Our Children Are The Guarantors

Defending Zionism from its detractors. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. Let the other side apologize for a change.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Yes, They Exist. No, They Aren’t The Solution

From time to time I take a peek to see what the other side, particularly the lefties, are saying about the blogging efforts of the wakeful in general, and sometimes I stumble upon things about mine in particular. Most of the sentiments are quite the expected stuff: charges of racism top the list, then warmongering, intolerance, stereotyping and the like. Sometimes the word “bigotry” is used instead of “racism”, and a common refrain is to put the words, “A good Muslim is a dead Muslim” in our side’s mouths. It’s the subject of bigotry, stereotyping and the question of the moderate Muslims that I wish to talk about here.

First, I find charges of bigotry toward me far better than charges of racism. Both charges are meant to smear, but the charge of bigotry has a chance of approaching the truth, and it’s a charge I can address, while the charge of racism can’t be true about me even in theory, nor can I address it any more than I can answer the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Also, when I read the aforementioned phrase they put in my mouth, I’m consoled by the fact they say “Muslim” and not “Arab”. Even a cursory reading of my blog will reveal that my arguments are about Islam and its adherents of any race, not about Arabs. None of my writings apply to Christian Arabs, for example, with the exception of dhimmis like Israeli parliament member Azmi Bisharah who still think pan-Arabism is as influential an ideology as it was 30 years ago; and they apply to Arab Muslims, to slanty-eyed Malay Muslims, to black-skinned Somali Muslims and to blond, blue-eyed Swedish converts to Islam equally. I’m tired of repeating this again and again, but here goes: it’s about religion, not about race.

Now to address the argument that does follow from correct initial assumptions: that I’m a bigot who believes all Muslims are evil and want to offer us the choice between conversion and death (and dhimmitude for some of us). I am charged with disbelieving in the existence of good Muslims: of Muslims who lead their religious lives on the “live and let live” model to which all other religions today adhere; who may think all human beings should keep shariah law, but leave the conversion of the non-Muslims to such observance to their deity rather than to humans; who are ashamed of their brethren of whom we hear about on the news every day, and think they are giving Islam a bad name; and who view clashes like those in Israel or Kashmir as nationalistic land disputes that can be solved through negotiations, and through concessions from both parties. Such Muslims do exist, and I have never hinted otherwise. However, I see four problems that nullify any Leftist argument that proposes the abandonment of the war, on the ideological front against Islam as well as on the physical front against the Muslims, on the grounds of the indisputable existence of such Muslims. These are the problems:

  1. They are a minority.
  2. They can turn to the extremist majority any moment.
  3. Many professing moderates are extremists engaging in dissimulation (taqiya).
  4. Even true and stable moderate Muslims are powerless to deal with their extremist brethren.

Each point needs elaboration.

First: extremist Muslims, the ones you hear about on the daily news, are the majority. This is substantiated by numerous surveys, by grassroots actions (such as cab drivers refusing to take passengers carrying wine or accompanied by a guide-dog), by the half-hearted way most Muslims condemn Islamic terrorism, always with “but it was because of oppression in…” appended, and last but not least, in the Muslim states, by the existence of education systems that cannot but bring their students to the way of jihad.

Picture: Cartoon comparing the wide and vocal protest of Muslims in the streets against Pope Benedict XVI's medieval quotes with the tame, televized reaction of a few Muslim officials to 9/11
Cartoon by Chuck Asay, September 19, 2006. From Townhall.com.

I think this revelation is the most difficult for people today to accept. There is a widely-held belief nowadays that extremists and evil people are necessarily a minority, usually a tiny one (“tiny but vocal” is the phrase often used), while moderates and good people are necessarily the majority. I don’t know for sure where that belief comes from; I’d hazard a guess that 1960’s humanist psychology, which holds the basic good of mankind as its core assumption, is the source of that common error. It is, like Communism, a purely theoretical construct based on the solid ground of wishful thinking. No reason is offered as to why extremists must be a minority; it’s a given. But reality is something else, and reality knows of the situation of extremists and malicious humans being the majority as well as the opposite. Moderate Muslims, then, far from being able to influence their extremist brethren, are in constant danger of being drowned in their ocean.

