How I almost became a Muslim, a tale of Hegemony, Monotheism, Massacre and Remembrance...by A. Nonymous

He was a feisty little fellow and when I first heard him speak I didn't know who he was but he made a lot of sense. Now I hadn't kept up with politics much except for what little I got from Jimmy Kimmel, but this feisty little rascal reminded my of Dennis Kucinich-in a nice sort of way; not as broad in the shoulders, more like Woody Allen. But there was a mean streak in him. He struck me as a man who would know how to build a Fuhrerbunker in a quicksand bog. And when he shook his finger in my face-now I'm saying this theoretically, he didn't actually do it-and he said, and I wrote this down, "Our nation's advice for you is to get back to the path of monotheism, justice, and friendship, at least in a bid to safeguard your own nation's immediate, and long term interests."

Well, I'm all for friendship and justice and when I found out he was a Muslim I was ready to convert to Islam-or at least I was thinking about it. He appears to be what Nancy Polosi had been looking for. But being a careful person and a High School dropout to boot, I looked up monotheism in the dictionary. Well, imagine my surprise! I had been a monotheist all my life and never knew it! It was almost as shocking as when I discovered I was a monogamist. And when my eighth-grade science teacher told me I was a carnivore-well, it took me a while to recover from that one. So I was a monotheist, a monogamist and a carnivore. And according to that little rascal I was already half a Muslim. All I had to do was find a Mosque and get confirmed and then head for Joe's Bar and Grille and Gun Club and hoist a few with the boys Wouldn't they be surprised! Me-a Muslim!

That little rascal-Mahmoud was his name-was so convincing and so full of advice I was mesmerized. Yes-mesmerized. That's what the Misses says Paris Hilton does to me-mesmerizes me. And now this little rascal was doing the same thing. Anyway, this little rascal said-and I wrote it down too-"Beware, if you do not go back to this path; if you do not end your oppressive methods; if you do not keep on looting the other nations and try to keep on imposing your illegitimate hegemony over other nations, you will face the destiny of past tyrants in history, that is none but death, and downfall for yourselves, and wretched lives for your nation."

Well that got me to thinking. So I looked up hegemony in the dictionary. Can't say as I understood what it meant, but that little rascal was one smart cuss-as smart as Dennis Kucinich, almost as smart as Jimmy Kimmel. And I took his words to heart! I sure didn't want to face the destiny of past tyrants! My life was wretched enough as it was. Being burned to death in a Fuhrerbunker in a trailer park ain't that appealing. So I studied up on the little rascal and it turned out he's the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran! And he wasn't talking about me-no, sir, he was talking about George W. Bush and the United States of America. It appears I had become a little confused. Was this rascal Howard Dean or was he the President of Iran? They sounded similar. It's easy to cross-pollinate jackasses.

Then I remembered another thing Mahmoud said, "You have so far kept trying for 28 years to halt the path of our nation's progress in vain...I am hereby assuring you oppressive powers that the Iranian nation's demand from their political officials is taking full advantage of the entire capabilities of the nuclear energy in technical and industrial fields."

Nuclear energy? Well, gosh, if somebody didn't know any better they might think he was talking about the bomb. That's what I thought and the first thing I thought of was Dr. Strangelove and Chill Wills riding that old nuclear bomb down on the Kremlings. Must have scared the pants off Khrushchev. Or was that Telly Savalas? I always get those two mixed up. Mahmoud made a good argument-he needed the bomb to protect himself from the hegemonizers. Couldn't blame him for that. He's for justice and friendship and peace and paternity and so am I. If he don't like the hegemonizers, than neither do I. At least that's what I thought at first. Imagine my surprise when Joe at Joe's Bar and Grille told me I was one of the hegemonizers! Well that didn't make sense. How could I be a hegemonizer? I didn't even know what it meant! There must be some mistake! I had been ready to go down to the local Mosque and get sworn in as a Muslim but I decided to hold off for a while. I was getting mixed signals. And I kept thinking of John Walker Lindh.

I heard about that incident at Lewiston Middle School where a student tossed a ham steak in a paper bag on a lunch table where a bunch of Muslim students were eating. C.A.I.R. said it was a hate crime and I thought so too at first. Pigs is unclean and Muslims aren't supposed to touch them. Then I remembered how Lester Gooch used to throw dog crap on the table where I ate lunch at the Disciplinary Barracks-that's what we called Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Ham steak ain't as bad as dog crap and kids is kids. Still I was pretty angry. The Misses asked, " Shouldn't you be watching Paris Hilton instead of this crap?' After a day or two I simmered down.

