Islam and Islamism: Faith and Ideology
National Interest (pdf)
http://www.danielpipes.org/366/islam-and-islamism-faith-and-ideology
One cannot emphasize too much the distinction between Islam - plain Islam - and its fundamentalist version. Islam is the religion of about one billion people and is a rapidly growing faith, particularly in Africa but also elsewhere in the world. The United States, for example, boasts almost a million converts to Islam (plus an even larger number of Muslim immigrants).
Islam's adherents find their faith immensely appealing, for the religion possesses an inner strength that is quite extraordinary. As a leading figure in the Islamic Republic of Iran maintains, "Any Westerner who really understands Islam will envy the lives of Muslims." Far from feeling embarrassed about its being temporally the last of the three major Middle Eastern monotheisms, Muslims believe that their faith improves on the earlier ones. In their telling, Judaism and Christianity are but defective variants of Islam, which is God's final, perfect religion.
Contributing to this internal confidence is the memory of outstanding achievements during Islam's first six or so centuries. Its culture was the most advanced, and Muslims enjoyed the best health, lived the longest, had the highest rates of literacy, sponsored the most advanced scientific and technical research, and deployed usually victorious armies. This pattern of success was evident from the beginning: in A.D. 622 the Prophet Muhammad fled Mecca as a refugee, only to return eight years later as its ruler. As early as the year 715, Muslim conquerors had assembled an empire that extended from Spain in the west to India in the east. To be a Muslim meant to belong to a winning civilization. Muslims, not surprisingly, came to assume a correlation between their faith and their worldly success, to assume that they were the favored of God in both spiritual and mundane matters.
And yet, in modern times battlefield victories and prosperity have been notably lacking. Indeed, as early as the thirteenth century, Islam's atrophy and Christendom's advances were already becoming discernible. But, for some five hundred years longer, Muslims remained largely oblivious to the extraordinary developments taking place to their north. Ibn Khaldun, the famous Muslim intellectual, wrote around the year 1400 about Europe, "I hear that many developments are taking place in the land of the Rum, but God only knows what happens there!"
Such willful ignorance rendered Muslims vulnerable when they could no longer ignore what was happening around them. Perhaps the most dramatic alert came in July 1798, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Egypt - the center of the Muslim world - and conquered it with stunning ease. Other assaults followed over the next century and more, and before long most Muslims were living under European rule. As their power and influence waned, a sense of incomprehension spread among Muslims. What had gone wrong? Why had God seemingly abandoned them?
Anwar Ibrahim, a savvy Malaysian Islamist leader.
The trauma of modern Islam results from this sharp and unmistakable contrast between medieval successes and more recent tribulations. Put simply, Muslims have had an exceedingly hard time explaining what went wrong. Nor has the passage of time made this task any easier, for the same unhappy circumstances basically still exist. Whatever index one employs, Muslims can be found clustering toward the bottom - whether measured in terms of their military prowess, political stability, economic development, corruption, human rights, health, longevity or literacy. Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia who now languishes in jail, estimates in The Asian Renaissance (1997) that whereas Muslims make up just one-fifth of the world's total population, they constitute more than half of the 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty. There is thus a pervasive sense of debilitation and encroachment in the Islamic world today. As the imam of a mosque in Jerusalem put it not long ago, "Before, we were masters of the world and now we're not even masters of our own mosques."
Searching for explanations for their predicament, Muslims have devised three political responses to modernity - secularism, reformism and Islamism. The first of these holds that Muslims can only advance by emulating the West. Yes, the secularists concede, Islam is a valuable and esteemed legacy, but its public dimensions must be put aside. In particular, the sacred law of Islam (called the Shari'a) - which governs such matters as the judicial system, the manner in which Muslim states go to war, and the nature of social interactions between men and women - should be discarded in its entirety. The leading secular country is Turkey, where Kemal Atatürk in the period 1923-38 reshaped and modernized an overwhelmingly Muslim society. Overall, though, secularism is a minority position among Muslims, and even in Turkey it is under siege.
