For The New Criterion, Ben Weingarten, commentator and Founder & CEO of ChangeUp Media sits down with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ardent defender of Western civilization and individual liberty against Islamic supremacism, New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Caged Virgin,’ ‘Infidel’ and ‘Nomad’ and ‘Heretic,’ former Dutch MP, fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, founder of the AHA Foundation Ayaan Hirsi Ali and recipient of The New Criterion’s fourth annual Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture & Society for an in-depth interview. During their discussion, Weingarten and Ali discuss America’s inability under both Presidents Obama and Bush to recognize and defend against Islamic supremacism as the totalitarian existential threat of our time, the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West and the ideology of the global jihadist movement, the Islamization of Europe, how the West can defend its freedoms from a subversive global jihadist movement seeking to use those freedoms against us, the war on free speech in the West being waged by Islamic supremacists with the help wittingly or unwittingly of many on the Left and more. For more from The New Criterion’s April 2016 ‘Edmund Burke Award’ gala and other compelling content, check out The New Criterion’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheNewCri….
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Whether Islam will eventually be reformed is an open question. The topic is much discussed by Muslims, a few of whom favor reformation and more of whom oppose it. The issue is important for America, and indeed the free world in general. There is little that non-Muslims can do to assist a reformation beyond recognizing the substantial differences between moderate and radical (mainstream) Muslims, supporting the former and purging the latter. Please don’t conflate the cops with the killers.
Reformation of Islam
Here’s are comments by an American Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser
In the following December 2015 video, the Fox News host misrepresented Donald Trump’s position as banning “all” Muslims, apparently permanently. Trump’s proposal was to ban Muslims until we can vet them adequately. Dr. Jasser agreed that Muslims advocating Islamist political ideology should be banned and that we should temporarily ban them alluntil we can distinguish moderate Muslims from “radical” Muslims. His suggestions for vetting Muslims included cessation of reliance on the Council on American – Islamic Relations (CAIR), et al, which are on the side of the Islamists.
An article by Raymond Ibrahim delves into Muslim perceptions of moderate vs. “radical” (i.e., mainstream) Islam and posts these views, as articulated by Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Khadr, an Islamist. Dr. Khadr stated,
“Islamic researchers are agreed that what the West and its followers call ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘moderate Muslims’ is simply a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them. They also see that the division of Islam into ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘radical Islam’ has no basis in Islam — neither in its doctrines and rulings, nor in its understandings or reality. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Among the major distinctions (translated verbatim) made in Khadr’s article are:
Radicals want the caliphate to return; moderates reject the caliphate.
Radicals want to apply Sharia (Islamic law); moderates reject the application of Sharia.
Radicals reject the idea of renewal and reform, seeing it as a way to conform Islam to Western culture; moderates accept it.
Radicals accept the duty of waging jihad in the path of Allah; moderates reject it.
Radicals reject any criticism whatsoever of Islam; moderates welcome it on the basis of freedom of speech.
Radicals accept those laws that punish whoever insults or leaves the religion [apostates]; moderates recoil from these laws.
Radicals respond to any insult against Islam or the prophet Muhammad — peace and blessing upon him — with great violence and anger; moderates respond calmly and peacefully on the basis of freedom of expression.
Radicals respect and revere every deed and every word of the prophet — peace be upon him — in the hadith; moderates do not.
Radicals oppose democracy; moderates accept it.
Radicals see the people of the book [Jews and Christians] as dhimmis[barely tolerated subjects]; moderates oppose this [view].
Radicals reject the idea that non-Muslim minorities should have equality or authority over Muslims; moderates accept it.
Radicals reject the idea that men and women are equal; moderates accept it, according to Western views.
Radicals oppose the idea of religious freedom and apostasy from Islam; moderates agree to it.
Radicals desire to see Islam reign supreme; moderates oppose this.
Radicals place the Koran over the constitution; moderates reject this [assumption].
Radicals reject the idea of religious equality because Allah’s true religion is Islam; moderates accept it.
Radicals embrace the wearing of hijabs and niqabs; moderates reject it.
Radicals accept killing young girls who commit adultery or otherwise besmirch their family’s honor; moderates reject this [response].
Radicals reject the status of women today and think that the status of women today should be like the status of women in the time of the prophet; moderates oppose that women should be as in the time of the prophet.
Radicals vehemently reject that women should have the freedom to choose partners; moderates accept that she can choose a boyfriend without marriage.
Radicals agree to clitorectomies; moderates reject them.
Radicals reject the so-called war on terror and see it as a war on Islam; moderates accept it.
Radicals support jihadi groups; moderates reject them.
Radicals reject the terms “Islamic terrorism” or “Islamic fascism”; moderates accept them.
Radicals reject universal human rights, including the right to be homosexual; moderates accept them.
Radicals reject the idea of allying with the West; moderates support it.
Radicals oppose secularism; moderates support it. [Emphasis added.]
Dr. Jasser’s views on what American Islam should be are remarkably similar to the perceptions of moderate Islam set forth by Dr. Khadr, albeit with contempt as “a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them.” Mr. Ibrahim concludes his article by suggesting that “the West may need to rethink one of its main means of countering radical Islam: moderate Muslims and moderate Islam.” I agree. What is being done now is actually furthering “radical” Islam.
Here’s an address to the Canadian Parliament by a moderate Muslim journalist. Please watch the whole thing, because it sets forth quite well the differences between Islamists who want to overpower us and moderate Muslims who support freedom and want to eliminate Islamism.
Islamic apologists routinely claim that violent Qur’an verses have no validity beyond Muhammad’s time, but this story illustrates that this is not the mainstream view in Islam. The persecution of Mouhanad Khorchide also shows the uphill battle that genuine Muslim reformers face: branded as heretics and/or apostates, they’re often shunned (or worse) by the very community that needs their ideas the most. [Emphasis added.]
The author, Robert Spencer, quotes a May 23rd article by Susanne Schröter in a German periodical:
When the theologian Mouhanad Khorchide, who teaches at the University of Münster, published “Islam Is Compassion” in 2012, he received a variety of diverse reactions. Many non-Muslims celebrated the work as the revelation of a humanistic Islam: an Islam that no one needs to fear. This feeling arose in part because the author created a picture of God that is not “interested in the labels of Muslim or Christian or Jewish, believer or nonbeliever.”
