From the Mailbag

Last updated on: September 5, 2018 at 9:53 am by Dan Peterson

From the Mailbag 2018-09-05T09:53:46-06:00 Dan Peterson

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An anonymous nineteenth-century illustration of the AD 638 conquest of Jerusalem by ‘Umar, the second Muslim caliph. (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

I just found the following comment on my blog. It was apparently sent (by somebody calling himself “Jon”) at around the time that I left for the Middle East, about — what was it? — three weeks ago. A reader evidently marked it as “spam.” (Not I.) It’s referring to my April Ensign article about Islam:

It is evident you presented an overly optimistic, politically correct, non-offensive, one-sided version of Islam seen through “rose-colored” glasses. I wonder how you would have presented the lives and history of Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Mao, or Vlad the Impaler. It’s clear from international papers that the Islamic migrant and refugee situation has rapidly turned from bad to worse, yet you intentionally “sugar coated” your message and avoided the realities of actual events occurring this very moment. There’s nothing wrong with an independent opinion, but your article was cloaked as church policy and will ultimately just pacify and lull more LDS into a false sense of security; persuading many to do nothing about Islam’s growing threat to Christianity, western civilization, and our cherished values and beliefs. Your article only contributes to keeping “the saints ignorant, complacent, and asleep.” (Ezra Taft Benson). I’m not suggesting you were dishonest but your article was about as biased, unfair, and deceitful as Elder Kearon’s General Conference talk. His infamous talk has since been exposed for containing multiple exaggerations, irrational analogies, half-truths, and misrepresentations. Do you want to be held partially responsible for influencing LDS to welcome more Islamic migrants and refugees into their neighborhoods, leading to an inevitable eradication our values, beliefs, and way-of-life (as is happening throughout Europe now and beginning to happen in the US)?

Why did you avoid stats revealing at least 50% of Muslims desire to replace western, Christian based culture and laws with Islamic Sharia law? Why did you avoid this week’s Szazadveg study indicating 70% of Europeans see “Muslims as a serious threat?” Are you taking into account that “almost 98% of gang rapists in Sweden have a migrant background according to this week’s Swedish newspaper, Expressen?” Why did you avoid recently published stats indicating a Muslim extremist is 100X more likely to kill you/I than a white extremist? (according to GAO report) Why did you avoid last month’s report by a prominent long-time refugee aid worker who stated Muslims are not “shedding their medieval views” and consider even the kindest western women “stupid whores?” Maybe we should discuss why 99% of Islamic German refugee remain unemployed after a full year, why there’s been over 30,000 deadly Islamic terror attacks since 9/11, why they committed approx. 700,000 crimes in one year in Germany alone, why the 2nd generation is often more extreme than the first, and why they rarely ever convert to Christianity.

Of all people, Mormons should be the most opposed to increased Islamic presence. According to our LDS doctrine, the US will only remain free from bondage if the God of the land remains Jesus Christ (Ether 2:9-12) and the US Constitution is supported. Also remember that religious liberty definitely does not apply to every ideology, belief and religion. As the LDS general counsel explained earlier last year, “Latter-day Saints understand that religious liberty is primarily about preserving our right to choose Christ and live His gospel.” “And for us, respect for that same principle of agency impels us to grant reasonable tolerance to others to choose differently.” It is not reasonable to tolerate a religion responsible for 174 attacks and 1,500+ killed in the name of Islam in just a month’s time during Ramadan last year. Why should Mormons embrace an ideologies and beliefs that are contrary to our religion? Mormons should find this troubling considering a growing 50% of US Muslims would replace the US Constitution with Sharia law and most will remain opposed to Christianity. Import 3rd world middle-east culture, become 3rd world middle-east culture.

I won’t respond at length right now. (It’s very late here, I’m having very long days, I’m extremely busy, and I have had very poor internet connections.) But such comments are helpful to me, as they illustrate the misconceptions and areas of ignorance with which my forthcoming book on Islam urgently needs to deal.

Some quick remarks, though:

I enjoyed the comment.

I stand by my article.

I’m happy to be linked with Elder Kearon. I loved his conference talk, and he and I have spoken about the hostile reactions it received from certain people.

I always enjoy being depicted as a potential defender of Stalin and Pol Pot. As a lifelong political conservative, I find such caricatures of me refreshingly novel. Unfortunately, they’re no longer unexpected.

I didn’t address current events because the article that I was asked to write wasn’t intended to address transient news and because it was very, very short.

Polls indicating that a sizeable percentage of Muslims want to live under shari‘a have, in my judgment, been seriously misinterpreted and abused by certain antagonists of Islam. I will definitely address this topic in my book.

I believe in religious liberty and religious tolerance, and am delighted to stand with the Brethren against those who don’t.

I’m surrounded at this very moment by many, many thousands of Arab Muslims, and I feel entirely, happily, safe and secure.

As-salaamu ‘alaykum!

Posted from East Jerusalem, Israel

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