The Religion of Peace

Don't Offend Us, Or Else . . .

There have been cultures in the past which have institutionalised dissembling, deception and lies. The West, built upon the foundations of the Christian faith and the Ten Commandments, of which only vestiges now remain, still struggles to come to terms with institutional lying or ideologically driven deception. Almost everyone assumes that in the public square people endeavour to speak the truth.

In some Asian cultures, lying or camouflaging the truth, is very common. Stories abound of Japanese and Chinese (often regarded as inscrutable to Westerners) who manifest excessive politeness, yet inwardly despise the barbarian. The truth tends to come out at 3 am in the bars when the sake has freely flowed. The Japanese, of course, are culturally attuned to the practice of layers of deception (or deflection of the truth); they can "read through" the the dissembling. They understand what is going on.

The Cold War was largely a war fought by the respective intelligence agencies. A polite term was invented for the lies that were deliberately told to lead one's "cold enemy" astray. That term was "disinformation". Using lies as a weapon against the enemy has a long and noble history. It was celebrated and lionized, of course, by that ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. But the West largely accepts that in warfare such lying is fair play and within the rules of cricket.

But what happens when the West is faced with a foe or a people which is ideologically committed to lying or deceiving the West whilst there is no war in sight? The result is that the West as a whole becomes an easy dupe--or, as Lenin put it, a useful idiot. Islam is the foe. Or, more accurately, Islam sees the West as one of its foes which must be conquered and subdued as the religion of Muhammed spreads over the globe. Its religious teaching and ideology endorses telling untruths and lies to non-Muslims. To the committed Muslim the infidel is not owed the truth. If the infidel is blocking the expansion and influence of Islam he deserves to be misled and deceived in order to be defeated.

In the US Congress, Representative Peter King is about to kick off a series of hearings to explore how US citizens are recruited to become Islamic terrorists who seek to kill US citizens in their own country. It has the Left in apoplectic conniptions--but that's another story. "Moderate" Islamic leaders in the US are also professing outrage. They are warning of the great damage these hearings will cause.



These "moderate" leaders have been busy assuring everyone that Islam is not a violent religion and that Islamic people are, well, just like everyone else. They have condemned terrorism and violence in the name of Islam. Now, however, they are saying something in addition. They are telling the "useful idiots" that if these hearings are held, Islamic people in the US will be radicalised and will become willing terrorist recruits. The proposition appears to be: if you say something to offend us, we will react with retaliatory violence.  Does anyone sense a slight contradiction here? Both cannot be true. But the Islamic leader appears to have no difficulty whatsoever in speaking out of both sides of his mouth with a very straight face probably because prevarication is an acceptable tactic when dealing with an infidel.

The proposition that Samuel Huntingdon provoked Islamic people to terrorism (as some self-styled moderate Muslims argue) or that somehow Huntingdon is responsible for the radicalization and terrorism of Muslims because of his book Clash of Civilizations would be absurd, unless Islamic ideology teaches that criticism and verbal argument should be dealt with by deadly force.

An interesting question is, which is the lie: the proposition that Islam is not intrinsically violent, or the threat that King's hearing will provoke Islamic Americans to violence and terrorism?

In the nineteen sixties, Bobby Kennedy--then US Attorney General--called for a series of hearings into the role and operations of the Mafia in the US. Nobody at the time argued that the hearings were unfairly discriminatory against the Italian minority. Nor did anyone have the chutzpah to argue that as a result of the hearings Italians would be offended and radicalised and that the Mafia would get many more recruits.

But then that was another day and Italian Americans did not have spokesmen for whom lying was a weapon in an ideological and religious war. Nor did Italian Americans have a common ideology of world religious domination by force of arms if necessary.