Czech President tells Organization of Islamic Cooperation to “Go Jump in a Lake”
On the occasion of Israel’s Independence Day, the Czech Republic President, Milos Zeman, gave a speech at the Israel Embassy in Prague. It was stunning in its clarity regarding Islamic hateful doctrine towards Jews and by inference Christians and virtually all unbelievers and apostates. Our colleagues at Gates of Vienna (GoV) obtained a translation of President Zeman’s remarks. They have since generated an acrimonious and courageous exchange with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) who alleged that Zeman had committed blasphemy by accusing Islam of not being a religion of peace and tolerance. Anything but. Baron Bodissey of GoV said, “He’s the only head of state that I know of who has ever told the OIC to shove off. And he did it so brilliantly.”
Here are excerpts from Zeman’s speech at the Israeli Embassy in Prague published by GoV in translation from the original Czech, “A Euphemism for Political Cowardice” :
There are states with whom we share the same values, such as the political horizon of free elections or a free market economy. However, no one threatens these states with wiping them off the map. No one fires at their border towns; no one wishes that their citizens would leave their country. There is a term,political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly.
It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilisation. It is international terrorism linked to religious fundamentalism and religious hatred. As we may have noticed after 11th of September, this fanaticism has not been focused on one state exclusively. Muslim fanatics recently kidnapped 200 young Christian girls in Nigeria. There was a hideous assassination in the flower of Europe in the heart of European Union in a Jewish museum in Brussels. I will not let myself being calmed down by the declaration that there are only tiny fringe groups behind it. On the contrary, I am convinced that this xenophobia, and let’s call it racism or anti-Semitism, emerges from the very essence of the ideology these groups subscribe to.
So let me quote one of their sacred texts to support this statement: “A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of Jews.
After all, one of the paragraphs of the statutes of Hamas says: “Kill every Jew you see.” Do we really want to pretend that this is an extreme viewpoint? Do we really want to be politically correct and say that everyone is nice and only a small group of extremists and fundamentalists is committing such crimes?
Michel de Montaigne, one of my favorite essayists, once wrote: “It is gruesome to assume that it must be good that comes after evil. A different evil may come.” It started with the Arab Spring which turned into an Arab winter, and a fight against secular dictatorships turned into fights led by Al-Qaeda. Let us throw away political correctness and call things by their true names. Yes, we have friends in the world, friends with whom we show solidarity. This solidarity costs us nothing, because these friends are not put into danger by anyone.
Less than a week following President Zeman’s remarks, Iyad Ameen Madani, the Secretary General of the Saudi-based 57 member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, issued a thundering taqiyya-ladened charge that Zeman’s remarks were blasphemous demanding an apology. GoV on June 7, 2014 posted the OIC ‘s riposte and demand for President Zeman to recant his remarks, “Promoting Peace, Harmony, and Magic Ponies At The OIC”. Here are some excerpts:
The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Iyad Ameen Madani, expressed his disappointment at the reported statements made by the Czech President, Miloš Zeman, on 26 May 2014 at the Israeli Embassy in Prague that “Islamic ideology rather than individual groups of religious fundamentalists was behind violent actions similar to the gun attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.”
[…]
Mr. Madani stated that the Czech President’s recent statements on Islam are in line with the previous statements the President made in the past, where he linked “believers in the Quran with anti-Semitic and racist Nazis”; and that “the enemy is anti civilization spreading from North Africa to Indonesia, where two billion people live”.
Such statements, said Mr. Madani, not only shows President Zeman’s lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of Islam, but also ignores the historical facts that anti-Semitism and Nazism are a European phenomena through and through. They have no roots in Islam, neither as a religion nor as a history or civilization. The Holocaust did not take place in the area from North Africa to Indonesia, Madani said.
Madani stressed that such statements, issued even before the identification of culprits and motives, are not only irresponsible but also feed the existing stereotyping, incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence against Muslims based on their religion. It also runs contrary to the ongoing global efforts to strengthen dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions to promote multiculturalism, understanding, acceptance and peace.
The Secretary General reiterated that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and that terrorism should not be equated to any race or religion; a stance upheld by all major UN texts on the subject of countering terrorism. He added that the OIC countries share a profound respect for all religions and condemn any message of hatred and intolerance.
It is only appropriate that President Milōs [sic] Zeman apologizes to the millions of Muslims worldwide for his deeply offensive and hateful anti Islam statements.
Mr. Madani urged the international community to take strong and collective measures to promote peace, harmony and tolerant co-habitation among peoples of diverse religious faiths, beliefs, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. He also called upon all political, secular or religious leaders to join hands and strengthen their efforts in promoting dialogue and mutual understanding, which will prove that “what joins us together across religions and regions is far greater than what separates us”.
OIC Secretary General Madani’s statement is what we have come to expect. We wonder how the millennia long documented history of Islamic Jihadist anti-Semitism, documented by Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom among others keeps being avoided by Madani and other luminaries in the Muslim World. Our recent interview with Dr. Harold Rhode gave clear evidence of the Muslim connection to the Nazi Holocaust. That was evidenced in the June 1941 Farhud in Baghdad fomented by the nefarious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Haj Amin al Husseini, Hitler’s houseguest in Berlin during WWII, Al Husseini was a cheerleader for the destruction of Six Million European Jewish Men, Women and Children. He actively sponsored a Muslim Waffen SS Division engaged in their slaughter. Better to kill these possible immigrants making Europe virtually Judenrein to prevent their emigration to the ancient land of their Jewish forbearers. A land renewed in May 1948 with the declaration of Independence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish nation.
President Zeman issued no apology for his remarks. A subsequent GoV post, “Czech President to the OIC: No Apology”, noted:
The translated excerpt from idNES.cz:
President Miloš Zeman is not going to apologize for his statements in which he linked Islamic ideology with violence. His words were conveyed by his spokesperson Jiří Ovčáček: “President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologize. For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologize for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text.”
Perhaps, President Zeman had in mind something that occurred in Prague in January 2014, when the newly arrived Palestinian Ambassador, Jamal al Jamal was mortally wounded as a result of his opening a booby trapped safe in his new residence. A search of the residence by Czech security revealed discovery of a cache of weapons. A cache that might have been used for possible terrorist actions in the Czech Republic perhaps targeted its small Jewish community.
Israeli officials should follow Czech President Zeman’s truth telling. After all, Israel tolerates Israeli Arab Muslim like Haneen Zoabi (Balad) supporting a second holocaust by a nuclear Iran and Sheik Raed Salahl head of the northern branch of the Islmaist movement, Hamas inside Israel, who foments riots in Jerusalem seeking declaration of a Salafist Emirate to replace the Jewish nation. A group that Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (MK-Likud) proposes banning. A group he said in a recent Israel National News article “ that is illegal everywhere except in Israel”.
Baron Bodissey’s final acute observation was:
As far as I am aware, Miloš Zeman is the first Western head of state ever to tell the OIC to go jump in a lake. So this is an historic occasion.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.