MOST MUSLIMS ARE PEACEFUL PEOPLE
MOST MUSLIMS ARE PEACEFUL PEOPLE:
BUT SO WERE MOST GERMANS,
JAPANESE, RUSSIANS, AND CHINESE
By
Ken Eliasberg
What I love about the Examiner is its very open-minded approach to debate; it is always ready to entertain views from either side of the aisle, no matter their nature or the energy with which they are expressed. That is why I was so surprised when a letter from a Mr.Michael Canzano, questioning the peaceful nature of Islam, elicited such a heated response. I believe that what Mr. Canzano was expressing was a view that, while objectionable to some, is one that is widely held by others. That view does not so much attack peaceful Muslims as it does raise the question that I raised in my May 18, 2006 column entitled The Silent Muslim Majority – Where’s The Outrage?. An email that I received from a friend takes the question one step further by pointing out that their peaceful nature is irrelevant if they do nothing to reign in their not-so-peaceful brothers and sisters. I reprint that email here because I believe it bears fundamentally on our current problem with Radical Islam.
“A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned
a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis he said, but many enjoyed the return of
German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’
We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the ‘peaceful majority’ – the ‘silent majority’ is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
China’s huge population, it was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?
History lessons are often incredibly simple but blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence!
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, at the risk of offending anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, [he] can contribute to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand.”
Now, you may not agree with the views of the author of this email, but not only do I agree with them, I feel it would be suicidal not to pay heed to the message contained therein. Which was the same message that I was trying to impart in my 2006 column, and, in my opinion, the message that Mr. Canzano was trying to impart. And that is, again in my opinion, that the only thing that can really bring Radical Islam to heel are numerous, significant and forceful acts (not just words) of disapproval by the non radical forces of Islam. These fanatics must get the clear message that their bretheren strongly disapprove of their acts, and regard those acts as the hijacking of this allegedly peaceful religion. Also, and directly to Mr. Canzano’s point, such acts are the only gestures that will lend credibility to an increasingly disbelieving number of non Muslims that Islam is indeed a religion of peace.
Now, I realize that fear may be a weighty factor in silencing peaceful Muslims, to which I respond by reminding the reader of Burke’s famous statement that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Regarding Mr. Canzano’s letter I feel that it expresses a view that reflects the legitimate thinking of many U.S. citizens, and we cannot allow political correctness to sweep existential concerns under the carpet, no matter how heavily the expression of those concerns weighs on the delicate sensibilities of some of our readers. Please don’t misunderstand, I am not objecting to the expression of the views of some of our outraged readers over Mr. Canzano’s views; what I am objecting to is any effort to silence Mr. Canzano, who is obviously a passionate and concerned citizen.
In conclusion, Islam may indeed be a religion of peace, but until all those peaceful Muslims do something to and about those not so-peaceful Muslims who are allegedly hijacking their peaceful religion, you’ll forgive me if I harbor just a touch of skepticism, and, as a consequence, completely understand the skepticism of Mr. Canzano.
Again, the beauty of the Examiner is that it provides an outlet for free expression, and “free” means that, while you may not like a given expression, that does not give you the right to silence it. Besides, societies do not perish over a heated exchange of views; they perish when its citizenry is either too ignorant or apathetic to have a view, let alone the courage to express it.