Second: the phenomenon of Sudden Jihad Syndrome is well-attested. Christian refugees from massacres by Muslims, Israeli Jewish survivors of the Independence War (1947–9) and Hindu immigrants to India from Pakistan can testify that it’s possible to live alongside Muslims for more than a decade on end and then, suddenly, be attacked by those same neighbors and friends. There’s no knowing when a moderate Muslim might be overcome by the need to go back to serving the god of the Koran—it could be on account of a middle-life crisis, it could be after seeing the news pictures from the Backstabbing Brutus Corporation, it could be anything, but the end result is a few shocked non-Muslim neighbors exclaiming, “But he was such a wonderful boy! You could never have thought him capable of such a thing!”

One may object that the phenomenon of sudden religiosity is common to all humans, especially to the other history-based faiths like Judaism and Christianity. This is true, but it is no objection, because the turn to religious observance manifests itself differently than for Muslims. To put it this way: the next time a Jewish ba’al teshuvah goes blowing himself in Muslim centers of population rather than just keeping kashrut and shabbat, give me a call. The next time a Christian born-again demands all women in his neighborhood cover up rather than just hand out Christian Bibles to passers-by, let me know. The next time a convert to Hindutva goes shooting Pakistani Muslim immigrants in London because of “the Pakistani occupation of Hindu lands” (a valid claim, by the way—Pakistan and Bangladesh are both stolen Hindu lands) rather than just holding more traditional rituals than before, tell me as soon as possible. I’m sorry to say this, but the Muslims are unique in that regard. The truth is offensive.

Third: a lot of Muslims profess being moderate for Western media consumption only. The members of CAIR are the first such that spring to my mind, but there are many more. They are quick to rush in front of the microphones standing with a suit and tie, vehemently exclaiming that suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam, with the added, “but resistance of the oppressor is legitimate”; or explaining how turning a woman into a walking piece of cloth is actually the highest form of feminism! Those same people are reluctant to speak out against their overtly extremist brethren, and rush to scream, “RACISM!!!” every time someone in the West does something or even just proposes something in order to defend non-Muslims from said brethren. They are a fifth column in the West—the rational-looking, sensible-sounding adherents who call the non-Muslims to be cool-headed and pragmatic and enter negotiations and concessions toward the Muslims right after every terrorist attack. Such are the ones that demanded change of British foreign policy and recognition of Muslim holidays in Britain after the 7/7 bus bombings. Extremists in moderate clothing.

Finally, the fourth point is that tiny minority of Muslims who are truly moderate and not dissimulating, and who are stable enough to resist the pull toward extremism. When Western intellectuals and policymakers talk of “appealing to moderate Muslims to fight the extremists”, those are the only ones they could truly rely on. But in reality they can’t—not because of the lack of will on the part of such Muslims, but because they’re in the most dangerous situation possible, and because they’re at a loss to present an Islamic challenge to the extremists.

The first point is, that it is the height of irrationality to expect Muslims to fight against the would-be enforcers of worldwide shariah law when even the non-Muslims of the West endanger themselves when doing so. If French philosopher Robert Redeker, after having written just one article critical of the prophet Mohammed in Le Figaro, has to go into hiding following death threats, why should any Muslim dare to do the same? For a non-Muslim like Redeker or Pope Benedict XVI there might be some leeway for an Islamic cleric to call for moderation; for a Muslim who does the same, there is absolutely no appeal—he will be branded an apostate and executed following that (and rest assured any Islamic cleric who speaks against that will himself be branded an apostate). I think non-Muslims should really let go of their calls for action by moderate Muslims and do the dirty work themselves. The true moderate Muslims will not speak out unless they feel they can—unless criticism of Islam brings about the same response as does The Da Vinci Code. That won’t come true until the non-Muslims, in their own states, while they’re still the majority, enforce such a Muslim reaction with a stern and determined hand.

