RUSH: Now, Andy McCarthy, National Review Online, one of the editors over there, I mean this is a great, great piece. His headline: ‘Inventing Moderate Islam — It can’t be done without confronting 
mainstream Islam and its Sharia agenda.’ It’s a long piece, but McCarthy says we’re being force-fed the idea there are moderate Muslims pouring out of our elite, totally bought-off universities. And McCarthy explains there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Now wait ’til the Drive-Bys get hold of this piece. I mean they’re going to literally freak out. It is a long, long piece. But the point is there’s no such thing as moderate Islam. One of the things McCarthy says taught him this — as we’ve discussed countless times in the program — Andy McCarthy was on the US attorney’s staff, the US attorney’s office prosecuting the blind sheik. And in preparing for the trials, he listened and read what the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman had said, some of the most incendiary, provocative, violence-inducing things he had said.
McCarthy said, (paraphrasing) ‘We’re obviously dealing with a kook here. So I want to find out just how far off the reservation of Islam this guy is.’ So he took some of the most outrageous things that Omar Abdel Rahman had said and went looking for what the counterpart could be in the Koran. And McCarthy said that he was bowled over, he was shocked that there wasn’t any exaggeration, that everything the sheik was saying, all these claims, all these threats, he could find every one of them in the Koran. He said, ‘My gosh, we’re not dealing with a kook here. This is a mainstream Islamist who wanted to blow up subways and so forth in New York, the World Trade Center back in the nineties.’ So there’s a wide disparity here once again between the ruling class and everybody else over who these people are. This is why I believe we’re looking here at almost a reincarnation of the Cold War. We’ve got the Russians, the Soviets, and the American elite, the academics and everybody else thinking, ‘Oh, they’re harmless people. In fact, it’s a great system if we just get the right people running it. It’s all about fairness and equality.’
Meanwhile, the rest of the people see that people are slaughtered in communist countries, they build walls to keep ’em in. They kill ’em and they put ’em in jail if they don’t toe the party line. And we’re saying how can our elites look at this and find anything admirable in it, anything they want to emulate. And we’re at a loss. Then Ronald Reagan comes along, starts calling the evil empire and the people in the ruling class literally start having cows. Reagan makes jokes before taping a Saturday radio address, ‘Tell the Russians the bombing starts in five minutes.’ They literally had a cow Reagan was gonna start a nuclear war with these people. Gorbachev was the savior. Gorbachev was the man that was gonna save the world from nuclear disaster. Reagan was gonna cause it, he was the cowboy. So you have this great divide, and you’ve got the same thing now. You’ve got Bloomberg and the pro-mosque people thinking that this is nothing more than a freedom of worship issue, a freedom of religion issue, when they don’t care about that in the first place anyway. Versus the rest of the country that says, wait a minute, now, 2700 Americans died on that site, something here doesn’t compute with those of us who live in the world of common sense.
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Mike in Washington. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. I’m thinking to myself that if McCarthy is right and there’s no such thing as moderate Islam, then we know Barack Obama, uh, is not a Muslim, because he hasn’t honor-killed his wife for showing too much skin yet or either of his daughters for any of the naughty things that I’m sure they’ve done. So that settles the whole Barack-Obama-is-a-Muslim issue. But, um, as far as —
RUSH: No, no, no. Wait a minute. You gotta start here at the beginning. I’m not sure I was able to follow your ‘brilliance’ on this.
CALLER: Sure. I’m saying —
RUSH: You said that if McCarthy is right, Andy McCarthy —
CALLER: There is no moderate Muslims.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Then by now Barack Obama surely would have had his wife honor-killed for showing too much skin in some of those dresses she wears or wearing a bikini or something like that, right?
RUSH: Uhhhhhh… Well, if that’s how you want to interpret it.
CALLER: Well, that’s what he wrote.
RUSH: I, frankly, hadn’t looked at it that way. You’re looking at this through a prism that not even I, El Rushbo, am looking at it through.
CALLER: (snickering) Well, anyway, let’s get to the Cordoba House because I heard you say yesterday that of course they have the right, just as the West Baptist ministers have the right to shout their foolery at the soldiers’ funerals. But are you going to come out and defend them for it? Well, I think the difference here is that there the West Baptist ministers are the bad guys. Here, liberals like myself argue that Muslims that are trying to reach across the divide and that regret that 9/11 ever happened, they’re the good guys. They’re the guys that we need on our side. So I guess my question to you would be: Is there any Muslim anywhere on earth that you would feel okay opening up a mosque near Ground Zero, and if you can’t identify a Muslim, should we deny Christians the right to go to Auschwitz since Christians perpetuated… (sic)
RUSH: No, wait a minute. The burden of proof is not on me. The question really needs to be asked of people like you. ‘What are the Westboro protesters doing wrong?’ The people that show up at soldiers’ funerals and say they deserved to die or whatever, what are they doing wrong?
