points out that they still are entitled to half as much as men!
Islam stands for peace! Yes, this too is true. Peace amongst Muslim men. Whilst they state "There is no compulsion in religion" that is only again, part of the story. The author shows that there are numerous Koranic injunctions to kill or war against non-believers. (Whether they mean all non-Muslims, or 'pagans' can be seen by the fact that Muslims themselves live out the injunction by waging war against ALL non-Muslims).
Muhammed divides the world up, that area already under Muslim domination, and those areas that aren't but soon will be.
The issue of the Crusades is also smartly dealt with by the author. For too long Westerners have had to apologise for these misadventures. If you want to be relativist, if that is your bent, then consider that
a) they happened 1000 years ago - Muslim agression is still happening.
b) they were a reaction against Muslim agression - no Muslim has ever apologised for waging war against Christendom (remember all that is now part of Turkey, northern Africa, much of the Middle East, was once Christian!)
c) they were not actions based upon the teachings of Jesus - Jihad is taught by Muhammed, who actually lead armies into battle, and massacred PoWs.
There are numerous anti-Christian books also available on amazon, but are their authors in fear of their lives? How many authors has your local church condemned to death?
In the past 200 years, how many busses have Christian fundamentalists blown up as suicide bombers?
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks to look at Islam without the biased of one who just accepts its tennets without logic, or question.
Amazon Online Reader : Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest-Growing Faith
Should Christians speak out against Muslim persecution? -
11-29-2007, 05:33 AM
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