Circe in a Burqa

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

In Greek mythology, Circe was a beautiful sorceress who turned Odysseus' men into swine. With help from the god Hermes, Odysseus resisted Circe’s charms, freed his men, and lived with her for a year. The story of Circe and Odysseus had a happy ending. Their union was passionate. Their parting was amicable.

In America, the Statue of Liberty is our Circe, holding aloft the torch of freedom for those who flee servitude and degradation to live their lives unimpeded by tyrants and mobs.

In Islam, Circe (or woman) is an innately corrupting creature, the equal of dogs and monkeys and monkeys, who must be covered from head to toe lest her charms lead Muslim men astray from the path of purity and righteousness and release the beast in them. It is a version of Christianity’s original sin.

Sean Hannity recently had on his TV show two guests to discuss the recent ban in France of the burqa, and its proposed ban in Belgium: Bridgette Gabriel, president of the American Congress for Truth (ACT), and author of They Must Be Stopped, and Edina Lekovic of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It is a measure of the West‘s self-induced vulnerability, however, that all it can fear and combat are the outward manifestations of Islam. Such as the burqa. . .

The French ban of the burqa, and the proposed ban of it in Belgium, may be signs of an awakening but belated concern about the incremental Islamification of Europe. But the bans do not address the essential peril posed by Islam, which is its aggressive, all-consuming ideology. The banishers are unable or unwilling to attack that ideology. They forget or ignore the fact that the religion cannot be segregated from its politics; they are one and the same. There is probable truth to Gabriel’s contention that where the burqa is worn in Western countries, that is where the “extremists” may be found. But will banning this degrading attire somehow alter the venues of alleged “extremism“ or “radicalism”? No. Islam is by its nature radical and extremist, as radical, extremist, totalitarian, anti-reason, and anti-individual rights as was Nazism. One may as well have forbidden Nazis from wearing jackboots and flaunting the swastika. Islam is Islam.

Edina Lekovic for the MPAC claimed she is against the burqa, too, but insisted that it is a woman’s choice to wear it. Which is balderdash. It is worn because a woman is an obedient, brain-dead manquétte, or because she is forced to by order of some cleric‘s interpretation of the Koran and Hadith (there are four main schools of Islam), or from fear of reprisal from her husband, relatives and other Muslims if she does not wear it (that, or the chador, or a veil, or some clothing that neutralizes her feminine existence). In many Islamic countries, she would risk arrest by the religious police. No woman would consciously choose to wear the suffocating, gender-obliterating, self-existence-erasing garb. There is no rational reason for any woman to parade in public looking like an inhuman blob. In all instances of its being worn, it is evidence of mindless or fear-based submission. Submission is, after all, the signature act and virtue of Islam.

Towards the end of the Hannity segment, the host brought up the subject of Imam Faisal Rauf and the Ground Zero mosque. He ran a National Republican Trust ad against the Ground Zero mosque, which CBS and NBC refused to air. Gabriel had enough time to mention that Rauf’s father was connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of all existing Islamic terror organizations, and that the mosque is an insult to those killed on 9/11. Lekovic claimed the mosque was inspired by a “exact opposite vision of Islam as the one that inspired the 9/11 hijackers,“ and more or less repeated Rauf’s public statements about the mosque’s purportedly benign purpose.

Hannity cited Rauf’s statementsin public and from Rauf’s book, in an attempt to underscore the fact that what Islamists say in public, in English, to the West, is the exact opposite of what they really mean when addressing anyone in Arabic. Lekovic simply launched into her own panicky exhibit of taqiya, or the Islamic art of dissimulation, sanctioned by the Koran.

Allow me to quote briefly from Rauf’s Wikipedia entry:

In 1997, Abdul Rauf founded the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a civil society organization aimed at promoting positive engagement between American society and American Muslims. The organization is now headed by his wife, Daisy Khan. In 2003, Abdul Rauf founded the Cordoba Initiative, another registered nonprofit organization with offices in both New York and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As CEO of Cordoba Initiative, Abdul Rauf coordinates projects that emphasize the bonds that connect the Muslim World and the West.

