The poster features "the faces that are always talking about terrorism": Osama bin Laden, Daniel Pipes, Pat Robertson, Donald Rumsfeld, and Steve Emerson. A motley cast of characters, to be sure, and already a smear in putting them together, with the obvious implication that each in his own way is misrepresenting Islam. The poster continues: "Now it's our turn." To talk about terrorism or misrepresent Islam? From the looks of the program and the speakers, there will be quite a bit of the latter. The introductory note reads in part:
The current vicious cycle of political and religious extremism not only hurts Islam and Muslims but also threatens peace and stability all over the world. Political extremists are using the actions of religious extremists to justify their attempts to trample civil liberties. It is our duty as American Muslims to break the cycle by exposing it and by contributing to public discourse that will clear the name of our religion, secure the safety of our country, and preserve the integrity of our democracy.
In other words, the conference's focus will be on attacking anti-terror efforts, not on contributing anything positive on how actually to eradicate violent jihadism from the American Muslim community.
Speakers indicate the dimensions of the taqiyya fest that this is likely to be: John Esposito, Jamal Badawi, James Yee, Maher Hathout, Hussein Ibish, and others -- including Tariq Ramadan.
Tariq Ramadan? So he will be allowed into the country? Was this item, then, indeed accurate?
UPDATE: Daniel Pipes saw this post and wrote to let me know that Ramadan will most likely be speaking by video, as he does a lot these days to US groups. He said that beginning with the University of Notre Dame, where Ramadan had been scheduled to teach, various institutions are regarding bringing him in via satellite as taking a stand, and are exceedingly proud of themselves for doing so.
Of course, what else would you expect from Saidist-dominated academia?
About Tariq Ramadan, it's my experience that when faced with a determined lawyer and a sob story, the legal affairs department at State always caves in and approves a visa, regardless of what a consular officer in the field might say. My guess is that other government bureaucracies and the lawyers who guide them tend to be cut from the same cloth.
"our democracy...?" As if muslims had any idea of how to establish a democracy...
Hopefully somone who lives in southern Californina will attend the MPAC convention and offer an objective report back to Jihad watch.
This Witches' Sabbath -- James Yee playing the complete innocent, a Dreyfus for our times; John Esposito, whose "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" was originally funded by a "Palestinian" Lebanese contractor, a member of whose family Esposito thanks smarmily in one of those picture-books that J. E. specializes in (say, what do the people who can think at Georgetown, such as James Schall, S.J., make of the likes of John Esposito? It must be most embarrassing to have him around, and he, in turn, must be feeling their displeasure, not to say disgust, at his islamochristian sentiments -- remember that at a Muslim website Esposito described himself as "pleasantly surprised" to discover that rates of conversion (oops -- reversion) to Islam had not suffered one whit after 9/11 -- note that "pleasantly"); Hussein Ibish, whose propagandistic performances are well-known to connoisseurs of the genre; and Tariq Ramadan -- the conference of course is designed to get him back in to this country, so that he may make his appeal over the heads of our bad old government to all the wonderful people -- Scott Appleby, Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and other Great and Good People who might be expected to lend him a hand.
Transparent nonsense and propaganda. Will it fly? Possibly not quite as easily as it might have pre-van Gogh, pre-Beslan, pre-car bombs in mosques, pre-awareness of what the Jihad, and what dhimmitude, is all about -- people are thawing out, all over the Western world.
It's too late. The violent Jihad should have held off by a decade or two. It came too soon. Now a vast effort to backtrack, to confuse, to make sure that this business of talking about 1350 years of Jihad and of subjugation of non-Muslims does not get out of hand, or reach the mainstream.
Frantically Esposito, Ibish, Ramadan and the rest are trying to confuse, distract, divert, play the "tu quoque" name (no one becomes more indignant about the terrible behavior of Christians toward inoffensive Muslims than John Esposito, formerly of Holy Cross, and now of Georgetown -- he knows which side his pita bread is smothered with hummus).
