Left & Right October 9, 2019

Jim Wilfong of Stow, Maine again sits in the left chair for this show. We open with a question from our producer: "Do you support Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria?"

Jim doesn't. He thinks it a very bad idea to abandon our allies, the Kurds, who have helped us at least since the First Iraq War under President George H.W. Bush, and in every operation in the region since. I have mixed feelings about the move.

We go on for some time discussing 100 years in the region's history back to WWI, after which the British and French carved up the former Ottoman Empire into the nation-states as they exist today, but they divided Kurdish tribal areas assigning parts of "Kurdistan" to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and not one of those countries is well disposed to the Kurdish minority within its borders. All see the Kurds as a troublesome, rebellious minority of which they'd prefer to rid themselves.

We go into Constitutional history in which the Founders gave Congress the power to declare war until Lyndon Johnson was given the power to conduct the Vietnam War by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the 1960s. Then came the War Powers Act of 1973 which limited the president to act only in emergency situations, and then for only 30-60 days until Congress decides the issue. That, however, is being mostly ignored by successive presidents and Congress has allowed them to.

Jim goes into the Petroleum Politics of the region, citing that we are no longer dependent on Persian Gulf oil, but China and Europe are. He says Turkey is strategic as a site for pipelines for getting Russian natural as to southern Europe. Iran and the Emirates are also interested in getting their natural gas out the same way.

We spend more than half the show on these complicated issues in what is collectively called "The Middle East."

Then we shift to impeachment. I read a 1788 Federalist paper quote from Alexander Hamilton on the subject. He saw impeachment as a divisive and political process more than a legal process.

We examine the House "inquiry" going on now and conducted in secret, that media reporting on much of it is by unnamed sources, a "high government official speaking anonymously," and so forth. We compare the impeachment process in the 1860s for Andrew Johnson, in the 1970s for Richard Nixon, and in the 1990s for Bill Clinton with how it's going now. There is a consistent thread for the first three but not for what the Dems are doing to Trump so far in 2019.

Time runs out before we can thoroughly explore the Supreme Court case about a transexual person fired by a funeral home.

Left and Right February 12, 2019

Gino starts talking about a dead goose that he loved, which had been hit by a car in Jackson, NH. He wrote a letter to the editor about his grieving and got lots of feedback. We go next to the battle for Trump wall funding. Do we think he will declare a state of emergency? I say yes. Gino doesn't declare exactly what Trump may do. We go on to European immigration by Muslims and how politically destabilizing it is. George Soros is concerned that conservative backlash moving European nations rightward -- because of immigration which he has financed, both here in the USA and in Europe. He is worried the EU may disintegrate and wrote an op-ed about it. I describe the expansion of no-go zones in Europe where Muslims let no one in, where they have their own police and courts. Demographers forecast the trend to accelerate because Muslims have five or six times as many children as native Europeans -- and they're harassing Jews. Muslim Democrats elected to US Congress recently are increasingly anti-Semitic as well. I introduce Alexandria Occasio Cortez's proposed "Green New Deal" and read specific items from her FAQ released last Friday. It was endorsed by five announced Democrat presidential candidates and it's painful to read. After reading four or five specific items in the proposal, Gino acknowledges it's crazy and it will never happen. Then he actually blames the right for it. Why? He offers no evidence. We travel over a lot of territory. As I make points Gino doesn't like, he quickly introduces red herrings. He changes the subject so as not to respond to my arguments -- especially about the newly-elected, radical-leftist, Democrat members of Congress and takes things in a different direction. I go along, struggling to keep my tone moderate, and countering with facts. Ultimately, he plays the racist card again, and again with no evidence, because I criticize statements from newly-elected Muslim, Democrat members of Congress.

Latest Left and Right TV Show episode

This just got posted to my Youtube account. It was filmed November 2nd. Gino, my left-wing opponent, defends the left's obfuscation of Muslim terrorism as well as all things Democrat. He doesn't do well.

Mutilation in Maine

The euphemism is “female circumcision,” but federal law banning it in the USA labels it “Female Genital Mutilation” or FGM, and that would seem to be the more accurate term. That law passed in 1997 but if it hadn’t, I wonder if it would pass in today’s political climate.

