Religious Practice Versus Imposition

Earlier tonight an acquaintance said he had heard that during Ramadan in Dearborn, Michigan, there's a high school football team that does their football practice from 11:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. because some of the devout Muslim players can't eat or drink anything during the daylight. He said this without any judgment at all. It looked like he felt absolutely neutral about it.

I said, "In other words, the Muslims are imposing their practices on non-Muslims." I said it with a face that clearly displayed disapproval.

He was casually dismissive. "Well, other religions do crazy stuff too," he said.

I said, "They don't impose their stuff on me. Are there religious people who impose something on you? Or try to get you to grant a concession? Or try to make your values yield to theirs? To practice a religion is personal and private. If someone wants to go without food, what do I care? They can go right ahead. But when it impinges on people who are not members of the religion, that's no longer religious. It's political. So all the high school students who want to play football at that school have to practice in the middle of the night because Muslims are thrusting their Islamic practice into the non-Islamic public sphere. Those non-Muslim kids have to disrupt their normal sleep cycle because the Muslims won't bend and the non-Muslims will. And step by step, inch by inch, orthodox Muslims gain one concession after another as our tolerant culture yields to their intolerant culture. Is that okay with you? It's not okay with me."

I had to leave, but this brief conversation inserted an idea I got from Bill Warner. And my acquaintance looked like he heard something he had never even thought about. I wish I'd had time to explain to him that religious supremacism is the belief that a particular religion is superior to others and entitles members of the religion to control or dominate non-members. That's what these Muslim football players were doing.

But maybe it was better that I didn't go into any more detail. Sometimes less is better. Sometimes it's actually more effective to let things sink in a little at a time.

Given how many people are becoming aware of the disturbing nature of Islamic texts, these kinds of brief conversations must be taking place all over the free world. Let's keep it up. We should think in terms of small bits and long campaigns.

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Can We Stop This Creeping Jihad?

CAIR executive director, Nihad Awad

The following is a letter by Edward Kesler, published on July 28, 2013 in the Reader's Forum of the Tribune Star.

Admittedly, Americans have enormous difficulty realizing that a religion, Islam, is a threat to our society. Perhaps untiring efforts to awaken the public is a fool’s errand. Most readers of any newspaper will not research this issue for themselves. Understanding the task is daunting. It may be useful to examine groups the media believes purportedly speak for Muslims in the U.S.

In the news recently is the Muslim Brotherhood. Some Americans realize the Brotherhood controlled the Egyptian government until the last few weeks. Fewer understand this is not a “political party” but a movement dedicated to world domination. Simply reading the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto should sound alarms for all of us.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. A primary goal was to re-establish a caliphate that could be extended worldwide. The founders, ardent admirers of Hitler, translated “Mein Kampf” into Arabic. The Muslim religious leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, spent many years in Germany supporting and observing death camp operations and planning the same for the Muslim world. Rommel’s defeat at El-Alamein ended the plan.

The Jihad (terrorist) group Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the government of Gaza. In the United States the Brotherhood is the power and financing arm behind the Islamic Society of North America (headquartered in nearby Plainfield), the Muslim Students Association, the International Institute for Islamic Thought and many others.

Perhaps most notably, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, portrayed as a Muslim civil rights organization, is not only connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, but was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation money laundering case. The foundation was convicted of funneling money to Hamas to aid in the terror against Israel.

These are the “moderates” with whom this president’s administration and, to some extent, the previous two administrations, have attempted to coexist. In this administration, members of the Brotherhood and various other Islamist groups have made deep inroads into the halls of power.

Is it too late to stop the creeping social jihad being waged against us, even at the highest levels of our government?

— Edward Kesler, West Terre Haute

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ACT! for America Wins Victories

If you haven't yet signed up for ACT! for America's email updates, it's time to do yourself the favor. Their updates are top quality, they often give you action alerts to let you know how to take a specific immediate action that will make a difference, and sometimes their reports include good news, like the one they sent out yesterday. Here's what it said:

This year, the governor of Oklahoma signed into law American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation.

The Alabama legislature passed ALAC and has sent it to the voters for approval in 2014 to add ALAC to the state constitution.

South Dakota passed the Free Speech Defense Act.

A school board in Northern Virginia rejected a charter school application from a group affiliated with the Islamist Gulen Movement.

