"Between dhimmitude and death, who would not choose dhimmitude? "

I choose to fight to the death (preferably their death) and being an armed American I have the choice.

Mr. Dalyrumple...your essay was interesting. I find the comments by Mr. Westphal more to the truth of the matter. I believe firmly that the Koran was the natterings of an on again off again mentally retardent person. That the angel Gabriel was much more likely Satan or his minions.

What was produced was not a religious text but an ideaology of evil. If anything islam is a convienient "religion" its ability to become anything the current sayer wants is unbelieveable.

I hope beyond a prayer that western and eastren civilization soon awakens to recognize islams inherent evil and takes the steps needed to expunge it from the world. The world , for environmental reasons, could use the loss of its 1.5 billion mental cases.

While the diversity is tolerable, the perversity is not. Muslims have a choice: join the modern world or be rejected by it.

That said, the aspects of modernity the Muslim finds objectionable--the lack of modesty, the moral lassitude and decay, the insufferable "individualism" that has taken hold in Western society in the last 40-50 years, and which you have described so compellingly in your writings--these retardant socially destructive traits are also objectionable to those of common sense and proportionate decent respect for the permanent, time-tested virtues and values.

So it would seem that if adherents to the Muslim mythology wish for they and their universal centrality to endure, they might best adjure their infidel hatred and join the league of decency in the struggle to maintain moral balance in the face of the disintegrating features of decadent modernity.

But of course they will not. For perversity, radicalism, hatred for the "other," once uncaged, knows no satiety. It is, and always has been, the underlying instinctive activator of all religious belief, utopian secular idealism, and "blessed god-talker" progenitors of such notions.

Christian true believers say that the Christ figure is the exception. And that Christianity is the exception thereupon. That would be true, if human nature were Christ-like, instead of immutably corruptible, historically corrupt, and perennially unredeemable in perpetuity.

Thus the absolute requirements of common sense, rationalism, proportionality, and common decency, about which you have written so eloquently, in lamentation of their absence, and which much of the Muslim world, in its pervesity, rejects.

While I support Mr Westphal's argument, we should recognize that the New Testament was written during the years 50 to about 100 - not exactly in the same generation.  Paul, for instance - the best-known apostle - never saw Jesus, except on the road to Damascus.

None of which changes the main argument.  The Bible has an Old and a New Testament; the Koran is one continuous book.  The New Testament teaches love and inclusiveness ("Who is my brother?"); the Koran teaches the division between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb - "us" and "them", and the word for "them" in this case - "Harb" - means "war".

The author reaches a sensible conclusion as Islam is in contradiction with modern occidental values like equality of all citizen whatever is their sex or religion and also contradics the freedom of worship.

But so twisted path, taking as true some clichés as Islam was more tolerant than Christianniy in other times.

Inquisition for instance, was born in Spain just after the Christians defeated the Muslims, gaining again all their rights after 800 years of miserable conditions. The Jews as the objective associates of the muslims suffered the same punishment.
All had to choose with conversion to Christianity or being banned from Spain. Inquisition was tracking false converts to avoid the Islamic rule of infamy to rise again.
A little relation indeed with Christian worship and dogma, but a political act of one people raising again after a long, long timeof darkness.

So called tolerant muslims in Spain just transformed a 90% chritian country into a 90% muslim country, how can tolerance lead to such a result ?

Because the discriminatory policy against other religions is part of the sacred book of the muslims, the Kuran, whereas the Christians Gospel gives a message of peace to all human beings.

Professor Stora is another twisted reference. He was a trotskyst activist and claims his ideological positions, arguing his militant position on history.
He is anticolonialist, minimizes the status of the jews under islamic rule before the French arrived in Algeria, and emphasizes a supposed opposition between jews and settlers decsendants in Algeria.

If French Algeria suffered as well as metropolitan France of antisemistic movements, there has never been any deportation nor concentration camps in Algeria during WWII although racial laws were edicted by Vichy French government all over the territory.
Jews had positions in French Algeria like other communities had, like Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, Maltese or Mahonese  had.
French Algeria was a mix of people from different origins, were the muslims had their own law : muslims women had half of the rights of muslims men had as stated by islamic law and applied in all islamic countries.

If the jews fled Algeria with all other non muslims inhabitants it's just because all were sharing the same values and culture, whereas new power of FLN claimed from the start their allegiance to islam and its "tolerance".