Best Sellers

I was a bit distressed to learn from Justin Logan that World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism by Norman Podhoretz is Amazon.com best-selling book in the Islamic section. It's also the number two book in world history (number one is by Naomi Klein which I'm not too thrilled with either, but I doubt her ideas would lead to nearly the sort of bloodshed of a Podhoretz).

Even more disturbing, though, is what follows Podhoretz on the Islamic history list. Number two is Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, number three is The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion, and number four is The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World.

Reza Aslan's book eventually checks in at number five, but it seems that insofar as Americans are interested in Islam what they want is some good, old-fashioned Muslim-bashing. That can't bode well for the future of our foreign policy.

Comments

Sigh. You might want to read some of the history of the Islamic world - and recognize that it was a conquering, imperial ideology long before the West was - before you make uninformed statements in the future. Christianity had it's its "kill the infidel" issues mostly washed out at the end of the wars of religion in the 17th century; Judaism lost any inclinations in that direction a lot earlier. Islam is now going through something that looks an awful lot like the counter-reformation, and there's simply no way that can turn out well for anyone.

Posted by James Robertson | September 17, 2007 7:00 PM

Count me as distressed as you are about those rankings. I'm wondering, though, if this is indicative only of the current tastes of American readers. Is it possible that there also aren't enough good books out there that present a clearer perspective on Islam? In that vein, the authors that immediately come to mind would be Reza Aslan and Karen Armstrong. Are there others out there?

Posted by Khaled | September 17, 2007 7:01 PM

Mr. Yglesias is missing the issue here. The issue here is whether the books cited by him are correct and accurate. If they are, the charge of Muslim bashing is wrong. If they are not correct and accurate,then the charge of Muslim bashing has merit. Mr. Yglesias, in making a general charge of Muslim bashing is doing the same thing that he has accused the critics of Walt and Mearsheimer of doing. Let's show some consistency.

Posted by SLC | September 17, 2007 7:03 PM

hm. look, i think a lot of pluralistic and tolerant people who are "OK" with islam would rather read some meditations on rumi than islamic history. that is, there is a particular set that knows islam is a religion of peace and treated its minorities better than christendom. that doesn't make for riveting reading. on the other hand, the set that knows that islam is a religion of blood and violence is in for some action packed narrative. in short, the liberal half of the west already thinks it knows islam because islam is just one face of universal spirituality. anyway, that's my theory (as a brown guy who meets plenty of liberal tolerant people who think they know "my culture" because they watched it on national geographic ;-)

Posted by razib | September 17, 2007 7:11 PM

But, this bodes well for my upcoming book "Muslim Men: They're Coming for Your Daughters!"

Posted by Citize (World) | September 17, 2007 7:14 PM

I'm a Christian, and it's weird how people let my belief system off the hook, claiming we Christians got over our religious warfighting propensities in the 17th Century. Not exactly. There was a strong religious component in the Cold War--rightwing Christians were all in favor of killing commies for Christ. The NYT carried an article today about the Catholic Church's unsavory role in Argentina during the dirty war, for instance. Rightwing American Christians were all in favor of supporting their fascistic counterparts in places like Guatemala, where born-again dictator Rios Montt committed genocide in 1982.

And on the left, liberation theology, for better or worse, was involved in supporting leftwing revolutions.

And this is just scratching the surface.

I don't want to say Christianity is inherently warlike, because it isn't, but this claim that you have to go back to the Thirty Years War to find examples of Christian warmongering or Christian arguments for committing atrocities is simply false.

As for Judaism, Jews haven't been in a position to slaughter people in large numbers, but one look at the settler movement should be all you need to see that Jewish fanatics are no better than any other brand.

Posted by Donald | September 17, 2007 7:21 PM

Yglesias,
Have you read Spencer's books?
I assume you must have in order to speak disparagingly of them. So could you tell us what you find wrong about them? Specifically?
Btw, I haven't read them and have no opinion. But since you are disturbed that people are reading Spencer, please share why.

Posted by David Sucher | September 17, 2007 7:22 PM

Yeah, I'm totally cashing in on this. Look for my future bestseller, Muslims: the Real Killers of Christ from Random House in the spring 2008 catalog.

Posted by Walt | September 17, 2007 7:22 PM

Where' my favorite, Secret Protocols of the Elders of Medina?

