In Cedar Rapids, ‘Nationally Recognized Expert’ Todd Green Deplores ‘Epidemic of Islamophobia’ (Part 3)

Where is all this “anti-Muslim bigotry” and “racism” that Todd Green sees everywhere? The major media have been falling all over themselves deflecting attention from the ideology of Islam, insisting that “‘Islamic terrorists’ have nothing to do with Islam and only anti-Muslim bigots and racists think otherwise.” Write this out 100 times on the blackboard. How often have you seen any of the Jihad verses in the Qur’an quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, or on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN? Never. Instead we have assorted “terrorism experts” insisting that the “root cause” of Muslim terrorism is either “poverty,” or “lack of education,” or “resentment of post-colonialism,” or “sympathy for the Palestinians,” or “anger at American foreign policy.” But never, in that same major media, is there ever a suggestion, backed up by Qur’anic quotes, that the texts and teachings of Islam need to be looked into as the cause of Islamic terrorism.

This “epidemic of anti-Muslim bigotry” is a fiction. The real epidemic is that of a diseased sympathy for Muslims, that has even resulted in the attempt, by the giant tech companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter — to silence on social media such sober islamocritics as Robert Spencer and such sites as Jihad Watch.

Let’s get this straight: because a mosque was built in Cedar Rapids in 1934, that must mean that Islam is 1) not a foreign religion; 2) not at odds with American values; 3) not a threat to American identity.

Let’s grant #1. Islam is no longer a “foreign religion.” It is, however, a very late arrival, and even now only 1% of the population is Muslim. #3 would require us to define an “American identity” which I cannot do satisfactorily, although I agree with Mr. Justice Potter Stewart, when he famously said about “obscenity” that, while he couldn’t define it, “I know it when I see it.”

So let’s focus on #2. How does the existence of that mosque in Cedar Rapids prove that Islam is not at odds with such “American values” as, inter alia, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equal treatment of people of different religions, equality of the sexes? We know that when it comes to any criticism or mockery of Muhammad, Muslims are against freedom of speech; some even believe capital punishment is warranted. We all remember the martyred cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo and the attempts to kill Lars Vilks. The same limits apply to freedom of the press in a Muslim country: Islam and Muhammad are off limits to critics. As for freedom of religion, it does not exist in Muslim states for apostates from Islam, who can be severely punished, and even executed. In the Muslim state, non-Muslims used to be treated as dhimmis, subject to many onerous conditions, including payment of the Jizyah; that led many to convert to Islam not out of conviction, but in order to escape the wretched status of dhimmi. That is not exactly “freedom of religion.” The equal treatment of religions guaranteed by our Constitution is flatly contradicted by the Sharia, which privileges Islam above all other faiths, and Muslims above non-Muslims.

As for equality of the sexes, in Islam it does not exist. Qur’an 4:34 allows a husband to “beat” a wife he fears may be disobedient, and describes the man as “superior” to the “woman,” which is why he must be her guardian. Daughters inherit only half of what sons receive. A woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a man, because, as Muhammad says in a famous hadith, “of the deficiency of her intelligence.” A Muslim husband can marry plural wives, but a wife can have only one husband. He may divorce a wife merely by reciting the triple-talaq; if the wife wants a divorce, she must return her bride-price, or mahr, to her husband, and offer an acceptable reason for wanting the divorce.

These are only some, not all, of the differences between Islamic and American values.

Did local Muslims “create” Cedar Rapids in a moral, legal, cultural sense? No. Local Muslims built a mosque, no doubt houses too, and lived, and worked, in the city. There is no “powerful message” coming from this. There is, however, a “powerful message” coming repeatedly from Todd Green, whose every fourth sentence contains the scare word “Islamophobia.” He doesn’t admit of the possibility — why not? — that one can be a keen critic of Islam not because one is irrational, but because one refuses to be irrational, like Dr. Todd Green, and assume that Islam offers no cause for alarm, when the Qur’an and the nightly news tell us otherwise. It is Green’s absolute refusal to consider the evidence — the terrorist attacks all over the world, and the Qur’anic verses that justify and command them — that constitutes an “irrational desire to defend and promote Islam.” We could call that a serious case of “islamophilia.” “Nearly all aspects of American life”? “Politicians” and “media personalities” are people, not “aspects of life.” Nor have they, these unnamed “politicians and media personalities,” come to “equate terrorism with Islam,” as Green so baselessly insists. But some students of Islam have claimed, with ample textual evidence which they readily quote, that there is an undeniable link between the ideology of Islam and the terrorist attacks by Muslims. This is not the same thing as “equating” terrorism with Islam. Todd Green regards the recognition of this link to smack of “anti-Muslim bigotry” and “islamophobia.” It is unclear if he has read the Qur’an, but if he did, it clearly did not make an impression.