Posted on 06/19/2002 3:17:46 PM PDT by swarthyguy
First, understand what I'm NOT saying. I'm not saying I'm a great columnist. I'm not even saying I'm a good columnist.
I'm saying only that I've been writing columns for some publication or other since 1950. Thousands of them.
And I'm saying nothing I've ever written has ever caused me more pain than this one.
Among the things that give me maximum pleasure in the world are my children, football, North Carolina barbecue, Polish music, skinny blondes, and brotherhood.
Yes, brotherhood. I quite literally weep with joy at stories of courageous whites preventing white haters in the South from lynching blacks, Ukrainian farmers risking their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, Serbian monks protecting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Greeks and Turks selling hot dogs together from street carts in New York.
Freaky? Maybe. But, maybe not. Some people like all that sexy stuff. Some like all that violent stuff. Some like all that expensive stuff. I just happen to like all that brotherly stuff.
As a senior at the University of North Carolina in 1952 I led the successful fight to desegregate Kenan Stadium; and that was long before you got hugged by Hollywood movie stars or quoted in Newsweek for such activities that far South.
The French leader who handed Algeria its independence after World War II had better damned well be a tough French nationalist with a good war record. And he was: Gen. Charles DeGaulle. The American president who popped up in Beijing to open relations with communist China in the middle of the Cold War against communism had better damned well be a tough anti-communist, and not some soft-on-communism Democrat. And he was: Richard Nixon.
And you'd better have a thick scrapbook of brotherly deeds before you wonder out loud whether the "brotherhood" you've spent your life promoting and practicing is still appropriate to the Moslem world.
Brotherhood, morally correct back then, may actually be suicidal now. Throughout all our wars we've had people in America who were "of" the enemy; born of the enemy, descendants of the enemy, sympathetic with the enemy, enamored with the enemy, even willing to fight and die for the enemy.
But it never amounted to much. If any Hispanics residing in America made trouble for America during the Spanish-American War, history hasn't told us about it. During World War I we had a good-sized German population, but no major problems of sabotage or disloyalty. In fact, America's greatest air ace of that war was the enfabled German-American Eddie Rickenbacker.
In World War II we had Germans who up, the instant we went to war against Germany, admired Adolf Hitler, Italians who admired Mussolini, and Japanese who were overawed by the military power of their native Japan.
But when the war started, they all proved they were reliable Americans by a majority so overwhelming that the remainder gave us nothing to talk about.
And there's nothing strange about that. The only force tugging against their loyalty to America was their nationalism. And that little "hometown" tug was easily overcome by their awareness that America's democracy trumped the fascism of their homelands.
Today is different.
Islamic Antagonism
Today we have millions of residents, many if not most American citizens, who have, not a nationalistic, but a RELIGIOUS antagonism toward America. The Germans, Italians, and Japanese in America during World War II had zero RELIGIOUS hatred of America.
Islam does.
And all attempts by my brother "brotherhoodists" to spin that reality away are so futile they've been largely abandoned. Too much is now known of what's taught in the "madrassas," Islamic religious schools. Too much is known about what's preached in the mosques and spread through the Moslem media.
Right after 9-11 I, too, instinctively wanted to believe the terrorists were merely an aberrational few and that most Moslems, certainly in America, were little more than Catholics with a different doctrine, Jews with slightly darker complexions, or Presbyterians who wrote from right to left whose men preferred facial hair and whose women covered their heads differently.
Before 9/11 my brotherly intuition left me to assume the little Mustafas of Dearborn, Mich., and the little Achmeds of Alabama were patted on their backs by their proud fathers for learning to recite the Bill of Rights and urged by their mothers to hurry up and learn the Preamble to the Constitution.
Sorry. Not sarcastically sorry; I'm genuinely sorry.
Islam's religious antagonism to American political and social values is as powerful as it is primitive. Thomas Jefferson's sparkling exhortations in favor of democracy bounce like BBs off the thick armor of fundamentalist Islam – especially the kind of hateful, fundamentalist Islam force-pumped into those American mosques financed by the Wahabi sect of Saudi Arabia.
(What percentage of American mosques are financed by Saudi Arabia? The common figure most often heard is 50 percent!)
