We Can Not Tolerate Any More Silence
I don’t normally quote huge swaths of an article, but I need to make an exception for Mark Steyn’s column this week. He reveals some information I had not heard about the Islamist murders in Bombay. I did not know that the Islamist killers specifically targeted the only Jewish Rabbi in a city of 20 million people and spent a year working on the plan.
Let’s start with Steyn’s excerpt and, if my blood pressure holds up, we’ll move from there.
In fact, you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion, least of all one beginning with “I-“ and ending in “-slam.” In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations — “Islamic terrorists,” “Muslim extremists” — and by the time of the assault on Bombay found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators “militants” or “gunmen” or “teenage gunmen,” as in the opening line of this report in the Australian: “An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok…”
Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.
The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution “practitioners.” “Practitioners” of what, exactly?
Hard to say. And getting harder. Tom Gross produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Bombay media coverage: The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured, and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”
Hmm. Greater Bombay forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon? “I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?”
Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for “going after the wrong people” and inflaming moderates, and “that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.”
Really? The inflammation just “appears”? Like a bad pimple? The “fairer” we get to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in almost all the Western media as “ultra-Orthodox,” “ultra-” in this instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for “strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but they probably shouldn’t have been over there in the first place.” Are they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two “inflamed moderates” entered the Chabad House, shouted “Allahu Akbar!,” tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young Rabbi’s pregnant wife. Their two-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mown down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.
The Times was being silly in suggesting this was just an “accidental” hostage opportunity — and not just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it’s not a hostage situation, it’s a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving “militant” revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance. The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they’re any more important than the Indians, Britons, and Americans targeted in the attack on Bombay, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the pathologies of the perpetrators.
In a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the “militants” nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city’s poor in a nondescript building. If they were just “teenage gunmen” or “militants” in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only rabbi in Bombay?
I’m sure that at some point, someone will come along and try to convince me and anyone else who reads this post that the past two decades rampant Islamist violence is due to a few “extremists” who have nothing do to with True Islam.
That’s rubbish. Muslims everywhere own the blame for the torture-murders of Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and their unborn child. They have spent decades silently accepting the growing Islamist movement. They attend the mosques where the Imams preach death to Jews and the rest of the infidels and say nothing. They give to charities that fund killers. They sit in silence as news report after news report comes in from yet another bloody scene of Islamist violence and they do not rouse themselves. They allow CAIR to speak for them with nary a peep of protest.
Their silence is consent, whether they like it or not, and we have to treat it as such. Does anyone seriously think that if the Muslim world rose up against the Islamists that Islamism wouldn’t be an underground curiosity in just a few years, or even less? Muslims can stop this, if they want to. They never will if we continue to give them alibis and rationalizations and warm fuzzy hugs. Muslims will only change their situation if we make it abundantly clear that their silence is unacceptable and that we will stand with them, no matter what it takes, to help them fight the scourge in their midst. We must make it clear that we want their friendship. We will be happy to have them as companions and allies, but only if they cast out the butchers. If they don’t, then they need to understand that we won’t continue to treat them as infants but as fully-responsible adults. They will find no favor with us. Our generosity will disappear. We will treat their institutions and governments with suspicion. We will be left with no sane alternative. Treating them with kid gloves is killing us, bit by bit.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Abandoning the Women of Pakistan
- I’m Beginning to Think the “Humorless Muslim” Stereotype is True
- A Little Sharia Couldn’t Be Bad, Right?
Category: Alliances and Allies, Anti-Semitism Everywhere, Fighting the Islamists
So do you, as a Christian, accept responsibility for what the IRA did? Or for what happened in Oklahoma City? After all, a religion must take responsibility for what it's adherents do. Maybe you should consider the words a wise man once said: "Judge not, lest you be judged." He probably said it in Aramaic, but you get the gist.
>>So do you, as a Christian, accept responsibility for what the IRA did?>>
No, because the IRA did what they did in spite of, not because of.
>>After all, a religion must take responsibility for what it’s adherents do.>>
Disagree. The adherents need to take responsibility for what the religion does, and either support it or condemn it. The religion preaches what it preaches, and should condemn it's adherents when they do not follow those preachings. Islam specifically preaches that muslims should kill unbelievers, so islam is directly responsible for the actions of its adherents.
>>Maybe you should consider the words a wise man once said: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”>>
And often misinterpreted, imo. No man can judge the soul or morality of another man – that's the province of God, if you believe in an all-knowing, perfectly just God who rewards or punishes in the afterlife. In _this_ life, however we not only can but _should_ judge a man's actions as they conform to the principles of society and to the principles of the individual. A man can be a martyr for islam and therefore a good muslim, but still be a killer by the standards of society. As for the afterlife reward or punishment, I may have an opinion, but I'll leave that judgment up to God.
Refusing to make judgements of the rightness or wrongness of actions – our own or that of others – is just a way of avoiding responsibility – and usually a way of excusing our own actions.