Korchide threw out the idea that Koran verses that appear violent or hostile toward women or non-Muslims may be valid for all eternity. He wanted them to be viewed as the words of a bygone era.
It seemed that the professor, with the swoop of his pen, managed to brush aside all those reservations that made people wonder whether Islam really “belonged to Germany,” as former President Christian Wulff said famously in a 2010. One might even have thought that Muslims would offer Khorchide a pat on the back.
On the website for DITIB, Germany’s Turkish Islamic union and the country’s largest Muslim organization, one can read that Khorchide’s statements were a “rejection of the teachings of classical Islam” and an “insult to Muslim identity.” For this reason, the professor was removed from his post at the university.
In November 2014, while testifying before the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I raised the issue of Islamic clerics using mosque sermons to attack the foundational principles of Western civilization and liberal secular democracy.
The Senate Committee session referred to is the one presented in the video referenced above.
Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell was outraged by my testimony that at most Canadian mosques, the Friday congregation includes a ritual prayer asking, “Allah to give victory to Muslims over the ‘Kufaar’ (non-Muslims).” In a heated exchange with me, the senator suggested I wasn’t telling the truth, implying I was motivated by Islamophobia. Sadly, Sen. Mitchell is not alone in such views.
But neither is there any let-up in the attacks on Canadian values emanating from many mosque pulpits and Islamic conferences hosted by radical Islamist groups.
For example, in a sermon on Friday, May 6, delivered at a mosque in Edmonton, an imam invoked the memory of Prophet Muhammad to whip up hatred against Israel. He declared peace accords with Israel are “useless garbage” and vowed that Jerusalem will be conquered “through blood.”
In February, the same cleric predicted Islam would soon conquer Rome, “the heart of the Christian state.”
The Edmonton mosque diatribe was not isolated.
On May 13, just north of Toronto, an Islamic society hosted a celebration of Iranian mass murderer, Ayatollah Khomeini. The poster promoting the event described Khomeini as a, “Liberator and Reformer of the Masses.”
On Saturday, the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in some countries, hosted a conference to discuss the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate.
The first speaker was Brother Mostafa, of Arabic roots. Mostafa started by calling nationalism and sectarian conflict the main reasons for division in the Ummah (Islamic nation). He reminded Muslims that they are obligated to implement Allah’s demands that fulfill the Islamic State. It is “not permissible for us to choose, ” he said. He cited the verse: [Emphasis added]
“It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.” — Surat-Al-Ahzab (33), verse 36. ]Emphasis added.]
. . . .
As the event started late, Naeema [a woman in the audience] began a conversation. We talked about our origins and how long we had been in Canada. She said she had been here 40 years, so I asked about the disconnect between enjoying 40 years of democracy, yet trying to end it. I mentioned a book published by Hizb-ut-Tahrir:
“Democracy is Infidelity: its use, application and promotion are prohibited.”
“الديمقراطية نظام كفر، يحرم أخذها أو تطبيقها أو الدعوة إليها”
Naeema said she was not qualified to debate the topic, but that democracy had done nothing good for people, so she and other believers would follow the rule of Allah. [Emphasis added]
The meeting participants are comparable to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas affiliated organization which, along with similar groups, provides Obama and His “fighting violent extremism” cohorts their marching orders on fighting, not Islamist jihad or Islamisation , but “Islamophobia.”
Conclusions
America would fare better in fighting “violent extremism” if the principal enemy were named: it is political Islam — Islamism. Presently, naming it is forbidden and those engaged in “fighting” it — supposedly on our behalf — are Islamists dedicated to the Islamisation of America.
Suppose that, instead of relying on CAIR, et al, as representative of “peaceful” Islam, our government rejected CAIR and its Islamist colleagues favored by Obama and instead supported and relied upon Dr. Jasser’s moderate group, American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
A devout Muslim, Dr. Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. Dr. Jasser is a first generation American Muslim whose parents fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria in the mid-1960’s for American freedom. He is leading the fight to shake the hold that the Muslim Brotherhood and their network of American Islamist organizations and mosques seek to exert on organized Islam in America. [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps, if our next president is neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders, we will do that. If we don’t, the Islamists will continue to win, the Islamisation of America will continue and American principles will go down the toilet. We cannot permit that to happen.
We only have the right to live on as free men, so long as we show ourselves worthy of the privileges we enjoy. We must remember that the republic can only be kept pure by the individual purity of its members, and that if it once becomes thoroughly corrupt it will surely cease to exist.
. . . .
All American citizens whether born here or elsewhere, whether of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we welcome every honest immigrant, no matter from what country he comes, provided only that he leaves behind him his former nationality and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship. [Emphasis added]
When we thus rule ourselves we have the responsibilities of sovereigns not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way – by making the proper use of them.
It has been my observation (and to a substantial extent that of the Canadian journalist and moderate Muslim in a video embedded above) that the principal loyalty of many Islamists is not geographical or to a state. Rather, it is to their version of Islam, be it Shiite, Sunni or some variation thereof. For example, Hezbollah members fight, not to help Lebanon or Syria, but to support the Iranian version of Shiite Islam — an apocalyptic vision in which the hidden iman will return and bring the world to an end. It is reasonable to assume that the principal loyalty of mainstream Muslims (Islamists) in America is, and will continue to be, to Islam, not to America.
American origins and views are very different and perhaps uniquely so.
This land was made, not for Islamists but for immigrants who leave behind their former nationalities and remain “neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but become an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.” How many of America’s current crop of immigrants do that?
We have had little of this thus far. How much do we want? It’s pretty much up to us.
In November 2014, while testifying before the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I raised the issue of Islamic clerics using mosque sermons to attack the foundational principles of Western civilization and liberal secular democracy.
Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell was outraged by my testimony that at most Canadian mosques, the Friday congregation includes a ritual prayer asking, “Allah to give victory to Muslims over the ‘Kufaar’ (non-Muslims).” In a heated exchange with me, the senator suggested I wasn’t telling the truth, implying I was motivated by Islamophobia. Sadly, Sen. Mitchell is not alone in such views.
