The well-known Hamas propagandist, the “Palestinian” Arab Azzam al-Tamimi, has recently denounced the Swiss for their vote, one overwhelming in favor of banning minarets, on a program beamed out by Al-Jazeeera. Azzam al-Tamimi is quite a figure in London, where he used to be — just a few years ago — a respected commentator on Middle Eastern, especially Arab-Israeli matters. In the United States too, he was allowed, a few years ago, in the guise of that same respected commentator and analyst, to contribute a “My Turn” column to Newsweek, no doubt his piece being vetted and approved by the disturbingly skull-faced Fareed al-Zakaria. Zakaria has been such a sly apologist on the matter of Islam, though he himself, in his own ostentatious behavior, is reassuringly “moderate” (you know, with a love of wine, and that sort of thing, that can so mislead). You can see, for your first viewing, the Al-Jazeera interview with Al-Tamimi here.
Al-Tamimi’s performance is telling, and deserves to be seen. One hopes that his, and similar denunciations, will be played and played in Switzerland and all over Europe, so that the next time there is a vote, the well-informed will not constitute 58%, but 98% of the vote. Al-Tamimi mingles real fury and illogic with, at times, a voice barely under control, but meant to indicate that he, Azzam al-Tamimi, is being logical. He begins by maintaining that while the “Swiss elites” were intelligently against the ban, the ignorant Swiss people themselves, devoid of intelligence, were for it. Or rather, while the Swiss “elites” were against the ban, it was those “neo-Nazis” whose “neo-Nazi” followers, according to Al-Tamimi in his Al-Jazeera interview, were “behind the Swiss minaret ban.” Except that a few seconds later he decides that it was really the “Zionists” who were behind the ban, but don’t worry, in a Hegelian synthesis of the thesis (“neo-Nazis” were behind it) and the antithesis (“Zionists” were behind it), he offers his own synthesis: the “neo-Nazis” and the “Zionists,” naturally, have no trouble working hand in glove.
Azzam al-Tamimi then goes on to explain to his Muslim audience, with no awareness of his galloping illogicality, that in Europe the “people” need, and are longing for, Islam, which will rescue them from their ignorance and stupidity, so that apparently it is those same “elites” (the ones who were against the Swiss ban on minarets) who are keeping the “people” from hearing the Message of Islam. They are doing this because Islam, the Deen of Islam, is exactly what all Europeans would embrace, if only they could find out about Islam. And for some reason they just can’t. In the age of the Internet, in the age when we — when you and I — can see thousands of videos of Muslim clerics sermonizing, of Muslim propagandists propagandizing, of Muslim leaders alternately threatening non-Muslims and sweetly sweet-talking them, of Shi’a Muslims weeping at Muharram (it is going on now, and you can see hundreds of pictures, of child-preachers crying, of mullahs telling about Karbala and becoming hysterical, of strong men beating their chests or whipping themselves with chains or drawing their own blood with knives in masochistic unison). So, when the Al-Jazeera interviewer gives Al-Tamimi a question (it is amusing to see this fellow try occasionally — he just can’t do it, can’t possibly do it — to “daringly” mimic the freedom he sees among Western interviewers, as if he were a real interviewer, and Al-Jazeera more than a propaganda outlet supported by the Emir, Prince, King, whatever he now calls himself, of Qatar) about European fears of “islamization of Europe,” Al-Tamimi does not deny that the islamization of Europe is the goal, but first deflects attention by saying that Muslims only want “to be Muslims” in Europe, that they came as “refugees” from countries — Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and so on — and that Europeans should not “compare themselves” to such countries. By that he means that even though all Muslim countries put restrictions, most often severe restrictions, on the practice of Christianity, and even though some of those countries not only ban such practice outright but local Muslims attack, and kill, with impunity, Christians who have no protection from the local Muslim authority, it is wrong for the Swiss, or for anyone else, to dare to point this out.
Furthermore, Al-Tamimi says, all of these Muslims came to Europe as “refugees” and it would impliedly be cruel for Europeans to impose their rules on these Muslim “refugees.” Really? Are they “refugees” in the traditional sense, fleeing systematic persecution or an unendurable situation? Let’s take Azzam al-Tamimi himself. He was born and spent the first ten years of his life, from 1955 to 1965, in Hebron, when it was under the rule of fellow Arabs, of Jordanians. He then left, with his family, to go to Kuwait, where they lived, and where, eventually, the behavior of many so-called “Palestinians” who betrayed the Kuwaitis and took the side of the invading army of Saddam Hussein, led to their wholesale expulsion. But there were plenty of places Azzam al-Tamimi could have gone. He could have gone, most obviously, to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s regime back in the early 1990s would have been glad to have him. And there are nearly two dozen members of the Arab League, and at least some of them might have welcomed him, or at least not turned him away. But instead Azzam al-Tamimi chose to go to England. And there was he not only allowed to enter, but to settle, and was not only allowed to settle, but was allowed to work on behalf of Jihad — the Lesser Jihad against Israel initially, but now, it appears, he has also been working to promote the Islamization of Europe by demonizing all those Europeans aware enough to be alarmed about the Muslim presence, and the Muslim aggression and hostility and mendacity of which the performance of Azzam al-Tamimi, on Al-Jazeera, provides a telling embodiment and example.
