The following post is the result of various discussions Vlad Tepes and I had a few weeks ago.
When was the last time you heard of a beheading where the perpetrator was neither a Muslim nor a Mexican gangster?
And, out of all such beheaders, what percentage professed the Islamic faith?
I began this post more than a month ago, before the press of current events relegated it to the back burner. As a matter of coincidence, the very day I started writing it (September 25), a news story broke about a beheading that had occurred the day before at a food distribution facility in Oklahoma. The alleged killer (who was shot but not killed by an officer of the company) was a recent convert to Islam, and had attempted da’wa on his fellow employees before he was fired from the plant.
Most of the early media reports on this incident either failed to mention JIM or played down the Islamic aspect of the incident. This is typical of the way the MSM handles instances of grotesque barbaric violence carried out by Muslims — either reporters decline to discuss the religion of the perpetrator, or they hastily explain it away, before all the details of the case have been revealed, before the body parts have even been collected and the blood hosed off the floor. If possible, they avoid mentioning the killer’s Islamic name, even if it had been legally changed. A case in point is the late John Allen Williams, the Beltway Sniper. The media were extremely reluctant to use his preferred surname (Muhammad) and thereby assign his crimes a Mohammed Coefficient of 100%. In the weeks after his arrest, back in the fall of 2002, they used “Williams” for as long as they possibly could.
The media reports on the more recent “lone wolf” attacks in Canada and New York have used the same playbook. In most instances, the jihadis’ infidel names are the only ones mentioned by reporters. The perpetrators’ conversion to Islam is played down, or papered over. Their actions are ascribed to insanity, or poverty, or sunspot activity — anything to avoid looking at Islam and the ideology of jihad.
Such behavior on the part of the Fourth Estate simply follows the lead of our governments, which tell us repeatedly that such-and-such atrocity “has nothing to do with Islam”, regardless of the faith professed by the perpetrators, or their regular attendance at a well-known mosque, or which god they pray to five times a day, or what books they were reading just before their bomb belts detonated.
The corollary statement that “there was no connection to terrorism” is part of the same syndrome. Spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security might as well hand such statements out to media people on a pre-printed card after each new atrocity. “Terrorism” is now commonly understood to mean “Islam”, so no incident, no matter how horrendous it is, no matter how many victims are killed, can possibly be a “terrorist” attack. “Workplace violence” — maybe.
Or “senseless violence”, which seems to be the phrase preferred by President Barack Hussein Obama. Fjordman has compiled a handy list of Mr. Obama’s utterances on the topic:
- Obama administration calls London terror attack ‘senseless violence’ – the same language President Obama used over Benghazi
- Obama State Dept: London cleaver attack was ‘senseless violence,’ not terrorism
- Obama: ‘No justification’ for ‘senseless violence’
- A dissent: Mark Steyn: Attacks Aimed at Canadian State, Not ‘Senseless Violence’
All of the formulae described above are examples of what I call “The Big Lie”. The core falsehood of this ideological complex is the assertion that Islam is not inherently violent. As an immediate corollary, anyone who commits violence in the name of Allah or Mohammed is perforce un-Islamic, and “does not represent true Islam.”
It is remarkable to hear Western political leaders — who are not Muslims, do not speak Arabic, and have no training in Islamic law — make such confident declarations about the true nature of Islam.
Why should we take David Cameron’s word on what constitutes “true Islam”? Why does John Kerry have any credibility when he pontificates on the nature of Islam?
Mind you, Mr. Obama may well be an expert on Islam, since he was raised as a Muslim. But that means he is also well-trained in the art of taqiyya, and knows exactly what to say about Islam, true or otherwise, when the infidel is listening.
And, whether it is taqiyya, stupidity, or political expedience, the rest of the governing class in the Multicultural West is singing the same tune:
[Lower House Speaker Laura] Boldrini said the group had deviated from Islam…. ISIS is “religious deviance using religion for political purposes; that’s not Islam,” she said.
