by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com
In the ongoing debate (or debacle) concerning free speech/expression and Muslim grievance—most recently on exhibition at Garland, where two “jihadis” opened fire on a “Prophet Muhammad” art contest organized by Pamela Geller—one thing has become clear: the things non-Muslims can do to provoke Islamic violence is limitless and far exceeds cartoons.
Writes Victor Davis Hanson for example:
[Pamela] Geller, and not the jihadists who sought to kill those with whom they disagreed, was supposedly at fault. Her critics could not figure out that radical Muslims object not just to caricatures and cartoons, but to any iconographic representation of Mohammed. Had Geller offered invitations to artists to compete for the most majestic statue of the Prophet, jihadists might still have tried to use violence to stop it. Had she held a beauty pageant for gay Muslims or a public wedding for gay Muslim couples, jihadists would certainly have shown up. Had she offered a contest for the bravest Islamic apostates, jihadists would have galvanized to kill the non-believers. Had she organized a support rally for Israel, jihadists might well have tried to kill the innocent, as they did in Paris when they murderously attacked a kosher market.
But it’s even worse than that. The list of things that non-Muslims can do to provoke Islamic violence grows by the day and accords well with the list of things subjugated “infidels” must never do lest they provoke their Islamic overlords as laid out by Islamic law, or Sharia.
As such, the West needs finally to come to terms with the root source of these ubiquitous, easily sparked “Muslim grievances.”
Enter Muslim supremacism.
Islamic doctrine—which teaches that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims, who are further compared to dogs and cattle—imbues Muslims with this sense of supremacism over the rest of mankind. And a good portion of Islamic history—when Muslims were for centuries on the warpath, subjugating large swathes of the Old Word—further enforces it.
This sense of Islamic supremacism was dramatically humbled after European powers defeated and colonized much of the Muslim world. Bred on the notion that “might makes right,” Muslims, for a time, even began emulating the unapologetic and triumphant West. Turkey, for example, went from being the epitome of Islamic supremacy and jihad against Christian Europe for five centuries to emulating Europe in all ways, becoming perhaps the most Westernized/secularized “Muslim” nation by the mid-1900s.
Today, however, as Western peoples willingly capitulate to Islamic mores—in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness, or just plain cowardice—Muslims are becoming more emboldened, making more demands and threats, as they realize they need not militarily defeat the West in order to resuscitate their supremacist birthright. (More appeasement from the bullied always brings about more demands from the bully.)
To understand all this, one need only look to Muslim behavior where it is dominant and not in need of pretense, that is, in the Muslim world. There, non-Muslim minorities are habitually treated as inferiors. But unlike the many Western appeasers who willingly accept a subservient role to Islam, these religious minorities have no choice in the matter.
Thus in Pakistan, as Christian children were singing carols inside their church, Muslim men from a nearby mosque barged in with an axe, destroyed the furniture and altar, and beat the children. Their justification for such violence? “You are disturbing our prayers…. How dare you use the mike and speakers?”
And when a Muslim slapped a Christian and the latter reciprocated, the Muslim exclaimed “How dare a Christian slap me?!” Anti-Christian violence immediately ensued.
Such is what I call the “How Dare You?!” phenomenon. Remember it next time “progressive” media, politicians, and other talking heads tell you that Muslim mayhem and outbursts are products of grievances. Missing from their rationale is the supremacist base of these grievances.
The Conditions of Omar, a foundational medieval Muslim text dealing with how subjugated “infidels” must behave, spells out their inferiority vis-à-vis Muslims. Among other stipulations, it commands conquered Christians not to raise their “voices during prayer or readings in churches anywhere near Muslims” (hence the axe-attack in Pakistan). It also commands them not to display any signs of Christianity—specifically Bibles and crosses—not to build churches, and not to criticize the prophet. (See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians for my translation of “The Conditions of Omar.”)
If the supremacist nature of Islamic law is still not clear enough, the Conditions literally commands Christians to give up their seats to Muslims as a show of respect.