The second point is one that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch constantly makes: the moderate Muslims are ill-equipped to challenge the extremists on Islamic grounds. That’s because of the observation of apostate Ibn Warraq that, although there are moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam. The sources of the Islamic religion are all on the side of the intolerant, jihadi, shariah-forcing Muslim. The situation is similar to that of homosexuals trying to challenge Orthodox Judaism or Evangelical Christianity on religious grounds: it’s just impossible. Homosexuals today benefit from the fact that the explicit command in Leviticus to execute them is not put into practice by either Jews or Christians (Orthodox Judaism has technically put that command on hold until the reestablishment of the Davidic kingdom, but then it will no longer be needed); but the condemnation of their lifestyle is there, and no amount of sophistry can yank it out of the scriptures or their orthodox commentaries. This is not to say religious change is impossible: after all, the Catholic popes steered their church away from anti-Semitism with a host of declarations after the Holocaust. Yet, as we know, traditionalists like Mel Gibson don’t accept those declarations. In Islam, religious decrees against the extremist way are few, equivalents of Mel Gibson in not following such decrees are many, and all it takes is just a handful of extremist Muslims to make the daily news. Polls often show Muslim support for jihad as being in single-digit percentages, but considering that they’re usually taken in countries having millions of Muslims, that’s no comfort at all.

To sum it up: there are moderate Muslims, I have little doubt about that; but, they’re no more relevant to our situation than were Germans who saw Nazism as nothing more but a movement to heal German society internally. Such had no chance of stopping World War II and its atrocities, and the moderate Muslim minority too is not going to help non-Muslims out of the slide toward World War III. It’s up to us alone.

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12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent effort!

Are you aware of the Jihadi Lawsuit against Dr.Paul Williams?


(Paul L Williams)

( Dr. Paul L. Williams holds a Ph.D. in historical theology from Drew University. His dissertation won the National Book Award for literary and scholastic merit. He has served as professor of Catholic theology and patristics at the University of Scranton and Wilkes University, and as senior editor of Northeast Books, the publishing arm of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has written features for National Review and appeared on Firing Line, People Are Talking, and Larry King Live.)

When the penalty for defending my country (Israel)against the murderous forces of Islam, becomes complete financial ruin...you can bet your last dinar that pro-zionist-anti-Jihad advocacy will dry up and disappear.

http://www.stopdoomsday.com/paul_williams_defense.html

Want to help? Interview Paul or other pro-zionists under siege? Contact me;

Michaelmgr@Gmail.com

November 19, 2006 10:29 PM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Hello Michael Travis,

By "interview", does it mean video, audio or textual? I can do only the last type. Beside interviewing Dr. Paul Williams, is there any other way to help?

Thank you.

November 20, 2006 12:43 AM  
Blogger Rezwan said...

Hi Just wanted to point out one factual mistake in your rant:

"a valid claim, by the way—Pakistan and Bangladesh are both stolen Hindu lands"

Please learn more about the partition of India and how Bangladesh got separated from Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

And learn more about how about 118 million Muslims live in Bangladesh, who are mostly poor and do not have the luxury to ponder about what US or the Arab countries are doing because they are busy trying to earn their three meals a day.

http://www.morristhepen.net/home/blog.php?id=52

The jihadi ideology is the brainchild of wealthy Arab nations who does not have to do a 9-5 job but have affluent oil money to expend on poor Islamic countries to carry out their satanic acts.

November 20, 2006 1:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another excellent article!

I've posted a "tease" and links to it from my Blog.

http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2006/11/on-moderate-muslims.html

Keep up the good work!

Cheers, Ronbo

November 20, 2006 1:38 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Rezwan,

I confess I may not have read the article well at this late night hour, but I haven't found anything to contradict what I wrote. Pakistan was established off of formerly Hindu lands in order to accommodate the Muslims living there, and Bangladesh is just East Pakistan, which at first was part of Pakistan and then became a separate state. If you would point me to the case that Bangladesh is different from Pakistan, I'll erase its mention from this post. The case seems doubtful to me, though, because it's certain the Hindus had that area, as they had what is now Pakistan, exclusively until the Ghaznevids and their successors took it and colonized it.

