Irritable Saracens

After watching the end of an interview with Muslim critic Robert Spencer, where he accurately described Islam as a problem because it is and always has been an authoritarian and supremacist political philosophy, I caught a rightwinger blogger being angry because a Time editor said that burning the Koran was worse than burning a Bible.

Well, to a Muslim, burning the Koran IS worse than burning the Bible is to a Christian. As I've pointed out before, for Christians, the Bible is an inspired library of texts which are the Word of God written in the words of many men, but they all point to a higher reality, the Word of God incarnate in the God-Man Himself, Jesus.

For Muslims, for whom there is no human incarnation of God --an idea that the Koran often and directly rejects-- the highest form which the Word of God can take is the Koran. It is not the words of many men, or even of one man, but the words of Allah, delivered directly to that man and then transcribed. That's the reason behind the bizarre Muslim claim that you cannot understand the Koran in translation, only in the original Arabic. It makes understandable why the Koran is chanted in mosques throughout the world only in Arabic, regardless of the language of the worshippers. Because the original eternal uncreated Koran is also in Arabic. Literally. The Koran is far more analogous to Christ, the eternal uncreated Divine Word, than to the Bible. And burning it or desecrating it is more analogous to desecrating the Host of the Mass than to any book.

The leftliberal conclusion, then, is that because it is a greater crime to desecrate the Koran there is even more reason never to do it and less reason to be surprised when it provokes riots and murder.
This conclusion almost justifies the bloodshed.

My conclusion differs. Since this book holds a unique and distinctive place and it is something like the Christ of Islam in text, then you had better pay close attention to every single thing it says and not try to play the interpretive games with the Muslim Holy Book that you can play with the Christian library of sacred writings. It's as if the Koran is entirely written in caps in non-erasable ink. So for example when it says --and pardon me here for giving only an English translation...--

9:29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, [even if they are] of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Pickthall translation)

This jizyah is a tax laid only on non-Muslims under a triumphant Muslim regime and constitutes protection money. It's part of a project of dhimmitude, to make the non-Muslims feel the superiority of Muslims and their own inferiority. Islamic Jim Crow tax. Since this is one of Allah's many direct statements in the Koran, it tells you a lot about the Religion of Peace. Islam means not peace but submission.

As to Spencer, his interviewer asked why so many people's instinctive response to badly behaving Muslims is to assert that "not all Muslims are like that." Their reaction is to excuse, to minimize. And if you press, then they will attack you as a bigot.

Why do they do that for Muslims when they certainly don't say "not all Republicans are like that."?

My answer? Race. A huge part of the cultural change of the 60's was to delegitimize any and all global, universal or even general remarks about Blacks that were uncomplimentary. To refuse to do so was to make you an accomplice of Bull Connors and a little-girl-killing church burner. It has become an almost instinctive reaction to back away from any blunt criticism of a darker race. Facts are not allowed if they interfere with the Prime Directive.

And Islam, as we know, despite the fact that it is a religion which even the blondest of the blond can join --Ibrahim Hooper, the red-headed CAIR mouthpiece--, it gets classed in public discourse as a race because most Muslims are not white Europeans.

So people who know zip fuck all about Islam immediately move to this position. Because Muslims to them are another form of Black people, who must never under any circumstances be confronted, challenged, criticized or much less blamed for any of the abundant bad behaviors of any of their race.
If they act like savages and barbarians, we must have driven then to it.

Irritable Saracens. Irritable Ex Cathedra.