Intolerance, history, fear and the facts about Islam

Because I wrote a column last week on the historic threat of Islam to the West, this week I am dealing with the usual accusations of intolerance and Islamophobia.

If you believe my accusers, it turns out I am a bad person because I have actually tried to inform myself about the history of Islam in the West, the basic tenets of the religion, and the danger they pose when unopposed. I am supposed to just shut up about the gay-killing, wife-beating, adulterer-stoning, infidel-conquering beliefs of traditional Islam. If I talk about them, it is little old me who is the problem, not the religion that sanctions executing homosexuals or stoning women to death.

Calling someone who sounds the alarm over Islam’s danger Islamophobic is roughly the equivalent of calling Paul Revere Anglophobic for shouting (in folklore at least), “The British are coming, the British are coming.” If the British had been home napping in London town, Paul Revere would have been crazy. But since the British were indeed marching on Lexington and Concord, it made him a hero, not a fool.

I submit that while I may not be a hero, I am certainly no fool when I warn Americans that we face a grave threat from people who hate us in large part because they are Muslims and we are not. The attacks of 9/11 should have proved that once and for all. The Fort Hood shooter and Times Square bomber are recent confirmations.

Nor is this threat something new. It is not an invention of Osama bin Laden, and not a unique reaction to the policies or existence of either Israel or the United States. You can find evidence of the impulse to conquer and subjugate infidels in the very beginnings of the religion, as Muhammad fought neighboring Arab tribes; in the era of the great caliphate that spread across northern Africa and into Spain; and in the continuing push of Islam into Europe and into Southeast Asia.

Indeed, to obscure the threat, you literally have to blot out hundreds of years of history that provide clear evidence of the imperialist ambitions of Islam, and more importantly the blood-thirsty willingness to sacrifice both fellow Muslims and us infidels in the pursuit of worldwide submission to sharia, the so-called law of God.

Yet, to the politically correct, it is wrong to even speak of a danger from Islam. It’s the religion of peace, isn’t it? Yeah, the religion of peace that intends to bring peace by fighting all its enemies until they are in full submission. Don’t take my word for it. Read the Koran for yourself. Read the sayings of Mohammad (the Hadith). Study Sharia, the body of Islamic law that is violently in opposition to our own Constitution and our cherished freedoms.

Yep, Islam is a religion, but does that mean it is to be trusted? Ask the tribal enemies of the Aztecs how much trust they put in the Aztec deities who demanded beating human hearts as a blood sacrifice. Ask the victims of the Spanish Inquisition who were murdered for heresy or simply for being Jews or Muslims whether they had trust in the Catholic Church.

To argue that a particular belief system should be trusted merely because it believes in a deity, even the same deity you believe in, is like telling Jews to trust in Nazis, African slaves to trust their European or American masters, or the Kool-Aid drinking folks at Jonestown to trust in Jim Jones.

Nazis were not dangerous because they were German, or even because they were socialists, but because they believed they had the divine authority to rule the world. Slave owners were not slave owners because they were American, but because they had a belief system, a world view, and ultimately a religion that sanctioned slavery. Likewise, fear of Islam is not based on it being a different religion, but based on what that religion believes.

Calling me and other writers Islamophobic will not protect this country or our culture any more than calling Paul Revere a fear-monger would have benefited anyone other than the British.

The arc of history is visible to all who step back far enough to see it.  In 1776, the British military was the greatest power in the world. The Americans were shopkeepers and butchers and boys still in kneepants. Victory by the British was assumed not simply to be a matter of time, but a matter of weeks. But weeks dragged into months, and months dragged into years, and more than one assumption was dragged to the grave along with many a Redcoat.

We know now that the British were doomed to failure in their war against a smaller, weaker enemy because they assumed their victory was inevitable. Yes, we know that NOW, but at the time it was unthinkable — just as it is unthinkable for many Americans today that our Muslim brothers could ever destroy the constitutional republic we founded starting in 1776.

The parallels, however, are unmistakable.

While the American patriots in the Revolutionary War did whatever was necessary to win skirmishes against the more powerful British army, the Redcoats responded by marching in rank and file, sticking to protocol and following gentlemen’s rules — which inevitably got a bunch of them killed, and ultimately led to their defeat.

The bad news for us Americans is that we are now the British. If we could paraphrase Pogo’s famous quote a bit, “We have beaten the enemy, but unfortunately we are now him.”

It is America now which has become the bloated dandy represented by the British army of 1776. In our arrogant minds, it is impossible for us to lose a war against an annoying enemy that won’t play by the rules. And thus, we blithely ignore history, and even death threats, with an air of invincibility that will surely result in our defeat. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually.

Radical Islam, like the patriots of the American revolution, is willing to do whatever it takes to win, whether the enemy (yep, us) considers it proper or not. Given the historical example of who won the war between the British and the Colonies, that makes al-Qaida and radical Islam a formidable opponent, and us a sitting duck.