"In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful."
This is the way the world is reached and the Word preached and hearts and minds won toward the furtherance of Humankind.
When "God is Most Great" is used as a sword or a truncheon, it is diabolical and real blasphemy. Its true purpose is as a shield, and I invoke its God-given blessing as such against the Darkness which calls itself The Religion of Submission yet offers no light.
I will not directly address the attitudes of an archaic Shari'a (bordering on primitive superstition) here or the archaic and likewise primitive view toward - and treatment of - women, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, as these are entire subjects to themselves and are already being handled (albeit very late) in the public forum. Still less often does one hear of Islamist, if not generally Muslim, bigotry and racism being confronted and exposed for what it is, and its self-serving double-talk of victimhood and superiority.
Hitler did not have a Jewish problem on his hands, the German Jews had been here since the Romans founded Augsburg, and the Jews from Eastern Europe were just barely able to make a foothold in Germany, they were struggling with day to day matters. Neither were they in a position to, nor had any inclination, to take over Germany, much less Europe, establish a Jewish Reich, or for that matter resort to the smallest form of violence to achieve any end whatsoever. They were very very integrated. Very. And we know what befell them - under Hitler. Since then we have a social-democratic Federal Republic with a Constitution worth defending, whose foremost Basic Law is about the non-negotiability of human rights for every human being. That includes, by the way, homosexuals, who in the Muslim world are still denied rights, are persucuted and murdered for just being what they are.
Many Muslims, both (most visibly) Turks and those from Arab lands, have over the past two generations sooner or later integrated. Out of cultural and/or to greater extent ideological, let us even say political, reasons many have not and will not, and have no intention of integrating. Jews never used violence, Muslims certainly. Jews have not killed Jews in the name of Judaism, nor have Germans killed Muslims, but Muslims certainly kill Muslims, all the while claiming to follow him who said, "Muslims - kill not your brethren Muslims" and, "Faith is a restraint against all violence. let no Mu'min commit violence" and , "There is no compulsion in Islam" - well, we know from a long history of it, how far that went.
Jews, widely and generally speaking, do not hate Muslims. So long as the latter are not bombing one's subway or busstop or café. Jews are typically oriented (may I use that word?) toward bridge building and reconciliation, in fact moreso with other groups than within their own, sadly enough - but that's another story.
Muslims to a large extent, when they're open about it or among themselves, hate the Jews. And I don't mean Israel, that's a granted for a "good Muslim". I mean Jews, and this goes way back. While Hitler was persecuting and murdering Jews in the millions, no Muslim lifted a finger to protest - with perhaps the one exception being the King of Morocco, may God be pleased with him - Jews however have spoken out for the rights of Muslims in the West, and I have yet to see Muslims returning the favor.
I am primarily addressing the ideology of Islamism which horrendously calls itself Islam. Shari'a is placed as a partner to Allah, if not in fact above God, and I mean this. (Abstain from pork and dress warmly, that's "Islam", that's it!) When fundamentalists work their poisonous evil and nothing is undertaken by those of their population who are moderate to counter this, then the latter share in the culpability. The only true enemy of Islam are the Muslims themselves. They have proven Islam is dead, folks. Islam is dead, it died with its Prophet, and lives on secretly in the hearts of those who know and address Allah directly and have the light and the joy and the unconditional love to show for it.
Envy, self-pity and a thirst for power (read: conquest, not empowerment) are the severe cancers which still affect the Muslim world, East or West. So with Germany under Hitler, so with the Muslims. If this does not apply to Muslims worldwide, then please stop referring to yourselves as "Ummah". We can throw in hypocrisy and cowardice - the one, every time Allah and His Prophet are invoked, the other when it comes to confronting the alarmingly growing fascistic movement extending from its fundamentalist ideology. Only through love is God made a reality in one's life and proved in this world. As with all fatalistic, fundamentalist ideological trends, when hope of "paradise" and fear of "hell" pass for "religion" - there is only a business deal, primitive arrogance, ignorance, bigotry, war. "The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self." Hadith, of course, but who cares?
Compare the few editorial cartoons in the Danish press with the countless cartoons in the Arab press all over the Middle-East depicting exclusively Jews:
a) The Danish can be called editorial, they addressed a specific outrage with irony befitting such cartoons' purpose; the Arab cartoons have an historic persistence in strictly anti-Jewish hate-propaganda modeled after the Nazi Streicher's "Der Stürmer" - so all the knee-jerk accusations of Western "racism" are of course gravely misplaced.
b) However uncalled for the Danish cartoons may have appeared (which I doubt), they could not possibly measure in tastelessness to the gratuitously graphic insinuations and venomous Jew-baiting and hate-mongering one sees regularly in the cartoons coming out of the Arab world. "It is not worthy of a speaker of truth to curse people."