In World War II, Lutheran clergymen with German congregations in America never once said, "We must undermine America for our beloved Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. Catholic priests in Italian parishes never once said, "America is decadent, and we must bring it down for our beloved Duce, Benito Mussolini." And Japanese-American troops, called "nisei," demoralized their German foes in Italy with their combat ferocity.
Mosques all over America, however, are echo chambers for the Wahabi line. And it's pretty awful.
'America Is the Enemy'
"America is the enemy. Unbelievers in Islam deserve death. We must work with our Islamic brothers for Jihad! There is no higher distinction than martyrdom against the infidels who despoil our sacred soil with their unbelieving feet and aid the wretched Jew in their usurpation of our holy territory."
Heady stuff!
What gives me the right to worry about the octane of our Moslem countrymen's loyalty?
I glide easily to such concerns without infiltrating a mosque, purloining confidential documents from any Islamic organization, swallowing one drop of propaganda from Moslem-bashers, or wire-tapping a single imam.
All I had to do was observe the American Islamic reaction to 9-11. Or, heartbreakingly enough, the lack thereof.
Spiders weave webs. Beavers build dams. Humans react. The entire global Jewish community reacted instantly and thunderously denounced the crazed Jewish settler in Hebron who entered a mosque and slaughtered 50 or more Moslems at prayer. America instantly and thunderously denounced the accidental destruction of an Iranian civilian plane by an American military ship in the Persian Gulf.
Israel denounced its own assassination of an innocent Moroccan Arab in Lillehammar, Norway, who was catastrophically mistaken for one of the terrorists who murdered the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
Listen now to the Moslem community of America. Listen closely!
Since Sept. 11, 2001 we've heard not one single, rousing, convincing, united blanket denunciation of the terror attack from the American Islamic community. Neither have we heard any rousing, convincing, etc. pro-American declaration from that community since that tragic date.
Everything we've heard is defensive. "Islam is a peaceful religion." "You can't indict our whole group because of a few terrorists." "You cannot discriminate against us because of our ethnicity or religion." "You are PROFILING!"
Agreed! But where are the ringing affirmations that they, the American Muslims, join the rest of us in victimhood and outrage against the attackers? Where is their proactive demand that all who commit such attacks be extirpated and annihilated?
If you put that question to "Islamic spokesmen" in the United States they will quickly furnish you with the names of prominent Moslems here and there who protested and a mosque or two in Jersey City and Sacramento that, indeed, issued supportive statements. But there's no political stethoscope powerful enough to detect any real fury palpitating behind the breast-bones of American Moslems, at least not fury against the terrorist attackers.
Am I asking too much when I expect just as much anti-terrorist, pro-American solidarity from the Islamic community as I do from the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities? Is it too much to ask the same sentiment from American Palestinians, Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, Iraqis, etc. as I do from Americans of every other national origin?
The muted and ambiguous murmur we do hear from our American Moslems makes me feel rather like the president of a corporation in the hospital who gets a note from the chairman of the board stating, "I have been authorized by the board of directors to wish you a speedy recovery – by vote of five to four!"
My lifelong friends in the "Brotherhood Caucus" try to restrain me. "Relax!" they counsel. "These people are shy. They're new here. They don't know how to react yet. It's not their style or tradition to protest or picket, or hold up placards, or even speak out loud."
That placated me for a while; but suddenly the American Moslems proved they did, indeed, have a voice; a loud one at that, that needed no coaxing.
Any shyness that might have prevented American Moslems from locking arms, hearts, and voices with other Americans after 9-11 vanished when the Israeli military entered Ramallah and Jenin to root out the terrorist bomb factories and suicide-homicide schools (operating, incidentally, quite openly inside refugee camps run by the United Nations!)
It was comforting to learn our American Moslems have a voice. It was disappointing to learn that voice is raised, not when their co-religionists attack America, but only when their co-religionist murderers face obliteration at the hands of Israelis seeking self-defense.
I'm an American who believes in God, seeks to serve his fellow man, likes a drink, and, though occasionally glancing at graven images of scantily clad women in our culture, wishes there were fewer.
If my lifestyle is punishable, I want it to be punished by the Almighty Himself when He decides to render judgment upon me personally; and not by those living in the most God-kissed country on earth who quietly cheer the monsters of 9-11 and denounce those who interfere with their U.N.-sheltered murderers of innocent soldiers, men, women, and children. I write this, not in hatred, but in disappointment; not in anger, but dismay.
