Yes, Muslims should be asked to condemn Islamic terror

Why would you refuse to condemn those who murder in your name?
By Dennis Prager, FPM

RanaLast week, an opinion piece appeared in The Washington Post that tells you much of what you need to know about the moral fabric and intellectual depth of the ACLU and much of the left.

Written by Rana Elmir, deputy director of the Michigan chapter of the ACLU, the title says it all: “Stop asking me to condemn terrorists just because I’m Muslim.”

Here is how her column begins:

“As an American Muslim, I am consistently and aggressively asked — by media figures, religious leaders, politicians and Internet trolls — to condemn terrorism to prove my patriotism.

“I emphatically refuse.”

Even putting aside her refusal as a Muslim to condemn the greatest organized evil in the world, her misleading rhetoric is revealed by another aspect of the opening sentence.

It is not to “prove [her] patriotism” that people ask her to condemn Muslim mass murder, torture and sexual enslavement. It has nothing to do with patriotism.

Decent people (including many decent Muslims) make this request for three other reasons: One is to ascertain the moral/religious views of that Muslim. The second is to ascertain how widespread Islamist views are among Muslims. And the third reason is to have as many Muslims as possible condemn Islamist violence in the hope that Muslims considering supporting or engaging in terror will think twice about doing so.

It is the most logical request people of goodwill can make when they ask Muslim spokespeople to react to atrocities committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. How else are non-Muslims to assess Islam and Muslims?

If the Spanish Inquisition were taking place today, wouldn’t every Catholic spokesperson be asked if they condemn it? Of course.

But there is a difference. No one would have to ask Christians to condemn mass murder committed by tens of thousands Christians in the name of Christ. Millions of Christians would have already spoken out and demonstrated against such a thing.

Or take Jews’ reactions to the 1994 murder of 29 Palestinian Arabs by a religious Israeli Jew, Baruch Goldstein.

The Israeli prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, in an address to the Israeli parliament, said to the Knesset:

“You [Goldstein] are not part of the community of Israel… You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law…

We say to this horrible man and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.”

Even the Jewish Settler Council, of which Goldstein was a member, declared that what Goldstein had done was “not Jewish, not humane.”

Israel’s Sephardi chief rabbi said, “I am simply ashamed that a Jew carried out such a villainous and irresponsible act.” And the Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, labeled the murders “a desecration of God’s name” — which is the worst sin a Jew can commit.

The then-chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, declared: “Such an act is an obscenity and a travesty of Jewish values.”

And all these Jewish condemnations were in reaction to the action of one Jew.

In 1982, rogue Lebanese Christian militiamen killed at least 800 Palestinians in two refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in the Beirut-area. Though no Israelis participated in the killings, Israel held itself responsible because it was the occupying power in that area at that time. In addition, approximately 400,000 Israelis — about 10 percent of the Israeli population — protested against their own government. It was the largest demonstration in Israel until that time.

That is what civilized and moral people are expected to do — condemn those who murder in their name.

But, according to the ACLU official, such civilized, moral behavior is not expected of Muslims.

Rather, in the age-old left-wing habit of reducing evil through moral equivalence, Elmir writes:

“Just as [an American] I have never been asked to condemn Dylann Storm Roof’s attack on parishioners of a historic black church in South Carolina, Robert Dear’s attack on a Planned Parenthood facility, the murder of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, or the slaughter of moviegoers in Colorado or Louisiana, I will not be bullied into condemning terror perpetrated by Muslim terrorists.”

So there you go. If you ask Muslim spokespeople to condemn women in burqas, Muslim honor killings, Muslim annihilation of Christian communities in the Middle East, the massive support in Muslim countries for killing any Muslim who converts to another religion, or even the atrocities of Islamic state, al-Qaida, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, or the myriad other Muslim mass murder organizations, you are a bully. You are the guilty party.

That is one of the more remarkable moral inversions of our time.

But such is the moral universe of Elmir and the ACLU.

In fact, just as we ask Muslims to condemn evil done by Muslims in the name of Islam, we should ask supporters and members of the ACLU to condemn this column written in the name of the ACLU. It’s that bad.

January 6, 2016 | 9 Comments »

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9 Comments / 9 Comments

  1. Ted Belman Said:

    A lot of people get defensive when we talk about a war against Islam. After all we have to treat all religions equally, don’t we?

    Yes Islam, not every Muslim, is is at war with us. Therefore we are in a forced defensive war against Islam, or specifically political Islam and Jihad.
    Of course we know you subtract the Jihad and intolerance and war from Islam and there isn’t enough philosophy left to fill one side of a sheet of paper but we must frame the news gently to delicate confused sheeple.

  2. I complete agree Ted to be anti-Jihadi and anti Political Islam is needed for our survival. This actually supports the reformers in Islam.

    Being afraid to say what is evil and not fighting it is a losing proposition. The Obama’s of the world get this confused. They do not deal with the world as it is in reality but how they pretend it is. So the problems just gets worse. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser estimates 30 to 40% of the Muslims in the world support or agree with the jihadi view of Islam. So the problem is not how to break a small cult but a religious view that 100s of millions of Muslims have.

  3. A lot of people get defensive when we talk about a war against Islam. After all we have to treat all religions equally, don’t we?

    i think it works better for us to be anti-Jihad. Nobody would defend Jihad. We would then be PC.

    Just an idea.

  4. @ ArnoldHarris:
    I agree Arnold change in the Muslim World will not be quick. Forecasts I have none!

    A much larger movement is: The Gülen movement is a transnational religious and social movement led by Turkish Islamic scholar and preacher Fethullah Gülen. The movement has no official name but it is usually referred to as Hizmet (“the Service”) by its followers and as Cemaat (“the Community/Assembly”) by the broader public in Turkey.

