With some notable exceptions -- I just spoke at a Catholic conference in Ohio last Friday -- I've found Catholic audiences to be generally unreceptive to information about the jihad threat. Like other groups, particularly religious groups, they may suspect that to resist the jihad and Islamic supremacism is tantamount to working against religious freedom -- a view that arises from ignorance of the political and supremacist character of Islamic law.
But there are signs that Roman Catholics in America are awakening to the threat. John Zmirak, a Catholic writer who is one of the most absorbing and accomplished writers of any perspective on the scene anywhere today (and author of the superbly witty book The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living), has written a piece at Inside Catholic, "A Pink Cloud Hangs Over Britain," July 28, that demonstrates that at least some American Roman Catholics are starting to realize what is happening.
When Pope Benedict deplanes in Great Britain, he should probably wear a gas mask, and keep it on all through his visit. Sure, it might mar his public appearances, making the Vicar of Christ seem even more alien than he already does, on an island whose sense of national identity was formed in large part by its rejection of popery for potpourri. Just for fun, I think that Il Papa's first remarks to the Prime Minister, wheezed through the gas-mask, really should be: "Luke . . . I am your father." That might even tickle poor Christopher Hitchens.Why should the pope wear protective breathing gear? To preserve his good health and sanity from the Pink Cloud of "human rights" unanchored in any responsibilities that hangs over the island from Cornwall to the Orkneys -- and which pumps energetically from every bodily orifice of Prime Minister David Cameron. The leader of that kingdom's once-great Conservative Party has worked energetically to remake it in the image of Tony Blair's New Labour, whoring after strange gods such as "multiculturalism" and "diversity," two postmodern euphemisms for national suicide.
That same Cloud hangs thick as incense around the archbishop of Canterbury. It billowed skyward when he squinched up his furry face to embrace sharia law in Britain, and it leaks out from under his skirts whenever he reassures Britons that when Islamic clerics call for universal Islamic law and for "death to the unbelievers," what they really want is tolerance and peace. Like laughing gas at the dentist, the Pink Cloud eases the pain. It blurs your thoughts about the drill and the blood, and reminds you that everyone else is really just like you. Orthodox Muslims may think that they favor honor-killing, female genital mutilation, polygamy, jihad, and second-class citizenship for "unbelievers." But if you grant them all their political demands, and speak to them in a calm, reassuring voice, they will in time come to see that all they really want is a good, starchy meal, a pint of decent ale, and a football match on the telly. They just don't realize it yet.
I've huffed this cloud myself, eager for reassurance that implacable enemies of the Western way of life -- with all its flaws, damn it, it's ours -- are in fact, behind their henna beards, just folks. I've read endless paragraphs of anaesthetic blather emitted by the Catholic B.S. Generator on the subject of Islam, by liberals who view Muslims as ersatz Mexicans wearing differently shaped hats, and by conservatives who fantasize that someday imams will help us round up and behead all the abortionists. Such daydreams can lull anyone into a mellow, alpha-brainwave, second-joint-in-Southern-California stupor, which can last for up to 20 minutes -- after which you've forgotten about the whole question of Islam engulfing the cradle of our civilization, because you're Googling the latest Lady Gaga video....
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
The winds of change whisper in the trees, and walls of doubt will crumble tossed and torn.
Yes it is brilliant...
'Such daydreams can lull anyone into a mellow, alpha-brainwave, second-joint-in-Southern-California stupor, which can last for up to 20 minutes...'
Don't forget the north...The second joint San Francisco stupor lasts for days...sometimes months...
"Angry Bristol car owner jailed for grabbing helicopter"
Angery driver was - Yep
"Girl, 14, forced to be prostitute in Greater Manchester"
Nine men convicted at Manchester Crown Court in connection with the abuse were: Yep
Zany, zany, zany--I wish I had Zmirak's perception. [Pink Cloud, huh--reminds me of the universally inescapable sameness in the children's book, Priscilla and the Pink Planet--a favorite of my late daughter of enduring memory.
The only thing I don't get is he "huffed this cloud" himself.
That's mystifying to me. I never "huffed" any PC MC cloud after 9/11 (never thought about 'em before (9/11) - the evil of Islam and it's adherents' was clear from the get-go. No, they're not like us. That's readily apparent. Well, glad he's not huffing anymore and "gets" it.
Bravo.
“Show me just what Prophet Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman.”
