A Field Day For Fatuity in Fresno

by Hugh Fitzgerald

“Fresno Muslims, faith leaders call shooter’s ‘Allahu Akbar’ cry a crime against Islam,” by Carmen George, Fresno Bee, April 18, 2017:

Muslim and other faith leaders gathered outside Fresno City Hall Tuesday to denounce a violent shooting spree that killed three people in Fresno and to offer prayers for the families of victims. Later Tuesday, a church group gathered near the shooting scene for a vigil.

A “vigil” not so much on behalf of the victims, but of the Muslims who everyone was so quick to assume were about to be unfairly victimized.

Fresno police reported that the suspect in the shooting, Kori Ali Muhammad, 39, yelled “Ali Akbar” before being arrested. However, a review of Muhammad’s social media shows he’s previously quoted the phrase “Allahu Akbar.” This is a common phrase in Muslim prayers and means “God is the greatest,” said Imam Seyed Ali Ghazvini of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno.

Imam Seyed Ali Ghazvini knows perfectly well that “Allabu akbar” means “our (Muslim) God is greater (than your god).”

Ghazvini said his center does not know the suspect, and he was not known at any local mosques. Ghazvini said the words “Allahu Akbar” are commonly used in Muslim prayers to ask God to bring healing and peace, and that using them in association with violence is a crime against Islam.

But “Allahu akbar,” whatever else it has been used by Muslims to express, has for 1400 years also been a terrifying battle cry, shouted by millions of Muslims who, we are now being asked to believe by Seyeed Ali Ghazvini of Fresno, California, were all “committing a crime against Islam” when they shouted “Allahu akbar” before, during, or after battle. How strange that up until the day before yesterday, no Muslims seemed to have realized this, for “Allahu akbar” has been shouted out during and after almost every attack by Muslims on Kuffar. Apparently, those Muslims attacking Infidels all over the globe, in Beijing, Mumbai, Moscow, Stockholm, Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris, Nice, Madrid, New York, Washington, Fort Hood, San Bernardino (oh fill up the page, printer, with a few hundred or a few thousand other sites of violent Jihad), continue to be unaware of what Imam Seyed Ali Ghazvini wants to convince us is its only legitimate use, which is “to ask God to bring healing and peace.”

“This individual does not represent our faith or our community,” Ghazvini said. “This individual does not represent your Muslim neighbor, your Muslim classmate or your co-worker. The Muslim community in the Valley are working hard for the well-being of our society and country.”

Because, you see, no Muslim would attack, at random, non-Muslims and scream “Allahu akbar” as he did it. Where would anyone get such an idea?

Possibly from here:

Mohamed Atta, in the letter to himself that he left behind, wrote “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.”

Or from here:

The Muslim gunmen who burst into the Bataclan nightclub in Paris shouted “Allahu akbar.”

Or from here:

Major Nidal Malik Hassan repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar” as he slaughtered his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.

Or from here:

Within just the last few weeks, the Muslim who stabbed people outside the Louvre, shouted “Allahu akbar.”

Or here:

The Muslim who ran people down on Westminster Bridge, in London, shouted “Allahu akbar.”

Or here:

The Muslim who ran people over with a truck in Stockholm yelled “Allahu akbar.”

Or here:

The Muslim who stabbed a Jewish woman to death in Paris was heard shouting “Allahu akbar.”

Or here:

Muslims rampaging in Seville during Good Friday ceremonies “struck terror in the hearts” – caused a panic – among the Catholics celebrating by shouting (can you guess?) “Allahu akbar.”

The war-cry of Allahu akbar is uttered before, or during, an attack, to “strike terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers” or afterwards, to triumphantly declare the murderous mission accomplished.

Around 25 faith leaders – including representatives from several Fresno Muslim centers, interfaith groups, Christian churches and a Jewish temple – gathered to address the shooting during the news conference outside City Hall.

Reza Nekumanesh, director of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno, said that the shooter reportedly saying Allahu Akbar “brings pain to our community and truly crushes our hearts and souls.”

