The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Metaphorical

I have, for some time now, suggested that it's the responsibility of the broader Muslim community and Muslim leaders to unequivocably reject the Islamists in their midst. To do this, Muslims must reform their religion (as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi suggested) so that violence and intolerance are banished from it, and recognize that if they refuse to do this, they will, over time, become enemies of the West.

Now, another Muslim leader is speaking out in terms that are considerably less than delicate. The U.K. Daily Mail reports:
Labour politician Ahmed Aboutaleb, a former journalist who was appointed mayor of the Dutch city [of Rotterdam] in 2008, is known for his straightforward stance on integration.

The 53-year-old won the praise of London-mayor Boris Johnson over his comments last week attacking fellow Muslims who move to Western nations but refuse to accept the Western way of life.

'It is incomprehensible that you can turn against freedom,' Mayor Aboutaleb told Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur (Newshour).

'But if you don't like freedom, for heaven's sake pack your bags and leave.

'If you do not like it here because some humorists you don't like are making a newspaper, may I then say you can f*** off.

'This is stupid, this so incomprehensible. Vanish from the Netherlands if you cannot find your place here. All those well-meaning Muslims here will now be stared at'.

Mayor Aboutaleb grew up the son of an imam in northern Morocco, but moved to the Netherlands in 1976 ...

This week, London Mayor Boris Johnson hailed Mayor Aboutaleb as his 'hero' and 'straight to the point'.

'That is the voice of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire,' Mr Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

'If we are going to win the struggle for the minds of these young people, then that is the kind of voice we need to hear - and it needs above all to be a Muslim voice.'

It's time for Western leaders to state the same thing. It's time to stop hiding behind the cloak of multi-culturalism and diversity. Both are commendable concepts in the abstract, but exceptionally destructive when they are used to protect violent Islamists in our midst. Our leaders must state, honestly and forcefully, exactly what Ahmed Aboutaleb said. It's time to demand—not ask—that the Muslim community in Western countries do more to help eradicate radical Islam in the West and the violence, murder, and terror it foments.

In a metaphorical sense, its 1934. The Nazis have begun their March. Their apologists have circled the wagons, telling us that the 'Nazi's will stop if we give them what they want, or that they will change, or moderate, or disappear. They didn't.

Radical Islam is the 21st century version of Nazism. With it's rabid intolerance, its demands for submission, it virulent anti-Semitism,—the comparison is frighteningly similar. Appeasement didn't work in 1934 and it will not work today.

If Radical Islam is not stopped soon, millions will die. Just like they did in the 1940s.

To stop radical Islam, the broader Islamic community itself must take the lead. If it refuses, it will be recognized as antithetical to every value that defines the West, and the West must act accordingly.