In connection with NR choosing its battles, Dr. Andrew Bostom writes this to me this morning: "I think it was in the second 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' movie wherein a character chooses the wrong chalice, gulps down its contents, and is told by a well-preserved 1000 year old knight guardian, 'You have NOT chosen wisely'...shortly before said character begins to choke and convulse!!!!!" An apt analogy for playing ball with the likes of CAIR.
Here is my piece in FrontPage this morning explaining why this is important. Because jihadists use Muhammad's words and deeds as their primary guide for their own actions, it is imperative for Americans to know what Muhammad said and did — and thus imperative to read books like those of Menezes and Trifkovic (click to order!).
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has this week waged a campaign against National Review, seeking an apology and the removal of a book called The Life and Religion of Mohammed from sale by the NR Book Service. This was a bit out of focus, since National Review did not publish the book and is not the sole source for it. In fact, I wrote this ad, although I receive absolutely no remuneration from the sales of the book by NR or anyone else. CAIR’s campaign was revealing of what CAIR wants Americans to know — and not to know — about Islam and Muhammad. And CAIR did succeed in intimidating NR into withdrawing the book, along with Serge Trifkovic’s Sword of the Prophet.In a press release, CAIR called the book “virulently Islamophobic,” and quoted sections from advertising copy for book that called it a “guide into the dark mind of (the Prophet) Mohammed.” It took issue with the ad copy’s description of the book as explaining “why Mohammed couldn’t possibly be a true prophet, and reveal[ing] the true sources of his ‘revelations.” Above all, CAIR was angered by the ad copy’s assertions that “Mohammed posed as the apostle of God...while his life is marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries, all the time invoking God’s holy name to sanction his evil deeds,” and that “Mohammed again and again justified his rapine and licentiousness with new ‘divine revelations.’”
CAIR’s Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper fumed that “this anti-Muslim screed is the literary equivalent of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and should not be promoted by a publication that has any sense of decency. The National Review must clarify its position on Islamophobic hate speech and offer a public apology for promoting a book that so viciously attacks the faith of one-fifth of the world’s population.” He added, according to the CAIR press release, that “anti-Muslim rhetoric often leads to discrimination and even violence.”
In fact, however, The Life and Religion of Mohammed is not “anti-Muslim hate literature.” It was written over eighty years ago by Fr. J. L. Menezes, a Roman Catholic priest who was a missionary in India. I have read it, and there is nothing inflammatory or inciteful in it; in fact, it is suffused with a pastoral love for Muslims.
The author, as a Christian priest, obviously did not accept Muhammad’s claim to be a prophet. If it is Islamophobic hate literature for a book to explain “why Mohammed couldn’t possibly be a true prophet,” then the Christian Faith itself is Islamophobic and hateful. (And that, of course, is precisely the view that prevails among all too many today in Pakistan, where many Christians have been victimized under the nation’s blasphemy laws after being confronted by Muslims and refusing to acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet.)
Also, as this press release itself reflects, The Life and Religion of Mohammed doesn’t say anything false about Muhammad. It is true that “Mohammed posed as the apostle of God...while his life is marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries, all the time invoking God’s holy name to sanction his evil deeds.” Aside from the judgment that all this is “evil,” what in that is CAIR actually denying? That Muhammad claimed to be the apostle of Allah? No, I’m sure Hooper and Co. would affirm that. That he was married more than once? Universally acknowledged by Muslims. That his career was marked by “great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries”? Let’s take each of those in turn.“Great licentiousness”: Again, these are judgmental words, but the judgment is not unreasonable or unfounded. Just one of many possible examples comes from the Qur’an, in which Allah allows Muhammad to have more wives than are allowed to other Muslims: “a privilege for thee only, not for the (rest of) believers...” (Qur’an 33:50).
“Deeds of rapine”: Yet again this is not an unreasonable judgment. The Qur’an assumes that Muslims will be waging war and forcibly seizing others’ property, and so far from forbidding this, only insists that the Prophet get a share: “And know that whatever ye take as spoils of war, lo! a fifth thereof is for Allah, and for the messenger and for the kinsman (who hath need) and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if ye believe in Allah and that which We revealed unto Our slave on the Day of Discrimination, the day when the two armies met” (Qur’an 8:41).
“Warfare”: Muhammad fought in many battles and enjoined warfare on his followers: “Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not” (Qur’an 2:216).
Muhammad, of course, started almost all the battles in which he fought. A sampling: “Ibn Shihab reported that Allah’s Messenger made an expedition to Tabuk and he (the Holy Prophet) had in his mind (the idea of threatening the) Christians of Arabia in Syria and those of Rome” (Sahih Muslim, book 37, no. 6670).
“Conquests”: Did Muhammad not conquer? “And that Our forces, they surely must conquer” (Qur’an 37:173). He won followers through his conquests. One contemporary of the Prophet explained: “The Arabs (other than Quraish) delayed their conversion to Islam till the Conquest of Mecca. They used to say: ‘Leave him (i.e. Muhammad) and his people Quraish: if he overpowers them then he is a true Prophet. So, when Mecca was conquered, then every tribe rushed to embrace Islam, and my father hurried to embrace Islam before the other members of my tribe” (Sahih Bukhari, vol. 5, book 59, no. 595).
“Unmerciful butcheries”: Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad’s earliest biographer (and a pious Muslim) recounts the massacre of the Jewish Banu Qurayzah: “The apostle went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches....There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900.” (Ibn Ishaq’s Sira, 689).
CAIR may differ with Fr. Menezes’s assessment of this material, but it can’t very well deny its existence. Muslim apologists try to justify Muhammad’s marriages, battles, and killings in various ways, but it would be the height of chutzpah to deny they took place at all. Would CAIR, in contrast, paint for us a picture of Muhammad the Rotarian?
