Head Shot-viNothing prompts the hundreds of ordinarily feuding and fighting sects of Islam to come together like the slightest disrespect shown to the founder of their religion or their religious sanctity. With the slightest hint from their vested-interest clergy and politicians, mobs of Muslims pour into the streets with frenzy, burning, destroying buildings and killing people they associate, however remotely, as complicit in defaming Islam.

Concurrently, Islamic diplomats flood international forums such as the United Nations demanding the international community adopt so-called blasphemy laws that would make criticism of their religion a criminal offense. Islamic heads of government such as Muhammad Morsi of Egypt, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and Ayatollah Khamenei of the Islamic Republic of Iran are raising a hue and a cry about how Islam has been defamed in the West and claiming urgent action is needed to stem the tide of anti-Islam expressions. These defenders of Islam, also billed as the religion of peace, call the expressions that the free world considers part and parcel of freedom of speech, blasphemy. And committing blasphemy in many Islamic lands can cost people their lives.

The annual fall circus of the United Nations where heads of state or their high representatives flock to New York to address the General Assembly on matters of great import to the world community, often lives up to the appellation “circus.”  It is in this forum the Hitler wannabe clown, Ahmadinejad, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was lecturing the international body on the civility of his government and the need for the rest of the world to follow its example.  Among the things the world must do is expunge Israel from the map, send the Jews to wherever they came from, and if not to where his idol Adolf sent millions of them. And, no, his government’s around the clock race to acquire nuclear weapons capability is a fabrication of Jews and Americans. The Islamic government is pursuing a peaceful nuclear program and has no intention of developing nuclear weapons. When asked why is it that the Islamic government does not allow the international atomic energy commission to inspect their facility, he has the audacity to say that there is no need for so doing.  Just take our word for it.

This business of criminalizing blasphemy, demanded by a raft of Islamic politicians and high clerics, reached its highest pitch when the head of the Arab League, Nabil Alaraby, formally proposed it in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly this week. He said that in the same manner that the West has criminalized actions that physically harm people, it should also criminalize acts that harm people psychologically and spiritually.

Fascinating proposal indeed! Should only the West adopt laws that would suffocate their freedom of expression in order to protect Muslim sensibilities? Don’t Muslims need to do the same? Alaraby indeed proposes that these laws should criminalize insulting the sanctity of religions. It is very civil of him to make it inclusive by using the plural term, “religions.” But, to him and one and half billion Muslims, there are, according to the Quran, only three belief systems that qualify as religion: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What about the billions who are Hindus, Buddhists, and members of other faiths? What about agnostics, and atheists who don’t believe in a deity? Not believing in a deity, in itself, is also a belief system. These people are fair game and can be vilified without any penalty under the proposed blasphemy law?

americaInterestingly enough, Muslims lash out in savagery when the sanctity of their faith is affronted in the form of a cartoon, a video, a book, or an individual burning of a Quran. Yet, they feel free not only in insulting other peoples’ religions, but wreaking all kinds of horrific acts upon them.  Defaming, insulting, and desecrating others’ beliefs is in the fabric of Islam itself.

Muslims are offended by a particular individual burning of a Quran at one end of the world and react with mayhem, violence and killings wherever they live.  Let the individual buy all the Qurans he wants and burn them.  In a free world, publishers rush their presses and produce more than enough replacements of the burned Qurans even before the smoke from the smoldering books completely disappears.  Someone has made a video offensive to Muslims?  Did the video actually incite riots? Did it violate the boundaries set by freedom of expression? If so, it is the duty of the courts to decide the matter and mete out the appropriate punishment and not the prerogative of the mob to unleash its wrath on buildings and innocent people.

Muslims have no problem insulting even a Quran-sanctioned religion, Christianity, in all places, in the Quran itself: Quran 5:73 “infidels are they who say Allah is one of three,” in reference to the Christian concept of Trinity. And “Infidels are they who say Allah is the Christ, son of Mary.” In Quran 9:30 it says, “the Christians say the Christ is the son of Allah…may Allah’s curse be upon them.”

I hardly need chronicle here all the vile things Islam has done and continues to do and say about the Jews during the life of Muhammad and to this day.

Muslims do not limit their attacks on other religions to cartoons, videos, and print material. Just a few instances are sufficient to establish their heinous deeds and the double standards they practice. Not long ago, the Taliban shamelessly destroyed the magnificent historical statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia bars churches, synagogues, and places of worship for any and all non-Muslims. The Islamic Republic of Iran has an official policy of decimating the country’s largest religious minority, the Baha’is. In pursuit of this criminal objective, Baha’is’ holiest shrine in Shiraz has been leveled, Baha’i cemeteries are bulldozed and in many cities the Baha’is are not even permitted to bury their dead. Baha’is are barred from government employment, their businesses and lives routinely attacked, some are imprisoned, and many executed.

Young Baha’is are not admitted to universities unless they recant their faith. When Baha’is attempt to educate their people by offering courses in private homes, the teachers are imprisoned and study materials and computers are confiscated.

Christians and Jews are not treated as cruelly as the Baha’is in Iran. Yet, they are clearly second-class citizens in their own country simply because they are not Muslims.

Atrocities committed across the Muslim world by Muslims against other faiths are legend. Egypt’s Coptic Christians are fleeing their ancestral home in droves; ditto for Christians in Iraq. Mali’s Ansar Dine, overrun by jihadist Muslims, is experiencing the destructions of Sufi temples and Christian churches. Bombing Christian churches and killing Christians in Nigeria is all in a day’s work for people of the religion of peace.

dearborn-michiganIt stands to reason that the Muslims who feel so offended by the uncomplimentary portrayal of Islam need to take a close look at their own individual as well as collective treatment of non-Muslims. Muslims do not have the right to engage in atrocities against others while demanding that no one in any form or shape offend their religious sensibilities.

