Cheap Seats 2018Faux-bia - 10/31
By Rich Trzupek
On the one hand, it’s good to see almost universal condemnation of the slaughter of eleven Jewish worshippers at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh last week. On the other hand, attempts to equate anti-Semitism with so-called Islamophobia are depressing.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was a poster-boy for this confused, but politically-correct way of thinking. In a statement released by the UN, Guterres said in part:
“The Secretary-General calls for a united front — bringing together authorities at all levels, civil society, religious and community leaders and the public at large — to roll back the forces of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred, bigotry, discrimination and xenophobia gaining strength in many parts of the world.”
We’re all on board being against hatred, bigotry, etc. But to equate the reality of violent anti-Semitism with the fantasy of Islamophobia? Give me a break.
I’m not a Bill Maher fan, but the left-wing commentator occasionally gets it right. He understands and is willing to speak out against the threat that violent, fundamentalist Islam represents to the rest of the world and especially to Jews.
“Jews weren’t oppressing anybody,” Maher noted back in 2014. “There weren’t 5,000 militant Jewish groups. They didn’t do a study of treatment of women around the world and find that Jews were at the bottom of it. There weren’t 10 Jewish countries in the world that were putting gay people to death just for being gay.”
Violence is, in many ways, a part of life. It always has been and always will. The on-going battle to prevent violence necessarily requires one to understand the causes of violence.
The brand of violence that is fundamentalist Islam traces its roots back to the Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1989 Khomeini famously issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of the “The Satanic Verses,” a novel Khomeini and other Islamic fanatics deemed blasphemous.
This was a turning point in history. The leader of a theocracy reached out across the borders of the nation he ruled in an attempt to impose his version of religious purity in a nation (the United Kingdom) in which he had no legal authority.
Such things happened in Christian nations back it medieval times, but we’ve progressed a bit since then. Not so fundamentalist Islam. Putting out a hit on an obscure author living in another nation for the sin of saying something Khomeini didn’t like was barbaric, medieval act, but then fundamentalist Islam wax and remains a medieval religion.
The west’s reaction to Khomeini’s barbarism then was much the same as it is today: Tut-tut a bit, but be very careful not to further inflame the barbarians with open criticism or – God forbid – actual punitive action.
Conflating anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia” is simply more of the same. It’s a deflection. It’s a smokescreen. It’s sticking one’s head in the sand.
Jews across the world and especially Jews who live in Israel are in real danger for their lives, every day. They’re endangered by an idea – the idea that someone could know, with absolute certainty, God’s Will.
My sympathies go out to those who lost their lives in Pittsburgh last week. May they rest in peace.
Email: rich@examinerpublications.com
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