Then came the Virginia Tech massacre. Well-what do you say? All those poor people in South Korea-praying and grieving and apologizing as if it had been their fault; as if they had been responsible...And the Korean-Americans...praying, grieving for the victims...and the South Korean President expressing his condolences four times! Four times! It wasn't South Korea's fault! It wasn't the Korean-Americans' fault! The kid was a nut! He could have been an Irishman, an Eskimo-he could have been anybody! Gosh!

And then I remembered what happened after 9/11-Muslims dancing in the streets in Palestine, in Egypt, in Iran, all over the world, some of them right here in the United States! How could I have forgotten? And that creep from Saudi Arabia-coming over here and offering Rudy Giulian $10 million to aid the victims of 9/11 if the United States would change its foreign policy! I wanted to throw a rock at Rosie O'Donnell. I had come to my senses. The South Koreans had nothing to be ashamed of but I did! I had forgotten who I was and where I was and what the bastards had done to us. I wanted to go out and hug a Korean. The Misses said, "You had better damn not."

So I went down to Joe's Bar and Grille and Gun Club. "Still thinking about becoming a Muslim?" asked Piano Legs Hickman?

"Naw," I said, "I'm leaning toward Buddhism.'

Rock Around the Clock With Abu Hamza

"One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock...We're gonna rock around the clock tonight."

"That's what you think, Vinnie.You get that grease out of your hair and your butt out of those tight pants, and hit those geography books! You might need to know where Iran is some day. That Shah guy ain't gonna live forever...Until you start getting some Bs and Cs on that report card, you're gonna be buying your own gas...You hear me, Vinnie? Vinnie?"

Sounds like yesterday at the Barbarino house.

"When the clock strikes two, three and four...We're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight."

"I don't care, Marion, the way those poodle skirts flare it's an open invitation to sex. We can't have Joanie going to a sock hop unescorted. What will the Cleavers think...the Nelsons? If you won't go, I will. Suppose the Fonz gets sick one of these days? Who's going to do our parenting?"

Was that the Cunninghams?

"We're gonna rock around the clock tonight...We're gonna rock, rock, rock ‘til broad daylight."

"Now simmer down, Granny. Jethro's a big boy an' can take care of hisself. It's just a cotillion. Sure, some o' these city gals can be a mite aggressive but they's not all that way, though Ah must admit Ah've seen more desperate Old Maids here in Beverly Hills than Ah thought existed in the whole world...some o' them nigh unto 18-19 years old. Pathetic! Ellie Mae says they's gonna be a rock an' roll band a-playin' an' Ellie says it drives them Old Maids crazy. So Ah reckon Ah'll mosey along with Jethro to this here Cotillion an' keep an eye on him."

Old Maids? Rock and roll band? Can it get any worse?

"We're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight."

If Jed was worried about what Old Maids and rock and roll could do to Jethro and Howard and Marion begin twitching nervously at the mention of a sock hop and Mr. Barbarino reached for the razor strap whenever he thought of the grease in Vinnie's hair, pity the plight of poor Mr. Abu Hamza.

Abu who? Abu Hamza, Islam's Captain Hook.

Oh, that Abu Hamza. Yes, that Abu Hamza.

Mr, Hamza was arrested by British Police under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and is currently lodged in Belmarsh Prison. He has been charged with 16 crimes including encouraging the murder of non-Muslims. His trial began in July of 2005 and he doesn't know where his son is, and, like most fathers, he is worried. Of course-he should be; the little rascal could be rocking till broad daylight instead of filling suicide-bomber belts with explosives; he could be doing one, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock instead of laying roadside bombs. When the clock strikes two he might be on the way to the hop instead of to Iraq. That would never do. How will he ever get to Allah's Great Whorehouse in the Sky?

Abu Hamza blames this sad state of affairs on John Travolta. Yes, that's right-on John Travolta; not that Hamza is worried about his son, he's not. He's worried about the Muslim girls that might be rejecting his son's ardent advances because of Travolta-not that they are converting to Scientology; that would be a horror of another dimension. It is Travolta's stomach is what scares Hamza. Yes, Travolta's stomach! It is corrupting Muslim girls; it is leading them astray from Islamic principles.

This is how Hamza described his worst fears: "This brother he's a mujahid (freedom fighter) and she looks at him and says, ‘Oh look, his forehead is black, probably he's praying. She likes John Travolta, who is dancing and moving his stomach as quick as the-as I don't know what-"

Like a priest caught masturbating in the sacristy by a nun? Words failed him.

Hamza regrouped. "And she likes that because if he (the mujahid) was wearing the proper dress which has been imposed on him by Muslims, she wouldn't ever think about him."

Those brazen Scientologists! Is there nothing they won't do to attract women? If Vinnie Barbarino had thought of something like that he might have had a career in show business!

