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Isn't it odd that almost a decade after 9/11 we don't have a specific term for the enemy that declared war on Israel and the West? We know them, even if we haven't yet settled on a name for them. Should we call them islamofascists? Islamocists? Islamic extremists? Muslim freedom fighters? Islamists? Are they a handful of criminals not in touch with their religion? Are they Muslims driven mad by western hostility? Are they Muslims driven to retaliation for something or other perpetrated by Israel and/or the West against Islam or against the founder of Islam or against some Muslims somewhere? Or are they simply ordinary run-of-the mill Muslims conforming to the tenets of their religion, living a life style sanctioned by their religion, with the attitudes instilled by their religion? Is the enemy Islam itself? Perhaps we should call it Resurgent Islam, now that Islam has the money to carry out a sustained and well-planned attack to make Islam become the dominant religion world-wide?
Then there's a category we can name readily -- we're just not sure it exists. Define for me, if you will, a moderate muslim? Is it your neighbor who grills hot dogs at his fancy backyard chef station? You don't discuss politics or religion with him -- it would be rude. Sometimes you wonder what would happen if you offend him -- and uneasily stifle that thought. Is it the girl wearing a head scarf and smart jeans, shopping at the mall? Is it, as is claimed, all but a very few, the criminal few we have a problem naming. Andrew McCarthy has summed up our perplexity[1]. He writes
"Bernard Lewis [writing on Islam] obviously felt no need to resort to such devices as "Islamism" — a device I adopt myself in The Grand Jihad — to conform to today's obligatory but unproved assumption that there exists a moderate, tolerant Islam, scripturally based and doctrinally distinguishable from the Islam of the 'extremists.'"
So here is our dilemma. We know of many groups of Muslims that are engaged in stealth jihad and frank terrorism in the service of promulgating sharia law universally -- but we are not sure what to call them. Conversely, we have a specific name for Muslims who are not fellow travelers of these extremists -- we just aren't sure they exist.
There's another problem, perhaps artificially created -- the nature of the religion. We haven't settled on whether the extremists are an aberration or if their behavior is sanctioned, even considered praise-worthy, by their religion. Does the religion encourage violence and is it itself the source of the goal of its adherents to institute sharia law worldwide by more or less violent means, depending on the circumstances? Or is it a peaceful religion? This latter view is peddled by much of the media and many politicians as a matter of faith needing no proof. In this rosy view, pure Islam has occasionally been hijacked by some extremists, who get all the attention, but most of Islam's adherents could teach the Buddhists a thing or two about peace and world harmony. If true, does that mean these peaceable Muslims -- putative moderates -- are following the dictates of their religion? Or are they ignoring the call to Jihad? Or haven't they yet been called to action by their leaders?
Then there's the evolving story that there is Islam, the religion,
and Islamism, the political conspiracy to unify the world under sharia
law, and the two are very different. In this view, Islam the religion
and political Islam are never joined, despite the fact that
prestigious and respected clerics continue to preach jihad.
MANY IN THE MEDIA WILL NOT CALL A MUSLIM TERRORIST a terrorist. The NY TImes self-censors itself.
It did show this cartoon by Oliphant[2] where Israel is the Nazi; Hamas' Gaza the innocent victim. What an inversion of the truth!
What a truly offensive way to describe Israel defending itself. It
is particularly scurrilous when in actuality IDF soldiers often
endanger themselves rather than try to kill a terrorist wearing a wife
or two in front of him and children surrounding him. The Times
profoundly insulted Christianity, asserting that this photo of
Serrano's Jesus hanging on a cross submerged in a jar of urine
But you won't see the Mohammad cartoons in the NYTimes.
Some braver souls will discuss the religion. Or the politics. They
often won't link them. They state facts but they won't connect the
facts. They ignore patterns.
Others enter into the fray and explore more deeply. Let me give you
an example. In August 2010, some first-rate scholars came together for
a conference on anti-Semitism at Yale University. Their intent was an
examination of global anti-Semitism. So how could they not talk
about Muslim anti-semitism? Islam and its people and its geography
created and continue to create a big chunk of the history of
anti-semitism. "In Europe, Muslims, ... only 3%-4% of the population,
committed 24 to 32.3 times the number of anti-Semitic incidents as
European non-Muslims."[4] Increasingly in the States, the campus has
become the locus where anti-semitism is introduced into the community.
It has become commonplace to see a sudden spike of vicious
anti-semitism at a university where there is a strong and
well-financed group of Muslim "students." Some at the conference
discussed the zeal with which Palestinian Arabs have taken on the job
of demonizing Israel. Altogether, these scholars had cause to feel a
sense of accomplishment at their careful examination of the recurrence
of an old disease.
