Friday, July 01, 2005

More Russian aggression

Jamie Glazov "moderates" a Muslim participant into a coma in his latest symposium at Frontpagemag today: Muslims in France: a ticking time bomb?

FP (Glazov): Sorry gentlemen, my eyes are starting to glaze over.

When organizing this symposium, I thought about the term “ticking time bomb” and thought it was a given that it referred to the growth of the Muslim population in France and the dangers it poses. There is an obvious Islamist component here. Within this whole phenomenon lies a clear threat to democracy, freedom, individual rights (of Muslims and non-Muslims) in France, not to mention the rise of extremism and terror etc. As this discussion proceeds, it appears that several members on this panel believe that the ticking time bomb is the potential response that some French citizens might engage in to Islamist terror and extremism. In other words, Islamist terror and extremism is not the problem, but the response that might be made to it.

Obviously we need to avoid alienating Muslims. It is clear we need to try to nurture a moderate Islam and to ally ourselves with Muslims who seek to modernize and democratize Islam. But to pretend that the threat to France posed by Islamism has nothing to do with the growth of the Muslim presence in France is mind-boggling.

The reminder to us that a fanatical Jew killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is an absurd distraction to this conversation. Sorry, I think the last thing the victims of Islam’s gender apartheid, and all the victims of Islamist terror, worry about at night are fanatical Jews. The homosexual Palestinians that flee to Israel to avoid their death sentences under PA culture for being gay, I assure you, do not live their lives in dread worrying about fanatical Jews. And trust me, when I go to sleep at night and worry about the world’s safety and future, I think about things like 9/11, about Tehran’s Mullahs having nuclear weapons, about Zarqawi and Bin Laden getting their hands on WMDs. The threat of fanatical Jews, I am afraid, does not loom large in my fears at night.

The point about the Holocaust being “perpetrated by refined Christians” is a crock and the people who utter it know it is a crock. The Holocaust was not perpetrated for a Christian reason. It was not perpetrated by Christians acting out of loyalty to their faith and following their religious texts. The Holocaust’s evil was not perpetrated and legitimized, step by step, by references to verses from the New Testament. The Holocaust was the ultimate anti-Christian act that might have been committed by some people who happened to be Christian but who were violating the basic tenets of their religion. You cannot find anything in the New Testament that serves as a foundation for the legitimacy of the Holocaust nor can you find a reference to anything even close to justifying the acts used in carrying it out. And I am not going to waste my time here going over how Islamist terror finds its roots in Muslim texts. Go read Robert Spencer’s Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West.

Do we support Muslims who want to reform Islam and democratize it and make it a religion of peace? Yes. Can we deny that when Osama and al Zarqawi refer to Surahs in the Koran to justify their violent acts that they are referring to real Surahs? No. The Muslim community is as diverse as any other group, culture and community? Please. When there are Muslim women from the Muslim world freely competing in sports and in the Olympics, get in touch with me. When they are free to become rominent intellectuals and critics in their own society and receive material and ultural rewards for being prominent dissidents, get in touch with me. When they are free, if they so choose, to engage in Muslim beauty pageants, get in touch with me. When Muslims throughout the Arab world start creating the most hilarious self-critical stand-up comedy routines, get in touch with me. When Muslims create heated and controversial talk shows, books and films, where free opinions startle and provoke thought on all limits, and the creators are not hiding in desperate fear of their lives, get in touch with me.

Again, is there a fight happening for the soul of Islam? Yes. Must we support Muslims, like groups such as The Free Muslims Against Terrorism? Yes. But please spare me the absurdity of the Muslim community being as "diverse" as any other community. When Jews and Christians rise in its ranks and become members of it on many levels and realms, like Muslims have done in the West, get in touch with me. In the old Islamic empires, Jews and Christians who attained political influence were often the target of violence and resentment by Muslims. Today, Christians like Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, have risen in power only in states where Islamic law has been set aside.

When you can name me ten fatwas, off the top of your head, made by ten famous Muslim clerics against bin Laden within this “diverse” community, get in touch with me. Yes, of course these fatwas exist, but why are they so few in number and what effect have they had on widespread support for Islamic terrorists within the Islamic community worldwide? Does this not say something about "diversity" in the Muslim community.

Kindly also spare us the nonsense about the Islamic “tolerance” that was practised in medieval Spain. Newsflash: it never happened. Robert Spencer has meticulously delegitimized this myth in his Ch. 7, “The Modern Myth of Islamic Tolerance,” in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

In any case, Dr. Ibn Guadi? Sorry, it’s getting a bit hot in here.

Ibn Guadi ("an Islamologist at Strasbourg University and a researcher in Semitic Philology. He is a contributor to Figaro, Le Point and other journals. He has lectured at the Theological Seminary of Montpellier (France) in Islamic Law and Islamic Warfare during the Abbasside empire at Fez (Morocco) and has taught Persian, Arabic, Sumerian and other Semitic languages in Switzerland"): "I see."

I see.

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