Reformism, occupying a murky middle ground, offers a more popular response to modernity. Whereas secularism forthrightly calls for learning from the West, reformism selectively appropriates from it. The reformist says, "Look, Islam is basically compatible with Western ways. It's just that we lost track of our own achievements, which the West exploited. We must now go back to our own ways by adopting those of the West." To reach this conclusion, reformers reread the Islamic scriptures in a Western light. For example, the Koran permits a man to take up to four wives - on the condition that he treat them equitably. Traditionally, and quite logically, Muslims understood this verse as permission for a man to take four wives. But because a man is allowed only one in the West, the reformists performed a sleight of hand and interpreted the verse in a new way: the Koran, they claim, requires that a man must treat his wives equitably, which is clearly something no man can do if there is more than one of them. So, they conclude, Islam prohibits more than a single wife.
Reformists have applied this sort of reasoning across the board. To science, for example, they contend Muslims should have no objections, for science is in fact Muslim. They recall that the word algebra comes from the Arabic, al-jabr. Algebra being the essence of mathematics and mathematics being the essence of science, all of modern science and technology thereby stems from work done by Muslims. So there is no reason to resist Western science; it is rather a matter of reclaiming what the West took (or stole) in the first place. In case after case, and with varying degrees of credibility, reformists appropriate Western ways under the guise of drawing on their own heritage. The aim of the reformists, then, is to imitate the West without acknowledging as much. Though intellectually bankrupt, reformism functions well as a political strategy.
The Ideological Response
The third response to the modern trauma is Islamism, the subject of the remainder of this essay. Islamism has three main features: a devotion to the sacred law, a rejection of Western influences, and the transformation of faith into ideology.
Islamism holds that Muslims lag behind the West because they're not good Muslims. To regain lost glory requires a return to old ways, and that is achieved by living fully in accordance with the Shari'a. Were Muslims to do so, they would once again reside on top of the world, as they did a millennium ago. This, however, is no easy task, for the sacred law contains a vast body of regulations touching every aspect of life, many of them contrary to modern practices. (The Shari'a somewhat resembles Jewish law, but nothing comparable exists in Christianity.) Thus, it forbids usury or any taking of interest, which has deep and obvious implications for economic life. It calls for cutting off the hands of thieves, which runs contrary to all modern sensibilities, as do its mandatory covering of women and the separation of the sexes. Islamism not only calls for the application of these laws, but for a more rigorous application than ever before was the case. Before 1800, the interpreters of the Shari'a softened it somewhat. For instance, they devised a method by which to avoid the ban on interest. The fundamentalists reject such modifications, demanding instead that Muslims apply the Shari'a strictly and in its totality.
In their effort to build a way of life based purely on the Shar'i laws, Islamists strain to reject all aspects of Western influence - customs, philosophy, political institutions and values. Despite these efforts, they still absorb vast amounts from the West in endless ways. For one, they need modern technology, especially its military and medical applications. For another, they themselves tend to be modern individuals, and so are far more imbued with Western ways than they wish to be or will ever acknowledge. Thus, while the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was more traditional than most Islamists, attempted to found a government on the pure principles of Shiite Islam, he ended up with a republic based on a constitution that represents a nation via the decisions of a parliament, which is in turn chosen through popular elections - every one of these a Western concept. Another example of Western influence is that Friday, which in Islam is not a day of rest but a day of congregation, is now the Muslim equivalent of a sabbath. Similarly, the laws of Islam do not apply to everyone living within a geographical territory but only to Muslims; Islamists, however, understand them as territorial in nature (as an Italian priest living in Sudan found out long ago, when he was flogged for possessing alcohol). Islamism thereby stealthily appropriates from the West while denying that it is doing so.
Perhaps the most important of these borrowings is the emulation of Western ideologies. The word "Islamism" is a useful and accurate one, for it indicates that this phenomenon is an "ism" comparable to other ideologies of the twentieth century. In fact, Islamism represents an Islamic-flavored version of the radical utopian ideas of our time, following Marxism-Leninism and fascism. It infuses a vast array of Western political and economic ideas within the religion of Islam. As an Islamist, a Muslim Brother from Egypt, puts it, "We are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims"; a Muslim of old would have said, "We are neither Jews nor Christians, but Muslims."
