A crisis came to Longmont, Colorado. And for once it wasn't snow falling from the sky.
Instead top Longmont officials appeared less worried about the piles of snow that blocked off roads and closed schools than a politically incorrect octogenarian as they converged on the home of an 83-year-old man to demand that he take down a yard sign critical of Islam and Muslim immigration.
"Muslims kill Muslims if they don't agree. Where does that leave you, 'infidel,'" the sign asked.
A story ran in the local paper. The Denver Post took note. The Associated Press headlined this vital story as, “Longmont man refuses to take down anti-Muslim sign”. The refusal of an 83-year-old man to recant his politically incorrect, but factually correct, statement on Islam had become a national crisis.
Some of the coverage contained information about the location of an elderly man standing up to Islamic terrorists. But there was no objection to putting his life in danger because of his “objectionable” views.
Longmont's Public Safety Chief and the Community and Neighborhood Resources Manager visited Harry McNevin to urge him to take down the sign or change the wording. A variety of other public officials also weighed in. A protest was contemplated as soon as the potential protesters could “figure out exactly what he means”. McNevin helpfully explained, "They're not our friends, they're our enemies."
Or as Islamic teachings put it, “Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them.”
The threats poured in after the newspaper articles. And they succeeded. The temperature fell well below zero and the sign came down. The left had notched another social justice victory. It had every reason to be proud of itself. It had terrorized an 83-year-old man to prove that Muslims aren’t terrorists.
But it’s not just Muslims who terrorize dissenters. Leftists have a long history of intimidating, jailing and killing those they disagree with. The war on Islamophobia is a perverse fusion of two intolerant ideologies protecting their privilege to remain above criticism.
Longmont is an unlikely target for Islamic terrorism. And yet it intersects with another encounter with Islamic terror. Start out at the offices of the Longmont Times-Call and drive up to the University of Northern Colorado. Assuming the snow isn’t too bad, it’ll take you around an hour to make the trip. And there’ll you will find one of the more obscure battlefields in the current Islamic war against the West.
The name Sayyid Qutb won’t ring any bells in Greeley, Colorado. It’s doubtful that anyone remembers an ugly, scowling man with bulging eyes and a little Hitler mustache who lived there in the 50s.
But Qutb certainly remembered them.
Back then the Muslim Brotherhood monster who serves as an inspiration to Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS was just another foreign student at Colorado State College. Like many of them, he violently loathed America and everything about it. Hardly any aspect of life was safe from Qutb’s envy and loathing. These he distilled into a hateful tract with furious subtitles such as, “Americans Are Free of Humanity”.
The American character was “deformed” and the people he encountered were “abysmally primitive” who might as well be living in “jungles and caves”. They were in love with “hardcore violence”. The churches of Greeley were places of “meeting and friendship” or “as they call it in their language ‘fun.’" Qutb even managed to describe in breathlessly outraged tones the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
He groused that football was a primitive game of “great violence and ferocity” which was misnamed because “the foot does not take part in the game”. Reflecting typical Islamic racism, Qutb ranted that jazz was created by “savage bushmen” to “satisfy their primitive desires... for animal noises.” American clothes were too garish and primitive. Even the barbers who gave him haircuts had “awful taste”.
They probably didn’t even appreciate his carefully nurtured Hitler mustache.
Qutb lusted for the “enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests” even as he denounced the “overwhelming lust for the sensual pleasure” of Americans. He paid close attention to “the round breasts, the full buttocks” of Greeley’s women and girls. The women represented America to the Egyptian Islamist, as to so many Islamists after him, desirable and hated.
America was unimaginably advanced. Qutb had been a big fish in a small pond. His background, like that of many Muslim Brotherhood figures, was with the landowners. But even Greeley couldn’t help making him feel backward and small; a primitive savage in a land where peasants could live like kings.
Behind his sneering lay the sense of inferiority that motivates Islamist violence. Islamic colonialism asserts its supremacist conviction of superiority out of that same resentful knowledge that it is inferior.
Qutb’s writing, like all Islamist works, argued for the natural superiority of Muslims. All these arguments are necessary because even casual observation shows the superiority of the American way of life to the Islamic way of life. It is Qutb’s civilization that is guilty of the flaws and faults he attributed to America.
It was not the Americans who were "enthralled" with "flowing blood and crushed limbs." It was a Hamas suicide bomber from Qutb’s own Muslim Brotherhood movement who boasted, “We are a blood-drinking people and we know that there is no better blood than Jewish blood.” It was a member of Qutb’s Muslim Brotherhood Free Syrian Army in Syria who was videotaped eating a human lung.
Qutb wrote that the “American love for peace” was an “illusion”. But it’s the Islamic peace that is the illusion. Islamic peace is achieved only through war. Muslims fight an endless war for peace against the rest of the world and an endless war against each other to establish their version of the “peace”.
