Confronting evil on Flight 93

Evil exists. The Scriptures tell us that the evil one "masquerades as an angel of light" seeking to deceive and destroy.

One ancient manifestation of that evil, cloaked in religiosity, is today revived and emboldened.

For most Americans, 9/11 was inexplicable and sudden horror. For many around the world, only the extent of the devastation, not the will to destroy, was surprising, since they too have suffered at the hands of Islam. In every nation in which the religion of Mohammed gains a foothold, violence ensues. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, animists, and other non-Muslims have all suffered at the command of Allah.

For many, the reality of what happened on 9/11 has dimmed (if it ever was real at all). If this preview of United 93 is accurate, the film is a must-see. Americans must watch and remember. Infidels around the world and Muslims of Good Will must see and understand the devastation Allah causes.

And we must act. Act to reveal the truth about the god from hell and his false prophet who require this violence. Act to expose the lies of those who would keep unwary Infidels blind to the blade about to sweep across their throats. Act to prevent the realization of Islam's ultimate goal: the subjugation of all Men under Shari'a, the rule of Allah.

Inside the Making of United 93:

On United Airlines flight 93—out of Newark, scheduled for San Francisco, bound for history—34 passengers caught up on paperwork or dreamed their last dream. Four others were there on a mission.

Forty-six minutes into the flight, one of them shouted in Arabic and brandished a bandolier of explosives. Another got into the cockpit, stabbing the pilot and co-pilot. A third seized the controls. Some of the captives, getting on phone lines, learned that two other planes had torpedoed into the World Trade Center. Realizing their doom, the passengers also found a mission. They stormed the hijackers, rammed their way into the cockpit and, to keep the plane from being one more missile aimed at a U.S. landmark, tried to wrest command of it.

Fourteen times.

That's how many times Paul Greengrass, writer-director of United 93, put his cast through the hijacking and ensuing heroics. On a set in suburban London's Pinewood Studios, where many James Bond fantasies have been filmed, Greengrass staged this real-life, high-stakes death battle over and over—the whole ordeal, nonstop, in takes lasting from 20 to 55 min., as the reconstructed Boeing 757 would wobble and shudder, and the camera crew followed the action like nosy paparazzi. Says Cheyenne Jackson, who plays Mark Bingham, one of the stalwart passengers: "We spent so many hours throwing our trays around and bleeding and screaming and crying and praying, and throwing up and peeing ourselves, and trying to imagine every possibility of what these people were going through. It was an environment where we could go to these deep, dark places. But the saddest thing about it was that finally we could wash off our makeup and come out of those places."

He means that the passengers on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, could not come out; they crashed and died, along with the hijackers, in a field near Shanksville, Pa. But there are many Americans for whom the dark place of a movie auditorium is a last refuge from reality. The trailer for United 93 has upset viewers with its gritty evocation of that day, especially a shot of the plane hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center. Audiences who wouldn't flinch at slasher movies and serial-killer thrillers have shouted back at the previews. A multiplex in Manhattan yanked the trailer after complaints from patrons. Some were angry, some in tears. They felt violated to see, in the guise of entertainment, a pinprick reminder of a tragedy for which Americans still grieve and which they may wish to keep buried, along with the people and the image of national invulnerability lost that day.

Yet the events of 9/11, like a nightmare that haunts the waking, have permeated the media. Not just the all-news channels but also books, plays, songs. Michael Moore's political take, Fahrenheit 9/11, scared up $119 million at the domestic box office, and abc is preparing a mini-series based on The 9/11 Commission Report, with Stephen Root as terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke and Harvey Keitel as John O'Neill, the fbi's al-Qaeda sleuth who died in the World Trade Center carnage. Flight 93, a TV movie about the same events shown in United 93, reaped the A&E Network's all-time highest ratings and stoked no protests.

Perhaps those who saw the trailer didn't realize that this was the one flight, of the four hijacked that day, with an inspiring ending. This was the one on which the good guys, following passenger Todd Beamer's John Wayne-like invocation, "Let's roll," foiled the bad guys. The saga of this flight makes for, in 9/11 terms, a feel-good movie. Just as important, United 93, at which Time was given an exclusive first look, is a good movie—taut and implacable—that honors the deeds of the passengers while being fair, if anyone cares, to the hijackers' jihad bravado. (At one point the passengers are heard murmuring the Lord's Prayer while the hijackers whisper their prayers to Allah.) If this is a horror movie, it is an edifying one, a history lesson with the pulse of a world-on-the-line suspense film.

Ready or not—and the pending release this week of the black-box tapes from the doomed flight suggests some kind of turning point—United 93 opens around the country April 28, three days after its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, within view of the still gaping Twin Towers site. Greengrass's film is the first of a few big-studio projects dealing with 9/11. World Trade Center, the account of two Port Authority policemen trapped beneath the towers' charnel rubble, follows in August. James Vanderbilt's screenplay of Against All Enemies, Clarke's contentious memoir of his career tracking terrorists, which begins with frenetic scenes in the White House on 9/11, is floating around Hollywood. Paul Haggis, fresh from his Oscar upset with Crash, has expressed interest in directing it. Against All Enemies will get its juice from the spectacle of stratospheric double-dealing; there's more backstabbing than in Hamlet. World Trade Center promises to be a hymn to the courage and perseverance of Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Officer Will Jimeno (Michael Pena). Jimeno was trapped in an elevator shaft for 15 hours, McLoughlin interred in rubble a few feet below Jimeno for 23 hours.

The days the two men visited the set—Howard Hughes' old airplane hangar near Marina del Rey, Calif.—McLoughlin, who had 30 surgeries that left braces on his legs and an open wound on his left hip, stayed away from the 65-ft. mound of Styrofoam beams and cargo boxes meant to represent ground zero. "I hate getting upset," he says. As soot-covered extras in police and military uniforms milled around, Jimeno was reduced to tears by the sight of the too-lifelike rubble pile. "I survived for a reason," he says. "We, as a country, have a short attention span. We don't want people to forget those who died and those who saved us."

Although the film's director is Oliver Stone, this is no paranoid panorama on the order of JFK. It's a boy-down-a-well saga with, insists first-time screenwriter Andrea Berloff, "no politics. This is a small story. We're in the hole with these two guys for practically the whole movie." With the digging out comes the uplift. "I hope people will walk out of the theater and say to themselves, 'Life is short,'" Jimeno says, "and go home and hug their loved ones." Berloff has the same aim. "You don't want people leaving theaters slitting their wrists. I don't think the world is ready for the Towering Inferno version of 9/11. I don't know how you would make that movie." These three films, in various stages of gestation, all look to be honest, fact-based depictions of a central American story. They also have recognizable movie antecedents. In the horror stories of history, Hollywood picks through the carnage to find heroes, and the makers of the 9/11 films have found a few. Clarke, in Against All Enemies, is the lonely sentinel begging a smug, slow-witted establishment to take al-Qaeda seriously. He's Frank Capra's Mr. Smith after 30 years in Washington, his stubborn zeal intact. Another species of hero is the lucky survivor; and as Schindler's List was not about the nearly 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis but about 1,100 who escaped, so World Trade Center focuses on two of the last victims evacuated alive after the big buildings collapsed. As for the United 93 passengers--in movie terms, and in the life of the world--they are the first heroes of the 21st century.

"At 28 minutes past 9," says Greengrass of Sept. 11, "none of us were wondering What are we going to do? We were watching telly, wondering What the f___ is going on? The people on United 93 weren't doing that. They were looking at four guys. They knew exactly what was going on." Knowing of the World Trade Center attack, they could surmise that their own flight might be the next weapon.

