By JUDE DOUGHERTY
The Wall Street Journal ran on a recent Opinion Page an informative piece by Ayann Hirsi Ali, a fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School, documenting clearly that hatred of homosexuals is an integral part of Islamic belief.
Ayann Hirsi Ali, no stranger to the subject, is the author of two readily available books, Infidel (2007) and Heretic: The Case for a Muslim Reformation (2015). Given the bold headline, “Islam’s Jihad Against Homosexuals,” and the prominent place the WSJ gave the article, there can be no excuse for politicians and media personnel to use multiple euphemisms to avoid acknowledging the motivating source of Muslim rage against homosexuals.
Hirsi Ali writes, “[The Orlando attack] is not primarily about guns or immigration. It is about a deeply dangerous ideology that is infiltrating American society in the guise of religion.” She may be guilty of an inconsistency when she says “in the guise of religion,” for earlier she made the point that “Muslim homophobia is institutionalized. Islamic law as derived from scripture, and as evolved over several centuries, not only condemns but prescribes cruel and unusual punishments for homosexuals.” She goes on: “Many Muslim majority countries have laws that criminalize and punish homosexuals in line with Islamic law.” Clearly it is sanctioned by the religion.
Elsewhere the 46-year-old Dutch American has argued that while for centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change, the time is now ripe for a Muslim “reformation,” and such she boldly proclaims may have already begun. Many others have hoped that it may be possible to reconcile traditional Islamic teaching with modernity, but when Islamic texts speak of the duty of Muslims to wage holy war against the infidel, such hopes may never be fulfilled.
At the heart of the Western debate over what Islam is and how to deal with it is the need to take into account that Islam is situational, local, and adaptable, able to take advantage of the political and cultural terrain in which it finds itself. It may be violent one day and quiet the next. Its adherents may be peace-loving and lightly observant in the main, but portions of its young men may pursue violence against the infidel when there is some material, political, or religious profit in it and still be practicing Islam.
Islam is not a religion in the Western sense. There is no central authority, no pope, patriarch, or council to say what the faith is and what constitutes heresy. The distinction between church and state, spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and lay has no analogue in Islamic history. The rule-making body that would shape Islam is not there. State level support, such as Saudi Arabia’s endorsement of the Wahhabi strain of Islam, does not qualify given its less than global authority.
Unable to locate an Islamic center, Western authorities cannot make viable war against it and consequently can only move from one bushfire of religious enthusiasm to the next. Apart from ceaseless warfare, the only remaining option available to the West is to marginalize state support for Islam by financial and market punishment.
Such action may be broadly welcomed. A moderate Islam has long been the dream of many Westernized Muslims, Middle East diplomats, and businessmen, let alone the rest of us who receive daily reports of suicide bombings in the Middle East, if not in Europe or North America.
Yet we are continually told by Islamic apologists, in spite of works like those of Hirsi Ali, and those of distinguished scholars like Bernard Lewis’ Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, and Ali A. Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, that Islam is a peaceful religion. That, in spite of the fact that the very word “Islam,” according to Arabic dictionaries, means “submission” or simply “the religion of Islam.” University and commercial presses flood the book market with studies that present Islam as one of three “Abrahamic faiths,” deserving of the same respect accorded Christianity and Judaism, its doctrine and history notwithstanding. The political left, often for ethnic or other reasons that remain obscure, can usually be counted on to support Islam against Christian interests.
Predictably, major media further obfuscate the nature of Islamic brutality by their tendency to present victims as larger-than-life personages. How else to explain big media’s prominent display of images and biographical sketches of each of the deceased victims. Politicians too can obfuscate. On the morning after the Orlando attack, Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris is reported to have said, “Tonight the Eiffel Tower will wear the rainbow flag in tribute to the victims of the massacre in Orlando,” and indeed it did.
As many have noticed, Western democracies have long been living off the moral and cultural capital of Christianity. To the extent that inherited influence is diminished, governments are left without a moral compass and become vulnerable to every passing fad no matter how opposed to common sense. Paris is only one example.
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