Mr. Raymond Ibrahim is a young, talented researcher who seems to share with my research concerns. (Lily)
1．Gatestone Institute（http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org）
Muslim Persecution of Christians: March, 2012, 25 April 2012
by Raymond Ibrahim
"It is necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." Saudi Grand Mufti
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, one of the Islamic world's highest religious authorities, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region."
The war on Christianity and its adherents in the Muslim world rages on. In March alone, Saudi Arabia's highest Islamic legal authority decreed that churches in the region must be destroyed; jihadis [holy warriors] in Nigeria said they "are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women"; American teachers in the Middle East were murdered for being Christian or talking about Christianity; churches were banned or bombed, and nuns terrorized by knife-wielding Muslim mobs. Christians continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for allegedly "blaspheming" Islam's prophet Muhammad; former Muslims continue to be attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and killed for converting to Christianity.
The extent of this persecution is virtually unknown in the West, due to the mainstream media's well-documented biases: the mainstream media knows that if they do not ignore or at best whitewash the nonstop persecution of Christians under Islam, their narrative of Islam as the "religion of peace" would be quickly undermined. Last month alone, the New York Times ran an anti-Catholic ad, but refused to publish a nearly identical ad directed at Islam; theBBC admitted it mocks Jesus but will never mock Muhammad; and U.S. sitcoms have been exposed as bashing Christianity, but never Islam.
Categorized by theme, March's batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity:
Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Proselytism: Death and Prison
Egypt: A Christian man accused of insulting Islam's prophet Muhammad was sentenced to six years in prison. Although under Egyptian law "defamation of religion" is a misdemeanor, punishable by a prison sentence of one month to three years, the judge doubled the sentence to appease Muslims, including an angry 2,500-strong mob thatterrorized the courtroom, and demanding death for the Christian. Similarly, an "anti-Christianization course" was initiated by an organization "specializing in the resistance to Christianity," so that Muslims will not be "throw[n] under the feet of the Cross." According to an instructor, "Recurring attempts at the university in Aswan to convert Muslims to Christianity or provoke them with misleading information was the impetus behind the course."
India: A young woman was attacked and thrown out of her home "for daring to give thanks for healing in Christ's name" in a predominantly Muslim village; "her parents helped Islamic extremists to beat her nearly unconscious": In a village where "hard-line Muslims have threatened to kill the 25 families who initially showed interest in Christ, leaving only five frightened Christian families," the woman was attacked when returning from church, and called "pagan, among other verbal abuses." The mob also harassed and threatened the Christian woman who had allegedly "lured" her to convert to Christianity.
Iran: In a rare crackdown on a concentrated area, in what is seen as a tactic to discourage Muslims from attending official churches, authorities have arrested 12 more converts to Christianity living in the country's third largest city of Isfahan, Among the latest known Christian converts detained in the Isfahan area is a man who was reportedly taken into custody on March 2 while returning home from his work: "Security authorities raided his home and seized him without explanation."
Iraq: An American teacher was shot to death by an 18-year-old student at a private Christian academy. He "was a devout Christian who frequently praised Christianity and prayed in the classroom, and his friends in Washington said his evangelism is what motivated him to teach in Iraq." According to students, "Mr. Jeremiah's hands were still folded in prayer when he fell;" others say a day before the shooting [there was] "a heated discussion…during which the pupil threatened to kill the teacher because of conflicting religious views." In an interview, the father of the pupilcondemned Christian evangelists, portraying them as "more dangerous than al-Qaeda."
Malaysia: After religious police raided an event at a Methodist church over "fears that Muslims were being converted," Muslim officials created a seminar called "Strengthening the faith, the dangers of liberalism and pluralism and the threat of Christianity towards Muslims." After the title of the conference was criticized, a lawmaker said the reference to Christianity would be removed, but the seminar's content would remain unchanged: "The seminar is part of the right of Muslims to defend the faith of its practitioners from any action which may lead to apostasy. It is our responsibility," he said.
Pakistan: A Muslim mob attacked a 60-year-old Christian woman who converted to Islam, only to reconvert back to Christianity six months later: she "was tortured—her head shaved—and paraded through the streets, garlanded with shoes." Soon after, she received more threats of "dire consequences" from Islamic clerics, fleeing region with her family. Likewise, a 26-year-old Christian woman, mother to a five-month-old girl, was falsely accused of "blaspheming" Muhammad and arrested. A few days prior, some of her relatives who had converted to Islam pressed her to do the same: "She refused, telling them that she was 'satisfied with Christianity and did not want to convert,' and was arrested of blasphemy soon thereafter."
