The Reporting of Information of Events associated with Islam

“What is happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe”

April 14, 2016 9:07 am By Robert Spencer 93 Comments

At last, a true bishop. Compare Isa Gürbüz, a man who isn’t afraid to face inconvenient truths, with Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who delude themselves and their people with soothing and suicidal falsehoods, telling themselves and those whom they should be warning and protecting that Islam is a Religion of Peace and that the cure for what ails the West is an inundation of Muslim migrants. Isa Gürbüz sees the future they are inviting, and sees why future generations of free people, if there are any, will regard them as dupes who helped bring about the destruction of Western civilization.



“‘What is happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe,'” translated from «Was im Nahen Osten geschieht, wird auch in Europa passieren», Tages Anzeiger, April 14, 2016 (thanks to Othmar);
Isa Gürbüz, the Syrian Orthodox Church leader in Switzerland, calls Christians to be vigilant. The agenda of Islam is to take power.
“In 20 or 30 years there will be a Muslim majority in Europe. Half of European women will then wear a hijab.” This prediction doesn’t come from Michel Houellebecq or Thilo Sarrazin, but from Dionysos Isa Gürbüz, the Syrian Orthodox bishop in Switzerland. He resides in the idyllic Lake Zug Arth Capuchin monastery, with two monks and two nuns. From the monastery Mor Avgin, as it is called today, he oversees the 10,000 Syrian Orthodox faithful in Switzerland and 4,000 in Austria.

Isa Gürbüz is busy preparing for the Easter services, which are celebrated in his church in late April. Then his coreligionists will flock in the hundreds to Arth. Together they will pray, sing and debate – in the Aramaic native language, the sacred language that Jesus spoke. The Syrian Orthodox Church is the oldest of all. In her home in the former Mesopotamia, today Syria and Iraq, they are persecuted. “Arth has therefore become a center for the preservation of our endangered religion and culture,” says Gürbüz.
The fate of the Christians preoccupies the bishop.

Easter joy may not come easily for the bishop. He is too busy with the fate of Christians in the Middle East: “What today has caused thousands to join the terrorist groups of IS, Taliban or al-Qaida, is the extension of the genocide of 1915.” At that time nearly two million Christians – Aramean, Syrian and Greek Orthodox – perished, and millions converted to Islam. The Bishop continues: “What is happening to us today began 1,300 years ago.” In the 7th century, the genocide of Christians began, then in the darkness, now in the media spotlight. The agenda of Islam has remained always the same to him, namely to expel the Christians from the Middle East. Also in the coming years, the spirit of terror will reign there.
UN protection zone for Christians

The 51-year-old bishop comes, as do most Syrian Orthodox Christians living in Switzerland, from the eastern part of Turkey, which formerly belonged to Syria. Living at Turkey’s border with Syria at the beginning of the century were still 230,000 Syrians; today there are virtually none left. Turkey is the enemy of Christians, says Isa Gürbüz. He was first a monk at the famous monastery of Mor Gabriel, left in 1989, and then went Southeast to teach Syrian and liturgy at the theological seminary in Damascus. In 1997, he became the first Syrian Orthodox bishop in Germany, before he came to Arth a decade ago….
…Isa Gürbüz can hardly imagine a future Syria without Assad. A better man is not easy to find, he said. Before the war, Syria was the only country in the Middle East where Christians were left undisturbed to live their faith. “If Assad is eliminated, the same thing could happen as in Iraq, where after the fall of Saddam Hussein, democracy failed and Islamist groups took over the reins.” The Arab Spring was for Isa Gürbüz just a game, an interlude. “Because Islam ultimately accepts no democracy, but wants to impose Sharia law.”

The bishop is traumatized by the persecution in the Middle East, so that for him it is a matter of urgency to call for vigilance, especially to churches that are intent on political correctness. It is naive to think that the millions of refugees who are now coming to Europe via Turkey will all adapt and live with the Christians in Europe in peace. Also among the refugees there are terrorists. “Why have the Gulf states, the Emirates and Qatar not taken any refugees?” Because it is their agenda to convert Europe to Islam.
Isa Gürbüz already sees Eurabia in the mind’s eye: the number of Muslims with many children will grow rapidly, will take power and will begin the persecution, he believes. “What is happening today in the Middle East will happen here in Europe.” He do not call for hatred, insists the bishop. Only for him, 1,300 years of history of persecution have taught him not to trust Muslims. He sees the beginnings of fateful proselytizing in Europe by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the Turkish Ministry of Religion Diyanet, in mosques in this country….


Robert Spencer in PJ Media: Minneapolis 'Moderate Muslim' Tries to Join ISIS
Islamic State threatens attack on India, vows to wipe out Hindus

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Scholars catch up to Robert Spencer, realize ancient Qur’an challenges Islam’s origins

ByPamela Geller on August 31, 2015
Free Speech Robert Spencer
72 Comments

• See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2015/08/sch...ges-islams-origins.html/#sthash.ayqJybS2.dpuf

This is big international news today — but my colleague Robert Spencer was saying it over a month ago.



“Scholars catch up to Spencer, realize ancient Qur’an challenges Islam’s origins,” by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, August 31, 2015:



“Fragments of the world’s oldest Koran, found in Birmingham last month, may predate the Prophet Muhammad and could even rewrite the early history of Islam, according to scholars.” That’s the lead paragraph of the story below, which is dated today. The implication is that the text existed before it became part of the Qur’an — which would completely demolish the Islamic claim that the Qur’an was delivered in perfect form through Gabriel from Allah to Muhammad, and wasn’t based on any source texts at all.

On July 22, I wrote this about the same Qur’an manuscript: “So if this is a fragment of the Qur’an as it now stands…and yet it could date from as far back as 568, two years before Muhammad is supposed to have been born, it might not be a fragment of the Qur’an at all. It could instead be a portion of some source that later became part of the Qur’an…”

On July 27, I wrote that “this could be a portion of a pre-Islamic source for the Qur’an.” Glad to see the academics catching up.



“The ‘Birmingham Koran’ fragment that could shake Islam after carbon-dating suggests it is OLDER than the Prophet Muhammad,” by Jennifer Newton, MailOnline, August 31, 2015 (thanks to all who sent this in):


Fragments of the world’s oldest Koran, found in Birmingham last month, may predate the Prophet Muhammad and could even rewrite the early history of Islam, according to scholars.
The pages, thought to be between 1,448 and 1,371 years old, were discovered bound within the pages of another Koran from the late seventh century at the library of the University of Birmingham.
Written in ink in an early form of Arabic script on parchment made from animal skin, the pages contain parts of the Suras, or chapters, 18 to 20, which may have been written by someone who actually knew the Prophet Muhammad – founder of the Islamic faith.

The pages were carbon-dated by experts at the University of Oxford, a process which showed the Islamic holy book manuscript could be the oldest Koran in the world.
The discovery was said to be particularly significant as in the early years of Islam, the Koran was thought to have been memorised and passed down orally rather written.
But now several historians have said that the parchment might even predate Muhammad.
It is believed that the Birmingham Koran was produced between 568AD and 645AD, while the dates usually given for Muhammad are between 570AD and 632AD.

Historian Tom Holland, told the Times: ‘It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged – and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.’

Keith Small, from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, added: ‘This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven….

Or alternatively, some other individual or group used texts that were already in existence and shaped them to fit their own political and theological agenda, as I show in Did Muhammad Exist.

• See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2015/08/sch...ges-islams-origins.html/#sthash.ayqJybS2.dpuf

The Rationality! ("Scientific-Historical Analysis")



The Insanity! ("Islamic Scholarship Apologetics")
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Birmingham's ancient Koran history revealed

By Sean Coughlan Education correspondent

• 23 December 2015
• From the section Business

Media caption The ancient Koran discovered this summer is giving up some of its secrets

When the University of Birmingham revealed that it had fragments from one of the world's oldest Korans, it made headlines around the world.
In terms of discoveries, it seemed as unlikely as it was remarkable.
But it raised even bigger questions about the origins of this ancient manuscript.
And there are now suggestions from the Middle East that the discovery could be even more spectacularly significant than had been initially realised.
There are claims that these could be fragments from the very first complete version of the Koran, commissioned by Abu Bakr, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad - and that it is "the most important discovery ever for the Muslim world".
This is a global jigsaw puzzle.
But some of the pieces have fallen into place.
It seems likely the fragments in Birmingham, at least 1,370 years old, were once held in Egypt's oldest mosque, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat.


