Earlier this year (last installment in October, 2005), Laura Mansfield published a six-part series on Islam in America. As a fluent speaker of Arabic, but allowing the Muslims who welcomed her to the Mosque to assume she did not understand what they were saying, Mansfield witnessed a dramatic difference between two discourses, one in English, one in Arabic: “two different doctrines are being promoted. One peaceful, friendly, warm, and fuzzy doctrine is being used to draw people in, with a focus on the wellbeing of their children. But the Arabic speaking sessions clearly have an anti-American tone.” The latter openly hostile to the USA, to the West; the other, classic demopathy, invoking all the good sentiments that Americans like to hear.

In her fourth installment, Mansfield writes of attending a “summer camp” for children. She described the address of the head of the Mosque to the children, some as young as five years old of which the following is an excerpt:

He ranted for around 10 minutes about the “kafirs” and how the ambition of these unbelievers used the name of Christ to work with the Zionists to kill all of the Muslims in the world.

Then, suddenly he shifted gears. He started discussing Jews and Zionists, explaining that they were the most hated creatures by Allah. He told the children that Allah in fact hated them so much that at one point he turned all the Jews into pigs and monkeys.

The focus shifted to politics again. The imam told the children to never forget the struggle of the Palestinians, who were only trying to regain their ancestral land, which has been their home for thousands of years. He told the story of Mohamed Durah, and explained to the audience how the 14 year old had been killed while “innocently going down the street with his father.” He emphasized that the killing was an unprovoked murder by the “Jewish sons of pigs and monkeys”. He reminded the children that the goal of every Christian and Jew was to kill every single Muslim, even the tiny babies.

Mansfield thinks that he has twice changed subject. He has not. His goal is to justify global Jihad to these children. His ten minute rant accuses all non-Muslims (really non Islamists, like some of them may choose to be, but they don’t know that yet) of trying to kill all Muslims (including innocents like themselves). This may strike even five year olds as less than convincing, given their generally decent encounters with most Americans. He then moves to the demonized other, the Jews, whom most of them have never met (or known they were Jewish had they met them). He thus can tar the Christians with their support and association of the apocalyptic enemy, the purely evil. Finally, he nails down the evil of the Jews with the tale of al Durah, a real live crime, witnessed by the whole world, that proves the genocidal intent of the Jews and therefore — and here liberal cognitive egocentrists will shake their heads in bewilderment — Christians. Full circle, from the initial accusation of genocidal desires against all unbelievers, through the Jews and Israelis, to the repeated attribution of genocidal desires to “every Christian and Jew.” QED

Note the use of al Durah to embody the nature of the Palestinian conflict on the one hand, and to describe the genocidal intent of the unbelievers who surround them (i.e., their fellow non-Muslim Americans). Even as the speaker emphasizes a demopathic theme (Western liberal values) that can resonate with his young, and somewhat Americanized audience — “they [Palestinians] are only trying to regain their ancestral homeland” — he weaves in both the demonizing language — “Jewish sons of pigs and monkeys” — and the classic paranoid projection — “they’re out to commit genocide against us.” This accusation of genocidal intent replicates almost to a detail the Nazi projection onto the Jews of desiring world conquest and the enslavement of all mankind. As they screamed about the “world Zionist plot,” they planned precisely that. Here, as with the Nazis, one has to pay attention to what those who accuse Jews and Christians in the manner have to say about what to do with these enemies, to understand what role this accusation serves in the plans of global Jihad. In their minds, these beliefs make their own genocidal desires mere self-defense.

This case of a southern American mosque echoes an argument I made about the French with al Durah: as they repeatedly played al-Durah on TV for their own purposes — to erase the debt of the Holocaust, to indulge in moral Schadenfreude where they can delight in Israel’s moral confusion — they were also broadcasting it to an audience that saw a different message, a warrant for genocide not only against the Jews, but against the Christians. Only fools — dupes of demopaths — would believe that because they do not consider themselves Christian, that these Jihadi Muslims will also not consider them the “enemy.” In conspiratorial apocalyptic politics, “my enemy’s enemy is… my enemy.”

Mohammed al Durah, icon of global Jihad. Is there anything we can do about it being taught in such a manner to American Muslim children?