Lawrence Auster and the Quest for the Holy Sharia

Lawrence Auster likes to play up his image as an honest and fearless critic of Islam. He dares to speak the truth when everyone else settles for euphemisms, qualifiers, and the other comforts of Political Correctness. He will not tolerate the politeness of a Daniel Pipes -- or a Dinesh D'souza -- who distinguishes between "radical" and "moderate" Islam. There is only one Islam -- neither radical nor moderate -- that ceaselessly wages jihad, kills the unbelievers, and will not stop until it subjugates the entire world.

This belief of Mr Auster's -- whether it's propaganda or paranoia -- serves the interests of Israel. If all Muslims are really a terrible human scourge then Israel will always be on the side of the angels when it slaughters Palestianians and if Islam is portrayed as a great threat to the West then West must ally with Israel in opposing Islam.

Though we can argue over the significance of threat that Islam poses -- and we will address this in another post -- the facts as Mr Auster presents are simply not there. He likes to argue that he sees Islam "as it is," and not "as it should be." But he doesn't see Islam "as it is," but how we wants to see it i.e. as a Neocon who wants to wage war against Muslims and protect the state of Israel.

Let's look at specific case that Mr Auster makes against Islam: "It is the rule of Sharia, the imposition of the Islamic law over each society and ultimately over the whole earth. Sharia is the true end of Islam, Sharia is practically indentical with Islam..."

But how accurate is this really? Lawrence Auster is simply reducing the history of Islam, the beliefs and actions of every single Muslim in the world -- all 1.5 billion of them -- to a few passages in the Quran. Every waking moment of every Muslim's life is dominated by only two thoughts: killing the infidels and then imposing the Sharia on them. So where can we find this fabled Sharia?

Let's look at a few facts. The most populated Muslim nations are Indonesia (over 200 million), Pakistan (167 million), Bangladesh (132 million), Egypt (70 million), Turkey (70 million), Nigeria (64 million), Iran (64 million), Algeria (32 million) , Morocco (32 million) , Afghanistan (31 million), and Saudi Arabia (26 million). Now how many of these countries actually codify the Sharia into their formal articles of government? Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Turkey are secular. Egypt does recognize Islam as the state religion but still permits some freedom of religious expression. Afghanistan is now nominally secular but has been embroiled in tribal wars since the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989. Iran is run by religious clerics -- and in that sense is an Islamic theocracy -- but does allow other religious traditions. Saudi Arabia probably enforces the strictlest interpretation of Islamic law, but this is actually an exception in the Muslim world and not the norm. Of course the political life in these countries is often quite primitive and at the local level and in rural parts of the country Sharia is more commonly practiced, but this only reinforces the fact that Islam really isn't much of a threat: If Muslims cannot even codify the Sharia when they are almost 100% percent of the population should we really regard the Sharia as a concern when Muslims are less than 2% of the U.S. population?

If anything these facts illustrate that Muslims are disorganized, tribal, and blunderingly inefficient when it comes to running political affairs. The Islamic world, while diverse, is backward, stagnant, and pitiful when compared to the nations of the west.

In future posts we will look more closely at the claim that Islam is a threat and though this is true to a very limited extent, Mr Auster's case against Islam is pure fantasy. Relax. The Sharia isn't coming to a town near you.