SOME MUSLIMS AND SOME NON-MUSLIM USEFUL IDIOTS
and self-hating Jews reframed the conference as a hate-mongering
dastardly attack on the po' Palestinians by a bunch of evil-minded
people. In Richard Cravatt's words, [it was as if] Identifying
Palestinian Anti-Semitism is itself racist.[5] To judge from the
amount of Google space devoted to these attacks on the conference,
Daniel Pipes was sadly right in noting that "the right of Westerners
to discuss, criticize, and even ridicule Islam and Muslims has eroded
over the years.[6] These conference attackers knew the speakers had
to be evil zealots because for the most part they are pro-Israel. One
pathetic soul, in a fascinating inversion of reality[7] claimed that
we need even more criticism of Israel "to expose and halt an
Israeli/Washington partnership to conquer, divide and control the
Middle East by force, stealth, deceit, intimidation, occupation, and
political chicanery, common tools used by rogues and imperial
marauders." What the Conference needed, he tells us, was the
promotion of "the right of Palestinians to live free of occupation in
their own land or in one state affording everyone equal rights." As
is typical of fervent supporters of Palestinians, he either doesn't
know or ignores that there is no Palestinian people and there was
never a country or state called Palestine.[8] On the other hand, the
Jews have an overwhelming right -- backed by international law -- to
Mandated Palestine,[9] a tiny bit of land in the vast land holdings
given to the Arabs by the same authority that created the irrevocable
trust for a Jewish state. I'd also like to know how he proposes a
single state for Jews and Arabs, when arab leaders -- and this
includes Mahmoud Abbas, the nominal head of Fatah[10]. -- will not
allow Jews in their states.
Of course Muslims objected. They object to so many things. Most are
trivial. Some are actually annoying, but most other people put up with
them for the sake of community harmony. It's true Muslims don't object
to everything. They don't object when a Muslim slaughters a Christian
family because they are Christian; when an Arab sniper hits a car full
of Jews including a pregnant woman because they are Jewish; when yet
another missile terrifies an Israeli child who just missed getting
hit; when an arab is killed because someone accused him of
collaborating with Jews -- a most serious crime; or when a Muslim
father beats his daughter to death because she wants to go to the
prom, or dress like everyone else..
The only thing that's predictable about provoking Muslims is that
it will happen. So the world indulges in pre-vention, (the art of
preventing Muslim venting). What they ignore is that the reasons for
the riotous outrages are flimsy; more often then not, the street
theatre was premeditated to win some major concession, and its
creators were just waiting for something to outrage about to come
along.
As the title of a Michelle Malkin's article puts it, Islam is
easily provoked.[11]
This is some of her article:
"At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual
Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways. Just a
few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they
thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors.
... [It] was actually a
building resembling London's St. Paul's Cathedral.
[...] In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer
with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress with a
saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall
800,000 shoes because they claimed the company's "Air" logo looked
like the Arabic script for 'Allah.' [...]
"[In 1998] Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to
death 200 people in protest of the Miss World beauty pageant. ...
Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have
approved of the pageant and ...
he would probably
have chosen a wife from among them. The newspaper rushed to print
three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn't stop Muslim
vigilantes from torching the newspaper's offices. [...]
"And who could forget the global Danish cartoon riots of 2006 (instigated by imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips)? From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight, and brave journalists who stood up to the madness were threatened with beheading.
"It wasn't really about the cartoons at all, of course. Little-remembered is the fact that Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time.
"Yes, it was just another in a long line of manufactured Muslim explosions that were, to borrow a useful phrase, "premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere."
WHEN THE YALE CONFERENCE SCHOLARS READ OF THE MUSLIM
REACTION, some of them wrote an open letter to the President of
Yale University and its scholarly community.[12] It said in part:
They reassure the bogey-man that they discussed Islamism -- Islamic
extremism -- not Islam. They point out:
What are these scholars saying? That Koranic dictates such as "Slay
the unbelievers wherever you find them." (Koran 2:191); "The Jews and
the Christians are perverts; fight them." (Koran 9:30); and "Terrorize
and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur'an."
(Koran 8:12) aren't part of the religion? An arab instructed during a
religious service that Mohammed hated Jews is being taught to love
Jews? This arab hears the high priests of Islam insist that it is
every Muslim's duty to invade and conquer areas not yet under Muslim
control and he decides that he will do jihad with a facial,
some scented candles and an hour of meditation?
IN A WAY THESE SCHOLARS HAVE INDEED ILLUMINATED
why Jews have anti-Semitism and Muslims have success at getting their
environment refitted (or should that be retrofitted) for them.
