Two Versions of the Dalai Lama (Part III)

by Hugh Fitzgerald

I used  to wonder if the Dalai Lama was deliberately trying to pretend that the real Islam was all those nice things — peaceful, tolerant — he claimed, in the hope that if enough Muslims heard this repeated by enough Infidels, it would change their behavior; Muslims pleased to hear themselves described as such would then begin to behave so as to fit the description. Well, it didn’t happen, and Muslim violence, including terrorism, against non-Muslims has only increased pari passu with the descriptions of Islam in the West as peaceful and tolerant. There is nothing that the Dalai Lama, or Pope Francis, can say that will change Muslim beliefs and behavior. But their pronouncements do real damage to those in the West who are confused about Islam, have a need to know about it (their lives may depend on it), trust them as spiritual leaders, and accept on faith their wildly misleading characterizations of Islam.

The Dalai Lama has not given any evidence of having read the Qur’an and Hadith, for he has failed to grasp the essence of Islam as a text-centered faith. If he has not read those texts, that bespeaks one kind of unintelligence. If he has read those texts, but still failed to comprehend their meaning, and instead has taken at face value the assurances of taqiyya-masters as to what Islam teaches, then he demonstrates another kind of unintelligence. If he thinks it makes sense to ignore 1,400 years of Islamic history, that is still a third kind of unintelligence.

To sum up: the Dalai Lama continues to assert that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant faith, and that therefore, there is no such thing as a “Muslim terrorist,” because anyone who engages in terrorism cannot be a true Muslim.

In order to arrive at this bizarre view, the Dalai Lama has had to ignore a great deal, including:

1. 1,400 years of Islamic  history, and of the Jihads waged in many different lands and against many different peoples, that took Islam from being the faith of a few dozen people in dusty 7th-century Mecca to becoming the faith of 1.6 billion people across the globe. In India alone, 70-80 million Hindus were killed in Jihads.

2. The more than 109 verses in the Qur’an that command Believers to wage violent Jihad against the Infidels. Among them are these: “And kill them [the Infidels] wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing” (2:191); “They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal. So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah. But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them” (4:89); “Then when the Sacred Months have passed, then kill the Mushrikun wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush.” (9:5). There are more than 100 other verses similar in their violence. How did the Dalai Lama manage to miss them all?

3. Verses in the Qur’an that call specifically for “striking terror” in the hearts of the enemy, such as “Your Lord inspired the angels: I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes…” (3:151) or that call for extreme violence, as “So, when you meet those who disbelieve, smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly.” (47:4)

4. Many  passages in the Hadith, in which we learn that Muhammad took part in 27 military campaigns, helped in decapitating 600-900 prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, ordered the torture and killing of Kinana of Khaybar, and learned with satisfaction of the killing of several people who mocked him.

5. Muhammad declaring in the Hadith that “war is deceit.”

6. Muhammad declaring in one of his most famous Hadith that “I have been made victorious through terror.”

These are only a few of the passages that the Dalai Lama seemingly is unfamiliar with. Did he know of them before? What does he make of them now? And if he did know of them, why did he think it was right for him to ignore them? If he leaves out so much of significance that is found in the Islamic texts, why should anyone trust his version — sanitized beyond belief — of Islam? And how can he remain so ignorant of the history even of his own faith, Buddhism, and how it fared when the Muslims arrived and conquered India?

The Dalai Lama (Version Two):

The Dalai Lama has consistently been telling us that we have nothing to fear from the authentic, peaceful Islam. Yet at a conference in Malmö, Sweden this September, he struck a more somber and worried note. He took a much harder line on immigration. He declared that immigrants should receive appropriate training and then be sent back to their companies of origin instead of remaining in Europe. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet said that while Europe can help refugees, “Europe belongs to the Europeans,” and migrants should rebuild their homelands.

Malmö, Sweden, where he made his comments,  has struggled with an increase in rape and violent crimes correlating to an increase in refugees from Syria and other predominantly Muslim countries. The Dalai Lama argued that European countries were “morally responsible” for assisting “a refugee really facing danger against their life,” but that refugees should ultimately go back and rebuild their home countries.

“Receive them, help them, educate them … but ultimately they should develop their own country,” the Dalai Lama said, according to AFP.

“I think Europe belongs to the Europeans,” he added, saying “they ultimately should rebuild their own country.”…

“From a moral point of view, too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily.”

The Dalai Lama has clearly become much more aware of the demographic changes sweeping Europe, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He will not come out and criticize Islam, but he certainly does not want Muslim migrants remaining in Europe. He thinks that only bona fide refugees, those who are facing “danger against their life,” should be admitted. The 80-90% who are economic migrants, seeking to receive benefits — the more the better — from Europe’s generous welfare states, should not in the Dalai Lama’s new view be admitted at all, but should be promptly returned to their home countries. Not only that, but even the real refugees — those who have legitimate fears for their lives — “should only be admitted temporarily.” They might be sent back to their countries of origin, once the life-threatening violence has decreased, or possibly sent to other countries akin to their own, where the violence is less life-threatening. If  “refugees” cannot return, say, to Libya, because of continued warfare, there are a dozen other Muslim Arab countries that might be a much better fit — with people identical to these “refugees” in language, customs, religion — than Sweden or Germany or France.

What explains this new attitude on immigration by the Dalai Lama? Though the word “Muslim” is not used, it must be understood as implicit in all that he says, for the migrants to Europe who have caused such trouble these last few years have overwhelmingly been Muslims.  At a certain point, the Dalai Lama, tiring even of his own pollyannish pieties about Islam, looked around Europe, took note of the fact that nowhere were Muslim migrants integrating into their host societies successfully, saw the aggressive demands they made on the peoples among whom they have been allowed to settle, heard the demands they make on their host societies (everything from calling for single-sex pools and burqas, and time taken off for prayers in the middle of a work or school day, to changes in the school curricula to accommodate Muslim sensibilities), was made aware of the horrific rise in violent crime — rapes, murders — committed by these migrants, observed their hostile attitudes and behavior toward their hosts (as non-Muslims, according to the Qur’an they are “the most vile of creatures”), learned of their sky-high rates of unemployment that bespeak an unwillingness to work (and why should they work, with all the benefits lavished upon them by a generous welfare state?) — some or all of this has finally penetrated and become part of  the Dalai Lama’s new understanding. He has finally grasped what this enormous Muslim migration has done, and is doing, to Europe. He has understood that the large-scale presence of Muslims in Europe has created a situation that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for the non-Muslim indigenes, and for other, non-Muslim, migrants, too, than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence. Or, to put it more simply, what explains this new and improved version of the Dalai Lama is simple: he has finally been mugged by reality.

First published in Jihad Watch.