Yemen: Al-Qaeda gunmen fatally shot an American teacher. The terror network's affiliate in Yemen issued a message saying, "This operation comes as a response to the campaign of Christian proselytizing that the West has launched against Muslims," calling the teacher "one of the biggest American proselytizers." He was shot eight times on a Sunday.
Church Attacks
Bethlehem: One week after the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority [PA] told an audience of Evangelical Protestants that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, the PA declared a Baptist Church illegal, adding that birth, wedding, and death certificates from the church were no longer valid. A pastor noted that "animosity towards the Christian minority in areas controlled by the PA continues to get increasingly worse. People are always telling [Christians], 'Convert to Islam. Convert to Islam. It's the true and right religion.'"
Egypt: Some 1,500 Muslims—several armed with swords and knives and shouting Islamic slogans—terrorized the Notre Dame Language School in Upper Egypt, in response to false claims from local mosques that the private school was building a church: "Two nuns were besieged in the school's guesthouse for some eight hours by a murderous mob threatening to burn them alive;" one nun suffered a "major nervous breakdown requiring hospitalization… The entire property was ransacked and looted. The next day the Muslims returned and terrorized the children. Consequently, school attendance has dropped by at least one third."
Iran: The Armenian Evangelical Church in Tehran is the latest church to be ordered to cease holding Persian services on Fridays. The officers serving the notice threatened church officials, saying that "if the order is ignored, the church building will be bombed 'as happens in Iraq every day.'" As another report summarizes, "Christians and Churches in the Islamic Republic of Iran are now banned from preaching the Gospel to non-Christians, holding Persian language services, teaching and distributing the Bible, or holding Christian classes."
Iraq: Even though Kirkuk's church was recently restored after an earlier bomb attack that killed a 13-year-old Christian boy, the "reopening celebration was but a brief respite in the ongoing suffering of Iraq's Christian community, signaled by two further attacks": Another church in Baghdad was bombed, killing two guards and wounding five, and the body of a Christian was "found riddled with bullets in Mosul. He had been shot nine times at close range. The freelance photographer had been kidnapped four days earlier. Iraqi Christians are often targeted by kidnappers for ransom."
Kenya: A band of Muslims launched a grenade attack on a crowd of 150 Christians attending an outdoor church meeting, killing two and wounding more than 30. "Human-rights groups say that the Muslim attackers were hyped into action by a militant Muslim preacher holding an alternate rally only 900 feet from the Christian gathering. Further reports say that the Muslim preachers were slandering Christianity and that members of the Christian group could hear the Muslim speakers."
Nigeria: A Boko Haram suicide car bomber from the Islamist group Boko Haram [Arabic translation: "Western Education is a Sin"] attacked a Catholic church, killing at least 10 people. The bomb detonated as worshippers attended Mass at St. Finbar's Catholic Church in Jos, a city in which thousands of Christians have died in the last decade as a result of Boko Haram's jihad, and
where, less than two weeks before, another church was attacked, killing three.
Saudi Arabia: The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, one of the Islamic world's highest religious authorities, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." He made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait, where a parliament member recently called for the "removal" of churches: the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia's position on churches with the Grand Mufti, who "stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it," basing his verdict on a saying (or hadith), of Muhammad.
Sudan: Sudanese aerial strikes were aimed at church buildings in some regions. Churches in the Nuba Mountains are holding worship services very early in the morning and late in the evening to avoid aerial bombardments intentionally targeting their churches. The Khartoum regime is "doing everything possible to make sure they get rid of Christianity from the Nuba Mountains—churches and church schools are the targets of both the Sudanese Armed Forces and its militias," said an aid worker.
Dhimmitude
[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]
Denmark: In a Muslim ghetto in Copenhagen, a refugee from Africa had his door kicked in several times and was threatened by a group of "youths" who accused him of being "both black and Christian," and who then tried to extort money from him. Police said they could not guarantee his safety; he was eventually found in tears living in the streets.
