Monthly Archives: December 2007

Another ‘Just So’ Story?

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December 16, 2007

By Andrew G.
Bostom

Speaking
at a December 10-11, 2007  Rome Conference entitled, "Fighting for Democracy in the Islamic World,"
renowned historian Bernard Lewis intoned,

"The authoritarianism present in the Middle East region is not part of
the Arab and Muslim tradition, but it has been imported from
Europe…."
Lewis, according to the account of his lecture in Adnkronos
International, then offered as putatively convincing support for his thesis
the non-sequitur observation that during the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan
(presumably, in the course of making decisions) consulted all the dignitaries,
and when he ascended the throne he would greet the crowds, uttering "Allah is
greater than you are."

This ahistorical contention, accompanied by an equally vacuous example of
Ottoman era "proof,"   seems like a desynchronized "Spy Versus Spy" Mad
Magazine segment with Lewis playing the role of both "Department of Joke
and Dagger" agents, simultaneously, when juxtaposed to Lewis’ own entry on
hurriyya-Arabic for freedom-which appears in the venerable Encyclopedia of
Islam.

Hurriyya and the uniquely Western concept of freedom are
completely at odds. Hurriyya "freedom" – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the 
lionized "Greatest Sufi Master", expressed it - "being perfect slavery."
And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis’ perhaps metaphorical
understanding of the relationship between Allah the "master" and his human
"slaves."

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Brothers of Invention?

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By Andrew
G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com |
11/29/2007

Matthias Kuntzel has argued cogently in a series of essays about the unique
dangers posed by Iran’s fusion of a martyrdom mentality, with nuclear weapons
capability, and Holocaust denial. He maintains, “It is precisely this suicidal
outlook that distinguishes the Iranian nuclear weapons program from those of all
other countries and makes it uniquely dangerous.”

Kuntzel’s recently released book Jihad and Jew Hatred, in contrast, is
a very problematic work. Kuntzel concludes this rather brief (~ 60,000 word)
analysis of what he terms the “ideological roots of Islamism,” by calling for
the West to challenge those putative “roots.” But his noble admonition—of vital
importance—is thoroughly undermined by the author’s failure to provide a
coherent assessment of these ideological roots consistent with a sound doctrinal
and historical understanding of the permanent Islamic institution of jihad,
Islam’s foundational, continuously expressed Jew-hatred, and their nexus with
the modern totalitarianism and Jew-hatred of the Nazi movement.



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