Of many strange moments in President Obama’s Cairo speech, perhaps the strangest is the conclusion:
The Holy Quran tells us, Mankind, we have created you male and a female. And we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.
The Talmud tells us, The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.
The Holy Bible tells us, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
What does the idea of gender and tribe distinction have to do with peace? The answer is nothing, except that Obama’s speechwriters felt compelled to drag out some Koranic quotation that sounded vaguely like the biblical and rabbinic concept of peace. The fact that this was the best they could do speaks volumes.
The first human vision of universal speech came from Isaiah, and all classic Jewish sources repeat this theme, as do Christian sources. The Koran, however, contains numerous warnings not to make peace with non-Muslims, but not a single statement comparable to those in Jewish and Christian sources. This may be verified by searching for the word, “peace,” in any of the several online versions of the Koran, including this one from the University of Michigan. There are 49 instances of the word in the Koran, most warning against false peace, e.g.
And when it is said to them, Do not make mischief in the land, they say: We are but peace-makers.
or
O you who believe! when you go to war in Allah’s way, make investigation, and do not say to any one who offers you peace: You are not a believer. Do you seek goods of this world’s life! But with Allah there are abundant gains.
Not a single Koranic mention of the word “peace” corresponds to the biblical vision of divinely-ordered peace.
This confused and contradictory conclusion befits the dumbest utterance on foreign policy ever to escape the lips of a senior American official. Howlers abound. A personal favorite is this:
In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”
Adams’ attempt to appease the Barbary Pirates preceded the Barbary Coast War of 1801-1805 which ended in the reduction of Tripoli by the American fleet in 1805, an event commemorated in the Marines’ Hymn. Arabs remember, even if Obama doesn’t.
Or this one:
American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.
Nobel Prizes? Apart from the Peace Prize, which even Yassir Arafat got, Muslims have won only three Nobel prizes since the they were first awarded, or one for every 450 million Muslims alive today. By contrast, 169 Jews have been Nobel Laureates (excluding the Peace Prize), or about one for every 89,000 Jews alive today. That is, a Jew was 5,000 times more likely to win the Nobel than a Muslim.
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is the last Muslim to win the Nobel. He is an atheist, and lives in virtual exile in New York. Only one Muslim writer today is mentioned as a frontrunner for the literature prize today: the Syrian poet Adonis (the pen-name of Ali Ahmad Sa’id), whom I profiled (Are the Arabs already extinct? Asia Times Online, May 8, 2007).
But the silliest statement of the lot is this:
The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
To which “traditions of Islam” is modernity and globalization hostile? Obama was giving this speech in a country where nine out of ten women undergo clitorectomies. The Egyptian parliament last year passed legislation making genital mutilation legal. Genital mutilation is not mandated by classic Islamic sources, but it is condoned or prescribed by a wide range of Islamic authorities. Is that what the President was thinking when he said, “And we will also expand partnerships with Muslim communities to promote child and maternal health?”
Obama mentioned in passing, “ Today I’m announcing a new global effort with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio.” Polio has reappeared in Nigeria and other West African nations because Muslim religious authorities oppose vaccination as a Western plot against Islam.
To blame Muslim backwardness on colonialism and the Cold War is idiotic — I wish there were a more elegant way to put the matter. Placating Muslims by apologizing for non-existent past mistreatment fools nobody.
The only significant policy content of Obama’s speech was to demand one-sided concessions on the part of Israel, America’s closest ally in the region:
Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.
Obama is lying about “previous agreements.” Bush administration National Security Council official Elliot Abrams reported in an April 8 Washington Post op-ed that Israel’s agreement to the 2003 “road map” included an understanding about ”natural growth” inside existing Israeli settlements. The Israeli government has asked the US to respect pre-existing understandings, and Obama has gone back on them.
Embracing backward societies with no clear path forward while breaking faith with allies is a prescription for declining American influence in the world. If Obama had set out with malice aforethought to lower America’s standing in the world, he could not have done more damage.