Egypt: Christian families in the Minya province are "living in terror:" Salafis threatened to kidnap any Christian girl not wearing the hijab. Parents are keeping their daughters indoors, and missing school. Similarly, a Christian boy was abducted; his kidnappers were demanding a large ransom from his family. Further, a court in Edfu sentenced the pastor of a church that was torched by Muslims to six months in prison for violating the height of the church -- which had received a license and was still under construction when it was torched by a Muslim mob in September – and he was ordered to remove the allegedly excess height.
Iran: After complaints about the display of Christmas trees and Santa Clauses in the streets of Tehran during the Christmas season, an official warned that the municipality will begin to seize such symbols: "Building facades in Tehran should be controlled by the municipality and the display of such symbols should not be allowed."
Iraq: Christians are running out of havens as rising security concerns and economic hardship cause them to leave the places of refuge they had found in the country's Kurdish north. The sort of attacks that initiated a mass exodus of Christians from Baghdad and Mosul are increasingly occurring in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, "which welcomed Christians and was relatively safe." A Christian who fled there from Mosul seven years ago after retrieving his son from kidnappers said it is like history "repeating itself."
Nigeria: The Islamist organization Boko Haram declared "war" on Christians, saying it aims to "annihilate the entire Christian community living in the northern parts of the country." According to a spokesman, "We will create so much effort to end the Christian presence in our push to have a proper Islamic state that the Christians won't be able to stay." Along with constant church bombings—most recently on Easter, killing nearly 50—one of the groups new strategies is "to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women."
Pakistan: Two Christian hospital employees were abducted by "Islamic extremists": "Such cases are on the rise, as banned Islamist groups and other criminal gangs are turning to kidnapping for ransom in order to survive and procure weapons and ammunition," said a senior investigator, adding that most Islamist groups believe that Christian NGOs are involved in evangelizing "under the guise of charity," a belief that provides Muslims with an even greater incentive to be abusive.
Sudan: Over half a million people, mostly Christian and originally from South Sudan, have been stripped of citizenship in response to the South's secession, and forced to relocate: "Sudanese Christians, who have barely a month to leave the north or risk being treated as foreigners. are starting to move, but Christian leaders are concerned that the 8 April deadline set by the Islamic-majority Sudan is unrealistic. 'We are very concerned. Moving is not easy ... people have children in school. They have homes ... It is almost impossible,' said a Catholic bishop."
Syria: The nation to which many Iraqi Christians fled as a haven is slowly becoming like Iraq, as thousands of Syrian Christians continue to flee to nearby Lebanon. "Al-Faruq Battalion, which is affiliated with the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA), is imposing jizya (an extra tax imposed on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) on Christians in the Homs Governorate" and "armed men … threaten to kidnap or kill them or members of their families if they refuse to "pay Islamic taxes"—precisely the same form of extortion that has been taking place in next door Iraq.
Turkey: Formerly hailed for its freedoms, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom named Turkey as "one of the world's worst violators of religious freedom," based on Turkey's treatment of Christians and other minority groups. The report stated that restrictions on non-Muslim communities, such as limiting their right to train clergy and own places of worship, "have led to their decline, and in some cases, their virtual disappearance," further noting "an increased number of attacks, ranging from harassment and vandalism to death threats, against Protestant churches and individuals in 2011 compared to 2010."
About this Series
Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:
1. To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
2. To show that such persecution is not "random," but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.
Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death to those who "offend" Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya(financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, "tolerated" citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.
Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.
・Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
2. Malaysia in religious row over 'threat of Christianity'
(AFP) – Mar 29, 2012
KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian state religious and education officials have changed the title of a seminar on "the threat of Christianity" following outrage from non-Muslims in the multiethnic country.
Southern Johor state education officials faced criticism over the school teachers' seminar to be held Saturday that was titled: "Strengthening the faith, the dangers of liberalism and pluralism and the threat of Christianity towards Muslims."
The furore over the title follows allegations of Christian proselytisation in the Muslim-majority country after religious police raided a Methodist church event last August fearing Muslims were being converted.
State lawmaker Maulizan Bujang told the Bernama news agency the reference to Christianity would be removed from the title, saying: "The seminar aims to strengthen the faith of Muslims and it does not need to be politicised by any party that claims it (the seminar) is a threat to other religions."
But co-organisers from the state religious department said the seminar's content would remain the same.
"The seminar is part of the right of Muslims to defend the faith of its practitioners from any action which may lead to apostasy. It is our responsibility," an official told Bernama.
