Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant
Saturday
This is another in our series, Answers to Objections. It is an article written by Paul on Celestial Junk. The reason I'm reprinting this is because one of the most common responses we get when we mention anything negative about Islam is, "But the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people." This seems like such a final, decisive, irrefutable, self-evident conclusion, it makes all your ranting about Islam completely pointless. Or so it seems to the person who says it.
But from now on, when someone counters your educational efforts with "most Muslims are peace-loving," school them with Paul's response. Here it is:
Just as a "committed" Christian is one who truly follows the Bible, so a "committed" or "devoted" Muslim is one who truly follows the Quran. And just as a "devoted" Christian is one who truly follows Jesus, so a "devoted" Muslim is one who truly follows Muhammad.
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, he replied, "Very few people were true Nazis, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."
We are told again and again that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Even if this unqualified assertion is true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of zealous Muslims rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the committed, devoted, zealous followers of Muhammad...the "true Muslims"...rule Islam at this moment in history. Some call them "fanatics" or "extremists." It is these zealous followers of the Quran who march. It is the fanatical, committed, zealous, literal followers of Muhammad who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the committed Muslims who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatical followers of the Quran who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatical followers of Muhammad who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatical, committed Muslims who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatical Muslims, those who take the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad very seriously and literally, who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful Muslims, the "silent majority," (IF they are indeed in the majority), are cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving?"
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like the aforementioned German aristocrat, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Brigitte Gabriel made this answer to a questioner, summarized emphatically. Watch it here on YouTube: Brigitte Gabriel's Epic and Brilliant Answer To "Most Muslims Are Peaceful..."
Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.
10 comments:
Brilliant article. Thanks for posting.
Dave L.
Excellent article, my article "Islam's Invasion Ideology" will provide support and additional clarity:
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010100111804/editorial/rsn-pick-of-the-day/islams-invasion-ideology.html
Sincedrely, Martel Sobieskey
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/renouncing-islamism-to-the-brink-and-back-again-1821215.html
Even if the number of Muslims who believe in the basic political objective of Islam and are willing to vote in that direction or take even more aggressive action in that direction — even if these kinds of Muslims are as small a minority as you believe they are, this small minority is, by definition, more politically active and more committed than the peaceful majority of Muslims. If the majority is largely silent and politically-inactive, then it doesn't really matter what they think. They are having no influence on the public sphere.
In other words, your approach would be, at least in part, to strengthen, encourage, and support the politically-apathetic Muslims in their apathy. This approach, it seems to me, will do nothing. It will not stop the politically-active Muslims, and will have very little impact on the apathetic Muslims. As a matter of fact, it may even strengthen the recruiting efforts of the jihadists because they will correctly see this effort as "attacking Islam," since Islam strictly forbids apathy and commands active political participation from every Muslim.
The following is from an article entitled, The Complacent Muslim and Your Obedience to Mohammed:
This fatal danger on the part of the silent (majority, as in the "peaceful Muslim majority") has been demonstrated again and again throughout the annals of history wherever tyranny is the victor. The extremists seem to ever know how to capitalize on the complacency of the majority in ensuring the victory they will stop at nothing to achieve. They know full well how to make the silent majority completely irrelevant in their plans for domination and power, and it is always then the fanatics who determine the future of the nation, or movement, they have come to control.
The same tragedy of unbelievable proportions occurred in China; the same occurred in Cuba; the same occurred in Rwanda and it was the same in pre-Second World War Japan. Wherever the fanatics took control, those who stayed silent became irrelevant, then by nature of the process, complicit, and then, they became the ultimate victims of these always cruel tyrannies.
And more from the same article:
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until the die was cast.
As for we who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts — the fanatics who threaten our way of life. Anyone who doubts (which includes all the appeasers on the left) that the issue is serious and as such decides to just carry on, is contributing to the blindness and passivity that allows these problems to expand. Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, realize that peaceful passivity is not the answer, and react to the fanatics — before there is no more time, and no one left, to stop them.
having lived in the midleast for three years, shooting film,eating and intervewing many muslims, I also found some of the best people,warm,welcoming,naive and the sad part is they want to just ignore, the matawin, police of your mind,your dress, timee, ethics, etc........this has happened, again and thru history,and is happening all over the world again..........the extremest survive on the innocents of the hardworking people of the world. My fear is that our Americans are always looking for something else, something new...a change. The change and the new, always start,"with the man(womem) in the mirrow. France is now 50% islam. That was easly done. America time we grew up, you know we really are the new kid on the block, Let us show the world we are as smart, strong,hard working and intelligent as we are capable of being...........Jeannie in the bottle................
Great article. I imagine the silent majority of Muslims are as problematic to the cause of peace as are the silent majority of Europeans.
A Facebook page called "Islam Against Women" posted this:
"If Islam were a violent religion, then all Muslims would be violent"
The Muslim myth
Most Muslims live peacefully, without harming others, so how can Islam be a violent religion? If Islam were the religion of terrorists, then why aren’t most Muslims terrorists?
The truth
The same question can easily be turned around. If Islam is a religion of peace, then why is it the only one that consistently produces religiously-motivated terrorist attacks each and every day of the year?
Why are thousands of people willing and able to cut off an innocent person’s head or fly a plane full of passengers into an office building while screaming praises to Allah? Where’s the outrage among other Muslims when this happens… and why do they get more worked up over cartoons and hijabs?
Rather than trying to answer a question with a question, however, let's just say that the reason why most Muslims don't kill is that regardless of what Islam may or may not teach it's wrong to kill over religious beliefs.
Consider that many Muslims would not even think of amputating a thief's hand. Does this mean that it is against Islam to do so? Of course not! In fact, it is clearly mandated in both the Quran 5:38 and the example set by Mohammed according to the Hadith, Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 8, Book 81, No. 792. As individuals, Muslims make their own choices about which parts of their religion they practice.
However, even though believers may think whatever they want about what Islam says or doesn't say, it doesn't change what Islam says about itself. As a documented ideology, Islam exists independently of anyone's opinion. As such, it may be studied objectively and apart from how anyone else practices or chooses to interprets it.
The Quran plainly teaches that it is not only proper to kill in the name of Allah in certain circumstances, but that it is actually a requirement. Muslims who don't believe in killing over religion may be that way out of ignorance or because they are more loyal to the moral law written in their hearts than they are to the details of Mohammed’s religion. Those who put Islam first or know Islam best know otherwise.
In fact, few Muslims have ever read the Quran to any extent, much less pursued an honest investigation of the actual words and deeds of Mohammed, which were more in line with hedonism, deception, power and violence than with moral restraint. The harsh rules that Muslim countries impose on free speech to protect Islam from critique also prevent it from being fully understood. In the West, many Muslims, devout or otherwise, simply prefer to believe that Islam is aligned with the Judeo-Christian principles of peace and tolerance, even if it means filtering evidence to the contrary.
It is no coincidence, however, that the purists who take Islam too heart are far more likely to become terrorists than humanitarians. Those most prone to abandoning themselves to Mohammed's message without moral preconception are always the more dangerous and supremacist-minded.
They may be called ‘extremists’ or ‘fundamentalists,’ but, at the end of the day, they are also dedicated to the Qur’an and following the path of Jihad as mandated by Mohammed.
Good article. Here's m:
http://the-other-side-of-history.blogspot.com/2015/12/je-ne-suis-pas-charlie.html
Post a Comment