“Hooper said anti-Muslim rhetoric often leads to discrimination and even violence.”
Fr. Menezes calls for no violence. Everything he says about Muhammad is, as I have shown, easily established from Islamic sources. What this charge does is attempt to divert attention from the real violence committed by jihadists today to a chimera of violence against Muslims in America, and thereby silence criticism of Islam and, in particular, investigations of the sources of Islamic terror in the Qur’an and Sunnah.
But what about when the jihadists themselves quote the same passages to justify their behavior? Surely they aren’t “Islamophobic” too, are they? Of course they aren’t — and if non-Muslims can’t look into Islamic sources to investigate the causes of jihad violence, it plays into their hands: the less Americans know about how they recruit and motivate terrorists, the less we can do about it.
“This anti-Muslim screed is the literary equivalent of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’” No, it isn’t. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a malicious work of fiction. But the Islamic sources I have cited are not fiction. Is CAIR ready to say that all that (and much more that could be adduced) is false? Of course not. They would say (except that they won’t have to, because they won’t be called to account) that it is all taken out of context. Yet no one has ever satisfactorily explained in what context this all becomes benign.
Now that CAIR has succeeded in intimidating NR into silence and getting them to drop this book, it will be a victory for those who don’t want Americans to know the uncomfortable details about Muhammad that are in the book. Unfortunately, however, jihad terrorists around the world today know these elements of the life of Muhammad quite well, and are imitating them. Ignorance of them on the part of Americans will only make us more vulnerable.
Today’s Extras:
U Penn’s Terror Apologists:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17538
The Death of France's "Multiculturalism"
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17511
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/3/29/122012.shtml
Founding a Mosque for Pluralism (Stephen Swartz alert)
http://techcentralstation.com/033005D.html
Border control opposed by the ACLU (darn those right-wingers!)
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20050330.shtml
Good Grief, there must be an Islamic Bill O'Reilly out there organizing the masses. This story reminds me of when I was a socialist volunteer at Uni. We used to hand out leaflets that had a picture of a shopping basket with "Weapon" emblazoned across it. (ie you have the power to boycott evil corporations).
It seems that the muslims are slowly catching on to the idea. Over here we have a drink called 'Mecca Cola' which is basically a horrible tasting cheap rip off of coke which muslims buy. (most muslims refuse to drink coca-cola because the coca cola company is owned by a jewish family, this is also the reason that coca cola (but not pepsi) is banned in countries such as Saudi Arabia).
We also have a large chain store called 'Marks and Spencers' which is also owned by a jewish family. Down in London there are regular muslim rallies outside of M and S urging people not to go in (they claim it is because they sell products imported from Israel, but it's a bit nastier than that).
The muslims are organizing and becoming a powerful lobby group. Political parties are already pandering for their votes.
The Labour Party want to pass a law banning religious hatred ie you can be arrested for criticising islam, and have launched a number of subtley anti-semitic campaign adverts attacking the leader and shadow chancellor of the conservative party (who are jewish).
The Liberal Democrats have attempted to win muslim hearts by launching blistering attacks on Israel (one Lib Dem said if she was a palestinian she would become a suicide bomber) and sending prominent figures to visit Mosques.
The Islamic block will soon be big enough to be able to swing the results of elections (it is rather like the Hispanic block in the US). God help us!
Smirnoff, thanks for reminding me (with the phrase 'pandering for their votes). There is a matter on the US vote which needs correcting:
http://www.ampolitics.ghazali.net/html/introduction.html
Excerpt: Preliminary results of an exit poll, on Nov. 2, by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) indicated that more than 90 percent of Muslim voters are casting their ballots for John Kerry in today's election. In that early survey of 537 Muslim voters, 93 percent of respondents said they voted for Kerry, 5 percent favored Ralph Nader and less than 1 percent said they supported President Bush. In the key battleground state of Florida, a CAIR sampling of 335 Muslims who cast their votes on Nov. 2 or in early polling shows that 95 percent voted for Kerry and just 3 percent voted for President Bush. Ralph Nader received under 2 percent of Muslim votes. In Ohio, a similar sampling of 222 Muslim voters showed 86 percent voting for Kerry, 4 percent for Bush and 10 percent for "other" or a third party.
Other sources (some islamic):
http://216.26.163.62/2004/ss_muslims_11_02.html
http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1304&theType=NR
http://www.americanmuslimvoter.net/pView.asp?action=viewPDetails&pageID=11020
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13199
Muhammad's life is central to Islam and to the Muslim view, because he is, in the Qur'anic phrase, "uswa hasana," or al-insan al-kamil, the Best of Men and the Model for all Mankind.
Why else did Khomeini, that learned theologian (and less of a sport, in the history of Islamic Iran, than the Shah), as virtually his first act, reduce the marriageable age of girls to 9, if not because Muhammad had consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was 9 years old?
In other words, everything Muhammad did is of relevance today to the fervent Believer.
There are those Bright Young Muslim Things, the ones who attempt to get all the publicity for their (non-existent, hopeless, helpless) attempts to "reform" Islam, who tell us that the Sunna -- that is, the model of customary law and behavior to be derived from two sources, the Hadith (the acts, sayings, and even the silences of Muhammad) and the Sira (the biography of Muhammad, containing all of his acts, including his marriage to little Aisha, his observing with pleasure the massacre of the 600-900 prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, his attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, his seizing of women whose husbands and brothers he had killed and keeping them as sex-slaves, his personally ordering the decapitation of such prisoners as Nadhr and Ocba, the assassination of Kab ibn Ashraf, which Sir William Muir describes because it "faithfully illustrates the ruthless fanaticism intow which Maohmet was fast drifting" (p. 257, in "The Life of Mahomet," Kessinger Publishing Reprnt), the murder of Ibn Sanina by a follower (a story adduced to prove the strenght of the faith because the murderer claimed that if Muhammad had commanded him to kill even his own brother, he would have done it), the execution of Abu Ozza, and so much more.
