http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9572
An Islamic Scholar is someone who has spent his life trying to understand the moronic writings or rantings of a functionally illiterate bandit. I have read that better than 90% of the post graduate degrees out of Saudi Arabia are in Islamic studies.

Georgetown Launches New PhD in Islamic Studies
Drawing on Georgetown’s unparalleled resources for study of the Islamic world through the Department of Arabic, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and the Departments of History, Theology and Government, the new PhD program will prepare students not only for scholarly careers in academia, but also to meet a rapidly growing demand in both the public and private sectors for those with expert knowledge of the language and culture of the Islamic world.

Al-Waleed bin Talal is the Saudi Arabian prince who, when he is not running telethons for suicide bombers, boasting in interviews how Saudi Arabia is Christian-rein (free of Christians), or operating a hate-spewing television station, gives universities like Georgetown and Harvard $20 million dollars to create centers for Muslim-Christian understanding. Now let’s take a look at exactly what a student might spend tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, room, and board at any university on a degree in “Islamic Studies.”

Religion as a tool for political and social control
Throughout history, dictators and kings have used religion as an excuse to perpetrate wars of aggression and the worst imaginable atrocities. This has been standard practice in every part of the world. On the night before one battle, for example, the Macedonian Army was terrified by a lunar eclipse. Alexander the Great immediately turned to his priest or soothsayer and said, “This omen means that Macedonia will eclipse the Persian Empire– isn’t that right, Aristander?” “Yes Boss! Absolutely right, Boss!” (or something to that effect) replied the seer. Today, of course, militant Islamic leaders do the same thing.

Iran’s Messianic Menace by Daniel Pipes
When he was still mayor of Tehran in 2004, for example, Ahmadinejad appears to have secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi [Islamic Messiah]. ..When addressing the United Nations in September, Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi’s appearance: “O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”

On returning to Iran from New York, Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

…one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

We suspect that all of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s followers saw the aura of light around him, if they knew what was good for them.

The Antichrist: A Valuable Organizational Model
We do not believe literally in the Christian prophecy of Revelations but it has valuable lessons in terms of organizational psychology and organizational dynamics. Revelations states that a False Prophet– perhaps the helpful fellow who makes himself see a halo of light around Ahmadinejad much as a good doublethinker from George Orwell’s 1984 could make himself see four fingers as five whenever Big Brother wanted him to– will help the Antichrist, a religious demagogue, rise to power.

Per John Keegan (The Mask of Command, 1987, 11) ,

The theatrical impulse will be strong in the successful politician, teacher, entrepreneur, athlete, or divine, and will be both expected and reinforced by the audience to which they perform. …What they know of him must be what they hope and require. What they should not know of him must be concealed at all cost. The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.

In other words, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad– a civil engineer by training and hence not the kind of a man to go into trances or religious raptures– is not crazy. He is probably more rational (i.e. calculating in his own self-interest) than Adolf Hitler, who came to a bad end through believing his own propaganda. He is, like the Wizard of Oz, reinforcing his own power by “fulfilling” Islamic prophecies and becoming what his followers expect or want to see. He may in fact be assisted by False Prophets similar to those of Revelations, and their job is to proclaim the miracles and wonders he wants them to proclaim.

We would not be surprised if, one day, the so-called Mahdi does climb out of that well that Ahmadinejad is watching and begins to say exactly what Ahmadinejad wants him to say. This would be unlikely to work in a civilized Western nation– Jimmy Jones and his cyanide-laced Kool-Aid managed to kill only a few hundred people by appealing to ignorant superstition– but it would play quite well in a backward and ill-educated Islamic country like Iran.

Judaism and Christianity, Then and Now
In the interests of impartiality, however, we must take a close and hard look at the Jewish and Christian religions before we discuss the lethal Kool-Aid that modern fundamentalist Islam sells to its followers.

The ancient Hebrews were not very nice people, as shown by the Old Testament. Their leaders apparently had the nasty habit of going into their tents, where (so they said) God told them to exterminate entire populations and take their land. In other words, they behaved a lot like Nazis, i.e. little better or worse than their contemporaries like the Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans. To their credit, though, their laws also limited what masters could do to their slaves; a Roman slave owner could kill his slave at will, work him to death, or send him to fight in the arena. Modern Jews, however, do not behave this way and it is quite obvious that the God we worship did not tell our ancient ancestors to smite entire populations.