The issue is getting controversial and opinion is divided along left/right political lines. Generally, Republicans want to ban it and Democrats resist. There’s also disagreement about whether FGM is a Muslim religious practice or strictly an African cultural ritual. Some say it’s both.

Prevalence of FGM

A report in The Middle East Quarterly claims FGM is practiced in many Muslim countries beyond Africa, especially in Kurdistan, but there’s little research beyond that because such discussion is discouraged in the Muslim world. An article on stopfgmmideast.org claims FGM is discussed in a “hadith,” a singular or plural noun for accounts of what Muhammed said, which records a discussion between Muhammed and a woman who performed FGM. Muhammed said, “Yes, it is allowed … if you cut, do not overdo it, because it brings more radiance to the face, and it is more pleasant for the husband.” On the strength of that hadith, today’s Muslims do not prohibit FGM.

So how would one “overdo it”? Carmen Fishwick, writing in the UK Guardian, describes FGM thusly:

“Female genital mutilation involves the removal of the clitoris, inner-and-outer lips of the vagina, and the sewing or stapling together of the two sides of the vulva leaving only a small hole to pass urine and menstruate –- depending on the type. Typically FGM is performed with a razor blade on girls between the ages of four and 12, traditionally without anaesthetic.”

One FGM procedure only removes the clitoris.

Dr. Jumana Nagarwala

No one had been prosecuted in the United States under the federal law until April of this year when two Michigan doctors, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar were arrested for mutilating the genitals of two young Muslim girls from Minnesota. A USA Today article claims there were many more victims and that Dr. Nagarwala regularly performed the practice but tried to cover up her activity. Nagarwala was released under $4.5 million bond two weeks ago while awaiting trial. Her attorney said she would not flee because the wants a trial: “It's a fight about a sacred religious practice,” she added. Nagarwala, a Muslim, clearly believes FGM is a religious practice. Attorney Alan Dershowitz agrees and is consulting with Nagarwala’s defense team.

Dr. Fakhruddin Attar

A bill to criminalize FGM in Maine failed by one vote last summer. Maine State Representative Heather Sirocki of Scarborough had introduced the bill and she told me she expects it to be reintroduced by Governor LePage in January. Opponents of Sirocki’s bill claim FGM doesn’t happen in Maine and her bill is a solution in search of a problem. Sirocki claims Maine girls are indeed being victimized. As evidence, she cites a survey of federal Medicaid data where there are codes for each procedure performed including female genital mutilation. For 2016 alone, Maine documented eight incidents of treatment for FGM — presumably medical intervention for complications resulting from FGM rather than for the procedure itself.

Maine Representative Heather Sirocki

When I attended a forum at St Joseph’s Church in Bridgton, Maine last year, a woman claiming to work in the Portland school system said Somali girls told her they’d been taken to Boston for the procedure. If anyone who attended can tell me that woman’s name, I’d appreciate it. Sirocki also told me that Maine’s Department of Human Services (DHS) instructs mandated reporters to notify DHS about suspected incidents of FGM, but that didn’t happen for the eight incidents reported above.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lobbied against Sirocki’s bill in Maine and against a similar bill in Minnesota where it was also defeated. However, twenty-four other states have outlawed the procedure. It’s perplexing that neither the Democrat Party nor women’s groups in the US are not leading the charge against FGM. The issue would seem to be tailor-made for them. Neither do they complain about widespread abuse of women within Islam from beatings to honor killings. The same kind of myopia is evident in the European left as well.

Augustin Bahati

Some claim it’s multiculturalism — the idea that all cultures are equal, that no one culture is superior or inferior to any other culture — even one that oppresses women. In my conversation with Maine Representative Heather Sirocki, she cited the case of a Manchester, New Hampshire man, Augustin Bahati, 33, who was arrested last August for what the Manchester Union Leader described as “striking, pushing, grabbing, kicking and pulling out the hair of a woman who was 27 weeks pregnant…” The charges were dropped by Manchester domestic violence prosecutor Andrea Muller because “he lacked the cultural competency to participate in the American justice system.” Bahati is an immigrant from the Congo. It’s okay to beat up women in the Congo, so let him do it here too?