June 4th, 2009 |
[...] few statements in Obama’s speech were… idiotic (Spengler) StumbleUpon| Digg| Reddit| Twitter| [...]
June 4th, 2009 |
[...] reactions: David P. Goldman: Why Couldn’t Obama’s writers find a peace quote from the Koran? Ed Morrissey: Not so bad; not much different from Bush Michelle Malkin: Not having any; [...]
June 4th, 2009 |
Daniel Goldman says: “Not a single Koranic mention of the word “peace” corresponds to the biblical vision of divinely-ordered peace.”
Here’s one, in the Arberry trans Q8:63:
“And if they incline to peace, do thou incline
to it; and put thy trust in God; He is
the All-hearing, the All-knowing.”
Here’s another, Q37:75:
“‘Peace be upon Noah among all beings!’
Even so We recompense the good-doers;
he was among Our believing servants.”
Later passages in Q37 say similar things about Abraham, about Aaron and Moses, and about Elias.
June 4th, 2009 |
Ooops, David P. Goldman, not Daniel. Sorry.
June 4th, 2009 |
Gee, you ought to be a speechwriter for Obama. Trouble is, 8:61 (not 8:63) comes right after 8:60, which says:
“Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them whom ye know not. Allah knoweth them. Whatsoever ye spend in the way of Allah it will be repaid to you in full, and ye will not be wronged.” Not quite Isaiah or Jesus in context.
June 4th, 2009 |
This president is so incredibly naive and full of himself, it’s embarrassing. He was so proud of his “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” quote. The audience applauded, but not for the reasons Obama assumed. The intent of Islam is to bring all into submission to Allah–this is what a good Muslim wants.
June 4th, 2009 |
I took your suggestion and searched for “peace” on a searchable Quran and got 190 results. then I did the same thing with the Holy Bible and got 210 results.
the bible is over 800,000 words long, the Quran is 4/5 the length of just the new testament.
I thought you’d be interested in the per volume comparison here, just like you were with your Nobel Prize comparison.
June 4th, 2009 |
I’m clearly grasping at straws here, but nonetheless: Is it possible to view Obama’s speech as an first step toward something a little more, shall I say, honest, rather than a statement of future foreign policy? If this is part of an approach that eventually demands full reciprocity, then maybe the woolly mittens we’ve seen here are a good way to begin.
June 4th, 2009 |
Whatever this speech (and that paragraph) might do for Islamicists, it will certainly toff off the transgenderists ;) …….
http://www.lauras-playground.com/transgenderists.htm
June 5th, 2009 |
Sam Forsyth, can you identify for us which particular translations of the Bible and the Koran you executed your searches on? Goldberg’s search was executed on M.H. Shakir’s translation. It would be helpful to know whether you relied upon a more recent translation directed at a Western market. I understand that the Islamic term for “submission” is often translated into the English word “peace” when the translation is preformed for Western non-Muslim consumption.
BTW,Sam Forsyth, can you tell us what a “sword verse” is?
June 5th, 2009 |
There is quite a debate among conservatives. I note that David Horowitz at frontpagemag.com liked Obama’s speech:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35117
Daniel Pipes trashed it:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/06/assessing-obamas-cairo-speech.html
I agree with my friend Dan Pipes here.
June 6th, 2009 |
Mr. Goldman,
could you supply another link regarding the female circumcision ban being abolished? The article you cited is horribly vague and yahoo was unable to produce any links for me.
June 6th, 2009 |
Quoted and linked to:
http://www.thecampofthesaints.com/2009.05.31_arch.html#1244144600922
June 8th, 2009 |
Mr. Godman bless you for it is people like you who give birth to xenophobia and bigotry and all that is evil in this world. instead of building bridges and speaking of love and tolerance and understanding, you fan the flames of intolerance and hatred. We look to peace “that is how we greet all and sundry’ and harmony. You quote out of context to expand your own brand of malice, shame on you. If Mr. President is extending a hand of friendship and understanding let us all grasp it firmly and not let go. Despite the attempts of rascist bigot, wherever they maybe. Selective quotes can be produced from the Bible and the Torah to justify violence but where will that lead us? only on the path of self destruction. You Sir should know that better or is it selective and venomous amnesia? Let there be peace amongst the three Abrahmic religions and all others of all faiths and inclinations, let there be tolerance and harmony and understanding. Look in the mirror Mr. Godman what do you see?
