Another
Friday the 13th. I hate the
films. And it’s rarely bad luck. Here’s something completely different.
Obviously
Islam is a relevant topic these days. I
can’t turn on the Book of Faces without seeing someone bark and bray about
“banning Sharia” or “Muslims taking over America”. I have a few things to say on this topic,
which might be rather provocative. Bear
with me.
Misguided Satanists. As we know, Islam is the religion founded by
Arabian warlord Mohammad in the early 600s.
He claimed Allah told him a bunch of stuff, most (if not all) of which
was fairly self-serving. The most
accurate description of this religion is that it was made up by him to justify
his military campaigns to take over as much of the known world as he
could. His followers carried on the
tradition after his death in 632 and continue worshipping Allah and attempting
to spread his Word even to this day.
There are several predominantly Muslim countries, and one (Shi’ite)
theocracy, Iran. The Sunnis of Iraq and
Syria have attempted to set up a competing Sunni theocracy in those countries.
C.S. Lewis. In his The
Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe series of books, Lewis created a
fictional race of Calormenes, who worship a deity named Tash. These were obviously meant to be Muslims
worshipping Allah. Aslan, the wise and benevolent
talking Lion, tells the children that Tash is essentially the Devil. “Good deeds done in Tash’s name are in fact
done in my name, and evil deeds done in my name are actually done in Tash’s
name”. Even Lewis, having identified Allah
as Satan, still recognized that there were good Muslims and evil Christians.
If
you don’t believe God or Satan exist, then “Allah” is an imaginary being
created by Mohammed to justify his exploits.
Neither option – Satan or make-believe deity – reflects well on Islam.
Reformed Church of
Satan. It’s too difficult for me to conceive that
Muslims around the world consciously worship the Devil. Naturally they view Allah as God. And Islam has a Devil, Iblis, in their
theology. I’ve yet to hear of any sect
of Islam that worships Iblis, as the Devil.
In the US, we have self-professed
Satanists. In particular, I’m familiar
with Anton LaVey, his Church of Satan, and his Satanic Bible, which I own and have read. Oddly, despite ostensibly worshipping the
Devil himself, these “Satanists” are really atheists. Their brand of Satanism is more accurately
described as a deliberately provocative form of atheism which personifies Man
and his right to carnal and physical pleasure while he lives his short and
brutal life on this planet, followed by eternal oblivion. LaVey’s positions were extremely close to
Ayn Rand’s, and we know she was an atheist too, although I’m not aware of any
actual connection between the two. Rand
would have considered LaVey as an arrogant huckster who elevated atheism into a
circus sideshow to gain popularity and notoriety for himself.
…so what? Having said that, I don’t believe Muslims in
the United States are any threat to us.
Here is why.
Rome. This is the capital of world
Catholicism. Rather, I should say, the
Vatican City, which has a population of ….557.
Rome itself has a population of 4 million. There are 1.2 billion Catholics around the
world. The largest Catholic country is
Brazil, with 124 million Catholics.
Clearly, 1.2 billion cannot fit in the Vatican, nor in Rome, or even
Italy. I visited Roma and the Vatican
myself in 1981 on a school trip, but have no desire to live there. Nor, it seems, do the Catholics living
outside Rome.
Israel. There are 14 million Jews worldwide, of which
83% live in Israel and the US. Zionism
aside, not all Jews want to live in Israel.
Half the world’s Jews live in Israel, most of the other half in the US.
Mecca. Islam’s holy city has a permanent population
of 1.6 million. While all Muslims have a
duty to make a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, living there permanently appears
to be neither required nor expected. Worldwide there are 1.7 billion Muslims.
Muslims
in the US. Less than 1% of the US
population is Muslim. There are far
more Buddhists and atheists – plus Jews, of course – than there are
Muslims. The US is almost 80% Christian. Of a population of 321 million, that means
256 million Christians and 3 million Muslims.
By numbers alone, it would be almost impossible for Muslims to establish
a majority in this country. And I don’t
even think they want to do this. Why?
Someone
posted an infographic on how the world’s Muslim countries are the poorest, shittiest,
countries. Maybe true for Bangladesh,
less so for Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Iraq
and Syria are unlikely to get better any time soon. Egypt isn’t too bad. Libya is having problems. Anyhow.