Paris match

This is because academics are increasingly confident the Birmingham manuscript has an exact match in the National Library of France, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Image copyright Thinkstock
Image caption

The Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Egypt, where Birmingham's Koran seems to have orginated
The library points to the expertise of Francois Deroche, historian of the Koran and academic at the College de France, and he confirms the pages in Paris are part of the same Koran as Birmingham's.
Alba Fedeli, the researcher who first identified the manuscript in Birmingham, is also sure it is the same as the fragments in Paris.
The significance is that the origin of the manuscript in Paris is known to have been the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat.


'Spirited away'

The French part of this manuscript was brought to Europe by Asselin de Cherville, who served as a vice consul in Egypt when the country was under the control of Napoleon's armies in the early 19th Century.
Prof Deroche says Asselin de Cherville's widow seemed to have tried to sell this and other ancient Islamic manuscripts to the British Library in the 1820s, but they ended up in the national library in Paris, where they have remained ever since.


Image caption

1: In summer 2015 two leaves of an ancient Koran at the University of Birmingham were identified and dated as being much earlier than anyone had anticipated and among the oldest in the world.
2: The National Library of France, Paris has leaves from the same Koran, brought from Egypt by a vice consul under Napoleon.
3: The Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat, Egypt.
The fragments of the Koran in Birmingham are believed to have come from this ancient mosque.
4: Alphonse Mingana was born near Zakho in modern-day Iraq in 1878. He brought the manuscript to Birmingham from the Middle East on a collecting trip in the 1920s funded by the Cadbury family.


But if some of this Koran went to Paris, what happened to the pages now in Birmingham?
Prof Deroche says later in the 19th Century manuscripts were transferred from the mosque in Fustat to the national library in Cairo.
Along the way, "some folios must have been spirited away" and entered the antiquities market.
These were presumably sold and re-sold, until in the 1920s they were acquired by Alphonse Mingana and brought to Birmingham.
Mingana was an Assyrian, from what is now modern-day Iraq, whose collecting trips to the Middle East were funded by the Cadbury family.
"Of course, no official traces of this episode were left, but it should explain how Mingana got some leaves from the Fustat trove," says Prof Deroche, who holds the legion of honour for his academic work.
And tantalisingly, he says other similar material, sold to western collectors could, still come to light.


Disputed date

But what remains much more contentious is the dating of the manuscript in Birmingham.
What was really startling about the Birmingham discovery was its early date, with radiocarbon testing putting it between 568 and 645.
The latest date in the range is 13 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632.

Image copyright Thinkstock
Image caption

Manuscripts were brought to France by Napoleon's forces in Egypt

David Thomas, Birmingham University's professor of Christianity and Islam, explained how much this puts the manuscript into the earliest years of Islam: "The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad."
But the early date contradicts the findings of academics who have based their analysis on the style of the text.
Mustafa Shah, from the Islamic studies department at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, says the "graphical evidence", such as how the verses are separated and the grammatical marks, show this is from a later date.
In this early form of Arabic, writing styles developed and grammatical rules changed, and Dr Shah says the Birmingham manuscript is simply inconsistent with such an early date.
Prof Deroche also says he has "reservations" about radiocarbon dating and there have been cases where manuscripts with known dates have been tested and the results have been incorrect.


'Confident' dates are accurate

But staff at Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, which dated the parchment, are convinced their findings are correct, no matter how inconvenient.
Researcher David Chivall says the accuracy of dating has improved in recent years, with a much more reliable approach to removing contamination from samples.


Image caption

Jamal bin Huwaireb believes that this an even more remarkable find than has so far been realized

In the case of the Birmingham Koran, Mr Chivall says the latter half of the age range is more likely, but the overall range is accurate to a probability of 95%.
It is the same level of confidence given to the dating of the bones of Richard III, also tested at the Oxford laboratory.
"We're as confident as we can be that the dates are accurate."
And academic opinions can change. Dr Shah says until the 1990s the dominant academic view in the West was that there was no complete written version of the Koran until the 8th Century.
But researchers have since overturned this consensus, proving it "completely wrong" and providing more support for the traditional Muslim account of the history of the Koran.
The corresponding manuscript in Paris, which could help to settle the argument about dates, has not been radiocarbon tested.


The first Koran?

But if the dating of the Birmingham manuscript is correct what does it mean?
There are only two leaves in Birmingham, but Prof Thomas says the complete collection would have been about 200 separate leaves.

Image copyright PA
Image caption

The text of the Koran has remained unchanged since this very early version in Birmingham

"It would have been a monumental piece of work," he said.
And it raises questions about who would have commissioned the Koran and been able to mobilise the resources to produce it.
Jamal bin Huwareib, managing director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, an education foundation set up by the ruler of the UAE, says the evidence points to an even more remarkable conclusion.
He believes the manuscript in Birmingham is part of the first comprehensive written version of the Koran assembled by Abu Bakr, the Muslim caliph who ruled between 632 and 634.


Image caption

Prof Thomas says the writer of this manuscript could have heard the Prophet Muhammad preach

"It's the most important discovery ever for the Muslim world," says Mr bin Huwareib, who has visited Birmingham to examine the manuscript.
"I believe this is the Koran of Abu Bakr."
He says the high quality of the hand writing and the parchment show this was a prestigious work created for someone important - and the radiocarbon dating shows it is from the earliest days of Islam.
"This version, this collection, this manuscript is the root of Islam, it's the root of the Koran," says Mr bin Huwareib.
"This will be a revolution in studying Islam."
This would be an unprecedented find. Prof Thomas says the dating fits this theory but "it's a very big leap indeed".


'Priceless manuscript'

There are other possibilities. The radiocarbon dating is based on the death of the animal whose skin was used for the parchment, not when the writing was completed, which means the manuscript could be a few years later than the age range ending in 645, with Prof Thomas suggesting possible dates of 650 to 655.

Media captionThe university's academics were "startled" by the results of radiocarbon dating
This would overlap with the production of copies of the Koran during the rule of the caliph Uthman, between 644 and 656, which were intended to produce an accurate, standardised version to be sent to Muslim communities.
If the Birmingham manuscript was a fragment of one of these copies it would also be a spectacular outcome.
It's not possible to definitively prove or disprove such theories.
But Joseph Lumbard, professor in the department of Arabic and translation studies at the American University of Sharjah, says if the early dating is correct then nothing should be ruled out.
"I would not discount that it could be a fragment from the codex collected by Zayd ibn Thabit under Abu Bakr.
"I would not discount that it could be a copy of the Uthmanic codex.
"I would not discount Deroche's argument either, he is such a leader in this field," says Prof Lumbard.
He also warns of evidence being cherry-picked to support experts' preferred views.

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BBC iWonder: The Quran

A timeline of how the Quran became part of British life

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Prof Thomas says there could also have been copies made from copies and perhaps the Birmingham manuscript is from a copy made specially for the mosque in Fustat.
Jamal bin Huwaireb sees the discovery of such a "priceless manuscript" in the UK, rather than a Muslim country, as sending a message of mutual tolerance between religions.
"We need to respect each other, work together, we don't need conflict."
But don't expect any end to the arguments over this ancient document.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35151643

 

The BBC Really Wants You to Believe the Qur’an Is Authentic

And will bend the truth to convince you.

July 23, 2015
Robert Spencer
91
2.4K211


The BBC announced enthusiastically Wednesday that “what may be the world’s oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.” This news is not only of interest to scholars and Muslim intellectuals; it appears to buttress the Islamic claim that the Qur’an’s text has remained unchanged for 1,400 years – which is purported to be proof of its divine origin.
There is only one problem with all this: the BBC article raises more questions than it answers, and reveals more about the wishful thinking of the academic and media establishments than it does about the Qur’an.
The article is riddled with academic and journalistic sloppiness. We’re told that the radiocarbon dating shows, “with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.” Very well, but does the ink date to that time as well? We are not told. Parchment was often reused in the ancient world, with the earlier text erased and written over, and so if a parchment dates from 645, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the text does.

However, it is impossible to discover any more details from this shoddy BBC presentation. The best photo of this manuscript that the BBC provides shows clear traces of another text underneath the main text. It is not clear from the photo whether that is the text from the other side bleeding through on the photograph, or even if there is any text on the other side; nor does the BBC tell us whether or not the parchment shows signs of having been a palimpsest — that is, a parchment that was used more than once for different texts. There is also some red ink in the top lines of the manuscript in the photo but not in the succeeding lines. Has the red ink faded from the other sections, or is it itself evidence of the ink fading? Or is it a later hand filling in areas that had faded away (and possibly altering the text)? The BBC doesn’t tell us, yet this is an extremely salient point. Another recently discovered and much-touted fragment of the Qur’an, now in Germany and dated from between 649 and 675, shows clear signs of alteration, raising the possibility that the Qur’anic text was altered over time (image available here). If this is a possibility also for the University of Birmingham manuscript, the BBC should tell us so. But it doesn’t.