Only evil and inhuman...Want Sharia? Got the stomach for it?
Islamic Amputations. (video)
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/05/islamic-amputations.html
"Don't forget the north...The second joint San Francisco stupor lasts for days...sometimes months..."
In the case of Bay Area moonbats, the brain damage appears to be permanent. ;)
Some Catholics regard Islam is an ally against the the Great Bogeyman of 'Secularism'. After all, it's a brother Abrahamic faith, isn't it?
I have never been able to fully understand what "diversity" means or what it has been invented for.....and nobody in the UK can explain it satisfactorily to me...........the indigenous population are advised that they need it more than oxygen to breathe........but Muslim communities seem to be oblivious of and not in any need at all of this thing labelled diversity????.......Ah, I think I am begining to figure it out.....
Thank you, Robert, and Marisol and to the likes of Andrew C. McCarthy who are trying to awaken our fellow Catholics.
Sadly, 40+ years of Kumbaya-My-Lord, I-Do-It-in-the-Spirit-of-Vat-II, non-judgmental, Jesus-is-my-drinking-buddy Catholicism Lite has favored pathos over logos. [See some of the commenters suggesting "racism" as Mr. Zmirak's motive over at the original Inside Catholic article.]
I remember fondly the nuns who pounded the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) into us high schoolers but that was the early 1970's. I cannot tell you how many Catholic school pupils have emerged from a system that now substitutes the popular "I feel" for "I believe and here is the reasoning I used".
Keep on keeping on, Mr. S! We need you and thank God for writers such as Mr. Zmirak.
Orthodox Muslims may think that they favor honor-killing, female genital mutilation, polygamy, jihad, and second-class citizenship for "unbelievers." But if you grant them all their political demands, and speak to them in a calm, reassuring voice, they will in time come to see that all they really want is a good, starchy meal, a pint of decent ale, and a football match on the telly. They just don't realize it yet.
Zmirak provides us with the most seemingly anodyne qualifier I've seen yet: "Orthodox" Muslims. We may add it to the asymptotic list of more obviously objectionable ones, such as "extremist", "radical" (or worse, "radicalized"), "fundamentalist", and that particularly annoying one, "conservative" -- not to mention the "-ist" and "-ism" suffixes to magically create the Islamist and Islamism, in order to preserve the unqualified Muslim and Islam as off limits to condemnation.
Zmirak's qualifier raises the same questions, however:
1) What is an "unorthodox" Muslim?
2) Are "unorthodox" Muslims harmless to us?
3) If the answer to #2 is "Yes", how is that harmlessness determined?
4) How many "unorthodox" Muslims exist, relative to "orthodox" Muslims?
Once it becomes clear that -- even if we could determine who, and where, these "unorthodox Muslims" are -- we have no way of knowing whether they are any less dangerous to us than the "orthodox" Muslims, the qualifier is seen as useless. Indeed, worse than useless: it becomes positively a hindrance to our ongoing pedagogy of our fellow Westerners, and to the extent it would inform public policy with regard to the problem of Muslims, it could have recklessly dangerous effects for our safety in its presumption of a knowledge it does not possess.
Hesperado
Once again you're way off base.
Someone who was not a relentless fault-finder might see in Zmirak's "orthodox Muslims" a matter-of-fact assumption that Islam's core texts and teachings teach violence and supremacism.
But not you. Oh, no.
Do you know what "orthodox" means?
Cordially
Robert Spencer
If I may, I'd like to offer a crude but succinct definition of diversity: Diversity is the notion that only one's own farts stink.
...or is that "multiculturism?" I forget.
A Catholic with cajones!! Just donated a hundred bucks to this Inside etc mob. Loved the Saxon knights, too. Let's take sane action now so that it never has to come to this.