But neither is there any let-up in the attacks on Canadian values emanating from many mosque pulpits and Islamic conferences hosted by radical Islamist groups.
For example, in a sermon on Friday, May 6, delivered at a mosque in Edmonton, an imam invoked the memory of Prophet Muhammad to whip up hatred against Israel. He declared peace accords with Israel are “useless garbage” and vowed that Jerusalem will be conquered “through blood.”
In February, the same cleric predicted Islam would soon conquer Rome, “the heart of the Christian state.”
The Edmonton mosque diatribe was not isolated.
On May 13, just north of Toronto, an Islamic society hosted a celebration of Iranian mass murderer, Ayatollah Khomeini. The poster promoting the event described Khomeini as a, “Liberator and Reformer of the Masses.”
On Saturday, the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in some countries, hosted a conference to discuss the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate.
Pakistan-Canadian writer Tahir Gora went to cover the event, but was barred from entering the hall. “They said this was a closed door, in-camera meeting for our supporters,” Gora told me after he was asked to leave.
A speaker addresses the Hizb-ut-Tahrir conference in Mississauga, Ontario, on May 21.
Fortunately, one Palestinian-Canadian woman was able to enter the event.
She shared with me some of the proceedings from inside the gathering. “I walked into the banquet hall with approximately 100 attendees who were gender segregated. I sat next to a woman who said she had been in Canada for 40 years.” When I asked her if she felt any disconnect between enjoying 40 years of democracy, yet supporting the Hizb-ut-Tahrir who wanted to end it, she explained that democracy has done nothing good to people, so she and other believers follow Allah’s rule.
“The first speaker reminded Muslims that they are obligated to implement Allah’s orders that fulfil the Islamic State. It is “not permissible for us to choose’ he said, citing the Quran. However, he said it was necessary to win the public’s hearts and minds; and to partner with people of power, citing examples from the life of the Prophet.”
“At the end, a three-minute video was presented to demonstrate the collective oil and natural gas production capabilities of the Muslim world, the human capital needed to mine and process these resources … the military power required to protect them and the types of weapons needed to make such a military effective.”
While this was unfolding we received news that the Trudeau government, as part of its infrastructure development program, had authorised a $200,000 grant to a southern Ontario mosque with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This Pope is a disgrace to the Church, to Judeo-Christian civilization, and to the free world.
******************************
AP reported breathlessly Monday that Pope Francis “embraced the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim center of learning, reopening an important channel for Catholic-Muslim dialogue after a five-year lull and at a time of increased Islamic extremist attacks on Christians.”
Why has there been this “five-year lull”? Because “the Cairo-based Al-Azhar froze talks with the Vatican to protest comments by then-Pope Benedict XVI.” What did Benedict say? Andrea Gagliarducci of the Catholic News Agency explains that after a jihad terrorist murdered 23 Christians in a church in Alexandria 2011, Benedict decried “terrorism” and the “strategy of violence” against Christians, and called for the Christians of the Middle East to be protected.
Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayeb, whom Pope Francis welcomed to the Vatican on Monday, was furious. He railed at Benedict for his “interference” in Egypt’s affairs and warned of a “negative political reaction” to the Pope’s remarks. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the Pope’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.”
Benedict stood his ground, and that was that. But in September 2013, al-Azhar announced that Pope Francis had sent a personal message to al-Tayeb. In it, according to al-Azhar, Francis declared his respect for Islam and his desire to achieve “mutual understanding between the world’s Christians and Muslims in order to build peace and justice.” At the same time, Al Tayyeb met with the Apostolic Nuncio to Egypt, Mgr. Jean-Paul Gobel, and told him in no uncertain terms that speaking about Islam in a negative manner was a “red line” that must not be crossed.
So Pope Benedict condemned a jihad attack, one that al-Azhar also condemned, and yet al-Azhar suspended dialogue because of the Pope’s condemnation. Then Pope Francis wrote to the Grand Imam of al-Azhar affirming his respect for Islam, and the Grand Imam warned him that criticizing Islam was a “red line” that he must not cross. That strongly suggests that the “dialogue” that Pope Francis has now reestablished will not be allowed to discuss the Muslim persecution of Christians that will escalate worldwide, especially since an incidence of that persecution led to the suspension of dialogue in the first place.
What’s more, his dialogue partner, al-Tayeb, has shown himself over the years to be anything but a preacher of peace, cooperation and mercy: he has justified anti-Semitism on Qur’anic grounds; and called for the Islamic State murderers of the Jordanian pilot to be crucified or have their hands and feet amputated on opposite sides (as per the penalty in Qur’an 5:33 for those who make war against Allah and his messenger or spread “mischief” in the land. Al-Azhar was also revealed to be offering free copies of a book that called for the slaughter of Christians and other Infidels.
Will the Pope during al-Tayeb’s visit to the Vatican again affirm his respect for Islam and contempt for Christianity? Will he convert to Islam before al-Tayeb, or just offer his submission and a jizya payment?
The Times of Israel opined that Monday’s Vatican meeting was a “sign of improved ties between Catholic Church and Muslim world.” Really? Where? Muslims have massacred, exiled, forcibly converted or subjugated hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria. Have these “improved ties” saved even one Christian from suffering at the hands of Muslims? No, they haven’t. All they do is make the “dialogue” participants feel good about themselves, while the Middle Eastern Christians continue to suffer. In fact, the “dialogue” has actually harmed Middle Eastern Christians, by inducing Western Christian leaders to enforce silence about the persecution, for fear of offending their so-easily-offended Muslim “dialogue” partners.
Has the Pope welcomed any of the persecuted Christians to the Vatican? Or is that honor reserved only for this man, who will allow for “dialogue” only when his Christian “dialogue” partners maintain a respectful silence about Muslim massacres of Christians?
This Pope is a disgrace to the Church, to Judeo-Christian civilization, and to the free world.
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)
While England Slept is the title of Winston Churchill’s 1938 book documenting the failure of England to counter Germany’s rearmament. Despite the gruesome price paid for ignoring Churchill’s warnings, postwar Europe has slumbered for decades while its cultural dysfunctions have nurtured the jihadist violence erupting across Europe. Last week’s attacks in Brussels, coming four months after the Paris attacks that killed 130, suggests there are more attacks to come. According to AP, 400-600 ISIS-trained terrorists are making their way to Europe.
