How Should We Respond To Charges Of Blasphemy Against Islam

Six months after declaring that all churches in the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called at the weekend for a global ban on insults targeting all religious “prophets and messengers,” a category that, from a Muslim perspective, includes Jesus Christ.

Leading Sunni Clerics Demand Global Ban on Insults to Islam, CNS News, 17 Sep. 2012

“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.”

Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Angry at Online Video, NYT, 16 Sep. 2012

Allow me to respond to your contentions, Grand Mufti and Mr. Ali.

Your religion is unique in many ways - one of which is that adopts a false Christianity as part of its founding narrative. Islam claims that Jesus is a "prophet" of its religion while ignoring his teachings and denying his divinity. In the Dome of the Rock Mosque, built atop the most holy site in the Jewish faith, there is an inscription now 1,300 years old:

The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son.

Now, that is blasphemy in its purest sense. It irks me, but I ignore it, thinking only that you are misguided. But if you and your fellow Muslims in the Middle East, on the other hand, are prepared to do violence because someone in the U.S. said something not nice about Mohammed - well, you can pack it where the sun doesn't shine. And if you act violently, expect an appropriate response in return, bearing in mind that our tolerance level for your infantile, hypocritical and outrageous acts is not infinite. At some point, your violence will beget a response of overwhelming force.

As to Jesus, while the Koran claims to adopt him as part of Islamic faith, yet the Koran adopts none of his teachings. Perhaps most importantly, Jesus commanded us to follow the Golden Rule. Mohammed acknowledged no Golden Rule. To the contrary:

Islam does not enjoin believers to do unto infidels as you would have infidels do unto you. On the contrary! Islam tells its followers to subdue infidels; to kill them; to, at best, reduce them to dhimmitude.

And as to the Dome of the Rock, let's talk about the detestable Muslim habit of attempting to wipe out symbols and buildings of other faiths - an act directed by the Koran, verse 018:021. The Dome of the Rock was built on the holiest Jewish site, the Temple Mount, 1,300 years ago. It wasn't until 800 years ago that Muslims justified this on the claim, apparently made out of thin air, that this was a site also intrinsically holy to Muslims because of Mohammed's night ride. Everywhere Islam conquered, they built mosques on top of the holy sites of Christianity, with Constantinople and Cordoba being the two most famous of thousands of examples. Unfortunately, this is not merely historical - it continues to this day, from destroying ancient historic Buhddist statues in Afghanistan to the destruction of Churches in Nigeria, Egypt the West Bank - and let's not forget Jordan's industrial scale destruction of Jewish holy sites after they captured the Jewish Quarter in Jerulsalem.

I could raise an entire litany of other examples. There is the Muslim world's glorification of the most animalistic, subhuman acts of terror directed against Jews and Christians. There is the Koran's direction that it is acceptable to rape and enslave non-Muslims. There is the officially sanctioned discrimination against Christians and the few Jews left in every country with an Islamic government. There is the murder of homosexuals and people accused of witchcraft, not to mention the grossly unequal, violent treatment of women.

I consider the vast majority of these things to be a blasphemy against my religion - and indeed, all of these things to be a blasphemy against humanity. Here is reality. Your nations have produced nothing to advance civilization in the past near millenium. Today, the Arab Middle East is a cesspool of poverty, corruption and dysfunction - and that is not the fault of the West, not the fault of the Crusades, not the fault of 'Western imperialism,' and not the fault of America, where if you want to practice your religion in peace, you are perfectly welcome to do so. It is the fault of Islam and an Islamic culture that is, in the words of Churchill, the most "retrograde force" on this earth.

The best thing that I and the world can do for you is to criticize your religion and demand that you reform it to the point that its believers comport with civilized behavior. The best thing that you can do is evolve your culture and religion.

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Jihad & Counter-Terrorism Linkfest

All of the most interesting links on the world of jihadism and efforts to counter it below the fold
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The above cartoon unabashedly stolen from Always On Watch.

Always On Watch is blogging on a major attack by Muslims on a Christian school in Jakarta, Indonesia, injuring hundreds of students. The attack was spearheaded by the local imam and chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood Forum of Kampung Pulo Village, who in the past opposed the opening and continued existence of the Christian institute.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser ponders the significance of the resignation of Parvez Ahmed from CAIR's Board of Directors. What he observes is a change in tactics rather than any fundamental shift away from the goal of instituting political Islam in America.

Someone is killing the Syrian leadership running Hezbollah. A few months ago, uber terrorist and Hezbollah operations chief Imad Muginayah was assassinated in Damascus. Today its Syrian President Bashar Assad's top aide, adviser, and liaison officer to the Hizbullah, General Mohammed Suleiman. Anti-Mullah is blogging on news reports that he was shot and killed by an unidentified sniper in the Syrian port city of Tartous. This is a positive trend.

Atlas Shrugs covers the testimony of Steve Emerson before Congress on the thoroughly backwards State Dept. attempts to engage the Muslim community in the U.S. by going through organizations set up and funded by radical foreign elements. The meat of Mr. Emerson’s testimony:

"While the outreach to the Muslim community by the State Department "is an honorable and worthwhile pursuit, the State Department has conducted outreach to the wrong groups, sending a terrible message to moderate Muslims who are thoroughly disenfranchised by the funding, hosting and embracing of radical groups that purport to be opposed to terrorism and extremism."