How does she know what Islam is or isn’t?
Did she receive her secondary education in a madrassa in Peshawar?
If we are to believe these people, the more any given behavior pattern resembles that of Mohammed, the less it has to do with Islam. Take, for example, this report about a young “Canadian” who died waging jihad in Syria:
“My son was a student, he suddenly changed,” the man told reporter Harun Maruf. “He used to pray but he increased it to 24 hours of prayers, and he was rarely away from mosques. He arranged his travel without my knowledge, and then he ended up in Syria. All of us [in the family] are very saddened. We did not expect he would do this.”
So let me see if I have this straight… The kid started going to the mosque more and more. He prayed all the time. He read the Koran constantly. He became devoted to Mohammed and Allah. And then he went to Syria and joined a murderous group that has nothing to do with Islam.
There were similar reports about a young “Australian” who died in a confrontation with police:
“He was the best kid, [who] never harmed anyone, never missed a prayer,” said one friend.
In other words: the more devoutly Islamic these young men became, the less they had to do with Islam.
Talk about incoherence!
The insistence that “violence has nothing to do with Islam” is the Big Lie of our time. Virtually every Western head of state and prime minister has delivered the line over and over. Some of them may even believe it.
So how effective is it? Is the Big Lie accomplishing its purpose?
Is it soothing and reassuring non-Muslims, whilst placating Muslims, and thereby making violent confrontation less likely?
I submit that it is not.
Regardless of their intent, Western political leaders are paradoxically making violent jihad more likely by peddling all these blatant falsehoods about Islam.
Let’s imagine a typical example: a 20-year-old Muslim man named Mehmet Mahmoud bin Mohammed, born and raised in the United States. His parents immigrated to Brooklyn thirty years ago, for whatever reason — probably economic, but in any case, they’re quite secular. They only visit the mosque perfunctorily, on special occasions. His mother never wears a headscarf unless a particular ritual demands it. His father hangs out with infidel guys, likes to watch football, has been known to drink a beer from time to time.
When he was in middle school, young Mehmet heard President George W. Bush tell him that Islam was a religion of peace. He liked that. It made him feel good.
Then, not long ago, he heard President Barack Obama say that the “senseless violence” of the Islamic State had “nothing to do with Islam”. He liked that, too. Kind of…
Then he started hanging out at the mosque with his pals, because that was the cool thing to do. He heard a couple of lectures and started reading the Koran and the Sunna.
And he discovered that Barack Hussein Obama is a bald-faced liar.
His president had out-and-out lied to him. He’d been told that all those atrocities committed by ISIS weren’t justified by Islam, but the exact opposite was true! Everything the Islamic state had been doing was backed up by chapter and verse of the Koran. They were just following the example of the Prophet (pbuh).
Now he knows that his president lied to him. The secretary of state lied to him. His congressman lied to him. The mayor of New York lied to him. The TV networks lied to him.
Everyone kept telling him things about his religion that simply weren’t true.
Now he pays close attention to the sermons at the mosque. He watches all the ISIS propaganda videos, and sees all those cool guys doing cool things with their latest weaponry. He’s growing his beard. He’s applied for a passport so he can fly to Syria and be a part of it all.
But in the meantime, there are all those infidels down in Times Square and Greenwich Village doing all those unspeakable, blasphemous, un-Islamic things. Time to pick up some firepower and take a little trip downtown…
This is what the Big Lie has helped to create: millions of Mehmets, armed, primed and ready to detonate.
Yes, some of them would have chosen jihad, no matter what. But our stupid, dishonest, corrupt, cowardly leaders have made it that much more likely.
I’d like to think that our treasonous political class will someday have to face the consequences of their foolish, craven actions. However, as the Islamic State gains momentum and becomes ascendant, they’ll probably cut a deal. That’s what they always do.