Opposition leaders say the ruling coalition, which is expected to announce national polls this year, is trying to woo back Malay support by using fear of other religions, after a swing vote saw the government lose control of a third of parliamentary seats and four states in 2008 polls.
Reverend Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, said the government had to take a stand against the seminar.
"Of course we are disappointed, it derails the whole idea of harmony and mutual respect and understanding each other," he told AFP.
Malaysia has largely avoided overt religious conflict in recent decades but tensions have simmered since a court ruling in late 2009 lifted a government ban on the use of "Allah" as a translation for "God" in Malay-language bibles.
The ban had been in place for years but enforcement only began in 2008 out of fear the word could encourage Muslims to convert.
The 2009 ruling triggered a series of attacks on Christian places of worship using Molotov cocktails, rocks and paint.
Muslims make up 60 percent of the country's 28 million people, while Christians account for about nine percent, most of whom come from indigenous groups in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.
3. The Malaysian Insider（http://www.themalaysianinsider.com）
Are churches misusing the pulpit? Yes, they should!, 25 April 2012
by Alwyn Lau
APRIL 25 — GE13 draweth nigh. Bersih 3.0 is around the corner. Election fraud is imminent. Putrajaya’s war drums are sounding. What do Christians do? Especially in church on Sunday mornings?
We know the answer of people like Steve Roads who, recently in The Star, expressed his concerns about churches misusing the pulpit. Folks like Roads are turned off by what they call “political sermons” that incite the holy and harmless Sunday worshippers against the government. And — gasp — some pastors are even inviting non-Christian politicians to speak at workshops, all of which compounds the apolitical super-spiritual Christians with “political motives”.
This is bad because politics is divisive and emotive and good Jesus-lovers shouldn’t be exploited by opportunists in politics. Instead of receiving the warm sweet milk of spirituality, Christians nowadays are being forced fed the harsh carnal whiskey of political indoctrination!
Far be it for churches to become the place where the neutrality of Christians are undermined and that pious motto — “politics is about power and Christianity is about sacrifice” — reversed and sullied. No, pastors should spend more time in “introspection”, setting church affairs right before indulging in self-righteous “pontificating”.
Tough news, Steve. We, Christians, are crap out of luck.
Because the problem isn’t about us being infected with political sermons; it is that apolitical sermons are already “political” in the purest way. By refusing to discuss and preach on local issues of justice or oppression we would be behaving AS IF these don’t exist and by so doing justify them.
The problem is not political indoctrination, it’s about not recognising the fact that virtually all church-goers are politically indoctrinated. The problem isn’t about how politics is divisive, it’s about being ignorant of the severe divisions and inequalities in the country caused by governmental actions. The problem isn’t about pastors not putting right things within the church, it’s about how churches are TOO concerned with administration to the point where church-goers can get upset because a wall-deco was hung wrongly but feel nothing if twenty people are wrongly imprisoned.
The problem isn’t that Christians’ spiritual desires are being hijacked, it’s that Christians have a pretty skewed idea of what it means to be spiritual. We’re so obsessed with buying (and renewing) our hellfire insurance we couldn’t care less if the world burns.
Of course there’s another heavenly world awaiting us, but a key part of that culmination involves the church acting in a way that earth is “as it is in heaven”. Yet how can the church do this if it can’t tell its church members to, among other things, kick Barisan Nasional out of Putrajaya? We tell ourselves in the kopi-tiams that 1 Malaysia is a lie, but on the pulpit, we act as if it’s, excuse me, “gospel truth”?
“But hold it, Alwyn, I never said churches should support Barisan Nasional or 1 Malaysia on the pulpit!” Alas, you don’t have to! That we even use the term “apolitical” means that we have accepted the DISTINCTION between what is in the “political” domain and what isn’t, and this distinction is precisely what political usurpers want the people to embrace.
There is nothing Barisan Nasional would love more than for the rakyat to believe that certain activities are neutral, “merely cultural”, and so on. Likewise, there is nothing Najib & Co would love more than churches telling their flock that the pulpit is not a place to talk politics because, in one stroke, the act of speaking against the government would be denied a primary place within the worship life of the church, i.e. the sermon.
To fail to acknowledge the above and to sift them through the lens of the Bible — and what other purpose of the pulpit is there other than to examine things of the world through the Word of God? — is not only delude ourselves, it’s to prevent truth from doing its work.
Of course, the paradox is that preachers have already made it very clear in many other ways which political party they support. If you check out the Facebook links of many preachers and listen to their conversations, it’s quite evident who they believe Christians should vote for.