Islamists see their adherence to Islam primarily as a form of political allegiance; hence, though usually pious Muslims, they need not be. Plenty of Islamists seem in fact to be rather impious. For instance, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, Ramzi Yousef, had a girlfriend while living in the Philippines and was "gallivanting around Manila's bars, strip-joints and karaoke clubs, flirting with women." From this and other suggestions of loose living, his biographer, Simon Reeve, finds "scant evidence to support any description of Yousef as a religious warrior." The FBI agent in charge of investigating Yousef concluded that, "He hid behind a cloak of Islam."
On a grander level, Ayatollah Khomeini hinted at the irrelevance of faith for Islamists in a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev early in 1989, as the Soviet Union was rapidly failing. The Iranian leader offered his own government as a model: "I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system." Khomeini here seemed to be suggesting that the Soviets should turn to the Islamist ideology - converting to Islam would almost seem to be an afterthought.
Contrary to its reputation, Islamism is not a way back; as a contemporary ideology it offers not a means to return to some old-fashioned way of life but a way of navigating the shoals of modernization. With few exceptions (notably, the Taliban in Afghanistan), Islamists are city dwellers trying to cope with the problems of modern urban life - not people of the countryside. Thus, the challenges facing career women figure prominently in Islamist discussions. What, for example, can a woman who must travel by crowded public transportation do to protect herself from groping? The Islamists have a ready reply: she should cover herself, body and face, and signal through the wearing of Islamic clothes that she is not approachable. More broadly, they offer an inclusive and alternative way of life for modern persons, one that rejects the whole complex of popular culture, consumerism and individualism in favor of a faith-based totalitarianism.
Deviations From Tradition
While Islamism is often seen as a form of traditional Islam, it is something profoundly different. Traditional Islam seeks to teach humans how to live in accord with God's will, whereas Islamism aspires to create a new order. The first is self-confident, the second deeply defensive. The one emphasizes individuals, the latter communities. The former is a personal credo, the latter a political ideology.
The distinction becomes sharpest when one compares the two sets of leaders. Traditionalists go through a static and lengthy course of learning in which they study a huge corpus of information and imbibe the Islamic verities much as their ancestors did centuries earlier. Their faith reflects more than a millennium of debate among scholars, jurists and theologians. Islamist leaders, by contrast, tend to be well educated in the sciences but not in Islam; in their early adulthood, they confront problems for which their modern learning has failed to prepare them, so they turn to Islam. In doing so they ignore nearly the entire corpus of Islamic learning and interpret the Koran as they see fit. As autodidacts, they dismiss the traditions and apply their own (modern) sensibilities to the ancient texts, leading to an oddly Protestant version of Islam.
The modern world frustrates and stymies traditional figures who, educated in old-fashioned subjects, have not studied European languages, spent time in the West, or mastered its secrets. For example, traditionalists rarely know how to exploit the radio, television and the Internet to spread their message. In contrast, Islamist leaders usually speak Western languages, often have lived abroad, and tend to be well versed in technology. The Internet has hundreds of Islamist sites. François Burgat and William Dowell note this contrast in their book, The Islamist Movement in North Africa (1993) :
The village elder, who is close to the religious establishment and knows little of Western culture (from which he refuses technology a priori) cannot be confused with the young science student who is more than able to deliver a criticism of Western values, with which he is familiar and from which he is able to appropriate certain dimensions. The traditionalist will reject television, afraid of the devastating modernism that it will bring; the Islamist calls for increasing the number of sets . . . once he has gained control of the broadcasts.
Most important from our perspective, traditionalists fear the West while Islamists are eager to challenge it. The late mufti of Saudi Arabia, 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin-Baz, exemplified the tremulous old guard. In the summer of 1995, he warned Saudi youth not to travel to the West for vacation because "there is a deadly poison in travelling to the land of the infidels and there are schemes by the enemies of Islam to lure Muslims away from their religion, to create doubts about their beliefs, and to spread sedition among them." He urged the young to spend their summers in the "safety" of the summer resorts in their own country.
