Our Islamic 'Friends'

First, understand what I'm NOT saying. I'm not saying I'm a great columnist. I'm not even saying I'm a good columnist.

I'm saying only that I've been writing columns for some publication or other since 1950. Thousands of them.

And I'm saying nothing I've ever written has ever caused me more pain than this one.

Among the things that give me maximum pleasure in the world are my children, football, North Carolina barbecue, Polish music, skinny blondes, and brotherhood.

Yes, brotherhood. I quite literally weep with joy at stories of courageous whites preventing white haters in the South from lynching blacks, Ukrainian farmers risking their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, Serbian monks protecting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Greeks and Turks selling hot dogs together from street carts in New York.

Freaky? Maybe. But, maybe not. Some people like all that sexy stuff. Some like all that violent stuff. Some like all that expensive stuff. I just happen to like all that brotherly stuff.

As a senior at the University of North Carolina in 1952 I led the successful fight to desegregate Kenan Stadium; and that was long before you got hugged by Hollywood movie stars or quoted in Newsweek for such activities that far South.

The French leader who handed Algeria its independence after World War II had better damned well be a tough French nationalist with a good war record. And he was: Gen. Charles DeGaulle. The American president who popped up in Beijing to open relations with communist China in the middle of the Cold War against communism had better damned well be a tough anti-communist, and not some soft-on-communism Democrat. And he was: Richard Nixon.

And you'd better have a thick scrapbook of brotherly deeds before you wonder out loud whether the "brotherhood" you've spent your life promoting and practicing is still appropriate to the Moslem world.

Brotherhood, morally correct back then, may actually be suicidal now. Throughout all our wars we've had people in America who were "of" the enemy; born of the enemy, descendants of the enemy, sympathetic with the enemy, enamored with the enemy, even willing to fight and die for the enemy.

But it never amounted to much. If any Hispanics residing in America made trouble for America during the Spanish-American War, history hasn't told us about it. During World War I we had a good-sized German population, but no major problems of sabotage or disloyalty. In fact, America's greatest air ace of that war was the enfabled German-American Eddie Rickenbacker.

In World War II we had Germans who up, the instant we went to war against Germany, admired Adolf Hitler, Italians who admired Mussolini, and Japanese who were overawed by the military power of their native Japan.

But when the war started, they all proved they were reliable Americans by a majority so overwhelming that the remainder gave us nothing to talk about.

And there's nothing strange about that. The only force tugging against their loyalty to America was their nationalism. And that little "hometown" tug was easily overcome by their awareness that America's democracy trumped the fascism of their homelands.

Today we have millions of residents, many if not most American citizens, who have, not a nationalistic, but a RELIGIOUS antagonism toward America. The Germans, Italians, and Japanese in America during World War II had zero RELIGIOUS hatred of America.

And all attempts by my brother "brotherhoodists" to spin that reality away are so futile they've been largely abandoned. Too much is now known of what's taught in the "madrassas," Islamic religious schools. Too much is known about what's preached in the mosques and spread through the Moslem media.

Right after 9-11 I, too, instinctively wanted to believe the terrorists were merely an aberrational few and that most Moslems, certainly in America, were little more than Catholics with a different doctrine, Jews with slightly darker complexions, or Presbyterians who wrote from right to left whose men preferred facial hair and whose women covered their heads differently.

Before 9/11 my brotherly intuition left me to assume the little Mustafas of Dearborn, Mich., and the little Achmeds of Alabama were patted on their backs by their proud fathers for learning to recite the Bill of Rights and urged by their mothers to hurry up and learn the Preamble to the Constitution.

Islam's religious antagonism to American political and social values is as powerful as it is primitive. Thomas Jefferson's sparkling exhortations in favor of democracy bounce like BBs off the thick armor of fundamentalist Islam – especially the kind of hateful, fundamentalist Islam force-pumped into those American mosques financed by the Wahabi sect of Saudi Arabia.

(What percentage of American mosques are financed by Saudi Arabia? The common figure most often heard is 50 percent!)

In World War II, Lutheran clergymen with German congregations in America never once said, "We must undermine America for our beloved Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. Catholic priests in Italian parishes never once said, "America is decadent, and we must bring it down for our beloved Duce, Benito Mussolini." And Japanese-American troops, called "nisei," demoralized their German foes in Italy with their combat ferocity.

Mosques all over America, however, are echo chambers for the Wahabi line. And it's pretty awful.

"America is the enemy. Unbelievers in Islam deserve death. We must work with our Islamic brothers for Jihad! There is no higher distinction than martyrdom against the infidels who despoil our sacred soil with their unbelieving feet and aid the wretched Jew in their usurpation of our holy territory."

