Honor among psychopaths

A news broadcast, now posted on NewsOK.com, has reported a disturbing example of one of the problems with Islam. A Muslim man in Tulsa Oklahoma named Jamal Miftah decided he had finally had enough after seeing yet another Al Qaeda video calling for jihad. He wrote a column, published in the Tulsa World on October 29, describing his anger and sadness over what people like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden have done in the name of Islam. There's a copy of it here, accompanying a blog on westernresistance.com that discusses the incident. Mr. Miftah calls these terrorists what they are, cowards and criminals, and berates them for taking advantage of Muslim youth for their heinous acts of violence. He begs Muslims around the world to take back their religion and earn back the right to claim it as a religion of peace. You would think that the other members of his mosque would receive this column with praise, and relief that someone had finally said it. That's assuming of course that any of them actually agreed with him.

Apparently they don't. They accused him of betraying his faith and told him that he is no longer welcome at the mosque. They even threatened him. He was told that the only way he would be allowed back is by retracting his column and apologizing for insulting fellow Muslims. And thus we are brought to one of the most fundamental problems with Islam. Their warped concept of honor.

The aforementioned blog on this topic informed me of something I was not previously aware of. Muslims have a concept called takfeer. Takfeer is the act of condemning the actions or beliefs of another Muslim, and it is not taken lightly. Only senior clerics are permitted to do so. They are taught that a Muslim who criticizes another Muslim in front of non-believers will be punished for it on the day of judgement. This is one of the reasons that so many Muslims may be afraid to denounce terrorists. It's not so much that they're afraid of being targeted by them, though they probably are. They are afraid of dishonoring their religion and being made to pay for it after death. That's why so many Muslims will say that they condemn acts of terrorism, or groups like Al Qaeda, but never mention any of the perpetrators by name. It's why some Muslims who may in fact be horrified by the senseless violence committed in the name of Islam will still describe Osama bin Laden as a good Muslim.

This concept of takfeer meshes rather seamlessly with other Islamic ideas about honor. The Pope cited a long dead emperor's quote describing Islam as a violent and irrational religion, and Muslims around the world immediately proved him right by rioting, burning churches, killing westerners and Christians, and chanting about the impending destruction of the infidels. The reason they reacted like this is because the Muslim sense of honor demands revenge for any insult. "How dare you call us violent, we'll kill you for that!" The controversial Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad with a bomb in his turban sparked similar reactions. Revenge killings are still commonplace in most Islamic countries, and the authorities turn a blind eye. Someone insults the honor of another, and the entire clan of the offended party will raid the home of the person who insulted their kin. I recall reading about one such incident in Iraq where all the men in the house were shot, all the boys were hanged, and then all the women and even a girl as young as 8 years old were gang raped. Why? Because it was the honorable thing to do. There's an article on FrontPageMagazine.com that provides chilling examples of gang rape being a sanctioned and legally protected method of punishment for young women and even prepubescent girls who are found guilty of dishonoring their family. Even in European countries Muslims and their entire families have been murdered after doing something that offended the local Muslim community. I pray such a thing does not happen to Mr. Miftah and his family.

Christianity is a religion based on the pursuit of truth and goodness. Embarrassment or saving face doesn't factor into it. If a Christian does something horrible, Christians are the first to condemn them. By name. Christian radicals that have bombed abortion clinics are shunned by the rest of their faith, as their community apologizes for the behavior of one of its own. Islam is much more concerned with looking good than actually being good. It doesn't matter if what your fellow Muslims are doing is despicable, you support them because they're Muslim. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they get along so well with liberals.

Mr. Miftah is a courageous man. Unfortunately he also seems to be one in a million Muslims who loves truth more than honor. Even if the vast majority of Muslims disagree with the radicals of their faith (and I'm not convinced they do), even if they're horrified by the bombings and the executions, even if they want it to stop, the fact that they refuse to actually do or even say anything about it calls into question where their loyalties really lie. If it came down to a choice between supporting or even joining Muslim radicals, or siding with America to put down the vile beasts threatening the rest of humanity, which would they choose? If we get close to crushing radical Islam, or if we are again forced to invade or even destroy an Islamic nation, will the "moderate" Muslims still be on our side? If they can't even insult a fellow Muslim, how can we expect them to sit quietly while we exterminate the darker side of their religion? I think we should be prepared for the distinct possibility of Muslims rising up en masse to blindly "defend" their faith.

On a side note, I went to the website of Tulsa World, the paper that originally published Mr. Miftah's column. All that remains is one reader comment on the column. The link to it now leads to an expired page. The column is nowhere to be found on the entire site. It's not even in the archives. I'm curious to know the exact reasons for the removal of the column.