Friday, May 1, 2015

'Do the Muslims Love Their Children Too?' — Reapplying Sting’s Cold War anthem to a new war

In Europe and America, 
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria…
. . . But what may save us, me and you,
Is if the [Muslims] love their children too.

—Adapted from ‘Russians’, by Sting, 1985.





By Ralph H. Sidway


The Islamic State's Poster Child
June 1 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of Sting’s solo career with his critically acclaimed, jazz inflected hit album, Dream Of The Blue Turtles. Included on this radical departure from the musical stylings of Sting’s former band, The Police, was the sobering meditation, Russians. (Complete lyrics here. Watch his live performance at the 1986 Grammys here.)

Although I disagree with some of Sting’s political sensibilities (after all, Reagan won the Cold War), his use of a simple, rhetorical question was most compelling. (Of course, the Russians love their children!) 

In any case, today, thirty years after Russians was released, we seem to have entered into a new phase of a different war, a very, very old war, with ominous clouds on the horizon. 

Ours is a time of fitful contradictions and spasms of policy incoherence, as the United States, the UK, and the West vacillate between outright denial of the threat of Islam, and ill advised alliances with the very forces seeking to destroy us. Sorely lacking is a clear-headed appraisal of and strategy to meet the mortal threat posed by a globally emboldened, militant Islam, which, after fourteen hundred years, is once again 100% determined to conquer us, through immigration, birth rates, lawfare, politics, stealth, and conversion when necessary, by terrorism wherever possible, and by open warfare whenever the odds are in their favor. 

No doubt you’ve seen the projections: England will be a Muslim majority country in a couple of decades. Europe too. The growth of Muslim populations in major European cities has led to sharia “no-go zones,” where police seldom venture, and from where Muslim youths routinely riot over the slightest offense. Last Spring it was Sweden which burned. In 2005, the outskirts of Paris. This year (so far) it’s Denmark


Generational Assimilation among Western Muslims?

We were told that multiculturalism was the way of the future in England, Europe, Canada and America. That any mild inconveniences experienced because of new (Muslim) immigrants having difficulties adjusting to Western paradigms would smooth away as their children grew to maturity, adopting wholeheartedly the Western worldview of prosperity, freedom, tolerance and congeniality.

Rather, the reverse seems to be happening, as numerous reports indicate second and third generation Muslim immigrants are committing far more crimes (218% more in Denmark) and are far more inclined to join the global jihad in Syria than their supposedly less-acclimated parents. There are whole French and German-speaking units in ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the most bloodthirsty jihadist faction among the Syrian “rebels”) made up primarily of second and third generation descendants of Arab immigrants and Muslim converts.


There are reports, too, of whole Muslim families joining the jihad, as in the case of a British Muslim father who took his five sons across Europe and Turkey in order to wage jihad with them in Syria. 

The Muslim Dad from the UK: Proud of his Jihadi Sons.

Problems within Muslim Culture?

Doesn’t this reveal something about Islamic culture, the message being propagated via mosques, books, videos, and, of course, through core Islamic texts, including the Quran, the Hadiths and the Sira?  Devotion to the example of Muhammad’s victories in battle, the all important Muslim self-image of Islamic superiority over all other religions, supposedly proven by its conquering of the Byzantine Christian Empire in 1453 (celebrated annually by “secular” Turkey), coupled with disdain for the lax and soft European, British and American cultures, breeds contempt for the West and a sense of rightful entitlement.

And that’s just the West.


Media Watch Groups report on Global Muslim views

There are shocking video reports out of the Middle East of Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian TV programs and videos geared expressly towards children, which portrays Christians and Jews as sub-human, openly calling for their slaughter, and prepping Muslim children for suicide operations. A quick list of examples follows.

The Next Jihadi-Generation.

Syria

Pakistan

Palestinian Children's TV Show.

Hamas trains children and teens to be suicide martyrs, kill Jews —
After seeing how the Islamist terror group had appropriated her father’s work to encourage genocidal hatred, Diana Disney Miller – daughter of Walt Disney – voiced her disgust to the New York Daily News:  
‘Indoctrinating children like this, teaching them to be evil. The world loves children and this is just going against the grain of humanity… What we’re dealing with here is pure evil’.



What would Bugs Bunny do?

Egypt — 

Hamas Teen Camp

Palestinian Authority — 

Lebanon —

Dagestan — 

  • In the Muslim homeland of the Boston Marathon jihad murderers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, children are imitating their parents by filming their own jihad videos.


