http://www.grasstopsusa.com 8/28/2007
"Tiny" Muskens
Even for the Dutch – tolerant to the point of national suicide – it was a tad much.
Martinus “Tiny” Muskens, Catholic bishop of Breda, told a television audience that Catholics should pray to Allah, as a way to ease tensions with their Islamic neighbors.
“Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah?” asked the bishop who spent 8 years in Muslim Indonesia. (Our Allah who art in heaven, hallowed be thy jihad?)
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) thought the prelate’s proposal a capital idea. “It reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same God,” CAIR Spokes-thug Ibrahim Hooper told FOXNews.com. Then, why don’t Muslims begin praying in the name of Jesus, or use the Hebrew word Adonai (Lord) in their prayers?
Just for a change, why don’t Muslims do something to ease tensions? They fly planes into buildings, kidnap and behead, assassinate, try to blow up airliners and spread the most vile hatred imaginable – and it’s our job to reassure them.
“What does God care what we call Him? It is our problem,” Muskens declared. Hooper agreed, “I don’t think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God’s moral principles.” If Hooper said that in Islamabad, Riyadh, or Cairo – he’d be stoned to death by his ecumenically minded co-religionists. FYI: CAIR’s adherence to “God’s moral principles” may be seen in its status as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the federal trial of the Holy Land Foundation for aiding Hamas, now in progress.
If there’s nothing in a name, why didn’t Joshua order that on entering the Holy Land, the God of Israel would henceforth be known as Baal, to facilitate relations with the Canaanites? Why did Jesus instruct his disciples to pray in his name?
My friend Bill Donohue, the tough-talking president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said the bishop “can pray to ‘Allah’ all he wants, but only addlepated Catholics will follow his lead.”
A poll in De Telegraaf, the largest paper in the Netherlands, found 92% of the Dutch opposed to the bishop’s bootlicking.
The papers were filled with comments like “Sure. Let’s call God Allah. Let’s call a church a mosque.” Hollanders can also pray toward Mecca, dress their women in burquas and beat them when they’re “disobedient.” Why go half-way?
After the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a homegrown jihadist, the Dutch are starting to reassess their anything-goes ethos.
In a 2006 opinion survey, 63% said the Religion of Peace is incompatible with modern European life, 68% felt threatened by “immigrant or Muslim young people,” 53% feared a terrorist attack by Dutch Muslims and 47% believed that at some point in their lives, Holland would be governed by Islamic law.
In 1955, John Wayne made “Blood Alley,” a movie about a shipload of Chinese villagers dodging danger as they fled the Chi-Coms. Along with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the Netherlands is beginning to look like Allah Alley.
Due to immigration and procreation, Dutch Muslims have gone from 22,000 in 1973 to more than 1 million today, roughly 6% of the population. In March, the Dutch government announced a 10 million Euro program to combat the radicalization of Muslim youth. The methods to be employed weren’t specified. Presumably, they will not include buying prayer rugs for Catholics.
Besides the slaughter (literally) of Van Gogh - because he had the temerity to do a documentary on the abuse of women under Islam - last November, four Dutch Muslims were convicted of plotting a terror campaign.
The ringleader, Samir Azzouz, had prepared a suicide video intended to “strike terrible fear into the Dutch people.” The cell’s targets included Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who renounced Islam and helped Van Gogh with his film.
In December, 2004, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior released a 60-page report titled “From Dawa (proselytizing) To Jihad,” which conservatively estimated that there are 50,000 Islamic radicals amongst the tulips and windmills.
According to the report, the Saudis have financed a number of mosques and Islamic organizations (never a good sign), including Amsterdam’s Tawheed mosque, where Van Gogh’s killer prayed, and whose imam refers to Christians and Jews as “kindling for hell fire.” Now there’s a good-will gesture for you – one guaranteed to ease tensions.
The report rated the ability of Dutch society to resist Islamic extremism “low,” though this seems to be improving. It also noted that the Dutch Muslim community is particularly susceptible to radical influences.
Like Romans in the dying days of the empire, Europeans have let barbarians in the gates, with predictable consequences. There are an estimated 20 million Muslims in Europe today. The percentage of Muslims in the population of the European Union doubled between 1995 and 2005.
Go to any major city in Western Europe and see who’s pushing strollers with two and three children. It won’t be Babette, Anka or Inga. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Brussels, the most popular name for baby boys is Mohammed – not in honor of the American boxer.
The birthrate of European Muslims is three times that of their non-Muslim counterparts (the latter well below replacement level). In less than 20 years, it’s estimated that one-third of all European children will be born into Moslem families. By 2050, one in every five Europeans will pray to the same god as Osama bin Laden and the Iranian ayatollahs.
Some Europeans are fatalistic.
An October 25, 2006 article published in The Brussels Journal quotes German author Henryk M. Broder, who told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that young Europeans who don’t want to live under a Caliphate should leave while they still can. Sitting on a balcony in Berlin, pointing to passersby, the author sadly commented, “We are watching the world of yesterday.”
Others choose accommodation, and even consider themselves heroic innovators for their pathetic gestures – like Britain’s Booby Prince Charlie, who says that instead of “Defender of the Faith” (a traditional title of British monarchs), he prefers to think of himself as “Defender of the Faiths.” (Why not skip the interim step and go directly to “commander of the faithful”?) This after a conspiracy of Muslim doctors tried to blow up a number of his mum’s subjects in July.
