All It Means Is That He Makes The Claim

“Bob, you have written a lot about Imam Feisal Rauf, accusing him of being a Radical Muslim who believes in Jihad, but I have heard that the man is a moderate.”

That is correct. You have heard such an appraisal. It’s not true, but, yes, you heard it. The only evidence for Rauf being moderate is that he calls himself one. And yet, his alleged moderation refuses to label Hamas a terrorist organization. The Hamas charter not only denies the right of Israel to exist but calls for the extermination of Jews all over the world. Shouldn’t this fact end our discussion? Do we even need to mention other things, like Rauf’s connections with Muslim Brotherhood (whose stated goal is to make the entire world Sharia compliant) or his belief that America was partly responsible for 9/11?

I realize Mr. and Mrs. Rauf are good looking and charming and they both smile a lot. The Associated Press sure likes to point this out. They have a snapshot of Rauf’s smiling mug in the midst of his current overseas trip. Next to the picture is a caption telling us that he is smiling. Not that it wasn’t already a great big, obvious smile, but I guess this was just their loving way of saying, “Gee, the guy doesn’t really look so bad.”

Yeah, he must be a moderate if he smiles. I heard the same thing when Iranian dictator Ahmadinnejad was interviewed by Mike Wallace: “He looked good. He smiled. It’s hard to view him as a liar or a murderer when he smiles.”

I won’t insult the intelligence of my readers by commenting on the smile thing as I’m sure they’ve seen films of Hitler and his Nazis also smiling. You probably remember a lot of smiling bullies in school as well. Instead, I will remind everyone that Mohammad himself told his followers that lying was permitted during times of war and frankly, Muslims see themselves at war quite often.

“Lying is wrong, except in three things; the lie of a man to his wife to make her content with him, a lie to an enemy, for war is deception, or a lie to settle trouble between people.” (Hadith, Mussnad Ahmad 6:459. See Also, Surah 3:28)

I’m sure there are many tricks to pulling off a convincing lie . I’m sure smiling is included amongst those skills.