Posted on 08/09/2004 1:25:34 AM PDT by goldstategop
Jackie Mason Turns Serious
Don Feder
I thought of comedian Jackie Mason last week, when two leaders of an Albany, New York, mosque were arrested and charged with trying to buy a shoulder-launched missile to assassinate Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.
What better way for disciples of a Religion of Peace to celebrate harmony and coexistence than with a Stinger missile?
Two weeks ago, Mason got in hot water (a place where he seems quite comfortable) by telling a radio audience that "the whole Muslim religion" is a "murderous organization" that instructs its followers in "hate, terrorism and murder."
Filling in for syndicated talk show host Jim Bohannon, Mason said terrorists are "following the orders of the religion directly from the Koran." Also: "The Koran…is 50 versions of hate, venom, hostility and murder…dedicated to terrorism. I don’t know how we can call it a religion in the traditional sense. It should be called a murderous organization that’s out to kill people."
This provoked the predictable self-righteous demands for an apology (and, possibly, castration?) by the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR), which fancies itself a Muslim Anti-Defamation League.
In a letter to Westwood One, which syndicates Bohannon’s show, CAIR decried Mason’s "Islamophobic smears." (Jackie has an unreasonable fear of shoulder-launched missiles?) "It is this type of hate-filled propaganda that was used by the Nazis as justification for their persecution of the Jewish community in Germany," CAIR claimed.
Say something critical of Islam, and in CAIR’s eyes you’re a Nazi preparing to push innocents into gas chambers – just like the Kosovar Muslims recruited by the S.S. to help carry out the Holocaust.
But Mason is merely the latest in a long line of Islamophobes.
A 20th century politician made comments far more damning of Islam than Jackie Mason. This world leader said Islam "above all others was founded and propagated on the sword." Moreover, it provided "incentives to slaughter, and in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men – filled with a wild and merciless fanaticism." By CAIR's logic, that makes Winston Churchill a "Nazi." Winnie and Jackie Mason: odd Nazis, indeed.
But seriously, folks – as standup comics like Mason say – I don’t know of anyone, including Islam’s most trenchant critics, who’s advocating the mass murder of Muslims. Most of us would be content if zealous Muslims would stop killing – or trying to kill – us.
Which brings me to the Albany arrests.
The accused are two immigrants from Jihadistan – Yassin Aref, imam of Albany’s Masjid As-Salam Mosque (ironically, it means, "House of Peace" mosque) and Mohammed Hossain, owner of a pizzeria.
Fresh from confronting the malicious Mason, CAIR expressed concern that the accused are victims of racial profiling and entrapment.
"There’s always a concern that people may be targeted for a sting operation like this solely because they are Moslems," declared Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s indefatigable spokesman. "It’s a perplexing case, and the question we have is whether the government got these men to do something they otherwise wouldn’t have done."
Just picture it: The innocent imam and pure pizza man are walking down a street in Albany one day, when suddenly a sly undercover agent approaches the pair and entices them into buying a shoulder-launched missile.
Agent: "Like to buy a Stinger? Great for taking out Pakistani ambassadors or killing infidels."
Mohammed and Yassin: "Gosh, we’d never thought of that! Hmmm, that might not be a bad idea. Say, it could come in handy, if the Zionist entity ever invades America."
Jackie Mason couldn't write funnier satire than CAIR has.
That CAIR should be skeptical of allegations of terrorist activities is understandable. The organization is an offshoot of the Islamic Association for Palestine – identified as a Hamas front by two former heads of the FBI’s counter-terrorism section.
In April, Randall Todd (Ismail) Royer, a staffer in CAIR’s national headquarters, pleaded guilty to conspiring to train Americans for jihad. Yep, just think of CAIR as part ADL – and part Stern Gang.
Jackie Mason seems only to be observing the evidence all around him. Curiously, two men are arrested in a sting operation trying to buy the type of weapon used to take down airplanes, and – Guess what? They’re not Baptists! Gunmen burst into a church in Pakistan and fire round after round into the prostrate bodies of women and children. The perps aren’t Scientologists or Latter-Day Saints. A Jewish kid is stabbed outside a yeshiva in Brussels, and the gang of youths believed responsible don’t belong to the local Buddhist temple. Churches and monasteries are torched in Kosovo; not the work of Hindus.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all have had a profound impact on Western civilization. One faith was founded by a lawgiver who led his people out of tyranny. One religion was established by a man of peace, who wouldn’t even resist his own execution and asked God to forgive his executioners. The last was started by a man who personally led his adherents into battle. The faith did not spread from the Pyrenees to the Philippines within 100 years of Mohammed’s death, by peaceful proselytizing. There are over 120 chapters (suras) in the Koran calling on believers to fight Jews and Christians, subjugate them, murder them, break treaties that are made with them, cut off their heads, lips and the tips of fingers, crucify them – and other acts of conciliation. A review of the actual history of Islam for past 1,400 years shows the religion has interpreted these texts just as today's "radicals" do.
In his opus, The Clash of Civilizations And Remaking of World Order (1996) Samuel Huntington spoke of Islam’s "bloody borders" – meaning that wherever a significant Muslim population comes into contact with others, violence ensues. Wherever Muslims are living in proximity with Christians, Jews or Hindus – someone is getting shot, bombed, burned alive, stoned to death, forcibly converted, ethnically cleansed, uprooted, jailed or otherwise persecuted. Where Muslims are in the majority, other faiths are proscribed (Saudi Arabia), severely circumscribed (Egypt) or subjected to relentless persecution (Pakistan, Indonesia, the Sudan and Northern Nigeria). Where Moslems are a substantial minority (Serbia, Macedonia, The Kashmir, Israel, Chechnya) there’s intifada – terrorism in pursuit of succession.