Furthermore, the very act of pasting a link on one’s Facebook status and raising an issue during the sermon (e.g. the Jais raid on DUMC) is, for all intents and purposes, an act of political side-taking.
Put bluntly, Malaysian preachers are ALREADY — by their actions, online activity, conversations, etc. — “telling their congregation who to vote for”. Yet, on the pulpit, everyone expects preachers to be “neutral”. Since when is the pulpit a mini-Geneva?
Do all the above not sound like the situation faced by one of those angels in the movie Dogma, played by Alan Rickman, who was allowed to see, touch and even sip alcohol but never to drink or swallow it? Hence, he had to keep spitting out the liquid each time? So, in church and out of church, Christians aggressively behave and talk like partisan members but on the pulpit everybody “spits out” their partisan loyalties?
Are we misusing the pulpit? That’s the wrong question. The right one is: How must we mis-use it even more?
・Alwyn Lau reads The Malaysian Insider.
・This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.
4. Right Side News（http://www.rightsidenews.com）
The Savage lands of Islam, 24 April 2012
by Daniel Greenfield
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has ruled that ten year old girls can be married off, because in his words, "Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age." The Mufti, who also recently called for destroying churches in the Arabian Peninsula, is descended from Mohammed Wahhab who gave birth to Wahhabism and his descendants have controlled the Saudi religious establishment, which has given them control of Islam around the world. For all his power and influence, the Mufti is blind and hasn't seen a thing in the last 52 years, an apt metaphor for his entire religion.
Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam, still tries and execute witches. What sort of religion can come out of a place that marries off ten year old girls and murders old women on charges of witchcraft? Exactly the sort of religion you would expect to flyplanes into skyscrapers, murder teenage girls for using Facebook and base their entire society on a ladder with Muslim men at the top, Muslim women a few rungs below and everyone else somewhere at the bottom.
The Saudis are not some aberration, they are Islam in its purest and truest form. This is where Islam originated, these are the people whose brutality and cunning spread it across the world, whose clans killed each other, then killed or enslaved minority groups, and then embarked on a wave of conquest that destroyed countless cultures and left behind seeds of hate that linger to this day.
Unlike Egypt or Syria, they were never colonized by European powers and the impact of Ottoman influence was limited. Oil has brought in massive amounts of money, but it has changed very little. There are limousines instead of camels, the slaves have foreign passports, though they are often still slaves, there is still a brisk trade in imported luxury goods, harems for princes and clans staggering under the weight of their indolent progeny.
Religiously, Wahhabism has done its best to recreate the "pure" Islam of its origins. Economically, oil has allowed the Gulf Arabs to prosper without reform or change. And if Mohammed were to ride out of the desert tomorrow, he would have little trouble fitting in, as soon as he developed a taste for porches. Anyone who wants to see the world as it was in Mohammed's day can visit Saudi Arabia and see inbred clans, slave labor, veiled women and thugs enforcing the will of Allah on every corner.
But you don't even need to visit Saudi Arabia because diluted forms of it can be found everywhere from Cairo to London and from Islamabad to Los Angeles. A hundred and fifty years after the United States freed its slaves, Muslim immigrants have brought back slavery, importing young girls to live as their slaves. Ninety years after American women won the right to vote, the ghosts of Islam tread the streets in sheets that hide their personhood and mark them as property.
The religious wars of the desert have not stayed there as the immigration Hegira has brought them here and everywhere. And that is the source of the Clash of Civilizations. Immigration has brought Muslims into closer contact with different cultures and religions who don't defer to them or give Islam the privileged status that its adherents are used to enjoying.
To know the truth of this all you have to do is measure the respective tolerance levels of America against the average Muslim country. There is no comparison with even the more secular Muslim countries, not in law and not in public attitudes. The sole benefit of the Arab Spring has been to exposethe fraud of the moderate Muslim country. Egypt's transition to theocracy reminds us that a moderate Muslim state is a completely unrepresentative dictatorship. The alternative is majority Muslim rule.
The endgame of the Arab Spring and the immigration Hegira is to reduce the entire world to the level of Saudi Arabia. And that means eliminating outside influences in a long march to purification. Islamists know that they cannot enjoy complete cultural dominance over their own people until their rivals in the West are obliterated. To turn Egypt and Malaysia into Saudi Arabia, and to purify Saudi Arabia, the infidels must be brought down, their religions subjugated and their nations replaced with proper Islamic states.
