Tarek Fatah’s Imbroglio
As I read Tarek Fatah’s latest contribution to the National
Post (re: Proud to be Muslim and proud to fight Islamofacism), I was amazed yet
again, not only that this piece, along with his previous contributions, are
given free rein in that great newspaper, but also that, as a consequence of
this journalistic accommodation, his contradictions inadvertently (and, in my
opinion, undeservedly) acquire a sagacious air.
One should be careful to remember when reading Tarek Fatah’s
take on Islam that the axiomatic is not synonymous of the truth, neither do
superior numbers, in this case Mr. Fatah’s popularity among non-Muslims,
indicate veracity. That one should have to write an entire book as a means of
convincing the non-Muslim—and perhaps the Muslim—world that Islam’s long
history of anti-Jewish violence does not justify the contemporary delineation
of this ancient religion as being nothing more than a racist and malefic belief
system, and that the very efficacy and perpetuity can be easily identified in
this same anti-Jewish hatred, merely verifies the prudent wisdom of the Hebrew
proverb, “A fool is known by a multitude of words.”
How similar to other apologists for Islam is Mr. Fatah when
he esteems all non-violent Muslims as true Muslims and condemns all violence-prone
or extremely religious Muslims as “Islamists.” This tendency of the apologist,
to exculpate his/her religion in order to distance its promised good from those
religious who might betray spiritual imperfections, had been the habit of
Christians for the sake of Christianity long before Muslims began their present
toil for the sake of Islam. There are numerous instances when I have heard or
read Christians describe members of the Einsatzgruppen (“mobile killing
units”), or the Ukrainian camp guards who walked little Jewish children to the
gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor and Treblinka, as not being “real
Christians.” But these henchmen for the cause of Nazism were real Christians—in
the same way that those animals who beheaded Daniel Pearl and murdered the
Russian children of Beslan were real Muslims.
I think it was Bruno Bettelheim who wrote, “If all men are
good, there can be no Auschwitz.” This observation applies to Islam: If Islam
is a totally salubrious faith, then there can be no Islamofacism—there would
never have been a 9/11 and Daniel Pearl would still be alive today. Fatah
writes that “Islam is a religion with roots in Judaism and Christianity.” What
he fails to mention to his readers is the fact that both Christianity and Islam
were introduced into the world by way of a very public repudiation and
derogation of Judaism and the exclusive connection it commands to the Jewish
people. To imply that Islam in any way portrays Judaism and the Jewish people
as being responsible for any good that Islam may affect in its adherents is to
tell a shameless lie. Mr. Fatah will know that Islam instead claims that the
“words of the Prophet” render as obsolete all other religions—past, present and
future. Tarek Fatah’s only obstacle is that he is not courageous enough to
repudiate Islam outright. For this reluctance I don’t blame him. After all, to
publicly repudiate Islam is pronounce a death penalty upon oneself.
Mr. Fatah writes in the National Post that its readers
“should know the difference between Islam and Islamism.” It is my opinion that
they are one and the same, only difference being that Islamism is more aligned
to the original and veridical Islam: the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed and not
the watered-down version practiced by irresolute apologists like Tarek Fatah.
To pretend otherwise is to perpetuate the very evil he hopes to destroy.
“The fool rages and is confident.” –Book of Proverbs
Written by Michael Devolin
