A debate at the Oxford Student Union over the question of whether the West "is right to be suspicious of Islam" was aired over the weekend, showing two sides, the Islamic side and the Western side, battling for the souls of our nations. The question is if Islam is compatible with Western values. It is not. One student claimed, with a straight face, that Islamic terrorists are not Muslim because Islam is a non-violent religion and the Quran calls for peace.
The arguments made by Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, and Jonathan Sacerdoti show that Islamic ideals in the West are something of an invasive species, gaining a foothold, seemingly innocuous at first, and then destroying everything that was there before it. And in fact, that is the goal of Islam. Iran's former Ayatollah Khamenei has said jihad is a must, and the Quran offers a roadmap.
The first step directs peace with non-Muslims only until such time as they have the resources to conquer. Even the use of the victim status is a ploy to gain trust and a privileged status. The next stage of jihad is defensive, fighting non-believers who pose a threat to Islam. That is where we are in this Oxford Student Union debate. After that is stage three: control of government, going on offense.
The defenders of the West, dare I say Christendom, were invited by the Oxford Student Union leaders, three Muslims to hash out the proposition. As Aisha Khan Aziz spoke to the defenders of the West, she noted with some enthusiasm that a mob outside would tear the men limb from limb if it weren't for the security so generously provided by the Muslim leaders of the debate event, even after she proclaimed that Islam is not a religion of violence. The students then applauded the power of the mob and the generosity of Aziz to have provided security so that the crowd outside couldn't hurt their invited guests. Fox later noted that he'd brought his own security.
"There is a crowd outside rioting against you tonight, and without the protection and generosity of a Muslim Palestinian president and a mostly South Asian executive committee, you would be quite literally cooked," she told Tommy Robinson.
The concept of debate is for a flow of ideas, the notion is that among reasonable men (yes, yes, and women too), any idea can be discussed in a non-adversarial way. A debate is meant to be impersonal, winners and losers decided on the merits of presented arguments, not emotions or feelings. Yet, while the men—and this time I do mean men—who were defending the West made their points calmly and clearly, the women of the pro-Islamist side were manipulative and uninformed.
Fox threatened to show a cartoon of the revered Prophet Muhammad, the same cartoon that was printed by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, causing Islamists to massacre 12 staff members in the magazine's own offices. Muhammad, as any British schoolteacher can tell you, does not like his face to be shown and demands murderous vengeance in return.
"We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!" Said the Muslim terrorist brothers during a gunfight with French police in which they lost their lives. In the aftermath of the attack, even as news outlets across the West reported on the story, they did not publish the graphic. The right thing to do would have been for every single paper in the entire West to publish the graphic on the front page. They did not. We have not. The short reason why is that we don't want to get hunted down and murdered by these insane people.
They were afraid. So too was the Oxford Student Union when Fox threatened to pull the cartoon out of a brown, paper envelope, and show it to the assembled and to cameras. When he finally did reveal the cartoon, it was of someone else entirely, not Muhammad. He, too, did not show it. The room, however, had been terrified that he would. "The West should resist Islam on the strongest possible terms on the grounds of free speech alone," Fox said, and he's not wrong.
When Muslim student Arwa Elrayes argued before the Oxford Student Union that the West should have no suspicion of Islam she made the oddest possible argument, saying that those who kill in the name of her god are not actually Muslim and that their greatest book doesn't say anything really violent. She's saying those who behead and murder people while screaming "Allahu Akbar" are not Muslim. She doesn't say what they really are, though, or why there are so many of them or why they all claim to kill in the name of her peaceful religion, or why martyrdom and jihad are so revered among her people.
"The people who behead, the people who wage wars, the people who wage wars, the people who attack and the people who stone and behead—these people are not followers of Islam," Elrayes said. She said that terrorists only "claim to believe in Islam and then misrepesent and denegrate our religion."
Jonathan Sacerdoti brilliantly contradicted her point, showing just how stupid and foolish a sentiment it was. He said that terrorists who slaughter in the name of Allah are in direct opposition to the traditions of "defiant liberty and fearless truth telling" that characterize the west and so is the religion that inspired them. He walked through just some of the Islamist extremist terror attacks that have happened in the US, UK and Europe since the 1990s.
"I am motivated by love," Sacerdoti said. "Love for freedom, love for life, love for debate, for discussion. Love for the West. The West is a civilization of defiant liberty and fearless truth-telling."
Elrayes demanded Sacerdoti provide examples from Muslim scripture as to where terrorist actions were justified. Sacerdoti said the quotes from the men themselves show clearly their allegiance to Islam. He showed that the slow boil of a society in the Islamic pot is part of the dictates of Islam, revealed that the Islamic plan to take over the West slowly and from the inside out. "Islam doesn't only attack with bombs, sometimes it uses our own freedoms and our own lands and our own institutions against us."
And isn't that the problem? We in the West hold so true to our ideals that we extend them to everyone, even those who hate us. We embrace right of free speech, freedom of religion, a free press for all and have this notion that these values are not only key to a strong and vibrant society but that those exposed to them will want them for their own. It did not occur to us that the barbarians at the gates would take and use our freedoms to bring in their opposing ideas and destroy our way of life.
This article was originally published in Libby Emmons' newsletter. You can subscribe here.
