Turning the World Upside-Down

Making Truth and Islamophobia a Crime

On November 2, U.S Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new national strategy to counter Islamophobia. The English language term, “Islamophobia,” appeared academically as early as 1923, but its widespread coinage as a major Muslim Brotherhood propaganda word originated with the Council of Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) between 2011 and 2012.

The powerful 57-nation member Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) within the United Nations (UN) had been lobbying Western UN members to make Islamophobia (essentially any criticism of Islam) a punishable hate crime. They had already succeeded in many Western European nations of the European Union. In late 2011, less than a year before the Benghazi incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was consulting by direction of President Obama with OIC leadership to make Islamophobia a punishable hate crime in the U.S. To get such a federal law passed by Congress in the United States at that time would have been politically problematic.  Recognizing the political risk to the Obama Administration, Clinton’s strategy to appease the OIC was to  penalize criticism of Islam by informal “social shaming,”  making use of federal government influence on the media, academia, and cultural and political power centers.

President Biden’s announcement broadened the strategy to include protection for Jews and other vulnerable groups. The strategy will be led by the Domestic Policy Council and the National Security Council.

All this is obviously connected to the October 7 attack by Hamas Jihadists on Israel. Despite the brutal terroristic murders of over 1,200  innocent Jewish men, women, and children, the Biden Administration is focusing on the danger to Muslims in the United States. But while CAIR allegedly received over 700 complaints from Muslims fearing retaliation, this is really about Muslim votes in Michigan, Minnesota, and other Muslim concentrations in the political electorate. To appease Muslim nations and several hundred thousand American Muslim voters angry with U.S. support for Israel, our country and all its Judeo-Christian traditions are being betrayed.

To outlaw any criticism of Islam would be contrary to First Amendment free speech and academic, journalistic, and political freedoms. Moreover, given the Jihadic doctrines and enmity against non-Muslim cultures that dominate much of the Quran and traditions of Muhammad, a blanket approval of Islam would be extremely unwise.

Islam has a trilogy of three written foundational documents. In addition to the Quran, the Hadiths and Sira, which are the traditions and biography of Muhammad, are almost as sacred.  Islamic Law (Sharia) reflects the teachings derived from the Quran, the Hadiths, and the Sira.

The Quran itself can be divided into two parts in regard to Muhammad’s career. The first two-thirds recorded in Mecca is relatively peaceful except for some harsh condemnations of unbelievers. The last third was recorded in Medina, where Muhammad had become a political leader and warlord.  

The Quran, the Hadiths, and the Sira are foundational documents of Islam and comparable in influence and obligations on Muslims to the influence and obligations of the Bible on Christians.

The most dangerous aspect of criminalizing criticism of Islam is that it would likely become a political tool to destroy any other religious, political, social, or cultural groups and punish any words or activities deemed unfavorable to Islam. This is an alarming trend in Europe. In the UK, Germany, and Sweden, this has even been applied to statistics and science. Unfavorable social or crime statistics can be criminally punished and often seriously affect employment and social, political, and academic standing. It is turning several European nations and Canada into totalitarian societies reminiscent of Stalinist tyranny depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm.

The words and acts of Muhammad play an extremely important role in Islam. According to the research of Dr. Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam International,  Muhammad is mentioned in the Quran 89 times as the perfect Muslim and the only acceptable pattern to Allah. The Sunna refers to the combined teachings of Muhammad in the Haditshs and Sira. Anything that comes from the Sunna, and thus Muhammad, has a strong stamp of approval in Islam. “It is Sunna” is the ultimate argument for legitimacy.

According to Warner’s research, seven percent of the words of Adolph Hitler in his infamous book, Mein Kamph (My Struggle) are about Jew-hatred. In the combined trilogy of the Quran, Hadiths, and Sira, Jew-hatred amounts to 9.3 percent, and is highest in the last third of the Quran, written in Medina, at 17 percent.

