Islam: Religion or Political Ideology?

The philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that Judaism was not a religion, but a mere body of laws. Secular Jews would agree with him. Some secularized Muslims say the same about Islam, for example Ali Sina of www.faithfreedom.org. Sina writes: "Islam is not a religion. Considering Islam a religion is a foolish mistake that could cost millions of lives. Islam is a political movement set to conquer the world. It is the Borg of the non-fictional world. Islam has one goal and one goal alone: to assimilate or to destroy."

In an emotionally charged atmosphere, precise thinking is needed. Kant was wrong, but wrong in a way that helps clarify the problem. Ali Sina and other Muslim secularizers are just as wrong. I shall argue that Islam is both a religion and a political ideology. Religion is what makes Islamic political ideology so dangerous.

Religion offers the individual a way of transcending death by separating the holy, or eternal, from the profane, or transitory. It presupposes not merely an eternal plane of being exalted above mere creation, but also some means by which mortals may participate in this higher being through revelation and grace, and some procedure by which they may obtain grace, that is, ritual and prayer.

Jackie Mason Turns Serious

Don Feder

I thought of comedian Jackie Mason last week, when two leaders of an
Albany, New York, mosque were arrested and charged with trying to buy a
shoulder-launched missile to assassinate Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

What better way for disciples of a Religion of Peace to celebrate
harmony and coexistence than with a Stinger missile?

Two weeks ago, Mason got in hot water (a place where he seems quite
comfortable) by telling a radio audience that "the whole Muslim
religion" is a "murderous organization" that instructs its followers in
"hate, terrorism and murder."

Filling in for syndicated talk show host Jim Bohannon, Mason said
terrorists are "following the orders of the religion directly from the
Koran." Also: "The Koran…is 50 versions of hate, venom, hostility and
murder…dedicated to terrorism. I don’t know how we can call it a
religion in the traditional sense. It should be called a murderous
organization that’s out to kill people."

This provoked the predictable self-righteous demands for an apology
(and, possibly, castration?) by the Council on American- Islamic
Relations (CAIR), which fancies itself a Muslim Anti-Defamation League.

In a letter to Westwood One, which syndicates Bohannon’s show, CAIR
decried Mason’s "Islamophobic smears." (Jackie has an unreasonable fear
of shoulder-launched missiles?) "It is this type of hate-filled
propaganda that was used by the Nazis as justification for their
persecution of the Jewish community in Germany," CAIR claimed.

Say something critical of Islam, and in CAIR’s eyes you’re a Nazi
preparing to push innocents into gas chambers – just like the Kosovar
Muslims recruited by the S.S. to help carry out the Holocaust.

But Mason is merely the latest in a long line of Islamophobes.

A 20th century politician made comments far more damning of Islam than
Jackie Mason. This world leader said Islam "above all others was founded
and propagated on the sword." Moreover, it provided "incentives to
slaughter, and in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men –
filled with a wild and merciless fanaticism." By CAIR's logic, that
makes Winston Churchill a "Nazi." Winnie and Jackie Mason: odd Nazis,
indeed.

But seriously, folks – as standup comics like Mason say – I don’t know
of anyone, including Islam’s most trenchant critics, who’s advocating
the mass murder of Muslims. Most of us would be content if zealous
Muslims would stop killing – or trying to kill – us.

Which brings me to the Albany arrests.

The accused are two immigrants from Jihadistan – Yassin Aref, imam of
Albany’s Masjid As-Salam Mosque (ironically, it means, "House of Peace"
mosque) and Mohammed Hossain, owner of a pizzeria.

Fresh from confronting the malicious Mason, CAIR expressed concern that
the accused are victims of racial profiling and entrapment.

"There’s always a concern that people may be targeted for a sting
operation like this solely because they are Moslems," declared Ibrahim
Hooper, CAIR’s indefatigable spokesman. "It’s a perplexing case, and the
question we have is whether the government got these men to do something
they otherwise wouldn’t have done."

Just picture it: The innocent imam and pure pizza man are walking down a
street in Albany one day, when suddenly a sly undercover agent
approaches the pair and entices them into buying a shoulder-launched
missile.

Agent: "Like to buy a Stinger? Great for taking out Pakistani
ambassadors or killing infidels."

Mohammed and Yassin: "Gosh, we’d never thought of that! Hmmm, that might
not be a bad idea. Say, it could come in handy, if the Zionist entity
ever invades America."

Jackie Mason couldn't write funnier satire than CAIR has.

That CAIR should be skeptical of allegations of terrorist activities is
understandable. The organization is an offshoot of the Islamic
Association for Palestine – identified as a Hamas front by two former
heads of the FBI’s counter-terrorism section.

In April, Randall Todd (Ismail) Royer, a staffer in CAIR’s national
headquarters, pleaded guilty to conspiring to train Americans for jihad.
Yep, just think of CAIR as part ADL – and part Stern Gang.

