Many examples of conspiracy theories, inshallah-fatalism, and sheer craziness have been on display in the Muslim Middle East, as it tries to make sense of the coronavirus. A recent roundup of voices from Turkey at Memri.org offers views often contradicting one another.

Here is Memri’s summary of what the Turkish press and public have been saying:

Members of the Turkish press and public have reacted to the global spread of COVID-19, colloquially known as the Coronavirus, blaming it on Jews and other unspecified political actors and saying that the virus cannot be transmitted in mosques. On March 13, Turkish medical doctor Dr. Yavuz Dizdar claimed that 60% of the population of Turkey was already infected with the virus and that the Ministry of Health, in order to hide this fact, was not providing test kits.

If the Ministry of Health is not providing test kits, on what basis does Dr. Dizdar insist that 60% of the Turkish population is already infected? Is his dim view of the Ministry of Health warranted? Could it be that the Ministry does not have enough test kits due to the sudden explosion of the coronavirus, as has happened in many countries, and is merely incompetent, not malevolent, in failing to have enough of them? What Dr. Dizdar’s claim does show is a deep suspicion of the authorities, the belief that they would not hesitate to hide facts about spread of the virus if they felt it in their own interest to do so, by appearing to be more competent than in fact they have been.

“This Virus Serves Zionism’s Goals Of Decreasing The Number Of People”; “Anyway The Jews Are A Cursed Race”

Fatih Erbakan, who is the head of Refah Party and the son of late Turkish Islamist politician and former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, who is generally thought to have been President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political mentor, said of the virus in a speech reported on March 6: “Though we do not have certain evidence, this virus serves Zionism’s goals of decreasing the number of people and preventing it from increasing, and important research expresses this. [Necmettin] Erbakan said: ‘Zionism is a five-thousand-year-old bacteria that has caused the suffering of people.’”

Fatih [“The Conqueror”] Erbakan says that “though we do not have certain evidence” – meaning, “we have no evidence at all” – nonetheless he can state with confidence that the coronavirus serves “Zionism’s goal’s of decreasing the number of people.” But why would the Zionists be served if the world’s population were to decrease? Why is that good for them? No hint of an explanation from Erbakan. No hint that an explanation is even needed. Do Jews possess a special antibody that renders them impervious to the coronavirus? Obviously not, because hundreds of Israelis have been stricken, and the number of cases in that country increases ever more steeply, though Israel is in lockdown.

As for his father’s comment, that he deemed worthy of repeating, that “Zionism is a five-thousand-year-old bacteria that has caused the suffering of people,” Fatih Erbakan needs to be reminded that Zionism, as a movement, began in the 1890s, not 5000 years ago. But in the crazed world of the anti-Zionists, who’s counting?

A video recently appeared on social media showing a Turkish bus driver saying that all the epidemics in recent history, from AIDS to Ebola, had been created by pharmaceutical companies. The bus driver then asked: “And to whom do most of the pharmaceutical companies belong? To the Jews.” A passenger said: “[The Jews] will do anything to end the lineage of the Turks.” Another said: “Not only Turks, sister, they will do anything to bring the world to its knees.” The bus driver then said: “Anyway the Jews are a cursed race.”

One malevolent and idiotic claim after another is presented. First the bus driver, who insists on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that pharmaceutical companies have created AIDS, Ebola, SARS, the coronavirus, in order to profit by selling vaccines. None of the main pharmaceutical companies in America and Europe — all of them publicly owned and traded, with tens of thousands of owners – belong, as he claims, “to the Jews.” To add another dose of idiocy, a passenger insists that “the Jews will do anything to end the lineage of the Turks.” How would they do that? The coronavirus has been especially virulent in China, Italy, and Iran, not in Turkey. Right now there are more cases of coronavirus in Israel than in Turkey. Besides, why would “the Jews…do anything to end the lineage of the Turks”? Why should they have it in for the Turks? For many decades, Turkey and Israel were allies; it was only after the arrival of Erdogan that that relationship turned sour. Israel and Turkey have not been hereditary enemies. Isn’t Iran a much more dangerous threat to Israel today than Turkey? Still another passenger chimes in with the news that the Jews “will do anything to bring the world to its knees.” How? Why? To obtain what? Crazed claims are made, one after the other, each more bizarre than the next, and instead of evidence we get a series of baseless assertions.

