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Islam Gets Special Treatment
Townhall.com ^ | January 13, 2015 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 01/13/2015 12:42:16 PM PST by Kaslin

Since 9/11, the Western world's academic, media, political elites have done their best to portray Islam in a favorable light, treating it very differently from all other religions. Criticism of every doctrine, religious or secular, is permitted, often encouraged. But not of Islam. Only positive depictions are allowed.

We'll start with an example of pro-Islamic bias that is so ubiquitous that no one seems to notice it. Why do Western media -- overwhelmingly composed of irreligious people, one might add -- always deferentially refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet Muhammad" in news articles and opinion pieces?

When Jesus is mentioned, the media never refer to him as "Christ, the Lord" or as "the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Just "Jesus." In fact, "A.D." ("anno Domini" -- "year of our Lord") has been completely dropped by the very academics and media who always write "The Prophet Muhammad."

When the media discuss Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon Church), they don't refer to him as "the Prophet Joseph Smith." Why not? Is there a single difference between his title and roles in Mormonism and Muhammad's in Islam?

And Jews refer to Moses as "Moshe Rabbeinu," Moses our Teacher. Why don't the media?

This was not the case in the past. When I studied Islam and Arabic in college, professors referred to the founder of Islam as "Muhammad." And virtually none of the great biographies of Muhammad -- even among those recommended on Muslim websites -- have the words "the Prophet Muhammad" in their title.

There is only one possible reason and that is Political Correctness -- Western elites bending over backwards on behalf of Muslims and Islam in ways they never would for another religion.

Another ubiquitous example: Before 9/11, the phrase "Allahu Akbar" was translated as "Allah is great" [or "the greatest"). Since 9/11, it has been translated as "God is great."

This was deliberate. In 2004, the influential Associated Press Stylebook announced: "A new entry has been added to the AP Stylebook: Allah. The Muslim name for God. The word God should be used."

Now, there are perfectly valid reasons to translate "Allah" as "God." And there are valid reasons not to. Indeed, Malaysia, a country widely depicted as a moderate Muslim country, last year banned Christians from using the word "Allah" in Arabic translations of the Bible -- because, while all Muslims regard Allah as the God of the universe, many Muslims regard the name "Allah" as specifically Muslim.

Whatever theological side one takes, the fact remains that after 9/11 Allah became "God" in the Western world -- in order to essentially show how similar Islam is to Judaism and Christianity.

Always referring to Muhammad as "the Prophet Muhammad" and translating "Allah" as "God" are subtle examples of the Western media and intellectual bias in favor of Islam since 2001. Most examples of the bias are not subtle, but blatant and morally indefensible.

Take one from the Paris murders.

Why did the Muslim terrorists go to a Jewish grocery? This is not a riddle. We all know. But some in the media pretended they didn't. During the attack, a reporter for Sky News, one of the largest English-language news services in the world, said on Fox News: "Whether it was targeted specifically for its religious connotations it is difficult to know."

Is there one reader of this column who thought it "difficult to know" whether the Muslim terrorists targeted a Jewish grocery?

Why would someone presumably intelligent say something so obviously stupid?

In order to protect Islam.

Just as so many in the media and government did after Major Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. They found it difficult to ascertain if religion was a factor in his murders, despite his yelling, "Allahu Akbar" while shooting, despite his listing himself as a "Soldier of Allah" on his Facebook page, and despite many other affirmations of Islamism.

A New York Times writer blamed it on Major Hasan's "snapping" (in an article titled "When Soldiers Snap"). Chris Matthews said "it's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting." NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten explained that Hasan, though never in combat, may have suffered from "pre-traumatic stress disorder." And the U.S. Department of Defense classified the Fort Hood shootings as acts of "workplace violence," not terror, let alone Islamic terror.

Perhaps the most egregious example of a society's elites treating Islam differently from all other religions took place in the UK. Between 1997 and 2013, at least 1,400 girls, as young as 11 years old, in the small English city of Rotherham (population 275,000), had been repeatedly gang raped and sold as sex slaves. The UK government acknowledged that these atrocities were allowed to go on solely due to the fact the perpetrators were British Pakistanis and the girls were white. No one was allowed to say that. The author of a 2002 report identifying Pakistanis as the perpetrators and organizers of the Rotherham gang rapes and the sex slavery was sent to diversity training.

