9-11: Tears, no fury...

On the first anniversary of 9-11, I wrote, "On this day, a year after the fanatic Muslim—predominantly Saudi—attack on the American soil, it seems that the affect expressed by the administration as well as the American media has largely been that of teary frustration and pain, not unlike the 'why me?' feelings experienced and expressed by anybody in grief. There has been little anger, let alone fury, in words or facial expressions of the nation’s leadership; instead, there is a lot of solemnity, quivering lips, and—especially initially—calls for reconciliation with Islam that was translated by the President as 'peace' instead of 'submission'. The mighty thunder of the only great power left on Earth, which all terrorists in the world—from Arafat who donated his poisonous blood to injured Americans, to Saudi financiers of terror—braced themselves for, has never come. The mosques, planted in the US and everywhere in the world by the Saudis to teach hatred in preparation for the whole world to become Dar-ul-Islam, the 'abode of Islam', are still churning out brain-washed fanatics ready to die while killing unnumbered 'kaffirs' regardless of their age and sex. Arafat has just recently become undesired in the administration’s eyes, but still remains the 'leader of the Palestinian people' instead of being recategorized into the oldest living terror chieftain. The 'Palestinian' state is still discussed as a desirable goal, while the majority of its potential citizens support continued murder of innocent Israelis. The administration is still trying to convince Arabs that they should support an attack against Iraq, while even its European continental allies, faithful to their familiar tactic of appeasing the murderer, deny their support. And American airlines, ready to risk passengers’ lives in fear of offending “Middle Eastern” guests, waste the effort of their security personnel, incompetent as it is, on checking the underwear of grandmothers in wheelchairs for explosive nail clippers they could hide there.”


What has changed since? Arafat's poisonous blood has eventually killed him. The portrait of that brigand now decorates the office of his comrade-in-arms, Abbas, who is going to ask the UN for recognizing "Palestine" - a nonexistent state with an imaginary president: Abbas's "term", for what it's worth, ended in January 2009. Another US president has just declared now, "I’ve made it clear that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam." Never mind that this statement is irrelevant grandiloquence or worse - a chronic delusion: if militant Islam is at war with the United States as it is, so is the United States with Islam, however unwillingly. It would indeed make sense to say, "We do not want to be at war...", but it would make no difference. 


Yes, it is difficult to identify the enemy: the wars have been between nation-states for a long time. Those wars are "normal", I guess. It seems insane and abnormally regressive to speak in terms of religious wars. In fact, however, there is no need for it, nor would it be correct. This is not a religious war not only because the United States does not represent a religion in conflict with another. It is not religious because there is nothing in Islam relevant to a religion that concerns the non-Muslim world. Does it really matter to anybody but devout Muslims that they believe in having a deity by the name of Allah, who used to have three daughters  - until, that is, that information in the Koran was abrogated in the Koran? What is of concern to the non-Muslim world is Islam as a political ideology: the Koranic claim on the entire Earth and humanity, to be brought into submission to Islam. By force and terror or by dawa, Islamic indoctrination. 


There is nothing truly unfamiliar in this sort of war that is neither religious nor against a nation-state. The Western world has never come into a direct conflict with Soviet Communism - only with its numerous and weakly connected proxies who would kick their Soviet advisers out as soon as they were sure of attaining necessary power. Nonetheless, if it were a direct conflict, it would be an ideological one. The war with Nazism was an ideological war: even though the Germans were a "master race", that notion included, in their eyes, at least the Nordic nations. Also, their allies - Nordic or not - would benefit from Nazi victories. The Nazis were not worried much about the Semitic origins of the Arabs, or the Slavic origins of their SS divisions "Galizien" and "Handschar", organized from Orthodox Ukranians, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks - the latter with the able help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, Arafat's relative. What mattered to Germans was those troops' zeal in exterminating the Jews, the Gypsies, and the enemies of Nazism. It's easy to forget that it was indeed Nazism and fascism that the world fought against in that war - because it is so much easier to identify the noun, Germany, and forget the adjective, Nazi, or just mean it as synonymous with Germans at the time but not now. Obviously, what's changed is not the nation - inasmuch as nations have continuity. It is the ideology that has dramatically changed. Even though we may conveniently think that it was Germany that was defeated, it was, in fact, Nazism, which had taken possession of the minds of Germans, like Islam has taken possession of the minds of Arabs and many others.


