Posted on 05/18/2004 1:31:07 AM PDT by kattracks
I had intended to follow my last TCS column, on the growing crisis of American Islam -- i.e. on the problem of extremist domination of the American Muslim community -- with some long-developed reflections on the silence of the American Muslim community about the extremist threat to America's security, and to the situation of American Muslims. Unquestionably, the continued extremist dominance of Islamic discourse within the U.S. and globally -- and Muslim passivity in the face of it -- threatens American Muslims even more, in some respects, than it does non-Muslim Americans.
Non-Muslim Americans simply cannot be blamed for interpreting Muslim community silence at the atrocities of Wahhabi and other Islamist extremists as acquiescence, if not support for such horrifyingly brutal acts as the videotaped decapitation of Nick Berg, whose case is now so well-known it needs no further description or elaboration. Of course, I cannot deny that when actions like the Berg murder occur, "official" Islamist groups in the U.S. and elsewhere often condemn them, in pro forma statements. There are, of course, exceptions. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for example, has apparently never gotten around to condemning its former representative, Randall Todd Royer, for his extremist activities, which resulted in a 20-year federal prison sentence. "Muslim silence" is not, however, defined by formal declarations, but by community action, and the awareness, on the part of non-Muslim Americans, that effective Muslim mobilization in defense of America, of democracy, of pluralism within Islam, and of interfaith civility, and in real opposition to extremist terror, remains absent.
But before proceeding with a discussion of Muslim silence -- and its counterpart, Muslim radical noise -- I want to thank a reader, who shall remain nameless, for pointing out a gap in my previous column, wherein I discussed the phenomenon of "new Muslims," or American converts to Islam, who willingly participate in terrorist conspiracies. I failed to mention the infamous Mark Fidel Kools, the soldier who murdered an officer and injured 15 more members of his U.S. Army unit at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Kools had also been a member of the Saudi/Wahhabi-controlled Muslim Students Association and attended a Saudi-run mosque in Los Angeles. I reported on his case at the time.
But my topic now is Muslim discourse, not Muslim action.
Muslim Discourse
Muslim silence in the face of extremist atrocities is not difficult to understand. First, immigrant Muslims in the U.S., until very recently, seldom expected to find American Islam operating under the thumb of the "Wahhabi lobby." Indeed, most Arab and Indo-Pakistani-Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants to the U.S. came for normal and rational reasons -- to gain economic success, as well as better educational and other opportunities for their children. Saudis excepted, they came from Muslim societies where, notwithstanding corrupt political rule and extremist religious influence, the battle for the future of Islam had yet to be decided. Most of them knew an Islam in which Saudi-backed Wahhabism sought to make inroads, but encountered considerable resistance from traditional Islam.
When they got to America, they discovered a fact that I have mentioned on television and radio countless times -- that Islam is completely dominated by Wahhabism in only two major countries in the world: Saudi Arabia and the U.S. (Qatar, a minor country, officially adheres to Wahhabism but its rulers have domesticated its Wahhabi clerics to a considerable degree, although it remains the headquarters of al-Jazeera television and the residence of the obnoxious Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the worst agitators in the Islamic world.)
Finding that 80 percent of the main mosques in America are controlled by Saudi-Wahhabis is a pretty big shock to the average Muslim immigrant. The first reaction is: how did the CIA or FBI, which "the Arab street" believes to be omniscient and omnipotent, allow this to happen? The second is: how did I go from bad to worse, in religious terms? Back home, from Morocco to Malaysia, the ordinary Muslim could attend a normal mosque and avoid Wahhabism. Here in the U.S., Wahhabism and its variants seemed to be shoved down the believers' throats.
Then, in times of crisis, the Muslim immigrant watched television, and what was shown there? Islam after September 11 has been represented almost exclusively by extremists and apologists for extremists, ranging from Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to the grotesque Hussein Ibish of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Ibish himself is a radical leftist who hates all religion, yet is regularly invited on to American talk shows to represent Muslims. Some of the worst Arab advocates seen on our airwaves, defending extremist violence, are not even Muslims, but are Arab Christians. American Shia Muslims who support the Coalition in Iraq are almost never interviewed by the major networks; nor do their names appear in the newspapers. Bosnian and Kosovar Albanian Muslim clerics who feel deep gratitude to America are unknown to the U.S. media public. And the non-Arab, non-Muslim academics, privileged to comment to mainstream media audiences on Islam, in most cases are strident supporters of Arab extremism.