What’s more, if the text along with the parchment really dates from between 568 and 645, it may not be a fragment of the Qur’an at all. The Qur’an, according to Islamic tradition, was compiled in its definitive form in the year 653 by the caliph Uthman, who ordered all variant texts burned and the canonical version distributed to all the provinces within his domains.

As I show in my book Did Muhammad Exist?, however, there are numerous reasons to doubt this story. The principal one is that if the entire Islamic world had copies of the Qur’an by the mid 650s, why is it that not until the latter part of the seventh and early part of the eighth century do mentions of the Qur’an begin to appear? The Dome of the Rock inscriptions date from 691; they are made up of many Qur’an verses, but out of their Qur’anic order and some with notable changes in wording. Who would have dared to change the words of Allah? And the first clear reference to the Qur’an as such occurred around the year 710—eighty years after the book was supposedly completed and sixty years after it was supposedly collected and distributed. During a debate with an Arab noble, a Christian monk of the monastery of Beth Hale (of which there were two, one in northern Iraq and the other in Arabia; it is not known in which one this monk lived) cited the Qur’an by name. The monk wrote, “I think that for you, too, not all your laws and commandments are in the Qur’an which Muhammad taught you; rather there are some which he taught you from the Qur’an, and some are in surat albaqrah and in gygy and in twrh.”

By this point Arab armies had conquered a huge expanse of territory, stretching from North Africa, across the Levant, Syria, and Iraq, and into Persia, and yet those eight decades of conquest had produced scarcely a mention of the book that supposedly inspired them. And when the Qur’an finally was mentioned, it appears that the book was not even in the form we now know. Surat albaqrah (or al-Baqara) is “the chapter of the Cow,” which is the second, and longest, sura of the Qur’an. The eighth-century monk thus quite clearly knew of a Qur’an that didn’t contain this sura; he considered surat albaqrah to be a stand-alone book, along with gygy (the Injil, or Gospel) and twrh (the Torah). It is unlikely that the monk simply made an error: who ever mistakes a chapter of a book for a separate book?

So if this is a fragment of the Qur’an as it now stands (and what portion of the Qur’an is it, anyway? Neither the BBC nor its quoted academics tell us), and yet it could date from as far back as 568, two years before Muhammad is supposed to have been born, it might not be a fragment of the Qur’an at all. It could instead be a portion of some source that later became part of the Qur’an, as did Surat al-Baqara.
The BBC quotes Professor David Thomas, who also doesn’t tell us what exact portions of the Qur’an this manuscript contains, and who raises even more questions when he says: “These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.”
This is a very strange statement. The BBC, and apparently the University of Birmingham, are advertising this as an ancient fragment of the Qur’an. Presumably when Thomas says that “these portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today,” he means that the larger whole of which they once formed a part was “very close” to the Qur’an. But how close is “very close”? Mainstream Muslims maintain that the Qur’anic text has undergone no alteration at all since it was first “revealed.”

So when Thomas says that his fragments were once part of something “very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration,” he is already departing from the standard story of Qur’anic origins that he is claiming to support. The text has undergone “little or no alteration”? Well, which is it? Little alteration, which no matter how little would explode the Islamic claim of its divine origin and perfect protection, or no alteration, which would support that claim?

The Guardian illumines some of this in its own report when it says: “The significance of Birmingham’s leaves, which hold part of Suras (chapters) 18 to 20, was missed because they were bound together with another text, in a very similar hand but written almost 200 years later….The verses are incomplete, and believed to have been an aide memoire for an imam who already knew the Qur’an by heart, but the text is very close to the accepted authorised version.”
Suras 18 and 20, with their long stories of Moses (very odd ones in 18, along with material about Dhul Qarnayn, who is usually assumed to be Alexander the Great, and the Christian story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus), and sura 19, with its extended retelling of the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, are some of the most obviously derivative sections of the entire Qur’an — reinforcing the impression that this could be a fragment of a source of the Qur’an, not the Qur’an itself. And indeed, it is not the Qur’an itself, we are finally told, for “the verses are incomplete, and believed to have been an aide memoire for an imam who already knew the Qur’an by heart, but the text is very close to the accepted authorised version.” Very close is how close? Any deviation could just as easily be not an aide memoire for an imam, but evidence of editing and change, as Islam was being developed in the latter part of the seventh century and the early part of the eighth.

In sum, the more one looks at this curious story, the less there is to see. It seems indisputable that an ancient manuscript has been confirmed to be ancient. Has its text been altered? We aren’t told. Is it part of the Qur’an? We can’t be sure. Does it correspond to the modern standard Qur’anic text? We aren’t told. The only thing we can really be sure of about this story is the closing statement from Dr. Muhammad Isa Waley: this “is news to rejoice Muslim hearts.” As is so often the case with the mainstream media, that may be the primary objective all along.

Tags: Did Muhammad Exist?, Mohammad, quran, United Kingdom

Oldest Qur’an fragments in the world discovered in the UK? Maybe, maybe not

July 22, 2015 10:47 am By Robert Spencer


This BBC article is circulating widely, but it raises more questions than it answers, and reveals more about the wishful thinking of the academic and media establishments than it does about the Qur’an.

The article is riddled with academic and journalistic sloppiness. We’re told that the radiocarbon dating shows, “with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.” Very well, but does the ink date to that time as well? We are not told. Parchment was often reused in the ancient world, with the earlier text erased and written over, and so if a parchment dates from 645, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the text does.

However, it is impossible to discover any more details from this shoddy BBC presentation. The best photo of this manuscript that the BBC provides shows clear traces of another text underneath the main text. It is not clear from the photo whether that is the text from the other side bleeding through on the photograph, or even if there is any text on the other side; nor does the BBC tell us whether or not the parchment shows signs of having been a palimpsest — that is, a parchment that was used more than once for different texts.

There is also some red ink in the top lines of the manuscript in the photo but not in the succeeding lines. Has the red ink faded from the other sections, or is it itself evidence of the ink fading? Or is it a later hand filling in areas that had faded away (and possibly altering the text)? The BBC doesn’t tell us, yet this is an extremely salient point. Another recently discovered and much-touted fragment of the Qur’an, now in Germany and dated from between 649 and 675, shows clear signs of alteration, raising the possibility that the Qur’anic text was altered over time. If this is a possibility also for the University of Birmingham manuscript, the BBC should tell us so. But it doesn’t.


The Tubingen Quran manuscript, dated from 649-675, showing clear signs of alteration.


What’s more, if the text along with the parchment really dates from between 568 and 645, it may not be a fragment of the Qur’an at all. The Qur’an, according to Islamic tradition, was compiled in its definitive form in the year 653 by the caliph Uthman, who ordered all variant texts burned and the canonical version distributed to all the provinces within his domains. As I show in my book Did Muhammad Exist?, however, there are numerous reasons to doubt this story.

The principal one is that if the entire Islamic world had copies of the Qur’an by the mid 650’s, why is it that not until the latter part of the seventh and early part of the eighth century do mentions of the Qur’an begin to appear? The Dome of the Rock inscriptions date from 691; they are made up of many Qur’an verses, but out of their Qur’anic order and some with notable changes in wording. Who would have dared to change the words of Allah? And the first clear reference to the Qur’an as such occurred around the year 710—eighty years after the book was supposedly completed and sixty years after it was supposedly collected and distributed. During a debate with an Arab noble, a Christian monk of the monastery of Beth Hale (of which there were two, one in northern Iraq and the other in Arabia; it is not known in which one this monk lived) cited the Qur’an by name. The monk wrote, “I think that for you, too, not all your laws and commandments are in the Qur’an which Muhammad taught you; rather there are some which he taught you from the Qur’an, and some are in surat albaqrah and in gygy and in twrh.”


By this point Arab armies had conquered a huge expanse of territory, stretching from North Africa, across the Levant, Syria, and Iraq, and into Persia, and yet those eight decades of conquest had produced scarcely a mention of the book that supposedly inspired them. And when the Qur’an finally was mentioned, it appears that the book was not even in the form we now know. Surat albaqrah (or al-Baqara) is “the chapter of the Cow,” which is the second, and longest, sura of the Qur’an. The eighth-century monk thus quite clearly knew of a Qur’an that didn’t contain this sura; he considered surat albaqrah to be a stand-alone book, along with gygy (the Injil, or Gospel) and twrh (the Torah). It is unlikely that the monk simply made an error: who ever mistakes a chapter of a book for a separate book?