Infidels all over the world have known until recently very little aobut Islam. They still do. They still rely on "good" Muslims to explain it to them, unaware of the profound need by all Muslims, but especially the less fervent ones, not to tell the full truth about the doctrine, to attempt to hide the contents of Qur'an (and such principles of understanding as the doctrine of "naskh" or abrogation, which leads to the earlier, and milder verses identified with the Meccan period to be cancelled by the far harsher and aggressive later verses), and even to pass over in silence the Sunna -- i.e., the Hadith and the Sira.
For filial piety and embarrassment may help to explain this mode of complete defensiveness, or something else -- a careful staying away from the subject altogether. The Pentagon, it seems, has a small stable of "good" (i.e., loyal, long-time servicemen) Muslims whom it has entrusted with the task of "explaining" Islam -- explaining that is, that it is not Islam itself but -- "Wahhabi" Islam, or "Salafis" or "extremists" or "only the political Muslims" or "Islamists" -- it is all nonsense, and if one were to simply assign the task of total immersion in the theory and practice of Islam to a few hundred highly intelligent non-Muslims, that would do more to save hundreds of billions of dollars, more to protect this country, more to prevent the islamization of Europe, our necessary civilizational and military allies, than anything else.
Colossal sums are being wasted, colossal misuse and misallocation of men and money and materiel, all because of a failure to understand Islam and the psychology of Muslims. As to the nature of Islam, its tenets, its methods of reconciling (or not) clashing attitudes in the Qur'an, one could do worse than spend time reading the Qur'an (with appropriate commentary), available in English translations either on-line (and synoptically) at www.usc.edu. The Hadith of Bukhari (the most trusted of the mudaddithin, or hadith-scholars) can be found at the same site. The Sira, or biography of Muhammad, is available in many versions, and one can read Sir William Muir's "Life of Mahoment" (Kessinger Reprints), Professor Arthur Jeffery, Tor Andrae, Maxine Rodinson -- or, of course, the excellent discussion of Muhammad "as a model" at www.faithfreedom.org (Ali Sina's indispensable website).
But nothing will be achieved unless one is willing to concede, to understand, that Islam is quite different, as a Total Explanation and Regulation of the Universe, which has managed to suppress free and skeptical inquiry, and which even today freely punishes open apostasy by death, from all other "religions."
For it is not so much a religion as a highly successful geopolitical system, one based on conquest and on subjugation of non-Muslims. It is the history of Jihad-conquest, and of the institution of dhimmitude, that need as well to be studied -- that is, along with the theory of Islam, these several hundred trained experts (who cannot, for good reason, receive proper training from the apologists who have seized control of MESA Nostra and of almost every university and college department of Middle Eastern or Islamic studies)must study the remarkable similarity, over 1350 years, and from Spain to the East Indies, in the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, and to see how the practice of Islam is consistent with the theory -- i.e., the teachings -- of Islam, as derived from Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira.
Such students would find, for example, that the Muslim state relied heavily on contributions from its non-Muslim population. That explains why, though 60-70 million Hindus were murdered, the slaughter did not continue and even these mishrikun (polytheists), were permitted to live in order to pay the jizyah and support the Mughal rulers in all their luxury.
After the initial Jihad-conquest, Muslim states relied on the jizyah and the kharaj (a land-tax). But for centuries, they also relied on the capture of loot -- chiefly slaves, including 1 million Christian slaves taken in raidsThe diminished or non-existent population of non-Muslims means that most Muslim states (save for Malaysia, that has the disguised jizya of the Bumiputra system, that forces economic profit-sharing by the more entrepreneurial and industrious Chinese and Hindus with Malaysian Muslims) would have descended into complete poverty had they not been saved by two things: the accident of geology (oil and gas) which has led to the largest transfer of wealth (and what's more, completely unearned and unmerited wealth) in human history, and in the case of those Arab or Muslim states that do not have that wealth, a clever manipulation of Infidel powers to extract, for reasons entirely unclear, vast sums of foreign aid that are both misused,and contribute not one whit to obtaining any real, or even any feigned, gratitude on the part of those getting, and seemingly continuing to get no matter what, such Infidel aid (Egypt, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority come immediately to mind). Indeed, the Infidel governments seem to be behaving in classic dhimmi fashion, in their fear of actually stopping such aid -- as if it belongs to Egypt, Pakistan, the Palestinain Authority by right (and no one protests, no one suggests that these are unworthy and enemey recipients that, if they need money, might more approriately shake their tin cups at Saudi Arabia, instead of demanding aid from those whose long-suffering Western taxpayers whom they do not wish well in any way).
money that funded the Islamic state. Today, the numbers of non-Muslims have decreased within dar al-Islam, so that the Muslims, despite the inshallah-fatalism and reliance on the jizyah and slaving parties and piracy by Arab corsairs that managed to kidnap one million white Western Europeans, 3 million Slavs from the East, and tens of millions of black Africans (the males castrated on the spot, which led to a 90% mortality rate), over several centuries, not to mention the mass-murder of 60-70 million Hindus during 250 years of Muslim rule in India and the seizure of vast wealth from Hindus.
But it is only when Qur'an and Hadith and Sira are thoroughly grasped, and the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslism understood, that the many instruments to counter the Jihad can be employed and deployed properly.