Islamists are not completely impervious to the fear of these schemes and lures, but they have ambitions to tame the West, something they do not shy from announcing for the whole world to hear. The most crude simply want to kill Westerners. In a remarkable statement, a Tunisian convicted of setting off bombs in France in 1985-86, killing thirteen, told the judge handling his case, "I do not renounce my fight against the West which assassinated the Prophet Muhammad. ... We Muslims should kill every last one of you [Westerners]." Others plan to expand Islam to Europe and America, using violence if necessary. An Amsterdam-based imam declared on a Turkish television program, "You must kill those who oppose Islam, the order of Islam or Allah, and His Prophet; hang or slaughter them after tying their hands and feet crosswise ... as prescribed by the Shari'a." An Algerian terrorist group, the GIA, issued a communiqué in 1995 that showed the Eiffel Tower exploding and bristled with threats:
We are continuing with all our strength our steps of jihad and military attacks, and this time in the heart of France and its largest cities. . . . It's a pledge that [the French] will have no more sleep and no more leisure and Islam will enter France whether they like it or not.
More moderate Islamists plan to use non-violent means to transform their host countries into Islamic states. For them, conversion is the key. One leading American Muslim thinker, Isma'il R. Al-Faruqi, put this sentiment rather poetically: "Nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous and rich continent [of North America] turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar [God is great]."
This contrast not only implies that Islamism threatens the West in a way that the traditional faith does not, but it also suggests why traditional Muslims, who are often the first victims of Islamism, express contempt for the ideology. Thus, Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel Prize winner for literature, commented after being stabbed in the neck by an Islamist: "I pray to God to make the police victorious over terrorism and to purify Egypt from this evil, in defense of people, freedom, and Islam." Tujan Faysal, a female member of the Jordanian parliament, calls Islamism "one of the greatest dangers facing our society" and compares it to "a cancer" that "has to be surgically removed." Çevik Bir, one of the key figures in dispatching Turkey's Islamist government in 1997, flatly states that in his country, "Muslim fundamentalism remains public enemy number one." If Muslims feel this way, so can non-Muslims; being anti-Islamism in no way implies being anti-Islam.
Islamism in Practice
Like other radical ideologues, Islamists look to the state as the main vehicle for promoting their program. Indeed, given the impractical nature of their scheme, the levers of the state are critical to the realization of their aims. Toward this end, Islamists often lead political opposition parties (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) or have gained significant power (Lebanon, Pakistan, Malaysia). Their tactics are often murderous. In Algeria, an Islamist insurgency has led to some 70,000 deaths since 1992.
And when Islamists do take power, as in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan, the result is invariably a disaster. Economic decline begins immediately. Iran, where for two decades the standard of living has almost relentlessly declined, offers the most striking example of this. Personal rights are disregarded, as spectacularly shown by the re-establishment of chattel slavery in Sudan. Repression of women is an absolute requirement, a practice most dramatically on display in Afghanistan, where they have been excluded from schools and jobs.
An Islamist state is, almost by definition, a rogue state, not playing by any rules except those of expediency and power, a ruthless institution that causes misery at home and abroad. Islamists in power means that conflicts proliferate, society is militarized, arsenals grow, and terrorism becomes an instrument of state. It is no accident that Iran was engaged in the longest conventional war of the twentieth century (1980-88, against Iraq) and that both Sudan and Afghanistan are in the throes of decades-long civil wars, with no end in sight. Islamists repress moderate Muslims and treat non-Muslims as inferior specimens. Its apologists like to see in Islamism a force for democracy, but this ignores the key pattern that, as Martin Kramer points out, "Islamists are more likely to reach less militant positions because of their exclusion from power. . . . Weakness moderates Islamists." Power has the opposite effect.