NH Prosecutor Andrea Muller

We’ll see what happens when Maine Governor LePage reintroduces the FGM bill in January.

Our Leaders Are Losing It

Wilhelm Reich

I’m not the smartest guy in the world and I can still be fooled once in a while, but I’ve learned a few things and my intuitive BS alarm works pretty well. For example, as soon as I heard of Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus Complex — that we males are born with a sexual attraction for our mothers — I knew it was hokey. Lately though, my alarm is going off so often I have an  almost-constant headache.

Bernie Sanders

A few months ago, I learned that Bernie Sanders neglected his studies at the University of Chicago because he was obsessed with Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Wilhelm Reich. “Wilhelm who?” you may ask. Well, driving around in remote Rangeley, Maine four years ago I came upon the Wilhelm Reich Museum. A student of Freud, Reich had been dead for more than a half century, but his research into human orgasm continues in rural Maine. Young people with dreadlocks, metal in their faces, and a wide-eyed spaciness greeted me when I got to the door, but I went inside anyway as one would to see a freak show at the fair.

Reich Museum in Rangely, Maine

On display were some of Reich’s devices including what looked like an old telephone booth but actually was an “orgone energy accumulator.” The UK Guardian described it as “an almost magical device that could improve its users' ‘orgastic potency.’” The Guardian article continued saying: “The accumulator was used by such countercultural figureheads as Norman Mailer, JD Salinger, Saul Bellow, Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Dwight Macdonald and William S Burroughs.” Reich also recommended that his “patients” should be massaged while naked to “loosen their body armour.”

Woman in "Orgone Energy Accumulator"

Some of the Bernie! supporters I see around Maine and New Hampshire remind me of the starry-eyed docents I met at the museum. Do they know Senator Sanders continued his obsession with Reich until he was at least thirty? After moving to nearby Vermont, Sanders wrote articles referring to Reich in the Vermont Freeman, an alternative newspaper. Mother Jones reported that: “His early writings reflect a political worldview rooted in the fad psychology and anti-capitalist rhetoric of the era and infused with a libertarianesque critique of state power. Sanders feared that the erosion of individual freedom—via compulsory education, sexual repression, and, yes, fluoridated water—began at birth. And, he postulated, authoritarianism might even cause cancer.”

Cancer!

Authoritarianism may cause cancer? Some of us think it’s time for Sanders to retire to his orgasmatron, but he’s a leading Democrat candidate for president of the United States. How many of his supporters know about the his obsession with Reich? I’m afraid to ask, but now Bernie is claiming that terrorism is caused by "climate change" and not radical Islam.

Though Islamist terrorism in Paris put France into a three-month state of emergency a few weeks ago, the biggest concentration of world leaders ever is meeting there to “save the world” from climate change. It all reminds me of how crazy-worried our leaders were about Y2K, which turned out to be nothing. Our “leaders” pretend all that paranoia never happened but they’re right back at it with President Obama playing the role of Chicken-Little-in-Chief. He’s about to cripple America’s already anemic economy by jacking up energy costs “before it’s too late.” He insists climate change is a much bigger threat than ISIS, our $20 trillion debt, or anything else. So he says.

Hansen warns us to watch out for those boulders!

Retired NASA scientist and “world-renowned climatologist” James Hansen claims Obama is not going far enough. Hansen warns that climate change causes “flying boulders” too. It whipped up storms so powerful they blew boulders weighing thousands of tons up onto cliffs in the Bahamas 100,000 years ago. Hansen’s claims are so out there that even the liberal Washington Post worries that: “some critics wonder whether the man [Hansen] who helped spawn the whole debate about the dangers of climate change has finally gone too far.”

Only some critics wonder that?

Reich is buried next to his cloudbuster

Wilhelm Reich, Bernie Sanders’ psycho-psychoanalyst, also built a “cloudbuster" machine I saw at the Rangeley museum. He claimed it could be put into reverse and draw in “orgone energy” from the atmosphere, which could then be infused into his orgasmatrons. Is something similar on the table in Paris? According to Bloomberg, today’s climate geniuses propose “replicating the planet-cooling effect of a volcanic eruption… The idea is to mimic [Mount] Pinatubo by using a fleet of modified business jets to inject fine droplets of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere, where they would combine with water vapor to form fine sulfate particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth.”

