A View of Islam From Someone Who Knows First Hand

The Nice Muslim Family Next Door

by Nonie Darwish  April 22, 2013

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3681/muslim-family-next-door

Where are the articles by moderate Muslims condemning the prominent Muslims who beg Allah to strike infidels with cancer and disease? No practicing Muslim has openly condemned such prayers, or named the sheikhs who urge these brutalities.

The neighbors of the Chechnyan Muslim family whose sons were responsible for the Boston Marathon terror attack said they were stunned by the news and that this nice Muslim family was known for its generosity and kindness. Many Americans often ask, "What about the Muslim family next door? They are really nice people."

Some of the nicest people I know are Muslims, but that must never blind us from understanding the risk we are taking when we allow the building of hundreds of mosques financed by Saudi Arabia, as well as millions of Muslims to migrate into America at a time of a fierce, if sophisticated, desire by Islamist groups to spread Islam throughout the world, and to radicalize impressionable youths by stoking anger against the Western nations, people and values.

The existence of nice, educated Muslims should also never blind us from seeing the deep problems within the ideology of Islam and its jihadist goals. Muslims themselves admit that Islam is more than a religion – that it is, in fact, a state, legal system and a military institution—with the goal, as one's holy duty, of bringing Islam to the rest of the world, a desire often enshrined deep in the hearts of Muslims.

Even though our visible problem is with the Muslim jihadists, the so-called "moderate" Muslims have often been silent enablers and defenders, perhaps from inertia, misinformation or fear of reprisals against them, including death threats to them and members of their family should they speak out.

Terrorists could never be as powerful as they are without the prayers, and especially the material support, of Islamic nations, governments and people. A Muslim Egyptian friend -- one of the nicest people you will ever meet -- visiting in 1994, was crying in front of the television while praying for the people of Chechnya to declare independence from Russia and declare their country an Islamic State ruled by Sharia law.

The critiques of Islam by this author are never written for the purpose of condemning people; naturally, there are good and bad people in every culture. My deep concern springs from the ideology of Islam: it has had such dark implications on Islamic society, forcing many, otherwise perfectly fine people, to enact unthinkable terror, as others stand silently by. Islam is the only religion that requires its followers to kill those who do not believe in Allah, and to take revenge in the name of Allah. In the Quran, holy vengeance and retaliation are commanded for Muslims: "O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you. He who transgresseth after this will have a painful doom." [Koran 2:178]. Or: "We shall take vengeance (Muntaquimun) upon the sinners." [32:22] The translation of the Arabic word "Muntaquimun" meaning vengeance is often watered down in translation by using the word punishment or retribution instead.

It was frustrating and unsettling to hear the aunt of the two terrorists stating, from Toronto, Canada, that her two nephews were "set up," and the terrorists' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, stating in various interviews with ABC and other stations, first that his son should give up peacefully; then that the son who was killed was framed; then that the son who was not killed should tell the truth; then warning that if the US kills his son: "all hell will break loose."

Having grown up Muslim, I would urge Americans to demand more from the so called "moderate" Muslims, instead of giving them a pass for their silence, which appears a complicit defense of jihad. For too long, with some courageous exceptions, moderate Muslims hear no evil, see no evil and do nothing about it. They stand defiant, behaving as if they were victims, while the cries of Christians suffering under Islam in the Middle East are ignored. (Most Jews were forced out years ago. As the saying in Arabic goes: First the Saturday People, then the Sunday People).

Many moderate Muslims have been insisting that the Boston bombings have "nothing to do with Islam." They deny there is a problem for apostates fleeing Islam, and do nothing about their arrest, the threats against them or their murder. At least 5,000 reported honor killings happen annually in the name of Allah, but moderate Muslims insist that, too, has nothing to do with Islam, and is a hold-over tribal custom, despite the Sura and verses that are used to justify it [Qur'an (18:65-81], and not only speak out against the practice, but go as far as to threaten those who expose it. Moderate Muslims also have nothing to say to the hundreds of Islamic clerics who curse non-Muslims and encourage jihad from the pulpits of mosques.

Where are the articles by moderate Muslims condemning the prominent Muslims who beg Allah to strike infidels with cancer and disease? The holiest mosques of Mecca blast curses at Jews and Christians over microphones -- "Till they pray for death and do not receive it" -- and supplicate Allah to make the lives of Christians and Jews "hostage to misery; drape them with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression."

No true practicing Muslim, moderate or not, has openly condemned such prayers to pilgrims in Mecca or has named the sheikhs who urge these brutalities. But the majority of moderate Muslims are quick to blame American foreign policy and Israel . If America cooperates with Islamic dictators, Muslims accuse America of empowering dictators; if America removes a Saddam Hussein to give Muslims a chance for freedom, they accuse the US of interfering in their internal affairs.

The day Usama Bin Laden was killed, a friend called from Egypt to say that everyone was in mourning, sad over Bin Laden's death. Does such a response to the death of a terrorist stem from moderate Islam, radical Islam, or Islam?

Nonie Darwish Author "The Devil We Don't Know" and President of Former Muslims United.