From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 15 Nov 2002 - 21:01:23 GMT
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/11/13/
3dd1fc5c8d868
Column: Opposition to hate should cut both ways{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="}
Bala Ambati (Sweep of Daylight)
November 13, 2002
Jerry Falwell is a bigot and idiot for calling the prophet
Mohammed a "terrorist." Such comments should be denounced
from every quarter. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council
on American-Islamic Relations said, "When it comes to hate,
silence equals consent." Hooper's statement is beautiful and
absolutely right. Yet CAIR and other Muslim-American
organizations are strangely mute when it comes to the diarrhea of
hate spewing from mosques and madrassahs all over the Middle
East.
Every Friday, imams and grand muftis at mosques in Yemen,
Qatar, Iraq, and even the holy mosque in Mecca, pray: "O God,
destroy the Jews, destroy the Christians, destroy the Hindus"; "O
God, the Jews and Crusaders are the filthy sons of pigs and
monkeys. Destroy the Jews who the Qu'ran describes as wicked";
"O God, destroy all disbelievers. O Muslims, rise up in jihad.
Terrorize the disbelievers in their homes"; "Jewish women are
yours to take, legitimately. Enslave them"; "Islam allows acts such
as the Bali attack." Arab newspapers proclaim that Jews eat the
blood of Muslim children for Purim and Passover, and TV
stations propagate the lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This hate reaches across the oceans.
In Greensboro on June 21 of this year, the Ameer of the Islamic
Center proclaimed, "Remember, you cannot appease the Jews
who run this country.... They will pursue and persecute you." On
60 Minutes, a Muslim high school student in Brooklyn declared
that if she "blew up a naval base, [she] would go to heaven."
Textbooks at the Islamic Saudi Academy near Washington teach
that it is "okay to hurt and steal from those who are kufr [non-
Muslim]" and that on Judgment Day, trees will say, "Oh Muslim,
oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and
kill him."
The co-founder of Global Relief, an Islamic "charity" in the
United States, declares that "financing jihad is part of Islam" and
that by targeting terrorist financing, the United States is "attacking
Islam." The executive director of the American Muslim Council
declared in front of the White House, "I support Hamas and
Hezbollah" (groups which have killed hundreds of Americans). In
London, al-Mujahiroun held a celebratory conference on Sept. 11
this year titled "A Towering Day in History." Forgetting the
disgusting pun, where is the outrage at this hate speech? Where is
the recognition that when it comes to root causes, this cancerous
venom is front and center? It is immoral to seek the protection of
the Constitution yet not stand up for its principles against those
who despise them. Indeed, when it comes to hate, silence equals
consent.
Make no mistake: Sept. 11, where men coveted murder over their
own lives, was a hate crime. The difference between Falwell and
the Middle East's bigoted imams is not their hate, but that Falwell
does not fund, call or inspire his followers to murder. Indeed,
since Sept. 11, Americans at all levels--from President George W.
Bush's visit to a mosque to Rudolph Giuliani's assigning police to
protect Islamic centers on the very evening of Sept. 11 to the
average citizen--have taken measures to prevent an anti-Muslim
backlash in an admirable display of tolerance. Sadly, this has not
been reciprocated in any substantial way by the Muslim-American
community.
While Muslim-Americans hold countless protests against Israel's
treatment of Palestinians, have they held a single one protesting
Osama bin Laden's treatment of Americans? Perfunctory
condemnations and pro forma condolences do not count; where is
the fervor, the rage against the mass murder of fellow Americans
as there is about treatment of Palestinians? Governments and
organizations from around the world took out full-page ads in the
New York Times condemning the terrorists in the weeks after
Sept. 11. Was there a single one from Muslim-American
organizations? While Bush was pounced on for using "crusade" to
describe defensive military action, Harvard's commencement
speaker disingenuously airbrushed away the call to violence
associated with "jihad," Muslim-American women sue Florida and
Illinois for the "right" to get a driver's license while being picture-
IDed with their veils on, but emit not a peep about Saudi women
not being allowed to drive.
Muslim-Americans rightly call for a dialogue on Islam, but
whenever anyone questions inflammatory verses in the Qu'ran
used by imams to inspire murder and justify targeting of civilians,
they are ignored, accused of bigotry or obfuscated by red herrings
like Timothy McVeigh and Baruch Goldstein. But McVeigh,
Goldstein, etc., are universally reviled within their communities,
whereas Osama bin Laden is cheered by media, mosques, and
madrassahs. More importantly Islamic fundamentalists cross
oceans to kill thousands, demonstrating both global ambition and
reach. Young men are continually brainwashed into mass-
murdering others by enticement of getting 72 celestial virgins. On
Sept. 11 not only Palestinians but Kuwaitis (even the information
minister) celebrated.
There is a large problem⬝not one or two crazies, but an
ideology with numerous sympathizers⬝Islamic fundamentalist
imperialism⬝that seeks to destroy Israel, shatter India, cripple
the United States and ultimately convert the whole world to a
perverse brand of Islam. The problem is not just terrorism but its
aims. It seems to me that it is not for Americans to decree what is
Islam and what it is not. The decision of what Islam is, whether it
will be defined by Islamic Jihad and its ilk, must be made by
Muslims, and it must be made by them assailing terrorist co-
religionists rather than those outside the religion who dare to
inject uncomfortable facts into the conversation.
And until moderate Muslims castrate these psychopaths as the
United States did to the KKK, make their preachers stop using sex
with celestial virgins to sell mass murder by suicide, preach to
young men that terrorism leads not to 72 virgins in heaven but one
72-year-old virgin in hell, that funding terrorism is neither
charitable nor Islamic and ultimately repudiate not only the
terrorist methods but the imperialist ideology of Islamic
fundamentalism, there is a huge problem for the civilized world.
For if moderate Muslims won't take out their own garbage, sadly
the militaries of democracies will have to.
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