CALLER: (snickers) They’re screaming outrageously offensive things and elevating —
RUSH: Isn’t the problem —
CALLER: — their own agenda above —
RUSH: Isn’t the problem that they’re —
CALLER: — the families’ grief.
RUSH: Wait a second. Isn’t the problem that they are being insensitive to the dead soldiers. When they show up at military funerals and say they deserve to die and have all these offensive signs, isn’t the problem they’re being insensitive to the dead soldiers?
CALLER: I wouldn’t characterize it as that. I would say they’re being very, very selfish in elevating their own political-religious agenda above that of the families that are grieving.
RUSH: No, no. That’s not the point. The point is they have the right to do it. I simply ask: Is it proper? Is it sensitive? Does it make sense? How is that any different?
CALLER: What I’m saying to you is that my problem with the West Baptists… I have no problem with those, folks, although I do see they have the right. I think it’s wrong, but what they are doing is wrong. I don’t think what the (pause) Rauf guy is doing is wrong. He’s trying to bridge a divide between, you know, Americans that were hurt by 9/11 —
RUSH: No, no.
CALLER: — and the Muslim community.
RUSH: Let me tell you something. Mike, you are epitomizing the real fundamental problem we have in this country. You are a leftist, and you want to side every chance you get against your country. If they were really interested in bridging a divide, they would not build the mosque. They can see the polling data. They can see that most of the Americans whom they want to build a bridge to do not want the mosque at Ground Zero. They’re not opposed to the mosque anywhere in the country, but they don’t want it there. Now, if they’re really interested in bridging a divide, then they would listen and not do it there. The fact that they are not listening means they are purposely trying to provoke. There’s no difference in these guys and carrying signs like the Westboro gang at dead soldiers’ funerals, mocking it. There’s no difference whatsoever. The fact that you, as an American liberal, somehow don’t see this is the epitome of the problem our country faces. You pose a much bigger threat to this country’s future as it exists than this imam ever will.
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RUSH: A quick question, ladies and gentlemen. Somebody help me out with this. Can anybody anywhere recall for me the last time the American left stood up for the right of any other religion? When have they stood up for Catholicism? When has the American left stood up for Judaism? When has the American left stood up for Mormons? Last I heard they’re trying to tear down Mitt Romney and Mormons. Can anybody name for me anywhere, any time the American left has stood up for the right of any other religion? I can’t. Now, is that because Islam is the first anti-American, anti-Western religion? Could it be that the American left and liberals like our caller stand up for Islam because it is an anti-American, anti-Western religion, and they identify with it? And they look at them as a minority, as victims, oppressed by Western civilization. Howard Fineman called Mitt Romney a back-stabbing throat cutter.
Now, there’s also another possibility to explain the American left’s newfound love of religion, ’cause it is, the American left’s newfound devotion to religion, specifically Islam. As I have just illustrated, the American left really doesn’t like any religion. But they hate conservatism more. The American left hates conservatives more than they hate religion generically. In the Hamasque issue, the American left sees conservatives opposed to it, and therefore since they hate us more than they hate anybody else, they have to support the mosque. ‘Cause, frankly, I don’t think they care. This is the first time I’ve ever heard the American left be so devoted to defending a religion. I don’t remember it. I can’t think of a time. Mostly the American left acts scared to death of it. Separation, church and state, I mean what the hell’s the purpose of the ACLU? What’s the purpose of Barry Lynn? The purpose is to wipe out religion. The Southern Poverty Law Center, all of these groups exist basically attacking right-wing religious people. They do it under the guise of racism, bigotry, being opposed to all that. But now all of a sudden out of the blue, the biggest supporters of a mosque and Islam are the American left. Even if you were to tell ’em, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey, there’s no separation of church and state in Islam,’ it wouldn’t matter. They oppose us. They hate us more than they hate anything else.
The American left — let’s be honest about it — the American left considers us a greater threat than Al-Qaeda. Well, that’s a question that’s always puzzled me. How can the leftist females in this country, the NAGs, the NOW gang, how in the world can they intellectually, honestly support Islam, with what happens to women in Islamic countries? And yet not a word because conservatives, to them, pose a greater threat. They hate us. And this notion that Islam is a minority, it’s the largest religion in the world, but yet they look at Islam as an oppressed minority because they consider America the world’s greatest oppressor and conservatives are part and parcel of that.
Paul in Buffalo, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh Show. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you. God bless you and your work, sir.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: When I heard there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim my ears perked up because I’ve long thought that, but you never, ever hear it. When you compared it to the Cold War I know what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree with you, but I think that could be nuanced a little bit because I think that it is infinitely more dangerous than the Cold War.
