Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Heretic" -- Let's Reform How We Think and Talk about Islam

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's beauty and charisma personalize the unending atrocities against all-too-often anonymous women in the Muslim world. Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia and Saudi Arabia. She escaped from an arranged marriage. In Holland she was elected to parliament. She is now an American citizen. In 2014, Muslims prevented Hirsi Ali from receiving an honorary degree at Brandeis. Hirsi Ali's 2006 memoir Infidel is an essential record of the life of one Muslim woman who chose, no matter the cost, to live with dignity, courage and integrity. Hirsi Ali's 2015 book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, is less successful. Its flaws are representational of the flaws found in much counter-jihad rhetoric produced by self-identified atheists or atheists-lite including Sam Harris, Douglas Murray, and Bill Maher.

Hirsi Ali divides Muslims into three groups. She labels jihad-committed Muslims "Medina Muslims" (15)."Mecca Muslims," she says, pledge fealty to Islam but aren't actively violent (16). "Modifying Muslims" are Muslims who want to change Islam (17). These divisions are not emic – Muslims themselves do not label themselves as "Mecca Muslims" or "Medina Muslims." There is no way that non-Muslims can reliably differentiate between one and the other. Hirsi Ali, had she known him, would almost certainly categorize Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a non-violent or "Mecca" Muslim right up to April 18, 2013, the day he was identified as a suspect in the April 15 Boston Marathon Bombing. Tsarnaev's friends identified him as not one of "them. He was us. He was Cambridge." His twitter feed seemed to reflect a man "much more concerned with sport and cheeseburgers than with religion."

Hirsi Ali cites five features of Islam that must change (24). The first such feature is "unquestioning reverence" for Mohammed and the Koran. In fact Muslims cite the Koran and hadith to support capital punishment for anyone who insults Mohammed or the Koran. Mohammed ordered the deaths of those who insulted him. Muslims have repeatedly killed others for insulting Mohammed. Islam's attitude toward the Koran differentiates the Koran from the sacred scripture of any other world faith. Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists do not riot when someone burns a Bible, the Vedas or the Diamond Sutra. The Koran has near divine status: it cannot be translated from Arabic; the Koran is co-eternal with God, and uncreated; the original copy of the Koran is in Heaven and has been there eternally.

The second feature Hirsi Ali cites as needing to change is a "fatal focus" on the afterlife. She mentions Muslim parents who encourage their own children to be suicide bombers. A third feature of Islam that must change is sharia. Hirsi Ali says it "keeps Muslims stuck in the seventh century." A fourth feature of Islam that must change is hisbah, the injunction to command right and forbid wrong. The chapter devoted to this concept describes life among Muslims as comparable to life under the East German Stasi. Hirsi Ali describes Muslim family members turning on each other to keep all obedient to Islamic dictates. The often fatal fruit of such one-on-one surveillance is honor killing, in which parents, uncles, or older siblings murder Muslim females and sometimes males perceived to have strayed. The fifth feature of Islam that Hirsi Ali says must be reformed is jihad, "the call for holy war" that "is a charter for terror."

Hirsi Ali briefly recapitulates her autobiography, material that will be familiar to her loyal readers. Much of "Heretic" consists of summaries of news stories of Islam-inspired atrocities. Hirsi Ali revisits the attempted 2010 Times Square car bombing and other terrorist plots in the US, the honor killings of several Muslim women living in the US and Canada, the imprisonment of Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, a Christian woman, in Sudan, and the filmed gang rapes of Egyptian women in Tahrir Square.

In this avalanche of atrocities, of parents murdering their own children while the surviving brothers of murdered sisters applaud their infanticidal parents, Pakistanis burned alive by their neighbors, of recipients of Western welfare bombing their benefactors, one story stands out. Thirteen-year-old Somali Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was gang raped. She reported it. Sharia demands four adult male Muslim witnesses for a rape conviction. There were no witnesses. Duhulow was accused of adultery, buried up to her neck, and stoned for ten minutes. Her devout Muslim murderers dug her out, found a pulse, reburied her, and stoned her again. For those who read the news regularly, Heretic's forced march through bombings and torture murders, a march that provides no new insights or avenues for action, will merely be redundant and depressing. These accounts don't build to a larger point. Rather, they proceed episodically, like beads on a string.

One of the flaws in Hirsi Ali's book, and in atheist discourse on Islam in general, is the tacit acceptance, as an almost religious dogma, of human progress. At least since nineteenth century thinkers August Comte and Herbert Spencer, some have believed that as time moves forward, an unseen hand evolves people into a smarter, more ethical, less religious species. In this belief system, the word "modern" is virtually a synonym for "ethical," while the word "medieval" or "from the middle ages" is the ultimate insult. This worldview informs prominent atheists Michael Shermer's and Steven Pinker's recent books, The Moral Arc and The Better Angels of Our Nature. In this worldview, we don't need the Judeo-Christian tradition to inform our ethics, because human progress is making us better people every day.

In the progress worldview, Islam is a problem because its roots are in the past. Islam will inevitably improve with time as other religions have. When Islam is "modern," it will be good. "Other religions have undergone a process of reform," Hirsi Ali writes, "modifying core beliefs and adopting more tolerant and flexible attitudes compatible with modern, pluralistic societies" (25). "The Muslim world" is struggling to come to terms with "modernity" (26). Modernizing "revolutions" liberated Europeans from "priestly authority" (58). Islam is problematical because it has "frozen into place" "tribal norms" (88). The Old Testament contains harsh verses, but "no one invokes these passages in modern-day jurisprudence" (135). Westerners "have come very far from the days when public executions were the norm and religious offenses were punishable by death" (137). Sharia amputations may be seen as "antiquated practices that, like witch-burning in Massachusetts, will die out" (138-9). Sharia harms Muslim women; it is a surviving remnant of "patriarchal tribal culture" (143). Persecution in contemporary Islam is "an odd echo of the religious persecutions of the European middles ages" (148). "In the twenty-first century, I believe that all decent human beings can agree that barbarous acts should not be tolerated" (152). "The early history of New England" confirms that "some Protestant sects" policed their members. "Modern" cities and regions "allow the clock to be turned back" when they become more Islamic (163).

