After reading an excellent article in The Independent regarding the ongoing feud between Christopher Hitchens and Gore Vidal (talk about pots and kettles accusing each other) I perused the comment section and came across this classic that is deliciously worthy of Fisking.

A commenter by the nom de blogue of “1938maqazi” takes umbrage with Hitchens’ unrepentant hostility to Islam (to be fair he is hostile to ALL religions, but properly reserves his most corrosive vitriol for Mohammedans). Alas, what the writer offers is a jejeune talking-points memo that sounds as though it was lifted in toto from a CAIR-type website. Thus:

Why blame Islam? Individuals, not religions, carry out inhuman acts.

True. But individuals - and even groups of individuals - do not operate in a vacuum. They do what they do based partly on nature and mostly on nurture. Teach a child to hate - in this case, Muslim children who are taught that Jews and other infidels must be destroyed - and that child will carry the hatred with all the fervor of a woman in love carrying a torch for her beloved.

Islam is a religion of peace, accepted and practiced by more than 1.25 billion people worldwide. It is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and if it was what some critics claim, why should the people from all walks of life from around the world keep embracing Islam? Where is the sword now?

Where is the sword? You’ll find it literally in the hands of Mohammedan jihadists who cut off the heads of Jews and other infidels. You’ll find it figuratively in the hordes of ululating barbarians who take to the streets to cheer ever attack they launch against Western civilization. Religion of peace? That is for to laugh. Anywhere in the world today that one finds sectarian strife, in almost all cases it involves Muslim aggression.

Christianity is a religion of peace. I know this because the man who founded it never once counseled any of his followers to harm others. There is no story that he ever made anyone blind or anyone crippled or ever lifted his hand except to bless or to heal. The same cannot be said of the mad pedophile brigand who called himself Mohammed.

In Islam, a person has the right to defend himself, his family, his country or his neighbor(s), which justifies the resistance being offered by the people of Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine, to attacks on their soils by the so-called liberators, who are actually the occupiers.

Islam is not indigenous to any of these locations and there is no such entity as Palestine. As history demonstrates with depressing regularity, Islam is an aggressor religion that grew largely by dint of the sword. And for that reason it bears mentioning that Western civilization likewise has a right to defend itself from Muslim incursions - a right if first exercised roughly 1400 years ago. Hence the First Crusade - launched as a purely defensive measure to rescue formerly Christian lands from the grip of the Mohammedans.

The Holy Qur’an clearly states that if a person saves one life, it’s as if he saved humanity, and if a person kills one human being, it’s as if he killed humanity.

The “holy” Quran also contains numerous suras calling for jihad against non-believers in addition to seeking out and slaughtering Jews.

What is happening in the enslaved Muslim countries is a natural reaction to occupation, bombings, killing and terrorizing of innocent civilians (children, old men and women), rapes, in addition to looting of resources, national antiques and artifacts, above all destruction of property by the occupiers. Terror breeds terror.

Cry me a f*cking river. If slavery does exist and if Muslims are indeed enslaved, it is at the hands of other Muslims, for it is only in the Muslim world that slavery is still practiced today.

We assure those who bash Islam that if there was no occupation in this world by foreign invaders, there would be no resistance – the so-called terror.

History speaks otherwise.

We would like those who criticize Islam to explain the following acts committed by the Christians on Jews, other Christians and Muslims alike, throughout history:

Let the Jews - who are openly despised and reviled by Islam - plead their case against Christianity. Likewise, let various Christian denominations sort out the history of their animosity - which, today, is virtually non-existent.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim men, women and children killed by the crusaders, who were Christians.

Hundreds of thousands? The number sounds a tad exaggerated. But let’s assume it’s accurate. What on earth would impel Christian Crusaders to slaughter hundreds of thousands of men, women and children? Conquest? The desire to land and riches?

It certainly fits the pattern of human nature and aptly describes the shameful Fourth Crusade which resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople by Christian Crusaders. But there was another reason: self-defense. The goofy, absurd and utterly barbaric entity known today as Islam sprang up in the deserts of Arabia as the product of a mind that was either diseased or demonically possessed. It then spread - like a rapidly metastasizing cancer into the civilized world, pushing both east and west into North Africa and the Middle East. Everywhere they went these human locusts conquered and converted by the sword. It’s worth noting that all of the Middle East and all of North Africa was Christian at the time of the Muslim incursions. For that matter, so was almost all of Europe and certainly all of Iberia. This leads us to the next point.

Inquisition of Jews and Muslims from Spain by Queen Isabella, a Christian.

The Inquisition is perhaps one of the most misunderstood episodes in Iberian history. It was instituted only AFTER Iberian Christians expelled the Mohammedan invaders in the wake of a seven hundred year long war. It was instituted to root out crypto-Mohammedans who claimed to be Christian but had ulterior motives. Perhaps we could do with an Inquisition here in the U.S.

Millions of people killed by the European and American Christians during the two world wars. Atrocities committed on millions of Jews and Christians by Adolph Hitler, a professed Christian.

Christianity had nothing to do with any of these wars. Both Christians and Jews were savagely persecuted by the pagan Nazis. Moreover, more people died in the 20th century at that hands of atheistic totalitarianism than in all the wars of recorded history before then. It’s worth noting that during the Second World War, Mohammedans in the Middle East were close allies of the Nazis and shared their hatred of the Jews.

Hundreds of thousands of Christians killed every year by the Irish Christians, including the British and the IRA, both Catholics and Protestants, during the past few centuries. Why are they not blamed to be “Christian Terrorists?”

Um…at most the religious strife between Catholics and Protestants in Britain resulted in the deaths of at most 5,000 people over a period of four centuries. During the reign of terror conducted by the Irish Republican Army not more than 2,000 people - most of them IRA members and British security forces - perished. Moreover, since the 1990s the IRA has pretty much been inactive.

Both of them believe in Jesus Christ, who told them to turn the other cheek, and both of them believe in the same Lord, Who commanded that “Thou shall not kill.” Period.

Precisely. Christians who willfully murder other people are acting in direct defiance to what Christ taught.

Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City , was a Catholic. Are all Catholics terrorists?

If McVeigh was a Catholic, he was certainly a non-practicing one. But that’s irrelevant. Nowhere in the Catholic Catechism will one find any directive to go forth and kill in the name of Christ. On the other hand, the Quran is replete with such directives.

Last but not least, the bombings, killings, rapings and lynchings of both American Indians and black slaves (Afro-Americans) during the past 200 years in the United States . What about them?

Not a good idea to throw stones from inside a glass house. In Africa, Muslims still practice slavery and still engage in religious persecution. And let’s not get started on the issues of women’s rights and clitorectomies.

Will those filled with hate for Islam blame Christianity for the above inhuman acts by Christians in various parts of the world since its inception?

Of course not, silly, because Christianity teaches precisely the opposite. It teaches its followers to extend tolerance, forbearance, love and forgiveness for all people, not just other Christians.

If not, then why are they blaming the religion of Islam for what is a natural reaction to occupation of Muslim countries by foreign invaders?

Because Islam is barbarism personified. It is a goofy, stupid, asinine and ultimately deadly belief system that befouls everything it does not destroy. Winston Churchill summed it up perfectly over a century ago:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

They remind me of the Star Trek “Borg” - a vast collective of cybernetic organisms that travel the galaxy in enormous cube-shaped vessels, conquering an assimilating entire star systems and races.

Interesting that the creators of Star Trek chose a cube for the configuration of the Borg vessel. It reminds me of another famous cube: the Kaaba.

Islam is no less dangerous to Western civilization in reality than the Borg were to the Federation of Planets in science fiction. Both must be utterly destroyed.