It is the we-are-not-at-war-with-Islam-religion-of-peace attitude of a teary Bush that first portended today's situation, when, after Taliban has been defeated, it is still on the verge of return, when Saddam's Iraq has become Iran's Iraq with a Koran-based constitution, when "friendly" dictators are being replaced with Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey of Ataturk has become Turkey of a new Islamic sultan, Erdogan. It is a bit like leaving Mein Kampf as the foundation of social thought in Germany after Nazi defeat. The same intentional blindness is expressed in Obama's nonsense that "Those who attacked us on 9/11 wanted to drive a wedge between the United States and the world." What about those who attacked England on 7/7 and Spain on 3/11?  Are they also about "wedges"? Or are all these terror attacks by Muslims different, as the world perceives terror against Israel? With Israel, it's always Israel's fault - it's all "occupation", even though it's the same terror that tortured Israel before 1967 and any "occupation". What is so hard for the West to understand in that it's not because of "occupation", land, or any particular grievances? It would be good if it was: if we were the reason, we could and should be able remove it. No, we are not, and we can't. It is because Islam has finally gained sufficient strength to resume violent jihad bequeathed to Muslims by Muhammad, or Allah if you will: "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war" (Koran 9:5). Not enough strength to wage a war using armies and battles, but enough to blow up trains and restaurants, demolish buildings symbolic of non-Muslim might with thousands of the infidels inside, and shoot point-blank and cut throats of Jewish babies. It is cynical if not downright dishonest of the US president to claim that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence". Those unnamed "people", aka Arabs, have shown nothing of the kind: ask Israeli diplomats who have just fled from Cairo, or Lara Logan, raped in the Tahrir square, a symbol of Egyptian newly acquired "freedom".  It is still tears for those who perished on 9/11 - not fury at those who murdered them - that dominate the 9/11 affect. America's post-9/11 wars, delimited by time and not by victories, are indeed not with Islam. That's why they will not prevent terror, a stratagem in the war Islam wages on humanity.

Kristof's tilted balance

Another piece in the New Ork Times from Nicholas Kristof, "Seeking balance in the Middle East". The balance he seeks is supposed to be obtained in the US Congress. It so happens that this elected body, in Kristof's eyes, has been entirely "obstructionist" - that is, obstructing the road to "Palestinian statehood". The reason is that the Congress does not follow the "clarion call for American reasonableness in the Middle East" - that of J Street, a Soros-funded organization whose members consider the IDF (Israel Defense Force) to be as terrorist as Hamas and support the BDS campaign (boycott of Israeli products, divestment from and sanctions against Israel). Kristof's "balance" does not include any demands from "Palestinians" - just give them what they want. Knowing that this is a blatant double standard and attempting to preempt this critique, he provides a straw man of "denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria" and justifies his lack of demands for that by the lack of financial help to Syria from his tax dollars. No word, of course, about those American tax dollars - about a billion direct and much more in many other ways - that go to the terrorist and terrorist-supporting Palestinian Administration.

In his opinion, virtually the whole Congress is engaged in "tomfoolery", when it demands accountability from the "Palestinians" before they ask for the UN's recognition of their state. There is no reason to doubt that that state would be a terrorist one, with no responsibility for terror required from it, as Kristof considers Israel's operation in Gaza to halt rocket attacks an illegitimate "invasion". The only "intransigence" there, in his view, is Netanyahu's government's. His rule is false symmetry, whereby Israeli Jews' building kindergartens in "illegal settlements" (which are fully legal from the legal standpoint) is equal to Palestinian Arabs' slaughtering Jewish children - both are "extremism". It is therefore clear what is needed for the "balance" a la Kristof: to follow the marginal views of despicable J Street, which he is trying to present as the American Jews' mainstream.

He cowardly repeats the antisemitic "Jewish money and influence" canard - without taking full responsibility for it: "Some see this influence of Jewish organizations on foreign policy as unique and sinister". There is certainly plausible deniability in that "some", isn't there, but in the end it is very hard for him to hide his sympathies, when he expresses his hope that J Street will help Washington to get a "new beginning" - along the lines of Arab Spring. Considering that the only thing changed so far as the result of this "spring" is that the friendly dictators are replaced with unknown ones but supported by peace-lovers like Muslim Brotherhood, it is clear what this new beginning would be like.

As the likes of Kristof always do, they demand everything for "peace settlement" from the side that is not waging the war. They think that the price is not for them to pay if another Munich 1938 happens. Fortunately, it seems the US Congress has more common sense and knowledge of history to understand that the "land for peace" principle should have died in the ruins of 1945 Berlin and in the ashes of Auschwitz.

Burning Koran: the form and the substance

Considering the violent nature of the enemy and enemy ideology, Islam, the immense courage of Ann Barnhardt is unquestionable. The young American woman posted on YouTube her videos where she reads the horrible Koranic suras, followed by burning the respective Koran pages, and criticizes the US Senator Graham for his reaction to a Koran-burning by a Florida pastor. It is telling that "[m]any Afghans did not know about the Quran-burning [by the pastor] until Karzai condemned it four days after it happened." Graham and Gen. Petraeus, another accuser of the pastor and defender of Muslims' rights to passions, do not blame Karzai, a corrupt puppet, sitting on American bayonets that apparently are beginning to be more uncomfortable for him than the threat to follow Najibullah's footsteps if the Taliban comes back.

