University of Malaya: Something 4 U guys to ponder upon

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Temple University Rejects Geert Wilders

Contrary to what those at the ironically named David Horowitz Freedom Center have been claiming, Geert Wilders was not planning to travel to Philadelphia from the Netherlands solely for the purpose of informing Americans about terrorism. The notion that a politician from the Netherlands needed to travel to a city less than two hours away from Ground Zero to inform us about the nature of terrorism or the challenges we face from it in the future would be laughable if it were not such a grim indicator of the state of the world today.

So, we must wonder, what then was the real motive for the Dutch politician’s planned visit? Based on Wilders’ record, it is clear that the purpose behind the speech was to convince Americans that Islam as a religion is the root cause of terror and that that the United States must seriously consider curtailing the civil liberties of its Muslim population if it wishes to survive as a free nation. We need only to look at some of the many previous comments Wilders has made to come to this conclusion.

“It is not a coincidence that every terroristic act, almost every terroristic act, aimed and based on this fascist book, the Koran, and this wrong ideology, Islam, unfortunately has been done by people from Islamic [background]“

“I don’t believe in a moderate Islam. I don’t believe in what some people call a European Islam. I don’t think there will be [a moderate Islam] and if there will be, in time, it will be in two or three thousand years.”

“Madam Chairman, this country has an excise tax on petrol and diesel, it has parking permits and a dog tax, it has an airline ticket tax and has a packaging tax, so why not tax the headscarf? A Head Rag Tax.”

We were fortunate this time around that students and the administration at Temple University were informed of Wilders’ nefarious agenda by the commendable efforts of the Muslim Students Association on campus and his slanderous speech (which is not protected by the First Amendment) was canceled before it could take place. Rumor has it though that Columbia University has decided to hold the speech instead. One can only hope that they too come to the realization that slander is not a right acknowledged by the First Amendment nor is it a form of speech worthy of being granted a position at the podium of an institution of higher learning.

To understand why Wilders’ words should be considered as slanderous, we have to take a few steps back and look at the big picture. Slander involves the speaking of false words that damage the recipient’s reputation (luckily for Wilders, one can not be sued for slandering a religion or ideology). Wilders’ claim is that there are elements intrinsic to Islam itself that promote acts of terror against civilians. To support his position he has crafted a youtube-sized video that cleverly juxtaposes carefully selected passages from the Quran and speeches by terrorist leaders with acts of terror. Ignoring the fact that anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of the Quran could show that the passages Wilders [and his intellectual brethren in Al Qaeda] chose are taken out of context, Wilders has forgotten the very basic of all rules of statistics. Correlation does not imply causation. The significant number of Muslims involved in terrorist actions does not mean that Islam is the cause, nor do most Americans follow that crass logic.

How can Islam as a religion be culpable for causing terror if terror itself has had such a long history of being practiced by people of varying faiths and no faith? When Native Americans attacked and killed all of the inhabitants of Jamestown, what was it but terrorism? When President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, what was it but terrorism? When the Zionist group, Irgun, bombed unarmed Palestinian and British civilians, what was it but terrorism? Any argument that attempts to assert that Native American beliefs, or anarchist beliefs, or the Zionist movement, intrinsically promote terror against civilians is absurd and patently false. Similarly, any argument that claims that Islamic scripture promotes terror simply because Islam is the religion practiced by most terrorist today is just as absurd and just as patently false.

There are more than one and a half billion Muslims in the world today. If Wilders’ assertions about Islam were correct, one in four people would be attempting to kill the other 3 people. Were this to happen, global civilization would quickly disintegrate as we faced a level of warfare that would make World War II look like nothing more than a rough game of beach volleyball. Since this is clearly not the case, we are left with the possibility that the vast majority of Muslims who have condemned terrorism have misunderstood their religion and that Geert Wilders, great scholar of Islam that he is, has uncovered Islam’s true message. Once again, this would be a laughable notion if it were not such a grim indicator of the current realities of political thought.

The unfortunate truth is that terrorism is simply a tool used by peoples who have exhausted all others means of resistance. Fanaticism and terrorism by a people who have had their lives and liberties attacked from every possible direction is a deplorable yet predictable phenomena that is independent from any particular set of religious or ideological beliefs. In the last century alone, those living in the the “Muslim World” have had to face challenges stemming from the decline of formal religious institutions, the abrupt end of colonialism, the imposition of forced dictatorships, the creation and failure of arbitrary nation-states, and the existence of occupying foreign armies on their land. The combined effect of these forces has unfortunately resulted in a rise in the number of people who see acts of terror as the only means by which they can establish a system of social justice that they believe will give them the freedoms they desire. Islamic scripture is used as a way to rationalize the approach these individuals have chosen to achieve their goal, similar to the way Christian scripture was used to rationalize the political and financial ambitions of the papacy during the Crusades.

Until Geert Wilders is able to demonstrate that Islam, and not the numerous other factors that have historically played a role in cultivating terror, is the actual cause for terrorism today–a task as unachievable as it is absurd– his claims amount to slander and defamation and should be treated as such. Temple University was right to rescind their offer to have Wilders speak and Columbia should follow suit. Slander has no place in a free and just society; especially slander that utilizes hate speech to promote discrimination.

You might also like:

* The Blog Wars
* Supreme Court Rejects Anti-Obama Conspiracy Theory
* Discrimination Against the Roma

Posted by Rev. Jim Sutter at 10/18/2009

Taken from http://www.chasingevil.org