A Virus Cannot Spread In Allah’s House – Also, The Quran Has Healing Verses, We Recite Them Continually”

On March 10, Abdurrahman Dilipak, a columnist for daily Yeni Akit, wrote: “Look how some people today have rolled up their sleeves to bring the Nazi dream to life. This is a fascist plan. Once they have finished their work with the gays and lesbians, of whom they appear to take ownership, their plan for their ‘removal’ is ready on the table, and this is an ordinary and easy task for them. It’s as if for them a woman is just a bionic robot doing its incubation duty on a human farm. But of course, they think that the population of the world must first be greatly decreased. The most cowardly example of this is the subversion and sterilization of the family! This is what they want to do. Maybe tomorrow they will present the vaccine for Corona as a medicine, and they will add something sterilizing to it. And you know how the virus can spread on money, so that’s good for Bitcoin.”

Who are “some people” who are determined to “bring the Nazi dream to life”? Clearly, it is the Jews (as Memri’s experts have concluded), for it is they who “think that the population of the world must first be greatly decreased.” How do they do this? First, they encourage homosexuality, both for men and women, which naturally leads to a decrease in heterosexual couples and hence of births. Then they encourage, within the family units that do exist, both sterilization of women and vasectomies for men. They may even try, according to Abdurrahman Dilipak, to present a coronavirus vaccine “as a medicine” (which is of course exactly what it is), but will sinisterly add an agent to it that will sterilize patients.

We still don’t understand why “the Jews” would want to decrease the world’s population, and Dilipak does not offer any guidance. Is it sheer malevolence? A belief that the Jews alone will be immune to the coronavirus and so it is they who will inherit the earth? There are certainly many more Israelis who have fallen sick with the coronavirus than Turks. Did the Jews miscalculate? Or was there never such a plan, to kill off only non-Jews, in the first place?

Turkish journalist Seyhan Avşar interviewed some Turks in a mosque on March 16. One woman, asked if she was concerned about coming to the mosque while the virus is spreading, said: “A virus cannot spread in Allah’s house. Also, the Quran has healing verses, we recite them continually. As our president said: ‘Cleanliness comes from faith.’… Also, if the virus is going to spread in the place where I came to read the Quran, then let it spread.” An older man said: “No one dies before their time. I would come to the mosque even if I knew I would die [because of it].” The same day, Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs announced that, in order to limit the spread of the virus, prayers would not be performed in groups in mosques throughout the country.

Several aspects of Islam are on display here.

The first is inshallah-fatalism. For many Believers, it is Allah who knows – who decides — when each of us will die. As the older man quoted above says “No one dies before their time.” So there is no need, in his view, to take precautions against the coronavirus. Our stories are already written; the days of our deaths are known to Allah. The Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, fortunately, is not filled with inshallah-fatalists, and has forbidden group prayers in mosques.

The woman who is interviewed about going to the mosque claims that the coronavirus cannot be spread “in Allah’s house.” But for extra protection, she admits that she continually repeats “healing verses” from the Quran, just in case her first belief, that the virus can’t be spread in mosques, turns out not to be true. The belief in these two different ways of preventing coronavirus infection – being in a mosque, where the coronavirus cannot be transmitted, and reciting “healing verses” – bespeak a deep credulity.

In sum, there appear to be a disturbing number of devout Muslims in Turkey who believe the spread of the coronavirus is a plot by “the Jews” to destroy those of “Turkish lineage” or even worse, it’s a Jewish plot to ensure that “the population of the world must first be greatly decreased.” No evidence is presented for these assertions; they are tossed off as if “everyone knows” these claims to be true. Nor has anyone tried to explain why the Jews would wish to decrease the world’s population in the first place.

This much is clear: first, some Turks have vivid antisemitic imaginations, and are not bothered by their lack of logic or their failure to produce evidence; second, Israelis are becoming infected with, and dying from, the coronavirus no differently from, and at the same rate as, all other peoples.