I don't know if you have noticed it but across Europe things are stirring and people are awakening to the Muslim threat and this awakening is taking the form of Nationalism. Now, perhaps you don't like the direction this awakening takes. However nature abhors a vacuum and the nationalist parties, the BNP in Britain, the PVV in Holland, the Front National in France and many other Nationalist organisations are getting increasing shares of the votes. The PVV has been asked to form part of the government in Holland as it is the largest party and remember Holland was once the most permissive of societies in terms of PC/Multicult. Ordinary people are looking around at thier societies and seeing thier cities turned into third world ghettos. There is a growing realisation that the ruling elite have sold the ordinary working class/middle class down the river and have in the process betrayed thier own countries, this is called treason. The realisation that the P/C, Multicultural experiment is in the process of destroying native values, traditions and any sense of community is also taking root. There are, no doubt people on this site who will scream "Nazi", "Fascist" etc. It should be noted that these ephitets are a far cry from the truth and just parrot the media etc.For instance go to the BNP Website and read the constitution and aims and objectives, there may well be things there you don't like or disagree with but its a far cry from being Fascist - unless of course you are a Liberal/Marxist/Anarchist. I challenge the the detractors of Nationalism and Nationalist parties to put forward an alternative and they cannot and have not. All they do is cry in thier beer about how awful things have become (for the most part). There are of course exceptions to this and sites such as Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, Gates of Vienna and Frontpage Mag are examples. The ruling elites, Church, Media, Government, Civil Service, Police, Educational system, Financial system in Britain and in most parts of Europe are contaminated with an ideology that is inimical to Western Society. They can offer nothing but more of the same. They are in the process of allowing the Islamification of Europe with horrific consequences for that generation who are now in thier 20's and for thier children, my daughter is Jewish and in her 20s I fully expect her to be caught in the middle of the coming civil war and unfortunately she is oblivious to the problem. Here lies the problem; the change that is needed to stop Europe from being destroyed is nothing less than revolutionary. If things are allowed to continue as they are then there will be massive civil conflict. There are pressures building up which cannot be defused by the usual outlets and the financial crash, mass immigration, poverty, unemployment and the ongoing destruction of public services will contribute to this. Time to take sides Ladies and Gents - time is getting short.
masterfully written
"I've found Catholic audiences to be generally unreceptive to information about the jihad threat."
I wouldn't characterize it as such. Given the general discrimination against Catholics in American culture from the founding of the nation through 40-50 years ago, Catholics are just being cautious and skeptical. Many will see the light when presented by genuine facts, but they are unlikely to be swayed by any but the strongest and well-supported arguments, as should be the case with everyone. Liberals are easily swayed by flimsy emotional arguments, but most people need something with substance.
On the subject (more or less).
Both Christianity and Islam rose in the Middle East, each under adverse circumstances. Within a generation Christianity extended from Iberia to India, spread by peaceable Apostles with a message. Islam spread throughout northern Africa and Western Asia spread by violence, rape, slaughter, and pillage by warriors. Christianity with its message and martyrs overcame the Roman Empire. (The Christian martyr - Gk. for "witness" - was one who would not reject his Lord or his Faith even in the face of death.) Islam's martyr is one who dies, perhaps incidentally, while killing other people.
The Roman Empire and its continuation, the Byzantine Empire, and its adopted child, the Holy Roman Empire, though admittedly imperfect and violent at times, flooded Europe and the world with a rich civilization. The Islamic Empire entered rich civilizations and, in all instances, reduced them to rubble.
I do believe that Europe is waking up. Even as deep-rooted rivalries and differences separate Catholicism from Orthodoxy, the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow are both aware that Christianity is the salvation of Europe. Or, in another light, the neglect and rejection of Christianity is the cause of Europe's confusion and undoing.
In America, the liberal theologians and diversity catechists have taught the faithful not to stand up for their faith. The end result is that for many Catholics and other Christians, having been taught that their unique heritage doesn't matter because we're "all the same," there are few if any convictions. How can one believe that the Incarnate Word said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" and at the same time celebrate diversity with those whose "prophet" teaches deliberate lying, maiming, systematic oppression, genocide and sexual depravity? Only by not REALLY believing in one or the other.
"Michael"
That's what I gave them, of course.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Zmirak may talk the talk, but he's no nearer to walking the walk than any of the multiculturalism/diversity-celebrating idiots in the UK.
His idea that Orthodox Muslims are just like "us" and all they want is a quiet peaceful life, and all that's needed is calm and reassuring engagement as if they are naughty kids who need to see the error of their ways is absolute and utter rubbish! He's doing it, too! What is it about "men of the cloth" and this turn the other cheek business and loving their enemies? Where does it get them when they're up against the inbred hatred inculcated Orthodox Muslims? It gets them hated even more, if they're lucky. If they're not, it gets them killed.
