JOHN ESPOSITO’S MOMENT OF TRUTH

If Lebanon was George W. Bush’s moment of truth as John Esposito wrote for The Arab American News.com, what was Mr. Esposito’s moment of truth? Surely, he has had one—everyone has a moment of truth, some more than others. William Jefferson Clinton had several starting with it ‘depends on what is is.’ Jimmy Carter has one every day. Andrew Jackson’s moment of truth lasted 40 years. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

So what about John Esposito? Was his moment of truth the day he converted to Islam? He had spent ten years in a Catholic monastery. That’s a lot of sackcloth and Hail Mary’s He must have spent at least a year on his knees. What went wrong? Didn’t he get enough Holy Water? Maybe he fell and struck he head on the font. That’s hard on George Wallace’s pointy-headed intellectuals—makes them dull boys.

After monastery, he taught high school and then studied theology at St. John’s University. One begins to detect a pattern here. Hail Mary’s in the morning, Our Father’s in the afternoon, Acts of Contrition in the evening and Syncretism in between. All that religion might have been too much for him. It was for Joe Stalin. He should have eased off a bit. Jerry Falwell had time for only one religion and compared to Esposito he’s completely sane.

Then he went to Temple University; and while earning his PhD, he studied Islam. Maybe that’s when he discovered Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, only a mere prophet, one of Mohammed’s helpers. But that wouldn’t have been a moment of truth, it would have been a moment of deception—self-deception. He didn’t have to believe it. He should have taken a Sabbatical, spent a month at the Playboy Mansion, put aside all that religious nonsense; had coffee with Michael Newdow. Alas, now he is taking money—big money—from the Wahhabi branch of the Saudi Barbarian Royal Family and acting like he actually knows something about religion and writing foolish articles like the one that appeared recently in The Arab American News.com. If he’s not careful he could end up like Noam Chomsky. They both have that lean and hungry look. Is that you, Cassius?

Esposito quoted a recent Gallup World Poll that said 91-95 percent of Muslims did not believe America was trustworthy, friendly or cared about human rights. Esposito sets great store by this poll. Nonetheless, one must remember these 91-95 percenters approved the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, rioted in the streets and burned buildings because a couple of artists drew cartoon pictures of Mohammed, and turned a blind eye toward the slaughter of millions of non-Muslims by Muslims in Sudan, East Timor, India, and the Philippines, to say nothing of jumping for joy at 9/11. Why would anyone with the least pretense toward humanity want to be perceived as trustworthy and friendly by such people? The last thing Winston Churchill wanted was to be idolized by the Nazis. Killing Jews is nothing to be proud of. Islam has a long history of wanting to kill Jews.

“America,” writes Esposito, “with its unconditional support of Israel, has become a partner not simply in a military action against Hamas or Hezbollah militants but in a war against democratically elected governments in Gaza and Lebanon, a long time US ally.” Ally…Lebanon, an ally? Of course—those letters of condolence after the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 had killed 241 American servicemen! How could one forget that! It might not be like coming ashore at Normandy or Tarawa or supporting the US in the UN but it’s what passes for being an ally in the late 20^th and early 21^st Century.

Esposito had a chance for a moment of truth during the 34-day war but he blew it. There is no direct correlation between democratically elected governments and democracy. Esposito should have known that but it went over his head like most of Seinfeld’s advice to George Costanza. Democracy is as much cultural as it is political. It comes from the heart, not from the Qur’an. It was born in the minds of the Greek philosophers and birthed by Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton. It did not spring full-blown from the head of Mohammed. Why Esposito would equate elections with democracy is troubling only if one thinks he cares more about democracy then he does about the Qur’an.

Islam’s track record is frightening—not a single democracy in 1,400 years and things are getting worse instead of better partly because of the actions of converts like Esposito who ignore democracy while promoting a system of religious servitude that would have made Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest get down on their knees in front of Old Abe to beg forgiveness.

The words used to describe Israel’s actions in the 34-day war are ‘disproportionate response’ and ‘excessive use of force.’ Olmert used a sledgehammer to kill a fly and missed. That doesn’t mean sledgehammers don’t work. Uncle Sam used a sledgehammer on Herr Adolph—a very effective weapon if one follows the instructions.

US Congressman Tom Lantos, (D-CA), has it right. He intends to ask the Bush administration to freeze the $230 million aid package to Lebanon until somebody other than Hezbollah controls Lebanon’s border with Syria. The United Nations Peace Keeping Force cannot be counted on. Even if Mack Sennett were put in charge of the Blue Helmets it is doubtful if he could raise that highly politicized organization to the level of the Keystone Kops let alone to Barney Fife and Inspector Clouseau.

John Esposito is on the advisory board of the Institute for Islamic Political Thought. (Everything Islamic it political and everything political is Islamic) Hamas leader, Azzam Tamimi, is director of the Institute. Esposito has said, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” He wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to say this. Esposito is confused. Freedom fighters who are fighting for an exclusive right to oppress other people are not freedom fighters, a distinction beyond the comprehension of most Muslims and the radical left. Esposito also said Muslims should not criticize Muslim leaders who say suicide attacks on Israeli citizens are justified.

George W. Bush had his moment of truth on 9/11. Esposito, like Doctor Faustus, had his moment of truth (apostasy) when he made his pact with the Wahhabi devil.

RED CARPET TREATMENT AT O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

Willie Sutton followed the bank president through the row of teller’s cages. He winked at the blonde; he knew he shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was like a dream. The bank president showed him the surveillance cameras, the alarm system; explained how they worked, how they could be deactivated. Then he smiled; he couldn’t give Willie a demonstration, he said, because it would disturb his employees and time was money. Ha-ha! Then he took Willie to the vault.

“Look at this door, Mr. Sutton,” he boasted. “Hardened steel, bomb and pressure resistant, triple-glazed electrostatic powder coated…a good vault door can weigh as much as 100,000 pounds. We use a delayed aggress electromagnetic time lock. If this sounds confusing, it isn’t. The whole system can be shut down by a single toggle switch on the underside of the desk in my office…Say…did you get one of our complimentary floor plans?

“This is a low crime area and the police aren’t around all that much. You will find Car 54 at Dunkin’ Donuts at 2 A.M. every morning—you can set your watch by them. Our security personnel are hired through the Barney Fife Employment Agency. We get only the very best. They don’t do any profiling; they’re not allowed to. They’ve all been through sensitivity training. A person like you, Mr. Sutton, could walk right in here, rob this bank, and walk out without anybody noticing, provided, of course, you knew how everything worked.”

***Willie was on the phone to Dillinger and Frank and Jesse before he realized he had been dreaming. Nuts! It had seemed so real! Well, it was time to catch the plane for Miami. He glanced at the newspaper. Ah-hah! There it was! The reason for his dream! It leapt right up at him from the front page like the first dum in Joe Friday’s dum-de-dum-dum. Oh, how he hated that guy. Let’s see…what did the article say? The Department of Homeland Security takes Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on behind-the-scenes guided tour of security arrangements at O’Hare International Airport? Customs and Border Patrol agents explain to CAIR what screeners look for in high-risk passengers? Apologize profusely for past wrongs?

Willie remembers…April 9, 2004, Randall Todd Royer of CAIR sentenced to 20 years in jail for aiding and abetting terrorist activities. It didn’t make sense. Why would…

Agents are told that jihad is a struggle against sin. It has nothing to do with violence. Islam is a religion of peace and toleration.

Willie remembers…September 2003, Bassem Khafagi of CAIR pled guilty to charges of bank and visa fraud. It didn’t make sense.

More than 30 Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers have been spun through a cultural sensitivity program by CAIR officials Christina Abraham and Mariyam Hussain.

Willie remembers…Mariyam is CAIR Prison Project Coordinator.