As I said, I’ve learned a few things over my sixty-four years, like Rudyard Kipling's warning to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...”

Carry Your Own Water, Mr. President

I wouldn’t have thought much about it until the mainstream media went into high dudgeon. It’s been interesting to watch feeding frenzy over what Donald Trump should have said when a questioner maintained President Obama was a Muslim. “He should have corrected the questioner!” they insisted. Trump said he has no obligation to defend Obama, and he’s right. Methinks the media protesteth too much. Chuck Todd continued to gnaw that bone when interviewing Trump on “Meet The Press” last Sunday morning. George Stephanopoulos worked it over on his program too.

Various polls have shown that as many as 54% of Republicans, 26% of Independents, and even 10% of Democrats think Obama is Muslim. Let’s review some of the possible reasons so many Americans believe this, shall we?

Obama’s father was Muslim. His stepfather was Muslim. He registered as Muslim when he went to a Muslim school in Indonesia. Back then his name was Barry Soetoro. As an adult, he decided to change it and go by Barack Hussein Obama, a distinctly Muslim-sounding name. Yet whenever conservatives dared to so much as utter the middle name Obama himself chose, the mainstream media went ballistic. Even John McCain chastised one of his hosts for referring to his opponent as “Barack Hussein Obama.”

When being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos back in 2008, Obama slipped, and said: “You’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith…” at which point Stephanopoulos interjected: “my Christian faith,” and Obama dutifully repeated as Stephanopoulos instructed: “…my Christian faith.”

In 2008, when the Hillary Clinton campaign was accused of circulating a picture of Obama wearing Muslim clothing, Obama objected, saying, “[People were] saddened when they see these kind of politics.” Obama had visited Kenya in 2006 and tried on some Muslim garb, but so what? Why get all excited when a picture emerged? Why would anyone be “saddened”? Why should the picture have been kept hidden? No reason, unless he was trying to hide something.

As for Obama’s Christian bona fides? Well, President Obama said he attended the Reverend Wright’s United Church of Christ in Chicago for twenty years. He said Wright performed his wedding and baptized his two children. Yet when videotape emerged of antisemitic, racist sermons Wright delivered in that church, including one in which he yelled: “No-no-no! Not God bless America — God damn America!” Obama claimed he was shocked and never heard of Wright saying any such thing. When challenged on this, Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial,” and the Reverend Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with.”

Not particularly controversial? As a lifelong Christian, I can’t say I’ve ever known one who wouldn’t be shocked to hear sermons like that in any church. For him to excuse Wright that way would kindle doubt about just what kind of Christian Obama considers himself to be. The Reverend Wright’s outrageous exclamations sound more like they come from a radical imam in an Iranian mosque than from a pastor of a Christian church in America.

President Obama issues presidential proclamations for all Muslim holidays, including this one on Ramadan from 2011:

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem. Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith…

There was, however, no Easter proclamation that year and Christians across the country objected. Since then Obama has issued Easter proclamations, but he had to be prodded. People notice this and it’s no wonder opinion polls reflect doubt about the veracity of what Obama claims his religion to be. They also remember statements like: “If you like your policy, you can keep your policy, period,” as well as others now too numerous to count. They’ve learned that lying comes easily to President Obama.

Islam would consider Obama to be Muslim because both his father and the stepfather who adopted him were Muslim. According to Daniel Pipes, an Islam specialist and president of the Middle East Forum: 

“Islam is a patrilineal religion: In Islam, the father passes his faith to the children, and when a Muslim man has children with a non-Muslim woman, Islam considers those children Muslim. Mr. Obama’s grandfather and father having been Muslims — the extent of their piety matters not at all — means that in Muslim eyes, Mr. Obama was born a Muslim.”

I’ve seen no record of Obama ever renouncing his Muslim faith. To do so would make him an apostate, an offense punishable by death according to Islamic law. I don't know if the president is Muslim or not, but it's not unreasonable for people to suspect he is. Donald Trump is absolutely correct. Obama has to defend himself when accusations like this come up. It’s not up to anyone else. It’s his job, but he sits back and lets the mainstream media do it instead.