Hesperado seems to be of the same kind. Perhaps this needs spelling out to the likes of Hesperado, Zmirak and others - the time for caution is long past. How many times does it need to be said that arrogantly placing our own Western norms and mores on Muslims just doesn't work? They understand the elitism and totaliarianism of Islam - what their minds and social conditioning are unable to accept is that in order to succeed and live in peace in Western countries they must not only tolerate but RESPECT other faiths and allow them to exist alongside them. The more our idiot politicians, and liberal religionists do the conciliation and understanding bit - THE MORE "ORTHODOX" MUSLIMS DESPISE US! Got it? "Orthodox" Muslims cover the whole spectrum of Islam, but by virtue of the fact that they must take the Koran literally, they are NOT allowed to tolerate others. Orthodox Muslims are just one small step removed from what the liberalists/multiculturalists call "Radical" Muslims because heaven forbid that they should be called "extremists."
All Zmirak's doing is talking a lot of pink hot air.
Apologies, folks - I went off on one. I suppose what I mean is it's all very well people like Zmirak coming out with all this stand up for your rights bit and I'm sure Zmirak realises that extremist Muslims (I wish he'd have just come out and called them that) are NOT just like us - but what is the Catholic Church (and other Churches) doing about it? Not a lot, from what I can see. At least the Catholic Church isn't (yet) talking about divestment from Israel because of its treatment of the poor oppressed Palestinians - when it's becoming more and more apparent that the economy in Gaza is booming and it's Hamas itself that's using the poverty-stricken Gazans as propaganda fodder, but some Christians can't (or won't see it).
So there is hope that when the Pope comes to the UK he can move Catholics along the right path to speak out against a particular faith which does not tolerate Catholicism any more than it does other faiths. I hope he does this.
Jamie:
One thing is clear: you have completely and abysmally misunderstood what John Zmirak is saying here.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I loved the article by Mr. Zmirak, and I visited the site to read other articles from "Inside Catholic". As to the pro-Islamic Catholic mindset, it's very revealing to go through the comments regarding the Ground Zero Mosque. Some of the posts are shockingly naive.
As a lifelong practicing Catholic, I have been dismayed (since years before 9/11) by many of my fellow Catholics' unwillingness/inability to confront Islam. This is what I hear, over and over:
--The vast majority of Muslims are good, kind people who are now being persecuted for their faith, like our forefathers. They need tolerance and understanding. We must pray for people to accept them and not judge them on what a few kooks within the religion do.
--Muslims may have some beliefs we find alien, but they are anti-abortion, pro-large family, and sexism isn't ALWAYS a bad idea. At least their value system is good.
--They're only saying out loud what everyone really thinks about Israel and the Jews.
The first response is a result of years and years of watering down moral teaching to the point where no one can be criticized; it's ill-mannered to do so. The second response makes me absolutely crazy: Hitler was kind to animals, but that didn't make him a moral person!
The third response is, I think, a throwback to hardwired anti-Semitism that nearly all Europeans seem to have (and a lot of Chicago-area Catholics are European immigrants, or the children of immigrants). Reminding these people that Jesus was a Jew only infuriates them. I don't think the Church has ever appropriately addressed anti-Semitism.
Here is a perfect example of the Catholic mindset: Our kids attended a public grammar school, here on the South Side. One day my daughter came home and told me that her 5th grade class was preparing a piece for a multi-cultural assembly and that they would be reciting, in Arabic, "There is no god but Allah." A Muslim kid in the class (his name was Jihad) had gotten his mom involved, and the ex-nun who was the teacher in charge was THRILLED that finally the Muslim viewpoint would be represented, after years of Christmas/Hannukah assemblies. (They originally wanted all the little girls to wear hijab.)
When I found out, I hit the roof. I called the school, and the principal lectured me about diversity. (Right, I'm so anti-diversity that I send my kids to a school that's only 40% white.) She said they would not change the selection.(She also told me that their legal dept. said this would be okay.) I asked my neighbor, a devout Irish Catholic whose son was in the same class, what she thought of this. She saw NOTHING wrong. I asked her if she would be okay with the entire assembly praying the Hail Mary. She was horrified: "Oh, now THAT would be illegal!" I said, "Right, but this is the same thing!" She didn't see it.
In desperation, I emailed Daniel Pipes. Like the cavalry, he rode to my rescue and offered sound advice, as well as put me in touch with the Thomas More Law Center and the media. When the principal found out I had organized an awareness campaign, the school backed down. Mr. Pipes will always be my hero.