You also never miss a chance to bash the Germans, the social-democratic Federal Republic with charges of racism, at the merest onset of criticism - because doing so is cheap and irresistable, it is easy, and unfortunately it works on the German politicians - and you spare yourselves the trouble of reflection and introspection while grabbing a free ride. Then you defend your (dubious) "honor" in doing so! Where is the honor in the murder or in the crassest disfigurement of wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters; in the disenfranchisement of your women; in forced and arranged marriage (and this at very young ages)? "God enjoins you to treat women well, for they are your mothers, daughters, aunts; the rights of women are sacred."
Germany doesn't seem to practice "racial" profiling when it comes to Asians, Indians, Africans - from these quarters come no such accusations. Based on one's encounters, Turkish Muslims however, view the Arabs as beneath them culturally, and both alike typically view Africans - especially the darker the skin - as still lower culturally and racially. How the Asians are viewed I have never asked. But so much for brotherhood under Islam. "Do you love your Creator? Love your fellow Beings first."
While bashing the Germans for "racism" of course, you never miss an opportunity to compare yourselves to the Jews under Hitler while in the same breath baiting when not openly denying their factual history under the Third Reich's Holocaust - so you can have it both ways. Jews have neither ever bombed nor murdered (much less used their own children for suicide propaganda or sent them to die), and then on top of that blamed the surrounding culture - so where's the comparison?
And under the Nazi regime they were Stateless - they were always Stateless until Israel was founded. Ironically they'd always seen themselves as very much belonging to the nation or State of residence - certainly the German Jews, until Hitler redefined that for them. They had never demanded ever more synagogues, each one more imposing than the last, and they always financed their own way. They contributed to the dominant culture creatively and generously, benefitting every Western land they inhabited. They never murdered other Jews or bombed each other's houses of worship. When will Muslims for once in 1500 years be able to say the same?
By the way, how many churches are allowed to be built in, say, Turkey, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia? I can hardly count all the mosques in Germany, some of the most recent monuments to Islamist presence rivaling al-Aqsa itself!
In the West, the give and take of constructive criticism is practiced and respected, self-criticism all the more so. Jews are well known for both, whereas Muslims neither practice nor respect either.
No one in the West - no one - has a problem with Islam, rather Islam has a problem with itself, and projects that onto the world, unwilling to face itself and mature. No one has a problem with the democratic system in principle, of whichever land, with values placing human rights above every abusively ideological scheme, political or religious. Jews have no problem with this, in fact they have always been a force in developing it.
The mistrust toward "Muslims" cannot be surprising in view of the Islamist intention of non-integration, non-development - and eventual conquest of Europe if not the world. This is no mere exaggeration, as I'd once thought. The elements of the Muslim world - and they are just that, elements - who actively seek this are the ones armed to the teeth with arsenals and a network of outreach and propaganda. The majority of respectively integrated and still genuine Muslims have to check their own attitudes and ask themselves why they won't put a stop to those elements, why they remain silent or ineffectual.
If you are not influenced by fatalistic, fundamentalist Islamism, you might find this disturbing - I would as a Muslim. Why don't you open your mouths and change that? Instead of pathologically and pathetically blaming "The Other".
Apropos racism: "Muslims" find especially fertile ground in old "Leftists" as well as the extremist Right, both of whom already long share a combatively entrenched antisemitic attitude.
Here in Berlin where I live, so many take me for a Turk. The Turks even take me for a Turk. They are sometimes dismayed when I don't respond in their tongue - which is okay, we're in Germany after all, I don't normally speak English here either.
What shall I say when asked if I am a Muslim? If I am truthful, neither yes nor no will fit. So I shall have to confess:
"I drink wine and I eat pork products. I bear no one ill will, but greet those I pass with open gladness, associating no fault. I hear myself repeating 'la ilaha illa'llahu' on every breath all day long and in the night. For I know for a fact - and not a belief, but with sheer joy - that Allah is my Source and my Destiny, and is closer to me than the vein in my neck. And I know for a fact that even if I don't see Him, verily He sees me. And that He is Love itself and the Source of it. And I know all this because I am united with ALL the illuminated souls He has given the world, known and unknown, who form the embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance."
And this in plain German. With a non-intrusive Star of David visibly dangling from my neck.
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