During the March 23, 2015 broadcast of The Daily Show, both host Jon Stewart and guest Hirsi Ali voiced the human progress worldview. Hirsi Ali, prompted by Stewart, said, "Christianity went through that process of Reformation and Enlightenment and came to a place where the mass of Christians, at least in the Western world have accepted tolerance, the secular state – separation of Church and State, respect for women, respect for gays … There were Christians, I mean, within Christianity, who came out and said hey, we need to change things, we need to reform." Islam, though, Hirsi Ali reports, is a problem, because it has not yet progressed, not yet evolved. The Koran "was written by a man a long time ago and the morality of the 7th century doesn't apply in the 21st century and they have to pick that up … the morality of God-knows-when doesn't apply now."

There are problems with the human progress worldview. The biggest problem is that not a single one of the features Hirsi Ali would like to change in Islam is representational of the seventh century.

It is open to question whether Islam's gender apartheid is a time capsule of pre-Islamic Arab culture. In 1986, in the journal Signs, Lelia Ahmed, Harvard's Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, published "Women and the Advent of Islam." Ahmed argues that Arab women enjoyed more freedom and power before Islam than after, and that taking freedom and power away from women was a large part of the early mission of Islam. Ahmed cites the biography of Khadija, Mohammed's first wife. Forty-year-old Khadija, who lived most of her life before the founding of Islam, was a businesswoman who hired twenty-five-year-old Mohammed, proposed marriage to him, and enjoyed him as her sole spouse – he was allowed no other wives while married to her. Before Mohammed, Ahmed writes, Arab women "had been remarkably active and independent" in a variety of roles including as the commanders of armies. Ahmed also cites Islam's written record. "Perhaps 80 percent of Koranic rulings" Ahmed says, were "devoted to regulating marital relations and the conduct of women … the establishment of Islam was marked by the institution of new sociosexual norms." Based on available evidence, "it becomes difficult not to conclude that the absolute empowerment of men in relation to women in all matters relating to sexuality and offspring and the disempowerment of women and thus the complete transformation of [contemporaneous Arab] society's mores in the area of the relation between the sexes was itself one of Mohamad's prime objectives." Ahmed concludes with a tale from Islam's early days. Two of Mohammed's great granddaughters are chatting. One is happy; one is sad. Why? The happy girl was named after an ancestress who had lived before the founding of Islam; the sad girl had a Muslim name.

One can go farther back in time than Ahmed does. Thousands of years ago, ancient, Pagan Egypt was among the friendliest to women of all Mediterranean civilizations. Ancient Egyptian women could testify in court, own property, and initiate divorce. Recently, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey rated today's Muslim Egypt as one of the worst countries for women.

Jihad, Islam's most problematical feature, in no way is representational of the seventh century. Jihad is articulated in this hadith, inter alia, "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' and whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' his life and property will be saved by me." No other religion in the seventh century followed this precept. Hinduism, sometimes considered the world's oldest religion, was then and is now largely confined to the Indian subcontinent. This geographic distribution reflects Hinduism's lack of a command to proselytize through military campaigns. Judaism, comparable in age to Hinduism, never announced itself as being under God's command to world domination by military might. Jews were less than one percent of the world's population in ancient times, and they are less than one percent of the world's population today. Jewish population numbers reflect Jews' disinterest in proselytizing by any means, including military – a disinterest that has lasted for thousands of years. Islam alone holds up the precept of jihad. Jihad is about Islam's essence, not the essence of the seventh century.

Similarly, the deification of the Koran, the protection of Mohammed from any critique, hisbah, or spying on one's intimates and policing their behavior, and the love of death, are in no way reflective of the seventh century. All these features of Islam worked with frightening efficiency in the ancient world, and they work today.

The difference between Islam and other world religions cannot best be measured with a clock or a calendar. Islam is not problematical because it was founded 1400 years ago. Islam is problematical because of its doctrines of jihad and gender apartheid. Time, in the form of a magical unseen hand called "progress" or "modernity" will not inevitably work any magic of "reform" on Islam.

It's telling that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other atheist and atheist-lite critiques of Islam so frequently compare Islam to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so rarely compare Islam to Hinduism or Buddhism. The latter would make more sense. More Muslims, for more time, have lived cheek-by-jowl with Hindus and Buddhists than with Christians. That Hinduism and Buddhism are so rarely invoked tells us that there is something going on here. Two things are going on here. The first is Politically Correct hostility to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Hirsi Ali is not PC, but PC is the water in which she is swimming. The second is another PC dogma: cultural relativism. It is taboo to say that Western Civilization or the Judeo-Christian tradition are in any way superior to any non-Western culture.

Jon Stewart tried to back Hirsi Ali into a corner: "People single out Islam as though there is something inherently wrong with it that is not wrong with other religions … I get the sense you think Islam is different than other religions … there is something inherently wrong with this religion that is not wrong with other religions and that's the thing I'm trying to get at." And Stewart attempted to get Hirsi Ali to sign on to the one true faith of cultural relativism: "Christianity went through the exact same process."

As hard as he tried, Stewart could not get Hirsi Ali either to say, or to refute, that there is something inherently wrong with Islam that is not wrong with Judaism or Christianity. Hirsi Ali was canny on The Daily Show. She played the Christophobia, cultural relativism, human progress cards. It is not okay to say that Christianity is different, and in respect to jihad, better than Islam. It is okay to say that Christianity is like Islam, and that time improved Christianity, and that time will similarly improve Islam. Christians do bad things, Hirsi Ali insisted. "In the name of Catholicism [they] despise and are homophobic." But progress came along and changed Christians and made them modern – that is ethical. "Christianity went through that process of Reformation and Enlightenment and came to a place where the mass of Christians, at least in the Western world have accepted tolerance, the secular state – separation of Church and State, respect for women, respect for gays."

