Acquittal of the Guilty
by Michael Devolin
“Acquittal of the guilty damns the judge.” – Horace
With every lone wolf terror attack these days there’s always the sequent announcement, either from the press or the local police spokesperson, suggesting that the terrorist was suffering from mental illness. It had nothing to do with the religion of Islam and jihad but everything to do with the perpetrator’s drug addiction, or a stormy marriage, or the fact that he was a new convert and misinterpreted Islam, or…well, you get the picture. And we, as we go about our busy day, accept their compendious overviews probably because, as Neil J. Kressel reminds us, “…most of our insight into why individuals become fundamentalist terrorists is not based on firm research.”
And Heaven forbid someone should come right out and say that the terrorist is a Muslim impelled by the Quran’s prescribed hatred of the infidel and encouraged by his fellow religious to commit terrorist acts. It couldn’t be that Islam, the religion of peace, could produce such vile and contrary personages. During a recent sermon in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Sheik Omar Abu Sara shouted, “Oh, Allah, hasten the day of the [slaughter] of the Jews!” To which his audience responded with a healthy “Amen!” And I mention Jews because Jews, as everyone knows, are Islam’s favourite infidels. It’s written in the Quran.
Jocelyn Belanger, a psychology professor at L’Universite du Quebec a Montreal, was recently quoted in Canada’s National Post as saying that “I think the evidence is very clear about mental health and terrorism: there’s actually no link.” He adds, “We know that people who have mental illness are stigmatized in our society. And now to, on top of that, say that they may be radicals or future terrorists, imagine the label we’re putting on those people.” I’m so glad Professor Belanger pointed this out, because our Western media had me almost convinced that the mentally ill are attracted to Islam. But now it’s clear to me: Islam makes people crazy. “A crooked tree casts a crooked shadow.”
It’s now the custom of Western journalists to forgive Islam the heinous crimes zealous Muslims are committing every day around the world. Such a grand exculpation has become the convenient denouement to the inscrutable problem of terrorist violence. They’d rather blame the mentally ill because such blame is much easier to apply to humanity than to approach the insurmountable reality that such a widespread and ancient religion as Islam is the primary source of the plague of Islamist terrorism. It’s much easier (and safer) to leave the Muslim world undisturbed in their antiquated belief that certain Jews are the descendants of swine and monkeys, for example, than it is to confront their 1.6 billion and flat out tell them that such a belief incites homicidal behaviour in a vast number of their fellow religious in Gaza.
The fact that the religion of Islam is ancient and it followers so many should in no way become a means of removing the guilt both deserve for having become the sole and spectacular example of religious intolerance and terrorism in the contemporary world. Numbers can never justify the means. Not during antiquity and surely not now. And to stay an unbiased condemnation of these egregious transgressions will not only elicit the same religious intolerance and terrorism in Canada and the United States, but it will also cast us in an unfavourable historical light. Our children and our children’s children will surely wonder at what will have been our ghastly imprudence.
Johannes J. G. Jansen writes, “Western writers who give accounts of Islam to a Western public do not stress those elements in Islam that would be offensive or nonsense in the eyes of their Western readers. They rather see it as their duty to present Islam in as acceptable a light as possible to the West. They state the case of Islam with as much coherence as possible and construct the most feasible explanation for various Islamic aspirations. In general, they take on the role of a counsel for the defense.” Hence, the true face of Islam is not being fairly articulated by Western writers, most often journalists and political hacks, who have obscured veridical Islam — the Islam that exists — and given us instead an ersatz Islam — the Islam promised and imagined by its apologists.
Jihadists are now acquitted of their atrocious deeds, as ludicrous as that may sound to the sane of this world, some even repatriated back into their country of origin. Not only damned are those who conceive of such injudicious concepts as the idea that terrorists could ever be integrated risk-free into our society, but more damned are those of us whose silent compromise becomes a sign of consent to such foolish clemencies.
Michael Devolin has been a member of JDL Canada since the 1980s, and has served as the personal bodyguard to Meir Weinstein, National Director of JDL Canada, at several high-profile trials, including the Jim Keegstra hate crimes trial and the Imra Finta war crimes trial.