Every fresh Muslim atrocity seems to push a button on the console controlling the flow of effluvia (decorum prohibits my using the bovine word that first sprang to mind).
Even as Paris morgues, hospitals and priests work overtime, identifying the dead, trying to save the still living and praying for them all, a noise as deafening as the rat-tat-tat of those AKs is gaining in volume.
Westernised Muslims and bien pensant Westerners fall all over themselves, screaming themselves hoarse about the massacre having nothing – or, when they are in a generous mood, little – to do with Islam.
Dr Qanta Ahmed’s Spectator article is typical: it mixes a soupçon of magnanimity with a bucket of mendacity to produce a rancid stew of pro-Islamic propaganda.
In the same sentence, he first adds a dash of honesty, “The repugnant seed of the Islamic State is certainly related to Islam…” and then drowns it in a lie, “…but it is also inimical to Islam.”
Dr Ahmed and the whole peace-loving Muslim community are filled with “repugnance… and a sense of desecration” when they “hear of gunmen shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ before committing the very acts of murder explicitly prohibited by the Koran.”
The good scholar no doubt has made a deeper, more professional study of that book than I have. Yet even the rankest amateur can’t fail to notice enough in the Koran to doubt either Dr Ahmed’s reading skills or his honesty.
He paints with a master’s hand a picture of a generally moderate community whose reputation is besmirched by a few rotten apples. Now I’ve met a moderate Muslim once; his name was Asif. But perhaps I haven’t been looking in the right places, an oversight to be corrected immediately. So let’s look at the Holy Book itself, the Koran. Let me see…
“Love your enemies…” Oh I do apologise, got into the wrong book. Now, here we go:
“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)
“As for thief, both male and female, cut off their hands.” (5:38)
“Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…” (5:51)
“Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush” (9:5)
“Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.” (4:74)
“…If they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them…” (4:89)
There are 107 verses like these in the Koran, conservatively counted. And, unlike the rather violent passages in the Old Testament, all of these are open-ended, not tied into a particular situation or historical context. This should be enough to show that Islam, for all its sterling qualities, doesn’t foster moderation in its adherents.
The Koran is a long book, and calls to murder and mutilation are of course leavened there with peaceful dicta as well. But it’s sheer larceny to suggest that horrific violence is ‘inimical to Islam’. It is not – especially when mullahs around the world, emphatically including France and Britain, preach a message of hate with ample scriptural support.
A moderate Muslim, in other words, is an oxymoron. A pious believer can’t possibly ignore the 107 verses calling for cannibalistic violence. And if he does ignore them – as Dr Ahmed seems to be doing – then he’s not a pious believer.
As we mourn the Paris casualties of the Muslim war on infidels and anyone else they dislike, allow me on this Sunday morning to refer to the book that emphatically doesn’t call, in any part of its canon, for the slaying of idolaters, apostates and nonbelievers:
“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and prosecute you;” Amen.