I Am Ashamed To Be A Muslim

I AM ASHAMED TO BE A MUSLIM Road Map Leads to Darkness by Ruslan Tokhchkov I am ashamed to be a Muslim .. again. I am originally from a Muslim minority in Russia and I was never quite as ashamed of the Soviet Union, which I left as an anti-Communist emigrant long ago, as I am of the Muslim world that makes even the USSR look free and civilized. Total gender apartheid, treating women worse than animals, tyranny, oppression, intolerance of any kind of free expression and on and on. The Muslim world is the world of no good news. And now, there's yet another sickening, albeit not surprising, headline: "Jews rule the world by proxy, says Malay leader" (P-1, Oct. 17). Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, speaking before a gathering of the world's Islamic leaders, invoked the same old, tired explanation of the Muslims' many ills and ailments: the Jewish conspiracy. Judging by the many historical references he included in his speech, Mohamad read some history but he proved to be absolutely incapable of learning history's lessons. He alluded to Islam's glorious past when the Muslim world thrived economically and culturally and shone in science, medicine and education while the West was backward and savage, wallowing in the misery, famines and plagues of the Dark Ages. True, but the roles have since reversed. It is the Muslim world in the Dark Ages now, as one can judge by Mohamad's speech and by his audience's reaction to it. The leaders of 57 Muslim countries greeted this hate tirade with a standing ovation and praised it as "a good road map." How pathetic. A road map where? Deeper into darkness? During the Seven Golden Centuries of Islam, the Muslim world was tolerant of the Jews and provided a haven for hundreds of thousands fleeing the savage persecution in Europe -- a fact Mohamad acknowledged. But now it is just the opposite. Mohamad noted that the West surged ahead of the Muslims during the Industrial Revolution. But who led this revolution? The English and the Dutch, the ony ones in Western Europe who were tolerant to their Jewish communities. On the other end of the spectrum was the Inquisition nation of Spain, which was totally bypassed by the Industrial Age, just like the Arabs. It was the only country in Europe that had completely "cleansed" itself of Jews. This put the "purified" Spaniards on a 400-year-long downslide into ever-greater corruption, backwardness, poverty and misery. Finally, after a series of shattering military blows from Anglos, both British and American, the Spanish Empire collapsed like a rotten shack. No, Mohamad, the Jews do not "take over" the most powerful countries in the world. They help those countries that welcome them to become powerful and successful. One hundred years ago, 1 million Jews fled from Tsarist Russia to the United States after a wave of pogrom atrocities. Russia's loss was the United States' gain. The Russian Empire had violently collapsed in just a decade and the United States, which entered the 20th century as a third-rate power, emerged from it as the world's unchallenged superpower. Let's ponder the fate of all once -powerful enemies of the Jewish people: the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Assyrians, the

Babylonians, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Inquisitor of Spain, the Russian Tsarist Empire, the Nazi Reich. Did any one of them not suffer a brutal end? In the Christians's Bible, there's a part about G-D cursing those who curse the Jewish people and the entire world history seems to confirm it. Now, whether you are Christian or not, whether you are religious or not, whether you call it G-D's law or the law of history, you have to agree that not one nation that persecuted Jews had escaped very bad consequences. I don't think this law has an exception for the Arabs or any other Muslims. This is what we the Umma (the world Muslim community) should pause to think about. Only then might we be able to find our way out of darkness. Otherwise, I am afraid, the Muslim world will be beyond redemption.