Islam is Proving Western Multiculturalism Wrong

Scholar and writer, Raymond Ibrahim, has written persuasively about the degradation and slaughter of Christians under Islam:

·       From one end of the Muslim world to another, Christians are suffering under the return of Sharia…Whenever Muslims are in power or getting more power, churches are outlawed, burned or bombed, while Bibles and crucifixes are confiscated and destroyed. Freedom of speech – to speak positively of Christianity or critically of Islam – is denied, often on pain of death…Christian women and children are routinely abducted, raped, and forced to convert to Islam. (Crucified Again, 8)

Why is this happening? Ibrahim writes:

·       Islamic doctrines unequivocally create hostility toward Christians… Muslims around the world are quite deliberately enforcing the provisions of Sharia law against Christian worship, Christian evangelism, freedom of speech, and even freedom of conscience. But Christians also suffer violence at the hands of Muslims. (157)

Laws regarding apostasy from Islam are one example. Ibrahim cites Samuel M. Zwemer’s 1916 book Law of Apostasy in Islam:

·       The law of apostasy… is not a dead letter. It is known to all Muslims from their youth up, if not in its detail of legal penalties, yet in its power to producing an attitude bitterly hostile toward converts to Christianity. What else could such a law produce except a fanatic attitude toward all who are not Muslims? The more Muhammadan a country or a community, the more does it despise the Christian. (159)

This hatred has been embodied by Islamic rituals. Ibrahim cites Travels in Arabian Deserta by C.M. Doughty, a British writer:

·       Arabia’s Muslims would, circumambulating around the Ka’ba, supplicate Allah to “curse and destroy” the Jews and Christians.

Ibrahim, citing a present-day chant, argues that this practice remains unchanged:

·       O Allah vanquish the unjust Christians and the criminal Jews, the unjust traitors; strike them with your wrath; drape them with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression; inflict your tortures and punishments upon the unjust Christians and criminal Jews. This is our supplication, Allah; grant us our request! (159)

It is not surprising that, all around the world, Muslims act in accordance with these sentiments. Ibrahim quotes Marco Polo (13^th century) to demonstrate that these same sentiments have always been part of Islam, pre-dating colonialism:

·       “The inhabitants [of the Arabian Peninsula] are all Saracens [Muslims], and utterly detest the Christians.”

These sentiments are also expressed in Islamic education. Ibrahim cites Arabist E.W. Lane who traveled Egypt in 1820:

·       “Children in Egypt are often taught, at school, a regular set of curses to denounce upon the persons and property of Christians, Jews, and all other unbelievers in the religion of Muhammad.” (161)

Ibrahim shows that, even today, these beliefs and practices are promoted in Islamic textbooks:

·       In October 2012, the Daily Beast reported how the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and incitement, especially against Christians and Jews, despite Saudi promises to reform their textbooks. For example, a ninth-grade textbook published by the Ministry of Education states, “The Jews and the Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims.” An eighth-grade textbook says, “The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”… Islam’s clerics remind authorities that these are teachings of Islam and that to suppress them is to suppress Islam – and to be declared apostate rulers. (162)

No wonder Saudis have done nothing about these textbooks. However, the same phenomenon is occurring in this country among the “moderates.” Ibrahim writes:

·       Fox reported that “one such school outside Washington, D.C., uses textbooks teaching 11^th graders that ‘the day of Judgment can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.’ … Americans generally assume Islamic hate teaching resided ‘out there’ – in Cairo or Riyadh. (162)

It is therefore no surprise that the level of violence against Jews is skyrocketing in the West, especially around sizable Islamic populations. It is also no surprise that even the educated Muslim promotes terrorism.

Several years ago, mainstream media portrayed local opposition to the building of a mosque in Tennessee as bigots. The media also presented hand-picked gentle peace-loving Muslims as representatives of the embattled Islamic community. However, in April, a very different side of this mosque was revealed:

·       Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, a Memphis Imam based in Tennessee, preaches openly about what Islam truly is. He makes no bones about thinking that anyone other than a Muslim doesn’t deserve anything and are less than Muslims. In fact, part of Yasir Qadhi’s preaching includes rhetoric that says non-Muslims lives are forfeit and their property is legal for Muslims to take in jihad, (and this would include women as sex slaves) Recently Yasir Qadhi said that “Jews and Christians filthy, their lives and property can be taken in jihad by the Muslims.”  Yasir Qadhi is not only a Memphis Imam, but is also the Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute. He is a hafiz (has memorized the Qur’an) and he has an M.A. in the Islamic Creed and a B.A. in Islamic Sciences from Islamic University of Medina, as well as a master’s and a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Yale. 

According to Ibrahim, this is not an anomaly. Instead, he argues that the more a Muslim becomes trained in Islamic writings, the more radicalized they become. Pakistan is a country rich in Madrassas but poor in tolerance for non-Muslims:

·       A November 2011 report from the U.S. Commission of International Religious Freedom demonstrates that Pakistani school textbooks promote intolerance for Christians, Hindus, and all non-Muslims, and that most school teachers view non-Muslim minorities as “enemies of Islam”: “Religious minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for which they should be grateful.” (163)

This second-class status characterizes non-Muslims in the entire Islamic world, even in those countries that have secular constitutions. Ibrahim presents the case of Turkey:

·       In February 2012 the Turkish Association of Protestant academics Churchs’ annual Report on Human Rights Violations noted, “Christians in Turkey continue to suffer attacks from private citizens, discrimination by lower-level government officials and vilification in both school textbooks and news media.” … Despite promising to reform its school textbooks, Turkey’s [now Islamic] Ministry of Education made no changes… “In fact, the negative and slanderous portrayal of Assyrians [Christian] has increased.” (163)

This is not surprising. Not only are these negative characterizations endemic to Islam’s holy books, but Islam will tolerate no criticism or reform. Ibrahim cites the example of the Turkish genocide against their Armenian Christians, which they still refuse to admit:

·       Most objective historians agree that about 1.5 million Christian Armenians were systematically slaughtered during World War I in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government. (164)

If these horrors are merely anomalies in the distant past, and if Islam has genuinely confessed these as sins and has given evidence that they have moved beyond this, then there would be little reason to harp on these atrocities. However, denial reigns even in the West. Ibrahim writes:

·       While negative depictions of non-Muslims proliferate in Islamic school textbooks, a whitewashed image of Islam predominates in Western education, particularly in the United States. According to a 2009 American Textbook Council report citing a number of popular textbooks used by American junior and senior high school students, “key subjects like jihad, Islamic law, [and] the status of women are whitewashed” because of political correctness, or out of fear of Muslim activists. Discussing the strikes of 9/11, one textbook never mentions Islamic ideology, referring to the nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers simply as “teams of terrorists.”… One seventh-grade American textbook offers wishful thinking in place of facts: “Jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties.” (165)

A Western faith in multi-culturalism – that we can all be friends if we just show respect to other cultures – has supplanted truth and any pride in or promotion of Western traditions. According to many American textbooks:

·       Islam ambiguously “spread” or was “brought” to those [other countries]. This is from the same textbooks that allot whole chapters to bemoaning the Crusades and portraying Christians as intolerant fanatics (ignoring the fact that the Crusades were in response to jihadi conquests of Christian lands and centuries-long persecution of Christians.) (165)

Islam has a long, proven, and ubiquitous history of violence and persecution. Ibrahim therefore concludes:

·       There is one urgent reason that the West in its entirety… should take note of and respond to Muslim persecution of Christians: it is a reflection of what Islam has in store for them. (245)