Posted on 09/12/2002 8:30:12 AM PDT by dennisw
A TIME FOR TRUTH -- 9/11 AND ISLAM By Don Feder
People keep asking me what we learned from September 11, 2001 and the deaths of 3,000 of our fellow citizens. I'm tempted to say: Absolutely nothing. (Who was it who remarked that the lessons of history are the last things we ever learn?)
Among the many unlearned lessons of Day-Which-Will-Live-In-Infamy-II-- the necessity to control our borders, the need for a patriotic renewal and the importance of combatting multiculturalism -- the most significant is the nature of Islam. You will note that I do not say militant Islam, or radical Islam, or Islamic extremism or other such weasel words – but Islam, period.
Every one of the hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were professing and practicing Moslems, as is Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda network is based in Moslem countries and supported financially by pious Moslems in Saudi Arabia.
The overwhelming majority of Moslem religious authorities who've spoken out on the subject, including those at the main mosque in Mecca and Egypt's prestigious Al Azar University, either endorse or rationalize acts of terrorism. On a day when Americans were incinerated or buried under tons of rubble, from Nigeria to Indonesia, Moslems celebrated in the streets.
Sept. 11 was one chapter in a 1400-year jihad. Every day, the World Trade Center massacre is reenacted on a smaller scale somewhere in the Third World – Jewish women and children are burned alive in a bus on the West Bank, a missionary is beheaded in the Philippines, gunmen shoot up a church in Pakistan (deliberately firing into the prostrate bodies of women trying to shield their children), ancient monasteries and convents are destroyed in Kosovo, a woman is sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, Hindus are murdered in the Kashmir, a nun is found beheaded in Baghdad -- and the beat goes on.
Genocide in the Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, religious persecution in Saudi Arabia, calls for another holocaust in mosques from Mecca to Gaza, the imposition of Islamic law in Nigeria, forced conversions in Indonesia, synagogues burned in France, Jews attacked across Europe – these are everyday events, as Third World and much of the First slowly turns Islamic green.
And still our leaders, from President Bush on down, insist on peddling the absurdity that Islam is a religion of peace – a creed of kindness and benevolence tragically and inexplicably corrupted by fanatics.
At a conference, I recently had an exchange with Tom Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, wherein I questioned the governor on Islam a la Hans Christian Andersen. Ridge replied that Islam was indeed a pacific faith corrupted by a handful of heretics. I replied that the "handful" is in the hundreds of millions and -- as far as I can see – it's the Moslems who aren't trying to kill us who've misinterpreted their religion.
Why this reluctance to confront manifest reality? The reason lies partly with our absurd foreign policy. We've declared certain Moslem nations to be our loyal allies – including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. We wouldn't want to offend these dear friends by saying something unflattering about their bloody, butcherly, dark ages faith.
Then too, Americans are naturally benevolent. Most of us are taught from childhood that is religion is good (and it doesn't matter which religion). As long as little Johnny believes in God and goodness, it's inconsequential whether he lights candles, wears a skull cap to services or prays in the direction of Mecca.
This works with every religion except Islam.
Consider the following: Of the three major monotheistic religions, one was started by a lawgiver, one by a man of peace (try to imagine Mohammed telling his followers to turn the other cheek) and one by a warrior. Mohammed led men into battle. The essence of his message is holy war – slaughtering your enemies for the glory of Allah. He even advised his followers to negotiate a phony truces to lull their enemies.
For almost 1,400 years, that has been the reality of Islam. Within a century after the death of Mohammed, Islam spread throughout the Middle East and across North Africa. It overran the Iberian peninsula and was finally stopped in southern France. It spread eastward as far as the southern Philippines. It was not propagated by fresh-faced young men knocking on doors and announcing: "Hello. I'm from your local mosque. Have you considered the Koran?" It was spread by force – conversion by the sword. To a large extent, it still is.