By way of analogy, consider when Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her bus seat to white passengers. Any white supremacist at the time had sincere grievances: how dare she think herself equal?
But were such grievances legitimate? Should they have been accommodated?
Likewise, are the endless “grievances” of Muslims legitimate and should they be accommodated? These are the questions missing from the debate about easily bruised Muslim sensitivities.
One can go on and on with examples from all around the Islamic world:
In Turkey, a Bible publishing house was once stormed and three of its Christian employees tortured, disemboweled, and finally murdered. One suspect later said: “We didn’t do this for ourselves, but for our religion [Islam]…. Our religion is being destroyed.”
In Egypt, after a 17-year-old Christian student refused to obey his Muslim teacher’s orders to cover up his cross, the teacher and some Muslim students attacked, beat, and ultimately murdered the youth.
These Turkish and Egyptian Muslims were truly aggrieved: As seen, Islam’s Conditions makes clear that Christians must not “produce a cross or Bible” around Muslims. How dare the Egyptian student and Turkish Bible publishers refuse to comply—thus grieving Muslims into murdering them?
In Indonesia, where it is becoming next to impossible for Christians to build churches, Christians often congregate outside to celebrate Christmas—only to be attacked by Muslims hurling cow dung and bags of urine at the Christians as they pray. These Muslims are also sincerely aggrieved: how dare these Christians think they can be a church when the Conditions forbid it?
In short, anytime non-Muslims dare to overstep their Sharia-designated “inferior” status—which far exceeds drawing cartoons—supremacist Muslims become violently aggrieved.
From here, one can begin to understand the ultimate Muslim grievance: Israel.
For if “infidel” Christian minorities are deemed inferior and attacked by aggrieved Muslims for exercising their basic human rights, like freedom of worship, how must Muslims feel about Jews—the descendants of pigs and apes, according to the Koran—exercising power and authority over fellow Muslims in what is perceived to be Muslim land?
How dare they?!
Of course, if grievances against Israel were really about justice and displaced Palestinians, Muslims—and their Western appeasers—would be aggrieved by the fact that millions of Christians are currently being displaced by Muslim invaders.
Needless to say, they are not.
So the next time you hear that Muslim rage and terrorism are products of grievances—from cartoons to territorial disputes and everything in between—remember that this is absolutely true. But these “grievances” are not predicated on any human standards of equality or justice, only a supremacist worldview.
Were it not for petro-dollars and O.P.E.C.–these savages would still be living in huts woven from twigs such as are on display at the museum in Dubai. The Saudis are building Mosques worldwide with petrodollars–the Saudis are funding Islamic schools worldwide with petrodollars. The Saudis supplied 90% of the crews of terrorists who attacked the U.S.A. on 09/11/2011. Ask our politicians why the U.S.A. has laws on our books denying U.S.A. oil producers from exportation of their oil? Ask the Saudis who paid for the diplomas from Columbia University and the Law degree from Harvard University for our Islamic President and his Holy Koran? Ask congress why they are importing hundreds of thousands of unvetted muslims to come into the U.S.A
The concept of Muslim supremacism certainly helps one understand Mr. Obama’s arrogance.
Simply judge any religion by the actions and commands of its founder or founders. If that religion requires its followers to mimic the actions and commands of its founders, judge the adherents accordingly without excuses. Excuses for religions are usually forms of political correctness supplanting bold facts that assault the eyes and ears of most anyone paying attention.
Remember, too, that the “anti-Islamic” video which caused so much supposed outrage in Libya, et cetera, was made by an Egyptian Coptic Christian. In Egypt, his people have been persecuted by Muslims for at least a century.
Let me add another indicator where islamic supremacism is often taken for grievance. Western observers regularly comment the wearing of a veil by a muslim woman. To the West the veil proves female oppression, thus grievance. However many muslim women living in the West do in fact wear head-covers to advertise their status as a supreme muslim female wihtin a degenerate Western society.