What gives me the right to worry about the octane of our Moslem countrymen's loyalty?

I glide easily to such concerns without infiltrating a mosque, purloining confidential documents from any Islamic organization, swallowing one drop of propaganda from Moslem-bashers, or wire-tapping a single imam.

All I had to do was observe the American Islamic reaction to 9-11. Or, heartbreakingly enough, the lack thereof.

Spiders weave webs. Beavers build dams. Humans react. The entire global Jewish community reacted instantly and thunderously denounced the crazed Jewish settler in Hebron who entered a mosque and slaughtered 50 or more Moslems at prayer. America instantly and thunderously denounced the accidental destruction of an Iranian civilian plane by an American military ship in the Persian Gulf.

Israel denounced its own assassination of an innocent Moroccan Arab in Lillehammar, Norway, who was catastrophically mistaken for one of the terrorists who murdered the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Since Sept. 11, 2001 we've heard not one single, rousing, convincing, united blanket denunciation of the terror attack from the American Islamic community. Neither have we heard any rousing, convincing, etc. pro-American declaration from that community since that tragic date.

Everything we've heard is defensive. "Islam is a peaceful religion." "You can't indict our whole group because of a few terrorists." "You cannot discriminate against us because of our ethnicity or religion." "You are PROFILING!"

Agreed! But where are the ringing affirmations that they, the American Muslims, join the rest of us in victimhood and outrage against the attackers? Where is their proactive demand that all who commit such attacks be extirpated and annihilated?

If you put that question to "Islamic spokesmen" in the United States they will quickly furnish you with the names of prominent Moslems here and there who protested and a mosque or two in Jersey City and Sacramento that, indeed, issued supportive statements. But there's no political stethoscope powerful enough to detect any real fury palpitating behind the breast-bones of American Moslems, at least not fury against the terrorist attackers.

Am I asking too much when I expect just as much anti-terrorist, pro-American solidarity from the Islamic community as I do from the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities? Is it too much to ask the same sentiment from American Palestinians, Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, Iraqis, etc. as I do from Americans of every other national origin?

The muted and ambiguous murmur we do hear from our American Moslems makes me feel rather like the president of a corporation in the hospital who gets a note from the chairman of the board stating, "I have been authorized by the board of directors to wish you a speedy recovery – by vote of five to four!"

My lifelong friends in the "Brotherhood Caucus" try to restrain me. "Relax!" they counsel. "These people are shy. They're new here. They don't know how to react yet. It's not their style or tradition to protest or picket, or hold up placards, or even speak out loud."

That placated me for a while; but suddenly the American Moslems proved they did, indeed, have a voice; a loud one at that, that needed no coaxing.

Any shyness that might have prevented American Moslems from locking arms, hearts, and voices with other Americans after 9-11 vanished when the Israeli military entered Ramallah and Jenin to root out the terrorist bomb factories and suicide-homicide schools (operating, incidentally, quite openly inside refugee camps run by the United Nations!)

It was comforting to learn our American Moslems have a voice. It was disappointing to learn that voice is raised, not when their co-religionists attack America, but only when their co-religionist murderers face obliteration at the hands of Israelis seeking self-defense.

I'm an American who believes in God, seeks to serve his fellow man, likes a drink, and, though occasionally glancing at graven images of scantily clad women in our culture, wishes there were fewer.

If my lifestyle is punishable, I want it to be punished by the Almighty Himself when He decides to render judgment upon me personally; and not by those living in the most God-kissed country on earth who quietly cheer the monsters of 9-11 and denounce those who interfere with their U.N.-sheltered murderers of innocent soldiers, men, women, and children. I write this, not in hatred, but in disappointment; not in anger, but dismay.

Hello, Moslems of America! Do you really want to remain the only group in our history who said "No, thanks" to our values, our openness, our eagerness to include, our democracy, and our willingness to make people as different as you are from us?

In my lifetime, Americans of German, Italian and Japanese extraction cheered as their "terrorists" were defeated and our American values replaced the tyrannies of their long-tortured homelands.

I want to live long for many reasons; and among them is the desire to be there when we can lift a glass together – fruit juice for you, vodka-on-the-rocks for me – to celebrate the triumph of democracy in every single nation in the Moslem world.

Mr. Farber has no room in his heart, or his soul, for American Muslims who abhor, deride, denounce and want nothing to do with terrorists, of any kind. And who have said so loudly and publically and then must tolerate oafs who say "I didn't hear YOU!"

