A Battle for Global Values

Tony Blair wrote on Foreign Affairs To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is.

To me, the most remarkable thing is how naive you are.

I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book,

If you think it is a reforming book, you have just read the early suras, before Satan pretended to be the Angel Gabriel, and started feeding Muhammad the violent jihad verses.

trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins,

Muhammad did plagerize a lot of Judaism and Christianity, twisting things to his own objectives, but trying to lure Jews and Christians to convert to his new Islam religion.

much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later.

What Islam needs is a reformation such as the Christian church went through, not a return to the Jihad of the 8th century.

The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.

Oh yes, it is has very interesting attituedes toward women, like Surah 4:11 which says Allah (thus) directs you as regards your Children's (Inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females A woman only gets half the inheritance of a man, the word of two women counts as the word of one man in court, and in order to prove rape a woman must have four males to testify that she was raped, otherwise she may be charged with having sex ourside of marriage, and may be stoned to death.

Under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking.

That is what you get when you have a religion that calls for it to be spread by the sword. Surah 19:4294 says Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war .... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya.[A special tax that Jews and Christians must pay to live in a Muslim country. Followers of other religions are just killed outright if they refuse to convert to Islam.] If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them.

Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture.

Back in the Middle Ages that may be right, but what advances, other than killing, have they done in Modern Times. How many Nobel Prizes have been won by Muslims: 167 by Jews vs 4 by Arabs, and all four of them are considered traitors to Islam.

The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones.

This is not the Middle Ages, and we don't want to go back to those days.

But by the early twentieth century, after the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment had swept over the Western world, the Muslim and Arab world was uncertain, insecure, and on the defensive. Some Muslim countries, such as Turkey, made a muscular move toward secularism. Others found themselves caught up in colonization, nascent nationalism, political oppression, and religious radicalism. Muslims began to see the sorry state of Muslim countries as symptomatic of the sorry state of Islam. Political radicals became religious radicals and vice versa.

Those in power tried to accommodate this Islamic radicalism by incorporating some of its leaders and some of its ideology. The result was nearly always disastrous. Religious radicalism was made respectable and political radicalism suppressed,

Wrong. With Islam religion and politics is the same. If one renounces Islam, and converts to another religion, he not only needs to worry about what God will do to him at judgement day, he needs to worry about the government killing him for being an apostate.

and so in the minds of many, the two came together to represent the need for change. They began to think that the way to restore the confidence and stability of Islam was through a combination of religious extremism and populist politics, with the enemies becoming "the West" and those Islamic leaders who cooperated with it.

Not exactly. Dictatorial and authoritative governments began telling their own citizens that the reason they were in such bad shape was all the fault of the West, so that the people would not revolt against their own oppresive governments, which were the real ones taking advantage of the people.

This extremism may have started with religious doctrine and thought. But soon, in offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, supported by Wahhabi extremists and disseminated in some of the madrasahs of the Middle East and Asia, an ideology was born and exported around the world.

Pamela Geller Oshry blogged Paul Belien at Brussels Journal points out this insanity from Blair here. And no this is not a joke. When Belien sent it to me, I thought Belien is saying this? OMG, they got to him, he must be in jail ....... something terrible has happened. Then I read further. This is Blair. He has lost it.

Aussie commented He clearly has been spending too much time around his loon wife, or maybe the Moon God worshippers put a curse on him and he is now possessed by Jins, either way its game over for Tony Blair. England hang on to your arse for you are about to lose it sooner than later. How could an obviously intelligent man be so unbelievably ignorant on the most basic of historical facts?

vonason commented Is he aware of the lies he is telling? "Restoring" the Torah to what it was before "the Jews perverted it" is one of Islam's greatest lies, and Blair has just endorsed it.

mts commented

Maybe he borrowed Prince Charles' "translation" of the koran. The one with only the pretty verses before mo's flight, not the nasty ones afterwards. And re: his knowledge of history... How come the muslim golden age is only golden at the beginning of its history, once it finished its conquest? As in born smart, and getting progressively dumb ever since. Not a golden age built up to by the muslims. I.e. one that was co-opted from the old Christian lands, one added to by the still majority at the time Christian populations serving as dhimmis. Only after they were converted was this light extinguished.


Heidi blogged He hasn’t read the Koran. It’s that simple. Tony Blair has NOT read the Koran. He’s trying to make it seem like he has, but there is no doubt in my mind that he has NOT - much like the majority of our American politicians today. And in the midst of an otherwise reasonable essay, he’s just proven himself to be incredibly misguided.

Tony Blair still doesn’t get it. A pure and progressive Islam has not been tragically hi-jacked by extremists. ISLAM IS EXTREME.

Yourish blogged That sound you heard was my jaw dropping to the floor. That Muslim empire that the Koran helped found? It was done by the sword. That claim that it was “far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance”? Bullshit. This is the book that states definitively that a woman’s testimony in court is worth only half that of a man’s. This is the book that allows a man to take four wives, but women may only have one husband.

Then there’s that whole “trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins.” Uh, hello, the Koran has absolutely nothing to do with “returning” Judaism to its “origins.” Judaism never got away from its origins. The Torah that we read in synagogue every Shabbat is virtually unchanged from the Torah that was read when Mohammed was wearing diapers. It’s the same Torah that Jesus studied as a child and adult. It has not changed in 2,700 years. How much closer to our origins do you think we need to be, Tony? Temple worship? Fine, just get rid of that mosque on the Temple Mount, and we’ll be happy to oblige.

I really hate it when people who are utterly ignorant of Judaism profess to tell us what Judaism is all about. And when it comes from the leader of a nation that sits on the UN Security Council—well, you just have to shake your head and wonder how any of his advisers could have read that and not said, “Er, Mr. Prime Minister, do you really want to put it quite like that?”