Hard Truths

A moderate Muslim is given a voice in the LA Times and offers us two truths about Muslims, one of which is that there are no moderate Muslims.

Be that as it may, his essay is worth reading. The writer, Mansoor Ijaz, says, for example, that:

I am an American by birth and a Muslim by faith. For many of my American friends, I am a voice of reason in a sea of Islamist darkness, while many Muslims have called me an "Uncle Tom" for ingratiating myself with the vested interests they seek to destroy through their violence. Mostly, though, I try not to ignore the harsh realities the followers of my religion are often unwilling to face.

The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank.

The hypocrisy only starts there. Muslims and Arabs have done pitifully little to help improve the capacity of the Palestinian people to be good neighbors to their Israeli brethren. Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim "haves" put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the "have nots" to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages.

The most interesting graph, however, is this one:

In fact, the most glaring truth is that Islam's mobsters fear the West has it right: that we have perfected the very system Islam's holy scriptures urged them to learn and practice. And having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize those of us in the West and to try to bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate or house.

Whether this is entirely true or not, it contains an excellent insight. The West, whose values were shaped by Christian influence and where Christians still seek to fulfill the mandate given by Christ to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, is really the only source of compassion and succor in the world for those who suffer. The wealthy, oil-besotted Arabs do little for those they're in the best position to help, and non-theistic Asian nations have hardly distinguished themselves by their altruism.

It is Christianity which is the hope of the world's destitute, and were that flame ever to flicker and go out, as the secularists among us fervently hope it will, the world will rapidly descend into a Hobbesian nightmare of war of every man against every man. Once Christianity no longer provides the impetus for relief to the suffering stranger, there will not be a different impetus, there will be no impetus. Those who, like the people devastated by the tsunami in 2003, will suffer with no hope of rescue or relief.

Humorless Wastelands

One of the traits that sets True Believers off from the rest of humanity is that True Believers find it impossible to laugh at themselves. Perhaps they are too insecure in what they believe, perhaps humorless people just naturally gravitate toward an ideology or a faith that takes itself so seriously that self-deprecation is considered a major fault. Whatever the reason, TBers are often a humorless lot.

Think of the political left which, with a few exceptions, is a mirthless wasteland, especially compared to the conservative right. Read the hard-left blogs and newspaper columns and you find that whatever wit they put on display is generally employed in the service of the political cheapshot. The only thing they find at all amusing are the misfortunes of their political enemies (and anyone who does not agree with them is indeed an enemy, not merely an opponent.

The Islamic world is another example of people completely bereft of the ability to laugh unless it is the humorless laughter of derision directed at those they hope to soon kill. They are especially incapable of laughing at themselves, which is too bad because they're missing out on some real fun.

Anyway, by stark contrast consider this irreverent Israeli who is conducting a contest to see who can pen the funniest anti-semitic cartoons:

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the "Muhammad cartoon-gate" events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves! "We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!" said Sandy "No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!"

The contest has been announced today on the www.boomka.org website, and the initiator accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Sandy is now in the process of arranging sponsorships of large organizations, and promises lucrative prizes for the winners, including of course the famous Matzo-bread baked with the blood of Christian children.

Probably most of what will be produced in a contest like this will be pretty tasteless and a lot of it won't reach the level of the genuinely funny. Nevertheless, maybe I just don't know enough Muslims, but I'm having difficulty trying to picture anyone of that faith even contemplating doing something like this.

They're much too preoccupied with raising money to fund the bounties they're putting on the heads of Danish cartoonists.