The Discerning Texan

We Love Life

You love life and we love death.

So said the voice speaking Arabic, with a Moroccan accent on a videotape retrieved from a waste basket near Madrid's main mosque and morgue (how very apt). This was in the wake of the horrific train bombings in Spain last spring, after a man with an Arab accent called in to TV channel TeleMadrid with instructions on where to look for the tape.

We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid ... It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies ... There will be more if God wills it. You love life and we love death ... if you don't put an end to your injustices more and more blood will run.

Ostensibly, this message was a ploy to influence Spain's presidential elections (a ploy that would prove to be successful). But there is a more sinister and profound message in this disembodied warning to the infidels from Islam's holy warriors: it is yet another explicit avowal (we still don't get it, do we?) of Islam's sanguine nature. It is the love of death in God's name, whether it is the ignominious murder of the infidel or the glorious death of the shahid (martyr). It is the spread of God's domain--dar al-Islam--through the violence of offensive jihad. And it is the perverse diminution of what we here in the West hold to be most dear: the sanctity of life.

Islam is a divinely inspired (via the Qur'an) culture of death. In no other cultural construct is death a more revered and desirable part of life. Whether it is the killing of infidels who refuse to accept Islam's supremacy, or dying while endeavoring to kill them, death is fanatically embraced by Muslims. The mujahideen are not brave for their robotic resolution in carrying out their Islamikaze missions. They are merely brainwashed cowards who have come to believe that they are serving God and will be rewarded in the afterlife with pleasures of the flesh. It's really quite sordid if you think about it. They're not courageous. They love death. They're raised from infancy to hold death for God--at any age--as life's highest ideal.

Islam also exaggerates the psychological concept of in-group/out-group bias to an amazing extent. The out-group (non-Muslims) is not only marginalized in the Islamic mind, but is actually seen as an inferior category of subhumans who should be killed if they refuse to convert to Islam or to acknowledge its superiority. It's a hyperxenophobia. We all exercise the mental dichotomy of us/them, but most of us here in the democratic West have come to accept that just because people don't conform exactly to our belief systems, does not mean that they should be exempted from our compassion, empathy, and consideration. Here in America, through much struggling over time, we have built a solid, free society out of a vast, eclectic plurality. The fascistic, intolerant dogma of Islam leaves room only for the second-class citizenship of dhimmitude when it comes to kuffar (non-Muslims/infidels). That's what the book says, and the book is not to be questioned.

This is not to say that all of Islam should be scrapped. Like any religion, it has much of value to offer its adherents and mankind in general. But that's only if it's severed from its central tenets of hateful intolerance, brutal repression and totalitarianism, irrational arrogance, and obsession with killing and dying in God's name. That's not going to happen until Islam undergoes a drastic, fundamental reformation. To achieve that, Muslims will have to abandon the idea that the Qur'an is the infallible word of God, which would be to contravene the very foundation of Islam. And I don't think that's going to happen. As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, I really don't see much reason to hope.

So, in the meantime, we are locked in bitter enmity with people who have as their spiritual inspiration, (literally interpreted) verses like this:

• Of the believers are men who are true to that which they covenanted with Allah. Some of them have paid their vow by death (in battle), and some of them still are waiting; and they have not altered in the least. -Qur'an 33:22
• Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you [infidels] worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:-- "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master." -Bukhari Vol 4, Bk 53, No 386
• Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur'an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme. -Qur'an 9:111
• I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "The example of a Mujahid in Allah's Cause-- and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause----is like a person who fasts and prays continuously. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty." -Bukhari Vol 4, Bk 52, No 46
• Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world's life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward. -Qur'an 4:74
• ...the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Nobody who enters Paradise will (ever like to) return to this world even if he were offered everything on the surface of the earth (as an inducement) except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed ten times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him. -Muslim Bk 20, No 4636

They kill women, children, and the elderly because they think it pleases their God. What sort of monster of a deity would be pleased at such depravity? The Holocaust survivors who are blown to pieces on buses in Jerusalem by Arab terrorist cowards; the Americans who leaped hundreds of feet to their death after Al Qaeda scum flew planes into the buildings they were in; the schoolchildren who were mowed down like so much human grass by the Chechen mujahideen: they all loved life, and I could never believe that any sort of good and just God would take pleasure in their murder.

