The pretty sounds of Islam

Defending Islam is a job that is dark but far from lonely. While the whole world observes if not feels the effects of Islam daily - in the continuous warfare Islam wages against it, - apologists of Islam are legion. Moreover, the intended audience for Islamic propaganda is generally quite willing to accept it, happily providing it with high pulpits of the leading newspapers and magazines, and amplifying that propaganda with its own progressive and "tolerant" scholarly commentary. This is understandable - after all, if the world refused to deal with terror-producing Muslim countries, it would have to also refuse another product of theirs, without which it simply cannot survive. Oil, you know. Then there is so-called religious tolerance , which is a definitive sign of civilization and progress. Because Islam is known as a religion, it is immune from the just criticism and accusations that could target its very existence. Thus Muslim propaganda dutifully continues to be fed to the "well-informed" Western audience, which then builds its political sympathies on this information platform. Meanwhile, politicians that are drawn from the same progressive and educated audience know that it's best for them to be in tune with their constituency, and increasingly are on the side of Islam. We now have a US president who, having received Muslim education during his formative childhood years, refers to the call to Muslim prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset”. Perhaps it is worth remembering that this sound contains the same words as heard by Danny Pearl and others who shared his fate, before they were beheaded by other lovers of that sound, - "Allahu Akbar!" and the statement of acceptance of Muhammad as the Apostle of Allah. Barack Obama recites those words perfectly and knows their meaning well. It does not matter to what political orientation the willing or inadvertent propagandists of Islam belong - whether it's George "the Religion of Peace" W. Bush or the naive leftist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times - as long as the job is done, by omission or commission. 

The printed word from the sources accepted as serious and progressive, such as The New York Times, is perceived by the "educated" public like Pravda was by faithful Communists in the Soviet Union - unquestioningly, immediately becoming part of the foundational axiom. Our omniscient intelligentsia like to think of themselves as independent but follow the media's call like Pied Piper's - pick yourself the appropriate group of his listeners. Both their ignorance about Islam and disinformation are used by the Muslim propagandists. In this disinformation, the apologists of Islam employ deceptive cliches that, thanks to the progressive media, never get tired. Recently I wrote about one that was used by the Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison. To counter Bill Maher's characterization of the Koran as a "hate-filled book" (forward the video to 2:26), Ellison quoted a wonderful passage from that book, "anyone who takes the life, it's as if he killed the whole world" (Koran 5:32). What he failed to say, of course, was that the Koran gives that passage only as a quote from what the Jews were "decreed", nowhere indicating that this decree pertains to the Muslims. The Koran mentions this decree only to accuse the Jews of violating it, among their other transgressions ("And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors"), to justify the Koranic hate toward the Jews, unambiguous and lethal. It is remarkable that hardly any other Koranic quote is usually given to illustrate Islam's pacifism - so hard is it to find expressions of tolerance in the "religion of peace". One possible and oft-repeated exception is "There is no compulsion in religion", which is quoted without mentioning, of course, that it was abrogated by verses like "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). The journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, kidnapped and forced to convert under pain of death, can testify to the veracity of "no compulsion".

No wonder that the same Jewish decree, lifted by Muhammad from somebody familiar with the Talmud, was cited by the 9/11 mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in his recent article, in which he tries to bring the reader to understanding that Islam is just another Abrahamic religion. That decree, having nothing to do with Islam and negated by the whole history of Muslim conquest, is the only support he could muster to his "fact ... that true adherence to Islam at its essence is as peaceful as true adherence to Christianity". These propagandist lies were published by another beacon of the Western capitalist freedom - The Wall Street Journal, which could not stay behind the progress. Now that we know what "true" adherence to Islam is, we only need to enlighten the miriad of Muslim clerics of the highest authority who swear by violent jihad as the primary virtue of a Muslim. Rauf has as much right to call Islam "Abrahamic" as a thief who stole an heirloom to claim his membership in the family he robbed. Muhammad used the Biblical names he learned from Jews and Christians who had lived in Arabia before he mass-murdered and expelled them. Pathetically plagiarizing the Scriptures while accusing the Jews and Christians in intentionally perverting Allah's word (Koran 5:13-15, 41), he distorted the meaning of and relations between those names, conflating Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the wife of Moses, and Haman with pharaoh. In contrast to the Pentateuch, the Koran never names Abraham's son in the sacrifice story, which results in the Muslims' belief that it was Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, not Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews. Islam's founder and "perfect man" whose example is to be followed, Muhammad could do no wrong - whether he "married" a 6 year-old girl (Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64), murdered his critics, ordered genocide of the Jews, or reneged on treaties at a concocted pretext. 

As for Islam being a religion, it is telling how imam Rauf describes himself in the article's footnote as "the founder of Cordoba Initiative, an independent, multifaith and multinational project that works to improve Muslim-West relations." Usually, in expressions like that "Muslim-West", a certain symmetry is implied: "Jewish-Christian", "capitalist-communist", "East-West". The "West", to be sure, is not a religion - but so is "Muslim", a totalitarian political ideology counter to the "West" democracy, with the goal of making Muslim both the West and the East, conquering Rome of the West as it did Rome of the East, Constantinople, reconquering Cordoba and Andalus, killing and subjugating the disbelievers - truly a "multinational" project. "True adherence to Islam", Rauf says, "would end terrorist attacks" - and he is right. Of course it would, as that true adherence, from the Muslim standpoint, is when the entire world adheres, and terrorism is needed no longer. When everybody hears the call to Muslim prayer as pretty, and the sounds of other faiths are heard no more, as they are in Saudi Arabia, the land of Allah's Apostle. 

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.

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.

"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.