(Christina Abraham filed the original complaint against Thomas Klocek, the DePaul University professor who was fired for disagreeing with a radical Muslim student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine. Christina demanded an immediate firing—no hearing, no nothing. Klocek had not shown the proper deference and respect to one of DePaul’s most cherished and protected minorities—Muslim student radicals. Klocek had raised his voice above a whisper. He had defended Israel’s right to exist—he had not shouted “Death to Palestine.”

Was he dreaming? There was more.

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Chicago’s CAIR office, had met with O’Hare security employees to explain the nature of Muslim-American complaints against airport security procedures.

(Previously, on MSNBC’s Tucker with Tucker Carlson, Rehab had told Tucker what he thought of strip searching. “Whose standards are you using for what strip is?” he demanded. “For this girl, as a female, she has a right to conceal whichever part of the body she wants. Her hair is and her headscarf, really, it just like her blouse and skirt. You cannot remove any of these articles of clothing.” As far as Rehab was concerned, the Qur’an and Sharia Law trumped the US Constitution.

Willie scowled…something wasn’t right here. If Christians converted to Islam would they automatically have the right to…Naw! That wasnonsense! Air travel is not a guaranteed right. The Constitution didn’t say anything about air travel and he was sure the Qur’an didn’t either. He had been a pretty good jailhouse lawyer at one time. They shouldn’t even be discussing this. Now it if was a camel caravan…

Suddenly, Willie remembers…August 21. 1971, Angela Davis supplying the guns the Black Panthers smuggled into George Jackson at Soledad…a nasty piece of business.

Rehab says Hassan al-Banna founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, mother of all modern terrorist organizations has been a major influence on his life. The main influences on Willie’s life had been Frank and Jesse.

On to the computer to check up on CAIR: Omar Ahmad, co-founder of CAIR: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant: the Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” It was food for thought.

***Willie missed his flight to Miami. He spent the night and the next day pacing the floor. That night he called John Dillinger. “Say, John,” he said. “I think I’ve got a foolproof way to get into banks…Ever thought of becoming a Muslim…Yeah, a Muslim. You know, them guys with the turbans? The women wear headscarves…Think of it, John. You won’t have to wear a mask…just a headscarf…You can hide your gun in it too…No, I’m not crazy! It’s called a hijab…Hello, John? John? How about that! You finally get a good idea and the man hangs up on you!”

THE MUSLIM-AMERICAN HOMELAND INSECURITY CONGRESS

The plot had been foiled; the would-be suicide bombers had been arrested; and an incredible harvest of death over the Atlantic had been avoided. It couldn’t have been done without them and the Muslim-American Homeland Security Congress wanted everybody to know, so they organized a press conference. It will have to be repeated; Los Angeles is a long way from the scene of the action and 9/11 is not the big thing in the Sunshine State that it is in New York. Besides, a lot of California’s dhimmis missed the press conference. They were preoccupied with immigration and Schwarzenegger and maybe the troubles in Lebanon. Some of the beautiful people like Paris Hilton and Potsy Webber and Ralph Malph are totally unaware of the existence of the Muslim-American Homeland Security Congress and the wonderful job they have been doing in the war on terrorism. That is precisely what the press conference was meant to accomplish—making Paris and Potsy aware of what is going on, admittedly, a difficult task.

It was a first-class dog and pony show. All the important people in law enforcement were there: Officials from the Department of Homeland Security’s Los Angeles Bureau, agents from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca, US Congresswoman Jane Harmon (D-CA), assorted immigration, customs, and border protection officers, and, of course, representatives from the various Muslim-American organizations that comprise the Congress.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), made the keynote speech. “I want to acknowledge,” he said, “the crucial tip that came from a worried member of the British Muslim community, and was the primary reason that the alleged plot was disrupted. It is that unknown hero that we want to acknowledge today as well as those Muslims in America, Europe and throughout the world who are stepping forward out of their Islamic obligations to protect their communities and their societies that we want to raise awareness about. These are people who are serving their patriotic duty in the United States and elsewhere.” (Worried member of the British community? Unknown hero? If MPAC finds out his identity, he will have even more to worry about!)

It’s a relief to know that somebody is actually on the job though it is doubtful if anything could interrupt Paris in her pursuit of fun and games but at least Potsy and Ralph should be able to sleep secure in the knowledge that Salam Al-Marayati and his co-religionists are on the lookout for terrorists. Or should they?

Marayati has said some unsettling things in the past. He described Hezbollah’s attack on the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 Marines as a ‘military operation.’ A few hours after 9/11, before the dust had settled over the World Trade Center and the cries of the dying had not yet faded into eternity, he appeared on an LA radio talk show and accused Israel of bringing down the Twin Towers. Maybe he had a hotline to Amiri Baraka. He has called on the US government to unfreeze the assets of the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation that had been raising money for terrorist organization. This is one fine fellow.

Another member of the Muslim-American Homeland Security Congress is Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Muslim Relations (CAIR). “I’m not aware of anyone preaching violence,” he said. “Honestly, I can swear that. I don’t know of a single mosque that would even think about preaching such ideas.” (George Orwell had his Double-Think’ Ayloush has his Double-Taqiyya)

“Islam does not bear the responsibility of the actions by the extremists any more than Christianity bears the responsibility for Holocaust or for the genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo,” said Ayloush. “Both actions carried significant religious overtones and were supported and cheered by millions of Christians.”

Cheered by millions of Christians? Does Ayloush have this on tape? It could be the news highlight at 11. It’s people like Ayloush and Marayati that gave Pinocchio a bad name. (The Nazis were not Christians; they were pagans. Hitler was their Mohammed and Christians did not cheer the Holocaust. Ayloush has strayed beyond mere taqiyya into the world of Goebbels and Himmler)

Marayati and Ayloush compose just the tip of the Islamic iceberg. Shakeel Syed of the Shura Council of Southern California is also a member of the Congress. Shakeel is a writer. He wrote this for aljazeera.info: “Nine Eleven ‘changed everything’ has become a popular saying among some. In fact, nothing has changed since 1775. The imperialist mindset remains unchanged. The then founders killed the Native Americans and believed that they are giving themselves a free America.”

If Shakeel has such a low opinion of America why does he want to defend it? Could it be his intention is not to defend America, but to destroy it? One could say Shakeel has no knowledge of American history but that would be giving him more credit than he deserves.

This is Shakeel on the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons: “Freedom of speech is an inherent right and, in many societies, is legally protected. But that doesn’t make every expression of it right. The inflammatory content of the Danish cartoons—comparing Prophet Muhammad to a terrorist—belies the claim that it was an exercise in ‘freedom of the press.’ Muslims worldwide see it as anti-Semitism reborn as ‘Islamophobia’ in a Europe that gave the world the Inquisition, the Holocaust and the recent Bosnian genocide. From the Islamic perspective, freedom of speech and expression is ‘vindication of truth’ and ‘protection of human dignity,’ with embedded maxims of morality and legality. Slander and libel are not protected under free speech.”

It is not slander and libel to call Mohammed a terrorist—it is a matter of historical record. There is no human dignity involved in cutting off the hands of thieves, hanging 16-year-old girls who were victims of rape or the murder of two millions Sudanese Christians and animists for their land.

Sheriff Lee Baca said, “The security of our homeland is important to all Americans…So is the understanding and acceptance of our differences…Together, we will fight bigotry and work jointly to prevent terrorism.” It would make more sense to enlist the Ku Klux Klan in the fight against racism.

America’s failure is in its inability to accept the fact that there are significant differences between Islam and Christianity, differences so basic to the conduct of a free society that if embraced or allowed to fester it will be the death of free society.

Congresswoman Jane Harmon, (D-CA), said, “The key to winning the peace is in this room. We cannot solve the problem of terrorism without the support of the Muslim-American community. I am proud to associate myself with this import organization.”