I well know that not all Muslims engage in these reprehensible acts. I am not condemning Muslims, the people (although I certainly condemn the man who has already killed in his heart or with his hand, in the name of Islam). I am criticizing Islam, the unreformed, violent, and hateful politicoreligious death cult. There's a difference. The very few moderate voices in Islam are always drowned out by the mainstream, or by a bullet, or a knife. Death for blaspheming God's religion.

While we prosecute our soldiers for putting a pair of women's underwear on the head of Saddam's fedayeen to take an immature picture, "God's soldiers" of Islam respect the pride of innocent kuffar civilians they've captured--before sawing their heads off to the empty, droning declaration of "God is great!" While we take great pains on the battlefield to respect our own lives and the lives of noncombatants, the mujahideen love death. Their lives mean nothing to them, nor do the lives of any civilians who get in the way of their mission from God.

We love life. To love life is natural and good. To discount life's worth is aberrant and vile. We've spent enormous amounts of blood, treasure, and mental energy in broad efforts throughout the West's history to preserve and respect life. For those of us who are faithful, life is a precious and irreplaceable gift from our creator. We honor it, cherish it, and look for new ways to improve it and extend it. All of Western civilization is a living testament to how very highly we regard life. And when someone comes along who wants to treat our lives with the same pathological indifference with which they treat their own, we are obligated to destroy them and/or their ability to threaten us; even as we endeavor to minimize that destruction within reasonable bounds.

The mujahideen have come to mock and exploit our love of life, in their perverse delusions of godly purpose. But they have underestimated our willingness to kill them en masse if we need to. They love death. Let them have death.

"This was a purposeful, hateful act as far as we know, by an individual acting alone," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels at a news conference...

[.....]

And also, from the FBI: "We believe he is a lone individual with antagonism toward this organization,"

"The hits were intentional,'' he said, noting that police are treating them as assaults.

Gittens had no information about a possible motive. [WTF??? --DT]

Muslim kills Jews? “Road Rage…”

Maxed Out Mama has a brilliant and temperate post wherein she looks beyond the sputterings of some who (like me) “wrote angry” last night or in the wee small hours. As usual she is clear-thinking and wise, and she bounces an important idea off of my comment, below, that the press and powers-that-be are - by their reactions - fomenting distrust and prejudice toward moderate and peaceful Muslims much moreso than are these violent acts by Islamic Fundies. When people see a thing happening and are told, “no, that’s not happening, it’s something else and if you think otherwise, you’re an immoral person,” it creates enormous resentment, a sense of disorientation and a further sense that someone, “either me or thee” is nuts and must be guarded against. She writes:

I think there is a war here, but it is not a war between religions, but as Ali says, between Violence and Reason. Violence has a theology, but so does Reason. And coming back to the Anchoress’ point, I think that failure to confront and examine the “war within the Law of God” will leave people in the US with the impression that this is a different war, and that all Muslims are prone to go off like popguns in Jewish neighborhoods. I think it’s time to come to grips with what Violence is truly saying in order to let Reason prevail.

I want to reiterate this: for every act of violence in the west, there are ten in the Muslim world. The ideology of Violence must be defeated, because it will never surrender - but that need not mean that Muslims must be outcast, or that being Muslim is at all incompatible within being humane and just. What we should do is speak and live reason, even if we have to carry a gun to do this. I must, in the end, have a radical addiction to freedom, because I would rather live in an armed society than in one which carried out pograms against innocent Muslims.

Our society doesn’t fail to criticize and examine the violent Christian teachings which occasionally arise, and I think we now must confront openly the violent Muslim teachings without fear or favor. Unless we do this, it will end in pograms. H/T Sigmund Carl and Alfred.

