Dr. Chesler, Islamic Jihad, and the Aristotelian Concept of Objective Reality

by Jeanette Pryor
NewsRealBlog
April 12, 2010

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/738/dr-chesler-islamic-jihad-and-the-aristotelian

Dr. Phyllis Chesler introduced her article, POTUS Says: Jihad Is Only a Figment of Our Imaginationwith this citation:

"Earlier today, Matt Apuzzo, of the Associated Press, led me straight down the rabbit-hole when he wrote that:

'President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as 'Islamic extremism' from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.'"

After making the necessary distinctions between secular or moderate Muslims and the Islamists, Chesler makes an astounding, Aristotelian assertion:

"It is crucial to name reality properly. Otherwise, nothing exists, everything is the same, everything is no-thing."

Centuries of pluralism and subjectivity have lullabied Western Civilization into intellectual somnambulance by which we consider the highest state of educated wisdom to be the assertion that, "Everything is the same."

In her article, Islamist Takeover of Manhattan, No Bullets Fired, Chesler continues to make the case for the objective nature of truth. The very title, "Takeover-No Bullets" asserts that the first Radical Islamic victory is the seduction of the mind by bringing it to adopt a perception of the world that does not correspond to what has been and what is. Political occupation is of less importance than convincing a mind to embrace non-reality, to conform to that which " is not."

Chesler describes her viewing of the new documentary by Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab Lands. The film is about three brave Arabs who helped to rescue Jews being slaughtered in rarely acknowledged killing centers in North Africa during the Holocaust.

"Where(as) the European aspect of the murder of more than 6 million Jews was copiously recorded in film, photography, records (the meticulous Germanic obsession) and personal histories captured in book and tape and Spielberg's Shoah recordings, few today have ever heard of this North African contingent of Holocaust that murdered so many, with so little remnant left. Professor Satloff is owed a huge debt, an enormous debt, for his massive digging in stubbornly opaque libraries and hamlets now crumbling."

"True, if a film can document the existence of the European Holocaust in North Africa, and can also show that at least three Muslims (there may be many more about whom we know nothing) saved Jews from Hitler's executioners, then obviously, Arab and Muslim Holocaust Denial or Holocaust Indifference is being seriously challenged–and in the most "positive" of ways. The three Muslims are the heroes of the film, as is the author who set out to find them. His on-camera search and interviews constitute the film's story."

While appreciating the merits of the film and hailing its heroes, Chesler states:

"Beyond that, the film made me a little crazy because it neatly, carefully, smoothly, sidestepped the thundering herd of elephants in the room right now…"

The elephant is the Holocaust Denial and Israeli Moral Equivalency embraced by most of the Islamic world and by much of the Left in this country. This attitude is illustrated by the reception in New York City of the darling of the Subjectivist Left, the poster-boy for rehabilitating the image of "slandered Islam," Tarik Ramadan.

"…the vaunted hero of the American "politically correct" Left, Tariq Ramadan, is the formerly "exiled" professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University."

With Journalist Fern Sidman, Chesler explains the concrete real world threat posed by the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna.

"Ramadan uses language in a way that seems to support the precepts of non-violence and assimilation, yet he does not distance himself in any way or nearly adequately from the supremacy of political Islam and the concept of the Islamic State. His excuse is that he is speaking 'from within Muslims'. But this prevents a real understanding of his ideas about political Islam, the Islamic state, and Sharia law versus constitutional republics and the establishment clause. It prevents a real understanding of his position on the Muslim Brotherhood and thus becomes actual tacit support of the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood. "

"Ramadan has been unacceptably deceptive on issues related to Sharia such as its laws against apostasy, proscribed punishments under Islamic law, state law versus Sharia law, and real and universal equality for women. His positions remain in line with the Muslim Brotherhood–which endangers both other Muslims and the world at large. Ramadan's easy access to media suggests that other Muslims are all like him–which is not true. His larger-than-life media presence silences and hides other kinds of Muslim voices."

Leftist mentation is allergic to the concept of objective truth. Having eviscerated the Aristotelian foundation of Western thought that recognized universal standards of intellectual rectitude, the non-subjective moral value of human acts, and the need for society that protects these core principles, those embracing Tarik Ramadan are unable to identify, let alone condemn and defend themselves against the intrinsic fallacy of his "truth" and the barbarism of his legal code.

Everything is not the same.

Truth is a terrible exigency. It leads inexorably to intellectual honesty or the madness of denial. In action, it leads to war for freedom, or groveling submission. To do what Dr. Chesler calls, "naming reality properly," leads to a true martyrdom. The three Arab heroes of Among the Righteous were ready to sacrifice their own lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. Sometimes this "martyrdom" is "nothing" but banishment from the water-cooler, or the evaporation of academic panel and dinner invitations.

The militant nature of Jihad will not allow us to sleep forever. Eventually, the real imperialism, that of Sharia, will require us to make a choice between its sexist dictatorship and our American freedoms. Even those who tried to disguise the War on Terror by hiding its Islamic nature, will be confronted with the reality of the distinction between truth and lies, between slavery and freedom, between "everything and no-thing."

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