June 8th, 2009 |
Poster O’Malley is correct — the word “peace” in the Koran and Sunna mean something totally different than what Westerners think it means. That is why toting up how many times the word “peace” appars in the Koran and Sunna is really a fool’s errand. I would bet that less than one out of a hundred Western pols and pundits know that “peace” to an Arab Muslim means about the same thing as “pacification” meant to the US Army when it conducted “search and destroy” missions against suspected Viet Cong villages, i.e., burning down whole settlements and killing everyone, inclusive of noncombatants, does indeed “pacify” the targets.
There are a number of logical corallaries to this. For instance, Arab Muslims have no concept of the Western tradition embodied in the maxim “pacta sunt servanda” — treaties are to be obeyed. Their model is the Treaty of Hudaibiya, where Mohammed had agreed to a ten-year truce with his Meccan enemies, but broke the treaty on a pretext within a few years when Muslim forces were stronger than the Meccan ones; in other words, the end — Muslim dominance/victory — justifies the means, submission of the kaffirs.
There is a reason the world is divided into two camps by normative Islam — Dar-al-Islam (the Domain of Those who have Submitted [Muslims]) and Dar-al-Harb (The Domain of War [the non-Islamic lands of the Kaffirs] — it is the Sixth Pillar of Islam, Jihad/qitaal [combat] against the Bilad-al-Kufr (Lands of the Unbelievers [Those Who Have Not Submitted]).
June 9th, 2009 |
How dare you call me a racist? I am critical of Islam — but Islam claims that the Hebrew Scriptures are a deliberate falsification, so how can I not be?
June 10th, 2009 |
Spengler must not have been listening to all of Obama’s speech because Obama did quote one of the most powerful references made by Mohammad and the Ko’ran to peace and compassion being the only true path to union with Allah.
Mohammad said he who kills one single innocent human being kills the whole human race. And he who shows compassion to a single human being shows compassion to the whole human race. He also said that he who says he loves Allah and hates another human being is a liar. He also taught his followers to love those who hate them and to show compassion to those who persecute you. He showed the way by making his life a living example.
For example, the man who would curse the Prophet and spit on him every day when he came to the gate to leave or return to the city: when this man fell ill, Mohammad went to his home with a pot of soup, took the man’s head in his lap and fed him, nursing him back to life.
For 7 years Mohammad and his followers offered no resistance to the Meccans who murdered, tortured, slaughtered raped and starved Muslims during that time. His first wife actually died during this period of what is believed to be complications from malnutrition. The Meccans woudn’t let the Muslims trade with the citizens of Mecca and wouldn’t let them work their jobs hoping to starve them into submission.
He then fled with his followers some 200 miles away from Mecca and only when the Meccans came looking to kill the Prophet with his followers was Mohammad given the official okey-dokey from God to defend themselves. That’s where Jihad comes from. During the defense Mohammad overheard a young Muslim say he was proud to serve in the Jihad. The Prophet told him that this was not true Jihad. The true Jihad had to do with killing the Ego so that the true Self could merge with Allah, the Beloved.
After the Muslims had defeated the Meccans and driven them back to Mecca, instead of pillaging the Meccans, the Prophet forgave them which led most of them to convert to Islam.
Suicide murdering was not condoned by the Prophet nor is it suggested in the Kor ‘An.
Spengler should be ashamed of himself and stop the hate mongering. Spengler admits he hasn’t read the Kor’An as the basis for these vicious attacks and draws his conclusions from a computer search of the Kor’Anic text to find the word “Peace.” That’s what I call great journalism!