"Subsequent to 9/11," says Greengrass, an Englishman who directed the superb docudrama Bloody Sunday, set in Northern Ireland in 1972, and the gritty espionage film The Bourne Supremacy, "we all had to make decisions about the world we live in, about the courses of action that we take. This film is saying that, before we got to that, there was this event: this extraordinary work of fate, mired in confusion, with the passengers gaining knowledge of 9/11 as they went. What that did was create a debate on the plane: What are we going to do? Are we going to do nothing and hope for the best, or are we going to do something? What can we do? What will be the consequences of both courses of action? That is our post-9/11 debate." Which the doomed, defiant passengers had just a few minutes to comprehend and resolve—on the fly.

United 93 is a meticulous reconstruction of that morning. Greengrass worked closely with the victims' families, who had already heard the black-box recordings, and the actors, who were improvising. Few events, either on the plane or in the air-traffic control centers, are underlined for effect. As Bingham's mother Alice Hoagland notes, "What happened on board Flight 93 has so much drama and pace, it needs no embellishment."

At the start of the film, before 93's takeoff, our knowledge of what is to come bestows a creepy portent, a sad, sick, helpless feeling, to banal intimacies and mundane activities. A simple cell-phone "I love you" holds a lifetime of poignancy; the closing of the plane door is like the sealing of a tomb with live bodies inside. In a film that, in its near finished state, runs about 105 min., it's 30 min. before Flight 93 is aloft, an additional 12 min. before the second plane hits the World Trade Center, a full hour before the hijackers seize control. For the viewer, the wait is rackingly tense, as real as a newsreel.

That is because, wherever possible, Greengrass cast people close to their roles. J.J. Johnson, who plays the captain of Flight 93, is a real United pilot. Trish Gates, who plays head flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw, was a real United flight attendant. Ben Sliney, who as national operations manager for the faa kept track of the mounting atrocities, appears as himself. Lewis Alsamari, who plays one of the hijackers, spent a year in the Iraqi army.

The actors playing the terrorists were kept segregated from those playing the passengers; they stayed in different hotels and did not meet until the hijack sequence was shot. Those actors had to deal with the violence on a more personal level. "We all came out with stuff that we've never seen in ourselves before," says Jamie Harding, who describes his character, Ahmed Al Nami, by saying, "I do all the beating and hurting, although I don't actually kill anybody." Alsamari says he looked at a scene in the film in which he attacks the pilot and co-pilot, "and I had my hand on my mouth. I thought, I can't believe someone could do that. It was like looking at somebody else."

If the actors find United 93 hard to take, what will an audience's reaction be? Many people will certainly feel they're not ready to see the film. And that's fine. But it's honorable and artful as a re-creation of history, and as a film experience it's both unbearable and unmissable.

"Movies need to address the way the world is," Greengrass says. "We have to tell stories about 9/11." He also notes, "The victims' families want this film made. Every single one of them." (Universal, the studio producing the film, is donating 10% of the first weekend's box-office gross to the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund.) Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died on the flight and who serves as chairman of Families of Flight 93, sees two reasons America needs this film. "One, we're proud of what these Americans did," he says. "These are ordinary citizens who in a matter of minutes overcame what very evil and capable people had planned for years. The passengers took action without police or official support. They knew right from wrong, and they acted on it. Out of the dark of 9/11 came these heroes. And two, it is an example that future world citizens can learn from. If you remember Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, he tried to engage a very dangerous bomb and was thwarted by the bravery of the passengers and crew. Flight 93 served as a beacon for them. I don't think you can reaffirm that message too often or too much."

"I hope we're not as a society inured to the messages of the movie," says Hoagland. Those messages, of the hijackers' terrible cunning and dedication, the passengers' valor and sacrifice, are both timeless and timely. "I know it's not too soon," she says. "I hope it's not too late."

More Islamic peace and tolerance

If their god is true, why must they act like thugs? And why is this allowed to happen in America? Staring down intimidation:

It took 10 police officers to keep order last month when Brigitte Gabriel gave a speech at Memphis University. A passionate and powerful speaker who had witnessed Palestinian terrorism and experienced anti-Jewish and anti-Christian propaganda in her native Lebanon, Ms. Gabriel had been invited to speak at the Tennessee campus by religious studies professor David Patterson.

But the day before Ms. Gabriel's speech, Mr. Patterson began receiving threatening e-mails.

"Do you honestly think the scheduled lecture will serve any useful purpose other than inflaming the Muslims, insulting them and spilling poison in the community?" one message said. Another said that inviting Ms. Gabriel to speak was "worse than hosting of the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan," and another described her as among "the true enemies of Islam."

When Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Patterson arrived in the campus auditorium 15 minutes before her scheduled presentation, several rows of seats in the front of the room were already occupied by men and women dressed in distinctive Muslim clothing.

Before Ms. Gabriel was introduced, a Muslim man who has been a long-term graduate student at the university strode to the front of the room and announced: "We have been told that the speaker will only accept questions written on cards. Everyone who believes this is an undemocratic lecture, raise your hands." The Muslims in the audience shouted their agreement.

Ms. Gabriel then went to the front of the room and announced that the lecture belonged to her and that all who did not see it this way were welcome to leave. Two campus police officers stood, one on either side of her. They also called for backup. By the time order was restored and Ms. Gabriel began her speech, 10 police officers were posted in the room. Mr. Patterson implored the audience to give her a chance to be heard.

After her speech, she answered every question submitted -- questions she described as "Palestinian talking points" -- before the Muslim audience members swarmed onto the stage and surrounded her, yelling angrily at her. Finally, police officers grabbed her and hustled her out a side door. Someone else had to retrieve her coat and suitcase while she waited in a police car to be driven to the hotel where, for security reasons, she was registered under a fictitious name.

Only after she had locked her door and drawn the curtains, did Ms. Gabriel allow herself to begin to tremble.

"The intimidation takes a toll on you," Ms. Gabriel said in an e-mail message to friends after the Memphis speech. "I was dreading this all day, ever since my hosts told me they had been receiving hostile e-mail about my lecture. It was weighing so heavily on my heart. My stomach was in knots. I got a migraine headache. I knew I was going into battle, and there was no way out of it. I was nervous and stressed. Each time this happens, I hate it and it makes me feel that I don't want to do it anymore. But I will do it. I will never stop. If we stop, the Islamists will have won. We cannot allow that to happen."

Islam's threat to Europe isn't new, and the proper response isn't either

Jihad isn't just for Americans and Jews, and it isn't novel. Here's a timely follow-up to "Europe's slow demise":

Luther on Islam

Introduction

As early as 1518, Dr. Martin Luther had identified the Islamic faith as the "scourge of God." For the rest of his life Luther believed that the Muslims were God's punishment upon a sinful Christendom who had, among other sins (ingratitude, toleration of wicked sects, worship of the god Mammon, drunkenness, greed, and the split of Christendom which had provoked His wrath), tolerated the papal abomination. They would function as Germany's schoolmaster who must correct and teach the German people to repent of their sins and to fear God.

By 1541, Luther's burning question for the German people is "how can God be patient any longer?" Just as God had punished the generation of Noah for its wickedness, God must now protect His honor and divinity by punishing the thankless and ungrateful German people.

The Origin and Nature of the Islamic Faith

Martin Luther, having spent the majority of his life lecturing on the Old Testament, derived his understanding of the origin and nature of Islam from Daniel 7 and Daniel's dream concerning the four beasts. In Daniel's vision, each beast represented a kingdom with the last beast signifying the Roman Empire.

