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The Founding Fathers Weren't Anti-Islam
The Founding Fathers were not nearly as anti-Muslim as many current American Christians.
As Ted Widmer writes at Boston.com:
The
Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a
country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the
fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence
that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They
knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is
not alien to American history — but inside it.No book states
the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the
citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known
as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Koran, from the personal collection of
John Adams. There is nothing particularly ornate about this humble
book, one of a collection of 2,400 that belonged to the second
president. But it tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly
the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up
like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like
we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment,
dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing
empires. Yet better than we, they saw the world as it is, and refused
the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply
pretend they didn’t exist.Reports of Korans in American
libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of
Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its
foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first
Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in
1806.Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the
Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Koran in 1806?
Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in
the Islamic scripture. The legendary bluenose Cotton Mather had his
faults, but a lack of curiosity about the world was not one of them.
Mather paid scrupulous attention to the Ottoman Empire in his voracious
reading, and cited the Koran often in passing. True, much of it was in
his pinched voice — as far back as the 17th century, New England
sailors were being kidnapped by North African pirates, a source of
never ending vexation, and Mather denounced the pirates as “Mahometan
Turks, and Moors and Devils.” But he admired Arab and Ottoman learning,
and when Turks in Constantinople and Smyrna succeeded in inoculating
patients against smallpox, he led a public campaign to do the same in
Boston (a campaign for which he was much vilified by those who called
inoculation the “work of the Devil,” merely because of its Islamic
origin). It was one of his finer moments.This theory was
eloquently expressed around the time the Constitution was written. One
of its models was the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which John Adams
had helped to create, and which, in the words of one of its drafters,
Theophilus Parsons, was designed to ensure “the most ample of liberty
of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”As
the Founders deliberated over what types of people would ultimately
populate the strange new country they were creating, they cited Muslims
as an extreme of foreign-ness whom it would be important to protect in
the future. Perhaps, they daydreamed, a Muslim or a Catholic might
even be president someday? Like everything, they debated it. Some
disapproved, but Richard Henry Lee insisted that “true freedom embraces
the Mahometan and Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.”
George Washington went out of his way to praise Muslims on several
occasions, and suggested that he would welcome them at Mount Vernon if
they were willing to work. Benjamin Franklin argued that Muslims should
be able to preach to Christians if we insisted on the right to preach
to them. Near the end of his life, he impersonated a Muslim essayist,
to mock American hypocrisy over slavery.Thomas Jefferson,
especially, had a familiarity with Islam that borders on the
astonishing. Like Adams, he owned a Koran, a 1764 English edition that
he bought while studying law as a young man in Williamsburg, Va. Only
two years ago, that Koran became the center of a controversy, when the
first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, a Democrat from
Minnesota, asked if he could place his hand on it while taking his oath
of office — a request that elicited tremendous screeches from the talk
radio extremists. Jefferson even tried to learn Arabic, and wrote his
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to protect “the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of
every denomination.”Jefferson and Adams led many of our early
negotiations with the Islamic powers as the United States lurched into
existence. A favorable treaty was signed with Morocco, simply because
the Moroccans considered the Americans ahl-al-kitab, or “people of the
book,” similar to Muslims, who likewise eschewed the idolatry of
Europe’s ornate state religions.
What are Muslims Like?
Some Muslims really are terrorists.
Some Christians are as well.
In
truth, the percentage of Muslim and Christian terrorists is very small
compared to the huge numbers of adherents of those faiths.
Just
like Christians range from abortion doctor killers to mystics, Muslims
range from jihadis to poets like Rumi (Sufism - the mystical branch of
Islam - is peaceful and contemplative).
As prominent Christian writer, psychiatrist and former army doctor M. Scott Peck wrote, all humans - no matter what religion might be dominant in their culture - go through 4 stages of development:
1st: Chaos (a heroin addict, for example, who robs to support his habit)
2nd:
Fundamentalism (clinging to dogma in order to fight off chaos;
believing the book - whether Bible, Koran or Bhagavad Gita - is THE
truth, and anyone who disagrees is evil)
3rd: Skepticism and questioning (feeling stable enough to question the dogma of the dominant religion and other institutions)
4th:
Maturity (keeping the skepticism and questioning, but also being open
to life's beauty, love and mystery; using both one's head and heart;
being passionate and dedicated to making the world a better place)
(These
4 steps are not necessarily the full and complete truth, but they
present one possible description which is useful for starting a
discussion on religion).