As I have blogged on several occasions before, this is precisely the same mistake Britain is making.

CAIR is celebrating the dismissal of Michael Savage’s lawsuit over CAIR’s use of parts of his radio program to organize a boycott of his show’s sponsors. Given the serious implications of Savage’s lawsuit for the fair use doctrine and freedom of speech, I have to say that, in this one very unusual and discrete instance, CAIR was right. Meanwhile, the American wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the MAS, is supporting the insane decision by a judge to release Sami al Arian on bond.

There is an utter outrage in Pakistan. Kidnapping and rape of pre-teen Christian girls has been given the green light by Pakistan’s lower courts. Christians Under Attack has the story of two young Christian girls kidnapped by Muslims, "married," forced to convert to Islam. In a lawsuit by the children’s parents to force the return of their children, the lower court ruled that they are now Muslims and the rightful property of their "husbands." There is an update to this story at Gates of Vienna.

The Terror Wonk blogs on the ramifications of the CIA making public allegations, carried in the NYT, that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, is actively involved in supporting the Taliban. The ISI has been a snakes den for decades.

Robert Spencer at Dhimmi Watch blogs on a Turkish soap opera about an Islamic man and wife who act as equal partners. It apparently has Saudi women enthralled and Saudi clerics up in arms.

The Wahhabi purists in al Qaeda are upset with King Abdullah for attempting to reach out to other faiths. Dinah Lord posts on the latest al Qaeda video calling for beheading the King.

Via Europe News, there is Diana West’s column on how serious the problem of radical Islam is in the UK and the utter failure of the chattering class to face the issue. Indeed, to the contrary, they are doing all they can to silence any attempt to raise or debate the issue. Among the many facts they are ignoring are items like this from an interview with Egyptian Islamic Preacher 'Amr Khaled: "Within 20 Years, Muslims Will Be Majority in Europe" And the Gathering Storm posts on how one small community in Britain that rejected plans for building a Mosque in their town are now having the decision taken away from them by the government.

Winds of Jihad has an eye opening post on how Muslims are turning areas of Germany into no-go zones for police and non-Muslims.

From Eye On The World: "The son of one of the most prominent Hamas MPs coverts to Christianity, calls Islam a religion of death, admires Israel and cautions that Islam will never allow Muslims to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews."

Michael Ledeen blogs at PJM on the interaction between "soft power" and brute force, making the important point that the determining factor of success in a counterinsurgency is who the populace believes is going to win the "brute force" end of things.

At Ironic Surrealism, a chilling video about the goals of jihadism in the words of their spiritual leaders.

Europe News reports that Denmark is 'liberalizing' its laws to allow for the possibility of greater immigration as the result of "cousin marriages" among the Muslim population.

From Islamist Watch, an article by David Rushin on Muslim intimidation and threats of violence against "apostates" in the West who convert from Islam.

At the Lebanese news outlet, Ya Libnan, an editorial on the prospects for the new Cabinet: "To expect Hezbollah to play a positive role in the creation of a Lebanese civil society is to believe in the supernatural and to suspend rationality in favour of miracles."

At LGF, the Turkish AKP party, having just survived a challenge to its constitutionality, has backed down on the issue of "allowing" females to wear headscarves as a sign of their faith in public buildings and universities.

From Marked Manner, Obama has been getting sizable campaign contributions from individuals in Rafah, GA. GA stands for Gaza, not Georgia.

Freedom of speech and radical Islam in all its manifestations are diametrically opposed. Thus it is no surprise when Muslims Against Sharia reports that Kuwait has now declared criticism of Islam on the internet to be a criminal offense.

Debbie at Right Truth has an exceptional update on uranium enrichment and other activities directed towards the imminent creation of a nuclear arsenal by the mad mullahs

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The Multicultural Fool of Canterbury

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the priest who recently supported allowing some form of Sharia law in Britain, is a fool who has no business whatsoever as the clerical head of the Anglican Church. He is an inveterate marxist and a pure multiculturalist who sees Western society and America as destructive forces, while accepting Islam non-judgmentally.

In his latest idiocy, the Archbishop has stated that "Christians in the Middle East are facing persecution because of British and American foreign policy," and more particularly, that the "indigenous Christian community throughout the [Middle East] have suffered from being associated with the American global project . . ." In other words, he blames America for the murderous rampages of radical Islamists while absolving them of responsibility for their actions.

Archbishop Williams might wish to educate himself as to the actual dogma of the radical Islamists - any post by Tawfiq Hamid would be a good start. Radical Sunni and Shia Islamists seek regional and global domination with nary a mention of America's "global project." He also might wish to map out where these radical Islamists hold sway - it happens to be all of the same locales where Christians are being persecuted. As to the "global project" of America, we are clearly having an effect on religious intolerance in the Middle East, it is just not the one this fool of an Archbishop is positing.



The above is Michael Yon's iconic photo from Baghdad of Christians and Muslims placing a cross back on top of a Church in Baghdad. The story that goes with that photo is here. And Williams might also want to test his hypothesis by discussing it with Rev Canon Andrew Whit, the Anglican Priest for Iraq, who seems of a different mind. And indeed, the American Project seems to be having a similar effect in the larger world, as the radical sects of Islam are weakened.

In parting, let me ask, who will rid us of this troublesome - and supremely misguided - priest?

(H/T Dinah Lord)

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