MORON.
By Andrew C McCarthy
A Muslim repeatedly screams “Allahu
Akbar!” while shooting down a plane. Sounds like a violent jihadist, right?
Heavens no, replies John McCain — it’s a . . . “moderate!”
Andrew has the report.
Discussing a member of the Syrian mujahideen shooting a plane out of the
sky, Senator McCain told the Fox & Friends crew this morning
that the jihadist’s cries of “Allahu Akbar!” — echoing jihad
mass-murderer Nidal Hassan, to take one of innumerable examples — were
really no different from “an American Christian saying, ‘Thank God, thank
God.’”
Well, an Egyptian official recently described McCain’s
judgment as “moronic,” and it seems the senator is hell-bent on proving him
right.
I discussed the phrase in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy:
As
it has demonstrated in each “Arab Spring” venue, the Muslim Brotherhood remains
the ummah’s most significant organization. It still proclaims unabashedly it’s
90-year-old motto: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The
Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest
hope. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” The motto’s coda is not just
rote chanting. Allahu akbar!, which also serves as the chillingly
familiar exclamation of Muslim terrorists, is commonly translated as “God is
greatest!” But that’s not exactly right. It literally means, “Allah is greater!”
– the greater God, the mightier, more fearsome power. It is a comparative,
ubiquitously invoked by a civilization that sees itself surrounded by hostile
forces, forever competing for dominance.
Allahu
Akbar! is not about
expressing gratitude — Arabic-speaking Muslims have other phrases for that. Allahu
Akbar! attaches comfortably to acts of aggression because Islamic
supremacists see themselves in a fight to the finish that they expect to win
because Allah, in their minds, is greater than their adversaries. It is about
conquest.
Andy Bostom alerts me to this
helpful entry on the phrase from WikiIslam. It
explains the comparative sense this way:
Lane’s
Lexicon, the most revered and scholarly dictionary of the Arabic language,
confirms the majority view is that “Allahu Akbar” refers to Allah being “greater”.
Unlike in its early years, so does Wikipedia,
stating the phrase literally means “God is greater”. But is usually translated
“God is [the] Greatest,” or “God is Great”.[6] Similarly,
Pierre Tristam, the Lebanese-American About.com Guide
states, although most often translated as “god is great,” Allahu Akbar is
Arabic for “god is greater,” or “god is greatest.”[7] Many news sources and other web resources
are now also beginning to use the more correct translation.
It then moves on to the historical
significance of the phrase, which — as in most things Islamic — traces to
Mohammed, Islam’s warrior prophet:
“Allahu
Akbar” has been used historically by Muslims as a battle cry during war.[1] This precedent was set by Prophet Muhammad
when he attacked the Jews of Khaibar.
In the following sahih hadith, you can see the phrase has been
translated correctly into English by Muslims:
Narrated
Anas: The Prophet set out for Khaibar and reached it at night. He used not to
attack if he reached the people at night, till the day broke. So, when the day
dawned, the Jews came out with their bags and spades. When they saw the
Prophet; they said, “Muhammad and his army!” The
Prophet said, Allahu-Akbar! (Allah is Greater) and Khaibar is
ruined, for whenever we approach a nation (i.e., enemy to fight) then it will
be a miserable morning for those who have been warned.” [Sahih Bukhari 4:52:195]
About a year ago, McCain’s constituency,
the media, finally noticed the “Arab Spring” phenomenon of American flags
and other flags being ripped down and replaced with al-Qaeda’s flag — a black
banner inscribed in white with the shahada, the Islamic proclamation
that “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed
is his messenger.” The flag has a way of showing up at riots and
beheadings. But the media’s agenda, like McCain’s, is not to register
what the widespread practice of displaying the flag says about support for
Islamic supremacism in the Middle East; the agenda is to explain it away —
no matter how preposterously. So a CNN anchor dutifully told her viewers that the flag is “not an
al-Qaeda banner but an affirmation of faith.”
This sort of thing, of a piece with
equating a bay for blood with “Thank God,” is, well, moronic. That why
I’ve long described it as ”willful
blindness.” It is more suicidally
delusional today than it has ever been. The only silver lining is that McCain
has probably done more for the non-interventionist position on Syria than
anything we non-interventionists could have come up with.
Note: Obviously, this wasn't Andy McCarthy's title, but I bet he agrees with it 100%.
http://tinyurl.com/lxfzljq
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