Last February 15 marked the five year anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 Christians—20 from Egypt and one from Ghana.  One human rights group summarized the incident in a statement:

This week in 2015, 21 men were brutally beheaded on a Mediterranean beach in Libya, by members of ISIS. They had been captured by ISIS a few months earlier and pressured to renounce their faith in Christ and convert to Islam. These 21 modern martyrs chose their faith and love for Jesus Christ over the opportunity to extend their mortal lives….  All were given the opportunity to convert to Islam to save their lives, yet each chose the love they had for Jesus above the love they had for their families and own lives. Reportedly, the Ghanaian captive on seeing the faith of his fellow Coptic Orthodox captives chose their faith and death over saving himself.

The slain are ultimately modern day reflections of an ancient (and ongoing) phenomenon that permeates nearly fourteen centuries of history: Muslims slaughtering Christians who refuse to renounce Christ and embrace Muhammad.

Indeed, earlier this month, on March 6, the martyrdom of 42 other Christians was commemorated.  They too were beheaded—1,171 years before half their number (the 21 Egyptians/Ghanaian) were executed under very similar circumstances.  Known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium, their dramatic story follows:

In 838, Caliph al-Mu‘tasim—at the head of eighty thousand slave-soldiers—burst into Amorium, one of the Eastern Roman Empire’s largest and most important cities. They burned and razed it to the ground and slaughtered countless; everywhere there were “bodies heaped up in piles,” recalled a chronicler. The invaders locked those who sought sanctuary inside their churches and set the buildings aflame; trapped Christians could be heard crying kyrie eleison—“Lord have mercy!” in Greek—while being roasted alive. Hysterical “women covered their children, like chickens, so as not to be separated from them, either by sword or slavery.”

About half of the city’s seventy thousand citizens were slaughtered, the rest hauled off in chains.  There was such a surplus of human booty that when the caliph came across four thousand male prisoners he ordered them executed on the spot. Because there “were so many women’s convents and monasteries” in this populous Christian city, “over a thousand virgins were led into captivity, not counting those that had been slaughtered. They were given to the Moorish and Turkish slaves, so as to assuage their lust,” laments the chronicler.

When the young emperor, Theophilus (r. 829–842), heard about the sack of Amorium—his hometown, chosen by the caliph for that very reason, to make the sting hurt all the more—he fell ill and died three years later, aged 28, reportedly from sorrow.  Meanwhile, the Muslim poet Abu Tammam (805‐845) celebrated the caliph’s triumph, since “You have left the fortunes of the sons of Islam in the ascendant, and the polytheists [Christians] and the abode of polytheism in decline.”

Among the many captives carted off to Iraq were forty-two notables, mostly from the military and clerical classes.  Due to their prestigious status and in order to make them trophies of Islam, they were repeatedly pressured to convert:

During the seven years of their imprisonment, their captors tried in vain to persuade them to renounce Christianity and accept Islam. The captives stubbornly resisted all their seductive offers and bravely held out against terrible threats. After many torments that failed to break the spirit of the Christian soldiers, they condemned them to death, hoping to shake the determination of the saints before executing them. The martyrs remained steadfast…

Interestingly, some of the arguments used by Muslims indicate that they acknowledged Christ as the Prince of Peace and Muhammad as the Lord of War—and played it to great effect.  One Theodore, a Christian cleric who fought in defense of Amorium, was goaded as follows:  “We know that you forsook the priestly office, became a soldier and shed blood [of Muslims] in battle. You can have no hope in Christ, whom you abandoned voluntarily, so accept Mohammed.”  Theodore replied: “You do not speak truthfully when you say that I abandoned Christ. Moreover, I left the priesthood because of my own unworthiness. Therefore, I must shed my blood for the sake of Christ, so that He might forgive the sins that I have committed against Him.”

In the end, none would recant; and so, on March 6, 845, after seven years of torture and temptation failed to make them submit to Muhammad, all 42 Christians were—like their 21 spiritual descendants, the Egyptian/Ghanaian martyrs—also marched to a body of water, the Euphrates River, ritually beheaded, and their bodies dumped into the river.

