Okey dokey.
I did not use the words “dupe” or “fool” at any point. I have made no claim that anyone (you or anyone else) was either duped or foolish for having overreacted to terrorist actions. It is only your particular inference that causes those words to be applied to you as the result of my statement.
You don’t get to cry foul by putting words in my mouth.
On the other hand, your statement was explicit in claiming that anyone who did not agree with your interpretation of various text was a “benighted fool.”
The violence in societies does not arise instantly or disappear instantly. The conditions that led to the subjugation of many peoples in many parts of the world occurred at different levels at different times. Currently, the peoples who are in the societies suffering the most disruption are those in countries where the Great Powers destroyed the political infrastructure or suppressed various cultures (without bothering to eliminate the people, themselves).
Your silly claim that Christianity is more peaceful than Islam because the lives of Jesus and Mohammed differed fails on any test you want to give it. When Islam conquered the Middle East, the inhabitants were allowed to continue practicing their religions. They incurred more tax burden than their Muslim neighbors, (but often less burden than they had suffered under the Byzantines who were dislodged). When the Christians launched the Crusades to “save” the Holy Lands, they butchered the inhabitants of Jerusalem–Muslim, Jew, and Christian–(not to mention butchering their fellow Christians in Constantinople on the way by). When Saladin reconquered Jerusalm, no similar massacre occurred.
Riots over cartoons? Christians have rioted and murdered over other Christians using the “wrong words” for prayers.
You are right. You never said they “duped” or “fooled” me. You said
So you just said you are “sorry for me” on general principles, not because somehow the terrorists had “scored a victory” over me by, well, not by fooling or duping me, you didn’t say that, but by leading me to “over-react” in some mysterious fashion, despite the fact that I was never duped or fooled. Maybe I’m just too dumb to see through the terrorists sneaky methods … but wait, you didn’t say that either.
tomndebb, out here in the real world, telling someone that you feel sorry for them because the terrorists have “scored a victory” over them by causing them to “over-react” is an insult. You can paper over it all you want by telling me what you didn’t say, but it’s still an insult.
You then go on to respond to my entire next post by saying, in its entirely …
Sounds like you’re not going to address a single one of the issues I raised, and are going out of your way to be snarky about it. If you’re not going to answer, fine … but it is un-Christian to try to belittle me along the way with a dismissive remark. If you don’t want to answer, then just keep quiet … but I thought we were trying to fight ignorance here. You claim no nation has a Sharia Law system throughout. I point out that your own citation proves you wrong twice. Rather than admit that you made an obvious mistake, you ignore it, and just say …
Okey-dokey.
Well, “okey-dokey” back atcha, I’ll ignore all that, then. We’ll put all of our disagreements in the past, and forgive and forget. I will now ask just one very simple question, for the second time. My simple question is:
Should I self-censor my 12 cartoons of Muhammed or not? And if so, why?
That way, we can avoid all of the questions about what you said and I said, and have a real example we can discuss without over-reacting.
My best to you, and to everyone,
w.
There’s a very good, well researched, scholarly article on whether the roots of Muslim terrorism are Islamic or come from the evil actions of the Great Powers in the journal Middle East Quarterly. Curiously, they come to a very different conclusion from tomndebb’s …
w.
Not in that article, it does not.
Fine points out the difference in tactics between the religious and the secular terrorists, but there is nothing in that article that suggests that Islamist terrorism would have developed spontaneously in Muslim countries without the social disruption that leads to such violence. Suicide bombers did not spontaneously erupt out of the Ottoman Empire once gunpowder had been introduced. Indonesia does not have a 400 year tradition of terrorism dating to the late 16th century when Islam replaced Hinduism and Buddhism as the most prevalent religion in that region.
In fact, it would seem that if one combines my statement that the Islamist movement is dangerous with my statement that terrorism and violence are more apt to arise in disrupted societies, then Fine’s article exactly supports my assertions.
No.
And your question is silly in context, in that I have not argued that we should bow before Islamist threats. I offered no opinion that we should censor ourselves or let the Islamists determine our rights to self expression.
My only point was that the over broad claims of hatred that you have posted and inadeqautely defended are neither accurate nor constructive.
Certainly we should exercise our freedoms. At no time have I posted otherwise. I just think that we should not emulate bin Laden as characterizing an entire system of belief as evil.