"No, because the IRA did what they did in spite of, not because of."
I'm confident you've never read the Quran. If you had, you wouldn't write such nonsense. The Quran is very specific in its condemnation of terrorism, unlike the Bible which does not condemn terrorism at all. Yes, it condemns murder (Exodus), but then it endorses it as well (Exodus, Joshua). The good news for you is that you need only read the Quran until the second Surah to find the specific condemnation. There, Muhammed says that anyone who commits criminal acts in the name of Allah will be forever condemned by Allah. And that isn't just my liberal reading of the Quran. I had a fascinating discussion of this issue with a Wahhabi scholar in Turkey. He had exactly the same interpretation. And he was quite surprised that I had not only read the Quran, but knew where the passage was. As you might expect, we didn't see eye to eye on a whole lot of things, but the conversation was polite. And we were in full agreement about what the Quran says about terrorism. Terrorism is wrong in Islam. Period. No exceptions.
Given that, I ask you again to condemn the acts of terrorism committed in the name of Christianity. If you can't do it, you are a terrorist.
"A man can be a martyr for islam and therefore a good muslim, but still be a killer by the standards of society."
Not really. Islam has standards very similar to the rest of society on when killing can be justified. We all accept that a soldier does not commit murder when he kills his enemy. And almost all of us accept that killing innocent people for whatever cause is murder. There are obviously some Irish Catholics and Muslim extremists who are okay with terrorism, but neither religion should be condemned for the beliefs of a small minority. Especially Islam, which specifically condemns violence against innocents. It only allows for violence against their oppressors, and only when the relevant religious authorities approve a jihad. Obviously, there are more than a few bad Muslims, but that doesn't make Islam bad anymore than the existence of bad Christians makes Christianity bad.
And for the record, I will accept the blame for all of the acts of terrorism committed by Buddhists. But Buddhists have a funny concept of terrorism. They usually make sure they only kill themselves. They dump gasoline on themselves and burn themselves in protest. It's actually a very effective method. People remember it. And no innocents get hurt. Disturbed for sure, but not hurt. Sadly, they don't always do that, as the anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetans shows. They were wrong to burn down Han businesses, and you'll remember that I condemned those acts at the time.
@fostert –
And yet thousands of Imams preach killing using the Quran regularly. Odd that they should differ from you so severely. Leads me to believe that you're taking a purposefully forgiving view of the matter.
Your attempt to compare worldwide Islamist killings with terrorism that was both very local and widely condemned by proponents of those religions (Catholics and "Christians") doesn't hold up under even cursory examination.
The truth of the matter is that there is not a small number of extremists. Recent polls in the UK and US prove that. As I said, Muslims could reduce Islamist murder to a curiosity if they wished. They simply do not wish it.
I should add this. The Muslims of India are adamant that the Mumbai terrorists not be buried in Muslim cemeteries. The reason? Those terrorists offended Allah by their actions and it would be sacrilege to give them a Muslim burial. That should make it clear that regular Muslims do not support terrorism. And that shouldn't surprise us, Muslims are the most likely victims of terrorism. For all of our complaints about the targeting of foreigners in the Mumbai attacks, more Muslims died than foreigners.
"Your attempt to compare worldwide Islamist killings with terrorism that was both very local and widely condemned by proponents of those religions"
I don't remember Christians in America condemning Irish terrorism. Where were the Christians on that one? Oh yeah, they were donating money to support the IRA. The majority of the IRA's financing came from Irish Catholic churches in the US. But they weren't investigated, were they? But God forbid that a Mosque do the same. I'm not defending those Mosques that aid terrorism, I only ask that Christians be held to the same standard. And they clearly haven't been held to an equal standard. And you don't have the guts to admit it. I will condemn my Tibetan Buddhist compatriots when they behave badly. And you know damn well that I have. But you will always defend Christians no matter how badly they behave. That makes you a Christianist, not a Christian.
"And yet thousands of Imams preach killing using the Quran regularly."
Thousands? Really? I've got a lot of problems with what many Imams say. But the vast majority of them condemn terrorism. I really doubt that there are thousands of of them that support terrorism. Dozens would be more accurate. But there are hundreds of Christian preachers that support the "Left Behind" philosophy. And there are tens of millions of Christians who support it. And let's be clear, the Left Behind concept advocates genocide against us non-Christians. You can rest assured that we will fight back. And my guns are better than yours.
You're simply incorrect and yes, thousands. It is a central tenet of Wahabist Islam to wage actual war against infidels (regardless of the shine-on you got from the Imam to whom you spoke). This, also, isn't sparsely documented.
You're arguing against facts that are already well-established. I'm not sure why.
Also, regarding the "Left Behind" theory you have, you are also entirely incorrect. I honestly don't have the faintest clue where you get this from. REgardless, Muslims remain silent while thousands (yes, thousands) of Imams preach murder. As I said, they could stop it if they wanted. But they don't.