In fulfillment of Daniel 7:20, Luther identified the origin of Islam with the small horn which had displaced the kingdoms of Egypt, Greece, and Asia and who makes war against God's people. The nature of the Islamic faith can be understood by the human eyes of the beast which represented Islam's sacred book, the Qur'an, containing only human wisdom. The mouth signified the many blasphemies that the prophet Muhammad uttered against the Christian faith.

In a letter to Nicholas Hausmann, Luther made the further identification of Gog with the Muslim and Magog with the pope, the former being the external or worldly enemy of God's people and the latter being the spiritual or ecclesiastical enemy of Christ and His Church. These two enemies of God, and of His people, possessed the same origin in time with the establishment of papal primacy to Boniface III in 606 A.D. by Phokes and with the appearance of the Muslims in 621-632 A.D.

Islamic Errors

Luther believed that the Islamic faith was a patchwork faith which had been "patched together out of the faith of the Jews, Christians, and the heathen" (PE 5:95). The chief theological errors of Islam manifested themselves in the following ways:

A FALSE SYSTEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

For Luther, it is foolish and unwise to place one's hope of salvation upon a religious system which had no calling or promise from God. Consequently, all of the Muslim's fasting, alms-giving, zeal, spirituality, and self-chosen worship count for nothing before God (LW 24:229).

The reason the Muslim engages in these labors, suggests Luther, is that his false understanding of God's nature and will leads him to view God as an angry God who must be won by humility, fasting, sacrifice and good works (LW 22:336). In doing so, he rejects the office of Christ (as Redeemer and Mediator) by his own labor to obtain a gracious God and constructs his own ladder to heaven (LW 22:334). As a result, the Muslim bears fruit that is natural and temporally good, but it is not Christian and everlasting since its source is not found in the true Vine who is Christ (LW 24:214).

In summary, the Islamic faith is simply that "if you are pious and just, and if you perform good works, you are saved" (LW 22:501). The prayer of the Muslim is "may God spare my life that I may atone for my sin" (LW 24:349). Thus, the Muslim possesses a false righteousness that strives to be holy, not through faith in the merits of Christ but through his own self-chosen works (LW 24:243) and to "do good according to the light and understanding of reason and to be saved in this way" (LW 24:372).

A FALSE SOURCE OF THEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

The second major error of the Islamic faith is its refusal to remain with the simple Gospel but instead to create a new bible, the Qur'an (LW 24:9). Due to this false source of theological knowledge, a system of salvation was constructed that could be comprehended by and which conforms to unregenerate human reason (LW 22:301-302; LW 23:79). Consequently, the tenets of the Islamic faith are in marked contrast to the fundamental articles of the Christian faith (Trinity, Incarnation) which are beyond human reason (LW 22:302) and revealed from heaven by the Holy Spirit (PE 5:178-179).

A CHRISTOLOGICAL HERESY

According to Martin Luther, the chief strategy of Satan, and of all heresies, is to deny Christ's incarnation, rob humankind of God and His Word, and to fabricate a new god. This is the way the devil goes to work: "He attacks Christ with three storm-columns. One will not suffer Him to be God; the other will not suffer Him to be man; the third denies that He has merited salvation for us. Each of the three endeavors to destroy Christ...Surely all three parts must be believed, namely, that He is God, also, that He is man, and that He became such a man for us...If one small part is lacking, then all parts are lacking" (Bente 1965:14).

The Muslims believe, like their ancestor Nestorius, that Jesus was only Mary's son and not the Son of God (LW 22:351). They hold Christ to be an excellent prophet and a great man who preached to His own time and who completed His work before His death just like any other prophet. Christ, however, is not as great as Muhammad (LW 22:18; LW 23:82), who is to be worshipped and adored in Christ's stead (LW 22:137). Thus, the Muslims storm against the teaching of Christ as true God (LW 22:395) and refuse to accept the testimony of Jesus Himself and of the Holy Spirit (LW 23:377) that He is the true God and true man (LW 22:468; PE 5:94).

The real stumbling block for the Muslim is "acknowledging that Christ is the Son of God and His message is the Word of God" (LW 22:476) since it is the nature of all schismatic spirits to assert that Jesus' Word must be ignored and discarded (LW 23:357) and to sever and separate God, Christ and His Word from one another and debate about God (LW 24:67). As a result, the Muslim is not able to know God because he seeks to know Him without Christ (LW 24:23), the true path and ladder (LW 23:56). The Muslim, instead of finding God here on earth in the flesh of Christ (LW 23:117), searches in vain for God in heaven (LW 23:123; LW 23:170).

THE ISLAMIC FAITH DESTROYS TEMPORAL AUTHORITY

A final tenet of Islam which Luther condemns is its teaching about the proper role of government. The Muslim is not concerned, like other rulers, with the maintenance of peace, the protection of the good, and the punishment of the wicked but uses government, after he has murdered men's souls with his Qur'an, to murder their bodies (PE 5:96). By his lies, the Muslim seeks to "destroy the spiritual estate, murder the temporal, disregard for marriage the estate of matrimony" (PE 5:100).

Luther's Advice in Dealing with Islam

SIR CHRISTIAN -- THE FIRST MAN

The advice of Luther concerning the Islamic threat in Europe during the Sixteenth Century was not the crusades, for to advocate a Christian crusade against the Muslims was to mix spiritual authority with temporal authority. The consequences of such a mixture and a confusion of the two authorities would be to draw God's wrath and insure the success of Islam. Instead, the Muslims were to be fought spiritually by Christians with repentance, the amendment of one's life and with prayer.

In order to achieve this spiritual posture before God, Germany's pastors were to admonish the papists to stop blaspheming God and to admonish the ungrateful, wanton German people to improve their behavior, to honor God's Word and to call on God in prayer. Germany's pastors were to be God's prophetic voices, calling God's people back to Himself through genuine repentance, faith and prayer.

THE EMPEROR -- THE SECOND MAN

The second man whose place it was to fight against the Muslim was Emperor Charles. It was his office to war agains the Muslim because of their threats toward the Empire's subjects and the Empire itself. It was his duty, as a ruler appointed by God, to defend his own people and land (PE 5:102). If there was to be war against the Muslim, "it should be fought at the Emperor's command and under his banner, and in his name...[why?]...Because then everyone can assure his own conscience that he is obeying the ordinance of God, since we know that the emperor is our true overlord and head, and he who obeys him...obeys God also, while he who disobeys him disobeys God also" (PE 5:102-103).

Therefore, advises Luther, the emperor and the princes should be exhorted concerning their office and duty to God not to let their subjects be ruined, but rather to be reminded that Germany and its people are "given you and committed to you by God, that you may protect, rule, counsel, and help it, and you not only should, but must do this on pain of losing your soul's salvation and God's favor and grace" (PE 5:106).

Concluding Remarks

Just as in the days of Noah, so also in Luther's life, people lived as Epicureans and skeptics. As a consequence of their thankless hearts, God was just in punishing Europe. The Muslims were simply God's scourge and schoolmaster, permitted by God to be the servant of the devil, who not only ruins land and people with the sword but also lays waste the Christian faith and our dear Lord Jesus Christ.

The consistent resolve and advice of Luther was to appeal to the two governments instituted by God, namely, spiritual and temporal authority. Sir Christian, as the body of Christ, was to fight with the Word of God, prayer and a reformed life. Then the Emperor was to carry out his office and defend his people and land. For "if our kings and princes were to agree, and stand by one another and help one another, and the Christian man were to pray for them, I should be undismayed and of good hope; the Muslim would leave his raging and find in Emperor Charles a man who was his equal" (PE 5:122).