Please, somebody, hand Jane a roster! Even the Chicago Cubs don’t take the field without knowing what they have got in the bullpen. Salam Al-Mayarati…Hussam Ayloush…Shakeel Syed… Not much to put out a fire. And who is that warming up down the leftfield foul line? Why, it’s Dafer M. Dakhil of the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation! He is also a member of the Congress. Shortly after 9/11, Dafer donated 300 copies of a translated version of the Qur’an to Los Angles schools. Wasn’t that generous of him? He thought so—but it wasn’t appreciated. A teacher noticed some footnotes in the books that weren’t kosher. They described Jews as ‘illiterate,’ ‘arrogant,’ and ‘men without faith.’ One footnote was so bold as to say, “Many of them, even if they could read, were no better than illiterates for they know not their own true scriptures, but read into them what they wanted, or at best their own conjecture.” The books were removed from the school libraries. Dafer regretted the decision. How could the notes have been ‘offensive?’ They were Allah’s words.

Had enough? No? Another member of the Muslim-American Homeland Security Congress is Muzammil Siddiqi of the Islamic Society of Orange County. Musammil throws a great curve ball—he fools most of the dhimmis all the time. He has been to the White House to advise the President. Muzammil told his followers, “You should think of and treat non-Muslims as potential Muslims.” He has also said, “The United States of America is directly and indirectly responsible for the plight of the Palestinian people. If you (America) remain in such injustice the wrath of God will come.”

It’s not Ruth and Gehrig and Lazzeri, Jane, but it is a murderer’s row.

And here is a last word from Salam Al-Marayati, the famous ‘Early American’ historian. “When Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death;’ that statement epitomized jihad,” said Salam. “That is a way of looking at the term jihad from an American perspective.”

Sure, and Ben Franklin flew a kite loaded with explosives during an electrical storm into Big Ben. Patrick Henry’s ‘give me liberty or give me death’ was a rhetorical flourish. He would have been aghast at the mere thought of turning Mr. Yankee and Mr. Doodle into human bombs to blow holes in one of General Howe’s privies. It’s a cultural thing.

One can only hope the time-servers in the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have run first-rate background checks on their allies in the war on terrorism and that they have enough common sense to ignore some of the sillier instructions coming from the still incredibly gullible White House.

JIMINEY CRICKETS! WHAT’S THAT GUY SAYING NOW? THE CARTER DOCTRINE: Part 100.

Okay, so he doesn’t like George W. Bush. Does he have to take it out on America? So he got voted out of office. So what? He was a bad President. Nobody hired that attack rabbit—Bugs did it on his own. How long is he going to hold this grudge? Maybe he hangs around with the wrong crowd. Really—Michael Moore? And why couldn’t he vacation in Gun Blast, Texas, or Mud Slide, Alabama, or Swaledale, Iowa? All that running off to Havana, Pyongyang and Caracas to hobnob with Fidel and Kim Jong the Ill and that new Neanderthal Hugo Chavez doesn’t sit well folks who’ve never burned the American flag.

But there he was in Der Vaterland, promoting his latest book, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crises, and, of course, taking potshots at George W. Bush. What moral crises, asked Der Spiegel. It was a good question. Western Europe’s moral decline had reached critical mass with its achievement of the perfect socialist state and was now succumbing to a creeping Islamo-fascism. Maybe they could pick up a few pointers.

But Old Jiminey Carter was in no hurry; he wanted to do a little bragging about past accomplishments before he lectured the Krauts on how to survive. “When I became president,” he boasted, “we had had four terrible wars between the Arabs and Israelis…And I under great difficulty…decided to try negotiations and it worked and we have a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt for 27 years that has never been violated…if you don’t negotiate…your problem is going to continue and maybe even get worse.”

Twenty-seven years? Why, that’s nothing. Harry Truman negotiated a treaty in his own special way with Japan that has lasted for 60 years and more truth and honesty passes between Japan and the United States in one day than has passed between Egypt and Israel in 27 years! Gosh, Egypt agreed to peace with Israel because one more war with the Jews and Egypt would have ceased to exist not because they like old Jiminey’s smile! Truman knew how to negotiate—he did it the old-fashioned way, from a position of strength.

Yes, yes, but what about all this moral depravity, Mr. President? Yes, what about it? There is nothing Europeans like to talk about more than America’s moral depravity.

And Jiminey obliged. He nailed Bush’s hide to the smokehouse door. First, there’s the Texas Gunslinger’s doctrine of preemptive war; second, his departure from the Jeffersonian ideal of separation of church and state; and third, the massive tax cuts that benefited millionaires, capitalists, and large corporations at the expense of peanut farmers, authors, and ex-presidents trying to make a living.

First things first: The war in Iraq is not a just war said Jiminey. Michael Moore understands that; Noam Chomsky understands that. So does Howard Dean. Why doesn’t George W? Nor does Carter believe the horrendous events of 9/11 were casus belli for war against Islamo-fascist terrorism. Apparently, in the estimation of one Jiminey Carter, the World Trade Center was not the moral equivalent of Pearl Harbor, not the moral equivalent of the Maine, the Lusitania, the Leopard, Fort Sumter, Lexington, Charles Sumner’s ‘harlot’ speech, or any of the Ali-Frazier fights. Carter said, “Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis.”

Please, Jiminey! The sinking of the Lusitania did not directly threaten the security of America, nor did the sinking of the Maine or the destruction of the Leopard. The attack on the World Trade Center, however, was a direct attack on America’s security, even more so than Pearl Harbor, because the Islamo-fascists—call them what you will—intend to continue their assaults until they bring America to its knees, unlike the Japanese who wanted a free hand in the Pacific, not war with America—an incredible miscalculation on their part Would Jiminey care to eat his words? How about all 26 letters of the alphabet simmered in a delicious mouth-watering attack rabbit stew? Countries that wait until their security is directly threatened have short life expectancies.

And now to sock it to Jerry Falwell: “The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God; that they and their ideas are God’s ideas,” said Carter. “Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior…a fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality…And, of course, fundamentalists don’t believe they can make mistakes, so…we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.”

Isn’t he precious? Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Torture? Who was he describing? Some rigid inflexible politician so set in his ways as to be almost oblivious of other opinions? Hey! Wait! He was describing himself! Wow! Talk about the law on unintended consequences! For sure—Jiminey was a Born Again Christian, an Evangelical…he was more worried about lusting in his heart than Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert were…he never got along with Tip O’Neill or Teddy Kennedy; they were real politicians…he thought the Clinton administration was incapable of negotiation with North Korea so he did it for them without asking…and he tortured 230 million Americans for four years and never apologized! Talk about a preemptive strike on himself—is somebody going to read this stuff back to him?

Carter has never forgiven America for rejecting him at the polls in 1980. Maybe if he had been beaten by someone like Abe Lincoln—but Ronnie Reagan, a broken-down old movie star? It was too much. Between Reagan and the Ayatollah Khomeini, Jiminey lost it. It wasn’t long before he ran off to Nicaragua for the first of his many sordid affairs with Communist dictators. Danny Ortega was such a nice fellow—handsome, dedicated; he was for the workingman, for the campesinos. Somoza was evil; the Contras were worse. Jiminey supported Ortega against the United States (and, of course, against Ronnie Reagan). Since then Carter has been in and out of more houses of ill repute than Moll Flanders—Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the Gaza Strip, Haiti. He has praised such brutal dictators as Hafez al-Assad of Syria and Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethopia. He held the record for French kissing Yasser Arafat until Jacques Chirac came along. He’s spent more time in China praising Communism than Marco Polo spent counting silk worms.