I do disagree, however, with the form of Ms. Barnhardt's message - Koran-burning, - but not for the Petraeus and Graham reasons. Those reasons border on despicable, misplacing blame for Muslims' murdering people from the Muslims committing those murders to Americans destroying a book, the Koran, - from an expression of Islam to an expression of the American Constitution. My reason is a historic association of that form - book-burning - with the Church's burning heretical books and the Talmud, Nazis' book-burning, Soviet Communists destroying, censoring and banning  books, Muslims destroying Bibles, and other similar actions. The Heine maxim still warns that "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." The words are from Heine's play "Almansor", and the book burnt by the Inquisition in that play was, fittingly, the Koran. 

My view is that a possibility of such parallels in the expression of legitimate feelings towards the Koran, while protected by the Constitution, should be ruled out. Not by the law - which would indeed be dhimmitude - but by people's recognition of those historic parallels. The lack of historic knowledge or the desire to maximally dramatize the expression of one's rejection of Islam as an ideology can result in the effect opposite to the intended, raising negative reactions to the substance of the matter. The substance, with which I entirely agree: Islam is a totalitarian ideology mimicking religion, enslaving its followers and calling for them to enslave others, and pursuing global domination - from subjugation and murder of family members (women and children) to subjugation and murder of minorities in Muslim countries to subjugation and murder of "unbelievers" elsewhere and everywhere. The Koran needs to be read, and the terror inflicted by Muslims upon the world needs to be understood for what it is - following Islam as prescribed by that unholy book. Burning the Koran and calling for others to do the same is wrong in form, may prevent people from seeing the substance, and may hurt rather than help the fight against the totalitarian cult of Islam.

Fair militancy

Militant atheism is frequently selective - not in its deity-rejection but in its militancy. For instance, even though Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all "three anti-human religions" for Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), they come from "a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament". The latter, "known as...", of course, only to Christians (it's Tanakh for the Jews, without the changes introduced by the Christians), is, of course, responsible for everything, being a "tribal cult of a single fiercely unpleasant God." Definitely more unpleasant to Dawkins than the deity of his own religion, in whose hands he was molested as a boy - after all, that was for him only "an embarrassing, but otherwise harmless experience". Judaism is somehow to blame even for the death penalty for blasphemy practiced in Pakistan. As if penalties for blasphemy did not exist in other religions entirely independent of Judaism, and Islam did not contain enough violence that is unique to it.

It is thus comforting when an atheist is at least fair in his militancy. This is the case with Bill Maher. He is derisive of Christianity and Judaism, as he is of anything he dislikes. In his fairness though, interviewing Keith Ellison, a congressman and a Muslim convert, he called the "holy" Koran a "hate-filled book", where "Islama bin Laden" (must be a slip of the tongue) takes his instructions. Unapologetically and matter-of-factly. He sees a greater threat from Islam than even from the "right-wing" and the KKK (which would not say much if he did not consider everything on the right of Marx to be equal to KKK). There is no need to transcribe the short dialogue - just watch it.

What is interesting in that dialogue is not Maher's mumbling attempts at critiquing Islam, fair as they are - unusually for this self-styled "comedian", - but Ellison's helpless response. The only Koranic quote Ellison was able to produce to contravene Maher's "hate-filled book" statement was deceptively incomplete: "anyone who takes the life, it's as if he killed the whole world". That's what you usually hear from Islam's disingenuous apologists. What they never say is that the complete quote of this Koran 5:32 verse is, "Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors." So yes, there is a belief that murdering one human is like murdering the whole humanity, but this is a Jewish belief, indeed found in the Talmud. It is referred to as a Jewish belief in the Koran. Nowhere is it seen that Islam accepts it. What it does accept is Koran 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." Then again, Ellison, who referred to the eternal Koran as "compiled" and stated that he accepts "non-believers", may have not done his conversion right, or perhaps has forgotten what it was since he was 19, and there is a hope for him yet.

Talking tough

Remember courageous Mr Kristof? The one who took a Bible to Saudi Arabia with him - not because he needed it, but "to see what would happen"? You can feel how Mr. Kristof is excited about his bravery in his new piece now: wow, he got enough of it to ask "a politically incorrect question: Could the reason for the Middle East’s backwardness be Islam?" (I like that preemptive recognition of "incorrectness" - Allah forbid somebody decides he does not understand how severe that thoughtcrime is). 

