"How I Joined The Rotten Core Of American Extremists..." (Ralph Peters Wrong On Islam Alert)

I am a bigot, a Klansman "with higher-thread-count sheets," the "enemy within," part of "the rotten core of American extremists" who are making it harder for moderate Muslims "to recapture their own faith."

So says Ralph Peters, retired military man, establishment conservative and eternal optimist.

In a commentary in the September 7th New York Post, Peters went postal on those who believe (in his words) "that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith's primary agenda."

Us Islamophobes fantasize about the "Protocols of the Elders of Mecca," imply that Muslims are "evil and sub-human," and thus spread baseless hatred wherever we go, Peters charges.

I am mortified and deserve to be sentenced to a sensitivity-training session forthwith.

Ralphie explains it all so clearly. Muslim fanatics are "a minority of a minority," says he. And, while Peters admits that Islam as it's perpetrated in the Middle East is less than delightful, still, "from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn, I've seen no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith," the columnist insists.

In an interview on the Laura Ingraham show later in the week, Peters elaborated on his list of Muslim paradises. Indonesia "the world's most populous Muslim country," in harmony central, he assured us.

When trying to present the sunny side of Islam, it helps to be as uninformed as Ralph Peters.

According to The Voice of the Martyrs, all is not tolerance and brotherhood in "the world's most populous Muslim country." In Indonesia, the nation's Muslim majority (88%) plays Nazis and Jews with its Christian minority (8%).

Last October, three Christian schoolgirls were attacked with machetes and beheaded on their way to classes on the island of Sulawesi. But, us rotten extremists are probably to blame by making it harder for moderate Muslims (those would be the ones without machetes) to reclaim their peaceful faith.

Voice of the Martyrs further informs us: "Militant Islamic militia groups, such as the Laskar Jihad, have orchestrated an Islamic jihad against Christians in some areas of Indonesia, killing thousands of people and destroying hundreds of churches and homes, often supported by government troops."

Another of Peters' examples of the "hopeful currents in the Muslim faith" is Dearborn, Michigan, with its concentration of mosques and American mujahedeen.

In an article in Front Page Magazine ("What I Saw in Dearbornistan," July 28, 2006), Debbie Schlussel writes of a community meeting at the Bint Jebail Cultural Center during the recent fighting in Lebanon.

Schlussel describes the affair as "a Nazi-style hate-fest." The 3,000 in attendance chanted prayers for "the martyrs of Hezbollah," and described Jews and Americans as "diseased." Mohammed Turfe, the Center's founder, predicted that after Armageddon "only a few thousand Jews will survive." Apparently, every imam in Dearborn was on hand to hear these words of reconciliation. At an earlier Dearborn rally, in memory of Yasser Arafat, one of these worthies held a poster of his favorite moderate Muslim - the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Coincidentally, the day that Peter's pollyannic prose was published, the Times of London reported on a British Parliamentary Enquiry into Anti-Semitism. The report noted that 37% of British Muslims believe the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target in the "ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East." Meaning: If you're unhappy with the actions of Israel or America - for any reason - kill a Jew, any Jew.

An earlier Parliamentary survey noted the results of a Study of Global Anti-Semitism by two Yale University scholars, which showed that a European Muslim was 800% more likely to harbor overtly anti-Semitic attitudes than a European who was not a member of the religion of peace.

Stephen Steinlight, formerly director of education at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, repots there are an average of 12 assaults a day by Muslims on Parisian Jews - comparable to Nazi attacks in the last days of the Weimar Republic.

Verses in the Koran fomenting hatred of Jews, describing them as evil incarnate, and inciting genocide are too numerous to mention here.

Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar Univeristy (the most authoritative voice in Islam) notes the Koran "describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics" as "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." But, the Grand Imam's perspective on Jews isn't entirely negative. He acknowledges: "All Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not."

Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia for 22 years, claims the Jews "invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power." Mohamad admits: "There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim."

Pope Benedict XVI caused a stir at Regensburg University in Germany, on September 12, when he quoted the 14th. century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in a conversation with a "learned Persian."

The emperor asked his guest: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword by the faith he preached." The Vatican expert for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica said of Benedict's speech "the text reveals his deep mistrust regarding the aggressive side of Islam." Is there another side?

In the face of fury in Jihad-land, the pontiff said he was "deeply sorry" that Muslims were offended. To show just how outraged they were by the suggestion that Islam promotes violence, Muslim pacifists - murdered a nun in Somalia, burned the pope in effigy in Pakistan, firebombed seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza, threatened to "break the cross and spill the wine" in the "house of the dog from Rome" and pledged to "hunt down the pope" and "kill him on the spot." Moderate Muslims were unavailable for comment.

His apology aside, Benedict's concerns about Muslim immigration to Europe are well known. Besides not approving joint prayers with Muslims and being wary of inter-religious dialogue with the faith, as a cardinal, Benedict opposed Turkey's membership in the European Union.