Anyway, Vinnie and Joanie and Jethro survived childhood without rock and roll scarring their psyches. They grew up; they got jobs; they got married-though not necessarily in that order. Jethro is a tycoon; Vinnie is a go-go dancer at Couples Unlimited; and Joanie married Chachi-three or four times. They all cried when Elvis died. What's so bad about that?

Islam doesn't allow its children to grow up. They are born, become Muslims and that's it. Mahmoud and Habib don't go exploring in Christian churches and Jewish synagogues like Tom and Huck once galavanted about Indian villages, donning tribal gear, doing war dances, and participating in Native-American religious rites. There is no exploration in Islam, no journeys into discovery. Everything non-Islamic is haram.  A thousand martinets working six days a week for a hundred years could not come up with as many regulations as Mohammed issued in one day. Life is constricted. One won't catch Mahmoud and Habib banging drums and parading around a dentist's waiting room singing, "The Yanks Are Coming," like the Little Rascals once did.

Drums...noise...music...it terrifies the Mad Mullahs. Especially music.

Mustafa Sabri, one of Islam's most-respected scholars of the 20^th Century, had a lot to say about music, most of it negative.

"Firstly," said Sabri, "music is a senseless activity which in fact, is a state of passiveness...Secondly, the benefit and pleasure taken from music involves a meaning of deep slavery in passion...Since Islam is the only enemy of passiveness and slavery in passion, an important duty of Islam is to search their traces in unexpected hide-outs...The acts of pure entertainment are considered low-level professions in the eyes of unpolluted human nature...During listening to music people, would not be doing anything for the good of humanity...They would cause, instead, a lot of money to change hands. And, in return for the money, what do these people get? Nothing!"

Passive? Frankie Yankovic, Madonna, the Grateful Dead, they are passive?

And what is this slavery in passion? Does it include the "Marine Corps Anthem; God Bless America; I've Got the Joy Down in My Heart? Tell that to Martin Luther King.

Search their traces in unexpected hideouts? Sounds like a Nazi looking for an excuse to burn something down-like a church or a synagogue. Did Sabri know Heinrich Himmler?

And this gets the booby prize-money to change hands. That's bad? It's capitalism, baby. It's what made Uncle Jed rich and the Saudi Royal Family the low-life swine of the Middle East.

As if all that wasn't enough, Sabri insulted every musician and singer who has ever lived by dismissing music as a low-level profession. There is nothing lower than a Mad Mullah who stuffs the heads of countless children with hatred of other religions and then sends them out into the world to do the Devil's work.

Pathetic, wretched, brainwashed children become pathetic, wretched brainwashed adults. Life is not a preparation for death to be hedged in by fear and loathing; to have any meaning at all it must be lived as an unparalleled adventure. Waiting at Track Nine for the train to Anaheim, Azusa, and Allah's Great Whorehouse in the Sky just doesn't cut it.

Captain Hook had a crocodile, Abu Hamza has his Qur'an and Vinnie and Joanie and Jethro had rock and roll. Captain Hook has already went to his reward and it doesn't look good for Hamza. The first thing that rascal is going to hear when passing the Stygian Gates on the way to Hell is Elvis singing "You ain't nothing but a hound dog."

"And they rocked and they rocked ‘til broad daylight."

THE RAPE OF THE 21^ST CENTURY SABINE WOMEN!

There are times when you see an arrogant sexist chauvinist pig and wish you had a horsewhip. Take Sheikh Taj el-Din Hilali. He's one of Australia's most prominent Muslim clerics. When he speaks, millions of Muslims listen-and millions of Australians grind their teeth. The Sheikh was appointed or elected or made himself Grand Mufti of Australia in 1988. He talks a lot. He has kind words for suicide bombers and said the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 was "God's work against oppressors." In January of 2003 he was arrested and charged with assaulting police during a traffic stop. Yes, it is supposed to be a religion of peace and tolerance.

Hilali is an anti-Zionist. He says the Jews are the "underlying cause of all wars," and use "sex and abominable acts of buggery," to "control the world." That rules out George W. Bush and Paris Hilton. His pastime is rewriting history. He says the original settlers of Australia were Muslims and that the Aborigines were their descendants. This is the kind of historical analysis that kept Potsy Weber in high school an extra year. The Aborigines were spearing water toads in the outback long before Mohammed crawled out from under that rock in Saudi Arabia. Of course, what Hilali meant was that Australia belongs to Islam because non-Muslims have no rights any Muslim need respect.