You have the freedom to follow his example and I have the freedom to point out your error.
Its good to know that when I ask silly questions or make silly statements, it doesn’t neccessarily follow that I’m being silly. Any fool can see that.
tomndebb, thanks for the reply.
What I meant was that you seem to think that the Islamic terrorists are not motivated by Islam, but by secular reasons (the evil actions of the “Great Powers”). You say that Islam is not motivating Somali taxi drivers, or disaffected youth in France, or the folks in the “teddy bear” prosecutions.
Fine, on the other hand, says that yes, by and large the terrorists are explicitly religiously driven, and are not driven by secular considerations like the fifty year old actions of the “Great Powers”.
That’s why I said that he comes to a conclusion that is very different than yours. You seem to think that the reason for Islamic terrorism does not lie in Islam, but in the fact that the poor terrorists grandparents were treated mean by the “Great Powers”. He explicitly rejects this thesis. Even the title, “Contrasting Secular and Religious Terrorism”, gives a clue as to the main thrust of his article.
In his conclusion, Fine says
Now, you can interpret that as supporting your theory that it is secular rather than religious motives that drive the Islamic terrorists … me, I’m not smart enough or flexible enough to do that kind of mental gymnastics, I just read his words.
w.
Correct me if I’m wrong, tomndebb, but as far as I can tell, in this thread you have not taken a position either way regarding the OP’s question of self-censorship. You’ve said Islamic terrorism is a danger, and you’ve said the Great Powers were bad and wrong, you’ve alternately abused me and ignored my questions, but you have not (AFAIK) said a single word about whether we should censor, self or otherwise.
So why is my question “silly in context”? I wanted to know your, and other people’s, position on the question of whether I should self-censor my cartoons. What is “silly” about that?
Unless, of course, you meant that it is silly to ask you questions.
w.
PS - Der Fliegende Holländer, I 'bout fell out of my chair laughing when you wrote:
… except you forgot, it’s not just “any fool can see that”, it’s “any benighted fool can see that” … these details are important. Any benighted fool can see that tomndebb didn’t call me “silly”, because that would be an insult.
Two out of three might not be bad, but getting only one out of three is not good performance.
The Somali taxi drivers are (sort of) prompted by (their Somali cultural interpretation of) Islam–an interpretation that is not shared by Muslim Sudanese, Muslim Iraqis, Muslim Iranians, Muslim Indonesians, Muslim Indians, Muslim Turks, or, from what any evidence anyone has been able to provide, any other Muslim group in the entire world. (For that matter, Muslim Somali immigrants in Maine, Virginia, and Texas do not appear to share the same beliefs, indicating that it might be a belief held by a very localized group–and certainly not worldwide Islam.)
The disaffected youth of France were condemned by the observant Muslims and it has been repeatedly pointed out that those kids had little contact with Islam. In their perception that they were facing discrimination from mainstream France based on the fact that they came from “Muslim” countries, they rioted in “the name” of Islam without actually being motivated by any Islamic beliefs.
The teddy bear incident was a case of one political group trying to use a particularly odd form of xenophobia to exert pressure on the government–a group that was not supported by many of their own countrymen and found no support in the rest of the Muslim world.
So, arguing that “Islam” is responsible for events that do not arise from any Muslim beliefs strikes me as a hatred in search of a target.
The overall violence occurs due to social disruption (which hardly ended fifty years ago unless you think we invaded Iraq in 1957). Within that violence, a fair amount of specific terrorism has a religious component. Your claim, here, is a strawman along with a touch of false dilemma and excluded middle.
Are you deliberately misreading my posts? Or are you so fixed on your world view that you have to distoryt history and my statements in order to create your claim?
The “reason” for Islamic terrorism? As in the cause of such terrorism? Which cause? Formal cause? Material cause? Efficienrt cause? Final cause?
I have at no time denied that the source of much of the Islamist terrorism is a specific branch of Islam.
I have noted that the overall violence occurs in societies that have suffered disruption. (If you think that external disruption in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Sudan, Libya, or other countries ended fifty years ago, you are very badly mistaken.)
A disrupted and violent society is more easily led into particular forms of violence by people who can provide an external object of hatred. (Much as some Westeners, fearing violence, make Islam such an object.)
