From Other Sites on the Line: 4 Apr 08

Playing the Muslim Game: Which team are you rooting for?

Cross posted from Planck's Constant:

http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/03/how_to_differentiate_moderate_muslims_from_extremi.html

In the photo above are two teams. The moderates and the extremists. Can you tell the difference? Perhaps they can, but even worse, perhaps even they cannot.

To avoid charges of Racism, Bigotry and Islamophobia, many commentators when criticising Islam try to ameliorate the sting of their remarks by closing their arguments with the meaningless phrase, "Of course not all Muslims are terrorists," as if one can easily look into the heart and soul of our Muslim guests and immigrants and easily distinguish one from the other.

The effort is futile. They will still be called racists, bigots and Islamophobes by Muslims and their apologists. But why even bother uttering the obvious? Of course, not all 1.5 billion Muslims are terrorists. But so what? The problem with allowing Muslims into our country is not that there might be one terrorist out of a thousand; the problem is that the other 999 make a fertile media in which the terrorist may thrive.

But, you may interrupt, the Amish in America have not really accepted the American way of life so why don't you criticise them? Well, that may be true in part. Like Muslims they dress modestly or at least differently, like Muslims they have a very high fertility rate (6.8 children per family!), like Muslims their lives follow a very strict set of guidelines, like Muslims the Amish are averse to any technology, and one can find hundreds of other similarities. What distinguishes the Amish from Muslims however is one thing, the most important thing and the thing that makes the Amish completely harmless: they do not care to forcefully convert anyone to the Amish faith. If, however, the Amish If, however, the Amish Ordnung contained the phrase Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them." [Quran Sura 8.12], then I would do all in my power to have them deported or interned even though they be born American citizens.

If a hundred-thousand Amish moved into Bayonne, my city would profit from their industry and wholesomeness. If ten Muslims moved in, it would be the beginning of the end for my town and eventually civilization as we know it.

The problem with Muslims is the Petri dish problem. If you have an empty Petri dish it is impossible for bacteria to grow, but put in just the tiniest amount of agar agar and you have the proper environment in which to grow bacteria. So it is with Muslims. Terrorists by themselves cannot live in isolation. They would be too easy to spot, their activities too easy to monitor, their plans too easy to discover. But put a thousand Muslims in an American city and you invite terrorists to come there. How would anyone be able to distinguish the lone terrorist from among the moderates? One cannot. Money, food, lodging, and support, all these things would now be available to him from those who are not terrorists themselves but are sympathetic to his cause.

Look at any survey among Muslims. The country they have emigrated to is not their country; the laws they wish to live under are not the democratic laws of their adopted country; their hopes and dreams are not the same as the culture in which they live. Give truth serum to any Muslim and he will readily admit, no boastfully declare, that his hope and his dream is that his new country one day becomes a fundamentalist Islamic state.

CBS News,14 Apr 2006,Many
British Muslims Put Islam First

The recent homegrown plot in Britain to blow up transatlantic flights will intensify the fear that the country's 1.6 million Muslims are rejecting political tolerance and free speech for a violent, radicalized version of Islam. There is a real concern that British Muslims do pose a threat to that country and its traditional values. So how prevalent are such radical views among British Muslims?

Some answers are provided by the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. The results from NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, are startling.

Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not
a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last
year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the
U.S.-led war on terror.
When asked, "Is Britain my country or their country?" only one in four say it is. Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law.
According to the report, "Half of those who express a preference for living
under Sharia law say that, given the choice, they would move to a country governed by those laws."
Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state. This comports with last year's Daily Telegraph newspaper survey that found one-third of British Muslims believe that Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to end it.

If I took out the word Muslim and substituted the word organism in that report, would any parasitologist fail to describe that organism as a destructive parasite? And once the shell of democracy is destroyed, there will be no room for any other organism. We will then understand the true pathology of Islam: subjugate, convert, or kill.

In the photo above are two teams. The moderates and the extremists. Can you tell the difference? Perhaps they can, but even worse, perhaps even they cannot.

Is it possible that among the 200,000 or so Amish that there is even one terrorist? Yes, remotely possible, but it is not important that we be able to differentiate moderate Amish from extremists because the moderates would themselves not support, aid, hide or tolerate the extremist.

If we could rely on moderate Muslims to do likewise then they themselves would no longer pose a threat to our country. Unfortunately the opposite is true. So to answer the question, "How to differentiate Moderate Muslims from Extremists?" We cannot. Even they cannot. But our survival demands that we must. Logic tells us what we must do.


Response from Radarsite:
This is a terrific article. It presents us with a whole new way of looking at Muslim immigrant populations in the US, and gives us some good reasons to act. "Logic tells us what we must do."

I agree that logic tells "us" what we must do, and that "we" are more than willing to do it. But what of all those people out there who think that this whole conversation is only about racism and intolerance (ours, of course)? What the hell will it take to convince all those people to do what logic tells us to do? Their "logic" is different from our logic. In their logic "we" are the enemy.