The Jews don't stand their ground. They let themselves be attacked
without attacking back effectively. We just reported some facts --
the facts have nothing to do with Islam. Gee whiz. Why would anyone
think that. And the Muslims? They don't just stand firm, they keep
pushing. We non-Muslims have been so brutally conditioned by some of
their barbaric violence, we now respond with proper respect and
compliance to much milder stimuli, even to vague threats of violence.
And so, to use a phrase dear to the academic's heart, they keep
expanding the envelope. One day footbaths. The next a mosque to
commemorate their destruction of the financial center of a powerful
enemy.
So are there moderate Moslems -- people who have not rejected
Islam, who lead decent lives and are not pleased when members of their
tribe behave badly or meanly or cruelly? There well might be. In a
global population currently estimated as some 1.5 billion to 1.66
billion Muslims, it is optimistically estimated that only some 10-15%
support activist jihad [13]; i.e., there is only a small percentage
that is actively involved in the planning and implementation of
terrorist acts and/or who celebrate publically when a terrorist
slaughters people and/or will riot for jihadists, supply them with
weapons and help finance them. Another way of stating this statistic
is this: the minimum number of Muslims that approve of violent
jihad is roughly equal to half the number of people who live in
the U.S.A, (about 310 million). And that doesn't include participants
in quiet encroachment in stealth jihad: the bankers that
promote Sharia Law and the lawyers that sue people who write books
critical of Islam, the philathropists who donate academic chairs that
teach the history of Islam in a respectful manner, the subsidizers of
books flattering to Islam and the builders of mosques where radical
imams preach jihad. In so large a population pool, why not expect some
moderate Moslems? I myself know of three. Admittedly, we haven't seen
many come out publically to voice disapproval over Muslims
slaughtering Christians and Jews the way we see them in towns over
Europe angry over a perceived slight to Islam or at anti-Israel
demonstrations in this country.
Or maybe what we take for moderation, is -- like one of the phases of
the moon -- but one of the faces of Islam, showing us how they behave
when they are not incited by their leaders or excited by a group sport as
in Ramallah in Samaria. Mark Seager, a photographer from London was
an eye witness of the Ramallah Slaughter at the start of the second
Intifada in 2000. This is an extract:[14]
".... all of a sudden there came a big crowd of Palestinians shouting
and running down the hill from the police station. I got out of the
car to see what was happening and saw that they were dragging
something behind them. Within moments they were in front of me and,
to my horror, I saw that it was a body, a man they were dragging by
the feet. The lower part of his body was on fire and the upper part
had been shot at, and the head beaten so badly that it was a pulp,
like a red jelly. [...] He was dead, he must have been dead, but they
were still beating him, madly, kicking his head.
I thought that I'd got to know the Palestinians well. I've
made six trips this year and had been going to Ramallah every day for
the past 16 days. I thought they were kind, hospitable people. I know
they are not all like this and I'm a very forgiving person but I'll
never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I
think about it, I see that man's head, all smashed. I know that I'll
have nightmares for the rest of my life."
From moderate to cannibal with one turn of the Sura.
Footnotes
[1] http://www.think-israel.org/mccarthy.totalitarianislam.html
[2] http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/26/poll-rational-criticism-or-anti-semitism/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kors-university.html
[4] http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/identifying_palestinian_antise.html
[5] http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/identifying_palestinian_antise.html
[6] http://www.danielpipes.org/8913/two-decades-rushdie-rules
[7] http://www.phillyimc.org/en/yale-universitys-pro-israeli-anti-islamic-conference
[8] See
here, here
and
here for starters.
[9] Start with
this, this,
this and
this. Also Google the many articles by Grief, Shifftan, Hertz and
Belman inter alia in Think-Israel.org on ownership of Mandated Palestine.
[10] http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2010/07/abbas-wants-jew-free-palestine-in-west.html
[11] [12] http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=4153&q=1
[13] http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/65537
[14] http://www.think-israel.org/freerepublic.octoberramallahlynch.html
"Shhhhhhh, we're told. Don't protest the Ground Zero
mosque. Don't burn a Koran. It'll imperil the troops. It'll inflame
tensions. The 'Muslim world' will 'explode' if it does not get its
way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national
security-threatening impudence, but when is the "Muslim world" not
ready to "explode"?
It has come to our attention that, despite its manifest
virtues and successes, the YIISA conference has been erroneously
described in the Yale Daily News, by politicians and a
contingent of motivated bloggers, none of whom attended the conference
or read a single paper, as providing a platform for "anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim speakers". Therefore, as speakers at this conference, and
as listeners to the panels, lectures and discussions that were part of
this conference, we write to assert that these
accusations are false, and that the conference was keeping with the
scholarly mission of a great research university.
The clear distinction between the religion of Islam, in
general, and the specific 20th and 21st century tradition known as
"Islamism" that in various forms has inspired terrorism and
antisemitism was a theme of a number of presentations at the
conference. [emphasis added]
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