Ignore the clothes, the skin color and the accent, and what do we see?
A drug addict in Saudi Arabia, America or Israel will look fairly similar. Fundamentalist
Christians, Muslims and Jews all think the other guy is evil, and that
God wants them to wipe the other guy out. Skeptics look the same
everywhere. And people who integrate their head and their heart all are
operating out of the same basic dynamic.
We Helped Radicalize Islam
Moreover - in order to know our history and perhaps become a tad more humble in the process - it is important to recognize that we helped to create "radical Islam".
President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has openly admitted that he created the Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And it continued under President Reagan (here's a picture of President Reagan meeting with some of these folks).
As the Council on Foreign Relations writes:
The 9/11 Commission report (PDF)
released in 2004 said some of Pakistan's religious schools or
madrassas served as "incubators for violent extremism." Since then,
there has been much debate over madrassas and their connection to
militancy.
***
It was Pakistan's leading
role in the anti-Soviet campaign in neighboring Afghanistan during
this time that radicalized some of these madrassas. New madrassas
sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, where students were encouraged to join the Afghan resistance.
And see this.
And veteran journalist Robert Dreyfuss writes:
For
half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I
call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War.
***
Today
it’s convenient to speak about a Clash of Civilizations. But ... in
the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among
Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for
two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and
because the opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel
Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh.In the 1950s, the United
States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed
many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains.
But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards
who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the
USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s,
rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the
Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in
league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi
Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the
United States has ever made in the Middle East.A second big
mistake ... occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War
and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States
either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in
countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the
Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel,
and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against
Syria. And ... Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim
Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of
Hamas.Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam
would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to
America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But ... America’s
alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan
in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned
civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban,
and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.Would the
Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. This is not
a book for the conspiracy-minded. But there is no question that the
virulence of the movement that we now confront—and which confronts many
of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and
beyond—would have been significantly less had the United States made
other choices during the Cold War.
And the chief of the visa section at the U.S.
consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (J. Michael Springmann, who is now
an attorney in private practice) says
that the CIA insisted that visas be issued to Afghanis so they could
travel to the U.S. to be trained in terrorism in the United States, and
then sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
In other words,
if the U.S. and our allies hadn't backed the radical violent Muslims
instead of more stable, peaceful groups in the Middle East, radical
Islam wouldn't have grown so large.
Stopping the Bad Guys
That's
not to say that we don't need to stop the handful of Muslim terrorists
that are threatening the U.S. (to give you an idea of numbers, there
may be less than 50 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan according to the CIA itself).
But war is not the way to protect America, and defeating Islam is the way to safety. And see this.
Specifically, according to top security analysts, the global war on terror is weakening, rather than strengthening, our national security, and making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks:
For
those who still think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are
necessary to fight terrorism, remember that a leading advisor to the
U.S. military - the very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation -
released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".
The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security.
As a press release about the study states:
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.
(And no ... 9/11 did not "change everything".)
Beware of False Prophets
The neoconservatives who launched the wars in the Middle East may not even be people of faith themselves.
As I noted last year:
The godfather of the Neoconservative movement - Leo Strauss - taught
that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve
the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not
believe in religion.As I have previously written:
Leo
Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including
many leaders of the current administration. Indeed, some of the main
neocon players were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago,
where he taught for many years. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli.Strauss believed that "A
political order can be stable only if it is united by an external
threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external
threat exists then one has to be manufactured" (quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).Therefore, it is unknown whether the [Neocons] who [launched the wars in the Middle East] actually believed that the brown-skinned people they wished to [destroy] were Satan-worshippers who needed either to be converted or destroyed.