So Harry McNevin pointed out in a place not too far from where Qutb fulminated against America.
It was not the people of Greeley who lacked all regard for the sanctity of human life or respect for the dead. It is Qutb’s devout Islamic followers who cry, “We love death, you love life.” And it is they who swarm over the bodies of their victims and their terrorists alike, holding up bloody body parts.
Nor was it the good people of Greeley who lacked sexual mores or self-control. That too could be found in Qutb’s Muslim Brotherhood mobs swarming and assaulting women in Tahrir Square. Taharrush gamea mobs of Muslim men converging on women, groping them and tearing off their clothes, have been documented from Cairo to Cologne.
Qutb’s indictment of Greeley attributed to the American “other” the malignancies of Islam. Once the sins of Islam are laid on the West, then it may be saved from persisting in the pre-Islamic darkness of Jahiliyyah through conquest, colonization and mass murder by the vanguard of Islamic civilization.
For over a thousand years, Muslim colonialism has destroyed countless civilizations the same way. America is only the latest to face the invasion. Qutb, like Mohammed and countless predecessors, looked upon Greeley, Colorado and decided it could be vastly improved with slavery and beheadings.
Harry McNevin’s critique of Islam is far shorter and to the point than Qutb’s critique of America. But unlike Qutb, McNevin does not waste his time on trivialities such as critiquing haircuts or complaining about anecdotal incidents. Instead he notes that Islam does not bring peace even among Muslims.
It’s a critique that can have no answer. The Muslim world’s perpetual violence speaks for itself.
And so the Muslim Brotherhood, the men who walk in Qutb’s hateful footsteps, invented the very tool that would be used to censor Harry McNevin. They popularized the accusation of Islamophobia.
The followers of that bigot with the bulging eyes and the Hitler mustache found a way to silence an 83-year-old man and his yard sign. They did it with the complicity of the Coloradans whom Qutb hated.
The crisis in Longmont, Colorado has been settled. The yard sign is gone. And with the departure of that piece of wood, goes the need to think about what all the Qutbs who arrive here every year will do.
As the snow falls in Longmont, the clash of civilizations continues around the world.
Instead top Longmont officials appeared less worried about the piles of snow that blocked off roads and closed schools than a politically incorrect octogenarian as they converged on the home of an 83-year-old man to demand that he take down a yard sign critical of Islam and Muslim immigration."Muslims kill Muslims if they don't agree. Where does that leave you, 'infidel,'" the sign asked.
A story ran in the local paper. The Denver Post took note. The Associated Press headlined this vital story as, “Longmont man refuses to take down anti-Muslim sign”. The refusal of an 83-year-old man to recant his politically incorrect, but factually correct, statement on Islam had become a national crisis.
Some of the coverage contained information about the location of an elderly man standing up to Islamic terrorists. But there was no objection to putting his life in danger because of his “objectionable” views.
Longmont's Public Safety Chief and the Community and Neighborhood Resources Manager visited Harry McNevin to urge him to take down the sign or change the wording. A variety of other public officials also weighed in. A protest was contemplated as soon as the potential protesters could “figure out exactly what he means”. McNevin helpfully explained, "They're not our friends, they're our enemies."
Or as Islamic teachings put it, “Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them.”
The threats poured in after the newspaper articles. And they succeeded. The temperature fell well below zero and the sign came down. The left had notched another social justice victory. It had every reason to be proud of itself. It had terrorized an 83-year-old man to prove that Muslims aren’t terrorists.
But it’s not just Muslims who terrorize dissenters. Leftists have a long history of intimidating, jailing and killing those they disagree with. The war on Islamophobia is a perverse fusion of two intolerant ideologies protecting their privilege to remain above criticism.
Longmont is an unlikely target for Islamic terrorism. And yet it intersects with another encounter with Islamic terror. Start out at the offices of the Longmont Times-Call and drive up to the University of Northern Colorado. Assuming the snow isn’t too bad, it’ll take you around an hour to make the trip. And there’ll you will find one of the more obscure battlefields in the current Islamic war against the West.
The name Sayyid Qutb won’t ring any bells in Greeley, Colorado. It’s doubtful that anyone remembers an ugly, scowling man with bulging eyes and a little Hitler mustache who lived there in the 50s.
But Qutb certainly remembered them.
Back then the Muslim Brotherhood monster who serves as an inspiration to Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS was just another foreign student at Colorado State College. Like many of them, he violently loathed America and everything about it. Hardly any aspect of life was safe from Qutb’s envy and loathing. These he distilled into a hateful tract with furious subtitles such as, “Americans Are Free of Humanity”.
The American character was “deformed” and the people he encountered were “abysmally primitive” who might as well be living in “jungles and caves”. They were in love with “hardcore violence”. The churches of Greeley were places of “meeting and friendship” or “as they call it in their language ‘fun.’" Qutb even managed to describe in breathlessly outraged tones the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
They probably didn’t even appreciate his carefully nurtured Hitler mustache.