They’ll get to continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. They’ll be pampered vassals of the New Islamic Order. They’ll be able to stay secure in their gated communities, insulated from the murder and rapine and horror that will become the new norm on the streets of the communities they betrayed. They’ll be able to raise their children in that same luxurious environment. Maybe not their grandchildren, but still…
Unless they say the shahada, of course. Then they’ll be home free.
“If we are to believe these people, the more any given behavior pattern resembles that of Mohammed, the less it has to do with Islam.”
Sums it up… this should be repeated ad nauseam, to all liberal-leaning mainstreamers out there who currently fall for the media line.
As for Mehmet the “radical”, the liberal mainstreamers will likely counter that there are millions of other Mehmets out there, who are not going to Syria… to which the counter could be:
A) it takes bravery to do such a thing, so only the bravest will do it (always a small percentage, out of any population).
B) for every Mehmet leaving for Syria, how many support what’s happening – but don’t quite have the guts to pack their bags & join him? (ie, they still like their nice Western lifestyle)
C) is going to Syria the only way of doing Jihad, or could there be other, more “effective” ways? (eg, deceiving naive westerners into thinking Islam is a religion of peace)
And, last but not least:
D) how many young, devout Catholics, protestants or Jews are packing their bags and joining “radical” groups of their religions, who are acting comparably to Isis? (apparently they’re “no more peaceful” than the Religion of Peace, so should be some, right?)
David Cameron is a British politician, and as he has acknowledged, Britain is a Christian country, our society is founded on Judeo-Christian values, and the Bible is part of our cultural and political heritage. (See link.) This is the context in which Cameron received his education.
“In making this speech I claim no religious authority whatsoever.” – David Cameron, 16th December 2011.
“I’m not a scholar of any religion.” – David Cameron, 8th October 2014.
Cameron has acknowledged that he is not an authority on any religion, and admits he has not taken the trouble to educate himself specifically about Islam. So there is nothing to suggest that David Cameron knows the first thing about Islamic doctrines and practices. It follows that no one need take anything he says on that particular subject seriously.
And if anyone asserts that Islam is ‘a religion of peace’ simply because David Cameron has uttered those words, then they are – obviously – making an appeal to inappropriate authority.
This is a fallacy – the argumentum ad verecundiam. (Copi & Cohen, 14th Ed. p. 166)
George Bush also stood in the dusts and ruins and twisted metals of the twin towers and called the perpetrators of the religion of peace. The next day there was no riot against the daring LIAR of the free world leader.
No demonstrations or riots against grave, subtle ideas. They go unnoticed. And therefore no one gets angry at subtle expressed outrageous ideas and opinions.
It shouldn’t be too hard to get an elementary education in Islam just by observing the kinds of societies and subcultures that develop wherever Islam predominates, as well as the headline-making actions taken in the name of Islam.
What you write of is true today – and something will have to be done about it one way or the other, about this fairly young robust upstart religion called Islam. Born too late.
However, in Medieval Europe, beheading was used by the ruling class to dispatch nobles and peasants alike quite a popular form of execution during the Middle Ages, the most famous being the execution of Charles I in 1645. Chaucer even wrote about it:
But whan they weren to the place brought
To tellen shortly the conclusioun,
The nolde encense ne sacrifice right noght,
But on hir knees they setten hem adoun
With humble herte and sad devocioun,
And losten bothe hir hevedes in the place.
Hir soules wenten to the Kyng of grace.
From Chaucer’s The Second Nun’s Tale: Lines 393-39
Islam has no place in Britain or in any other Western country.
Or any place that aspires to be civilized.
I think it is fascinating that western leaders have taken this stand re Islam. They have all the experts at their fingertips and they know all about Islam. Eg Bush, you know, talked to Bernard Lewis, and others, after 911.
You know that they know that we know they are lying.
I can think of only two reasons: 1. They thought there were too many Muslems to fight and we had to start a sort of mass conversion of their brains–like a reformation.
Or 2. They wanted to use Islam as a hammer to break the capitalist model and then install a socialistic third way…all the while believing they could easily dispose of Islam when the time came …when it wasnt needed anymore.