Posted by Buddha Edwards | September 17, 2007 7:27 PM

"hm. look, i think a lot of pluralistic and tolerant people who are "OK" with islam would rather read some meditations on rumi than islamic history. that is, there is a particular set that knows islam is a religion of peace and treated its minorities better than christendom. that doesn't make for riveting reading. on the other hand, the set that knows that islam is a religion of blood and violence is in for some action packed narrative."

During the period of the Islamic (and later Ottoman) Empires, attitudes and treatments of non-Muslims varied. They were always taxed extra (the Jizya).

Whether the sumptuary laws were enforced against them depended on the era - but those laws were always on the books, and whether they were enforced or not depended on the ruling class.

The fact that the Christian West was frequently worse isn't really relevant; after the 17th century, things got progressively better. For those of you unclear on that subject, compare and contrast how Andres Serrano (Piss Christ) was treated, and how the people who published the Muslim cartoons are being treated. If you can't tell the difference, then you're dense.

The "Radical Right" that Matt is terrified of writes letters to the editor and tries ballot issues. When they fail, they stay within the system. I don't think you can say the same for the Islamic Radicals.

Posted by James Robertson | September 17, 2007 7:31 PM

I suspect a bunch of commenters on a relatively leftwing blog going “No Matt, you just don’t get it. Muslims really do just suck.” is going to make him any more optimistic about the tide of public opinion.

Posted by DJ | September 17, 2007 7:40 PM

After the 17th century the Christian west got progressively better? Perhaps, but with the slight exception of the period 1933-1945.

Posted by William Burns | September 17, 2007 7:46 PM

"The fact that the Christian West was frequently worse isn't really relevant; after the 17th century, things got progressively better. For those of you unclear on that subject, compare and contrast how Andres Serrano (Piss Christ) was treated, and how the people who published the Muslim cartoons are being treated. If you can't tell the difference, then you're dense."

Except for that thing where half of Europe's Jews were killed off. You also have to remember that we killed off the Native Americans as we moved westward. The only decent chapter in Hitchens's new book traces the relationship between the Vatican and the rise of fascist and corporatist powers in Europe before WWII, even pretty much calling Mussolini a man sent by providence and God. Catholic fascists like Salazar were doing horrible things in their colonies until just a little while ago. Things have progressively gotten better in the Christian West since about the 1970's or so with the end of much of the last vestiges of European imperialism, such as the creation of democracy in Spain and Portugal. It should also be pointed out that imperial Japan and the late Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide acted as they did in part because they thought doing so was acting Western and modern and creating a modern nation-state like those in Europe.

Posted by Reality Man | September 17, 2007 7:47 PM

"The "Radical Right" that Matt is terrified of writes letters to the editor and tries ballot issues. When they fail, they stay within the system. I don't think you can say the same for the Islamic Radicals."

In doing so, they opted to go and kill about half a million innocent people in Iraq. The Christian Right in this country has blood on its hands. Let's not forget that these are people that believe that our government's policies should be aimed towards Israeli policy bringing about the Second Coming and then Jesus killing off all non-evangelical Christians. The number of innocents Bush has killed is a lot more than bin Laden.

Posted by Reality Man | September 17, 2007 7:50 PM

The Nazis were not Christian - insofar as they used any religious imagery and explanations, they reached into German history for pagan ones.

So thanks for playing, but you folks clearly don't know your history. You can blame the slaughter of the late 15th to late 1th centuries on Christian famatics - but the slaughters of the 20th century had nothing to do with Christianity.

Posted by James Robertson | September 17, 2007 7:56 PM

Have you read Spencer's books?

I'm familiar with them all, unfortunately two of them from a relative's bookshelf. Day of Islam wins the Paranoid Style award for 2007. The only thing not linked to al Qaida is the Odessa project.

The quality of research and argument in all these books is what you'd expect. They're rants directed at their intended audience, and you're not going to read a cogent discussion of arguments among Islamic thinkers. And forget about any skepticism about the evidence the authors present, let alone a fair treatment of counter-evidence or rival interpretations.

If James Robertson were looking for good books on the history of the Islamic world and not just trying to score points, I really can't think of a worse place to start.

Posted by Buddha Edwards | September 17, 2007 7:56 PM

[T]he slaughters of the 20th century had nothing to do with Christianity.

Robertson apparently knows as little about the Ustase and Josef Tiso as he knows about everything else.

