One of the foundational principles of the Bush Doctrine was and is the oft-repeated dictum, “You are either with us or against us.” Little did President Bush know that the American Muslim community was…against us.
George Bush believed that the moderates in the Muslim world would denounce and destroy the devout (that is, the “radicals”). He was expecting a war within Islam that never actually took place. Imagine Bush’s dismay when he discovered that no one was behind him, like John Belushi in Animal House when he goes running out the front door shouting, “Who’s with me?!?,” only to discover that he is utterly alone.
The faked hate narrative that Muslim groups and leaders use is now the default talking point any time that jihad — or patriotism, for that matter — is being discussed. If Muslims spent as much time instituting programs in mosques and Islamic centers against jihad recruitment and the jihadic doctrine as they do fighting the myth of “Islamophobia,” the world would be a vastly safer place.
A Muslim-dominated group, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), alleges that Muslims have become targets of “violent threats” because of American Sniper. Nobody believes it. They are demanding that American Sniper director Clint Eastwood and actor Bradley Cooper denounce the alleged hateful language directed at Muslims because of the film.
This it is what they do: victim jihad. When one part of the Muslim world kills, the other half cries victimhood. Whack and whine. It is a distraction to get people to stop talking jihad and instead address their demands.
Apparently, the ADC is claiming that a couple of tweets offended their sensibilities. They want action! More like submission. It’s called free speech, brutes.
Why don’t Muslim groups demand that leaders of the Muslim world, imams, Al Azhar university, et al denounce the hateful, racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, anti-kuffar language in the Qur’an that is responsible for all of these Muslim wars across the world?
The idea that the film “glorifies war and sanitizes [Chris] Kyle,” as the ADC claims, is laughable. The only war talk or war movie that the left enjoys is a war in which the US loses or stands down. The left demands that we hang our heads in shame if we triumph. Which is why American Sniper is such an invigorating breath of fresh air.
As for “sanitizing Kyle,” let’s get real. It is the enemedia and the elites that sanitize jihad and Islam. And they do it every day, in every news story. Hollywood doesn’t just sanitize jihad and Islam; they avoid them at all costs. It is the gravest threat to freedom, and Hollywood pretends that it doesn’t exist.
As my colleague Daniel F. points out:
Now it’s American Muslims who are complaining about ‘violent threats,” allegedly incited by the hit movie American Sniper. And this time the media is trumpeting this story. Two rules of history converge here:
1) When Muslims in an a non-Muslim country reach a certain critical mass, they seek to dominate the surrounding community – and then move on from there. cf. Britain, Germany, Sweden and France, inter alia.
2) Free speech is unknown in the Muslim world, actually it’s anathema. So it starts with trying to shut us up and stopping us from casting Islam in a negative light. And does it work? For one thing, you can be certain the entertainment industry is now poring over their scripts and deleting “offending” sections. Other “projects” will simply bite the dust. Of course, Obama didn’t need cajoling. As soon as he took office he banned certain phrases from the government’s lexicon that might reflect poorly on the Muslim religion. Makes you wonder what that man is all about, doesn’t it?
For the record, I saw the film back in December when it was first given a very limited release — just two theaters in New York City. I loved it. I tweeted that it was the best film in decades. It’s hardly a rah-rah cheerleading film. It is a film about a deeply good and decent man, a true American patriot.
The record breaking box-office numbers show how out of touch the elites are with the American people. And that is even more true of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.