Fair and Square:
An Islamic terrorist by any other name is still an Islamic terrorist…
“We should call
them criminals.”
Muneer Fareed must be a pretty smart man. He uses words like Islamophobia and Abrahamic. He has led multi-faith prayers on Capitol Hill. He has studied Islam at Darul Uloom Deoband in India something neither Noam Chomsky nor Ward Churchill has done. He has a PhD. from the University of Michigan. He is an associate professor of Islamic Studies at Wayne State University. He is Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and if that isn’t quite as good as being Recording Secretary of the Die-Hard Chicago Cubs Fan Club, the position guarantees he will get a hearing in educational and governmental circles. He is a player.
Muneer may not have mastered political correctness to the degree of a Nancy Pelosi but he knows the game and is trying his hand at influencing the Presidential election while serving Islam at the same time. He doesn’t like people who use the word ‘Islamic’ to describe terrorists so he took a close look at the Presidential candidates. Do any of them use the word ‘Islamic’ in connection with terrorism? Yes, John McCain does. Now, Muneer doesn’t have anything against John McCain. In fact, he wants to like John McCain. He does—really. Islam is the religion of peace and toleration. They have said so hundreds of times—thousands of time; they have said so every day for years and years, but there are people who haven’t listened to them, people who have ignored them and John McCain appears to be one of them.
So Muneer organized a group of concerned citizens, including members of ISNA and CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) to pressure McCain, in a politically correct American sort of way, of course, into rephrasing his description of the ‘enemy.’
But McCain is not an easy man to track down. He is here, he
is there; he is everywhere. One might as well be looking for Osama bin Laden.
“We’ve tried to contact his office,” Muneer told the Washington Times, “(to)
contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more
acceptable to the Muslim community. (People who don’t understand Islam might
think this was an attempt at censorship) If it’s not our intent to paint
everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about
just characterizing them (the terrorists) as criminals, because that is what
they are.”
And a rose is a
rose is a rose, but if Dagwood wants
a red rose he will have to ask the florist for a red rose otherwise the florist
won’t know what he wants. It’s the same with terrorists. Not all terrorists are
Muslims. There are Marxist terrorists, Nazi terrorists, FARC terrorists and
eco-terrorists. The one thing that differentiates them from Islamic terrorists
is that they don’t shout “Allahu akbar” while launching their victims into the
next world. Specificity pays. If J. Edgar Hoover had sent Melvin Purvis out to get
any old criminal instead of a Klan terrorist, Purvis might have come back with
Pete the Tramp or Leona Helmsley’s chauffeur.
“I think this is
just criminality, fair and square,” said Muneer. “We should just call them
criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine. But adding the word
‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ certainly doesn’t help our cause as Americans. It’s
counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total,
in a very negative way. And certainly that’s not something that we want to do.”
Muneer might have a
point were ‘we’ talking about mere criminality, fair and square, but terrorism
is not mere criminality, it is criminality with a political or religious
purpose, otherwise it would not be terrorism, it would be random violence, a
low grade of criminality. Breaking one window is random violence, breaking
every window in the World Trade Center was terrorism on an incredible scale and
the millions of Muslims around the world who gleefully celebrated the events of
9/11 made it Islamic terrorism. All the lies told since cannot change that.
In a recent survey
by Pew Research Center, 25 percent of Muslims living in the United States under
the age of 30 said suicide bombing was an acceptable way to defend their
religion. Support for suicide bombers was strongest among Muslims born in the
US and among those who regularly attended mosque. Only 40 percent of US Muslims
believe Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The percentages are higher
in Europe.
ISNA condemns using
terror against civilians but seldom condemns specific acts of terrorism and
never when committed against Israel and it is not entirely clear what they mean
by civilians.
ISNA did not endorse
or participate in the May 14, 2005, Free Muslim March Against Terror.
Kaukab Siddique,
radical editor of New Trend,
has testified that ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus controls who will
speak at prayer every Friday and which literature will be distributed. Sufi
Islam leader Hisham Kabbani testified at a State Department Open Forum as long
ago as 1999 that extremists had, “taken over more than 80 percent of the
mosques in the United States.” He personally investigated 114 mosques. “Ninety
of them were mostly exposed, and I say exposed,” he said, “to extreme or
radical ideology, based on their speeches, books and board members.” He
credited this to the efforts of Muneer Fareed’s organization.
US Senators Charles
Grassley (R-IA) and Max Baucus (R-MT) of the Senate Finance Committee listed
ISNA as one of 25 American-Muslim organizations engaged in financing terrorism
and in perpetuating violence. Federal prosecutors have labeled ISNA and CAIR as
un-indicted co-conspirators in a criminal conspiracy to raise money for the
notorious Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
In a speech last
July to Christians United For Israel, John McCain said, “Violent Islamic
extremists would have us believe that there is only one acceptable religious
practice, and that those who diverge from it are not entitled to life or
liberty. They are wrong, very, very wrong.” Nothing has changed. Nonetheless,
Homeland Security has recently rebuked John McCain for using words like
‘Islamic’ to describe terrorists.
It is no secret the
Bush administration has lost touch with reality as it flounders toward Election
Day. Terrorists have become resistance fighters. Jimmy Carter has met openly
with the enemy something even Benedict Arnold did not do; and Tom Tancredo has
fewer friends in the administration than Ron Paul, CAIR and ISNA.
The Muslim
Brotherhood Guide Book says participating in democratic elections is an
endorsement of democracy and that democracy is antithetical to Islam. There are
no Islamic democracies.
The word Islamic
applies to terrorism. It was earned on 9/11…on 7/7…in Sudan…in Sulawesi; in the
11,002 terrorists acts committed by Muslims since 9/11. The word has been
earned ‘fairly and squarely.’