Towering Babble Over Cordoba House

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

What should one write about first and foremost? The “greening” of America? The “socialization” of America? The “de-exceptionalism” of America? Or the “Islamization” of America?

I do not think Charles Krauthammer saw it coming, but in a rare alignment of political planets, he agreed with President Barack Obama by opposing the planned site of the Ground Zero mosque in lower Manhattan for the same reason that Obama endorsed it. Krauthammer claims that Ground Zero is “sacred” and that no mosque should be built on or near it. Obama, on the other hand, claims that it is the right of Muslims to build a mosque on private property as an instance of “religious freedom,” which one guess he regards of “sacred,” as well.

One shakes one’s head over Krauthammer’s confusion, and is tempted to laugh at Obama’s citation of “private property,” an institution he is devoted to abolishing.

Krauthammer disappoints, because he is otherwise so perceptive in his criticism of Obama’s policies. In this instance he practically sides with Obama in the latter’s evaluation and esteem of Islam. In his Washington Post article of August 13, “Sacrilege at Ground Zero,” he repeats the politically correct notion that Islam was “hijacked” by “extremists.”

Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history --perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Calling the attack on this country by “Islamists” a “mass murder” without any qualifying description of it reveals that Krauthammer is utterly ignorant of the nature and ends of Islam. 9/11 was an attack on this country, a more emphatic declaration of war on America than was any previous terrorist depredation. 9/11 was not merely an act of “mass murder”; it was an attack designed to inflict the greatest number of casualties possible. In the next paragraph, Krauthammer compounds his ignorance.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

On the contrary, that “strain” of Islam is its core philosophical and political nature in action. It is fundamentally viral, vitriolic in its position on non-Muslims, and destructive. There is nothing “extreme” in how terrorists practice it. Their actions are not antithetical to it. It is as Islam is meant to be practiced. Run-of-the-mill, non-violent Muslims who do not practice Islam in its essentials are “sham Muslims,” who wish to have their mysticism and banal anonymity, too, passively content with their “submission.” It saves them from the task and responsibility of thinking.

Islam does not require agreement with its tenets, either with its violent or with its “pacific,“ esoteric ones; it demands mindless agreement with them. It is intolerant of internal dissension (witness the feuding between Sunnis, Shiites, and other Islamic sects), and of other religions. It cannot be “reformed” without destroying it. If it admitted disagreement, “reform” of Islam might be possible. But it forbids disagreement or dissension. So, there are no redeeming elements in Islam whatsoever. It is a moral code for manqués, for men and women who are human but who have voluntarily dispensed with their volition. It is for people who willingly surrender their minds and their identities to mysticism, either from fear of retribution for questioning it, or from a comfortable pragmatism.

This is what Krauthammer does not grasp. Further, he reveals his “conservative” take on property in his concluding paragraphs.

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all. These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred….

Build it anywhere but there.

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere. A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf's ostensible hope for the structure, would accept the offer.

There are no “bridges” Rauf seeks to build, except those that would more easily allow Islam to cross them to invade, occupy, and conquer America. The governor of New York was wrong to offer Rauf and his backers help in finding land to build the mosque (whose land? State-owned land or land seized by eminent domain?), and was in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibiting federal and state governments from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another.

As for zoning laws prohibiting liquor stores near schools and strip malls that “offend local sensibilities,” together with architectural codes and the like, these are wholly arbitrary statist laws that violate property rights. “Common decency,” moreover, is what apparently Rauf and his backers lack. And employment of the term “sacred” -- the nub of Krauthammer’s whole argument against the mosque -- is merely an unexamined emotional response to the prospect of a mosque being near Ground Zero.

“Build it anywhere but there”? Krauthammer should be perceptive enough to know that “there” is precisely where Rauf and his backers want the mosque, not for any “decent” reasons, but to erect a victory monument in Dar el-Harb, a country in which Islam is waging a war of conquest.

It is not so curious that some of the most prominent statists have come out in favor of the Ground Zero mosque: Obama, Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Governor Paterson, state Attorney General Cuomo, and others. They are all nascent totalitarians, as well. Of course they would be friendly to a totalitarian ideology, and practice what could be called “infidel taqiya” by posing their arguments for the mosque in terms of “religious freedom.”

Obama’s April 13th endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque is not an error based on ignorance of Islam, nor is it a surrender to political correctness. It is a sugar-coated expression of malice for a country that is resisting his desire to transform it into one huge socialist penitentiary, and a particular verbal middle finger extended to those who died at Ground Zero and their survivors. Continuing a practice begun by his whipping boy predecessor in the Oval Office, George Bush, Obama presided over a Ramadan dinner at the White House.

"Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country," Obamasaid at a White House iftar, the traditional breaking of the daily Ramadan fast.

Perhaps “anyone else” does have a right to practice his religion in this country, as long as he does not advocate murderous jihad against “anyone else” in this country. Muslims, however, are not “anyone else.” They are the self-effacing ciphers of a creed whose spokesmen boast that Islam will conquer America and urge the rank-and-file to engage in violent and stealth jihad. I cannot help but suspect that Obama knows this.

That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he continued. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure."

Some “private property,” apparently, is more equal than others, as Obama’s own “jihadist” socialist agenda can testify. The overall “writ of the Founders” has been abused and ignored in the pursuit of that agenda. But, that issue aside, he must also know that Islam’s commitment to religious freedom is nonexistent. What is not there cannot be “unshakeable.” How often have we heard those same spokesmen boast that America is destined to become a Muslim-ruled America, and that the Constitution is an abomination, contrary to “Allah‘s will,“ and must be eliminated?

As Leonard Peikoff noted, rights exist in a context. If a religion or a state has declared war on America, we have no obligation to "respect" its property rights and "point of view," here or abroad. We have every moral right to eliminate them as a threat and stop them from achieving their agenda. Rauf and his ilk pretend to extend the “olive branch” of peace and tolerance and “interfaith dialogue.” What he and his ilk are actually offering is poison ivy coated with arsenic.

Obama spent more time “honoring” Islam and its alleged contributions to America than he did those who were killed on 9/11 with the destruction of the World Trade Center. He tossed this offensively brief fillip in their direction:

Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

And,

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who led the response to that attack -- from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us also remember who we're fighting against, and what we're fighting for. Our enemies respect no religious freedom. Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam -- it's a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders -- they're terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children. In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -- and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Always make sure, one can imagine Rahm Emanuel advising Obama and his speech writers, to mention “innocent Muslims” killed on 9/11, in order to level the empathy. But, so what? Are any Muslims “innocent” who do not for any reason question the tenets of their faith? Those that do, become apostates who repudiate the faith -- and earn a death sentence. And, so what if al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than non-believers? It can boast that it killed 3,000 non-believers in one day, together with a handful of disposable Muslims.

One grows weary of hearing that 9/11 was “tragic.“ Earthquakes, tsunamis, nightclub fires, and head-on train collisions that result in innumerable deaths, are “tragic.” 9/11, London, Madrid, Bali, and the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing were acts of war. The thousands killed were casualties, not “innocent victims.” This is a reiteration of George Bush’s position on Islam, that Islam has been “hijacked.” Islam cannot be “distorted.”

As a political/religious ideology, Islam is the apotheosis of the psychotic. Listen to the speeches of prominent imams and mullahs on YouTube. Better yet, watch Geert Wilders’ Fitna, or Three Things about Islam You Didn’t Know, which clarifies the essentials of Islam. Any terrorist, living or dead, was exhorted by his Islamic religious leaders to do what he did or will do. Al Qaeda’s cause is the Taliban’s cause, as well as Hamas’s cause and Hezbollah’s and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s. And the Cordoba Initiative’s Imam Feisal Rauf’s.

Pamela Geller ruthlessly parses Obama’s pre-Ramadan dinner remarks in her Big Peace article of August 12th, “Obama Ramadanadingdong.”

Islam is more a political ideology than a religion or creed. Its critics, apostate Muslim and expert non-Muslim, know this, for otherwise they would not feel compelled to weigh in on the subject. What politicians ever felt compelled to defend Quakerism, or Amish-ism, or Scientology, for example, the way they do Islam?. I cannot think of any. There is no hidden agenda woven into those creeds' tenets. A totalitarian one is intricately woven through the whole fabric of Islam, in the Koran and the Hadith. Obama, Bloomberg, Cuomo, and other politicians focus on the religious face of Islam, and ignore the far more important political face of it.

This is for two reasons: it earns them brownie points with liberal/leftists (and with Muslims, of course), and because they are nascent totalitarians themselves. Examine their statist careers. Of course they are friendly to Islam. It is their own brand of deception, a kind of infidel taqiya. “I’m for ‘religious freedom’ and private property, too” -- wink, wink.

We are confronted with a tower of babbling rhetoric concerning the Ground Zero mosque, a literal “confusion of tongues” opposing and defending the structure. All of it, so far, ignores or disguises the true nature of Islam. The babble is a consequence of an abandonment of reason.

Crossposted at The Dougout