A German-born 18-year-old of Iranian descent named Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree last Friday. He reportedly targeted young children and murdered nine.
This incident is a reminder that the ongoing terrorization of the West is not limited to the Islamic State (ISIS), “extreme” Wahhabi or Salafi interpretations of Islam, or terrorists posing as refugees entering the West.
Ali Sonboly was none of those. He was born and raised in Germany and, based on his name and Iranian heritage, was most likely of Shia background.
But he was a Muslim. He screamed Islam’s ancient war cry “Allahu Akbar” during his rampage and, less significantly, launched his attack on the one day of the week that many calculated Islamic attacks on non-Muslims occur: Friday.[1]
And that is the grand lesson of the Munich massacre. Mere Islam—to borrow from C.S. Lewis’ famous book about the many commonalities shared by most Christian denominations—is responsible for the ongoing terrorization of the West.
If you doubt this, simply turn to a recent study. It found that Muslims of all sects, races, and sociopolitical circumstances—not just “ISIS”—are responsible for persecuting Christians in 41 of the 50 worst nations to be Christian in: Shia Iran is the ninth worst nation, “Wahhabi” Saudi Arabia is 14th, while “moderate” countries like Malaysia and Indonesia are ranked 30 and 43 respectively.
The common denominator in all these nations is ISLAM—without qualifier.
Even ISIS’ abhorrent treatment of Christians and other non-Muslims is only an extreme reflection of what Muslims in general are doing to non-Muslims all around the world. See “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” reports which I’ve been compiling every month for five years this month, and witness the nonstop discrimination, persecution, and carnage committed against Christians by “everyday” Muslims—from the highest authorities to the basest mobs. Each monthly report (there are currently 58) contains dozens of atrocities, any of which if committed by Christians against Muslims would receive 24/7 blanket coverage.
While the media concoct any number of lies to dispel the Islamic nature of the Munich attack—the usual strategies, especially talk of “grievances,” are already being employed —the fact remains: for all the differences and tensions between Europe’s native and Muslim populations, the Christians being persecuted by Muslims are often identical to their persecutors in race, ethnicity, national identity, culture, and language. There is no political dispute, no land dispute. Nor do these disempowered and ostracized Christian minorities have any political power—meaning there are no Muslim “grievances” either.
So why are they hated and hounded? Because they are Christians—that is, non-Muslim infidels—and that’s the real reason Western people are being terrorized by Muslims, most recently (or at least as of this writing) in Munch.
Ugly or not, this truth, that mere Islam—not “ISIS,” “Salafism,” “Wahhabism,” or “Shiism”—promotes hate for and violence against non-Muslims will never be remedied until those in positions of leadership first acknowledge it. And, with the notable exception of Donald Trump, they are very far from doing so.
Notes:
[1] Lamenting how Muslims are often riled against “infidels” during weekly Friday mosque sermons in Egypt, a Coptic Christian once said, “Let me tell you … we [Christians] know that every Friday is a day of death; that the day after Friday, on Saturday, we’ll be carried to the morgue!”
I had a Christian friend who was raised in Indonesia. When I mentioned the Jakarta attacks in January, she said that she was surprised that it made the news. She said that shootings and attacks were a constant threat against her Catholic school when she was growing up, so much so, that children were taught and played in the inner buildings of the school, in case of drive-by attacks.
Of course you are correct Raymond as always. But how to get this through to the majority living amongst us? ( I am in Europe)
I cannot even start a conversation about muslim terror and persecution anymore, have to walk on egg shells ! Most are ( understandably to a certain extent) sick of hearing about it, many ignore the news with just a ‘ oh terrible’ or worse, nothing, and subsequently concentrate on other things , business as usual not realising what a dangerous mind-set this is , and if I raise the subject , my concerns are waived off in irritation, ‘ there she goes again’
It is frightening as already fewer come round to visit than they did, even family.
They also all know I am educated in Islam and religions generally. They just don’t want to know!
These others have closed their eyes and thus their minds to the global threat of Islamic extremism. They prefer their daily life as a placid comfort. They wrap themselves in a cocoon shielding them from the nastiness of the human condition as it presents itself in our time. They haunt the shopping malls and the darkness of the movie theater. Television broadcasts feed them entertainment and scripted, superficial reports presented as news. They represent the herd that the philosophers have long identified.
As always, this collection of mass humanity requires a strong leader to provide direction and a rationale for action. Today, only a single man of significance, Mr. Trump, has realized this necessity.
His opponents, his misguided fellow citizens, respond with incoherence and doomsday babble. They warn against him as dangerous to all they cherish. They air mindless assertions such as, “We are better than this.” Yet they never clarify what “this” includes and means. Instead, they rely on the dogma and the platitudes propounded in the high school classroom to fill the consciousness of the citizenry.
These foolish opponents cannot bring themselves to accept that like it or not, a war to the death rages daily between Islamic extremism and Western civilization. This war has manifested itself with destruction and murder of innocents on American soil.
Our nation needs a wartime leader to counter the enemy with a view to victory over him. Mr. Trump proposes to snuff the Muslims who practice Islamic extremism.
The voters in America have a clear choice between Mr. Trump and Clinton II (a serial liar) to serve our nation during this war.
Put another way, Muslim terrorists arise from the Muslim community, and they murder innocents in the name of Islam. Denial of this fact grounds itself in the social evil of political correctness — a dumbing-down of dialog to scrub it of words that some others find harmful, offensive, unfair, biased, etc.
The antidote to this evil comes from an ancient Asian philosopher, Confucius, who said: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name.”
Mr. Trump gains his appeal in large part because he dares to follow this old guiding maxim. He says the words that need saying. He speaks his mind. He employs the power of words. Citizens respond in a positive way to a speaker who describes actuality in plain terms that fit it.
What you need to do, Raymond, is put together a legal brief demonstrating how the mere profession of Islamic beliefs and teachings encourages the commission of murder and genocide. Encouragement of crime is a mode of accessorial participation, and it means thatm wherever there’s a murder linked to the Islamic State, the parents of the perpetrator are also guilty for having raised him as a Muslim.
Another thing you need to consider is that, when the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was promulgated in 1949, it was not intended that it protect religious groups identified in terms of the use of the Divine Name to commit capital crimes.
Radical Islam? No, Islam is radical.