
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 22, 2005
/ 15 Tamuz, 5765
Reality and Islam
By
Diana West
By refusing to confront the truth we are not only deluding, but hurting, ourselves
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
On Monday, I outlined the problem of the age: the incompatibility of Islam with a multicultural West that hides away inconvenient history and disturbing doctrine under layers of political correctness. Without stripping them off to examine the problem, all we get is a lot of wishful thinking.
Historian Niall Ferguson, writing in the Telegraph on the intensifying "Muslim colonization" of Europe, has decided that such "demographic shifts" are not "invariably a bad thing." After all, seven centuries of jihad-imposed dhimmitude for infidels in Muslim Spain gave us the Alhambra, or something. It's that pesky "ideology" of conquest that follows all the shifting that's the problem something he thinks European Muslims ought to take "a much closer look at." Really stern stuff.
Over at the Boston Globe, a lefty editorial mantra turns culture clash into harmonic convergence: "European Muslims and non-Muslims must learn to live together. Each will have to practice the tolerance that [Theo van Gogh] assassin Bouyeri proudly scorned." They must, must they? As sharia law becomes a democratic option, who will enforce such tolerance?
As conservatives, JWR columnist Charles Krauthammer and blogger-cum-radio host Hugh Hewitt still fight the good fight, but, in these multicultural days, that means sorting through "extremism" and finding nothing too terribly Islamic about it. Mr. Hewitt writes that my arguments of last week were wrong, citing "functioning democracies in Turkey and other predominantly Islamic countries" as evidence of Islamo-Western compatibility. He throws in the loyal host ("millions of loyal British and American citizens") for good measure. Problem is, the extent to which Turkey where, just incidentally, "Mein Kampf" was a top 10 bestseller this spring has ever functioned as a democracy is directly related to the efforts of a strong man, Ataturk, to constrain Islam's grip on the country's institutions, replacing religion with a doctrine of Turkish racial and civilizational supremacy. And while it tugs on the heartstrings, the loyalty of individual Muslims fails to neutralize or reform the institutions of jihad and dhimmitude that rise from Islamic teachings. That I even raised the issue, Mr. Hewitt writes, "underscores the almost desperate need for Muslim leaders in the West again and again, to denounce, without argument or sidebar mentions of Israel, etc., the use of terrorism as a weapon." Almost desperate is right.
Having determined that "99 percent" of European Muslims are "peace-loving and not engaged in terror," Charles Krauthammer sounds a similar alarm. "They must actively denounce not just ... the terrorist attacks, but their source: the Islamist ideology and its practitioners. Where are the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders."
Why Europeans? Why not the Krauthammer 99 percent, or the Hewitt millions? This is where it gets tricky, where those cultural ties to terrorism's tactics and/or goals seem to be all too binding. It is true that in March, something called the Spanish Muslim Council issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, calling him an apostate for his atrocities. Judea Pearl, father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, mentions this in his Boston Globe piece about a clerically star-studded conference on Islam in Jordan this month. Mr. Pearl notes that the fatwa led many to believe it would be followed by others, "and," he writes, "that using the Islamic instruments of fatwa, apostasy and fasad (corruption), Muslims would be able to disassociate themselves from those who hijacked their religion."
He continues: "Unfortunately, the realization of these expectations will need to wait for a brave new leadership to emerge. The final communique of the Amman conference, issued July 6, states explicitly: 'It is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any necessary article of religion.'"
Mr. Pearl spells out the chilling ramifications: "In other words, belief in basic tenets of faith provides an immutable protection from charges of apostasy." Even what Mr. Pearl calls "anti-Islamic behavior," including "the advocacy of mass murder in the name of religion, cannot remove that protection," he writes. "Bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the murderers of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg will remain bona fide members of the Muslim faith, as long as they do not explicitly renounce it."
Which leaves conservative Muslims, liberal Muslims and everybody else between a rock and hard place. Isn't it time to crack things open?
JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Diana West Archives
© 2005, Diana West
|