Qutb lusted for the “enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests” even as he denounced the “overwhelming lust for the sensual pleasure” of Americans. He paid close attention to “the round breasts, the full buttocks” of Greeley’s women and girls. The women represented America to the Egyptian Islamist, as to so many Islamists after him, desirable and hated.
America was unimaginably advanced. Qutb had been a big fish in a small pond. His background, like that of many Muslim Brotherhood figures, was with the landowners. But even Greeley couldn’t help making him feel backward and small; a primitive savage in a land where peasants could live like kings.
Behind his sneering lay the sense of inferiority that motivates Islamist violence. Islamic colonialism asserts its supremacist conviction of superiority out of that same resentful knowledge that it is inferior.
Qutb’s writing, like all Islamist works, argued for the natural superiority of Muslims. All these arguments are necessary because even casual observation shows the superiority of the American way of life to the Islamic way of life. It is Qutb’s civilization that is guilty of the flaws and faults he attributed to America.
It was not the Americans who were "enthralled" with "flowing blood and crushed limbs." It was a Hamas suicide bomber from Qutb’s own Muslim Brotherhood movement who boasted, “We are a blood-drinking people and we know that there is no better blood than Jewish blood.” It was a member of Qutb’s Muslim Brotherhood Free Syrian Army in Syria who was videotaped eating a human lung.
Qutb wrote that the “American love for peace” was an “illusion”. But it’s the Islamic peace that is the illusion. Islamic peace is achieved only through war. Muslims fight an endless war for peace against the rest of the world and an endless war against each other to establish their version of the “peace”.
So Harry McNevin pointed out in a place not too far from where Qutb fulminated against America.
It was not the people of Greeley who lacked all regard for the sanctity of human life or respect for the dead. It is Qutb’s devout Islamic followers who cry, “We love death, you love life.” And it is they who swarm over the bodies of their victims and their terrorists alike, holding up bloody body parts.
Nor was it the good people of Greeley who lacked sexual mores or self-control. That too could be found in Qutb’s Muslim Brotherhood mobs swarming and assaulting women in Tahrir Square. Taharrush gamea mobs of Muslim men converging on women, groping them and tearing off their clothes, have been documented from Cairo to Cologne.
Qutb’s indictment of Greeley attributed to the American “other” the malignancies of Islam. Once the sins of Islam are laid on the West, then it may be saved from persisting in the pre-Islamic darkness of Jahiliyyah through conquest, colonization and mass murder by the vanguard of Islamic civilization.
For over a thousand years, Muslim colonialism has destroyed countless civilizations the same way. America is only the latest to face the invasion. Qutb, like Mohammed and countless predecessors, looked upon Greeley, Colorado and decided it could be vastly improved with slavery and beheadings.
Harry McNevin’s critique of Islam is far shorter and to the point than Qutb’s critique of America. But unlike Qutb, McNevin does not waste his time on trivialities such as critiquing haircuts or complaining about anecdotal incidents. Instead he notes that Islam does not bring peace even among Muslims.
It’s a critique that can have no answer. The Muslim world’s perpetual violence speaks for itself.And so the Muslim Brotherhood, the men who walk in Qutb’s hateful footsteps, invented the very tool that would be used to censor Harry McNevin. They popularized the accusation of Islamophobia.
The followers of that bigot with the bulging eyes and the Hitler mustache found a way to silence an 83-year-old man and his yard sign. They did it with the complicity of the Coloradans whom Qutb hated.
The crisis in Longmont, Colorado has been settled. The yard sign is gone. And with the departure of that piece of wood, goes the need to think about what all the Qutbs who arrive here every year will do.
As the snow falls in Longmont, the clash of civilizations continues around the world.
Comments
Qtub's account of his Colorado experience lacks any instance of violence or threat toward him. He suffered from cognitive dissonance. How could these inferior, decadent infidels have a better life than superior, pious Muslims? His resolution was to destroy them. There! His sense of justice was restored.
ReplyDeleteA single lunatic? History tells that he catalyzed billions to join his jihad. Just as the left would rather destroy the successful than elevate all. Islam and Leftism are the stars of envy and schadenfreude.