Europe's slow demise

A powerful and insightful post by Fjordman at the Gates of Vienna, a look into several of the factors that have led Europe to the brink of submission to Islam--I’m a Terrorist Groupie, Hear Me Roar!:

I have heard some people say that Western popular culture will destroy Islam. That is possible, but we need to remember that this is not a one-way street. What if the opposite happens? Sometimes the barbarians also influence the civilized people, and there is a disturbing amount of “understanding” for terrorists in Western movies and media these days. Creeps come crawling out of the woodwork, more or less cheering for the terrorists who are trying to bring society down. There are probably always people who are drawn to blood and mayhem. They would like to destroy the current political order, but aren’t capable of doing it themselves, so they end up as cheerleaders for those who are attempting to do so. Let’s call them “terrorist groupies.” I’m not just talking about the Oscar-nominated suicide bomber film Paradise Now. There are others examples of this mentality.

“V for Vendetta” is a recent movie made by the Wachowski brothers, the men behind the modern sci-fi classic “The Matrix.” It is set in Britain about a generation from now. The USA has dissolved into chaos and civil war after its involvement in a prolonged war in the Middle East. Great Britain has become a Fascist state. The protagonist, a “freedom fighter” named V, wants to ignite a revolution and brags about how blowing up a building can change the whole world. He is wearing a Guy Fawkes mask to conceal his identity, and proclaims that he wants to finish at November 5th what Fawkes tried to do in the so-called Gunpowder Plot in 1605: Blowing up Parliament. He gets an accomplice in this task, a young girl named Evey, played by Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman. Portman cites a popular British rhyme that is often quoted on Guy Fawkes Night:

”Remember, remember, the 5th of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot; I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.”

During the movie, we see a gay man keeping a 14th century Koran in a secret room in his house, because he enjoys “the beautiful poetry and imagery” in it. He is later executed when the authorities discover this, as the Koran is now banned and Muslims are oppressed. What beautiful imagery we are never told. “And slay them wherever ye catch them”? “I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them”? At the same time, the Church is shown to be a place of filth, corruption and hypocrisy. Islam is good and “misunderstood,” Christianity is bad and oppressive. In the final scene of “V for Vendetta,” the British Parliament is blown up, with hundreds of thousands of people in Guy Fawkes masks watching and Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” blasting from loudspeakers, fireworks crackling and Natalie Portman smiling.

In Hollywoodistan, gays admire the beauty of the Koran. In real life, gays are physically attacked in increasing numbers by Muslims in Europe, and death squads are targeting gays in Islamic countries such as Iraq. A gay man, Pim Fortuyn, was de facto executed for criticizing Islam, after having been demonized by Dutch media and the Dutch establishment for “Islamophobia” and “hate speech”. In Hollywoodistan, the Koran has been banned on pain of death in Britain. In real life, British PM Tony Blair has called Islam “progressive” and praised the Koran for being “practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance.” In Hollywoodistan, Muslims in London are ruthlessly persecuted. In real life, London has become the Islamic terrorist capital of the entire world, as demonstrated by writer Melanie Phillips in her book “Londonistan.” In Hollywoodistan, native Fascists kill British civilians to spread fear and terror and soften them for their goal of overthrowing democracy. In real life, the only Fascists trying to do this are Muslims, following the example of their prophet Muhammad who bragged about how he had been “made victorious by terror.”

After the Jihadist terror bombings in London in July 2005, not a single Muslim cleric has been expelled from Britain. Historian David Starkey warned that Britain was in danger of sleepwalking into a new era of religious intolerance, as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What today might be described as thought crimes, such as expressing any sympathy for suicide bombers, would in previous eras have been termed heresy, he said. The right response to the bombings was that Britain should become more tolerant towards Islam. A Chester professor, Ron Geaves, has stated that the attacks that killed 52 people were not the acts of terrorists but “just an extreme Muslim demonstration” and that “the word terrorism is a political word which always seems to be used to demonise people.” Muslim immigration continues unabated, and open hatred towards the West continues to be preached in mosques. The BBC is busy as always in campaigning against “Islamophobia” and reminding everybody that Islam is rich in diversity and that Western civilization would have been impossible without huge Islamic contributions, which we should be eternally grateful for.

For an outsider, it is sad to see the nation that once faced down Hitler and Napoleon slowly succumb to these barbarians. It is good that smaller nations such as Denmark and maybe the Netherlands are at least starting to confront the Islamic threat, but this isn’t enough. For the sake of Europe, we need some of the larger countries to do the same thing. France is sinking into a quagmire of problems of her own, and has been leading the creation of Eurabia in the first place. Maybe the Germans could do the job, but they are still restrained by their guilt complex from WW2. We need the British on board, and so far, there are few signs of this happening. Will Britannia forever be enslaved, or will she rise to the occasion as she has done in the past?

Luckily, even though Hollywood won’t tell the truth, there are still a few people who will. Mullah Krekar, an Al Qaeda-linked Islamic leader who was granted refugee status in Norway told an Oslo newspaper that there’s a war going on between the West and Islam. He said he’s sure that Islam will win. Muslims could indeed win this, if they could just sit tight, remain quiet and continue the demographic Jihad. But too many of them behave so, well, Islamic, boast and brag about their plans. Listening to Mullah Krekar talking is like watching one of those old James Bond movies, where the villain just has to tell Bond everything about his evil plans, just in time so that 007 can prevent it. “I’m so smart and evil, you can’t stop me, bwuahahaha!” Then again, given the state of things in Al-Britannia these days, James Bond would probably have been working for the other team. “There’s a nasty case of Islamophobia going on at the Telegraph newspaper today. Take care of it, will you, 007. How do you want your Koran, Mr. Bond?” “Shaken, not stirred.”

In another movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” directed by star actor George Clooney, CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow is shown standing up against Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy during his intense anti-Communist movement in the 1950s. I assume Clooney’s motivation for making this movie now is insinuating that the ongoing War on Terror is “just like” the paranoia of the 50s. First of all: Although there is no doubt that Senator McCarthy went too far and destroyed the lives of many innocent people, the Communist threat to the USA and the West was in fact very real during the Cold War. And second of all: Whoever decided that a new “political witch hunt” necessarily has to come from the Right?

“McCarthyism” is sometimes defined as “the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition.” Some would claim that this describes very well how critics of Muslim immigration in the West have been demonized during the previous generation, especially by Leftists. Carl I. Hagen, leader of the right-wing Progress Party, was for several decades virtually the only Norwegian politician of some stature that warned against the madness of the current immigration policies. And he was hated for it by the establishment, denounced as a racist pig, Nazi and subject to every insult in the dictionary. During the 1990s, when there were still many people who took the “Oslo Peace Process” seriously, he went in demonstrations in support of Israel and with the slogan “No money for Arafat.” The public now understands that he was right, which is why his party has grown from being a tiny protest party to being at the brink of replacing the Labor Party as the largest political party in Norway, for the first time in 80 years. Why doesn’t Mr. Clooney or other Hollywood personalities make a movie about Carl I. Hagen, Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s Party, Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands or others that have been warning against the madness of Muslim immigration? They are the real victims of the “new McCarthyism.”