June 10th, 2009 |
Re. your May 5 column “Predicting the death of Islam”:
if Muslims really thought there was no such thing as individual freedom and responsibility, they wouldn’t whack off the hands of thieves, now would they?
June 10th, 2009 |
Mr. Shea,
Good day to you, too.
It is often pointed out that the context for the quote you mention (5:32) conveys a very different meaning, for the following verse says,
“The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom.”
June 10th, 2009 |
We need a Islamist Doublespeak dictionary, listing the Western meaning and the Islamist meaning of common words, which mean different things to Westerners and Muslims>
E.G.,
World Peace: Western — Comity and non-belligerance between cultures, states, peoples. Islamist — Submission of kaffirs and Dar-el-Harb.
Women’s Rights: Western — Equality and parity with men in all spheres of life. Islamist — Adherence to the Sharia, which liberates women better than any socio-polical sytem ever devised by man (not humankind).
God: Western — the deity, who loves the individual and has created man in His own image, i.e., as moral beings. Islamist — Allah, who is capricious and whimsical as an oriental despot, and who is known by 99 names, none of which is Love, and who has divided all mankind into Muslims and kaffirs, those billions of nejis/filthy subhumans predestined for Jahunum/Hell, per his Holy Koran.
June 11th, 2009 |
Ah.. Mr. Goldman here we go again..”The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance..it is the illusion of knowledge” (Stephen Hawkings).. Allow me to quote both the verses in their entirety from ‘The Holy Quran’ as translated and explained by Mohammed Asad ( a convert from Judaism) .
(5:32) “Because of this did We ordain unto the children of Israel that if anyone slays a human being, unless it be (in Punishment) for murder or for spreading corruption on earth, it shall be as though he had slain all mankind: whereas, if anyone saves a life it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind. And indeed there came unto them Our apostles (to the followers of the Bible, both Jews and the Christians) with all the evidence of the truth: yet, behold, notwithstanding all this many of them go on committing all manner of excesses on earth.(translation: in view of the preceding passages these excesses obviously refers to crimes of violence and in particular to the ruthless killings of human beings).
Now to the verse that follows:
(5:33) It is but a just recompense for those who make war on GOD and his apostle (Translation: The term apostle is evidently generic in this context. “By making war on God and his apostle” is meant a hostile opposition to, and wilful disregard of , the ethical precepts ordained by God and explained by all His apostles, combined with the conscious endeavour to destroy or undermine other people’s belief in God as well) and endeavour to spread corruption on earth, that they are being slain in great numbers, or crucified in great numbers, or have in result of their perverseness, their hands and feet cut off in great numbers.(translation: In classical Arabic idiom the “cutting off of ones hand and feet” is often synoymous with “destroying ones power”, and it is possibly in this sense that the expression has been used here. Alternatively it might denote “being mutilated”, both physically and metaphorically, similar to the(metonymical)use of the expression “being crucified” in the sense of “being tortured”) or are being entirely banished from the face of the earth: such is their ignominy in this world.(translation………In short the verse ought to be read in the present tense, for read in this way the verse reveals itself immediately as a statement of fact, a declaration of the inescapability of the retribution which “those who make war on God” bring upon themselves. Their hostility to ethical imperatives causes them to lose sight of all moral values, and their consequent mutual discord and ‘perversness” gives rise to unending strife among themselves for the sake of wordly gain and power. they kill one another in great numbers, and torture and mutilate one another in great numbers with the result that whole communities are wiped out or as the Holy Quran puts it” banished from the face of the earth”. It is this interpretation alone that takes full account of all the expressions occuring in the verse.. and lastly the fact that these horrors are expressed in the terms used by Pharoah the “enemy of God”.(see 7 ;124,20;71 and 26:49) Pharoah is invariably described in the Holy Quran as the epitome of evil and godlessness.
