Islam Re-Revisited

Another Friday the 13^th.  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.