Glorification of anti-democratic fanatics has penetrated Western popular culture in other ways than movies. Che Guevara’s face is cropping up everywhere, from posters to t-shirts. Che is famous for helping Fidel Castro shape the Cuban revolution. Later, he was in charge of La Cabana prison, where he oversaw a military tribunal which condemned scores of counterrevolutionaries to death without trial. “Hatred,” he said, is important. It makes you, he reflected, “into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine.” He helped set up a police state in Cuba, and negotiated the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba in 1962. He later became furious when Moscow removed them following the Cuba Crisis. “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all...” He spoke of “unimaginable destructiveness to defend a principle.” Yet this murderer and symbol of an ideology that killed 100 million people during the 20th century is treated as a pop icon in the democratic West.

Michel Foucault is one of the best known and most widely read philosophers of our time, familiar to hundreds of thousands of Western University students. During and after the 1978-79 revolution, Foucault visited Iran twice and also met with Khomeini in Paris. Much of Foucault’s work is grounded in the problems of modernity in Europe. Thus he became fascinated with the Iranian revolution because it “challenged the Western model of progress.” He wasn’t the only Western intellectual who was seduced by the “revolutionary energy” displayed in Iran. The age of marriage for girls was reduced to 9 years, tens of thousands of political opponents were arrested, tortured and killed, young women were raped in prisons as a matter of routine to prevent them from entering Paradise as virgins, and barbaric, medieval laws were re-enacted for tens of millions of people. Apparently, for some Western intellectuals, anything is excusable as long as you are anti-Western and have a “revolutionary cause.”

Phyllis Chesler writes about the Culture War in academia, where both Western leftists and Islamists employ a systematic misuse of language, writing about “insurgents,” not “terrorists,” whom they describe as “martyrs,” not “killers, and as “freedom fighters,” not as “well educated evil men.” Meanwhile, hateful anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators are described as “peace activists. She believes that Western academy has been “utterly Palestinianized.” Our Islamist opponents have turned out this propaganda non-stop around the world. As propagandists, they are “far more sophisticated than Goebbels, and far more patient.”

Yale University in the US admitted a former Taliban spokesman, Rahmatullah Hashemi, as student. He was the chief translator for Mullah Omar in Afghanistan. Female Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya said Hashemi was one of the Taliban’s top propagandists and called his status as a student at Yale “disgusting” and an “unforgivable insult.” Yet people at Yale fired back and said it was the critics of Yale and Rahmatullah Hashemi who were the real Taliban, and that excluding him would “ takes us one step closer into the Taliban-like suppression of views that challenge the party line.”

Robert Fisk is a veteran British foreign correspondent. During a visit to Australia, Fisk said: “I see this immense world of injustice . . . and I must say given our constant interference in the Middle East, I’m amazed that Muslims have been so restrained.” In fact, so “restrained” are they that Fisk wasn’t sure how much they can be blamed even for the terror attacks of 9/11. He often spoke in the US, he said, and “more and more people in the audience believe the American administration had some kind of involvement”. “ …the worst I can envisage is that they know something was coming and they preferred it to happen so that their strategy could be put into place.”

Ironically, it seems as if some of the chief defenders of democracy and Western civilization now are immigrants. Britain’s first black Archbishop made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity. The Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said “that too many people were embarrassed about being English.” “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains,” he said. He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism. “What is it to be English? It is a very serious question,” he said. “When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’, they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it.”

Writing about the Muhammad cartoons controversy, author Ibn Warraq quoted the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme’; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.”

“The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience,” Ibn Warraq stated. “How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship?”

These are encouraging words, but they cannot conceal the fact that there is a very powerful undercurrent of self-loathing and guilt-obsession in the West at the beginning of the 21st century. Where does it come from?

Lars Hedegaard, writer and columnist for newspaper Berlingske Tidende, has, together with colleagues Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen, been one of the leading forces behind making tiny Denmark into a frontline country in the battle against Islam. In his book “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,” Bruce Bawer gives an account of a meeting with Hedegaard and Brix in Copenhagen:

“Hedegaard was of the view, however, that the Danish establishment’s benign neglect of Islamic extremism must have deeper causes than snobbism or hippie nostalgia. After all, he said, the Islamicization of the Nordic countries was “the most fundamental transformation” they’d experienced in a millennium. Something so monumental, in his opinion, could not be explained simply by a few people’s foolishness or class snobbery. “Heavy consequences,” he insisted, “must have heavy causes.” The surrender of Denmark to Muslims had to be the result of some deep-seated compulsion. (…..) His theory was that Western Europe’s ongoing surrender to radical Islam had its roots in the psychic devastation of the First World War. For while that conflict marked America’s ascent to the rank of Great Power, Europeans took it as a devastating proof, Hedegaard said, “the our culture was worthless. It was basically destroyed. And that prepared the way for two sorts of totalitarianism” — Nazism and Communism — and for “atrocities of a magnitude that is hard to imagine.” Those atrocities, in turn, placed upon Europeans an unbearable burden of guilt. The Nazis, he said, “made Europe think it is doomed and sinful...and deserves what it has coming.”

Lars Hedegaard’s view seems to mirror that of French philosopher and cultural critic Alain Finkielkraut, who thinks that “Europe does not love itself.” Finkielkraut says that it’s not forces from outside that are threatening Europe as much as the voluntary renunciation of European identity, its wish of freeing itself from itself, its own history and its traditions, only replaced by human rights. The European Union thus isn’t just post-national, but post-European. What characterizes Europe today is the will to define itself, not from an ideology, but by dismissing any sense of identity. Europe is now built upon an oath: Never again. Never again extermination, never again war, but also never again nationalism. Europe prides itself in being nothing. According to Finkielkraut, Auschwitz has become part of the foundation of the EU, a culture based on guilt. But this is a vague ideology saying that “We have to oppose everything the Nazis were for.” Consequently, nationalism or any kind of attachment to your own country, including what some would say is healthy, non-aggressive patriotism, is frowned upon. To remember is to regret. Europe rejects its past. “European identity” is the de-identification of Europe. Of the past, we are only to remember crimes. This didn’t just happen in Germany, but in all of Europe. “I can understand the feeling of remorse that is leading Europe to this definition, but this remorse goes too far. It is too great a gift to present Hitler to reject everything that led to him.” This is said by the Jewish son of an Auschwitz prisoner.

Finkielkraut says that Europe has made human rights its gospel, to such an extent that it threatens European history and culture. This creates a Europe without substance. “When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.” Finkielkraut reminds us that the multiculturalists’ demand for “diversity” requires the eclipse of the individual in favor of the group. The abdication of reason demanded by multiculturalism has been the result of the subjection of culture to anthropology. “Under the equalizing eye of social science,” he writes, hierarchies are abolished. The disintegration of faith in reason and common humanity leads not only to a destruction of standards, but also involves a crisis of courage. “A careless indifference to grand causes,” Finkielkraut warns, “has its counterpart in abdication in the face of force,” and weakens the commitment required to preserve freedom.

What, in fact, is replacing assimilation? Anyone who doesn’t want to assimilate, French culture assimilates into his identity. Children aren’t speaking French, but rather a jargon composed of Arabic words and meager French. “There is always a culture that emerges victorious. In no society is there a vacuum.” Another thinker, Pascal Bruckner, agrees that Europe has made repentance for old sins, perceived or real, the central point of its identity, and something close to an obsession. And this is unhealthy, according to him. “If somebody hits you, you will think: This is for something I have done.” “Never again” and the belief that dialogue will take care of all problems are the guiding principles. We are filled with regret, but cannot fill Europe with anything positive.