The Islamic Jihadists, and they come in many forms, are feeling particularly emboldened at the moment. We need strong leadership to deal with this problem, yet the West just dithers and hopes the gathering threat will go away. Is history repeating itself? We are paralyzed by political correctness from fighting a real war against those who wish to kill and subjugate us, and our President is not only too weak and ineffective to deal with a rag-tag group of murdering psychopaths in Iraq, but is bending over backwards in order to give the Mad Mullahs of Iran the bomb. What motivates him to act so recklessly?
Perhaps he shares the same sense of grievance of the West the Jihadists do?
Somewhere in sands of the desert,
A shape with lion body and head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless like the sun,
Is moving it’s slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
And what rough beast whose hour has come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
-Yeats-
In the movie Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood shows a look of disgust as the mayor of of San Francisco gives in once again to the demands of a rampaging killer. Harry says ” when are you going to stop playing his game? ” I think the Western powers need to come to a similar conclusion in regards to Islam before it’s too late.
When schools in Europe were teaching the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, Muslims students were offended and thus the course was dropped in many districts. Same for many books and theories (such as evolution) which insult the devoted followers of Islam. Muslim artists who created exhibits showing the oppression of women are threatened by the followers of the religion of peace and forced to cancel their shows.
Al-Qaeda had several excuses for attacking the United States on 911. Third on the list was aiding the transition of East Timor from the murdering Muslim Indonesian army who were committing genocide against the dominate Christian population. Bin Laden said ” we can never forgive the crusaders for taking Muslim land away in East Timor. ” Muslim land??? East Timor is predominately Christian. So, not to upset the Islamists you just have to allow the Indonesian army to slaughter the infidels or else!
In August of 2003 al-Qaeda in Iraq destroyed the UN headquarters in Baghdad with a massive explosion. No doubt the bomb was given to the insurgents by former Baathist’s. The target of the terror attack was UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, who lead the transition of East Timor. He was killed in the explosion along with 20 others. The al-Qaeda communiqué after the bombing said:
“the personal representative of America’s criminal slave, Kofi Annan, the diseased Sergio de Mello, criminal Bush’s friend. Why cry over a heretic? Sergio Vieira de Mello is the one who tried to embellish the image of America, the crusaders and the Jews in Lebanon and Kosovo, and now in Iraq. He is America’s first man where he was nominated by Bush to be in charge of the UN after Kofi Annan, the criminal and slave of America, and he is the crusader that extracted a part of the Islamic land [East Timor].”
So, if you don’t want to be killed by Islamists, you just have to let Muslims murder and savage the non-believers. Notice how Islamists are also angry we saved Muslims in Kosovo!
The Bali bombings of 2002 which killed over 200 civilians was also in retaliation for stopping the genocide in East Timor. Australians were targeted because they sent troops to aid in the transition. Again, if you don’t want your people attacked, you just have to allow Muslims to slaughter, or else!
One other point. Often the Islamists like ISIS and al-Qaeda will say ” we attack your lands because you attacked or invaded ours.” Oh really? This propaganda is always used by the Left to give a black eye to our containment policies against radical Islamists and sadistic regimes who aid them like Iraq.
My question is this….What business do Jordanian, Sudanese, Egyptians, Saudi, Indonesian, Syrian and many others have in moving into Afghanistan? Or in the Sudan or Iraq? Notice how the Islamists can mark any land in the world as theirs regardless if they have any connection what so ever to the country?
When someone like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins calls Islam a broken mess of a religion uniquely unable to handle the twenty-first century, I feel like doing an Arsenio Hall style fist pump. When someone like Orsen Scott Card calls Islam sexist and homophobic, I want to tell him people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I have no idea were Raymond Ibrahim falls.
” The list of things that non-Muslims can do to provoke Islamic violence grows by the day …”
Which is of a piece with the recent articles on Progressivism run amok on campuses.
The point isn’t to prevent some “offense”, the point is to assert power and make you dance to their tune. They’re not asserting power to rid them of offense, they’re asserting offense to assert power.
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
― George Orwell, 1984