Someone has had to sayall this for a long time. The Westcreated Western civilization from the Roman idea of citizenship and from Christianethical thinking all brought into modernity through the egalitarianism of theEnlightenment. The East created two civilizationsinformed by Buddhism particularly.
Islam grabbed pieces of thecivilized world and imposed a code of barbarian law over its preexisting partswhile imposing an anti rational religious structure that flies in the face of modernismand actively seeks to destroy just that. It says much for common humanity that much of the Muslim world has foundways to preserve the ways of civilized man in the face of this. Allowed freedom of religion, Islam will soontransform itself into a very different ethos.
The world’s citizens areengaged with Islam, like no other religion and it is not an engagement fromwhich Islam can hope to prosper. Everyhate filled diatribe may encourage a few hundred believers, but in the world ofmodern communications, thousands learn to reject Islam.
In many regards, Islamis visibly faltering. The alignment ofradical Islam with political power that has proceeded for centuries is notunnoticed and is strengthening the resolve of anti Islamic forces whosestrength is waxing. Picking up the swordwill bring the sword down on your own head.
Every Islamic barbarism producesa million anti converts to Islam.
How to Make Islam Respectable
Posted By MarkTapson On December 26, 2010 @ 11:00 am In Email,Feature,IslamicGroups in the U.S.,Middle East,Radical Islam,Religion,Terrorism (Islamic),TheConcession Stand,Top Twenty,War on Terror
Regardless of whetherone subscribes to the notion of a clashof civilizations, I think we can all agree that relations between “theIslamic world” and “the West,” however one defines those labels, are, well, strained. President Obama was electedat least partly because, with childhood roots in Muslim Indonesia and anArabic middle name no one was allowed to mention until after the election,the Left believed him to be the perfect candidate to heal that rift. When hewasn’t healing the racial divide, America
So right out of thegate, Obama made his first order of business anappearance on al-Arabiya TV, in which he made seven references to“respecting” the Muslim world, his flashing neon semaphore to them that he wasno imperialist exploiter like his predecessor (DanielPipes notes here how common a motif the word “respect” was for Obama,ironically so for a man who commands none either at home or abroad). Then itwas on to aself-important speech from Cairo, in which Obama flattered the Islamicworld so effusively that one wondered if he was angling to ask it to the prom.And of course, who can forget hisshow of contemptible dhimmitude – I mean deep respect – to the SaudiKing?
His effortshaven’t exactly mellowed the clash of civilizations into a Kumbiya campfirecircle. And yet Obama was at least theoretically on the right track. Because arecent poll by the new Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre reports that a largemajority of Muslims say that the best way for the West to improve relationswith them is to “respect Islam.” But the West has made every effort at “Muslimoutreach” and bent over backwards to make social and cultural concessions toits Muslim citizens. President Bush himself expressed a distasteful degree ofdeference toward Islam, and Obama far surpassed even that; so how much morerespect will it take to make the Muslim world feel sufficiently respected?
The issue needs to bereframed. Since even our most gushing genuflection seems to have accomplishednothing except to incite further expectations of respect, it’s time for theWest to take charge of this dialogue on our terms. We in the West – apart from Obama and hissycophants – are accustomed to the understanding that respect cannot simply beexpected, much less demanded; it has to be earned. So now the question becomes, what must that majority ofMuslims who want respect for their religion do to earn it? How can they maketheir religion, well, more respectable?
What follows are tensuggestions (some of which mirror Robert Spencer’s fiveways to end Islamophobia) for those Muslims cited in the Gallup poll totake to heart – those who, like Rodney Dangerfield, lament that they can’t getno respect.
Let’s get the mostobvious one out of the way first. If Muslims are tired of having the words“Muslim” and “terrorist” linked (on those rare occasions when our leaders andmedia actually do linkthem), a painfully obvious solution leaps to mind: stop committing acts ofterrorism in the name of Allah and his prophet.
Ending atrocitiesagainst innocents and non-combatants (as we define them, not as the Islamists define them), andstriving to actually live up to Islam’s Religion ofPeace™ label, would be a nice good-faith gesture to lay thegroundwork for better relations with the West. It’s certainly the most urgentstep to take, and the most necessary – without it, none of my subsequentsuggestions will matter.
For Muslims who already are not plotting orcommitting acts of terrorism, confront your co-religionists who are and nip them in the bud.After all, as it’s often pointed out, they constitute a TME – Tiny Minority ofExtremists™ - that should easily be overwhelmed by the moderates’ superiornumbers. At the very least, report the TME to the authorities…
… Whichbrings us to number nine: The police are your (and our) friends.
9. Cooperate to the fullest with law enforcement to root out theterrorists in your midst.
9. Cooperate to the fullest with law enforcement to root out theterrorists in your midst.
A New York Times article lastweek noted that Rep. Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman ofthe House Homeland Security Committee, intended to look into a lack ofcooperation in terror investigations:
When I meet with lawenforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they getfrom Muslim leaders.