In such a situation, the pro-American Muslim immigrant, who wants his religion to live up to the claim that it is a religion of peace, feels lost and lonely. If one speaks up in a Wahhabi-controlled mosque, dire consequences may result -- including even death. Some major American mosques were built decades ago by immigrants from Pakistan and India, who hated Wahhabism. But after the passage of a generation, they have been taken over by Saudi-funded Wahhabis. When anti-Wahhabi factions organize to take their mosques back, violence or the threat of it is often the result. Few Muslim immigrants want their children to come home and tell them the other kids' parents have denounced them as "Zionist stooges." And finally, Arab governments, led by the world's worst liars, who rule Saudi Arabia, avoid condemning extremism, as was so despicably demonstrated in the wake of the Berg murder.
The only remedies for Muslim silence in the U.S. are, first, to empower and defend those Muslims willing to publicly declare their adherence to the classic, and long-established Islamic principle of obedience to any government that "does not interfere with the call to prayer;" i.e. does not prevent Muslims from reading Qur'an, praying, or teaching their religion. On this basis, Muslims owe allegiance to the government of the U.S., which has never prevented them from observing their faith.
Second, Americans of all faiths must pressure the media to abandon its addiction to the black-white versions of the Muslim story, both the liberal version, which depicts hegemonic America and victimized Muslims, and the conservative version, which portrays Islam as demonic. Real journalists need to get the real facts about Islam.
Muslim Noise
But then there is the problem of Muslim noise. While pro-American Muslims remain silent, radical Muslims and their Arab enablers fill the media void. An especially egregious example came recently, between the uproar over prison abuses by U.S. personnel in Iraq and the horror of the Berg case.
Hussein Ibish's ADC and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) issued a statement on the Iraqi prison investigation that was a model of mendacity. As previously noted, ADC has no standing as a religious body. And both ADC and MPAC would protest loudly at being associated with Wahhabism. But ADC and MPAC did not hesitate to act together, and radically: they told America they had found the source of the Iraq prison crisis. According to them, it wasn't a matter of imperfect discipline and training, or bad orders from above, or wartime confusion, or the pressure of working in a prison in a torrid, foreign country, subjected to constant rocket attacks. Rather, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were caused by a "culture of hate" in America. The culprits: Hollywood, Islam expert Daniel Pipes, and such periodicals as The Weekly Standard!
The first thing that has to be said bluntly is that for any Arab group to complain of a "culture of hate" allegedly existing in the U.S. represents nerve almost beyond description. Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, flourish in America -- indeed, Arabs live much better in the U.S. than in, for example, France, which now issues oceans of crocodile tears over America's so-called "dirty war" in Iraq. The perpetrators of abuse at Abu Ghraib are about to go on trial, while most of the French officers responsible for torture in Algeria more than forty years ago have yet even to be publicly criticized! Muslims also live better in America than in Britain or Germany, where they are typically crowded together in ghettoes.
But if there is anyplace in the world known for a "culture of hate" it is the core of the Arab world, from whence such practices as videotaped beheadings of utter innocents originate. Videotaped beheadings were first seen, in the recent era, during the Bosnian war, when Arab "volunteers" produced some, showing the execution of Serb and Croat Christians. Bosnian Muslims, to their credit, stopped the practice from continuing. But the war in Chechnya, which has been infiltrated by Saudi-Wahhabis, has produced some 400 separate videos of the beheading of Russian soldiers, which remain on sale right here in the U.S.
So before ADC, MPAC, or its counterparts in the "Wahhabi lobby," such as CAIR, complain of a "culture of hate," they should act to clean up their own environment.
If it weren't for the hideous hypocrisy of their arguments, and their lies, the ADC-MPAC line would be laughable. The ludicrous claim that "America hates Arabs because Popeye cartoons and antiterrorist movies show 'reel bad Arabs'" -- an argument put forward by Jack Shaheen, an otherwise obscure academic -- is nothing more than a second-rate exercise in behaviorist psychology. Lots of Americans who as kids watched camel-riding Arabs swinging scimitars in cartoons, or who sat through movies featuring Arab villains, had the opposite reaction. That's how real human beings are.
