A German's View on Islam
Andrew Grigorenko
Andrew P. Grigorenko
President of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation
www.grigorenko.org
This is by far one of the best explanations of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His reference to past history is accurate and clear. Not long, easy to understand, and well worth the read. The author of this email is Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a well known and well respected psychiatrist.
A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.
My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and t o become suicide bombers. The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 30 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda which collapsed into butchery.800,000 Slaughted. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this and think about it, and send it on before it's too late.
Emanuel Tanay , MD
Wayne State University
Ann Arbor , Michigan
Sam Libkind
"And there was evening and there was morning. Then came Session. And the living envy the dead." The student's Bible.
Inci Bowman
There are several problems with this communication, “A German’s View on Islam.”
1. Its title is misleading, as it is not about Islam, the religion, but on Muslim fanatics or Islamic violence.
2. Many writers are eager to express their opinions on Islam, but they end up talking about Muslim terrorists, thus furthering prejudice against Islam. This piece by Dr. Tanay is another example of this trend that we often witness in the Western media.
3. It appears that this is a chain letter. One of the last sentences reads: “So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on!”
4. The author’s statement, “The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.” is unfounded, unwarranted and even false.
In the proper context, Islam is a religion practiced or adhered by about 1.5 billion people, second largest religion after Christianity. It is the fastest growing religion in the US and Europe, hence the understandable degree of anxiety felt in the West. There are more than 30 countries, where the Muslims are in the majority. Countries such as Turkey and Tunisia, with 99% Muslim population, are ruled by secular laws (not by the rules of Koran or Qu’ran). Arabs account for about 20% of the Muslims worldwide, and most Muslim terrorists have come unfortunately from the Arabic countries.
Inci Bowman, Ph.D.
Washington, DC
Pavel Litvinov
Halya Coynash
I was living in Moscow at the time of Beslan. Remember well the lies coming from the Kremlin, and listening avidly to any news from Radio Svoboda and Deutsche Welle. Remember the Mufti of the RF and others stating categorically, that those who fight with children’s lives were cowards, not warriors of any holy war. Zakaev had just said that he was prepared to come and negotiate when the mysterious explosion led to the storming of the school and death of 331 people, half of them children. I’m convinced that those who were assiduously pushing the idea that these were fanatics who would negotiate with no one, didn’t want those voices to be heard.