Lowry and National Review may, like so many who think they have "given at the office" (of anti-Communism) and so are exempt from learning, or inquiring too deeply, into the theory and practice of Islam, and can continue to employ such a dangerously misleading phrase (dangerous because leading to incoherence in policy, includng the cart-before-the-horse policy of introducing a primitive Cat-in-the-Hat version of Western "democracy" before attempting to create the conditions whereby, from within, Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere can come to understand that the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of Muslim polities and peoples are the result of -- Islam.
This self-censorship will come to haunt National Review, and all those who are cheering on a policy based on a misunderstanding of Islam, and of the psychology of Muslims. It has already lead to the present misallocation of resources in Iraq, and a bland misapprehension of the demography-cum-Da'w threat in Europe (which eventually becomes a military threat, and even a civilizational threat). It has led, in Israel, not to preventing the demented Sharon policy, based again on a misunderstanding of Islam, and the psychology of those who will pocket every concession, with appetites never sated but only whetted -- instead of making clear that there will be no further concessions, that there is no "solution" to an endless Jihad against Israel, except the "solution" of permanent deterrence (which worked with the Soviet Union). The whole notion of identifying permanent and immutable situations as "problems" that, in good roll-up-the-sleeves can-do Yankee-Doodle-Dandy garage-tinkerer fashion, must therefore have "solutions," is that of a child.
But since the study of history has fallen into desuetude (and neither a law degree, or a "law and diplomacy" degree, or a degree in that appetizing thing "international relations" is any subsitute for a knowledge of, not only of the facts of history, but also historical sense), and so too has the study of literature (which would provide a certain vigilance about words -- so that such phrases as "war on terror" or the "Palestian people" or "occupied lands" would be sniffed out of their lairs, and promptly destroyed at birth, rather than allowed to grow and to flourish), and would also offer training in the exercise of the imagination, so that one might realize that what people think, and how they react, in a society or civilization of One Book -- the Qur'an (or Three Books -- Qur'an, Hadith, Sira) -- which supplies the web of allusion and content that fills so much of every sermon, every text, every newspaper article, every conversation, the shape and form and content of every thought.
This blog gets better and better as the Jihad vs. the West gets more intense. As the Muhammadans search out more outlets for their innate desire to suppress and obliterate all writings that expose their prophet.
Islam is a five year old child trowing temper tantrums at those who dare critique Muhammad (their infallible father figure) and the Koran that's based on his night time hallucinations in the cold Arabian desert. At those who prove that the early Muhammad had some good preachings but that his main message is one of war, subjugation and murder of the non-Muslim
CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper fumed that “this anti-Muslim screed is the literary equivalent of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ ...
Except that the "Protocols" is all lies, whereas the book in question seems to not be.
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A disgusting puff piece on the COVER of the ("right-wing") Tampa Tribune today claims "Latinas Embrace Islam." It disgusted me so much that I actually bought the damn thing for the first time in years.... I think I gave up on them around the time they endorsed a pretty-much straight repunk ticket back in '00. Now all I usually get is the backwater rag here that's mostly ads (thirty years ago its feature would've been "Society Page"s but at least there's no Cal Thomas.)
BTW... isn't National Review, shall we say "a little right wing"? LOL. And just see how they grovel and beg and acquiesce and obsique (okay I made that word up... it's the verb form of "obsequious". Look it up monkey.) Like "non-MSM" FAUX news and their beloved "Shias."
Maybe someday, not today of course, but someday you guys will wake up, stop demonizing lib'ruls and the so-called MSM and realize that YOU ARE BEING HAD.
EVERY media outlet is dedicated to one thing and one thing only: MAKING MONEY.
EVERY religion is dedicated to making money.
EVERY politician is dedicated to making money.
Most of us care more about principals than money so the above cullies try to appeal to our "value systems." It's mostly a bunch of crap. If you must eat it, can't you at least let it dry out a little first?
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...and there as always is little, caustic Gary.
I have a few things that keep me from really being the anti-Gary. First of all, I have a life. Next, I have a life outside of my computer. I have a job. I have two babies.
And I have a prohibition on insulting people and getting off topic. As you have plainly seen, this is not the case with Gary, Catharine, Bar, et al.
Well I love to learn, even when the stuff I learn about is stuff that I hate. So I clicked on Gary's link to "Border Control Opposed by ACLU" and wouldn'tya know it? It's another hatehonk by the current GOPer pinup girl, Michelle Malkin. (Hey, I don't blame you guys. She is MUCH sexier than Ann Coulter and Barbara Olsen.) And dig the title: "ACLU versus America."
So if you don't hate us lib'ruls enough just yet, please go and learn more.
Nevermind the fact that the "Border Patrol" that the ACLU actually opposes is not the professional, highly-trained, federal agents. Us lib'ruls are all for that. It's your Boy that can't seem to adequately fund protecting our borders while squandering hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq. No, the "Border Patrol" opposed by the ACLU is the cracker rabble recruited at militia websites for besotted cowards that couldn't-wouldn't serve their country in uniform when they had the chance (i.e. were too hefty or peed the bed or couldn't leave mommy.) These guys know they will be heavily armed and "on the lookout" for illegals with little more than the clothes on their backs.
Maybe JUST MAYBE the ACLU and the other America hatin' commie libs want to prevent some murder? Please tell me that you really, really think that this folly (the "citizens" Border Patrol) won't end in murder of some innocent people.... it could even end in the murder of some innocent rednecks that think that they are really helping their beleaguered homeland.
Thanks for staying "on topic" Gary. Assuming of course that the topic is "Why We Should Hate Libruls."
KJ
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Hugh
Muhammad's life is central to Islam and to the Muslim view, because he is, in the Qur'anic phrase, "uswa hasana," or al-insan al-kamil, the Best of Men and the Model for all Mankind.