A principal in Washington state removed a flawed, biased textbook from the school.

Kansas said "no" to sharia law and passed anti-Female Genital Mutilation legislation.

And ACT! for America helped make every one of these 2013 victories possible.

They have the largest national security grassroots citizen action network in the country, with over 260,000 members and 800 chapters, and growing.

They've got chapters now in other countries too: Argentina, Canada, Australia, Britain, India, Germany, etc. Sign up for their email updates here.

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They Oppressed the Wrong Woman

Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie was born in the desert of Somalia. Her family were Muslim nomads. When she was 13 years old, her father announced to her he'd found her a husband and she would soon be wed. Her "groom to be" was an old man. She protested and begged, but the old man had already paid her father, so the deal was done.

The next morning, before her father awoke, she ran away. She took off into the desert knowing only that somewhere was a city named Mogadishu and somewhere in that city she had an aunt. Amazingly, after a very difficult journey, she found her aunt and stayed with her a short time. Then one of her uncles became the Somalian ambassador to the UK and would be stationed in London. Waris begged her uncle to take her with him to be a maid. He consented.

She eventually became a fashion model whose face adorned the covers of many glamour magazines.

At one point in her career, Waris had been interviewed many times. The interviews were always about how a barefoot Somalian nomad became a famous model. But one day as another of these interviews was beginning, Waris took a bold step. She said the rags to riches story had already been told. "Would you like a real story?" she asked.

She told the interviewer about the day she experienced female genital mutilation (FGM), an ancient practice of removing a woman's clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora. Waris was then sewn up with a small hole for urination, which is usually how it's done. This procedure guarantees that she will be a virgin when she gets married, and it ensures she will not feel pleasure during sex (and thus helps prevent infidelity). A girl is not considered marriageable if she is "uncut" — she is considered no better than a whore, so parents make sure she undergoes FGM.

The interviewer was moved and shaken by Waris's story. And the magazine had the guts to print it. This was the beginning of an increasing global awareness of FGM and a movement to do away with it, in the same way that binding girl's feet was banned in China in the early 1900s. Already several countries have committed themselves to eradicating the practice.

Banning FGM would not only save millions of girls from the horror, pain, and death caused by this barbaric practice (it is done to 8,000 girls a day worldwide, with one out of four girls dying from the procedure), it would also help to marginalize, discredit, and disempower orthodox Islam.

The practice is over 4000 years old, and it was taken for granted during Muhammad's lifetime that all women underwent FGM, so he mentioned it a few times as a forgone conclusion, and his mention was written down, so it has now been enshrined in Islamic doctrine as an Islamic practice. Fundamentalists want it to continue because whatever Muhammad said is right for all time.

Banning the procedure would stop this orthodox practice, which would help disempower the fundamentalism itself. Everywhere we can prevent an orthodox practice, like covering women or beating them for disobedience or FGM, we weaken the forces of orthodoxy. If some Islamic fundamentals can be abandoned or seen as wrong, other fundamentals might be more easily abandoned as well.

I encourage you to help your friends and family become aware of FGM. You don't even have to mention the word "Islam." Read Waris's story in her excellent book, Desert Flower (written with Cathleen Miller). And then share the book with people you know. Talk it up. And watch National Geographic's movie by the same name and share that too. This is a way to help innocent girls, a way to pit humanistic empathy against Islamic domination, and a way to get people involved in marginalizing orthodox Islam — people who might never otherwise get involved. The Islamic oppression of women can and should be stopped. Let's start by saving orthodox Islam's weakest and most innocent victims: Girls.

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Why Talk About Islam? Shouldn't We Talk Specifically About "Extremists?"

One of our articles, Will It Stop Terrorism To Build Schools?, received a comment and I wanted to talk about it here because the point of view of the commenter is one of the most important barriers preventing the West from successfully defending itself against Islam's relentless encroachment.

In other words, if the issues the commenter brought up are not answered and answered well, I believe Islam will successfully Islamize the West. My answer (below) may not be complete enough, but it's a start, and I hope others will help out by adding their points in the comments to this post. So here goes...

The commenter's name was Ekblad. His first comment was, "Seems to me that you yourself, sir, is promoting hatred."

My response was, "Let me get this straight, Ekblad: Because I stated a fact: 'The primary doctrinal source of Islam, the Qur'an, teaches hatred and encourages violence against non-Muslims,' that means I'm promoting hatred?

