[Slings and Arrows]

They shoot children, don't they?
Dennis Prager (archive)


September 7, 2004 | Print | Send


According to The New York Times, when the terrorists took over the Russian elementary school, they shouted "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is the greatest").

Does this surprise you, dear reader? Does it shock you that the people who deliberately attacked a school and then systematically shot and blew up little children did so in the name of Islam?

Unfortunately, the question is rhetorical. Having targeted little children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims committing.

We have already become almost inured to:

The slaughtering of innocent human beings as if they were animals while chanting Muslim prayers.

The reintroduction of black slavery and genocide against blacks.

The murder of daughters and sisters for imagined or real sexual behavior.

The stoning of women accused of adultery.

The burning of Hindu temples and Christian churches, and the destruction of among the greatest Buddhist sculptures.

The ban on women driving cars or learning to read.

The idolization of young men who blow themselves up while murdering and maiming innocent non-Muslims -- and the theology of sexual rewards in heaven for doing so.

These are some of the atrocities being committed by Muslims in different parts of the world today.

It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren't -- even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren't -- and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren't -- despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China.

With the psychopathic cruelty at a Russian elementary school, have we reached the point where people of goodwill can ask serious questions about Muslims and Islam? Or are any challenging questions still to be dismissed as "Muslim bashing" or, even more absurdly, "racist," as if religion were a race?

The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions. Most people are so afraid of being branded intolerant that the most natural and goodhearted questions are only posed by the handful who have the courage to do so (usually conservative Christians).

But good Muslims should welcome fair questions and not dismiss them as manifestations of bigotry. Most Americans have no a priori view of Islam. As far as they are concerned, it is one more religion that its practitioners ought to be able to practice in peace just as the members of every other faith in America do.

I know I have questions, and I know they come from a non-prejudiced place. And I can back up this claim.

Between 1982 and 1992, I moderated an extremely popular weekly radio show in Los Angeles on ABC radio. It featured a Roman Catholic priest, a Protestant minister and a rabbi. Beginning about 1987, I regularly invited Muslim representatives, marking the first time that Muslims were given such wide exposure on mainstream American radio or television. I developed such a good rapport with the Muslim community and its leaders that I was repeatedly invited to speak at the Islamic Center of Southern California, one of the largest and most prestigious institutions and mosques in the country.

And I in turn invited Muslim leaders to speak before major Jewish institutions.

Given this background, it is with the greatest sadness that I feel compelled to ask two questions:

First, is there anything in Islam or in the way Islam is now taught and practiced that dulls the conscience and thereby enables many religious Muslims to engage in or support atrocities that other groups, religious and secular, find inconceivable?

Second, the laudable condemnations of Islamic terror made by the Islamic Center notwithstanding, why are there virtually no public demonstrations of Muslims against the unspeakable evils committed by its adherents?

And while posing questions, here are two for liberals: Why are almost the only people asking these questions aloud conservative and religious? Where are you when it comes to acknowledging evil?

Yes, some people do shoot children, and good people have a right to ask why.

[taxesareforever]

Dennis spells it out like it should be.

[the_Watchman]

I really enjoy Dennis Prager and wish he were still on TV. However, this article points out one of the problems that we have set up for ourselves. Consider that Saddam Hussein didn't have problems with the Islamic extremists. I contend that he didn't because he adopted a "slash and burn" environment for his political opposition.

We have thoroughly vilified Hussein for establishing this intolerant human rights environment, and rightly so. But here's the rub: in order to deal with these extremists, the west will have to engage in some form of politically incorrect behavior bordering on the suppression exhibited by Hussein.

This is going to look pretty hypocritical to the rest of the world. Of course, the more the extremists engage in activities like those of last week, the easier the sell is going to be.

[Norski]

Is there any consensus or "rules of play" for how to ask these questions and receive answers? Where do we start? Is there a published list of Islam Imams by Mosque? What exactly, is the structure, or "chain of command" of the Islamic faith in America?

Are there any Muslim Freepers? Gotta be, there seems to be just about everything else . . .

And what would a security issue be on this posting or thread. Thoughts?

[SpaceBar]

Could it be that perhaps islam really isn't a religion? That it in fact is an extremely clever form of cultural brainwashing forced on unsophisticated arabic tribespeople fourteen hundred years ago by a ruthless military tyrant? In a related question, if Naziism proclaimed a divine source of inspiration, complete with a diety, and fanciful legends of a reward in the afterlife for performing murder, would it enjoy the current constitutional protection given islam? Inquiring minds want to know.

[tkathy]

Their vile god: "Allahu akbar the child killer".

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[Popman]

But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions.

There will be a point when even the most strident adherents of this religion, mostly liberals, will not be able to justify their hypocrisy any more. That time will be when murdering children in the name of allah comes to their front door.

Unfortunately it will come to that.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Dennis Prager cannot be dismissed as a radical partisan of Israel. For a very long time he actually opposed Israel's domestic right wing and supported the "peace process."

[AppyPappy]

The problem comes when people justify terrorism. Instead of condemning it wholesale, they attempt to rationalize it behind a facade of merely playing Devils Advocate.

"The Palestinians suffer too"
"The military has done this in the past"
"The Jews caused this Holocaust by wrecking the economy".

The problem is that terrorists have no concept of the innocent. All they want is to hurt people by any means necessary. That's why you cannot be silent. Silence basically puts you on their side. Muslims HAVE to speak out against terrorism without justifying it. Otherwise, they will be seen as supporters.

I knew a guy who liberated a Nazi concentration camp. He was amazed at the number of Germans in the area who said "This is horrible but.....". That's what made the GI's so mad.

[shattered]

But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance

Amen. Criticism of anything anymore is not PC in this country. Except, of course, republicans, conservatives, or Christians.

[NYer]

It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things.

The one question no one is asking is this:

Where is the outcry from the Mullahs?

Their silence is deafening!

Relatives grieve over the body of Vasily Reshetnyak, an eight year-old hostage killed in Russia's school siege, during his funeral in the town of Beslan, September 7, 2004. Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) rejected any dialogue with Chechen separatists, blamed for at least 335 deaths in the school hostage siege, as hundreds of thousands joined rallies against terrorism.

Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list

[MarMema]

This is a brilliant title.

[EveningStar]

Another fine article from Dennis. :)

[azhenfud]

"Having targeted little children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims committing."

We owe it to the islamite population to show them they neither now nor ever will have anything we place equal to or above the protection of our children - Mecca and/or Medena inclusive. We also owe it to them to show them we expect their policing of themselves while in the presence of others - and all failures to do so would be recompensed with their greatest losses. Our buildings will be exchanged for nothing less than your cities.

[TASMANIANRED]

ping

[Bobby777]

Dennis Praeger is a jewel, usually spot-on

[Ciexyz]

well said!

[DTA]

They Support terrorism, Don't They?

Leave them a message.

[MarMema]

ping