Friday, March 19, 2010

At Play in the Fields of Allah, Or, Our Pathetic Inability to Say The I-Word


Don Feder

The Religion of Peace had a swinging time in Nigeria, with what it swings best – machetes. On March 7th, Muslim mobs, thus armed, massacred more than 500 Christians in three villages in the northern part of the country. Many of the victims, including women and children, were decapitated or scalped. Others had limbs severed. Chindum Yakubu described how her 18-month-old daughter was ripped from her arms and hacked to death as the family tried to flee a predawn attack.

The mainstream media tried to explain away the atrocities (surprise!). The slaughter was a reprisal for the killing of Muslims in Jos, in the southern part of the nation, in January. The victims were cattle thieves. It was a tribal dispute in which religion played no part.

Denial is a river that also runs through part of the Catholic hierarchy.

Archbishop John Olorunfemi of Abuja told Vatican radio: “This is a classic conflict between herdsmen and farmers, only the Fulani are Muslims and the Berom (rival tribes) all Christians” – like the turf war in “West Side Story,” only the Jets were Christians and the Sharks were Muslims.

Olorunfemi continued, “The international media are quickly led to report that it is Christians and Moslems who are killing one another; but this is not true, because the killings are not caused by religion but by social, economic, tribal and cultural issues.” Darn those socio-economic factors.

Now, when have you ever known the “international media” to conclude that Islam provoked violence – anywhere, anytime?

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, excoriated CNN for downplaying the role religion played in the barbarism. In a March 9th press release, Donohue caustically observed, “Of course: When Muslims massacre Christians, religion never has anything to do with it.”

Donohue urged, “It’s time to stop viewing Muslim-Christian violence through the lens of moral equivalency.” We pause to note that the New Testament does not call on Christians to decapitate, scalp or dismember anyone, to spread their faith – unlike the Koran, which reads like the script of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Within days of the slaughter in Nigeria, attackers armed with grenades demolished the offices of a Christian relief group in northeast Pakistan, killing six workers. Dean Owen, a World Vision spokesman, called the attack “brutal and senseless.”

Brutal, yes. Senseless, no. It doesn’t take much to incite Muslims to murder and mayhem. A cartoon, an offhand comment, quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor – almost anything will do. In the case at hand, it was a rumor that the aid group was trying to convert Muslims – a hanging offense anywhere in Prophet-land.

In 2001, Nigerian Muslims rioted when a Christian woman tried to cross a street through a group of Muslim men at prayer. The hussy!

Other incidents in which religion played no role, all in January:


* In Malaysia, three churches and a Catholic school were firebombed. Here, the unbearable offense was some Malaysian Christians using “Allah” as a name for God. Apparently, only Muslims can use the name of their deity.
* In Egypt, Muslims attacked the Mar Yohana Church on Coptic Christmas. Eight Christians, all in their twenties, were gunned down as they left services. Wonder how many head of cattle the Copts stole to provoke the incident.
* Father Raymond J. de Souza, with the group “Saving Iraq’s Christians,” reports: “There was a massacre of Christians in Mosul, Iraq on January 2nd, and targeted killings of Christians throughout January and February. The ‘targeted killing’ is an especially effective form of anti-Christian terror. A Christian – either a man or woman will do – is simply grabbed off the street by Islamists while walking to work or school and the body dumped. No one can feel safe.” De Souza notes that the Christian population of Iraq fell from 20% in 1932 to 10% when Saddam took power, to 3 percent today.


Appearing in court earlier this month, lawyers for Muzzammil (“Mo”) Hassan – accused of beheading his wife, Aasiya, in February 2009, because she sought a divorce – said it was “ridiculous” to think religion had anything to do with the crime.

Hassan is the founder of Bridges TV, located in a suburb of Buffalo and dedicated to presenting a positive view of Islam (the goal was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way”). Apparently, Hassan was on the cutting edge of family values, a la Islam.

His lawyers say it’s absurd to think religion played a role in Aasiya losing her head.

Now, let’s see: Which religion goes in for decapitation? Which religion requires married women to cover their faces in public? Which religion condones honor killings? Which religion promotes polygamy? Which religion discourages the education of women (at least as manifested by the Taliban and Iranian regime), and which religion condones the battering of “disobedient” wives.” Hint: It’s not the Unitarian Universalists.

According to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, 90 percent of Pakistani wives have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse.

Robert Spencer, editor of Jihad Watch, explains that the violence was occasioned by “offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal.” Spencer: “Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.”

In “Alice in Wonderland,” was the Red Queen a Muslim?

It’s reported that Mo Hassan’s lawyers are going with an insanity defense. As prima facie evidence, they can offer his belief that the values of Islam are compatible with the American way of life.

The effort to avoid using the “I-word” is carried to ludicrous lengths.

On January 15th, the Pentagon (Obama’s brass butlers brigade) released its report on the November 5th Fort Hood killings. In 86 pages, the words “Islam,” “Muslims,” and “Koran” did not appear once. John Lehman, a former Navy Secretary and member of the 9/11 Commission, told Time Magazine that the Pentagon’s pathetic cop-out “shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become.”