"Who do I recommend hatred toward? Nobody, as far as I can tell. But if you quote a statement I have made that recommends people hate somebody, please let me know so I can correct it.

"Otherwise, what I am concerned with is a particular DOCTRINE. That is, a collection of written teachings. My main message is that anyone following those teachings will be necessarily dangerous to non-Muslims, and we non-Muslims best be aware of that fact and alter our policies accordingly. I'm talking about immigration policies, sedition laws, and our policies of negotiating with anyone following those teachings. I'm talking about policies toward allowing madrassas that teach these ideas to children, and I'm talking about policies toward what is said in mosques. Read more about that here.

"Many people do not know that inside the Qur'an are passages urging hatred toward Jews and Christians, and even greater hatred for those of us who are neither, and there are Muslims around the world who take these passages seriously and follow the teachings religiously.

"Do you recommend that we infidels simply stop talking about these teachings? Do you repudiate these teachings? Which passages of the Qur'an do you reject? Let's hear it, Ekblad."

Ekblad had this response:

"From your defensive tone I surmise your intention is in fact not to promote hatred. In that case I suggest you separate the Qur'an texts from its implementations, as we would do with Old Testament texts of similar content.

"An honest assessment of the implementation would no doubt result in the conclusion that the jihadists represent a tiny minority position within the Muslim world — and one that simply thrives on the kind of violence that has been the main tactic against them for too long.

"Bundling these extremists and their extreme interpretation of the Qur'an with all Qur'an followers is unfair and counterproductive.

"Greg Mortenson offers in my opinion a much more adequate and appropriate response towards the Muslim world, an attitude based on compassion for peoples living under difficult situations, regardless of creed."

Here is my response to that:

I think what you're bringing up here, Ekblad, is one of the most important issues non-Muslims will have to come to grips with in this century. Namely, is it legitimate to warn against the contents of the Qur'an and the Hadith? Or is wrong to do so? Is it being unfair to those who do not abide by every teaching of the Islamic doctrine?

I'm glad you responded, Ekblad. I was hoping for an opportunity to go into detail about this. To call my tone "defensive" seems oddly hostile. The reason I'm explaining so much to you is not only to answer you, but to answer your questions for the many others who will read this. And by the way, you didn't answer my question, which I still put to you: Are there any passages in the Qur'an that you repudiate?

But back to the main issue. I'm going to take your points one at a time. First you suggest we separate Qur'an texts from what people do with those texts (how they implement them). To which I would reply: I do exactly that. In the article you are taking exception to, I wrote, "Islamic terrorism (the implementation) has its roots in the ideology of Islam (the texts)."

I went on to say, "The primary doctrinal source of Islam, the Qur'an, teaches hatred and encourages violence against non-Muslims." Which is true. If you haven't read the Qur'an, I urge you to read it cover to cover as I have and find out for yourself. It is not difficult to read. Find out more about reading the Qur'an here. The passages are not hard to decipher. It is not written in vague language. It is vigorous and direct. And it does, very straightforwardly, encourage intolerance and violence against non-Muslims.

You should read it yourself before criticizing someone who talks about what's in it.

Your next point is that Jihadis are only a small minority of Muslims. If you mean violent Jihadis, I concede that point, although the minority who support the violence is much larger than most non-Muslims would guess (or feel glad about), and when you add up the violence worldwide, as Glen Reinsford does, this small minority of Muslims causes a great deal of carnage. But violent jihad is only one small part of the problem. There is a much larger and more dangerous issue — the political nature of Islam.

Islamic teachings direct Muslims to commit violence against non-Muslims, but the teachings do far more than that, and the options for waging jihad against non-Muslims are enormous. Violence is only one of many ways to wage jihad.

The political goal of Islam is universal Shari'a law. Political action toward that goal is a religious duty for a Muslim. One way a Muslim can work toward that goal is to use violence to strike terror into the hearts of non-Muslims. Or to intimidate non-Muslims into refraining from any criticism of Islam, as the "cartoon riots" tried to do (and in some ways they succeeded). Another way to wage jihad is to organize a YouTube video-banning project. If YouTube gets enough complaints about a video, YouTube makes the video unavailable to view. Muslims around the world have successfully banned many videos that were critical of Islamic teachings. Another way to wage jihad is to create an organization such as the Council of American-Islamic Relations and bring lawsuits against people who criticize Islam. Another way to wage jihad is to infiltrate the "chaplain system" of the penal system and try to convert prisoners to Jihadis.

