Posted on 11/11/2001 6:08:05 PM PST by NorthernRight
I read an article this week that so disturbed me -- though enlightened me at the same time -- I thought I would share it. It is a piece written by Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic and was titled: "Muslims torn between love of Islam and America." It is a deceptive title since nowhere in it was there any indication that these so-called Americans loved America at all.
It started out quoting Moayaad Hamad, who was wearing a striped Polo shirt, Nikes and was donning a cellphone strapped to his 501 Levis. This is what he had to say about his adopted country.
"It's getting to the point where I hate being here, even though I'm a citizen," said the 22-year-old structural engineer from Phoenix. "I don't think many (Muslims) are willing to say this because they are afraid to say it ... The Qu'ran doesn't justify taking out the World Trade Center, but Islam means not just peace, but freedom. You have to defend yourself."
It's the "but," that really gets me there. What, pray tell, is anyone defending themselves against by slamming commercial jet liners into the World Trade Center. But that's not what really troubled me.
The same article goes on to interview Ihsan Saadeddin, spokesman for the Phoenix Islamic Community Center, who is described as having a beautiful suburban home with a child's painting of an American flag on the front door.
"I love the Constitution of America. I love the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech," Saadeddin said. Yet, says the article, he also believes "the ideal system is a male-controlled Islamic state," and he acknowledges discomfort with free speech that criticizes Islam.
Maybe it's because I'm a woman and women -- let's be perfectly frank -- don't fare too well in countries that describe themselves as following Islamic law. What's maddening is this fellow would like to have it both ways.
He currently "loves" the freedom of religion and speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution because it allows him to practise his beliefs and say what he wants.
But, let's not beat around the bush here. If he and most of his fellow believers had his way, he would tear up the very foundation that gives him his rights in order for him to impose his views on his fellow Americans and me.
As one Christian pastor who is familiar with Muslim countries wrote in an email recently: "Islam advocates and pleads for tolerance wherever it is in the minority; it advocates, implements and practices suppression and violence wherever it is in the majority."
I know this column will anger many Muslims, but before you write me to complain, finish this little exercise: Name one country that follows Islamic law that can be said to be free and just and that has more people immigrating to it than want to emigrate from it?
You won't be able to because not one exists.
For the most part, Muslims want to move to the West. The Qu'ran very clearly calls on its believers to "fight and slay the pagans (infidels) wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war." Qu'ran, Sura 9:5.
It is probable that the vast majority of North American Muslims do not think that non-Muslims must be slain. But if not in body, certainly in spirit. Though the body will do in certain circumstances.
Saadeddin, the fellow who says he loves the constitution, when asked to comment on the Palestinian who straps a bomb to his body and blows up a pizzeria full of women and children, views that as justified.
"If someone fights to gain his freedom, that's not terrorism," he said. "I don't even call them suicide attacks there. I call them martyrs."
The Levis-wearing engineer, Hamad, said: "I don't see anything necessarily wrong with the bombing of the (USS) Cole," referring to the attack in Yemen last year that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
This fellow is an American?
Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist, reported for the Wall Street Journal from Beirut that she saw well-heeled professionals cheering in the streets following the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The cafe's sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked or moved. They were excited, very excited," she wrote.
She was told that 90% of the Arab world believes that America got what it deserved.
"An exaggeration?" she asks. "Rather an understatement."
Until recently I believed that seething anger towards the West existed only in far flung places of the world. But of late -- and I have much more evidence -- I'm starting to fear that many people who live in North America secretly feel the same way.
It troubles me and here's why.
I know that I would be executed post-haste in virtually any Islamic country for doing just what I have done here, write some facts and some opinion that the rulers don't like.
On this Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day) most of us will reflect on the high cost of freedom.
Those angry men I have quoted here have exercised that hard-won freedom.
We will have dropped the torch thrown to us by the failing hands of our veterans if we refuse to listen -- and hear -- their frightening message.
Islams/muslims are arrogant. The ones I worked with throughout the decades I thought were just aloof, but now I think they were just arrogant people, envious of Americas wealth, and hateful towards us because of our religions, because they are so INTOLLERANT of toher religions!
There is NO SUCH THING AS A MUSLIM AMERICAN!
"If someone fights to gain his freedom, that's not terrorism," he said. "I don't even call them suicide attacks there. I call them martyrs."
The fact is anyone who murders innocent and unsuspecting women and children is morally depraved and has lost the right to speak for any cause.
These people are warped and don't belong in a civilized society.
The basic problem here is very much like that of WWII. We have had Germans in this country for so many generations, that any attempt to draw parallels between them, either culturally or religiously, and the Muslims is doomed to failure. Germans are one reason why we won the War of 1812. They were technocrats then as now, and brought rifled musketry to the backwoodsmen of the frontier. They are culturally and religiously completely homogeneous with the Founders. And nobody talks about "German Americans."
By contrast, the immigration and appearance of Muslims in this country happened so fast that it took most of us by complete surprise. The problem is that they are 1)Outside the "Judeo-Christian tradition" -- WAY outside. 2)They do not in general identify with our culture and are seldom at pains to deny the fact, and 3) Do not understand the values of the land they have immigrated to. They honestly believe that our beloved America is a mutual arrangement whereby people can make lots of money with no sacred mutual bond of patriotism or sacrifice.
The Quran is a scary document. Recently a victim of the Taliban turned up missing his left foot and his right hand, a truly sick and sadistic thing to do to another human being, a great prototype for "cruel and unusual punishment." When asked where his tormentors came up with this idea he said "Oh it's right there in the Quran."
In other words, God wants people to do that to each other. Nowhere in the document are these people admonished to have anything but contempt for unbelievers, although "people of the book" i.e. Jews or Christians may be spared for purposes of conversion, if you're neither of these, you are to be MURDERED, pure and simple. God says so. Their claim to being a mainstream religion is bogus. And their claim to Jerusalem as one of their sacred sites is ludicrous, based solely on a dream Mohammed had about riding on a mythical animal called a "Borak" all the way to Jerusalem and from there up to the seventh heaven to have a chat with the Creator of the Universe. In his lifetime he described it as a dream, but in the lore of subsequent Muslim teaching, it's something that really happened. Nonsense. But since Mohammed could neither read nor write, what can we expect?
The situation is hopeless. Pat Buchanon is right. We and they cannot live together, and if we persist in our multi-culti fantasy about Gentle Mohammed Meek and Mild, we will wake up very very soon without a culture, without a civilizaton and without a country.
All the best, Maturin
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