As an American Muslim, when I read of a skyjacker drinking in a Florida topless bar, I said out loud "that is No True Muslim!" "An imposter trying to hide behind something he doesn't follow!"

But Mr. Farber got his name in print, probably a fee for writing his article, and of course I believe in free speech. That's why I live here.

(s) Rafael P.
House guest of an honored and longtime American deist. And we are friends, close friends, in peace.

Their brother Osma blows up New York and they tell me to read their book ??

1)I refuse to have my literary excursions dictated to me by the likes of Osama Bin Laden.

2)I refuse to have my spiritual pursuits dictated to me by the likes of Osama Bin Laden.

3)I refuse to have my world view dictated to me by the likes of Osama Bin Laden.

The same goes for the countless Osama-loving-lemmings who forward the same causes around the globe.

As an American Muslim, when I read of a skyjacker drinking in a Florida topless bar, I said out loud "that is No True Muslim!" "An imposter trying to hide behind something he doesn't follow!"

So where are the true muslims? Every time a muslim explodes his worthless self in an Israeli bus, "moderate" muslims declare him a "non-muslim" even as their obituaries praise them for being "martyrs". By condeming them, I am sure many muslims would declare YOU "an impostor trying to hide behind something you don't follow"

Mohammad Attah, the Skyjacker you refer to was a highly educated man who studied at western universites and spoke several languages. He was a serious islamic scholar. Mohammad Attah dedicated his life to Islam. He memorized the Koran. All his study and education led him to conclude that Allah desired him to kill thousands of Americans.

Having a drink is a moslem sin which in his mind, "allah" would forgive because of his terrorist act against America.

Or take the case of John Walker Lindh. Heres a guy from a completely different background who tries his best to find the heart of islam. His journey led him directly to osama bin laden and a loaded machine gun.

From what I see, your "allah" is a pathetic angry little fictional god.

Why won't Muslim-Americans (Gawd, I hate that term) do the same in respect to those who wish to destroy this nation?

Because they are in solidarity with their mohommedan "brethren" who wish to destroy the American way of life and replace it with an Islamic theocracy.

This is precisely why there is no room in this country for these barbaric, uncivillized mohommedans. They need to be interned and/or deported immediately.

I'm dead serious.

As an American Muslim, when I read of a skyjacker drinking in a Florida topless bar, I said out loud "that is No True Muslim!" "An imposter trying to hide behind something he doesn't follow

Or possibly a Jew in disguise.......you know how those Jews are behind everything /sarcasm

"that is No True Muslim!" That's a matter for the clerics and the adherents to decide. What's good enough for me is that the jihadis claim the hijackers were true, pure muslims.

It's also true that the voices of those preaching hate, violence and calling for the destruction of America far outweigh those of people like you. It's not for us unbelievers to decide who's a true one or not. Those who claim they are, are.

Agreed. Let's keep the focus on American Muslims primarily those from the arabcountries and the subcontinent. 6-7 ethnic groupings of muslims around the world do exist; arabs, turks, iranians, afghan and the stans, southasia, indo-malay and those here in the US and europe.

'Muslims' does paint with a wide brush, but the jihadis seem most prevalent in the arab and pakistani communities in the USA, and to a lesser extent, those from india.

Nice commentary. So what do you really know about the true Islam and those who practice it? For someone who has been writing since the 50's it seems like not much. Yeah there are bad guys and there are good guys. Most of which are good guys. Maybe you should start by asking some of those good guys how they feel? Why they are not marching? Before you start writing in the first place.

Islam is often referred to as one of the world's great religions. It seems that designation is given if (a)the religion has been around for a long time, and (b)it has large numbers of adherents. By this standard, astrology and wishful thinking could be considered among the world's great religions.

If Islam had originated about 10 years ago as a small group outside of , oh let's say Waco, TX, the reaction to it would be quite different. If they were in their compound forcing women to wear veils, chopping off the hands of thieves and the heads of adulterers, Janet Reno would have sent in the tanks pronto. However, since there are millions of Muslims worldwide, this religion somehow commands great respect (or is it just fear?) among educated people who ought to know better.

Let’s see, Muslims highjack four US jet airplanes, and you don’t question if they are true Muslims.

Muslims use box cutters to slit the throats of passengers and flight crew and you don’t question if they are true Muslims

Muslims slam airplanes into buildings and kill 3,000 innocent people and you don’t ask if they are true Muslims.

But:”As an American Muslim, when I read of a skyjacker drinking in a Florida topless bar, I said out loud "that is No True Muslim!" "An imposter trying to hide behind something he doesn't follow!"

I understand. You are a true Muslim. What I think of you and your belief is not printable.

Mohammed is burning in Hell.

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