The "Tough-Minded" Stupidity Of Piers Morgan On Islam

Here is the article. It’s meant to be tough on Islam and Muslims, by asking them to stand up and denounce the murderers in Paris for “not being Muslims.” It contains statements that are both widely disseminated, and absurd. The first is the idea that since one of the policemen killed was a Muslim, this cannot possibly be an “Islamic” crime, or the killers not motivated by Islam. And we are then reminded that Muslims, too, died on 9/11. Yes, of course, in attacking in the West, where are Muslims living, it is not unlikely that sometimes Muslims will be among the victims. But that does not make the attacks less prompted by Islam. It means that, unfortunately, for a greater good, sometimes Muslims have to die for the sake of Islam, and if they are mixed up with Infidels, then it may be unavoidable. And then, too, there is the thought that if a Muslim is working with Infidels, or still worse is part of the police and required to enforce the laws of an Infidel state, perhaps they have it coming to them, for they are not being good Muslims. And when Piers Morgan says that the “crazies” — that’s how he dismisses them, using either that word or words to that effect — who in the Islamic State kill other Muslims, he assumes that must mean they cannot be Muslims. Sure they can, and they are killing those whom they regard as insufficient in their taking to heart the ruthless example of Muhammad, and acting upon it. They convince themselves that since they are the truest of Muslims, enforcing what the Qur’an and Sunnah tell them to enforce, those who do not agree with them, or submit to them, are either dangerous “hypocrites” (as are, by Uber-Sunni definition, those Rafidite dogs, the Shi’a, who cannot possibly be considered to be real Muslims).

And in passing, Piers Morgan — who hasn’t had time in his busy celebrity-newsman-interviewer life to sit still long enough to read and study and think about the Qur’an and Hadith and Sira (I doubt if he knows what the last two are)–quotes another shallow celebrity, the one famous for plagiarism, the skull-beneath-the-skin Fareed Zakaria, who while  raised in a Muslim environment seems remarkably uninformed about Islam. And what does Fareed Zakaria say about “blasphemy” in Islam? He pooh-poohs all the non-Muslims who have been killed for, who live in fear of being accused of, “blasphemy” by Muslim neighbors, which happens often in Pakistan, a place one would have thought Fareed Zakaria pays attention to, and instead claims, falsely, that Muslim despots like to use the “blasphemy” laws of Islam to keep their hold on power, to use against their enemies. This is nonsense. Neiither Saddam Hussein, nor the Assads father and son, nor any other despot, including the enlightened despots Bourguiba and Ataturk, ever used the “blasphemy” laws of Islam to maintain political power. And in Pakistan the assorted generals and zamindars who hold onto political and economic power are indifferent to the charges of blasphemy routinely made against Christians, but are not using such laws against Muslims. The only people who might attack other Muslims for being “blasphemous” are those individuals, not despots, who know they are permitted to enforce by themselves the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari’a, and do so whenever they think some Muslim exhibits dangerous signs of independent thought, of being not sufficiently blindly submissive to Islam and the figure of Muhammad. One example is Farag Foda, in Egypt. But as usual, Fareed Zakaria’s ignorance, even silliness, will pass, because the network that employs him has to ignore his faults, and build up as a wise guide to foreign affairs in order to keep up the ratings. It would not do to fire him over his repeated acts of plagiarism; it would not do to allow unanswerable criticism of his coverage and analysis of Islam to be disseminated and understood.

And besides, Fareed Zakaria is a celebrity news analyst, and Piers Morgan another celebrity newsman, and they don’t have to know  much. Their corporations, the ones that build them up, will protect them from the pseudodoxia epidemica of their hectic lives, when they are obviously too busy to study, or to think, or even, at times, to refrain from recycling the stuff that their massive staffs of helpers largely wrote or cobbled together in the first place..