NONE of the other parents stood with me. Most of the white kids in the class were Catholics, and their parents saw this is me making a mountain out of a molehill. A lot of our neighbors were mad at us for a long time.
It was a Pyrrhic victory. I attended the assembly and videotaped it, and I know they didn't sneak anything in, on THAT day. But several of the kids in my daughter's class ostracized her for being a "racist", having a racist mom, etc. She endured sarcastic remarks from some of her favorite teachers, too, who did not approve of my intolerance. Ironically, the teacher who was angriest was a Jewish woman who was extremely proud of her faith. She somehow interpretted my "crusade" as a campaign against anyone who wasn't Catholic.
My daughter is now finishing high school, and she says that even though she was mocked for being "anti-Muslim", she is proud that we successfully resisted the assembly plans.
Dear Jamie and Hesperado:
Reading comprehension 101
Zmirak has tongue firmly in cheek with his words about "Orthodox" Muslims coming around to enjoying a pint of ale and a football match on telly. Read the preceding three sentences in that paragraph and it is clear that Zmirak is mocking the naive attitude induced by inhaling the "pink cloud" of multiculti BS. He wrote:
"That same Cloud hangs thick as incense around the archbishop of Canterbury...and it leaks out from under his skirts whenever he reassures Britons that when Islamic clerics call for universal Islamic law and for 'death to the unbelievers,' what they really want is tolerance and peace. Like laughing gas at the dentist, the Pink Cloud eases the pain. It blurs your thoughts about the drill and the blood, and reminds you that everyone else is really just like you."
Zmirak is NOT advocating the blurry irrational tolerance induced by the Pink Cloud but rather mocking it and warning us readers against making the same mistake as the archbishop and his ilk.
- AvantiBev
Dear Mary:
I applaud what you did and applaud your own awareness of the problem. I share many of your frustrations. And, having survived a childhood in the Celtic Catholic 'hood and schools of the shamrocked Southwest Side of Chicago, I find your observations to be quite similar to mine about the South Side. However, do not lump Irish and other Catholics' with my fellow Italo American ROMAN Catholics when it comes to attitudes about the Jewish people.
Since the time of Augustus when a large community of Jews lived in Rome, Italians have been overwhelmingly philo-Semitic. Italy saved 80% of the Jews within her borders during WWII. Many ordinary Italians cooperated in forging documents, hiding Jewish families, and lying to the Nazis who invaded after the coup ousting Mussolini. From policemen to clergy to farmers or urban merchants many Jews were aided with false identities and allowed to hide in plain sight thus surviving the Holocaust. Of the occupied countries, only Denmark had a higher percentage of Jewish survivors.
Now get the hell out of the SW Side girl! I did. Come on down to Taylor Street. :-)
- AvantiBev
Robert,
My point is that to label the problematic Muslims with a qualifier implies the Muslims without that qualifier are unproblematic (or at least don't rise to the level of the problem being discussed with the qualifier).
This particular label, orthodox, may too easily reinforce a common trope which Westerners bring to bear on the problem of Islam -- namely, the trope of superimposing the Western sociology of religion and its history of ongoing secularist erosion (or evolution, depending on one's POV) of religious institutions, societies and psychology onto an alien matrix of religious culture, the Islamic. Thus, Zmirak's implicit unorthodox Muslim raises the questions I raised. Are we to assume there exist innumerable Muslims out there as "lax" or as "ignorant of their own religion" -- or even also as self-critical -- as the millions of erstwhile Christians throughout the West that have evolved over the past 200 to 300 years, with each passing generation only secularizing more profoundly in many different ways?
Are we to assume these innumerable unorthodox Muslims who reflect Westerners in a familiar mirror are numerous enough to provide a way to solve the problem their Islam is causing the world? Are we to assume these innumerable unorthodox Muslims can in fact assimilate into the West, unlike their more "orthodox" brethren?
More importantly, are we to assume that any given Muslim who seems unorthodox to us really is so, in ways that matter pragmatically for our safety -- or does our assumption, perhaps, reflect a lurking neo-Colonialist condescending expectation that there must exist Muslims in great numbers, numbers sufficient to make a damn difference, who are somehow at heart like us?
Etc.
But I already covered all this in my previous comment, even if it wasn't spelled out for those so unfamiliar with these important questions it never occurs to them, apparently, to discern their gist, let alone to ask them.
