Article about, and interview with, the Owner of a Book Publisher called "Feral House." From "Reason." I have excerpted part of the interview that is on their book, "Extreme Islam," a collection of articles from Islam sources attacking the west.
>>>>Among the most recent things to be upset about was radical Islam's explosive arrival on the domestic scene with the 9/11 assaults. This inspired Parfrey to assemble his latest collection, Extreme Islam, which reprints primary documents and commentaries from a wide variety of Islamic figures and organizations. The book explores the dark and disturbing sides of pan-Islamism, the Palestinian cause, the Khomeini revolution in Iran, and the Taliban. It paints a picture of an often violent and radically anti-American worldview that -- though not necessarily representative of Islam as a whole -- is frightening, fascinating, and vitally relevant to Americans.<<<<
>>>>Reason: How did you become interested in the Islamic fundamentalism you explore in your new book Extreme Islam?
Adam Parfrey: Ever since the Khomeini revolution, I've been intrigued by Islamic text and graphics. When the Iranian revolution started, I began to see things that came over from the Middle East -- strange collages, the Echo of Islam magazine, and then a book collection of those magazines that came out in English. It featured things like amazing posters of Jimmy Carter as a satanic figure murdering young women -- not what people in the U.S. would expect or think Jimmy Carter capable of.
That's where my interest started. After 9/11, I brought out old Echo of Islam magazines and went on the Internet and found there were many jihad, basically terrorist, Web sites that were shut down shortly thereafter. Even Google cache files disappeared.
I'd noticed in the U.S. press that the old Chamber of Commerce idea of the world still dominated: Everybody's a nice guy. Everybody means well. Even if the Koran is really, truly a book about destroying the enemy, you'd hear the media say, "They don't mean total destruction of the enemy. If the enemy goes along with their religion and converts or pays a poll tax, a humiliation tax, then that's OK, they won't kill them."
I found it astonishing that those aspects of radical Islam were ignored by the major newspapers and even the alternative weeklies. I thought I could use [the Islamic extremists?] own propaganda to reveal the substance of their thought, and that should be a troubling thing. And I found it was. Not all Muslims are as extreme or as interested in jihad, but let?s say only 10 percent are. That's 120 million people worldwide -- a significant number of people.
Reason: What can we learn from the material in Extreme Islam?
Parfrey: One lesson is that we need to ask, what are the consequences of putting American troops in Saudi Arabia and keeping them there? Some Americans might think we should be able to put troops anywhere we want. But it's arrogant to believe there are no consequences to those actions. Or, if there are consequences, that we should just knock anyone who objects senseless.
Extreme Islam was produced primarily to get across an idea that wasn't disseminated widely in American culture -- to show how strong the [fundamentalist Muslim] belief system is and how unmanageable it is, considering there are tens or possibly hundreds of millions of people sharing these ideas. America has to come to grips with the intensity of their beliefs. Any conflict with them will not be resolved by simply saying we're great guys, we believe in democracy.
I believe Osama bin Laden, if you examine the Koran, is closer to the Koran and the prophet Mohammed's beliefs than the hope that Islam can be democratic. It's not a very democratic belief system. To say that it is comes out of a wish that has nothing to do with Islam. It comes from the idea that everything good has to do with democracy or democratic ideals. Well, there are different ideals at work in the world, and we need to come to grips with that.
Reason: People sometimes make comparisons between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. Maybe the ideas in Extreme Islam are no more representative of Islam than fundamentalist Christians are of Western culture.
Parfrey: There is something to that, I think. You?re talking about three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is a belief by some Christians and Jews that Islam is "undeveloped." That's what they say when they are being nice about it. They say that Christianity and Judaism have had many more years to "progress." I do think that all fundamentalisms have something in common. Each one believes in the deficiency of other beliefs and the ascendancy of their own beliefs over everyone else's.
The situation in east Jerusalem, at the Al Aqsa shrine, indicates this. The Al Aqsa shrine in east Jerusalem is thought by Jews and some Christians to be the site of the Temple of Solomon. Let's say the Orthodox Jews and Zionist Christians actually do what they wish and destroy the Islamic shrine and then rebuild the Temple of Solomon. You're talking about a world war situation these people are fooling around with. But they would wish for it to happen. That's what's scary. It's not like they don't care -- they want it! I discussed that with a Time magazine writer, who ended up writing a story that discusses that specific problem. It's watered down a bit from what I had said to the writer, but nonetheless it's a very disturbing situation in the Middle East regarding the Temple Mount, and these democratic well-wishers just refuse to talk about it.<<<<
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