They Shoot Children, Don’t They?

In his latest column, Dennis Prager examines the current primative, barbaric state of radical Islam and the validity of “Muslim bashing” as a political hot potato.

According to The New York Times, when the terrorists took over the Russian elementary school, they shouted “Allahu akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”).

Does this surprise you, dear reader? Does it shock you that the people who deliberately attacked a school and then systematically shot and blew up little children did so in the name of Islam?

Unfortunately, the question is rhetorical. Having targeted little children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims committing.

We have already become almost inured to:

The slaughtering of innocent human beings as if they were animals while chanting Muslim prayers.

The reintroduction of black slavery and genocide against blacks.

The murder of daughters and sisters for imagined or real sexual behavior.

The stoning of women accused of adultery.

The burning of Hindu temples and Christian churches, and the destruction of among the greatest Buddhist sculptures.

The ban on women driving cars or learning to read.

The idolization of young men who blow themselves up while murdering and maiming innocent non-Muslims — and the theology of sexual rewards in heaven for doing so.

Prager is not painting with too broad a brush here. He specifically is targeting the Islamist radicals that are a pestilence on the face of our planet.

It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren’t — even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren’t — and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren’t — despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China.

Since 9/11, critiques of Islamic radicals and the general silence of non-radicals have been blunted by political correctness. Prager questions how long this should continue after the massacre of schoolchildren.

… have we reached the point where people of goodwill can ask serious questions about Muslims and Islam? Or are any challenging questions still to be dismissed as “Muslim bashing” or, even more absurdly, “racist,” as if religion were a race?

The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions.

Have we reached the point? This must be another rhetorical question, because we reached that point, passed it, and can now barely see it as a speck in the rearview mirror.

Yes, some people do shoot children, and good people have a right to ask why.

Exactly!

However, I disagree with Prager at one point where he states that “the only people asking these questions aloud [are] conservative and religious.” I stand here as an atheist exception, and I’d wager there’s a sizable portion of liberals or non-religious who would concur. After being careful with his brushstrokes on Islam, why did Prager have to go and get paint on me?