Does Hirsi Ali make this case Heretic? No. Hirsi Ali is factually incorrect or merely misleading in many of her statements about the Judeo-Christian tradition. She misrepresents the Biblical story of Tamar (102), what Jews worship (77), Christian doctrine (84), understandings of the Bible and Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac (116), Christianity and women's suffrage (151), and Pope Urban's speech calling for the First Crusade (196). All these errors echo themes found in other atheist works on Christianity: the Bible is incoherent and violent; Christianity oppresses women; the Crusades are comparable to jihad. Even so, in the context of Hirsi Ali's larger point, these half-truths are minor. What is important is this: the title and main thrust of the book is utterly off base.

I have to assume that Hirsi Ali and her publishers felt they could rely on widespread ignorance of what the Reformation actually was for the title of this book, and its main thrust, to go over with readers. Contrary to Hirsi Ali's comments on The Daily Show, the Reformation was not a "modernization" of Christianity that included "separation of church and state, respect for women, respect for gays." Hirsi Ali mentions Luther's 95 theses (57). Luther's theses addressed the Catholic Church's selling of indulgences in order to fund its building projects. Not a single one of Luther's 95 theses concerned same-sex marriage.

Jesus Christ was the son of God; he was crucified and rose from the dead; God commands us to love people regardless of their identity and to spread his word through speech and good deeds, not violence; we are to render unto Caesar what is Cesar's and unto God what is God – the concept of separation of church and state is built in: this was core Christianity two thousand years ago, it was core Christianity five hundred years ago, and it is core Christianity today. The Reformation did not budge these ideas, central to all Christians.

Further, Hirsi Ali is incorrect when she speaks of modernization as a magical hand that arises ex nihilo to improve Christianity.

One can see the superficial appeal of the human progress point of view. Fifty years ago, computers were large and slow. Today computers are slim and fast. One concludes that time improved computers. Just so, time will improve humans. Upon reflection one realizes that Aborigines lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years without producing a modern culture, and that Ancient Egypt reached great heights and lasted for three thousand years in a static form. Great ancient civilizations, India and China, did not produce modernity. Time itself doesn't always move human societies forward.

Hirsi Ali, in the same way as atheist Michael Shermer, speaks of The Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the American and French Revolutions (58), as if they were Athena springing fully formed out of Zeus' head. That is not accurate. The passage of time alone did not produce these life-improving modernizations. All these events that Atheists embrace so fervently appeared only in the West. Without the soil of Ancient Greece and the Judeo-Christian tradition, perhaps none of them would have come to be, or they would be quite different. Modernization, it has been argued, is the fruit of the Judeo-Christian tradition. See, for example, Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.

Hirsi Ali does not discuss in any serious detail previous attempts to liberalize Islam, although she does mention in passing the Mu'tazilites (59) and liberalization followed by oppression (210-11).

Given that modernity arose in the West and not elsewhere, given that Muslims have tried to liberalize Islam and only been crushed for their efforts, one must examine whether Islam is not amenable to modernization. Indeed, given that, as Hirsi Ali acknowledges, capital punishment has been justified and applied against those who criticize Islam, Mohammed, or the Koran, one has to ask if Islam has not built-in, unique, failsafe features that defeat liberalization.

Hirsi Ali struggles to support her case by comparing Islam to Christianity. "Medina Muslims" are just like pre-Reformation Christians who were typified by their "fanaticism and violence" (14). "See," Hirsi Ali says, "just as, in the past, Christianity produced terrorists and the endless wars of jihad, and Christianity was modernized by the irresistible forces of time and progress, Islam will also be modernized." Except that Christianity didn't produce endless wars of jihad, and pre-Reformation Christians are really not comparable to terrorists.

Some readers will balk at the previous assertion. "What about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Witch Craze?" First, historians acknowledge that the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Witch Craze have been systematically exaggerated. I begin my own class on the Witch Craze by telling my students, "Ninety percent of what you think is true about the Witch Craze is actually false." Protestants and Catholics have been rivals for half a millennium. In that rivalry, Protestants have often exaggerated wrongs committed by Catholics as part of their propaganda efforts. More recently, Christophobes have mined this rich vein and amplified it. One brief and popular yet excellent demonstration of the level of exaggeration is Dr. Bill Warner's YouTube video, Jihad v Crusades. This video graphically compares Crusader battles with jihad battles. Second, wrongs committed by Christians have never been either geographically or chronologically coterminous with Christianity; rather, they have been local and temporary responses to local and temporary stimuli.  Third, Christians have always criticized and righted wrongs committed by other Christians. Christians outside of Spain, for example, produced serious criticisms of the Spanish Inquisition. Catholic Poland sheltered Jews expelled from Spain. By comparison, Saudi Arabia is not opening its borders to Christians expelled from Iraq. Finally, Christians who murdered in the name of their faith were acting in opposition to explicit scripture forbidding such behavior and enjoining Christians to spread their faith through charity, preaching, and good works, and to allow people to reject Christianity if that was their choice (Matthew 10:14). In short, Hirsi Ali's and others' comparisons of Christians and Christianity to Muslims and Islam obscure rather than clarify.

"The internet has the opportunity to be to the Muslim Reformation what the printing press was to the Protestant Christian one" (69). Except that modernity has been exploited by jihadis. Its key ingredients jet planes, world commerce, and television, no event in history was more modern than the 9-11 terror attack. ISIS has proven itself to be a master at social media.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an essential heroine. Her contribution to counter-jihad is inestimable. Heretic is not her best book. No one demands that Atheist counter-jihad authors become Christians; rather, all will benefit when they more accurately compare Islam, not just with Christianity or Judaism, but with all other world faiths. There is no unseen hand called "progress" that turned Christianity from its jihad-like past, that never existed, into its warm and fuzzy present, and no unseen hand will work that magic on Islam, either. We must confront jihad for what it is: a timeless and universal threat that requires an equally timeless and universal response.

This review appears at Front Page Magazine here 

Mary Engelbreit, Beloved Illustrator, Rich White Liberal Race Baiter & Politically Correct Thought Censor

I love Mary Engelbreit's art. An annual ritual for me: going to a bookstore the day after Christmas, the very day they go on sale, and purchasing a new Mary Engelbreit desk calendar. I've been doing that for the better part of the past twenty years. 