Posted by Buddha Edwards | September 17, 2007 8:02 PM

insofar as Americans are interested in Islam what they want is some good, old-fashioned Muslim-bashing

Well, the "insofar" there is actually a big deal, since most Americans aren't interested in Islam. For those that are, the Amazon sales charts may be a result of what's available as much as anything else. Are the major publishers of punditry publishing books about Islam that aren't essentially non-stop Muslim-bashing?

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | September 17, 2007 8:05 PM

James Robertson, fluent reader of Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish (both old and new-style!) and student of the Iranian plateau from the Sassanian through the Safavid period,

brings Teh Expertise to Yglesiasville's lefty garret.

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 17, 2007 8:06 PM

I do not share your description of Robert Spencer as a "Muslim-Basher". Perhaps many of his readers and admirers are traditional Muslim-bashers - referring to Muslims as "Mohammedans is a give away- but this is not to be confused with looking at a text plainly and engaging in open criticism.

Speaking personally, I would deny that Islam is a Religion of Peace, since those who want a supernatural warrant for violence will not find the Qu'ran to be unappealing. However, this is not the same as insisting on the reciprocal condition - that Islam is strictly a religion of War. Rather, it is just to make known that Al-Qaeda, far from importing depravity into an otherwise peaceful religion, are actually exporting a strain of depravity which exists inside the religion. Ironically, insofar as the "Islam is religion of Peace" mantra suppresses this point, it is making the emergence of a more modern and peaceful Islam more difficult.

Finally, I would say the insanity of Podhoretz is much more relevant here. I really don't think Spencer will ever have impact on US foreign policy, for the basic reason that, barring a Tancredo election, no US politician is stupid enough to explicitly declare War on Islam.

Posted by Neal Murray | September 17, 2007 8:09 PM

The ustase were hardly fighting for "Christianity", as killing Orthodox Christians was a big part of their program. They were primarily Croat nationalists for whom Catholicism was meaningful as a source of Croat identity, they weren't very interested in theology.

Posted by vanya_6724 | September 17, 2007 8:11 PM

Have you ever tried to research Mormonism? It is very much the same situation. Go to a public library (ok, your university library is likely to be better) and what you'll have to dig through are numerous anti-Mormon tracts written by Pastor Bob before getting to good scholarship.

At the same time if you go to the same library and look for books on Islam, you're likely to find the same twaddle written by Pastor Bob.

Posted by tom | September 17, 2007 8:11 PM

Robertson, that's bullshit. The Nazis had an ambivalent relationship with Christianity, but they never repudiated it, and the Holocaust was carried out by legions of German Christians and drew on a centuries-old heritage of Christian anti-Semitism. The so-called "German Christian" movement received as much support from the Nazi regime as did neo-Germanic paganism, which was more of an SS thing.

In any event, if one result of the Christian west getting progressively better from the 17th century on is the Holocaust, why should wish the same process on the Islamic world?

Posted by William Burns | September 17, 2007 8:13 PM

William Burns: "In any event, if one result of the Christian West getting progessively better from the 17th c. on is the Holocaust...."

Exactly. Carl Jung went further, and remarked that two thousand years of Christian devotion ended not in a Millenium but in poison gas and barbed wire.

Of course, Robertson, like many on the US Right, appears not to have experienced or paid heed to that whole 1914-1945 blip that sobered Europe up so effectively, being rather stuck in a perpetual 1898 of the soul....

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 17, 2007 8:18 PM

Vanya, a whole lot of Christians for a long time have killed other Christians in the name of Christianity, and not all of them were interested in theology. I doubt if the average member of Al-qaeda or participant in an Iraqi Shiite death squad are all that interested in theology either.

Posted by William Burns | September 17, 2007 8:19 PM

Burns is right.

Anyone who denies there is a straight line between the Crusades and the Fourth Lateran Council, from the Fourth Lateran Council to the inquisition, from the inquisition to the blood libel trials, from the blood libel trials to the pogroms, and from the pogroms to the Holocaust is simply outside of reality.

Posted by Neal Murray | September 17, 2007 8:22 PM

Re: You might want to read some of the history of the Islamic world - and recognize that it was a conquering, imperial ideology long before the West was

I assume that you are excluding Rome not to mention Alexander the Great from your definition of "West". And if you look at later history it wasn't Islam that spread itself to every inhabited continent and most major islands by force of arms and it's not the Semitic languages that have official or semi-official status in about 3/4 of the nations on Earth.