As for the jihad ideology being "the brainchild of wealthy Arab nations"--no doubt their petrodollars provide ample monetary support for it, but I do believe the ideological foundation for jihad is found in the sources of Islam (Koran, Hadith). Not that I'm an expert in them; I have to rely mainly on Robert Spencer's articles.

I hope Bangladesh could become a bastion of moderate Islam. But, for the reasons given in my post, I'm not holding my breath.

Ronbo,

Thanks for the tease. Congrats on the new blog design, it's very sleek-looking!

I'll have to add another (short) post as a clarification to this one. After complaining about using modifiers with the words "Islam" and "Muslim", such as "radical", "extremist" and "militant", I need to explain why I used the term, "extremist Muslims" here. The short of it is that that term isn't inaccurate, it just leads to the false impression that the jihadis are a minority. Other modifiers too have problems without being inaccurate.

November 20, 2006 2:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Zionist, I think you make a slight mistake regarding Jewish law and homosexuality. If a state were established that was run according to the Torah, even if Mashiach hadnt yet been revealed, capital punishment would be applied to homosexuality.

For example in the kingdom of the Hashmonaim the Torah was the law even though Mashiach was still hidden. The same rules in fact apply today.

November 20, 2006 2:27 AM  
Blogger mts said...

Want to lose an argument? Go ahead and quote Wikipedia to me. Lousy bulletin board posing as an encyclopedia. Go find a real repository of knowledge, like Encyclopedia Britannica.

November 20, 2006 7:09 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

kahaneloyalist,

As far as I know (and I'll have to make a she'iltah again), the issue isn't Mashiach but the Temple. When the Temple does not stand, it signals that Israel is in exile, so that many of the laws of a sovereign state are put on hold just as the Temple sacrifices are. The Temple existed during the Hashmonaim.

Thanks.

mts,

Wikipedia suffers from its own slogan, specifically the part, "...that anyone can edit". "Anyone" means that people not trained in writing an encyclopedia (that means academic standards, especially the conventions of source citation and bibliographical referencing) can take part in it. Even Britannica should be taken with a grain of salt, but Wikipedia poses danger to people who have high blood pressure.

November 20, 2006 10:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Zionist, I realize this is a little late but....It is not a standing Temple that is necessary but either a fully functioning Sanhedrin, or a proper Government which establishes King's Courts, they enforce the same laws as the Sanhedring but use a lower standard of proof. Rambam Mishen Torah Hilchot Melachim, Hilchot Sanhedrin

November 22, 2006 8:40 PM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

It's never late, kahaneloyalist. Even if the post is out of the view of the main page, I get a notification of the comment by e-mail, which I check at least twice a week.

I thank you for correcting me. I am, you realize, far from the level of a rabbi. The halachot pertaining to the state are the ones I'm less versed in, because they're outside of what I must know for day-to-day life. Of course, we are obliged to learn all the halachot; but I haven't reached many of those yet, hence my having to ask a rabbi from time to time. But I can't let that hold me off blogging, because sanegoria of Israel is the greatest necessity of our age.

In the meantime, before thinking at all of worrying about the question whether the law of Leviticus regarding homosexuals should be put back into practice in our day, we're pressed to defending the institution of marriage. Homosexuals in Iran would say those of the USA, for example, have it good (because the Iranian government hangs them on cranes); but those of the USA (and Israel... *sigh*) are calling not just for the right to live and practice their lifestyle (both of which are undisputed by state authorities) but to be socially accepted as equals to heterosexuals. This insistence on "Gay Marriage" rather than civil unions, as was the insistence on the "Pride Parade" in Jerusalem, shows something going beyond a demand to be allowed to exist. Rationally speaking, it's very stupid of them--if they didn't raise such a high profile, no one would know, and hence no one would show antagonism. But we know there are more than just rational forces behind today's events.

November 23, 2006 12:41 AM  
Blogger Rezwan said...

Zionistyoungstar:

The difference between Bangladesh and Pakistan:

* Bangladesh is a democracy and Pakistan is well Mushocracy

* Pakistan has sharia law but Bangladesh has rule of law based on English colonial laws (similar to India).

