Rauf: Dialogue or “Ecumenical Blather”?

Ibn Warraq has published the first of a two-part essay on the “multiple messages” which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf delivers with such disingenuousness. By now, who could miss the sad fact that the man lies like a prayer rug? He’s always flat out, and predictably the same:

Warraq says:

…On Sept. 30, 2001, 60 Minutes host Ed Bradley asked him if he thought the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks. Rauf replied, “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. . . . We have been an accessory to a lot of - of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, it - in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A.”

It is worth noting Rauf’s words carefully. The atrocity is characterized in the passive: “a crime that happened.” This allows Rauf to avoid stating that it was Islamists who committed it. In his book What’s Right with Islam, Rauf even objects to the term “Islamism” - one that was actually concocted to avoid indicting Islam directly - since, he argues, it falsely implies that Islam is the source of the militancy. [my emphasis -D]

We have seen massive evidence of the forked tongue imams need if they are going to talk to the mosque and talk to the public square. The messages for each are quite different.

That use of the passive voice - e.g., “lies were told” - is the mark of a deceiver. That’s why you’ll often hear politicians avoiding the active voice. Bill Clinton was a master of this art.

Islam is a political ideology. Thus imams must needs be politicians, not holy men. It is quite difficult for Westerners to keep this fact in mind when listening to Rauf or any of the other infamous imams. Would you believe a politician without fact-checking what he has to say? Islam’s religious leaders need the same careful scrutiny, the kind of observation which lines up their words and their deeds in order to see if they possess the congruity of truth…or the chaos of lies. All too often, for both the imam class and the political class, you find chaos. It’s simply the nature of both beasts.
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We need to recognize that our naïve propensity for laying the template of Christian minister or Jewish rabbi onto Islam’s imams is doing us harm. They are not men of integrity, at least not of Western integrity. In Islamic terms, their fundamental deceit when dealing with infidels does not invalidate their status as “holy men”. If anything these repeated fabrications (swallowed whole by the journolists) are a source of pride to their followers.

Warraq reminds us that the left is willing to be Rauf’s megaphone as he praises the thuggery of Iran:

…what Rauf wrote in the Huffington Post, soon after the rigged Iranian elections of June 12, 2009, is evidence that he is an admirer of the tyrannical theocracy in that country. After endorsing the “official results,” Rauf praised the 1979 revolution: “The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was in part to depose the shah, who had come to power in 1953 after a CIA-sponsored coup overthrew democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddeq. And in part it was an opportunity to craft an Islamic state with a legitimate ruler according to Shia political theory. . . . After the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took the Shiite concept of the Rightly Guided Imam and created the idea of Vilayet-i-faqih, which means the rule of the jurisprudent. This institutionalizes the Islamic rule of law. The Council of Guardians serves to ensure these principles.”

It is creepy that any human being possessed of a normal sense of decency, could look at the images coming out of Iran and be willing to serve as Rauf’s outlet for his praise of this “tyrannical theocracy”. Yet that is what the Huffington Post does.

You have to wonder at the psychological price paid by liars like Rauf. Even if it’s culturally acceptable or even encouraged by Islam, that doesn’t mean a predilection for deceit doesn’t harm one’s characterological integrity. But then there is so much in Islam that destroys those within its grip. This is a whole culture bent toward slaughter, physical and mental abuse of children, the degradation of women, etc., ad nauseam, ad infinitum, as prime manifestations of the ways by which they will convert the world to Allah.

Rauf’s defiant deceits are the least of it. Eventually, his grip on reality becomes even more slippery. Or rather, the Islamic view of reality veers further and further from the point of view of the rest of the world.

Read Ibn Warraq’s essay, especially the part about Rauf and Tehran; or Rauf’s failure to explain what vilayet-i-faqih means. If we are ever to overcome Islam, our victory will be based on a solid grasp of the jurisprudence of Sharia Law.

He has a grimly humorous anecdote:

Nearly ten years ago, I was the guest of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) of Rome. PISAI is dedicated to interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims. But as the director at the time said to me, “There is no real dialogue, since Muslims never reciprocate the goodwill gestures made by the Christians. The result is we sit down together, and the Christians say what a wonderful religion Islam is, and the Muslims say what a wonderful religion Islam is.”

Obama believes religiously in ‘dialogue’. This belief of his is dragging America under; it is one reason we need to vote him out when the time comes. America desperately needs a leader who bases his actions and judgments on reality, especially the reality of past behaviors.

We have accumulated 1,400 years of Islamic behaviors. That’s more than enough evidence to stop the stupidity.

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In more recent news, as if to back up Warraq’s thoughts, The New York Post has a new revelation:

A founding member of an organization run by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the driving force behind the planned mosque near Ground Zero, claims that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” and that Muslims have been made scapegoats, The Post has learned.

Faiz Khan -- who has preached at least twice at the former Burlington Coat Factory building, the site of the proposed mosque -- was for years Rauf’s partner in the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims, which is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of Islam.

Hey, we already have an excellent understanding of Islam. That’s why the prospects for Rauf’s Folly get dimmer by the week.