Posted on 04/09/2008 1:45:00 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It's important for Muslims to keep reminding us that there is absolutely, positively no relationship between Islam and violence. Otherwise it's easy to forget.
The latest excuse for Islamic bonhomie is the documentary "Fitna" by Geert Wilders. In the 15-minute film, showing on YouTube and other Internet sites, the Dutch MP says that far from getting Islam wrong, terrorists understand their religion only too well.
"Fitna" (Arabic for "upheaval" or "ordeal") has verses from the Koran -- which Wilders calls a "fascist book" -- artfully interspersed with scenes of carnage from 9/11 and the March, 2004 Madrid train bombing, as well as fragments from an interview with Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered by an Islamist assassin in 2004.
Mostly, Wilders provides a forum for Muslim self-expression.
Imams rave about the joys of killing Jews and "Crusaders." Iranian President Ahmadinejad calls for global jihad. Muslim protestors are seen holding signs proclaiming "Be prepared for the real Holocaust" and "God Bless Hitler." And a 3-year old girl tells an interviewer that Jews are "apes and pigs." How does she know? Allah told her so (in the religion-of-peace handbook).
Despite vigorous efforts to suppress it, "Fitna" is all over cyber-space. A posting on the British video-sharing site LiveLeak was viewed more than 2.5 million times in English and 2.7 million times in Dutch, within 72 hours.
The reaction in Prophet-land was excruciatingly predictable.
Malaysia's former prime minister called for a boycott of Dutch products. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (representing 59 countries) condemned the film as "a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims." Half of the Jordanian parliament voted to sever ties with the Netherlands.
The Indonesian Foreign Minister said "Fitna" "has a racist flavor and is an insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression" (something that -- Allah be praised -- you'll never find in a Muslim country).
Ambassadors to the Netherlands from 26 Muslim countries demanded that the Dutch government ban the film. And demonstrators from Karachi to Jakarta called for Wilders' death.
Equally predictable was the reaction from Crescent-kissers in the West, who went into appeasement-overdrive.
Where are the voices of censure from champions of religious tolerance when Muslims defame Jews in the most vile terms imaginable?
In 2002, during Ramadan, Egyptian state television broadcast a dramatization of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," as a 41-part series. The Czarist-forgery supposedly reveals a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world. While confined to lunatic-fringe reading lists elsewhere, the book is a bestseller in Muslim world, along with Arabic translations of "Mein Kampf."
When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in 2001, Bashar Assad told the Pontiff that the Jews are "the enemies of all true religions."
An article in the April 1st New York Times ("In Gaza, Hamas's Insults to Jews Complicate Peace") noted that at the Al Omari Mosque, the imam regularly cursed Jews and "Crusaders," while making the obligatory reference to the former as "the brothers of apes and pigs."
Writing in the Toronto Sun on April 5, Salim Mansur, who tells us he stopped attending services in mosques after 9/11 ("and severed relations with 'official Islam' and its spokesmen who are the most egregious practitioners of bigotry with their hate-filled language that fuels violence"), says Obama's pastor is "a mere sophomore when it comes to the Friday tirades of Islamist imams denouncing and damning America, Israel, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims who reject their lies and venom."
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah insists: "Anyone who has read the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they (Jews) did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history... Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."
Does the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights think there should be "appropriate restrictions" on such genocidal rhetoric? Silly question!
The demented reaction to Geert Wilders' film is but the latest instance of Islamic rage and Western compliance. In February, Danish police broke up a conspiracy to kill one of the Muhammed cartoonists.
In 2005, Danish newspapers published a number of cartoons depicting Islam's founder. In response, Gaza gunmen seized the local European Union office, Danes were beaten in Saudi Arabia, there were riots in Turkey and a Catholic priest was murdered in the Turkish city of Trabzon, by a youth shouting "Allah Akbar."
The quisling chorus also raised its voice here. The National Council of Churches called for "solidarity" with Islamic groups in the U.S. who, though justly provoked, yet demonstrated "disciplined self-restraint" by not rioting or killing priests.
The following year, in a speech at a German university, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th century Byzantine Emperor on the critical shortage of Muslim pacifists.