It won't work. History, and all those real scholars -- Jeffery, Lal, Snouck Hurgronje, Dufourcq, Bousquet, Vajda, Abel, Goitein, and a hundred others are being uncovered, republished, even put on the Internet. And Bat Ye'or's books on dhimmis and on "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" just cannot be removed from our consciousness -- much as Esposito would like to do so. And coming up: "Eurabia." Oriana Fallacia, Pilar Rahola, Kilroy-Silk, Will Cummins, Geert Wilders, and tens of thousands of others, ably encouraged by more and more defectors from Islam -- Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, et al -- just cannot be stopped.
And the problem for the Espositos of this world is that all these others, those who show him up for what he is (a slightly upmarket Armstrong, with better illustrations and a more plausible text) have the historical and textual evidence -- the actual history of Muslim conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims as dhimmis, from Spain to East Asia, over a very long period, and the textual evidence of Qur'an, hadith, and sira.
Would the Espositos of this world care to debate either the history, or the contents of those immutable texts?
And Ramadan the Da'wa man, what is it that he thinks the world of Islam has that the Western world, in art, in science, in human creativity, in attention to individual rights -- what is it that Islam has that the West does not? What is the wonderful thing about the world of Islam, the peoples and polities of Islam, of Saudi Arabia, or Yemen, or Algeria, or Syria, or Iraq, or Pakistan, what is that wonderful thing, those wonderful creations, that we need to emulate?
Tell us. Please.
The front page of the MPAC site (http://www.MPAC.org) is a wonderful display of cognitive dissonance. It contains a link to a hagiography of Yasir Arafat (article at http://mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=713) while also calling for the release of Margaret Hassan. Didn't it occur to them that Arafat was the man who developed the terrorist methods which culminated in the kidnapping of Ms. Hasan???
The PDF program for the MPAC convention states that Brother Tariq is supposed to appear as the keynote speaker at a MPAC Fundraising Banquet the night of the event. Esposito is the other keynote speaker. I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear Esposito grandstand that night after Tariq is a no-show.
http://FireTariqRamadan.blogs.com
Error - those links are:
MPAC homepage:
http://www.mpac.org
Arafat article:
http://mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=713
Note the kids' program for the Nov. meeting of MPAC:
*Gameworks Arcades
*Aquarium
Movie
Letter-writing activity to the President
Motivational Guest Speaker
PlayStation and other games
Letter writing activity to the President? What did the motivational guest speaker say? What kind of motivation do these kids need?
MPAC is obviously trying to get children involved in the political affairs of these meetings. Are these kids being taught to critically think for themselves when it comes to politics or does MPAC want to 'guide' them to right opinion? But I thought Islam was a religion and not political. You know, a religion of peace, no compulsion in religion, consistent with democratic values, and all that.
Is MPAC endeavoring to brainwash children to a particular political point of view, just as the Qu'ran itself attempts to brainwash the reader on every page? "Believe or be damned, believe or be damned; obey the Prophet!" says the Qu'ran. "Write the President. Defend the faith! Your religious requires this of you! Do this or you are not a good Muslim." says the motivational speaker?
And the army of Islam marches on with children in tow.
Father Schall says the following in an interview Dec. 5, 2002:
http://www.claremont.org/writings/021223masugi_b.html
"The Crusades were a much-delayed defensive action that, had they not been undertaken, would have opened Europe to be conquered by a very aggressive Islam. The Crusades were a response to a religion that had conquered three quarters of the Mediterranean, mostly Christian, world, without much effective response. It would have conquered the rest of it had it not been repulsed. The Crusades, granted well-known problems, were a defensive reaction that, in a certain sense, prevented an Islamization of Europe. We seem now to witness a renewed effort again to expand Islam outside its desert confinements. One thing that I find especially interesting is that Islam would probably win this battle against the West if it did not choose to fight, if it just kept increasing in numbers before a declining western population."
If he believes this, then how can he stand by at Georgetown while Esposito and company, with the help of Arab money, advance the destruction of the West through apologetics, deception, and blatant intellectual dishonesty (or blindness due to an irrational bias in favor of Islam).