Islamism has now been on the ascendant for more than a quarter century. Its many successes should not be understood, however, as evidence that it has widespread support. A reasonable estimate might find 10 percent of Muslims following the Islamist approach. Instead, the power that Islamists wield reflects their status as a highly dedicated, capable and well-organized minority. A little bit like cadres of the Communist Party, they make up for numbers with activism and purpose.
Islamists espouse deep antagonism toward non-Muslims in general, and Jews and Christians in particular. They despise the West both because of its huge cultural influence and because it is a traditional opponent - the old rival, Christendom, in a new guise. Some of them have learned to moderate their views so as not to upset Western audiences, but the disguise is thin and should deceive no one.
Letter to the Editor on "Islam and Islamism":
With all due respect to Daniel Pipes and his long years of work on Middle Eastern affairs, I would urge you to drop the term "fundamentalist" when speaking of anyone other than those Christians who employ it when speaking of themselves. The State Department (my former employers), USIS, and others invariably use the term for Muslims "we" (usually liberal) don't like, with little or no effort made to distinguish how the political Islam of the Front Islamique du Salut or Hamas differs from that of the Sa'udi rulers or the late Turgut Ozal. The term further suggests a transnational unity or degree of coordination which Islamic radicalism does not necessarily possess. I fear that careless use of the "fundamentalist" buzzword will not only alienate portions of the Muslim world which might welcome Western cooperation, but also play into the hands of those who would stifle recent Christian inputs into the American domestic political dialogue.
Why is Necmettin Erbakan a "fundamentalist" and his erstwhile protégé, the late Turgut Özal, not? The latter accepted traditional Muslim beliefs and practices, advocated a wider public role for Islam in Turkey, and followed an educational and career path quite similar to the angry young men of Algiers. But the difference lies in that whereas Erbakan desired to see Turkey become a leader of western Asia and northern Africa, Özal was a supporter of NATO, joining Europe, and the anti-Iraq coalition.
It is said that Muslim "fundamentalists" will be bad for minorities and women in the Muslim world. Has anyone noticed that the house of Sa'ud won't let guest workers and diplomats hold Christian services in their country? Or that not a single Gulf State tolerates conversion from Islam to another religion? Or that shaking the faith of a Muslim is against the law in Morocco? But why aren't the governments of these states called "fundamentalist?"
Radical Islamism more often than not represents the unpaid bills of various socialist, militarist, radical nationalist or even Communist and post-Communist states, all of which ensured that only the most stubborn and uncompromising dissent tended to survive. Do we really owe anything to the former terrorist-harboring and pro-Communist Algerian militarists, or to the Syrian Ba'ath Party? Are we to excuse China's treatment of dissenters because both the Muslims in the West and Christians in the east and center might be called "fundamentalist"? Nor do I see any real difference between the fanaticism of Hamas and the sort of fanaticism earlier seen in the supposedly "secular" Palestinian factions of the period from 1967-80. It seems to me that if we can mend fences with the Chinese Communists, we can probably do the same with Islamists, who might just win in several African, Mideastern, and Asian states.
Islam lacks a doctrine of original sin. This may be why the Muslim world is so susceptible to wacky conspiracy theories and hunts scapegoats to blame for whatever goes wrong. Perhaps the best thing we could do for any Muslim state plagued by neo-traditionalist ferment would be to let it work out its best possible internal solution rather than providing a convenient Shaitan for the next generation of agitators-especially since neither our current social science nor our policy machinery seems geared towards dealing with the sorts of questions posed by neo-traditionalist ferment in Midwest, to say nothing of the Middle East.
Peter J. Herz
Mr. Herz is not a fan of the term "fundamentalist" when applied to Islam. Neither am I. That's why I used the term just twice to ground the reader (as well as once in a quote); and I used the alternate term "Islamist" or "Islamism" fifty-two times - including the title. So, why the lecture, Mr. Herz? Next time, how about reading the article beyond the first line before shooting off a letter to the editor?
May 13, 2013 update: For an updated summary of this article, see "Islam vs. Islamism" today in The Washington Times.