More
likely, they just followed the old Straussian playbook in creating a
threat which didn't exist - Satanic Muslims who wanted to take over
the world - and using religion to rally the mid- and lower-level
participants in the ... program to carry out their orders.
Atheists Versus People of Faith
I want to address one more divisive issue related to religion, which I think disempowers those of us working for a better world.
Many
atheists believe that all religious people are pedophiles, idiots,
crackpots or charlatans, and many people of faith think that all
atheists are selfish, rootless, valueless and crude.
But let's look at the facts.
Initially, about two-thirds of American scientists believe in God if you count the social sciences. About 40%
of physical scientists believe in God, and that number has stayed
constant for almost 100 years. So atheists shouldn't assume that all
people of faith are idiots.
And the Bible says that you shall know them by their fruits, not by what they say. So believers shouldn't assume that all people who say they are Christians are good guys.
Some Christians are pedophiles, murderers and con men. But others are fighting hard for justice, truth and social justice.
Some
atheists are selfless, valueless hedonists. But others are tireless in
their struggle for liberty, have a passion for freedom which they are
willing to sacrifice their lives for, are selfless in their service and
their love for the smallest of us.
Making the other side the "bad guys" only adds to the ability of the powers-that-be to divide and conquer us.
The
left-right split is false, and hundreds of millions of Americans are
waking up to the fact that the whole Republicans-Versus-Democrats
things is a dog-and-pony show. They are waking up to the fact that
both parties serve the big banks, big pharma, military-industrial
complex, and the whole oligarchy.
These
Americans realize that it doesn't matter whether a politician wears a
red tie or a blue one: he or she either serves the big money boys or
the American people, and that the "team" he's on doesn't matter.
We also have to wake up to the false dichotomy about faith.
Just
as it is urgent that we recognize the left-versus-right split for the
game it is, we atheists have to tolerate religious folks ... and we
people of faith have to tolerate non-believers.I am lucky to call
some incredible atheists and some amazing believers my friends and
colleagues in the struggle for a better world. We may not see
everything exactly the same ... but it is a big tent.
Postscript: Granted,
there have always been some radical factions in Islam, just as there
have always been radical factions in Christianity and Judaism. But -
contrary to what fundamentalists would tell you - Muslims claim that
the Quran does not promote going out and killing non-Muslims.
While
there might be some stage 2 (using M. Scott Peck's system) Muslims
who believe the Quran commands them to kill the "other guys", just
as some stage 2 Christians or stage 2 Jews think that the Bible
commands them to kill Muslims (the Crusades, for example) or atheists or abortion doctors or others. And remember, governments often use tactics to make the other guy seem more violent.
But again, the problem isn't any
particular religion, it is the immaturity of a small handful of its
followers, and the misuse of religion by the powers-that-be to divide
and conquer us.
- advertisements -
From where do you obtain a standard of behaviour?
Reason.
You can't see reason.
You can't smell reason.
You can't taste reason.
You can't touch reason.
Reason is responsible for some of the most horrible evil in the history of mankind.
Last and most damning, you can only appeal to the existence of reason by using reason.
In spite of this - you believe reason exists.
Since you have faith in a reason that cannot possibly exist, why not seek the One who created it, the God of the Christians, and at long last be at peace?
Reason is a demonstrable quality of the human mind. Try again.
I just *demonstrated* to you that you believe in something that you can't empirically prove exists, and can only justify it using self-referential logic that atheists accuse theists of using to prove the existence of God.
Look who is having faith now.
Reason is "the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences." Reason leads to practical and concrete results which are observable and measurable. Try again.
Yes, because the men and women in the United States military are over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are purposely executing men, women, and children with the intention of exerting "terror" and commiting mass genocide of the population ...
You fail at logic. If the United States military was a force of "terroristic" evil, the Middle East would not exist ... get real ... the United States could destroy the Middle East 10x over again if that was their intention ...
And on what ground does this come from? 'Terroristic evil', whatever this includes, might display a sense of self preservation which prevents from going against their best interests.
At current point in times, no matter the good, evil or stuff, people in the ME cannot be eradicated. It is not an option on the table.
Eradicating people in the ME will lead to ask who will own their properties.