So if this is a fragment of the Qur’an as it now stands (and what portion of the Qur’an is it, anyway? Neither the BBC nor its quoted academics tell us), and yet it could date from as far back as 568, two years before Muhammad is supposed to have been born, it might not be a fragment of the Qur’an at all. It could instead be a portion of some source that later became part of the Qur’an, as did Surat al-Baqara.

Professor David Thomas, also without telling us what exact portions of the Qur’an this manuscript contains, raises even more questions when he says: “These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.” This is a very strange statement.
The BBC, and apparently the University of Birmingham, are advertising this as an ancient fragment of the Qur’an. Presumably when Thomas says that “these portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today,” he means that the larger whole of which they once formed a part was “very close” to the Qur’an. But how close is “very close”?

Mainstream Muslims maintain that the Qur’anic text has undergone no alteration at all since it was first “revealed.” So when Thomas says that his fragments were once part of something “very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration,” he is already departing from the standard story of Qur’anic origins that he is claiming to support. The text has undergone “little or no alteration”? Well, which is it? Little alteration, which no matter how little would explode the Islamic claim of its divine origin and perfect protection, or no alteration, which would support that claim?

In sum, the more one looks at this curious story, the less there is to see. It seems indisputable that an ancient manuscript has been confirmed to be ancient. Has its text been altered? We aren’t told. Is it part of the Qur’an? We can’t be sure. Does it correspond to the modern standard Qur’anic text? We aren’t told. The only thing we can really be sure of about this story is the closing statement from Dr. Muhammad Isa Waley: this “is news to rejoice Muslim hearts.” That may be the primary objective all along.

UPDATE: The Guardian has this: “The significance of Birmingham’s leaves, which hold part of Suras (chapters) 18 to 20, was missed because they were bound together with another text, in a very similar hand but written almost 200 years later….The verses are incomplete, and believed to have been an aide memoire for an imam who already knew the Qur’an by heart, but the text is very close to the accepted authorised version.”

Suras 18 and 20, with their long stories of Moses (very odd ones in 18, along with material about Dhul Qarnayn, who is usually assumed to be Alexander the Great, and the Christian story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus), and sura 19, with its extended retelling of the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, are some of the most obviously derivative sections of the entire Qur’an — reinforcing the impression that this could be a fragment of a source of the Qur’an, not the Qur’an itself. And indeed, it is not the Qur’an itself, we are finally told, for “the verses are incomplete, and believed to have been an aide memoire for an imam who already knew the Qur’an by heart, but the text is very close to the accepted authorised version.” Very close is how close? Any deviation could just as easily be not an aide memoire for an imam, but evidence of editing and change, as Islam was being developed in the latter part of the seventh century and the early part of the eighth.

“‘Oldest’ Koran fragments found in Birmingham University,” by Sean Coughlan, BBC, July 22, 2015:

What may be the world’s oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.
Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.
The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.
The British Library’s expert on such manuscripts, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this “exciting discovery” would make Muslims “rejoice”.
The manuscript had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, without being identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the world.

Oldest texts

When a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, looked more closely at these pages it was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the results were “startling”.
The university’s director of special collections, Susan Worrall, said researchers had not expected “in our wildest dreams” that it would be so old.
“Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting.”
The fragments of the Koran are still legible
The tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, showed that the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, were among the very oldest surviving texts of the Koran.
These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
“They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam,” said David Thomas, the university’s professor of Christianity and Islam.
“According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death.”
Prof Thomas says the dating of the Birmingham folios would mean it was quite possible that the person who had written them would have been alive at the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
“The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad. He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach. He may have known him personally – and that really is quite a thought to conjure with,” he says.

First-hand witness

Prof Thomas says that some of the passages of the Koran were written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels – and a final version, collected in book form, was completed in about 650.
He says that “the parts of the Koran that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death”.
“These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.”
The manuscript, written in “Hijazi script”, an early form of written Arabic, becomes one of the oldest known fragments of the Koran.
Because radiocarbon dating creates a range of possible ages, there is a handful of other manuscripts in public and private collections which overlap. So this makes it impossible to say that any is definitively the oldest.
But the latest possible date of the Birmingham discovery – 645 – would put it among the very oldest….
Dr Waley suggests that the manuscript found by Birmingham is a “precious survivor” of a copy from that era or could be even earlier.
“In any case, this – along with the sheer beauty of the content and the surprisingly clear Hijazi script – is news to rejoice Muslim hearts.”

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CAIR: “Oldest Qur’an” challenges “Islamophobia” — but Saudi scholars discredit it

July 27, 2015 12:40 pm By Robert Spencer
H
amas-linked CAIR’s press release says in part:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Muslim advocacy group, Friday cited a discovery of what may be the earliest fragments of the Quran as an opportunity for Americans of all faiths to increase their understanding of the holy text and to challenge growing Islamophobia.

How could the discovery that a purported Qur’an fragment dates back to the late sixth or early- to mid-seventh century be an opportunity to challenge supposedly “growing Islamophobia”? Hamas-linked CAIR doesn’t explain, aside from this from its top dog Nihad Awad: “We ask Americans of all faiths and backgrounds to use the opportunity offered by this new discovery to obtain or share a copy of the Quran and to use it as an educational tool to help challenge the rising level of Islamophobia in our society.”
That’s a great idea — to use the Qur’an as an educational tool. I’m all for that. Those wishing to obtain an education should be sure to read carefully these verses (among others): 2:190-193; 4:34; 4:89, 5:51; 8:12; 8:39, 8:60; 9:5; 9:14-15; 9:29-30; 9:123; 47:4; 48:29; and 98:6.
And in the meantime, regarding this “oldest Qur’an,” even Saudi scholars are not on board, and echo many of the same objections I made here and here to its status as a seventh-century manuscript: “Saudi scholars discredit UK’s claim of ‘oldest Quran,'” Saudi Gazette, July 27, 2015:

Several Saudi scholars have questioned the veracity of claims a British university has discovered the oldest copy of the Quran, according to the Makkah daily.
Researchers at Birmingham University claimed last week that fragments of a Quran manuscript found in the university library were from one of the world’s oldest surviving copies of the Islamic text and may even have been written by someone who knew Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
Radiocarbon dating of the two parchment folios containing Quranic verses from chapter 18-20 in Hijazi script were at least 1,370 years old, likely written between 568AD and 645AD.
Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is believed to have lived between 570AD and 632AD.

And that means that this could be a portion of a pre-Islamic source for the Qur’an.
However, at least three Saudi scholars claim the text must have been written after the Prophet’s death for several reasons.
Abdul Sattar Al Halouji reportedly said the university’s claim could be a publicity stunt.
“It is not possible to ascertain that the parchments were written close to the time of the Prophet (pbuh),” he was quoted as telling Makkah daily. “The university should have examined the ink not the hide on which it was written.”

He said the hide, or animal skin, on which the text was written could be as old as the researchers suggest, but that does not prove the text was written at that time.
Archaeologist Adnan Al Sharif told the newspaper the manuscript was not as old as suggested because during the Prophet’s life, the Quran did not include red ink lines to separate chapters, nor red ink to write the words ‘Bismillah Al Rahman Al Raheem’, which traditionally start a new Surah (chapter), and the order of the holy book was not of that era.
“The manuscript might possibly be from the time of Othman Bin Affan who became Caliph many years after the death of the Prophet (pbuh),” Al Sharif, dean of libraries at Umm Al Qura University, was quoted as saying.

“During the time of the Prophet (pbuh), the Quran was not organised or put in its present day form. Also, there were no colours used.”
He added there were several observations that cast doubt on the Birmingham University claims.
“One of these is the red-colour separation between the Bismillah and the two Surahs of Mariam and Taha. It was not customary during the Prophet’s time to separate between the Surahs. This copy seems to be organised in [an] order which was not so during the time of the Prophet (pbuh),” he said.
Also, radiocarbon examination of a manuscript could only indicate the century in which it was made and not the year, he said.
“There are copies of the Quran in Turkey, Egypt and Yemen dating back to the first Hijra century. This means that they are concurrent to the Birmingham manuscript,” Al Sharif was quoted as saying.

Abbas Tashkandi, another manuscript expert, agreed that examining the hide did not reveal when the text was written.
“The hide may be old but the writing may be new,” he said.

Counterterror expert: "deradicalization" is "practically impossible"
Islam: Fastest Shrinking Religion in the World

Comment by admin:

The "guy who changed the script" (timemarker 9:30-11:00) is Al Hajjaj ibn Yusuf; Iraq administrator of the 5th Ummayad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (builder caliph of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hajjaj_ibn_Yusuf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Malik_ibn_Marwan

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Hugh Fitzgerald: Homo Kaplanensis: “Europe Was Defined By Islam. And Islam Is Redefining It Now.”

