Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host on KRLA-AM (870) in Los Angeles, evidently wants Muslims to answer five burning questions he thinks non-Muslims would like answered. I'm not sure which non-Muslims he means, but regardless, I attempted to answer. Not sure this was worth my time...
(PRAGER): The rioting in France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.
Here are five of them:
Why are you so quiet?
Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week's protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah.
There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam? This is true even of the millions of Muslims living in free Western societies. What are non-Muslims of goodwill supposed to conclude? When the Israeli government did not stop a Lebanese massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, great crowds of Israeli Jews gathered to protest their country's moral failing. Why has there been no comparable public demonstration by Palestinians or other Muslims to morally condemn Palestinian or other Muslim-committed terror?
(ME): The first issue here is how one defines terrorism and evil. Suppose a crazed criminal breaks into Dennis Prager's house, and forces Dennis Prager out. If Dennis Prager resists, is he wrong for doing so? Can he rightly be designated as a terrorist?
According to international law, it is the right and indeed the duty of an occupied people to respond, with arms if necessary, to end their occupation. The attempt to paint the Palestinians as the violent party in the conflict is perhaps the most masterful propaganda of the century. It is a classic colonial strategy, as practiced by the British in Kenya or the French in Algeria: Occupy a country; crush or disarm the resistance; label those who still resist as "terrorists;" then jail, torture, or kill them out right.
It may be that Muslims don't demonstrate because they're rooting for the Palestinians to win their land back after 58 years of occupation. It is natural to feel empathy for the underdog--certainly the Palestinians in this case. Israel has received $84,854,827,200 of U.S. taxpayers money since its inception (source: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), and yet has been unable to crush the Palestinians. It is clear that the Palestinian resistance is a popular movement which represents the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. So, should we start demonstrating in protest because David has finally scored a hit against Goliath?
Recall the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, who engaged in violent acts against the Nazi occupiers. Were they too, terrorists, or somehow wrong in fighting back? Would it have been appropriate for other Jews to be out in the streets demonstrating to condemn the Warsaw ghetto Jews for fighting back against the Nazis?
The second issue is of collective guilt. Suppose that the acts popularly labeled "terrorism" might by some stretch of the imagination be considered as such under international law. Why should each and every Muslim feel responsible for demonstrating against, or otherwise repudiating these acts, when neither they, nor their elected representatives have committed them? Do Americans (with the exception of a tiny conscientious minority) go out and demonstrate against their government's actions each time a Palestinian child is killed by Israeli Defense Forces..a near daily occurrence--with weaponry purchased with their tax dollars? In our democracy, did we stop our elected representatives from killing in excess of 100,000 Iraqi men women, and children? We were too cowardly even to impeach Bush, when he clearly lied to the nation about the existence of WMDs, and continued to let him kill in our name. We don't even accept responsibility for acts committed by someone whom we put in office twice. Why then should Muslims feel guilty for acts committed by people who are not their elected reps, and in doing so, accept responsibility for the acts committed by others?
It is laudable if masses of Israeli Jews demonstrated against Sabra-Chatilla. Did they demonstrate against Deir Yassin, Kafr Kassim, and all the other massacres of Palestinian peasants perpetrated by Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun gang, clearing the way for the "birth" of Israel? Did they continue to demonstrate against the Jenin massacre and other recent massacres and near daily killings of Palestinians?
Did the Israeli Jews demonstrating against Sabra-Chatilla take note that the overseer of that massacre, Ariel Sharon, was rewarded for his atrocities with the post of Prime Minister? Imagine how 9-11 victims might feel if Osama Bin Laden (or whomever one imagines responsible for that attack) was appointed governor of New York. Then imagine how Palestinians who lost family members in Sabra-Chatilla might feel at Sharon's Prime Ministership.
(PRAGER): Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.
(ME): In a Doublespeak-free world, this question would be: "Why do some Palestinians defend themselves with arms, and others do not?"