Europe can’t say it wasn’t warned. In 2002 Oriana Fallaci published The Rage and the Pride, a passionate defense of Western civilization and an indictment of those who appease Islamic illiberalism. Ten years ago Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept gave first-hand reports of Europe’s feckless immigration policies that fostered and appeased Muslim radicalism and violence. A year later Claire Berlinski’s Menace in Europe and Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan sounded the same alarms. And there are the dystopian novels of Michel Houellebecq like Platform and last year’s Submission, which link Europe’s cultural and spiritual exhaustion to the rise of homegrown jihadism and Islamization.
An even more important prophet is Bat Ye’or, whose Eurabia (2005) documented “Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.” The result is the dhimmi mentality of Europe’s elites, which manifests in word and deed Western inferiority to Islam, and guilt over alleged crimes against the Muslim world.
But a secularized Europe committed to multicultural fantasies and la dolce vita as the highest goods has dismissed these prophets as bigots and “Islamophobes” who distort the “religion of peace.” Yet after the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate in 1923––the “catastrophe” Osama bin Laden mentioned after 9/11–– the theorists of modern jihadism were forthright and plain in expressing the intolerant and triumphalist Islamic beliefs and jihadist imperative consistent with Ye’or’s analysis. Islam’s nature, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna wrote, is “to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.” Fellow Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb concurred: “Islam has a right to remove all those obstacles which are in its path.” The Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, agreed: “The great prophet of Islam carried in one hand the Koran and in the other a sword; the sword is for crushing the traitor and the Koran for guidance . . . Islam is a religion of blood for infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.”
Nor are these sentiments alien to traditional Islamic beliefs as codified in the Koran, Hadith, Muslim histories, and the biographies of Mohammed. As such, the jihadist imperative, despite anticolonial and nationalist rhetoric, was the foundational motivation for the military attacks on Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and today it still drives the terror campaigns against Israel waged by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO. Jihad in the name of Allah sparked the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the subsequent launching of the Iranian terrorist mother ship from which numerous jihadist organizations have continued to receive training and financial support. The Taliban who gave sanctuary to al Qaeda in Afghanistan are close students of jihad and shari’a law, executing transgressors in a soccer stadium paid for by the EU.
Nor has the West been spared. Jihad lay at the heart of al Qaeda’s serial attacks on the U.S. and its military in 1993 (first World Trade Center bombing), 1996 (Khobar Towers), 1998 (East African embassies), 2000 (U.S.S. Cole), and the spectacular carnage of September 11, 2001, as well as inspiring the terrorist murders in Madrid (2004), London (2005), Fort Hood (2013), Boston (2013), San Bernardino (2015), Paris (January and November, 2015), and now Brussels. And don’t forget the torture, rape, and murders perpetrated by ISIS, the latest and most successful example of modern jihadism inspired by traditional Islamic doctrine.
We know the terrorists’ Islamic bona fides because they continually tell us why they want to kill us, in speeches, internet videos, and writings filled with Koranic verses and precedents from the life of Mohammed. Yet despite this evidence, elites in Europe and the U.S. refuse to confront the religious origins of jihadism, settling for the stale environmental and psychological causes dear to the materialist mentality. Thus they continue to chant the “nothing to do with Islam” mantra, as our president did in response to the Brussels attack. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” the president asserted. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” The first two clauses are patently false to Koranic commands and Islamic history, and the third is a non sequitur.
But the most powerful refutation of this common delusion is the scarcity of public protests by observant Muslims against the “extremists” who allegedly have “hijacked” their faith. After each jihadist atrocity there is typically more celebratory ululation and cries of “Allahu Akbar” in the Muslim world than marches against terrorism by heretical “extremists.” There are no “million Muslim marches,” no “not in our name movements,” no large scale Muslim attendance at memorial services for the victims. Yet perceived insults to Islam or Mohammed will produce violent mobs and lethal rampages.
Nor should this surprise us, when poll after poll registers significant pluralities and majorities of Muslims who approve of violence against infidels, and support the implementation of illiberal shari’a law. The latest evidence for such support from “moderate Muslims” comes from Brussels, where the planner of the Paris and Brussels attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was hiding in plain sight in the Muslim-dominant district of Molenbeek. Yet it still took four months for Belgian police to find him, and when they moved in for the arrest, they were met with rocks and bottles from residents who knew he was there and never tipped off the authorities.
Yet this is just one of many such enclaves in Europe. Ca n’Anglada in Barcelona, Marxloh and Neukölln in Germany, Seine-Saint-Denis and Clichy-sous-Bois in France, Malmo in Sweden, and many other towns and neighborhoods across Europe house disaffected and unassimilated Muslim immigrants whose faith predisposes them to contempt for the infidel and his secular laws, and justifies violence against the enemies of Islam. And despite the segregation, unemployment, crime, costly welfare transfers, and jihad-preaching mosques in these neighborhoods, Europe has accepted hundreds of thousands more Muslim immigrants in 2015 alone. Undoubtedly among them are untold numbers of ISIS-trained terrorists, many of them from the 5000 European Muslims who have gone to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
That is the reality everyone knows who wants to know. But too many in the West do not want to know, just as those enamored of Soviet communism did not want to know about the gulags and show-trials and engineered famines that killed at least 20 million. Like yesterday’s communist sympathizers, today the sleepwalkers of Europe are trapped in their ideological fever-dreams––fashionable self-loathing, guilt for colonialism and imperialism, sentimental one-worldism, and noble-savage multicultural fantasies. Worst of all, they are crippled by a refusal to appreciate and defend their political and cultural inheritance––prosperity, human rights, freedom, consensual government, and tolerance––created by their ancestors.
