After interviewing Islamic scholar Kasem Khaleel on my show tonight, my hope faded even more that we'll see a short-term pathway to winning the Islamic heart and mind...
With 15 books under his belt on "the nature and history of Islam", Dr. Kasem Khaleel could have been expected to offer some reasoned responses to my questions on the pathological power of radical Islam to misshape young minds. I truly wanted to know what has happened in the bowels of a religion that could turn a soccer-loving young English born Muslim like Hasib Hussain into the fidgeting young man who detonated his backpack on the No. 30 bus in London last week. What I got instead was a lesson in the wholesale brainwashing that fuels radical Islam.See if you don't agree that Khaleel isn't one of the chief bottlewashers in the modern bleaching of innocent Islamic minds.
In response to my questions about the militant nature of Islam, I fielded the following salvos from Dr. Khaleel:
The London attacks were very possibly not the work of Muslims at all, but instead were a sham attack perpetrated by disguised Mossad agents from Israel, all done to discredit Islam. Uhhhh....
When pressed, he applied this same Zionist connection to the 9/11 slaughter, contending seriously that the entire world has been deceived by the Bush goverment on the facts. In reality, nine of the original hijackers are actually still alive and at large today. And of course, the presumption is that they are Israelis. And yes, he has proof of this. In fact, he seemed surprised that I hadn't heard about it. Guess that's cause I don't listen to talk radio that late at night, where that theory is sandwiched in between the alien abductions and the colon cleansing commercials.
If you go to the "Sayings of Mohammed", a book that is comparable to the Koran, the good doctor went on, you will find that taking the lives of others and running suicide missions is indeed outlawed by Islam. However, he was a little less than able to provide such a statement using the actual Koran.
When pressed to explain the statement of a prominent London mullah yesterday who said "There is no such thing as an "innocent civilian" in Islamic teaching. If you're not in the Family of Allah, then you're in the House of Death", he had no answer. I never even got around to the statements of Dutch filmmaker Van Gogh's confessed Muslim killer, who said this week that he'd slit the throat of the man again if he ever got the chance, because his religion orders him to do so. As for the slain man's mother, this killer turned to her in court and said he had no feeling for her, because she was an infidel. Nice...
We then shifted to world (or should I say weird) history, in which Dr. Khaleel instructed me that, even though Islam doesn't teach any of this killing, it is all perfectly understandable because of the Crusades, American colonialism, and consistent attacks on Muslims by Americans for many years. I see, we should excuse pathological killing today in the name of events that took place half a millennia ago? Mmmm. Who knew that terrorists had inner child frustrations that went back that far?
Finally, Dr. Khaleel assured me that all this killing would stop the moment that American forces left the Saudi peninsula and Israel gave up the Palestinian lands. Funny, all the thousands who have been exterminated this year in Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and other fun locales simply because they refused to convert to Islam might question that. They were being killed long before we ever got boots on the ground in the Gulf, and I have a feeling they would need to stay in hiding long after we ever left the Gulf.
After all, jihad isn't just an event, it's a way of life. Unfortunately.
Joe Pursch is heard nightly on AM 710 KFIA from 5-7PM PST, streamed live on the Internet at www.kfia.com.
You can contact him at realtalk@kfia.com.