ABSJ1136
I read Prof. John Calvert's biography of Qutb. His views on the Jews is pretty much the same as the Nazis. He said in his commentary on the Qur'an that "the Jews have been conspiring against Islam from the very beginning". He claims that the weakness of the Muslim world that allowed the Western powers to colonize the Middle East and to become the leading powers in the world was also due to conspiracies against Islam. Note that he doesn't think that the fact that many Muslims became disillusioned with Islam in the 100 years prior to about 1970 when the Islamic revival began was due to any serious structural problems WITHIN Islam and Muslims themselves...the whole problem is due to outsiders, particularly Jews and Christians, in his distorted world view.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that the radical Left has a similar view. They view the public as being "brainwashed" by capitalists, militarists, racists, misogynists, conservatives and other deplorables. I once encountered a Leftist who object to my criticism of Obama for ruling by Presidential Decree, rather than using the Constitutionally mandated legislative system. The Leftist claimed that Obama had to because of immoral "obstructionism" by the Republican-controlled Congress against the supposed "will of the people who elected Obama". When I pointed out that the people also elected the members of Congress and they represent their constituents, he replied, "No, the reason they oppose Obama is because he is black. They are racists".
There you have it, another bizarre conspiracy theory. The problem is the "racist American people", not Obama's incompetence and disregard for the Constitution.
Thus, we see a very similar mentality between Qutb's radical Islam and the radical Left. This is fascinating since one would think they are polar opposites, but they really have much in common, which explains that bizarre alliance we see between the radical secular Left and Islamic extremism
Excellent article.
ReplyDeleteAnon, agreed!
ReplyDeleteYet another reason for banning muslims from the united states
ReplyDeleteLeftist and liberals (a.k.a. leftists with rich parents) are well known bullies. The way to deal with them is trading punch for punch, as a good boxer does, first thing counterpunch, always! This must be the default response so they know every time they hit pain is coming their way. Operant conditioning if you will. It is like training an animal. President Trump knows it intuitively.
ReplyDeleteAgain, Mr. Greenfield sheds the extraneous and arrives at the heart of the Islamic hatred of the West, and that is the readily apparent, easily observable superiority of Western civilization over Islamic "civilization". Every year, more books are translated in tiny Greece than the entire Arab world combined. Qutb and his successors know well the Quranic injunction that the Muslims are the "best of peoples", but must face a reality that contradicts that Quranic verse and hundreds others. Is it just the existence of Israel, or perhaps it's success that is most galling to the Muslims? only the extremes of sexual oppression and sexual acting out occur in the Islamic world because a society with some degree of sexual freedom implies a relative equality between the sexes that is impossible in Islamic polities. Art, science, history, and any sense that humanity can improve it's lot and shape a better future is crushed by the Islamic imperative that the times of Mohammad and his merry band of Jihadists were the best of times and it's all down hill from the 7th century onward. Islamic ideology is a retrograde and dangerous force that must be ultimately eradicated , but failing that, must be contained for the present time.
ReplyDeleteMr. Greenfield:
ReplyDeleteThe new video the left has out about President Trump having an "Alternative Constitution" while they believe in a "Living Constitution' reminded me of an excellent column you wrote quite a while back. The title escapes me at this moment but you compared the hypocrisy in beliefs progressives in America have in common with Islam. It explained clearly why the left is so infatuated with the Muslim religion.
You hit the nail on the head then and it is even more relevant now with the demonstrations taking place over President Trumps immigration ban.I would appreciate it if you could publish it once again. Thank you !
And in Britain a man was hauled before Court because he called a transgender "woman" a geezer. Geezer is a totally inoffensive term referring to men. I call my beloved husband an old geezer from time to time because he is one. How did this rubbish in Britain get to Court? This stuff makes my eyes roll.
ReplyDeleteAnother brilliant piece. Please keep'em coming.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sultan. I very educational.
ReplyDeleteBTW, is your cat still on the SPLC blacklist?
There is also a clash of civilizations in California. The "Progressives" are allied with Islam in trying to bring our civilization down. I just read a review of a new book about their "successes" in my old city. In reality the Progressives did nothing useful, and a lot which was harmful, the only thing they are good at is claiming credit for themselves and getting elected. Watch out, they are trying to destroy the rest of the country also.
ReplyDeleteI could go into endless detail on the local situation, but it probably wouldn't be of much interest to the general readers.
Enough, leave.
ReplyDeleteWhy there can never be peace among Muslims - the curse of Yishma'el- Genesis 16.
ReplyDeleteAll Muslims share in the curse.
I read one of Saiyyid Qutb's books in translation, and want nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. It stinks. And all of its Western enablers stink even worse.
ReplyDeleteIsrael Struggles:
ReplyDeleteby Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
www.aish.com/jw/s/Israel_Struggles.html
What many don't know about Longmont is that it is within 10 miles of Boulder, Colorado, which is an extremely ultra-liberal enclave of rich, entitled, elitist whites.
ReplyDeleteSo it's no surprise to anyone who knows what Boulder is like, to see that this would happen in Longomont. Most likely the majority who were harassing this old man were Boulder residents themselves. Boulder is full of the type of white liberals who have never lived near a Mexican or a black person, but will disown a member of their own family who lives in Chicago and complains about the crime there. This is the kind of wildly irrational liberal that lives in Boulder.
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