The list goes on and on. All of these things and many more are being done in the United States and Europe. Jihad is being waged on so many fronts at once, it is astonishing. And frightening. The end-goal of all of these efforts is to establish Shari'a law — a seventh century form of law which removes human rights from women, among many other drawbacks.

Warren Mendleson said at a recent press conference:

Sharia "requires non-Muslims to live as dhimmis, second-class citizens... and be treated in a brutal and demeaning way... it mandates discrimination against women and non-Muslims, demands the murder of homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates, and requires violent jihad against all infidels, including Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others." He continued that "Sharia law is seditious because it calls for the violent overthrow of governments like the United States and the replacement of democratic Constitutional law with its own bureaucratic code." He indicated that the nations practicing Sharia law today are "some of the most oppressive regimes in the world."

Another speaker at the same press conference, Wendy Wright, said:

In Shari'a law, "husbands can use physical force against their wives, the early forced marriage of a girl as young as nine, that men can have multiple marriages and multiple wives, that men can have the right of custody of children and mothers have no rights of custody, that homosexuals should be stoned to death, that women accused of bringing dishonor to male relatives should be killed."

The teachings of Islam urge followers to establish Shari'a law and to abolish "man-made" governments (such as democracies) so the law of Allah can rule the behavior of all people on earth. That is the goal.

R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence, commenting on Robert Spencer's book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, wrote:

"Robert Spencer makes a solid case that the major threat to our way of life does not come solely from those radical Islamists who embrace violence and terrorism. It also comes from those who do not accept that they must live side-by-side on a basis of equality with those of other faiths in a civil society and who instead work in multiple ways toward obtaining special standing for Islam in our society and, ultimately, toward theocracy. A vital wake-up call of a book."

So in answer to your question, Ekblad, I do not think it is especially significant or useful to emphasize that Jihadis are a "tiny minority" in the Muslim world.

This is why the core teachings of Islam are relevant and important to non-Muslims. The core teachings of Islam are aiming at the eradication of the values, principles, and way of life non-Muslims care about most. If Islam accomplishes its goal, governments protecting liberty and equality will no longer exist.

Your third point, Ekblad, is that it is unfair and counterproductive to bundle "extremists and their extreme interpretation of the Qur'an with all Qur'an followers." And here we arrive at the core issue. The Qur'an says what it says. It promotes intolerance toward non-Muslims in very direct language which requires no "interpretation." Since we can all read it, and since we couldn't possibly know for sure that at least some of the people who call themselves Muslims have decided not to follow some of those teachings, it is up to Muslims to declare themselves. It is not up to non-Muslims to avoid offending those liberty-and-equality-loving "Muslims" by assuming they are peace-loving, liberty-loving, and equality-loving people.

That is a big assumption to make for anyone who knows what is in the Qur'an.

This is so important, I want to make this perfectly clear. We non-Muslims can read the Qur'an. We can know what it says. Anyone who calls himself a Muslim, we assume, must believe the Qur'an is the word of Allah, which means he believes in (and is committed to) the passages in the Qur'an. Which means he is potentially dangerous to the liberty and even the survival of non-Muslims. For non-Muslims to have any inkling that a "Muslim" does not follow all the teachings contained in the Qur'an, he would have to tell us which passages he repudiates.

I have yet to hear any Muslim doing so (except the excellent people over at Muslims Against Sharia). In fact, it says in the Qur'an itself a Muslim may not reject or ignore any verses of the Qur'an. So both Muslims and non-Muslims are between a rock and a hard place. I don't know what the ultimate solutions will be for this problem, but I'll tell you what I know will NOT work: For non-Muslims to avoid or ignore or downplay the writings of Islam's most sacred book. For any solution to come about, we all have to be honest about what is written in that book.

I've been studying about this and writing about it for a long time, and I have heard from many Muslims over the years. Almost all of them have said they were "peaceful Muslims." But not one of them has quoted a passage from the Qur'an and said, "I do not and will not ever follow that passage."

What is a non-Muslim to do?

