DANIEL PIPES'S BOOK, Militant Islam Reaches America, will probably make it to my Christmas Recommendation List this year. Although it is a thinly disguised compilation of his journalism, there is a common theme: Islamism is a new political ideology that is dangerous in all its forms but downplayed by governments and press. Some facts and ideas, some mine, some Pipes's:

1. "Where a traditional Muslim would say something like, 'We are neither Jews nor Chirstians, but Muslims,' a member of the Muslim Brethren from Egypt says that 'We are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims.'" (p. 8) Islamism is not about religion, but about countering Western success now that socialism has so clearly failed. It is not the reactionaries that have turned into Islamists, but the Marxists.

2. It is not so strange that the 9-11 hijackers were so dissolute in their personal lives. Islam is a legalistic religion. If you are going to die in jihad, you are going to heaven, for sure. So you have plenty of "virtue credit" to use up in sinning. (me, not Pipes)

3. The Islamists don't know or care about traditional Islam. They are engineering types, who have read the Koran, but no commentaries. In this, they are like the Puritans of 1600, who use their own interpretations, look down on traditionalists, and seek to combine modern learning with the original purity of the religion, skipping everything in between.

4. One quarter of the population of Brussels is Moslem (p. 25). That, not deference to France, explains why Belgium was in the Axis of Weasels (me).

5. The central theme of politics in Middle Eastern countries is no longer how a politicians stands on Israel. Rather, it is how he stands on Islamism (p. 39).

6. In the Cold War, it made sense for the US to support rightwing tyrannies, because Communism spreads, and it was the greater danger. Now, it makes sense for the US to support leftwing tyrannies (or any kind of secular ones, actually), because Communism is not a threat but Islamism is (p. 49).

7. Friday is not a day of rest for Moslems--- it is a day of religious gathering, with work done the rest of the day. The Ottoman Empire introduced the first day of rest in 1829, making it the religiously neutral Thursday. Turkey made Sunday the day in 1935, at the instigation of local businessmen. Virtually all of the other Moslem countries inherited Sunday as a day of rest from the colonial governments, and kept it after independence, though now there has been change to Friday (p. 77).

8. The Islamic law, Sharia, that is favored by the Islamists, differs in three fundamental ways from real Sharia (p. 81):
   1. Law is created and interpreted by the state, like the Napoleonic code, not by independent scholars. In this, traditional Islam went even further than the English common law, because the king did not appoint the Islamic scholars.

   2. Law is subordinate to the interests of the state, rather than religion taking precedence. If the state says to skip fasting so you are stronger for a war, you have to skip fasting.

   3. Islamic law applies to everyone in a territory, rather than to Moslems everywhere and non-Moslems nowhere.

   I conjecture that these second two features are another reason for the immorality of the 9-11 terrorists. They were free to "blend in" by violating religious rules in order to further their mission, and anyway they were in a country where Islamic law did not rule.

9. The veil nowadays is so important because the Islamists, unlike traditionalists, are feminists, who want women to go to school and work. They can't work with men unless they are protected from lust. Thus, the veil (p. 79).

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.06.09a.htm ]

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