But even more ridiculous is the claim that the incidents in Abu Ghraib were caused by Dan Pipes' exposure of Islamist extremism, or articles in conservative journals and websites. Of course, there are commentators biased against all Arabs, or who blame Islam as a whole for the threat of a "clash of civilizations." I don't put Pipes or The Weekly Standard, for which I write regularly, in either class. But the probability that the guards in an Iraqi prison took their cues from Arab-baiting or anti-Islamic commentators in America is almost nonexistent.
ADC and MPAC tried to exploit the real disgust and disappointment of ordinary Americans at the problems in Iraqi prisons to advance their own agenda. That roster of demands includes calling on the federal authorities to blacklist from "faith based" charity spending Christian groups which, for better or worse, have a theology of their own to defend, and which, rightly or wrongly, see Islam as counterposed to their faith. Pushing to exclude such organizations from federal programs is a lot more un-American than some individual, no matter how high in responsibility or widely heard on talk radio, popping off about Islam.
ADC and MPAC actually want debate about Islam ended altogether in the media. Their version of the religion is the only suitable one for dissemination, according to them. This naked attempt at censorship is also un-American.
ADC and MPAC further, with supreme arrogance, poor grammar, and a touch of cognitive dissonance, want the U.S. authorities to "stop making comments that suggest that the [Iraq prison investigation] demonstrates the virtue of the American democracy." According to these agitators, "any lauding of our democratic systems… in the context of this scandal, taints our democracy and will only foster greater resentment and anti-American sentiment." Oh, and they also want the U.S. to get out of Iraq in a hurry.
ADC, MPAC, CAIR and the rest of the extremist enablers live in an upside-down world where America represents a culture of hatred and the Arab world a culture of virtue. Such nonsense is no more legitimate or valuable than the ignorant comments and claims they supposedly wish to oppose; it mirrors them. ADC and MPAC have no standing to order the U.S. authorities how to handle the Iraq prison situation. Those who did wrong at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere will be punished, which is to the credit of our culture, traditions, laws, and military, and we will continue to take pride in that fact.
In Qur'an, the Islamic scripture, we read: "truth stands forth from falsehood." In this context, the same may be said. America will cleanse itself of the stain of prison abuse in Iraq, because America's culture rejects hatred and cruelty. Let ADC, MPAC, CAIR, and the rest work on cleansing their culture of the stain of Nick Berg's blood -- to name but one victim. Otherwise, at the present time, Muslim silence might be preferable to Muslim noise.
Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.
Ping!
ping
I've never read such a clear, convincing, and obviously well-researched explanation of Islam in the United States. The author of this piece (whose website I'm about to archive) deserves some kind of award.
Thank you, sir, for your public service.
For Freepers: may I simply urge that we propagate this information to as many people as possible. Especially members of Congress.
This author is wrong, or lying or both.
there is no "moderate" islam.
Only obedient jew and christian killing types who can read the koran....
and apostates who largely reject the entire ball of wax, want equality for their little girls and LIKE going to movies, drinking and ignoring stupid idiotic customs, prayers, the veil, the burqua, and the rest of the bs...
apostate islamics... are our only friends.
the rest are nuts waiting to be radicalized at the mention of the "I" word... Israel.
The only remedies for Muslim silence in the U.S. are, first, to empower and defend those Muslims willing to publicly declare their adherence to the classic, and long-established Islamic principle of obedience to any government that "does not interfere with the call to prayer"
Speaking of which, this is an example of "not interering with the call to prayer":
Muslim Call to Prayers in Michigan
The City Council of Hamtramck, Michigan approved an amendment to the city's noise ordinance to allow the Muslim call to prayer over (amplified) loudspeakers 5 times daily, from 6 a.m. - 10 p.m. The new ordinance takes effect May 26.
He was a guest on the program but he was on there for a scant 10 minutes it seemed. The host of the program told him to not bring up such matters. I heard the exchange live on the radio.
