In the war against terror it is always worth remembering what is at stake. Why is the free West engaged in this struggle, and just who or what is the enemy? Jewish commentator and radio host Dennis Prager seeks to answer these sorts of questions in an article in the August 29, 2006 issue of FrontPageMagazine.com.
Entitled “Just a Reminder of Who We Are and Why We Are Fighting,” he begins by debunking the notion of moral equivalence, the idea that Western democracies are no better and no worse than Islamic dictatorships. He does so by providing a number of examples of what President Bush recently called Islamic fascism.
Sudan is a noted case in point: “The Islamic Republic of Sudan, in its attempt to force Arab/Muslim rule on the largely non-Arab and non-Muslim population of southern Sudan, has led to the killing of well above one million Christians and animists and black (i.e., non-Arab) Muslims, in addition to the widespread enslavement, rape and torture of those people.”
What has been happening in Sudan has been horrific, yet no “major international Arab or Muslim organization has condemned the Sudanese government’s mass murders that border on genocide.” Of course there are many other examples. Consider Iran:
“The leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel. As the six million Jews of Israel do not plan a mass exodus from their ancient and modern homeland, such annihilation would in fact mean another Holocaust.”
Or consider the heartland of Islam, Saudi Arabia, the “holy center of Islam, the Muslim country where the holiest Muslim sites are situated. . . . That country bans the practice of any religion other than Islam, amputates hands of thieves, does not allow women to drive a car, mandates what women wear outside of their homes and is the only country in the world to feature a weapon on its national flag. Women were treated considerably better and had more civil rights in ancient Rome, not to mention ancient Israel, than women living in the holiest cities of Islam today.”
Islamic countries around the world are renowned for their total lack of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. “Virtually every Islam-based country decrees the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another religion. In other words, every country that calls itself ‘Islamic’ is morally inferior to just about every country in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, almost every Asian country, and many African countries.”
He continues, “No Muslim country treats non-Muslims and their religions anywhere nearly as decently as any Western non-Muslim country (including Israel) treats Muslims. That is why tens of millions of Muslims immigrate to non-Muslim societies and virtually no non-Muslim immigrates to any Muslim society. In every Muslim country, non-Muslims are either systematically persecuted at worst or treated as inferiors at best.”
Prager then goes on to list a number of individual examples of how Islamic nations treat people. Let me mention just a few:
“A German court sentenced a Turkish man to more than nine years in jail yesterday for the ‘honour killing’ of his sister…The murder of Hatun Surucu, 23, who was shot several times at a bus stop in a Berlin suburb last year, shocked Germany. . . . Forced to marry a cousin in Turkey as a young girl, Ms. Surucu later broke with her Turkish-Kurdish family in Berlin and was living independently with her 5-year-old son, to the intense disapproval of her relatives. . . . Public outrage at the murder was exacerbated when some teenage boys at a school with many pupils from immigrant families…reportedly openly applauded the killing, condemning the victim for having lived ‘like a German.'” (The Guardian, UK, April 14, 2006)
“Men using machetes attacked worshipers in three Coptic [Christian] churches in the port city of Alexandria [Egypt] on Friday morning, killing an 80-year-old man and wounding at least six other people, the police there said.” (International Herald Tribune, April 15, 2006)
“An Egyptian state-controlled newspaper praised Monday’s suicide attack in Tel Aviv, which killed nine people and wounded dozens, calling it an act of sacrifice and martyrdom.” (Jerusalem Post, April 18, 2006)
In Britain, Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife Cossor, 23, were arrested in connection with the plot to blow up airplanes flying across the Atlantic. According to Scotland Yard, the Muslim couple planned to take their 6-month-old baby on the suicide mission, using their baby’s bottle to hide a liquid bomb. (Daily Telegraph, UK, Aug. 14, 2006)
“We’ve got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the [Israelis].” – words of a Canadian UN observer written days before he was killed by Israeli bombs (Ottawa Citizen, July 27, 2006)
Prager realises that not all Muslims support such activities. Probably most do not. But where is the condemnation of such acts by leading Muslim figures around the world? These numerous examples of Islamic fascism do suggest that “Muslims who see this evil in their midst have not mobilized any counterforce either out of fear for their lives or for some other reason; and that decent men and women around the world – Hindu, Christian, Jewish, atheist, Buddhist and Muslim – are threatened by this powerful, death-loving force.”
