Whenever the question of Islam and violence, specifically
terror, is raised, we are repeatedly told that "the vast majority of Muslims
in the world are peaceful people" who never engage in terror. This is
entirely accurate.
And entirely irrelevant.
The vast majority of Germans living in the Nazi era were also
peaceful; very few ever so much as laid a hand on a Jew. So, too, the vast
majority of Russians never killed anyone while 20-40 million of their fellow
citizens were murdered by their Communist regime under Stalin. The point
here is that the threat to civilization emanating from within Islam is no
more obviated by the fact that the great majority of Muslims are not violent
than the threat that emanated from Nazism was obviated by the peaceful
behavior of the great majority of Germans or the threat from Soviet
Communism was nullified by the nonviolence among the great majority of
Russians. Germany was a threat to civilization because Nazis and
their ideology took over German society while the majority of Germans (the
"good Germans") either supported Nazi ideals or did nothing. Russia was a
threat to civilization because Communists took over the country, and the
great majority of Russians either supported Papa Stalin or did nothing. Some
Islamic societies are today becoming a threat to civilization because
Islamic totalitarians and terrorists are taking over those societies while a
majority of Muslims either support their ideals or do nothing.
That is why it is meaningless at best and dishonest at worst to
deny the threat to civilization coming from various Muslim countries by
noting that most Muslims are not violent. Only a handful of Saudis
terrorized America on 9-11-01, but a large majority of Saudis support Osama
bin Laden. Few Palestinians strap bombs onto their children's bodies, but
the majority of them support such evil and none others publicly morally
condemn it.
At this moment, the dominant strain of Islamic thought is
totalitarian, meaning that wherever possible, a government should be Islamic
and govern according to a strict interpretation of the Sharia (Muslim
religious law). Furthermore, when necessary and when possible, the Islamists
believe these religious laws should be imposed violently -- as in Sudan,
Nigeria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In addition, the dominant ideological
trend in much of Islamic society is hate-filled. What is said daily about
Jews in Middle Eastern mosques rivals what the Nazis said about Jews. And
not only in mosques. During Ramadan, Egyptian television is running a
41-part series based on the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion."
For all these reasons, one's moral assessment of what is taking
place in the Muslim world must be made independent of the fact that the
great majority of Muslims are peaceful people. Their peaceful lifestyle is
not influencing the bellicose trends in their religion.
Thus, what is most frightening is not that there are Muslim
terrorists, but by how little criticism of Islamic terror emanates from
normative Islamic groups. While some Muslim groups have condemned individual
acts of Islamic terror such as 9-11, not one significant Muslim group in the
world, including here in free America, has condemned Islamic terror
generally. And the leaders of Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious
institution of Islamic learning, have actually morally and religiously come
out in support of Islamic suicide terror against Israelis.
So the fact that the majority of those living in the Islamic
countries are good people is of no consequence. Unless they do something to
condemn and to isolate the Muslim totalitarians and terrorists in their
midst, history will judge them as it has all the good Germans during the
Holocaust.
