We Ain't Them

Frankly, I don't think much of Islam. I've yawned and struggled through the Koran, Sunna and two recommended versions of the Haditha--and I still don't think much of it. Compared to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, the Koran doesn't. Not as revelation, not as history, not as moral instruction and definitely not as literature. The Koran is stilted, clumsy, repetitive and, above all, derivative--and don't tell me I don't get it because I don't read Arabic. The illiterate Mohammed didn't either, much less write it, and Arabic is an unsophisticated language. It ain't Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English, the languages of the Bible. To me, the Koran is a user's manual for the abused and Islam is more totalitarian sociopolitical control system than religion, but no one--yet--is forcing me to buy into it, and as an American, what and who other people worship is not my business.


But that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, which is: Mohammed ain't Moses. For a holy man, he was awfully preoccupied with the things of this world--not all them legal or seemly. As a prophet, which he claimed to be, he sounds like Daffy Duck alongside Isaiah or Jeremiah. And he sure as sunrise ain't Jesus Christ. What Mohammed was--among many unsavory things we won't go into now-- was a plagiarist. Without the Bible to crib from, and ancient pagan beliefs from the surrounding desert tribes to coopt (including recruiting a certain demon djinn named Al'lah) he might have remained silent--and we'd all be happier today. Especially Muslims.


Which (work with me) brings us to Islamic terrorism. I'm not one of those self-hating lefty appeasers who believes that killing terrorists creates more terrorists. Frankly, I don't care if it does. The more that pop up, the easier it becomes to play Whack-a-Mole. A wall of stacked dead terrorists, like the wall of dead Persians the Spartans built in 300, is not an unpleasing image. For every one of ours who falls, I'd prefer to see one hundred of theirs go down--as policy. Sue me.


All that said, we ain't them--and we must never forget that. When the Tolley-bonn took over in Afghanistan, they destroyed the mammoth Bamiyan buddhas, built ca. 300-500 AD, because they supposedly threatened Islam. (Islam has an inferiority complex--and deserves it.)

This followed a pattern of jealousy, triumphalism and historical revisionism begun with the building of the golden-domed Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem over the ruins of Solomon's temple and continuing today with the threatened construction of the Ground Zero mosque. When the Jews retook the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, they did not blow up the Golden Dome and start construction of a new temple, which would have been tit for tat. The reason they didn't? Israel ain't them, and neither are we.

Which (keep working with me) brings me to the scheduled ceremonial burning of the Koran on 9/11. This bonfire is the "brain" child of the Rev. Terry Jones, founder and pastor of the Dove World Outreach ministries of Gainesville, Florida. Dove's grandiose name belies the fact that it has 50 members and I don't know or care where Jones got his divinity degree or even if he has one. This is America. Anyone can start a church and get a tax exemption. Is this a great country ot what? Yes, this is a great country. Remember that, because we ain't them. We ain't terrorists and we ain't Westboro Baptist and we ain't Dove Outreach. We're Americans. We don't purposely kill women, children or innocents, we don't use human shields and we don't burn books. Even when our symbols are violated, whether they soar into the sky like the twin towers or lie in their former shadow like a graveyard, we don't engage in cheap symbolism, because we ain't them. Most of us are Christians, whom God taught that every human soul has equal worth, and we struggle to remember that, because we ain't them.

Oh, we'll fight back. Don't dream that we won't. And we'll win, too, but burning the Koran is not fighting. It's a cheap publicity stunt, tailor-made to play into the hands of Democrat spinners desperate to find some leverage in the eleventh hour of a campaign that is likely to end in a blood-bath. It'll give them a chance to call us haters, but we're not, because we ain't them. Let's not find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We're Americans, the people from the City on a Hill, and the whole world is watching. And cheering. We're the real American majority, silent no more and standing tall in overwhelming numbers for the first time in my lifetime. We don't have to play stupid and we don't have to play dirty. We're not afraid of terrorists. We're not afraid of Islam. We're not afraid of any enemy, foreign or domestic. And we're certainly not afraid of a poorly-written book. We can win this thing sweet and clean, battle by battle, standing in the fire of truth. So let's just do it, our way, the free American way, because--never forget--we ain't them. I don't care wo they are.