Recently I shared an article, since link-rotted, discussing the 72 virgins promised jihadis, with some fellow West Point Parents. Among several responses, I received this one:
As a Muslim I find the joke about the virgins and Allah distasteful. Also, this article seems to paint a very rosy picture of what is happening in Iraq. REMEMBER, almost 1500 of our young men and women have died in this war to find weapons of mass destruction. Besides, is the forum appropriate to post personal political views?
Sorry, 1500 sacrificed lives do not lighten my spirit or cheer my heart.
I made this reply:
You are an American Citizen or a Legal Immigrant residing in the United States of America. Your son is preparing to serve this Nation called United States of America as an Officer in our United States Army. You came to this nation because you found here or anticipated you would find here something you did not or could not have found or achieved in your nation of birth. This nation is a structure of religion, culture and morality, the three functions of man’s spirit, that is both varied and united in loyalty to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Your son took an oath to defend and protect that Constitution. Muslim, Christian, Hindu, etc. has nothing to do with that. Everyone finds certain things distasteful in this nation. Everyone has to forebear what is distasteful unless it becomes illegal, in which case there are well-known and protected avenues of redress available to all citizens and other persons legally residing in this nation.
I am not impressed by your finding anything distasteful as a Muslim, no more than I expect you to be impressed by anything I find distasteful as a Hindu. Islam has the same validity that the other four of man’s great religions have. It is on an equal playing field with these others and whether one espouses loyalty to this religion or that is a matter of destiny and freedom and as such fraught with the ambiguities of existence. Islam is no more an absolute than anything is. The five great religions of man themselves are ambiguous. They bring good and they occasion evil. Islam brings nothing to the enterprise of humanity and history that was not already long present before it arrived. Islam has nothing now or futurely to contribute to the enterprise of humanity and history that the other four great religions of man do not have and do as well.
Therefore, being a Muslim does not impress me any more than being a Christian, etc. does. So what? In this nation those tags are private and respected but not trumps on any private or any public aspect of life. Muslim leadership which lives in this nation or seeks to exercise influence in it is obliged to grasp this fact and live it cheerfully without reservation or ulterior goal. For example, to expect this nation eventually to come under the rule of shariah, mullahs, ayatollahs and/or imams is seditious and will be dealt with accordingly. Many Muslims in this nation harbor just that agenda and it is known that they do. It is easy to recognize who they are. It is a stupid and forlorn agenda that will be met with the legal sanction it deserves.
There is nothing special about Islam and in this nation there is now and never will be any deference to Muslims because they are Muslims any more than there is now nor ever will be any deference to Hindus because they are Hindus or Christians because they are Christians, etc. The other two great religions of man, standing shoulder to shoulder in validity beside Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, are Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.
Religion and culture, along with morality, are functions of man’s spirit, and they influence one another profoundly, but they are not the same functions, nor is one positioned to trump another. People from Muslim countries have been flooding to Western Democratic Nations for the very reason that in these Nations these three functions of man’s spirit are encouraged to be robust, creative and synergistic but not hegemonistic, as the function of religion is allowed to be, often to the near exclusion of the functions of culture and morality, in many regions and nations most of whose citizens espouse Islam.
The Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not wars. They are Operations inside a war, the War on Terrorism, which I characterize as the War against Caliphism. It is not a religious war. There never has been and never will be a religious war. Islam, like the other four great religions of man, is salutary, never war-like. No religion is war-like, never has been and never will be.
Wars are caused by one or more of three desires: desire for wealth, desire for dominion, desire for women. Caliphism is caused by desire for women, specifically desire to maintain and extend to the entire globe Arab and African misogynistic customs, which include homosexuality. Religion has nothing to do with this and as a Muslim one expects you to be as cheered to have harbingers of its defeat as one expects every religious person to be. No religion supports misogyny, much less war to maintain and expand it.
The defeat of this desire on a field of humanity’s choosing is the subject of the news article I forwarded yesterday to our parents’ clubs.
Your reference to WMDs is credulous. The situation in regard to WMDs in Iraq and elsewhere (!) is significantly other than you take it to be and the lineaments of it one is not going to learn from news media of any nation. Some careful examination is recommended on this matter before one commits to statements regarding it.
I want to congratulate you and your family on having a son at West Point. I hope you will respect and support the Constitution of the United States of America, and all that that implies, as your son has sworn to do on the Plain at West Point. And I hope you will not expect Islam or your being a Muslim to trump that Constitution, and all that it implies, in any matter whatsoever.
AMDG