He concludes, “ Muslims who do not acknowledge the threat to civilization from within the Muslim world at least have two excuses – fear for their lives or group solidarity. What excuses do non-Muslims have who deny this threat?”
Exactly right. Too many Westerners are simply following a policy of appeasement, denial, or self-loathing, when, instead of condemning Islamic atrocities, they continue to find reasons to blame the West for these acts. Such is a recipe for social suicide.
Bill
Your comment on “Why we are fighting” shows me that advocates of ‘moral equivilence’ must be exposed by showing what is behind these words. Perhaps we should think seriously of turning these words into a cliche so that everyone becomes familiar with what they really mean.
Stan Fishley, Wantirna
Stan
I will do my best to try and give my take on what Bill means by ‘moral equivalence’. I think what he is referring to is the common idea that there is nothing morally wrong about Islamic countries, even those of the more extremist flavour, and the way they conduct themselves.
Because few respect objective moral values today they tend to see everything through the prism of power relationships. There is no ‘oughts’ or ‘shoulds’ in the world, just those who have the power and those who do not. And that is all that really matters. So this really means that we ought to only see Islamic countries and Muslims in our own country as the poor subjects of western imperial power. Whose only guilt right now is that they are rebelling against the mistreatments they have received down through the ages by the west. So they are not guilty of anything morally wrong. They just want to be heard and understood. The best way to deal with them then is through diplomatic means and not war. They are just the poor blind dupes of western power abuse. Don’t you see?
I think this conception from the political left has its roots in postmodernism (PM from now on) in general and cultural relativism in particular.The relevant aspect of PM for our discussion from what I can tell is its rejection of objective (especially moral) truth. Once we break down objective truths and values all are left are those with the power and those without it. That is all we are left with. So the wrong doings that Islamists purpetrate on others perpetrate on others doesn’t get recognition because they don’t have the power, the west does. So even a little wrong that the west commits gets condemned yet the worst abominations the Islamic countries commit hardly get recognised. This is a classic case of what Jesus called ‘straining at a gnat and swollowing a camel’. The left focuses on little things the west does yet fails to condemn the far greater evil by the Islamofascists.
This is probably too simple a picture but I hope it helps in some way. Comments and feedback welcome.
Bill
Your comment on “Why we are fighting” shows me that advocates of ‘moral equivilence’ must be exposed by showing what is behind these words. Perhaps we should think seriously of turning these words into a cliche so that everyone becomes familiar with what they really mean.
Stan Fishley, Wantirna
Stan
I will do my best to try and give my take on what Bill means by ‘moral equivalence’. I think what he is referring to is the common idea that there is nothing morally wrong about Islamic countries, even those of the more extremist flavour, and the way they conduct themselves.
Because few respect objective moral values today they tend to see everything through the prism of power relationships. There is no ‘oughts’ or ‘shoulds’ in the world, just those who have the power and those who do not. And that is all that really matters. So this really means that we ought to only see Islamic countries and Muslims in our own country as the poor subjects of western imperial power. Whose only guilt right now is that they are rebelling against the mistreatments they have received down through the ages by the west. So they are not guilty of anything morally wrong. They just want to be heard and understood. The best way to deal with them then is through diplomatic means and not war. They are just the poor blind dupes of western power abuse. Don’t you see?
I think this conception from the political left has its roots in postmodernism (PM from now on) in general and cultural relativism in particular.The relevant aspect of PM for our discussion from what I can tell is its rejection of objective (especially moral) truth. Once we break down objective truths and values all are left are those with the power and those without it. That is all we are left with. So the wrong doings that Islamists purpetrate on others perpetrate on others doesn’t get recognition because they don’t have the power, the west does. So even a little wrong that the west commits gets condemned yet the worst abominations the Islamic countries commit hardly get recognised. This is a classic case of what Jesus called ‘straining at a gnat and swollowing a camel’. The left focuses on little things the west does yet fails to condemn the far greater evil by the Islamofascists.
This is probably too simple a picture but I hope it helps in some way. Comments and feedback welcome.
Damien Spillane, Sydney