On Tolerance and Prudence in Islam and America

On July 6, Arab News Daily published an article by Linda Heard titled, "America's Growing Culture of Hate." I analyzed her article in a July 7 posting titled, "Pot Meet Kettle, The Hypocrisy of Islamic Journalism." I posted Linda's response to my analysis yesterday as "Linda Heard Responds." Following is my response to her response.

Linda-

Firstly, thank you for your email and apologies for my delayed response.

It did not escape my attention that your article was written about events in the United States. Most of my response dealt with the events you described as contributing to a culture of hatred toward Muslims in the United States. I tried to distinguish between what could reasonably be considered hateful behavior (e.g., vandalism and threatened or actual violence), and what is rightly characterized as the exercise of free speech (e.g., Doctor Laura’s radio program). Your response provides a laundry list of anecdotal evidence for what you conclude is the beginnings of a “mass paranoia” toward Islam. I beg to differ. The United States is coming to grips with a serious national security threat that is attributable to Islam and Islamism. While the threat predates 9/11, it was brought into sharp focus by that day’s mass murder of thousands of innocents by 19 Muslim men. Need I remind you that while so many in New York and Washington suffered from the 9/11 attacks, many Muslims celebrated the carnage and death by dancing in streets round the world. Americans did not respond to 9/11 with violent rampages against Muslims living in the United States. There was an increase in threats and vandalism but appreciably little actual violence (I think there were two actual deaths- one of them a Sikh- in a country of 250 million people). Indeed, one can document vastly more violence and murders perpetrated by Muslims against Christians in countries like Pakistan, Sudan, and Indonesia in the twelve months following 9/11 than were perpetrated by Americans against Muslims in the United States. Are you planning to publish in Arab News Daily an article about the Islamic culture of hatred for Christians and Jews? I won’t hold my breath.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Americans have gone to war against terrorism and have taken steps to secure our borders against terrorist infiltration and to identify internal terrorists. These security imperatives have resulted in occasional and regrettable errors- they have also resulted in the successful preemption of terrorist strikes. The successes by far outweigh the inconvenience to those wrongfully questioned. Before you respond that I have the luxury of not being one of the inconvenienced few, let me clearly state that every American is inconvenienced as a result of Islamist terror. I used to be able to leave my home twenty-five minutes in advance of a shuttle flight- without having purchased a ticket- and in that time drive to the airport, park, purchase a ticket, and board the flight without having to hurry. This scenario is but a fantasy in the aftermath of 9/11 when passing through security can take an hour. Whenever I find myself waiting in an airport security line, I feel angry about the imposition and I think about the underlying reason why the line exists in the first place. It isn’t because we have a problem with grandmothers from Minnesota sneaking shoe bombs onto airplanes; it isn’t because Buddhist monks have been hiding box cutters under their saffron robes; it isn’t because Christians have been attempting to fly airplanes into the Grand Mosque in Mecca; and it isn’t because Zoroastrians have been preaching bigotry and world domination in Friday sermons. It is because nineteen Muslims, with support from a dispersed network of Islamist organizations (themselves financed by Muslims around the world), murdered thousands of innocents in the clearest possible declaration of war against Western civilization.

I conceded above that wrongful questioning and detention is regrettable in America. It is important to note that wrongful questioning and detainment are standard operating procedures in the world’s Islamic republics. Having said as much, consider just a few of the reasons why Americans are understandably suspicious about Islam’s claim to be a religion of peace.

- Have you heard of Daniel Pearl, the American news reporter who was murdered by Muslims in Pakistan?

- Have you heard of Paul Johnson, the American contractor who was murdered by Muslims in Saudi Arabia?

- Have you heard of Fabrizio Quattrocci, the Italian contractor who was murdered by Muslims in Iraq?

- Have you heard of Kim Sun Il, the South Korean contractor who was murdered by Muslims in Iraq?

- Have you heard of Keith Maupin, the American Army specialist who was murdered by Muslims in Iraq?

- Have you heard of Nick Berg, the American contractor who was murdered by Muslims in Iraq?