In the video of the 21 martyrs made by ISIS, some could be seen mouthing, “Oh Lord Jesus Christ” immediately prior to having their heads carved off. Commenting on this, Coptic Orthodox Bishop Anba Antonios Aziz Mina, said: “The name of Jesus was their last word. Like the passion of the early martyrs, they entrusted themselves to He, who moments later, would welcome them into his embrace (emphasis added).”

At any rate and when it comes to the Muslim persecution of Christians past and present, some things apparently never change.

Note: For more examples throughout the centuries of Christian martyrs of the Islamic jihad, see the author’s recent book,Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.

At this Wednesday’s press briefing by President Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force, President Trump was asked one of the most insulting questions that he has ever been asked during his presidency – and that’s saying something. A “reporter” wanted to know, “how many deaths are acceptable?” The president’s response was firm and direct: “How many?  None.  Okay?  How many deaths are acceptable to me?  None.  Okay?  None, if that’s your question.”

The pretextual reason for this sinister question was to follow up on the extent of testing of Americans for the coronavirus that would be considered necessary before allowing people to go back to work. President Trump rejected the idea of testing 350 million people or requiring the testing of all persons within a state that has virtually no problem to date:

“We have some big problems, but it’s confined to certain areas, high-density areas.  So why would we test the entire nation — 350 [million] people? With that being said, I’m going to say it again: We tested far more than anybody else.  We are — we have the ability to test — I mean, we’ve come a long way from an obsolete, broken system that I inherited.  We have now tested, with the best test, far more than anybody else.  And when I say “anybody else,” I’m talking about other countries.  No country is even close.”

The question is sinister because it is a thinly veiled way of pushing the left’s latest false narrative against President Trump – he is more interested in prematurely pumping up the economy to bolster his re-election campaign than he is in saving lives. The message also is that greedy capitalists care more about profits than human life. For example, in an article entitled “Trumpworld Embraces the Death Wish Economy,” published by the New Republic on March 25^th , the magazine staffer Matt Ford wrote that the president and his allies “have concluded that the loss of human life is acceptable and the decline in corporate earnings is not.” He added, people “will suffer and die if Trump’s nihilistic vision of crisis management prevails.”

Fortunately, most Americans have common sense and reject the outright lies the left is spreading to advance its sick socialist agenda. According to a Gallup poll released on March 24^th that specifically looked at how President Trump has been handling the coronavirus crisis, “Americans give the president generally positive reviews for his handling of the situation, with 60% approving and 38% disapproving. Ninety-four percent of Republicans, 60% of independents and 27% of Democrats approve of his response.”

Leftists believe that even talking about beginning to open portions of the country by Easter or perhaps soon thereafter exposes the “evil” of capitalism – i.e., profits over lives. The national affairs correspondent for The Nation, Jeet Heer, wrote an article entitled “Trump Toys With a Let-Them-Die Response to the Pandemic.” Heer lashed out at what he called “a kind of cult capitalism.” Heer added, “The existing system is viewed as so sacred that it is worth sacrificing innumerable human lives to keep it going. Even nonrevolutionary changes to the system are anathema.” Heer’s apocalyptic claim, so emblematic of the left’s deranged hate-Trump, hate-capitalism echo chamber, crumbles under the lightest feather of facts.

The “existing system” has been turned upside down to save as many lives as possible and the livelihoods of millions of Americans when they are finally able to go back to work. Perhaps Heer should count to 2 trillion before the next time he goes to sleep – the cost of the truly revolutionary congressional deal to rush economic relief to Americans, businesses and the health care industry who are all coping with the human costs of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s all about keeping workers employed and paid, and keeping the companies (big and small) that employ people afloat long enough to remain in business when the crisis significantly abates. And it’s about enhancing the nation’s health care system to save as many lives as possible while the pandemic continues to afflict Americans. President Trump and his administration worked tirelessly with leaders of both parties in Congress to move this legislation through the Senate in record time. Even Democrat Socialist Bernie Sanders ended up voting for the Senate bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has predicted that the legislation will pass the House of Representatives on Friday with bipartisan support. Meanwhile poor Joe Biden imagines himself as being too busy to think about any more debates because his “focus” is “just dealing” with the pandemic crisis. Who knew? Biden is disappointed because student loan forgiveness and “my Green Deal” will have to wait until “the next round [of congressional economic aid].”

