Editor's 2 Cents

FRANK MIELE

Tolerance of the intolerable

In mosques all around the world, a crier known as a muezzin calls the faithful to prayer five times a day. He shouts to the four compass points one after the other, "Allah is the greatest… Make haste towards prayer… Make haste towards prayer… Allah is the greatest."

This public display of obdurate virtue is well-known, but it is less well-known what goes on inside the mosques where Muslims gather for their prayers. The Islamic religion has always had an element of secrecy about it, including keeping the holy city of Mecca off limits to anyone except Muslims.

That veil of mystery has been penetrated from time to time by outsiders, including Sir Richard Francis Burton, the great 19th century explorer and author who disguised himself as a Muslim in order to enter the holy city and the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building which is the mystical center of the religion and toward which Muslims pray five times a day no matter where on earth they are located.

In recent years, because of the increase in terrorism led by Muslims worldwide, there has been a growing need for information about the Islamic religion. But most non-Muslims today know just as little about what happens inside a mosque as they did before Burton's pilgrimage and before 9/11.

That lack of knowledge has allowed a public debate to take place about whether Islam is a religion that "teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace" (as President Bush described it) or whether it is a religion that teaches domination, destruction and subjugation.

For a variety of reasons - including fear, political correctness and tolerance - most Westerners have been unwilling to make a true and honest inquiry into this question, but this month we may have started to see a few chinks in the wall of silence.

It started in England last week when Channel 4's "Dispatches" news show did a special report called "Undercover Mosque," in which a reporter attended services in mosques that "claim to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths." Instead, the reporter found what the show's Website called a "message of religious bigotry and extremism being preached." That included general hatred for non-Muslims and more specifically calls for the overthrow of the British government and democracy.

This weekend, the light continues to shine in dark places as both CNN and Fox are showing documentaries dedicated to unveiling the threat of Islam to our way of life.

Fox News's report, called "Smokescreen: Hezbollah Inside America," tells the story of a Hezbollah cell that operated for several years in Charlotte, N.C., before being broken up a year before 9/11. The connections of this criminal enterprise stretch back to Lebanon and Iran, and though al-Qaida has gotten more publicity, Hezbollah is considered as big a threat to the United States, if not more so.

On CNN, reporter Christiane Amanpour introduces a new show called "Special Investigations Unit," which again focuses on the British Muslim community to illustrate the threat to Western society in a report called appropriately "The War Within." Amanpour apparently links the radicalization of Britain's Muslims to the War in Iraq, which I certainly don't agree with, but even so I am glad to see the word get out that we face an enemy that intends to destroy us.

In a column on the CNN Website, Amanpour wrote, "we found shocking evidence of the bigotry, intolerance and hatred preached by some Muslim fundamentalists in the UK. We met men like Anjem Choudary of the now-banned Al-Mahajiroon extremist group, who denounces democracy and predicts Britain will be ruled by Sharia, Islamic law."

Despite this clear and "shocking" evidence, however, the CNN reporter takes two steps back when she concludes that the violent, intolerant Muslims are a small minority in Britain. She holds out hope that "mainstream Muslims" will reclaim their religion, and speaks of a "deep sense of Islamophobia" on the rise in Britain and across Europe, as if fear of people who want to kill you is somehow a mental illness.

It is this almost pathological tendency toward self-blame which has the capacity to undo us. But the evidence abounds that there are millions of Muslims who intend to destroy our culture or to subjugate it, and no evidence that any substantial number of Muslims intend to do anything to stop them. Indeed, if Muslims speak out against intolerance and oppression of the "infidels" - namely us - then they themselves risk being put to death.

Perhaps, Amanpour should once again read the words of Osama bin Laden:

"This war is fundamentally religious… Those who try to cover this crystal clear fact, which the entire world has admitted, are deceiving the Islamic nation. They are trying to deflect the attention of the Islamic nation from the truth of this conflict… Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For the enmity is based on creed."

Yes, bin Laden blames part of the war on the fact that "you (Americans) attacked us and continue to attack us" in Palestine and Somalia, but much more relevant to the "enmity" that exists between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world are bin Laden's words such as this:

" What are we calling you [Americans] to, and what do we want from you?

"(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam…. and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He [Allah] sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

"(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

"(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest….

"(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

"(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Sharia of Allah in its Constitution and laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."

So bin Laden, with the blessings of his mullahs and Islamic teachers, freely admits that he and his kind will not be happy until they have converted the West to Islamic law, Islamic religion and Islamic customs.

The war against terror is not about fighting to prevent a bombing here or there; it is about fighting for survival.

The evidence should be clear to anyone who hears the muezzin's cry. The call to prayer is a call to action, and as long as we in the West continue to ignore the very real, very vocal threat of Islam, then we will continue to be victims of our own good nature.

There is really no secret about the nature of Islam, and these television shows of the last few days don't really teach us anything we didn't know already if we were paying attention.

The question, of course, is whether our love of diversity will continue to be greater than our love of life. If so, it promises to be our ruin. Because however much we Americans pride ourselves on our tolerance - that tolerance will not protect us from zealots; rather it will protect the zealots from us.

Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake. If you don't like his opinion, stop by the office and he will gladly refund your two cents. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com