My Contribution to "What I Think About Islam Day"

June 6 (the date of the D-Day landings in France in 1944) has been designated as a day for bloggers and writers to sound off on what they think about Islam. I have decided to join in that discussion, for better or worse. In fact, I am beginning to draft this piece a week early because there is just so much I have to say.

Since 2007, when I opened this blog and became an activist, I have written a lot about Muslims and Islam. In fact, I notice that I am increasingly devoting more and more space to issues of Islam, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and other related issues pertaining to Muslims in the West. I will be the first to admit that most of what I have written has been negative. I have opposed the Muslim Student Union of the University of California at  Irvine, where I teach, and I have opposed the major Islamic organizations in America, such as CAIR and the others. I have also followed the occurrences in Islamic countries and reported on the persecution of religious minorities in Muslim lands, as well as the rampant anti-Semitism in Europe as practiced by Muslim immigrants.

All the while, I have tried to draw a line between recognizing the threat of political Islam to our freedoms and hating Muslims as people. It is not as if I don't know any. I interact with Muslims almost every day and have enjoyed many positive relationships.

But the more I research and write, and the more I interact, the more convinced I am that Islam has no place in any free, pluralistic and democratic country-beyond the mere worship of God. No need to go back over the thousands of attacks and massacres that are happening virtually every day around the world. No need to quote verses from the Koran. It is all staring us in the face as clear as day. In virtually every Muslim majority nation on Earth, non-Muslim religious minorities are being badly persecuted, killed, imprisoned, driven out, and/or having their places of worship burned to the ground. Just this week, a statement came out from the Vatican that an estimated 100,000 Christians are being killed every year because of their faith. These usually occur in Muslim countries.

Islam is more than just a religion; it is a political ideology that does not recognize any division between mosque and state and is bent on conquest and subjugation of the non-Muslim world whether by peaceful means or through war. If we want to maintain our freedoms and respect for human rights, we are going to have to resist the efforts of Islamists to infiltrate and eventually take over our societies. This is the long range strategic goal, and it is working.

There is  more than just the threat of 9-11 style attacks that kill Americans or the fanatical attacks overseas against non-Muslims (and Muslims too). The al Qaeda plan is to wage violent jihad against the West and especially America. That is just one layer of the threat.

Then there is what you see in Europe, a large disaffected and unassimilated minority that has no respect for the values and cultures of the countries they have settled into while contributing to a street crime problem the continent had not heretofore known in modern times. They openly tell the Europeans that they are going to take over their countries and install sharia law. That is another layer of the threat.

Here in the US, it is more complex. With the exception of certain national groups like the Somalis, we have a largely well-educated class of immigrants and their second generation off-spring. We have major Islamic organizations like CAIR and imams that engage in inter-faith meetings with Jews and Christians-all the while telling us that they believe in peace and mutual respect. They condemn terrorism, they say. Yet, their long range goals are the same- an Islamic America under sharia law brought about by peaceful means; immigration, demographic change, outreach, and conversions, aided by a healthy dose of litigation when needed. Any criticism of them or revelations about their questionable connections, and you are called an "Islamophobe", whatever that is. There is even some institution  at the University of California at Berkeley called the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, which would have us believe that Muslims are a besieged minority in racist America. All of this constitutes the third layer, which we call "stealth jihad".

Ultimately, we have to get down to the question of whether all this terror, violence,  hate and intolerance of other religions is a result of some radical fringe of the Muslim world that has "hijacked" the religion and twisted it to its own uses, or whether the bin Ladens of the world are carrying out the dictates of the true faith. It is fashionable and more comforting to believe in the former theory because to accept the latter is to make a judgment call on a major world religion, and we do need to live with the over one billion believers around the world, do we not? In addition, if the latter is true, we have some very difficult decisions to make as to what we do about it. How much easier it is to grasp onto verses in the Koran that say that "whoever kills one person kills the whole world", and "whoever saves one person saves the whole world",  while ignoring the ones that say, "slay the disbelievers wherever you find them" and "cut off their heads and fingers". Contradictions? Sure, but Islamic scholars have found a logical way to resolve those contradictions. Since the Koran was recorded over the course of several years and during that time, the Prophet Muhammad evolved from a preacher to a warrior to spread Islam at the point of a sword, there is the principle of abrogation, which basically states that whichever was recorded later in time abrogates any earlier conflicting verse. It makes perfect sense.

To be sure, there are parts of Islam that merit respect. What is not to respect about praying 5 times a day? What is not to respect about an Arabic language that is riddled to references to God (Allah)? What is not to respect about women who dress in a modest manner and live moral lives? Of course, there is a dark side as to some of the prayers and their references to Christians and Jews (Sura One, for example), as well as how much freedom Muslim women have to choose the path they wish to follow in life to say nothing of the punishments if they stray.

As to Sharia, it is the Islamic legal code that governs the rights and relationships of people with each other. Much of it is benign, but it relegates women and non-Muslims to second class citizenship. It also has a code of punishment for certain crimes against God (hudud Sharia) which mandates death for blasphemy, adultery, apostasy, and homosexual acts. It is precisely here that sharia fails the test of being compatible with  Western laws in free countries, where these acts are not even considered crimes.

Can Muslims living in the West-or Muslim lands for that matter- live in a tolerant and peaceful manner not wishing to harm anyone? Sure. Millions around the world do. The problem is that those who do not have the texts (Koran and hadith) on their side. The problem is that you can take every horrendous act committed in the name of Islam over the years, the decades, and the centuries, and the theological justification is there in the texts and the life of the Prophet. We can deny it all we want. Our political leaders dare not say it publicly, but it is there. It was just two or three decades ago that the popular term for the jihadists was "fundamentalists" until some genius figured out that the term suggested they were correctly following the dictates of Islam to the letter.

To be sure, other religions have their dark chapters as well including Christianity with the Inquisition and the Crusades, where, in the latter, both religions shared in the killing, and Christians also killed many Jews along the way. Yet, I would maintain that the above two examples represent a true "hijacking" of the word of Jesus Christ by the Popes and the Catholic Church. Nothing that Christ said or did in His lifetime ever had any connection to what was done above  in His name. Unfortunately, every atrocity that has been carried out in recent times by Muslims has a scriptural basis- even beheading.  Fortunately, Christianity and Judaism were subjected to the European Reformation as well as the Enlightenment. Islam never experienced anything similar. When Martin Luther led his Reformation, he was not rejecting the Bible nor was he rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ. He was rejecting the corruption and rule of the Vatican. For Muslims to reject anything in the Koran would be to reject what is considered the word of God. Similarly, to reject any of the deeds, sayings or teachings of Muhammad is to turn their back on the Prophet. For Islam to truly reform, both are required.

The dilemma for us is how to remain true to our own values, maintain the rights of all in the West including truly moderate Muslims, while standing up to the threat and refusing to submit to this totalitarian force as our world heads toward a true clash of civilizations. And it is coming.

Ultimately, the West, We the People and our leaders (if we can find any)  need to take a stand and say we will never submit to Islamist ideology.

File that in the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project!