Some will respond that all religions go through periods of violence, usually in their infancy. Christianity had its crusades and Inquisition, its forced conversions and expulsions. But the evil committed in the name of Christ happened centuries ago. The evil committed in the name of the Prophet is going on now, as you read these words. Of 22 conflicts in the Third World, 20 involve Moslems versus someone else. Coincidence? In his brilliant book, "Clash of Cultures and the Remaking of World Order," Samuel Huntington speaks of Islam's "bloody borders."
There is no Methodist Jihad, no Hasidic holy warriors, no Southern Baptist suicide bombers, no Mormon elders preaching the annihilation of members of other faiths.
Islam is a warrior religion – the perfect vessel for fanatics, the violence- prone, the envious and haters of all stripes. This is one reason why Islam is making so many converts among the peaceable denizens of our prison system.
Still, much of the West is addicted to a fairy-tale version of Islam. Christian and Jewish clergy fall all over themselves to have interfaith services with imams. Representatives of Moslem groups are invited to the White House. The president signs a Ramadan declaration. In California, public schools ask children to role-play at being Moslems. Our universities take carefully selected verses from the Koran and present them as the essence of the faith. All that's needed is a Moslem character on "Sesame Street." Look – it's the Jihad Monster!
This perspective engenders a fatally false sense of security. Imagine, in 1940, Winston Churchill taking to the airwaves to announce that Nazism was an ideology of peace which, regrettably, had been perverted by a few fanatics like Hitler and Goebbels. But most storm troopers and SS men are fine follows – your friends and neighbors.
For the first thousand years of its history – from the death of Mohammad to the 17th. century decline of the Ottoman empire, Islam was an expansionist force. For the next 300 years, as the West rose to preeminence, Islam receded. For the past four decades – fueled by Arab oil wealth, a surplus population in the Middle East, the waning of the West and the rise of more virulent strains of the faith (Shiism, Wahhabism, Sunni fundamentalism) – Islam is expanding once more. Round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows.
Due to Moslem immigration and aggressive proselytizing among the underclass, Islam is being exported to the West. Moslem populations are burgeoning throughout Western Europe. (In southern France, there are said to be more mosques than churches.) In Judeo-Christian America, Islam is the fastest growing religion. It's also spreading down the coast of West Africa, through the Balkans (after Serbia, Macedonia is the next target) and up from Mindanao in the Philippines.
Wherever it comes, Islam brings its delightful customs – child marriages, female circumcisions, rabid anti-Semitism, terrorism and support for terrorism and a virulent intolerance of other faiths.
Am I suggesting we declare war on 900 million Moslems? The question is irrelevant – many of them have declared war on us. When one side knows it's at war and the other thinks peace and brotherhood prevail, guess who wins?
Ultimately, it's not about Jews in the West Bank, or Orthodox Serbs in Kosovo, or Hindus in Kashmir, or Maronite Catholics in Lebanon, or Christians in Sudan and Nigeria but all of us. As Ben Franklin would have it – Either we will hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately.
I'll save what-is-to-be-done for another installment. In the meantime, my compliments to Richard the Lionhearted and Charles Martel
Muslims gather behind a banner reading "ISLAM Will Dominate the World", at the Finsbury park Mosque, in London, Wednesday Sept. 11, 2002, to participate in a conference entitled "September 11 A Towering Day in History". The conference is due to hear from some of the most radical Muslim clerics in Britain. (AP Photo/Mark Lees, PA)
Has this appeared in any of Feder's outlets (e.g., Townhall.com or JWR?)
I would add one thing to this:
Why this reluctance to confront manifest reality?
Political correctness and the multi-culti, self-loathing, hate-America cult that rules media and education in the USA. The chattering class's cocktail party chic, upside-down world, where cop-killers and child-molesters and bus-bombers are cool and Jerry Falwell and Bill Bennett and George Bush are the faces of evil.
I once saw an entry in TV Guide for a movie that I believe was called "The Message", starring Anthony Quinn. The description said (as best I can recall it): "The story of the founding of Islam. Action packed."
I don't want anything to do with any religion whose founding is summed up by TV Guide as "action packed".