Hello, Moslems of America! Do you really want to remain the only group in our history who said "No, thanks" to our values, our openness, our eagerness to include, our democracy, and our willingness to make people as different as you are from us?
In my lifetime, Americans of German, Italian and Japanese extraction cheered as their "terrorists" were defeated and our American values replaced the tyrannies of their long-tortured homelands.
I want to live long for many reasons; and among them is the desire to be there when we can lift a glass together – fruit juice for you, vodka-on-the-rocks for me – to celebrate the triumph of democracy in every single nation in the Moslem world.
Oh, at least. What us crickets lack in size we make up for in volume. :^)
Seriously though, they are going to have to do the same. Americans as a rule have one of the kindest, most forgiving and easygoing culture I have ever seen and, believe me, I have seen a lot of them. But there is always the flipside and when we get a good case of mad on we can also unleash hell like no one else too.
The Islamic world will either have to change or it will be changed. There are no longer any other alternatives, the only questions are how soon and who will do it.
a.cricket
If you are merely asking me of the story-line of the myth, this can readily be found almost anywhere Islam is studied. In short, Mohammed rode his celestial steed from Mecca to Jerusalem during the night. The supernatural horse, named Al Buraq, then rested against what is now the Jewish Wailing Wall before stepping atop the rock now within the Dome of the Rock and then carrying Mohammed off into the heavens. (I would imagine the moon, since Allah was the God of the moon before Mohammed adopted him). Moslems refer to the Wailing Wall as the Al Buraq Wall, and consider it a Holy Site, although one of their few concessions to the Jews has been to let them worship there. Perhaps this is because celestial steeds are so obviously the result of a creative mind, whereas the Dome is a physical structure that can attain Holiness through its' mere nature as a beautiful mosque.
Perhaps for starters, you could quit blowing smoke.
Knock off questioning the anger of Americans against everything related to murderous radical/fundamental Islamic thugs -- and stop trying to convince me that I should ignore the attacks and threats of more attacks from LEADERS of various Islamic groups and mosques.
The Islamic radicals and their supporters, have convinced most Americans that Islam means to do us harm... They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams to ANGER us.
The storm will rage, and 100s of thousands could die before the only rational conclusion results.... The attacked non-Muslim world may be forced to deliver massive destruction to the Muslim world --- IF the "moderates" don't expell the "radicals", and indeed BEHAVE as a Peace Loving Religion - and not an army of religious warriors on a Jihad..
America would be foolish to ignore the threat from without and within.... Muslims within America - could show more attachment to the country they came to --- and with CLEAR words and ACTIONS, EXPELL from their faith and their mosques the voices and preachers of hate against all that is not Islam.
It was the Islamic "radicals" that made this a "Holy War" - of one religion or civilization against the other....... It thus becomes the responsibility of Muslims to reverse this situation...... Until then, many of us will regard all Muslims with great suspicion that could quickly spin out of control. No one wants that....and I would think especially the Muslims agree that they can not survive complete and total "Jihad"....
Semper Fi
Of course not.
Declaring a death wish against all of a people -- is what lunatics do...
Recently, only "radical" Islamic lunatics have been demanding death for all Jews and Americans.
I would think that if the majority, or even a vocal effective minority of Muslims were repelled by the current Islamic Jihad against Jews and Americans - there would be at least as much turmoil in the Mosques, as there is in the Catholic churches in protest against homosexual priests.
But instead, all I've heard is protests against "profiling" or other forms of "discrimination" against Muslims.
I have seen ONLY defense of Islam --- NOT attacks by "moderate" Muslims against the radical element within.
If "Islam" cann't correct the "face" and "soul" of Islam, the American people will be forced to recognize Islam as a death dealing cult - and deal with it..
Semper Fi
First you tell the State Department to get the hell out of the way. Second, cut aid, as in military aid and protection to the family of Saud allowing the extremists just a bit closer. Finally help the Russians get their oil out of the ground and transported to market. Bye Bye Saudi Arabia. The entire Kingdom is based on oil. Once the oil situation is done with, throw the Family of Saud to the extremist wolfs. Heck they helped create them in the first place.
All to well, unfortunately and they are entrenched including into this Administration and Bush relatives like Neil Bush. Regards...
Yes, I did not think there were any moderate muslims.
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