April 21, 2016 6:45 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 22 Comments



Robert Kaplan, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, has just published a piece on Islam and the future of Europe. He claims, startlingly, that Europe “was essentially defined by Islam,” by which he means that before Islam swept across North Africa, Europe consisted of a single civilization, on both banks of the Mediterranean — that of the Roman Empire — and that Islam’s arrival severed “the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves.” It is true that Muslim conquerors swept across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries, but not quite true, pace Kaplan, that they “extinguished Christianity there.” Millions of Coptic Christians remained a majority in Egypt until the 14^th century (that is, for at least 700 years after the time that Kaplan claims Muslim armies “virtually extinguished Christianity” in North Africa). And while it is true that the Roman Empire was sundered, it was not only by the forces of Islam, as Kaplan appears to believe: before the Arab armies arrived, others had been seizing territory from Roman control, including the Visigoths in Spain and the Vandals, who conquered the Roman province of Africa in 433 and held it till 539.

Kaplan quotes with evident approval Jose Ortega y Gasset that “all European history has been a great migration toward the North.” Is that true? The Roman Empire fell because of a great migration of the Germanic tribes from the north and northeast to the South; it was they, the Barbarians, who beat down the steady Roman legions and seized Rome in 476 A.D., with the Germanic warrior Odoacer placed on the throne. And even before the Fall of Rome, the Roman Empire had divided into Eastern and Western Empires, one ruled from Rome, the other from Constantinople. Surely that split was just as significant, for the future of European civilization, with the Western empire embracing Latin Catholicism, and the Eastern empire Orthodox Christianity, as the loss of North Africa to Islam.

Racing through the centuries, Kaplan in the same sentence leaps from “the breakup of the Roman empire” (into East and West, but he says nothing further about the colossal effect of that split) to “that northward migration” which “saw the Germanic peoples (the Goths, Vandals, Franks, and Lombards) forge the rudiments of Western civilization.” This is a doubly bizarre remark, since it was their southern migration which brought the Germanic peoples within the borders of the Roman Empire and ultimately to Rome. And it was the Romans of both the Western and Eastern Empires, not the Germanic tribes, who forged more than the rudiments of Western civilization, including such monumental achievements as, in the Eastern Empire, the Code of Justinian.

Kaplan fleetingly mentions, exactly three times, what should be at the center of any history of Europe: Christianity itself. He writes that the Slavs and Magyars “adopted Christianity,” that European unity began with the concept of a “Christendom” in “inevitable opposition to Islam,” and that Muslims in Europe today “have no desire to be Christians” – and that’s all he has to say on the subject of Europe and Christianity. He does not discuss what Christianity has contributed to forming the European mentality over the last two thousand years, or how it has influenced, even shaped, Europe’s art and music, its literature, its philosophy, its political thought, its more, none of it thinkable without taking into the account the influence of Christianity. Kaplan has Islam on his mind, and were he to do justice to Christianity, his readers might begin to see the sense of insisting that it was not Islam, but Christianity, that “defined Europe.”

If Islam and the Muslim armies hadn’t existed, Europe’s civilizational boundaries would be different – could still extend into North Africa and the Levant — but the nature of that civilization would not be different from what it was, and is. Europe would still have been a child of Greece and Rome and ancient Israel. Islam did not contribute to those many things – art, music, literature, philosophy, political theory – that we mean by “civilization.” Islam created in its adherents a mentality that abhorred novelty, or bida, that held to a kind of inshallah-fatalism based on the view of an Allah who could interfere, at whim and subject to no laws, with the lives of men, that encouraged a habit of mental submission rather than of skeptical inquiry. European civilization stood in stark contrast, promoting rather than anathematizing the new, believing in a God who was not whimsical but rationally prepared to obey His own laws, and promoting critical thought and inquiry. After the initial sweep of Muslim armies through North Africa, halted at the highwater mark for Islam of Poitiers in the West and, centuries later, of Vienna in the East, Islam’s “contribution” to Europe consisted solely of military aggression, mainly through raids by sea (in one case, Muslim raiders got as far as Iceland). But Islam contributed nothing to European culture. Civilizationally, Europe remained a child of Greece and Rome and Israel, and then, of course, for two millennia, of Christianity. The armies of Islam waged war as best they could; their gains and losses helped to define Europe’s political boundaries, but Islam had no effect on the European mentality.

Kaplan several times mentions Edward Said’s book Orientalism favorably, claiming that it set out how “Islam had defined Europe culturally, by showing what it was against. Europe’s identity, in other words, was built in significant measure on a sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery.” What Said mainly tried to do in Orientalism was different: to endow with a new and insidious meaning the word “Orientalist,” which hitherto had referred neutrally to Western scholars of the languages of the Levant (especially Arabic), and of Islam and Islamic civilization. Said claimed that these “Orientalists” studied Arabic as part of a deliberate campaign to justify and help the project of Western imperialism by means of their putatively unsympathetic or hostile treatment of Oriental peoples. The devastating detailed critique of Said’s use of “Orientalism” as a term of polemical abuse, delivered by Bernard Lewis in 1982, and which many considered a knockout blow, apparently has not yet reached Robert D. Kaplan.

Kaplan appears to believe that European unity in the early modern period could not have been achieved without Europe’s “inevitable opposition” to Islam. This “inevitable opposition” to Islam was, Kaplan says, “a concept that culminated in the Crusades.” No, the Crusades were not the culmination of some “inevitable opposition” to inoffensive Muslims. Rather, Europe’s opposition to Islam “culminating in the Crusades” was fed by centuries of Muslim attacks up and down the coasts of Europe (and not the other way around), and the Crusades were undertaken initially in order to repel an assault by Muslim Seljuk Turks on Anatolia, and the Christian effort then broadened into an attempt to retake the Holy Land because, for a century, Muslims had made life hell for Christians in the Holy Land, beginning with the almost-total destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the orders of the Caliph Al-Hakim in 1009, and attacks on Christian pilgrims that kept them from travelling freely to, and within, the Holy Land. This understandable response to continuous Muslim aggression hardly required an “inevitable opposition” to “Islam.”

Kaplan mentions Europe’s “sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery” as building its identity. Curiously, he doesn’t mention Islam’s far greater sense of superiority to the Christian world on its periphery. Nor does he mention that Europe had been quite capable of uniting and building an identity without needing Islam to measure itself against – or has he forgotten about the Roman Empire?
And Kaplan continues in the Saidian vein of grand pronouncements, and like Said, turns out to be wrong in many of his details.
He writes that “imperialism proved the ultimate expression of the evolution” from the “inevitable opposition to Islam” to that European “sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world.” That’s the grand pronouncement. And here’s the cavalier way with history: “Here modern Europe, starting with Napoleon, conquered the Middle East, then dispatched scholars and diplomats to study Islamic civilization, classifying it as something beautiful, fascinating, and – most crucial – inferior.”

What happened was this: Napoleon entered Egypt in 1798. Far from this representing the beginning of Europe’s conquest of the Middle East, all French forces had left Egypt by 1801, and no European forces “conquered” any part of the Muslim Middle East or Muslim North Africa until the 20^th century, with the single exception of Algeria. But Kaplan appears to believe that Napoleon entered Egypt, and then those Europeans, “starting with Napoleon, conquered the Middle East.” He may not know the true sequence of events: save for a three-year stay by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt, and the annexing of Algeria by France in 1830, the Europeans had little to do with the Arab lands until just before World War I. Scrupulosity with the facts of history is indispensable, but Kaplan dispenses with it, and how.

