Post By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Islam has never overcome its adolescent origin. G. E. Von Grunebaum put it differently. In Modern Islam (1962), he says, “Islam is inherently unprogressive.” “Islam,” he explains, “is not vitally interested in analytical self-understanding.” This describes an adolescent mentality.

More recently, Bernard Lewis, in “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (1990), portrays Islam’s overweening arrogance and utter contempt for Western civilization.

Ethnocentrism goes well with adolescence: Muslims are not interested in what a non-Muslim says about mankind and the universe.

Contrast Maimonides: “The identity of an author, be he a prophet or a gentile, is of no concern [to us]. We don’t rely on [the personal authority of] the individual who made [such and such] statements … but on the proofs he presented and the reasons he made known.”

Islam is not really interested in truth, which is why the Taliban says “reason stinks of corruption.” Islam knows only “Islamic” truths. Hence, Grunebaum and Lewis say that any intelligent Western statesman will understand why Muslims, steeped in the mentality of the Qur’an, lack the ability to moderate their demands in disputes with non-Muslims.

This Islamic mind-set makes nonsense of Barack Obama’s “outreach” policy to the Iranians, just as it makes nonsense of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “reciprocity” policy toward the Palestinians. Indeed, it’s idiotic to insist on reciprocity with Muslims whose sacred scriptures call for your destruction.

Obama’s mindless posture, however, stamps the liberal West, whose leaders live in a cringing state of denial of Islam’s childishly proud, 14-century record of punctuated murder and mayhem!

There is but one adult conclusion to be drawn from this 14-century reality:  Israel will not enjoy genuine peace with its neighbors so long as Muslim adults behave like adolescents! Syrian-born psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan said as much when she said Islam must be “transformed,” not merely “reformed.” Let’s draw some “politically incorrect” conclusions.

First, as advised by theologian George Weigel, we must stop speaking of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths” or the “three monotheisms.” These tropes, says Weigel, obscure rather than illuminate. They “ought to be retired.”

I would go further. Islam should no longer be dignified by the term “religion.” A basic aspect of religion is “altruism,” a concept wholly foreign to Islam. Altruism is intrinsically alien to Islam since its distorted theology rejects the Jewish concept of man’s creation in the image of God, the ultimate source of human dignity and of the moral unity of mankind.

Moreover, whereas the Genesis concept of imago Dei teaches Jews to emphasize the primacy of reason and persuasion in human affairs, the denial of this concept conditions Muslims to exalt the primacy of force and coercion. This syndrome can be traced to Islam’s bellicose, polytheistic origin, which prompts Muslims to behave like rival gangs of teenagers,

It follows from the preceding, and as indicated by Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist living in Los Angeles, Islam can’t be reformed by moral suasion from within. She rightly says Islam must be “transformed,” hence transformed from without. But to transform Islam from without, certain measures must be taken to desacralize what Muslims worship, above all the Qur’an, which virtually no one thinks of doing, even though the Qur’an is the foundation of every Islamic regime, from Iran to the Palestinian Authority.

Focus, however, on what the Qu’ran high lights, namely, the “enemy,” the “infidel.” We are not going to expunge this word from the Qur’an by “changing hearts and minds” via a “Voice of America.” As “infidels,” we are Islam’s enemy, which means that Islam is our enemy.

So let’s be grown up about this enemy and cease behaving like adolescents, mindless of Islam’s history of genocide, which exceeds that of the Nazis. We have an unprecedented and implacable enemy.

We are not wide-eyed teenagers or sentimental old ladies. Nor are we acanemics that exaggerate the influence of ideas on behavior. We have a deadly enemy. Mankind has always thought of the enemy as one you must kill or destroy first, otherwise, sooner or later, he will kill or destroy you.

But living in effete liberal democracies, we do not think this way.  “We are caught,” says Lou Harris, “in the midst of a conflict between those for whom the category of the enemy is essential to their way of organizing all human experience and those who have banished even the idea of the enemy.”

The conflict is between adolescents weaned on hatred and adolescents weaned on pap! We are being led by politicians who have made a career on pap.