Since those conditions are in place, it has been easier for those Fundamentalist factions of Islam to take control to “direct” the violence, in this case, employing terror–hence my statement throughout this exchange that the Islamists are, indeed, dangerous. Lumping French punks together with Mohamed Atta is counterproductive. It assigns a single source of violence to widely disparate movements, something that will make it harder to understand or combat either.
I saw little point in stating the obvious. I saw no one actually defending self-censorship, only a few posters who felt it might be a necessary precaution. It has only been when posters have submitted errors of fact or opinions based in errors of fact that I felt obliged to provide a counter position.
So tomndebb, when you talk about everything but the question in the OP, (because you see “little point in stating the obvious”, or for whatever unstated reason), that makes me “silly” for wanting your opinion regarding the question???
Okey-dokey … foolish me. Won’t make that mistake again, you’re right, I agree with you, wanting to know your opinion is indeed silly.
In any case, I can’t make out your argument. You say that Islam is not responsible for terrorism, but you also say it is … you say it’s for secular reasons, due to external forces, but you also say it it is religious in nature. So in the main, which one is it?
I don’t see that your position differs from mine … but only because you haven’t taken a single position. You want to camp out on all of them.
My position is simple. Islamic fundamentalists, by and large, are not driven by a sense of loss, or by what happened in their grandparents time, or by the prevailing level of violence in the societies they inhabit. In fact, they are responsible for much of the violence in the societies they inhabit, so your argument is circular. They are driven by Islam.
Have a look at Bin Laden’s “Declaration of War” … somehow, he doesn’t mention the level of violence in Saudi Arabia (which is low by any definition) as being a force that impels him. Nor does he say it was the actions of the Great Powers in 1950 that drives him.
To the contrary, he says he is impelled and driven by Islam … and hey, call me silly, but I believe him.
You airily sniffed and declined to answer my question about Thailand, which I understand completely, in your position I might not have answered it myself … but then I wouldn’t find myself in your position. It is very relevant, however, since we find exactly the same kind of terrorism in Thailand (which was never conquered by the Great Powers, and had no history at all of this type of violence) as we find elsewhere in the Islamic world. How does your theory about “it’s all due to interfering outsiders and historical violence” deal with Thailand? Or is that another “silly” question?
And if the Great Powers and the violence levels have driven the delicately balanced Islamists to terrorism … how come it’s only Muslims that it has this effect on? There’s Christians and Hindus and Buddhists and a host of other groups who have been mistreated by the Great Powers and live in the midst of violence.
… curious how so very, very few of those Buddhists and such have strapped on bombs and blown up the local restaurant, isn’t it? But I suppose that’s just a coincidence … perhaps they are made of solider stuff than the Muslims, for whom even a whiff of a cartoon is enough to make them rush out into the street and kill Crusaders and Jews.
w.
You did not simply want my opinion of the OP. You tied it to your whole bogeyman argument against Islam. The context was that in the middle of you trying to portray islam as the great monolithic source of evil on Earth, you suddenly wanted my opinon regarding your cartoons.
meh.
Clearly, you are unable to figure out what I have said, but since it is already there and you are now simply mangling what I said for the purpose of mocking it, I see no reason to exert more effort explaining the point. I rarely expect to persuade the True Believers of any faith and my posts were intended to point out to the peanut gallery at home that your simplistic condemnation of Islam was based on errors of history and logic. Having made my point, I find no reason to continue trying to persuade you away from your dearly held beliefs.
You continue to push the false claim of “fifty years ago” regarding events that are current. No point in trying to persuade those who simply deny history.
I agree about many of the Fundamentalists–but you equate them to Islam and I recognize that they are a specific movement that is a small part of Islam and that is not equivalent to or identical to Islam.
Again with the “1950s” claim (that you invented). Are you hoping that if you keep repeating that the events (many recent) happened long ago the rest of the audience will fail to note that you have created that claim out of whole cloth?
As to bin Laden, he very definitely does talk about the cultural and social disruption of the society in which he was born. He defines it in terms of his faith–which one would expect of a Fundamentalist of any religion–but he is definitely talking about the loss of cultural values in his society. His complaints are filled with longing for “that old time religion” in which he grew up–the extreme form of Wahabbism that bloomed in the tribal societies of pre-petroleum Arabia and that is rejected by the Shi’a and even by most Sunnis.
Well, we could consider the actual reports from the incident:Many southern Muslims feel unfairly treated by the country’s Buddhist majority, and their discontent has fueled separatist movements since Thailand annexed the area a century ago.
