Americans Too Slow to Grasp the Source of Islamic Terrorism: Random Thoughts on the Koran and the Boston Marathon Bombing

I find it deeply disturbing to see how slow our nation has been to recognize the threat of Islamic terrorism. My mother's family fled Armenia. For this and other reasons, I am highly sensitive to the way Muslim adherents murdered my Christian ancestors in one of the most horrible examples of genocide in history. In my mind, it is as if those murders occurred minutes ago.

As an Armenian-American, I understand, better than most, the severe costs of overestimating how safe it is for Christians to have Islamic neighbors. Frankly, it would take generations of new, non-violent behavior by Islamic adherents before I would ever suggest it was safe to have Islamic adherents as neighbors.

I am also an independent sort of person. I have a reputation for speaking my mind so, in a sense, I am not surprised I should be among the first to sound the alarm and to argue that Muslims have not yet proven to the world that they are safe neighbors. As such, I am livid at the coverage provided by the mainstreamm media. After watching MSNBC and the White House's response to this latest act of terrorism in Boston, I am offended that we are not doing more to link Islam to a bombing that wounded more than 170 people and left three dead.

All in all, I am startled about how squeemish and politically correct the media gets as we face down the threats posed by Islamic ideology. For a great look at Al Qaeda ideology, I recommend Dore Gold's book, Hatred's Kingdom.

The fearful ideology that apparently motivated the Boston Marathon bombers has been a violent threat to its neighbors in Saudi Arabia for years.

The depth of the challenge should be obvious to anyone who reads through the Koran. In a recent article in American Thinker, Victor Sharpe provides a great list of passages from the Koran which should be read and understood by every American. As he reports, the Koran instructs people as follows:

"Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them." Koran 2:191

"Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood." Koran 9:123

"When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them." Koran 9:5

"Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable." Koran 3:85

"The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them."... Koran 9:30

"Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam" Koran 5:33

"Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies." Koran 22:19

"The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them." Koran 8:65

"Muslims must not take the infidels as friends." Koran 3:28

"Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur'an." Koran 8:12

"Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels." Koran 8:60

When I read these passages in the Koran myself, I was shocked at the way this supposed holy text propogates and justifies violence against, and oppression of, Jews and Christians. It is disturbing to me that otherwise capable mainstream analysts would seek to minimize the extent to which the Koran is not really a religious book at all, but actually a political ideology of fascist-style domination.

I have also seen Islamic contempt for Christians face-to-face. I taught my grant writing workshop at the Bible Society of Egypt in 2008 and got to see how persecuted Christians lived under an Islamic regime. It was not pretty. The Christians we met were reduced to living in and worshipping in a cave above a garbage dump.

I am deeply afraid that we are going to be too slow in catching the next wave of violent Islamic terrorists out of fear of offending Islamic adherents. Frankly, the more I read up on Islam, the worse and more dangerous it looks to me. I expect the bombing in Boston will renew a fresh, courageous conversation regarding Islamic terrorism and the root causes of Islamic violence - the words of the Koran.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

New Photos From Occidental Years Show Real Obama

The New Yorker blog features new photos that verify my take on what our 44th president acted and looked like as a sophomore at Occidental College. Readers will note the real Obama, the young revolutionary extremist with a soft spot for Islam, that I got to know as a participant in Occidental’s radical student politics.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/barack-obama-at-occidental-college-photographs.html#

Curiously, the photos show Obama wearing a band on his left ring finger that WND alleges to read “there is no God but Allah.” 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obamas-ring-there-is-no-god-but-allah/

The photo I find to be most historically significant is the one that shows details from of the anti-apartheid rally of February 18, 1981, the rally that debuted Obama’s famous first skit in Obama’s Dreams from My Father. In contrast to Obama’s story, the banner above the event proclaims the somewhat more complex cause of “Affirmative Action & Divestiture NOW.” The photo features many of the real life figures who would become composite characters in Obama’s autobiography. These include my white ex-girlfriend, Caroline Boss, the radical student leader who improbably lent her grandmother’s name - and much of her scintillating personality - to the big-boned, black “Regina” character.

For the record, I view these photos from the perspective of an accident victim looking at a long ago car wreck. Caroline and I had parted ways just weeks before this rally. As I recall, the split was painful enough to cause us to temporarily adopt the roles of imaginary divorce lawyers, lawyers who combed through our conflicting feelings and amicably laid out the details of what became our eventual, imperfect separation.

For many years, young Obama was simply a footnote in my own intellectual autobiography. He was an early witness to the process in which I abandoned my expectation of a Communist revolution, dropped my old Occidental College friends, and eventually became a Republican business owner. In contrast, Obama held tight to his Occidental College friends and their causes.

“Decades later,” Margot Mifflin writes in response to these photos, “Obama would spur a new generation of students into political action, forging a connection between sixties radicals and media-savvy millennials.” Mifflin, of course, is only telling part of the story. She leaves out the part where at least one of Obama’s friends was not so pleased by the impact of affirmative action and never quite forgot what it was like to sacrifice everything he had for scholarly achievement only to learn, at the end of the process: “Sorry, you’re white.”

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.