Pure, unadulterated crap

IN THE NEWS
That's about the best I can say about The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, one of the more reprehensible books to appear in a prominent display at your local Barnes and Noble or Borders. Here are some blurbs from the cover, with the necessary corrections appended:

• "Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states." No, it doesn't. The goal, giving all Muslims the opportunity to live under Shari'a law, doesn't depend on military action. In fact, reputable Islamic scholars would agree that war should be the last resort, not the first. They would also tell you that jihad, often misused as a synonym for religious war, actually refers to the Muslim duty to struggle to live a pious life.
• "Today's Jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as the Muslims who fought the Crusaders." Only if you strain so hard to find similarities that you could just as easily make the statement, "The French resistance had the same motives and goals as the Muslims who fought the Crusaders." The Crusades were a muddle of internal and external conflicts. Muslims fought Crusaders. Crusaders fought Muslims. Muslim leaders fought each other. Christian leaders fought each other. "Jihad terrorists," on the other hand, aren't facing anything like the Crusader invasions. Groups like Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood might strenuously argue that Americans are just Crusaders in disguise—which should lead you to ask yourself why anyone here in the West would want to agree with them.
• "The Crusades were defensive conflicts." No doubt, the Crusades happened because of a widespread desire to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control.  However, that's a strange way to describe them as a "defensive" conflict. In 1099, Christians living in Jerusalem had been subject to some recent, minor persecution, including an Egyptian caliph's threat to destroy the Holy Sepulchre. Nonetheless, Christians were still the largest religious group in Jerusalem, and there were no streams of refugees eager to escape. In fact, the rumors of horrific persection that motivated the First Crusade later turned out to be false. True, Muslims and Christians sparred for centuries before and after the Crusades, with Christian rulers evicting Muslim armies from Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, and other portions of what we now consider Europe. True, Muslim corsairs often took Christian prisoners captured in raids as slaves. However, medieval Muslims had their own, equally justified set of complaints about the actions of Christian rulers, not least of which was invasion of a lot more than just Jerusalem during the Crusades.
• "Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centuries—and still goes on." I don't have the space here to perform a thorough analysis of Christian versus Muslim persecution, using the weights and measures of historical suffering. However, it would be ludicrous to say that Muslims didn't suffer at the hands of Christians, such as the Tsarist persecution of Muslims in Central Asia. I'm not even sure what the point of this claim is, exactly. Are we comparing prison experiences? The number of killed and wounded? The free exercise of a minority religion?

The history of Islam is far from spotless. For example, the history of the Crusades is a story of frequent stupidity and brutality on both the Christian and Muslim sides. However, the authors of The P.I.G to Islam are clearly trying to weave all of Islam into one infernal web, as if Christian Reconstructionists were representative of all modern Christians.

In another post, I exhorted people to go read more books about Islam. Please skip this one.

Comments

[JohnFH]

Yes, there are good books, terrible books, and really excellent books about Islam and the interface between Islam, modernity, and war/terror. As is true with any other subject under the sun. You would be more helpful if you gave examples of excellent books, essays, or whatever.

Here's my list of more knowledgeable authors, in alphabetical order: Gilles Kepel, Bernard Lewis, and Olivier Roy.

[Kingdaddy]

I'd add to the list Richard Pipes' excellent In the Path of God, and Karen Armstrong's short history of Islam.

[anon]

"The Crusades were defensive conflicts." Are you making that up? Did they actually write that? Does it say anywhere that "Rape is a quick way to get a lady's attention" or "Nancy Grace is an eloquent advocate for the rights of the accused"?

[Kingdaddy]

Yep, they actually did write that.

[John Everitt]

They obviously know little of the crusades. For starters they haven't even distinguished between crusades. Which crusades? Does that include Constantinople? What about the economic angle? I can only conclude that the author of that book is encouraging his readers to to thing of the crusades as a single thing. It's re-writing history just like the Victorians did.

[beats by dre it]

This is all very new to me and this article really opened my eyes. Thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.