Because a victim does not respond violently, does not mean he or she is not victimized. Different people respond to injustice in different ways.
One reason for the absence of Palestinian Christians from the armed resistance may be: Palestinian Christians are far fewer in number than Palestinian Muslims. If the total number of Palestinian Christians is smaller (than Palestinian Muslims), then so is the number of Palestinian Christians who are part of the Resistance. If there are not as many of them in the Resistance, then it follows that there is a smaller number of them to resist with arms.
Another reason for the difference of response may be: Muslims are not allowed to accept oppression, racism, colonization, or other forms of subjugation. The Qur'an commands Muslims to fight back when attacked or occupied. Off course such a command would be anathema to Israeli settlers bulldozing Palestinian homes and destroying Palestinian crops. Hence the labeling of Qur'anically mandated Palestinian Muslim armed resistance with terrorism.
When Palestinians--both Muslim and Christian--and their supporters choose to oppose occupation by non-violent means, they are mowed down, like Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall. The decades long racist policy of excluding the Palestinians from "Peace Talks" ended, only to be replaced by talks in which true representatives of the Palestinians were barred. Even in these bogus talks, the agreements made were repeatedly violated by the Israelis. Today the Palestinians are disenfranchised from most Israeli decision-making bodies and processes, much as Black people were disenfranchised in the U.S. under Jim Crow. The recent PA election showed that when Palestinians attempt to forge a government of their choosing through suffrage, the U.S. and Israel do all they can to choke it out of existence. So after excluding the Palestinians from all democratic alternatives, is it really a surprise that some of them, who don't wish to remain colonial-settler subjects the rest of their lives, resort to the only avenue for change left open to them..violent resistance.
(PRAGER): Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?
(ME): The question is a complicated one. The answer lies in part in the U.S. foreign aid budget. For example, in 2005, U.S. aid to Muslim countries included:
Afghanistan $980,460,000
Algeria $850,000
Bahrain $19,498,000
Egypt $1,821,520,000
Indonesia $147,820,000
Jordan $456,212,000
Lebanon $38,220,000
Morocco $45,835,000
Nigeria $130,099,000
Oman $21,340,000
Pakistan $537,550,000
Saudi Arabia $25,000
Sudan $305,219,000
Tunisia $11,795,000
Turkey $38,328,000
Uzbekistan $48,717,000
(Numbers are FY 2005 Estimates. Source: Federation of American Scientists, Arms Sales Monitoring Project.)
Many U.S. aid beneficiaries are military dictatorships, heavily criticized by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. So, the absence of democracy may be attributable at least in part to U.S. aid to these dictatorships. It's like paying a gangster who terrorizes people on a street corner, and then wondering why the people are terrorized. American taxpayers are unwittingly financing torture and murder in not just Afghanistan, Iraq, or Gitmo, but across the globe.
The second major obstacle to "freedom" in Muslim countries is the legacy of colonial rule, which many Muslim countries endured. Just as a few decades of affirmative action could not erase the legacy of 500 years of slavery in the Americas, a few decades of independence from overt colonialism did not end many deleterious colonial practices, which continued in the more subtle form of neo-colonialism. Colonialism nurtures a class of elites to serve the interests of the colonizing power. That elite survived the transition to independence; in the Muslim world it acts as neo-colonial agent of Western powers. Alienated from the masses, it squanders the wealth of the country, often through trade practices which harm the country. These actions often occur with the encouragement or support of the U.S. and other Western powers, and earns the elite the wrath of the masses. The ruling elite must then purchase massive weaponry, often through arms deals with the U.S. (placing the U.S. in the position of interested party maintaining these dictators) to subjugate the restless natives and maintain power.
On the other side of the coin, many countries popularly deemed "free" or democratic are today experiencing monumental challenges to freedom. In Austria, for example, a man was recently convicted for making politically incorrect statements about the Holocaust. Ditto for another man in Germany. Hark the Era of the Thought Crime! In London, imams can only preach what they are told, or risk jail sentences (very similar to Cairo or Riyadh), and police can shoot immigrants and "darkies" on suspicion and ask questions later.
Here in the U.S., special interest groups buy votes at every juncture, third party candidates are excluded from debates and have next to nil chance of election, and candidates are selected for high office under highly irregular circumstances, using Diebold machines with no paper trails. Political dissidents are subjected to officially sanctioned spying, thousands of people are rounded up and jailed and/or deported because they are the wrong race/religion, and American citizens are held for years without trial or charge. In New York, protestors, exercising their Freedom of Assembly in a permitted anti-war march, were harassed, photographed (for intimidation), and--in many cases--arrested by police. Closer to home, in Baltimore, Black residents are arrested for congregating on their own doorsteps, in violation of their elementary right to Freedom of Assembly, under the pretext that they may be selling drugs (although such harassment does not occur in predominantly white neighborhoods). This is the "democracy" we want to export to other countries?
(PRAGER): Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims - in the name of Islam - murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in "honor killings." And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.
(ME): I don't know--because Muslims are inherently violent and criminal? (If I didn't know any better, I would think Dennis Prager is trying to paint an egregiously stereotyped picture of all Muslims as violent.)
Beheadings and church burnings don't occur in the U.S.? Rapes, assaults, prostitutions, or beatings to death by boyfriends, husbands, fathers, and uncles of the predominantly female victims don't occur in the U.S.? Poor Black people..unable to acquire adequate legal counsel--weren't legally lynched by the President of the United States? In many of these cases, the perpetrators are self-proclaimed Christians or Jews. The only difference is that Muslims don't have the media savvy (or deviousness perhaps) to label the perpetrators of these crimes as Christian, Jew, etc.
As far as the "foreigners working to make Iraq free": under international law, workers employed by an occupying force are considered agents of the occupying force, and thus may be dealt with in the same way as the occupying force.
As far as Muslims murdering Russian schoolchildren in the name of Islam: Independent investigations after the fact showed that the hostage-takers did not murder the children; rather Russian forces, which cut off negotiations with the hostage-takers, and prematurely stormed the school, caused the death of the children. In fact, a furor arose in Russia when the premature storming became public knowledge (reported in all the major Russian newspapers). Further, the event followed the destruction of an entire Muslim city, Grozny, including its main orphanage. One major reason cited by the guerrillas for the hostage-taking was Grozny. Even then, the mainstream Chechen Muslim Resistance repudiated the hostage-taking. It is telling that Western media quickly forgot about the aerial bombardment of Grozny, which killed 100,000 Chechen Muslims (reported by BBC), in their efforts to make it appear as if Chechen hostage-taking had occurred in a vacuum.
In terms of sheer numbers, U.S. forces, and previously the U.S. acting through the U.N. Security Council, killed more people in the last two decades than any Muslim country. One hundred thousand (100,000) Iraqi people have been killed during the course of the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. A half million (500,000) Iraqi children died as a result of U.S.-spearheaded U.N. sanctions. These innocent lives were taken by U.S. forces, or the U.S. acting through the Security Council, not by Muslims. The question "Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?" might only be asked by someone with complete and utter tunnel vision to world events in the last several decades.
(PRAGER): Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?
No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan's Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.
Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a "Christian terrorist." As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.
(ME): Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, and Pakistan, among others are monarchies or dictatorships. Islam, by definition, prohibits kingship and dictatorship, so the categorization of these countries as "Islamic" (or governed by religious Muslims) is itself incorrect. Additionally, for reasons elucidated in Q3 above, few, if any, truly Islamic states have emerged in modern times.
On the prohibition of churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia: Islam itself has no prohibition against the building of churches or synagogues, so this question is better directed at the U.S.-supported Saudi monarchy.
On the destruction of the Buddhas: According to the Taliban's public statements, they were destroyed as a protest to the international community's apathy to millions of starving Afghan children. Recall after the Soviet withdrawal, and the years of internecine conflict which followed, the Taliban government brought peace to Afghanistan for the first time in decades. They also eliminated opium-trafficking. Yet they were rewarded by a near total cut in international aid. At the same time, U.N. agencies were moving to spend millions of dollars to refurbish the Buddha statues. The Taliban, infuriated at the world's concern for statues over Afghan children, destroyed the statues. The incident was cleverly manipulated by corporate media, and the original reasons for the Taliban protest were forgotten.
On Sudan's Islamic regime murdering Christians: Sudan's Christians live primarily in the south of the country. Until recent years, they lived in peace with Muslims. To understand how the conflict between the Christian SPLA and Muslim Sudanese arose, one needs simply to examine the case of the Nicaraguan Contras, and their funding by the Reagan Administration in furtherance of the overthrow of the Sandinista government. So, it's not quite as simple as the Sudanese government waking up one day with blood in their eyes and targeting poor innocent Christians. If an armed rebellion arose within the mainland U.S., the U.S. government would similarly squelch it.
In Pakistan, Christians and Muslims have historically lived in peace. Recent incidents, in which churches were attacked occurred under highly suspicious circumstances, and are thought to be the work of provocateurs.
In Palestine, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, peacefully coexisted, prior to 1917, when immigration of Zionist settlers was artificially accelerated..by the Zionist Founding Fathers..to the very high rates required to fulfill their political agenda. Historically, Muslims, Christians, and Jews have co-existed peacefully throughout the Arab world.
Notably, no Muslim country has bombed the U.S. or another Western country on Christmas or Easter. Yet the U.S. bombed Afghanistan during Ramadan, the holiest time of year for Muslims. Numerous mosques in Afghanistan and Iraq have been bombed by U.S. forces, many at prayer time. In Palestine, Arabs are stopped at checkpoints and prevented from reaching mosque services, if they happen to be on the wrong side of the Wall. In Jerusalem, Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli Jew entered a mosque full of worshippers and opened fire on them with an automatic weapon. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, the Holy Qur'an was thrown on the ground, in the toilet, urinated on, and otherwise desecrated by U.S. occupying troops.
In light of all this, the claim that "countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions" is indeed a bizarre one. Persecution of non-Muslims probably does exist to some small extent in some Muslim countries (as does the persecution of anyone who is different in most places). But Muslims generally don't come to non-Muslim countries and bomb and desecrate the Holy places of non-Muslims, and try to murder them on their Holy Days.
Muslims in many Western countries face varying levels of persecution. For example, in France, Muslim girls are forbidden by law from wearing hijab (Islamic head cover) to school. In the U.S., Islamic rituals not attacked at an official level; rather hostility and misunderstanding..where it occurs--seems more the result of public susceptibility to Zionist anti-Muslim propaganda, and to a xenophobic foreign policy. Many U.S. Muslims are harassed and intimidated from wearing headscarf or saying the obligatory five Muslim prayers in public for fear of physical assault. Many U.S. mosques are wiretapped or infiltrated by agents provocateurs. U.S. intelligence agencies set up booths at Muslim conventions. Muslim students at universities and colleges are harassed and tracked by DHS. Muslim professors are threatened with termination by Zionist interest groups if they question U.S.'s one-sided Middle East policies.
(PRAGER): As a member of the media for nearly 25 years, I have a long record of reaching out to Muslims. Muslim leaders have invited me to speak at major mosques. In addition, I have studied Arabic and Islam, have visited most Arab and many other Muslim countries and conducted interfaith dialogues with Muslims in the United Arab Emirates as well as in the U.S. Politically, I have supported creation of a Palestinian state and supported (mistakenly, I now believe) the Oslo accords.
Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, "Yes, we have real problems in Islam." Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better - for you and for the world - than dismissing us as anti-Muslim.
We await your response.
(ME): I hope this answers it.
Dennis Prager's nationally syndicated radio show is heard daily in Los Angeles on KRLA-AM (870).
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