Less sanguine is a French-born rabbi serving a synagogue in Brussels. Writing in The Jerusalem Post last October, Rabbi David Meyer confessed: “I am frightened not just by the anti-Semitism, but by the collective European response of indifference and appeasement. Today, Europe worships compromise. It is ‘fanatical’ in its non-violence. It is a Europe that, in the face of Islamic fanaticism, is ready to stay silent” – or suggest that we all begin praying to the god of jihad.
“By refusing to truly battle the Islamist ideology, by refusing to firmly and consistently oppose the dangers of Iranian nuclear proliferation, by refusing to support Israel in its battle against the menace of Hezbollah, Europe is saying everything is ‘negotiable’” – even the faith of its fathers.
Goodbye, Christendom. Hello, Caliphate. Allah – what a beautiful way to say “I give up; please don’t hurt me!”
It’s fun to chuckle at the Europeans – feckless, faithless, gutless. But America too is on a suicide watch, thanks to the treason of the elites.
* In September, New York City will open the first public school for Arabic-speaking students. One can imagine a typical math lesson: If Ahmed can saw through flesh and bone at the rate of an inch a minute, how many Zionists can he decapitate in an hour?
* In May, the Department of Homeland Security announced a $15,000 grant to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, to help upgrade its security system. This is part of a $24-million program to aid non-profit organizations “deemed high-risk for a potential international terrorist attack.” Why international terrorists – who aren’t exactly Presbyterians – would want to attack American mosques is a mystery. The ever-helpful CAIR (which sits on the FBI’s community advisory board) is encouraging Islamic organizations to belly up to the bar. Giving an anti-terrorism grant to a mosque is like airport security doing a pat-down on an octogenarian nun, while expediting the boarding process for a flying imam.
* In June, The Detroit News reported that the University of Michigan-Dearborn will spend $25,000 to install “foot-washing stations” on campus, to facilitate Muslim religious practice. That the university is a public institution apparently presents no problem for the “church/state separation” crowd. This at a time when college administrators – at public and private institutions – are busy removing crosses from chapels and renaming Christmas parties.
* At its winter meeting, the Democratic National Committee was led in prayer by Imam Husham Al-Husainy of the Dearborn, Mich. Karbalaa Islamic Education Center. The Imam asked Allah to: “So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom.” According to the Koran, Islam is “the path of the people you bless,” while other religions are the “path of the people you doom.” The dumb Democrats didn’t realize they were praying for their own conversion. And, if they did, would it have mattered?
* The State Department has issued visas to hundreds of fundamentalist Muslim clerics, who come from countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan – areas of intense Al Qaeda activity - many of them recent graduates of Saudi-supported Wahhabi seminaries. Law enforcement agencies are urging the State Department to exercise more discretion here. But Condoleezza Rice’s boys are determined to prove to the Islamic world just how much we love that old religion of peace. (The Secretary of State calls Islam a “religion of peace and love,” and has referred to Hamas as a “resistance movement.”) Come to the land of opportunity, where the streets are paved with explosives! Come on over and create more Jose Padillas.
* To honor the heroes of Flight 93, the brave passengers who fought back against 9/11 hijackers, by an act of Congress, our government is creating a national memorial in the shape of the Islamic crescent, which is called (I kid you not) “The Crescent of Embrace.” While the architect who designed this multicultural monstrosity maintains there’s no religious symbolism, if you stood facing the middle of the half-mile wide crescent, you would be almost exactly oriented toward Mecca. Tom Burnett Sr. – father of one of the Flight 93 heroes – says he won’t allow his son’s name to be used on a memorial that incorporates the faith of the killers. Imagine the uproar if they’d designed the World War II memorial in the shape of a giant swastika.
In the past, I’ve referred to contemporary leftists as residents of the Happy Land of Make-Believe, where the real world isn’t allowed to intrude on comforting delusions. In her new book, “The Death of the Grown-Up,” Diana West has another name for it – “dreampolitik” – an entrenched reality-avoidance which characterizes many of the ‘60s generation, who are frozen in an adolescent time-warp.
You’ll encounter them at Starbucks, ordering their favorite environmentally friendly beverage. You’ll see them zipping around town in their VWs, plastered with “War is Not The Answer” bumper-stickers. What is the answer, anyway – surrender, submission, slavery, self-destruction?
As he prepares for dhimmitude (the inferior status of unbelievers) in the coming Caliphate, Bishop Muskens may have forgotten that a year ago the people he’s trying to appease by adopting the name of their god were threatening to kill the head of his church.
When Benedict XVI quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor to the effect that everything wasn’t groovy with the creed of the Prophet, Muslims from Jakarta to London were chanting “Death to the Pope,” and burning in effigy the spiritual leader of a billion Roman Catholics.
To show just how offended they were by the suggestion that Islam is violent, they shot a nun in Somalia, firebombed a number of West Bank churches and murdered some Hindus (who never imagined they were agents of the Vatican).
Despite the pope’s repeated apologies, an Iraqi gang predicted, “The day is coming when the armies of Islam will destroy the ramparts of Rome.” (They already have a beachhead and unwitting fifth-columnists to facilitate the conquest.) When it comes to Islam and every other religion, sensitivity and magnanimity are a one-way street.
To accommodate Islam, praying in the name of Allah may not go far enough. In the ultimate gesture of solidarity with those of the jihad persuasion, perhaps infidels should start cutting off their own heads – following the good example of the Bishop of Breda.
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
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