Hilali was born in Egypt. When he first arrived in the Land Down Under he was toting a tourist visa. The visa expired; Hilali remained. The Aussies have tried to deport him for being in the country illegally and for inciting hatred. They haven't been successful. It's difficult to kill a Frankenstein monster. A Caliphate would suit him just fine.

Okay-so how is he different from a thousand other loud-mouthed, obnoxious, dhimmi-hating Imams, Muftis and Mullahs? He wears a turban on his head; his beard is trimmed to the exact length prescribed by Sunnah (it must be no more than the width of a hand and is not to be shaven off); his robes are perfectly nondescript-they are more like shelter halves than anything that might be seen in Armani's or Calvin Klein's; his views on women make Archie Bunker sound like Gloria Steinem...

Women? Gloria Steinem? Ah-hah! That's what defines Hilali-what separates him from the other guys in the front row at the freak show. He's more outspoken when it comes to Bs-and-Bs and Ts-and-As than the average arrogant, sexist, chauvinist Muslim cleric. It takes a lot of doing. And he can put his foot in his mouth with the best of them. In his sermon winding up the holy month of Ramadan, he issued his latest epistle on the place of women in society. Women who displayed their charms, he said, were "uncovered meat."

Uncovered meat? Yes! Uncovered meat! He wouldn't dare say that in front of Rosie O'Donnell-maybe in front of Karen Armstrong or Ingrid Mattson, but not in front of Rosie. He's lucky he was in a mosque and not at a Teddy Kennedy fund-raiser-oops, make that a Teddy Roosevelt fund-raiser.

But Hilali was far from done. "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park," he said, his thin-lipped, beady-eyed congregation hanging on his every word, "And the cats come and eat it...whose fault is it? The cats or the uncovered meat?"

Little Annie Fanny would have looked at this creep and said, "Galloping Gonads!" Ah, sweet little Annie-what an obviously accurate assessment!

In the minds of many Australians Hilali was using the sermon to defend the actions of Muslim men who have been raping the gals Down Under as if they were so many Sabine women awaiting their mythological fate. Shame, shame and shame again!

The Sheik's comments were "appalling and reprehensible," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

"It is an incitement to crime," said Pru Goward, Australia's sex discrimination commissioner. "Young Muslim men who now rape women can site this in court."

As was to be expected when faced with the incontrovertible truth, Hilali claimed he had been incorrectly translated and misunderstood. He condemned rape; Mohammed condemned rape; Allah condemned rape; all Islam condemns rape.

Qur'an 24-34: "Force not your slave-girls to whoredom (prostitution) if they desire chastity, that you may seek enjoyment of this life. But if anyone forces them, then after such compulsion, Allah is oft-forgiving." (Ah! The oft-forgiving clause!)

(A liberal judge in New Hampshire or Ohio could have written something of the same sort in defense of a child molester)

Hilali said he respected the right of Australian women to dress as they saw fit. He also respects the Qur'an and the Prophet and the surahs and the commentaries and the coming Caliphate, none of which respects the rights of any woman to dress as she sees fit and that includes Mother Teresa.

Moderate Muslims were appalled, aghast, horrified, discombobulated, and dumbstruck. They always are when someone like Hilali correctly interprets the Qur'an. How could this be, they say. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Hilali does not represent true Islam. He is a hijacker. That's what he is-a hijacker.

Well, nobody called him a hijacker or a loudmouth in the middle of his sermon and nobody walked out of the mosque in protest, but his parishioners did have some harsh things to say about Prime Minister Howard earlier in the year when he called on Muslim immigrants to make a better effort to integrate into Australian society, to learn English, to accept Western values, and treat women with greater respect. Muslim leaders were infuriated. Talk like that would radicalize Muslim immigrants and increase the dangers of race riots. So, in the end, nothing is to be done-not today, not tomorrow, not the next day, not ever.

It's High Noon in Australia and the train bearing Frank Miller is pulling into the station. No one would mistake John Howard for Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) but this is his chance. This is where the horsewhip comes in. Forget Frank Miller and concentrate on the arrogant sexist chauvinist pigs. It's great exercise, it gets the blood flowing and the women of Australia will be forever thankful. When the train pulls out Hilali should be on it. It doesn't matter where he goes-to Iran, to Pakistan, to Saudi Arabia-as long as he goes somewhere other than Australia. They could send him to Dogpatch where Mammy Yokum could teach him some manners, put him in the tub with Pappy and wash his mouth out.

But Howard will have to do it himself. He won't get much help from moderate Muslims or their socialist allies. He will have to run the risk of radicalization and the race riots. One hates to say it but Islam is the religion of the arrogant, sexist, chauvinist pig, and it won't be easy, but a start has to be made somewhere and turning Hilali into covered meat isn't a bad idea.