Nah, don't worry, surely this question is only to dismiss it with alternative balanced views, the best of which he finds to be that it's all because of "various secondary Islamic legal practices that are no longer relevant today", not because of Islam. One wonders, however, why those "secondary practices" are still working today well enough to keep 1.3 billion people in "backwardness". And how, if those practices are Islamic, is there no connection between them and Islam. Well, it's the same Mr. Kristof, after all, who thinks that Saudis ban Bibles from their country not because of Islam, but "out of sensitivity to local feelings". Where do those "feelings" come from, I wonder, if not from Mohammad's ban on any religion but Islam in Arabia? You can imagine what the chances are for realization of Kristof's "hope we'll have some tough, honest conversations on all sides about what went wrong". Perhaps the Muslims would be talking tough. One could even risk a guess, they already are. "We" - won't.

Freedom of silence

The state media in the Soviet Union - and all media was state there - hardly needed political censorship after decades of the Soviet rule. The writers exercised self-monitoring very well. The most they allowed themselves was mild allegoric satire that was benignly looked upon by the powers that be as a safety valve for the teacup frondeurs. That helped the writers' popularity and created an illusion of freedom, while keeping boundaries intact. Considering that the writers' livelihood, and sometimes life itself, depended on their craft, one can hardly blame them for self-censorship - perhaps for the choice of profession.

It seems that the US media is getting the proper conditioning as well. On some issues, to remain silent is the only right. The case in point is Juan Williams, a senior National Public Radio (NPR) reporter and Fox News contributor, who has been fired from NPR. He violated the current taboo established by the government, which is a source of NPR funding. He said that seeing people in Muslim garb on a plane makes him nervous. He honestly admitted suffering from a psychological/psychiatric phenomenon, an increased anxiety. That anxiety is conditioned, as is well-known, on a very traumatic event and other similar events associated with the same system of beliefs people in Muslim garb are very likely to share - not on some "Islamophobic" prejudice. He should have kept silent. Such anxiety, and honesty in admitting it, are "inconsistent with [NPR's] editorial standards and practices". Since he could not do much about his anxiety, it is honesty that should have been kept in check, if he wanted to continue serving the organ of governmental propaganda.

One might juxtapose this firing with the recent firing of Helen Thomas by Hearst. There are significant differences, however. Helen Thomas said that Jews should should "go home" from Israel to Germany and Poland, the countries where they were exterminated. She thus unashamedly shares views of Hamas and Hizballah, not necessarily a kosher thing for a senior correspondent with White House accreditation. She was fired because of her antisemitism and support for terrorists' ideology. UPI and Hearst Newspapers, for which Thomas worked, are also not funded by the government. Juan Williams said that he was nervous on the plane seeing people looking like they were into Islam - a characteristic they share with Hamas, Hizballah and Al Qaida. It would be unreasonable not to be nervous about that after 9/11.

Juan Williams has long been an object of disdain and hate by the left for his participation in Fox News, however pro-left his position has been there. The left, taking after its spiritual ancestry, hates everybody who collaborates with what it views as "class enemy". Besides, he had chutzpah to criticize Michelle Obama (who felt OK about the US the first time when her husband was made a presidential candidate). Welcome, Juan, to Miranda rights - Soviet style.

Mosque and state

I watched Fox News a couple of days ago - what else a wingnut would watch? A minister, Reverend Barry Lynn, whose main occupation is to fight for separation of church and state (he heads an organization with that mission), had a dispute with Walid Shoebat, a former Muslim and an anti-Islamist. Shoebat was translating, from his native Arabic, the "Cordoba mosque" imam Rauf's comments regarding the need for America to become a Shariah state.

Now, I understood why Lynn could have been invited to the program. After all, Islam does not consider separation of "church" and state at all: Islam was created by Muhammad to be the foundation of his perfect state. It is the only option an Allah-fearing Muslim may entertain. Witness Iraq, liberated from a dictatorship by the sacrifices of American soldiers only to ensure that "Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation" (Iraqi Constitution, Article 2). Quoting further, "A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established." Somehow, the next clause is that "B. No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established", which hardly makes sense, because any law deviating from Shariah will contradict clause A, and democracy is supposed to make laws outside of the established provisions of Islam, i.e., the Shariah. There has never been a democratic Islamic country, unless you consider voting a sufficient proof of democracy. If you do, we also had democracy in the Soviet Union, have it in Gaza, and I have the proverbial bridge to sell. Of course, when in a foreign non-Muslim country, serving Islam in the land of infidels like imam Rauf does, one has to be realistic, but nobody can stop a man from dreaming. Particularly when this man's idea of the ideal state is Muhammad's totalitarian empire.

What a shocker it was, however, when, instead of criticizing Islam for its non-separation from state, Rev. Lynn turned out to be a protector of Islam. In response to Shoebat's translation, the minister announced that it was a "misstatement". No idea whose misstatement he meant. No, he does not read or speak Arabic. He knows, however, that he can with  impunity accuse Shoebat of "misstatements" when telling truth about Islam is considered lying - that is the view of the mainstream media that sings in happy unison with the US government. Except for that repeated statement of "misstatement", and the usual straw man of the Muslims' "right to build", Lynn provided no argument.