There’s one place he hasn’t been—Iran. Oh, what a bitter taste Iran leaves in his mouth—humiliated by the Ayatollah and then defeated by Ronnie Reagan. Nobody humiliates a Carter. But, gosh, a lot of years have gone by, how much longer can he resist the anti-American appeal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Isn’t it time to bury the hatchet? That shy smile, the anti-Bush tirades, the willingness to face down the great hegemon, to snub the UN, to insult the IAEA, to trash Israel—it’s enough to make an old peanut farmer’s heart skip a beat. But he better hurry or Jesse Jackson will get there first and everybody knows a tyrant’s first kiss is the sweetest.

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! This is disgusting! Jiminey Carter would never sink that low! Castro, Chavez, Ortega are one thing—besides what would he do with that corpse he’s been dragging around with him all these years? The last thing they want to see in Tehran is Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s best buddy. It’s sad, but it’s the only thing keeping Jiminey from a complete collection of bad guys. Now, if Billy were still around…

AKBAR AHMED—TROJAN HORSE OR A SECOND ALI JINNAH?

He looks like a nice guy. He’s a professor, an anthropologist, an author, a screenwriter (Jinnah: 1988 with Christopher Lee as Jinnah), a social scientist, a historian; he’s what passes for a deep thinker in academia these days. If the late F. Lee Bailey had met him in the street he would have taken him home for dinner. Homer Simpson would buy a used-car from him no questions asked. It might be too much to expect Franklin Graham’s kids to call him ‘Uncle Something-or-Other,’ but Robert Edgar and the primates at the National Council of Churches get wobbly-kneed at the sight of him. Brian Lamb had him on C-SPAN for a Q&A session—Q&A with Akbar Ahmed. That’s his name—Akbar Ahmed; couldn’t have a Q&A with Akbar Ahmad without Ahmed.

This is the guy Leopold and Loeb should have had for a lawyer instead of Clarence Darrow. He would have stood up well against Judge Roy Bean. If Charlie the Tuna had been half as slick as Ahmed was on Q&A, he would have ended up on Broadway instead of in a dozen cans of Friskies. Whenever Lamb fired a fastball, Ahmed fouled it off. Curve balls, sliders—bunted safely every time. One can carry sports analogies too far but if Ahmed had been a football player he would have been a blocking back. That’s right, a blocking back—from start to finish he ran interference for Osama bin Laden and Hezbollah.

The terrorists are not practicing true Islam he explained. (Anyone heard that one before?) Islam must get back to its Abrahamic roots. The Jews and the Christians and the Muslims are all Abrahamic religions. They honor the same prophets. Isn’t that wonderful? Islam is a religion of peace and toleration, a religion of compassion, dialogue and inclusivity (his word). “It is a very rich legacy.”

“Remember,” he lectured, “Islam gave you a civilization 1,000 years ago with scholars and writers and astrologers and poets which was unique at that time of the world. (The Chinese might disagree with that but they are, after all, Buddhists—infidels) It was right at the cutting edge, the most advanced civilizations of the world. Why can’t Muslims again participate on this?”

Say, did Ahmed mention poetry? Yes, he did! He did mention poetry! That is very interesting! More than a few centuries have passed since Asma bint Marwan waxed poetical and the advent of Salmam Rushdie but not much has changed. Wait a minute, Asma bint Marwan? Who was Asma bint Marwan? Asma bint Marwan was a 7^th Century poet. Very perspicacious—she ridiculed Mohammed and his new religion. “Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?” the Prophet cried in exasperation.

And so it came to pass that Marwan was murdered while lying in her bed with her children by one of the psychopathic thugs that surrounded the Prophet like the vampire bats that clung to Count Dracula’s coattails. And Mohammed said, “You have done a great service to Allah and His Messenger.” There was little or no compassion involved in the murder of Marwan and if there was any dialogue it was of the hair-tearing variety. Henry II, guilty of a like crime, the slaying of Thomas a Becket, spent the rest of his life repenting his foul deed. It was his Abrahamic conscience at work. Mohammed wasn’t troubled by any such scruples. Maybe his understanding of his Abrahamic roots was faulty. He was illiterate. But one must not judge him too harshly, Robert Edgar and the primates at the National Council of Churches don’t understand it either—they seem to think there is next to no difference between Christianity and Judaism and Islam.

The West should not trouble its pretty head about such things says Ahmed, a vigorous debate is taking place within the Islamic community about the nature of Islam, about getting back to its Abrahamic roots. Let’s see—the debate has been going on how long now? A thousand years? Well, one can’t rush into these things.

“Your challenge in the United States,” says Ahmed, “is to understand what’s happening in the Muslim world because if you don’t and you treat all Muslims as potential terrorists…then what you will do is you will push a lot of moderates, a lot of marginal and wavering and swinging people into the extremist camp. And that, Brian, I’m afraid even the sole superpower of the world cannot do.”

Was that a threat? Is sounded like a threat. There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. If a mere ten percent of them are marginal that means there are 140 million potential terrorists. That’s a lot of suicide bombers and it doesn’t matter whether they are swinging or wavering. So you don’t want to do anything that might antagonize all those potential terrorists, right, Brian? America should stop supporting Israel. America should get out of Iraq; America should get out of Afghanistan; America should get out of Dearborn, Michigan. America should stop harassing Hezbollah…al-Qaeda…Hamas. America should stop harassing Ibrahim Hoopercrit when he tries to get on an airplane. He notices those little things.

The best way to fight terrorism is to engage the terrorists in dialogue. “That is how you marginalize extremism and, therefore, violence,” said Ahmed. Be patient, Brian. Talk is better than war. It will take time, but the terrorists have just cause Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue is best. You will come to understand the terrorists. You have Jacques Chirac’s fine example in France. Take it from there. Sharia Law won’t hurt a bit if you just give it a try. Millions of dhimmis have and they are satisfied.

Ahmed couldn’t say enough about Ali Jinnah, his beau ideal of Islam. Maybe they’re planning to re-release Ahmed’s movie. (Jinnah was the Father of Pakistan. He was more secular humanist than Muslim. He died of tuberculosis in 1948. He was a great man—sort of like Martin Luther King, but it took Islam 1,400 years to produce Jinnah; it takes them ten days to produce a terrorist. Somebody is falling behind)

What’s the book on Ahmed? He has certainly mastered taqiyya; he plays an excellent good cop in a game of good cop—bad cop. He may not be as fine an actor as Christopher Lee and he’s not Ali Jinnah—he’s more like a Trojan horse. Could he be trusted? Maybe if one was buying a used-car. If he was sincere in his Q&A with Brian Lamb and a Universal Caliphate should come to pass, the chances of his survival wouldn’t be any better than Sadegh Ghotbzadeh’s or Abolhassan Banisadr’s were in Iran trying to ‘cooperate’ with the Ayatollah. The Ahmadinejads, the Ali Khameinis and the Nasrallahs would see to that. But was he sincere? Why, of course, all Trojan horses are sincere, just don’t leave any hay lying around; this guy looks like he has an appetite. Say, there’s a nice chunk of the dar al-Harb—looks right tasty.

CAN MUSLIM-AMERICAN BE TRUSTED? NO, NO AND NO!

It’s a question nobody wants to ask: In an age of ‘Islamo-fascist’ terrorism can Muslim-Americans be trusted? The answer is, sad to say, no—not today, not tomorrow, not the next day, maybe never. Muslim-Americans cheered, some of them openly (though they will deny this), when the World Trade Center came crashing down. Muslim-American cooperation with law enforcement in ferreting out terrorists has been minimal. Muslim-American FBI agents refused to tape-record fellow Muslim-Americans suspected of terrorist activities halting or thwarting ongoing investigations. Thousands of Muslim-American college students with their radical-left running dogs have turned Berkeley and Durham into cesspools of hatred. Death to America! Death to Israel! Lee Boyd Malvo ‘s jailhouse thought for the day was: “Islam is the only true guidance, the way to peace.” Peace through murder. Sergeant Hassan Akbar wrote from Kuwait: “As soon as I am in Iraq, I am going to try to kill as many of them (American GIs) as possible.” In the end he couldn’t wait that long. He had to get on with the killing. Hatred does that to people.

