PrintSeptember 12, 2010
Islam Continues to Strengthen Geert Wilders' Case
Geert Wilders, Dutch politician and outspoken critic of fundamentalist Islam, has just witnessed another example of Islamic tolerance. A well-known Islamic cleric in Australia has just called for his beheading. (See also Geert Wilders 9/11 Ground Zero Speech.)
Of course, Geert has been getting such threats from practitioners of the peaceful faith of Islam for years, especially since he created his film Fitna. So I would doubt if he is surprised by another Muslim saying he wants to behead him for criticizing the faith, as it seems to be a common theme among some Muslims.
Thee can be no question that there are peaceful and tolerant Muslims, and a broad negative typecast of Muslims is not my aim. There are Muslims that have assimilated into Western societies, peacefully practice their faith, and forego the more aggressive calls to jihad found in Islamic texts. But the perception that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion becomes more and more distant from reality with stories like this.
It is impossible to hide the common correlation between Islam and violence. To disbelieve that this correlation exists could only be the result of wanting so desperately to believe Islam is a peaceful faith that you plug you ears and close your eyes to all the evidence saying otherwise. Fundamentalist Islam is the source of a tremendous amount of global violence, and more violence is committed in the name of Islam than of any other faith.
Where in other faiths, in contemporary times, can we find compare to the hate and intolerance found in those who claim to follow Muhammad's path? The fatwa on the head of Rushdie? The unjust murder of Theo Van Gogh? The death threats of Jyllands Posten and South Park? Do we find large numbers of Hindus and Christians strapping bombs to themselves with the sole purpose of taking the lives of those who believe differently? And if there were some bad apples committing such atrocities, wouldn't the Hindu and Christian community at large renounce any such practice, rather than exhibit a deafening silence?
We must be honest, and cast aside political correctness for a brief moment. It takes only a loose inspection of Islamic texts and a basic historical perspective to conclude that "peace" in devout Islamic dogma means one thing: a society of Islamic hegemony, where none shall be worshipped but Allah, Sharia law is imposed universally, and the infidels live as dhimmi (second-class citizens) and pay the jizya (tax upon infidels) to their Islamic betters.
Don't believe that? Here's some evidence.
Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
I've read various translations of this verse, and cannot construe a different meaning from any of them. There is but one way to read this: Muslims are instructed to fight the infidels, and to either convert, kill, or subjugate them.
Muslims take this very literally to be the infallible word of Allah, as told to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. And they have every right to believe that. But there is a simple fact that escapes others when they approach Islam from the outside, looking in. And that is that Muhammad was a seventh century warlord, and the above passage sounds like it was written by none other than a seventh century warlord. While many passages in Islamic texts are retellings of Judeo-Christian dogma, many others lend themselves to a purpose of conquest rather than peace, as one would expect in the ideology of a warlord and caravan plunderer. Though some might see this analogy as blasphemous, and others as politically incorrect, it is as sound and historically accurate as saying that the Gospels were written about a Jewish carpenter.
Huge swathes of Muslim practitioners follow Muhammad's call, fighting to convert, kill, or subjugate the infidel, and their jihad is two-fold. First, Islamic fundamentalists plan and execute violent attacks to inspire terror and to force submission to Allah. Second, through massive immigration, there is the gradual implementation of Sharia as equal or superior law to that of Western European nations.
Geert Wilders stands on the ramparts to warn Europe and the world of these threats. He recognizes the dissonance between Islam that values submission and the Western democracies that value freedom. At a global scale, Geert Wilders passionately struggles to break through the mind-numbing wall of political correctness to educate people of the danger Islamic groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda create. Domestically, he has not called for violence against practitioners of Islam, but simply suggests a requirement that Muslims in European nations recognize Western laws and practice their faith within those confines. Those who do not wish to conform to those laws are free to live elsewhere.
For his honesty and astute observation of the very real threat fundamentalist Islam poses, Geert Wilders has been painted as a hateful ideologue. The parties responsible for his negative portrayal simply want to discourage any agreement to Wilders' perspective, as anyone who agrees would be labeled a hatemonger, too.
But the evidence that Wilders' is right about Islam is piling up, and Americans and Europeans cannot ignore it much longer. And the newest evidence is in the incredibly dark irony that Geert Wilders has just had his life threatened, again, by the self-proclaimed "peaceful" Islamic elements he warns us about.
William Sullivan blogs at politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com