The rationalization usually offered for the above is that a small but energetic group of fanatics have grossly distorted the tenets of their benign religion to wreck bloody mayhem.
But many of the most renowned Muslim religious authorities enthusiastically endorse holy war (jihad) and terrorism – including Grand Mufti (supreme religious authority) of Egypt Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, the imam of Mecca’s main mosque and the scholars of Al-Azhar University. These are hardly fringe figures in Islam. If their views are a corruption, there is indeed corruption in high places.
If these views are so atypical, why do some American converts to Islam try to destroy the society that nurtured them? One thinks of the Beltway sniper, John Allen Muhammed, who killed 10 people at random in 2002, or American Taliban John Walker Lindh. Why on September 11, 2001, did Moslems from Brooklyn to Ramallah, and Dar es Salaam to Jakarta, take to the streets to celebrate the deaths of 3,000 Americans and extol Osama bin Laden's death squads?
In her book The Rage And The Pride, Oriana Fallaci mentions seeing a member of one of these mobs interviewed by a reporter who asks him "Who is, for you, Osama bin Laden?" The old man replies "A hero, our hero!" Why not, he overcame 3,000 infidels in the course of a holy war.
Someone should tell CAIR if they sue for libel, Mason may have more than enough evidence to persuade a jury of his opinion by a preponderance of evidence.
I have no inherent animus against Islam. All other things being equal, it makes no difference to me that close to one billion inhabitants of planet Earth Mohammed was the "seal of the prophets." But it does concern me when the bulk of them are taught that 72 olive-eyed virgins await them in Paradise if they kill me. (What do Muslim women get – 72 sexually inexperienced men?)
I don’t agree with the central tenet of Christianity. Nevertheless, if I mention that to a Christian, he’ll tell me Jesus still loves me and that Christian will say a prayer for me. There is no equivalent imperative to bloodshed in Christianity.
Hinduism, Buddhism and The Book of Mormon are all alien to my faith tradition. But did you ever hear of a Hindu hijacker, a Buddhist suicide bomber, or a Mormon elder issuing a fatwah (putting out a hit on someone for insulting Joseph Smith)?
Try as we might, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that this extreme view of Islam represents a major portion – or perhaps even most? – of the world's Muslims.
An August 8th New York Times story on fighting in Najaf, Iraq (where more than 300 have died) is headlined – "Marines Pushing Deeper Into City Held by Shiites." Strange that all of those currently killing Americans (including hostages Nick Berg and Paul Johnson) in Iraq and Afghanistan seem not to be Rotarians, 33rd degree Masons or members of a Salvation Army, but Muslims. It hardly seems coincidental that this is the case.
It’s takes a strenuous act of will to suppress an awareness of the religious dimension of terrorism’s war on the West.
bump
For the record (especially since my recollection is hazy and I don't feel like looking up the threads) weren't some higher ups or contributors to CAIR found to be funding Islamic terrorism?
ROPMA ping!
Very well put.If Jackie Masons views make him a Nazi in CAIRs eyes then HEY CAIR ,I"M A NAZI TOO!! If they want to worship DEATH then I say let them meet their master!
The media has loved to slam conservative Christians because of the actions of a few bombers, arsonists or shooters at abortion clinics. The number pale in comparison to Islamic fundamilism/terrorism but extreme "Christians" still outweigh radical muslims in the American media.
In 2002 or 2003 there were some radio ads on conservative talk radio (from CAIR?) saying that they represented the arab states and that if only Israel would agree on certain "conditions" all of this hostility/terrorist activity would cease. At the time, I looked up the name of the organization but could find no website and they did not provide a phone number or mailing address. The ads ran for at least a month.
Islam, The Cult of Death™
Preaching to the choir, Don and Jackie.
I mean, you know how it is, someone offers you a few surface-to-air missiles to assassinate a foreign dignitary.
What are you supposed to do, be impolite?
They were just following the Hadith.
" he did not invite the controversy with Ed Sullivan "
What was that " hand gesture " controversy all about anyway ? I forget ...
Good for Jackie Mason.
At least he has the guts to call Islam for what it is.
Oh , and they revere Jesus as a prophet too! What a joke. They won't be happy until every Jew on Earth is dead or enslaved and Israel is an Islamic state. Then we'll be next. This is war. It's high time we started acting like it.Convert or die? Guess I'm dyin' then. F'em. Twice.
"This provoked the predictable self-righteous demands for an apology (and, possibly, castration?) by the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR), which fancies itself a Muslim Anti-Defamation League."
This group is as much an Arab American civil rights group as the Mafia is an Italian-American civil rights group.
Mason, as usual, is right on about Islam.
Mason's routine was running long during one show, the director gave him the 'cut' signal, and Mason flipped him off...on **live** TV, iirc.
fyi
To all you adherents of the Religion of Peace:
Islam IS as Islam DOES!!!!
Bottom line, end of discussion.
He was blacklisted for awhile (although I think he still got work in the Ant & Aardvark cartoons by the same studio which did the Pink Panther shorts).
This is the difference between then and now (with Janet Jackson). She did not become an immediate outcast and even still there are some people who decry those who protest a mutilated nipple being included as a planned part of the show at the Superbowl as being "prudes".
Like they say: "Not all muslims are terrorist, but all terrorists are muslims."
Higher ups like their Wahhabi lovin Saudi petrol dollar guys...?
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