As pope, he granted a private audience to Oriana Fallaci - a self-described atheist who died on September 15th.

Once the world's most famous journalist (she interviewed both Arafat and Khomeini, as well as Kissinger and Castro), later in life, Fallaci became part of the rotten core of Italian extremists who make it harder for moderate Muslims "to recapture their own faith."

In her 2001 book "The Rage And The Pride," Fallaci (who fought in the anti-fascist resistance as a young girl in World War II) could have been addressing Peters when she warned: "You don't understand, you don't want to understand, that a reverse Crusade is underway - a war of religion they call Holy War, Jihad. You don't understand, you don't want to understand, that for those reverse Crusaders the West is a world to conquer and subjugate to Islam."

In the same book, Fallaci described the Religion of Peace as "the mountain which emerges from the abyss." (Mountains are monolithic, as they not?) The real protagonist in terrorism's war on civilization isn't bin Laden, or Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, Iran or Syria, Fallaci cautioned.

Instead, our adversary "is the Mountain. That Mountain which in one thousand and four hundred years has not moved, has not risen from the abyss of its blindness, has not opened its doors to the conquests of civilization, has never wanted to know about freedom, civilization and progress. In short, has not changed. That Mountain which in spite of the shameful richness of its retrograde masters (kings and princes and sheiks and bankers) still lives in the monstrous darkness of a religion which produces nothing but religion."

Trusting souls like Peters are always waiting for the alleged majority of moderate Muslims to assert themselves, put down the Koran-spouting fanatics and "recapture their religion."

How did they lose it in the first place? How did Islam become the domain of suicide-bombers, mass murderers, lunatic theocrats, raving anti-Semites, America-haters, nun-killers and those who bear grudges for perceived wrongs from the 11th. century?

If the fanatics and extremists are a minority, they are a very active minority - while the moderates are practically invisible.

The "minority of a minority" are they killing Christians, Hindus and Jews from North Africa, to Sub-Saharan Africa, to the Middle East, to Kosovo, to the Caucuses, to the Indian subcontinent, to Indonesia and the Philippines.Wherever Moslems in significant numbers come in contact with any other faith, World War III ensues.

If the moderates are just biding their time, waiting to assert themselves and reclaim their honorable heritage, why is it no mainstream Muslim group ever disavows the most horrific acts committed in the name of their religion? The pope is expected to wear sackcloth for quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. Where are the Muslim apologies for the nun who was murdered yesterday?

On the anniversary of 9/11, a writer who used to be in Peters' camp published a mea culpa in the Baltimore Jewish Times.

Columnist Ira Rifkin confessed that in 1985 he was one of the first to push a Muslim-Jewish dialogue. Rifin says he "sought participation in Jewish-Muslim interfaith activities; I've broken bread with Muslims at their homes and at mine, and at the White House at official presidential Ramadan break-the-fast events."

Rifkin ruefully admits: "I fully embraced, even relished these opportunities. Information and dialogue, I believed, could lower if not eliminate the barriers of suspicion that kept Muslims and Jews from understanding each others' hopes and fears. We live in the United States, not the Middle East, I told myself. Here, reason might prevail."

However, the more time he spent with Muslims the more he concluded that "as a group, their worldview and that of most Jews are in such profound conflict as to render real dialogue meaningless."

"That's because a prime tenet of Islam is the uumah. The notion that there is an essential unity among all believers, regardless of where they live, and that it transcends nationality, race and ethnicity. Religious solidarity comes first. Islam is the primary social identity. This helps explain why American Caucasian converts to Islam with no direct link to Middle East tensions, tend to adopt anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes."

Rifkin believes, "The Muslim animosity has gone beyond anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism festers within the Muslim community like no other."

To wit, "At a pro-Hezbollah August rally in Washington (DC) sponsored by leading American Muslim activist groups, the crowd extolling Hezbollah's leader, chanted 'Nasrallah, Nasrallah: the martyr is the beloved of Allah; the Zionists are the enemy of Allah.' Across the continent in San Francisco, at another pro-Hezbollah demonstration the same day, participants carried signs that read: 'Nazi kikes out of Lebanon."

While he's exposing the rotten core of American Islam-haters and waiting for the moderates to emerge from the bunkers and recapture their faith, Peters can also : 1) Anticipate the emergence of a kinder and gentler mafia, 2) Look forward to the day when responsible National Socialists recapture their party and 3) Wait for the price of oil to dip below a dollar a gallon.

"... I understand a faith that's worth dying for, which gives me an clear understanding of the seriousness of the threat of Islam."

BINGO!! I wish more people would realize this point!

And .. one of the major statements Peters made in the Rush Limbaugh Letters was this: "We have never before faced an enemy who believed death was a promotion."

While Peters may not understand their motivation .. from his interview with Rush, I got the general impression he does understand the seriousness of the threat the terrorists pose to the whole world.

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