This idea that Auschwitz has defined the modern identity of Europe is reflected by Spanish journalist Sebastian Villar Rodriguez in his piece “Europe died in Auschwitz:”

I was walking along Raval (Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz.

We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!

We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.(...) Because it is the people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing.

We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders (…) opened its doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics(…), the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.

We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.

But why does this guilt complex also apply to Britain, which defeated the Nazis, or Denmark, which saved most of its Jews? Why do we detect some of the same currents even in the United States? And why on earth can’t Europeans give stronger support to the survivors of the Holocaust in Israel?

Yes, we have been sold out by our elites through the creation of Eurabia and the wiping out of our own cultures through Multiculturalism. But this is only half of the story. In democratic societies, even if sometimes flawed ones, this would never have been possible if there wasn’t a profound undercurrent of self-loathing present in the general public already. The trauma caused by the events of 70 years ago is clouding our judgment this time, since any talk at all about the threat posed by Muslim immigration or about preserving our own culture is being dismissed as “the same rhetoric as the Nazis used against the Jews.” Europeans have been taught to be so scared of our own shadow that we are incapable of seeing that darkness can come from the outside, too. Maybe Europe will burn again, in part as a belated reaction to the horrors of Auschwitz.

V.S. Naipaul has called India “a wounded civilization.” But maybe it’s really Europe that is the wounded civilization, the difference being that India’s wounds were inflicted from the outside, whereas Europe’s wounds are largely self-inflicted. Islam isn’t destroying Europe, Europe is destroying itself. Just as a patient with AIDS may formally die from flu or even a common cold, the real cause is the long, slow decay of his immune system. It resembles euthanasia on an entire civilization: Europe is tired of living. Islam just puts it out of its misery.

It is almost fascinating to see how self-loathing and West-bashing make scores of people in the media and the academia misunderstand and misrepresent the threat we are facing. The good guys become the bad guys and vice versa, or alternatively, we’re all equally good and bad, since all cultures are equal. Some would say that I am reading too much into a few simple movies. Perhaps. But these are the same people that claim that popular culture will destroy Islam.

Pop culture matters. It both reflects and shapes the values of a civilization. Judging from the message in too many films, almost five years after 9/11 we have hardly even begun to understand the scale of the Islamic challenge. On the contrary, many Westerners are busy demonstrating “understanding,” even sympathy, towards the enemies of civilization.

Britain in “V for Vendetta” is a totalitarian state where the authorities promise peace in return for total submission. Peace for submission, where have we heard this mantra before? I know: Islam. “Islam” means submission, and comes from the same root as “salaam,” which means “peace”. It is curious to notice that in the previous movie by the Wachowski brothers, “The Matrix,” people are turned into slaves and passive tools by living in a make-belief reality designed to pacify them and keep them in chains. In the real world, one fifth of humanity are proud to proclaim themselves “the slaves of Allah,” and consider it their mission in life to make the rest of mankind share their mental bondage.

Islam is the Matrix. Somebody better give the Wachowski brothers their red pills.

Here is (most of) my post in the Comments section:

Charles Martel wrote:

War is inevitable. Islam must be Islam and as such will continue its attacks on the West. It will not be subdued peacefully. It never has been and never will be. Liberal pluralistic democracy is incapable of defending itself against Islam. The rot and nihilism of multiculturalism has already set in.

Slobodan Milošević will be posthumously vindicated as his "atrocities" will be seen as small potatoes against the measures that will be forced upon those fighting to survive in Europe.

Islam is a civilizational perfect storm. Islam is not a religion but a fascist supremacist ideology that must be eradicated. Short of that, the only possible solution is absolute containment and separation. That will entail the forcable removal of all Muslims from Europe and the United States. As utterly impossible as this may see it will come to pass.

You are correct. As long as the false prophet and his god from hell's "revelations" are considered divine, the faithful will have to fight.

Fjordman's synthesis of the big picture in Europe is very insightful; I would add two thoughts:

First, Europe's self-loathing and rejection of its past is a symptom of a greater disease: the rejection of the "faith once for all delivered to the saints."

It was Christianity that provided the foundation for the glories of the West cited in the article. Not the least of these are codifying into Law the Equality and Dignity of Man and making possible the wonders of modern Science by means of free intellectual inquiry into a well-ordered Creation.

Second, as Europe's treatment of Jews was noted I was reminded of the promise of (the true) God: "I will bless those who bless you [Israel], and I will curse those who curse you."

How can one who has known the blessings of Christ expect good from rejecting Him? In the face of "the Scourge of God" five centuries ago (we know it today as "Islam"), Martin Luther noted that a proper response to the evil upon us is repentance and a return to faith.

Will Europe reclaim what made it great? As it continues to believe in nothing, Europe leaves itself defenseless against Islam. Some will convert to the faith of the oppressor out of persuasion, others out of fear. It is up to those who believe, as it always has been, to fight back.

On a side note, your and Pim Fortuyn's references here to NATO's treatment of Yugoslavia are timely, since I recently made a brief post at my site entitled, "Bill Clinton, the first Muslim president."

+ Word of the Day +

From Life Of The World:

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come -- In the volume of the book it is written of Me -- To do Your will, O God.' '

Previously saying, 'Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them' (which are offered according to the law), then He said, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.' He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:1-10).

So, it's not a great religion hijacked by "extremists"?

Apparently, those who kill in the name of Allah are just following their prophet's example.

The word is getting out. The barbarity and mendacity of Allah and his false prophet have been noted here a number of times using Islam's own "sacred" texts. In Islam Beheaded, the author notes that the free and rapid exchange of information made possible by the Internet allows Infidels and Muslims of Good Will to learn the truth about the false prophet and his god from hell.

As the truth spreads, hope grows (links in the original):

The Information Superhighway and the Death of Mohammedanism. [1]

Heinrich Heine once wrote a clever poem titled "Marie Antoinette," in which the ghost of everyone's favorite French queen entertains her guests with "strictest etiquette." The irony of the poem is that neither Antoinette nor her guests realize that their heads are missing. They were all beheaded during the French Revolution, but without their heads, they don't have the brains to acknowledge their headlessness. Islam is currently in a similar situation. Muhammad's empire of faith has managed to thrive in the modern world for one simple reason: Muslims have kept Muhammad's dark past a secret. Indeed, they have gone beyond keeping it a secret; they have somehow convinced themselves (and many others) that Muhammad was an outstanding moral example, perhaps even the greatest moral example of all time. Perpetuating this fraud has been, in my opinion, the most stupendous deception in world history.

True, there are plenty of instances in Muhammad's life that one could view as the deeds of a moral individual, and Muslims are quick to point out his acts of charity and his dedication to prayer. However, in assessing the overall character of a man, we must take into account all of his actions, not just the ones that support our feelings about him. For instance, suppose I become convinced that tHe is entirely different from the people among whom he is born and with whom he spends his youth and early manhood. He never tells a lie. The whole nation is unanimous in testifying to his truthfulness. . . . He is the very embodiment of modesty in the midst of a society which is immodest to the core. . . . He helps the orphans and the widows. He is hospitable to travelers. He harms no one . . . [He] is such a lover of peace that his heart melts for the people when they take up arms and cut each other's throats. . . .

In brief, the towering and radiant personality of this man, in the midst of such a corrupted and dark environment, may be likened to a beacon-light brightening a pitch-dark night or to a diamond in a heap of dead stones. . . . [After he begins to deliver the message of Islam the] ignorant nation turns against him. Abuses and stones are showered at his august person. Every conceivable torture and cruelty is perpetrated upon him. . . .