The same straw man has been raised by The State, i.e., the US government, including the president. Nobody has questioned that right. What is questioned is the propriety of that construction in  that location. It may take a long time for the public to understand that it is a cynical distortion of justice for governmental officials, with the US president on top, to proclaim rights of a Shariah-toting imam to build a house of worship for a faith that denies that right to other faiths. It is also an obscene distortion of the principle of separation of church and state, when these officials, representing the state and trying to silence a public dispute, suggest that the nation's disagreement with construction of an Islamic monument near the mass grave of victims of violent Islam is tantamount to hate crime.

Then again, what can you expect when Barack Hussein has announced that "America and Islam ... overlap". Perhaps church and state, let alone synagogue and state, are separated in Obama's America. Mosque and state is a different matter. It would be a sure sign of Islamophobia to hold them separate.

Related posts: Monument to Murderers; Just Thinking; Thinking Ahead;  "First We Take Manhattan"; Islamophobia?

Islamophobia?

You hear that, and bad things come to mind. Claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and other similar extreme anxiety conditions disabling people. Judeophobia, which is a more precise synonym of antisemitism. Phobia is an irrational, intense fear/hate and avoidance of something that poses little or no actual danger. There are phobias related to animals (e.g., spiders), environments and situations (heights, storms). There are some phobias peculiar to a culture, such as taijin kyofusho, specific to Japan - an exaggerated fear of offending somebody. Most if not all  phobias appear to be extreme variants of normal human fears and apprehensions. It follows that once this word is attached to an entity, you know that the latter is really nothing to be afraid of, let alone hate. It is a disease or extreme prejudice not to see that.

Is that what we are dealing with, when the word "phobia" is attached to "Islam"? Is there indeed an irrational fear or hate of Islam? If so, is it as grotesque and morbid as agoraphobia, or perhaps as dangerous and murderous as Judeophobia? I won't delve much into the ancient history, because the fears or comfort of the living are not so much influenced by what happened centuries ago, unless the same events occur in the present, and then the present may not connect with the past. For instance, in the Russian language there is an archaic word, бусурманин (busurmanin), that is derived from "Muslim" and was used as recently as in 19th century to scare children and designate any enemy. The origin of that scare is in the times of Muslim raids on the Russian territories and in the centuries of Muslim khans' domination and enslavement. The word was not revived, however, when the children of Beslan were murdered by Muslim terrorists, or hostages of suicidal Muslims died in a Moscow theater, or Muslim "Black Widows" blew themselves up in the Moscow metro. Indeed, even though Chechens are Muslims, and it is hard not to see Islam's involvement in their cause, that cause is more nationalist than Muslim. Nowadays, the language is either more specific  - "Chechens", "Wahhabites"; or more generic - "terrorists". Muslims comprise a large proportion of the population in Russia, and are not persecuted for their religion. Russia, like the Soviet Union before, is good friends with  Islamic countries. Interestingly though, devout Muslims to this day call Christians "Crusaders". They also jumped at the word "crusade" (against terrorists), used by Bush in the wake of 9-11 in no connection to a Christian cause. Of course, because for Muslims the suicidal mass murder of 9-11 was an act of their faith, they considered any response to be religious  as well - Jewish and Christian. Never mind that Bush became a spokesperson for Islam, "religion of peace".

According to Obama, the explanation of 9-11 is in the "tension [that] has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies". Not according to Osama. His "fatwa" was titled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" - his grievance was in the violation of Muhammad's prohibition of any religion but Islam in that land, one of the early manifestations of Islamic tolerance. That's why the Saudi monarchy that allowed the American/non-Muslim presence on the Arab soil is Osama's enemy as well. According to Obama, "America and Islam ... overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." Not according to Islam, which denies justice and dignity not only to other faiths (unless you consider dhimmitude just), but to even Muslim women and children. OK, let's assume that Islam is not defined by Muhammad's "marrying" a six-year old Aisha and raping her at the ripe age of nine, by his genocide of the Jewish tribes in Arabia, by the bloody conquests and Islamization of North Africa, Asia and large part of Europe  - that's all ancient history. There is a lot, they say, bad stuff in any religion's past.  What good is Islam defined by in our times? What is coming out of the Muslim world that serves, or at least does not hurt and promise to hurt more, humanity? These questions are rhetorical. No, I take it back. There is good coming out of Islamic world - people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who leave us hope that Islam's hold on its adherents is not absolute even in the darkest places of Dar al-Islam.

Ancient history aside, it's hard to miss Islam's influence in present-day events. The negative stuff in the name of Islam, by Islam and for Islam happens - well, every day. Everybody knows about that, so I'd like first to consider the positive. Let's see.  Can you? I can't. What I can see is that the only way for a Muslim not to think or do horrible things - not just to others but to family members - is to become a "bad" Muslim and neglect the Koran of Allah and the Sunna (tradition on the conduct) of the Prophet, which a "good" Muslim is supposed to dutifully follow.