Islam is the monkey see monkey do religion. That's the key to understanding Islam. That it's essence is to copy, emulate, repeat the life of the prophet. And what an awful life it was. Example: Muhammad has three people assassinated. Ever since then Islam has engaged in assassination as an honorable tool of warfare. Assassinations of kings and leaders are rife throughout Islamic history
African Americans ought to know that it was the Arabs who raided negro villages to abduct men to sell into slavery, not westerners.
They also ought to know that the red arrow on the Palestinian flag represents the arab conquest (ie invasion and genocide) of North Africa. It's the equivalent to the Swastika.
Comrade Smirnoff:
The Muslims have figured us out. The achilles heel of our Western democracies is that votes and political organization skills count. As a Muslim, your political goals are very simple and easy to understand - to bring the whole world to Islam! Muslim people are very easy to organize towards accomplishing this goal too as they often care about nothing much other than their religion because Islam is a totalitarian belief-system that controls or influences every aspect of their lives, from how they think, what they read, what careers they undertake, how they go to the bathroom, etc.. Consequently, everywhere this cult ends up in large numbers, they soon become a threat to the established order. If you look at the southern provinces of Thailand, here is a textbook case. Do the Muslims there identify themselves with the country of Thailand? No. They identify with Islam. Consequently, they seek to create an independent Islamic state in Southern Thailand.
It will be the same everywhere they go. They will attempt to subvert every state in which they are in. Take a look at who Amnesty International is trying to spring from jail in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, etc.. Generally speaking, almost every person who Amnesty is trying to help in those countries is an Islamist who, if they were in power, would immediately take away all the freedoms that Amnesty holds dear. The paradoxes, the ironies are too many to comprehend.
Here is my future scenario:
1) Because of demographic trends and a lack of political will, Islamists will either take power in many Western countries or influence their politics tremendously soon.
2) The remaining Western minded people in those countries will soon flee to countries where Western values are still respected. The United States will probably continue to be the one last bastion of freedom on earth for the next 100 years or so at least.
3) When the Islamists take over Western countries, those countries will inevitably become economic, intellectual and cultural backwaters where nothing much happens, as in all the other Muslim countries.
4) The Islamists will continue to try and bring the whole world to Islam and devastating wars will be fought but some Western minded countries will still continue to be powerful countries whereas no Islamic country will ever be powerful enough to threaten Western countries militarily for the forseeable future.
5) When the oil runs out in Saudi Arabia and Iran in about 50 or 60 years and Saudi Arabia and Iran implode politically, this will greatly reduce the threat of Islam as neither country will ever have a viable economy outside the oil industry.
6) However, Islam will continue to be a tremendous threat to the remaining Westerners because we have ceased to have children. When a civilization ceases to have children, that civilization will soon cease to exist. One factor in the decline of the influence of religion in the West is that it increases peoples' selfishness. Because they perceive this life as the only one they will ever live, they do not want to devote large amounts of time, energy and money to raising children. So, they don't have any. 500 years from now, there will large swathes of the globe, including probably all of Europe, that will be completely Islamic and desperately poor. There will be a few small enclaves of Western minded people, the majority of whom will be very old (I think life spans will increase enormously in the next few decades. And people will be in good health; they will not just be living longer.), fantastically wealthy, tended by robots of every description and defended by robot armies. Then, this cultural battle for the hearts and minds of men will move into space. I hope the Americans will have begun to terraform Mars by then and will have colonies there so that even if every person on earth is killed, there will be a few people left elsewhere.
It's fun thinking about the future, eh?
Saw that cover KJ; a puff piece in the Tribune? Say it ain't so! =)
I think too, what might be mentioned about the 'Protocols' is that vast numbers of muslims in the Middle East DO in fact believe them, or at the very least in their message. The moderator of a site I used to debate on told me in fact that 'although the Protocols were false, the modern situation seemed to conform to them' - which is to say that modern Jews must be engaged in some kind of massive conspiracy against muslims.
This seems to be an occasional difference between the views of islam in the West and in the East - in the East, anti-semitism is open for all to see; no need to disguise it. In the West, hush-hush is the rule. Then again, an American Muslim woman I debated with not only owned up to the jihadic passages of the Quran but also said that the Christians should be following their book more closely too - all of it - by which she meant some of the brutal nonsense in the OT. Nice, huh? "Christianity is a sick evil religion that's mean to minorities and you should come back around to the real meaning of God and oppress minorities but HARDER."
That's islamogic for you.
Geoff
"the arab conquest (ie invasion and genocide) of North Africa"
which continues today in Sudan, and if it weren't for the existence of Western military deterrents, would swallow the whole continent.
The Nazis had their obsession with 'brotherhood', and 'blood and soil'. Their view of history was that of a Darwinian war between rival creeds and races for territory and domination.
In the west such a view has long been met with disgust. In the muslim world it's regarded as common sense.
It's no coincidence that Mein Kampf is such a popular seller in the Middle East at the moment.
Islam is nothing more than a primitive version of Nazism.
Nice try Gary... you never, ever cease trying to hang Islam around the liberals neck like a dead albatross, do you?
Muslims voted en masse against Al Gore in '00 because Lieberman is Jewish. Sami Al-Aryan campaigned FOR Bush in 2000. Bush posed for pictures WITH Sami Al-Aryan.
Why don't you ever talk about that? Thousands of Muslims voted for Dumbya in 2000 in Florida. Dhimbya won by 500 votes, remember? "Winning" Flordia won him the election, remember?
Can you figure out the rest? (The Muslims of Florida put Bush in the Whitehouse.)