P.S.:
The aforementioned trope is one of many pieces of the PC MC paradigm routinely brought to bear on the problem of Islam. Like most of the mechanisms of that paradigm, it seems incoherent when analyzed closely. One incoherency, or inconsistency, or self-contradiction at play here is the vacillation between two assumptions:
1) the orthodox religious person (or "serious" or "traditionalist" or "fundamentalist" or any number of roughly equivalent qualifiers) is the "real" representative of his religion and as such reflects the majority
2) the unorthodox religious person (or "lax" or "secularized" or "Westernized" etc.) is the "real" representative of his religion and as such reflects the majority.
PC MC tends to vacillate between these two when they regard Western Christians -- on the one hand, the PC MCs exaggerate the prevalence and danger of the "fundamentalist" Christians; on the other hand, they assume as a given that the secularized Christian is the real model of all religious sociology to be applied everywhere in the world and thus naturally fits Muslim societies & psychology.
I oppose qualifiers when talking about Muslims, because the qualifiers tend to reinforce this superimposition of the model of Western secular process onto Islamic culture, society and psychology -- a superimposition that reflects axiomatic prejudice, ethnocentric neo-Wilsonianism, wishful thinking, and a gullible inclination to be swayed by superficial data more than it does reality.
Thanks for your reply. I agree with you--there are different cultural perspectives among Catholics regarding Judaism. But it isn't just an Irish-Catholic thing: many Chicago-area Catholics are from Central/Eastern Europe, and a lot--not all--are hard-core anti-Semites.
bevc,
I realize Zmirak's piece is filled with sarcasm, but that doesn't mean every single phrase or word in it enjoys the literary exemptions under the license to satirize. His particular use of Orthodox does not seem subject to such an examption. To persuade me, you'd have to demonstrate specifically how it is so in its semantic context.
The portion in question --
...the Pink Cloud eases the pain. It blurs your thoughts about the drill and the blood, and reminds you that everyone else is really just like you. Orthodox Muslims may think that they favor honor-killing, female genital mutilation, polygamy, jihad, and second-class citizenship for "unbelievers." But if you grant them all their political demands, and speak to them in a calm, reassuring voice, they will in time come to see that all they really want is a good, starchy meal, a pint of decent ale, and a football match on the telly. They just don't realize it yet.
-- is not using "Orthodox" in the voice of the people Zmirak is mocking, but rather qualifying the Muslims which Zmirak is saying those people think they can change through their liberal policies.
Imagine if he had eliminated that qualifier and wrote:
Muslims may think that they favor honor-killing, female genital mutilation, polygamy, jihad, and second-class citizenship for "unbelievers." But if you grant them all their political demands, and speak to them in a calm, reassuring voice, they will in time come to see that all they really want is a good, starchy meal, a pint of decent ale, and a football match on the telly. They just don't realize it yet.
That would imply too "sweeping" a "generalization" with a "broad brush" about "all Muslims", one supposes, for Zmirak's (and his audience's) comfort zone.
Oh, got to love it!!! Thanks Robert for another amazingly wonderful article!!!
I like the part about SoCal!!! Really tickles me!!
Keep up the good work!!
Dear Mary, Thank you so much for doing what you did, you are very gutsy and we need more catholics like you dear God in heaven!!I know just what you mean about naive catholics. Sometimes I want to scream!Naivete should be non-existent in Christianity. I've heard the same from priests who of all people should know better. One priest told the congregation during his sermon that he "was privileged to learn about islam in the seminary where he was taught about it by a 'scholar' and that it's really peaceful except for a few radicals." So it's apparent that the imams are in the seminaries spreading their propaganda. Robert, could you maybe look into this? They're probably in some convents as well. This is very ominous. Thank you
Mary
that is scary! So they had actually conned the teacher into the idea of making a whole bunch of non-Muslim kids recite at least part of the shahada! Muslims believe that if you say the shahada, that's it, *you're a Muslim*. *Even if you're tricked into it*.
Thank God that you were able to put a spanner in the works. Aided by that capable Jew Daniel Pipes, and the Thomas More people.
That story's a word of warning to all of us who have kids in the school system, whether primary or secondary: we have to *watch out*, and if we see Muslims preparing to pull the kind of con-job you saw, then we have to be prepared to 'hit the roof' (and, if necessary, call the lawyers) as you did.
