The Imam Yusuf Kavakci, a supporter of Khomeini, recently gave an invocation in the Texas State Senate at the invitation of Senator Florence Shapiro, the Senate’s senior Jewish member. And in her self-satisfaction and preening about her own magnificent display of “tolerance,” a fool.
A great admirer of Ayatollah Khomeini, is Imam Yusuf Kavakci. He was permitted, he was allowed, he was even encouraged, by various people, including “Jewish leader” Florence Shapiro, to pray in the State Senate. But she and others were apparently too incurious to find out just a little more about this Kavakci and about Islam, and about the Khomeini he so admires.
I’ll help her out. Here’s a speech by Khomeini, given early (in 1942) and from whose principles, ideas, ideals, Khomeini never wavered in the slightest:
Islam is Not a Religion of Pacifists
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 1942“Islam’s jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviation, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Islamic] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under [God’s law]. …
Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does that mean that Muslim should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill the [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!
There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”
Florence Shapiro was unaware of what Khomeini, so admired by Kavakci, was all about. But she had a duty to find out. She had a duty to find out a lot more about Islam, about “war is deception” as a guiding principle, about the instruments of Jihad, about taqiyya, about the deliberate attempt to make Islam “seem” (only “seem”) in the eyes of Infidels to fit in, at this point, with the legal and political institutions of the United States, while they are still too weak to openly reveal their full agenda — though some of the hotheaded truth-tellers nicely insist on doing so, which is a good thing for Infidels. What could be better than to have this Imam manage to appear to address the Texas Legislature? Apparently Florence Shapiro and others who supported this terrible and very damaging act had no idea of what the whole thing was about, and probably have never read, or re-read with comprehension, the Qur’an, the Hadith, the Sira. Yet these people, who are used again and again, become indignant when attacked for their useful idiocy.
Such people, the many Florence-shapiros of this world, seem to believe in their sweet, trusting, not-very-intelligent way that of course “all religions mean the same thing” (they don’t), and “we are all essentially the same” (we aren’t), and Islam is essentially a fine religion (it isn’t). And she has been told that Muslims are “fine upstanding citizens,” and those she has heard of are not a burden on the state (the usual litany about all those “engineers” and “professors” — engineers such as “Mike” Hawash? Professors such as Sami al-Arian?). And she may know about the sheer wonderful middle-classness of America’s Muslims (yes, we are repeatedly told, the situation is so very different, so very much better, than in Europe, where the Europeans are responsible for the problem because they “won’t allow” Muslims to “integrate” the way they do so beautifully here, with our Big Tent and Warm Hearts).
Those who sponsored this speaker were apparently unaware of how Islam, the tenets of Islam, the teachings of Islam, flatly contradict every single principle of Western, and especially American, democracy. It is a faith that abhors the individual; a collective faith, a faith that encourages mental and every other kind of submission, a collective submission, and duties determined by the collective. It does not allow for freedom of conscience: you cannot get out of the Army of Islam. It does not allow for freedom of speech: you must say nothing, ever, critical of Muhammad as a figure, or of Islam. It does not allow for equal treatment of women. It does not allow for equal treatment of non-Muslims, and is against true pluralism, though in lands traditionally ruled by Shari’a or reasonable facsimiles thereof, non-Muslims over the centuries were permitted to survive, but required to live as dhimmis, a permanent status of humiliation (as illustrated, for example, in the required manner of payment of the Jizyah), degradation, and physical insecurity.
It is idiotic to utter phrases about how Muslims are “fine middle-class people who pay their taxes.” Even if it were true (and it is a grossly inaccurate remark) what is the relevance of a 1040 to the real attitudes toward Infidels and toward the American system? Islam flatly contradicts every principle of the American Republic. This is not revealed on any 1040.
Yet Florence Shapiro needn’t be too embarrassed. Even though Khomeini wrote many things in the same vein, all of them available before he came to power, she shouldn’t be too embarrassed. After all, neither Jimmy Carter, nor his “National Security Adviser” Zbigniew Brzezinski, nor his “Iran expert” Gary Sick, apparently had read a word of Khomeini or knew a thing about him, except that he was a “fellow man of faith” (as Carter uriah-heepishly addressed him in his own personal letter, one Pious and Good Man of Faith to another — Christian or Muslim, what does it matter?). So Florence Shapiro is really no more offending, and possibly more justified in her complete ignorance than were Carter and Sick and Brzezinski.
Oh, there’s plenty of blame to go around for this spectacle of an Khomeini-admiring imam man reciting from the Qur’an before the Texas Legislature. Plenty of ignorance, plenty of moral preening. But it should be exposed and mocked. Such negligence, by those who have a duty to know better, is a danger to Western societies and countries. Not imaginary. Real. Present.