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On Tuesday the Saudi Ambassador to the United States threw a big shebang at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
Check out the woman with the camera crew -- she was showing the Saudis that American women don't wear burqas.
His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to The United States, irritated me at the start of his remarks, by beginning in Arabic. I considered this rude, because he didn't appear to offer any translation. Immediately non-Arabic speakers were excluded from what he was saying. This goes ominously well with the Koranic teaching that other religions are inferior to Islam. As a matter of fact, the Ambassador went out of his way to point this item of Koranic teaching out to us. From an audio recording of his remarks:
We Muslims not only accept but we also revere and adore all of the prophets, from Noah to Jesus and Mohammed, [odd that he mentioned no famous Jewish religious figures. -- ed.] and hold them equally as prophets of God sent down for the education and betterment of mankind. We also consider Jews and Christians as people of the book, and their books, whether as Torah or New Testament, are revered by Muslims, as we revere our own book, which is the Koran, which we believe is a completion of the revealed books, whether it is the Torah or the New Testament. And so, this is the ideal state.
In other words, the world's other religions are incomplete. Only Islam is "the ideal state." Perhaps that is part of the reason the Ambassador chose to open his remarks in a language used only by the Muslims in the room.
The Ambassador didn't mention that the Koran instructs that "people of the book" be treated as second-class citizens, but he was forced to admit it when an audience member spoke up and asked aloud if he would comment on the status of churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The Ambassador then stated that none were permitted. Jews and Christians were welcome to worship all they want... in their homes. But congregation in places of worship, is forbidden to them. Here's the video:
Click image to play. Requires Flash.
Listen to how he sounds. He doesn't sound hopeful. He sounds like he submits to something sadly, and like he's determined for us to submit too. "Islam" means "to submit." From Wikipedia:
Islam, "submission (to the will of God)" is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the world's second-largest religion. Followers of Islam are known as Muslims or Mohammedan. Muslims believe that God revealed his divine word directly to mankind through many prophets, and that Muhammad was the final prophet of Islam.
...Muslim, a follower of Islam, an agentive noun meaning "one who surrenders" or "submits" to God.
What's wrong with this belonging in our culture, is that, as we have seen in the riots over the Mohammed cartoons, and as we see again in the treatment of non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia, to Muslims, submission means sacrificing our freedom of speech, and treating non-Muslims as second-class citizens with severely restricted freedoms of all kinds.
I'm in favor of doing business with the Saudis. But until Islam reforms and learns not to physically attack people of other faiths, it is important to do as Robert Spencer has advised:
