Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) is an Abrahamist. He is also a Catholic. Imam Mohammad Qatanani, who regularly preaches sermons at the Islamic Center of Passaic in New Jersey, is an Abrahamist. He is also a Muslim. Robert Edgar and John Esposito are Abrahamists. Both are Christians; one is a Catholic. Barack Obama may be an Abrahamist, though he doesn’t come right out and say so.
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Abrahamists believe the three great monolithic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—are like peas in a pod. They sprang from the same source; they worship the same God. Does it matter that one reads from the Torah, another from the New Testament, the last from the Qur’an? No! Jew, Christian, Muslim, they all believe in the same things, in the sanctity of life, in peace and toleration.
Does it matter that one celebrates Lent, another the Passover, and the last Ramadan? No, they are brothers under the skin—they are Abrahamists. They get along together. There is more goodwill amongst Abrahamists than there was amongst Mork and Mindy; more than there was amongst the Sons of Katie Elder ten minutes after the shooting started...
Eat your heart out, Bill Maher, and you too, Franklin Graham. We are all Abrahamists, says Robert Edgar. “Aren’t we wonderful?”
So it’s no wonder Bill Pascrell, the Catholic, go to bat for Imam Qatanani, the Muslim? After all, in addition to one being a Catholic and the other a Muslim, they are both Abrahamists.
Qatanani migrated to the United States in 1996 and applied for permanent residency in 1999. He never got a green card. In 2006, the US government started deportation proceedings against him. It seems the Imam had a past. He hadn’t been running guns for the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight or knitting suicide-bomber belts for Hamas Mouse—nothing that serious—but he had forgotten to mention to immigration authorities that the Israelis had arrested him in 1993 while on a visit to the West Bank.
You mean that old thing? It was a little misunderstanding—a difference in the definition of Abrahamism.
Qatanani was detained for three months. The Israeli Army claimed he belonged to an unauthorized association and provided services for the said association and for being a member of Hamas and acting on its behalf. He was fined, sentenced to three months in the slammer and given a 12-month suspended sentence.
Qatanani forgot to mention the incident when he applied for permanent residency. It happens all the time. Muslims have a tendency to forget things like that. The Department of Homeland Security has been trying to boot him out of the country since 2005.
One would think that with expulsion hanging over his head, he would be more careful with what he said. But he hasn’t been. Some would say he is full of wind. He likes to talk about Palestine. And the First Amendment gives him the right to be as obnoxious as he can.
“We (the Palestinians),” he said, “have a historical and geographical right to the land. We must teach this to the young and our children.”
Actually the Jews were their first and the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948 and most of those who fled are now dead, many by self-inflicted wounds, and the remaining so-called Palestinians—they range in age up to sixty years—cannot go back to where they have never lived without being an invading force. But this requires a delicacy and a logic that appears beyond the capabilities of a modern-day Palestinian.
The Imam has expressed his admiration of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has defended the practice of charity for the children of suicide-bombers, rues the day Israel was created and continues to support the Holy Land Foundation.
Among Qatanani’s most famous quotes is this bit of seismic lucidity: “Oh brothers and sisters! On such a day, a human disaster occurred; on 5 and 10, the 15th of May 1948 was the greatest disaster which occurred on the face of the earth. It is what is known today as the Palestinian nabka…the State of Israel was established on the Land of Palestine.”
He also says it was impossible for airliners to destroy the World Trade Center. Here’s a man, who has never heard of Terry and the Pirates acting like he knew something about aviation. But he has a vision of the future worthy of Darth Vader.
“How do you view the world of 2020?” he asks. Then he goes on to say what it will be like. “The majority of people that was declared in the speeches of the politicians, we expect the world to be Muslim from Morocco to China.”
The only thing non-Muslims need to fear, he said, is fear itself—not stonings, not honor killings, not suicide bombers, not halal chicken at McDonalds—but fear itself. “The reason for the spread of Islam,” he said, “is because the West has been bankrupt spiritually and has become looking for about something to fill his spirit and mind.”
Yes, if only the West were more like Islam. A re-born Ku Klux Klan and a new Inquisition would be a start. And what could be better to raise the spirits and fill the minds of the masses than weekly witch hunts with real live witches, firing squads and roadside bombs.
So the Question is: Why would congressman Pascrell – supposedly a God-fearing Catholic – support Qatanani? The Imam has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhod; he is for a Palestinian right-of-return, for a Grand Caliph stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, for Sharia Law.
“If you think you’re gonna fill the collective or personal benefits of human beings, it would not be acceptable outside Sharia,” he said in an ICPC lecture. “Some people will seek to find happiness outside of the Sharia… (this) is the pinnacle of ignorance and…the pinnacle of silliness.”
Ignorance and silliness? So, you know, why! Pascrell is a Catholic? Probably he is; so is John Esposito. And so were the school administrators that fired Thomas Klocek at DePaul University.
Pascrell, Esposito, the DePaul administrators may claim themselves to be Catholics, Abrahamists. Abrahamists, whatever they may mean. But Catholics? Only if there is no difference between Allahu akbar and Jesus saves, between a suicide bomber’s belt and an aspergillum. They must know the Qur’an does not accept Catholics as People of the Book, let alone as Abrahamists. Could it be Pascrell and Esposito are mistaken in their assumptions about Islam? What does the Qur’an say?
Qur’an 5:17 “Verily they are disbelievers and infidels who say, ‘The Messiah, son of Mary, is God’”
Qur’an 5:73 “They are surely disbelievers who blaspheme and say, ‘God is one of three in the Trinity for there is no Ilah (God) except One, Allah. If they desist not from saying this (blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall them---the disbelievers will suffer a painful doom.”
The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost—the Trinity. Surely, Pascrell, being a Catholic, believes in the Trinity. So does Esposito. If they don’t, they are not Catholics.
What they claim themselves to be, Abrahamist or Catholic, only one thing is certain. They are all just opportunist useful idiots of Islam, who will stand tall in support of the most abhorrent Islamist.
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