Posted by Jonf | September 17, 2007 8:26 PM

Serge Trifkovic has got to be kicking himself for publishing The Sword of the Prophet 5 years too early to ensure maximum popularity. It doesn't even fall into one of the top-100 books in Amazon's Islam section

Interesting that the whole "hysteria about Islam" book-buying occurred more than 5 years after September 11th. I think as America loses ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are turning to these tomes for reassurance that, even if we're bumbling and making fools of ourselves on the world stage, we're still right because everyone else is evil.

Posted by Tyro | September 17, 2007 8:38 PM

although to a large extent the state churches in Germany were co-opted by the Nazis...Hitler is on record as having been strongly anti-Christian. that's a simple matter of historical fact. (anti-semitism in Poland or France did have a strong clerical, even Holocaust-facilitating, component.)

obviously the even greater death tolls of Stalin and Mao cannot be laid at Christianity's door.

Posted by Nathan | September 17, 2007 8:46 PM

I should add that Hitler saw the existence of Christian churches as a temporary, necessary evil...and foresaw the eventual abolition of Christianity as an essential part of his plans for Germany. (indeed, contempt for Christianity was part of Hitler Youth indoctrination)

Posted by Nathan | September 17, 2007 8:48 PM

I tend to think this particular bestseller list does not forebode the clash of civilizations. Instead, as others have said, it reflects that one ideological agenda makes for dramatic reading and the other for dull and turgid prose.

It's the same reason the netroots generates a more passionate following than David Broder.

(And I'd add that international High Broderism is no more intrinsically compelling than the domestic variety.)

Posted by southpaw | September 17, 2007 8:48 PM

Nathan and James, your problem is that you're confusing "Christianity" with "the West." Christianity is an incidental, not essential, feature of the west. The history of the modern western world has been an attempt to strip away Christianity into a shell of a social club in order to expose the "western" core. Christianity in a middle eastern religion.

The "little matter" of 1914-1945 was western. Mercantilism, the invasion of the new world, and manifest destiny was western. Oliver Cromwell was western. "The west" owns all of that, even if Christianity was only tangentially involved.

My guess it that you mistakenly think that Islam's dispute it with Christianity when in fact their dispute is with the West. That the west just happens to be Christian is incidental to the issue.

Posted by Tyro | September 17, 2007 8:53 PM

For crying out loud, this is the same nation that made Da Vinci Code a run away best seller! Popularity and scholarship (religious or otherwise) hardly ever coincide, and when they do, the scholarship is often misconstrued.

As in, "Christianity had it's its "kill the infidel" issues mostly washed out at the end of the wars of religion in the 17th century; Judaism lost any inclinations in that direction a lot earlier." or "Speaking personally, I would deny that Islam is a Religion of Peace, since those who want a supernatural warrant for violence will not find the Qu'ran to be unappealing."

Puuuhlllleeeease! The idea that the "other" major world religions (or just Chritianity and Judaism, if you like) have been "cleansed" of their violent and fundamentalist aspects is patently false. Drawing such conclusions are indicative of an absurd level self-delusion and self-serving logic and one need only spend five minutes browsing a high school history text or "A Dummy's Guide to the Old Testament" to find evidence to the contrary.

The reality is that there are those who adhere to the basic "truths" of their religious texts and those that will "make use" of certain portions of those texts for "political" purposes. Always have, always will. The danger is that not everyone will be able to tell the difference.

Posted by Rihilism | September 17, 2007 9:06 PM

On the morning of 9/12/2001, on a radio station some consider a propaganda organ of radical Islam (KPFK, and yes, the people who hold that opinion *are* actually nuts), I heard a program that included a representative of each of the Abrahamic religions, on which the Islamic clergyman (Imam?), in response to a question about the relationship between terrorism and Islam, said, "Terrorism can clothe itself in any religion, but in reality it is the religion of Satan."

So listener-supported radio has better success getting a Muslim of standing to unequivocally condemn the 9/11 attacks than billions of dollars' worth of mainstream media. Kind of makes you stop and think, don't it?

F.

Posted by Fingal | September 17, 2007 9:21 PM

Re: Anyone who denies there is a straight line between the Crusades and the Fourth Lateran Council, from the Fourth Lateran Council to the inquisition, from the inquisition to the blood libel trials, from the blood libel trials to the pogroms, and from the pogroms to the Holocaust is simply outside of reality.