RUSH: How is that?
CALLER: Primarily because of the fundamental ideology of Islam versus a Judeo-Christian mind-set. Even though many communist people were suppressed for years and years with their religion, it still didn’t change what’s in their hearts and minds as right and wrong and how to go about achieving their worldview. They saw communism, they saw the falseness of communism after a while, and yet Gorbachev was a big help in this, but I think it’s infinitely more dangerous because that ideology, I don’t know how they can be reconciled, the Judeo-Christian ideology and the Islam ideology —
RUSH: Well, wait a minute. You couldn’t reconcile communism. Communism has to get rid of all religion. If you take ’em outside the United States, communists hate Muslims, too, because they’re religious. I mean who was it that was battling the Mujahideen in Afghanistan? It was the Soviets. Who was it that was causing trouble for the Muslim Serbs and so forth? The Soviet Union was behind all this. The communists have to wipe out God. The state replaces God in communism.
CALLER: Right. But people that were suppressed by communism, they are different than the people who are suppressed by Islam. Their basic ideology is different.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I thought I lost you there for a second.
RUSH: No, no, I get it now. The people who follow communism are not following their religion. They’re oppressed and really would like to get out of it. The people following Islam are big believers.
CALLER: The mind-set is different. I mean it’s to proselytize the world. There’s no building bridges. Your last caller talked about building bridges, and I agree with you, when are some people gonna get it through their thick heads that they don’t view it as building a bridge. They can talk about breaking down divisions but in reality whether it’s active or whether it’s under the table and quiet and kind of stealth, there are no building bridges. Their basic ideology is to just convert the world and that’s not getting along with other people. You know, you see other faiths doing that. They disagree on many things but they try to get along. That’s not the basic premise here and I don’t remember anything on a wide scale where Islam —
RUSH: I understand what you’re doing. You’re separating leadership from rank-and-file. I understand your point here, but in terms of communism’s leaders versus Islam’s leaders the communists are trying to convert everybody. The communists are trying to defeat all opposition. And that’s what Sharia law is all about in Islam.
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RUSH: I just want to clarify something Andy McCarthy said. He did not say that there aren’t any moderate Muslims. He says in his piece that there are millions of moderate Muslims. What he says is there’s no moderate Islam, that the doctrine is not moderate for all the reasons we’ve been detailing, i.e., separation church and state. For example, what does the ICLU say about all this, the Islamic Civil Liberties Union? There isn’t one. We have an ACLU but there is not an Islamic Civil Liberties Union getting in to help adjudicate disputes within the religion.
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RUSH: Just a couple of more things on all of this, ’cause I really do think… I’m gonna try this when some time passes, just to test my theorem, and that is I’m gonna come out against something that I would normally be for. It’ll just be between you and me. Psst! Don’t tell anybody. Just to see the media’s reaction and the left’s reaction. For example, I don’t even have to do it. All McCain has to do is come out and rip his own party and they love him. McCain tacks to the right of JD Hayworth, ‘Ohhhh, too bad! We’ve lost McCain. What a horrible guy.’ Remember for the first half hour when I endorsed Clinton back in 1992, they thought, ‘Whoooa, Limbaugh may be cool. Look at this.’ They were excited about it.
I did my endorsement back in 1992. My broadcast partners panicked. Hee-hee-hee-hee. They did. People who had tickets to the Rush to Excellence Tour were calling and threatening to burn ’em because I endorsed Clinton. Now, a couple things here. You remember when the Danes published a bunch of cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed in an unfavorable light. Remember the outcry? Virtually all the mainstream media refrained from publishing those cartoons. We weren’t allowed to see what the controversy was all about, and the reason they gave was that publishing the cartoons would offend Muslim sensibilities and sensitivities. ‘We don’t want to offend the Muslims.’
When was the last time they were worried about offending you? Thomas Jefferson was sent to Europe to deal with the Muslim Barbary Coast pirate problem before he even became president. Would you like to know what Thomas Jefferson learned? I’ll tell you what he wrote. Islam ‘was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.’ This is what Thomas Jefferson learned before he even became president.
And Thomas Jefferson ended up going to war with the Muslims rather than pay them tribute, the Barbary pirates. So there isn’t anything new here. What’s new here is the leftist, the American left’s reaction. I ask my question again: Name for me the last time the American left went gaga over religion? When did they stand up for it, like it, encourage it? They don’t. Oh, they might. If the Reverends Jackson or Sharpton say something from the pulpit, they might go along with that, but they don’t. But we are a bigger enemy. American conservatism is a bigger enemy to the American left than any international threat that the country faces.