The character of Michel in Houellebecq’s Platform (2001) articulates the failure of civilizational nerve that has paved the way for metastasizing jihadist violence. Europe’s forbears, the jaded hedonist Michel muses, “believed in the superiority of their civilization,” and “invented dreams, progress, utopia, the future.” But their “civilizing mission,” their “innocent sense of their natural right to dominate the world and direct the path of history had disappeared.” All that is left is the dwindling cultural capital being squandered by their descendants, who have lost “those qualities of intelligence and determination,” and who exist only for the present and its material pleasures. Like like Michel, they are “decadent” and “given over entirely to selfishness.”
But at least Michel, unlike the sleepwalking European elite, recognizes that this is cultural suicide: “I was aware, however, that such a situation was barely tenable, that people like me were incapable of ensuring the survival of a society. Perhaps, more simply, we were unworthy of life.”
If you’re keeping score, freeing Islamic terrorists from Gitmo does not play into the hands of ISIS. Neither does bringing Syrians, many of whom sympathize with Islamic terrorists, into our country. And aiding the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of ISIS does not play into the Islamic group’s hands.
However if you use the words “Islamic terrorism” or even milder derivatives such as “radical Islamic terrorism”, you are playing into the hands of ISIS. If you call for closer law enforcement scrutiny of Muslim areas before they turn into Molenbeek style no-go zones or suggest ending the stream of new immigrant recruits to ISIS in San Bernardino, Paris or Brussels, you are also playing into the hands of ISIS.
And if you carpet bomb ISIS, destroy its headquarters and training camps, you’re just playing into its hands. According to Obama and his experts, who have wrecked the Middle East, what ISIS fears most is that we’ll ignore it and let it go about its business. And what it wants most is for us to utterly destroy it.
Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees make us safer. But using the words “Muslim terrorism” endangers us. The more Muslims we bring to America, the faster we’ll beat ISIS. As long as we don’t call it the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s lead in calling it Daesh.
Because terrorism has no religion. Even when it’s shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.
Obama initially tried to defeat ISIS by ignoring it. This cunning approach allowed ISIS to seize large chunks of Iraq and Syria. He tried calling ISIS a JayVee team in line with his recent claim that, “We defeat them in part by saying you are not strong, you are weak”. Unimpressed, ISIS seized Mosul. It was still attached to the old-fashioned way of proving it was strong by actually winning land and wars.
Then Obama tried to defeat ISIS by arming the Islamist allies of Al Qaeda and now a lot more American weapons are in the hands of Islamic terrorists. Some of them are even in the hands of ISIS.
Europe and the United States decided to prove that we were not at war with Islam by taking in as many Muslims as we could. Instead of leading to less terrorism, taking in more Muslims led to more terrorism.
Every single stupid counterintuitive strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism has been tried. And it has failed miserably. Overthrowing “dictators” turned entire countries into terrorist training camps. Bringing Islamists to power in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia led directly to attacks on American diplomatic facilities. The Muslim Brotherhood showed no gratitude to its State Department allies. Instead its militias and forces either aided the attackers or stood by and watched while taking bets on the outcome.
Islamic terrorism has followed an entirely intuitive pattern of cause and effect. There’s a reason that the counterintuitive strategies for fighting Islamic terrorism by not fighting Islamic terrorism don’t work. They make no sense. They never did. Instead they all depend on convincing Muslims, from the local Imam to Jihadist organizations, to aid us instead of attack us by showing what nice people we are. Meanwhile they also insist that we can’t use the words “Islamic terrorism” because Muslims are ticking time bombs who will join Al Qaeda and ISIS the moment we associate terrorism with the I-word.
The counterintuitive strategy assumes that Islamic terrorism will only exist if we use the I-word, that totalitarian Jihadist movements just want democracy and that our best allies for fighting Islamic terrorism are people from the same places where Islamic terrorism is a runaway success. And that we should duplicate the demographics of the countries where Islamic terrorism thrives in order to defeat it.
The West’s counterterrorism strategy makes less sense than the ravings of most mental patients. The only thing more insane than the counterintuitive strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism is the insistence that the intuitive strategy of keeping terrorists out and killing them is what terrorists want.
If you believe the experts, then Islamic terrorists want us to stop them from entering Europe, America, Canada and Australia. They crave having their terrorists profiled by law enforcement on the way to their latest attack. And they wish we would just carpet bomb them as hard as we can right now.
When ISIS shoots up Paris or Brussels, it’s not really trying to kill infidels for Allah. Instead it’s setting a cunning trap for us. If we react by ending the flow of migrants and preventing the next attack, ISIS wins. If we police Muslim no-go zones, then ISIS also wins. If we deport potential terrorists, ISIS still wins.
But if we let ISIS carry out another successful attack, then ISIS loses. And we win. What do we win?
It depends. A concert hall full of corpses. Marathon runners with severed limbs. Families fleeing the airport through a haze of smoke. Only by letting ISIS kill us, do we have any hope of beating ISIS.
Politicians and experts claim that ISIS is insane. It’s not insane. It’s evil. Its goals are clear and comprehensible. The objectives of the Islamic State are easy to intuitively grasp. Our leaders and experts are the ones who are out of their minds. They may or may not be evil, but they are utterly insane. And they have projected their madness on Islamic terrorists who are downright rational compared to them.
Unlike our leaders, Islamic terrorists don’t confuse victory and defeat. They aren’t afraid that they’ll win. They don’t want us to kill them or deport them. They don’t care whether we call them ISIS or Daesh. They don’t derive their Islamic legitimacy from John Kerry or a State Department Twitter account. They get it from the Koran and the entire rotting corpus of Islamic law that they seek to impose on the world.
Our leaders are the ones who are afraid of winning. They distrust the morality of armed force and borders. They disguise that distrust behind convoluted arguments and counterintuitive rationales. Entire intellectual systems are constructed to explain why defeating ISIS is exactly what ISIS wants.
After the San Bernardino shootings, Obama insisted that, “Our success won’t depend on tough talk or abandoning our values… That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for.” But ISIS does not care whether Obama talks tough, even if it’s only his version of tough talk in which he puffs out his chest and says things like, ”You are not strong, you are weak.” It is not interested in Obama’s “right side of history” distortion of American values either. ISIS is not trying to be counterintuitive. It’s fighting to win.
And our leaders are fighting as hard as they can to lose.