I love her art so much I keep the desk calendars. I still have years' worth of Mary Engelbreit desk calendars. 

Mary Engelbreit is a very rich white lady. She draws the world of very rich white ladies. It's a world that I have entered only in order to accompany my mother as she cleaned houses, and to clean houses myself.

Mary Engelbreit draws big fat Victorian homes with wrap around porches, apple-cheeked children caressed by adoring grandparents in homespun and denim overalls, endless beaches, productive orchards, star strewn skies, roses with no thorns. Her world. 

I enter her world, the world I wish I lived in, through my imagination. I gaze at her pretty, pastel creations every day when I look at my desk calendar. No matter that I live in a slum. I have a Mary Engelbreit desk calendar. 

I was surprised to see, on Mary's facebook page, which I did follow (before she kicked me off), the above illustrations. 

These illustrations pimp toxic falsehoods: 

* That in every case where a police officer kills a black person, that happened because America is a white supremacist nation, and the police officer killed the black person out of nothing but white supremacist animus

* That the only response to America's white supremacy is Ferguson-style rioting

* That Ferguson-style rioting does black people any good at all. 

* That Mike Brown was an innocent child who had raised his hands and said, "Hands up; don't shoot" before being murdered by a white supremacist 

* That white people don't care about black people. 

I think that these memes are false and toxic. 

I attempted to tell Mary Engelbreit as much on her Facebook page. 

I posted the message, below. 

In response, Mary Engelbreit took away my ability to post and "like" on her Facebook page. 

Here's what I wrote:

Mary do blue lives matter to you at all? Do the destroyed lives of the small businessmen and women matter to you at all?

Mary, I live in Paterson, NJ, a majority-minority, high-crime city.

Mary, three men have been murdered *directly in front of my apartment* in the past four years.

Has anyone ever been killed in front of your front door, Mary?

I've been questioned by police about one of these murders. The man was stabbed to death mere feet away from me while I slept.

Have you ever been questioned by police about a murder, Mary?

All the dead are minority men. All the killers are minority men.

Ever think about the children murdered every weekend in Chicago, Mary?

The attitude you are promoting, the Al Sharpton "Blame whitey and take no responsibility and do not ever address those who commit crimes and resist arrest" attitude, the attitude of "If anyone questions our belligerence that person is a RACIST!" -- that white liberal attitude is responsible for the rotting of millions of lives of black children in Paterson, Newark, Camden, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit.

Do you care, Mary? Do you live in a majority-minority city, Mary?


I've been buying your products loyally since I first encountered them. Now I will give these purchases a second thought. I know that won't have any impact at all on your bottom line, but when white liberals like you champion race baiting instead of responsibility, you have a toxic effect on innocents like me and my decent, hard working, law abiding black neighbors.

The Human Fetus As Garbage: A Necessary Comparison to Nazism

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The Human Fetus As Garbage: A Necessary Comparison to Nazism

In July, 2015, the Center for Medical Progress began releasing a series of videos. In these videos, Planned Parenthood personnel discuss the abortion procedures necessary to obtain, from aborted fetuses, high quality kidneys, hearts, skulls, arms, and legs. These fetal body parts are then sold to medical researchers. The videos also show employees dissecting human fetuses in order to harvest organs and body parts.

The efficacy of fetuses in medical research is debated. Various news sources, depending on their editorial stance toward abortion, depict aborted fetuses as providing promising avenues for research. Other news sources downplay the value of human fetuses for medical research. This dichotomy indicates that aborted fetuses' value to medical research is not a slam dunk. If aborted fetuses were unarguably necessary for a medical breakthrough that could save millions of lives, Planned Parenthood would have said so by now.

Given that aborted fetuses' use to medical research is not beyond reasonable question, taxpayers, who help fund Planned Parenthood, are thinking long and hard about Planned Parenthood's practices. In the public debate which has ensued in the wake of the Planned Parenthood videos, an interesting rhetorical flourish has appeared. In at least two high-profile responses to the Planned Parenthood videos, pro-abortion voices have referred to aborted human fetuses as "garbage."

On July 28, 2015, Rebecca Watson, who calls herself "Skepchick" – that is, skeptical chick– released a video and blog post entitled "Planned Parenthood is Not Selling Baby Parts, You [deleted] Idiots." Watson's pro-abortion video twice specifically refers to human fetuses as "garbage." Planned Parenthood employees, Watson claims, "do see some pieces of fetal tissue." In fact these employees have to see "pieces of fetal tissue." Watson's downplaying of what actually occurs in an abortion is not to her credit. Watson continues, these "pieces of fetal tissue" "are just going to be thrown away in the garbage, but the patient can instead choose to donate [them] to important medical research." In fact, "the patient" in this case is the fetus, and it cannot give or withhold consent to be donated to medical research. "Planned Parenthood allows women," Watson says, "to aid in the research and treatment of conditions like H.I.V. and Parkinson’s disease, when instead those women could just be throwing that tissue in the garbage!"

On August 4, 2015, Alternet published "6 Things to Say to Your Conservative Relatives Who Buy Into Anti-Planned Parenthood Propaganda." Author Amanda Marcotte writes, "Ask your conservative relative if he would prefer the fetal tissue to be thrown in the trash, since that is the only alternative." Of course throwing a fetus in the trash is not the only alternative to exploiting it for medical research; gestating that fetus and allowing it to grow and be born is the alternative.

The pro-abortion insistence that there are only two alternatives for a fetus: either to be garbage or to be "life-saving medical research," is interesting. It is interesting because it is false; again, a fetus could potentially grow into a human being, if allowed to do so. And, aborted fetuses in medical research are not sure-fire panaceas. There is another reason that this insistence is interesting. It calls to mind Nazism.

Most Nazi comparisons are easy, cheap, and dismissible. In this case a Nazi comparison is necessary. Many people have heard of Nazis manufacturing soap from human beings. It's interesting that so many people have heard of this because the Nazi manufacture of soap from humans was very limited in time, space, the number of humans used, and the project's success. The soap was simply not very good. So many people have heard of the use of human corpses for soap not because it was widespread; it was not. The use of humans for soap – something common and cheap – violates the conscience of the listener.