Finally, why won't the New York Times print even one Charlie Hebdo cartoon? Twelve journalists were slaughtered over those cartoons; are the caricatures not newsworthy? Of course they are. But they satire Islam, and that is not allowed.

Here's the ultimate irony. These PC professors and news media who treat Islam so much better than any other religion are literally Islamophobic. They truly fear Islam.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: dennisprager; islam; islamophobia; politicalcorrectness; townhall
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To: maine-iac7
“Why do Western media — always deferentially refer to Muhammad as “the Prophet Muhammad” For the same reason O’bummer always refers to the koran and “The HOLY Koran” - with perfect accent, but the Holy Bible only as ‘the Bible”

Good catch....

41 posted on 01/13/2015 6:52:02 PM PST by GOPJ ("I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. "Charb Charbonnier-Publisher Charlie Hebdo.)
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To: Kaslin
The Western Academy's deracination of history in changing dates A. D. and B. C. to "C. E." and "B. C. E." is an example of kowtowing to Jewish scholars' religiously-based agitation. They Jewish scholars might contrariwise find it vexatious and even antisemitic, if Western scholarship suddenly started referring to "the alleged prophet Nehemiah" or "the alleged King David" (asserting that David is insufficiently documented in "unimpeachable historical records" such as -- assuming they were trying to be deliberate pains in the butt - -- the Assyrian chronicles, Egyptian chronicles and monuments, and other "reliable" sources unlikely to mention David even on a good day!) or removing Israel from atlases as was recently done, or replacing it with a map showing instead "the Zionist entity" and employing other common Pali hate-speech. Then Jewish scholars would be completely justified in getting torqued off about the slights.

But as annoying as religious-fussiness-driven invasions of Western literature and history may have been, what is being done with Islamic subjects is just sinister. It's actually far worse, considering that Jewish Ph. D. 's haven't gone gun-crazy anytime recently, mowing down pews full of Christian apostates and idolaters or blowing up commencement ceremonies at Catholic universities.

42 posted on 01/14/2015 2:40:55 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house, the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: paterfamilias
Infidel! </s>
43 posted on 01/14/2015 2:44:23 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house, the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: newnhdad; Travis McGee; Liz
islam has the entire democrat media complex as their defense counsel.

Academia is worse. I attended an archaeology lecture a couple of years ago on the Moslem conquest of Cyprus and its change of cultures as shown by the material record.

After an hour or so of discussing much-reduced town outlines and slighted or destroyed churches, fortification schemes, and so on, I finally got to ask questions and so went for the money question: What happened to the pre-conquest population of Cyprus, much of which seems to have disappeared?

The answer, completely unavailable in Wiki by the way (yes, it's been munged into meaninglessness) is that the population, which in the 7th century was still majority-pagan, celebrating the ancient Greek (and Asian) rites, was slaughtered by the Arabs. The embarrassed lecturer told me, that it was deeply Not Done in modern academe, to admit that the Arabs slaughtered people like vermin, in their religious purging frenzies.

(Wiki tells us instead that for 300 happy years, Cyprus enjoyed a peaceful condominium of the Byzantine and Arab Empires. If you believe that one, I've got a nice mosque in south Florida that's just your size.) Much more pleasant (on the surface) to document the addition of qibla walls and mihrabs to former churches, or the rebuilding of large churches on much-reduced plans, and so forth, than to speak aloud about what happened to the unhappy people who were suddenly overwhelmed by the Religion of Peace.

44 posted on 01/14/2015 3:26:23 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house, the Left would root for the termites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: Sasparilla

None and none.


45 posted on 01/14/2015 4:18:23 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink)
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To: Mears

No, I like pigs. It is that sheep and goat diddling, devil worshiping, inbreed bunch of goobers that don’t like pigs.


46 posted on 01/16/2015 9:40:36 AM PST by Rumplemeyer (The GOP should stand its ground - and fix Bayonets)
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