Of course the Jew-hating wussy Mahathir supported Kerry. He hates Bush. Funny you never mention the crazies that supported Bush because they hate Kerry. You never mention that Iran endorsed Bush.
You never mention that the PLO endorsed Mel ("Shoah? What Shoah?") Gibson's "Passion".
It's the perfect Anti-Science. Muslims do it all the time: mention only the facts that back you up, ignore contradictory data, vilify anyone that questions you (call them a traitor or whatever), stamp out calls for reform, repeat the lies again and again, and eventually you will win.
Gary you are my hero .
You to mentat ISlam must make its move now before the goo runs out.
parasites need a healthy host.
It's the perfect Anti-Science. Muslims do it all the time: mention only the facts that back you up, ignore contradictory data, vilify anyone that questions you (call them a traitor or whatever), stamp out calls for reform, repeat the lies again and again, and eventually you will win.
You nailed it.
f.g.
kj~ perfect summation of the Leftist Academia, Thanks!
What conclusion should one come to except the obvious? That Boeing needs the goodwill of Arab states to sell its planes; that some fixer or go-between was contacted by CAIR, or perhaps by some powerful Arab contacted by CAIR -- a Saudi flunky, either Arab or not -- and that, in turn, Boeing was contacted, and told that if it wanted to sell planes, or have one of its other subsidiaries sell planes, to Saudi Air or someone else, it should really look into this National Review ad. And so he did, and then he did, and then he did, and then Lowry surrendered, and allows himself to believe that he did the right thing, and that he desperately needed the money from those Boeing ads.
Perhaps. But selling your editorial soul for a mess of pottage may not have been wise, given the stakes. Is it not important for as much information not only about Muhammad's life, but about how Muslims receive, approve of completely, and act on Muhammad as a model, that must be brought to the attention of the Western, Infidel public? What better book than one by a Westerner who lived, and indeed ministered to, Muslims many decades ago, and attempted to understand their psychology? And do not defectors from Islam, such as Ali Sina, at www.faithfreedom.org, stress repeatedly the role or role-model of Muhammad, and should we not listen to those defectors just as we once learned about the Soviet system, and Soviet aims, from defectors from the ideology of Soviet communism?
The decision, seemingly so hard-headed, may not be -- and will not be, if enough of those who support NR (through donations, through attending its expensive "cruises" in which they can learn all about Islam from -- Bernard Lewis), and so on, express their fury, and take their money and support elsewhere.
I hope they do. And I hope that money and support will go to those who need it -- i.e., Jihadwatch. But even if it goes into buying hydrangeas for the garden, rather than supporting National Review, it will be money far better spent.
There has to be some reaction, some punishment, some sting that makes clear how unhappy we all are with the government, the press, to what begins to look even to the sanest and least conspiratorial as a kind of unspoken conspiracy not to discuss, not to teach about, not to enlighten, on the subject of the theory and practice of Islam -- all in the hope, the forlorn hope, that the "good Muslims," the "moderate Muslims," will, if not offended, appear, one by one by one, and speak out. Those "moderates" are a figment of fervid imaginations. Real "moderates" who detest the violence and aggression and craziness and supremacist ideology of Islam, and its limits on free and skeptical inquiry, and its manichaean division of the world between Believer and Infidel, and its limits on artistic expression, and its simian similarities with Fascism, simply leave Islam altogether, sometimes silently, and sometimes noisily.
Those who insist that they are standing up for "moderation" are, in fact, mostly in the business of standing up for themselves, of getting grant money, and institutional affiliations, and giving richly-compensated lecture tours to churches and synagogues (where their schtick, and only claim to fame, is precisely this "moderate Islam" that never quite comes to grips with Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira).
And of course, there are also the comical "new Muslims" -- that is, not the John Walker Lindh variety, but the Spiritual Searcher who ended up in Bosnia, say, and as an American, at a time when the Americans were protecting Muslims, and as someone who came into contact with the very particular kind of Muslims to be found there, who had had to become, if only because of where they lived and who was largely in control for more than a century, to syncretistic influences, to moderation in criminal and dress codes and in attitudes and atmospherics -- and then this is taken by that "revert" (who notes that Muslims prefer not to use the term "convert" but does not explain even this to his unwary audience, so intent is he not on eliding even this, the Muslim belief that everyone is born a Muslim and therefore "reverts" rather than "converts."
It is cruel, it is foolish, it is dangerous to allow those weak-minded Spiritual Searchers, who would not get the time of day had they not declared themselves to be Muslims (and then they get all kinds of self-promoted attention, as Interesting Figures To Be Listened To), to offer themselves up as experts on Islam when what they really are is recent converts who think that this has made them experts on Islam (and they are big on denouncing "Wahhabism" without managing to offer not only an explanation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (hardly "Wahhabi"), but also of the conquest, mass murder, and subjugation of every kind of non-Muslim (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists) by Muslims for a thousand years before a certain al-Wahhab was born in the Nejd.
Now we have all been schoolboys or schoolgirls. In elementary school and junior high and even into the first few years of high school, girls used to enjoy writing their first name, and then to add after it, various last names of imagined future husbands.
Boys are different. They play cowboys-and-Indians, or are Brave Explorers. Things haven't changed much since the days of those books-for-boys by Stratemeyer or G. A. Henty ("True to the Old Flag," "In Freedom's Cause," "Under Drake's Flag"), or the Rover Boys, or the Hardy Boys, or Don Sturdy in the Tombs of Gold.