The counterintuitive strategy is not meant to fight terror, but to convince the populace that winning is actually losing and losing is actually winning. The worse we lose, the better our plan is working. And when we have completely lost everything then we’ll have the terrorists right where we want them.
Just ask the dead of Brussels, Paris, New York and a hundred other places.
This isn’t a plan to win. It’s a plan to confuse the issue while losing. It’s a plan to convince everyone that what looks like appeasement, defeatism, surrender and collaboration with the enemy is really a brilliant counterintuitive plan that is the only possible path to a lasting victory over Islamic terrorism.
But intuitive beats counterintuitive. Winning intuitively beats losing counterintuitively. Counterintuitively dead terrorists multiply, but intuitively they stay dead. Counterintuitively, not discussing the problem is the best way to solve it. Intuitively, you solve a problem by facing it. Counterintuitively, collaborating with the enemy is patriotism. Intuitively, it’s treason.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Fascists want to take away our freedom of speech. So do the delicate little snowflakes infesting our institutions of “higher learning.” How much worse will it get over the next few years? Substantially worse, I fear.
In the above video, Bill Whittle recounts numerous Fascist attempts to shut down those with different ideas. I’ll not repeat what he says. Instead, I’ll point out a few other Fascist efforts.
Islamist Fascists
In line with its “misconception” that Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance, the Obama administration has consistently courted the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — which do everything they can to shut down all discussion of whether Islam is peaceful and tolerant and whether it should change. The Obama administration, following its lead, has ignored Muslim voices for reform.
What does Hillary Clinton think? Apparently that Islam is fine the way it is.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a different view.
As I noted here, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim. She had been scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University in April of 2014. However,
Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women, after protests from students and faculty.
The university said in a statement posted online that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence.
“She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world,” said the university’s statement. “That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” [Emphasis added.]
Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the religion, “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.”
Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She has not commented publicly on the issue of the honorary degree.
. . . .
More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be removed from the list of honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students,” said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.
“But it’s not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs,” she said. “A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.” [Emphasis added.]
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also got into the act:
“It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views.”
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
“This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy,” Joseph Lumbard, chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. “They feel unwelcome here.” [Emphasis added.]
Following the public announcement, the Muslim Students Association at Yale went through its usual routine, first seeking to have Ms. Hirsi Ali disinvited (though it disputes this), then to limit the subject matter of her speech, then to impose conditions on her speech that would stigmatize her. In the spirit of WFB himself, Lizardo stood firm.
The MSA routine worked at Brandeis; at Yale, not so much. Not this time.
Poor delicate little snowflakes. Isn’t it a shame that they might be exposed to new ideas that are alien to them? That they were not required to attend and listen to those ideas is, apparently, inconsequential. They did not anyone to listen to them.
Here’s a video of her remarks. The introductions are a trifle long and add little value. The questions she was asked at the end and her answers are, however, interesting. They begin at 55 minutes into the video.
She seemed to be speaking less to the “choir” and more to a broader audience which she was trying to convince. To that end, she was as conciliatory as she could be without abandoning her thesis that Islam is the religion of repression, submission and death, not peace; that it is highly dangerous to Western civilization, including our concepts of freedom and democracy. “Radical” Islam is rising, becoming even worse and it must be defeated.
Even to try to defeat Islam, we need to defeat the increasing efforts to eliminate freedom of speech at home in favor of speech that is politically and multiculturally correct and therefore not free. [Emphasis added.]
On April 7, 2015, Hirsi Ali spoke at the National Press Club. Here’s a video of her remarks on the Clash of Civilizations, largely based on her book Heretic, which I later reviewed here. There, she writes optimistically of the possibility (but not the probability) of an Islamic revolution, someday.
There is a clash of civilizations. Muslims in Western countries generally refuse to help the police prevent Islamic terror attacks, such as recently occurred in Brussels.
There is a reason why Israel razes the homes of terrorists. It is because Israelis know that a terrorist cannot plot and carry out an attack without the knowledge and help of his or her immediate relatives, and further, the entire community. Punitive home demolition is meant to serve as a deterrent, the idea being that a would-be terrorist’s family will fear losing their home and thus persuade him or her against the attack.
In fact, knowing that it “takes a village” to aid and abet a terrorist is precisely why the terrorists responsible for the Paris and recent Brussels bombings could operate “right under the noses” of their victims. And it is why some are calling for heightened scrutiny of Muslim communities across the West, and right here in the U.S., despite cries of Islamophobia.
The MailOnlinereports that police in Molenbeek — a district known for spawning jihadis like the France and Brussels attackers — have pleaded with local Muslims for help in finding the terror suspects only to have their pleas rebuffed.
Western nations which welcome and care for them are spit upon. “See something, say something” did not work before the San Bernardino Islamic attack. Perhaps those who saw something but said nothing remained silent because they feared being characterized as Islamophobes.
Here is a recent video of an interview with a teenage Yazidi girl who escaped the Islamic State. Is Islam the religion of peace and respect for females? For people of other religions?
In the unlikely event that any delicate little snowflakes watch it, will they be offended by its presence on You Tube, by the “lies” told by the Yazidi girl or by the truth of her statements?
Multicultural Fascists
Europe has many multicultural Fascists and Obama’s America has fewer. However, those who propagate the multicultural fantasy are winning. In the past, we sought immigrants who brought with them cultures compatible with ours. Now, Obama demands that we accept immigrants whose cultures of violence, drugs, gangs, crime and the like are not compatible. We have sanctuary cities where gang, other violence and drug smuggling and use are endemic. Although state efforts to enforce Federal immigration laws which the Obama administration refuses to enforce have been struck down by the judiciary, the Obama administration somewhat impotently challenged the sanctuary cities this year, only following pressure from the Congress.
Here is a video of remarks made by Victor Davis Hanson about one year ago on the travesty of “illiberal illegal immigration.” Illegal immigration breeds illegality across the board.
