Political Correctness Kills, Says Islam Expert

Political Correctness Kills, Says Islam Expert

By Ken Timmerman

The U.S. military missed multiple direct warnings that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was contemplating mass mayhem once he learned he was going to be deployed to Afghanistan but ignored them because of political correctness, an Australian scholar of Islam told Newsmax in Washington, D.C. recently.

“At a certain point, someone explained to Major Hasan that he had a duty to fight Americans and that if he didn’t, he would go to Hell,” says Dr. Mark Durie, who has written several books on Islamic ideology. His latest is, “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom.”

Hasan made a presentation to Army colleagues 18 months before the Fort Hood massacre, warning them that Muslim soldiers were compelled by Quranic teaching to turn against the U.S. military if they were ordered into combat against fellow Muslims.

“A public debate needs to take place about whether . . . an Islamic worldview can be in conflict with loyalty” to the United States or any other non-Muslim country, Durie said. “This debate needs to be pursued without being censored by political correctness.”

And yet, the 86-page Pentagon report on the Ford Hood massacre, released last week, failed to mention the words “Islam,” “Muslim,” or “jihad,” and called Hasan’s actions the product of “self-radicalization.”

Challenged at a press conference where he presented his findings last week, the report’s main author, former U.S. Army chief Togo West, dismissed Hasan’s Muslim faith as a cause of his murderous rampage.

“Suppose it were fundamentalist-Christian-inspired,” West said. “Our concern is not with the religion. It is with the potential effect on our soldiers’ ability to do their job.”

For Durie such views are profoundly misguided, since they fail to take into account the guidance Muslim authorities are providing to their co-religionists around the world on how they should live and interact with the West.

Durie cited recent rulings by some of the world’s most respected Islamic jurists on the subject of “divided loyalties” that eventually drove Hasan to murder.

“Their rulings presuppose that naturalization in a non-Muslim nation, without proper justification, is unacceptable,” he said. A condition for making naturalization acceptable was that the Muslim should not seek to advance the cause of his adopted nation above that of Islam, for example, by fighting against fellow Muslims.”

Rulings calling on Muslims to reject assimilation into non-Muslim societies are not being issued by clerics the West would call radical, but by mainstream Muslim authorities who are currently advising the U.S. government on issues such as Shariah finance, Durie said.

“Major Hasan explained, citing chapter and verse, the beliefs that could lead to a member of the U.S. armed forces attacking his fellow soldiers. He cited examples where they had happened before.”

Durie said that Muslim scholars and interest groups in the West have engaged in a massive campaign to disguise the true nature and goals of Islam. They lie about the true content of Muslim scripture, claim that key quotes calling for violence have been mistranslated, and advance spurious allegations of victimization that have no basis in fact.

He pointed to the violence that erupted in the Muslim world when Pope Benedict XVI made a public reference during a speech in Regensburg to Islam’s historical practice of spreading the faith through violent jihad.

The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abd’al-Aziz al-Sheikh, issued a press release to refute the Pope’s claim, objecting that the sword was only “the last resort” offered to non-Muslims who refused to convert or surrender to the armies of Islam.

While Muslims expect to be allowed to live without hindrance in non-Muslim societies, “Islamic teaching doesn’t accept reciprocity” when it comes to non-Muslims living under Islam.

“From the Islamic perspective, non-Muslims are expected to display two psychological characteristics as part of their surrender. One is a sense of gratitude to the Islamic community for having spared their lives. The other is a sense of their own inferiority.”

Durie says he sees both on display in the actions and speeches of President Obama, in particular his frequent references to the “debt” the U.S. owes the Muslim world.

“The important thing about what President Obama is saying is not whether it is factual or not, but the need to express gratitude as a means of engaging the Muslim world.” This is the response demanded of the “dhimmi,” or the subjected peoples who live under Muslim rule, Durie argues.

Many in the West wonder whether Islam can undergo a Protestant-style “reformation” and become more West-oriented and less violent. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars since the Sept. 11 attacks trying to foster “moderate” Muslim thinkers and institutions.

Durie thinks these are wasted efforts. “Reformation in Islam is already happening, and al-Qaida is the product,” he says.

The Quran itself calls for “virtually unlimited war against unbelievers,” Durie writes in “The Third Choice,” citing chapter and verse of the Islamic text. “It is a sad fact that incitement against non-Muslims, and specifically against followers of biblical faiths, is an integral part of Islam, being hardwired into the Quran and the Sunna,” the authoritative Muslim texts.

The key concept the West needs to understand is “fitna,” an Arabic word that means “trial, persecution, or temptation” and is used in Islamic texts to describe efforts by non-Muslims to inhibit the spread of Islam.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is currently on trial in Holland for engaging in “hate speech,” because he made an 18-minute film called “Fitna” that juxtaposes quotes from the Quran and from prominent Muslim scholars with scenes of Islamist terrorist attacks.

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