Open Season on Reality

One Mansour El-Kikhia -- I am unsure whether this is a real name or his nom de guerre -- writes one of the most spectacularly evasive editorials I have seen in years. In the San Antonio Express-News, he asks, "When is this open season on Islam and Muslims going to end?"

For one thing, if it really were "open season", El-Kikhia wouldn't be free to publish such tripe. Furthermore, he and his fellow Moslems would, by now, be bowing and scraping towards a radioactive crater five times daily. This is whining at best.

For another, El-Kikhia, whose name must be an Arabic equivalent for Rip van Winkle, has nothing to say about anything members of the "Religion of Pissed" might have done since the massacres -- committed in the name of Islam and with the blessings of so many Moslems -- back in September 11, 2001. These he mentions offhand only as "9/11".

Nothing.

Instead, it's all America's fault. As usual.

The faith is vilified because it serves the needs of so many important actors on the international scene.

First, to a large number of conservative Americans and, by extension, the Bush administration, Islam has come to represent a threat more potent than communism.

...

There is no Islamic entity to pose a threat to the United States comparable to the Soviet Union; [Where have we heard that before? --ed] hence one had to be created. First, it was al-Qaida, but it soon became apparent that it was too small to make a viable opponent, resulting in the attempted links to Iraq and Iran that proved to be false.

...

Second, there are Israel's leaders, who agree with Huntington's position. The rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups that challenged their treatment of Palestinians necessitated a campaign to convince Americans that Islam is the single threat to the United States.

...

Third, a new security industry has emerged to piggyback on this issue. It is a multibillion-dollar industry that will not go away anytime soon. Indeed, this week, Boeing won a multibillion-dollar deal from the Department of Homeland Security for a virtual security fence on America's southern border to augment a proposed physical barrier.

Yeah, man. It's the military-industrial complex -- which anyone who has read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by now would know.

On a more serious note, this article pretty well encapsulates the kind of "reasoning" we are seeing from the Islamofascist-Far Left axis: (1) Ignore what the Moslems do wholesale if possible. And completely evade any role the teachings of Islam might have had in whatever you can't ignore. (2) Use anti-semitism and the real danger posed to Israel to feed off one another in order to wall off Israel, as if it is not part of the West. As if the fighting there has nothing to do with anything else. This is made a lot easier when you can say, "Hamas who? Hezbollah what?" This way, the next time you see, say, Israel dismembering Lebanon for some reason, we all know it's the fault of those filthy Jews. (And how did they doctor all those photographs from Lebanon? Those all-knowing apes! Those omnipotent pigs! Those Zionists are frightening in their reach, Allah be praised!) (3) If Israel's unexplained need to go through the motions of what all other nations do for self-defense implies that Israel thirsts for Islamic blood, then the fact that corporations make profits by supplying the government of the United States must mean that they're in on the turban-shoot, too.

Take heart, El-Kikhia, in the knowledge that you will one day look down from heaven to see this whole sleazy affair collapse like a house of cards when the Military-Zionist-Industrial Complex sputters and lurches to an abrupt halt after having run out of the Islamic blood it uses for fuel. You'll be in heaven and we'll be in hell. Isn't that what's really important anyway?

Or open your eyes and consider what people the world over -- and it isn't just al-Qaida -- are doing in the name of your religion. Consider the crazy notion that not everyone wants to obey every word some smelly, cave-dwelling imam has to say. Some of those people will not just accept some "invitation" to do so. Goodness. They may even forcefully resist! Here's a sample:

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:

• In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.
• In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.
• In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

One needn't even employ Occam's Razor to discount El-Kikhia's crazy nonsense to see that maybe we simply want to defend ourselves here in the West. So, Mansour, be thankful that your charge that it is "open season" on Moslems is just libel. And apologize for it.

In Charles Krauthammer's wise words, religious tolerance is a two-way street. People like El-Kikhia would do well to wrap their brains around that idea. But for now, I'd be happy for them to open their eyes ,just for starters, while they're at the wheel.

-- CAV