But what about America? The non-Wahhabist Muslims need to speak out more. They can't sit quietly by as their religion is hijacked by extremists or their silence will be heard as acceptance. All Muslims aren't bad people. They need to take back the organizations such as CAIR or form new ones.
I would ask the author why Christians would be "wrongly" convinced Islam is "counterposed to their faith." Christianity is literally outlawed in many Muslim countries and Christians have been slaughtered for their faith in unprovoked Muslim attacks historically too numerous to list. If allowed by the civilized world, they would kill every last Christian who refused to convert to Islam.
bmp
Let's put this in perspective. "All nazi's aren't bad people". "All communists aren't bad people" When you have an ideology that is inherently evil anybody who believes in it is bad. The only moslems that are good are MINO's : Moslems In Name Only.
Bump for later.
Islam is an enemy ideology. What are we doing about it?
where are the disproportionate number of Muslim-Americans volunteering to enlist in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines as German-Americans did in WW I and as Japanese Americans (the most decorated unit in the war) did in WW II?
As one on this board who has constantly urged moderation of anti-Muslim sentiments, I still wait for this evidence of "loyalty." I think this would be the perfect way for Muslim-Americans to shut up those critics who are suspicious of them. We are all waiting.
I'm getting real tired of these Muslim apologists trying desperately to convince people that somewhere in the mythical land of Hon-o-Lee there are a 'majority' of peaceful, moderate Muslims. I especially find this line offensive
"Some of the worst Arab advocates seen on our airwaves, defending extremist violence, are not even Muslims, but are Arab Christians"
So Christians are the problem???
Literate muslims are hard to find.
Yes, among the many hypocracies of the RoP: most muslim "people of the book" are illiterate. Supposedly mohammad himself was illiterate. Islam is a hoax.
Good morning, Kat. There's a real problem with this statement, don't you think?
A rebuttal article:
The praise of Allah for all Muslims with his support and the humiliating of those who attempt to defeat Islam and who attack it and who entice the unbelievers with their cunning... He has ordered the prophet — peace be upon him — and he is master the merciful are with the slitting of the necks of some prisoners and their slow killing. And for us it is an example and a good example... we tell you to know that the coffins will arrive to you one coffin after another, as your people are slaughtered in this way... Then you kill the polytheists (Christians) where you find them and you take them and count them and place them where they can be seen...Allah is the greatest and the honor to Allah and to its messenger and to the militants. And our last claim is that the praise of Allah is the Lord of the Worlds.... And you see the slaughter your fighting brothers suspend the head of this unbeliever on one of Baghdad bridges so that they teach a lesson to others from the infidels and serves as a witness to the honor of the Muslims.
— Statement read just moments before the video taped murder and beheading of Nick Berg.
Americans have yet to realize that they are now embroiled in a decade's long war with vicious Islamofascists who hail from dozens of countries and nationalities. Al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader behind the savage deaths of hundreds of Shiite civilians and Iraqi police, the attempted Ricin attacks in the UK and chemical attacks in Jordan, and the beheading of American civilian contractor Nick Berg, spoke just months ago of "gathering the sheep" for slaughter. Nick Berg was just the first victim in the plan of a series of dramatic public atrocities that will unfold in the months to come.
Watching the beheading of this idealistic young American and listening to his screams as he was butchered was revolting, sickening and maddening and yet it should be mandatory viewing. To truly understand the nature of this enemy we must digest their viciousness and use it to fuel the avenging fire that was initially kindled on September 11th 2001. War is not pretty, fun or nice but sometimes it is not only necessary but desirable when dealing with an enemy of such diabolical methods and goals.
The commitment to victory can only be solidified by free and just peoples when faced with such recent outrages as the enemy hacking and displaying bodies in Fallujah, the point blank shooting of a pregnant women and her four young daughters in Gaza, militants parading through the streets with the bloody remains of slain Israeli soldiers and the butchery of one slightly lost 26 year old American civilian.