For a not-so-young lad, what better way to make oneself interesting to oneself than to adopt some strange new faith, with all sorts of rituals, and if there is a heavy dose of the ready-made community, and lots of rituals, and if, in addition -- oooh -- you get to give yourself a whole new name, and even to identify yourself toponymically -- as if some American soldier, Private Steve Black, for some reason while serving in Iraq (fat chance, of course -- for almost all, their encounter with Islam has been satisfactorily enlightening) fell in love with the "wonders of Islam" and went around with his brand-new Islamic name, not merely "Soliman Black" but rather, "Soliman Black al-Tikriti." What fun. Go ahead -- try it yourself. Take your favorite placename, and just add it on: Al-Misri if you like Egypt, Al-Baghdadi, al-Qudsi, or for that matter, al-Oksfordi, al-Kembridji, al- oh gosh, just get a book of toponyms, and have a blast.
Fun for the whole family.
But not to be taken seriously, and certainly not where someone participates in helping to mislead and misdirect.
Read Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Irfan Khawaja, Azam Kamguian, and all those defectors from Islam whose testimonies can be found in "Leaving Islam" and on-line at www.secularislam or www.faithfreedom.org, and elsewhere. They will not steer you wrong. Others, whose claim to current fame is based entirely on their "reversion" to Islam and their claim to be our "guides" to Islam, can be read -- with the kind of mild amusement, soon giving way to impatience, and then to real annoyance, that one experiences watching any One-Trick Pony as it goes through its predictable paces.
But annoyance here grades into anger, at the way in which personal self-promotion becomes a serious impediment to understanding the gravest matters.
KJ-
I consider myself a liberal. I am very familiar with the problems illegal immigration causes in the US, particularly in the area of population growth. I am also familiar with the Minuteman Project and support it. Jim Gilchrist has a screening process for volunteers-and many of his volunteers have military and law enforcement experience. The rules of engagement are that illegals are to be spotted and reported to the Border Patrol. Confrontation and physical contact are not allowed.
I believe this project is necessary to call attention to the serious lack of control we have over our borders. The government has ducked their obligations for years. As citizens, we all bear the cost of illegal immigration, and it isn't cheap. We may also pay the price of our open borders through a terrorist attack. As citizens, we have the right to speak out against bad policy, and the obligation to try and change it. The Minutemen are exercising that right as "undocumented border patrol agents". :)
Here is a breakdown of project participation.
The MMProject has 40% participation from women and minorities (this is old information, so the percentages have probably changed).
The minority classifications follow:
32 Native American Indians (Apache, Cherokee, Comanche, Sioux, Blackfoot, and other tribes);
21 American Mexicans; 5 American Armenians; 6 American Russians; 1 American Lebanese; 1 American India (the continent);
1 Asian; 3 American Cubans; 3 American Africans.
Other Information:
Ages: 4 to 86
6 WHEEL CHAIR BOUND PARAPLEGICS, 7 AMPUTEES AND 2 DEAF.
19 LEGAL immigrants from 7 countries (Mexico, Peru, Russia, New Zealand, England, Australia, Phillipines).
Volunteers for The Minuteman Project include men and women from various political parties and professions: PhDs, university professors, several dozen career members of law enforcement, free-lance journalists and photographers, teachers, engineers, truck drivers, construction tradesmen, firemen, EMTs, geologists, chemists, surgeons and physicians, attorneys, labor union members, students of divinity, taxi drivers, aircraft pilots, three former state-level politicians, long range reconnaissance specialists, computer scientists, and combat veterans of WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
By the way, the ones threatening violence are the MS-13 gangs from South America and Mexico, who have issued appear to be planning to COME ONTO US SOIL and attack the Minutemen (source: Washington Times). It is very disturbing to me, at least, to think that these murderers and thugs believe that they can operate in our country with impunity. I don't see the ACLU being outraged by these threats, nor do I hear President Bush standing up for the safety of US citizens. The "murder" of innocent civilians is much more likely to be among the ranks of those who are protesting our government's pathetic border enforcement.
In the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution it states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances".
The right of a citizen to peacefully 1) parade and gather or 2) demonstrate support or opposition of public policy or 3) express one's views is guaranteed by the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
Vincente Fox and the ACLU are attempting to interfere with this fundamental constitutional right by deliberately spreading misinformation about the project (for example, that illegals will be hunted down and killed-probably by the four year old mentioned above) and attempting to intimidate through the threat of legal action. Of course, Fox has a vested interest in keeping the borders open, US law be &*@). I also note that the ACLU apparently takes no interest when the rights and safety of US CITIZENS are violated by illegals.
I suggest that you go to the Minuteman Project website (http://www.minutemanproject.com/) for further information. Reading some literature about life on the border and what people have to put up with from "peaceful" illegals is also very illuminating.
Treehugger
kj:
I believe that Spencer's earlier prohibition against name-calling included the generalized calling of your fellow posters "monkeys".
It won't be long before they come gunning for sites for this. Reported in the LA Times yesterday was case in Russia where a couple of artists (or was it the museum?) were found guilty of blasphemy !! Religious people are scarey !!
Mentat,
As a European I am making sure that my Kids see the USA as the place to go should the Muslims start to take over.
To All who are concerned about this threat.
What gets me more than anything is that we are all bitching and shouting about the threat, but apart from raising the awareness we are doing diddly squat.
What I would propose is a mass movement of people who will demonstrate against the development of Islam as a political force within Europe and the US as being a force that is inherently against our nation states and our freedom.
The question is who will lead such a movement and how do we develop it and more importantly how to control it. If the Muzzies can do it then we can.
I would propose organising marches to put pressure on our so called leaders, our approach must be to exclude the racism card so as such we must gather in as many non-muslim immigrants into the movement as possible, Hindu's in Britain for a start. We must seek to expose the hatred towards non-muslims under Islam.
This is the only way.
Anyone bowing down to Muzzie demands should be boycotted by what should be a huge number of middle class people. We too can play that card.
