Black populations have been targetted for Da’wa in many Western countries. Islam is presented as a vehicle of protest and as a vehicle of social justice, replacing Marixsm. It is, of course, neither. Rather, it is a belief-system that encourages slavish submission to “Allah” and “Allah knows best,” and also legitimates slavery, the institution of slavery.
Why, then, have governments and other institutions shown no interest as yet in a counter-campaign? Why have black ministers not been aided to make the case against Islam? Why have they not been given support by governments or foundations to publicize the history of the Arab slave trade, which began earlier, and ended far later, than the European variety? (That is, it ended later where it ended at all, and that was only because of the efforts of Western powers, the British and French.) That trade was particularly gruesome in that young black males were often the object of such seizure, then castrated on the spot, and only after that taken by slave coffle or dhow to the slave markets of Islam (see “The Hideous Trade” by Jan Hogedoorn).
Arab societies are the most openly racist on earth. One student known to me, who had learned about wonderful Islam at Duke, was surprised and confused and horrified while taking a language class in Cairo — or was it Damascus? — to hear stunningly racist remarks, casually delivered. It shook him, but not quite enough, apparently, to shake his Lawrentian (Bruce, not T.E.) faith in Muslim Arabs.
Then there is the matter of Arab supremacism as reflected in the behavior of Arabs toward black Africans today. After the Six-Day War the Arabs simply bribed a few African leaders to cut ties with Israel, and in cutting those ties, the extensive and very successful agricultural aid programs of the Israelis in black Africa were also cut. In Mauritania and Sudan, and possibly Mali, blacks are still enslaved. As for the Sudan, 1.8 million non-Muslim blacks in the southern Sudan have been killed over the past two decades by actions of the Arab Muslim government. And now the same kind of mass-murder has been underway for the past two years in Darfur. This time the victims are not non-Muslim blacks but black African Muslims, naturally regarded as inferior by the Arab Muslims.
And would not the ban on music in Islam also be pertinent in this context? This ban is sometimes very narrowly ignored, but wherever Islam arrives with a vengeance, as with the Taliban or Khomeini or in Saudi Arabia, the role of music diminishes or even disappears.
There is more. But that’s a start.
Governments in the Western world should focus on the campaigns of Da’wa. These often merely appeal to the innocence and the resentments of many — through clever propaganda that has nothing to do with the truth of Islam. That truth, if discovered by the new convert, is usually only found out when one is already in too deep to get out, out of fear, or out of brainwashing, or out of self-brainwashing. And as for that “social justice” business, just look at the distribution of wealth all over the Muslim world. Look at the Al-Saud family in Saudi Arabia, the Al-Thani in Qatar, the Al-Sabah in Kuwait, the Al-Maktoum in the U.A.E., or Khaddafy’s rule in Libya, or Mubarak’s family-and-friends plan in Egypt, or the Assad dynasty in Syria, or the Hashemites in Jordan and Sherifians in Morocco, or the generals who rule and steal in Algeria, or the zamindars and generals in Pakistan. That should shut everyone up about “social justice” in Islam. So too should the marked contrast between the rich (from oil, of course) Muslim states and the poor ones, with the latter getting what aid they do get from Infidels, not from rich fellow members of the Umma al-Islamiyya.
Governments in the Western world have to recognize that Da’wa is directed at signing up people not so much to save their souls, but to swell the ranks of recruits for the Army of Islam. This is more of a threat to the present and future wellbeing of Infidels and their legal and political institutions, and social arrangements, and freedom of thought and skeptical inquiry and artistic expression, than are these assorted acts of terror on which the Bush Administration insists on putting all of its attention, so stolidly, so blinkeredly, so ineffectively. That is, the Bush Administration’s efforts are ineffective if the goal is not merely to put out of commission this or that group of terrorists whose ranks are so easily replenished, but to limit the power and presence, in the West, of the belief-system that engenders permanent hostility to all Infidels and their ways.
Campaigns to counter Da’wa, to immunize Infidels against its sinister and meretricious siren-song, can be developed — not only to counter Da’wa, but to make Muslims in the West to confront the actual contents of Qur’an and Hadith, and the figure of Muhammad. All that is required is that Infidels themselves learn enough about Islam to discover its essence, and that essence is not the Five Pillars of individual worship, but the division of the universe between Believer and Infidel. There needs to be a constant and public demonstration by Infidels that they know what those texts contain, know what Muhammad said and did (or at least what Muslims are taught, from the Qur’an and from the Hadith given the highest rank for autheniticity by the most authoritative muhaddithin), and are fully aware of what that necessarily means for Infidels. That will force at least some Muslims to limit the amount of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque they engage in, and contradict their pretense that this belief-system can somehow be harmonized with Western freedoms, modes of thought, and institutions. Islam contradicts those freedoms, and works to deny Infidels the worth of their civilizational achievements. Stony fury, not credulity, should meet other kinds of crocodile-tear appeals about “feelings of humiliation” and such crocodile-tear appeals as “Muslims are the New Jews” and othe staples of the “interfaith dialogue” circuit.
This should be in everyone’s mind, should be understood, should be easily retrieved, should be made the subject of endless commentaries and conversations.
The nonsense and lies presented by those who deck out Islam for the purposes of Da’wa, should no longer be quietly endured or tolerated. Not anywhere in the Western or Greater Infidel World.