Anti-Islam Denmark

DR.ANDREW BOSTOM: DANISH INTELLECTUALS SPANNING 176 YEARS HAVE OPENLY EXPRESSED FORTHRIGHT TRUTHS ABOUT ISLAM…….

 

Danish truth tellers.

But here is an American cited by Bostom in the same article that rings ever so true:

Islam saw Allah, but not man; saw the claims of deity, not the rights of humanity; saw authority, failed to see freedom—therefore hardened into despotism. Its governments are not governments. . . . It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to an infinite despotism.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard, Hedegaard, Magaard, and Islam

February 25th, 2013 by Andrew Bostom |

Erudite, honest Danish intellectuals, and academics, spanning 176 years, from Søren Kierkegaard, to, at present, Lars Hedegaard and Tina Magaard, have openly expressed forthright truths about Islam. It is only now, in our sad era, that the free expression of such honest wisdom has been threatened by the mutually abetting totalitarian scourges of cultural relativism, and Islamic supremacism.

Over the past two years, I have chronicled the ongoing travails of my intrepid colleague Lars Hedegaard, the Danish journalist and historian,  most recently, his narrowly surviving an assassination attempt by a likely Muslim assailant.

Hedegaard’s plight, and his voiced (and written) opinions on Islam whetted my curiosity about what the profound 19th century Danish writer and polymath, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), may have opined—if anything—on the Muslim creed. Kierkegaard, although renowned as the “father” of existentialist philosophy, produced a vast, highly original output, as summarized by the venerable Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which transcended

… the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction.

Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the “father of existentialism”, but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyze and revitalize Christian faith.

In the wake of the Danish cartoons debacle, Carlin Romano interviewed then 94 year old Kierkegaard scholar Howard Hong (the interview, entitled, “What Would Kierkegaard Do?,” was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2006). During a career of more than 60 years, Hong edited and translated with his wife, Edna, the complete works of Kierkegaard (co-founding the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, the largest Kierkegaard research library in the world). However, Romano’s discussion with Hong (reproduced in full here) yielded only suggestive, rather thin gruel on Kierkegaard’s views of Islam.

Undaunted, I sought out the recent (2007) academic English translation,Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks: Vol. 1—Journals AA-DDpublished by Princeton University Press, and described thusly:

The first of an eleven-volume series produced by Copenhagen’s Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, this volume is the first English translation and commentary of Kierkegaard’s journals based on up-to-date scholarship. It offers new insight into Kierkegaard’s inner life. In addition to early drafts of his published works, the journals contain his thoughts on current events and philosophical and theological matters, notes on books he was reading, miscellaneous jottings, and ideas for future literary projects. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the marginal comments he added later. The new edition of the journals reproduces this format and contains photographs of original manuscript pages, as well as extensive scholarly commentary. Translated by leading experts on Kierkegaard, Journals and Notebooks will become the benchmark for all future Kierkegaard scholarship.

As it turns out, Kierkegaard took a rather dim view of “Islamic monotheism,” relative to Judaism. Moreover, Kierkegaard was also forthright about Muhammad’s—and his Islamic votaries’—perceived mandate for global conquest via military means (i.e., jihad), which he compared to the violent, late 18th to early 19th century Napoleonic land grab.

June 8, 1837: Judaism develops in the first books of Moses, where God appears more in his omnipotence as lawgiver (Moses steps completely into the background); then in Job the detached individuality appears in a kind of opposition to God, and in the Psalms finds peace in the thought that God is after all God the Almighty against whom man must not strive. Mohammedanism develops a caricature; God’s omnipotence becomes arbitrariness, and his guidance becomes fatalism. [emphasis added]

September 12, 1838: [note: 155 years after the Ottoman jihadist siege of Vienna was broken] It occurs to me that Napoleon much more resembles Mohammed than do any of the great generals of the past. Napoleon felt himself to be or at least played the part of a missionary, as one who brought along with him and fought for certain ideas…Napoleon’s expedition went in the opposite direction to Mohammed’s expansion, but through the same countries—Mohammed from East to West, Napoleon from West to East.

More here at Andy’s blog

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