“The Garland attack is a litmus test, and we have a clearer picture of who is ready to fight and who has already submitted to the enemy’s sharia restrictions.” Indeed so. It has been a defining moment in so many ways. The battle-lines for the defense of freedom are being drawn, and many who had been thought to be on one side turn out to be on the other.
“Bosch Fawstin on Islam and Jihad,” by Craig Biddle, The Objective Standard, Summer 2015:
…Biddle: Let me begin by asking what went through your head when you heard that shots had been fired at the Garland event?
Fawstin: I was on somewhat of a high, having just won the $12,500 award and standing on a stage with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Geert Wilders. I was in the middle of an interview with CNN when my friend told me shots were fired. Now, I understand the threat we face—I’ve studied Islam as if my life depended on it after 9/11—but being in the middle of an actual jihadist attack was . . . I can’t find the words . . . surreal seems too easy, but it was just the latest reminder that this enemy—one our government could have long defeated by now—is getting to us in ways it never has before, because our government has not done its job in defeating it.
Biddle: Some people, such as Bill O’Reilly, say that publishing cartoons of Muhammad is pointlessly provocative, and that you and the organizers of the Garland event were asking for trouble. What’s your response to that?
Fawstin: Bill O’Reilly is a buffoon. He’s so far removed from the reality that we’re at war, that Islam is the motivation behind that war, and that Muslims are on the warpath, that his only concern seems to be about the feelings of Muslim “folks.” And he reserves all of his criticism for a woman (where are the “sexist” charges against her critics?), Pamela Geller, who showed more courage on that one night in Garland than O’Reilly ever has. The event was necessarily provocative to Muslims and Islamophiles who would censor us in the name of sharia—in other words, in the name of protecting them from experiencing their baseless emotions.
Biddle: Having been raised in a Muslim family, and having actually read the Koran, you are quite familiar with the religion of Islam. Why, in your view, are some Muslims bent on killing non-Muslims—especially those who criticize the religion or draw pictures of Muhammad?
Fawstin: Because unlike most nominal Muslims who are human beings first, jihadists are usually Muslims whose lives have gone sour and who are ready to throw it all away in a big bang where their lives, which have been devoid of meaning, can now be redeemed with a meaningful death. They’ve sold their soul to Allah and have been morally inverted by Islam to believe that the most heroic act they can commit is to “kill the infidels wherever [they] find them.” So in place of their mind, there’s only Islam, which dictates their lives. And that’s what led those two would-be mass murderers in Garland, Texas, to attempt to commit what, in Islamic standards, would have been a morally ambitious act.
Biddle: You’ve said that most Muslims are morally superior to Muhammad and morally superior to the religion of Islam. What do you mean by that?
Fawstin: What I mean is that Islam is a religion begun by the scum of the earth—I refer to “the Muslim world” as a world where the bad guy won. No matter how Muhammad and his gang tried, they couldn’t turn most of the human beings around them into monsters. Today, most Muslims—especially in the West—don’t allow and need not allow Islam to dehumanize them; they still retain their humanity. Unfortunately, they’re offered up as proof that Islam is just fine, when in fact it’s in spite of Islam that they’re not a threat to anyone.
Biddle: As you and others—including Muslims who take Islam seriously—have repeatedly shown, Islam is not a religion of peace. But some people claim that Islam is not a religion at all—because it calls for murder and other evils. The idea here is that religion is inherently a good thing, Islam calls for moral atrocities, so Islam doesn’t fit the bill. What are your thoughts on this?
Fawstin: I reject this fanciful myth that religionists are hell-bent to push. Islam is religion; it is also a political ideology—it’s a fusion of the two, and it uses its religious identity as both its shield and sword. 9/11 was an act of faith, or else Mohammad Atta and his fellow savages would never have flown those planes into the Twin Towers. They believed with everything they had that they were flying into paradise. When Bush uttered the America-crippling lie, “Islam means peace,” what he was really saying was “religion means peace.” He was a born-again Christian who was so beholden to religion that he gave a pass to Islam for religious reasons. And we’ve all paid a deadly price for it. And still to this day, there are those who bite their tongue about Islam, lest they suffer scrutiny for their own religion.
Biddle: You vehemently oppose calling the jihadists’ religion anything other than Islam—not radical Islam, not totalitarian Islam, not extremist Islam, not Islamic fundamentalism, not Islamism—just Islam. Why are you so strongly opposed to these kinds of terms?
Fawstin: Because any term other than Islam to refer to the enemy’s ideology implies that Islam as such is not the problem, that only some deviant form of it is the problem. Every time we use a term other than Islam, we’re helping Islam. I’ve gotten in endless arguments over it with friends and allies, but I believe that in the end, they’re going to see that Islam as such is the enemy’s ideology….
Biddle: In regard to the risks involved in speaking her mind about controversial matters, Ayn Rand said: “I’m not brave enough to be a coward; I see the consequences too clearly.” You clearly have the same attitude. What consequences do you see coming if people don’t speak up about the evil of Islam?
Fawstin: I see more attacks like the one in Garland, physical attacks against those of us who speak and write and draw in ways to which they object. I see an enemy further emboldened by what I call the scumedia, who are dying to tell offended Muslims the opposite of “I’m Spartacus”: “I’m Not Pamela Geller!” The Garland attack is a litmus test, and we have a clearer picture of who is ready to fight and who has already submitted to the enemy’s sharia restrictions….
Read it all here.