PrintMay 9, 2010
The Narrative of Defeat
It is now life-threatening to criticize or mock Islam in the United States of America. The creators of South Park, Viacom, and anyone associated with the production of a recent episode portraying Mohammed in a bear suit would have potentially risked life and limb if they had broadcast the original cartoon sketch. In a manner eerily reminiscent of the Danish cartoon jihad, a Brooklyn-based Muslim group called Revolution Muslim posted a threat to South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker for their "outright insult" to the prophet.
"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably end up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show," read the post. Theo Van Gogh was the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim for producing the film Submission, critical of the treatment of women in Islam. Like Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, and targeted infidels before them, life would have been reduced to an unending fielding of threats and the heavily guarded jockeying between safe houses for those associated with South Park if the episode had aired unaltered.
The incident underscores the unceasing efforts by Islam to silence opposition and criticism in order to advance the establishment of a worldwide caliphate under Shari'ah law. Despite incidents like these, we in the West continue to react to Islam as if it were merely another variety of religious faith. Descriptions of Islam as a "religion of peace" and as "one of the three Abrahamic faiths" proliferate, obfuscating the need for further study and shielding the immutable, intolerant, militant, murderous doctrine from discovery. Although it's been almost nine years since 9/11, the level of knowledge and understanding of Islam is staggeringly low among the general population, let alone those sworn to protect us -- our military and intelligence services. At a time when the Western world should be intimately familiar with the concepts of jihad and dhimmitude, as well as the provisos of Shari'ah law, we are lulled back to sleep with platitudes of peaceful coexistence and shamed with charges of "Islamophobia" if we question the motives, demands, or practices of adherents to the Muslim faith.
Quite illogically -- given the sequence of events from 9/11 forward -- the very act of exhibiting fear or suspicion of Muslims is dubbed a "phobia" -- an irrational fear. This, after nineteen Muslims hijacked planes and flew them into buildings, exacting massive carnage in the name of their god, and afterward, their coreligionists feted the deed. The carnage has continued nonstop since then in other countries. In 2002, Muslim jihadists set off three bombs in Bali, killing over 200 people and wounding 240. In 2004, Islamic practitioners orchestrated a series of coordinated attacks against Madrid's commuter train system, claiming 200 lives and injuring 1,800. The following year, suicide attacks in London's public transportation system during the morning rush hour resulted in 52 deaths and 700 wounded. In 2008, Muslim terrorists held India's most populous city hostage for three days with a string of more than ten shootings and bombings at a hospital, cinema, college, and Jewish center that left 175 dead and over 300 injured. These are just a few examples among hundreds of recent attacks by Muslims worldwide.
Yet we in America shrink from charges of Islamophobia and fail to acknowledge our righteous apprehension of unthinkable acts of evil in the name of a vengeful and certainly not peaceful god. We allow ourselves to be censured and plead guilty as charged of Islamophobia for scrutinizing the activities of Muslims and placing blame on the canons of Islam. The joy and celebration from Muslims across the world following the mass slaughter and destruction of 9/11 should have put us over the edge and strengthened our resolve to eradicate followers of this deadly belief system. Instead, we exhibit suicidal insanity in our failure and unwillingness to connect the dots of Islam, jihad, and Shari'ah. We dither, apologize to the enemy, and shrink from rightful condemnations of their holy books, their religious practices, and their legal code.
No other religion on earth exists with a holy book dominated by hatred toward non-believers. The Islamic trilogy -- the Koran, the Sira (or biography of Mohammed), and the Hadith (the words and deeds of Mohammed) -- requires jihad, the killing of infidels, as the highest form of devotion to Allah. Islam is a theo-political-legal doctrine whose primary focus is not on the "goodness" of Muslims, but on others -- evildoers who do not share the Islamic belief system. Certainly the Old and New Testaments offer their fair share of brutal passages, but the practices described within those passages haven't been in evidence for centuries. The brutal practices contained within Shari'ah law are practiced today throughout the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, even in the United States.
Christians suffer through confession and acts of repentance for untoward acts that hurt others. Christians aspire to exemplary kindness and service to their fellow man for the privilege of escaping a hellfire-filled afterlife. Jihadists are awarded a guaranteed place in heaven and the promise of great reward for the holy act of murdering those who don't believe. While Jews practice "tikkun olam" -- repairing the world -- and perform "mitzvoth," or good deeds, devout Muslims pray to Allah for inanimate objects like rocks and trees to alert them to the presence of dastardly Jews. They pray, "O Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." Muslim world leaders and clerics routinely call for the death of non-Muslims. Has anyone ever heard a Western prime minister, president, rabbi, or priest call for the annihilation of a country or for the destruction of practitioners of other religions?
The Koran contains over four thousand verses of enmity toward non-believers. Over 63% of the Koran instructs Muslims to hate and avoid any association with non-Muslims. It teaches that non-Muslims should be held in contempt, killed, beheaded, humiliated, raped, enslaved, converted, or forced to pay the jizya or dhimmi tax. Eighty-five percent of the Sira -- the biography of Mohammed, the ideal man or moral icon for Muslims -- has to do with his battles against kuffars, or non-believers. This is a far cry from "Jesus died for your sins." Islamic teachings laud and require lying and deception, "taquiya," to advance the "ummah," or Islamic community. While Jews and Christians honor the Golden Rule, turn the other cheek and practice tolerance and inclusiveness, Muslims learn how to fight the Dar al-Harb, the infidel world of war, and practice the artistry of duplicity not only with impunity, but also with the highest praises from their god.
Let's not lull ourselves into complacency by citing that out of 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide, many are secular or have little knowledge of Islam. Although this may be true, that still leaves, conservatively, 10% to 15% (upwards of 235 million) of devout Muslims or jihadists who fit the description of submissive and intimidated, witting or unwitting enablers. As Mark Steyn astutely observed in America Alone, a "dominant minority" is the sole requirement for global jihad to take hold. In Mumbai, the carnage wreaked was caused by just ten people over three days. Nineteen hijackers were able to commandeer four passenger planes and murder three thousand Americans on 9/11. It doesn't take huge numbers to institute evil. In Nazi Germany, Hitler didn't win popular support in the country, but he pushed through his genocidal agenda as a passive, fearful populace looked on.
In our free society with a tradition of openly criticizing everything, even the sacred, it has now somehow become unacceptable to criticize Islam and the heinous actions of many of its practitioners. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to criticize Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion, for that matter. In 1989, "Piss Christ," an offensive photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a container of urine, was prominently displayed at a museum and won a U.S. government-funded award. While members of Congress and clerics condemned the sculpture in the media, the most egregious responses were from a museum patron who attempted to dislodge the photograph from the museum wall and a pair of teenagers who attacked it with a hammer. By comparison, in 2005, when editorial cartoons depicting Mohammed were published in a Danish newspaper, the Muslim world erupted into violence that claimed over one hundred lives and destroyed property worldwide, including four Danish embassies. Instead of reinforcing the Western value of free expression and severely punishing the actions of destructive Muslims, Westerners apologized for giving offense, censored the display of the cartoons, and cautiously monitored any future examination or critique of Islam.
Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna said, "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated; to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet." The work of the Muslim Brotherhood in America is "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
It is now five minutes to midnight in the global jihad that endeavors to destroy us and establish a worldwide caliphate under Shari'ah law. Instead of standing our ground and asserting the supremacy of our values, our fear and submissiveness have taken root to hasten our defeat. Will we wake up and face the enemy head-on before it is too late and all is lost?