To be on the safe side, a non-Muslim should assume anyone who calls himself a Muslim follows the teachings of the Qur'an. Just as we would assume anyone who calls himself a Christian is following the teachings of the Bible. But as much as people always try to imply the two religions are similar, the Bible is a large collection of writings from many different writers and written at different times in history. Its message is not nearly as clear-cut as the Qur'an's message. And the Bible does not give its followers a political agenda. It does not explicitly tell its followers how to treat non-Christians.

For those and many other reasons, non-believers such as myself have no need to be as wary of Christians as we need to be of Muslims (read more about that here). This may not be "fair" to those Muslims who choose to ignore particular teachings in the Qur'an, but this is an important issue of self-preservation and the protection of liberty. We cannot risk such things for the sake of being "nice."

It is up to the Muslims to say which intolerant and violent verses of the Qur'an they reject. It is not up to the non-Muslims to assume every Muslim rejects those passages until they prove otherwise by their behavior — too much is at stake. "Innocent until proven guilty" is an important legal principle in a criminal court, but it would be foolish to follow the same principle in establishing immigration policies, for example. It would be foolish to assume all mosques in the free world are teaching a peace-loving, democracy-loving (altered) version of the Qur'an until after a generation of mosque-goers prove otherwise, especially when Undercover Mosque and Mapping Sharia have already shown quite otherwise.

The onus is on the Muslims. Sad but true. There is no other sensible way for non-Muslims to deal with our dilemma.

The whole issue is compounded further by the principle of taqiyya, or religious deception. This is an Islamic teaching that says, basically, a Muslim may deceive a non-Muslim if it furthers the goals of Islam. But that is a whole other discussion which I will reserve for another time.

The last point you made, Ekblad, is that Mortenson offers a more appropriate response toward the Muslim world than my response of educating non-Muslims about Islamic teachings. You are saying you think it is a better solution to build non-madrassa schools in Muslim lands than it is to educate non-Muslims about the contents of the Qur'an.

I really like what Mortenson is doing, as I said in the article. But given all the ways jihad is being waged against non-Muslims, Mortenson's solution is only a small part of the response non-Muslims should make. It is an important and worthwhile contribution, but will not solve the problem by itself.

By the way, you said it was unfair to bundle "extremists" and other Muslims together. I assume you mean I "bundled them together" by saying they both use the Qur'an as their holy book. But I didn't make that up. I didn't conjure that idea from thin air. All Muslims — "extremists" and otherwise — profess to follow the teachings of a single book. In other words, I didn't bundle them together. They have bundled themselves together by professing reverence for the same holy book and Prophet.

You also said it was counterproductive to educate non-Muslims about the unsavory teachings of the Qur'an. And here I finally agree with you. It is counterproductive to the Jihadis' goals for me to inform non-Muslims about Islamic teachings. Non-Muslims are more capable of resisting "Shari'a creep," as it's been called, when they know about it. When non-Muslims are more informed about Islamic teachings, we are better able to see through the taqiyya and to stop giving concessions to Islam's constant pressure. We are better able to defend ourselves.

I wonder how you would answer this question, Ekblad: Does it harm a truly peaceful Muslim (or Christian, for that matter) to inform non-Muslims and non-Christians that their books contain passages that promote violence?

If the person is truly peaceful, and if the person is truly a Muslim or Christian, then that person must already be fully aware of the passages in their primary holy books, right? Are they embarrassed by those passages? I doubt it.

So they know about the violent or intolerant passages and they are not embarrassed. Then where is the harm of mentioning those passages?

The only harm I can see is it might make people shy away from converting to those religions. But that's not a good enough reason to avoid warning the potential victims of the violence.

I see only one other way it harms someone: I can see that it harms the Jihadis' ability to fulfill their plans when people like me go around "giving away the game." It harms the Jihadi goal of imposing universal Shari'a law to let non-Muslims know that's what they want. That is a "harm" I can live with.

I asked you a question before that you have so far avoided answering: What passages in the Qur'an do you reject? Here's another: Are you a Muslim? If not, what do you hope to accomplish by your criticism?

One last thing, Ekblad. Awhile back I wrote a post you might be interested in. I have heard from so many Muslims in the past, I decided to write out my response so I could just send a link next time and save my fingers some wear and tear. Check it out: A Message to Peaceful Muslims.

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