Well, I am not outside reality but I do not see a "straight line"-- though I would recognize a fairly jagged one. For one thing, the pogroms were a Russian affair, and Russia was not under the Roman Catholic Church. Neither the Lateran Council nor the Inquisition carried any weight there. One might though recognize an indirect influence via the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Germans (mainly Lutheran) in the 18th century; Russian anti-semitism and the resulting pogroms was strongly influenced by the "Enlightened" racism of these folks. As for the Nazis their doctrine was racist, not even remotely religious. It is best seen as a perverted form of Social Darwinism (itself already a perverted caricature of true Darwinian evolution theory) and without that element there would have been no Holocaust. The goal of the Nazis was not to convert the Jews (as was the goal of the medieval Church, both East and West) but to eradicate them.

Re: Christianity in a middle eastern religion.

Christianiy WAS a Middle Eastern religion. It didn't stay that way for long. Within a few generations of Jesus' death, Greeks got hold of it and made it a Greek religion, and three centuries later the Roman state turned it into a Roman religion.

Now as to this book's popularity, excuse me if I yawn. Let's remember that not a lot of people in America buy books, and even fewer buy non-fiction. It doesn't take a lot for a book to reach "best seller" status. There are more than enough rightwing fruitcakes in this country to give books like this such status without us needing to conclude that the great mass of American people are snapping the book off the shelves and hold to its theses.

Posted by JonF | September 17, 2007 9:24 PM

"Pogrom" is a Russian word, that hardly makes pogroms an exclusively Russian phenomenon. As for racial antisemitism, it began neither in Germany nor with social Darwinism, but in fifteenth and sixteenth century Iberia and the rise of "purity of blood" laws. Nazi doctrine was both racial and religious, Hitler and Naziism generally were praised by Nazis as manifestations of God's providence and the regime's rhetoric and imagery are full of Christian references.

Posted by William Burns | September 17, 2007 9:39 PM

Matt, will it make you feel better to know that the two books with a claim to being the bestselling "non-fiction" books of the 1970's are The Late, Great Planet Earth and Chariots of the Gods? Lots of very stupid people buy books, which is why Ann Coulter is a millionaire. That doesn't mean many of those people read or understand or vote based on those books. While it does bother me that enough of my fellow citizens buy books shouting about the threat from this week's set of Icky Brown People, it's neither new or disastrous.

Posted by Karen | September 17, 2007 9:48 PM

This isn't really my area of expertise, but here are a few books that might be useful as introductions to Islam. I have either read or been recommended all of them.

Besides Armstrong or Azlan there is:

A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani

and

An Introduction to Islam
by Frederick Mathewson Denny

and
Islam: A Very Short Introduction by Malise Ruthven (In the suprisingly excellent "Very Short Introduction" series)

and also

The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Cook

Posted by d | September 17, 2007 10:06 PM

"The Nazis were not Christian - insofar as they used any religious imagery and explanations, they reached into German history for pagan ones.

So thanks for playing, but you folks clearly don't know your history. You can blame the slaughter of the late 15th to late 1th centuries on Christian famatics - but the slaughters of the 20th century had nothing to do with Christianity.

Posted by James Robertson | September 17, 2007 7:56 PM"

Then why did Nazis wear belt buckles that said "God is on our side?" One quarter of all Nazis were Catholics, with only Goebbels having been excommunicated - for adultery and divorce. Hitler went so far as to proclaim that Jesus wasn't Jewish because no one as great as Jesus could be Jewish. It wasn't a pure religious movement or a pure secular movement, but it wasn't divorced from Christianity either. The Holocaust was also not just a German affair. The Nazis depended on collaborators in conquered territory to round of Jews, who were often conservative Christians. Christian Fascists like Salazar and Franco made laws denying Jews fleeing the Holocaust entry visas into Spain and Portugal. Muslim-dominated parts of Europe that were invaded by the Axis powers had a higher survival rate for the local Jewish population than Christian areas (a fact first brought to my attention by a Jewish Dutch Holocaust survivor). When we killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, McKinley explicitly said our goal was to Christianize the Philippines (despite the majority of Filipinos being Catholic). The crimes of the Soviet Union had less connection to Christianity (at least European Christianity) than did the fascists' crimes, but even then Moscow depended on the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism to discriminate against Jews.

