Our Islamic 'Friends'

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 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.

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.

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. 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."

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.

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.

As well as writing for 50 years, Mr. Farber had a long-running (by that I mean decades) overnight radio talk show in New York. His interviews were of diverse but always interesting topics. He speaks somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 languages. He has always been a voice of reason in my opinion. (He even ran for Mayor of New York on the Conservative ticket once).

Just thought some people would be interested.

Interesting, I read a column in the Newark Star Ledger by Paul Mulshine along precisely those same lines in which he was quoting Rep King from Long Island. Apparently the 'profiling' whines from Muslims are drawing the blunt response that we really don't trust them.

The tepid, "9/11 was a terrible crime, BUT..." protestations from CAIR and their ilk show no genuine American patriotism. They are not on our side and we notice.

A few days ago I noticed something that struck me. I was driving through downtown Newark, which I hadn't done in several months, along the route by which I used to commute to New York. I passed a marble building I knew to be a mosque and was surprised at the rather derelict look of the place. At first I thought it had closed down. The large sign above the door was gone. Then as I drove past I noticed a small sign on the side of the building and someone in the lobby looking furtively out, as if on guard. If Muslims think they have to lie low in Newark of all places that can't be good for them.

Bump to your post & post #10. Both worthy reads, in addition to the main thread that brought all of us here. I've noticed the apologists single out the smallest, benign-est things to criticize. Transparently pathetic. Like Arafat donating blood with a shut yap on 9/11.

Mrs Kus

Not astrology, more astronomy, but last summer was a time when the planet Mars was the closest to Earth it's been in a while. Very bright, even close to a city, it hung low in the sky here and had a orangey tinge on clear nights. Wonder if any astrologers predicted a time of war or something like that back then?

Wishful thinking religion -- as the hindu sages who've struck it in rich in the USA would say, "Give me your worldly assets and i will give you the secret of happiness."

Seldom is a mohammedan heard decrying the mayhem committed in the name of that peculiar belief system. I will not be bothered if all of its adherents are held accountable for what only about a hundred million of the buggers do at any given time.

Granted.

I have no doubt you truly feel that way, but the real questions Muslims here don't seem to want answer are...

1)Where are the denunciations from the American mosques?
2)Where are the denunciations from Muslim-American groups in this country?

Why do only a few speak up??

So what do you really know about the true Islam and those who practice it?

Islam, True Islam, cannot be satisfied until it is the dominant force on earth. It is not content to be merely practiced. True Islam seeks to control every government, every mind, every action of every man.

What I know about True Islam and those who practice it: it, and they, must be destroyed.

Death to Islam.

When I die and go to allah

islams allah is just a made up myth. Think about it...if "allah" was real "allah" sure would be doing things to help those evil slobs, like making them learn to choose a vocation and work. Look at all the newsclips..all they ever do is pose in the market places with their machine guns and rocket launchers and "people watch". No nation could ever get anywhere if nobody wants to work. And I don't mean selling fruit at the market. That is work ,but I mean more than that! If their so called "allah" was real, this "allah" would have helped them overcome those dictators that rule them! And this "allah" would make them overcome their wierd, idiotic state of affairs with their womanfolk, where they can't go to school, subject to bazarre clitoris destruction, etc.

I recall from another thread you were flying to Vienna to meet with a bunch of European (Eurotrash snobs) objectivists (pseudo Intelectuals).

What happened, the Airbus 300 couldn't get off the ground?

Great post! Thanks.

I noticed that a couple of muslims had to weigh in on this thread ("mohammad atta drinks and watches strippers - therefore he is no true muslim").

If a democrat had weighed in with some pro-bill-clinton spin on a freeper thread, he would have been flamed by about 50 freepers so fast that his head would be spinning all the way back to the commune. But I'm glad to see that these muslim guys don't get much of a response. Ever tried to argue with one of those halfwits in person? It's like arguing with a wall. So why even bother? I really don't care to hear any more about what they think, and NO I'm not going to study the Koran to learn about their pedophile founder. Remember the story about Mohammad Atta with the Florida banker, referring to her as "but a woman"? Doesn't surprise me a bit. That's exactly how they acted when I saw them in college.

So, when the muslims wonder why they aren't even worthy of a response, let me summarize: because you are "but a muslim".

If Mohammed Atta could find justification for slaughtering thousands of infidels in that Islamic "Diary of a Madman" (The Koran), surely he could find a verse that covered taking a drink at a bar on the eve of said slaughter.

And lo and behold, here it is... "As for the faithful who do good works and believe what is revealed to Muhammad...He will forgive them their sins..." (Surah 47:1)

"Good works" being the throat slitting, hijacking and crashing of the planes, of course. It's all perfectly consistent with the teachings of Mohammed ("seek out your enemies", "kill the infidels", etc.).

If that isn't the religion you signed onto, I suggest you get out immediately.

"Islam, True Islam, cannot be satisfied until it is the dominant force on earth. It is not content to be merely practiced. True Islam seeks to control every government, every mind, every action of every man. What I know about True Islam and those who practice it: it, and they, must be destroyed. Death to Islam."

Absolute nonsense, you need help.

I first heard Barry Farber on radio somewhere around 6-8 years ago, where he and Allen Colmes (currently of Hannity and Colmes) were doing a (very tame) Crossfire type show. He is very conservative, in a low key sort of way, and not as good a debater as you might wish (why can't conservatives debate better?), but this is a good column by Mr. Farber.

He is very conservative, in a low key sort of way, and not as good a debater as you might wish (why can't conservatives debate better?), but this is a good column by Mr. Farber.

Barry Farber has been on radio since shortly after Marconi plugged the first radio in. He had a talk radio show on WOR in New York for many years and did very well. I think at first, many New Yorkers were surprised to hear a Jewish man with a very Southern accent on "their" radio. He mixed conservative "common sense thinking" with Southern style "growing up stories" and I enjoyed him very much.

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