MR. Goldman, it is easy to quote verses to suit ones purpose, without or perhaps with the knowledge of the harm it does. We know the extremists do it very well. Let me quote the following in the same ignorant obscurantist vein but from Deuteronomy.
2:34 “and we took all his cities at the time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the LITTLE ONES of every city and we left none to remain.” “he that is wounded in stones or hath his privy member cut off”. 7:2 ‘and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee: Thou shall smite them and utterly destroy them…” 7:21 “a mighty God and Terrible”.
I could go on but I think you get the picture, at least he is an equal opportunity God.
It serves no pupose to demonise one or the other, we should live and let live without malise or rancour, or hate or hubris.
I would like to finish with a verse from the Holy Quran:” Consider the sun and its radiant brightness, and the moon as it reflects the sun. Consider the day as it reveals the world and the night as it veils it darkly! Consider the sky and its wondrous make and the earth and all its expanse!Consider the human self and how it is formed in accordance with what it is meant to be, and how it is imbued with moral failings as well as its consciousness of God. To a happy state shall indeed attain he who causes this self to grow in purity and truly lost is he who buries it in darkness.”
June 11th, 2009 |
Saeed,
I never have demonized Islam. The idea that Islam is a warlike religion as compared to Judaism and Christianity requires selective examples from history. We conquered Canaan around 1300 B.C.E., in the midst of the so-called Catastrophe that ended the Bronze Age with the burning of every city in the Eastern Mediterranean, excepting Egypt. Not just Canaan’s cities, but all the cities of Asia Minor (e.g. Troy), Mycaenae in Greece, and so forth were destroyed within two generations (I recommend Robert Drews’ book “The End of the Bronze Age” on this). Not for nothing is YHWH called “ish ha-milkhamah” (a man of battle) and “YHWH T’zavaot” (Lord of Armies). Those were tough times for everybody.
What I wrote was quite different: that there is an eschatalogical vision of a universal peace in the Jewish prophets which cannot be found with anything like the same clarity in the Koran.
June 11th, 2009 |
David:
Also, isn’t Rabbinic Judaism, the normative form of Judaism for the last 2,000 years, really a different religion in a number of important ways — e.g., it explicitly repudiated the Jihadi-like fanatical hatreds and militancy of such 1st Century sects as the War Party, Sicirii, Zealots, etc. —from “Biblical Judaism” ? Certainly Talmudic Judaism constitutes a thoroughgoing reinvenvention of “Biblical Judaism”, while Islam has had no worldwide reformation, only revivals, e.g., Whahabism.
June 11th, 2009 |
Richard Greene,
I don’t really know enough about variants of Judaism to answer your question fully. But if we believe Jon Levenson in Resurrection to the effect that resurrection of the body is fundamental to Biblical Judaism from a very early date, then the Sadducees must be considered a deviant group. That also enables us to tell Christians who are concerned about who killed Jesus, “We fired those guys.”
June 12th, 2009 |
Mr.Goldman, I am no scholar of religion, however allow me to quote a scholar of theology and an influential author: “The options have become clear: rivalry amongst the religions, a clash of civilizations, war between nations, or a dialogue of civilzations and peace between the religions as a harbinger of peace among nations. Faced with a deadly threat to all humankind, shouldn’t we demolish the walls of prejudice stone by stone and build bridges of dialogue, including bridges to Islam, rather then erect new barriers of hatred, vengeance, and hostility?.” (Hans Kung)
“A world without evil,a world where God’s sovereignty is fully manifest, is present in every world religion. However this Kingdom of Heaven is most strongly expressed in Judaism, Christanity and Islam.”
Without going into too much detail the “Kingdom of God” is a foundational concept in all the three Abrahmic religions. According to mainstream Islamic belief the second coming of Jesus will put an end to the tyranny of Antichrist and the reign will ensure tranquility and peace for the world.
