On Saturday, November 4th a massive crowd estimated at 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to rally for Palestine and demand a cease-fire in the Israeli-Hamas war. The event featured numerous speakers—mostly young Muslim women and men—almost all of whom wore the black and white checkered keffiyeh which, thanks to Yasser Arafat, has become a symbol of the Palestine Liberation movement.
The speakers predictably condemned Israel, but almost all of them condemned America with equal if not greater vigor because of its support of Israel. America was portrayed over and over by many speakers as a racist, colonial power bent on subduing people of other skin colors.
There was nothing moderate or balanced about the presentations. The speakers pounded the lectern, raised their fists and led the crowd in chants of “Free, free Palestine from the river to the sea.” No regrets were expressed about the Israeli men, women, and children massacred in the initial Hamas assault. The sole focus was on the Gazans killed in the Israeli counter-attacks.
As I said, America was more roundly condemned than Israel. Several of the speakers talked of an American-backed “genocide.” One even referred to President Biden as “genocide Joe.”
The effect of watching the rally on television was unsettling. How was it that such a large crowd of pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas young people (many of them here on student visas) could be assembled in the nation’s capital to spout anti-American slogans in what can only be described as a threatening manner?
After the rally some of the protesters shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “Free Palestine” tried to break down the gate to the White House. And Saturday’s rally followed weeks of pro-Hamas protests on dozens of American college campuses.
One might argue that since many of the early rallies and protests were focused on Israel, there is no call for Americans to be alarmed. But the animosity is not aimed solely at Israel.
If the State of Israel were to disappear into the Mediterranean Sea (the meaning of “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free”), Palestinian protests would continue—as would Muslim protests in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and in numerous other places. The enemy is not only Israel but the whole non-Muslim world.
Keep in mind that when Iranian authorities lead the Iranian people in chants of “Death to Israel,” they never fail to add “Death to America.” Moreover, in the eyes of Iranian leaders Israel is only the “little Satan” whereas America is the “big Satan.”
Likewise, at the Washington rally, chants of “Free, free Palestine” were accompanied by chants of “From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!” But, of course, it would be extremely naïve to suppose that if the border walls came down, the protesters would be placated.
That is because the main complaint that Muslims hold against the citizens of other nations is not this or that political issue, but that they are non-Muslims. They don’t follow the laws of Allah and they don’t recognize that Mohammad is the prophet of Allah.
This is difficult for secular Westerners to grasp. They don’t take religion seriously and they think that the concept of religious war is a thing of the past.
But religious war (or jihad) is central to the Islamic faith. As Muhammad, the founder of Islam put it, “Allah has commanded me to fight against all people until all people confess there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”
In short, Islam is commanded to expand and to keep expanding until all nations are brought into the “Dar al-Islam—the House of Islam. Almost from the moment of its birth, Islam began a program of subjugation—first the conquest of Arabia and then, in little more than 100 years, the conquests of Syria, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Sindh and Spain. And this history of warfare and conquests continued until the fall of the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire in 1922.
Moreover, centuries before the State of Israel came into existence, these conquests were marked by the same kind of butchery that Hamas inflicted on the Israeli settlers. For example, during the first siege of Vienna in 1529, Muslim warriors cut babies out of their mother’s wombs and stuck them on pikes. During the siege of Constantinople, both boys and girls were raped inside the Church of Hagia Sophia. Altogether, thousands of Christians were killed or raped, some were hacked to pieces for the sake of entertainment, the rest were sold into slavery or taken off to faraway harems.
In doing so, the Turks were not betraying their faith but acting in accordance with it. In fact, Muhammad commanded his troops to “strike off their [infidels]heads” (Koran, 8: 12) and he personally participated in the beheading of hundreds of captured opponents (The Life of Muhammad). On another occasion he ordered his men to gouge out the eyes of captured thieves, and on still another occasion, he gave permission to his soldiers to rape women who had been captured in battle.
Tragically, this kind of behavior can not be written off as ancient history. It is happening today not only in the Middle East but also in Asia and Africa. In Nigeria, jihadists have trapped Christians inside churches during Sunday services and then set the churches on fire. Hundreds of Nigerian girls have been kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam.
The recent expulsion of 120,000 Christian Armenians from the Republic of Artsakh by Islamic Azerbaijan tells a similar story. Beheadings, including the beheading of children, are a common practice. According to a Gatestone Institute article, “Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.”
In short, rape, torture, and beheading is not a Hamas thing. It’s an Islamic thing. It’s not an aberration. It’s standard operating procedure.
Another feature of Islamic conquest is that it’s often preceded by migration. In fact, Muhammad’s career as a warlord began shortly after he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina.
Islam’s policy of invasion by migration helps to explain why the people at the Washington D.C. rally wanted to take down not only the border separating Palestine from Israel but also the border separating Mexico from the U.S. They do this not because they want to facilitate the quest of Central Americans for a better future, but because they seek a route by which Islamic jihadists can enter the United States.