Were these ratbags insane? No, they were not insane; they were normal ordinary Muslims taking Islam’s irrational fear and hatred of things non-Muslim to the next step—Jihad. It isn’t easy; it isn’t done in a day; it’s an indoctrination that begins at birth or at the moment of conversion. Islam means submission and the Mohammads and the Hassan Akbars and the Lee Boyd Malvos submit. They become slaves—slaves to Islam—slaves to the Qur’an—slaves to Jihad.

The experience of someone like Opie Taylor is totally different. Sure, make fun of Mayberry, but Opie was born free, a lion cub with unlimited acreage to roam. He was allowed to grow up on his own, to do all the silly things Tom and Huck did. And why not—he was a kid, a child. It was a time to learn, to explore, to make disgusting noises, to make mistakes and be forgiven, to form friendships with other kids for no other reason than he liked them with Sheriff Andy and Aunt Bea on hand to make sure he didn’t run off with the first band of gypsies to come along.

Mohammed comes into the world bearing a terrible burden—1,400 years of Islam. He has scarcely drawn his first breath and the Qur’an is already regulating his life. The first words he is likely to say may well be, “Allahu Akbar.” The brainwashing starts early. The spin cycle is continuous. His mind is poisoned from birth. “The Jews are pigs.” “Christians will suffer a painful doom.” “None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.” The only differences between Mohammed’s educations and the education of Heinrich Himmler Jr., is Mohammed’s education starts earlier, is more thorough and lasts a lifetime. Every Muslim is a Manchurian Candidate waiting to happen.

When Opie goes to camp or to college or to basic training—take your pick—he enters a strange new world. Almost immediately, he will form friendships that will last a lifetime, and the great thing about these friendships is that politics, religion, ethnicity, facial warts or standing in the Chicago Cubs Die-Hard Fan Club will have little or nothing to do with it. They will be friends because they are friends. There will be no desperate phone call to some priest or rabbi or minister. “Can I be friends’ with Hulk Halfwit, padre? His mother’s one-third Choctaw and his father’s a Pleistocene.” Or: “Is it okay if I sleep over with Gravel Gertie, reverend? She’s a Sorority Sister. She says she’s a 7^th Day Adventist who quite after six days.”

Friends can be friends for life and should be. Religion shouldn’t intrude on non-religious matters. People who are worried about their friends’ religion are even more worried about their own. Can Muslim-Americans be trusted to maintain friendships with non-Muslims along these lines? No. Islam produces more Hassan Akbars and Mohammed Reza Taheri-azars than Gayle Sayers’ and Brian Piccolos.

Is it true Muslims cannot take non-Muslims for friends? It depends—the Arabic word for friend, awliya, has several meanings. It can mean friends, allies, protectors, guardians, etc., etc. Muslim scholars insist the word friends in “Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors” is incorrectly interpreted. The correct meaning is Allies: “Do not take them for Allies and protectors.” There is nothing wrong with developing personal friendships with non-Muslims to help the pathetic wretches understand, appreciate and ultimately to convert to Islam. However, fraternization for reasons other than Dawa is un-Islamic. Blockheads who say, “There are no Gods and no prophets, only Devils and liars,” are to be avoided at all costs. Do not seek out atheists or agnostics as friends, allies or protectors…or Hindus…or Buddhists…or animists…or those who believe the son of Mary is God. They are all infidels. They could—horror of horrors—insist on discussing religion.

Little Mohammed’s knowledge of other religions is next to zero. He reveres Jesus as one of the prophets; despises Him as the Son of God. Tolerance is lopping the heads off infidels. Peace is dhimmis paying the jizya. Stagnation is a way of life. The sixth and seventh Pillars of Islam are hypocrisy and slavery. Extremely limited in his contacts with the non-Muslim world, Mohammed is a dull boy. As if this weren’t bad enough, the Qur’an and the Mad Mullahs are constantly urging him to engage in Jihad.

Qur’an 8:39 “So, fight them till all opposition ends and the only religion is Islam.”

Qur’an 8:59 “The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah’s enemy.”

Did that come out of the Qur’an or out of Mein Kampf? It’s the kind of talk the Brownshirts listened to around pitchers of ale in the Burgerbraukeller in Munich in 1923. The similarities are frightening. The Qur’an; Mein Kampf! Hitler and Mohammed, two angry, violent and vengeful men, imposing their iron wills on as cretinous and as bloodthirsty a set of jackals as ever crawled out of Dante’s Inferno. Has anybody told Mike Wallace about this? Howard Dean? Michael Moore?

Can Muslim-Americans be trusted? No, not any more than Willie Sutton could be trusted with the key to the bank or Wile E. Coyote could be trusted with ten pounds of dynamite five seconds before the arrival of the Beep-Beep Express. Jesus versus Mohammed—that is the question. Christianity was born in Christ’s love for mankind—though atheists will certainly argue the point. But there is no doubt about Islam, like Nazism, it was born in hatred, and haters, simply, cannot be trusted.

INCOMPREHENSIBLE DHIMMITUDE—THE NEW YORK TIMES PROMOTES “MODERATE” ISLAMISTS, ZAID SHAKIR AND HAMZA YUSUF!

It was the kind of nonsense that would have impressed Opie Taylor if he had been to a revival meeting or a sheep shearing. There’s really not that much difference between them—maybe the size of the shears. It was a standing room crowd in an auditorium at the University of Houston. (Laurie Goldstein (New York Times) U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground) The sheep were waiting to be shorn—willing sheep, it must be admitted. Two converts to Islam, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, 48, and Zaid Shakir, 50, were applying the shears. Both had been born in America but one wouldn’t have known that for they spoke a flawless Arabic. The audience gasped! Wow! Snip, went the shears. These guys knew their stuff—they were as familiar with the Qur’an as Omar Bakri, as quick with a sunnah as Mullah Krekar, as adept with Tabari as Ibrahim Hoopercrit. Snip, snip, snip, went the shears. See how quick and painless it is? Could do this every day.

Yusuf and Shakir had spent years in preparation. They had studied under the best and brightest Islamic scholars in North Africa and the Middle East. They knew everything. Can Muslims take non-Muslims for friends? Just ask them. Nobody did.

Their fondest hope is to create the first Islamic Seminary in the United States. Isn’t that a tall order? Perhaps not—what are shears for? Their intention is to train a new generation of imams and scholars that will bridge the gap between Islam and American culture. Of course, there won’t be much left that is American when they get done but that will be ‘insha’Allah.’ Was that another snip? It sounded like it.

Yusuf and Shakir play to packed houses wherever they go—theatres, mosques and university auditoriums—and they don’t miss any opportunities. Muslim student organizations are at their beck and call. Islam must be rescued from extremists they say, though they don’t single out any particular extremist group. They probably wouldn’t name an extremist if asked. But that’s not unusual—they don’t name names.

During question time a student asked, “You said we have an obligation to humanity. Did you mean to Muslims, or to everyone?”

Shakir answered, “The obligation is to everyone. All of the people are the dependents of Allah.” The fleece was getting deep.

Tabari IX:69 “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us.”

Yusuf is quite the raconteur; he sprinkles his speeches with quotes from Jung, Solzhenitsyn and the Bible. He could as well have quoted Archie Bunker and George Wallace and nobody would have known the difference. He hasn’t gotten around to Winston Churchill—maybe to Ward Churchill, but not Winston Churchill. There is something unpalatable about Winnie.