- Have you heard of Richard Reid, the British Muslim who attempted to blow up a passenger airplane headed for America?

- Have you heard of Ramzi Yousef, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj, the Muslims who murdered six people in the first World Trade Center attack?

- Have you heard of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Muslim cleric who preached hatred at mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City, masterminded the first World Trade Center attack and the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and planned to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak?

I could add much to this list, but a story that came to my attention today will serve as a much better illustration of the problem the United States faces. The Womens Wall Street Journal recently posted a horrifying article by Annie Jacobsen titled, “Terror in the Skies, Again?” It recounted events that occurred during a flight between Detroit and Los Angeles where 14 Middle Eastern men seem to have conducted an in-flight practice session in collective bomb making. Passengers on the flight were terrified by the obviously suspicious conduct of the Middle Eastern men but all felt uncomfortable confronting them because they did not want to be considered racist. That is the true state of racial consciousness in America- better to die when the plane explodes than confront terrorists in the act of making a bomb. What is more, the article addressed the legal measure taken by the United States specifically to preclude security officials, including air marshals, from treating Middle Eastern and Asian people differently regardless of circumstance:

In researching her article, Jacobsen found a February 8, 2004 report in The Observer that the “...[United States] Transportation Security Administration issued an urgent memo detailing new threats to aviation and warning that terrorists in teams of five might be planning suicide missions to hijack commercial airliners, possibly using common items...such as cameras, modified as weapons.” She continued, “...Components of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] can be smuggled on to an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items... and assembled on board. In many cases of suspicious passenger activity, incidents have taken place in the aircraft's forward lavatory.” Jacobsen asked the question, “Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn't a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?” Her answer: “Apparently not. Due to [American] rules against discrimination, it can't be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that ...it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory.” Jacobsen concluded, “So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn't search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota.”

America and the Western world bend over backwards to avoid bigotry and intolerance. Don’t believe it? How many people immigrate (a different proposition from expatriation, which is temporary) from the West to Islamic republics? Basically none, I think. Care to guess why? The answer has much to do with the institutionalization of bigotry and intolerance in most Islamic republics. We aren’t perfect -- no one is -- but living as a minority in America and the Western world is vastly better than living as a minority in any Islamic republic and most of the non-Western world. Since 9/11, the American people have behaved splendidly toward Muslims living in the United States—true, there have been random acts of violence and discrimination, but we work to bring the perpetrators to justice under existing laws. So conscious are we of the taint of racism that we have created policies that jeopardize the lives of our people by giving the benefit of the doubt to the obviously suspicious activities of Middle Eastern men as noted in Jacobsen’s story above. I am not enthusiastic about racial profiling. I have Muslim friends and colleagues who do not deserve to be singled out on the basis of race or religion. I suspect, however, that the only way to maximize the safety of all Americans is through the systematic use of profiling. You will no doubt call this hatred; I call it prudence.

Finally, I must address your ludicrous contention that “Islam is extremely tolerant of other religions.” The extreme religious tolerance to which you allude no doubt explains why Saudi Arabia forbids Christians and Jews from building churches and synagogues, arrests Christians and Jews who display their faith in public, and executes Muslims who convert from Islam to Christianity or Judaism. That same extreme tolerance must be at work when Muslims in Sudan capture and sell Christians and animists into slavery. Of course, extreme tolerance can be credited when Muslims in Egypt persecute the Coptic Christian minority in their midst. I would be remiss if I failed to credit extreme tolerance as the driving force behind the slaughter of Christians by Muslims in East Timor. You will probably also agree that extreme religious tolerance on the part of the Islamic world is the very reason why the population of Christians and Jews in Islamic countries has dwindled to nearly nothing. Yes, it is the extreme religious tolerance enshrined in Islam that leads Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims to run like hell in the face of an Islamic majority.