Can anyone ever imagine a higher example of self-sacrifice, brotherliness and kind-heartedness towards his fellow beings than that a man would ruin his happiness for the good of others, while those very people for whose betterment he is striving should stone him, abuse him, banish him, and give him no quarter even in his exile, and that, in spite of this all, he should refuse to stop working for their well being? . . .

When he began preaching his Message, all of Arabia stood in awe and wonder and was bewitched by his wonderful eloquence and oratory. It was so impressive and captivating that his worst enemies were afraid of hearing it, lest it should penetrate deep into the recesses of their hearts and carry them off their feet making them forsake their old religion and culture. It was so matchless that the whole legion of Arab poets, preachers, and speakers of the highest caliber failed to bring forth its equivalent. . . .

This reserved and quiet man who, for a full forty years, never gave any indication of political interest or activity, suddenly appeared on the stage of the world as such a great political reformer and statesman that without the aid of radio, telephone and press, he brought together the scattered inhabitants of a desert extending across twelve hundred thousand square miles. He joined together a people who were warlike, ignorant, unruly, uncultured, and plunged in self-destructive trivial warfare-under one banner, one law, one religion, one culture, one civilization, and one form of government. . . .

He accomplished this feat not through any lure, oppression or cruelty, but by his captivating manner, his winsome personality, and the conviction of his teaching. With his noble and gentle behavior, he befriended even his enemies. He captured the hearts of the people with his boundless sympathy and human kindness. . . . He did not oppress even his deadly enemies, men who had sworn to kill him . . . He forgave them all when he triumphed over them. He never took revenge on anyone for his personal grievances. He never retaliated against anyone for the wrongs perpetrated on him. . . .

It was he who turned the course of human thought away from superstition, the unnatural and the unexplainable, towards a logical approach illustrating a love for truth and a balanced worldly life. . . . In the cavalcade of world history, the sublime figure of this wonderful person towers so high above all the great men of all times that they appear to be dwarfs when contrasted to him. . . . Can anyone cite another example of a maker of history of such distinction, another revolutionary of such brilliance and splendor?[4]

This is actually a very condensed version of Mawdudi's reverent depiction of his beloved prophet, but it accurately reflects the Islamic conception of Muhammad. The problem, of course, is that this conception is horribly inaccurate. The historical Muhammad (that is, the Muhammad we can know about through history) was psychologically unstable, brutal towards his enemies, and, according to some, sexually perverted. This isn't to say that Muhammad was all bad. He wasn't, and Mawdudi is correct in maintaining that Muhammad's character played a role in converting people to Islam. Even so, while Muhammad may have had many redeeming features, some of his less admirable characteristics are difficult to ignore. Consider the following facts about the life of Muhammad, which can be gathered from the reports of his earliest followers:

Fact #1: When Muhammad began receiving his revelations, his first impression was that he was possessed by demons. The "angel" who appeared to Muhammad choked him almost to the point of death. Muhammad concluded that he was demon-possessed and quickly became suicidal.[5] This wasn't the first time a person thought that Muhammad was under demonic influence, however. Ibn Ishaq tells us that Muhammad's childhood nurse also believed that he was demon-possessed.[6] Thus, both the woman who raised him and Muhammad himself held (if only for a short time) that he was possessed by demons. Further, throughout his life, Muhammad believed that he was the victim of magic spells cast by his enemies, who were somehow able to torment God's chosen prophet through their incantations:

Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated: Magic was worked on Allah's Apostle (may the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) so that he used to think that he had had sexual relations with his wives while he actually had not. Then one day he said, "O Aisha, do you know that Allah has instructed me concerning the matter I asked Him about? Two men came to me and one of them sat near my head and the other sat near my feet. The one near my head asked the other: 'What is wrong with this man?' The latter replied, 'He is under the effect of magic.' The first one asked, 'Who has worked magic on him?' The other replied, 'Labid bin Al-Asam, a man from Bani Zuraiq who was an ally of the Jews and was a hypocrite.' The first one asked, 'What material did he use?' The other replied, 'A comb and the hair stuck to it.'"[7]...

Fact #2: Muhammad supported his fledgling religion by robbing people. The early Muslims could have maintained Islam through hard work, frugal spending, and the donations of admirers. Yet Muhammad chose robbery as his chief source of income, and greed soon became one of the primary factors in people's rapid conversion to Islam. Indeed, Muhammad deliberately used the spoils of war to lure people to Islam. When he was criticized for the way he distributed his newfound wealth, he replied, "Are you disturbed in mind because of the good things of this life by which I win over a people that they may become Muslims while I entrust you to your Islam?"[8] Given the prospect of untold riches, it's no wonder so many people committed themselves to Islam. Muhammad guaranteed that Allah "will admit the Struggler in His cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty."[9] This message must have sounded extraordinary to the poor of Arabia. If they died in the cause of Allah, they would go to Paradise and be rich. If they survived, they would plunder their enemies and be rich. Either way, their situation would be much better upon embracing Islam....

Fact #3: Muhammad was often ruthless towards his adversaries. Punishments for taking a stand against Muhammad included torture and death. Both men and women were brutally killed for criticizing Muhammad.[10] Hundreds of Jewish men were beheaded for standing against him, while their wives and children were sold into slavery.[11] Some early Muslims who apostatized were killed after Muhammad gave the command to kill all who turn away from Islam.[12] Modern Muslims often claim that Muhammad only killed when he was attacked by his enemies, but history shows that he murdered numerous people whose only crime was writing poems against him.[13] Given the facts, it's difficult to understand how Muslim writers such as Mawdudi could have the audacity to claim that Muhammad "never took revenge on anyone for his personal grievances"....

Fact #4: Muhammad had far more wives than even his own revelations allowed. The Qur'an allows Muslims to have up to four wives: "And if you fear that you will not deal fairly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that you cannot deal justly (with so many), then one only, or (the captives) that your right hands possess." (4:3).

We know that Muhammad had at least thirteen wives during his life, and that he had at least nine wives at one time. Of course, he did receive a Qur'anic revelation telling him that he alone could exceed the four-wife limit: "O Prophet! We have made lawful unto you your wives whom you have paid their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses of those whom Allah has given as spoils of war, . . . a privilege for you only, not for the (rest of) believers" (33:50). Nevertheless, since Muhammad was the one receiving revelations that allowed him to transgress rules that applied to everyone else, many people have concluded that he was inventing revelations to justify his hypocritical behavior....

Fact #5: Muhammad consummated a marriage to a nine-year-old girl. Muhammad's courtship of Aisha began when she was only six.[14] Muhammad had a dream about her, which led him to believe that God wanted him to marry the young girl.[15] Fortunately, Muhammad didn't have sex with her until she reached menses at the age of nine. (Most girls do not have their first period by this age, but Aisha had been suffering from some form of intense sickness, which probably induced menses early.) Muhammad apparently took Aisha's first menstruation as a sign that she was an adult ready for sexual relations, and Aisha quickly became his favorite wife. Among her earliest duties as Muhammad's wife was the task of washing semen stains off his clothes: "Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) narrated: I used to wash the semen off the clothes of the Prophet (the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) and even then I used to notice one or more spots on them."[16]...

