Our elite media tentatively (gasp!) begins to talk realistically about Islam, by Paul Monk in The Australian. This article is notable because it appears in our elite press and actually begins to treat Islam realistically. A first! Perhaps there is hope that our elite will one day move on from their dangerous fantasies about Islam. Perhaps they’ve been reading the Internet.
Check out these excerpts, as the author critiques a conversation between the Waleed Aly (a Muslim) and Robert Manne (a politically correct Muslim apologist):
[T]hey failed to explain why there would be any reason to feel uneasy about or even hostile to the growing presence of Islam in the West. … If, however, we are to answer the question “Islam: What are we afraid of?” we cannot avoid raising certain characteristics of Islam that do in fact give cause for concern to many people in the West, and many of those trapped in Muslim-dominated states. …
[T]he classic Muslim sources (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Kathir, Waqidi, al-Tabari, going back to the 8th and 9th centuries) make clear that he was a very dubious figure even in his own time. He founded a religion at the point of a sword, plundered infidels, arranged for the murder of his critics (even poets), massacred or expelled communities of Jews in Arabia, condemned apostates to death, was an unscrupulous polygamist and taught that women were inferior to men. …
Islamic protest Sydney 2012
The Muslim sources themselves are completely explicit on all these points. It is simply dishonest to pretend that none of this is true or to pass it off on the basis that Christianity and even Judaism also have their dark or dubious characteristics. …
Outside the West, the problem is much worse. In wide swathes of the Muslim world, other religions are persecuted and apostates are hunted to death with judicial sanction. Blasphemy is violently attacked and Muslim “heretics” hounded. Homosexuals are condemned to death. Women and girls are denied freedom and education. The Jews are viciously denounced on racist and religious grounds, quite apart from the political issue of Zionism. …
We need to address them honestly and intelligently, not dismiss fear of Islam as phobic or bigoted. It would have been good had Manne asked Aly questions about these difficult matters and had Aly addressed them.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