“The sovereignty on that day will be God’s. he will judge between them”. Holy Quran 22.56
Also God judges all mankind according to their deeds either one goes to Heaven or to Hell, the former being the “Eternal Kingdom”. One thousand verses in the Holy Quran have mentioned the day of resurrection. Tafsir, the Quranic exegesis constitutes a large field of Islamic studies and I refer you to studies by, but not limited to, Dr.Zaki Sartoprar(Georgetown University) and Jim Fodor (Saint. Bonaventure University). We revere all prophets and believe in them and the day of judgement and the resurrection of “God’s Kingdom, and the dawning of an ideal world. The following verse referring to “Acharit Hayamin’ is not that dissimilar to that in the books of Jews or Christians.
“On the day when we shall roll up heaven as a scroll is rolled up for the writings, as we originated the first creation, so we shall bring it back again, a promise binding on us; so we shall do, for we have written in the psalms after the rememberance. The earth shall be the inheritance of My righteous servants.” The Holy Quran 21:104 That seems to me to be as throughgoing an eschatological vision of universal peace as any.
It might interest you to know that in the Holy Quran the name of Abraham is mentioned 48 times, that of Moses 136 times and of Jesus 36 times, (Peace be upon them) as compared to 5 times for Mohammed (Peace be upon him). That should give you an idea that we consider them our prophets as well, and their beliefs are our beliefs, their vision our vision.
June 12th, 2009 |
Saeed,
I am not proposing that the West go into Islamic countries to change what they do. On the contrary: I argue strongly against any such intervention (except under special circumstances where Western security interests are directly at stake, and then with very limited objectives). I am not proposing to tell Muslims to stop practicing Islam, or any such thing.
The problem is that some Muslim countries are headed towards internal dissolution, most prominently Iran, for demographic and economic reasons. Iran is engaged in aggressive behavior (using proxies like Hamas and Hizbollah, developing nuclear weapons) in response to its own internal crisis. And that requires a tough response.
The fact that the Koran cites the names “Jesus” and “Abraham” reflects the Islamic claim that Islam is the last revelation and that the Koran is the true, authentic revelation as opposed to the falsified Jewish and Christian versions. Sorry to disagree. I know Muslims who think that the Jewish and Christian Bibles are falsifications which the Koran corrects. And I know Christians and Jews who think the Koran is an 8th-century forgery. Textual criticism, paleology and so on will get to the truth in good time.
June 12th, 2009 |
“… Mohammad said he who kills one single innocent human being kills the whole human race. And he who shows compassion to a single human being shows compassion to the whole human race. …”
I was waiting for someone (David?) to point out that is a verse from the Talmud which Mohammed lifted.
http://www.on1foot.org/text/mishna-sanhedrin-45
The verse occurs in the context of instructing witnesses to capital cases how important it is to testify truthfully and not rely on hearsay, because human life, in its unique preciousness and its origins, is on another level entirely than monetary claims. “man stamps out many coins with one die, and they are all alike, but the King, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, stamped each man with the seal of Adam, and not one of them is like his fellow.”
Mohammed certainly uprooted the verse from its context as an injunction to be truthful in the service of restoring justice so a community can continue to exist.
June 12th, 2009 |
Yehudit,
I thought that was universally known — I suppose I should have pointed it out. Exactly why the verse appears in the Koran in the context in which it appears is obscure to me. It is a very odd juxtaposition as I noted with what comes before and after.
Shabbat Shalom to Jewish readers – signing off now until tomorrow night.
June 12th, 2009 |
A good number of the Koranic ayas have clear provenance in the Hebrew scriptures, Talmud and Midrash. One theory is the illiterate auto-didact Mohammed picked up these snippits around caravansery campfires during his sojourns as a camel jockey in the service of his first wife, Khadijah. During such evening breaks, preists and rabbis would regale fellow caravaners with religious wisdom and Bible stories, and all the pagans were duly impressed, if not spiritually enriched. One can see the little mind of outsider/orphan-boy/camel-driver Mohammed whirring … hhhmmmmm — great vocation, being a religious leader!
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact