RUTHFULLY YOURS

Amid all the controversy over where the coronavirus comes from (don’t you dare call it the “Chinese Virus,” a la “Spanish Flu,” that would be racist, and to be racist is worse than the virus itself) and what should be done about it, a Muslim cleric in Syracuse, NY., has found the key; thousands of people are being infected, many are dying, and America is teetering on the edge of economic collapse because American women are showing too much ankle.

Don’t laugh. Laughing would be “Islamophobic,” and Khadar Bin Muhammad, the imam of the Masjid Bilal Ibn Rabah in Syracuse, is not making a joke. In a video posted on YouTube last week and reposted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the learned imam explains it all for us. Offering us a revelation that the Center for Disease Control and everyone else who is working on the coronavirus crisis have overlooked, the imam explained that “safety comes through tauhid,” that is, Islam’s concept of monotheism. So if you don’t want to contract the coronavirus, turn to Allah. Khadar Bin Muhammad says: “Every destruction and every harm comes through shirk” – that is, having other gods besides Allah – “and through worshipping other than Allah, believing in other than Allah, and thinking that [anything] other than Allah can harm you or have an effect on you. All harm comes through that. That is why you see the kuffar [infidels] are the scaredest people.”

The infidels aren’t just scared when they should be trusting in Allah. They are also the cause of all the trouble in the first place – specifically infidel women. According to Khadar Bin Muhammad, the coronavirus is a manifestation of Allah’s wrath against their outrageous immodesty. “How many women do we see,” he asked, “may Allah guide them and protect them, who walk around and show their ankles? Is this not part of her awra [private parts]?”

Yes, that’s right. Khadar Bin Muhammad said that women’s ankles were part of her private parts. As strange as it may seem, this is not an eccentric view in Islam. A hadith depicts Muhammad saying to a woman, “‘O Asma’, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this,’ and he pointed to her face and hands” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4092).

Many Muslims believe that by saying this, Muhammad proclaimed every part of a woman except her face and hands to be her private parts, never to be seen in public. By this standard, of course, virtually all non-Muslim women in the world are parading around essentially naked. And Khadar Bin Muhammad, like Allah, has had enough of it: “How many women are very lacksadaisical [sic] in regards to their sleeves coming up like this? Is this not a part of her awra? How many women are very lacksadaisical [sic], with their ears showing, their necks showing? Why are they lacksadaisical [sic] and lazy like that? Shouldn’t they be more worried about protecting that, like [they are with] the hand sanitizer? [Sometimes] a lady has a dress on that comes up to right here” – and here the pious imam stood up and pointed to an area just above his sock. “How is that?! That’s her awra! She’s not supposed to show that to any man. But they do it like it’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. Khadar Bin Muhammad says “it’s disgusting and it is not permissible.’ Even worse, it resembles the practices of those whom the Qur’an says (5:82) are the worst enemies of the Muslims, the Jews: “From showing the ankle, to the tight dress, to the hoodies, whatever… And they are showing, it’s tight like this… All of that is games. They are playing games [with Allah] like Jews.”

Even Muslims are behaving this way, and the imam doesn’t spare them from his righteous anger: “So for sure you are going to die. What should you really be preparing for? Instead of washing your hands five times for fear of coronavirus, you should be repenting. Even Muslims are wearing masks now. They were scared before to wear niqab, saying: ‘No, people are going to laugh at me if I wear niqab outside, and bother me…’ But now they are walking around with ugly blue masks on their faces.”

So that’s the imam’s message for women: take off the mask, put on the niqab, and pick up the Qur’an, and the coronavirus will go away. Won’t it? And seriously, while it is easy to laugh at this, isn’t Khadar Bin Muhammad endangering his hearers by preaching this nonsense?

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.