Might-ay Bostom vs. Pugilist Pearl

Not sure how many of you have been following the slugfest between Judea Pearl (Daniel Pearl's father) and Andrew Bostom in the cyberpages of FrontPage magazine but it is an interesting intellectual bout between those that believe that Islamic societies are in urgent need of reform (Bostom, Sultan, Ayaan irsi Ali) and those that believe the violent Jihad that the Koran glorifies is merely aggressive verses  of the sort that should be "interpreted in a narrow local context, applicable to a specific period or specific battle in the life of the Prophet Muhammad" (Pearl, Pipes, most Muslim apologists).

Judea Pearl writes in the pages of FrontPage Magazine, The Future of Islam;

During a discussion period after a recent talk by the outspoken Islam-critic Wafa Sultan, I asked her how she would answer modern defenders of Islam, according to whom all the "bad" phenomena in Islamic societies are just "cultural baggage" and all the "good" ones represent the true intention of the religion. She answered: "How can you attribute "good" intentions to a verse like: 'I have been ordered to fight all men until they say: There is no God but Allah.'" To which I replied: "The Muslim scholars with whom I communicate claim that this, and other aggressive verses  of that sort should be interpreted in a narrow local context, , applicable to a specific period or specific battle in the life of the Prophet, and were not meant to be universally applicable". Dr. Sultan answered that these are just attempts to redeem an irredeemable religion.

[...] Reacting to Stein's article, Dr, Andrew Bostom has written a scholarly study (Frontpage June 28, 2006) attacking the "cultural baggage" theory. He argues that Jihadist ideology is rooted in the Koranic text and has been part and parcel of mainstream Islam throughout history. He further accuses me of naivete and absurdity for believing otherwise, and for attacking Dr. Sultan, a woman I greatly admire, though I question the practicality of her solution.

Bostom is mistaken on both accounts; I did not apply the "cultural baggage" argument to Koranic verses and I did not attack Dr. Sultan.

First, I do not dispute the centrality of Jihadist ideology in Muslim history, jurisprudence, theology and even modern outlook. As a reader of Bostom's book and articles I am well aware of the large body of evidence supporting his conclusions.

Second, one need not be an Islamic scholar to point out weaknesses in the "cultural baggage" line of defense. Even if it were true that all "bad" patterns of behavior associated with Islamic society (e.g., intolerance of non-believers, contempt of Western values, inequality of women, apostasy and heresy laws, corporal punishments, honor killing) are merely residues of anachronistic cultural influences, the question still remains how a religion that lays claim to universal and perpetual validity could co-habitate with such influences for 1400 years without serious attempts to eject, transform or eradicate those influences. Likewise, the "cultural baggage" theory has hard time explaining why a divine, universal religion did not come equipped with built-in safeguards to protect itself from hijackers who falsify or distort its basic teachings. These questions point to basic weaknesses in either the religion itself or its social organization, questions to which I have not found satisfactory answers in modern Muslim writings.

But the main mistake of Dr. Bostom is the solution that he proposes (by implication) for the problems faced by Islamic society. The notion that 1.3 billion Muslims can and should reject Islam or acknowledge its evil nature, before becoming bona fide members of modern society is many times more illusionary than the belief in the "cultural baggage" theory, however deficient the latter is. For the overwhelming majority of modern Muslims, renouncing the divinity of the Koranic scripture amounts to shattering their personal and collective identity. It is a losing proposition and a physical impossibility.

What hopes does this leave regarding the future of Islam?

What hope indeed. Read it all to get Pearl's full argument.

Bostom takes none of this lying down. He comes back swinging, firing off the facts with impeccable accuracy. We love that.

Islam: Back to the Future? By Andrew G. Bostom

Judea Pearl (“The Future of Islam”), in responding to my essay, which focused quite narrowly on the Muslim doctrine of abrogation (of Koranic verses), offers both clarification, and more confusion.

Pearl makes clear that he “…did not apply the ‘cultural baggage’ argument to Koranic verses” (i.e., this was wrongly attributed to him by Rabbi Steven Stein, not me, in a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed), and he does not “…dispute the centrality of Jihadist ideology in Muslim history, jurisprudence, theology and even modern outlook.” 

But while Pearl denies “attacking” the secular Muslim “apostate” Wafa Sultan, he certainly appears to do so in the approving way he paraphrases and quotes Rabbi Stein*, and the summary of his own exchange with Dr. Sultan:

[Sultan] “ ‘How can you attribute ‘good" intentions to a verse like: 'I have been ordered to fight all men until they say: There is no God but Allah.’ ” To which I [Pearl] replied: ‘The Muslim scholars with whom I communicate claim that this, and other aggressive verses  of that sort should be interpreted in a narrow local context, applicable to a specific period or specific battle in the life of the Prophet, and were not meant to be universally applicable’. Dr. Sultan answered that these are just attempts to redeem an irredeemable religion.”

Regardless, Judea Pearl makes a deliberate if confused and non-sequitur attack on what he terms my “solution…by implication” (I don’t know what a solution by implication means), that  “…1.3 billion Muslims can and should reject Islam or acknowledge its evil nature, before becoming bona fide members of modern society”. This is a rather bizarre projection from an essay which merely elucidates how pacific Koranic verses were cancelled by their bellicose counterparts, as per classical Muslim scholars and jurists, operating within what the renowned 20th century legal scholar G.H. Bousquet aptly termed the “dry and forbidding” confines of Islamic Law.