Posted by Reality Man | September 17, 2007 10:26 PM

I'm troubled by the right's paranoia about Islam, which was nicely displayed by Johann Hari in his TNR article on the National Review Cruise. A whole lot of people are off their rockers. But I think there are a lot of people who really dislike Islam who are far from deranged, loony, or paranoid. If most of the people reading these anti-Islam books are also reading The God Delusion, I'm quite glad about it. It is not bigoted to despise a religion's teachings, and many of them (Caste, Original Sin, Hell) are quite wicked. Of course, this does not require an antitheist to disdain every Muslim or every Catholic or every Hindu, and it is terribly immoral to extend the first criticism into blanket misanthropy.

Posted by Robert | September 17, 2007 10:48 PM

It's about the dogma. Pick a religion out of a hat and you will have a handful mixture of human observational truths ("Do unto others...", don't kill each other, and so on) mixed with insane dogma that obscures and overwhelms the feel-good stuff. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they be different, in which case they need to be exterminated immediately lest they eat your babies or soil your women.' It's all a bunch of crap based on primal fears, unanswerable questions, and powerlust. We can sit around and argue about which religion is worse, whether now or in modern history or with or without the inclusion of Hitler and Co., but they all suck.

Posted by tinisoli | September 17, 2007 11:17 PM

Sigh. You might want to read some of the history of the Islamic world - and recognize that it was a conquering, imperial ideology long before the West was - before you make uninformed statements in the future. Christianity had it's its "kill the infidel" issues mostly washed out at the end of the wars of religion in the 17th century; Judaism lost any inclinations in that direction a lot earlier. Islam is now going through something that looks an awful lot like the counter-reformation, and there's simply no way that can turn out well for anyone.
Posted by James Robertson

The problem persists of multi-culti Leftists refusing to learn about Islam, its history - and also annointing themselves as "Islam's defenders" on the grounds that all religions are "morally equivalent".

After 9/11 I decided to read the Qu'ran, read the accepted Sunni interpretation of what Muslim scholars believe is commanded of each believer in their lives. I read the histories. The more I learned, the further I doubted it was a religion of peace or in any way as something that could exist peacefully with modern Western or Asian civilization. I had gone to executive MBA courses with a few Muslims and they agreed pretty much with my interpretation that Islam does seek to assimilate all the world, that it sees peace and war as both equally valuable in that conquest of all the world's souls for Allah...war to advance, peace to conslidate gains and gather strength. All these well-educated men believed Israel's days were numbered. All were decent, intelligent, friendly guys who all believed that the West was obligated to accept as many mosques as possible and Muslims dating marrying infidel women and raising all children as Muslim was obligatory by Muslim custom. They also believed any churches or infidel cults like Scientology, Hinduism were justly prohibited in Muslim lands by the Qu'ran's commands that an inferior, conquered people may not build edifices that offend the eye of Allah.

Since the 1960s, 2100 mosques have been built in the West. In the Ummah, not a single new church or synogogue has been built and over 600 old churches have been destroyed. In Somalia, Eitria, Algeria old infidel cemeteries have been ripped up, headstones pulverized, corpses picked over and dumped into the trash heap - the recovered land blessed as "Muslim soil again". THis sort of eradication program has gone on since the earliest days of Islam to "cleanse away" non-muslim graves.

In Jerusalem, in recent times, Jewish headstones were used as street paving. When one tours Anatolia, Turk guides are slightly apologetic about Christian and Roman cemeteries and shrines ripped up for building material or as rubble fill for fortifications...

And the same guys confirmed that Allah's commands are that infidels dating Muslim women and having infidel children is a totally forbidden conquest against the Faith, and the Muslim woman who does seek relationships so forbidden violate not just their own honor, but the very honor of family and tribe.

Why Lefties do this desperate defense is anyone's guess. Islam has historically never coexisted peacefully with other faiths. When Jews or Christians have been permitted to live in a Muslim nation, it has only been with "conquered people rules" - never as equals.

The condition of Dhimmitude. With infidel men forbidden to own weapons, strike a Muslim man even in self defense, ride a horse, own land, be alone with a Muslim woman, pay extra taxes like the Jizya. In peaceful, tolerant Islam, they had to wear special articles of clothing to ID them from Muslims. Some of their children could be taken as slaves or conscripts.

