Originally published under the title “The West Lies Down Before Saudi Lies.”
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir: “ISIS is as much Islamic as the KKK is Christian.” |
Saudi Arabia—the world’s greatest hypocrite—is at it again.
On February 12, 2016, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) was held. It’s described as “the world’s largest gathering of its kind"; “the most important independent forum for the exchange of views by international security policy decision-makers,” where “about 350 senior figures from more than 70 countries around the world to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges.”
It’s apparently also where lying about one of the “current and future security challenges"—Islamic terrorism—goes unchallenged.
Enter Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign affairs minister. This representative of the one nation that has done more than any other to spread radical Islamic ideology spun lie after lie during his 20 minute presentation (transcript) before a captive audience.
Jubeir began by trying to kill two birds with one stone: distancing Islam from ISIS in a way to demonize and incite the world against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad:
Daesh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] is a terrorist organization composed of psychopaths who have no religion and no morals. They attract other psychopaths and it’s a cult. And it will be defeated. But in order to defeat Daesh, we have to deal with what I call the two elephants in the room. One of those elephants is Bashar al Assad. We cannot defeat Daesh in Syria unless we bring about change in Bashar al-Assad. He is the man who helped create it by releasing radicals from his jails, by allowing Daesh to operate without attacking them, by even trading with them. He is the man that allowed them to become what they are.
Jubeir would have the world believe that non-Sunnis are responsible for the rise of ISIS.
Jubeir concluded his Assad rant with a barely veiled threat: “unless and until there is a change in Syria, Daesh [ISIS] will not be defeated in Syria. Period.... When Assad goes, the fertile environment in which Daesh operates in Syria will be removed and we can deal with them.” When one appreciates how intricately connected Saudi Arabia and ISIS are, this sounds more like, “we will not reign in our mad jihadi dogs until we get our way.”
But it was only during the very brief Q&A portion following Jubeir’s act that the Saudi truly shined. After he was asked by a brave soul in the audience if ISIS didn’t in fact adhere to certain Islamic tenets, Jubeir responded by mouthing all the main lies, half-truths, and discredited apologias the world has ever heard about Islam[1]:
Every religion has perverts and psychopaths who try to hijack it. ISIS is as much Islamic as the KKK is Christian. Don’t they have a cross? Don’t they do everything in the name of religion and Christ? Don’t they believe that Christ compels them to lynch and kill people of African descent? ...For anyone to argue that DAESH is Islamic is preposterous.
On the other hand, the Koran does call on Muslims to hate and fight non-Muslims; it does call for beheadings, mutilations, and crucifixions; it does call for the collection of jizya or extortion money from subjugated minorities; it does permit the sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women and children. (See “The Islamic State and Islam” for references.)
In short, the Koran does support the actions of ISIS—not to mention the actions of Boko Haram, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Al Shabaab, and 41 Muslim nations that make the lives of Christian minorities a living hell. That’s why a PEW poll found that at least 63 million and as many as 287 million Muslims in just 11 countries—and 81% of Arabic language Al Jazeera respondents—support what Jubeir dismisses as “psychopaths who have no religion and no morals.”
The Saudi minister also managed to invoke the one Koran verse that is forever on the lips of Islam’s apologists:
In the Islamic faith the Koran reveals that you have your faith and I have my faith [109:6]. You are free to practice your faith and I am free to practice mine. What greater sign of tolerance and acceptance do you have than this?
Otherwise, why does the Saudi government ban the existence of a single church, synagogue, or temple? Why does it storm the private residences of foreign Christians holding prayer meetings, arrest and torture them, and confiscate their Bibles and crosses? Why is it the 14th worst nation in the entire world to be Christian in? Why does it imprison, torture, and kill Muslims who seek to leave Islam? Why does it openly declare that all Muslims must hate Christians, Jews, and all other non-Muslims?
Where, O Jubeir, is all this Islamic “tolerance and acceptance” you gush about?
Why is a nation that behaves like ISIS allowed to speak at a Western security conference?
And this is the grandest point, the true elephant at the Munich Security Conference that no one seemed to notice: most atrocities committed by ISIS that provoke shock and horror in the West, and which Jubeir claims have nothing to do with Islam, are being committed by Saudi Arabia as a matter of state policy—and also in the name of Islam.
The real question isn’t whether ISIS is Islamic; only fools and clowns are still trying to figure that one out. The real question is why a nation that behaves like ISIS is allowed to speak at a conference dedicated to “intensive debate on current and future security challenges,” and then given free rein to spew lie after lie?
From here, one begins to understand that Saudi Arabia and its premiere role in exporting “extremism” around the world is only one part of a more complex problem.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Islamic religion and Islamic civilization was the civilization that preserved the history of Greece and Rome and passed it onto the West. Western civilization would not exist without the Islamic Arab civilization. The Islamic civilization was the civilization that connected China with Europe, so it was global... If Islam was intolerant and DAESH represented Islam would Islam have preserved Aristotle and Socrates and passed it onto the West? Would Islam have connected Eastern civilization with Western civilization? Of course not.