The name of his organization was carefully devised, but nevertheless is telltale. What exactly are Muslims “advancing” toward? Why do they need an organization to ‘advance“ them? Do they not now enjoy the full benefits of citizenship? What else could there be an advancement to, unless it is a Sharia-compliant America? The acceptance of primitive, Dark Age Sharia law as a multiculturalist-tolerant “coequal” of Western, objective law? Yes. Rauf’s organization is merely a smiley-face front for the conquest of America, just as CAIR and the MSA are. And Rauf himself has terrorist ties. These have been so thoroughly documented that it would be redundant to discuss them here.

What is equally telltale was Rauf’s refusal to condemn Hamas, an organization that is inspired by the “exact opposite” of what purportedly inspires Rauf.

"Look, I’m not a politician. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question," he told WABC interviewer Aaron Klein.

Asked again for his opinion on Hamas, an exasperated Rauf wouldn't budge. "I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy," Rauf said, insisting that he wants to see peace in Israel between Jews and Arabs.

And, what bonds connect the Muslim World and the West? Are they the bonds of master and slave? No such bonds ever existed or exist now -- unless we let them grow, and then they would become fetters. Hamas’s conception of peace is the nonexistence of Israel. Rauf knows this.

The West and the Muslim World are not religious, but ideological antagonists.

Disagreement exists about the Ground Zero mosque. Some of it is honest disagreement. The preponderance of evidence that cites the mosque’s actual purpose is on the side of those who oppose it. American liberty is under attack on at least two fronts: by our own government, and by Islam. Opposing the one attack to the neglect of the other still imperils us. Both attacks are of equal importance to me, posing the same mortal dangers, and both can be repelled and defeated by using the same arguments: if one opposes Islam (and Sharia law) because it violates individual rights, that is the same as opposing the government’s violation of individual rights to impose de facto socialism. (The Islamists are also enemies of capitalism, and have made no bones about it.)

If we are addressing sentient beings whose minds are open to reason, they would concur with the corollary. If Sharia law is repugnant to American values for that reason, why should not secular socialism/fascism be equally repugnant? Switch the subjects around and ask the same question. The same argument can be made against Obamacare and similar legislation, such as financial reform, environmental regulations, and so on, as against all the totalitarian attributes of Islam.

The hypothetical victory of men of reason and advocates of individual rights that saw the retreat of statism might lay the groundwork for repelling the incursions of Islam. But, how long would it take to achieve such a victory? A generation or two? In the meantime, Islam would be “advancing” in this country. It is no coincidence that the left has allied itself with Islam and is friendly to any force that would vanquish its political institutions and Americans alike.

Defenders of the mosque backers’ alleged property rights must concede that our situation is absurd and unprecedented: We are burdened with a government whose current stewards have a ravenous appetite for power, and who seem to not mind the incursions being made in this country by a rival ideology, because that incursion will also help to dissolve the country they hate and wish to “remake” as a “people’s republic.” Which one do we take up intellectual arms against first? This column has written with equal fervor about Obama and his policies as well, as it has against Islam and the Ground Zero mosque and the horrors of its own.

How, then, should one weigh the parallel evils? In both the short and long runs, which phenomenon poses the most immediate peril to American liberties? Should we suffer incremental impoverishment from socialism and fascism, or should we suffer the risk being maimed or murdered by a car bomb and have the American population at large become fair game for activist and intimidating domestic jihadists, as the Europeans are?

I can understand Leonard Peikoff’s caveat during his recent podcast on the Ground Zero mosque, that his calm delivery should not be mistaken for disinterestness or distance from the subject. I do not think he ever imagined that the U.S. would descend to such an ignominious state and that the culture would become so irrational that it would defend its destroyers.

From my perspective, the insinuation by stealth and “tolerance” under the auspices of multiculturalism of Sharia law poses just as much a “clear and present danger” to me as the machinations of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al. to transform this country into one big prison of indentured servants to the state.

I reject with equal passion the prospect of Circe (or the Statue of Liberty) draped in a burqa, just as I reject the prospect of Barack Obama dressed as Uncle Sam.

Crossposted at The Dougout