For years, we’ve heard how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists.
What if it’s the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion?
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That certainly seems to be the case in Pakistan.
Salman Taseer, a popular Pakistani governor, was assassinated this week because he was critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
Specifically, Taseer was supportive of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who has been sentenced to death for “insulting Muhammad.”
Bibi had offered some fellow farm laborers some water. They refused to drink it because Christian hands purportedly make water unclean. An argument followed. She defended her faith, which they took as synonymous with attacking theirs. Later, she says, a mob of her accusers raped her.
Naturally, a Pakistani judge sentenced her to hang for blasphemy.
And Governor Taseer, who bravely visited her and sympathized with her plight, had 40 bullets pumped into him by one of his own bodyguards.
“Salmaan Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer,” Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri said to the television cameras as he was being arrested.
Now, so far, it’s hard to say who is the hijacker and who is the hijackee. After all, Taseer the moderate was a prominent politician, Qadri a mere bodyguard.
A reasonable person might look at this tragic situation and say it is indeed proof of extremists trying to hijack the religion and the country.
Except, it was Taseer who wanted to change the status quo and Qadri who wanted to protect it. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been on the books for decades, and while judicial death sentences for blasphemy are rare, the police and security forces have been enforcing it unilaterally for years.
And what of the reaction to the assassination?
Many columnists and commentators denounced the murder, but the public’s reaction was often celebratory. A Facebook fan page for Qadri had to be taken down as it was drawing thousands of followers.
And what of the country’s official guardians of the faith?
A group of more than 500 leading Muslim scholars, representing what the Associated Press describes as a “moderate school of Islam” and the British Guardian calls the “mainstream religious organizations” in Pakistan not only celebrated the murder, but warned that no Muslim should mourn Taseer’s murder or pray for him.
They even went so far as to warn government officials and journalists that the “supporter is as equally guilty as one who committed blasphemy,” and so therefore they should all take “a lesson from the exemplary death” of Salman Taseer.
If that’s what counts for religious moderation in Pakistan, I think it’s a little late to be talking about extremists hijacking the religion. The religion has long since been hijacked, and it’s now moving on to even bigger things.
Pakistan isn’t the only troubled spot. In Egypt, Coptic Christians were recently slaughtered in an Islamist terrorist attack. The Egyptian government, which has a long record of brutalizing and killing its own Christian minority, was sufficiently embarrassed by the competition from non-governmental Islamists that it is now offering protection. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.
But Pakistan is special because it has nuclear weapons and is inextricably bound up in the war in neighboring Afghanistan and the larger war on terror. U.S. relations with the Pakistani military remain strong, but — as we’ve seen with Turkey — good relations with a military don’t make up for losing support from an allied government as it goes Islamist. And it seems unlikely that a government can long stay secular when the people want it to become ever more Islamist.
Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist (and my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute), writes that even “relatively secular-minded Pakistanis are an endangered species.”
While most of the enlightened chatterers remain mute or incoherent as they struggle for a way to blame Israel for all of this, the question becomes all the more pressing: How do we deal with a movement or a nation that refuses to abide by the expiring cliché, “Islam means peace”?
Johan, thanks for highlighting this. Its something that really can't be repeated too often in todays world.
But I'm just dying to ask just one thing. Not that anyone will have a coherent answer since there isn't one, but here goes.
If a Christian is so unclean that you can't take water from one because she touched it, what does it say that you can, how do I say this delicately, force her to touch your "special purpose" (thanks Navin R. Johnson)?
That peaceful muslims are the real hijackers of islam should be self-evident from any acquaintance with the character and behaviour of their prophet. A man who not only committed violent, treacherous and lecherous acts but who exhorted others to do so. A man who committed what would today be considered war crimes. This chief exemplar of conduct within islam, who is supposed to be the supreme model of conduct for all people for all time, and upon whose words and deeds the whole wretched edifice of islam and its siamese twin, sharia law, are based must rate as one of the worst models that any totalitarian system could be based on. If ‘peace’ has any meaning in islam then it is only in the most brutally twisted sense, similar to that characterised by Tacitus in his famous dictum,”Et ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” (And when they have made a desert, they call it peace).