Given that Nazis had other, easier, cheaper, and more reliable methods for soap manufacture at their disposal, one must ask why Nazis made soap from human beings at all, even in a limited way. One answer. Nazis didn't make soap from human beings because they felt that the human beings they desecrated were inhuman. Rather, Nazis turned something sacred – the human body – into something common, cheap, and utilitarian in order to fully convince themselves that their victims were inhuman.

Most Nazis did not start out as Nazis. They needed to be coaxed into being Nazis. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, had to labor long and hard to convince Germans that they could murder Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and others with impunity. Germans were wracked by mass murder. Einsatzgruppen, who shot their victims at close range, complained. This personal method of murder gave way to impersonal death by gas. Nazis tortured their victims for a variety of reasons, but one reason was to convince themselves that their victims were not worthy of the regard that a human being commands. Nazis did to human beings things that a decent person never does to another human being not because they saw their victims as inhuman, but to make themselves see their victims as inhuman. "I am violating all social norms with this; therefore, this is not human."

In the Planned Parenthood videos, an employee who dismembers fetal corpses, seeking marketable samples, talks about how "sickening" it is. She is inured to it now, though; she reports it has become "fun." A medical professional has been taught – one might say brainwashed – to regard desecration and exploitation of a human corpse as "fun." How? By telling her that it's for medical research.

Again, pro-choice journalists report that medical research involving aborted fetuses holds out much promise. I am not a medical professional and I cannot assess that statement. I do see that it is debated by other medical professionals. One can't help but notice, though, that handling human fetuses as if they are garbage has played a role in teaching some that human fetuses are indeed garbage, and that they could never be anything else.

This essay appears in American Thinker here

You can purchase fetus soap at Etsy here

Danusha Goska is the author of Save Send Delete

Source

An Excerpt from "God through Binoculars" in Frontpage Magazine

I'm currently seeking a publisher for God through Binoculars, which is the prequel to Save Send Delete. An excerpt from God through Binoculars appears in Frontpage Magazine here. 

Jihad Apologists on NPR Fail American Muslims

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On Thursday, May 7, 2015, at 7:30 p.m., WNYC, New York's NPR affiliate, hosted "Islamophobia: A Conversation." WNYC talk-show host Brian Lehrer moderated. The discussion took place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, described on its webpage as "the home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas." Both BAM and WNYC are taxpayer funded. The discussion has been broadcast several times – at least twice the weekend of July 25 – and it is available on the WNYC webpage.

WNYC, on its webpage, lists the panelists for "Islamophobia: A Discussion" as follows:

Wajahat Ali—co-host of "The Stream" on Al Jazeera America; author of Fear Inc.: Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America;

Douglas Murray—associate editor of The Spectator magazine; author most recently of Islamophilia;

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar—Iraqi-born writer and human rights activist;

Asra Nomani—author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam;

Linda Sarsour—Brooklyn-born executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and

Bassem Youssef—host of "Al-Bernameg," the first televised political satire show in the Middle East. Youssef is also a Harvard fellow.

WNYC's "Islamophobia: A Conversation" typifies many features of liberal discourse on Islam. These features include:

1)    Selective inclusion of speakers in order to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion. Islam-critical scholars are excluded. Trained apologists for the Judeo-Christian tradition and Western Civilization are excluded. Muslims who express an orthodox Islamic worldview are excluded.

2)    Selection of Islamophobia, that is hatred and victimization of Muslims, as the topic of note. Jihad, terrorism, and gender apartheid are not worthy of focus.

3)    Exploitation of America's psychic vulnerabilities, specifically guilt about white supremacy, to coerce adherence to a pro-Islam worldview, and to silence any analysis of Islam.

4)    Conflation of Muslims and Islam with African Americans and the African American experience, thus rendering any critique of Islam an expression of white supremacy.

5)    An insistence on cultural relativism in which Islam is just like every other world religion, with a focus on insisting that Islam is just like Christianity.

6)    Depiction of America as a deadly hellhole for Muslims. At the same time, insisting on American Dream tropes. Assuming that all people on earth somehow automatically deserve entry into this idyllic American Promised Land, and that any expectation that Muslims renounce jihad or express fealty to their adopted homeland is a gross human rights violation.

7)    A disregard for, even a demonization of, objective facts.

8)    Misrepresentation and demonization of any critique of Islam.

9)    Trivialization and mockery: a Yoda imitation, a comparison of the stars of Duck Dynasty to ISIS or saying, "My mother can't be a terrorist; she's too busy cooking biryani."

10) Blame the victim. Americans cause terrorism by saying mean things about Islam.

WNYC created a theatrical façade of inclusivity of speakers and worldviews. Panelists, WNYC's webpage promises, come "from across the political, religious, and cultural spectrum" and they "address massive issues;" "the conversation covered broad terrain."

It is significant who was not part of the discussion. The most prominent and productive scholarly critic of Islam in the world today is almost certainly Robert Spencer. Spencer was not present. David Wood, another prominent, active, local, and productive critic of Islam, was not present.

British author Douglas Murray was present, and that's a good thing. It's not the best thing, though. Douglas Murray is not a full-time Islam critic; Spencer and Wood are. Further, Murray is an atheist, and an atheist without theological training. Islam, from its founding, has positioned itself as the opponent of Judaism and Christianity in a triumphalist, zero sum game. Indeed, Muslims on the panel at the WNYC event repeatedly invoked Christianity in order to score points for Islam. Osama bin Laden declared that all Muslims everywhere are justified in killing any and all "Jews and Crusaders."

Robert Spencer and David Wood don't just know Islam; they don't just know the Koran and hadith. They know the Bible, Old Testament and New. They know church history. They know that what most conventionally educated people believe to be true about the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch craze – historical episodes frequently cited by Islam's apologists – has been demonstrated to be false by recent scholarship.

It is notable that not a single person on the panel was an American of non-Muslim descent. It is notable that five of the six panelists were Muslims or former Muslims. Even as one panelist after another accused non-Muslim Americans of being imperialist oppressors, racists and indeed terrorists, WNYC did not allow one non-Muslim American to speak.