That’s the crux of all of this. When I read about these sorts of events, be they the synagogue shooting, the LAX incident, the Tarheel SUV attack or this new one, and see how quickly there is movement to make excuses for that behavior, I get an image in my head of an American, looking around at all of it, and feeling like it’s all happening under water, in ripples of distortion. If the American does not feel like he or she can get a clear sense of what is going on, the frustration is going to ratchet up. Not good.
:::END UPDATE:::

This is becoming an appalling habit in the press and by politicians. An Islamic fundamentalist shoots Jews in a Synagogue, and it’s some sort of random incident. An Islamic fundamentalist uses his SUVto kill people partly in front of a Synagogue, and in what would appear to be a somewhat “Jewish neighborhood” and the press takes a hours to cover the story (probably looking for the appropriate “frame,”) and until someone in authority can be found to sing out, “ROAD RAGE”! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Road rage! Mayor Newsom sees no problem, here…a “relatively young” person, obviously confused! Yes, that’s the ticket!

Omeed Aziz Popal, the poor confused youngster, is 29 years old.

Can you imagine, if someone had (God forbid!) driven a car into 14 gay people, how quickly the press would have managed to cover the story? Can you imagine that Mayor Newsom would call it “road rage” and suggest that there really probably wasn’t a “hate crime” attached to the action?

What the hell is wrong with the press, what the hell is wrong with the leadership? Why are they so incapable of calling anti-semitism what it is, of calling a terrorist action what it is? Newsflash, folks, when someone decides to drive his car into people as they’re crossing the street, it’s the same as tossing a molotov cocktail at them, it’s the same as tossing a grenade. It is destructive, it kills people and terrifies communities, that is called t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m! Hey, guess what, fellas, we don’t need no stinking anthrax to kill and terrify…we can use our cars.

I swear, these people are tempting me to some vile language.

I know this is rather an intemperate post for me, and I’ll probably regret some of these words, later…but I’m getting weary of watching the press and the people “in charge” go out of their way to downplay it anytime someone with an “Islamic” sort of name drives a car into people on a city street, or on a campus, or starts shooting people in a synagogue, or raises cain at an El Al counter at LAX. I know that somewhere in the minds of these movers and shakers they think they are protecting Muslims-in-general from reactionary prejudice, distrust and bias from us unruly, racist, mouth-breathing Americans (because we went nuts and burned down mosques after 9/11, right? We took to the streets and rampaged and lynched anyone named Abdul back then, right?) but the truth is, by their incessant downplaying, their knee-jerk move to protect-and-explain perps like this, they’re just making some people very resentful, and in the end, I think that’s going to do more to foment prejudice and bias, distrust and hate toward decent Muslim persons than would simply acknowledging the fact that when these Fundamentalists DO this crap, it is what it is - an act of aggression, hate and terror - and not some “mistake” that can be cooed away.

Gateway Pundit shows a map of the rampage, and lots of photos and updates. He says three people have been taken in for questioning.

LGF had the breaking story and lots of updates in the comments thread.

Apparently he perp “made comments” to arresting officers. I wonder if they were anything like Mel Gibson’s comments? We’d hear about them, then, certainly, wouldn’t we? UPDATE: LGF has video with a reporter saying the perp referred to himself as a terrorist. I’ll take it with a grain of salt, only because a year ago reporters were telling us babies were being raped in the Superdome…they’re not really good with breaking news anymore, so who knows what is known?

One of Michelle Malkin’s sources writes: “The 3500 California St hit was a 1/2 mile from the main Jewish temple, Temple Emanu-El and 41 miles from his starting point in Fremont.”

It will be very interesting to see how the reports go.

I seriously doubt that it will be that interesting--to most Americans anyway. The drive-by media will bend over backwards to make these acts seem as random as a day in the park; after all it is an election year--it would be criminal to give any credence to the charges that we really are in a war for our survival. And so what if we increase the likelihood of a catastrophic apocalyptic attack--surely that is a better result that for any of those war-mongering imperialist Americans to get anything resembling support from those giving us the news--right? Perhaps they can find a few more state secrets to leak between now and then and help our enemies so more of our finest can be slain and we can stay in a "quagmire"--at least until the almighty Democrats are elected again... I find this as repulsive and worthy of contempt as almost anything I have ever encountered in my life. And I am as convinced as ever that it is going to take another 9/11--or worse--before the public wakes up to what is being done to them. And when they finally do wake up--they are not going to be very happy with the people who sold them down the river--DT