The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran Review

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(More customer reviews)This is not a new translation of the Muslim's holy book: The Koran/Quran. Nor is it a chapter-by-chapter review of the Koran, whereby each chapter is analyzed and explained. Instead, as implied in its title, it is a well-written "Guide" to the Koran. Essentially, the author has selected 75 or so significant topics discussed in the Koran and explains their current significance to Muslims, and how jihadists may use them to justify their attacks against "infidels" (including Muslims whom the jihadists believe are not on the `Straight Path' in following Islam). The author compares passages from both the Koran and the Bible, and explains the many differences of similar stories in them. Some of these topics include: abrogation/changes in Koranic verses (ayats); the devil sleeps in your nose; Adam & Eve; Abel & Cain (why the crow?), the jizya tax, King Solomon's problem with the Queen of Sheba's hairy legs; Jesus and his flying clay birds; some of Muhammad's raids; slavery of the `right hand'; how the Jews and Christians `corrupted' their holy books; the Isaac vs. Ishmael sacrifice dispute; Moses and the Pharaoh differences; did Allah promise Israel to the Jews?; hot hellfire for the kuffars; can Jews and Christians be `tolerated' by Muslims if the former were created from `apes and pigs' by Allah?; did Muhammad actually ride to Jerusalem?; were all Jewish prophets really Muslims?; was Jesus neither divine nor crucified?; wife beating; and much more. Besides selecting topics from just the Koran, the author also discusses current topical-issues being raised by U.S. Pres. Obama, the fundamentalist Osama bin Laden, and miscellaneous Muslim spokesmen. The author discusses the historical development of the Koran. Besides quoting merely from the Koran, the author also quotes from other Islamic sources (such as the hadith) to help explain some poignant topic. As the author himself commented: "This is not a general guide to the Koran" (p. 20). To read a chapter-by-chapter review of Mohammad's "Koran," see the "Bogging the Quran" serial at the author's JIHAD WATCH website. Hopefully, someday this series will be reprinted in book form. If you want more of an analysis of the Quran itself, I suggest "Introduction to the Qur'an" by W. Montgomery Watt (and Richard Bell); Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1970 (ISBN 0-7486-0597-5).

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The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History Review

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(More customer reviews)"Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam." Andrew Bostom was working on a book about Islamic treatment of "dhimmis," "infidels" or non-Muslims, when he came across this quote by Sufi jurist Sirhindi (d. 1621). The virulence of this quote inspired Bostom to put his general work on Islamic treatment of dhimmis aside, for the moment, and to focus on Islamic anti-Semitism.
Andrew Bostom, a medical doctor, is a careful and ethical researcher and writer. Nowawdays, there is so much political frenzy around the question of Islam, that readers often fear that they are exposed to more heat than light in best-selling books. When reading Andrew Bostom, readers need not worry that they are being spoon fed propaganda.
Bostom works his way with painstaking slowness and exactitude through mountains of primary sources, and he presents that data to the reader, with full citations to original texts. Bostom uses Islam's own documents, including Islamic legal documents on Jews, and historical accounts of Jewish life in Muslim lands, to support his inevitable conclusion: from the earliest days, from the founding of Islam by Mohammed, and from Islam's central text, the Koran, anti-Semitism has been a central aspect of Islam, and any reform of this aspect of Islam will be very difficult.
Bostom effectively debunks three oft-repeated Islam-apologist myths: the alleged Islamic Golden Age, that Muslims learned their anti-Semitism from Christians or the West, and that anti-Semitism arose in the Muslim world only after the recognition of the state of Israel.
There was no "Islamic Golden Age" when persons of various faiths lived in peace and harmony under wise, tolerant Islamic rulers, Bostom insists. From the days of Mohammed, non-Muslims under Muslim rule were subject to taxation, humiliation, oppression, exile, and murder. Bostom devotes great energy to proving this through historical analysis.
Muslims did not learn their anti-Semitism from Christianity. Muslims who had never met a Jew or a Christian brought their culturally-ingrained anti-Semitism with them into India, a largely Hindu and Buddhist sub-continent. Nor did they aquire anti-Semitism from Scientific Racism's or Nazism's racial disdain for Jews. Arabs are Semites, just as Jews are. Muslims forced Jews to wear distinctive badges more than a thousand years before Hitler did so. Christians also had to wear identifying badges under Muslim leaders.
The Koran is replete with anti-Semitic verses, most notoriously, the ones equating Jews with "pigs and monkeys." There is also the hadith, or saying of Mohammed, that rocks will speak to Muslims, asking them to kill Jews. These verses are freely cited by Islamic religious leaders today, as Muslim sermons posted on youtube reveals. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, exercised murderous hostility toward Jews.
It will be very difficult to discover reformers within Islam who wish to co-exist with Jews in respect and tolerance; it will be even harder for those reformers to realize their dreams. Islam leaves no room for reform, especially when it comes to hostility to non-Muslims, especially Jews. The Koran is believed to be the perfect, unchanging, eternal word of God, and the Muslim God refers to Jews as monkey and pigs.
Bostom's book is essential reading for those hoping to understand the truth about Islam.

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