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries,” wrote Churchill. “The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property…must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men…No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Nor has Shakir mastered John Quincy Adams. “…he (Muhammad) declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind,” wrote J.Q. “The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.”

Shakir was born in Berkeley, California, and is a former Muslim chaplain of Yale University. Before being anointed by the New York Times as one of the saviors of Islam, Shakir was a dedicated Islamist. “Islam presents an absolutist political agenda, or one which doesn’t lend itself to compromise, nor to coalition building,” he said before his transformation. “Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the secular system in the United States, for it ‘is against the orders and ordainments of Allah…the orientation of the Qur’an pushes us in the exact opposite direction as the forces that are at work in the American political spectrum.’”

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Shakir either ignored or conveniently forgot his past record. He said core Islamic values were compatible with American values and that using Islam to justify terrorism was a mistake. What an ungodly stench! Was somebody burning taqiyya without a license? Moyers didn’t smell a thing. He was ready to get out the bricks and the mortar and do a little bridge building.

“Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country,” said Shakir. This is a complicated statement and merits an exegesis. If honest Muslims say they want Sharia Law as Shakir claims, what do dishonest Muslims want? If they say they don’t want Sharia Law and they are being dishonest does that mean they are practicing taqiyya and want Sharia Law? Of course, all Muslims want Sharia Law or they wouldn’t be Muslims. Shakir said he dreams of the day when Islamic law will be the rule in America. One can only hope his dreams turn into nightmares.

Hamza Yusuf has tossed aside his suicide bomber’s belt for a bricklayer’s trowel. But as a builder of bridges he comes across more like Wile E. Coyote than John Augustus Roebling. His past record is a match for Shakir’s. Shortly before 9/11, he said. “This country (America) unfortunately has a great, a great tribulation coming to it. And much of it is already here, yet people are too illiterate to read the writing on the wall.” (Nasty, insulting and unforgivable)

In an interview with BBC in 2003, Yusuf said, “If you get Jewish extremists, Hindu extremists and Muslim extremists in the same room—they all seem to look very similar, think very similar and have an inability to have a civil discourse, not just between themselves as different faiths, but even amongst each other. So I think you’re dealing with psychology, you’re dealing with a pathology. Extremism is a human problem. We have secular extremists, we have Christian fundamentalists that go and shoot abortion doctors—they’re terrorists, that’s terrorism.”

Muslims have committed more than 5,500 terrorist attacks since 9/11; almost all have been sanctioned, approved or ordered by various Ayatollahs, imams and mullahs. Shari Law did not stop one of them. After Tim McVegh it is next to impossible to find a successful secular extremist in the United States. Several thousand terrorist acts have been committed since James Koop shot and killed ‘abortion doctor’ Barnett Slepian and Eric Rudolph bombed an abortion clinic and none were the work of Christian fundamentalists. Neither crime was sanctioned, approved or ordered by any priest, rabbi or minister. What is an extremely rare occurrence in American and Israel happens daily—even hourly—in Islam.

Qur’an 8:12 “I shall terrorize the infidels. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them because they oppose Allah and His Apostle.”

Qur’an 8:67 “It is not fitting for any prophet to have prisoners until he has made a great slaughter in the land.”

Yusuf is described in the New York Times as a moderate Muslim. Shakir is considered one of the most respected and influential Muslim scholars in the West. Both have served as advisors on Islamic affairs to President George W. Bush.

Some of the sheep being shorn reside in high places.

THERE IS NO FUN IN ISLAM

Fun things are supposed to happen on beaches, right? Okay—that’s not always true, there are times when it is quite the opposite, when bloody conflicts fraught with the futures of millions of yet unborn, obliterate the beaches in an orgy of noise, violence and death, but the vast majority of activities enacted on the burning sands tend toward fun and games, right?

Nudists have their own beaches. Robinson Crusoe had a beach to himself. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissed on the beach in From Here To Eternity. (Mad Comics insisted they kissed on the beach instead of the lips but Mad is not one-hundred-percent reliable) Only military personnel with special passes were allowed on Utah and Omaha Beach on D-Day and Tarawa Atoll was reserved for the 2^nd Marine Division on November 20, 1943. But there were plenty of good times. Remember the parties Frankie and Annette threw on the sparkling sands in the ‘60s? How about Beach Party Bingo? You had to be a friend of Ricky’s or David’s or in the hands of a really good Hollywood agent to get within one hundred yards of the band. Lenny and Squiggy never made the cut.

Private beaches have been around longer than Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. And now everybody is getting into the act. Riccione, an Italian city on the Adriatic Riviera, is setting aside a stretch of sparkling seashore for Muslim women—gals only, yeah! It will give Fatima and Hanan a chance to shed their hijabs—to let their burqas down, to soak up some sun, to splash around in Neptune’s cooling waters, to have fun—yes, Fun! Fun! But not too much—too much fun is against Islam. But that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy themselves while still obeying Islam’s laws against mixed bathing and the displaying of female bodies to members of the opposite sex. Hmm! Better cancel Paris Hilton’s reservation. It might be best if Fatima and Hanan kept the laughter down and the splashing to a minimum just to be safe.

This is no drill. This is a serious warning. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said, “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer.” And that was precisely what Khomeini did to Iran. Hardship followed hardship and prayer followed prayer and the Hell Khomeini created continues to this day with Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei. So have fun on your private little beach, Fatima and Hanan—if you dare.

Islamic fun seems to be falling through the cracks everywhere in Europe. Carnivals are on the way out—if they ever were in. There’s not much call to ride the painted ponies and when it comes to blowing a little funhouse air up a burqa—well, forget it, it’s against the Qur’an. Almost everything connected with a carnival or an amusement park or a fair is against Islam. Taking everything into consideration it is not surprising that the first National Muslim Fun Day ever in the U.K. was cancelled. Alton Towers, England’s premier theme park, had scheduled September 17 as ‘Muslims only’ day. To make the outing more attractive for Muslims the park made some changes. There would be no alcohol, no gambling; no music. Rides such as the Corkscrew and the Ripsaw would be segregated to prevent unseemly clinching. There would be a strict dress code and halal food—and no dhimmis. They did everything but send Osama bin Laden a complimentary ticket. Maybe they should have. Fun Day organizer, Islamic Leisure, cancelled the event because of ‘insufficient ticket sales.’ That’s what they said. They had hoped to attract 28,000 of Allah’s faithful to the park. They sold less than a thousand tickets. Britain has a population of 1.7 million Muslims. One doesn’t need Jethro Bodine’s Ten-Speed Double-Naught-Spy Calculator to figure out that pathetic batting average. It’s why Charlie Brown never made the Major Leagues.

There are those who say Islamic Leisure and Alton Towers were wasting their time; that most Muslims are uncomfortable with mainstream entertainment. You name it—music, movies, drag races, marathons, picnics, beach parties, carnivals, concerts, fairs, hog-calling contests (Hog-calling contests?), lumberjack festivals, RV jamborees, battles of the bands, channel swims, Muslims just don’t turn out. Maybe they don’t know how to have fun. Maybe their fun genes have atrophied. The Qur’an seriously circumscribes their activities from the day they are born. A minefield of suras and hadiths surrounds them with dos and don’ts. Don’t take that person for a friend: women have no value as fun companions. Infidels are unclean, man’s best friend, dog, is unclean. Don’t touch this, don’t touch that; don’t draw, don’t sing. The Bird Man of Alcatraz had more control over his daily activities than little Mohammed on his way to a stultifying Mad-Rats-Asses class.

It’s next to impossible to have fun without at least a semblance of freedom. Flying into a rage over a Mohammed cartoon or screaming death to Israel is not a substitute for skipping stones across a pond or playing third banjo in Eb’s Hootersville band. It’s not even a substitute for insanity.