A transcript of his remarks is available here. Here’s just a short snippet:
[I]t’s a controversial topic. If I had said to you 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we’re going to get in a situation in the United States where 160,000 people are going to arrive at the border and break immigration law and we’re going to let them all in at once without any prior check, medical histories, you would think I was a right-wing conspiracist. If I had said to you, we’re going to have a president who is going to not only nullify existing federal immigration law, but on 22 occasions prior to that nullification warn us that he couldn’t nullify it, or, if I had said, he’s not only going to nullify federal immigration law, which he said would be unconstitutional, but that he is going to punish members of ICE, the border patrol, who follow existing law rather than his own unlawful existing order, I could go on, but you’d all think this was surreal, Orwellian, it couldn’t happen. Yet that’s the status quo as we look at it today.
Our borders are worse than porous; they are open and little effort is being made to keep criminals, drug dealers, gang members and other violent people out. While Obama has many “top” priorities, doing that is not among them.
Cultures are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive. It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot” concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing one culture.
If one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and morals.
Here’s a snapshot of our current Southern border by Sharyl Attkisson:
Conclusions
The delicate little snowflakes who demand safe spaces from reality in what were once institutions of higher learning seem to be increasing in number. They are our next generation and will soon begin to elect those with whose milquetoast views they agree. It will be a sad day for America when our nation mirrors those “educational” institutions. Solutions? I have none to offer, other than the development of backbones by their university administrators and teachers; perhaps even by their own parents. Perhaps some little snowflakes will be told, “If you don’t want to be exposed to views inconsistent with those you already hold, don’t come here.”
Living in America should be an honor not granted those who despise and abuse her by coming illegally, by illegally bringing crime and violence or by supporting those who do. Falsely characterizing Islam as the religion of peace and tolerance should not be “who we are” as Obama claims. Most of us are not deluded fools, I hope.
Oh well. Somehow we got Obama as the Commander in Chief. Twice.
This message was posted just eight days before the recent Islamic attack in Brussels, Belgium:
[The] spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general … Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam … Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.
**************************
Islamic jihad struck Brussels Tuesday morning—first at Brussels Airport and then at a metro station 400 meters from EU headquarters—leaving at least 34 people dead and 230 injured.
It was an apocalyptic scene according to survivors, “with blood and dismembered bodies everywhere,” even “thrown in to the air.” One man recalled the “horror. I saw at least seven people dead. There was blood. People had lost legs. You could see their bodies but no legs.”
Witnesses heard the attackers yelling in Arabic moments before the bombs—one of which contained nails—detonated. Other jihadi trademarks—including an unexploded suicide vest and a Kalashnikov rifle beside the body of a slain terrorist—were found. Islam’s ancient war tactic of blending in with non-Muslims was also implemented.
Horrific as the attack is, its inspiration and Western responses to it are all too typical—meaning, as I opined last year after the Paris massacre, “many more such attacks and worse will continue. Count on it.”
First, as happened on 9/11, Muslims around the world—those unnamed millions the media refer to as “ISIS supporters”—celebrated, including by once again handing out candy and shouting Islam’s victory war cry, “Allahu Akbar.” Yes, that ancient Islamic hate was back in the air and rampant on social media. “We are not just clapping, but we are happy again. We are smiling, we are laughing and we are joyful like it’s a day of celebration,” tweeted one ISIS sympathizer. Another wrote: “#Brussels, if you continue your war against the religion of Allah then this is our response.” Another wrote: “What a beautiful day today. F*** Belgium.” Yet another wrote, “A lot of duas [Muslim prayers] were answered today.”
Still, most Muslim sympathizers were quick to portray their bloodlust as a product of grievances against the West: “the most common remark under the hashtag was ‘You declared war against us and bombed us, and we attack you inside your homeland.’ Another popular reaction from ISIS supports on Twitter was that the Brussels attacks were intended to avenge the Muslims’ blood that was spilled in Mosul in a series of airstrikes by the Western coalition over the weekend.”
Meanwhile, and as usual, in its communiques to fellow Muslims, ISIS articulated the attack through a distinctly Islamic paradigm. It even signaled the attack with the words, “We have come to you with slaughter”—an assertion based on the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s words to a non-Muslim tribe that refused to submit to Islam: “I have come to you with slaughter.”
If this assertion is not clear enough concerning the intent and mission of Muhammad—and those who seek to follow him—another canonical assertion attributed to him and regularly quoted by jihadis, including over a decade ago in the opening paragraph of al-Qaeda’s “Declaration of War against Americans,” has the prophet saying:
I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped—Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my commandments (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.12).
Unfortunately, this one aspect—that Islamic scripture clearly, plainly, and unequivocally promotes violence against all who refuse to submit to Allah—is the very same aspect most vehemently denied by Western elites. Already, as always happens after an Islamic terror attack in the West, the talking heads are warning against “rampant Islamophobia” and abacklash against Muslims. Media are hosting professional liars, like Ramadan Foundation’s Muhammad Shafiq, who insists that “terrorism is forbidden in Islam” (even though the Koran calls on Muslims to terrorize those who resist Islam, e.g., 3:151 and 8:12).
Still, due to these growing numbers of jihadi attacks on Western soil, increasing numbers of politicians are responding with tough—but ultimately meaningless—words: “We are at war,” responded French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.”
This is true. But just like George W. Bush’s famous “war on terrorism”—a war on a method not its motivation—Valls doesn’t indicate who “we are at war” with, even though the most elemental step in winning a war is to “know your enemy.”
One of the few American political aspirants who need not revise his tone in light of this attack is Donald Trump. Over two months ago, he said “Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law.… You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now.”
This latest terror strike in Europe will likely reignite the refugee debate, which, while important, also minimizes the significance of the issue. The common denominator between all these recent terror strikes throughout the West is not that the culprits were all refugees but rather that they were all Muslim. Many terror attacks were homegrown. Muslim citizens of America were responsible for Fort Hood (13 murdered), Boston Marathon (four murdered), Chattanooga (four murdered), and most recently San Bernardino (14 murdered).
Of course, Europe could have spared itself if only it would’ve looked to the plight of non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim majority nations. As far back as 2012, after Western supported jihadi/freedom fighters were unleashed on Assad’s formerly stable Syria, intentionally displacing hundreds of thousands of Christians, the Syrian Christian archbishop correctly predicted “the jihadis will not stop here [Middle East], the war will spread to Europe.” Four years later and the war has certainly begun.