Christianity’s founder was, in contrast, a genuine reformer who had no interest in waging wars of aggression– perhaps because meekness was indeed the best survival strategy under Roman rule. Jesus wanted to clean the moneylenders out of the Temple, much as Martin Luther later wanted to clean the indulgence-sellers out of the Catholic Church. After the fall of the Roman Empire, though, Christian leaders soon learned to use their religion to justify atrocities as bad or worse than anything the ancient Hebrews ever did. Wholesale slaughters of populations for being the wrong religion or even the wrong kind of Christians (i.e. Christians sitting on land the aggressors wanted) were quite common. In one case, a war leader ordered, “Kill them all, God will recognize His own.”

The Thirty Years War turned a good part of Central Europe into a desert and killed about a third of its population through starvation. Whan the Catholics under Count Tilley captured Magdeburg, they slaughtered four out of every five inhabitants, looted and sacked, and then burned the city to the ground. Tilley remarked of the event, “The soldiers must have something for their trouble” although he tried to get those who had raped women to marry them. Fairport Convention’s Red and Gold recounts, meanwhile, a battle of the English Civil War:

Through the hedgerow’s fragile cover
I watched brother killing brother
And all of this was done in Jesus’ name

The Catholic Church had one of the greatest sucker rackets ever invented, namely the sale of indulgences. They began by telling people that they would have to spend thousands or even millions of years in Purgatory, an unpleasant place in the afterlife where people were purged of their sins so they could enter Heaven. Then the priests and bishops, who had supposedly taken vows of poverty, sold people forgiveness for their sins. A few pennies could reduce one’s time in Purgatory by a couple of years, while a bag of gold could buy several thousand years of forgiveness. If one had led a rather decent life, one could buy forgiveness for dead relatives who, according to the priests and bishops, were suffering in the afterlife. Today, of course, we have televangelists: “Put your trust in JAYSUS and your money in mah pocket, and you will go to the Promised Land when you die.”

Napoleon said that he could get men to fight and die for him by offering them bits of shiny metal with ribbons attached but the Catholic Church had an even better racket. The Pope could get thousands of superstitious and credulous peasants to die for him by proclaiming a Crusade and then saying, as God’s representative on Earth, that anyone who died while fighting the heathens would go directly to Heaven. Anyone who merely went on the Crusade would receive an indulgence for all his sins and would not have to go to Purgatory.

Just as modern Jews do not behave like the ancient Hebrews, though, modern Christians recognize that the above practices were frauds and a perversion and misuse of everything their religion’s founder stood for. Today, only fundamentalist Islam maintains practices that civilized Jews and Christians abolished hundreds of years ago.

Did Mohammed Take Drugs?
The Islamic world has a long history of using mind-altering drugs, as shown by the Assassins’ use of hashish. The Koran’s ramblings makes the reader suspect that Mohammed himself used mind-altering substances. Interestingly enough, Frank Herbert’s Dune, which is based on the life of Mohammed, involves people taking drugs (from the “spice” produced by giant sandworms) right and left for the purpose of acquiring superhuman powers.

Per “Mohammed’s Believe It Or Else,” Mohammed’s visions included a giant talking camel. Here are some incoherent ramblings from the Koran in which the camel is mentioned:

[11.62] They said: O Salih! surely you were one amongst us in whom great expectations were placed before this; do you (now) forbid us from worshipping what our fathers worshipped? And as to that which you call us to, most surely we are in disquieting doubt.
[11.63] He said: O my people! tell me if I have clear proof from my Lord and He has granted to me mercy from Himself– who will then help me against Allah if I disobey Him? Therefore you do not add to me other than loss:
[11.64] And, O my people! this will be (as) Allah’s she-camel for you, a sign; therefore leave her to pasture on Allah’s earth and do not touch her with evil, for then a near chastisement will overtake you.
[11.65] But they slew her, so he said: Enjoy yourselves in your abode for three days, that is a promise not to be belied.

This is typical of the Koran’s contents: almost-incoherent ramblings and rantings that appear to have been dictated by an illiterate bandit or alternatively someone who was trying to speak in tongues. The few coherent portions– about five percent of the overall text– relate to what may have been rather-sensible tribal laws. The most intelligent part of the entire book is propaganda for conversion of Jews and Christians. As an example:

[3.67] Ibrahim was not a Jew nor a Christian but he was (an) upright (man), a Muslim, and he was not one of the polytheists.

