RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND A MOSQUE

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON arguments of the supporters of the Ground Zero mosque includes religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Religion is seen as the framework to support building a mosque and community center near the site of the former World Trade Towers. Is this really about religion? Step back and look at the controversy. Do you feel like you are taking part in a religious exercise or a political fracas?

There is a vast confusion about what a religion is and is not. Currently the operative rule is that anything associated with Islam is a religious affair where all of the freedom of religion is applied to the action or event. Islam's actions are religious and if you oppose it, you are an un-American bigot.

It is time to stop and take a look at what we mean by a religion. There are about as many Buddhists in America today as there are Muslims. When was the last time you remember a Buddhist demand of any kind? Do Buddhists set up councils to shape the textbooks and demand Buddhist finance? Does the government make a big announcement when Buddhists are appointed to high posts? Are there even any Buddhists in any White House appointments? Do Buddhists complain? Never, for these are political actions, and Buddhism has almost no political outreach. Buddhism in America is purely religious, not political at all.

Yet the media and the Internet are consumed by talk and argument about Islam. The discussion is never about how many rounds of prayer to do or whether a certain food is halal (religiously proper). No, the focus is always on something that non-Muslims are to do to accommodate an Islamic religious practice.

There is a practical working definition of religion as compared to politics. Religious practices are done by those who follow that religion and are motivated for achieving paradise and avoiding hell. Outsiders are not involved in those religious acts. If it is about going to heaven and avoiding hell, then it is religious. However, if the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

Most people think that the Koran is a religious text. Instead, 64% of the text (by word count) is about non-Muslims, who are called Kafirs. The Koran is fixated on Kafirs and makes many demands on them. Not the least is that Kafirs submit to the rule of Islamic Sharia law. Ultimately Sharia law is the pure expression of Islamic politics and it completely contradicts our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Under Sharia there is no freedom of speech, wives may be beaten and apostates murdered.

Mohammed had little success with Islam until he transformed it into a political system. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and made about 150 converts. He left Mecca and moved to Medina. In Medina he turned to politics and jihad. In the last 9 years of his life, Mohammed was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks. The political method persuaded every Arab to convert to Islam. The religion did not succeed; it was politics that made Islam powerful.

Bill Warner
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam

NICE HAIRCUT

Here's an adept adaptation gone viral of a famous poem about the Nazis by Pastor Martin Niemöller—Muslim Outrage:

At first, the Muslims were outraged by cartoons, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't an artist.

And then the Muslims were outraged by history books and news, but I didn't speak up because I don't read much.

And then the Muslims were outraged by women who weren't completely veiled and hidden, but I didn't speak up because I'm not a woman.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the practice of other religions, but I didn't speak up because I'm not very religious.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the existence of Infidels so when they came for me … there was no one left to speak up.

The last line is the ultimate goal of Islam the rest are just steps towards that goal. But atmospherics are beginning to turn. Imagine where Western societies should be a decade from now. More Muslims no doubt will make demographic advances in Western societies some ten years from now but non-Muslims will be even more informed and disgruntled by the surly, superior doctrines and behaviors of the Mohammedans by then.

For Islam to be eventually assigned to oblivion, it is imperative that huge numbers of Muslims see the light and leave their fraudulent faith. We must remain confident this will happen. The more one examines Islamic doctrine and the life of Mohammed, the more unacceptable each becomes for both non-Muslim and Muslim alike.

Knowledge is power and the only path to extinguishing revolutionary Islam in long term.

Alternatively, once the West finds its sea legs in this new paradigm, may not involve "consigning Islam to oblivion" but merely managing it as best as possible through global quarantine—an indefinite war without end, but finally one where we will have the clear advantage, once we wake up and discard the so-called political correctness that rules today.

And part of that waking up process involves the realization that most Muslims will never reform; coming to a mind that cannot really absorb the uniqueness of the full horror of that Islam bestows upon its willing victims, the Muslims; a people who truly, deeply, sincerely love all the evil and dangerous tenets of Islam and who are truly, deeply, sincerely fanatical, paranoid and hateful of all non-Muslims; a people who are hopeless, who will never, in numbers sufficient to solve our problem with Islam, live up to our Western Classical Liberal ideal of universalism where all humans must be, at heart, pro-human, and not anti-human, and if the conditions are right, any anti-human will reform and see the light, wholly rejecting the cult of death they know as Islam.

All other non-Western peoples show sufficient capability of living up to that ideal (some less than others perhaps), but Muslims are not merely the worst of the lot on the same scale, as a group they are off the scale. Unique. In terms of philosophical, psychological, and political science implications, we may say, mytho-poetically, that Muslims qua Muslims exist to kill and be killed.

THE THEATRE OF POLITICAL DESIRE

The following is a comment from a PUMA named Janis. The topic is Obama's 2004 speech. Her perspective is quite close to my own, even though I do not consider myself a member of the Democratic Party as does she. In fact, I have been a declared independent, thus, bypassing the primary slate, for all of my adult life. But I am thankful to Janis for sharing her POV.

I CAN QUOTE from the speech myself, from the parts that struck me as good speechwriting. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like people poking around in our libraries in the red states. It was good—but it wasn't that good. It wasn’t the goddamned second coming.

I recall a short comment from Howard Dean about how the Dems lost in 2004; he made a comment about how the Dems consistently underestimate how deeply religious Americans are. We do. I’m atheist; I’ll openly say that I tend to find organized religion rather laughable and sad.

