Saturday, March 13, 2010

A Holocaust Survivor’s View on Islam

Dr. Emanuel Tanay

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.' We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march... It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts -- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about it, and send it on - before it's too late.

***

Emanuel Tanay, M.D. 2980 Provincial St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104

*Dr. Emanuel Tanay MD is a well-known forensic psychiatrist who has been an expert witness in many famous cases. He has served as an officer or committee member on the Michigan Psychiatric Society, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and others. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and of the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry and a distinguished fellow of the APA and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFC)..

A Holocaust survivor himself, Dr Tanay coauthored a book about the survivors of the Holocaust and was asked by the German government to consult on just compensation for the Holocaust survivors. Dr. Tanay has served on several journal editorial boards, authored many publications, and presented countless times on forensic medicine. His efforts have also produced many awards and commendations from groups such as the Michigan State Medical Society, APA, the Detroit Institute of Technology, and AAFC, among others.
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4 comments:

Jonathan Freilich UK said...

Emanuel Tanay's article is a well-worn rant on the dangers of extremist Islam and it's parallel with other extremist ideologies in history. It flags up the very real dangers of complacency and ignorance.

However, the piece does not go far enough and as a psychiatrist he fails to consider the psychology of extremism as well as its causes. I'm therefore left with the feeling of: kill them before they get us which could lead to the erosion of democratic values that occurred for example in Germany in the 1930s.

This equally alarming process is already happening in the UK in the name of security and we must be very careful of not responding to these fears in a knee-jerk reaction and so end up shooting ourselves in the foot! Jonathan Freilich UK

Anonymous said...

Seems the UK govt tolerates anything the radical Islamists want to say, so as "not to antagonize them," but shouts down, imprisons and ostracizes its own citizens if they say anything negative about Islamist extremism in the UK. Where do you suppose all this will lead???? It is already too late to save the UK. It has committed ethnic suicide by permitting the invasion of rapidly reproducing Islamo-facsists. It is only a matter of time until Sharia law will replace the Magna Carta and all other English law. A pity indeed.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Emanuel Tanay is real and a holocaust survivor but he did not write this article, nor is he German. This is an opinion piece that appeared on the web site of Paul Marek, who wrote it in March 2007 under the title of "Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant."

Dr. Emanuel Tanay, the son of Jewish dentists, was born in Russian occupied Vilna in 1928, which is now part of Poland, according to the personal account of his life in a Polish ghetto during the Holocaust.

GS Don Morris, Ph.D./Chana Givon said...

Thank you anonymous-I did not know this and appreciate the correction-dm