Other notable missing persons: there was no one like the pro-Sharia Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary, though Choudary is a media fixture. Choudary's Koranic worldview probably has more followers than the announced beliefs – moderate Islam, secularism, or reformed Islam – of all the other panelists combined. Choudary doesn't pay lip service to co-existence. In his beard and Islamic dress, Choudary is not the poster child for moderate Islam that photogenic, beardless and fashionably groomed Wajahat Ali is. Choudary says that Muslims are superior and that eventually they will exercise that superiority over all mankind, as prescribed in Bukhari hadith 4:196. In fact no one on the panel represented this worldview, though it is obviously an influential one among Muslims.

Another significant feature of the discussion: the decision, made before the discussion took place as to what it would address. WNYC titled its program "Islamophobia" and "Fear of a Muslim Planet." Bill Maher famously denounced the very word "Islamophobia" as one "created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons." WNYC chose as focus of its discussion on Islam a purported irrational hatred of Muslims that allegedly grips Americans. In the city where almost three thousand Americans were murdered on September 11, 2001, the city's premier, taxpayer-funded radio station understands "fairness" to involve smearing all Americans as bigots and not allowing one single American of non-Muslim descent onto a panel to challenge that smear.

The broadcast's alternate title is "Fear of a Muslim Planet." This title alludes to "Fear of a Black Planet," a 1990 Public Enemy hip hop album meant to protest white supremacy. White Americans are oppressive haters, WNYC's title announced. Muslims are innocent victims. Muslims are just like African Americans. "Fear of a Black Planet" includes the song "911 is a Joke."

"No one here wants terrorism, and no one here wants bigotry. Let's have a dialogue about how we can fight the one without enabling the other," host Brian Lehrer announced at the beginning of the discussion. Any thinking person immediately detects the culturally relativistic false equivalency. Terrorism is destroying the lives of millions of people. Ten million people currently live under the control of ISIS, for just one example. Terrorism is a much more serious matter than alleged "Islamophobia," yet Lehrer equates the two.

There were many similar false equivalencies. Bassem Youssef brought up the Westboro Baptist Church. The Westboro Baptist Church has not millions, but rather dozens of members. As painful as it is, a sign reading "God hates fags" cannot be compared to a terrorist bombing. Youssef spoke at length about the 2009 assassination of a late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. This murder can't be compared to 1400 years of jihad – but it was, and that comparison went unchallenged. Youssef's discourse on the murder of Dr. Tiller was the longest bit of uninterrupted verbiage in a NPR report on Islam in the US.

The WNYC broadcast opens with, and the homepage for the event closes with, a quote from panelist Wajahat Ali. "In America I'm asked, 'Why does Islam hate the West?' Abroad I'm asked, 'Why does the West hate Islam?'" Again, two phenomena that are not equal – jihad and alleged Western Islamophobia – are rendered equivalent in the one quote WNYC chose to feature on its homepage.

Linda Sarsour was the night's first speaker. She spoke loudly, rapidly and in a street-inflected enunciation that was so pronounced it could have been an affectation. In the tradition of fascist demagogues, Sarsour voiced flamboyant, bathetic grievances, claiming herself and her fellow Muslims to be victims of violent and dangerous, racist Americans. Sarsour claimed that Muslims are bullied in schools and must live with death threats from Americans who want to decapitate them. Sarsour insisted that "Islamophobia is an industry in this country. People making [sic] millions of bucks [sic] on dehumanizing and vilifying Muslims." She followed grievances with belligerence, telling people what they could and could not say. "You're free" she said, "to disagree with some tenets of Islam." Well thank you for that permission, Ms. Sarsour. Anti-Sharia legislation, though, is Islamophobic and must stop. American zoning boards that resist mosque construction are Islamophobic. They must grant permission for the construction of mosques. Sarsour claimed that the NYPD surveils Muslims for no other reason than racist animus. Douglas Murray called this a lie. Sarsour castigated Murray. Brian Lehrer backed her up, saying, "Let her speak!"

Sarsour repeatedly conflated Muslims with African Americans. Sarsour is attempting to appropriate the African American experience; she is a Muslim Rachel Dolezal. In 2012, Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi woman, was murdered in California. CNN published Sarsour announcing that "My Hijab Is My Hoodie." The article featured a photo of Trayvon Martin. The implication was that Sarsour risks being murdered by a racist American because she wears hijab, in the same way that Trayvon Martin was allegedly murdered by a racist American for wearing a hoodie. Alawadi's murder was a staged hate crime; her Muslim husband had beaten her to death.

Currently on her Facebook page, Sarsour insists that her son Tamir is the equivalent of Ramarley Graham, an African American shot to death by a police officer. Sarsour had previously said that her son is just like Tamir Rice, another black boy shot by police. Also on her Facebook page, Sarsour calls Franklin Graham "vehement, racist, disgusting." She writes "Existing as Black and/or Muslim in America is an act of courage." And "When Black lives matter all lives will matter, including Muslim lives." Sarsour repeatedly invokes Rosa Parks in her public statements, and Sarsour has been compared to Rosa Parks.

Sarsour was the most vehement in rejecting rational discussion. "I'm not interested up here to have ideological or theological discussion or pull out quotes from the Koran because every problem that we have could be found in other faiths." (sic).

Aljazeera's Wajahat Ali also spoke of Islamophobia as a profit center that is "bankrolled" by nefarious forces vilifying Muslims and Islam. Ali, like Sarsour, jumped on the "America is white supremacist" bandwagon. He self-identified as "brown skinned." In fact, he is clearly of mostly Caucasian ancestry, as is Sarsour. Ali complained that he is not "popular" in America, that Americans insult him by forcing him to apologize for actions he's never done, performed by people he's never met. Ali mourned that those making money off Islamophobia want "you to fear me because I am a Muslim." I am a "perpetual suspect." Ali went right for America's psychic jugular. Racism is in America's very DNA. Islamophobia "Takes its DNA from hateful fear mongering that was used against Jews, Catholics and Japanese. Same DNA." This isn't about free speech, Ali insisted. It's not about a cartoon. In his insistence that free speech and cartoons are immaterial, Ali joined Sarsour in rejecting discussion of objective realities. All that mattered, really, is that America is fundamentally racist.