While Congress was spinning its wheels, President Trump acted early and forcefully to address the pandemic crisis on multiple fronts. His travel restrictions have played a big part in preventing the crisis we are now facing from potentially turning into a catastrophe on par with the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which cost about 675,000 American lives. The progressives’ hero Woodrow Wilson made matters worse by failing to heed medical advice during the Spanish flu outbreak. Wilson hid the truth about the outbreak from the public. He had also rammed through Congress the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to report anything that could negatively affect the war effort during World War I. As a result, the press did not adequately warn the public about the disease and the dangers of large social gatherings. The death toll in Philadelphia alone was about 14,500, following a huge war bond parade in the fall of 1918 that led to an explosion of the disease in the city within 48 hours.

President Trump has listened to his medical advisers and followed their advice on instituting strict social distancing guidelines, supplemented by mandatory stay-at-home edicts in the most critically affected states. The Trump administration has supported those states, regardless of the immediately devastating economic consequences. The president and other administration officials have made it clear that the most affected areas will not return to normal for a considerable period of time. Under President Trump’s close direction, his task force, led by Vice President Pence, and many other parts of his administration have overseen dramatic increases in the manufacture, distribution and supply of tests, medications, masks and life-saving medical equipment, such as ventilators. The private sector has stepped up to the challenge. The president has been extraordinarily transparent – so much so with his daily in-person briefings that the left wing press is complaining.

The New York Times carried a story by the Associated Press on March 24^th that purported to be a “fact-check” against President Trump’s claim that “People get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies.” According to the so-called fact-checkers, “There’s no evidence that suicides will rise dramatically if nationwide social-distancing guidelines that have closed many businesses and are expected to trigger a spike in unemployment stay in place.”

In fact, there is historical evidence correlating horrible economic conditions with a rising suicide rate. First, there was an increasing suicide rate during the Great Depression, which the New York Times article downplayed. A study of the period between 1928 and 2007 found the following: “The largest increase in the overall suicide rate occurred during the Great Depression (1929–1933), when it surged from 18.0 [per 100,000] in 1928 to 22.1 (the all-time high) in 1932, the last full year of the Great Depression. This increase of 22.8% was the highest recorded for any 4-year interval during the study period.” The study added, “The overall suicide rate also rose during 3 other severe recessions: the end of the New Deal (1937–1938), the oil crisis (1973–1975), and the double-dip recession (1980–1982).”

There is also evidence of increased suicides during the Great Recession that began in 2008. “Three recent studies with data from single countries—England, Italy, and the United States —found a significant rise in suicide during the 2008-10 recession,” BMJ reported.

The left wants President Trump to fail and for the U.S. capitalist economy to collapse so that desperate Americans will embrace socialism. The socialist Jacobin Magazine published an article lauding the Soviet Union’s “fully socialized health-care system” established during its early days. “In a way few would have imagined, the coronavirus has, in recent weeks, severely challenged the dynamics of global capitalism by bringing the economy to a halt — perhaps even dragging it toward an unprecedented depression,” the authors wrote. “But surely, in this moment, we should think big — not only about health care as a collective right, but about the way capitalism has managed our existence. COVID-19 has shown that the world is willing to make dramatic changes and economic sacrifices to save lives. We should demand that the principles for collective health-care solutions also apply for other issues, such as food security and combatting climate change. The Spanish flu in 1918 brought lasting societal changes made possible through strong action taken by the state and the public realm. The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 provides a unique opportunity to change the world once more — and shows us that the necessary tools are within reach.”

American must firmly reject such charlatans even in the worst of times. Socialism is dangerous snake oil that would kill our constitutional republic and the liberties it is supposed to protect.

12. 

America’s Superb, Unappreciated President

A close look at what Trump has done to combat the current pandemic — amid constant Democrat assaults.

Fri Mar 27, 2020