He is careless, too, when he writes that “early modern Europe….dispatched scholars and diplomats to study Islamic civilization, classifying it as beautiful, fascinating, and – most crucial – inferior.” This is pure Said — the Orientalist as handmaiden to imperialism. Is it true? Which scholars and diplomats were “dispatched” by their governments to study Islamic civilization? A few possibilities come to mind. Edward William Lane produced The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, but no one “dispatched” him; he was simply a rich man indulging his curiosity in Cairo. The Frenchman Champollion was in Egypt, but instead of studying Islamic civilization, he deciphered the Rosetta Stone’s hieroglyphs. The scholar of Islam Theodor Noldeke stayed in Germany, and most of the important Western scholars of Islam similarly remained at home. Perhaps Kaplan was thinking of the scholar who fit his bill most closely – the Hungarian Ignac Goldziher, who did travel in the Muslim East, supported by his government. But Hungary had no imperialist project, in the Near East or anywhere else. And most damning to Kaplan’s suave assumption is that Goldziher – I’m fairly sure Kaplan didn’t know this – did not find “Islamic civilization” at all “inferior.” As for those “scholars and diplomats” who found “Islamic civilization” both “beautiful” and “fascinating,” it’s hard to tell whom Kaplan has in mind. I suspect he may have been thinking of writers, not diplomats or scholars, and got Flaubert, so scathing in his epistolary reports from the fleshpots of Cairo and Beirut, confused with Chateaubriand, who in his Le Dernier des Abencerages of a generation before, presented a Romantic view (“beautiful,” “fascinating”) of Islamic Spain, akin to what Washington Irving did with his Alhambra. Of course, neither Flaubert nor Chateaubriand was sent to the East by anyone. I’d like to see Kaplan’s list of the “scholars and diplomats” he claims were “dispatched” for such study.
And having misstated so much about early modern Europe in relation to Islam, in treating of the present day Kaplan, consistent in his inaccuracies, does not disappoint. He claims that “Europe’s sense of cultural preeminence was buttressed by the new police states of North Africa and the Levant.” Could it be that Europe’s “sense of cultural preeminence” needed no buttressing from the existence of Arab “police states,” but reflected an unapologetic awareness of Europe’s, and especially of France’s….”cultural preeminence”? And when one thinks of those places where French cultural penetration has been most pronounced, and thus French cultural “preeminence” most clearly on comparative display, they have been Lebanon and Tunisia, the two Arab countries that have been least like police states.

Kaplan thinks that the Europeans welcomed the absence of political freedoms in North Africa and the Levant, because it gave them the opportunity “to lecture Arabs about human rights” while not having to worry “about the possibility of messy democratic experiments that could lead to significant migration.” This is bizarre. For decades European governments have been monitoring the domestic politics of the Arab states, lecturing them about human rights and — for Turkey, in particular — about standards for admission to the E.U.. Kaplan is saying that it’s all been a farce, that the Europeans were happy to tolerate, behind the smokescreen of their human-rights-and-democracy palaver, the “police states” that held the Arab peoples prisoner. But the Europeans meant it; they followed through with threatened sanctions in order to force Arab governments to be less despotic. They supported, and still support, all kinds of NGOS. Kaplan would have you believe that when France and Great Britain bombed Qaddafi’s forces in Libya, thus helping to ensure his overthrow, they were deliberately acting against their own interests in making possible “messy democratic experiments” possibly leading to greater “migration.” His view of European malevolence toward the Arabs is not supported either by their words or their deeds. Their enthusiasm for the “Arab Spring” may have been naïve, but it was also genuine.

Kaplan writes that “hundreds of thousands of Muslims are filtering into economically stagnant European states…” True? A moment’s glance at the news tells us that these Muslims are in fact headed as quickly as they can for the most well-off European states, to the Scandinavian countries and, above all, to Germany, and not to the “economically stagnant” states, such as Spain or Greece or Italy.
‘The migration,” he claims, is “driven by war and state collapse.” But not only that. What about the availability of more boats, run by better-organized smuggling networks? What about the refusal of Western navies to enforce blockades as they once would have done, because of the power of the bien-pensants who have convinced Europeans (with Pope Francis now taking the lead) that they have a duty to accept these “refugees”? Above all, surely the greater migration today is the result of the widespread availability of cell phones and computers in the Third World, spreading tantalizing information about the quality of life in Europe, which would-be migrants assume will be theirs, too, if only they can reach those distant promised lands. Many of those claiming to be “Syrians” fleeing war-torn Syria, or “Iraqis” fleeing war-torn Iraq, turn out to be Muslims from dozens of countries, including Turkey and Pakistan and Kosovo and Russia and Serbia, that are far from collapsing and hardly, right now, war-torn.

Kaplan talks of the new Muslim migration with a kind of inshallah-fatalism. It’s here; it can’t be stopped; there’s no point in even weakly protesting against it, this migration is “erasing the distinction between the imperial centers and their former colonies.” Such “imperial centers” as Sweden or Germany? And what were their “former colonies” in North Africa and the Levant? Only two European countries had “former colonies” in those places – France (in North Africa) and Italy (in Libya). Great Britain’s mandates and protectorates did not constitute “colonies.” But Kaplan likes to think in terms of “imperial centers and their former colonies” — “imperialism” fits a left-wing mindset.
Bizarrely, Kaplan points to “the cultural purity that Europe craves in the face of the Muslim-refugee influx is simply impossible in a world of increasing human interactions.” “Craves cultural purity”? Another product of Kaplan’s perfervid imagination: Europe does not crave “cultural purity.” Europe has admitted into its midst all sorts of immigrants who violate its “cultural, ethnic, and religious purity,” such as it was, but who worry the Europeans not at all: Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindus from India, Brazilians, Filipinos, Peruvians and many others; Europe is, like America and the rest of the West, busily celebrating its new diversity. But there is one kind of “diversity,” the permanently un-assimilating, threatening kind, the kind that comes from Muslim migrants alone, which Kaplan never mentions. The Islamic division of the world between Believer and Unbeliever, the doctrine of al-wala’ wa-l-bara, that is, loyalty to fellow Muslims and enmity toward non-Muslims, the belief that Muslims are the “best of people” and non-Muslims “the vilest of creatures,” the duty of Jihad, incumbent on all Muslims to spread the faith, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere – what sensible Europeans “crave” is not “cultural purity,” but freedom from the fear of millions of unwanted Muslim migrants.

To accuse Europeans of desiring “cultural purity” (that word “purity” has a distinctly unpleasant – as in “racial purity” – note) when their worries about Muslims are well-founded (see Paris, Brussels, Madrid, London, Cologne for a start), is unfair. To insist that “if [the West] does have a meaning beyond geography”(!), that meaning will be found only in “an ever more inclusive liberalism,” by which Kaplan means “liberalism” in the peculiarly kaplanian sense of happily agreeing to admit into your national home everyone who wants to come in, amounts to suicidal altruism. “Going back now to nationalism” is impossible, Kaplan asserts; it would be “courting disaster.” I don’t know why Kaplan believes the kind of nationalism that consists of pride in one’s own country’s history, and an attachment to, and affection for it, is wrong and impossible and means “courting disaster.” He relies on authority, quoting Alexander Herzen’s version of inshallah-fatalism: “History does not turn back…” We derive as little meaning from this kind of portentous but hollow remark as from Fukuyama’s “History is Dead,” or Obama’s incessant prattle about “getting on the Right Side of History” or “getting on the Wrong Side of History.” But History is the kind of thing Robert Kaplan likes.
Kaplan sees as inevitable a Europe where Islam must be fully accommodated: “Europe must now find some way to dynamically incorporate the world of Islam without diluting its devotion to the rule-of-law-based system that arose in Europe’s north.” (“Europe’s north”? Has he forgotten where the Code of Justinian was fashioned?) And while Islam has its own rule-of-law-based system, called the Sharia, for Muslims there can be no compromise with another “rule-of-law based system”; accommodation with Islam means surrender to Sharia.

Kaplan ends: “If [Europe] cannot evolve in the direction of universal values, there will be only the dementia of ideologies and coarse nationalisms to fill the void. This would signal the end of ‘the West’ in Europe.”
But Europe already has “universal values” that were doing just fine before the recent Muslim invasion — democratic polities, legal limits on government power, protection for individual human rights including the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, legal equality for men and women; these are some of the “universal values” that are being attacked daily by Muslim migrants who hold very different “universal values” based on the supremacy of Islam, and submission to the Sharia. Kaplan appears to think it is Europeans who need to compromise, and ignores the grim fact – or does he not know? – that for Muslims there can be no compromising. Their ultimate goal is not “accommodation” with Europe, but “imposition” on Europe of the Sharia.

Kaplan’s take on the Islamic invasion of Europe is peculiar: fond of the idea of a once-and-future Europe, on both sides of the Mediterranean, being resurrected in a return to “a classical geography” — that of the Roman Empire — “as terrorism and migration reunite North Africa and the Levant with Europe.” Terrorism and migration are not “reuniting” Europe; they are destroying Europe, for these are simply two means of Muslim conquest, first by striking terror into the hearts of Infidels, and second, by demographically overwhelming them. As for invoking the future threat of the “dementia of ideologies,” what is Kaplan talking about? The only “dementia” apparent in Europe today is that of Muslim migrants in mental thrall to the ideology of Islam and, just as worrisome, the dementia of those non-Muslims who, like Robert Kaplan, fail to see what is staring them in the face – not the promise of a “new Europe” but the threat of a Europe that could be destroyed by the failure of its citizens to recognize, halt, and determinedly turn back, what has now become a Muslim invasion.

