Muslims Wake Up - Response to Freedom House Investigation

Muslim-bashing. That's the accusation many of my fellow Muslims now hurl at the various news outlets for their news stories about a Freedom House investigation that found extremist Islamic literature in some leading American mosques. This name-calling is unfortunate.

Since 1980, the Muslim world has experienced an enormous growth of religious fanaticism and extremism the likes of which Islam has not experienced in its 1,400 years. This movement continues to grow because of the spread of Wahhabi Islam; a sect that used to number no more than one percent of all Muslims, but because of money and technology, has spread to more areas around the world.

Extremism is also growing because of an ideology called political Islam. The basis of political Islam is the rejection of secularism and the belief that the mosque and the state should be completely intertwined. Unfortunately, history has shown that when politics and religion are completely intertwined, disaster results.

Most importantly, extremism in the Muslim world continues to grow because most Muslims are unwilling to admit that we have a problem with extremism and support for terrorism. The response by Muslims to the Freedom House report is not the first time that the Muslim community resorted to denial and accusations of Muslim-bashing when presented with evidence of Muslim culpability.

After September 11, many in the Muslim world chose denial and hallucination rather than face up to the sad fact that Muslims perpetrated the 9/11 terrorist acts. After 9/11, many Muslims, including religious leaders and "intellectuals," blamed 9/11 on a Jewish conspiracy, and went as far as fabricating a tale that 4,000 Jews did not show up for work in the World Trade Center on that day.

Since 9/11, the world has watched in horror as hundreds of schoolchildren were murdered in Russia by Chechen Muslim terrorists. Scores of civilians were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Spanish train bombings. Many others have been murdered in suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places, human beings have been beheaded, two Russian passenger planes were blown out of the sky, and many, many atrocities that are too long to mention. All carried out by Muslims.

With all the evidence that Islam is facing a crisis, one wonders what it will take for Muslims to realize that those who commit mass murder in the name of Islam are not just a few fringe elements. What will it take for Muslims to realize that we are facing a crisis potentially more deadly than the AIDS epidemic? What will it take for Muslims to realize that there is a large, evil movement that is turning what was a peaceful religion into a death cult?

Will Muslims wake up before it is too late? Or will we continue blaming an imaginary Jewish conspiracy and entities like The Dallas Morning News for all our problems? The blaming of all Muslim problems on others is a cancer that is destroying Muslim society. And it must stop.

Muslims must wake up, look inward and put a stop to many of our religious leaders who spend most of their sermons teaching hatred, intolerance and violent jihad. We should not be afraid to admit that as Muslims we have a problem with violent extremism. We should not be afraid to admit that so many of our religious leaders belong behind bars, and not behind a pulpit.

Only moderate Muslims can challenge and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we remain silent to the extremism within our community, then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims. We should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as terrorists. And we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports.

Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against extremism and terror, we need to take the lead in this war.

"When I say "win the war" I'm talking about about winning the war against the concept of Muslim fundamentalism and the consequential fallout on worldwide public opinion."

Here's a clue for you Bob. If all your enemies are dead and their cities and monuments are smoking radioactive dust then you've won the war and world opinion isn't worth a sack of horse dung.

You don't wage war on a 'concept'. You wage war on people. Anyone who has ever worn a uniform and carried a weapon in the service of this country has had that lesson learned the hard way.

You said earlier that you never served this country, but that you were still entitled to an opinion. That's true.

I'm going to hazard a guess here that you've never been to medical school either. Now, you're perfectly entitled to have an opinion as to how to perform brain surgery. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let you take a knife to my skull.

You have a perfect right to your opinions on matters both military and medical. But just because you have a right to them doesn't mean that your opinions on either subject will be correct.

You're in over your head here Bob, and one of lifes first rules is: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Do yourself a favor Bob. Stop digging.

Dear Bob J,

Thank you for your response. As I said, your religion allows you to say the worst and the best, it also allows you to practice Taqqya deceit. Did your prophet not say "War is deceit?"

With such a background, it is your faith that has the credibility problem. Words are cheap. Everybody loves peace and brotherhood, everybody likes pizza too.

At last count there are 30 conflicts on the planet. Islam is involved in 28 of them; 95% of all terrorist acts are Islamic. The plots are being hatched in Mosques and Islamic centers and the perpetrators are quoting ayas.

