It’s New York’s turn now. Yet another truck. Yet another shriek of ‘Allahu akbar!’. Yet another eight dead, 15 wounded.
The Uzbek Sayfullo Saipov seemed like a classic illustration to the notion of the American Dream. In the country for only seven years, he became an Uber driver and already had two trucking companies registered in his name. Another few years, and his American Dream would have acquired the shell of a suburban house complete with a lawnmower, wife and three children.
Except that Saipov looked at that scenario, didn’t like it and tore it to pieces. Instead he chose to drive a pickup truck through a crowded cycle lane in lower Manhattan.
As a driver who has spent countless hours sitting in traffic suffocated by such lanes, I could almost understand, if definitely not condone, this act – if it had been accompanied by a shriek of ‘Down with cycle lanes!’, ‘Freedom from bikers!’ or perhaps even ‘Uber alles!’
But it wasn’t. Instead Saipov shouted the usual Muslim mantra, leaving one in no doubt about the nature of his inspiration. He didn’t kill those cyclists because he hated their specially assigned lanes. He killed them because he’s a Muslim and they are not.
This observation escaped President Trump, who immediately tweeted that the evil deed “looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person.”
It doesn’t. It looks like an attack by a pious Muslim who takes the tenets of his religion seriously, specifically those 300 Koran verses that call for violence against infidels, such as:
“Slay them [unbelievers] wherever ye find them…” (2:91). “We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.” (3:151). “Take them [unbelievers] and kill them wherever ye find them. Against such We have given you clear warrant.” (4:91). “The unbelievers are an open enemy to you.” (4:101). “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush”. (9:5).
Unlike the violent passages in the Old Testament, all such Koran commandments are open-ended, not tied into a particular situation or historical context. Therefore, since good Muslims tend to be rather more devout than Westerners, one can safely say that a moderate Muslim is a bad Muslim.
Bad Muslims go about their daily business like the rest of us. Good Muslims kill.
Ascribing every Muslim atrocity to individual idiosyncrasies, such as madness, is therefore an intellectual and moral copout, underpinned by cowardice. Muslim terrorists may sometimes be deranged. But they’re always pious Muslims. Deranged or not, that’s why they kill.
A little later Trump added another statement: “We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!”
A laudable idea, that, and one so different from those put forth by Mrs May et al, who feel that such “naïve teenagers” shouldn’t be prosecuted. Instead they should be “reintegrated” by means of free social housing and welfare cheques.
Since these wild-eyed Muslim thugs clearly were never integrated in the first place, the ‘re’ prefix sounds a bit incongruous. Given the choice of housing them in council estates and putting them down quietly, I’d opt for the latter, although more humane possibilities may also exist.
By contrast with the defeatist drivel uttered by our ‘leaders’, Trump’s statement is an exemplar of moral fortitude. Alas, it has nothing to do with Saipov, who never fought with ISIS – and neither did he return from the Middle East.
Trump may be getting gun-shy in his self-expression, having drawn much opprobrium over his policy of banning nationals from six Muslim countries from entry to the US. His detractors gleefully point out that Saipov hails from none of those six, and they’re right. Like the Boston Marathon murderers, he grew up in the Muslim outskirts of the Soviet Union.
But what do those Trump haters want? That he should welcome immigrants from every one of the world’s 50 Muslim countries? Or enumerate every one of them in his decree?
The point is that it’s not geography but religion that matters. The denizens of Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Egypt are so united by their faith that the ethnic differences among them look trivial by comparison.
Trump probably knows this, but, fighting as he is for political survival, is afraid to say so. Since I have no political life to fear for, I’ll say it for him:
Islam and the West are incompatible. The West has been at times aggressively hostile to Islam over the past 1,400 years – off and on, but mostly off. Islam, on the other hand, has always been aggressively hostile to the West, and only brute force has ever limited manifestations of this hostility.
But force, no matter how brute, is impotent in the absence of courage, strong will and a sense of moral rightness. All these are indeed absent in the West today, which is why we’re helpless to curtail Islamic terrorism.
Never mind their country of origin, Mr Trump: the West should ban all Muslims from entry, at least until convincing evidence has been produced of their improved collective behaviour.
Deporting all Muslims already here is unfeasible and probably undesirable. But deporting all those who openly support jihad is both feasible and desirable. So is shutting and ideally razing every mosque or Muslim centre in which a single jihadist word has ever been uttered.
Muslims may be allowed to live in our countries, but only provided they’re indeed integrated. Covering women’s faces or mutilating their sex organs may be held as proof of insufficient integration, along with attending rallies, where the principal slogan is ‘Death to [fill in the blank]!!!’
Muslim children must receive Western education, and if their parents want to teach them the fundamentals of their religion, they can do so at home or perhaps in Sunday schools.
A child growing up in the West must have his country’s vernacular as his first language, with any other tongues strictly optional. Muslim ghettoes must cease to exist, and the practice of Sharia must be outlawed.
Since we’re clearly at war with Islam, a fact unacknowledged even by Trump, never mind our wishy-washy ‘leaders’, Western courts must abolish, or at least loosen, the peacetime standards of proof whenever a suspicion of terrorism activities arises.
We could think of many things along these lines. But none of them will ever be done. So brace yourself for bombs, guns and Muslimobiles. They’ll be coming thick and fast.
OH!!! So it WAS an Islamist…you’d never know by reading the popular press in Brisbane. They confirmed it was actually an act of terror, but the motive was a mystery. Of course, the word Muslim, or even Islam was not uttered, which then meant obedience to the Koran could not have any connection.
You know the story of the scorpion and the frog, it plays out every day in the West, but left wingers refuse to recognise the danger. There is not the slightest chance that Western Europe is going to avoid a mighty conflict when all the frogs wake up one day.
“left wingers refuse to recognise the danger”
Lefty does recognize the danger. They just tend not to want to respond to it, or even in some instances encourage the danger.
“Another few years, and his American Dream would have acquired the shell of a suburban house complete with a lawnmower, wife and three children.”
He for the most part already had the American Dream. He had brought twenty-three relatives from Uzbek land by chain migration.