STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Muslim Bogeymen
By Staff News & Analysis - August 24, 2010

Islam is the New Communism … Paul Hsieh wrote an excellent article about America's weakness in regards to the war against terrorists. However, he claimed that the mosque is distracting us from the real issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program. I respectfully disagree. The real issue is that we are fighting a war with Islam. The mosque, rather than distracting America, has brought her full attention to it. The mosque has refocused us on the fact that we were brutally attacked on 9/11, and Americans are starting to talk about it again. Videos about 9/11 are circulating the internet and discourse is taking place about who was responsible. People are learning about Islam and decisions are being made about who is to blame. – American Thinker

Dominant Social Theme: Islam is just the worst.

Free-Market Analysis: Both in terms of feedback to the Daily Bell and in the larger Western (American) society, we see an uptick of Islamic demonization. From our point of view, as we have expressed many times, this demonization of the "other" is a kind of power-elite dominant social theme. While the American Thinker is not exactly a mainstream 'Net publication, it does represent a certain strand of thinking that partakes of this meme. It might be characterized as "Islam is a fascist and bastardized belief system that is not a religion but a state-philosophy of mayhem and murder that demeans women and keeps societies in poverty."

We are on record as disagreeing with this point of view. We do have to admit that like any good meme it is continually being refined and that this refinement is the product of many brilliant minds. Originally, as we recall, the main criticisms of Islam focused on the Koran itself and its supposedly bloody incitements against foreign (non-Muslim) elements. But now the meme has morphed from what we can tell. Islam's critics today apparently claim that the religion cannot exist extant of the state and that it therefore a theocracy posing as a religion.

Of course we would like to point out that Islam seems to have existed in secular countries in various parts of the world for long periods of time without overt violence, or more than many Western communities, anyway. In Afghanistan, for instance the Pashtuns are Islamic but the religion has breen practiced in a way that is subordinate to the culture. Indonesia, with all its many government problems, is not an entirely theocratic state, even now. There are certainly other examples as well, to a greater or lesser degree.

What is also clear to us is that the more extreme forms of Islam have been cultivated in such places as Saudi Arabia which has a good deal of commerce with the West and which has supported and exported the kind of extremist Islam that certain Western intellectuals are now finding they despise. We have termed this trend "neo-authoritarian intellectualism" and the American Thinker article excerpted above may be seen within that context. Here's a little more from the article:

This is has been a difficult road, because Americans are benevolent and naïve concerning Islam. They are used to freedom of religion and they find it hard to condemn one. And that is precisely the problem, Americans see Islam as only a religion. It is not just a religion, it is also a sophisticated, detailed political ideology with the expressed goal of taking over the entire world by any means at its disposal, even if it includes lying and killing. Americans need to think of it as a social/political ideology, but they are so used to separating religion from politics (which was a first at the time of our country's founding) that they keep giving Islam the benefit of the doubt.

What is so striking about this sort of verbiage is that it partakes of the sort of condemnation of "anti-Semitic" sites aimed at Talmudic Jews. Here is an excerpt from the "epilogue" of a site entitled, TalmudUnmasked:

In this [site], I have quoted from only a very few of the Talmudic books which refer to the Christians. For the sake of brevity, and to spare your sensitive soul, I omitted many others which could have been included. These texts, however, which I have quoted should be sufficient to demonstrate how false are the statements of the Jews when they claim that there is nothing in the Talmud which teaches hatred and enmity for Christians. If it revolted you, Christian reader, to study the horrible blasphemies in this book, do not vent your anger on me. I did not state in the beginning that I was going to narrate something pleasant, but merely to show you what the Talmud really teaches about Christians, and I do not think I could have done so in a more suitable way.

I realize, however, that, since the truth does not please everyone, there are many who will become my enemies for thus having borne witness to the truth. And I have been reminded of this, both by the laws of the Talmud itself which threatens death to "traitors," and more so, by the warnings of those who have had experience of the actions which Jews take against those who make known things which are not favorable to them.

We have pointed out before, and will continue to point out that a religion of itself is a cultural environment not a political one. It is only when the power of the state itself is invoked via a theocracy, that the murders, torturing and mayhem begin in earnest and as polity. One could make the same arguments about Catholicism and even Hinduism and Judaism that are now being made about Islam. The texts of all great religions are replete with violent language. But that does not mean that worshipers incorporate that violence into their every day lives. Most people are not sociopaths and prefer to concentrate on the uplifting sentiments that major religions have in abundance.

The reason that Islam is being misrepresented as an intrinsically evil religion is in our view seemingly because the West itself needs a bogeyman. Our position on this point is certainly clear enough. The West is run by a power-elite that comprises a kind of inter-generational, conspiracy of extraordinarily wealthy families that endlessly seek more centralized governance for the West and even for the world. The terrible events of 9/11 seem to have provided a platform for energetic consolidations of authority in the US and Europe. As time goes on, Islam itself is increasingly demonized as a "terrorist" religion of fascist evil so that freedom may be squeezed from Western civil society.

After Thoughts

Many Muslim countries are poor and from a Western perspective "backward" – even the non-theocratic ones. But are they replete with institutionalized violence? The case is made that women in such countries are abused beyond measure, but the West has plenty of domestic violence against women (and children). Violence and cruelty against those who are weaker is ultimately an affliction of the human spirit not the provenance of religious texts.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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