And then Azzam Al-Tamimi, having first denounced the “Swiss people” for not allowing themselves to be swayed by their own elites — those elites who deplored the vote in favor of banning minarets — starts prating about “democracy,” a concept that to him is quite foreign. What he appears to mean is that “democracy” should always and everywhere never lead to a result that will in any way create obstacles for the spread and then the dominance of Islam. It doesn’t matter if nearly 58% of the Swiss voted for a ban on minarets, or if 98% of them had done so, or if they decided that mosques would be allowed only pari passu with the allowing of churches in Muslim-ruled lands.
No, none of that referendum and voting stuff constitutes “democracy.” Democracy is what happens when Islam is not opposed, but is inexorably, little by little, imposed. For Islam is the only thing that will save Europeans from the stupidity (because un-Islamic) of their lives. And the definition of true “democracy” in Europe (he has a most imperfect grasp of this idea, but then the word “freedom” common to all European languages has no equivalent in Arabic), appears to be that “people have a right to accept, but not to reject, Islam.”
Al-Tamimi acknowledges the Islamisation of Europe as the goal, but tells everyone what a splendid goal it is, the cure for everything that ails Europe. Just think: if the Europeans accept Islam, their countries, too, can look like Libya, or Algeria, or Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or the Sudan, or Iran, or Pakistan. And there would be no more of this getting up in the morning and going to work and then coming home after work. Why, people could sit around, just as they do in Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and Algeria, and Iraq, and Sudan, figuring out ways to divvy up unmerited oil money, or to convince Infidels to give them more aid, or to expropriate the property of foreign, Infidel companies and nationals, or to stage coups and upend a ruler or regime so that another ruler, and his faction or tribe, could help themselves to the government-controlled loot. Yes, Islam for Europe. And no more nonsense about science or art or individual autonomy. No more going home and “turning on the television” and perhaps even having a drink. There would be Islam, and only Islam. What could be better?
You can see the interview with Azzam al-Tamimi on Al-Jazeera, again, now that you have read a bit about it, here.
Watch Azzam al-Tamimi express his horror at the “undemocratic” democracy of Switzerland, with its “undemocratic” referendum, and invoke both his mock-horror of Hitler, and his, Azzam al-Tamimi’s, deep hatred of “Zionism” and rage at all of those he deems behind the Swiss — i.e., Jews, and those “Zionist” Christians who he conspiratorially believes must surely have been behind, must have manipulated the Swiss vote. Though he also says that the Swiss vote was the result of the ignorant Swiss people ignoring all of their “elites” and voting as they, out of their simple-minded Islam-ignorance, wished. Watch him explain that Muslims have a perfect right to do as they wish in the countries of Europe to which, he says, they fled as “refugees” (but “refugees” from what? from the misrule of Islam, but instead of shunning Islam, they brought Islam with them, and hope to implant it firmly in European soil). Watch him say that what really explains the Swiss vote is the terror, all over Europe, that people will convert en masse if they are allowed to discover the truth about Islam.
That hasn’t been my experience, as I have been learning more and more about Islam, and the behavior and deep-seated attitudes of Muslims, even those in whom I might once have had some hope, and especially as I have studied the works of Western scholars of Islam and the testimonies, or temoignages, provided by the articulate apostates from Islam. Has it been yours?
And for those who might want to refresh their memory about “Dr.” Azzam al-Tamimi, or see him not quite as unhysterical as he managed to be on Al-Jazeera, here is another video of him at a London hate rally, one that that Adolf Hitler (whose “neo-Nazi” followers, according to Al-Tamimi in his Al-Jazeera interview, were “behind the Swiss minaret ban” except that, a few seconds later, it is the “Zionists” who were behind the ban) would have thoroughly enjoyed. It can be seen here.
Azzam al-Tamimi is an exemplary figure. His outward aspect does not alarm. He appears practically as a mild-mannered accountant, suited-and-tied, wearing his glasses, just one more bland, ordinary, unthreatening inhabitant of one of the great capitals of the West. We might, did we not know more, assume he is deeply grateful to the citizens of Great Britain, and to their government, the government and the citizens of an Infidel nation-state, which could not for one minute have been created under Islam. We might have assumed that he was grateful to them for allowing this propagandist for Islam and the Jihad to live and work, and use as the base of his far-flung “operations” a position as director of an “Institute of Islamic Thought,” the funding of which no doubt bears (does not bear!) looking into.
But Azzam al-Tamimi is not to be understood by his outward aspect. He is to be understood for what is in his mind and heart. He lives in London. He has been exposed for many years to the West. He has enjoyed its freedoms. He has received every courtesy, every generosity, from the British. He travels freely throughout the West. A few months ago, he was in Canada, meeting with supporters. But what is in his mind? What is in his heart? What moves him? What makes him despise the Infidels among whom he lives, whom he has taken to calling “ignorant”? For they are, you see, still living in the time of ignorance, the Jahiliya. Indeed, all non-Muslims, in Azzam al-Tamimi’s view, live in a time of ignorance, and they are ignorantly manipulated — by neo-Nazis, by Zionists, by Neo-Nazi Zionists, to reject the splendors and wonders and consolation of the Total Belief-System of Islam, at least for now, only symbolically, with the minaret ban supported by those neo-Nazi Zionists, or Zionist neo-Nazis, or whatever they are, in the perfervid fantasies of Azzam al-Tamimi, and of hundreds of millions of other, deeply believing, Muslims no worse, but alas no better, than the hysterical Azzam al-Tamimi.