To Roger Olsen regarding Mark Daniels' book 'Islam and Terrorism'

Submitted by philsci (United Kingdom), Jun 17, 2010 at 15:14

So it is the 'orientalism' of Byzantines and Persians (and their colonialism of course) which provoked the jihad=aggresive holy war of muhammad and his immediate successors...The reality is of course that non religious factors do play a role but they 'modulate' at most the teological injunctions of the qur'an and other islamic traditions, the main root of the problem.

That's why it is unlikely to be a durable peace in Palestine (islamic traditions demonize the jews) as much as islam is not modernized in non trivial ways, muslims always seek minimally a return to the past when the Jews were dhimmi. Sadly islam teaches that truces are only temporary. Finally many people dislike the American hegemony for example but very few ever think to counter this via suicidal terrorism; to account for the scale of muslim terrorist attacks we witness one has definitely look at the ideology of islam itself.

As for Edward Said well I prefer ibn Warraq's debunking of him in 'Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism'. It's not how postmodernists say we can make a clear distinction between cultures and systems of thought and here the West is way better placed than other cultures be it only because the West has the necessary feedback systems which to lead to notable improvements. Time to say enough to postmodernist political correctness and its 'turbans of the mind' which prevent even western arabists to properly address islam....

PS: I am reading currently 'Islam and the Jews' by Mark Daniels and he's OK, no real biases...I suppose that 'Islam and terrorism' is on the same lines

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