Your “conquered by the Great Powers” statement is a strawman, by the way. I previously noted Muslim lands being disrupted by the ongoing conflicts between East and West. Thailand very much bought into that cycle of colonization. (Which is not a claim that most nations were not looking to conquer each other back throughout the ages, but the particular dynamics of the 19th and 20th centuries are still being felt.)
Peoples in the Americas and Pacific were eliminated by disease and warfare. The Europeans tended to leave the peoples in Buddhist and Hindu lands with their cultures (and often their political boundaries) intact. This meant that those societies and cultures suffered far less disruption. On the other hand, the Europeans tended to take Muslim lands and break them up and rejoin them in arbitrary ways that forced disparate cultures to associate in new (European) ways in artificial constructs that were unable to hold when the European pressure was removed. This is not an absolute rule describing every event, but it is a general guide that indicates the path that many colonies and “trusts” would follow. Certainly, Indonesia was not disrupted to an extreme degree by the Dutch. On the other hand, the effort to secure independence was interrupted and turned into a political football when the West and the Communists decided to pour weapons into the area with the U.S. supporting a fairly nasty dictatorship that delayed the movement to representative government.
As to the idea that only Muslims have resorted to terrorism, you’ll have to take that up with the victims of terror in the conflicts of Northern Ireland, the Basque-Spanish conflict, the Tamil rebels, the Sri Lankan Buddhist attacks on Muslims and Christians unconnected to the (Hindu) Tamil conflict, the member states of the former Yugoslavia, and the Marxists of Peru and the drug lords of Colombia. Muslims figure more prominently in the news of terrorism because more Muslim regions suffered the disruption that fosters terrorist activity.
No, suicide bombing is an Islamist creation, there is no doubt about that. Buddhists follow the Christian example of simply massacring their foes.
Upon re-reading the thread, I realize that for me, it’s personal. I’m a cartoonist. I’ll make fun of anyone, including the Prophet (PBUH).
For drawing those cartoons, some Muslims would say, even decree, that I should be put to death. But that’s a small minority, say half a percent.
Another, slightly larger group of Muslims would settle for one of the major punishments, like chopping off a hand. I’d say under five percent.
Another group would be satisfied with minor punishment, like if I were only caned, nothing permanent, just beaten raw and bloody.
Yet a larger group of Muslims would say I could draw them with only, like say prison time. Big jump here. I suspect if you asked, a third of the Muslims worldwide would say yes, you diss the Prophet (PBUH), at a minimum you do the time …
A larger group yet would say that even if I was allowed to draw those cartoons without punishment, their publication anywhere should be banned. My guess is on this point, a majority of the Moslem world would agree with banning publication of those cartoons.
Now, there’s two or three billion Muslims out there. Half a percent, OK, that means only ten million Muslims think people like me should be killed out of hand for insulting the Prophet (PBUH).
And only, say, forty million Muslims think people like me should have my hand chopped off. And likely a majority of them wanting to tell me what I can’t draw or print or post or write.
Oddly enough, I don’t find much comfort in any of that.
So, tomndebb do you see why I:
a) Take it very personally?, and
b) Identify the source of it with Islam, rather than with poverty or dislocation or Great Powers?
Because there’s no Buddhists or Shintoists or Zoroastrians out there believing I should die for what I draw. Just Muslims. Nobody else believes that a cartoon is worth a life.
There’s no Hindus or Jews or Christians or Copts out there thinking I should go to jail for a cartoon. Just Muslims.
There’s no Animists or Shamanists or Hutterites or Pagans out there decreeing that I should have my hand chopped off for drawing something they didn’t like. Just Muslims.
Now, when the stupid Cartoon War was raging, as you might imagine I followed it very closely. I used Google Alerts to feed me news from worldwide. And the one thing that struck me, the question I kept asking myself was, where is the moderate Muslim outrage at the burnings and the killings? Where are the imams and mullahs standing up and saying THIS IS NOT ISLAM!! Where did the moderate voices go?
Then I was reading some obscure middle eastern blog, a woman posted and said nobody spoke out against it because they were afraid. And I reflect on the recent murder of the woman whose crime was doing another woman’s hair, and I can understand that fear. The worst criminal in Islam, the one to be hunted down and killed without mercy, is the apostate, the one who has turned his back on the umma, the community of Muslims.
