Hugh Fitzgerald: In An Age of Terror, What Is The Responsibility of Glenn K. Beaton? (Part Four)
Still, I won’t blame all Muslims for that attack or for one congresswoman’s stupid remark about it. I firmly believe that to do so would dishonor my decent friends who died that day.
“I won’t blame all Muslims for that attack [9/11],” he tells us. But who has blamed “all Muslims” for the 9/11 attack? No one. That is a charge made by apologists for Islam, wishing to present sober islamocritics as incapable of distinguishing among Muslims. There are many Jihadis, and there are far more supporters of violent Jihad who have not themselves participated, but fortunately, they are not “all [the] Muslims.” The question is: are those Muslims who do not participate in violent Jihad refraining because they have a moral objection, they don’t believe in violence, or because they have other more effective ways of conducting Jihad (as Jihad of the pen, speech, or Jihad of wealth, or demographic Jihad), or because they believe that Muslim terrorism is in current circumstances in the West unwise, and counterproductive?
That leaves me with the question posed at the outset. What is the responsibility of that congresswoman and other Muslims in today’s world of terror?It’s this: They need to step up. They need to man up. They need to Allah up. The many decent and devout ones need to distance themselves from — nay, they need to condemn, ostracize and, if necessary, destroy — the few psychopaths.
“The few psychopaths”? The “few psychopaths” who have conducted 35,000 terror attacks around the world since 9/11? For 1,400 years Muslims have been conducting violent Jihad against non-Muslims. It was not a “few psychopaths,” but perfectly mainstream Muslims, following the dictates of the Qur’an, who managed to conquer many lands and subjugate many peoples, throughout the Middle East, all across North Africa, and then Spain, and even plunged deep into France, where their invasion was finally halted by Charles Martel at Tours in 732 A.D. Muslim armies conquered Sassanian Persia, islamizing a country that had been entirely Zoroastrian, and after many attempts over the centuries, Muslim armies finally conquered both the Byzantine Empire and India. They sowed terror wherever they went. During the centuries of Mughal rule in India, according to the historian K. S. Lal, between 70 and 80 million Hindus were killed. Were all of these Muslims who spread Islam by violence and terror “psychopaths,” or were they orthodox Muslims following the murderous dictates of the Qur’an? You know the answer to that. And Beaton would, too, if he would only take the time to study the Qur’an.
In short, the responsibility of Muslims is the same as the responsibility of Jews, Christians and all other people of faith and civilized secularists. In the battle against violent bigotry, there’s no middle ground. You’re either with us or against us.Be with us. Be our brothers and sisters in our battle for humanity. We want you.
The “responsibility” of Muslims is greater than that of “Jews, Christians, and all other people of faith” because the worldwide terrorism we see today is almost entirely that carried out by Muslims against non-Muslims. Think of Europe, where Muslims have carried out major attacks in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris (many times), Toulouse, Nice, Magnanville, St. Etienne de Rouvray, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London (many times), Manchester, Berlin, Hamburg, Wurzburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Helsinki, Turku, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beslan. In Africa, there have been repeated Muslim attacks on non-Muslims in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania. In Asia, Muslim terrorists have struck at Christians in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, at Hindus in Mumbai, in Delhi, in New Delhi, in Hyderabad, in Calcutta and, most recently, at several Christian targets in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Or think of the terror attacks just in the United States, in New York (many times), Boston, Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Fort Hood, Little Rock, Orlando, San Bernardino, Chattanooga?
Muslim terrorism is not the product of psychopaths, but of devout Muslims all over the world who are following dutifully what the Qur’an commands.
If that’s not reason enough to be with us, then be with us just to be on the winning side. Because we will indeed win, I promise you.
Does Beaton know what he is asking of Muslims? Apparently unfamiliar with the Islamic texts, he does not realize that he is telling them to ignore the commands to wage Jihad that are found throughout the Qur’an. He is asking them to ignore the example, too, of Muhammad himself, who claimed he was “made victorious through terror.” He is asking Muslims not to be Muslims, but who is going to tell him that? He will have to come to that understanding on his own. Mainstream Muslims will never stop heeding those immutable texts. And when he tells the world’s Muslims that they should “be with us just to be on the winning side” because “we will indeed win, I promise you,” he is issuing a kind of triumphalist threat that will not be well received by Muslims. They will be offended by Beaton’s prediction of a victory by the world’s Infidels, for they know that Allah is on their side; Allah is the “best schemer,” and he will not let them down.
Perhaps Beaton will surprise everyone; perhaps he will read and study the Qur’an, and some of the Hadith, and write another, very different, article about Muslim terrorists, this one based not on fantasy, but on the unpleasant reality of those immutable texts. He could do it in the form of an address to his “Muslim friends,” asking them how they think non-Muslims such as himself react when they read such Qur’anic verses as 2:191-193, 3:151, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, and 98:6. And then he might ask them, in a more-in-sorrow tone, something like this:
“How do you, the moderate Muslims of whom there must be many [not repeating that factitious “fact” about 99.9% of the world’s Muslims being good guys], propose to deal with these texts, that preach hatred and contempt for, exalt violence towards, command the killing of, and the sowing of terror among, all non-Muslims? What is the responsibility of Islam, of Muslims? Is it really enough for some Muslims to denounce this or that terrorist attack by fellow Muslims? Don’t we have to address the source of so much bloodshed? The Islamic texts have to be dealt with, if there is ever to be a way out of this morass — or is there no way out, as long as you continue to believe that the Qur’an is the uncreated, immutable word of God? We Need To Talk.”
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