Some commentators have made the observation that Islam has shown itself to be less of a religion than a bloody ideology similar to Nazism, Maoism, or the pesky militant Japanese cult of the Emperor that caused so much trouble a few decades ago. Where is the outrage in reaction to such crime from the good peaceful Moslems we are told are the vast majority of Islam? The silence is deafening and the followers of Mohammad bear a portion of responsibility and blame due to their failure to condemn such actions and for the continued support, shelter and protection of such terror artists offered by their clerics, mosques and communities not only here in the United States but all over the world.
One of my friends put it this way.
"Never forget that many of us saw, way back on Sept. 11, 2001, that the enemy of the Americans was the same enemy that was fighting Israel, and India, and Russia, and Indonesia and the Philippines, and infiltrating Europe, and advocating in America, and throwing acid in the face of unveiled women across the world, and preaching fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, and blowing up statues in Afghanistan, and manning the madrasses in Pakistan, and pushing propaganda on al-Jazeera, and blowing up schoolchildren in Tel-Aviv, and now beheading Jewish young men from Philadelphia."
Truer words have never been spoken. The mindset of Islamofascism is one of genocidal mania; the celebration of death and butchery, and revelry in the slaughter of innocents. Americans and civilized people the world over have been shocked by such sub-human behavior but they should not be. That is the character of the enemy that they face. It is the nature of a religious ideology that seeks the death or subjugation of all infidels and the extermination of the Jew. Al-Queda is just the latest manifestation of 7th century barbarism that has waged an endless shadow war on Western Civilization and has finally provoked the world war of ideology and religion that it has so eagerly sought.
American politicians in particular insist that this is not a war of religion or clash of civilizations. It is an endless spewing of "religion of peace" quotes, diatribes on "a nation of immigrants" and complaints about ethnic profiling at airports. I wish that someone would tell that to the enemy, for that is exactly the war that they are waging.
Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Queda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al-Tawhid, Abu Sayyaf, the Taliban, Al-Ansar Islam, Al-Sadr's militia, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Beyyiat el-Imam, Jund al-Shams or the dozens of other militant terrorist groups infesting the globe, their methodology, goals, tactics, cruelty, tenacity and victims are often eerily the same. It is a strange world of martyrdom, jihad, cries of Allah Akbar and fantasies of a heavenly reward of 72 virgins. They may differ by sect, creed or nationality but each wages war on the innocent, the Christian and the Jew, the concepts of Liberty and Justice, and Western Civilization itself.
The ideology of militant Islam is not some small isolated group of malcontents as they are so often portrayed. Millions of Moslems are adherents to the ideology and religious fervor that wages war on the West. The cries of jihad echo in the bloody guerilla warfare of Algeria. It is the ideology of the Arab slavers waging war on Christians in Sudan. It is the call from hundreds of minarets in Saudi Arabia and the gospel of the mullahs of Iran. It is the creed of the border tribes of Pakistan and was the heart and soul of the Taliban. It flourishes in the jungles of the Philippines and the slums of Indonesia. It sallies forth from the green valleys of Lebanon and preaches its hate in the mosques of Europe.
There will be no easy victory and the legions of the deluded zealots who vent their rage in the blood of the vulnerable, innocent and helpless will not be quickly defeated. Civilized peoples across the globe must learn to steel themselves against the coming barbarity and prepare for the long struggle against those who would slice your throat and murder your children in their beds if given half a chance. Their fanaticism cannot be underestimated and the righteousness of the cause of those who fight against them cannot be doubted. The world must answer terrorism and those who fancy themselves the warriors of Allah with a resolve for utter and total victory.
David Huntwork
May 15, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/huntwork/040515
My personal feeling is, I wouldn't be holding my breath while waiting. Wholesale renunciation is about the only thing that I see as evidence of loyalty. I for one am just a little tired of freedom sucking folks of all types, willing to spout any brand of stupidity, and still enjoy living under the banner of freedom, and liberty, paid for by the precious blood of our noble countrymen and women fighting on the front lines throughout our short history.
We have ample evidence of the lack of loyalty, and the sincere desire of Muslims to be loyal to one thing, and that one thing does not include the United States of America, but they are perfectly willing to bask in the light of freedom and liberty, that is such a basic part of our country, that most of us would feel disinherited if it were lost. The line is drawn in the sand and there will be some tough decisions that will have to be made if we are to survive as a nation.
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