A recent Customs and Border Protection (CBP) memo warns that terrorists from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad may have already begun to penetrate the Southern border. But the preferred type of migration invasion is the slow-motion type which is gradually turning Western Europe into a Muslim-dominated zone. A combination of legal and illegal immigration, and high Muslim birthrates has brought Europe to the edge of a demographic tipping point. Some large European cities are close to 40 % Muslim.
What’s more, naivete about Islam combined with an extremely low birth rate has resulted in a policy of appeasement on the part of Europeans. The decline of Christianity in Europe was matched by an increase in the belief that all religions teach the same values. Thus, it was widely believed of Muslims that they want what we want: tolerance, liberty, and equality for all. All that was needed was to provide a welcoming attitude and generous welfare benefits to the migrants.
But by-and-large, Muslims in Europe did not assimilate to European culture and values. Rather, they increasingly insisted that Europeans assimilate to Islam. The word “Islam” means “submission.” And little by little Europeans began to submit. Several Muslim leaders have admitted that their goal is to replace European culture with Islamic culture.
But how about America? Percentage-wise, there are far fewer Muslims in America than in Europe. If they ever gave it much thought, most Americans would assume that the Islamization of America is simply not possible.
Yet, America seems to be undergoing a softening-up process similar to the one that led up to the current crisis in Europe.
Like Europeans, Americans tend to assume that Muslims “want what we want.” Sure, Americans remember 9/11 and other Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil, but they have been taught that the terrorists are “misunderstanders” of Islam—a tiny minority of Muslims who have betrayed their faith. The vast majority of Muslims, we are assured, are moderate and peaceful.
Thus, Americans are highly susceptible to “stealth jihad”—a slow and steady cultural conquest that takes advantage of American tolerance and gullibility.
This softening-up process is already well-advanced– much more than most suspect. The fact that so many college students across the country rallied to support Hamas against Israel is one proof of this. It may have seemed spontaneous, but in reality, it was the result of years of ground-work: the establishment of activist Muslim Student Associations in practically every large and mid-size American university and the proliferation of radical Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)organizations. Meanwhile, wealthy Gulf Arab States such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia donated hundreds of millions of dollars to dozens of prestigious American universities with the aim of creating Islam-friendly courses taught by Islam-friendly professors, many with ties to radical Islamic groups.
One gauge of the effectiveness of this Islamic-funded college indoctrination is a recent Harvard/Harris poll which revealed that 48 % of 18–24-year-olds side more with Hamas than Israel.
But the indoctrination is not limited to colleges. Elementary and high schools teach that the word “Islam” means “peace” and that “jihad” is an “inner struggle.” Textbooks teach that Islam gently “expanded” into the territories they conquered, but that crusaders were bloodthirsty invaders. And, although American students are taught all the gruesome details of the Atlantic slave trade, they learn little if anything about the Arab slave trade which took many more lives. For many years, students have been taught a whitewashed version of Islam that will leave them unprepared to recognize or resist stealth jihad as they grow older.
You might think that you would know if this rose-colored version of Islam was being taught in schools. But schools aren’t very open when it comes to controversial topics. Consider that it took a very long time for most parents to realize that schools had been sexualizing children for decades.
And don’t assume that your children will get a more balanced view of Islam in Catholic schools. Since Vatican II, Catholic schools have taught that Islam is a fellow Abrahamic faith that shares much in common with Catholicism. The Council fathers were so happy to discover that Jesus is revered by Muslims, that they failed to notice that at the last judgement the Muslim Jesus will abolish Christianity.
Suffice it to say that the Catholic Church along with the mainstream Protestant churches is guilty of promoting a naïve and misleading view of Islam. Terrorists are often accused of misunderstanding Islam. But they understand it very well. Several prominent terrorist leaders such as Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda, Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheik”, and Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, held Ph.Ds. in Islamic studies. I don’t know of any Taliban leaders with a Ph.D., but it’s well to remember that the word “taliban” means “student.” Student of what? Well, Islam of course. Most of the Taliban leadership were educated at a prestigious seminary in Pakistan.
The real misunderstanders of Islam are all those, hopefully, well-intentioned school teachers, ministers, priests, professors and politicians who assure us that the followers of Muhammad “want what we want.”
If, as some are predicting, America is drawn into a conflict with a coalition of Islamic States and terror organizations, we will need a much deeper and realistic understanding of Islam than the shallow and superficial one we now have.
In a video that was published on MEMRI TV in December, 2022 Mahmoud al-Zahar, the co-founder of Hamas, talked about his goals: “The entire 510 million square kilometers of Planet Earth will come under [an Islamic system] where there is no injustice, no oppression, no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity.”
In other words, the whole world belongs by right to Islam.
That’s what committed followers of Islam want. Is that what we want?
Photo credit: Pixabay
