Fred Thompson's Most Important Piece - Criticizing Radical Islam & US / UK Multiculturalism

Fred Thompson has crafted a seemingly innocuous op-ed piece, quoted below, taking to task the US and UK for not addressing the cultural problems of "peaceful" Islamists in their midst. Specifically, he criticizes teachers in the UK for not teaching historical truth out of fear for conflict with or offending Muslim children being fed propoganda at their Wahhabi / Salafi mosques. (If you question that last sentence, see Undercover Mosque). This essay will likely pass unnoticed by most. It should not.

The essay is actually stunning in its significance. Fred Thompson get's it. He, alone of all the candidates for President of any political party, has just demonstrated that he understands precisely what the conflict with radical Islam is all about, and he understands that the fight against it has to be at every level - including at the level of challenging the myths and dogma of the Islamists.

If you think this is a small issue, think again. The existential threats of radical Wahhabi / Salafi Islam and Khomeinist Shia'ism will never be stopped until their religion is challenged and evolves. Juxtapose against that the the billions that have been and are being spent by Saudi Arabia to make a home for - and of - their radical sect in the West. Consider the UN seeking to outlaw any criticism of Islam, the radicalization of secular or moderate Muslim countries (Somalia, Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan among others), the Saudi funded effort backed by Democrats to change our laws to benefit radical Islamists. Consider the recent censorship by PBS of a documentary aimed at exposing the threat of radicals to moderates who seek to evolve their religion from Wahhab's medieval version. That act by PBS is just a minor example of how our government and MSM are actually enabling Wahhabism to flourish in the U.S. Whether to address the radical poison of Wahhabism at the most basic level is not a small issue - it is the crux of the issue. All else is treating the symptoms. And Fred Thompson has just taken a stand:

. . . [S]ome schools in Great Britain have stopped teaching history that is offensive to Muslim students. The topics that have been erased from the curriculum, the study found, include both the Nazi genocide and the Crusades.

This rewriting of history through omission wasn't some government policy. It was the result of individual decisions in local schools by teachers with large populations of Muslim students. Unfortunately, many of these students have been taught by parents and mosques that the holocaust never happened and that the Crusades were an unprovoked attack on Islam by European Christians. History books that present these events in any other light, they believe, are part some giant conspiracy designed to attack their very religion.

If anybody needs to hear these facts, it is the children who are being abused by those who are teaching the same hateful lies that have helped turn the Middle East into the self-destructive and often suicidal mess it is today.

. . . [T]here is a point when the desire not to offend the easily offended becomes an even bigger problem. We've already seen an English organization ban images of Piglet, the harmless character from the classic Winnie the Pooh books, because of protests by those who imagine that simply seeing a cartoon pig is a violation of their civil rights. We've even seen the banning of pins bearing St. George's cross, because it reminds some of the Crusades -- accompanied by demands that Great Britain get rid of the venerable Union Jack for the same reason.

These views, common in the Middle East, are not just an academic or intellectual challenge. We have seen homegrown British terrorists act on the same lies and conspiracy theories that are now being used to silence teachers. Ideas do have consequences and we all need to understand that the war on terror is taking place as much in the realm of ideas as it is on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

America is a free country and we do not tell people what they can believe or say. We should realize, however, that there are people in America who are also telling their children that the holocaust is a lie and that those who say otherwise are their enemies. We cannot prevent them from doing so, but we also cannot let them promote their agenda by claiming they are victimized by historical facts.

This would be a good place to quote an important British writer, George Orwell, who wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Even in America, our children are often taught a watered down, inoffensive and culturally sensitive version of events ranging from the Crusades to the battle at the Alamo.

It's time for people who believe that they have a stake in Western civilization and its traditions to get a little backbone -- even if it offends somebody.

Read the entire article here. Fred Thompson just wrote an incredibly important article. I wonder how many people will take note.