Fact #6: Muhammad had a contemptible opinion of women. Muslim apologists often argue that Muhammad raised the status of women, and they are entirely correct in saying this. However, the status to which he raised them is almost as shameful as their status in pre-Islamic Arabia. According to Muhammad, women's minds are so deficient that the testimony of a woman is worth only half that of a man.[17] Given this lack of intellectual ability, women have to be kept under control by other means. Thus the Qur'an sanctions the beating of women: "As for those [women] from whom you fear disloyalty, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them (lightly, without visible injury). Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them" (4:34). Notice the parenthetical remarks that the beating should be a light one. These words do not occur in the Arabic; apparently, even Muslim translators have a problem with this verse and do what they can to water it down. Notice also that the beating is done to bring the wives into submission. Muhammad repeatedly warned women about disrespecting their husbands: "The Prophet (the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) said: 'I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were thankless.'"[18] Hell, then, is composed primarily of ungrateful women (perhaps their husbands hadn't beaten them enough). However, even Heaven is a bleak prospect for women, for, according to Muhammad, women will spend eternity standing in the corners of Paradise, waiting for the men to come and have sex with them.[19]...

Fact #7: Muhammad is unique among prophets in that he is the only one to receive a revelation, proclaim it as part of God's message to man, and later take it back, claiming that it was actually from Satan. According to the earliest extant biography of Muhammad, he eventually became so sad about his countrymen's rejection of his prophethood that he began longing for some verses that would bring them to Islam. He soon received what he was looking for-a revelation saying that the intercession of three other gods was acceptable. Muhammad presented the revelation to the people, and his countrymen were overjoyed to hear that they could continue praying to al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat. A mass-conversion to Islam followed, but in time Muhammad received another revelation, which told him that the former verses had been given to him by Satan. God told him not to be too disturbed over the matter, for, according to the new revelation, all prophets occasionally receive ideas from Satan:

The apostle was bitterly grieved and was greatly in fear of God. So God sent down (a revelation), for He was merciful to him, comforting him and making light of the affair and telling him that every prophet and apostle before him desired as he desired and wanted what he wanted and Satan interjected something into his desires as he had on his tongue. So God annulled what Satan had suggested and God established His verses, i.e. you are just like the prophets and apostles. Then God sent down: "We have not sent a prophet or apostle before you but when he longed Satan cast suggestions in his longing. But God will annul what Satan has suggested. Then God will establish his verses, God being knowing and wise."[20]

These are just some of the facts that Muslims have been keeping secret, but they are enough to make any reasonable person doubt the validity of Islam. Muhammad was guilty of countless murders and of torturing his victims. He robbed caravans and participated in the slave-trade. His persecution of the Jews bordered on genocide. His polygamy went beyond that which even his own revelations permitted (though he did receive a revelation saying that this was okay for him). One of his wives was a nine-year-old girl, whose earliest duties in Muhammad's house included the constant task of washing the semen stains off his clothes. At times he believed he was demon-possessed or under the effect of magic. He was known to be suicidal. He admittedly received a message from Satan and delivered it to the people as if it were from God. He declared that women have half the intellectual ability that men have, that it is okay for men to beat their wives, that most of the inhabitants of hell are women, and that, even if a woman somehow makes it to heaven, her eternity will consist of standing in a corner, waiting for men to sexually enjoy her.[21]

These details about Muhammad raise a very important question: What does a prophet have to do before Muslims will be willing to question whether he is truly the greatest moral example in history? Normally, when we say that someone is a moral person, we mean that he doesn't commit acts such as robbery and murder. Yet Muhammad did all these things and much more. It appears, then, that Muslims are using the term "moral" in a very unique way. In this uniquely Muslim sense of the term, the word "moral" is defined as "whatever Muhammad does." Thus, if Muhammad were to chop off the heads of hundreds of people (which he did), this act would still be defined as a moral act, since Muhammad did it, and anything Muhammad does is, by definition, moral.

But this raises another important question. If God's greatest prophet is free to take part in murder, robbery, genocide, and slave-trading, can we really point a finger at people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and say that they are evil? They killed many innocents, but so did Muhammad. Saddam tortured countless people, but so did Muhammad. In fact, one could make a case that Osama bin Laden is morally superior to Muhammad, for, while bin Laden killed thousands of people, he didn't sell their wives and children into slavery, or have sex with a little girl, or marry more than a dozen women.

The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets. For centuries, it has been virtually impossible to raise objections about the character of Muhammad in Muslim countries, for anyone who raised such objections would (following the example set by Muhammad himself) immediately be killed. Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam, and those who have been interested have typically relied on modern Muslim reports about Muhammad, such as the above passage from Mawdudi. But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam, and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret. The facts about the founder of Islam are spreading very rapidly, and Muslims are frantically scurrying to defend their faith. But the information superhighway is paving over the ignorance that has for centuries been the stronghold of Islamic dogma. In the end, Islam will fall, for the entire structure is built upon the belief that Muhammad was the greatest moral example in history, and this belief is demonstrably false.

Notes:

On sources used. I have appealed to several sources for early information about the life of Muhammad. The Life of Muhammad (Ibn Ishaq) is the earliest biography of Muhammad. The Sahih Muslim and the Sahih Al-Bukhari are considered by most Muslims to be the most reliable sources of information about the life of Muhammad. All Qur'an verses are from The Glorious Qur'an translation.

1 Muslims object to having their religion called "Mohammedanism"; however, by "Mohammedanism" I mean only the Islamic beliefs about Muhammad. Thus, the term is appropriate in this context.

2 "The Jaycees" is an organization that helps young people develop various skills for success, in areas such as business development, leadership, and management. The organization places much emphasis on community service.

3 Before anyone misunderstands me here, I must note that I am not comparing Muhammad to John Wayne Gacy. My point is that, if I claim that someone is the greatest moral example ever, I cannot ignore all the details that prove me wrong. If a husband cheats on his wife on Saturday evenings but remains faithful to her the rest of the week, no one would claim that he is an excellent husband because he is faithful to his wife most of the time. A Saturday evening adulterer is still an adulterer. Similarly, when Muslims
claim that Muhammad was the greatest of prophets, they cannot simply select the facts that support their view.

4 Abul A'la Mawdudi, Towards Understanding Islam (Islamic Circle of North America, 1986), pp. 52-67.

5 Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, (The Life of Muhammad), A. Guillaume, tr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 106.

6 Ibid., pp. 71-72.

7 Sahih Al Bukhari, Dr. Muhammad Matraji, tr. (New Delhi: Islamic Book Service, 2002), Number 5765.

8 Ibn Ishaq, p. 596.

9 Sahih Al-Bukhari, Number 2787.

10 See, for instance, Ibn Ishaq p. 368 and p. 676.

11 See Ibid., p. 464.

12 See Ibid., pp. 550-551. See also Sahih Al-Bukhari 3017: "[T]he Prophet said: 'If somebody discards his religion, kill him.'"

13 See, for example, Ibn Ishaq, pp. 675-676, where Asma is murdered in her house for writing a poem against Muhammad. In Ibid., pp. 364-368, Ka'b is murdered for writing poems against Islam. Ibid., pp. 550-551, states that Muhammad gave orders to kill (1) al-Hawayrith for insulting him, (2) a woman
named Sara who had once insulted him, and (3) Abdullah's two singing girls for singing songs about Muhammad. One of the singing girls survived and was given immunity; the others were killed in obedience to Muhammad's commands.

14 Sahih Al-Bukhari, Number 3894.

15 Ibid., Number 3895.

16 Ibid., Number 232. See also 229, 230, and 231.

17 See Sahih Muslim, Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, tr., Number 142.

18 Sahih Al-Bukhari, Number 29.

19 Ibid., Number 4879.

20 Ibn Ishaq, pp. 165-166.

21 Sahih Al-Bukhari, Number 4879.