History Repeats, Along With Our Consternation

Fashionable Appeasement 

Random outlier, or the centre?  When it comes to Islam, the Western Commentariat fervently believe that centrist-Islam is roughly equivalent (in social behaviour and societal impact) to Christianity and Judaism.  Christians and Jews have a weekly holy day; so do Muslims.  Christians and Jews gather at their local house of worship to declare praise to their God; Muslims do likewise, except they adore a different deity.  But, general equivalence between the religions applies.  

What, then, does the Commentariat hold when the world is awash with Islamic violence (Muslim on Muslim; Muslim upon Jew; Muslim upon Christian; and Muslim upon Western secularists)?  The West's resounding response is to argue that such violence is not genuinely Islamic.  It is not the centre.  It is the random outlier.  It is Islamic extremism.  It is not genuinely Islamic.

We blogged recently on the brutal murder in Glasgow of an Islamic adherent by another Islamic adherent.  Now, Muslim violence perpetrated upon other Muslims is de rigueur  in many parts of the world, so its reasonable to expect it in the UK, as well as in NZ.  In this case, the violence, the brutal murder was religiously motivated.  Clearly so.

A Muslim man claimed responsibility last week for murdering a Scottish Muslim shopkeeper last month after the businessman posted a “Happy Easter” message to his “beloved Christian” friends on Facebook.  As previously reported, Asad Shah, 40, died in a hospital in Glasgow after sustaining serious injuries in the March 24 attack that British media described as especially brutal.

Police arrested 32-year-old taxi driver Tanveer Ahmed the day after the attack in connection to what authorities believed to be a “religiously prejudiced” attack.  After his second court hearing last Wednesday, Ahmed instructed his lawyer, John Rafferty, to read a public statement outside the court, the Daily Record reported.

This case becomes an interesting one because the alleged murder got his lawyer to read out in public his manifesto, justifying his crime.  So, a public confession before the trial.  He is proud of his actions.  He believes he has done right.  He has pleased Allah.
“Asad Shah disrespected the messenger of Islam the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Mr. Shah claimed to be a Prophet,” the statement read.  Ahmed was likely referring to a sentence in Shah’s Easter Facebook post that read, “Let’s Follow the Real Footstep of Beloved Holy JESUS CHIRST [PBUH] And Get the Real Success in Both Worlds.”

Image source: Facebook

The acronym “PBUH” is short for “peace be upon him,” the Islamic statement of reverence attributed to prophets.  “This all happened for one reason and no other issues and no other intentions,” the statement continued.  “It is mentioned in the Quran that there is no doubt in this book [that] no one has the right to disrespect the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,” Ahmed’s statement continues. “If I had not done this, others would and there would have been more killing and violence in the world.”  [Emphasis ours]

The testimony of this perpetrator is that he was subject to a higher law, a higher duty--the obligation to kill someone because it is commanded by Muhammad.  There is no doubt about these things, he tells us.  Is this an extremist outlier, or is it the core?  The confessed murderer claims it is core.  If he had not done this terrible (yet holy) deed, others would have done so.  He implies their violence would have been more indiscriminate, like setting off bombs, killing infidels completely unrelated to the victim.  Here is the ultimate self-righteous justification: "I killed to prevent many more being killed."  His fundamental assumption is the intrinsic violence and retributive nature of his religion.

There is no doubt whatsoever that such beliefs are widely held amongst Islamic peoples and Islamic nations around the world.  Not universally, but extensively.  Try posting what the victim, Mr Asad Shah expressed in Saudi Arabia, for example.  Try publicly writing, "Jesus Christ PBUH" and see what happens.

The victim, Mr Asad Shah represents the moderate Muslim--the archetypical Islamic believer--the centre--according to the Western Commentariat.  The arrested man with his Manifesto, Tanveer Ahmed represents the extreme outlier.  Yet, the universal violence of Islamic believers--either forcing compliance with dictats, or punishing those who breach them--and the legal construction and application of Islamic law in Islamic nations testifies to a very different reality.  When Islam becomes the dominant religion in a nation, "official" violence increases; it does not diminish.  It is almost as if the Western Commentariat is living in a parallel universe.

Consequently, it is not unexpected that this particular perpetrator has been lionised on social media by his co-religionists.  But, never mind, such sentiments are only from radical Muslims, random outliers.

According to the Christian Post, a group radical Muslims have created a Facebook page to honor Ahmed for killing Shah. The group refers to Ahmed as “Ghazi,” a title used to refer to Muslim warriors and champions. The page, which is no longer visible on Facebook, reportedly received more than 700 “likes” before it was apparently taken down.

A number of photos of Ahmed were featured on the page, according to the Post, including one of him posing next to a photo of a prominent Muslim assassin Mumtaz Qadri, who was executed in February for killing Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer in 2011 after he defended a Christian mother who was convicted of blasphemy and expressed a desire to modify blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

One gets the sense that we are living in times parallel in many ways to the West during the rise of the Nazis in Germany.  The European nations willed themselves to believe in Hitler's pacific intentions.  Every scrap of evidence was twisted and turned into butressing the belief that Hitler and the Nazis were "just like us".  One recalls how Neville Chamberlain testified that at one of his meetings with Hitler he looked into his eyes and could see there a man of integrity, committed to keeping his word.  Upon such inanities and make-believe fancies the deaths of millions of men and women subsequently turned.

In our day, we believe we are living in a time of similar self-deception, of willing one's propaganda and secular ideology and values to be true.  In reality, our greatest threat is not Islam, but Western secularist ideology which blinds our leaders and authorities to the huge elephant in the room.

If recent Western history has universally vilified Neville Chamberlain's reckless foolishness and complicit responsibility for World War II, what will it do with our equally purblind leaders intent on clinging to their secularist nostrums and failed humanitarian ideologies?  They persist in willing themselves not to see what is obvious to all reasonable people.  Appeasement has become fashionable again.  May God have mercy upon us.