Inconsistent with the definition of phobia, the fear of Islam is not irrational - it is well justified by the actions of Muslims in the name of Allah, whether it is a stoning of Muslim "adulterers" or Jewish children, a decapitation of a captive,  or incessant murderous attacks on anybody, any group, or any country that Muslims view as a problem. It does not matter how small the proportion of the 1.5 billion of Muslims that commit those actions is, as long as they are committed, not prevented, and condoned or even celebrated by the majority of the Muslims. It is those actions that are justifiably hated - not Muslims, who are the first victims of the cult of Allah. As a real phobia is a mental disorder, so is a lack of fear of something that presents clear, present and mortal danger - this is the other side of the same psychological coin. It is pathological or at least not very smart not to fear a lion and jump into his cage in a zoo. It would be pathological not to fear Islam.

Attaching "phobia" to "Islam" does not make the fear of Islam prejudicial, bigoted, or morbid. It is an attempt to subvert reality and turn the norm into pathology. In the same manner, Russian fascists invented the word Russophobia, serving a similar purpose - to render pathological the fear of the antisemitic and repressive Russian nationalism. Many Russians see through that and use the term only ironically. Those who use it seriously are known for what they are - fascists, who often are so transparent as to use swastika in their symbolics. I hope, the Americans are able to hold on to their rational fears, including that of Islam. The alternative is too dire - and scary.

"First we take Manhattan...."

Trying to defend indefensible, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof has become telepathic. He has penetrated the mind of al-Awlaki, and discovered that the Muslim terrorist "must be cheering the Republicans on as they demagogue against the mosque and feed into his terror recruitment narrative" (I guess, Harry Reid is a closet Republican).  This is in Kristof's blog, and a similar connection - between Muslim terrorists and Republicans - is made in his op-ed in the paper. To prove to the non-telepathic part of the population that building that Islamic center will be "force for moderation", he tells us that we already have strip clubs and liquor stores nearby, that Crusaders burnt Jews while singing, and that in Pakistan he knows a woman who fears of honor killing by her Christian brothers. Irrelevant as all that is, she is fortunately alive though, in contrast to so many Muslim women killed by their Muslim fathers, brothers and husbands. We do not know how Mr. Kristof knows of those brotherly intentions, but with his telepathic talents there is no need to doubt his knowledge. Instead, we should confidently rely on his "hunch... that the violence in the Islamic world has less to do with the Koran or Islam than with culture, youth bulges in the population, and the marginalization of women." Now, it is surely common knowledge, isn't it, that "the Koran or Islam" cannot be part of culture, and marginalization of women has nothing to do with Islam. What can Islam have in common with culture when it regulates every single moment of a believer's life? There is simply no room left for culture. Projecting his powerful telepathic probe into the feeble but evil minds of his true enemies, Kristof finds that "many Republicans are prepared to bolster the Al Qaeda narrative, and undermine the brave forces within Islam pushing for moderation." Those must be the very same forces that bravely want to rub this moderation into the wounds of those whose loved ones were murdered by the cultureless 9-11 shahids.

Arguably, the objections of even a single survivor of a victim of the 9-11 Muslim terror should be sufficient to stop the construction, if the Golden Rule still means anything in our culture. In Mr. Kristof's bright mind's eyes, however, such sensitivity to these survivors' anguish would be "just like [that of] the Saudi officials who ban churches, and even confiscate Bibles". Now, it is common knowledge, isn't it, that banning churches in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with Islam, even though that is done in accordance with Muhammad's prohibition of any faith but Islam in the land of Arabs. Mr. Kristof knows better. The brave Mr. Kristof even brought a Bible with him on his trip there - not because he needed it, but "to see what would happen". His courage, however, went only so far and did not extend to showing it to the customs officer, who did not check our hero's belongings. Nothing happened. Not sure what this proves, but Mr. Kristof got his pointless experiment that may get the customs guy fired if his superiors read the Times, and nobody will be able to bring any Bibles there anymore. Even the curious Mr. Kristof, who thinks that Saudis do that "out of sensitivity to local feelings", not because of the Saudi law. See, the law is Shariah, Islamic, which does not quite fit into Mr. Kristof's "hunches".

But the most interesting piece of Mr. Kristof's convoluted logic is related to Israel's wishful thinking regarding Hamas: "Israeli officials thought that if Gazans became more religious, they would spend their time praying rather than firing guns." The rationale for that, as Kristof recognizes, was the idea that "Palestinian violence has roots outside of Islam". Obviously, but imperceptibly to Kristof who still thinks that to be true, history has shown that to be a grievous mistake. The religious Hamas-led Gazans chant "Allahu Akbar" that surely has nothing to do with Islam, sending rockets to Israeli kindergartens.