Much could be said about the irony of Islamists smearing America as racist. The Arab slave trade of Africans and Europeans dwarfed the Atlantic slave trade in size and duration. The Arab slave trade was supported by the Koran and Mohammed's exemplary precedent. The Arab slave trade exists today. The legacy of the Arab slave trade is virulent racism among Arabs and many Muslims – as many Muslims have publicly acknowledged.

In a similar ironic display of hypocrisy, Sarsour, Youssef, and Ali deployed a self-contradictory but no less crafty stratagem. They spoke at length about what a devious, imperialist, destructive, racist, and indeed deadly place America is for Muslims. To state the obvious, Sarsour, Youssef, and Ali, who could easily return to their relatives in Palestine, Egypt, and Pakistan, choose to live in the United States. If America were the hellhole they describe, they would not be here. At the same time that they pound the shame-racist-America drum, Sarsour and Ali also insist on an ideal America that Muslims deserve uninhibited and unquestioned access to. I am Catholic. No Catholic has ever enjoyed unquestioned access to the American Dream. We had to prove our worth, and that we posed no threat. We did just that. John F. Kennedy's September 12, 1960 speech to Protestant ministers was just one proof that American Catholics have offered up to gain full access to the American Dream.

Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian television host and Harvard fellow, misrepresented the Islam critical point of view, and, specifically, Douglas Murray's point of view, as "All Muslims are out there to either subjugate you or convert you" and Muslims are "out there to get you basically" and "Islam is an infection" and "Why don't we go to the next level and put them all in concentration camps. Throw us in the gas chambers. It's much easier this way. No Muslims. No Islamophobia. Let's get it over with." "This is hate speech. It should be shut down," Youssef said of any criticism of Islam. Youssef equated critics of Islam with imams who call for death to Jews and Christians. Of Douglas Murray, Youssef said, "He's doing the same. He's doing the same. But on bigger platforms, and he's affecting a larger number of people." The moderator made no attempt to address Youssef's false, inflammatory remarks. The audience applauded enthusiastically. Following Youssef's comments in the program as it exists now at the WNYC webpage, and as it was broadcast in July, there was no response, including from Douglas Murray, who had been misrepresented to the point of slander. Youssef's unhinged, masochistic fantasies went unchallenged.

Youssef adopted a mock, singsong voice and trilled, "Yeah, there are violent texts in Islam." Any discussion of the Koran's many jihad verses, Mohammed's career as a warrior, or the history of a thousand years of unbroken Islamic expansion through violent and genocidal jihad was reduced to a joke. Youssef blamed America. "Billions of dollars" funded the spread of jihad. Youssef insisted that the Westboro Baptist Church and the KKK are completely equivalent with jihad. If someone gave the Westboro Baptist Church billions of dollars, they, too, would create terrorist groups on every continent that would last for a thousand years. "This is a game that has been used by Christianity and Judaism!" "Buddhists are killing!" Youssef's angry and grammatically incorrect sputterings were met with enthusiastic applause.

Wajahat Ali was allowed expansive, uninterrupted time to insist that "right-wing white men from the South" are the number one domestic terrorist threat to Americans, and that they should be surveilled and profiled. Ali also argued that Westerners bring terrorism on themselves by criticizing Islam.

In contrast to the generous time allowed Ali and Youssef, Lehrer interrupted Douglas Murray when Murray was making his summary statement, the kind of statement that is conventionally not interrupted by a moderator. "You are by your own words anti-Islam," Lehrer intoned, using the kind of formulation one would associate with the judge in a Stalinist show trial. Lehrer did not interrupt any other panelist's summary statement for ideological reasons. He interrupted Wajahat Ali for reasons of time, but allowed him to continue to speak.

Lehrer also interrupted panelist Faisal Saeed Al Mutar. Al Mutar was born in Iraq; he is now an atheist living in the US. He spoke relatively little. He attempted to adduce facts that would demonstrate that Youssef and Ali were incorrect to mock and trivialize the real threat of Islamic terrorism. Al Mutar listed Muslim countries that prescribe capital punishment for atheism; he pointed out that the worst countries to live in for women are Muslim countries. Lehrer interrupted Al Mutar's recitation of facts. "Is the path to peace to discredit the religion?"

Asra Nomani was born in India and currently teaches at Georgetown. She is the author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She said that the first person to RSVP for WNYC's event was a man who had sent her a death threat. Her voice was lovely and quiet; her speech measured and respectful. She spoke for reform in Islam. The Muslim men on the panel interrupted and made fun of her.

Douglas Murray repeatedly attempted to make an important point. Suppression of the unique challenges Islam presents is not good for Muslims. Most Muslims are decent people who should not face prejudice. The best route to a happy life for Muslims is for Muslims to say, "Yes, we have a problem, and yes, we are open to dealing with it." Three of the guests on WNYC's panel not only failed miserably at that task; they engaged in obfuscation, evasion and denial. Of the practicing Muslims on stage, Asra Nomani alone demonstrated the openness to discussion and solutions that will lead to a better tomorrow for everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Danusha Goska is the author of Save Send Delete

This article appears at Jihadwatch.org here

Empire State Building Wears Islamic Green Day After Chattanooga Massacre

Dear Anthony E. Malkin, Chairman, Empire State Realty Trust:

Your decision to illuminate the Empire State Building in green, the Islamic color, on Friday, July 17, 2015, to mark Eid al-Fitr was a grotesque error. By doing so, you imperiled the lives of every one of your fellow American citizens. Your choice may facilitate violence that will result in death. You will have to live with those consequences.

Of course most Muslims are good, non-violent, and decent people. In relation to your decision to illuminate your building in green, these good people are, alas, not relevant.

What is relevant is this: there are powerful, armed groups whose stated goal is to attack and kill Americans, and, indeed, in their own words, all Christians and Jews. These groups include, but are not limited to, ISIS, the Islamic state.

