BRUCE LAWRENCE—ABRAHAMIC PLURALIST AND DEFROCKED MEDEIVALIST: THE BIN LADEN CHRONICLES!
* Islamic lebensraum. * Nazi lebensraum. * Lawrence lebensraum.
Adolph Hitler had Neville Henderson and August Kubizek and Lord Haw Haw; John Kerry had Howard Dean and Michael Moore; Robin Hood had Maid Marion and Friar Tuck and Ben Jonson and John Keats; and Osama bin Laden has Bruce Lawrence of Duke University. Lawrence is current Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Durham. He teaches comparative religion—preparatory classes for students about to embrace dhimmitude. He calls himself an Abrahamic pluralist and a defrocked medievalist. Well, as long as he keeps his pants on. Lawrence thought it would be a great idea if everybody got to know Osama bin Laden as intimately as he does. Osama is not an ogre, says Lawrence. He’s really a swell fellow, a bit more religious than Larry Flynt and Woody Harreslon perhaps but a splendid fellow. He’s somewhat on the order of Jerry Falwell—only taller. And he’s a great family man; he’s got lots of kids. And he doesn’t want to take over the whole world—that’s a crass canard. He only wants a small part of it—the dar al-Islam part, for now anyway.
Osama is a very busy man. He hasn’t had time to sit down and make a contribution to the literary world—bunker-busting bombs and scum-seeking missiles can be quite distracting. So far there’s been nothing—no It was a Dark and Stormy Night, no Mein Kampf. Lawrence thought he would do bin Laden’s many fans and admirers in the Middle East and in Berkeley a big favor by collecting Osama’s speeches and putting them together in a book. And the deed has been done. The result: Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden on sale at Amazon.com for $16.95, already reduced to $11.53 with Free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
Could any full-blown, Allahu akbar Jihadist resist that kind of an offer? Only $11.53! Incredible! Why that’s cheaper than The Last Will and Testament of Casper the Friendly Ghost. And what about complimentary copies? Who’s on the list for freebies? Do we see Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) who called Osama bin Laden a great builder and US Congresswoman Marci Kaptor (D-OH) who compared the Taliban to the Green Mountain Boys? And how about US Congressman James McDermott (D-WA)? Will he have to dig into his own pocket for the bin Laden Chronicles or will Howard Dean let him have a peek at his autographed tome? An enticing question!
Lawrence says people are mistaken about bin Laden. Jihad doesn’t mean war—it means being better at things. Of course—being better at things! How could one have been so mistaken about bin Laden! Being better at things! That makes sense. Why didn’t someone think of that before? That’s what Heinrich Himmler and Reichsfuhrer Reinhardt Heydrich said about being a Nazi. A Nazi was better at things—especially at finding lebensraum and solving the Jewish question. And to one of Robin’s Merry Band it meant being better at shooting arrows off petrified heads and dumping oafs into muddy creeks.
Yes, Lawrence says, Jihad means being better—“being a better student, a better colleague, a better business partner. Above all, to control one’s anger.”
Anger? Osama has been controlling his anger? Where has Lawrence been the past twenty years? Doesn’t he watch TV; read the newspapers; go on line? Sure, he’s a college professor and an allowance can be made for that, but this is well beyond ignorance. Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe weren’t as far in the dark as this guy. Okay, let’s be fair for a minute—Gilligan and Crusoe might have been stranded on deserted islands for year after year but they were not isolated in some miserable Ivory Tower cut off from all intellectual stimulation. Somebody stick a pin in Lawrence and if he doesn’t respond in three days, call John Esposito or Noam Chomsky. He may need a blood transfusion—and make sure it’s halal blood, none of that cheap dhimmi stuff.
* The Professor’s choice. * And he thinks we’re going to read that crap?
Lawrence is also author of Shattering the Myth. It’s obvious he prefers publishing to perishing. Islam is neither monolithic nor violent says Lawrence. He blames Islam’s woes on the usual suspects—poverty, the Crusades, colonialism, imperialism, American foreign policy; that damn Thomas Jefferson! The fact that Islam’s woes preceded the various isms seems not to matter. The vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists he says. And what do they call Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible? Fundamentalists, isn’t it? And Muslims who do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Qur’an are what? Heretics? That’s a good guess. Lawrence must have confused a hadith with John’s Epistle to the Corinthians. That’s not unusual for a defrocked medievalist.
The Muslim silent majority is ready for democracy he says, for capitalism, the rule of law—abridged when necessary by the shari’a—tutti-frutti ice cream and an interfaith dialogue that promotes Islam, condemns Zionism and relegates Jesus Christ to little more than a cheerleader for Mohammed. This is the kind of deal Neville Chamberlain would have accepted from Hitler. It’s a replication of the same sorry cultural surrender made by France and Germany in the ‘70s and ‘80s to keep the good times rolling—oil, Muslim immigration, Wahhabism in; building contracts, trade goods and self-respect out. It was a conquest for Islam, cultural suicide for Europe and the birth of Eurabia.
Lawrence wrote a prayer for HarperSanFrancisco on behalf of peace during the First Gulf War titled, appropriately enough, A Prayer of Peace Among the Children of Abraham. It’s on the homepage of Lawrence’s website. The last paragraph is worth quoting, not because it has any literary merit or because it is particularly profound or perceptive—it isn’t—but because it is sort of frightening. It says, “In Islam is the abode of peace. Let it expand and expand engulfing all claimants to Abraham’s faith—be they Jews, be they Christians, and also, Your mercy, be they Muslims.”
Well, that does it! There’s no place for Bill Maher or Michael Newdow in Aldous Lawrence’s Brave New World. Nor will there be any room for John Travolta or Hop Sing. And the Abrahamists have been silent of what they intend to do with the gypsies, and eventually the Jews, but one can imagine.
There are hundreds of historical figures more worthy of admiration than Osama bin Laden—Jefferson Davis and Al Capone come to mind. Only an Abrahamic pluralist and a defrocked medievalist would have picked Osama bin Laden.
* I’m really sorry, Hop Sing, but there’s no room for you in an Abrahamic pluralistic society.