But what they did was they figured if they could whip up a religious messiah-figure, they could capitalize on that. They still didn’t get what the religiosity of Americans was; they thought they’d come to a brilliant strategic realization that “most Americans are religious,” and then they filled in the blanks with the worst of their own stereotypes of what “religious” meant: chanting and falling to the ground in front of a messiah, like a cult following.

To most Americans, religion is a sort of quiet, rock-solid, hard little thing underneath their lives that they like to rest on but don’t like to think about or talk about all that much. They allude to it, make proclamations, and then go about their lives. Most American religious types are not swooning snake-handlers. *shakes head*

And what they got instead was exactly the opposite; they didn’t woo the fundies over from the other side; they created a shitload of unrevealed fundies on their own side, young kids who were DYING for their own chance to weep oceans at the sight of the Radiant One’s golden halo.

Just as was planned. After the destruction...

"I shall stand astride the wreckage a colossus."

—Karl Marx

Americans may be religious, but we also don’t like phonies. Dog whistles are one thing, but once we feel like someone’s bullshitting us, we turn red. We’re not that bright a lot of times, but once we clue in, we don’t clue OUT.

INSIDE THE STEALTH INVASION

In a note from an intelligent fellow known as FidesEtRatio, we once again seize the opportunity to poke a hole large enough to drive a tractor through this lie known as "the vast conspiracy against Islam' that is fueling our enemies:

When I first heard about the cartoons, two years ago, my initial response, as a graduate student in Religious Studies, taught good Leftist values throughout my various degrees, was to think that the cartoonists had crossed a line. Then, we began to hear of people calling for the death of the cartoonists, of riots in London, Paris, and elsewhere, all over a dozen or so political cartoons. It was the violent response of Muslims to these cartoons that made me reconsider the Leftist values I've been brought up, which led me to make a sharp turn to the Right.

I would love to say that Islam is a Religion of Peace (TM), but the fact is that the evidence does not support this contention. The more I learn, and the more I experience, the more frightened I become. At the university where I study and teach, a group of Muslim students—thugs, really—found a loophole in the electoral process for the Presidency of the Graduate Student Association, such that, five of them, wielding hundreds of proxy votes obtained through intimidation and outright lies, had more voting power than all the other graduate students combined! They managed to elect one of their own as President. He then attempted to force through a change to our drug plan that would allow only married women to receive compensation for oral contraceptives, and to shut down the Graduate Student Pub, which is owned and operated by the Graduate Student Association. What was their justfication for this move? That monies collected from their tuition fees should not go to things that violate their moral code.

People who opposed them were accused of being motivated by hatred of Muslims. These charges went before the University's Human Rights and Equity Services, which ruled that there was no substance to the accusations of hating Muslims, and that, in fact, those who brought the charges had to issue a public apology for the slander. Likewise, none of their amendments went through: the insurance company that carries our drug plan could not legally discriminate on the basis of marital status, and there was too much popular support for the pub. However, for months, our Graduate Student Association was practically shut down by five men, who were explicitly motivated by the promotion of Muslim values to Islamify our heathen Graduate Student Association. We lost tens of thousands of dollars due to mismanagement, etc., as they carried out their Jihad.

This is different from the cartoon controversy only insofar as they used proxy votes instead of guns and vandalism to get power, and that, again, they used verbal and physical intimidation and guile instead of guns and vandalism to obtain said proxies. It convinced me, however, that with many (not necessarily all) Muslim we are dealing with less than rational folk who are prepared to use any means available to press their Islamicist agendas. I have little doubt, too, that they would have used guns and vandalism if they thought it would have been deemed necessary and effective. Only the fact that it was neither prevented them from doing so.

As I posted elsewhere, do I hate Muslims? No. Do I fear them? Yes, absolutely. The fact is, the Jihad is not just on our TVs. It is in our schools, our neighbourhoods, our places of employment. We are at war, and many of our neighbours are siding with the enemy. We ignore this at our own risk.

LA RECONQUISTA ACROSS THE POND

Infidel Marx hardly empathetic to Muslim totalitarianism, nor it with him

The fascination with Islam among Spanish Communists is nothing new. Just a couple of months ago the former Secretary General of the Communist Party of Spain, Santiago Carrillo, stated on a television program that "Islam is a powerful instrument of revolution against Western values as represented by the United States."

Senior Carrillo and all like-minded Marxists are quisling fools (in relation to Marxism and with Islam). Sure, one can dub Islam as anticapitalist, but so what? Most of that oil money is in the hands of a very few, not the many. How would implementing sharia move society forward from capitalism to socialism? It wouldn't. There is nothing about Islam that does away with private property, wage labor or class exploitation. Islam veils class rule with religious illusions that Marx scorned. Mohammedanism is an effort to turn back the historical clock that Marx would have rejected. Islam's ultimate ideal is perfect and total stasis, not progress.

It sounds like the New Left is becoming the Old, Old Right. Get off your duff. Smell the manure. Read the first few pages of the Communist Manifesto and try to picture Marx saying, "and in capitalism's final crisis, the proletarians will rise up and establish Islam."

You'll see how far these Communists have drifted from their roots.

Imagine the great treasures of Europe, two or three generations hence, under the dull blade of a theocratic regime such as the Taliban who routinely blow up ancient statues of the Buddha, one of history's great teachers of peace.

So long Sistine Chapel. Goodbye to The Last Supper. Stonehenge blown to bits. Acropolis razed. Marauders pillaging the Louvre. Keep these images in mind whenever confronting anyone over the ban of Islam in the West.

Not on our watch, say a few. Most of the remaining crowd remain in their fog only vigilent in that ever illusive pursuit of happiness...