Highly Inflammatory Op-Ed Compares the Mafia to Islam

Genovese mobster Benny "Eggs" was a patriot. He was
awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal
with four Oak Leaf clusters and three Battle Stars. 

Recently, I came across an article about the Mafia that is so inflammatory, I initially decided not to even write about it. But there is free speech in this country...

I write this blog to examine all mob-related topics and news that pique my interest, so I realized that I have no reason not to shine my spotlight here.

Now, I find myself for the first time in the position of defending Cosa Nostra.




I disagree passionately with this article. It sounds an alarm that resonates far beyond earshot of its intended niche audience. (It is an opinion piece published by the Jewish Voice.).

Need I remind the writer of the piece that the Mafia is an ongoing criminal enterprise; its goal is reaping the profits spun from ill-gotten gains; murder, torture, violence, however and whenever committed is with a criminal purpose. All the players know the rules of the game when they sign on.

The Mafia does not try to spread its ideology because it has no ideology. On its most basic level, it is a secret society believed to have started centuries ago among the lemon groves of Sicily. The Mafia's roots do not extend back to the days when Arabs dominated the island. (Here we speak of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra only; other groups on the mainland such as the Ndrangheta have their own history, yet the article makes no distinction. "Mafia" refers to several organized crime rings begun in Italy.)

It is the irrevocable mirror image of capitalism itself, and the shadow that covers the underworld also covers many a captain of industry of this nation's present and past, from the prototypical robber baron to the corrupt CEO and financier.

I disagree that the article even refer to mainstream Islam as purported; rather, it invites the reader to compare the Mafia with Terrorism, an exercise that helps nobody. It downplays terrorism, if anything.

(My personal belief is that terrorists need to be made extinct, period, end of sentence. Nothing about it is of even remote interest to me personally. Just wipe them out. All of them. End of game...)

The American and Canadian Mafia, aside from some shameful exceptions to the rule, don't harm women and children. The Sicilian and Italian Mafia groups, which hold various names, have committed extreme acts of violence and murder when challenged, overstepping boundaries that the North American Mafiosi would never cross. But it has to do with money and protection from law enforcement. Again, indulging in this kind of rhetoric is not helpful to anybody.

I don't care what "HBO personality Bill Maher" said. He was wrong when he proclaimed from his bullypit: Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book."

Comparing terrorists and mobsters shows a lack of perception, at best. At worst, it's an attempt to use the Mafia to sensationalize.

This was picked up from the end of an article titled Ten Ways the Mafia and Islam are Similar; it is part three of a series.

I did not write this and I don't claim to hold similar views. I am offering a diverse opinion to make known what is being said by The Jewish Voice (and I welcome any and all comments below).

"The mafia rationalizes its collection of "protection money" by portraying it as money that buys mafia protection against "outsiders"—when, as mentioned, the money/tribute serves only to protect the client from the mafia itself—so too do Islam's apologists portray the collection of jizya as money meant to buy Muslim protection from outsiders, when in fact the money/jizya buys protection from Muslims themselves. 

Conclusion: Mafia—What's In a Word? 

What accounts for all these similarities between Islam and the mafia? One clue is found in the fact that the very word "mafia," which means "hostility to the law, boldness," is derived from an Arabic word, mahya, which in translation means "bragging, boasting, bravado, and swaggering." 

This etymology is a reminder that Sicily, birthplace of the mafia, was under Arab/Islamic domination for over 200 years. Aside from a borrowed etymology, could some of the mafia's modus operandi also have been borrowed from Islam? Isolated on their island, could native Sicilians have co-opted the techniques of social controls that they had lived under and learned from their former overlords—albeit without their Islamic veneer? 

The mafia is not the only historical example of a non-Muslim criminal organization to be influenced by Islam. For example, the Thuggees — whence we get the word "thug" — were a brotherhood of allied bandits and assassins who waylaid and savagely murdered travelers in India, often by first feigning friendship. Although they were later associated with the Hindu cult of Kali, the original Thuggees were all Muslim. As late as the 19th century, a large number of Thuggees captured and convicted by the British were Muslim. 

The similarities are clear: Along with assassinating his opponents, including, as seen, through treachery, Muhammad also personally engaged in banditry, ransacking the caravans of enemy tribes. 

And if the words "mafia" and "thug" have Arabic/Islamic etymologies, the words "assassinate" and "assassin" are derived from a Medieval Islamic sect: the Hashashin, who pioneered the use of political assassination—with promises of a hedonistic paradise for the assassin who almost certainly died—in the name of Islam. 

At any rate, when HBO personality Bill Maher recently proclaimed that Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book," he was barely touching on the similarities between the mafia and other criminal organizations, and Islam."