Islamic leaders are under no illusion that religion is a spiritual matter, they know that it is a numbers game. Wage enough wars, terrorize enough nations, marry enough barely post-pubescent girls and use them to crank out an endless supply of babies, intimidate or trick enough infidels into joining up and you win. That was how Islam took over so much territory and spread around the world, that is how it is doing it again now.
Islam is not a spiritual religion, even its paradise is a materialistic place, a fantasy harem where the physical pleasures of life can be enjoyed without restraint. That gives it an advantage over Judaism and Christianity, just as it gives the Saudis and the Pakistanis an advantage over the Americans and Israelis. There is no angst in Islam, no spiritual seeking and no room for doubt. The marching orders are always clear and individual deeds and thoughts matter less than a willingness to always obey.
Islam came out of the desert and it has never left the desert, instead it has brought the desert with it along with its codes, its deep hatreds, its constant deprivation, its deceptiveness and its nomadic expansionism. Where Islam goes, the desert rises, its tents, its red knives and its insecurities. It was backward even at the time of its birth and it has only become more so, but its singlemindedness is an advantage in an age of effete leftectuals and eurocrats dreaming of a transnational world.
While the leftectuals dream of windmills, the Saudis hire foreigners to pump their oil and then sell it to them, the money goes to fund the Hegira, its mosques in every city from Dublin to Moscow to Buenos Aires and Toronto, the fatwas, the bombs, the websites where the masked faithful hold up AK-47's, the Islamic science courses and sessions on learning to love the Hijab and then the Burqa,
The Saudis just want what everyone wants, for everyone to acknowledge their greatness and live like them. They can hardly be blamed for that when the West spends almost as much money promoting democracy and its own way of life to people who still execute witches and blasphemers. They may be savages, but they fell ass backward into enough black gold to fuel a global religious war, and they're using it cleverly and cunningly to transform our societies and wage war against us even while attending dinners at the White House. It's smoother work than our diplomats are capable of.
You can hardly blame the desert bandits for being what they are, but you can blame the apostles of reason for preaching about a golden age of tolerance and enlightenment from every purloined pulpit and then turning away the heartland to a religion that is nakedly brutal and intolerant at home.
An honest look at Saudi Arabia, at its cruelty, its slaves, its intolerance of other religions and even of women, should be enough to tell even the dimmest Eton or Harvard grad exactly what the West is in for. No matter how many specialists in Muslim tolerance show up at universities, there is the Grand Mufti explaining that Mohammed commanded the eradication of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore there can be no churches allowed there.
Even few apologists for Islam will defend Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that it is indefensible. The media will run the occasional story about the House of Saud's commitment to reform, much as Charles Manson keeps committing to becoming a better person, but even they don't really believe it. Yet even though Saudi Arabia is the heartland of Sunni Islam, and its fortunes shape and control mosques and teachings around the world, they insist on treating Islam and Saudi Arabia as two separate things.
It is brutally telling that the two centers of Islam, Saudi Arabia for the Sunnis and Iran for the Shiites, are genuinely horrifying places. Neither can remotely be associated with tolerance or human rights. It is simple common sense that the spread of Islam will make Western countries more like Saudi Arabia and Iran, rather than less like them.
If Saudi Arabia is not an example that we wish to emulate, then why must we bodily incorporate the religion of Mecca and Medina into London and Los Angeles? What other possible outcome do we imagine that there will be but fewer rights and more violence, dead women, abused children, bomb plots and polygamy?
There are two Islams. The real Islam of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and an imaginary Islam that exists only in the mosques of air and card table korans of academics apologists and political pundits who have decided that Islam cannot be bad, because no religion can be bad, not even one which kills and kills, it must just be misunderstood.
But then why not tell the Grand Mufti that he has misunderstood his own religion, the religion that he and his ancestors have dedicated themselves to purifying and reforming back to its roots? Telling him that would be a dangerous thing on his own turf, but it would also be foolish. The Grand Mufti's controversial statements contain nothing that Mohammed had not said and can the founder of a religion misunderstand his own teachings?
Islam is savage, intolerant, cruel and expansionistic, not due to a misunderstanding, but because it is what it is and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise. We have opened the door to the desert and a hot wind blows through into the northern climes. Either we can shut the door or get used to living in the Saudi desert.
(End)