In fact, Islam is not tolerant of Christians, Jews or any other non-Muslim religion in theological or historical terms. The Koran does label Jews, Christians and Muslims as “peoples of the book” but this has no more meaning than if they were labeled “peoples of the planet Tattooine.” In practice, today and throughout Islamic history, Christians, Jews and all non-Muslims have been ill-treated in Muslim lands. Surahs in the Koran are designated by Islamic scholars to be either Mecca surahs or Medina surahs. Those in the former category are characterized by a more tolerant tone toward Christians and Jews while surrahs in the latter category are remarkable for there intolerance of Christians and Jews. This internal contradiction is resolved by “Allah” through the doctrine of abrogation, which holds that when a contradiction exists between surahs, the later surah abrogates the earlier surah. In practice and in fact, this means that niceties such as labeling Jews, Christians and Muslims “people of the book” are abrogated by verses such as:

- “In truth the disbelievers are an open enemy to you.” (Women – 4:101)

- “O ye who believe! Choose not disbelievers for (your) friends in place of believers. Would ye give Allah a clear warrant against you?” (Women – 4:144)

- “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.” (The Table Spread – 5:51)

- “O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there be of you twenty steadfast they shall overcome two hundred, and if there be of you a hundred steadfast they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they (the disbelievers) are a folk without intelligence.” (Spoils of War – 8:65)

- “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah not the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until the pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” (Repentance – 9:29)

- “O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s-end.” (Repentance – 9:73)

- “O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto him).” (Repentance – 9:123)

These verses would be dismissible as mere theological footnotes had they not served as signposts for Islamic behavior toward non-Muslims throughout Islamic history. Islamic theology is the driving force in Islamic history, and as a result Islamic history is filled with violent jihadist conquest and sword-point conversion of Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims. The conquests of what are today Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Portugal and Spain, amongst others, were motivated by Islam and featured unrestrained and cruel violence toward Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim conquered peoples. Once conquered, non-Muslims were subjected to dhimmitude, a contract of servitude and third-class subsistence that allowed them perilous survival solely at the whim of their Muslim neighbors. Dhimmi were not allowed to build new churches or synagogues, or repair existing ones. Dhimmi were not allowed to worship in public. Dhimmi were required to pay a tax for the privilege of retaining their faith- in India after the Mughal invasion this tax approximated one year’s earnings for the average man. Dhimmi were required to dress distinctively so as to be immediately distinguishable from Muslims—shades of later Nazi treatment of the Jews. Dhimmi were not allowed to construct buildings that were higher than those of their Muslim neighbors. Dhimmi were in all ways treated as inferior to Muslims under the law-- a fact often exploited by Muslims to steal dhimmi property. In other words, dhimmitude was, and is, a purposeful and practical means of destroying non-Muslim populations through attrition. Dhimmitude is decidedly not tolerant. As with the Koranic verses cited above, the contract of the dhimmi would be dismissable as a historical footnote were not elements of dhimmitude evident in Islamic societies around the world. Worse, the Islamist rhetoric that today emanates from so-called extremist movements demands the literal enforcement of dhimmitude against non-Muslim peoples. Their rhetoric is supported financially and otherwise by Islamic governments in countries including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan and by theological movements, chief among them Wahhabism.

I have Muslim friends who are dear to me. I find in them wonderful tolerance, humor and an openness to inquiry and discussion. They characterize what is best about human beings and what is-- without a doubt --the norm for Muslim people. One might describe them as defying the doctrine of abrogation because they are animated by the spirit of the Mecca surahs more than the Medina surrahs. Having said as much, when one scrutinizes the literal theology and the actual history of Islam, one stretches to explain it in the context of the tolerance that characterizes my Muslim friends and Muslims the world over. In fact, the actions and the rhetoric of Islamists and far too many Islamic governments are closer to a holistic reading of Islam, with reverence for the doctrine of abrogation and the Medina surahs, which is to say, not at all tolerant of non-Muslims.

You stated that the America you are reading about in the media is not the America you once knew and loved. Is the Islam of history and of recent headlines the Islam you presumably know and love today?

*Koranic quotations are taken from a translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, published in first edition by Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc. in 2000.

Posted by publius at July 16, 2004 02:43 PM