Missouri: Youth pastor's wife wearing hijab in "solidarity" with Muslims
CAIR-linked Hamas claims jihad bombing of Jerusalem bus

 

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Scotland: Saudis cut funding to ex-Muslims after they refuse to aid building of mosque

April 28, 2016 7:20 pm By Robert Spencer 15 Comments
“Wahhabism does not want people to think for themselves. Saudi Arabia does not want people to think for themselves. It is against women, it is against gay people, it talks of killing. Saudi Arabia wants to spread this around the world. I cannot be a part of it.” This raises important implications for Saudi students in the West, but Western authorities will not, of course, consider them.


“Saudi family left destitute after having university funding cut off blame refusal to co-operate over building of a mosque,” by Kirsteen Paterson, The National, April 28, 2016 (thanks to Thomas):

A DESTITUTE family claiming political asylum in Scotland told yesterday of their fears of being sent home to Saudi Arabia in a row over a mosque.
Haifa Alshamrani came to the UK to study medicine but her visa was revoked when Saudi officials cut the funding for her Glasgow University tuition. The 29-year-old travelled to Scotland with husband Abdullah Amri and children Mohammad, ten, and Gadah, seven, and wept yesterday as she recalled selling her jewellery and wedding ring to pay bills.
Alshamrani, who aims to specialise in regenerative medicine, claims the decision is linked to Amri’s refusal to participate in efforts to create a Wahhabi mosque in Preston, Lancashire, on behalf of Saudi authorities.

Amri is an agnostic and Alshamrani renounced her faith several years ago and the couple say they could not be involved in activities related to the form of Islam most commonly practised in their home country.
However, they claim to have suffered threats and intimidation and been asked to return to Saudi Arabia, but fear persecution if they do so.
Unable to work or study as they wait for their asylum claim to be processed, their Saudi bank accounts have been frozen and they have sold their possessions to pay rent. Now they are waiting to put their case to immigration officials and yesterday Alshamrani told The National: “I never dreamed I would be in this situation in my life.”

Amri lost his maths teaching job in Saudi Arabia in 2012 for failing to practice Islam in public and the pair arrived in London the following year as Alshamrani tried to pursue her medical ambition.
She subsequently gained a Saudi-sponsored place at Glasgow University but received an email from the institution in November 2015 informing her that her funding had been cut off. Appeals to the Saudi embassy failed and, when she called home to query why she could not access funds in her bank account, was told to fly back to discuss the matter.
Alshamrani fears this is an effort to lure the couple back to answer for Amri’s refusal to cooperate on the mosque. She cites recent high-profile cases in the Gulf kingdom including that of the blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes for writings critical of Islam, and Ali al Nimr, who was just 17 on his arrest after anti-government protests in 2012 and is currently awaiting execution.
Alshamrani said: “Because my husband would not help, he is an infidel. He was working with the Saudi Students Association and the Saudi Embassy put money into his bank account in instalments to buy a church and convert it into a mosque.

“He said he would not do this and tried to give the money back. People came to our door shouting threats. We don’t speak to our families at home for their own safety. I don’t want them at risk. It is not safe for us to go back.”
She went on: “I want to be a student. When I say I am an asylum seeker the attitude of people changes automatically. I didn’t come here to take your benefits, I came here to get qualifications.”
Saudi authorities fund around 125,000 international students, also supplying a monthly allowance to learners. With this gone and the asylum case in motion, the family fear they will be unable to remain in their tenement flat and be placed in accommodation by the British state….

A crowdfunder seeking £850 generated £1,255 for the family, with one donor, a 17-year-old girl from Australia named Ruby, sending her wages and toys for the children.
Alshamrani said: “When I sold my wedding ring, which has our names inside it, the man asked me why I wanted to do it when I would only get £60. But you need ID to sell jewellery and because they took our passports, the only form I had was the asylum form. All I could say was ‘you know why’.”
Amri, 36, said: “When I was a child, BBC Arabic was the only radio station talking about democracy and freedom. I lived in a very strict religious family where everything was forbidden but I bought a radio and I would hide it under my pillow and listen at night. The UK was my dream.

“Wahhabism does not want people to think for themselves. Saudi Arabia does not want people to think for themselves. It is against women, it is against gay people, it talks of killing. Saudi Arabia wants to spread this around the world. I cannot be a part of it.”…

Islamic State recruiters arrested, worked at Moscow airport & for Russian intelligence
Italy arrests 4 Muslims in Islamic State plot to attack Israeli embassy, Vatican

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: Ivan Rioufol on the Left and Far Left as Defenders of Islam

April 27, 2016 4:43 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 30 Comments



IVAN RIOUFOL, a columnist at Le Figaro, is one of the most acute French commentators on the menace of Islam and its supporters on the Left in France. Naturally he is, as a consequence, despised by all right-thinking people. In the piece below, Rioufol reports on:

1) the attacks, physical and verbal, on the famed member of the French Academy Alain Finkielkraut, who, like Rioufol, speaks truth about Islam and its alliance with the Left and Far Left, and is especially hated by the “palestino-worshippers”;

2) the antisemitism and totalitarianism of the Far Left (exemplified by the far left group Nuit Debout), which is supported by the broader, slightly less extreme Left, as represented by the Socialists now in power;

3) the exclusion of white heterosexual men from the so-called public debates held by this left fringe group;

4) the refusal of Nuit Debout, which advertises itself as an equal-opportunity revolt against everything, to condemn Islam and the Koranic ideology; and finally,

5) Rioufol criticizes Pope Francis for his “refusal to contemplate a clash between the West and the Muslim world,” his ill-conceived attempt to win Muslim favor by misstating Islamic doctrine, in confusing the Christian God of Love with the Vengeful Muslim God, and his criticizing the West for being insufficiently indulgent towards Islam.

“Progressivism snuggles up to totalitarian thought,” translated from “Bloc-notes : le progressisme cajole la pensée totalitaire,” by Ivan Rioufol, April 22, 2016:

The masks come off, and, as if it were needed, the incompetence of the Left in power is revealed. Unveiled, in particular, is the Left’s attraction to sectarianism, and the sheer violence of the Party of Goodness (Leftists) when in full rout. On Monday, a poll conducted by Figaro-RTL-LCI after François Hollande’s television appearance four days before confirmed the precipitous loss of confidence in Hollande: he got only 15% of the intended votes for 2017, that is, almost the same as the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. As for “Nuit Debout” (Up All Night), this fringe protest so overestimated by the System [i.e., the media-political establishment], let itself be rapidly subverted by a fanatical and racist extreme left. On Saturday evening, the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who had come as a spectator, was kicked out of the Place de la République, after being insulted and spat upon. In January on France 2 [TV channel], he had already been confronted with the same hatred from a woman who was identified simply as a Muslim teacher and who attacked by name “pseudo-intellectuals,” all of them Jews.

An anti-Semitic and totalitarian ideology oozes from these “Nuits d’égout” [sewer nights], nevertheless promoted by the copycat press. The rejection of capitalism and the defense of the Palestinian cause – formalized by the recent creation of a commission called “Palestine toujours debout” (Palestine still standing) – are transforming the Jew, yet again, into the caricature of Banker and Colonizer. Thus anti-Zionism exposes its Judeophobia even more, as that hatred is the bedrock of an islamo-left that is concerned, these days, with highlighting its links with the banlieues [the heavily Muslim suburbs]. As for totalitarianism, it is visible in the incapacity of this movement to accept contradiction or even difference. The Young Communists were proud to have thrown the academician [Finkielkraut] out. The Figaro newspaper described, last weekend, how white and heterosexual men had been excluded from some “debates” that flourished in this place of Intolerance. Thankfully, one “antiracism” association, LICRA, expressed its indignation at this robespierrism.
Nuit Debout shows what the Extreme Left really is, protected by the Center Left, and by numerous journalists deemed sensitive to “nauseating” ideas: a disgrace and an insult to the Republic.