All this should by now be well-known and we should be combining our efforts to defeat this merciless religion of holy war for good but no, we are busily pretending that all religions are peace-oriented and that the extension of any religion is only for the good.
"How do we deal with a movement or a nation that refuses to abide by the expiring cliché, “Islam means peace”?"
Here's how we should deal with it---Do Not Allow Any Muslims into This Country! Simple, no-brainer. Cut ourselves lose from all Muslim countries and let them wallow in their barbarism.
How do we deal with this movement? We import millions of Muslims into the West. They come with their fanatical ideas and we appease them in the name of anti-discrimination. We have soldiers dying in the Middle-East so we can "democratize" barbarians who do not want democracy.
Garandman, they were punishing her, you see. Anything is permissible when punishing an infidel. It doesn't have to make coherent sense in any way. So long as the infidel is punished.
Well, there is Sura 23:5-6 "[Most certainly true believers] . . . guard their private parts scrupulously, 6 except with regard to their wives and those who are legally in their possession, for in that case they shall not be blameworthy." (Sayyid Abul A’La Maududi, The Meaning of the Quran, vol. 3, p. 237)
And there is another Sura (don't have a reference handy) that establishes the practice of taking the wife of an infidel as a slave, after the infidel has been killed.
In Sharia Law, and while I am by no means an expert, as I understand things, a Muslim woman who accuses a man of raping her is required to produce some number of Muslim mail witnesses (more than 1, I don't remember the number) to testify on her behalf against her assailant that the woman did not provoke or invite the attack.
Note that Sharia forbids a Muslim woman to engage in any form of intimate relationship with a non-Muslim, that is infidel, male.
My father had a classic statement. "Beware of educated dunces"
And America and the rest of world is full them.
Is there anybody out there who can say what was Turkey before Muslim took it over? What was Eygpt before Muslim took it over? What was Iran before Muslim took it over?
What about the Kashmiri brahmins who because being Hindus, and a minority, which they were not until successive muslim invasions of india, living in Kashmiri were rooted out, and 700,000 are now living in tents in India.
To American Enterprise, Cato, National Review, Hoover, where the best and brightest continue to see Islam as a peac loving religion, which world are you living.
How 600,000 muslims got visa to live in America (Queens?)
When has Muslim been anything but brutal.
Read Our Oriental Heritage, by Will, and Ariel Durant, and go India, then weep the rest of the day.
The west like lemmings run to ocean to drown themselves.
So many have tried to distinguish Islam from Islamist, as if the urge to dominate and destroy applied only to the latter. A comforting thought, but where's the proof? It appears that the possibility of coexisting with the Muslim world is in direct proportion to its rejection of its barbaric inheritance.
I am by no means an expert in Sharia Law or the Quran/Hadith. I am actively studying / learning. I am not in the process of conversion, I simply want to understand them.
The Quran has the following to say about relations of the intimate kind between a Muslim male and relationships with women ...
Sura 23:5-6 "5 [Most certainly true believers] . . . guard their private parts scrupulously, 6 except with regard to their wives and those who are legally in their possession, for in that case they shall not be blameworthy." (Sayyid Abul A’La Maududi, The Meaning of the Quran, vol. 3, p. 237)
Maududi is a respected commentator on Sharia Law and Quran; he takes this Sura to say that if the woman is slave, then it doesn't matter if she is Muslim or not.
Obviously, the woman in question was not "legally in the possession" of her attackers. However, it is apparently very difficult for a woman to bring accusations of rape against a Muslim man in a country that uses Sharia Law as the law of the land, or as the basis of the law of the land. Under Sharia Law, non-Muslims are second class beings with no rights, no legal standing. So, if a non-Muslim has no rights under Sharia law, I am not sure how a non-Muslim could accuse a Muslim of raping her, under Sharia Law.
Mr. Goldberg makes a very interesting point with article, one that requires significant consideration and thought.
