In this news article, one more of those young Muslims claiming that “Islamophobia” explains mistrust of Muslims and of Islam, and if only we “learned about Islam from Muslims themselves,” we would think differently. He is, in other words, full of the usual nonsense.
Of course we do “learn from Muslims themselves” whenever we read, and reread, the Qur’an, especially the 100-odd “Jihad” verses (see the Calcutta Qur’an Petition), and hundreds of Hadith, and the Sira. They tell us all we need to know about Muhammad, revered by Muslims as uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, but appearing to many of us as something quite different in his own words and deeds. And we “learn from Muslims themselves” when some of those Muslims become ex-Muslims, and defect — like Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish and Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali — from the Army of Islam.
And we “learn from Muslims themselves” when we read what Muslim commentators and theologians wrote about the duty of Jihad.
And we “learn from Muslims themselves” whenever we turn on the radio, or television, or read what has just happened in Khartoum, or Karachi, or in a thousand places where Muslims cry out for someone to be killed. And often, in Dar al-Islam, someone is killed by others more fervent in their Islam. And there is no prospect of it stopping.
Yes, we already do “learn from Muslims themselves.” And the offer to attend some predictable outreaching Muslim or Mosque Open House sticks in the craw, for taqiyya-and-tu-quoque just won’t do anymore. They would have sufficed five years or especially ten years ago. But not now. And not ever again.
The site www.faithfreedom.org is one to be recommended to those who would like a view of Islam from its defectors, just as one would have learned most about Communism and the KGB (or the NKVD, or the Cheka) and the Comintern, from defectors. Why are ex-Muslims are not consulted? Why don’t the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. have them on the payroll? Why they are not brought in to lecture on how Muslims view the world, or the practice of taqiyya and kitman, and the really very repetitive means by which the nature of Islam is hidden from inspection, through taqiyya and tu quoque, selective quotation, misinterpretation, ignoring of abrogation, and even a little overlooking of the Hadith and the Sira, so that only the Qur’an is discussed? Who can explain all of this better to that Innocent Creature, an FBI or CIA employee, than an ex-Muslim?
Meanwhile, we are told by our leaders and our journalists that all Muslims yearn for is integration and acceptance. Then every holiday season, we hear again about some imam or other who has forbidden his flock to wish the Infidels well in their celebrations. There is something distinctly un-Fredrogersish about this insistence on not wishing Infidel neighbors well on their holidays, or indeed at any other time, even extending to not “first” saying hello.
“Won’t you, won’t you be my neighbor?” does not exactly sound like a theme song welcome on al-Jazeera. More appealing, apparently, are all those children’s shows where a cute little boy or girl sings a song about how he, or she, “wants to be a suicide-bomber” and “kill Jews” — but Christians, or “Crusaders,” will also do nicely.
Fred Rogers would not know what to make of Islam. But in him it is forgivable. It is not forgivable, however, in C.I.A. agents (the childlike, and worrisomely stupid Michael Scheuer, or in high officials of the American government, who really need to get cracking in their study of Islam, and stop accepting taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, or the Peter-Bechtold-John-Esposito school of blah, or what the uomini d’onore of MESA Nostra have been telling their wiseguys to make everyone believe about Islam, and they’d better, otherwise vaffanculo, goombah, and worse.
Instead, they should “learn from Muslims themselves.”