I honestly don't believe that even conservative mainstream venues, like JWR, etc., would publish this. It is WAYYY too politically incorrect. This is wayyy beyond the pale.
Well, not really. They were all lawgivers. All of the Hebrew patriarchs were very successful warriors in a time when if you weren't, you ended up chattel of somebody who was. Jesus was a carpenter (perhaps "joiner" might be more accurate if you really want to pick nits) and Mohammed was a merchant. And all of that is quite irrelevant.
I wouldn't go so far as Mr. Feder as to say that Islam is irremedially militant and aggressive. We have long periods of recorded history that indicate that it can be quite accommodating if its adherents see that military victory is infeasible. But the current accession of militancy within Islam is a very disturbing development, and, I suspect, one that is artificially maintained by major economic subsidies from those (notably the Saudis, but others to be sure) who find that convenient for their own internal purposes. It is not, in fact, dissimilar to the Crusades, in which some secular governments found it useful to subsidize the retaking of the Holy Land for their own secular purposes, notably trade routes and population control of the politically inconvenient. In short, militant religious aggression is pretty easy to whip up with a little money and a little ulterior motivation. I do not think many Muslims would be flattered by that comparison, though.
What is even more disturbing to me is, just as Mr. Feder points out, the reluctance of Moslem coreligionists to disavow these activities. It isn't simply a matter of conviction that murdering innocent people is an inescapable part of promoting Islam, for it is specifically prohibited in the Koran and is danced around by certain mullahs who grandly proclaim that there are no innocents. Yet that point, which one might think would be shouted from the minarets, is in fact muted to a whisper.
There are two reasons for this, IMHO - first, that anti-American politics is an even more pervasive and useful mechanism than anti-Christian religious drives and are synergistic with the latter, and second, that the radicals are armed and quite capable of murdering dissenters, and have done so in the recent past.
This is something about which Americans can't really do a lot. There aren't any foreign policies, including total isolation, that can't be twisted to suit a cynical and hypercritical anti-American stance for those for whom America's existence itself provides a useful foil. The danger to the Moslem world - and the Europeans as well - is that this constant drumbeat numbs Americans to the point at which none of it registers anymore; the danger to the U.S. is that certain portions of the political spectrum take this incessant barrage of hostility uncritically.
It seems like we are trying to appease the devil (arab nations) to take out one of his princes (Saddam).
God help us all.
The reason why the powers that be will not confront the face of our true enemy is two-fold and very simple.
First, how in the face of the First Amendment to the Constitution can we declare ourselves at war with a religion, however screwed up it may be. If we ID Islam as the enemy, the government is, in effect, prohibiting the practice of that religion.
Secondly, can you conceive of the consequences within this country of declaring Islam our sworn enemy when a substantial portion of the black population of this country identify themselves as Muslims? Talk about bringing on a race war!
Just my opinion,though.
Either that, or they are playing 'good cop, bad cop.'
Re: the calling of Islam an ideology not a religion...Now that's a tough sell. I almost think that is tantamount to what the meaning of is is.
Well, not really. They were all lawgivers. All of the Hebrew patriarchs were very successful warriors in a time when if you weren't, you ended up chattel of somebody who was. Jesus was a carpenter (perhaps "joiner" might be more accurate if you really want to pick nits) and Mohammed was a merchant. And all of that is quite irrelevant.
I beg to differ. Moses was a politician-turned-shepherd, who was best known for giving the Hebrews the Law. Jesus was a carpenter-turned-prophet, who is best known for dying on a cross and coming back to life three days later. momo was a merchant-turned-warrior, who was best known for conquering Mecca. Among his last words were a plea for allah to slay Jews and Christians.
To some extent, these religions reflect the character of their founders.
We don't allow the Mormons multiple wives so we do interfere with the free exercise of religion.
Islam calls itself a religion, but it is really a military organization. It is little different from Nazism except that Hitler didn't say he got his marching orders from an angel.
ML/NJ
I'm sure that Janet Reno would have the answer to that.
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