I could never understand what that Leonard Cohen song exactly was about. It does not say it clearly, and I am not telepathic. Then again, maybe it's contagious - now, I think, I have a "hunch". With people like Kristof forming the public's opinion, any terrorist can sing, "You know the way to stop me / But you don't have the discipline." Kristof did not have to exercise his telepathy. Like he, Mahmud Zahar of Hamas approves of the 9-11 mosque and thinks that "Muslims have to build everywhere".  As I said before, why not right where the Twin Towers stood? It'll show them...  moderation, Hamas/Kristof style.

Islam: Religious mimicry

This is part of the page titled On the Brink I posted in August 2006, upon returning from Israel after spending vacation with my family in a miklat, shelter (see a little story about that here). Although the whole page is still relevant, this text on history in particular provides the perspective on the July 2006 war with Hizballah as well as current events.

Islam was founded by Muhammad in the first half of the VII century. Muslims are taught that Islam and its holy book, the Koran, had existed as long as had the Universe, and all Jewish and Christian prophets had been Muslims. The truth, however, is that nobody had heard about Islam until Muhammad, an illiterate, poor and mentally unstable husband of a rich and much older wife, decided to turn his dreams or hallucinations into a message to humankind under her insistence. Perhaps her plan was to solve her family problems. In the patriarchal Arab society, Muhammad’s dependent status might have been considered not quite kosher. That could have contributed to his frequenting caves and sitting there, depressed and prone to scary visions under sensory and alimentary deprivation – these were the conditions under which he received his first revelation. The divine character of that was far from clear to the future Messenger of Allah, who was scared to death by his vision and needed his wife’s reassurance.

Reassured, however, he realized the benefits of his newly acquired Messenger status, and proceeded in his career from a pathetic charlatan, laughed at by the people who knew him the best, to a highway robber chieftain, to a genocidal mass murderer and totalitarian ruler, removing any opposition, real or imaginary, literally by sword. That removal was really an equal opportunity treatment, as he murdered regardless of the sex, age, and ethnic origin of the opponent. This included his extermination of all men of the entire peaceful Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza and enslavement of children and women. This was the first recorded application of the Nazis’ Babiy Yar method, long before Hitler. Jews were brought in groups and murdered on the brink of a ravine that was to be their mass grave. By Muhammad’s desire, expressed on his deathbed, Jews cannot settle in Arabia, which had been their home for centuries. The same rule, incidentally, was introduced by the British for Jewish immigration to the part of the Land of Israel they decided to call Trans-Jordan (later shortened to Jordan), assisting Hitler in murdering Jews. This has since been the rule enacted by Jordanian rulers, who consider themselves Muhammad’s direct descendants. No wonder, as Muslims are bound to follow the Sunnah (the example) of the Prophet, as they have followed it in their barbaric conquests.

Muhammad’s revelations would come to him conveniently when he had to justify another crime of his, perversion, political expediency and, eventually, the social order he created to facilitate his autocracy. That divine order (the Islamic state is supposed to be perfect) collapsed immediately upon his death into the war between the followers of Muhammad’s daughter and her husband, Muhammad’s nephew Ali, and the supporters of Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha and her father the strongman Abu Bakr. The conflict was of the same type as the one between Anna Nicole Smith and her late husband’s children. Except that Aisha probably had a better claim to the spoils, as Muhammad “married” her when she was six and consummated that marriage when she was nine (the paragon for all humanity himself was over 50). The stakes also were much higher, and the two groups, respectively Shia and Sunni, have been killing each other since – just observe the endless slaughter in Iraq. Imagine how easy it is then for both to kill infidels.

By sword has been the way Islam has spread from the Arabian peninsula, brought under the Islamic yoke by Muhammad by the time he died in 632, to North Africa, to a large part of Asia, and – for a long time – some parts of Europe. Nowadays, helped by the boundless tolerance of Western democracies to everything they perceive as underdog, the Islamic violent takeover, still in full force with a weaker adversary as in Sudan, is supplemented by unstoppable Islamic immigration and the ensuing demographic and political changes in the world of the infidels – Crusaders and Jews. This perceived underdog position of the 1.3 billion-strong umma sitting on the oil treasure of the world has served the dual function of lulling the Western societies into deafness to Islam’s inhuman teachings while raising Muslims’ anger at their “humiliation,” which the true believers perceive as any state in which Islam is not über alles, superior. Naturally, Islamic immigration has no intention of assimilation – quite the opposite, its leaders have overt plans of (gradual) government change.

