Do Not Be Fooled By Propaganda

Charley Reese

There is an ongo­ing slan­der cam­paign against Islam, claim­ing that it is a reli­gion that pro­motes vio­lence and hint­ing that it seeks world con­quest. Before you buy the malarkey that is being pro­duced by peo­ple with their own agen­das or prej­u­dices or who are just plain igno­ra­mus­es, fol­low these few suggestions.

Com­pare the his­to­ry of Islam with the his­to­ry of Europe, which for cen­turies was called Chris­ten­dom. An objec­tive look will show you that Chris­ten­dom wins by a land­slide when it comes to vio­lence and wars. After all, Europe and its off­spring did not come to dom­i­nate the world, includ­ing the Islam­ic coun­tries, because they prac­ticed the gen­tle virtues of Jesus.

As for the com­mon prac­tice of cher­ry-pick­ing Scrip­ture from holy writ­ings and pre­sent­ing it out of con­text, just check out what Chris­tians call the Old Tes­ta­ment. There you will find God advo­cat­ing a dou­ble stan­dard of moral­i­ty, con­don­ing slav­ery, order­ing the Israelites to com­mit geno­cide and com­mit­ting infan­ti­cide him­self on a mass scale. I don’t believe you will find any­thing com­pa­ra­ble in the Qur’an.

The word jihad,” which is so over-used these days, has, like a lot of words, more than one mean­ing. It means basi­cal­ly to strug­gle, but this can be per­son­al or spir­i­tu­al, or a peace­ful polit­i­cal strug­gle. Only if Islam is attacked are Mus­lims required to defend it. As for that obnox­ious pro­pa­gan­da term Islamo-fas­cist,” just recall that fas­cism is a Euro­pean inven­tion by nom­i­nal Chris­tians. To my knowl­edge, the only fas­cist gov­ern­ments ever to exist on this plan­et were all Euro­pean and nom­i­nal­ly Christian.

Anoth­er canard is that Islam pro­motes forced con­ver­sion. Not so. Even when the Arab empire was expand­ing, rarely were any of the con­quered peo­ple forced to con­vert. The Qur’an even for­bids it, as I recall. Nat­u­ral­ly, once Mus­lims were in charge, a lot of peo­ple decid­ed it was in their own self-inter­est to con­vert, but this is just one of the sleazy aspects of human nature.

I remem­ber when Flori­da elect­ed its first Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of the 20th cen­tu­ry. I saw plen­ty of peo­ple crawl out from under their rocks and con­vert to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, drawn by the smell of patron­age. With some rare excep­tions, human beings always act in what they per­ceive, right­ly or wrong­ly, to be in their self-interest.

It was Chris­t­ian Europe that slaugh­tered the Jews, and noth­ing remote­ly resem­bling the Holo­caust is to be found in the his­to­ry of Islam. In fact, dur­ing the past, when Jews were being per­se­cut­ed by Chris­t­ian Europe, they fre­quent­ly fled to and found sanc­tu­ary in the Mus­lim coun­tries. Until Israel was estab­lished, prac­ti­cal­ly every Mus­lim coun­try had siz­able Jew­ish pop­u­la­tions dat­ing back cen­turies. And there are still Jews and Chris­tians in some Mus­lim countries.

A final sug­ges­tion is that when you hear some indi­vid­ual rad­i­cal Mus­lim being quot­ed, just remem­ber he is one of a bil­lion peo­ple and speaks only for him­self and his small fol­low­ing. And be wary of the quo­ta­tions he uses, for they are often delib­er­ate­ly fab­ri­cat­ed or dis­tort­ed. If Mus­lims real­ly desired to con­quer the world, don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve been liv­ing in peace with them for near­ly a mil­len­ni­um and a half, except for those times when we attacked them (the Cru­sades, the Euro­pean colo­nial move­ment and our inva­sion of Iraq)? Don’t for­get either
that some of the coun­tries the Bush admin­is­tra­tion calls allies are them­selves Mus­lim –- Egypt, Jor­dan, Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia, etc.?

You have noth­ing to fear from Islam. The al-Qai­da move­ment is a tiny per­cent­age of Mus­lims and would­n’t be the force it is except for the fact that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has gone out of its way to make all of Osama bin Laden’s pro­pa­gan­da become true. Do Not Be Fooled By Propaganda 1

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