“We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.” — Charles Caleb Colton, 1825
Nothing brings the unpleasant truths of a thing to light as much as the apologetics constructed to conceal them. If it is true that “a crooked tree casts a crooked shadow,” it is therefore also true that it takes a mountain of apologetics to camouflage that same crooked shadow from the inculpation of exposure. If it is true that Islam is today the fastest growing religion, it is therefore also true that “The human being as a commodity is the disease of our age.”*
The British writer V. S. Naipaul has written, “Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands.” It is these “imperial demands” that have caused and are causing so much political and religious upheaval in the Western world, and especially for those countries that have opened wide their doors to Muslim migrants. As Naipaul writes, “The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved…in the Islam of the converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil.” Any democracy that opens its doors too wide for Muslim migrants must be aware of the fact that patriotic national aspirations and notions are contrary to Islam’s vision of a universal caliphate and as such are anathema to this imperialistic religion that does not suffer alternative horizons gladly.
The Christians have a proverb: “You shall know them by their fruits.” This is a perspicacious proverb,with a far-reaching insight when applied as a perspective for evaluating the salubriousness of religions and religious. Needless to say, the oft-heard boast that Islam is “a religion of peace” is shown to be ridiculously false when subjected to the scrutiny of this maxim. Those who have been diligent in demanding of Islam and its adherents a minimal level of conduct congruous with the behavioral norms of Western societies in general have been unfairly cast as “Islamophobes” and racists for exposing the anti-Jewish and anti-Western rhetoric of certain imams who enjoy the freedoms of democracy while doing so. Islam is a religion primarily based on the excoriation of all other faiths, but especially of Jews and Judaism and Christians and Christianity. But when similar criticisms are directed against Islam and the umma, violence and slander are their predictable responses. Dissent is a very dangerous path to follow in the Islamic world. Just ask Salman Rushdie.
Andrew Wheatcroft writes in Infidels: “There is the third alternative: the Texas Mule Tamer, who ends up killing the mule to get its attention. The policy maker’s fundamental error stems from misunderstanding the nature and capacity of their opponents.” Islam’s approach to gaining converts – or forbidding apostasy – with the threat of death is not the most attractive stratagem for a so-called “religion of peace.” To quote the Quran (9:11-12) and Muhammad in a saying ascribed to him in the Hadith: “Any person, i.e. Muslim, who has changed his religion, kill him” (Al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, p. 45). Which is to say, anyone who converts to Islam and later has second thoughts about his or her decision is immediately thereafter sentenced to an untimely death.
Islam does not countenance dialogue or dissent. I am not talking here about what might be agreeable and circumspect discussion between one imam and another; I am referring here, for example, to any discussion that would challenge the veracity of Islam’s many anti-Jewish claims, the most obvious being the assertion that Islam’s advent has rendered obsolete the divine mission of the Jewish people as being “a light unto the nations”and the redemptive qualities of the Zionism inherent within the nationalistic ideology of Judaism. Discussions about Islam’s imperialistic tendencies are also troublesome for all adherents of a religion whose most famous personalities are prone to blame the so-called “imperialism” and “colonialism” of Western nations for the ever-present internecine, sectarian violence of so many Muslim-majority countries whose citizens, because of Islam’s many cultural pathologies, are deprived of the good life found today only in Western democracies.
The “mission creep” of this religion within the Western hemisphere begins with “anti-Islamophobia” bills and ends with anti-blasphemy laws. The “long-term commitment” of Islam’s apologists and advocates to the religious and political domination of Western democracies is anything but an unplanned and happenstance objective. Those of us who are truly awake in the West know without a doubt (and with much consternation!) that what Muslim politicians promise us from their lectern has never squared with what Muslim imams portend from their pews. Apologists such as Tarek Fatah, the greatest sophist since Paul of Tarsus, have only one intention, and that is to exculpate Islam from the terrorism and antisemitism and antisocial behaviour it has spawned in all corners of the civilized and uncivilized world. They refuse to acknowledge the arguments of those who have always maintained – with ironclad logic – that Islamist terrorism is a problem, yes, but that this same Islamic terrorism could not exist without the malefic passions provoked by Islam’s intolerant and illiberal tenets.
Francis Bacon wrote, “A just fear of imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.” That same “just fear” is much maligned today by almost all Western journalists as “Islamophobia”; they invented the term as a means of silencing all who disagree with the foolhardy notion that Islam as a faith and religious culture is compatible with Western democracy. And blows have been given. 9/11 is a stark proof of this and should have been the clarion call for all of us to be warned of the existence of this propaganda war Islam is now waging against the Western world, but especially against the State of Israel and the Jewish people. But many in the West are still sleeping. We refuse to acknowledge the wisdom and prudence of those whose views and opinions have differed from the mediocrity of the masses who believe we have nothing to fear from Islam’s imperialistic tendencies.
*Max Lerner, 1959