I didn't get any replies to my letters to Mobile, Alabama churches. These mass shootings always seem to be implausible until they happen. I hope they reconsider and take my letters to them seriously.
I am planning on writing letters to the mosques in Mobile, AL and it seems that I need to get a move on now. I need to assemble materials together.
As background information are these blogs postings and articles about the anti-Muslim animus of the neo-Confederates.
One of my articles was originally published in The Touchstone and was later taken up by a Muslim group iin Texas.
http://hispanicmuslims.com/articles/alamokosovo.html
I was a major source for information for this article.
http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/sells2.htm
This is a section of a chapter in a book I wrote about the neo-Confederates hostility towards Muslims.
Muslims
The Chaplains’
Corps Chronicle of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Nov. 2006, has a short
section, “Confederate view of Islam,” to assert to the readers that there is,
in fact, a Confederate view of Islam.
The introduction to the section states, “Our Confederate compatriots saw
the immense paganism and evil in false religions, and Islam was one of those
that they viewed in such a way.” The article then includes a set of quotes from
pro-slavery theologians, with a note stating how each supported or fought for
the Confederacy. R.L. Dabney states, “Mohammed extends the same hope to all his
sinful follows.” Girardeau is quoted, “Mohammedanism is the great apostasy of
the East.” Thornwell has a more lengthy attack, characterizing Islam as being
swindle or racket, “Where it could not extort a blind credulity, it made the
passions the vehicles of its doctrines; the timid it frightened to submission,
the profligate it allured to acquiescence, and the heretic and skeptic it
wheedled and cajoled by a partial patronage of their errors,” and “its
strongest attraction the license which it gave to voluptuous indulgences.”
Someone might be critical of one religion
or another. People make choices as to what religion they believe in and have
opinions about others all the time. What is of interest here, however, is that
condemnation of Islam is held to be a part of Confederate heritage.
In response
to Minnesota Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, an African American, taking his
oath of office with a Koran owned by Thomas Jefferson, the Southern Mercury in 2007 ran an article by Ted Sampley titled “What
Thomas Jefferson Learned From the Q’uran.” The article is about the American
war and victory over the Barbary Pirates in the early 19th century. Jefferson
is supposed to have learned from his Koran that Islam is a danger, concluding,
“Jefferson had been right. The ‘medium of war’ was the only way to put an end
to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a
‘visionary’ wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim
Holy Book.”[i]
The current SCV Chaplain-in-Chief Ray
Parker, Dean of the Master’s Theological Research Institute of the MASTER’S
International University of Divinity (The name of the university has “MASTER’S”
in capitols.), has an editorial in the Feb. 2016 Chaplain’s Corps Chronicles of the Sons of Confederate Veterans condemning
“the culture of tolerance,” asserting that those who are tolerant will get
killed by Muslims as part of God’s wrath against the tolerant.
The great weakness of
this culture of tolerance is that it denies the God of the Bible and falls
under His wrath. Actually, Jesus Christ said, ―He that believeth not the Son shall
not see life; but the wrath of God abideth or remains on them. This culture has
set itself up as judge and jury, but it will be destroyed by enemies from
within. What enemies? Enemies they tolerate in their culture such as Islam!
Why? … They will be overwhelmed when they are lined up as cattle to be beheaded
by their enemy for their moral decadence. When their protests cannot deter their
enemy they will not know how to act. Why? They believe Islam is a peaceful
religion…
Parker then discusses an act of
terrorism in France. He criticizes the French who honored the dead with candles
and flowers, rather than expressing hatred against Muslims. Parker rejects this
stating, “Will flowers and candles protect you? Such reactions are the norm of
a culture of tolerance. When such a radical Islamist goes to shoot you, just
lift a flower in one hand and a candle in the other and all your problems are
solved!”[ii]
Parker revisits the topic of Muslims
again in a June 2016 editorial Chaplain’s
Corps Chronicles of the Sons of Confederate Veterans discussing a defense
of the Confederacy by Confederate Gen. D.H. Hill in the 19th
century. Hill asserts that abolitionists were hypocrites. Then in reference to what I think is the
massacre of church goers in Charleston by Dylann Roof Parker writes:
But such hypocrisy has not
ceased. For example, we are not supposed to judge Muslims by the myriads of
atrocious acts (murders, beheadings, burnings, crucifixions, etc.) that they
perform worldwide, but Confederate history, with its symbols, is supposed to be
obliterated from history because of the action of one murderer who had a
Confederate flag in his possession, but not a Confederate heart in his body.[iii]
The Abbeville Institute also has
articles which perceive Muslims as a menace. One example is Thomas Fleming who
as former editor of Chronicles magazine
ran a campaign of hysteria about Muslims in Chronicles
for decades. His 2015 article at the Abbeville Institute, “From Under the
Rubble: The Wearin’ of the Cross,” is a tirade against Muslims.