The Global Muslim Village:
“Unborn Martyrs” being Prepared to wage Jihad

Hillary Clinton famously wrote, “It takes a village,” yet there seems to be a significant and growing movement within the global Muslim village, which raises its children on a steady diet of hatred of non-Muslims coupled with an eagerness to “slay and be slain” (Quran 9:111), so as to gain Allah’s favor and inherit paradise. This Islamic indoctrination into a culture of death and murder begins in utero, as seen in this video example from the 2012 Muslim Day Parade in New York City, where one woman, an official speaker for the event, exclaimed “We have the unborn martyrs in our wombs.”


FGM, Child Marriage, and Honor Killings

Female Genital Mutilation

These are merely some representative examples of the impetus to jihad, death and murder in Islamic culture. Time and space do not allow us to cite the pervasive Muslim practices of female genital mutilation, child marriage, and honor killings, all codified in Islamic scriptures and law.

The situation of Muslim girls is perhaps the most dire of any segment of the global population, with the probable exception of Christian girls in Islamic countries such as Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Nigeria, where incidents of rape, abductions for ransom, and forced conversions are widespread. 


The Same Biology?

Sting’s repeating thought in Russians is the secular/scientific call for peace:

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology...


Clever rhyme, which both Christian and atheist could find at least some solace in. Religious or secular, one can pretty much acknowledge the innate human impulse to life, to live life, and to wish to hand down to one’s children the opportunity to live their life, and enable the same for others. America is founded on the belief that all people are entitled to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yet it seems there is a frighteningly powerful counter-impulse permeating and afflicting the Muslim world. In Islam, death has both practical purpose and divine sanction. The life of a non-Muslim is not sacred, as elaborate religious laws make clear in prescribing penalties for murder. And there is no penalty for a parent, grandparent, sibling or close relative for the killing of a Muslim woman or child who is perceived as bringing shame upon the family (the Muslim phenomenon of honor killings). Similarly, a Muslim apostate may be killed by any member of the umma without penalty; they are discharging Allah’s judgment.

The indoctrination of each successive generation of children in Muslim cultures to hate the infidel, prepare for warfare, bloodshed, murder and suicide missions, offers little hope for the world. To an indoctrinated Muslim, the kuffar are unclean, even sub-human. We only “share the same biology” if we embrace the Islamic ideology.  Biology alone is not a universal standard in Islam.


Do the Muslims love their children too?

Perhaps I’m not alone in approaching this question in a non-rhetorical manner. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently dared to tackle the subject quite a bit more directly (albeit without mentioning children), urging an international alliance against Islamism, and defining it as “the greatest threat facing the world today.” 

But could an alliance of non-Muslim nations expect to roll back fourteen centuries of entrenched Islamic culture based on unalterable sacred scripture, which makes hatred of the infidel and the slaughter of Christians and Jews permissible, even obligatory? 

As we ponder the failure of the West to assimilate and rehabilitate second and third generation Muslim immigrants, as they riot and become career criminals at home, or run off to join the jihad in Syria or wherever, breathlessly eager to bring the jihad back to America, Canada, Britain and Europe to advance the worldwide caliphate, the answer to Sting’s once rhetorical question seems neither pleasant nor hopeful.

But what may save us, me and you, Is if the Muslims love their children too.

Whether the Muslims love their children or not may be a secondary question. Perhaps the more important question is the one we must ask of ourselves: 

But what may save us, in the end, Is if we love our children, enough to defend.


A Christian Coda

Sting’s undeniable talent and literate songwriting aside (he was a school teacher, after all — remember ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’?), we require something of a Christian “coda” to our considerations here. 

The very question of “what may save us” violates Christian ontology, namely, that we are saved through union with and growing in the likeness of Jesus Christ, not through any “political solution,” and certainly not as a function of what any outside group may do or say, whether the Soviets or the Muslims.


The Pre-Incarnate Word creates Man in His Own Image.

Secondly, we are not saved so much from some external threat, whether the Soviets, the Islamists, or the devil himself. But rather, far more importantly, we are saved for something much higher, the lofty calling of humankind hinted at in Genesis with the creation of man “in the image of God,” fulfilled in the incarnation and voluntary suffering, death and resurrection of the Word of God Jesus Christ, and to be fully actualized at His Second Coming, when His faithful ones will share in His glory.

So, given such ultimate questions, we must admit that this article serves merely as a “hook,” a device to catch the reader’s imagination and pose a provocative question. But we must apply the question not only to Muslims, but to our own children.

Do we love them? If we do, then we should be raising them in the ways of the Lord: to pray, to believe, to hope, to strive, to forgive and to love. 


To follow Christ is to carry our cross.

If we love our children, we ought to raise them in the likeness of Jesus Christ, of His most pure Mother, and of the saints. But to do that, we must be growing in that likeness ourselves.

This is our calling, and our answer to every question posed to us. Everything else is a distraction. 

As the Apostle and Evangelist John wrote in his letter, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 JN 5:21).