Sharia Apologists

Lenin once used the phrase “useful idiots” to describe Westerners who even if well-intentioned, were aiding and abetting the Communists in their attempts to overthrow the West. There were plenty of academics, journalists and even clerics who glibly ran with the Soviet line, while denouncing the West.

Such useful idiots of course would be the first to be exterminated once the Communists seized power, but they were certainly quite helpful along the way. They were happy to denounce the free West while praising totalitarian Marxist regimes.

Sadly these folks have not gone away, but are still here in abundance. Only this time, it is not godless communism they are shrilling for, but militant Islam. These Western useful idiots do all they can to apologise for islam, while denouncing the West.

They actually seek to claim that if there are any radical or militant Muslims out there, it is basically the fault of the West. We somehow drove them to acts of desperation. Thus the many acts of terror are basically something we deserve. We have brought this hatred upon ourselves.

If we would just change, and learn to embrace Islam, and apologise for our Islamophobia, then they would probably all become a really nice bunch of people. That is effectively the message presented by numerous Western Muslim apologists.

We have more of this occurring – why are we not surprised? – in the Melbourne Age. A few days ago a doctoral student at Monash University’s Islamic studies centre wrote a piece which Islam was defended while the West was chided.

Rachel Woodlock said the West has “misplaced fears” about Islam, and boldly claimed, “There is no hidden agenda for sharia law; Western society is not under threat.” One might as well have written in the 1950’s, “There is no hidden agenda for Marxist domination; Western society is not under threat.”

This utter ignorance of the plans and purposes of Islam is what qualifies one for being a “useful idiot”. Just as the Marxists told us their plans, and then sought to carry them out, yet many Westerners refused to believe it, so too here. Muhammad, the Koran, and the hadith all state plainly the goals of Muslim domination. But here we have another egghead denying the obvious.

She claims there are no attempts to enforce sharia law in Australia, and Muslim immigrants are settling in just fine. She even smugly writes about Muslims born here, “Lots of Mohammads and Aishas are true-blue, happy little Vegemites sitting next to our Jacks, Marias, Sanjeevs and Nguyens in school, and that percentage is sure to increase at the next census.”

She seems to think that second-generation Muslims in the West will somehow be even more pro-Western and less pro-Islamic than their immigrant parents. But exactly the opposite is the case in the UK and other parts of the West. Studies have shown that this second-generation tends to be more militant and radical than their parents.

One could easily dissect this entire article, but amazingly – in what must have been a minor miracle – the Age actually allowed a right of reply by someone well-suited to demolish the myths in Woodlock’s article. Rev Dr Mark Durie had a piece today entitled “Muslim violence a fact, not prejudice”.

Says Durie, “Violence in the name of Islam is well-attested in nations in which Muslims are dominant, and it is non-Muslim minorities that suffer the exclusion. It does not do to argue that religion has no relevance to such events. In Muslim-majority Pakistan on December 3, Pakistani imam Maulana Yousuf Qureshi, in his Friday sermon, offered a $6000 bounty to anyone who would murder Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has also been accused of ‘blaspheming Allah’. Pakistani minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab governor Salman Taseer were subsequently assassinated because of their opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

“These laws are supported by Pakistan’s Islamic elites. The killer of Salman Taseer, Mumtaz Qadri, was praised by religious leaders from mainstream schools of Pakistani Islam, and when he was being led to court on January 6, 400 Muslim lawyers showered him with rose petals, offering him their legal services free of charge. There has also been a rush of recent assaults on Copts and their places of worship in Egypt, sparked by a wild tirade by a leading Egyptian cleric.”

He concludes, “Perhaps the most powerful evidence against Woodlock’s thesis – that it is exclusion, and not religion, that drives some Muslims to terrorism – is the fact that across the globe the most diverse religious minorities do not resort to violence, even when persecuted. There are no Falun Gong terrorists in China, despite all the bitter persecution. The same can be said for persecuted Christians in many nations.

“Even in Australia, many ethnic and religious groups have been subjected to disadvantage and exclusion, but none have produced the level of terrorist convictions of our own home-grown Islamic radicals. It is a bitter pill for the vast majority of Australian Muslims to swallow that their faith has been linked, globally and locally, to religious violence.

“Unfortunately, this link cannot be dismissed as the product of media prejudice or ‘Islamophobic’ propaganda. It is in part an issue of some Muslims behaving very badly, and their often strident claim is that they do this in the name of religion. Taking such claims seriously and debating them publicly must not be equated with stigmatising law-abiding and peaceable Australian Muslims.”

There will always be Western apologists for Islam, just as there were apologists for the Communist regimes. Both ideologies have declared war on the West. Fortunately Communism as a political/military machine has been largely defeated (although it still continues in the West as a powerful ideology).

Whether the same can one day be said about expansionist Islam remains to be seen. But with friends like Woodlock, who needs enemies?