Consider the 2010 massacre at the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad. Armed jihadis stormed the church during Sunday worship service, opened fire indiscriminately at the Christian worshipers, before detonating their suicide vests. At least fifty-eight Christian worshippers, including many women and children, were murdered, and nearly 100 wounded—many, like in Brussels, losing their arms or legs (see here for GRAPHIC pictures). If the Brussel jihadis used nails in their bombs, the Baghdad church jihadis wore vests “filled with ball bearings to kill as many people as possible.”
Now, if Brussels—or New York, or London, or Madrid, ad infinitum—was really “intended to avenge the Muslims’ blood that was spilled in Mosul in a series of airstrikes,” as aggrieved Muslims regularly claim—then one must ask: why are immensely weak, outnumbered, ostracized, and politically disenfranchised Christian minorities living in the Muslim world, who are wholly incapable of hurting any Muslim, also being terrorized and slaughtered, to the point of genocide?
The answer should be clear. So long as Islam calls for jihad against those who reject Allah and his prophet, so long will attacks like Brussels (and the countless before it) continue. Before the age of political correctness, the Encyclopaedia of Islam put it this way:
[The] spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general … Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam … Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.
This is the one ugly fact that few want to accept, much less act on—and understandably so, for the ramifications are immense.
♦ How hard is it to understand that radical Islamist jihadis have declared war on the West? In simple English this means: they will find you and kill you wherever and whenever they can.
♦ Time and again, many of us concerned Muslims have highlighted the dangers of political Islam/Islamism, which stems from one of three sources: the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi/Salafism or Khomeinism.
♦ The West has been asleep at the wheel, waffling about how to address the issue with “sensitivity.” Calling out the truth should never be subject to political correctness.
♦ The world needs to take the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to task and challenge it about what it is doing to stem the tide of violence emanating from the Muslim world. The world needs to understand that ISIS is not trying to set up a Caliphate. OIC is the Caliphate.
The terrorist attacks at an airport and Metro station in Brussels has by now claimed at least 34 dead and 250 injured.
Shocking, sickening and appalling — but surprising? No.
How hard is it to understand that radical Islamist jihadis have declared war on the West? In simple English this means: they will find you and kill you wherever and whenever they can.
Why? Because the Islamists have pinpointed the West to be “Dar al Harb” (land of war), a concept that allows them to justify killing anyone on this land. You, me and everyone in between — from the USA across to Canada, the UK and Europe.
Just this year, there have been terrorist attacks all over the globe, including Paris, Turkey, San Bernardino, Israel, Toronto, Ivory Coast and yesterday in Belgium. Whether carried out by groups or so called “lone wolves,” these attacks are not isolated and have one thing in common.
They are all the result of a dangerous, violent and sick ideology. Time and again, many of us concerned Muslims have highlighted the dangers of political Islam/Islamism which stems from one of three sources: the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi/Salafism or Khomeinism. This ideology has been on the rise for 35 years while the West has been asleep at the wheel, waffling about how to address the issue with “sensitivity.” Calling out the truth should never be subject to political correctness.
How are we Muslims dealing with this ongoing terror in the name of our faith? Social media tells us a lot. There are the usual deniers and apologists; there is a comparison that “while we show solidarity for Brussels, we must simultaneously remember every other country of the world,” hence watering down the impact of the horror and carnage that has just taken place in Belgium and showing a rancid face of inhumanity and deflection from the real issue.
Then the victim ideology kicks in and it’s all about the fear of a backlash. I say let’s speak out, take responsibility and deal with the backlash — it will be worse if we remain silent.
Added to this are people like the repulsive British politician, George Galloway, who says Europe is to blame for what has happened. No one wants to touch the real issue.
The real issue is that this violence will continue and get much worse unless all of us stand up and acknowledge the ugly virus within us and say no to armed jihad. All of us, in once voice, need to denounce and condemn armed jihad as a seventh-century construct, not applicable in this day and age.
How have media addressed the issue? They immediately brought in “experts” to analyze the motives of the attackers to smithereens. There is nothing left to analyze. It is simple: It is a war against us. Let us stop the talking heads and take some action.
Political correctness should not trump the truth.
To bring home this point: Following an attack on two Canadian military officers in Toronto on March 14, 2016, I was invited the next day by a local TV station to comment. At first, the media did not wish to publish the words spoken by the attacker: “Allah made me do it.” The next day, the news reported that the attacker had “mental health issues.” Again, no surprise here. Mental health issues are a good “fallback.” But I said on the news that if a person has the wherewithal to find a specific military location and attack two officers, he is capable of being a terrorist.
Once again, we failed to connect the dots. The CTV News clip of my interview never made it to the internet. Are they not able to handle the truth?
Following a terrorist attack on two Canadian military officers in Toronto last week (left), the media initially did not wish to publish the words spoken by the attacker: “Allah made me do it.” Following yesterday’s bombings in Brussels, the media immediately brought in “experts” to analyze the motives of the attackers. There is nothing left to analyze. It is simple: It is a war against us.
Our leadership, meanwhile, has developed a philosophy of “hug-a-terrorist” and deflecting the conversation into a politically correct Kumbaya mode.
On October 22, 2014, I wrote an open letter to Canadians on my blog. In this I made some clear suggestions about the dangers we face, and solutions. The backlash was fast and furious, not only from Muslims but from bleeding-heart white liberals — those who do not help our cause by promoting the victim ideology.
So, once again we are standing where we were many years ago, but worse off because hundreds more civilians have been slaughtered in the radical Islamist war against the West.
Countering this armed jihad is our responsibility because the problem emanates from the House of Islam and the lives of our next generations are at stake here.
There are solutions. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has a membership of 57 Muslims states spread over four continents, is the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations. The world needs to take the OIC to task and challenge it about what it has done or is doing to stem the tide of violence emanating from the Muslim world. The world needs to understand that ISIS is not trying to set up a Caliphate. The OIC is the Caliphate. Its members conveniently look away in face of blatant terrorism because their only focus is to dislodge Israel and condemn the West.
We cannot let the OIC speak for us. We face a simple choice: We can either speak out ourselves or wait for Mr. Trump to be elected and he will do it for us.
Raheel Raza is president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and founding member of the Muslim Reform Movement.
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