The story of the 19th century.
"Yes, because the men and women in the United States military are over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are purposely executing men, women, and children with the intention of exerting "terror" and commiting mass genocide of the population ..."
That's it, you got it. Unwitting or not, it still adds up to the same thing when a drone wastes a city block in Pakistan full of men, women, and children. Excepting that the perp doesn't have to sacrifice anything, in fact he/she gets to enjoy being paid!
You fail at logic. If the United States military was a force of "terroristic" evil, the Middle East would not exist ... get real ... the United States could destroy the Middle East 10x over again if that was their intention ...
Speaking of fallacies: you reason that illegal US acts of international aggression are not terrorism because they have yet to "destroy the Middle East 10x over" even though they have that ability (we all know that in reality it is only 0.7x times over, so far). Wow, just....wow.
Stupid, stupid, real dumb.
And to the point about 10x vs. .7x ... the United States military could wipe out the entire Middle East, every man, woman, and child ... you can't argue that reality. But still the United States does not ... why?
Once you understand the answer to that ... you'll understand why the argument that ...
United States Military == Christian == terrorists ... is an absurd projection of false reality ...
"And to the point about 10x vs. .7x ... the United States military could wipe out the entire Middle East, every man, woman, and child ... you can't argue that reality. But still the United States does not ... why?"
Oh! Oh! I know! I know! Because they are there on noble mission to spread international peace and understanding, working tirelessly to free the oi... er people of those lands from the yokes of their onerous masters (that were installed by the CIA).
Either that or the US military industrial complex is concerned that an overt policy of genocide might finally unite the rest of the world against them (re: Germany circa. 1939)? I think I'll go with this one.
Regards
Yes always about the OIL (complete neocon/libtard talking points) ...
Too bad 3 of the top 5 nations where the U.S. imports our OIL are in the western hemisphere ... guess we'll be invading Canada, Mexico, and/or Venezuela any day now ...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_l...
Why bother invading? They are already exporting all they can.
But you're right; Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela better keep the black coming, and cheap too.
Which fits in nicely with why the US didn't head straight for Saudi Arabia after 9-11; as you know, this is the birthplace of many of those responsible.
Curious: if it's not about the oil, enlighten me, please.
Regards
Curious: if it's not about the oil, enlighten me, please.
Not to be a complete dick, but it pretty obvious from your responses that you wouldn't understand why the U.S. is in the Middle East ... nor would you believe it ... because it is deeper than the kiddie pool understanding of geopolitical machinations ...
Keep up with your "Its all about killing the brown people and taking their oil" as it makes for a great narrative to keep you fighting the good fight ...
Actually, he's right! It's not (just) about the oil:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30/prudential-profits-from-slain-soldiers-with-help-from-taxpayers.html
Regards
pretty vacuous response. It's not the color of the people, it's the color of the crude.
In other words, "I've got an idea--an idea so smart that my head would explode if I even began to know what I'm talking about." - Peter Griffin
LMAO yeah I love when people say stuff like that.
Your answer is "You wouldn't understand"?
Heh, I bet you use that one when you change lanes without signalling too.
Oh I get it all right, "It's so deep, it's meaningless"
Good luck getting reasonable people to take you seriously with that non sequitur.
"... a drone wastes a city block in Pakistan full of men, women, and children ... "
How to argue for the religion of peace (tm) ... make crap up that provides supporting evidence to your case even though it never happened ...
And I'm the dumb one ...
It does appear to be that way...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carne-ross/us-drone-strikes-and-civi_b_203968.html
And before you reflexively denigrate HuffPo, research their source.
Not going to denigrate ... sure civilian casualties happen ...
Do not see in the article where the U.S. ...ACTIVELY TARGETED civilians for death ...
What was the U.S. military target that was missed on 9-11 by the Saudi terrorists?
Oh yeah .. there wasn't one ...
Sorry but what a load of crap - so when we invaded Iraq on BS premises and bombed the sit of their cities and killed thousands(who knows how many really died) that was OK because it was an act of "war" LOL so I guess it is OK to kill people in the name of war even when the war is started on a false premise correct? And Americans wonders why Muslims hate us? Imperialism is imperialism.