Muslims have no right to befriend Christians or Jews (Koran 5:51), let alone non-monotheists. They believe Jews are cursed by Allah (Koran 5:64) – because of the Jewish beliefs that are nowhere to be found except in Islamic teachings. They believe that Christians and Jews are to either convert to Islam, or keep their faith but assume a subhuman dhimmi position in the society under what is called “protected status” (of the kind of mafia protection), or die if they violate these conditions. Non-monotheists have no choice but to convert or die. Whether to offer a choice or not is under Muslims’ discretion. There is no choice as to who will eventually rule the world, currently divided into Dar al-Islam, the realm of Islam, and Dar al-Harb, the realm of war. Democracy, with its freedoms and human-made laws, is incompatible with Islam. Adding free elections to Islamic ideology as an attempt to introduce democracy is less meaningful than holding free elections in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Freedom does not necessarily create good neighbors – not when a neighbor is a criminal.

Whereas Islam is thus first and foremost a political doctrine and movement, the “religious” facet of Islam adds to the picture not merely the neutralization of the instinct of self-preservation but indeed its reversal. The brain-washed Muslim suicidal murderers perceive their certain demise not as death but as the virtually only way to ensure their staying alive (and well in Paradise). They are also convinced that they do a great favor to those Muslims who unintentionally get killed in a terror act because those are supposed to attain similar benefits. Most importantly, this eternal life is contrasted not with death, but with the almost certain alternative of their ending up in Hell, which is described in great detail in the Koran and the Sunnah, leaving little to imagination. Hell is virtually unavoidable for a believing Muslim, unless he is committed to jihad. Therefore, both negative and positive reinforcements are employed in the Islamic indoctrination, which has shown a great efficiency with a large number of people – not only when they receive it from their childhood, but – tellingly – with new converts as well. The usual straw-man counter-argument that only a small proportion of Muslims are in this altered state of consciousness is clearly invalid because there is no need for more than a minute proportion of 1.3 billion Muslims, properly educated and armed, to achieve a catastrophic effect. It is true, as human rights defenders in the US declare, that it is bad in general to discriminate in accordance with faith. It is not true, however, when the faith includes the current and actively enacted mainstream notions of human sacrifice and the subjugation or extermination of the other faiths. However highly developed the Aztec civilization was, had it survived till now, its bloody rituals would be forbidden, and if they were an inseparable part of the Aztec religion, it would be categorized into cult and banned. Islam, the ideology whose followers, led by Muhammad’s example, rape, enslave, behead unarmed civilians, execute “blasphemers,” and commit mass murder of children, thrives. The concept of Islam as a monotheistic religion serves this political ideology to protect it from the eradication that would certainly be in the cards for it due to its fascist and violent character. This religious mimicry, first used by Muhammad for ennobling, nay, sacralizing his morbid desires and immunizing himself from human critique, is still employed for the same purpose and perfected by Muslim spokespeople.

It is uncanny how the ongoing events resemble the pre-WWII layout. Russia, jealous of what it perceives to be the imperial position of the US, is playing, again thinking that it will gain dominance through pitting today’s Nazis against the West. France, true to its colors, stubs its allies in the back and is trying to appease the enemy. The rest of Europe keeps silence, thinking that if it keeps its head low, it will keep it – with profit. Antisemitism, reinforced by anti-Israelism, is as rampant around the world as in 1930’s, if not more. The left intelligentsia, ignorant in the matter as usual, but omniscient regardless by default, supports a totalitarian ideology – as long as that claims to fight for the “insulted and humiliated.”

Despite all experience with Nazism, the world has yet to grasp that violent ideology can only be fought as an infectious disease: by correctly identifying the agent, and by stopping its propagation by eliminating it and/or raising immunity against it - not by trying to appease it. Translated into the situation with Islam, that would mean first and foremost neutralizing those who spread the violent ideology - imams, mullahs and sheikhs, whose almost uniform obesity and penchant for hoarding female resources suggest that they themselves are not in a hurry to see the huris. This gives a strong hope that they can be persuaded to relay to their flock that jihad is about learning the multiplication table, brushing teeth and doing good deeds rather then cutting infidel throats, as the believers are used to erroneously think. Ataturk knew that well enough to deal with mullahs and employ healthy anti-Islam safeguards that have survived and protected Turkey till now as a relatively modern and open country, despite all its mosques and muezzins [again, this was written in 2006]. This is what should have been done in Iraq, instead of allowing its post-Saddam constitution to be based on the Koran - which is a bit like if Germany were allowed to use Mein Kampf for the same purpose after WWII.

“War on terror” may be a convenient shorthand. It is politically correct, but is as senseless as would be a war on guns or tanks, because terror is only a tool of war. The war that has been conducted by Islam, with variable intensity, against Dar al-Harb. Now is the first time, however, when the means of waging a truly decisive jihad have become available. Unless the complacent Western world learns from past lessons, it will be taught new apocalyptic ones, already under preparation by true believers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and wherever there is a mosque with a properly thinking imam. One who knows that

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews. (Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985; also Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6981-6984; and Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 176-179, 56: 791).

If you are a good Muslim, you must follow the Sunnah. I doubt there are so many Gharqad trees around.