Mumbai and Islamic Terrorism
Bill Muehlenberg | 18.02.2009 19:35 | Analysis | Terror War
But Islamic terrorism has been going on constantly now for a number of years. It did not start with 9/11, and it did not just include the above well-known atrocities. The stream of Islamic violence and terror has been so steady and so relentless that one website is dedicated simply to monitoring the ongoing carnage.
http://TheReligionofPeace.com website has been established to document the ongoing war against the West carried out in the name of Islam. It provides a daily update on the number of terrorist attacks being carried out by Muslims. Any guesses as to how many have occurred since 9/11? Fifty? Nope. A hundred? Not even close? Five hundred? Higher! A thousand? You’re still not even in the ballpark. OK, two thousand. Sorry, but no prizes for you.
Let’s cut to the quick. Exactly how many acts of Islamic terrorism have occurred since September 11, 2001? 12,352, and counting. Yes you heard me right. In the past seven years over 12,000 acts of Islamic terrorism have taken place around the globe. That is almost 1800 a year, or almost 150 a month. Yet people insist that Islam is a religion of peace.
The website in question offers this rationale for its existence:
“On 9/11, nineteen committed Muslims believed they had a religious mandate to fly planes into buildings and slaughter thousands of innocent people. The Muslim world erupted with outrage over this horrible act of mass murder. Massive demonstrations were held in nearly every Muslim country and Western city. At these demonstrations, Muslim leaders harshly denounced Islamic terror and shared the many hundreds of verses from the Qur’an that encourage universal brotherhood, peace and tolerance. A slew of fatwas and clerical condemnations against terror soon followed. Tens of millions of ordinary Muslims also reacted by rallying against violence and demanding that their leaders root out and eliminate the Islamic terrorists and their supporters. These same Muslims and their clerics called for introspection and atonement, accepting the role that the radical elements of their religion played in the attacks, and committing themselves to combating and eradicating the misinterpretation of their religion - the Religion of Peace…”
“Well, not quite.
Obviously this didn’t happen. If it had, then Islamic terror would have ended, 9/11 would have been a singular event, and this website would not exist. Unfortunately, the optimistic and fictitious picture that we just painted of Muslim reaction to terror and the predominance of peaceful Qur’anic verses could not be any further from the truth. . . . That’s what makes it extremely odd that Islam should be called a Religion of Peace. Not only does it inspire an enormous amount of violence, but an astonishing level of indifference and self-centeredness as well.”
Of course many Muslims do deplore these acts of violence, barbarism and terrorism. But one wishes they would speak up just a bit more. Often their silence is deafening. Until we do see massive protests in Muslim-majority countries – as well as by Muslims living in the free West - denouncing Islamic violence and jihad, one can question just how committed most Muslims are to peace.
Of course a Politically Correct West, which is often in a state of dhimmitude, is not helping matters much. There are very few mainstream media outlets in the West actually willing to call a spade a spade. Consider the quite recent Mumbai massacre. Very few MSM outlets are even mentioning the “I” word. They are terrified of linking Islam in any way to what transpired last week.
Jewish commentator Don Feder has been tracking the leftist New York Times, for example. He is not impressed by what he sees: “The Times adamantly refuses to recognize a connection between Islam and worldwide terrorism”.
He continues, “The killers were variously described as ‘terrorists,’ ‘gunmen,’ ‘militants’ and ‘assailants,’ but never Muslims. The only time readers could catch a glimpse of the terrorists’ motivation was when the paper quoted them directly - as when they complained about the treatment of Muslims in India and the Kashmir or called for the release of ‘mujahedeen prisoners’.”
And the paper, like much of the MSM, did a good job of covering up the real extent of the bloodshed and horror: “In thousands of words of coverage, The New York Times never mentioned that victims’ bodies frequently bore the marks of torture. One of the doctors who performed post-mortems was quoted on the Indian news website http://Rediff.com as saying ‘of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks’.”
Islam expert Robert Spencer also noted this conspiracy of silence by much of the Western media. He refers to an article in which Muslims worry that the image of Islam might be tainted by such attacks. Says Spencer:
“Of course, there is one thing they could do about that that would actually begin to make people think better of Islam, but no one even whispers anything about doing it in this article or anywhere else. Imams could begin to saturate mosques and madrassas with the message that jihad warfare is never justified, that the imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law must be decisively rejected, and that peaceful coexistence as equals with unbelievers is to be maintained indefinitely. If Islamic clerics stopped talking about conquering Europe and America, and began to teach the opposite, things might begin to improve. If Muslim leaders worldwide energetically pronounced takfir upon - that is, declared to be non-Muslim - all those who maintained belief in the Qur’an’s literal words of warfare, and in the traditional Islamic doctrines regarding jihad warfare (whether hot war or otherwise), and upon anyone who wished to impose Shari’a upon unbelievers by whatever means and at whatever speed, and if those leaders demonstrated their sincerity by actions instead of mere words, informed non-Muslims might begin to think better of Islam.”
“But these things will not happen. They’re not even on the table. Instead, many of the same people quoted in this article work to brand any non-Muslim who points out the ways in which jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism as a ‘bigot’ or a ‘racist.’ And that in itself, however effective a tactic it may be among the ignorant and easily intimidated, is revealing.”
So jihad continues apace, as does Western appeasement. If and when the West wakes up to the dangers it is facing is unclear. So far we seem way too inclined to only believe the best about Islam, and only believe the worst about the West. That combination is a recipe for disaster. It will only result in the jihad watch tally count increasing by leaps and bounds every single day.
Bill Muehlenberg
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http://www.billmuehlenberg.com
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