Progressive Fruits

“Death to America! Death to America!” shouted a million Iranians in the capital square. Every year they would gather to chant, and every year I would show film clips to my students. It was always instigated by Iran’s government in a country that calls itself “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” which, I’m sure, President Obama would insist has nothing to do with Islam as he negotiates with the ayatollahs.

My teaching ran directly counter to what was being taught in the vast majority of American public school classrooms. Most American students hear that Islam is a religion of peace. A majority of the world’s muslims are peaceful, most teachers claim. About the latter, they are correct. About the former? Fourteen hundred years of history gives lie to any assertion that Islam is a religion of peace. Yes, it was relatively peaceful between the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 to the Iranian revolution in 1979, but in virtually every other period since about 600 AD, Islam has been anything but.

But I was an anachronism. Those calling themselves Progressives have been in charge of education in America at all levels for almost two generations and the results are coming in. During the span of just two days I read about the following:

Students at the University of California at Irvine voted to ban the American flag in a portion of campus because they want to be “inclusive.” I figured: Oh well, that’s California — the left coast — the land of fruits and nuts — run yet again by Jerry “Governor Moonbeam” Brown. No big deal. Par for the course.

Then a dean at Cornell University was asked by an undercover conservative posing as a Moroccan student if he would welcome ISIS on campus. “Sure,” he said. Then he was asked if the “student” could invite “a freedom fighter [from ISIS] to come and do like a training camp for students.” And the response? “You would be allowed to do something like that. It’s just like bringing in a coach, to do a training, a sports trainer or something,” said the dean. Perhaps the dean doesn’t know that ISIS is at war with western civilization - which isn’t a required course anymore at Cornell, or at 86% of all other American universities either. Students at Cornell are instead required to take a course in a non-western culture.

Then Meredith Shiner, a reporter at Yahoo News, commented on Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement that he was running for president, by tweeting: “Bizarre [for you, Senator Cruz] to talk about how rights are God-made and not man-made in your speech announcing a POTUS bid? When Constitution was man-made?”

Hmm. Shiner graduated from Duke University, worked at Roll Call and Politico before Yahoo News, yet she’s a progressive who clearly doesn’t know much. She doesn’t know, for instance, that the concept of God-given rights isn’t in our Constitution. It comes from our Declaration of Independence, which was written shortly after the “shot heard ’round the world” was fired in Lexington, Massachusetts. But things have changed even there. After students at Lexington High School voted a theme of  “American Pride” for a school dance, their progressive school administrators cancelled it because it excluded other nationalities. “People consider America to be a melting pot, so the fact that it was even considered offensive is what people are a little surprised about,” said student Sneha Rao. I’m not surprised. That’s progressive education in action.

This was a little closer to home. I grew up less than twenty miles from Lexington. Yes, I know it’s in Massachusetts, sometimes referred to as “The People’s Republic of Massachusetts” and it’s a famously progressive state like California, but still. American pride is offensive? In America? What have we become?

Fryeburg Academy

Even closer to home, I read that a lacrosse coach at Fryeburg Academy was encouraged to resign because he posted a letter on his Facebook page. This guy coached some of my former students. The Conway Daily Sun reported: “The letter, written by ‘An American Citizen’ was about Obama’s speech given in Cairo in 2009 [in which he] said that Islam has long been a part of American history.” The letter goes on to criticize Islam, saying Muslims are still the largest traffickers in human slavery, which the US State Department reported in 2009. It claims Muslims were allied with Hitler in World War II, which they certainly were. Hitler’s Mein Kampf remains a best seller in Turkey and across the Middle East. In Arabic, it’s called “My Jihad.” My former students know all this.

The letter claims Muslims were either silent on or pleased with the September 11th attacks. That’s dismaying, but also absolutely true. For years I showed students video of Muslims dancing in the streets of East Jerusalem, which progressive mainstream media outlets quickly squashed. Visiting there in 2005, I was advised by my Palestinian guide not to leave the hotel by myself — because it wasn’t safe for Americans.