The problem with the last idea is that there were plenty of leaders on the right who also bought the ‘Islam is Peace’ shibboleth. But, I guess, both mechanisms could have been operating.
But you can’t have everyone lying to each other and have a healthy society. Isnt this what happened in the USSR? Isn’t this why Glasnost cracked the facade and their world came tumbling down? We need our own Gorbachev. Stat.
The Bush administration relied on people who seemed to believe there’s some magical power in allowing people to vote — that everyone deep down yearns for freedom and democracy, and that when people can vote for their leaders they’ll naturally turn their own societies into replicas of tolerant Western democracies.
Either they hadn’t studied much history and didn’t notice that it took a very long time to develop tolerant Western democracies or that it wasn’t a global pattern — or they just thought the whole process could be dramatically accelerated now that we’ve finally figured things out.
In its own way, that whole “democracy project” was just as utopian as the collectivism of the left.
“Just as utopian.” That’s putting a generous construction on the meaning of Bush’s words.
Seeing that the Jeb of the species won’t leave us alone and is already signaling his intentions to enter the 2016 presidential race, I would argue with all sincerity that the Bush clan is deranged by notions of delusions of grandeur that short-circuit their critical faculties to such an extent that they eagerly participate in the work of bringing Western Christendom to its demise — all the while imagining that they are doing God’s work. That’s the true nature of liberalism: “there is no God but that found in the pursuit of equality for all people,” and especially if that equality requires that Christians abandon their belief in the ONE TRUE God. Very exclusivist, don’t ya know.
GWB himself stated that Islam is but one road to God!
Thereby he denied the faith he purported to believe when he sought the presidency in 2000.
For I can assure you, there is salvation in no one but Jesus Christ, though the entire world should holler NOT SO.
Hmm… So people from remote places who’ve never heard of Jesus (i.e. the majority of humanity for most of the last two millenia) are condemned to eternal damnation, Harriet?
What comes to mind is a scene from Alice in Wonderland when Alice is sneaking into the Red Queen’s castle. In order to cross the moat to get into the castle she must step on the severed heads that are floating there in order to get to the safety of the castle.
I rather think that Alice’s episode with the Red Queen’s moat is good metaphor for the behavior of the politicians that ‘represent’ us.
I guess you mean the Tim Burton film, acuara. In Lewis Carroll’s originals, the Red Queen appears in “Through the Looking Glass”, and no severed heads are seen; it is (allegedly) a children’s book, after all.
“Violence is the heart of Islam.”
Ayatollah Yazdi
http://vladtepesblog.com/2012/01/18/islam-is-not-a-curried-christianity/
To understand the PC MC Mainstream, we must keep in mind that the issue is not really Islam, but rather Muslims. One can impugn Islam till the cows come home, and base the condemnation solidly on the texts and teachings; but this is a separate issue from whether Muslims following their Islam are a problem — how many of them are, and which ones are (as clearly distinguished from those who aren’t).
Many in the Counter-Jihad think the PC MC paradigm is illogical; but what saves it from illogic is the distinction between the Tiny Minority of Extremists and the Vast Majority of Muslims who are supposed to be innocent of terrorism. The concern to protect that latter demographic from broad brush policies that would harm them is what drives the logic.
This concern is furthermore augmented by a more or less implicit Reverse Racism, whereby Muslims are more or less implicitly deemed by PC MCs to be an Ethnic People (or a wonderful tapestry, mosaic, stir-fry, quilt of Ethnic Peoples), adding an extra hot button to the concern to protect them, since PC MCs are so powerfully anxious to redress White Guilt.
The overall concern, on the part of the PC MC Mainstream. to distinguish the Innocent Demographic from the Dangerous Demographic and protect the former from our policies addressing the latter only differs in degree (a putatively larger Majority of harmless Muslims) — not in kind — from what Counter-Jihad Softies think & feel in their asymptotic confusion of mind.