Jonathan Puddle

by Irshad Manji.

It’s actually a really important book. This kind of thing needed to be written, and not just for the reasons you’ll assume from it’s title. It’s written by a Canadian Muslim journalist, and is about Islam, Islam’s treatment of the Jews, of women, of other Muslims… and why it’s time for Islam to stop blaming the West for their problems and take a long hard evaluatory look at themselves. In addition to the usual ones, the author very recently received quite a credible death threat from a prominent Muslim authority. Her book is incredibly eye opening about a lot of things, not just Islam. I seriously recommend you get yourself a copy. The following quotes a kindof dark in nature, but I’m really beginning to think that Muslims are not much – if any- further from Christ than Jews. I’ve heard too many uninformed Christians blast Islam as devil worship, but accept Jews as brothers. This kind of ignorance needs to stop if this world is going to change. Read on.

Favourite bits so far:
“Palestinians are the Jews of the Arab world.” – The Arab nations tear Israel apart for their treatment of Palestinians, but Jordan has been the only Arab country that will accept Palestinian refugees. Every other Arab nation refuses them entry, and/or mistreats them.

Regarding accusations that Israel is an apartheid state: “Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? Would the judiciary be free of political interference? In the 2003 Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. Israel’s supreme court, exercising it’s independance, overturned both disqualifications.” (Digest that one!)

Quoting a Pakistani weekly, “Listen to Muslim intellectual, mullah, or politician and you will hear a litany of complaints and criticism against western sins of ommision and comission… Ask him where he wants to send his children to university and, if he is honest, he will reel off the names of the top American universities.”
…
“The fact that so many Muslims desire American influence holds the key to why they’re so furious with Washington. It’s not jealousy so much as unrequited camaraderie. For all the goods and services that America markets to Muslim societies, the greatest good, the greatest service – freedom – remains under-promoted.”

And finally…

“A majority of the world’s refugees spill out from Islamic countries. Not surpising, since most of the world’s civil wars rage among Muslims. Says Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, ‘The Arab states have fought no fewer than fifteen open or secret wars against one another since the 1930s …’ In the past ten years, Islamists and their socialist foes have butchered a hundred thousand Algerians. In February 1982, the Baathist forces of Syria’s Hafez Assad bombarded a town harbouring Muslim extremists. His hoodlums obliterated twenty-five thousand people. And from 1975 to 1990, the Lebanese civil war cost at least 150,000 lives, most of them belonging to Palestinians. That’s more than ten times as many deaths as Israel has inflicted in fifty years of combat.”