I viewed a video from Jihad Watch (http://tinyurl.com/34o5n2r) this a.m.
Pat Condell, a Brit, talking about the Ground Zero mosque, asked: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?"
Mr. Condell made a lot of good points, most of which have been made before. He, of course, has the (dis)advantage of living in England where Islam has made major inroads into the native culture.
One of the points he made was that Islam builds on top of the holy sites of people this "peaceful" religion conquers by the sword.
One such place that comes to mind is the abomination over Solomon's and Herod's Temple in Jerusalem.
Of course the Islamists don't want to build on top of the World Trade Center buildings they destroyed; they'll settle - and New York's Jewish mayor is working to assure this - for a 13or 14 story structure looking down on the site where the NYC landmarks stood; where some 3000 innocent people were murdered by Islamists.
But what I found equally interesting in Mr. Condell's little presentation was his remark that only Islam gains by the sword, by violence.
That's not quite true.
Of the three "western" religions, Judaism and its incorrigible children, Paulism and later Islam, only one, Judaism, never - repeat never - attacked other peoples with the intent to force any form of Judaism on them.
Even captive women, a recent Torah topic, were not forced to accept Judaism. There was no requirement that the woman convert to Judaism before her captor took her to wife or concubine. (Turns out the lack of that requirement proved the undoing of several Jewish kings.)
Israel had its wars of conquest; the wars were to control the land. It had other wars in defense of its borders and G-d-given land. It never - repeat never - had wars to gain converts; it nevere was "Judaism or the sword."
On the other hand, the Paulists give us the crusades in which many European Jews were massacred by "noble"men on their way to wrest the holy land from the infidels (this time, "infidel"="Moslem").
The Paulists also gave us the inquisition and the auto de fe.
And pogroms.
Anytime someone sneezed in Europe, "the Jews caused it; kill them."
At their spring holiday, when their god allegedly "rose from the dead," the Paulists would go on a rampage, claiming we - not the Romans - killed their savior who, according to their own legend, had to die for their sins. (Since when do gods die?)
Actually, the Muslims treated Jews, and Paulists, a little better.
We were - are - second class citizens with many restrictions on commerce and in legal matters in lands controlled by the Islamists. The Moslems inherited the legal handicaps from Jewish law. Even some of the punishment the Islamists use even to this day, stoning and lashes as examples, the borrowed from Judaism; the only difference is those punishments were long ago discarded and remain, even in modern Israel, only historical facts never to be practiced again.
Still, for many - including a few Jews and Paulists, some Moslem fanatics offered only the choice of "Islam or the sword."
While the Paulists gave us the holocaust in Europe - if you are honest, you must admit many - most - that good Paulists of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, et al, ran to murder us as individuals and in groups - synagogues turned into funeral pyres for too many Jews. There were, to be fair, some - a few - Paulists who helped us; and some appeared to help our children by hiding them . . . and then forcing the children into their belief.
While the nazis laid waste to European Judaism, the Moslems were having pogroms of their own - in North Africa, in Iran and Iraq - throughout the middle east.
About the only safe haven for a Jew was the far east - India, China, and Japan. There was no safe haven in the U.S.; despite thousands of acres of empty land, the U.S. congress and president denied entry to those few Jews who managed to escape. Of course now the U.S. welcomes illegal immigrants and gives them benefits many of its own citizens lack (but pay for). This situation, by the way, can be laid at the feet of both parties.
It may come as an unwanted surprise to Mr. Condell, but his coreligionist are as guilty of "Jewicide" - not genocide, since it is targeted largely at us * - as the Islamists who are taking over Europe and making inroads into the Orient.
Mr. Condell makes many good points, including a few he perhaps did not intend.
* Moslems also, of course, are murdering Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, and animists in Africa; Paulists explorers managed to decimate or entirely eliminate, either by disease or sword, numbers of indigenous peoples "for the glory of the cross."
Yohanon.Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com