He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, arrested lastyear for plotting to bomb the New York Queens imam hadtipped off Zazi that he was the target of a terror investigation.
Salam al-Marayati,the executive director of MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council*,“expressed deep concern” that [King] basically wants to treat theMuslim-American community as a suspect community.
I’m sorry to breakthis news to Mr. Marayati, but the Muslim-American community is suspect – not because ofbigotry or Islamophobia, but because the terrorists and radicals in itsmidst have made it so.Resisting cooperation with law enforcement naturally lends even more weight tothat suspicion. It doesn’t help when Muslim community leaderscry “civil rights violations” while claiming that people like King are underminingthe relationship that Muslim leaders had sought to build with law enforcementofficials around the country.
Relationship? Lawenforcement officials nationwide are complaining that there isn’t one. Short ofinfiltration, which Muslim leaders also oppose, lawenforcement has no way of knowing what radical activities may or may not begoing on inside the mosques. And that brings us to our next recommendation…
*Check out theInvestigative Project on Terrorism’s devastating piece about MPAC’sunfitness to serve as a liaison with law enforcement.
8. De-radicalize your mosques
Estimatesare that upwards of 80% of all mosques in the United States
Now former IranianRevolutionary Guard RezaKhalili reports that Iran is using mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Europe and the U.S.
They recruit, theytrain, they sell the ideology of martyrdom, and many, many are guided andconnected to terrorist groups.
There is no surprisein this, except for those Westerners who buy the politically correct line thatmosques are benign houses of worship that are never used for any nefariouspurposes. In reality, mosques have been used to preach hatred;to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house abomb factory; to storeweapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in theUnited States) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions;to fireon American troops; to fire uponIndian troops; or to trainjihadists.
If Muslims don’t wanttheir mosques infiltrated or investigated by non-Muslim law enforcement, thenit’s up to them to clean house and rid themselves of the elements –including the imams themselves – who might be fomenting and plottingsubversion, hatred, and terror.
Seditious
7. Start respecting the rights of women
One of the West’sbigger bones to pick with the Muslim world is the latter’s (mis)treatment ofwomen, which rockstarscholar Reza Aslan angrilyinsists is a non-issue:
If you’re somehowarguing that Islam has a different conception of women in society than Europe does, it’s just wrong.
Women such as AyaanHirsi Ali and my friends BrigitteGabriel and Nonie Darwish beg to differ.* Here is how Nonie’smust-read book Crueland Usual Punishment begins:
For the first thirtyyears of my life, I lived as a virtual slave. I was a bird in a cage; asecond-class citizen who had to watch what I said even to my close friends.Under Islamic law I had to live in a gender-segregated environment and alwaysbe aware that the legal and social penalty for “sin” could end my life. This iswhat it is to live as a woman under Sharia law.
Last week itwas reported that each year an estimated 600,000 lashes are dealt towomen in the sharia wonderland known as the Sudan
The Commission membershave orders to tell any women in public to cover up her face if they find thather eyes are seditious.
Ah, seditiouseyes – potentially more threatening than seditious bare ankles, although theCommission doesn’t explain what constitutes “seditious.” No word either on howthe Commission feels about “BetteDavis Eyes.”
* Not that Aslan willlisten. In 2009 Iattended an event at which Aslan was speaking, and Nonie Darwish rosein the audience to challenge him about the condition of women under sharia.After conceding one small point, he said, “Everything else you said is wrong” –and turned away from her, ending their discussion.
6. Start reciprocating religious tolerance
There is no morereligiously tolerant country in history than the contemporary United States
By stark contrast, noBibles, churches, temples or synagogues are allowed on the Arabian peninsula , the home of Islam. Non-Muslims are not even allowed in Mecca
Then there is theviolent persecution of non-Muslims. My friend Mark Durie, the brilliant scholarof Islam, notes in his TheThird Choice that
The human rightssituation of Christians in many Muslim countries has been getting steadilyworse over the past half-century. This deterioration has been directly linkedto the worldwide Islamic revival and reinstatement of sharia law.
A reportlast month at the Hudson New York think tank states that
Christians in Arabcountries are no longer being persecuted; they are now being slaughtered anddriven out of their homes and lands.
And then, of course,there’s the Koran-mandatedJew-hatred and Muhammad’scommand of death for those who leave Islam.
Muslims want us torespect Islam? End the persecution of non-Muslims, reciprocate religioustolerance, and abolish the death penalty for “apostasy.” Then we’ll talk.
5. Updateyour penal code from “medieval.”
While our own legalsystem has a far-from-perfect record of dispensing justice, and punishment canbe harsh (that’s why it’s called “punishment”), sharia is the very definitionof draconian. This “cruel and usual punishment,” as Ms. Darwish calls it, includeslashings for drinking alcohol, amputations for thievery, beheadings for moreserious crimes, being hanged or thrown from a roof for homosexuality, and – thereal gem in sharia’s crown – the stoning of adulterers.