This is the Ayatollah Khomeini on fun: “An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”

That man could have been a philosopher. He could have been somebody. If only he had grasped the fact that what he thought was right about Islam, was what was wrong with it—and on down the line.

In the meantime, send every available whoopee cushion with instructions on proper usage to Riccione Beach and every exploding cigar with quick-flash matches (no instructions or warnings, please) to every member of the Saudi Barbarian Royal Family on George W. Bush’s Christmas list.

We will teach them to have fun.

THE GREAT MYTH OF THE 21^st CENTURY—THE HIJACKING OF ISLAM! LIARS, FOOLS AND THEIR RUNNING DOGS!

Can American-Muslims be trusted? Perhaps—like the Road Runner trusted Wile E. Coyote; like Eliot Ness trusted Al Capone; like Joseph E. Johnston trusted Jefferson Davis; like Andrew Jackson trusted John C. Calhoun; like Fay Wray trusted King Kong; like Prisoner Number 76345 trusted the Beast of Belsen; as Ronnie Reagan once said, “Trust but verify.” Yet for hundreds of thousands of Americans, Muslim-American professions of innocence are enough. Islam is a religion of peace and toleration. Jihad is an internal struggle between good and bad; it had nothing to do with 9/11.

Former Congressman John Kasich, among others, never tires of talking about the handful of Islamo-fascist thugs who hijacked Islam. Maybe he missed the dancing in the streets in Lebanon, in the Gaza Strip, in Indonesia, in Egypt, in Iran when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. He probably missed the dancing at Berkeley and in the State Department too. For an ex-politician with an hour-long TV show he has missed a lot.

But if Islam was, indeed, hijacked, how did they do it and where did they take it? It’s never been reported missing. The mosques are still in place and so are the Mullahs, many of them still regrettably Mad, and they are still reading the same verses from the same Holy Book and the mythological hijackers are reading the same verses from the same Holy Book whether in Tora Bora or Bora Bora or the Aurora Borealis, wherever they are hiding, and there doesn’t appear to be any scriptural differences in their interpretations.

For every fatwa issued against Osama bin Laden, thousands have been issued against Salman Rushdie and hundreds of thousands against Israel and America. The truth is no one hijacked Islam—not that Islam hasn’t engaged in considerable hijacking itself: they hijacked Syria and Egypt; they hijacked Persia and Carthage. In Mohammed’s mad rush to obliterate the non-Muslim world they hijacked one ethnic or religious enclave after another. They hijacked Palestine from the Jews.

What they resent is resistance, and the more tenacious and successful the resistance the more they resent it. They resented the Crusades, Europe’s belated attempt to regain the Holy Land and its environs from the hijackers. In the end the Crusades were a delaying action—and that was a thousand years ago. More ground has been lost in the interim and now Islam is back as strong and as threatening as ever and their apologists are saying the Hijackers’ religion has been hijacked. Who is to be believed?

There was once a notorious gangster named Roger Touhy who was sent to jail for a kidnapping that never took place. A rival mob, Capones, wanted Touhy out of the way and a consummate swindler and stock manipulator named Jake the Barber Factor was desperately in need of an excuse to avoid deportation as an undesirable alien. The two parties were brought together and a deal was struck. Factor would pretend to be kidnapped, the mob would provide the witnesses and the safe havens and Touhy would be accused of kidnapping. Given the amount of corruption during the 1930s the scheme worked like a charm and Touhy went to jail for a long time. It was a sham and should have been recognized as such. A lot of people knew about it but either played along or kept silent.

Nobody kidnapped Jake the Barber and nobody has hijacked Islam, not Hezbollah, not Osama bin Laden, not the Taliban, not Omar Bakri, not the Muslim Brotherhood. It never happened. Nobody in the Muslim world believes its religion has been hijacked. But in the West, even before 9/11, blinders were the recommended eyewear for viewing Islam. President William Jefferson Clinton said, “…so many people unfairly identify Islamic terrorism” with ‘the forces of radicalism and terrorism. Terrorism is not a principle of any major religion, including Islam…Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, preaches peace and non-violence.” Clinton was not known for whiling away idle hours in the Oval Office reading the Qur’an or contemplating Islam’s much vaunted family values—locking women in separate rooms and collapsing tall buildings on gays.

Then came 9/11 and suddenly Islam has been hijacked! Yes, hijacked! Muslim theocrats murdered two million Christians and animists in Sudan in the 1980s and ‘90s and nobody said Islam had been hijacked; a hundred thousand Catholics were slaughtered in East Timor during the same time frame by rampaging Muslim troops and nobody said Islam had been hijacked; a Saudi Barbarian princess was convicted of sexual relations with her lover and beheaded and nobody said Islam had been hijacked. Now certain Western intellectuals in high places were saying Islam had been hijacked! If so, where did the hijackers take Islam…to one of Jake the Barber’s safe havens? No, they needed an excuse because this time Americans had been killed. So the hijacker myth was created to save the reputations of a lot of bonehead politicians and their expert advisors who got caught with their pants down in Mohammed’s Islamic Jihad Outhouse. And they still haven’t learned.

Here is George W. Bush: “Some call this Islamic radicalism; others militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it’s called this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam…(it distorts) the idea of Jihad.”

Here is Tony Blair: The terrorists are not “proper Muslims;” their extremism is “not the true voice of Islam.”

Osama bin Laden reads from the same book as Ibrahim Hoopercrit and Tariq Ramadan and John Esposito and Kevin Barrett and the neighborhood Mad Mullah; they believe the same truths; are working for the same universal Islamic state—the enduring Caliphate. There is little or no difference between what goes on in a mosque in Los Angeles, a Mad-Rats-Asses school in the Gaza Strip or in a cave in northwest Pakistan. Roger Touhy was lucky John Kasich and George Bush and Tony Blair were not on his jury. He would have been sentenced to death instead of 99 years.

Anybody who can spell existentialist must be smarter than Bill O’Reilly. A guy who can spend day after day in a shack in the woods and doesn’t have pinecones sticking in his hair and a beard down to his knees has got to be civilized—erudite even. This rascal reads Kurt Vonnegut; he worked for Gary Hart; he would have been on Laugh In if Dick Martin had known a first-rate standup comedian when he saw one. He knows more about Christianity than Jerry Falwell, more about Judaism than the rascal who wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; more about Buddhism than a Jihadist with a satchel charge eyeing a giant Buddha; more about Hinduism than a van loaded with Hari Krishnas on the way to the Bhagwan’s ranch in Colorado. He could have told James Jones he was using the wrong flavor of Kool-Aid.

Gosh, and he writes poetry—not one-two, buckle my shoe poetry, but real honest-to-goodness poetry, the kind of stuff that Maynard G. Krebs would have read; that would have brought tears to the eyes of Jack Keroauc. He’s been a mystic, a philosopher, a Renaissance man and a good caretaker. (That’s a fancy word for janitor) He took care of a cabin in the woods for a Madison Wisconsin Muslim organization called Khidria and never once was he cited by a Ranger for starting a major forest fire! He was so smart he became a Muslim. That’s what happens to an intellectual once he has learned everything worth learning. It’s a curse!

In recognition of his incredible brilliance the University of Wisconsin at Madison gave him a teaching job. That’s right. This fall he will be freely expressing his opinions as facts in an introductory class on Islam. His name is Kevin Barrett and some of his students may be forced to ‘Grin-an’-bear-it’ in order to survive. He is a suspicious fellow. He sees conspiracies everywhere. The dar al-Harb is full of them. Joe McCarthy had a list of 57 Communists working in the State Department. Barrett’s secret list of Nazis working for George W. Bush must top that by a least ten Obergrupenfuhrers. As any fool would know if one totals up the number of verses in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the hadiths and the various commentaries pertaining to 9/11 and divides by the estimated number of fleas in Osama bin Laden’s beard, multiplied by the number of unrequited virgins in Allah’s Great Paradise in the Sky one can only come to the conclusion that it was George W. Bush and company that brought down the World Trade Center on 9/11 and not that simpleminded dupe Mohammed Atta and his slack-jawed cretinous friends. One can’t argue with that kind of logic—and that’s the kind of logic the students in Barrett’s class will be up against.