Fleming’s article starts with a brief
mention of “A Palestinian Muslim named – what else? – Muhammad kills five military
men,” and is upset that television ABC News focused on Muhammad’s use of drugs.
Fleming asserts that the murder was motivated by the Koran’s teaching. Fleming
writes:
As Srdja Trifkovic and
others have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt, Islam is a religion of war,
violence, and oppression. The only function of non-Muslims in their world is to
pay taxes and endure oppression.
Srdja
Trifkovic is a Chronicles writer and
writes anti-Muslim books.
President Obama is portrayed as
knowingly allowing Muslim immigration to make the United States an Islamic
nation.
Even the President of
the United States, as ignorant and clueless as he seems to be, must have run
into an advisor who has given him a few hints. What does it tell us, when we
learn that under the Obama administration 400 thousand other potential
Muhammads are arriving legally into the United States every year? Will this
news cause the President suddenly to sober up? Not hardly. He is getting the
country he wants, a place where his Islamic friends and relations can be
considered typical.
Muslim immigrants to the United States are
held to be a scheme of a ruling elite to oppress Americans.
Importing militant
Islam into the United States is not an end in itself but a means to subjugate
the American people by creating chaos and instilling fear … Terror has been,
historically, an instrument of ruling regimes. The French and Russian
Revolutions, Nazi Germany and Maoist China all used terrorism to intimidate
their subjects. Our own regime has refined on their methods: Import dangerous
people from Latin America and the Islamic world, fill their heads with nonsense
about rights, and convince Americans that chaos and fear are normal, and they
will surrender all that is left of their liberties to this new KKK–the
KuKoranKlan.
And so on the article goes. The title
is in reference to “Wearing of the Green” a poem by Dion Boucicault in
reference to British oppression of the Irish. The implication is that
Christians will be similarly oppressed. Fleming informs us that Dion Boucicault
left Ireland to the United States. Fleming concludes the article with the
question, “Where, now, would anyone go to escape cultural genocide?”[iv]
In 2016 in a nation with anti-Muslim
hysteria raging, these writers in SCV publications are just a few voices among
many in a shrill cacophony. However, when presenting itself to the media, the
SCV is usually perceived as a group with a sentimental interest in history that
referenced as “heritage.” The Abbeville Institute wishes to promote the romantic
image of Southern cultural roots. These articles should raise the question as
to what the real agenda of the neo-Confederate organizations is.
NOTE: The two issues of Chaplain's Corps Chronicles of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been recently pulled offline. Google still shows it, but the link is no longer valid. I am noticing that the usual places I might find it have vanished also.
I found the issues online elsewhere on the Internet Archive, an institution which archives the Internet.
This is the Feb 2016 attack on Muslims. They are protrayed as murderous.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160209114814/http://chaplain-in-chief.com/custom3_1.html
This is the June 2016 attack on Muslims.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170226173757/http://chaplain-in-chief.com/custom3_1.html
[i] Sampley, Ted, “What Thomas
Jefferson Learned From The Q’uran,” pages 12-13, Southern Mercury, Vol. 5 No. 2, April 2007. The article can be found
online. I have never found this online.
[ii] Parker, Ray, “Editorial,” Chaplain’s Corps Chronicles of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans, Feb. 2016, http://www.scv.org/pdf/chaplains/2016_Feb.pdf,
printed out 7/3/2016. SEE ABOVE NOTE.
[iii] Parker, Ray, “Editorial,” Chaplain’s Corps Chronicles of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans, June. 2016, http://www.scv.org/pdf/chaplains/2016_Jun.pdf,
printed out 7/3/2016. SEE ABOVE NOTE
[iv] Fleming, Thomas, “From Under the
Rubble: The Wearin’ of the Cross,” Abbeville Institute, http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/from-under-the-rubble-the-wearin-of-the-cross/,
printed out 7/3/2016.
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