This last method ofexecution requires that the stones used be neither too small to do seriousdamage nor large enough to cause a quick death. So it’s clear that the ordealis intended to be as excruciating and prolonged as possible.
Say what you willabout our own electric chairs and firing squads, which we’ve largely abandonedin our search for the most humane method of execution (itself reserved for onlythe most heinous of crimes); sharia’s punishments are characterized bybarbarism. News flash: barbarity doesn’t generate respect.
4. Let thewhole cartoon thing go.
Speaking of barbarity…
This would seem to bea no-brainer, but apparently it bears explaining: “taking offense” isnot a license for frenzied rioting, murder and mayhem. The mostnotable example is the worldwiderage over a set of cartoons published years ago in a Danish newspaper,which no one outside of that tiny country would have seen if not for thecartoons’ shrewd distribution by Islamists themselves eager to unite theummah, the worldwide Muslim community, against the blasphemous West. Thatmurderous outrage is ongoing: Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was recently setupon in his home by a Muslim attacker seeking vengeance.
Similar, more recentexamples include the threats to kill the South Park creators for theirtame, satirical, animated take on that samehypersensitive hysteria, and the death fatwa issued against cartoonistMolly Norris, whohas since “gone ghost” in fear for her life. Not tomention the death threats, explicit or implied, over innumerableother things that offend many Muslims.
Apologists liketo point out that many Muslims take disrespect toward Islam,Allah, and his prophet very seriously, and they suggest we tiptoe respectfullyaround that religious sensibility. I would like to point out that suchapologists are cowards, appeasers, and religious hypocrites, and remind themthat violent lunacy is not deserving of respect. And this segues intosuggestion number three…
3. Stop trying to curtail our free speech and tocriminalize Islamophobia.
From the Salman Rushdie affair to Molly Norris’ sad vanishing, the list ofIslamist assaults on our precious freedom of speech is far too long to dojustice to here. And the West has too often responded not with firm resistance,but by preemptively censoringitself: witness Random House rescindingits offer to publish The Jewel ofMedina, a novel that an academic warned might outrage Muslims, orthe YaleUniversity Press publishing a book about the Danish cartoons that will not include the cartoons themselves.
Islamists know thatthe key to winning the war of ideas against the West is to keep hammering awayat our freedom of speech – our right and our ability to critique and denounce atotalitarian ideology that is hell-bent on bringing the West under its heel.Criminalizing blasphemy, defamation of religion, “Islamophobia” and the likewill put us at a mortal disadvantage. Indeed, the world’s largest Islamicassembly, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has made thecriminalization of religious defamation, specifically “Islamophobia,” its number one priority – and Obamahas sent a sympathetic envoy to that party to help them achieveit.
To earn our respectand the beginning of trust, you must embrace, not threaten, our freedoms andour values.
2. Stop letting the Muslim Brotherhood speak foryou.
For decades now, the MuslimBrotherhood has shrewdly worked to establish its subversive presencein America
Maddeningly, ourgovernment, law enforcement, and media have taken the bait and embraced thesegroups unquestioningly – blindly engaging an enemy that seeks the “eliminationof Western civilization,” as an internal Brotherhood documentproclaims. Such Islamist groups completely control this country’s dialoguewith our Muslim citizens.
Americans havebeen asking since 9/11/01:
Where are the moderateMuslims? Why have they not risen up en masse to show that they stand with usagainst the extremists?
For Muslims to earnthe respect of the West, those moderates in America and around the world mustprove first that they exist –by uniting, organizing, promoting themselves not only to the media andgovernment but to the public, and fearlesslyconfronting the deeply-rooted network of Brotherhood groups. They must speak out forcefully inunqualified solidarity with the West against theirco-religionists’ terrorism and stealth agenda.
1. Start taking responsibility for your owndestiny instead of blaming the West
In contrast to Westernnotions of self-reliance and free will, the Arab world suffers from what HughFitzgerald calls an “Islam-inculcated inshallah-fatalism”characterized by the habitual mantra “Inshallah,” or “If God wills it,” used inreference to virtually every action. As Fitzgerald writes,
Why try very hardwhen, in the end, every fiber in your individual or collective being tells youthat, in the end, it’s all up to Allah, and he will intervene, quiteinexplicably and suddenly, whenever he wants?
This is fatal tocultural, technological, scientific, economic, and spiritual development.Without the culturally ingrained confidence that human beings can, throughtheir own decisions and choices, impact the external world and to a largeextent steer their own destinies, a people is doomed to stagnation, jealousy,and parasitism, and tends to look outside themselves to affix blame.
To earn the West’srespect, such Muslims must stop shrugging “inshallah” about all things greatand small, stop laying the blame for their conditions on conspiracy theories ofWestern imperialism and thievery, and actively take responsibility for abetter future and a peaceful, shared destiny with the West.
Article printed fromNewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com
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