    The movement has attracted supporters and critics in Turkey, Central Asia, and in other parts of the world. The movement is active in education with private schools and universities in over 180 countries as well as many American charter schools operated by followers. It has initiated forums for interfaith dialogue. It has substantial investments in media, finance, and for–profit health clinics.[1][2] Some have praised the movement as a pacifist, modern-oriented version of Islam, and as an alternative to more extreme schools of Islam such as Salafism.[3]

  5. @ Bear Klein:
    If he world is fortunate, a widespread Islamic reformation comparable to the one that broke the grip of the Roman papacy in the 16th and 17th centuries will require a number of generations for any measurable fruition. If it happens at all.

    But if I were making book on all this, my betting money would be based on expectations of many centuries. If it happens at all.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  6. NEW Positive Muslim Movement. Run in Part by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser who was a careerist in USA military.

    Muslim Reform Movement and Zuhdi Jasser Declare “Jihad Against Jihad”

    Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has called for a “jihad against jihad,” meaning an all-out fight against the extremist ideology that has become identified with the term jihad, an Arabic word that can apply broadly to a personal spiritual struggle on one end and on the other, to the war on the West as perpetuated by ISIS.

    Jasser, the subject of New Times’ recent cover story, “All-American Muslim,” is not alone in his fight.

    In a December 4 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, a dozen imams, activists, and faith-based leaders declared the principles of what they call the Muslim Reform Movement: nine precepts that advocate for human rights and freedom of thought and action, as well as a rejection of the radical religious ideology that has inspired slaughter from Paris to San Bernardino.

    Joining Jasser in this courageous stand, one that could earn its proponents the death penalty in certain areas of the world, is Asra Nomani, a journalist and author whose fight for women’s rights within Islam is at the heart of her 2005 book Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

    At the press conference, Muslim Reform Movement members took turns at the mic, discussing the importance of the document that they had spent the previous two days hashing out. It could not have been more timely, given recent events in San Bernardino, where a married couple, drunk on radical Islam, murdered 14 people and injured 21 at an office Christmas party, later dying themselves in a shootout with authorities.

    “We need to have a progressive, forward-thinking interpretation of Islam,” Nomani said at the media event. “[One] that represents opening hearts, minds, and doors in our Muslim world. We need to do it for our children, and we need to do it for future generations, so they can live in peace and harmony.”

    In a discussion with New Times, Nomani concedes that many of the ideals espoused by the Muslim Reform Movement’s founding document are not controversial in the context of Western democracy. But in an Islam co-opted by political “Islamism,” the precepts are revolutionary.

    The mere mention of “violent jihad,” Nomani says, is certain to raise the ire of Islamists.

    This is what is needed of Muslim’s who are the only ones who can change Islam from within. Muslim’s who pretend there is no problem within Islam are fooling themselves and trying to fool others and is played along by the Obama’s and Kerry’s of the world.

  7. @ Yidvocate:
    I don’t know how right-thinking Moslems think, because I’m not one of them. But I am a hardcore rightwing-thinking Jew, and I can tell you for sure that I would never denounce any Jew accused of terrorism against the Moslems.

    That’s the nature of protracted conflicts. You have to join a gang whose actions are on your particular side of the conflict.

    Do I have any ethical problems with that? Hell no. Because when my own nation — Americans or Jews — are at war, my intentions are always subjective. And for that, I divide everybody in friends, enemies, or bystanders.

    Based on that, I find myself thinking better of that woman than I would if she were just another mouthpiece for the liberal cockroaches who poison the culture and politics of this country with their poisonous notions of political correctness.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  8. @ ArnoldHarris:

    It actually does sound like she favours jihad as a Muslim “solution”. She refuses to condemn it. So how do you infer she doesn’t favour?

    A society is judged not by the actions of its extremists but by the reaction of the society to its extremists. So if she doesn’t condemn she supports.

    Its really quite simple. Don’t know what you don’t get?

    She should feel enormous pressure to condemn it as it purports to “speak” in her name!

    We didn’t kill Jesus so FU is entirely appropriate but the muzloids do atrocities daily in the name of Islam. If I were a right thinking muslim, I’d be beside myself condemning it from the roof tops. Not you?????

  9. So Rana Elmir refuses to apologize for Moslems who plot or commit terror in the name of Islamic jihad. Good for her for having guts enough to stand against political correctness. I wish all my fellow Jews in particular and Americans in general would stop all the endless and useless apologetics.

    I still remember my elementary school years on Chicago’s not-infrequently nasty north side and, on and off, in West Hollywood California. In Chicago, I had to rumble with Roman Catholic Germans, Irish, and Poles, and under West Hollywood palm trees with Greek Orthodox kids, most of whom wanted me to apologize for us Jews killing Jesus My standard response to all of them was a childhood version of “fuck you!”.

    I never have recognized any deity other than our good old HaShem, and I feel no guilt whatsoever for myself or for the Jewish nation into which I was born.

    Do I live in peace these days with the local goyim up here in frozen southern Wisconsin? I guess so, because 80+ year-olds are medically advised to stay out of both bars and bar fights. Anyway, most of these good folks mainly worship beer drinking, their memories of the sex lives they enjoyed as kids 60 years ago, and the Green Bay Packers football team. Which doesn’t leave much time and attention for Jesus (Protestants) and Mary (Catholics)

    Back to Rana Elmir. It doesn’t sound as though she favors jihad as a solution to Moslem woes or dreams of world domination. But why the hell should she feel pressured to apologize for something she hasn’t done?

    The sooner the American nation and the United States of America ditch all the political correctness crap that has been overloading us for some 70 years. That’s one of the key reasons my wife and I will vote for Trump and none other in this years state primaries and general election.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker