by Phyllis Chesler
The Bloody Beast is really back. Only the willfully blind can deny it.
Let me spell it out, let me risk, yet again, being accused of “Islamophobia” (which does not exist), and of “racism” which very much does. Let the record show: I am not a “racist.”
The Beast is radical, fundamentalist, “Islamist” Islam; the beast is anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish Muslim supremacists, who are now also terrorists/jihadists. They—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moammar Gaddafi, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah—are not wrestling with themselves quietly, spiritually, to overcome lust or hatred. Oh the contrary. They are blowing people up, sending weapons, employing mercenaries, twisting minds, spewing hatred.
Yes, I am talking about the Jihad which has just claimed the lives of two American airmen in Germany—the shooter, 21-year-old Arif Uka, from Kosovo, was said to have yelled the proverbial “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) as he shot them down in cold blood. This is precisely what the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hassan, also yelled as he massacred 13 American soldiers on their home base in Texas.
The jihadists are telling us, showing us, that the Middle East and the Muslim world are here, both in Europe and in North America. Their gruesome and highly symbolic tactics and targets are here and of course, in India too. Does anyone remember 9/11, 3/11, 7/7, 11/26? How can anyone forget the World Trade Center, the Madrid train bombing, the London subway bombing, the attack on Mumbai?
The jihadists are also all over the Western campus (which is about to launch its annual grotesque Israeli Apartheid Week in 55 cities); the beast is present in all the “no go” zones throughout Europe where police dare not tread; it reigns among the politically correct “useful idiots” in the pro-Islamist Western media.
The beast can walk and chew gum at the same time. Thus, yesterday, Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet minister in Pakistan (Minister of Minorities) was assassinated for his opposition to the Islamic “blasphemy” laws. This means that one cannot criticize Islam (especially if what one says is true); if you do, you will be killed. According to leaflets left by his killers, the the 42-year-old Catholic Pakistani Minister was also assassinated because he was, quite simply, an “infidel Christian”; as such, Bhatti was viewed as unacceptable as a Pakistani government leader. In addition to defending the rights of minorities, Minister Bhatti had also defended the rights of rape victims. His killers claim to have acted for the Punjabi Taliban and al Qaeda.
The good news?
Finally, it is, or should be, overwhelmingly clear that the Arab Middle East has problems of its own that go far beyond America’s military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and far, far beyond Israel’s bright but tiny existence. Enormous poverty, tyranny, corruption, illiteracy, no free press, no freedom of religion, absolutely no personal and political freedom—such sorrows account for the frustration, resentment, and suffering of the majority of its inhabitants. There’s more. Today, both Muslim and infidel women are increasingly at risk in Muslim countries where forced veiling, forced female genital mutilation, forced child marriage, polygamy, and routine honor killings are normalized and even valorized.
Scapegoating Israel and America for such cultural, historical, tribal, and religious barbarism will not solve these larger problems. The cell phone generation that tried to launch a genuine revolution in Iran has, so far, been defeated. It remains a question as to whether their brave counterparts in Egypt will actually be able to win the day away from the far more powerful and organized Muslim Brotherhood and away from all the Egyptians who still want sharia law.
This point is utterly lost on both Tom Friedman in the New York Times and Andre Aciman in the Wall Street Journal.
Aciman wrote what promised to be a good op-ed piece. He understands why Israelis might be “nervous” about what’s happening in Egypt.The opening of the Suez Canal to two Iranian warships does not bode well. Neither does radical Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s ability to draw over a million Egyptians to hear him preach in Tahrir Square. Nor does last week’s attack by the army on a Coptic monastery, or the brutal assault on CBS News correspondent Lara Logan.
So far so good, yes? But then Aciman, an Egyptian Jew, born in Alexandria, does a 360 degree turn and writes that “Israel cannot afford to wait and see which way the wind blows as rebellion sweeps through the Middle East…this means striking an honorable deal with the Palestinians, vacating areas whose occupation is unjustifiable and allowing the Palestinians to have a country….Israel must learn to dream again.”
Is Aciman still dreaming of an Oslo Accord? Is he truly dreaming? Israel has never opposed a Palestinian state. The “Palestinians” (who used to be the Jews) and the Arab League have “occupied” a state of refusal for nearly a hundred years, at least since the Balfour Declaration. Why is Aciman bringing Israel and the Palestinians into this column? What politically correct reflex, what tunnel vision has guided him to spend four paragraphs on this non sequitur?
Then, we have Friedman. He congratulates President Obama for being an “African-American” (not a bi-racial American, which he surely is), and he congratulates Americans for having elected an “African-American with the middle name Hussein as president.” He believes this is one of the “factors” that have led to what he views as a mainly positive uprising in the Arab world. Friedman mentions other factors of influence (Google Earth, for example), but then, like Aciman, he just can’t help himself and he brings in Israel in a way that is both disquieting and patently ridiculous. He actually writes this:
The Arab TV network Al Jazeera has a big team covering Israel today. Here are some of the stories they have been beaming into the Arab world: Israel’s previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, had to resign because he was accused of illicitly taking envelopes stuffed with money from a Jewish-American backer. An Israeli court recently convicted Israel’s former President, Moshe Katsav on two counts of rape, based on accusations by former employees.
Excuse me? Is he saying that the people who came out to listen to al-Qaradawi or who voted for Hamas or for the Muslim Brotherhood—the Arab men who assaulted Lara Logan, the naked-faced infidel, will be holding orderly due process trials? Is he, too, dreaming?
Actually, Friedman gives Israel a great back-handed compliment. He states that since Israel tries its leaders for corruption and brings them to justice that the Arabs can’t help “but notice.”
I worry about the Arab Muslim dissidents, the southeast Asian Christians, the women, oh, how I worry about the women. Algeria once had a revolution too—but not for women, for whom they rolled the clock back. Khomeini’s so-called revolution set women back 50-100 years. I have just been told that Tunisian women are afraid—very afraid—that the post-self-immolation uprising in their country might spell their doom in terms of women’s rights.
Thus far, the only Arabs who have been calling for a feminist revolution are some brave Saudi Arabians (I’ve written about this here, here, and here) but thus far, they have remained a “virtual” revolution on Facebook only. Their modest demands for human rights and for women’s rights have not been heard in Tahrir Square, in Tripoli, in Tunis, in Manama.
Andre, Thomas, are you awake or are you both still dreaming?
Update: Arif Uka, the Franfurt shooter, is, according to my German-based source, a “known Islamist” who “calls himself on Facebook Abu Reyyan. He seems to be friends with Salafi Islamists like Pierre Vogel and is part of a hardcore scene of Islamist militants in Germany.” The Facebook page has been taken down.
Phyllis Chesler
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