Non-Muslims in the Quran and the Sunna (combined Hadiths and Sira) are often referred to as Kafirs (the Arabic word for unbelievers). Although more than half of the Quran is about Kafirs, only 2.6 percent of the words of the Quran say something good about Kafirs, although they are a major topic in all three foundational sources. There is a dual standard of treatment for believers and Kafirs, with Kafirs having inferior status.  Quran 4:2 is generally interpreted as Muhammad’s approval of the rape of Kafir women in Jihad or captivity. Jihad has often been interpreted as also including migration to a non-Muslim country. This interpretation is especially common among young Muslim men immigrating to European countries, and rape statistics, especially in Scandinavia, document the reality of its shocking frequency.

As I stated in my October 17 article in the Times Examiner, Terrorist Jihad against the Jews and Israel, 31 percent of the text of the Islamic trilogy of foundational sources is about Jihad. Less than two percent can be regarded as spiritual or personal development. The vast majority are about making war by the sword (all weapons and means) against all non-believers.  

These statistics do not condemn every Muslim, but they reveal a political foundation in Islam that cannot be ignored. Muslim immigration requires added precautions in vetting out Jihadist holy war against all non-Muslims and Jew-hatred. Christians are almost as endangered as Jews, and other religions—Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and others—are, after all, non-Muslins, and as history testifies, frequent targets of Jihadic attacks and perennial war. Secularists are also non-Muslims equally subject to Jihadist attack.

There are at least two other significant Islamic doctrines that make Muslim and non-Muslim relations more difficult than others. Taqiyya allows the deception of non-Muslims to further the cause of Islam. The doctrine of Abrogation, downgrading the significance of earlier peaceful Quranic verses and giving later contradictory and usually Jihadic Quranic verses primary significance can be used to mislead non-Muslims. Bottom line, Islam is not a religion of peace and tolerance. Some verses and many Muslims may be peaceful and tolerant, but that is not the mainstream of Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim clergy, and the major doctrines of Islam, particularly the doctrine of Jihad that thoroughly pervades the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad.

A two-state Palestine; a Jewish state, and a Palestinian Muslim state; may sound a reasonable solution for territorial grievances to well-meaning politicians and academics, but the reality of foundational Islamic beliefs makes it unlikely to succeed.  Moreover, Palestinians are by far the most radical in Islam in their fundamentalist beliefs about Jihad. Yet annihilation or continuous war cannot be a solution. Peace will have to have strong elements of security by separation, political independence, economic cooperation, and good will.

Israel is under existential threat from Hamas and its allies. Its very existence is threatened. The lives of every Jewish man, woman, and child in Israel could be under threat of total Jihadic genocide. An exaggerated danger? Read about the Ottoman Empire’s genocides against Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians from about 1910 to 1921.

Israel should avoid civilian Palestinian casualties, but its priority must be to defeat Hamas in detail.

A cease-fire is not appropriate while still under extreme threat. During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson ordered 16 different bombing halts to encourage the North Vietnamese to negotiate. In all 16, they used the bombing halt to re-supply, increase, and upgrade their forces and especially anti- aircraft guns. Johnson gained absolutely no concessions, but American and South Vietnamese forces faced increased North Vietnamese anti-aircraft fire and firepower on the ground when each bombing halt ended. The operational philosophy of hard-core Vietnam era  North Vietnamese Communists and Jihadic Islamists today are much the same.  

Take warning: the Biden-Harris national strategy to counter Islamophobia is a strategy to forbid any criticism of Islam. That has led to tyranny, social disorder, and violence of increasing magnitude everywhere it has been planted.  It has not served any nation well. It is a deadly enemy of freedom threatening our personal safety, public order, and national security.  It will backfire even against the useful idiots who are likely to accept it.

Combined with out-of-control immigration, criminalizing Islamophobia will wrap us in the chains of social chaos, fear, poverty, and despotism.