"Also, regarding the “Left Behind” theory you have, you are also entirely incorrect. I honestly don’t have the faintest clue where you get this from.'
It comes from reading the books. They scare the hell out of me. I'm the enemy in those books, and millions of people buy into those books. You can't just write that off like it's nothing.
"It is a central tenet of Wahabist Islam to wage actual war against infidels (regardless of the shine-on you got from the Imam to whom you spoke)"
No it's not. The central tenet is that everyone will become Muslims because human beings have free will. If they have free will, they will obviously make the logical choice to become Muslim. I obviously reject that thesis, but I can accept that they don't intend to forcibly convert us. But the "Left behind" series and the Book of Revelation make it clear that Christians do want to forcibly convert us. And they'll be looking down the barrel of my AK-47 when they try.
No, tom, the Bible says no such thing. You can't find any quote in the Bible that enjoins Christians to forcibly convert anyone. Your research is poor.
And you're wrong about Wahabism and Islam in general. Between you and the Imams, I'll trust them, and thousands of them are saying that I as an infidel must submit or die.
I'm thankful I'm not a Jew. I wouldn't get the option to submit then.
"No, tom, the Bible says no such thing. You can’t find any quote in the Bible that enjoins Christians to forcibly convert anyone."
You're absolutely right. Jesus was clear that conversion must be voluntary. Sadly, his followers rejected that concept. Yes, between Jesus's death and Constantine's conversion, the Christians actually followed what Jesus said. But in the period between Constantine and World War II, forcible conversion was the norm in Christianity. And that's a long time and a lot of forced conversions and murders.
"I’m thankful I’m not a Jew. I wouldn’t get the option to submit then. "
If you knew your history, you'd know that whenever there was a conflict between Christians and Muslims, the Jews moved to Muslim controlled territory. Yes, the Muslims would charge extra taxes on the Jews, but the Christians would burn the Jews at the stake. After torturing them first, of course. And that kind of attitude went well into the twentieth century. The Christians of Germany did nothing to stop Hitler. In fact, they voted for him. And the Catholic Church had no complaints whatsoever against the Nazis. In fact, they helped finance them. As did Prescott Bush.
And I want to make this clear. I have no problem with Christianity. In fact, I have a Bible near my bed and read it about once a week. I think Jesus offered a great message. And I do my best to follow his teachings. To me, he's a great Bodhisattva. All I ask is that Christians recognize the sins that were committed in Christianity's name. And I ask the same of the Muslims. None of us are perfect, and I'm willing to forgive anyone who recognizes their sins. And I'll criticize any Buddhist who commits a crime for whatever reason. Will you do the same? If you do, I'll forgive you.
"Jesus was clear that conversion must be voluntary.'
I'll note that the Muslim belief that conversion must be voluntary comes from Jesus. If you read the Quran, you'd notice that Jesus happens to be the most referenced and revered character in it. The Muslims assert that Jesus gave a perfect message, but it was misunderstood. Muhammed only clarified the message. Muhammed was simply a prophet, just like Jesus.
"regardless of the shine-on you got from the Imam to whom you spoke"
I spoke with that man for seven hours. It was no shine-on. Anyone can fool me for for a half-hour. But nobody will fool me for seven hours. And he wasn't trying to. He said some really offensive things about America to my face, and was blatant about it. And we spent an hour talking about Buddhism. And he had some striking criticisms that were really surprising. He knew more about Buddhism than most Buddhists. He wasn't trying to fool me, and he wasn't trying to impress me. He was just speaking his mind. And while I strongly disagree with him, I respect his honesty. And I respect his scholarship. I was happy to converse with him. And he wasn't an Imam. He was just a scholar. But the scene was impressive nonetheless. Him, with his beard and clerics garbs, drinking tea. And me, with my wild hair, drinking Raki and beer, and chain smoking cigarettes. The Turkish bartenders thought it was really amusing. And so did I. But it wasn't a joke. Both of us learned something. And that's why we argue. He gave me his email address the next morning, and I told him that my government would probably jail me if I talked to him again. He said that his country, Syria, wouldn't do that. Go figure.
You're scared because you read Revelation & know what that means to you. You're scared & it shows by the hysterical lies you are indulging in regarding Christianity and Christians in general. You are the one that holds Christians to a different standard than every other false religion out there. Why is that?
The books are fiction….I don't know anything about them either; nor do I know anyone who is trying to live their life by them.
And Jesus was not a prophet; He is God. Lot's of people like to play this game of well, in this religion He's one thing, but in another religion He's another. That's not how it works. Jesus is not what we make Him nor how we perceive Him. He is what He is and somebody is wrong.
>>Not really. Islam has standards very similar to the rest of society on when killing can be justified. >>
So all that "seventy two virgins" stuff is just made up? By whom? And why do all those suicide bombers believe it if the imams don't teach it?
Ah yes. The religion of peace…
http://www.aina.org/news/20081126035704.htm
Can 20,000 muslims _all_ be misinformed?