The Sun reported that although Coach Lees was to meet with top administrators about the letter, “athletic director Sue Thurston told him a decision to fire him had already been made,” so he resigned. Unless there was something more damning in “the letter” than the Sun reported, it looks like Fryeburg Academy officials should bone up on the history of Islam.

Multicultural Follies

“Nothing to do with Islam.”

That’s what our political leaders keep telling us when radical Muslims enslave, rape, crucify, behead, and otherwise slaughter people by the thousands all over the world. It has nothing to do with Islam.

Teaching in public school a few years ago, I showed students pictures of burning cars in France. French media said it was exuberant “youths” torching the cars — well over a thousand vehicles in one night. NBC News also called them “youths.” French and American media both averted their eyes from the plain truth that youths burning cars all over France were Muslim.

Reuters said only 1137 cars were burned on New Year’s Eve in 2009, while 1147 had been torched the year before. Responding to what it called, “another wave of reader complaints that we don’t brand these arsonists as Muslims,” Reuters explained: “Sure, there were Muslims among them — but there were non-Muslims as well. What value do we add to a news story by using a questionable religious label to describe a political and socio-economic phenomenon?” Nothing to do with Islam. The arsonists were victims of western capitalist greed, they suggest.

When my students asked why media refused to call the “youths” Muslims, I told them it went against their cherished concept of “Multiculturalism.” They looked at me with blank faces, having no idea what multiculturalism was. I told them to look it up on their laptops.

Some recited the Wikipedia definition, which said: “Multiculturalism refers to the historical evolution of cultural diversity within a jurisdiction, incarnated by its selection policies and institutionalized by its settlement policies.”

“Okay now?” I said. That should clear it up.” Some laughed. Most remained confused.

“Countries in Europe have formed into something called the ‘European Union,’” I explained, “kind of a United States of Europe. Elite EU leaders made ‘multiculturalism’ one of their founding principles, and it basically means that all cultures are equal. No culture or religion is any better or any worse than any other. They’re all the same.”

Then I explained how Muslim imams were like priests of Islam, and when many encouraged Muslims in the mosques to kill the rest of us, that made it hard for European leaders to continue insisting that Islam was no worse than any other religion. So what do European leaders do in the face of Muslim violence? “They pretend it isn’t happening, that’s what. Don’t call the arsonists Muslims. They’re just ‘youths’ getting a little rambunctious.”

More than forty thousand cars are torched in France every year. Nothing to do with Islam, though.

Then I showed them media accounts of how radical Muslim US Army Colonel Nidal Hasan shot forty-three American soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” I told them Obama Administration officials insisted the shootings had nothing to do with Islam. The president said: “Well, look, we -- we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable.”

I told them how the Pentagon investigated and published an 86-page report that never mentioned jihad, Muslim, Islam, or Koran. My students knew what all those words meant. Ultimately Obama’s Department of Homeland Security explained the Fort Hood shooting as “Workplace violence.”

Nothing to do with Islam.

Muslims believe Mohammed was “The Prophet” of Islam and the “Hadith” is an ancient record of Mohammed’s sayings, secondary only to the Koran. The Hadith prohibits making images of Mohammed. Radical Muslims kill people who draw cartoons of Mohammed, but President Obama and socialist French President Hollande insist those killings have nothing to do with Islam.

When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) murders thousands of Iraqis and Syrians in the name of Islam, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, and Attorney General Eric Holder maintain it has nothing to do with Islam. When Islamic terrorists from al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and al Shebaab torture and murder thousands of people across Africa and the Middle East in the name of Islam, our leaders assert it has nothing to do with Islam.

When the Koran, the holy book of Islam, instructs Muslims: “…cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them,” it has nothing to do with Islam. So what if there are over 100 sections of the Koran encouraging followers to commit violence against non-believers? If our leaders are right, we must conclude that the Koran has nothing to do with Islam.

Get it? The teachings of Mohammed — the Prophet of Islam, the teachings in the Koran — the holy book of Islam, the teachings of imams in the mosques of Islam, and the actions of millions of Muslims around the world — have nothing to do with Islam.

Islam is a religion of peace. If not, multiculturalism would be seen as a fraud, and we can’t have that.