I think people really need to understand that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and all of these other groups killing Christians, Jews, and other non-believers are the ORTHODOX Muslims.
Islam literally means Submission, not Peace. There's no "give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's" in Islam. Its a religion invented by a brigand to justify his brigandry.
MikeB, I am a pessimist too, but I think a partial solution does exist, at least for us in the West.
Step one is sobriety and awareness. In the public discourse, the canard "Islam is peace" needs to be demolished and replaced with the grim truth that Islam (at least in its current incarnation) is forced conversion, religious apartheid, brutal conquest, misogyny, intolerance, seventh-century barbarity and a complete disregard for human life.
For this to happen, straight-thinking Americans need to be vocal, to have facts at their fingertips, and to shrug off the inevitable "racist!" accusation.
Step two is a firm stand for us in the West that we will not tolerate sharia, jihad or any shred thereof in our midst.
There is a limit to how tolerant a society should be, before it collapses under the weight of its own tolerance. I truly view tolerating the intolerant as multiplying a positive times a negative - the greater either number, the farther into the negatives. Islam is an intolerant doctrine.
Thus, being very tolerant of a very intolerant doctrine is a great liability for our society, not a badge worthy of self-congratulation and moralistic narcissism.
Islam has no room for thriving in a tolerant society. If you are a Muslim and want to practice your religion quietly and privately in my country, be my guest. If you are a fire-breathing imam or an infatuated-brained "Soldier of Allah," Chacun chez soi. Let's start focusing on this message.
Step three is a united Western front against nations that perpetrate what we see as barbaric human-rights violations in the name of Islam. Put a squeeze on these countries, and see if reform doesn't eventually come.
But the first and most important step in this is to defeat the Islamic apologists in our society and force them out of the mainstream of civic discourse. Islam is peace only if you hijack the meaning of "peace."
Western culture tries to project its sense of morality and religion onto Islam (only way most of us can deal with it – i.e. religion of peace). Most Christians try to respect other religions - unfortunately Islam provides no reciprocal respect for any other religion (theologically or any tolerance). Jesus never preached worldwide conversion at the point of a sword.
The "enlightened" also say we cannot get into a war with Islam. At this point, honestly, why not? It seems that a world in which democracy and any sort of decency is possible cannot allow the worldview of a majority of Muslims to become ascendant. The only objection I can see is that their are too many of them to fight effectively. Perhaps a containment strategy, a la the Cold War, would be the best bet.
DougTN - please educate us on missionaries (not using a sword, but other persuasive measures in poor countries to "bring people to Jesus"). And, of course, what the brutal forced conversions to Christianity from centuries past by the Spanish wherever they went.
I can't disagree with anything Jonah has written because I feel the same way. But then I feel that way about ALL religions. Can non-Christians buy birth control in Ireland? Will the Religious Right in the US allow non-Christian gays to marry or non-Christians to have abortions? Nope. Any Jew can return to Israel despite having no ties to there. Arabs who have lived there for centuries (driven out pre-1948) cannot.
Other than some eastern religions, please name one religion that hasn't been hijacked to the detriment of other religions or non-practicing individuals?
Islam is a predatory system, and this is exemplified by both its sacred writings and its actual history. No other major religion was led by a warlord who used his army to make converts.
The PC view is a refutation of fact, and of a league with those who watched Hitler rearm and then conquer neighboring territory while believing he was a man of peace.
To seek peace by ignoring violence is to participate in your own demise!
Make no mistake, they are fighting a holy war on behalf of BinLaden, Mohammed, and Allah...while we continue to argue whether their agression is criminal or warlike!!! Who or what we are fighting for? Our oil interests? 5$ per gallon is coming; The President?...please; the Constitution?...can't even read it; Freedom and Liberty?...can you say progressives; the Flag?...burned it in the sixties; God?...Nietzsche warned of Liberal snobbish atheism and it is alive and well across Europe and the U.S.
Mr. Goldberg asks, "How do we deal with a movement or a nation that refuses to abide by the expiring cliché, 'Islam means peace'?"
We don't...because that is what he have been doing..."dealing".
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