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- Do You Think the Ground Zero Mosque Should Be Allowed?
- What Are the Important Elements of Islam's Ideology?
- Robert Spencer Proposed a Realistic Solution
SOMEONE ASKED me that question today and I said "no." He said, "Why do you say that?" I said, "I don't have enough time to give you a full answer, and a short answer wouldn't be very good." A woman sitting nearby said, "I think it should be allowed. After all, just because Muslims flew the planes into the Twin Towers doesn't mean all Muslims are bad." The man added his two cents. "I believe in freedom of religion," he said, turning to me, "Okay, tell me this. What do you think about the internment camps in World War Two?" I said, "I think they were wrong." "Why?" he asked, "Isn't stopping the mosque the same thing?" For once in my life I spontaneously came up with a good answer at the time rather than ten minutes later. I said, "No it isn't, because the Japanese-Americans they put in the internment camps did not have the same ideology as the Japanese who attacked America. The Japanese war machine was driven by a militaristic, imperialist, expansionist Shinto ideology. Almost none of the Americans placed in internment camps had those beliefs. "That's really the question, isn't it?" I said. "Will the people who run the mosque share the same ideology and the same goals as those who flew the planes into the buildings? If they do, I think we would both agree they should not be allowed to build the mosque. And if they don't have the same ideology or goals, I think we can agree they should be allowed to build it. "Unfortunately, in all likelihood, they will be promoting the same ideology in the Ground Zero mosque as the hijackers were following. And they will probably have the same goals (although they may differ in tactics). When mosques were investigated in the U.S., the majority of them preached jihad against America. And we have nothing in place to monitor what mosques are preaching. Why? Because they are protected by the freedom of religion." He was just staring at me now. This was obviously a much better argument than he expected, and he had nothing left to say. So I kept going. "So now the question is: If something being preached is seditious, but it's part of a religious doctrine, which law should trump which? Should preaching and promoting the sabotage, undermining, and overthrow of U.S. laws and the U.S. government be protected by the right to freedom of religion?" Luckily for him, we were interrupted by someone, and he had to go take care of something. But I was thinking about it afterwards. This mosque controversy is a great opportunity for us to awaken more people to the basic teachings of Islam. This issue pivots around the central question: What is the ideology of Muslims in general? If it's peaceful like they say it is, then okay, build the mosque because Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. But if Islam is inherently political, supremacist, imperialistic, and intolerant — if that's really a core, mainstream, inseparable part of Islamic doctrine — then what do we do? That's really the question we should be asking. This issue helps us push conversations into two important questions. First, what is the ideology of Islam? Here is a list of the central beliefs of mainstream Islam. And second, if this is true (that Islam is inherently political, supremacist, imperialistic, and intolerant), what should we do about it? I think Robert Spencer has a possible answer. Read it here. When the guy I was talking to earlier came back from his errand, I told him about Spencer's idea, and he saw the sense in it. And he seemed to also understand that it makes sense not to build more mosques — especially at Ground Zero — until we have some sort of solution to the more fundamental problem. I published a version of this article on An Inquiry Into Islam in case you would rather share this article with others from there. |
1. There is only one God, and Mohammad is His prophet. 2. Islam is a better religion than any other religion. 3. Islam has a better government and system of law than any other. 4. Anybody who is not a Muslim is worth less than a Muslim, deserves less respect, and under Islamic law, should be treated as a second-class citizen with fewer rights and a heavy tax burden. 5. Every Muslim should strive to make the whole world and everyone in it follow Islamic law. This is the prime directive. 6. Striving for this prime directive is the most important thing a Muslim can do. It is his (or her) most important religious duty. It is the most important expression of his religious faith. 7. He should strive to accomplish the prime directive with his time, his money, his speech and writing, and with weapons if necessary. 8. If he is in a place where Muslims don't have dominant political power, he can and should deceive non-Muslims if it helps Muslims accomplish the prime directive. 9. Any efforts by non-Muslims to inhibit the spread of Islam should be considered an attack on Islam. 10. Whenever Islam is attacked, it is a Muslim's holy duty to defend Islam by any means necessary. 11. A Muslim should never stop striving for the domination of Islam until it has been achieved. If you don't already know this about Islam, you have some learning to do. Start with the Quran (and make sure the Quran you use has been unscrambled). Then take the pledge and read the Quran. |
ONCE YOU come to grips with the fact that Islam has not been hijacked, and that it teaches the necessity to strive to establish Sharia law everywhere in the world by any means necessary, one question fixates your mind: "Good grief! What are we going to do about this?" I've heard everything from "Nuke em all" to "get used to the idea of an Islamic world because it is inevitable." This is an extremely difficult challenge. What kind of solution can we possibly come up with? We have a lot of Muslims in the world. Not all of them are orthodox, but there are enough of them to pose a serious problem for free societies. Should the religion be banned altogether? That doesn't fit with our fundamental values. And it probably wouldn't work anyway. This question is important. One of the reasons people don't want to even consider the possibility that mainstream Islam might be fundamentally supremacist, political, and aggressive, is that having a big problem without any solution in sight is hard to take in. The mind naturally wants to reject the premise. It can't be. It must be untrue. Rejection of the idea is reflexive, automatic, and robust. But what if you had a possible solution? What if you had an idea that wouldn't involve any of the horrible possibilities people are afraid of? It would make your listener more willing to consider the possibility that your original premise (that Islam is supremacist, political, and aggressive) might really be true. In an excellent talk available on YouTube entitled, Islam or Islamism?: Robert Spencer at the Vienna Forum, May 8, 2010, I thought Spencer's closing remarks offered one of the most sensible solutions I've ever heard, so I transcribed his closing remarks below. The only thing that could prevent the application of Robert Spencer's proposed solution is if we fail at getting the word out. If enough people understood Islam the way you and I do, this solution could be put into practice, and it would manage the problem. As Spencer has said, not all problems can be solved, but every problem can be managed. Here are Robert Spencer's closing remarks: The implications of what I'm saying are very bad. There's no way to sugarcoat them. But there are precedents. And there are useful ways forward — if we have the courage to face this problem as it truly is. |
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