This discovery isn’t new for those who, such as yours truly, have had to endure for ages the seemingly soft dictatorship of a clan which protects itself and condemns in others its own perversions. Behind the demonstration of a humanitarianism brandished like a special privilege, the Far Left often tries to hide its disdain for liberal and pluralistic democracy. Those who continue to make Nuit Debout an example of revolt deny at the same time the dangers of the Koranic ideology, liberticidal and sexist. It is because he brought attention to this risk that Finkielkraut made his situation worse in the eyes of the palestino-worshippers.
This radicalism is a trap from which the desperate Left, which points to the FN [National Front, headed by Marine Le Pen] as the danger, needs to get out of before it sinks. Not all the participants in the Nuit Debout, a curious experiment in societal expression, are in the image of the militia who want to preserve their “entre-soi” (staying among themselves) and to purify the place. But it is up to the democrats [on the left] to clean things up. And yet that is not the path that has been taken. Not at the CGT [the leftist General Confederation of Labor] either; it too shows signs of the same ideological stiffening in the face of its loss of audience. Philippe Martinez, the secretary general, chose to back, on Tuesday, a poster from the Info’com federation of the CGT which accuses the CRS [French riot-control forces] of “striking” citizens instead of “protecting” them, against a backdrop of a puddle of blood. Must Martinez, who seems to have already forgotten the Salafist attacks of 2015, be reminded of who is causing bloodshed in France? In reality, Marxism and Islamism are destined to get along.


The weakness of the Pope

The goodwill towards totalitarian ideology, an intellectual laziness regularly denounced here, has reached the somnolent progressive elites. They want to convince themselves of the false evidence of a happy identity and a dialogue of civilizations. For them, the prospect of a civil war is in the realm of fantasy. This head-in-the-sand approach is a godsend for the Salafists, left in peace in their undertaking to conquer and re-Islamize the Muslim community. Contrary to what Hollande announced the other night, the Sunna mosque of the Salafist imam of Brest, Rachid Abou Houdeyfa, was never closed. This is the enlightened one who teaches children that listening to music turns one into a monkey or a pig. For his part, the Belgian Interior Minister, the Flemish Jan Jambon, created a scandal on Monday when he said that “a significant part of the Muslim community” had celebrated the Brussels attacks “with dancing.” A fact confirmed by the head of the government, Charles Michel, who was careful to avoid “generalization.”

It bears repeating: nothing is more obvious than the complete incompatibility between political Islam, an all-encompassing ideology, and democracy. It is nevertheless this very incompatibility that Pope Francis dismisses in turn, caught up in his refusal to contemplate a clash between the West and the Muslim world, despite history and despite the facts. His decision to bring back from the Greek island Lesbos, on Saturday, three Syrian families taken into the care of the Vatican, is of course a good illustration of Catholic humanism. His apparent forgetting of the Christians of the East, persecuted by ISIS, nevertheless leads us to fear a lack of interest when it comes to his own religion. For him, all refugees are “children of God.” But the Muslim Vengeful God is not the Christian God of Love. On Tuesday, the Holy Father accused western societies of closing themselves off, “out of fear of a change in mentality and in life” that, according to him, the arrival of the immigrants would entail. He mentioned, in addressing them, “our merciful and forgiving God,” using the expression in the Koran. Nevertheless, hoping for the indulgence of Islam by submitting to Allah is a weakness which puts into doubt the credibility of Francis.


Merkel capitulates before Erdogan

Angela Merkel shows the same surrender when, in order to calm the wrath of the sultan Erdogan, she authorizes the criminal proceedings demanded by the Turkish president against a German comedian considered too impertinent. This renunciation to defend freedom of expression is the final humiliation.


Promotion of the veil at Sciences Po

And then this: a “Hijab Day” at Sciences Po Paris, launched Wednesday by students to promote the Islamic veil. When will we see a women’s submission day?”

Education Dept encourages Islam in classroom to stop bullying of Muslims
“All he could say was ‘sex, sex, sex’": Wave of Muslim migrant sex assaults hits Austria

​

 

Raymond Ibrahim: How Islam Erased Christianity from History

April 26, 2016 9:43 am By Raymond Ibrahim 61 Comments



While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory.

Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire. As one report put it, ISIS was “burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of” Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam.

As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam’s normative approach. This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancellation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era,” “many historical mistakes,” and “unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum.” “Tenth grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region.” Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate, including the portrayal of Christianity as a Western (that is, “foreign”) source of colonization, said al-Kaldani.

Of course, Christian minorities throughout the Middle East—not just in Jordan—have long maintained that the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region’s Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam.
“It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians,” said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt: “Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640]. The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The Christian era was gone. Disappeared. An enormous black whole.”

This agrees perfectly with what I recall my parents, Christians from Egypt, telling me of their classroom experiences from more than half a century ago: there was virtually no mention of Hellenism, Christianity, or the Coptic Church—one thousand years of Egypt’s pre-Islamic history. History began with the pharaohs before jumping to the seventh century when Arabian Muslims “opened” Egypt to Islam. (Wherever Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, Islamic hagiography euphemistically refers to it as an “opening,” fath, never a “conquest.”)

Sharara Yousif Zara, an influential politician involved in the Iraqi Ministry of Education agrees: “It’s the same situation in Iraq. There’s almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books, and what there is, is totally wrong. There’s nothing about us being here before Islam. The only Christians mentioned are from the West. Many Iraqis believe we moved here. From the West. That we are guests in this country.”
Zara might be surprised to learn that similar ignorance and historical revisionism predominates in the West. Although Christians are in fact the most indigenous inhabitants of most of the Arab world, I am often asked, by educated people, why Christians “choose” to go and live in the Middle East among Muslims, if the latter treat them badly… Keep Reading

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How Islam Erased Christianity from History

April 24, 2016 by Raymond Ibrahim 25 Comments
PJ Media

While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory.



Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire. As one report put it, ISIS was “burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of” Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam.

As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam’s normative approach. This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era,” “many historical mistakes,” and “unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum.” “Tenth grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region.” Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate, including the portrayal of Christianity as a Western (that is, “foreign”) source of colonization, said al-Kaldani.
Of course, Christian minorities throughout the Middle East—not just in Jordan—have long maintained that the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region’s Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam.

“It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians,” said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt: “Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640]. The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt. The Christian era was gone. Disappeared. An enormous black whole.”

This agrees perfectly with what I recall my parents, Christians from Egypt, telling me of their classroom experiences from more than half a century ago: there was virtually no mention of Hellenism, Christianity, or the Coptic Church—one thousand years of Egypt’s pre-Islamic history. History began with the pharaohs before jumping to the seventh century when Arabian Muslims “opened” Egypt to Islam. (Wherever Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, Islamic hagiography euphemistically refers to it as an “opening,” fath, never a “conquest.”)

Sharara Yousif Zara, an influential politician involved in the Iraqi Ministry of Education agrees: “It’s the same situation in Iraq. There’s almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books, and what there is, is totally wrong. There’s nothing about us being here before Islam. The only Christians mentioned are from the West. Many Iraqis believe we moved here. From the West. That we are guests in this country.”[ii]


Zara might be surprised to learn that similar ignorance and historical revisionism predominates in the West. Although Christians are in fact the most indigenous inhabitants of most of the Arab world, I am often asked, by educated people, why Christians “choose” to go and live in the Middle East among Muslims, if the latter treat them badly.

At any rate, the Mideast’s pseudo historical approach to Christianity has for generations successfully indoctrinated Muslim students to suspect and hate Christianity, which is regularly seen as a non-organic parasitic remnant left by Western colonialists (though as mentioned, Christianity precedes Islam in the region by some six centuries).

This also explains one of Islam’s bitterest ironies: a great many of today’s Middle East Christians are being persecuted by Muslims — including of the ISIS variety — whose own ancestors were persecuted Christians who converted to Islam to end their suffering. In other words, Muslim descendants of persecuted Christians are today slaughtering their Christian cousins. Christians are seen as “foreign traitors” in part because many Muslims do not know of their own Christian ancestry.

Due to such entrenched revisionism, Muslim “scholars” are able to disseminate highly dubious and ahistorical theses, as seen in Dr. Fadel Soliman’s 2011 book, Copts: Muslims Before Muhammad. It claims that, at the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the vast majority of Egyptians were not, as Muslim and Western history has long taught, Christians, but rather prototypical Muslims, or muwahidin, who were being oppressed by European Christians: hence, the Islamic invasion of Egypt was really about “liberating” fellow Muslims.

Needless to say, no historian has ever suggested that Muslims invaded Egypt to liberate “proto-Muslims.” Rather, the Muslim chroniclers who wrote our primary sources on Islam, candidly and refreshingly present the “openings” as they were—conquests, replete with massacres, enslavement, and displacement of Christians and the destruction of thousands of churches.

In the end, of course, the Muslim world’s historical approach to Christianity should be familiar. After all, doesn’t the West engage in the same chicanery? In both instances, Christianity is demonized and its history distorted by its usurping enemies: in the West, by a host of “isms”—including leftism, moral relativism, and multiculturalism—and in the Middle East, by Islam.

http://www.raymondibrahim.com/2016/04/24/how-islam-erased-christianity-from-history/