We noted the debate between Dean Esmay and Robert Spencer previously. In this installment, Spencer is seeking evidence to prove his rather pessimistic conclusions wrong:

“I have said that all eight madhahib [Islamic schools of jurisprudence], most notably the four principal Sunni madhahib — Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbali — all teach jihad and Sharia supremacism. They are not monolithic, but on that they are united. Prove me wrong.” I stand by that statement, and can support it and have supported it with evidence from each of those major madhahib. In other words, I can prove that violent jihad is not based on “tendentious and pernicious interpretations of what the Koran says, in the ways that the most radical clerics of Islam interpret them,” but on the Islamic mainstream. Esmay ignores this and asserts the contrary, without adducing a shred of evidence.

Is it “inescapably correct” that each Muslim school of jurisprudence sanctions violent jihad? Yes, as much as it is “inescapably correct” that each Muslim school of jurisprudence sanctions tauhid, or Islamic monotheism. There is no disagreement among Muslims about tauhid, and it isn’t hating Islam or Muslims to say so. With jihad it’s just the same thing: it is a matter of fact, not hatred. Again: prove me wrong….

What I have encountered again and again, however, has been the flat assertion that peaceful Islam (not just peaceful Muslims) exists and is the Islamic mainstream, and that I am dishonest or malicious for denying this. But no evidence is ever presented for the existence of this Islam, and in all the years that I have been studying Islamic texts and Islamic history, I have never found it. Again and again and again people throw up to me the assertion without evidence.

Accordingly, I have asked for this evidence again and again here, because I am only interested in the truth, and if such evidence exists, I have no interest in denying it. In my response to Dean Esmay, I asked again: “I have asked here many times for people to send me examples of Islamic religious scholars rejecting, on Islamic grounds, jihad violence against non-Muslims; rejecting the idea that Sharia law should be instituted in the Muslim and non-Muslim world; and teaching the idea that non-Muslims and Muslims should live together indefinitely as equals. Send me rejections of the ideas that women should not enjoy full equality of rights with men. Send me information that shows that those who write such rejections are not lone voices crying in the wilderness, with the wolves of Islamic orthodoxy ready to pounce upon them, but that they represent broad traditions within Islam and have large followings.”

We think the debate is interesting, and Spencer’s request worthwhile, but we can’t help feeling it is a little beside the point. Jihadists think they are saving their immortal souls through Jihad, and we hear almost no voices saying that they are not. From time to time we wonder the following: if Iran should set off a suitcase nuke in lower Manhattan or Tel Aviv (a subject we have previously considered), what percentages of the American people and the MSM would be incredulous, or would think it is George Bush’s fault?

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 4:52 pm and is filed under General, Iran, MSM, Religion, War, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.