Today in the Daily Beast, the leftwing website gives a platform to treacherous deceivers in service to the supremacist goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic imperialism. Hypocrisy and beastly lies.
"Pamela Geller's New Subway Ads" by Arsalan Iftikhar The Daily Beast Dec 12, 2012
Imagine how millions of peace-loving Christians would react if they saw a subway advertisement during their morning commute showing cherry-picked Bible quotes such as “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34) or "I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled" (Luke 12:49-51), trying to wrongfully portray Christianity as a religion of violence. I think it would be fair to say that most fair-minded Americans would be able to see right through the sinister veneer of these blatantly ridiculous advertisements. Now imagine that we are talking about Islam instead of Christianity.
Well, how would "millions of peace-loving Christians" feel? They would probably know that neither one of those verses is being taken by Christians today as a call to do violence to unbelievers. They would almost certainly know that there are no Christians anywhere in the world who are quoting New Testament (or Old Testament) verses to justify acts of violence against non-Christians. They would, if they were devout Christians, think back on what their priest or pastor might have said about such verses: that they were about putting Gd first and the divine judgment -- no Christian leaders say that these verses mean that Christians should take up arms against non-Christians.
Contrast that to the quran verse that Arsalan Iftikhar of Hamas-CAIR says is "cherry-picked": "Soon shall we strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers" (3:151). There have been over 20,o00 Islamic terror attacks around the world since 9/11 (how many Christian terror attacks in that span?). Each one had the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. Each one was justified by its perpetrators by this and other quran verses. If I am cherry-picking, so are the Muslims who are motivated by the quran to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims. But Arsalan Iftikhar, former National Legal Director of the Hamas-tied Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), doesn't have anything to say to them when they quote quran. He is only upset with me when I do.
Controversial anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller has just purchased new advertising space in several subway stations in the New York area so she can display her newest anti-Islam message. According to The New York Observer, Geller’s latest slate of anti-Islam ads seem to “feature a panorama of the sky the moment the World Trade Center burst into flames [on September 11], accompanied by a quote from the Quran that reads ‘Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.’” Geller is no stranger to Islamophobia.
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images
Geller is clearly trying to cherry-pick a verse of the Quran out of context in order to stoke anti-Muslim fears amongst ordinary Americans. First of all, her cherry-picked quote from Quran 3:151 above actually refers to the famous Battle of Badr, where the Prophet Muhammad had to defeat back attacking pagan Arab idolaters. Most importantly, this verse (and most other verses dealing with historical battles) refer to hostile pagan idolaters who attacked Muslims and they do not refer to Christians or Jews (who are referred to as “People of the Book” or Ahl Al-Kitab in Arabic) who all believe in the same monotheistic god of Abraham as Muslims believe.
This pseudo-analysis bamboozles many Americans, but think about it: Iftikhar, like many Islamic apologists, would have us believe that the quran's passages referring to warfare against unbelievers are limited to one long-gone historical context, and don't apply to modern times or modern non-Muslims. The obvious hole in this argument is that Muslims are using such verses to wage war against unbelievers today. And no Muslims are telling the Muslims who are waging jihad against unbelievers around the world today that the verses of the quran that they think command them to do so actually only refer to warfare against "hostile pagan idolaters" of the seventh century -- least of all is Hamas-CAIR's Arsalan Iftikhar telling them this.
Yet quran-quoting Muslims are bloody and violent today. Bible-quoting Christians are not. Robert Spencer explains why here. "Jenkins completely ignores the fact that it was Jewish and Christian principles involving the dignity of the human person as made in the image of God that led to the spiritualizing of violent passages... In Islam, by contrast, there is such a sharp dichotomy between the believer and the unbeliever (cf. Qur'an 48:29, which tells the Muslim to behave mercifully to fellow believers, but harshly to unbelievers), that the spiritualizing of violent Qur'anic passages has never taken place."Geller recently came to many Americans’ attention in September 2012 when she bought her first round of anti-Muslim subway ads which stated, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." The controversial advertisements were roundly condemned by most people around the country, including by prominent national Jewish organizations who were quick to call out her Islamophobia.
To those like Geller who think that Islam is more of an ‘inherently violent’ religion than other major world religions, Professor Philip Jenkins, author of the book Jesus Wars, once said during a March 2010 interview with National Public Radio (NPR) that, "By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane." He continued: "Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide." Professor Jenkins even went so far as saying during his March 2010 NPR interview that, "Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible."
But none of us should cherry-pick. Our holy books all have plenty of messages of tolerance, which we should use to help bring people together and not let fear-mongering bigots like Geller rip us apart as a nation.
Arsalan Iftikhar's hypocrisy is fully revealed in this. He denounces me, but never has a word to say about the real hate and violence emanating from Islamic jihadists. It is they he wants to enable.
The slaughter, Jew-hatred, ethnic cleansing, misogyny, child trafficking ...... is met with silence. Silence is sanction.
I didn't choose those quranic quotes, the jihadists did.
