Please stop your hate speech, Mr. Friedman

Dear Tom: You have forced me to come out of my hiatus and are making me do things I hate: being rude to and showing someone up, even in print. But, you have been impossibly difficult these past few months. Your pen is dripping poison. In the guise of the so-called "war of ideas" (your euphemism for "war on Muslims), you are systematically attempting to destroy the credibility of the Muslims, their culture, their holy book and their religion. You have such a stranglehold over the American media that one has to seek avenues abroad to refute your lies.

In your July 22 piece, you accuse the Imam of Islam's holiest mosque in Mecca of saying the following: "calling Jews 'the scum of the earth' and 'monkeys and pigs' who should be 'annihilated.' Other enemies of Islam were referred to by Sheik Al-Sudayyis as 'worshippers of the cross' and 'idol-worshiping Hindus' who must be fought."

Incendiary stuff! In one statement he manages to alienate the world's Christians, Hindus, and Jews. I wonder why he left out the Buddhists! If it is true that he has really used that kind of despicable language, he has polluted Islam's holiest shrine, and I will be the first to condemn him and ask for his firing.

Here is the problem though. You attribute the information, not to an impartial and respectable source, but to "Memri Translation Service," and "Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media."

This is where you sink into deceit, Tom. What you hide from America is that Yigal Carmon is a virulent Zionist, whose organisation, Memri, is dedicated solely towards painting the most negative picture of the Islamic world to the west. (Does Memri have an agent in the holy mosque, I wonder.) Yet, to unsuspecting Americans you pass off anti-Muslim Jewish extremist Carmon as a respectable mainstream American.

This crucial information changes the complexion of your expose entirely. You are so powerful Tom that no newspaper in America will dare to expose your deceit and publish this truth. Yigal Carmon supplying information about Muslim preachers is as believable as Baruch Goldstein fighting for the rights of Palestinians.

Since you want to be "non-discriminatory," let us discuss what happened at the funeral of Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein who gunned down 29 Muslim Palestinians as they were praying the morning Fajr prayer during Ramadan at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in February 1994. The Rabbi at the funeral said, "Thousands of Arab lives are not worth a Jewish finger nail!"

Remember that? Now, if the Rabbi could say this in public in front of the cameras, I have a feeling that he and those like him say some pretty nasty stuff about Arabs and Muslims beyond the reach of the cameras. I agree with you that "we need to shine a spotlight on hate speech wherever it appears. The hate spreaders assume that they are talking only to their own, in their own language, and can get away with murder. When their words are spotlighted, they feel pressure to retract, defend and explain them."

If you really want to be "nondiscriminatory," Tom, why don't you ask Memri to secretly tape the sermons of militant Jewish Rabbis and expose them to the world? If militant Imams' sermons inspire Muslim extremists, surely militant Rabbis' sermons must be inspiring, in your own words, "Jewish settler extremists who wrote 'Muhammad is a Pig' on buildings in Gaza." I can't wait to read your column denouncing Jewish hate speech.

Although through your grandiloquent theories you present yourself as a scholar on Islam, (after all, you coined the word "Islamo-fascists"), your understanding of Islam and the Muslims remains very poor. None of your phantasmagoric theories, so far, have panned out. You labeled the 7/7 London bombing a "Muslim Problem," although a Jewish reader of The New York Times quickly corrected you: "It's a human problem."

In the article you say, rather shamelessly: "The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. To this day, no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama Bin Laden."

These are lies and you know it. I hope the following truths are not too hard for you to stomach.

Ever since the London bombings, led by journalists like you, a chorus of criticism has been leveled against Muslim Americans for their supposed silence, with the innuendo that silence equals acquiescence. One only has to search Google to find (along with an avalanche of anti-Muslim smut) numerous Muslim American organisations that have unequivocally condemned the atrocities. The suspicion persists because of the erroneous belief that any Muslim American condemnations of the terror attacks are sure to be featured prominently in the press and the electronic media. This is simply not true. After 9/11 Muslim Americans had to buy space in the newspapers to air their condemnations.

It is naive to think that all it takes for bin Laden to stop his madness is some kind of signal from Muslims. You may be better informed, Tom, but the fact is, like the rest of America, Muslim Americans have no clue as to what Osama Bin Laden and his band of Al Qaeda maniacs are really up to. They have not consulted the Muslims and Muslims have not authorised bin Laden and his gang to speak or act on their behalf.

Yet, every time these lunatics carry out mayhem, for the rest of the world, cheer-led by those like you, it becomes, in your own words, a "Muslim Problem," with the insinuation that the lack of Muslim condemnation and "fatwa" (religious decree) against bin Laden empowers the gang. To assuage the anger of fellow Americans, Muslim Americans dutifully condemn the terrorists without really knowing exactly who or what they are condemning. The fact is: Muslim Americans or Muslims elsewhere have just about as much knowledge of, or influence over, bin Laden as has President Bush.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Pope, there is no temporal authority in Islam. Most Muslims abhor the issuance of "fatwa" because it is not religiously sanctioned. When Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death sentence fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, most Muslims outside Iran dismissed it. To think that bin Laden and his murderous thugs will be chastened by the issuance of fatwa against them is ludicrous.

What gets stampeded in the rush to make Muslim Americans culpable is the fact that bin Laden is an equal opportunity killer. Over 500 Muslim Americans were killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. On Sunday, July 17, The New York Times published the photograph of a beautiful Muslim Bangladeshi-British teenage girl killed in the London bombing. And in Iraq, Al Qaeda targets and blows up into smithereens several times more Muslims than American soldiers.

Muslim-detractors like your friend, Irshad Manji, are now citing verses in the Qur'an as inspiration for the terrorists. A particular verse has been quoted: "Whoever kills a human being, except for murder or other villainy, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind."

Supposedly, "except for murder and other villainy" is the "loophole" that inspires the terrorists. Nonsense. Self-defense is allowed in Islam. Muslims do not believe in "turning the other cheek" -- who does these days? If Muslims did not defend, all their lands would be occupied by invaders by now. While the terrorists will embrace this or any other verse as a blank check, for the average Muslims what constitutes "murder and other villainy" is a matter of intense scrutiny and debate. This certainly is not a "sin of Scripture."

Although terrorists couch their actions in religious garb for self-justification, their acts are fundamentally political. Any moderate Muslim eager to jump on the "war on terror" bandwagon is stopped dead in his track by three words: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. Just as it is disingenuous of the parents of the London bombers to be "surprised" by the acts of their madrassa-indoctrinated terrorist sons, it is a tad hypocritical for the apologists like you to pretend and to propagate the lie that western invasion, occupation, and destruction of Muslim lands have nothing to do with terrorism.

President Bush is head over heels singing the praises of democracy and freedom. He has forgotten an important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance -- "justice for all." "Freedom, democracy and law and order" are the clarion call of the strong. "Justice" is the cry of the weak and the oppressed. America's founding fathers begged the British for justice, which was denied, only then they took up arms.

"Justice" is the song the Muslim world would love to hear from President Bush. Occupation is the opposite of justice. No plea from anyone will stop the terrorist murderers, who must be hunted down, but, justice will win over the world's average Muslims to America's side. Administration of justice will go much further towards eliminating terrorism than the dropping of bombs.

Your own track record is not good, Tom. You have criticised Muslims for condemning the desecration of the holy Qur'an while remaining silent on the killing of the Iraqis by the insurgents, but you have never condemned the killing of civilians by the occupation forces in Iraq.

Please stop misleading America with lies and deceits, Tom. Practice truth and the truth will set you free.