In Islam, peace is the interval between Jihas launched to spread the Faith. When Samuel Huntington says Islamic history is about "bloody borders" , internal suppression and slow coercive assilimation of non-believers, he was not writing in the absence of solid research.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 17, 2007 11:34 PM

James Robertson, your comments regarding the Nazis and Christianity are far too over-simplified, though there's a little bit of truth to what you say. It's true that there was a strong anti-Christian current in Nazi thought that was coupled with a sort of re-configured, bastardized European paganism that provided some animating symbolism. Yet the Nazis actually had a complicated and fraught relationship with the German Church, both its Protestant and Catholic variants. The Nazis had to accomodate the Church in a lot of ways, and, absolutely central, they drew upon centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. One simply can't get around this last point. So it's a complicated, contradictory picture.

Also, claiming that "insofar as they used any religious imagery and explanations, they reached into German history for pagan ones" is a woefully misleading and inadequate statement on a lot of levels. Implicit in your comment is the sense that German history is fundamentally or wholly pagan, which is truly a bizarre notion. Germany was arguably the central player and testing-ground in the evolution of Western Christianity, at least since the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation was initially a German event, though it quickly spread throughout Western Europe, what with Calvin, Zwingli and so one. Yet the face of the Protestant Reformation as an historical event in the common understanding remains largely German--one immediately thinks of Martin Luther tacking his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. So, I would say you have some kind of stilted sense of European history. Pick up a book or two on the history and development of the Western Church.

Posted by Warren | September 18, 2007 12:39 AM

The accusations against Muslims need to be qualified as to when they occurred and as to how prevalent the bad acts have been. There is always a contingent of lunatics in any culture. There are people to this day, in this country (USA), who profess Christianity and believe that the European takeover/genocide in N. America was God's punishment of the unrighteous natives. These beliefs are currently considered disreputable, but holders of them are lodging themselves in various nooks and crannies convenient to the levers of power.

I'm not defending any religious lunatics, and in general I believe, with Gore Vidal, that monotheism is the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. Ann Coulter to the contrary notwithstanding, "The Left" isn't particularly pro-Islamic, they're just not all that taken with the strategic brilliance of making as many enemies as possible in a population of 1.2 billion.

F.

Posted by Fingal | September 18, 2007 12:57 AM

I suspect a bunch of commenters on a relatively leftwing blog going “No Matt, you just don’t get it. Muslims really do just suck.” is going to make him any more optimistic about the tide of public opinion.

I knew before I read the comments exactly which filth would want to comment and the gist of what they would say.

When historians find all this in a few hundred years, I wonder how they are going to explain the insane paranoia because I'm here and can't figure it out. I don't even know where to start.

Posted by Ed Marshall | September 18, 2007 1:05 AM

Ed Marshall, this falls under the category of "confirmation bias." Americans (and non-Muslim Westerners in general) want to believe that Islam presents a threat to them, because if they didn't believe this then our policies in the Middle East would be even more suspect than they already are. They read and believe the worst of their selected enemies, so that they can feel better about the actions that they have chosen to carry out.

Of course, there is more to it than that. Our old friend xenophobia plays a role, as it has throughout human history. Similarly, there is the fear of loss, in that people who are well-off now (in relative terms) are afraid of losing this status.

So this insane paranoia is actually not so insane or abnormal; in fact, it is pretty much par for the course in human terms. That is why liberal thought (in terms of universal human rights, freedom of belief, and so on) is such a precious thing that needs to be struggled for. That is what is abnormal, not paranoia or fear of the Other.

Posted by josephdietrich | September 18, 2007 3:25 AM

I'd rather hear what reasonable rational moderate Matt has to say in regards to Naomi Klein and her barnstorming call to alarms, Shock Capitalism.

Posted by Gregorio | September 18, 2007 6:04 AM

In all fairness, before condemning the Quran, it should be pointed out that the Hebrew bible is at least as bad if not worse in its justifications for genocide, mass murder, subjugation of women, slavery, etc., all ordered by Yahweh. And the book of revelations in the Christian bible is no slouch at suggesting gods' intent for mass murder either. The fact is that all the so-called holy books were written when human beings were little evolved from savages and reflect the consensus in vogue at the time.

Posted by SLC | September 18, 2007 8:33 AM

Funny, when I clicked on the comments I was expecting to see indignant defenses of Naomi Klein. I guess I don't know the Yglesias commenters as well as I thought I did.

Posted by cs | September 18, 2007 10:57 AM

So for those who are discussing the relationship between Nazism and Christianity, a question:
Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer right to be a Christian pacifist as Hitler rose to power, or was he right to eventually conclude that for the sake of humanity Hitler should be assassinated? (His participation in the last major plot against Hitler's life led to his execution.)