The “pain to our community” Reza refers to is that of having damage done to the image of Islam. Still worse a possible result would be if more people began to link attacks by Muslims — the Fresno shooter was a convert, though apparently more motivated by hatred of whites than by hatred of Infidels — to the ideology of Islam itself. Of course, the severest pain of all would be brought to the “Muslim community” if some of those Infidels actually decided to read the Qur’an and the Hadith for themselves, and would then be horrified to discover what they are most definitely not being told by, inter alia, Andy Levine, Reza Nekumanesh, Rabbi Laura Novak Winer, and the inimitable Imam Seyed Ali Rezvini.

“We condemn the acts of the criminal in the strongest terms,” Nekumanesh said, “and stand with our community and city in support and brotherhood … and we call upon our law enforcement agencies and our officials to properly investigate the motives of this man and hold him accountable accordingly.”

If the authorities conclude that among the “motives” of this man were the dictates of the Qur’an, would Reza Nekumaneesh ever be willing to accept that conclusion?

Andy Levine, executive director of the Faith in Fresno, part of Faith in the Valley, said he is standing with, and in support of, the many innocent members of the Muslim community and African American community who are already wrongfully receiving negative backlash because of the deadly shooting.

Might we have a single example offered of the “negative backlash” some Muslims claim they are receiving? Haven’t we been subjected many times before to stories about “hate speech” or other anti-Muslim acts that turned out either to be nonexistent, or committed by Muslims themselves to present themselves as victims?

“Sadly,” Levine said, “there are individuals and forces out there that will and already are using this to divide us and trick us into believing that we are different from one another

Of course, take it on faith from Faith in Fresno’s Mr. Levine, in true Family-of-Man style, that people are the same the whole world over, despite the entire history of the world providing evidence to the contrary.

and that we should be mistrustful of one another

There is no conceivable reason to be mistrustful, is there, of Muslims?

and that we should stay separated from one another.”

So remember: We are not different from, and should not be mistrustful of, one another, nor separate ourselves from one another. Also sprach Mr. Levine. What, then, does he make of one of the most powerful instructions in the history of the world, when it comes to dividing people, separating people, spreading mistrust among them? I am referring, of course, to Qur’an 5:51, the verse that reminds Muslims how very different they are from Jews and Christians, why they should be mistrustful of them, and stay carefully separate from them: “O you who believe! 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; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” What does Andy Levine, executive director of Faith in Fresno, think of that?

Not to be outdone in run-of-the-mill vacuity, Rabbi Laura Novak Winer of Temple Beth Israel describes Islam as a religion of “peace and justice” and calls on the community (of non-Muslims) to educate themselves about Islam – a religion that “faith leaders estimate is followed by around 1.8 billion people around the world.” Shouldn’t others – say, Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Ibn Warraq or Wafa Sultan – be the ones calling on Rabbi Winer to educate herself about Islam before she expresses such certitudes about “peace and justice,” and even suggest that she pay special attention to Qur’an 9:29 and 9:5 and 8:12 and 5:51 and 98:6? Perhaps then she will refrain from making pronouncements about an assumed definition of “peace and justice” that she appears to believe is shared by Muslims and Unbeliever. She may discover that the Muslim notion of “peace and justice” is the one that descends upon us all when Islam covers the globe, and Muslims rule, everywhere.

“There’s a lot of assumptions made about what Islam is about and what it means to be a Muslim, and those assumptions very often are not true,” Winer said.

Which assumptions about Islam are not true? And who decided that Rabbi Laura Winer knows better than, say, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, about “what it means to be a Muslim”?

We who live in Fresno, in this very diverse and colorful city, have an obligation to understand who each other is

For “to understand one another.”

and what each other stands for.”

For “what others stand for.”

And her conclusion is this:

“Ultimately, we all stand for peace and justice in this world.”

This jejune and empty remark means nothing, for both “peace” and “justice” mean very different things to different people. Each day brings fresh news of Muslims demonstrating their own view of how to attain “peace and justice” as defined in Islam, which requires subjugating the Infidels (that brings “justice,” that assures “peace”), and spreading Islam in every possible way, through both violent and stealth jihad, through Da’wa (the Call to Islam), through demographic conquest, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere. Even Laura Novak Winer should be able to distinguish this from what Jews and Christians mean by “peace and justice.” Meanwhile, it’s been a field day for fatuity in sunny Fresno, California.