Where are you Jesuit Father, learned, intellectual soldier of the faith, defender of Catholic religious and intellectual traditions, educator, advocate for reason and natural law? When it comes to the march of Islam in modern times, do the Jesuits choose to stay silent despite what they know to be true (that Christianity, Catholicism, and Western traditions are under attack by Islam through da'wa and jihad in all its many forms)? What would the thousands of Jesuits who died for the faith have to say about that? Where are you Father? Have the Jesuits forgotten their mission?
I wonder how many goat meat sandwiches Hussien Ibish can stuff in his mouth and gobble down at one sitting.....Whatever the number, it has to be some sort of record.....
Of the poster's proclamation (on the MPAC.org website)concerning those speaking about terrorism-
I have heard distressingly little by Donald Rumsfeld about the subject (WHAT does he think, really, we are fighting? Terror? Islamic extremists?); Osama B.L. doesn't talk about it- he just does it (then makes Is-lame excuses later); Daniel Pipes is an on target choice- since Terrorism and Jihad are hsi bread and butter; Steve "Jihad in America" Emerson is also an apt choice; while Pat Robertson is just a silly man, as absurd as many mullahs in Iran in his Apocalytpic loose-lippiness, fundamentalist bible-thumping and ability to polarize with a smarmy mix of showman, political pimp and intellectual featherweight wrapped in the winding cloth of Christ from the Cross.
He and Osama could probably have some good feisty, equally meaningless talks- each dead sure he was God's hand puppet for vengeance on Earth, but I'd rather that they had their chats on another planet, and leave our green and pleasant globe alone.
So, the MPAC gang sets up straw men, and goeas to town. In this case the town of Long Beach, California. (Only $50 for both dancing around the subject and dinner!)
But, as noted, they do not attack Terorism. Or their co-religionists using terror with the imprimatur ofd the words of the Koran which not only accept such murderous tactics, but encourage it, cheer it, absolve it and recommend subterfuges when direct assualts are tactically counter-productive.
This MPAC waffle-o-rama fits into the latter category:
Ignore the real problem- the 'mis-use' of Islam by maniacs.
Smear those fighting back.
Brainwash children.
Have dinner.
P.S.-
I'd love to attend, but I'll be lubricating my semi-automatic that evening. And listening to the lovely piano music of
Enrique Granados' "Valses Poeticos" (a great modern composer who died on board the Lusitania, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine during WW I).
What a pity.
But it'll save having to launder the crocodile tears out of my tuxedo, later.
Don't be surprised if the fake ultra orthodox jihadi club setup by the CIA starts making crank calls to the organisers' venue warning of bomb threats...nice way to disrupt these gasholes' hate-fests, eh?
Hulegu: Sura IX is indeed Islam's declaration of War--including IX:29, which is a warrant for dhimmitude, and the palpably untrue statement in IX:30 where Muhammad accuses the Jews of making Ezra the son of God analacous to the Christian doctrine concerning the person of Jesus Christ. It is extremely important that Muslims who claim to be moderate come to grips with it, and tell us honestly what it is saying. Maybe it is time-specific, but if it is not, then all the rest of us need to beware.
Hugh: perhaps the crazies jumped the gun in making jihad by ten years because God in His mercy is both looking out for and chastening the West while there's still a chance for it to wake up,repent, and return to the Christ who made it.
OT but are there any Australians here? I saw a TV report on SBS TV in which it was said that a certain percentage of Indonesians would support terrorist activities provided it was done to support Islam. Can anyone tell me what the percentage was?
Of course they can and should contribute to the public discourse, but without the backup of verifiable action, all such discourse will be clanging in the wind; Because of taqiyya and kitman, words are meaningless.
Mr. Fitzgerald:
Stephen Schwartz stated today that Brother Tariq is to speak to the MPAC conference by video - this appeared in his article on TechCentralStation today. Here is the link:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/120704B.html
This appears to confirm what Daniel Pipes told to you in the addendum to your article.
http://FireTariqRamadan.blogs.com
Dear Darius LaMonica,
Thanks for your note. FYI, I post all articles here.
Best regards
Robert Spencer