What's Kwame Got To Do with Dearborn?--Part I

Every now and then someone sends us an unhappy comment demanding to know what some subject we’re discussing “has to do with Dearborn.” Maybe there’s some validity to this, especially lately as the scandal enveloping the mayor of our northern suburb, Detroit, is simply too big a target to ignore. We’re also in the middle of a national election that, I’m sure most Dearborn residents would agree, is going to affect life in Dearborn.

Then again, just because we blog about Dearborn, doesn’t mean we’ve taken a vow never to speak of anything else, or anywhere else. Why would it? Especially when those other things are related to the issues of greatest interest to us here--like freedom of speech, Islamism, Israel, the Middle East, international jihadist terrorism, the mau-mauing of the press and government officials by mouthpiece organizations like CAIR. Last but not least, blogging offers no rewards such as money nor fame for the vast majority of us, so we should get to write about whatever we want.

As it happens I do think there are quite clear connections between the corrupt and venal Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Islam, and also between the callow and shortsighted Senator Barack Obama and Islam, that make their situations relevant to us at DU. That connection subsists in the never-discussed mutual cooperation between clergymen in many of America’s black churches, and the Nation of Islam and other radical Islamist leaders who’ve made common cause with America’s left.

We’re witnessing it right now in the revelations about Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s debased thinking, who rewarded Farrakhan and paid homage to Khadafi, goddamned America and has presided over a cult in Chicago predicated on racism, class envy, urban myths, and whatever leftist bullshit he can make use of.

It was there to be noticed if anyone was inclined, when Farrakhan endorsed Kwame Kilpatrick for re-election in 2005, and when the local New Black Panther/Nation of Islam member Minister Malik “Motown”* Shabazz showed up to pray with the embattled Kilpatrick and some of his patronage partners in the unions. [CORRECTION: Minister Malik Shabazz has pointed out to me that I'm in error identifying him as a Muslim: he states, "I am not Muslim , I am a Christian who respects Islam." I gladly make the correction.]

Is Kingpin Kilpatrick a Muslim? Of course not. Why should he be? He’s already had his 72 houris, and then some, without having to set off a suicide belt to get them, and as Detroit's Highest Ranking Christian, he gets his ass hauled around in a black Escalade. (Not for much longer, though). Is Obama a Muslim? I have no reason to doubt his own statement that he’s a Christian. It doesn’t matter. Muslims aren’t supporting these guys because they’re brother Muslims, but because they’re useful to jihad. Because they’re useful idiots. (Don’t think so? Obama almost had this thing won. Why is he losing now? Because of his own devil’s bargain with the prancing charlatan in the safari surf shirts they can’t stop showing on Fox News.)

Within weeks after 9/11 the first cries of “Islamophobia” were going up. It was evident by then that America’s jihadist spokesmen were already blowing past the speed limit on the Victim Grievance Expressway first excavated and paved by the post-MLK civil rights community, and then taken over and improved upon by the homosexual lobby. The re-education of American editors and news anchors and Hollywood that took the civil rights community thirty years to accomplish, and the gays much less than that, was accomplished by CAIR and a few university Middle East studies professors in just a few weeks. “As early as October 2001, the Society of Professional Journalists provided guidelines to the American free press that jihad was to be defined as ‘to exert oneself for the good of Islam and to better oneself’”.

As noted continually in these pages, and much more thoroughly at Dhimmi Watch and other prominent blogs, Islam, and Muslims in America, are very nearly immune from criticism in the mainstream media, and enjoy a kind of affirmative action on many of their initiatives because folks are terrified of being called a name if they raise any criticisms.

In the 1990s Seinfeld was able to poke fun at the craven fear of giving offense we'd all been reduced to on the subject of homosexuality. The show as able to get away with ridiculing both the sacramental attitudes towards AIDS (“the ribbon Nazis”), and especially the strict prohibition of criticizing homosexuality per se by continually reassuring all listeners whenever the subject came up, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

The American media, and most Americans, now are incapable of mentioning Islam or Muslims without immediately following up with some similar declaration assuring listeners we don’t think there’s any thing wrong with that.

Which isn't news to many of us.

But at the same time all this is happening between Islam in America and the media and public opinion, the black Christian community in America enjoys an almost complete immunity from the kinds of press or social criticisms that are so tiresomely repeated when it comes to white, Republican, or conservative political figures who so much as dare to mention the contents of their faith in relation to any official duty or setting. Google “theocracy” and you’ll see what I mean.

The immunity of the black church protects both the black clergy--and more important, black politicians--from challenges over the mixing of church and state, regardless of how porous the barrier is between religion and politics. Black preachers or quasi-religious figures like Jesse Jackson can go on talk TV and appeal to the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount or the Old Testament to blast political opponents, and you'll never hear a peep from interviewers, either liberal or conservative, that our political system is not based upon the Bible. Even on NPR black Christians can speak freely about the commands of Christ, completely free from the acidic ironies and sarcastic segues any white Christian daring the same thing would have to endure. Black churches regularly open their pulpits up to Democratic candidates, during services, to preach their campaign speeches, without check or balance.

This immunity isn’t a sign of the media’s respect for black Christians.

In the first place, liberals are among the most racist people on earth, and their patronizing view of blacks includes interpreting their "faith tradition" as a sociological component of an ethnically rich heritage, a colorful holdover from their slave heritage, like gospel music, collard greens, and the practice of matriarchy.

Public liberals are demonically intolerant of any overtly Christian speech that issues from any white man or non-minority, unless it's that sissy watered-down pap about a Christ who came to Earth to establish food banks and nuclear-free zones. But at the same time, these same liberals don’t find the preachments of black religion threatening at all, even if the message is theologically more conservative. That's because they know any religious strictures can be easily overcome, when needed, by the absolutes of leftist political theory. Tens of thousands of black clergy have proved them right.

If it weren’t for the manipulation of the black church by the Left, I wouldn’t think this immunity was all bad. For one thing, it's natural I don’t have the antipathy for Christianity that I admit having for Islam, as I’m a Christian myself, more or less. Nor does Christianity harbor at its heart a violent, triumphalist vision that historically manifests itself in subjecting nations, sexes, and unbelievers to slavery and humiliation by war and forced religious obedience. Christianity played a central role in the founding of the nation, and in spite of the irrational reactions against it prevalent at the moment, has never posed a threat to the survival of the Republic. If black Christians can get into the media and say things about Jesus without being censored when white folks can't, I see that as a good thing.

I also think that the immunity of black Christians might one day become the source of unbounded moral power--power to demand the right kind of change--the way that moral power was displayed briefly during the middle of the last century for a few short years of the civil rights movement. But that kind of moral power could only return at such time as the black clergy breaks their unholy bond with the political left and the Democratic Party. You simply can’t have moral power when you’re telling your congregation they must vote for candidates falling over themselves to legalize gay marriage and abort your babies to reduce crime.

This is a bigger subject than I thought it would get to be. I’ll try to say more about it later.

*We have recently figured out that America has been blessed with two "Minister Malik Shabazzes," both claiming to be leaders of the New Black Panther Party, both claiming to be proteges of Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammaed of the Nation of Islam, and neither one apparently willing to admit the existence of the other. One is local to Detroit, the other has more national exposure, and is often seen baiting Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor. For convenience sake, I'm referring to our local Shabazz as Malik "Motown" Shabazz, and the latter as Malik "Zulu" Shabazz, which is the middle name he chose for himself. [Minister Malik Shabazz has contacted me to protest that he and Zulu "get along fine." ]