Posted on 02/14/2003 11:10:05 AM PST by Doctor13
Friends of record producer Phil Spector were quoted this week as saying that he no longer had a violent streak. He had "shed" it. Well, unless there is a stunning discovery and someone else ends up taking the rap for the killing of actress Lana Clarkson, the truth must be confronted by those friends that Spector's violent streak was not shed at all, just submerged.
The same can be said about Islam. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the American Muslim Council and other members of the American Muslim disinformation lobby are using generous donations from foreign lands to package a sanitized version of Islam as peaceful and tolerant. But their fantasy Islam collides with the truth about life inside those countries where the religion is dominant.
Unfortunately, too many Americans are willing to believe that Islam is a gentle lamb of a religion, rather than the lion with blood on its claws, ready to pounce once more on unsuspecting innocents -- and that it is being prodded to do so by its most devout believers.
This does not mean that all Muslims are that way. But all it takes is a small minority who take its scriptures (which Muslims consider to be words dictated by Allah himself) literally to destroy the peace of the nation and the world at large. That became clear in a story reported last week that should arouse concern over who is ministering to the prisoners in our country.
Last week in The Wall Street Journal, a Muslim prison chaplain named Warith Deen Umar claimed that our country's alleged oppression of Muslims would bring further attacks along the lines of 9/11.
Umar wrote in an unpublished memoir, "Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud" the 9/11 hijackers for their wanton destruction of the World Trade Towers and the taking of innocent life. After all, Umar insists, the Qur'an does not forbid terrorism against so-called oppressors of Muslims, even if it means innocent people die too.
Not all Muslims are in line with such radical thinking. But all this proves what Free Congress Foundation Adjunct Scholar Robert Spencer has long said about Islam: as long as the violent passages of the Qur'an are interpreted literally, then there will be Muslims who believe and act accordingly.
The worrisome thing is that Umar had been a figure of some influence in New York state prisons until the Journal's revelations. Now, all of a sudden, Umar is no longer welcomed by the prison authorities.
Umar had been ministering to prisoners during the last few years as a volunteer, but he had spent 25 years as the ranking Muslim cleric for the New York state prison system before retiring in 2000. He also worked as a part-time chaplain for a Federal prison in New York state only to be fired last week when officials discovered just what he had been telling prisoners about 9/11.
Evidencing the popular misconceptions about Islam, the chief spokesman for New York State's prison system, James B. Flateau, insisted to the Journal that Umar had been distorting the teachings of the Qur'an. I don't know where Flateau got his imam's license, but I hope that Flateau's boss, Prison Commissioner Glenn S. Goord, is more accurate in his assertion that Umar had not been telling prisoners to interpret the Qur'an literally when he was on the state's payroll.
Muslims make up at least 10% of the populations of prisons in America. That's the lowball estimate. Some put the percentage as high as 17%. In New York State alone, there are 13,000 Muslim prisoners. I'd like to think that even hardened cons would be appalled at Umar's claims. But I know that not all will -- as was made clear in the Journal article in which it also described what happened during the immediate aftermath of 9/11 at Cape Vincent, a medium security prison in upstate New York.
One of Umar's disciples, a chaplain named Sufwan El Hadi, told the inmates that America had gotten what it deserved. Some prisoners were agitated by these outrageous comments. Others went up to El Hadi after he spoke and congratulated him. Later, Imam El Hadi, after being fired from his job, protested the interpretation of what he said, claiming he was not justifying the attacks or the taking of innocent life.
The official reaction? Goord said that "Umar did a great job" and Flateau had stated a disinclination to investigate the other chaplains that Umar appointed, having been quoted in an Associated Press article that it would be a "dangerous philosophy" to assume they shared his views.
What has been going on in New York State's prisons is an outrage. It begs the question: What's going on in your state's prisons? Do the officials really know who is doing the ministering and just what they are telling the inmates? Are the state legislators who oversee your state's prisons on top of this?
But there's also a lesson for those who insist, despite all available evidence to the contrary, on seeing the work of 9/11 as just that of a few terrorists. They fail to recognize that Islam has been waging war against the West well before 9/11 and that it will continue to do so until we submit to their rule.
I pray that day will never come, and it has not so far. Just like Communism failed, I think Islam will too in its latest attempt to subdue the West. But it should also be clear, given what is being said in our own nation's prisons, that much damage could be done before we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
(Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.)
Copyright 2003, Free Congress Foundation
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