Mark Steyn: There is no reason for Islam to moderate itself in a land that declares it worships only hockey and donuts
The other day I found myself on a panel with “Ibn Warraq,” the pseudonymous Muslim professor–or, as he sees himself, non-Muslim professor. Born in British India, raised in Pakistan, educated in Scotland and now resident in the United States, Professor Warraq has spent his whole life on the ever-moving frontier between Islam and the rest of the world. But, for all his scholarly research, he’d been asked by the organizer of the conference we were at to frame the issue in personal terms. So he said that awhile back he’d been in Mississauga visiting his niece. And, while they were talking, her children came into the kitchen and were eagerly anticipating a forthcoming hockey game between an American team and a Canadian team–presumably the Maple Leafs, though Professor Warraq is evidently not a great follower of the NHL. At any rate, the kids were excited about cheering for the Canadian team because, after all, they’re Canadians and they wanted their fellow Canadians to win.
And their mom rebuked them sharply: “You are not Canadian. You are Muslim.” Ibn had been depressed about this, as well he might be. There are many people who might say I am a Christian first and a Canadian (or American or Irishman) second and would regard it as entirely reasonable to place their obligation to the Almighty above their allegiance to the Queen. It would not prevent them being functioning members of a civil society. But the professor’s niece was demanding not that their Muslim identity supersede their Canadian identity but that it supplant it entirely.
Palestinian culture of child-abuse
Two more vivid examples of the depravity that is Palestinian culture:
These are the children of a people that hope and dream of peace?
The words of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir are even truer today than when she spoke them:
“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.â€
See also:
- LGF’s Palestinian Child Abuse slide-show
- Palestinian Media Watch Videos
Melanie Phillips: “To deny that it is a war which draws its authority from Islamic precepts is to deny the truth.”
People in Britain are shocked — shocked! — that medical doctors are suspected of involvement in the al Qaeda terrorist attacks on Britain over the past few days. The shock reflects the deep unreality of public discourse up till now. People have persisted in believing that Islamic terrorism could be explained by poverty, deprivation, alienation and so forth, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Now they are horrified that doctors, whose calling is to save life, can be bent on mass murder.
The capacity of the human mind to delude itself never ceases to amaze. How can such educated individuals be killers? people exclaim. Have such people really leaned nothing from history? Have they forgotten the Nazis, forgotten Dr Mengele, forgotten that the genocide of the Jews was carried out by people who delighted in Goethe and Mozart? Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s number two, is a paediatrician. Yet he is responsible for the deliberate mass murder of thousands of people.
Robert Spencer: Fact or “Islamophobia�
When he spoke this week at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Islamic Center of Washington, President Bush said: “In the Middle East, we have seen instead the rise of a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination. This self-appointed vanguard presumes to speak for Muslims. They do not.â€
There we are again. The Administration and the mainstream media (both Left and Right) take it as axiomatic that the jihad we see all over the world today represents a perversion of Islam, repudiated by the vast majority of Muslims. The American Muslim advocacy industry, chiefly the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has recently been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, has quite successfully portrayed any exploration of the elements of Islam that give rise to and justify jihad violence and Islamic supremacism as a manifestation of “hatred,†“bigotry,†“Islamophobia.†Those who do not accept the iron dogma that Islam contains nothing within it that can reasonably be used to justify terrorism are vilified and marginalized.
Amir Taheri: ‘Islamophobia’ Idiocy
Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects – most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.
A Shiite Muslim can’t build a mosque in Cairo; his Sunni brother can’t have a mosque of his own in Tehran. Editions of the Koran printed in Egypt or Saudi Arabia are seized as contraband in Iran; Egypt and most other Muslim nations in turn ban the import of Korans printed in Iran. The works of a majority of Muslim writers and philosophers are banned in most Muslim countries.
Tanveer Ahmed: Islam must face its uncomfortable truths
While the images of poverty and war in countries such as Sudan, Palestine or Iraq combined with the relative disadvantage of some Muslim communities in countries such as France or Britain may contribute to radicalisation, the foundation for their acts lies very much in the set of ideas called Islam. I have lost count of the number of occasions disgruntled Muslims have responded to my writings with comments like “Islam is peace” or “You are not a Muslim any more”.