This is similar to the “Jesus was Jewish” sales pitch from the “Jews” for Jesus.

In comparison with the Koran, the Old and New Testaments make sense. The Old Testament admittedly contains long litanies of who begat whom but at least one can understand what it is talking about. The New Testament contains sensible ideas such as the concept of the leader as a servant (to his or her people or organization). This is in fact a well-established modern management concept. In comparison, most of the Koran is almost incomprehensible although the theme “Allah will punish the evildoers” seems prevalent.

Furthermore, it is possible to understand how Al-Waleed bin Talal can promote “Muslim-Christian understanding” while his television show spews hatred of Christians given the following ramblings from the Koran:

[2.62] Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.

That is, Jews and Christians also believe in Allah and therefore shall be rewarded, except that:

[5.51] O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.

But a few passages later,

[5.69] Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians whoever believes in Allah and the last day and does good– they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve.

and later on,

[9.30] And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!

Militant Islamic Kool-Aid
Napoleon Bonaparte once pointed out that a leader could get men to die for him by giving them shiny bits of metal with ribbons attached, and medals did seem effective in maintaining the cohesion of the Grand Armee. Other armies simply provided their soldiers with copious amounts of alcohol prior to battle, for men will do things while drunk that they would never do sober.

Fundamentalist Islam, however, has an even better racket: a one-on-one meeting with Allah and 72 virgins. The Old Man of the Mountains gave his followers hashish (hence the name “Assassin,” or hashish-user) and then put them in a garden full of willing women. He told them they were in Paradise and that they would go there forever if they died while fighting for him. The Palestinians, for example, indoctrinate their children as “martyrs” almost from the cradle:

Thursday, January 9, 2003
Report: “Palestinian Media Watch”: Pressures Exerted on Palestinian Children to seek Shahada - Death for Allah
TV: Child Writes to Mother, “Rejoice over My Death” By Nadav Shragai Ha’aretz January 8, 2003:

“Ask for Death - the life will be given to you.” This slogan, which was broadcast on Palestinian television on July 5th of last year, was also the headline chosen by the authors of Palestinian Media Watch as the title of their 40th research report. This report examines the social pressure exerted by the Palestinian Authority [PA] on children to die as “Shahids” [Death for Allah].

“As for what a true martyr can expect, Chief Mufti of the Palestinian Authority Police, Sheik Abd Al-Salam Skheidm, spelled it out in 1999. “From the moment his first drop of blood spills, he feels no pain and he is absolved of all his sins; he sees his seat in heaven; he is spared the tortures of the grave; he is spared the horrors of the Day of Judgment; he is married to 70 black-eyed women; he can vouch for 70 of his family members to enter paradise; he earns the crown of glory, whose precious stone is worth all the world.” (Mona Charen, “U.S. needs to recognize differences between Palestinian, Israeli responses.”)

We observe that the Chief Mufti does not seem to be in any big hurry himself despite the promised rewards, and only the most superstitious and dirt-ignorant savages on earth would believe this kind of drivel for an instant. It is true that thousands of medieval Christians marched off to die in Crusades on the basis of similar promises but, at the time, even many members of the nobility could not read or write and they could be easily manipulated by demagogues in fancy costumes spewing mumbo-jumbo in Latin.

Ahmadinejad’s demons. From the New Republic, describes how the Khomeini regime imported 500,000 plastic keys from Taiwan to give to children who were to be sent into Iraqi minefields. The children were told that the keys would “open the gates of Paradise” for them.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”

This “God, for whom I speak, says that if you die for the Cause you will go to Heaven” garbage is eminently suitable for superstitious and illiterate mobs, which is why it plays so well in the modern Islamic world. This is in fact why militant Islamic nations outlaw or at least restrict all forms of education except for mindless religious dogma (see “Islamic Studies”) above, because education teaches people to think for themselves and people of even ordinary intelligence would not swallow the demagogues’ swill for an instant.

As it stands, 20th-century fundamentalist Islamic leaders could get hundreds of thousands of people to die for them by handing out little yellow plastic keys to Heaven. Jimmy Jones, in contrast, was able to get only a few hundred demented followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, while the Solar Temple worshippers who committed suicide to get on a celestial spaceship (or whatever) numbered in the dozens. This should underscore just how dirt-ignorant, primitive, and superstitious the militant “Islamic” world is. And, given Mohammed’s incoherent ramblings in the Koran, it is easy to see why.