So, tomndebb, I agree with you. Not all Muslims are alike. There are two main groups. The smaller group of the violent, and the larger group of the cowed. With, of course, the usual sprinking of heretics and intellectuals and dissidents and outlaws.
Here’s the difference to me. I don’t care if somebody wants to live like the Buddha. If they want to wear orange, sit under a tree, hold a begging bowl, meditate on the eight-fold path, no problemo, go for it…
And I don’t care if someone wants to live like the Christ. Wear a robe, grow a beard, preach peace and love and groovy, hey, I wish him well, more power to him. That’s not a problem to me.
But if someone wants to live like the Prophet, and gather some men and lead a raid on the next village, and defeat the villagers, and line the men and boys up and kill every male with pubic hair, and then take all the women and children as slaves and concubines … well … I have a problem with that.
w.
Intention You sure know your stuff buddy.
tomndebb Can I suggest you’re on a loser,** intention** has you beat all ends up
It’s been a long-standing rule around here that you can tell someone that their arguments are the most vile, stupid, fucking silly things ever put forward, in the history of the universe. You just can’t say the same things about the poster themselves. Of course, you knew that already, so what point were you trying to make?
That Muhammad wasn’t silly, but he did some silly things?
On a more serious note, tomndebb, upon re-reading the thread, I want to thank you for your continued insistence that Muslim ≠ Muslim. That is to say, there are Muslims and then there are Muslims, they are all different. This is true, and to be remembered. Thanks for the reminders.
For me, the difficulty is that Islam is a desert warrior’s religion, founded by a desert warrior who personally led his men to fight, pillage, rape, enslave, and plunder across the 7th century landscape. The “hadiths” (the collection of sayings of Muhammed’s contemporaries that surrounds and is used to explain and extend the Koran) are the sayings of his brothers-in arms in those battles.
As a result. Islam’s rules and laws and customs are appropriate to war and wartime. Its strictures and pronunciations are given in the language of war. Much of the Quran’s subject matter is the conduct of war — the treatment of prisoners, the times for fighting, the treatment of subjugated people, it reads in parts like a treatise on military law.
And as you might guess, a major tenet of Muhammed’s new religion was to spread Islam at the point of a sword if need be. This, of course, did not endear him and his followers to their neighbours …
Fortunately for the neighbours, however, upon Muhammed’s death the violence advocated by Islam turned inwards and began the now fourteen century long consumption of its own flesh. A generally overlooked feature of Islamic violence is that, 9/11 notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of its victims are Muslims themselves.
Muslim custom demands burial before 24 hours have elapsed. And before Muhammed was even in the ground, the battle between Sunnis and Shiites began, over who should succeed Muhammad. One group supported Muhammed’s uncle’s sister’s nephew’s firstborn, and the other group wanted Muhammed’s sixth son by his fourth wife, or somesuch, who knows.
Other than minor doctrinal variations, by the way, that’s the major difference between Sunnis and Shiites – they disagree over who should have been made the head honcho fourteen hundred years ago …
At some point, people always say “Well isn’t there lots of violence in the Bible”? Yes, there’s heaps. God is always smiting some poor shmoo, or killing 50,000 people because they pissed him off.
But there is no stricture in the Bible that enjoins Christians in the year 2008 to go out and spread their religion by the sword. Jesus’s basic message was “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men,” and “Forgive your enemies.” Muhammed’s basic message was “chop off one hand and foot on opposite sides of your enemy’s body, and he won’t bother you again”. Literally. That’s the specified punishment for someone who renounces Islam, who turns their back on the faith. Which works fine for desert warriors in the 7th century, but sucks in the 21st. (Actually, there’s a choice: kill them, or crucify them, or chop off one hand and one foot. Honest. You can’t make this stuff up.)
And don’t delude yourself that there are not Muslims out there who believe every word of that, literally, and are willing to act on that belief. Check out some of the stories of those who have renounced Islam … not all of them have lived to tell about it.
So while it says in the Bible that someone who blasphemed God was stoned to death, nobody pays that any mind these days. I know of only one major religion that still advocates stoning as a punishment for anything. All of the major religions have moved past that particular barbaric behavior … except Islam.
What I’m saying in all of this is that, just as tomndebb point out that all Muslims are not the same, I am saying that all religions are not the same … and we ignore that at our grave peril.
w.