Islam
has different varieties: at the very
least there is Sh’ite vs. Sunni, and even the Sunnis have different sects. If you live in Iran, you have to be Shi’ite. Presumably living in ISIS controlled
territory you have to be Sunni. When
Muslims get uptight about their religion, they are particularly harsh on fellow
Muslims who don’t worship Allah quite the same way.
We
take our religious freedom in the US for granted. We don’t have to worry that our church will
blow up, that strangers will accost us on the street and threaten us if we don’t
convert to Mormonism, or receive thinly veiled anonymous threats of
violence. Christians in Egypt come to
the US to escape persecution, and Muslims come to the US for similar reasons. (Also, to leave places where suicide bombers
and rocket attacks, or all-out war, are a daily risk.)
Again,
here in the US, which is less than 1% Muslim?
No one gives a damn. If Abdul
wants to get a bacon cheeseburger at McDonald’s or Burger King, or drink
alcohol, or do any of the things which Islam declares “haram” (forbidden), who
will stop him? Who will even care? Abdul and his family are free to do as they
please, without being harassed by the locals about how they practice
Islam. They get to enjoy the benefits of
living in a huge, rich country with no Civil War (since 1865), no suicide
bombings, no Sharia, no Imams, none of the hassles Muslims have to deal with in
Muslim countries. And most likely they
came here for THAT REASON. So turning the
US into a Muslim country is not only impossible, it’s highly undesirable – it defeats
the purpose of why they came here, which is not to turn the US into another
screwed up Muslim country, but to live somewhere that isn’t a screwed up Muslim
country.
Suicide bombers. Ok, take away the risk of an outright
takeover. Muslim suicide bombers could
still cause problems, right? Not really.
Aside from 9/11, we haven’t seen any
suicide bombings in the US. That Muslim
guy in Texas – the Army guy who went BSI – didn’t even blow himself up, nor did
the idiots who tried to blow up the World Trade Center back in 1993. It looks like the shooting spree yahoos who
do shoot themselves at the end were all non-Muslims. The guy at Initech with the unpronounceable
name isn’t blowing himself up. And I
don’t see Arab oil sheiks who already have harems of 72 women on this worldly
planet blowing themselves up. Mostly
it’s loser virgin boys from Loserstan who do that. Muslims in the US know they’re well off. They have too much to lose. Not gonna happen.
9/11 & ISIS. The attack on 9/11 was definitely a bad
one. 19 Saudis learned to fly jumbo jets
and took down the World Trade Center, knocked a hole in the Pentagon (now
fixed), and messed up the Pennsylvania countryside – plus all the crew and
passengers on all 4 flights and many firemen and first responders on the
ground. To date, ISIS remains dominant
in much of northwest Iraq and northeast Syria.
The Taliban looks like it’s taking back much lost ground in
Afghanistan. The crazies are definitely
NOT done yet. However, those theaters
are on the other side of the world from us and no threat to the continental US.
Closer to home, and more relevant to
our concerns here, among all those “peaceful” Muslims coming to the US, who
knows how many are truly peaceful and how many are Al Qaeda sleeper cells? It might be arrogant to assume that 100% of
them succumb to the charms of American society.
The FBI needs to remain vigilant at home (while respecting our
Constitutional rights, a balance we can acknowledge is not always easy or
obvious to make), and the cowboys from Langley better be on top of their game
overseas. Aside from the yahoo in Fort
Hood, Texas, and the Boston bombings, all of our mass shootings since 9/11 have
been home grown nutjobs with non-Islamic agendas. But that doesn’t mean there’s not another
cell of the same caliber as the 19 from 9/11 cooking up a scheme to do something
bad. However, we’ve seen those to be few
and far between. We have far more to
worry about in our daily lives from the mundane dangers of cancer, highway
accidents, or random, good old American street crime, to make it sensible to
worry about the extremely remote odds of another terrorist attack from
Muslims. They are, in fact, the least of
our worries.
So
if you’re obsessed about Muslims invading from Mexico or another 9/11…get a
massive clue and CHILL OUT. They may be
Satanists but they’re really no threat to us.
