Author: Charles Krauthammer
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: September 22, 2006
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101513_pf.html
Religious fanatics, regardless of what name
they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense
of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking
a joke well.
Today's Islamists seem to have not even a
sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The
pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about
Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and
violence:
· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims
attack seven churches.
· In London, the ever-dependable radical
Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope
is now condemned to death.
· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader
Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope.
The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead,
execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.
"How dare you say Islam is a violent
religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about
refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point
is intimidation.
First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek
report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And
now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in
German at a German university by the pope.
And the intimidation succeeds: politicians
bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York
Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship
about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in
which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight
of her latest concert tour.
In today's world, religious sensitivity is
a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly
followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.
The fact is that all three monotheistic religions
have in their long histories wielded the sword. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep
in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident)
with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil
war.
Christianity more than matched that lurid
history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter
of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres
to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium
(the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.
And Islam, of course, spread with great speed
from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign
persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and
the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism?
However, the inconvenient truth is that after
centuries of religious wars, Christendom long ago gave it up. It is a simple
and undeniable fact that the violent purveyors of monotheistic religion today
are self-proclaimed warriors for Islam who shout "God is great"
as they slit the throats of infidels -- such as those of the flight crews
on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and are then celebrated as heroes and martyrs.
Just one month ago, two journalists were kidnapped
in Gaza and were released only after their forced conversion to Islam. Where
were the protests in the Islamic world at that act -- rather than the charge
-- of forced conversion?
Where is the protest over the constant stream
of vilification of Christianity and Judaism issuing from the official newspapers,
mosques and religious authorities of Arab nations? When Sheik 'Atiyyah Saqr
issues a fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs"? When Sheik Abd al-Aziz
Fawzan al-Fawzan, professor of Islamic law, says on Saudi TV that "someone
who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one-third
of a trinity. . . . Don't you hate the faith of such a polytheist?"
Where are the demonstrations, where are the
parliamentary resolutions, where are the demands for retraction when the Mufti
Sheik Ali Gum'a incites readers of al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily,
against "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers . . . who prepare
[Passover] matzos from human blood"?
The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin
al-Shura Council in Iraq declares that it "will break up the cross, spill
the liquor and impose the 'jizya' [head] tax; then the only thing acceptable
is conversion or the sword." This to protest the accusation that Islam
might be spread by the sword.
As I said. No sense of irony.
