Islam

By

William D. Dannenmaier

My people migrated to the United States from Germany in the eighteen hundreds. They came because they didn’t approve of life in Germany with its aristocracy. They wanted to live in a democracy. My grandfather Dannenmaier refused to permit German to be spoken in his house. According to my father, he said, “We are Americans now, not Germans. We will speak English.”

In a similar vein my friend Al once spoke of his grandmother on St. Patrick’s day. He said his grandmother, who had migrated from Ireland despised St. Patrick’s Day. He reported that she said, “No one who grew up and lived in Ireland would want anything to do with it once they left.”

I believe that my grandparents and Al’s grandmother were typical of immigrants who came to this country in the past. They came because they wanted to leave the country of their birth and enjoy the freedom on the United States. This doesn’t mean they quit cooking foods they had enjoyed in their homeland. They not only continued to enjoy them but gave the recipes to neighbors who had tasted and enjoyed them. Similarly, they brought dances and other happy elements of their native lands, thereby enriching the United States. What they left behind were the laws and politics they had fled.

That is what I don’t understand about many of our Muslim immigrants. They wanted, I suppose, to leave the countries of their birth, certainly no one went to their lands and dragged them here. Why did they leave? I suspect that it was because the Islamic laws, the extremes of their enforcement and the politics of Islamic governments which prevented them from living the lives they wanted or participating in peaceful, but meaningful, change.

Why, then, do they want to bring those laws with them? A Muslim woman demanded, and received, the right to wear her veil, in accord with Muslim custom, when her picture was taken for a driver’s license. On the one hand, that destroys the purpose of the picture, any person could hide behind her veil. On the other, if she truly wanted Muslim law, there would be no need for the veil. Countries which require women to wear the veil in public do not permit women to drive. Some do not permit them to leave their home unaccompanied by a male. Does that woman, or any sane Muslim woman, want that as law in the United States?

A Muslim elected to Congress took his oath on the Koran, in defiance of our tradition. House Speaker Mrs. Pelosi was standing there smiling. Would she have been smiling if she had considered what that indicated that his beliefs were? Women, according to his beliefs as expressed in that Koran, belong in the home, not in Congress. Passages in the Koran advocate the killing of non-Muslims. Is that the direction in which he hopes to lead our nation? It is, of course, being done elsewhere. Try being a Christian in Indonesia, Pakistan or any of several other Muslim nations. It is true the Old Testament has some passages in which varied prophets urge Jews to kill their enemies, keeping only the young girls. But the New Testament, the foundation of Christianity on which this nation was founded, has no such suggestions. I know of no Christian leaders urging anyone to kill Canaanites because they are so urged in the Bible, and any Jewish leader who made such a cry would be suspected of insanity by his listeners.

Six Muslim leaders, imans, created a disturbance on an airplane. Publicly and noisily they said prayers before entering the aircraft and on the aircraft. They also shouted slogans used by terrorists before an attack. Then, refusing to take assigned seats, they distributed themselves so as to control entry to and from the airplane, as the terrorists had done in the 9/11 attacks. The two by the pilot’s compartment also demanded and received seatbelt extensions that they didn’t need, but which would have served as excellent weapons against the pilot and steward. They were put off the airplane. Thank God. Now they are claiming discrimination. They were perfectly poised to seize and destroy the plane and other passengers if they chose. How does anyone know they didn’t intend to do that?

Now there is a demand for “prayer rooms” in airports for Muslims only. Those asking say they wish privacy. I have been in many airports. I’ve never been in one that didn’t have areas in which there were no other people, most often one end of the baggage room. There is all the privacy available anyone needs. The demand is the usual arrogant self-centered demand of Muslim leaders, simply another attempt to bring Muslim law to the United States.

In a way, I rather like the idea of Muslim law, provided it is for Muslims only, in the United States. Let us cut off the heads of any Muslims who criticize the government and the arms and legs of those who steal. Imprison, but don’t feed, Muslim criminals, let their families do that. Cover women who violate their marriage oaths with sheets, bind their arms to their sides, bury them half way in sand and stone them to death. (In the name of equal rights, perhaps the same thing should be done to Muslim men who stray.)

A Muslim leader in Minneapolis is demanding that Muslim taxi drivers serving the airport refuse to transport anyone carrying alcoholic beverages or accompanied by a dog, even a seeing-eye dog. Still, he wants those drivers to have the right to service the airport.

Actually, I doubt that many Muslims want the above, but the vocal ones do. I suspect they see themselves as being in charge and dealing out their “justice” to others as do the leaders of many Muslim nations, which is why so many tens of thousands of Muslims have fled.

Since the days when our eastern States were colonies of England there has been an acceptance in some, not in all, of all religions, Christianity being the dominant and the source of the values and ethics for the writers of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the development of our democracy. Proponents and believers in other religions have more than accepted that, they have shown their appreciation of it by their migration, by the tens of thousands, to our nation. Until recently, they have been content to live under the laws established for all, but now a strident Muslim leadership is chipping away at our legal system and, eventually, at our freedom. We had best watch out.