I am reminded of the “how to boil a frog” story. You don’t throw the frog in the boiling water since he will get burned but will jump out before he is boiled. Instead you put him in comfortable room temperature water and just turn up the heat a degree at a time until he sleeps through his boiling.
The description below is a clear, concise display of history that shows how we are being boiled right now. It was written as an opinion piece by Paul E. Marek in March of 2007 (though it has been attributed to Dr. Emanuel Tanay). I think it is as true today as it was then, if not more so.
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 specter 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 honour-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 to 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 20 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 warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across Southeast 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. 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.
Do you agree?
2 comments
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November 22, 2010 at 11:51 pm
pmv
To me this article’s thesis doesn’t make sense. Because ordinary Muslims didn’t fight the radicals enough, they no longer matter and must be purged from society? Why? What is wrong with peaceful Islam? Can’t we fight radical Islam without fighting peaceful Islam? Don’t we fight radical environmentalism without fighting peaceful environmentalism? What possible reason can there be to persecute peaceful Muslims other than racism or xenophobia?
November 23, 2010 at 8:59 am
ttoes
Thanks, PMV, for the comment. Your point is interesting, but I think misses the point of the article. What I got from it (and you saw it differently) is that by remaining silent and not opposing the fringe, radical element of their society, the peaceful (complacent?) members of the society will become part of the fringe and therefore, the enemy. Whether they be the Germans who did not speak up against the Nazi atrocities or the Muslims who do nothing about the radicals who have taken over Iran, in the end, they become tools of the radicals and thus enemies. I don’t think he was saying that peaceful muslims are our enemy, just that their inaction will lead to them becomes such. I think he says that either you take action against the atrocities or you are as good as those who commit them. I think the Nazi example is a good one.