HT: Michelle Malkin

“Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world.”

Let’s consider that. Christianity knows Jesus to be very God of very God. The Muslim religion reduces Him to a second-string prophet, an opening act for the Mohammed Show. So yeah, it is anti-Christ in the Christian sense of the word (which is kinda the most significant sense, since we coined the term.)

As for the second assertion, that Islam intends to conquer the world. Islam is a universalistic religion which believes that everyone on earth should submit to and worship its god. Just as Christianity believes about God. Like some schools of Christianity, mainstream Islam believes its destiny is to spread throughout the world, until the entire globe is converted.

But does “Islam” want to conquer the world through violence? Clearly, many individual Muslims reject violence (though many, many of them eschew violence for themselves but support its use by fellow Muslims.) And the public ideologies of many schools of Islam renounce expansion through the sword. But many other schools of Islam think it’s perfectly hunkey-dorey.

If we look at Islam not as a purely 21st century creation, but rather as a historical religion, then Parsley’s argument looks a lot stronger. Through its history, Christianity has expanded primarily through conversion; Islam has converted through the sword. The Near East, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Byzantine Empire, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, portions of sub-Saharan Africa, and much of India were seized by force. Muslim traders and Sufi missionaries DID help expand Islam in south-east Asia, Africa and Central Asia, but the primary vehicle for the expansion of Islam has been violence.

This extends to the current era. From Indonesia to the Philippines to Thailand to western China to India to Dagestan to Lebanon to Kosovo to Sudan to Somalia to Libya to Nigeria to Paris suburbs, the margins of the Islamic world seem to be forever inflamed. There are often sociopolitical triggers, but the fact remains that Muslims have constant difficulties with their neighbors. A major factor in this is the relentless Islamic drive to expand, to increase the portion of the world sacralized by submission to Allah. And this drive isn’t at all finicky about the methods it uses.

In my view, Rod Parsley seems more guilty of overgeneralizing than anything. Many Muslims around the world renounce violence. But taking Islam historically and as a whole, Parsley isn’t too far off-base.

Steyn’s crime? He published a book featuring demographic data on Muslim and non-Muslim birthrates in the West, and drew conclusions about the impact of demographic trends on Western freedoms. He’s been charged with “exposing Muslims to hatred and contempt.”

Consider the implications of this. In a dictatorship, there is no need to be able to forthrightly critique the beliefs of actions of others. In a pluralist “democracy,” however, such speech is essential. If political speech is criminalized, how precisely are “the People” supposed to debate the merits of various policies and make informed decisions? Such criminalization cuts to the heart of a democratic society.

This shows just how pathetically short-sighted the Left has become. The only truly inalienable rights they support are: 1. the right to abortion; 2. the right to polymorphously perverse sex; 3. the right to not be offended (unless white, Christian or Jewish.)

In their world, the government can (and should!) minutely regulate your actions, words and even thoughts, yet you are still “free” because you can have consequence-free sex with whomever you choose. The rights which actually sustain a free society — silly notions like property rights and free speech — are mere trivialities compared to weighty ones such as the right not to hear anything negative about your religion.

For one of my grad school classes, I studied the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses case from 1988-1990.  What really struck me was just how low our standards are for “moderate Islam.”  

In the Rushdie case, “moderate” meant simply that one opposed the death sentence for Rushdie.  Even with this abysmally low standard, only 70% of British Muslims were moderates.  Nearly a third of British Muslims wanted him dead simply for writing a book.

Just as important, only a single “moderate” Muslim organization supported Rushdie’s rights to free speech and freedom of the press.  The remainder all wanted him censored, and nearly all wanted him arrested for blasphemy.  Only a tiny Muslim feminist group supported him, and they were assaulted by both Muslim youths and skinheads. 

Additionally, two-thirds of British Muslims polled during the case said they were “more likely to obey Islamic law than British law.”  Fully 43% said they would “definitely vote” for an Islamic party if one were available.  Worse, the history of British Islam since 1990 shows a community becoming more radical, not less.

The current discourse on “moderate Islam” and “radical Islam” obscures a very hard truth – most moderates hold to a worldview entirely hostile to Western, liberal notions of free speech, tolerance, and freedom of the press.

 The Star Trib reports today on an Islamic school operating clandestinely within the Minnesota charter school system.  If it were a Christian school, how long would it take before the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State would have the school in court?

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, the ACLU has determined that “We currently do not have enough facts to state whether or not the school is in violation of the establishment clause.” Yeah, right.

 Maybe I’ll be wrong this time, but I think we shouldn’t hold our breath on this one.

 Further Reading:
Ace of Spades HQ / Yid With Lid / Powerline

Far from loving their children, too, militant Islam expends them as human missiles.

Now I think he had a point. Not the one he was making, which was some frivolous moral equivalency argument. But it was significant that Russians loved their children. Their government was ruthless, but it was led by rational men who placed the survival of their people over their ideological cause.

What a contrast with militant Islam. This is a subculture which glorifies death and martyrdom. Their children are raised to idolize suicide bombers and other “martyrs” who have massacred the “enemies of Islam.” Far from loving their children, too, militant Islamists expend them as human missiles. To borrow from Sting, they’re all about Sunday, bloody Sunday. The cult of the suicide bomber is the ultimate expression of a subculture which creates nothing, loves nothing, and devours its own children in the process of destroying others.

This is the key difference between the Cold War and the War on Terror (along with the fact that we had a State enemy then and now face a transnational, stateless one.) In the past, we had a rational opponent. Militant Islam values only will, fervor, and the aesthetics of violence. This is why we must persevere in Iraq, Afghanistan and the larger War on Terror. Retreat only emboldens an enemy such as this. They cannot be reasoned with – they can only be defeated.

Variations on a theme:

Jihad Watch writes on Iranian Textbooks: “Every Muslim youth must strike fear in the hearts of the enemies of God and their people through combat-readiness and skillful target shooting”

Soccer Dad reports on a lack of enthusiasm for suicide bombing now that we’re winning in Iraq. Woot.

Mosque Watch: Muslim mom rejects son if he’s not a suicide bomber.

And lastly, Advice Goddess writes on The Death Cult Known As “The Religion Of Peace”