Related Topics: Islam, Radical Islam, US policy
Islam vs. Islamism (article)
Muslims "Lagging Behind"
Bibliography – My Writings on Moderate Muslims
3 Fundamentalism?? Islam Is An Ideology Not A Religion [417 words] Bill Hazelbauer Dec 12, 2015 13:07 227002
Islam and islamists [69 words] gloria Jan 11, 2015 09:53 220270
3 One needs to read the Quran before coming to any conclusions about Islam [242 words] Jill Jan 19, 2014 11:23 212737
Taqiyya [136 words] Truthtalker May 4, 2013 07:24 205821
they really are disguised [13 words] jems Oct 24, 2012 07:23 200033
1 sorry, but moderate Islam is a lie [301 words] gmaster Feb 6, 2012 19:04 193153
the real Taqijja uncovered by an Ex-Muslim [66 words] gmaster Feb 7, 2012 21:12 193153
What is your solution? [98 words] Schills Jun 25, 2012 13:14 193153
I thought you said it was none of our business? [201 words] sara Jun 25, 2012 18:27 193153
solution? [598 words] gmaster Jun 25, 2012 22:34 193153
Maybe I misunderstood you [244 words] Schills Jun 26, 2012 01:03 193153
Culture and deterrence are the keys [728 words] sara Jun 26, 2012 16:47 193153
Free elections have occurred [292 words] Schills Jun 28, 2012 12:29 193153
Support of Islamist parties [401 words] sara Jun 28, 2012 16:06 193153
IS the problem Arabs or Islamists? [205 words] Schills Jun 29, 2012 18:45 193153
Who cares and what is the difference? [135 words] sara Jun 29, 2012 21:28 193153
1 The Arab invaders of the lands of the civilized and Islamic crusades revisited [329 words] dhimmi no more Jun 30, 2012 07:02 193153
Why not exclude every ideology associate with political violence? [499 words] Schills Jul 2, 2012 15:56 193153
Western support for Mid East dictators well known. [11 words] Schills Jul 2, 2012 16:57 193153
Rice's speech [11 words] Schillls Jul 2, 2012 17:06 193153
Faulty supposition, Schills [206 words] sara Jul 2, 2012 17:30 193153
Sorry, I don't buy it [255 words] sara Jul 2, 2012 18:00 193153
Supporting Tyranny has lead to the current situation [231 words] Schills Jul 3, 2012 13:19 193153
3 Shills and his tablighee nonsense [161 words] dhimmi no more Jul 3, 2012 14:33 193153
1 Way too Simplistic, Schills [456 words] sara Jul 3, 2012 19:56 193153
Hopefully the links work [33 words] Schills Jul 4, 2012 13:29 193153
I never mentioned throwing money at the problem [183 words] Schills Jul 4, 2012 13:42 193153
You have it backwards, Schills [426 words] sara Jul 4, 2012 17:33 193153
7 Tablighees twists and turns never end and why is that our dear Shills? [491 words] dhimmi no more Jul 5, 2012 06:45 193153
1 Shills is a lost tablighee [154 words] dhimmi no more Jul 5, 2012 17:16 193153
To DNM [109 words] sara Jul 5, 2012 19:11 193153
I hope you find real South Asian Islamists to attack [303 words] Schills Jul 5, 2012 19:13 193153
4 Our dear Shills and the proof and the pudding! [1258 words] dhimmi no more Jul 7, 2012 07:47 193153
2 Islamophobia? It is gone and it is replaced by "trolling"! [179 words] dhimmi no more Jul 11, 2012 12:38 193153
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt [99 words] Schills Jul 12, 2012 16:20 193153
Feel free to exercise your freedom to troll. [160 words] Schills Jul 12, 2012 17:04 193153
I think you are seriously undervaluing the influence of Islam [395 words] sara Jul 12, 2012 17:16 193153
1 Trolling and Muslims [330 words] dhimmi no more Jul 12, 2012 18:35 193153
1 The Middle East was violent before modern Israel and Islam [521 words] Schills Jul 12, 2012 19:50 193153
They don't stop until they are 98% of the population [55 words] Prashant Jul 13, 2012 00:32 193153
The crux of the matter [702 words] sara Jul 13, 2012 17:08 193153
Exactly right, Prashant [176 words] sara Jul 13, 2012 17:53 193153
Why are you promoting the propaganda of dictators? [411 words] Schills Jul 13, 2012 19:07 193153
DNM why do you have a pre-9/11 outlook [103 words] Schills Jul 13, 2012 19:13 193153
4 Hijazi Arab aristocracy? are you for real? [292 words] dhimmi no more Jul 14, 2012 07:42 193153
Agree on one point [176 words] sara Jul 14, 2012 18:57 193153
3 Shameful Tablighee delusions [371 words] dhimmi no more Jul 15, 2012 06:40 193153
2 Propensity for violence is the problem [352 words] Rajeev Dec 13, 2010 23:09 180928
2 CDA en Islam [5094 words] wct Aug 27, 2010 10:19 177356
De Moslim organisaties en politieke partijen [1266 words] isaac May 7, 2012 08:51 177356
Nederland is gecapituleerd. [2880 words] Tessa S., Jul 6, 2012 10:25 177356
Erdogan ziet de turken hier als zijn vijfde colonne [3762 words] SANNA Mar 19, 2013 11:22 177356
Women cover their bodies, men cover their minds. [195 words] Lynn Jan 24, 2010 10:02 167817
Questions for Prof.Pipes [53 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes infosifter Mar 23, 2008 12:30 123364
Thanks to Prof. Pipes [24 words] infosifter Mar 24, 2008 17:14 123364
Pain, support and apathy [78 words] Phil Greend Jan 10, 2008 16:05 117927
small note ( detail ) [89 words] catholic Jul 19, 2007 20:07 104066
3 Mathew 11:1-16 [217 words] André Marc Nov 14, 2007 22:26 104066
Was John wrong [48 words] Blanche Jun 30, 2010 00:25 104066
1 Stop whitewashing [87 words] Shabana Muhammad Jan 7, 2007 00:19 71926
2 Ignorance is bliss [12 words] PDM Jan 5, 2007 12:47 71733
Dangerous Dissection [237 words] Shivkumar Singh Feb 14, 2006 17:39 35658
Nothing can convince me about Islam [42 words] Martin Jul 13, 2007 02:12 35658
1 Re: Nothing can convince me about Islam [114 words] Farhan Ahmed Jun 1, 2008 01:53 35658
Stop whitewashing Islam [13 words] scrutator Aug 5, 2008 12:56 35658
Appeasement [102 words] Bryan Dec 2, 2008 12:29 35658
verification [14 words] lily Jan 31, 2009 07:51 35658
2 How to Present Islam [23 words] Rehab Jan 26, 2010 09:24 35658
Ayann Hirsi Ali [33 words] Tom Dundee Feb 27, 2010 18:02 35658
It is all True. [39 words] Tom Dundee Feb 27, 2010 18:06 35658
Impossible [8 words] Tom Dundee Feb 27, 2010 18:07 35658
Re: An interesting ...dissection [136 words] Reuben Horne Aug 22, 2005 22:10 24975
Islam and Islamism - Faith and Ideology [32 words] Karel Orlík, Jul 2, 2005 05:17 23066
Regarding Judaism and Christianity being defective variants of Islam [303 words] Ihsan Ayyub Qazi Feb 11, 2005 06:28 20264
GOD AND ALLAH [1051 words] Jennifer King Jan 17, 2006 07:35 20264
Endless useless argument [92 words] Liz Reynolds Feb 15, 2006 15:44 20264
Separation of Church and State [195 words] Michael Kermon Nov 22, 2007 10:20 20264
God's Holiness cannot be matched by the most sincere efforts of man [252 words] William East May 18, 2008 16:41 20264
church and state [571 words] truthseekers Nov 20, 2008 09:49 20264
Impressive [23 words] Tom Dundee Feb 27, 2010 18:15 20264