Three years ago, my colleague and mentor Ibn Warraq outlined his own suggested program for the reform of Islamic societies—not Islam—beginning with a simple and logical, but profound step:

The only solution is to bring the questions of human rights out of the religious sphere and into the sphere of the civil state, in other words to separate religion from the state and promote a secular state where Islam is relegated to the personal. Here, Islam would continue to provide consolation, comfort, and meaning, as it has to millions of individuals for centuries, yet it would not decree the mundane affairs of state.

I agree with Ibn Warraq and reject Mr. Pearl’s offensive characterization of my so-called “implied” position, as opposed to my actual position about Islam as a private, de-politicized faith, consisting, for example of the well-known “five pillars”. But Mr. Pearl also states that he concurs with my assessment about the jihad (its “modern centrality” as he noted, above). Thus I hope he is willing to join me, along with true moderate Muslims (both those who are secular and those who identify themselves as believers) in condemning jihad as a demonstrably evil institution—in theory and historical practice—which till now, unfortunately, sacralizes the subjection of vast blocs of humanity by “MPED” (my mnemonic): massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation. And I also hope he and moderate Muslims would join me in condemning the corollary Islamic institution of dhimmitude, which, in theory and practice, sacralizes the complete, deliberately humiliating (see Koran 9:29) inequality—legally, financially, and socially—of all non-Muslims vanquished by jihad.

 Before Mr. Pearl once again accuses me of being “…many times more illusionary” let me point out that such rare Muslim individuals do in fact exist, and if they didn’t, we’d have to cultivate them or live with the unacceptable status quo, indefinitely. MEMRI recently uncovered that most scarce, but cherished commodity—Dr. Iqbal Al-Gharbi, a Muslim reformer willing to acknowledge, and offer mea culpa for the living legacy of jihad (including jihad slavery), and dhimmitude.

It gets better. It's Bostom --- read it and understand.

Comments

[Gary Gluon]

Say Pamela,
Did you ever interview Bostom on W.A.R. radio the other day? If so, will you be posting an mp3 file of the interview? And do you have any plans for posting your radio shows for your faithful readers who might not be able to tune in for each show?

[Pamela aka Atlas]

Hey Gary, Apparently we blew out our servers which led to annoying technical difficulties.
And yeah Bostom was all that and a bag of chips. Very informative. Very enlightening. Very smart.
It's tough to listen to because so many glitches impeded the flow. I couldn't hear the tech cockpit, they couldn't hear me so it is chaotic at times. Here is a temporary link for now (my show starts roughly 13-15 minutes into the recording)
http://tinyurl.com/qhkhp
Thanks, Pamela

[Lorin Friesen]

Andrew's MPED mnemonic of massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation works ok but...

These jihadists are nothing more than arrrgh, "LAND PIRATES"!

[Underzog]

It appears daddy Pearl suffers from some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. His poor son was also reported to be overly sympathetic to Muslims. The head decapitators have not hijacked the religion; they are part and parcel of it.

"There's no need to fear; UnderZog is here!"

[El Hakeem]

It requires a mind delibertaely shrouded in prejudice and groupthink not to see that a religon is nothing more than what its adherents want it to be.

We have seen Buddhists who literally hurt a fly, and warrior buddhist monks wreaking carnage.

The Koran is no diffeent from any religious text- it is wide and varied enough to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. It takes the wilfully blind not to see that there are millions of muslims worldwide who choose to interprete the Koran in a worthy and admirable light. They find much that is noble and positively aspirational in its verses.

Christianity is the same. What were the Crusades of the Middle Ages but Jihads for Jerusalem? Who were the terrorists in Bosnia and Northern Ireland? Christians.

The Bible is just as barbaric and medieval in its injunctions as the Koran is in parts. It urges slavery, stoning, homophobia, and the killing of witches, apostates, homosexuals and infidels.

Today, most Christians choose to interprete the Bible according to their modern norms- this has more to do with the people and the societies they live in than what the Bible's verses says. It's hard to imagine a modern American Christian advocating the killing of witches.

Alas, many Muslim countries are still relatively backward with regards to sociopolitical and economic evolution. Poverty, desperation and ignorance breed anger- and angry people will interprete a religious text in predictable ways.

There are also millions of enlightened, deccent Muslims, in the Arab world and elsewhere, who interprete the Koran according to their modern, humane and upright values.

If we're looking for faults, fault people and political systems- but not religions.

For a tendentious compendium of the nefarious verses of the Bible, go here (www.evilbible.com). And if you want a thoughtful, stimulating and balanced perspective, go here (www.amusis.com).

[elvis]

@ 8:24 AM

TAQQIYA

[raz0r]

"Who were the terrorists in Bosnia and Northern Ireland? Christians."

With regards to Bosnia, violence in this region isn't new. Go back about a hundred years and you'll find moslems prepetrating the violence against Christians. Some view what happened under Milosevic as payback, a hundred years later.

Now with reagrds to Ireland, the violence there had more to do with political and not religious differences. Akin to the Hatfield and McCoy fueds in America. Equating this with Christians doesn't work in your argument like the Bosnia example, as both sides were Christians denominations.

[wxjames]

Yes, Christians once fought and killed to spread the word of their dogma. But, that was then. That was before anyone could hear the views of others on a daily basis. That was when a local strong man could force his beliefs upon the community. Modern civilization has embraced various beliefs as normal. Only one barbarian 'religion' and death cult remains. And, if they cannot fix their own dogma to treat the others equally, then they MUST perish.