An uphill struggle to sell Islam
If you ask me, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is going about it all wrong in trying to sell American infidels on Islam.
CAIR’s pitch is that Islam is “a religion of peace.” That’ll never work. There’s simply too much news undermining the proposition. Here’s a helpful tip for CAIR from a friendly infidel/Crusader, namely, me:
Instead of the “religion of peace” sales spiel, stress the benefits the faith has to offer in the hereafter. Especially for guys. As I understand it, in Islamic paradise, there’s no sitting around on tufts of clouds all day listening to angels pluck harp strings. Booooring. I gather that the paradise of Islam offers what guys — heterosexual ones, anyway
— like most. And we all know what that is. Translations vary, but the Koran in general promises the faithful a sort of paradisiacal, bacchanalian sexcapade. “Full-breasted” gals galore. Plus “full cups of wine.” Or so I read, anyway.
As for the well-known 72 virgins, they are details promised not in the Koran, but in the Hadiths, the collections of sayings attributed to Mohammad. This I pick up from the Islamic scholars. The Hadiths are somewhat less authoritative than the Koran, I’m told, but still not without theological heft. The good news for guys is — according to leading scholars of the faith
— that the number, 72, is a minimum figure. Those who demonstrate exceptional piety on earth can expect a heavenly compensation substantially exceeding that number, according to the Islamic experts. Moreover. the great Hadith commentator alSuyuti, in 1505, fittingly promised guys what not even Levitra promises: “eternal” arousal. This pledge, perhaps, compensates for Islam’s arrangement limiting females in the hereafter to just one guy each.
Another major Hadith commentator, al-Ghazali, declared a few centuries earlier that in paradise you’ll need only to fantasize and the fantasy will be fulfilled at once. But rather than emphasizing such strong selling points, CAIR persists in the less promising marketing strategy of highlighting what it insists is the faith’s amicable and tolerant nature. The trouble is that hardly a day goes by without some grisly incident in the news casting doubt on the sales pitch. CAIR persists, however, in pushing the religion-of-peace case. CAIR takes a line from the old Marx brothers’ movie. CAIR asks us infidels: “Who you gonna believe, us or your own eyes?”
This puts CAIR in the untenable position of insisting that terrifying incidents in the name of Islam bear no relationship to the faith whatsoever. Not even when the perpetrators cry out “Allahu akhbar!” in the midst of the deed.
But the militant fanatics of the faith surely don’t derive their notions entirely from their warped psyches alone. Osama bin Laden seemed to possess a pretty solid knowledge of the Koran. He often quoted it at length from memory. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam also surely knows a thing or two about the Koran. I wager he can point you right to the passages that support his perfervid anti-Semitism — 5.60, for example, wherein Jews are said to be “cursed” by Allah as “apes and swine.”
Muslims of less belligerent disposition — surely the majority — offer calming interpretations of such truculent Koran passages. But the more excitable adherents of the faith can hardly be faulted for noticing a pronounced tendency of the sacred text to obsess over the perfidy of non-Muslims and the comeuppance they are due to get one day.
Greatly complicating CAIR’s efforts to market Islam as an ecumenical faith of brotherly love is the fundamental usagainst-them theology of the faith — the division of mankind into Dar al-Islam, “House of Islam,” i.e., Muslims, pitted against Dar al-Harb, “House of War,” i.e., everybody else.
The Koran seems to have much to say about “unbelievers” (as I see it calls non-Muslims) but little to say about progressives’ very favorite topic, diversity. Diversity, however, is constantly invoked on behalf of Islam in America and Europe. Ironic, eh?
Despite glitches, CAIR from time to time does seem to be making incremental progress in its uphill quest to assuage the misgivings of the infidel world. But then along come setbacks in the news, erasing the gains. Take, for example, the case of Muzzammil Hassan, successful PakistaniAmerican businessman, founder of Bridge TV. Bridge TV was to be a major effort to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims as hotheads prone to violence. Then Hassan up and decapitated the wife. Oops.
More recently, there was the incident in France, a hostage-taking by an Islamic militant in a supermarket. Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame of the French National Gendarmerie courageously offered himself in exchange for the release of a woman hostage. The militant accepted the deal, then cut Beltrame’s throat and shot him for good measure. Allahu akhbar.
Also recently, Umar Ahmed Haque drew a 25year sentence for grooming youths at an East London mosque as “hitmen for Allah,” as he termed it. Haque’s indoctrination program included showing videos of ISIS beheadings to his more than 100 junior jihadi charges.
Despite such recurrent news events, Islam surely is indeed a religion of peace to most Muslims, who practice it as such in their own lives. Yet, mistrust of the faith persists. “Islamophobia,” CAIR labels it.
According to the Pew Research Foundation’s polling, 41 percent of Americans persist in the belief that Islam encourages violence more than other religions. Well, duh. (Only 25 percent of Democrats think so, however, the majority of them, perhaps, being unwilling to put anything past the Maryknoll Sisters, the Quakers and such.)
The negativity toward Islam is even more marked elsewhere, Pew’s polling reveals. Seventytwo percent of Hungarians, 69 percent of Italians, 66 percent of Poles, 65 percent of Greeks and 50 percent of Spaniards are reported to have “unfavorable” views of the faith. That’s a lot of Islamophobia.
The polling surely doesn’t make CAIR’s labors any lighter in reporting that Muslims around the world favor the death penalty for any who dare to leave Islam for another faith. Favor it, moreover, by massive, enthusiastic margins. Egypt, 86 percent; Jordan, 82 percent; Afghanistan, 79 percent; Pakistan, 76 percent.
But the question is predictably posed: Isn’t the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible likewise crammed with nasty, exclusionary, triumphalist exhortations and violent imagery as well? The answer is: Yes, absolutely. Are there fanatics who take the Biblical stuff seriously? Yes, absolutely.
But the tiny Westboro “Baptist” Church lunatics, say, or the even more minuscule Branch Davidian wackos aren’t remotely the equivalent of, for example, Al Qaida or Hamas or ISIS or Hezbolah. Heck, they’re not remotely the equivalent of Abu Sayyaf or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Jemaah Islamiya or Ansar al-Islam or Al Shabaab or Haqqani Network or Boko Haran or Al-Nusra Front or Abu Nida or Al Badr or Egyptian Islamic Jihad or Harkat-al-Jihad al Islami or Islamic Jihad Union or Jaish-e-Mohammed or...whew, outta breath.
That’s but a partial recitation from the FBI’s official list of violent Islamist organizations. Making CAIR’s work all the more difficult. As if it weren’t difficult enough already. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
I’m telling you, CAIR, you guys have a blockbuster winner right there in front of your noses. Go with the sexual utopia pitch!
Greatly complicating CAIR’s efforts to market Islam as an ecumenical faith of brotherly love is the fundamental usagainst-them theology of the faith — the division of mankind into Dar al-Islam, “House of Islam,” i.e., Muslims, pitted against Dar al-Harb, “House of War,” i.e., everybody else.