A nativity play is one kind of thing; if non-Christian kids take part, the Christian kids and parents don't see that as making the kids Christian. It's a *story*. Same deal if the school did a purim play or sang a Hanukkah song: both of those involve commemoration of historical events and non-Jews can find the story of Esther or of the Maccabees inspiring even for non-religious reasons.
But getting kids to warble part or all of the Muslim shahada in Arabic is quite another sort of thing altogether.
That would be like making non-Christian kids recite part or all of the Apostles' Creed.
And they were going to make the girls wear hijab! That would have been like making them put on swastika armbands or Ku Klux Klan hoods...or (to get closer to the symbolism for females) dog-collars or slave-fetters.
Robert @ 8.53am - thanks for the heads up - I stand corrected.
J
Robert @8.53 - Thanks for the heads up - I stand corrected.
J
Robert,
I was at your lecture in Steubenville. I agreed with everything you said. Observation from the last row; every ear in the room was listening intently to you, every eye was glued to the stage!
Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and concern for the entire community! May God bless and watch over you!
Hesperado:
That only follows if the qualifier is intended to assume or demonstrate that the Muslims without the qualifier are unproblematic. There are plenty of instances, on the contrary, in which one may use a qualifier on the word "Muslims" for reasons having nothing to do with any distinction between Muslims who are "problematic" or "non-problematic" -- for example, one may speak of Sunni Muslims or Shi'ite Muslims without implying anything at all about whether one group or another is "problematic" or not.
So it is in this case also. Although I don't claim of course to know his mind, I don't believe Zmirak was intending to say anything about the distinction you're making, as it simply was not one of the concerns of his piece. When he referred to "orthodox Muslims," he was saying that "honor-killing, female genital mutilation, polygamy, jihad, and second-class citizenship for 'unbelievers'" were part and parcel of the belief system that is generally acknowledged by Muslims as standard, mainstream, ordinary Muslim belief.
That is, of course, correct, and it is a point that is almost never made except by a handful of writers. And I don't believe that stating it necessarily implies anything whatsoever about the states of mind or the potential dispositions and activities of the "unorthodox."
Maybe there are, but remember: Zmirak was only saying that "orthodox" Muslims -- i.e., those who hold beliefs that are generally considered correct and mainstream by key Islamic authorities -- hold to the correctness of polygamy, jihad, etc. That is a statement about standard Muslim belief. It does imply, certainly, that a Muslim who rejected polygamy or jihad or FGM or honor killing would be considered "unorthodox" by the bulk of his coreligionists. And that is manifestly true, as we can see from numerous stories posted here at Jihad Watch over the years.
But does it also further imply that there exists some large aggregate of Muslims who do in fact reject those things, are "unorthodox," and are hence utterly and definitively and for all time harmless to Infidels? I don't see how that follows at all.
That is an assumption I have cautioned against many times here over the years, as you yourself must know. I don't believe that Zmirak is so naive as to assume such things either, but in any case there is nothing whatsoever in his piece to warrant your assumption that he does in fact make such assumptions of his own.
Maybe it does, but I don't see anyone making that assumption. And so your assumption of incoherence -- something you've accused me of on numerous occasions -- actually founders on the fact that you're basing your judgment on positions that I do not actually hold. It is true that there are numerous people who identify themselves Muslims who don't care about their religion and are not pursuing jihad. It is also true that there is no way to distinguish within that group of Muslims between those who will remain harmless forever and those who will at some point become more fervent and begin to pursue jihad against Infidels. Consequently, as I've said many times, policies should not be based on the existence or presumed good will of the non-jihad-waging Muslim population, but it undoubtedly is a population that does in fact exist.
That is not an "incoherence" on my part. It is simply a statement of the way things are.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Overall, and excellent piece by Zmirak. I have only one small caveat.
He wrote:
...by liberals who view Muslims as ersatz Mexicans wearing differently shaped hats, and by conservatives who fantasize that someday imams will help us round up and behead all the abortionists...
..................
I doubt there are many "conservatives" who actually want to see abortion doctors *beheaded*, no matter how much they hate abortion.
But it is certainly true that just as there are many on the left who assume Muslims are just another liberal-voting "minority", there are many on the right who assume that Muslims will vote along "conservative" lines, and who advocate "traditional family values"—without having any concept of the malevolent nature of those "traditional values" whatsoever.