If the Islamic world were about peace and brotherhood, you wouldn't be a lone voice in the wilderness. It's that simple.

The truth of the matter is that as with Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shintoism, I would love to enjoy, nay, I demand, the luxury of not knowing a single thing about your chosen religion, certain that it is safe, reasonable, calm, peaceful. Instead I and millions of others have had to learn.

I couldn't care less what your book says. I'm certain that other books have bad calls in them too. There's a whole religion Rastafarianism that is heavily based on marijuana. I'm much more inclined to dance to Bob Marley's reggae than to see what it's really all about.

If an old lady like my mother has nail clips confiscated from her hand bag at the airport before boarding... the link is with your religion, not with the Greek Orthodox or the Zen. Idem for color coded alerts. That's the music we were offered by Islam to dance to.

I have no intention of arguing your perfect interpretation. I could take out my Windows 95 and turn it into a perfect religion. I could quote all the fine promises and reasonable suggestions of Mr. Bill Gates... Yet the program crashed for me as it crashed for millions of others. Bill was very quick at upgrading. Windows 98 was better and now Windows XP is amazingly trouble free.

Bill listened to the people, Bill was responsible... Microsoft has leadership. Islam has no leadership, only a great big and heavy inertia that must be moved along by "Infidels"... Just as the Islamic world has relied on the "infidel" to upgrade its technology, so too must it rely on OUR coercion to upgrade its morality. Otherwise, for example, slavery in Darul Islam would've ended of its own accord without outside imposition.

I mention the Imam of my city, Rome being ousted by politicians. It's a sorry state of affairs when the Imam of the largest mosque in Continental Europe needs to be escorted to the border by notoriously corrupt Italian politicians. Now the politicians of other European countries are making demands. In France and Holland, sermons will soon have to be delivered in the local language and the injunctions concerning the beating of wives, or the call to Jihad will have to toned down to meet certain political standards.

Your call to conscience, though noble, will not be heeded by your co-religionists. For it is conscience itself which they have submitted.

Your call to conscience as that of other Muslims (especially those who tend to be Koran only, those who tend to soften the translations of the rough Ayas) are paradoxically all coming from Christian countries. Interesting, n'est ce pas? It means that it is not wheat of your own sack.

So in conclusion, all judgment upon your religion, as far as I'm concerned will be based on what happens spontatenously in Muslim countries.

For the time being, all I know is that you're praying towards a place where I'm not allowed to set foot... so that is Islam's bottom line regarding the concept of brotherhood - all the rest is talk, phonemes, hot air;

All I know is that the Copts of Egypt are oppressed and have difficulty in even being allowed to repair their old Churches. I'm a Christian, not a Copt, but a Christian and so in the name of Golden Rule reciprocity, I don't want to see a single mosque built in my land. (Worry not, Rome has the biggest in Europe... Rome, the capital of Catholic Christendom, whereas a Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia is not even afforded the blessing of a priest, should he collapse in the heat while laying out boiling asphalt to build a road there).

All I know is that American cities have color coded alerts and that 15,000 Italians were hired to keep eyes on the train tracks...

All I know is that Italian women in mixed marriages can lose their children if the husband takes them to see grandpa and grandma in the old country and suddenly gets an itch to remarry there.

Islam will be judged neutrally... That is, when Mother can forget her nail clips in her purse... when I can take a train here in Italy and see Arab kids come aboard with backpacks and think nothing of it. I have no such paranoias for the Indian kids, the Chinese, the Filipinos. None whatsoever.

The mistrust in places once proud of multi-culturalism has been amply earned. If you feel it, your perception is correct. You may call it racism, hate, Islamophobia, you may tag any name on it that you wish.

Like e-bay transactions, trust needs to be earned the hard way. And at the moment, only suckers would buy the Islamic used car. Because for every reasonable voice, there are 1000 preaching the vilest anti-semitism; It is calculated that 15 percent of Dutch Muslims are "Fundamentalist"... It is a fact that not a single Muslim in Rome's crowded Mosque flinched when Imam Moussa thundered and moaned his curses on entire nations and praised the oblivion of suicide bombing.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.

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