To show how offended they were by this equation of Islam and violence, Muslims shifted to storm-trooper mode.
Pakistan's legislature unanimously condemned Benedict XVI. The pope was burned in effigy throughout the Muslim world.
In Cairo, demonstrators chanted "Death to the Pope." Iraq's Mujahideen Shura Council called the Pope "Satan's hellhound in the Vatican," and vowed to "break the cross and spill the wine. ... The day is coming when the armies of Islam will destroy the ramparts of Rome."
In Somalia, an elderly Italian nun was shot to death as she left the hospital where she'd worked for decades.
And Wilders has the audacity to make a film insinuating that Islam is, by its very nature, violent. Where did he get an idea like that? -- probably from reading newspapers and watching television.
In response to what they consider an insult, try to imagine Muslims, say writing letters to the editor instead of cutting off a journalist's head.
Outside of the Muslim world, the notion that Islam is inherently violent is controversial in only three places -- at the U.N., in Western foreign ministries and on Mars.
During the Easter week vigil, the Pope baptized Magdi Allam, an Muslim-born journalist.
Naturally, Muslims were mightily miffed. The head of Jordan's Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center called the baptism a "deliberate and provocative act."
Though ex-Muslims are automatically under a sentence of death, Allam probably felt he had nothing to lose. He already had a fatwa against him for his 2003 criticism of Palestinian suicide bombers. Worse, he defended Israel, observing that international opinion holds: "Everyone has the right to exist except the Jewish state and its inhabitants. Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life."
In reflecting on his odyssey, Allam discloses: "I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a moderate Islam, assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran."
Thus, Allam wrote in a newspaper column, "I was forced to see beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of the evil inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive."
The root of the evil is "inherent in Islam," which is "physiologically violent and historically conflictive"? Is this not "highly offensive," "a provocation," "an obvious attempt to generate discord between faith communities" and "hate speech" for which "there is no justification" -- in the words of Western apologists for the religion-of-peace?
By Allah, Ban Ki-moon shall hear of this!
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
PING!
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found jetliners flying into and destroying tall buildings and killing thousands of innocent people somewhat offensive.
What really offends me is when people are set on fire, dragged behind trucks, and then hung from bridges (not necessarily in that order). It’s amazing what offends decent human beings, eh?
The vast majority of Muslims are the Silenced Majority, more in fear of their imams and the Mosque Security Police than they are of the legal limitations placed upon them in whatever foreign land they may find themselves. These forlorn and forsaken souls dare not step out of the purview of the religious authorities, and in trembling voices, they call for the imposition of the devil they know, Shar’ia law. At least within the confines of that weird code, they find some comfort in conformity and familiarity. But this business of actually RESPECTING the rights of females, or toleration of customs or viewpoints that at times differ radically from all they have ever known, is obviously the work of Satan. So they retreat into the words they have heard repeated to them all their lives, which now take on a new and very real meaning to them.
The Westerners are THINGS, subhumans, unworthy of the presence of the Noble Islamic Gentleman Given Exceptional Respect.
JIHAD WATCH.org (REUTERS) - Snippet: ""I call on Muslims around the world, if you run into the maker of the film, kill him," said one of the speakers at the rally, Awit Mashuri. "Geert Wilders is a Christian terrorist," declared a placard held up by a protester. "Kill Geert Wilders," read another..." (March 31, 2008)
I know very little about Muslims. ;-)
Just funnin'.
ahem.....I get your little word play....
We need to prepare for the violence that will come after we decide to draw the line as to how far we’ll go to appease these animals.
The Europeans think that they can give them a little bit and that’s all they want. No, they want it ALL. That means that you either convert, live as a Dhimmi, or die.
They’ll take whatever you give them without violence, but once you decide that you don’t want to give them any more, that’s when they WILL turn to violence.
Al-Qaeda Vows More Attacks, UN, Europe Beg for Mercy
Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri declared the United Nations an enemy to Muslims and vowed attacks on Jews “wherever they may be found—as prescribed in the Quran.” Zawahiri called twin bomb attacks on U.N. buildings in Algiers which killed 41 people in December and the bombing of a U.N. building in Baghdad in 2003 which killed 22, “down payments on the debt of blood owed by these unbelievers.”
UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon issued an urgent plea for mercy to al-Qaeda. “We’re not your enemy, really, we’re not,” Ban insisted. “Look, our Human Rights Commission just voted 32-0 to punish those who insult Islam. Please tell us what more we can do. We’ll do whatever you say. Just don’t hurt us.”
The government of Austria made its own bid ward off Islamic terror by pressing charges against Susanne Winter, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party, for saying that Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.” If convicted, Winter could be sentenced to up to two years in prison.
“Better we sacrifice the free speech of the few, rather than expose the many to the wrath of these fanatics,” said prosecutor Otto Kleinlaut. “If we don’t do something to placate them they’ll kill many more than just this one woman.”
In Holland, the Federation of Dutch Employers is looking into the possibility of suing Geert Wilders. “This man’s insistence on focusing on the violence committed in the name of Allah is endangering our profits,” said Federation chairman Hans Geldgier. “What if Muslims boycott Dutch products? Shouldn’t Wilders be held liable?”
In related news, two Iranian immigrants’ accusation of discrimination has sparked a federal investigation of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. The crux of the complaint is that the refusal to provide the state driver’s license test in the Farsi language violates their right to equality under the law. “Everyone’s going to have to learn Farsi eventually anyway once Iran conquers America, so what’s the big deal” asked Arash Jahandar, one of the complainants.
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
It’s hilarious that they should complain about the content of the film - 90% of it is Muslims in their own words!
Most parents know saying yes to a child is much easier than saying no. A No response results in temper tantrums, constant harrassing and a liteny of other objections.
Even though the hard facts can’t be disputed, our world leaders have chosen to take the easy road, seemingly without a thought about the disastrous consequences that will arise when indulging and appeasing the muslims.
Hope this is helpful:
Death Before Burkas
Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue
Thank you. That story was the inspiration for this cartoon on a different subject:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1999579/posts
Blasphemers Unite!
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/04/blasphemers-uni.php
Michael J. Totten
4/4/08
Egypt’s Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi threatened “severe” consequences if the Dutch government doesn’t ban Parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamic film Fitna. It makes no difference to Tantawi and other perpetually outraged Islamists that the Netherlands is a sovereign country with its own laws. Ever since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie to death for writing the supposedly offensive Satanic Verses – and sent death squads after him and his publishers around the world – radical Islamists have seen it as their right and duty to enforce their own unilateral anti-blasphemy laws on the human race. (Meanwhile, liberal American Muslim Aziz Poonawalla hosts Fitna on his own Web site even though he, as should be expected, doesn’t like it.)
Fitna isn’t the only recent movie hard-line Islamists hope to squelch beyond their own borders. The other is Persepolis, an animated film based on Iranian author Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name about repression under both the Shah Reza Pahlavi and the Ayatollah Khomeini. General Wafik Jizzini at Lebanon’s Ministry of the Interior banned it because, he said, Shia officials (read: Hezbollah) said it was offensive to Islam and – you guessed it – Iran. Islamic Republic officials and their proxies are true to form here, considering it was they who kicked off the international anti-blasphemy campaign in the first place.
“The heart of every culture-loving Lebanese breaks with every ban,” writes Abu Kais, a Lebanese Shia who lives now in Washington and writes the indispensable blog From Beirut to the Beltway. Beirut is a genuinely cosmopolitan and culturally rich city, more so than any other Arab capital. And Lebanon, true to its form, fought back. Tarek Mitri, Lebanon’s Minister of Culture, managed to overturn the ban and get Persepolis on the big screen after all.
It’s too bad Fitna and the reaction to it sucked all the media oxygen out of the room. I haven’t seen Geert Wilders’ short film, but he’s sounds like a reactionary who makes a poor poster boy for free expression (he wants to ban the Koran in the Netherlands). He not only thinks radical Islamists shouldn’t be able to buy their own copy, but neither should moderate Muslims or people like you and me who might want to study it for our own reasons. The man has a death threat hanging over his head from nutjobs the world over, as do employees at the Internet company LiveLeak that hosts the film, yet an enormous amount of the public discussion revolves around whether or not his film is offensive. It is offensive to some people, including many reasonable people. But that’s beside the point.
Read the rest in Commentary Magazine.
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