Once again, an advocacy group is offended. This time, a muslim advocacy group is upset by mean things said about muslims.
They’re grousing about things said by Donald Trump — specifically the story he shared about John J. Pershing killing terrorists, dipping bullets in pigs’ blood and letting one prisoner go to tell the others as a deterrent — apparently got under their skin.
I hope they saved some outrage for the other top Republican contenders, because stemming the flow of Syrian refugees and waging war on Islamists are actually ideas we can all agree on.
Desperate for attention (or is it relevance?) the “Muslim Public Affairs Council” are singling out the political front-runner, challenging him to a debate. (Are they not aware that such attention actually helps his campaign?)
In a letter they said, “Ever since you announced your run for presidency of the United States, you have scapegoated the American Muslim community and other minority groups for all your perceived ills of America.” Elsewhere, they accused Trump of being scared of anything that is different from you.”
In a piece of delicious irony, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad chimed in with “Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has crossed the line from spreading hatred to inciting violence.”
Perhaps Awad is hoping we’ve forgotten CAIR’s ties to that Pacifist Movement known as “Muslim Brotherhood”, or that we have forgotten Awad’s own dodgy history (both referenced here).
Borrowing heavily from the Social-Justice-Warrior playbook (thanks for that, all you Alinsky-ites), they have twisted the original comments, and reframed them as “inciting violence”.
In the (probably apocryphal) incident Trump shared, there was a group of 50 Islamic terrorist captives. 49 were killed, with pigs’ blood used to defile their bodies, destroying their hopes of an afterlife. The last one, being witness to this, was set free to warn others. This supposedly worked as a deterrent for a long time.
Only an idiot could see this story as Trump inviting Americans to murder civilians. It wasn’t a story about civilians at all. It was about terrorists. Maybe MPAC does not differentiate between these groups. That itself might be a bigger problem than Trump’s own statements.
Back to the main point — terrorists. What we are dealing with is a determined enemy. This particular enemy will quite willingly throw away this life in exchange for one — and only one — reason: promised rewards in the next life. This story acknowledges human nature and psychology in a way that most political thinkers fail to. It uses the motivations of the enemy (in this case a promised afterlife) and harnesses them for the greater good of society.
We use this method literally every day in other circumstances. Speed zones are enforced with fines. Prison is a deterrent for theft or violence. But these are not adequate deterrents to someone ready to kill and be killed for a “better afterlife”.
What does a terrorist fear? Not death or imprisonment. But he does fear eternal judgment. If pigs’ blood endangers his Paradise, literally turning it into hell, we can leverage that motivator for the public good. He’ll think twice about murder-suicide, and won’t rush off to death quite so blindly as before.
It’s the same principle that helped the British stop the Hindu practice of forcibly throwing widows on their husbands’ funeral-pyres. They built a gallows and promised to hang as a murderer anyone who killed the widow. It got results.
As for the racism and fear issues? If you need tips on how to answer that objection, it was already covered here. Since people still aren’t “getting it” feel free to pass it around.
But now, let’s turn the question back on MPAC and CAIR. If Islam is so open, fair, friendly, and welcoming, why is it a capital offence to renounce Islam? Why is it in Islamic-majority nations that one can still find a traditional slave trade? Why have mobs killed people on the mere allegation of damaging a Koran? Why does Sharia impose a heavy tax on non-believers? What about the value of a woman’s testimony in court? Explain a husband’s right to strike his wife? What can explain the waves of violence (especially rape) being experienced in Europe in the aftermath of their “welcome refugees” policy?
Because all of these questions are tied to valid reasons for our NOT welcoming massive influxes of people eager to come to America — those who come here, not to become American, but to reshape America into exactly the sort of system that has already destroyed the countries they leave behind.
CAIR and other groups play the Race and Phobia cards far too often. It is a political cudgel, and a dishonest one at that. Can we not finally recognize them as such, and strip them of the political influence they have somehow acquired? Let them fall in public esteem to where they belong: just another noisy group of hacks, desperate for relevance.