* Bangladesh was a secular country when it got out of Pakistan. Its father of nation wanted to go towards Socialism and was assassinated in 1975 (probably capitalist superpowers did not like it). Later dictators ruled till 1990 and restored Islamists, who were hiding because of people rage (they were pro Pakistanis)

* Now because Bangladesh is a poor country, many Arab countries and Pakistan try to exploit the population by provoking their Jihadi ideologies and funding madrassas etc. However the majority of people resent them. Last election the Islamist parties got only 5% vote.

* Its true Bangladesh is recently facing political crisis and Islamist political parties are threatening to come on strong but there are many who will fight them till end.

* Regarding Muslim holy books backing of jihadi ideology, it is simply a matter of interpretation. No religion in particular is violent. But when you try to implement a 1500 year old theme or ideology in todays context it surely will be something violent or extreme as per the agenda of the person interpreting it.

In todays world when the importance of religion is diminishing day by day. The problem with todays Islamists are that they are trying to go back to 600 AD and trying to look at the world from that point of view. Todays Muslims need to embrace rationalization to find that the Jihadists (who are actually very few) are talking crap.

* How to do it? Well I could think this way because in school I did not have to memorize koran like many Islamic states but had a normal education and was taught reasoning.

The Muslim kingdoms, and Islamists regimes need to be turned into democracy. Then those Muslims will be freed and people will have no misconception thinking all the Muslims are violent and a threat to non-muslims.

November 23, 2006 3:26 AM  
Blogger ziontruth said...

Rezwan,

I hear in this comment some echo of the Bush Doctrine, itself a derivative of Fukuyama's "End of History" hypothesis, which says all people tend toward democracy and will embrace it once given the chance. That doctrine was the mainstay of Bush's experiment in Iraq, and also his downfall (in Iraq and in the recent elections for Congress and for Senate), because democracy isn't a universal desire, and if the people, inwardly, aren't of a democratic mindset, they will use a newly-installed democracy in order to vote a dictatorship into power. A great part of the success of democracy in the USA was contributed by the inward desire of the people, such as famously the Danbury Baptists, to avoid the royally-sanctioned religious persecution they were familiar with in Britain. Where there's a will toward democracy, there's a way toward democracy; but the reverse, which is what the Bush Doctrine held, is not true, and that goes a long way toward explaining why Iraq was such a failure. As far as Bangladesh is concerned, you can only stay democratic as long as the people do not believe that democracy constitutes unbelief (because it is a rule according to other than Allah's law, say the jihadis).

As for interpretation: I know from Judaism that there is the issue of canonicity. When people think of "the canon of the religion", they usually think of the sources, such as the scriptures. But in Judaism, and it seems most likely to me that in Islam as well, there are not only canonical scriptures but also canonical interpretations of them. For example, in the part where G-d speaks in the plural in Genesis (1:26), there are various canonical interpretations (the first being that G-d was speaking to His angels in humility and respect), but the interpretations of it as "one deity in many persons" or "three deities" are non-canonical, putting both interpreter and acceptor of the interpretation beyond the pale of Orthodox Judaism. So too, while there may be interpretations of the Koran that distance themselves from the ideology of jihad and the caliphate, they are most probably not canonical. Changing the canon of a religion is, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult.

In the case of Judaism, heterodoxy can at worst lead to shunning, as was the case of Benedict de Spinoza in 17th-century Amsterdam. Whereas, in the case of Islam, deviation from the canon usually leads to a charge of apostasy, and execution soon follows. I also take issue with your saying that "the importance of religion is diminishing day by day"; I think the lowest point of the diminishment of religion is past us, and today the situation is either stable or inclining toward religion (depending on the region of the world). The would-be replacements of religion have failed to fill humanity's spiritual void, so religion is today making quite a comeback.

I thank you for your reasoned comments. I'm reminded of another moderate Muslim blogger, Ali Eteraz, who has had similar exchanges with Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna. You might want to read the Baron's open letter to Eteraz:

gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/09/open-letter-to-eteraz.html

November 23, 2006 7:31 PM  

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