Not unexpectedly, Barrett has come under attack by a number of state legislators—most but not all of them Republicans. They want Barrett fired. Democrats say it is a free speech issue and they will defend it to the death, blah, blah and blah. Now if it was David Duke…well, some speech is not as free as others.

Pat Farrell, U.W.-Madison Provost, defended Barrett. He is a regular old Mr. Chips. “I still have every expectation this will be a very positive educational experience for our students,’ said Farrell. “Some are upset about Mr. Barrett’s viewpoints on 9/11 and don’t want to pay much attention to what makes for a quality educational experience.” If he really meant that he would have no objections to hiring a past-president of the John Birch Society to teach a class on McCarthyism—how Tail-Gunner Joe had been correct in his assessment of Communist infiltration into the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations. McCarthy had actually underestimated the number of fellow travelers serving in the US government but it scarcely matters now—there are more Communists teaching at U.W.-Madison these days than there are in the Kremlin. There is a lot of hypocrisy in a quality educational experience.

The question is why would someone with Barrett’s incredible intellectual gifts espouse such an obviously ridiculous conspiracy theory? The late Eric Hoffer said it was intellectual hubris that led great minds to radicalism and eventually to mass murder. Like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Eric Hobsbawm and other intellectuals, but not Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, Barrett knows more about everything that counts than just about anybody else and he knows it. But nobody pays Barrett or Chomsky or Finklestein the mass deference their exceptional genius requires. They are not allowed to run anything; a good plumber and a reliable mailman receive more deference and get more invitations to parties where the hot babes are. And waitresses think they are cheap. This is humiliating!

In other times and other civilizations, intellectuals, like Hitler and Lenin and Mao, actually ran countries—big countries with marching Armies and fireworks every evening, not itty-bitty university departments with AWOL secretaries and bad plumbing. American intellectuals would like to try their hand at running a country. They would like to run America—Harry Truman ran America and if Harry Truman could, anyone could, but the vox populi are unaware of the unparalleled genius of its intellectual class, the good news being kept from then, and the political parties are run by crass opportunists who seem to think they know more about what is good for the people than the intellectual elite. Isn’t that silly? It’s easy for intellectuals to hate those kinds of countries. There aren’t many of then. America is one. Intellectuals hate America. Chomsky hates America; Finklestein hates America.

Barrett has a second problem in addition to intellectual hubris—he knows too much for his own good. He has supposedly penetrated to the depths of every religion know to man and some unknown. Maybe he missed the Dukhobors. He knows Christianity inside out; he knows Zen; he is familiar with L. Ron Hubbard in a non-sexual way. He knows Freud and Jonge and he’s lived in the woods. Quite frankly, taken altogether this is not a healthy lifestyle. If he had christened his shack in the pines Walden Pond instead of Zawiya (Islamic spiritual retreat) it might have helped. Barrett is a very confused fellow. Christianity, existentialism, the Kennedy assassination, a religion of peace and tolerance, and 9/11 would be enough to warp an ordinary mind, obliterate an exceptional one. It could explain why Barrett became a Muslim and why he believes in silly conspiracies but it doesn’t explain why he was hired. To give students a quality educational experience is about as flimsiest an excuse as ‘the dog ate my homework.’ If anybody should be fired, it should be Pat Farrell. That would give everybody a quality educational experience—including Farrell.

ANGRY AT ISRAEL? AREN’T WE ALL? HEAVENS, NO!

“I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel,” said Naveed Aflaz Haq, 30. Sure, Naveed and a million other Muslim-Americans—they’re all angry at Israel and most if not all of them are angry at America, after all, America is a dhimmi country. But Naveed was different; he decided to do something about it.

A college graduate (a degree in electrical engineering from Washington State University at Tri-Cities) and a history of mental instability, Haq purchased a couple of semi-automatic handguns—a .40 caliber and a .45—waited five days, the required ‘cooling off’ period while Inspector Clouseau and Barney Fife made an exhaustive search of his background, picked up his guns on Thursday and on Friday afternoon vented his anger on Israel. He stalked—or perhaps the better word is crept—into the foyer of the office of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and opened fire. What a brave mujahedeen! He shot six women, killed one of them! Bail was set at $50 million.

Haq has been described as a loner that couldn’t hold a job, as a brilliant student who tutored others. He was no John Hinckley Jr., no loutish Leon Czolgosz. He had class. He fell away from Islam, studied the Bible, converted to Christianity; was baptized. But he wasn’t ready to die on the Cross. He said he was bi-polar. He never seemed to fit in. He was a wallflower without a wall. He had been seeing psychiatrists for ten years. In March he had been arrested for lewd behavior in a Tri-City mall. He had climbed up on a fountain, screamed at the women at the makeup counter at Macys and then exposed himself to passersby. Oh, yeah, a real George Costanza episode. He had trouble relating to women. They will notice him now.

It’s quite a record: ten years on the couch, the mall incident and the reward was a concealed weapons permit. If Barney Fife isn’t careful he will be back in Mayberry harassing jaywalkers. The law it supposed to prevent the Haqs of this world from getting their hands on guns. Get it? John Wayne okay, Naveed Haq is not okay. Of course, there is this minority thing.

Could this be a hate crime? Well, if it looks like a hate crime, walks like a hate crime and talks like a hate crime, it’s a hate crime. Politicians say that all the time so it must be true. And Haq did say, “These are Jews and I’m tired of getting pushed around and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.” That was enough. King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said, “The attack on these women was an attack on the Jewish community, not only in Seattle but throughout our nation and the world.” Well, if you put it that way.

Haq has been charged with one count of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first degree murder, one count of first degree kidnapping, one count of first degree burglary and one count of malicious harassment under the state hate crime law.

Haq did plenty of talking. In a recorded conversation with police dispatchers, he said, “I want these Jews to get out. I’m not upset at people, I’m upset at your foreign policy…I’m an American too, but I want our people out of Iraq.” Your foreign policy…our people—it was confusing.

Haq’s father, Mian Haq, migrated to the U.S. from Pakistan in the early 1970s. He works at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Many members of the area’s Muslim community are employed at the reservation. All Hanford employees must undergo background checks. See? There is nothing to worry about—right? Well, think again. There is this dual allegiance thing and it is not fifty-fifty. Like Robert E. Lee who was a Virginian first and an American second, Muslims are Muslims first and Americans second. And when Bobby Lee made up his mind to express his Virginia side it was bad news for all those dhimmi Yankees to the North. Haq was expressing his Muslim side. As the great Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing.” For most Muslims, “Religion isn’t everything; it is the only thing.”

But what has that to do with Naveed? He converted to Christianity, didn’t he? Sure, and then he announced, “I am a Muslim American,” before opening fire. Somewhere between being baptized and purchasing the handguns Haq had become a Jihadist. Why the return to the religion of his youth—the religion of peace and tolerance? The answer is not as puzzling as it seems. Haq needed God’s authorization and Mohammed’s inspiration to commit his crimes and the Bible does not sanction the killing of Jews; Islam’s Holy Book does.

Qur’an 5:80: “You see many of them (Jews) allying themselves with the unbelieving infidels. Vile indeed are their souls. Allah’s wrath is on them, and in torment will they abide.” (This is only one of dozens of similar verses in the Qur’an)

To find justification for his act, Haq returned to Islam.