Oh, c’mon! It’s not as if Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan (described in the Pentagon report as “the alleged perpetrator”): A) Shared an imam with two of the 9/11 terrorists; B) Attended a rabid mosque in Falls Church, Virginia; C) Defended suicide bombers; D) Said America was making war on Islam, and Muslims had to fight back – by whatever means necessary; E) Gave away copies of the Koran before his rampage; or F) Shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) as he allegedly pumped round after round into men and women whose only offense was wearing the uniform of the United States.

Half a mo (as the Brits say), that’s exactly what the Muslim shrink did do – not that it had any bearing on his alleged crimes.

A more realistic perspective than the Pentagon’s is offered by Adam Gadahn, who knows exactly what was running through Maj. Nissan’s head before he opened fire.

In a video message posted on an Islamist website, the American turncoat, now an al Qaeda mouthpiece, proclaimed: “Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of unbelievers and apostate regimes. Nidal Hassan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened the door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among unbelievers.”

Difficult as it is to believe, the Pentagon’s Fort Hood report isn’t the most glaring example of our New PC Army.

Interviewed on “Meet the Press,” within days of the shootings, Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, tearfully pleaded: “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. If our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

In other words, 13 dead U.S. soldiers are far less important than maintaining the sanctity of diversity – in this case, an appreciation for the killer creed. Casey sounds more like a community organizer in uniform than the type of fighting man who won two World Wars.

Not just Pentagon bureaucrats, but the entire Obama administration practices reality-avoidance, religiously, on the issue of Islam and terrorism.

On December 30th, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet (“the system worked”) Napolitano had a guest editorial in USA TODAY on the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner, that studiously avoided the I-word, the M-word and the J-word (jihad). Napolitano prefers “man-made disasters” to “terrorism” – without saying what type of men cause such disasters.

Earlier in the year, Napolitano’s department released a report that identified the coming terrorist threat not as the jihadists in our midst, but from conservatives, gun owners, right-to-lifers, those concerned about border security and veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. If she was operating before the American Revolution, Napolitano would have had Washington, Jefferson and Adams on a terrorist watch-list.

Napolitano is a good team player. It's just that she's not playing for the home-team.

About the same time Nigerian Christians were being butchered, the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, was in Israel, leading the administration’s latest assault on the outpost of civilization in a sea of savagery and fanaticism.

The administration is furious over the Netanyahu government’s announcement that it will build 1,600 additional housing units in Jerusalem’s Old City. “I condemn it immediately and unequivocally,” Biden blustered in a speech at Tel Aviv University.

He continued, “The United States will continue to hold both sides accountable for any statements or actions that inflame and influence these talks” – the long-hoped for “negotiations” leading to the establishment of a terrorist state in Judea and Samaria – I beg your pardon, a Palestinian homeland.

The administration holds the Palestinians accountable for nothing – not murder, not suicide bombings, not the bombardment of Israeli communities from Gaza, not the recent rioting on the Temple Mount, and not the constant barrage of anti-Semitic incitement from the alleged Palestinian Authority.

On February 28th, Al-Aqsa TV broadcast a sermon by Hamas Deputy Minister Abdallah Jarbu, who had this to say about Jews: “They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are a foreign bacteria….”

“May He (Allah) annihilate this filthy people (Jews) who have neither religion or conscience. …. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values.”

But, he probably said it in a non-inflammatory way, so as not to “influence” the long-hoped for negotiations – leading to a state run by people who believe Jews are bacteria, right on Israel’s border.

Mosab Hassan Yousef is a convert to Christianity. Hassan grew up not just a devote Muslim, but the son of Sheik Hassan Yousef, a revered figure in Hamas.

Promoting his book (“Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue and Unthinkable Choices”), the younger Yousef appeared with Sean Hannity, where the following exchange took place:

Hannity: “We keep hearing about that there is a distinction, the difference between radical Islam and mainstream Islam.”

Yousef: “This is a big mistake – comparing moderate Muslims and fanatics. This is not how we compare it. All Muslims to me are the same. At the end of the day, they believe in the god of the Koran and they believe that this Koran is from god.”

Hannity: “You’re saying that most Muslims think Jihad is where they need to go?”

Yousef: “It’s not their choice. If they believe that the Koran is from the word of god…”

Hannity: “So let me ask this again. So when people talk about moderate Islam, you’re saying it doesn’t exist?

Yousef: “It doesn’t exist.”

This is far from the fantasy version of Islam – “religion of peace,” “religion of love,” renowned for its “tolerance” – peddled by the establishment media, the administration, academics and Muslim spokesmen in the United States.

I don’t doubt that among the billion or so Moslems on Earth, there are many fine and decent human beings – charitable, kindly and desirous of peace with their neighbors.

But – and this is important – they are decent, charitable and peace-loving not because of Islam, but in spite of it.

The Japanese weren’t better for Bushido. The Germans weren’t better for Mein Kampf.

Islam doesn’t make for kindly individuals longing for peace. It makes for suicide bombers, spousal abuse, beheadings, dead U.S. soldiers and 18-month-old children butchered with machetes.

Commentary first appeared on GrasstopsUSA.com.

FamilySecurityMatters.orgContributing Editor Don Feder was a Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist for 19 years. His freelance writings have appeared in many publications, including USA TODAY. He's the author of two books ("A Jewish Conservative Looks At Pagan America" and "Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?").

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