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.
This is the comment he made to me
:"During the second world war, we did not pretend that there were good Nazis who we allowed to immigrate here, and bad Nazis who we fought against."
Our culture IS better than theirs.
This is not merely a matter of opinion, prejudice or chauvinism, but is objectively true by virtually any criteria reflecting universal human values. We in the West have discovered -- in representative democracy, plus secular government limited by individual rights, plus regulated capitalism -- the best way for men to govern themselves and provide for the sustenance of human life.
We should be proud of this accomplishment, but we should not be arrogant. We should remember that we learned these things the hard way. Hundreds of years of vicious, largely pointless and nearly continuous religious warfare taught us the importance of secular government. Our horrific experiments in this century with fascism and communism (and absolute monarchy and many other earlier experiences) taught us the importance of limited government. Learning the secrets of civilization has been costly for the West, and our civilization, despite its many bright and shinning moments, has spilled more blood in its evolution than any other in human history.
But for this very reason, although we should allow others in so far as possible to "see for themselves" that our ways are better, and although we must restrain ourselves from pushing nonessential elements of our culture (including our religions!) onto others, the Islamic world CANNOT be allowed to repeat all our mistakes. Not in a world with six billion souls for whom we are all corporately responsible. Not in a world with weapons of mass destruction.
I think Bush is correct to say that Islam is a religion of peace. It is, in its highest and best and most complete understanding, the full ethical equal of any other organized human attempt to express true love, gratitude and devotion to God. But in many respects Islam (or rather the minds of many of its devotees) are where Christianity, or "The West," was several hundred years ago. Many Muslims, even "moderates," fundamentally reject secular government, for instance, and dream of universal Islamic government for all mankind. This is inexpressibly frustrating and frightening to educated Westerners. We KNOW, from our own flings with utopianism, that aspirations like this, regardless of intents good, bad or indifferent, lead with terrible inevitability to hell on earth. Reform of Islam with respect to modernism, freedom of religion, etc is essential, but it is far from clear that Muslims have the necessary history to understand that need. God grant they don't learn the hard way.
Many Arabs I have spoken to seem to think that the US foreign policy should be to assist in the overthrow of the repressive governments under which their societies find themselves. They blame the US for perpetuating these regimes. Yet when left to their own devices they produce Islamic theocracies that take their countries back centuries from an economic and human rights perspective. I refer to Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria if it were permitted.
The minister quoted in the article had it right. When Muslims are in the majority in a country the country will be pushed to accept Sha'aria as the law of the land. Non-muslims then must effectively adhere to a foreign religious law. Lack of knowledge of that law is not an excuse.
That pretty well sums it up. Do we really want more Muslims in this country? HELLO.
This is precisely why we have to deport the Muslims here on visas because we can't let them get a foothold here and become instant traitor citizens like this hypocritical ingrate.
That's a pretty daring statement. She was told, she heard.... I can also come up with the idea that 70% of humans come from Mars, but that doesn't make it true.
Articles like this are only intended to fuel more hatred, even operating with very questionable "statistics" and numbers, that may very well be wrong.
This every Muslim is an enemy, all Muslims are evil, Islam called everything but a religion reminds me of some other times and mentality (Hitler like), that I thought were well behind. Obviously it is not so, and ignorance and hatred are still in eminent display here. Sadly
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Spot on.
Speaking for myself, I have done a lot of reading about Muslims since 9/11. Islam is what Muslims do, and right now, it ain't pretty, and I really don't think it has ever been so. Mohammedism, Nazism (Hitlerism), Maoism, Stalinism - they all look similar from this vantage point.
I have already made the move.
Pretty good summary. Most major religions have a problem with fanatics selectively using their scriptures to make them mean what they want them to mean.
And there were not tens of thousands of 25 year old German men roaming the USA on phony "student visas" planning their next acts of terrorism.
If there had been, they would have been interned or deported, and rightly so.
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