PS - Just read an interesting book review on this question in the New York Times (might be a free subscription required.)
intention:
I’ve been reading your posts in this thread and my conclusion is that you’re not seeing the world and its incredible complexity clearly enough and you are not aware of that limitation, which is why you are so categorical in your arguments.
If you have the time and the means to do it, I would suggest extensive travel and interaction with the natives. The more points of view you can look at something from, the clearer the picture will become. I know from experience.
This is simply propaganda bullshit. Repeating it does not make it true, even if it warms your heart to believe it.
I would not guess this at all, since I prefer to read actual serious history rather than the scary bogeyman stories written about Mohammed by people with a vested interest in demonizing him.
Just as there is no “stricture” in Islam–in 2008 or in 622–to go out and spread their religion by the sword.
I was willing to let your final post (#97) the other night stand as the closing to this thread (despite its clear errors of fact and its purely invented percentages). If you aspire to be a cartoonist and you find cartoonists attacked by members of a group, I can understand a visceral reaction to such attacks that are expressed in negative attitudes toward the group.
When you return to post nonsense and propaganda as “history,” you violate the point of the Straight Dope by promoting ignorance instead of fighting it.
Did Islam arise in a period of civil strife, with Mohammed engaged in armed conflict with other people? Yes.
Did he engage in or encourge “rape” and “pillage”? No.
Did he ever encourage (much less include as a “stricture”) forced conversions under threat of death? No.
(I suspect the response to this will be a few cherry-picked quotations from the Qur’an along with some propaganda from various anti-Islam hate sites, of course. Note, however, that I am not denying the strife that surrounded the birth of Islam, only the lies told about its beginnings that fearful people are only too eager to believe.)
Here: I’ll even help you out by pointing to a series of quotations that are generally trotted out by those who prefer polemics to history: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9318381&postcount=116
Of course, I will then point to a rebuttal using the full quotations in context by someone who is more interested in history than in hate baiting rather than the clipped quotations selected by those who appear to prefer fear and ignorance: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9324670#post9324670
tomndebb, you say:
Yes, he did. Your assertion is as untrue as the rest of the “facts” in your email.
Since you prefer history to stories, among many historical examples, we could start with the subjugation and destruction of Banu Qurayza. This one is well attested to by a variety of sources.
In the Muslim year A.H. 5 (626, 627 A.D.), Muhammad’s enemies (the Meccans and their allies) negotiated with the Jewish village of Banu Qurayza, to try to get them to help the Meccans in besieging Muhammad.
The Jews did not allow the Meccans to use their land, and they did not attack Muhammed. Nonetheless, after the Meccans had abandoned their siege and gone home, Muhammed said the Angel Gabriel came to him and ordered him to attack Banu Qurayza.
So, Muhammed gathered his men, and set siege to Banu Qurayza. He was assisted by one of his top lieutenants from the Medina siege battles, Sa’d b. Muadh. He was wounded in those battles, and had sworn that he did not wish to die until the Jews were wiped out.
Eventually, the Jews could no longer hold out, and surrendered. Muhammed picked one of his men to decide the Jew’s fate … and heck, call it unlucky chance, it was Sa’d b. Muadh that he picked.
Sa’d decreed that they should kill all the males with pubic hair, and enslave the women and children and distribute them among the men as spoils of war. And Muhammed said that he agreed with the sentence, and it was carried out. The property of the (by then very dead or enslaved) villagers was, of course, divided among the victors. These included Muhammed, who took a share of the booty himself.
These facts are not disputed by either Islamic or Western sources. The two sides of the debate place very different explanations on the skeleton of facts, but the facts themselves are agreed.
Now, where I come from, that constitutes engaging in and encouraging rape and pillage … although I suppose YMMV. Your view of Muhammed, while a testament to the goodness of your heart and your Christian virtues, is completely at odds with the historical record.
Also at odds with the historical record is your claim that:
From the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, page 89, [7] (my emphasis):
It almost became a sixth rukn, or pillar of Islam, and you claim it doesn’t even exist? … tomndebb, for one who proclaims some kind of authority on these matters, your beliefs about Islam are simply … well … silly. They fly in the face of both historical and modern accounts, research, and knowledge. I could provide you with a host of other citations, but they all say the same thing. Spread the religion with the sword. It appears that the forces of Islamic spin have scored a complete victory over you. I feel sorry for you.
w.