Defending Islam:  The Height of Leftist Hypocrisy

By: Amber Pawlik

Ever since 9-11, Islam has been a topic of debate in many circles.  President George Bush announced that Islam is a “religion of peace.”  Leftists, though, in particular have convinced us that to criticize Islam is to be “intolerant.”  This has created a culture unwilling to call Islam for what it is.  Here is a list of common debate arguments in defense of Islam, usually given by leftists, and quick rebuttals to them, proving otherwise.

You are a racist if you condemn Islam.  

As soon as you go to criticize Islam, the first response you always get hit with is “you are a racist.”  This is not true.  Islam is an ideology not a race.  You can criticize Islam in the same way that you can criticize communism, liberalism, feminism, etc.   

In fact, the biggest victims of Islam are Muslims themselves.  Every Muslim I have ever met is bright and hard working.  It is unfortunate that Muslims are under the spell of Islam, which prevents them from making the kind of scientific and technological progress they clearly could otherwise make.

Christianity can be just as violent as Islam.  

When you point out the verses in the Koran which call for the murder of Christians and Jews, etc., or point out that Muslims are killing people in the name of Allah, the instant response you get is, “Christianity has violent passages too, and people have killed other people in the name of Christianity too.”  

All I have to say is:  and?  If people are using Christianity as a reason to kill innocent people, guess what:  they are wrong too.  You can’t excuse one evil by pointing to another evil.   

Besides that, there are no Christian nations right now that are responsible for killing 3000 Americans or 200 Spaniards.  It is the Islamic nations and organizations that are.   

It’s the wrong interpretation of Islam that is the problem.  

Leftists insist that the Koran isn’t bad; it is the “wrong interpretation” of the Koran.  I’m not sure how anyone can fail to correctly interpret statements like, 

They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them, Surah 4:89, Nobel Koran) but I guess that’s just me.

When leftists say it is the “wrong interpretation” of Islam that is wrong, really what they mean is “why can’t Muslims just ignore the bad parts of the Koran?”  Leftists don’t understand the psyche of the person who takes things literally.  To them, things are just suggestions not commandments – even the law, as evidenced by the San Francisco mess.  

It’s not the wrong interpretation of the Koran that produces terrorists; it is an exact interpretation of the Koran that produces terrorists.

Most Muslims are nice people.  

The more emotional appeal is that most Muslims are nice, hard working people and criticizing Islam is to criticize these nice people.  Of course most Muslims are nice people.  The problem is in the leadership, i.e. people who are responsible for taking the Koran seriously and literally, not the naïve followers.   

It is not limited to leadership in the Middle East either.  Representative Peter T. King said publicly while promoting his book Vale of Tears that he estimates 80-85% of the Muslim leadership in America supports “Islamic fundamentalism.”   

Islam is not benign.  To ignore this, being politically-correct, is to ignore a very large, deadly pink elephant in the room. 

Islam has produced scientific achievements.  

Lots of people insist that Muslim culture has produced various scientific achievements. The biggest “Muslim” achievement that they point to is that they supposedly discovered Algebra.  This isn’t true.  It wasn’t Muslims or even Arabs that invented Algebra:  it was the Iranians.  The Iranians have had a very enlightened culture – one that radical Muslims have waged a war against, in an effort to Islamicize them (which you will never hear leftists condemn).   The Iranians also had their own religion, Zoroastrian, which was as opposite as you can get from Islam.    

Something else Islam defenders might point to as proof that Islam can produce scientific progress is a man named Razi, who they say was Muslim.  Razi made several findings in medicine.  But Razi, again, was not Arab or Muslim but Iranian.  In fact, he was so hostile to Islam that he wrote several books denouncing faith and upholding reason, and became a heretic.  Razi, an enlightened Iranian, was to the Muslim world what Galileo or Copernicus was to ours.  After treating these men of scientific achievement as heretics forced to live like gypsies, claiming them as proof that Islam can produce scientific achievement is a bit much.   

There is my short list of common arguments regarding Islam.  This brings me to what I believe is the biggest issue of our time and one of the largest hypocrisies. 

Leftists try to claim they are enlightened, sophisticated people, supporting the mind not faith – therefore denounce religion, especially Christianity.  Yet it is these very leftists that are most sympathetic to Islam: one of the most faith-based and anti-enlightened religions that has ever existed.   

Despite their theatrics, announcing they are intellectual, leftists are not enlightened or intellectual.  Genuine enlightenment came when men discovered reason and reality.  It started with one man:  Aristotle.  Accepting that reality was firm and external to man and that men can use reason to understand and explore it allowed for an explosion of scientific progress, technology, and civilization, as we know it.   

This is not what leftists advocate.  They advocate that reality is unknowable and that reason is impotent.  You can sit in any university classroom and find this out.  Leftists are not secular. They are just as mystical as any primitive religion, if not more so, which is why they can easily sympathize with a religion like Islam.   

The person who created the crop of intellectuals opposed to intellect is Immanuel Kant.  Kant is evil because he destroyed reason in the name of reason – by manipulating the definition of reason.  Reason is the process by which man understands and discovers reality through his own five senses and mind.  Kant said that reason was “a priori,” which means “without experience.”  Therefore, “reason” is just a person who, essentially, thinks about things with no sensory data fed to him.  This undercuts reason at the root.  How can enlightenment come if man is completely cut off from reality?  What scientific progress can come from the chemist who doesn’t study chemicals or the biologist who doesn’t study animals?  Immanuel Kant is to the primitives known as leftists/liberals of today what Mohammed is to Islam.  

Given leftists have been smearing reason in the name of reason; secularism in the name of secularism; enlightenment in the name of enlightenment, I have a fear.  Since “secularism” has been defined consistently as feminism, liberalism, communism, etc. as opposed to reason, progress, technology, etc., people might turn their back on anything “secular.”  Then, they will turn towards not just religion but religion in its pure form – influenced by nothing except what is in the text of the Bible or the Koran.  We are ripe for a Dark Age.      

Leftists defending Islam is the height of hypocrisy.  On all fronts – in the areas of human rights, tolerance, reason, science, progress – Islam comes up consistently as one of the most evil scourges to have hit the face the earth.  It is not a religion of peace; it is a violent religion.  Wherever it rears its ugly head, it creates for oppression, tyranny, and a lowered standard of living.  A person who truly values reason, tolerance, and science would completely and unequivocally denounce Islam.  But leftists don’t.  Perhaps because they do not stand for any of those things.