What is relevant is this: on Thursday, July 16, the day before you illuminated one of the tallest and most iconic buildings in the US in the Islamic color, Muhammad Abdulazeez murdered five uniformed American servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

What is relevant is this: Muhammad Abdulazeez identified his actions in messages sent to friends as in accord with Islamic doctrine and Koranic verses.

What is relevant is this: ISIS took credit for this shooting. Whether their claim is accurate or not, their attentiveness to events in America is instructive. ISIS cares what occurs in America. ISIS noted your illumination of the Empire State Building the day after the Chattanooga massacre.

One must conclude that groups like ISIS who openly call for death to all Americans and the ultimate destruction of Western Civilization were encouraged, emboldened, and egged on by your disastrous choice.

Right-thinking Americans bear no malice to innocent Muslims who are not violent. Innocent Muslims are not the point here. What is the point is that there is a critical mass of Muslims who do wish every one of us dead. Such Muslims made their desires all too well known on September 11, 2001, in the Portland Christmas tree bombing plot, at the Boston Marathon, in Garland, Texas, in the air over Detroit, in Fort Hood Texas, and in too many other incidents to itemize here.

You, Anthony E. Malkin of Empire State Reality Trust, sent a message to ISIS and Boko Haram and al-Shabab and others like them. You announced, loud and clear: powerful people in America are so feeble, so unaware, so unthinking, so ashamed of their own heritage, that they can be duped into sending a signal that will be understood by all too many as celebrating a jihad attack on their own soil. That message that you sent, Anthony E. Malkin, for all the world to see, endangers every American and every Westerner.

Please find another way to indicate your appreciation of peaceful Muslims and Islamic culture. Please find a way to make clear that you stand with Western Civilization. Please find a way to make amends to all of us whom you have wounded with your choice, most especially amends must be made to the loved ones of Sergeant Carson A. Holmquist, age 25, Logistics Specialist Randall Smith, age 26, Gunnery Sergeant Thomas J. Sullivan, 40, and Staff Sergeant David A. Wyatt, 37. None of these men will ever live to be as old as you are now.

Thank you.

Danusha V. Goska, PhD

Contact the Empire State Realty Trust here: http://www.empirestaterealtytrust.com/contact-us

Obergefell v. Hodges; Supreme Court Redefines Marriage; A Big Mistake

Norman Rockwell, who was possibly gay. I'm pro-gay and anti-redefining marriage 

I believe that the recent Supreme Court ruling redefining marriage was a huge mistake, and I think the day will come when people celebrating it today will look back in mourning.

In the same way that the Sexual Revolution was supposed to be so good for women and it ended up being a misogynist dystopia, this decision will be bad for women.

Because I am a Christian, "tolerant," "liberal," "educated" people often (not always / some not all) people talk to me as if I had a single-digit IQ.

"Don't you know," they say to me, "That various societies have defined marriage in a variety of ways?"

Well, let's see. I've lived on four continents and spoken ten languages as part of my professional life; I worked in the largest anthropological museum west of the Mississippi and I have a PhD. Ya really think that I don't know that marriage has been defined in various ways? Which one of us is, as Sam Elliot says in the meme, a special kind of stupid?

I know that in Palestinian Muslim Arab culture a woman's breast milk has been, traditionally, *her husband's property.* (Don't know if this is true today. See "Speak Bird Speak Again.")

I know that devout Muslims can't affix an age of consent because Mohammed is the perfect example and he married a six year old when he was fifty plus. So, yes, you can see plenty of videos on youtube of imams arguing that marriage to an infant is just fine, and little, prepubescent girls are married to old men every day, and, you can find Ayatollah Khomeini's text on how to sexually pleasure yourself with an infant. Oh, yes, and "Women are for babies; boys are for pleasure."

I know that women in Afghanistan asked the saddest day of their life replied, "The day I had to get married." Forced to marry, often to a stranger, often much older, often with a wife already.

I know that Hindu women, in the village I lived in, could not say their husband's name, could not sleep inside their own homes when they were menstruating, could not look at the hearth fire when they were menstruating, and were supposed to wash their husband's feet first thing in the morning and consume some of the wash water.

Clitoredectomy? Saw that in Africa. Saw it done. Teenage girls, naked except for ceremonial paint.

I know that in the soviet empire at its height, children were encouraged to inform on their parents to the state.

I know that Himmler wanted good Nazis to have multiple wives to produce more offspring.

I know that in ancient Athens, that perfect, pre-Christian world that Neo Pagans wax nostalgic about, women had virtually no rights. Prostitutes were so oppressed that when they were not entertaining clients, they had to weave cloth for their pimps. Upper class women were not supposed to walk the streets.

I know that in ancient Rome, ditto about idiotic neo Pagan nostalgia, the pater familias had absolute power to marry off his daughter to whomever he wanted whenever he wanted, and Thecla, an early Christian woman, defied that and became a saint and the star of her own book, "The Acts of Paul and Thecla."

I know that Christianity succeeded at least partly because it treated women and slaves so much better than the pre-existing Pagan systems. Let a man be the husband of only one wife. These two shall join together and become one flesh. In Christ there is no male there is no female. Let a man love his wife like Christ loved the church. That means a man had to be ready to *die* for his wife.

So, yeah, to me, marriage = one adult male and one adult female choosing to be in a union is a pretty wonderful thing.

It's also a pretty wonderful thing that Social Security, through survivor benefits, recognized the unique sacrifice that biology offers to women, not men, to get pregnant, have babies, and breast feed them.

Women leave the paid workforce and often stay home to take care of kids and many structures are in place to *honor* mothers for their *unique* contribution and *protect* them for their unique vulnerability.

Among the many things the court said this week, they said, "It ain't special having a womb and using it to produce human life and using breasts to feed and nurture."

I came from a less than perfect family and I have not been blessed with love / marriage / kids and I have always felt little-match-girl about that. You notice that I pretty much never post anything on mother's day. That's because my keyboard is too slick, and my screen too bleary, from my tears. I'm a very not-feminine feminist and an iconoclast and I never thought I'd have to be the one to say to other people, "Don't you realize what a treasure / what a blessing / what a precious heritage the nuclear family is?"

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Ooops. Too late.