Jackie Mason seems only to be observing the evidence all around him.
Curiously, two men are arrested in a sting operation trying to buy the
type of weapon used to take down airplanes, and – Guess what? They’re
not Baptists! Gunmen burst into a church in Pakistan and fire round
after round into the prostrate bodies of women and children. The perps
aren’t Scientologists or Latter-Day Saints. A Jewish kid is stabbed
outside a yeshiva in Brussels, and the gang of youths believed
responsible don’t belong to the local Buddhist temple. Churches and
monasteries are torched in Kosovo; not the work of Hindus.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all have had a profound impact on
Western civilization. One faith was founded by a lawgiver who led his
people out of tyranny. One religion was established by a man of peace,
who wouldn’t even resist his own execution and asked God to forgive his
executioners. The last was started by a man who personally led his
adherents into battle. The faith did not spread from the Pyrenees to the
Philippines within 100 years of Mohammed’s death, by peaceful
proselytizing. There are over 120 chapters (suras) in the Koran calling
on believers to fight Jews and Christians, subjugate them, murder them,
break treaties that are made with them, cut off their heads, lips and
the tips of fingers, crucify them – and other acts of conciliation. A
review of the actual history of Islam for past 1,400 years shows the
religion has interpreted these texts just as today's "radicals" do.

In his opus, The Clash of Civilizations And Remaking of World Order
(1996) Samuel Huntington spoke of Islam’s "bloody borders" – meaning
that wherever a significant Muslim population comes into contact with
others, violence ensues. Wherever Muslims are living in proximity with
Christians, Jews or Hindus – someone is getting shot, bombed, burned
alive, stoned to death, forcibly converted, ethnically cleansed,
uprooted, jailed or otherwise persecuted. Where Muslims are in the
majority, other faiths are proscribed (Saudi Arabia), severely
circumscribed (Egypt) or subjected to relentless persecution (Pakistan,
Indonesia, the Sudan and Northern Nigeria). Where Moslems are a
substantial minority (Serbia, Macedonia, The Kashmir, Israel, Chechnya)
there’s intifada – terrorism in pursuit of succession.

The rationalization usually offered for the above is that a small but
energetic group of fanatics have grossly distorted the tenets of their
benign religion to wreck bloody mayhem.

But many of the most renowned Muslim religious authorities
enthusiastically endorse holy war (jihad) and terrorism – including
Grand Mufti (supreme religious authority) of Egypt Sheikh Ahmed
Al-Tayyeb, the imam of Mecca’s main mosque and the scholars of Al-Azhar
University. These are hardly fringe figures in Islam. If their views are
a corruption, there is indeed corruption in high places.

If these views are so atypical, why do some American converts to Islam
try to destroy the society that nurtured them? One thinks of the Beltway
sniper, John Allen Muhammed, who killed 10 people at random in 2002, or
American Taliban John Walker Lindh. Why on September 11, 2001, did
Moslems from Brooklyn to Ramallah, and Dar es Salaam to Jakarta, take to
the streets to celebrate the deaths of 3,000 Americans and extol Osama
bin Laden's death squads?

In her book The Rage And The Pride, Oriana Fallaci mentions seeing a
member of one of these mobs interviewed by a reporter who asks him "Who
is, for you, Osama bin Laden?" The old man replies "A hero, our hero!"
Why not, he overcame 3,000 infidels in the course of a holy war.

Someone should tell CAIR if they sue for libel, Mason may have more than
enough evidence to persuade a jury of his opinion by a preponderance of
evidence.

I have no inherent animus against Islam. All other things being equal,
it makes no difference to me that close to one billion inhabitants of
planet Earth Mohammed was the "seal of the prophets." But it does
concern me when the bulk of them are taught that 72 olive-eyed virgins
await them in Paradise if they kill me. (What do Muslim women get – 72
sexually inexperienced men?)

I don’t agree with the central tenet of Christianity. Nevertheless, if I
mention that to a Christian, he’ll tell me Jesus still loves me and that
Christian will say a prayer for me. There is no equivalent imperative to
bloodshed in Christianity.

Hinduism, Buddhism and The Book of Mormon are all alien to my faith
tradition. But did you ever hear of a Hindu hijacker, a Buddhist suicide
bomber, or a Mormon elder issuing a fatwah (putting out a hit on someone
for insulting Joseph Smith)?

Try as we might, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that this
extreme view of Islam represents a major portion – or perhaps even most?
– of the world's Muslims.

An August 8th New York Times story on fighting in Najaf, Iraq (where
more than 300 have died) is headlined – "Marines Pushing Deeper Into
City Held by Shiites." Strange that all of those currently killing
Americans (including hostages Nick Berg and Paul Johnson) in Iraq and
Afghanistan seem not to be Rotarians, 33rd degree Masons or members of a
Salvation Army, but Muslims. It hardly seems coincidental that this is
the case.

It’s takes a strenuous act of will to suppress an awareness of the
religious dimension of terrorism’s war on the West.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.