War... but more accurately, conquest for resources.
Do not see in the article where the U.S. ...ACTIVELY TARGETED civilians for death ...
Here ya go, babykiller:
The Warped Mission of the American Military: "Out-Terrorize the Terrorists" Army: Soldiers Murdered Civilians
There's nothing so impressive as barbarism with a made-over modern face. I'm watching her right now, deep thought etching her face and swells of judicious concern oozing from her fat body. And she's on tee-vee representing the nation that has reached the zenith of human civilization, that shining neocon beacon on a hill. The interviewer is easily deferring to her stately gravitas, the flag of the USA in the background.
It's so nice when ruthless sociopathy without bounds is presented in such impressive fashion.
Guess a mass murderer just has to do what a mass murderer has to do. You can't blame them or see it as revealing commentary on the society they represent.
Must be their barbaric religion that makes them hate us.
"Do not see in the article where the U.S. ...ACTIVELY TARGETED civilians for death ..."
Any policy that promotes such attacks knowing without doubt that civilian deaths will result is de facto 'actively targeting' civilians.
So by extension of your failure at logic ... any action by extremist Muslims is de facto an action by all Muslims and therefore all Muslims are terrorists ...
1. Turn off brain.
2. Execute reason and logic like GoinFawr.
3. All your debatez belong to us.
Nonetheless, nice attempt to parlay the actual point made in my response ... what military target were the Saudi terrorists going after on 9-11 that resulted in *collateral* civilian casualties?
The Pentagon
So when did the U.S. move the Pentagon to NYC?
And when did the men and women who work as mail clerks, secretaries, and other white collar folks become frontline foot soldiers who deserved to be killed for doing their job?
See below. And now it's time for IS to do his amazing flip flop and justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
"Those bombs saved babies!"
Please, give him a hand folks! (he really needs it).
Army accuses GIs of slaying civilians for fun
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100920/NEWS03/309209992
Congratulations ... based on your ability to formulate an argument using "Fallacy of Composition" ...
All terrorists commit murder.
All terrorists are Muslim.
All Muslims are murderers.
Wow. That makes my head hurt less ... you know ... skipping all the thinking and logic and stuff ...
Your exposition is not illogical, but an example of pure Syllogistic Logic.
QED
QED (qoud erat demosdratum) = Awesome
You must be someone who has also had to take a formal logic or discrete mathematics course.
You sarcastically said, "because the men and women in the United States military are over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are purposely executing men, women, and children with the intention of exerting "terror"," and I disproved that statement.
Keep studying your logic, you'll get it.
Heh ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition
Yeah, you completely disproved my entire premise with your logical fallacy...
Thank you for supplying still more proof that the US Army keeps its crazies under control.
If only Muslim countries would display anywhere near that level of restraint!
Islam is a form of government, designed to keep people living in the 7th century forever, it is claimed to be a religion but this is a disguise.
+Infinity ... most Islam apologists do not know the history of the religion and are ignorant to the truth ...
There are a lot of naive pacifist idealists on this site. There are two choices in life: Be meat or eat meat.
Exactly. In their mad rush to equate Islam with peaceful religions like Buddhism and Christianity, very few westerners seem to realize that Islam requires sharia law ... and sharia is an entire legal system that's fundamentally incompatible with nearly every aspect of Western constitutional law.
I write this after having recently read the barbaric Islamic text "Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law" by Ahmad Ibn Naqib al-Masri, which you can find on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-Traveller-Classic-Islamic-Al-Salik/dp/091...
...and as witnessed by the dismal state under which most all muslims exist, sharia is incompatible with life itself. Where the two meet, sharia always comes out standing in a pool of blood spilled by its own force.
And Christianity is?
It is been a while now since the question of influence of religion over economical situation is concluded. It has none.
Really?
Absolutely. Max Weber launched the idea. Infirmed in all cases.
Yet another German.
Yes.
Please quote examples.
Of what? Of how loving one another is better than hating one another?
Some truths are self-evident.