Author: Yashiko Sagamori
Publication: IsraelNationalNews
Date: March 17, 2004
URL: www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3461
Primitive tribes offer sacrifices
hoping to mollify whatever nonexistent beings they believe in. New York
Times columnist Paul Krugman seems to belong to a very sophisticated tribe
that, according to the recently retired Malaysian Prime Minister, rules
the world by proxy. One would think Mr. Krugman should be above such crude
superstitions. Nevertheless, in his column on October 21, he suggests that
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should fire General Boykin in order to mollify
moderate Muslims.
General Boykin, the leading anti-terror
expert at the Pentagon and a devout Christian, had openly and publicly,
on several occasions, expressed his personal opinion of Islam, which happens
to be rather low. Considering where the terror is coming from, this is
far less surprising than Mr. Krugman's eagerness to sacrifice both General
Boykin and the First Amendment in order to mollify moderate Muslims. I'd
like to ask Mr. Krugman what gives him reason to believe that the beings
he is trying to mollify actually exist.
The official, politically correct
point of view says that Islam is just another monotheistic religion, not
that different from Judaism or Christianity. If that is true, then moderate
Muslims must exist, just like moderate members of other faiths. However,
moderate members of other faiths do not require sacrificial mollification
- that's basically how we tell moderates from extremists. Therefore, either
moderate Muslims are mythical creatures, or we need substantially different
criteria to identify them. That dilemma alone should make us suspicious
as to whether Islam is "just another religion". Obviously, it is important
that we determine how a moderate Muslim can be distinguished from a Muslim
extremist.
Why not ask Muslims themselves?
Irshad Manji, a young Canadian author, has published a book titled "The
Trouble With Islam." Since we don't hear too many Muslim voices criticizing
their religion, her book deserves our attention. This is what the author
herself says on her promotional website
(http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/the_book_index.html):
"I appreciate that every faith has
its share of literalists. Christians have their Evangelicals. Jews have
the ultra- Orthodox. For God's sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists.
But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam the literalism is
mainstream."
Apparently, the terms "literalism"
and "fundamentalism" in the quotation above are used interchangeably, as
synonyms of religious extremism. Unfortunately, the author fails to mention
the most important difference between "literalists" in Islam and other
religions. Evangelical Christians may believe that heaven is reserved for
them alone. Ultra- Orthodox Jews may display intimate understanding of
the murkiest places in the Talmud. I have no idea what extreme fundamentalist
Buddhists do that sets them apart from their moderate coreligionists. What
I do know however is that no religion except Islam pursues the idea of
physical extermination of those who believe differently. The concept of
holy war is unique to Islam. Jihad is the absolute monopoly of Muslims.
There is no parallel to it in any other religion in the world (Yes, I have
heard about Crusades, but Christianity does not mandate them, and do you
know when the last Crusade ended?).
So, here we have it in plain English,
as simple as A, B, C:
A. According to the Koran, holy
war against the infidels is a sacred duty of every Muslim.
B. According to Ms. Manji, mainstream
Muslims interpret Koran literally.
The conclusion is inevitable:
C. Mainstream Muslims perceive war
against the infidels - meaning you and me - as their sacred duty.
Once you understand that, you don't
need books to explain to you what exactly the trouble with Islam is. The
trouble with Islam derives from the fact that mainstream Islam openly calls
for murder of all infidels. That's why Islam is not "just another religion".
That's what, in my view, allows to classify all its followers as extremist.
What then, besides our stubborn,
groundless faith in the general goodness of our fellow human beings, leads
us to believe that moderate Muslims are not just a figment of our imagination?
How do they manifest themselves in the real world?
It would be utterly useless to look
for them in Gaza, Judea, or Samaria. Unlike bin Laden, terrorists occupying
Israeli lands do not live in caves. They live in small towns, villages,
and crowded refugee camps where everyone knows everything about everyone
else. They couldn't survive for a day without popular support. When someone
gives them a reason to doubt the sincerity of his support, they label him
a collaborator and murder him on the spot. Indeed, the PA- sponsored educational
system guarantees that innocent children are indoctrinated in the most
murderous variety of Islamic extremism - thereby losing their innocence
- at the earliest possible age. Therefore, in Israel, a moderate Muslim
is a dead Muslim, which is bad news for those who want us to believe that
there is a peaceful solution to the continuing Arab war against Israel.
Let's look elsewhere. Afghanistan,
liberated by the United States from the medieval tyranny of the Taliban
is about to publish the draft of its first constitution. Their new constitution
is going to be firmly based on Islamic principles. The country itself is
soon to be renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. We wouldn't call
a Jew or a Christian who wanted his religion to become the basis of his
country's constitution a moderate, would we? Here, in the United States,
we value the separation of church from state so much that we launch court
battles to remove the Ten Commandments and every reference to God from
everything that is even remotely related to the government. If Islam is
"just another religion", shouldn't the same criteria apply to Muslim countries?
And if the same criteria do apply, we have to conclude that President Karzai
installed in Afghanistan by the American military and unable to survive
now or in the foreseeable future without the American military presence,
is not a moderate Muslim, but an outright religious extremist. His "Very
correct" remark to Mahadir's call for the extermination of Jews shows that
he is a political extremist as well. Therefore, the only practical question
regarding Afghanistan is why did the United States have to waste lives
of its soldiers and tens of billions of dollars in order to replace one
bunch of Muslim extremists with another? It might have been worthwhile
had it improved our security at home, but, as we know, that didn't happen.
Therefore, we have to conclude that the United States has once again won
a battle but lost the war. The same will inevitably happen in Iraq.
The desperate search for moderate
Muslims goes all around the world. It is especially urgent in Europe, whose
face is being irreversibly altered by mass immigration from Islamic countries.
Recently, the British government appealed to the growing British Muslim
community to isolate extremists in their midst. It's not hard to predict
the response. Actually, there will be no response, because everyone in
any Muslim community is an extremist. Such is the nature of Islam, and
the only thing that I find hard to comprehend is the self-imposed blindness
of the British government. Apparently, such is the price of liberalism
and political correctness. Bye-bye, Europe. We are next.
I don't think World War II could
be won if the Allies, instead of eradicating Nazism, attempted to replace
Nazi extremists with moderate Nazis. Actually, nobody was looking for moderate
Nazis during World War II. But those were simpler, purer times. Today,
the mythical moderate Muslim remains the focal point of the US foreign
policy in the Middle East. The blind faith in his existence has already
led the United States to many monumental failures, and many more are to
be expected in the future. Meanwhile, the moderate Muslim, along with the
Big Foot, the unicorn, and the Loch Ness monster, remains more elusive
than a cure for cancer. There is at least a theoretical possibility that
a cure for cancer can be found one day, unless of course Islam takes over
and drags us all down into its own endless Dark Ages.