Mohammad Morsi, a card-carrying life-long member of the Muslim Brotherhood presently presiding over Egypt, has no credibility lecturing us on civility and respect for other people and their religion when in his own country minority citizens are at the mercy of Muslim mobs. Ahmadinejad, who time and again publicly proclaimed his aim to destroy Israel, should not be even allowed to sully the soil of the land of the free and promote Hitlerism in close proximity of the Statue of Liberty that symbolizes America and what America stands for and reveres.

 

 

Nabil Alaraby, the Head of the Arab League and his ilk need to learn the elemental lesson of civility by granting to others what they shamelessly demand exclusively for themselves. It is long overdue for these purveyors of hate and intolerance toward non-Muslims to mend their own ways before appearing in international forums and shamelessly preaching the need for respect. These Muslim pseudo-populists thrive among the masses of gullible Muslims, but they certainly have no standing among the people who judge them by their deeds rather than by their rhetoric.

My advice to these pretenders of civility and devotees of respect: Please go home and grant your own minority citizens a modicum of respect and tolerance before pressuring the world body to enact laws that would criminalize the defamation of Islam. Islam must, first, end its long-standing practice of defaming, imprisoning, and killing religious minorities to earn reciprocity from the non-Muslim people.

 

 

Amil Imani is the author of Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and Operation Persian Gulf.

 

2012-09-30 14:45:53
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Comments List
I suppose the best we can hope for is to slow the encroachment of Islam upon our liberty.

In reality, though, Islam is the relentless foe of liberty everywhere. For over a thousand years they seek our destruction or absorption through any means they can contrive: war, terror, outbreeding, and lately, by adopting the Alinsky-like rule of holding us to our own PC tolerance rules.

There are hundreds of millions of "moderate" Muslims, but there is no doctrinal basis for a moderate Islam. The core beliefs call for the destruction of Jews and the conquest of everyone else. They will not stop.

Gulp. This is an existential problem for human liberty. It's a toughie, but we will win or lose. We will never coexist in peace.
I'll never understand why the libs consider islam a religion of peace. Judging by the actions world-wide of its followers, islam demonstrates extreme intolerance and hatred unto death of unbelievers. There is no "coexistence", there is only subjugation or elimination of infidels.
The Koran defames Jews by calling them apes and pigs. Classical Muslim commentary and modern Saudi textbooks say that both Jews and Christians are apes and pigs. Perhaps it is now necessary to ban the Koran and other writings as these books defame religions.
It will be difficult to defeat Islam as long as we have a president who is a muslim plant. He's been planted by the Saudis since college at Harvard for a variety of reasons. One to keep us from producing all the energy we are sitting on, the other to advance Islam. It's hard to move forward with such a person at the helm.
Keep in mind, most muslims have no freedom to chose. To be other than a muslim is death in their countries. That is about as evil as you can get.
" Islam must first end its longstanding practice of defaming, imprisoning, and killing religious minorities before it can hope to earn reciprocity from non-Muslim people."

The sun will rise in the west and set in the east before this happens.
It is time to reexamine the Commie-State-Department 'rules of engagement' between the USA and the rest of the World. It is past time for examination of our slavish promotion of Democracy (always the precursor to totalitarianism) and start promoting the true American Way.

We need to enshrine a set of rules and behaviors we demand all our partners adhere to in order to achieve recognition from the USA. Without recognition you get no money, no official political presence and a country is put under watch as a potential enemy (if not an actual declaration of war). These rules could be based upon:

Equality for women.
Free Speech.
Freedom to practice religion.
Not practice genocide.

And as the UN would not support any of this; immediate withdrawal from the United Nations.
Don't forget that the Crusades were also in response to the invasion of Italy, Sicily was occupied, Spain conquered... the Mohammadan hordes were only stopped at the Pyrenees by Charlemagne.

yes Jerusalem was sacked, but this wasn't even the primary reason for the retaliation. They were becoming an existential threat. At least the response wasn't a b.s. "proportional " response guaranteed only to prolong conflict. The only response is overwhelming force. Otherwise you have Palestine . But then the salafists understand this, just look at their use of force in Africa lately.
I believe the first thing that must be admitted is Islam can hardly be qualified as a 'religion'...it remains nothing other than a cult of death, violence, murder and destruction. It has a fourteen hundred year history of nothing but. I have never heard of a circumstance where Christianity or Judaism killed because their faith tells them they must. Muslims do and Islam dictates they are required to do so. When it becomes apparent that Christians and Jews kill, it is in defense of themselves and their faith, not because they are the of the same moral equivalence. So when those who falsely claim Christians and Jews do the same, citing the Crusades, for instance, as the reason for Muslim violence, that in itself is a distortion and a lie...That is the lie that is at the heart of Islam. The Crusades, of course, were a response to the murders of over 3000 souls in Jerusalem by Muslims..so like so many of our day who don't understand the circumstances or the history of the 'religion of peace', and choose rather to distort the reality of the time, these people need to actually learn the real history and not the imagined revisionist history as quoted by those too lazy to learn from it.
"It stands to reason that the Muslims who feel so offended by the uncomplimentary portrayal of Islam need to take a close look at their own individual as well as collective treatment of non-Muslims."

Nothing stands to reason with Islam.