Posted by question | September 18, 2007 12:30 PM

Re: As for racial antisemitism, it began neither in Germany nor with social Darwinism, but in fifteenth and sixteenth century Iberia and the rise of "purity of blood" laws.

This was not racial anti-semitism, but rather religious anti-judaism combined with Spanish nationalism of a sort found among nations going far back to antiquity. There was no pretense that the Jews were a "race" in the modern sense, only that they were both a foreign (non-Spanish) people and also non-Christian folk. As for "pogrom" the term properly applies only to the persecution of the Jews in Tsarist Russia, though of course it has been extended from that usage to refer to any such persecution of just about any people. I was not sure if the original post was using it in the former or latter sense.

Re: Nazi doctrine was both racial and religious, Hitler and Naziism generally were praised by Nazis as manifestations of God's providence and the regime's rhetoric and imagery are full of Christian references.

If we have to accept Nazi bromides and platitudes about religion then we should also have to accept our own Religious Right's claims that the American Founding Fathers were out to establish a "Christian nation" founded on the Bible because they too (even Jefferson and Franklin) said nicey-nice things about Christianity when speaking to church groups. Politicians however will say just about anything they have to, tailoring their message to fit their audience. The Nazis were not just brutes: they were also politicians and had to mollify German Christians. Fact remains Naziism was antithetical to Christianity (a Jewish offshoot, remember) and the Nazi leadership was no more Christian than my cat.

Re: Then why did Nazis wear belt buckles that said "God is on our side?"

"Gott mit uns" had been part of German military garb since the days of Frederich Barbarossa. Might as well claim the state of Florida is a theocracy because its flag has St. Andrew's cross on it.

Re: Christian Fascists like Salazar and Franco made laws denying Jews fleeing the Holocaust entry visas into Spain and Portugal.

Um, you are very wrong about Franco. Perhaps his only good deed was allowing Jews throughout Europe who were descended from the Spanish exiles of 1492 to reclaim Spanish citizenship. During WWII Spanish embarssies in Nazi Europe made little effort to check such claims for veracity but handed out Spanish citizenship quite freely, thereby saving thousands from the Nazis.

Re: Muslim-dominated parts of Europe that were invaded by the Axis powers had a higher survival rate for the local Jewish population than Christian areas

What Muslim dominated areas? Albania? OK, that was conquered by Italy (1939) and Mussolini had no program of Jewish extermination. Bosnia was under Croatian rule; the Croats were Nazi allies and they were never directly under Nazi rule. By the way you may want to look into the survival of the Bulgarian Jewish community (Bulgaria was also a Nazi ally)-- hardly a single one of them went to the camps due to the strenuous objections of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Posted by JonF | September 18, 2007 12:51 PM

As I see it, the big difference between Christianity and Islam is in the teachings. There is no "Sermon on the Mount" in Islam. There is no "turn the other cheek" or "render unto Ceasar" in the koran. When Christians commit violent acts they are explicitly in contravention to the teachings of the bible. When Muslims commit violent acts the line is not so clearly drawn.

Posted by danceswithgoats | September 18, 2007 4:00 PM

I guess the question of whose father can beat up whose, er, I mean, which religion is more violent historically, Christianity or Islam, is more interesting that why Matt doesn't like Naomi Klein.

I've found Klein to be perhaps the most insightful political commentator of the past 10 years or so. Harper's has an excerpt from her new book and I can't wait to read it. Sorry, Matt. Capitalism ain't perfect and Klein's pretty much got its number.

Posted by Rob Mac | September 18, 2007 5:09 PM

Just in terms of World War IV being Amazon's Islamic section best-seller - might bulk buying be playing some role, artificially inflating its popularity? (Or has Amazon started adjusting for that in rankings?) After all, that had/has been an issue with various rightwing screeds - dunno if it's still common..

"monotheism is the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. Ann Coulter to the contrary notwithstanding"

I think we can all agree that the emergence of a religion that held Ann Coulter to be the One True God would be the worst thing that ever happened to this planet - although the current dualistic cult where the Great Leader Bush confronts the Islamoliberal Forces of Evil ain't so great either . . .

I briefly worked for the Middle East Forum before eventually choosing principles over food (ok, that's a bit overdramatic), and let me say, there's something about a bookcase of Daniel Pipes-iana (not to mention an overflowing box or two of Phillip's Londonistan - see above point about bulk buying) that just drains all the joy out of a day . . .

Posted by Dan S. | September 19, 2007 7:39 AM