I can see such a movement encompassing the right and the left. The aim is simple to defend our system of individual freedoms against the facism of Islam.
I would propose going the Al Sina way in regards to the existing Muslim population, that has to be the way to reduce their strength, just leave the extremists who will get more violent the more they are marginalised.
All we need to do is get organised, a figurehead or two, certainly one in the USA and one in Europe and another in Australaisa.
We must be able to do this, we have to do this, one thing the Internet has taught us, we can now communicate across the world lets use that power.
How many people feel like us but feel helpless, who raise their voices at home or to familly and friends, if those voices can be raised then we can shake our leaders out of their complacent attitude and do something to stop this madness.
Threatening a company crucial to the American aero-space industry over a book? And to what lengths will CAIR go when the stakes are higher? Yes, we have left Kansas, welcome to the land of Allah.
CAIR obviously also shares al Qaeda's tactic of attacking the American economy, its military-industrial capabilities, whereever there are vulnerabilities.
This is not a little incident over a book, it is a sign; a global, civilizational war rages, and one side, us, the Infidels, cannot comprehend what is going on because the terms of the conflict are defined by the attackers, the Jihadists, who themselves have not been identified.
As Muhammad also took little victories as opportunities for larger conquest, so too, CAIR will surely raise its ambitions next time around.
This little threat to freedom of speech should send off alarm bells at Homeland Security.
One more related item: hundreds of billions spent in Iraq, for what? We still do not know, but the Pentagon, the Administration, and Congress still do not know how to apply appropriate metrics: we win to the extent damage is done to the Jihad against America and Infidel lands generally. But what does the Jihad really amount to? Congress should study this incident to learn about one of its millions of tentacles.
Here is story about what will truly do the most damage to the Jihad:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/30/news/fortune500/gm_fuelcell.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
GM finally announces plans to come out with a line of fuel cell vehicles almost five years after 9/11; and the cost to the taxpayers: 44 million dollars in a joint development project.
Image if rather than 440 billion spent in Iraq, 440 billion were spent on transforming our economy, a 10,000 fold increase in efforts. Imagine the trillions of barrels of fossil fuels under Saudi sands losing value, as energy traders begin to foresee the day that one can question whether or not the stuff is worth the cost of pumping out of the ground. Imagine the desperation of Muslims, the lack of funding for da'wa, the scrabbling for new resources, the desperation, the realization that Muslim countries have nothing to offer, nothing to sell, except a violent, aggressive, closed-minded, irrational, bankrupt ideology that brings the world oppression, suffering, and death.
The Bush administration has completely misunderstood the nature of this conflict and has wasted, and continues to waste, valuable resources and time. And this is not a partisan issue; left-leaning Europeans and American democrats would promote policy of capitulation that is even worse. I hope the folks at NR, after this revealing incident, see matters ever more clearly. This conflict must be fought in new ways that adapt to our enemies weaknesses; may creative minds with more factual knowledge and power than myself find these ways and exploit them to protect our freedom.
There's a lot of unnecessary crap volleying to and fro about liberals and conservatives on this website. I've put in my two cents as well.
But the bottom line here, the icy cold reality friends, is that politicians on the right and left are more likely to be on their knees servicing Muslim sensitivities than doing the right thing for America. The bastards are afraid to stick their necks out in fear of losing votes. They act like a bunch of weak, indecisive crack ho's and they make me want to puke -- on both sides of the aisle!
This group of pandering, tip toeing capitulaters include NATIONAL REVIEW and all the other so-called "conservatives." This goes all the way up the ladder folks. No cajones. It looks like we're on our own. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Hey Gary , thanks for the link to the article by Michelle Malkin. It really shows the ACLU for what they are, and that, in my opinion, they should be tried under the RICO STATUTE. They are criminal and corrupt to the core.
The fuel cell thing is what we need, it cuts off their funding, as soon as it is economically possible I will buy one.
It does not matter that we are on the left or the right, if we believe in individual rights and democracy then Islam is against us, simple as that.
Kemaste, you said exactly what I have been thinking for some time. Both political parties would sell us out for votes. I have very little confidence in our government officials now, our borders are wide open. We might as well have a sign at the border saying "Come one, come all!". The steamrollering of CAIR is a very bad omen, it is very worrying. When will our government decide that our way of life is worth protecting? I guess the elite don't care as long as they can remain above the fray.
testing
Gary you are a posterior orfice, and your own worst enemy. I still think you are a paid agent of the Saudis though, you make Muslims look good, and like the Arabs you promote our addiction to oil, by opposing and denigrating alternative energy sources.
BTW Kemaste I agree with you. Fools like Gary and his crowd are infantile, and divisive. Hard line, and ultra simplistic ideologues, who see the world in stark Manichean terms, if you stick out a hand they will slap it down.
And the worst part they wear blinders.
He reminds me of a wife and children of an abusive husband, they live in denial when it comes to their own abuse, but will call the cops when the neighbors family is suffering abuse.
They will sit around and cluck about someone elses dirty laundry, but are afraid to look at the tracks in their own shorts.
As a secularist whose sole concern is about preservation of a free, civil, secular society I see no substantial difference in the attitude of Gary and Co and the Islamoids.
Maybe he should hi tail it to Iran (no they don't behead people there) but it is ultra, ultra conservative and they even allow Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians to worship, and serve in government.
Giaour, kj~
Today’s Extras:
The Leftist Academia’s propaganda machine. It's the perfect Anti-Science: Mention only the facts that back you up, ignore contradictory data, vilify anyone that questions you, stamp out calls for reform, repeat the lies again and again, and eventually you will win.
U Penn’s Terror Apologists:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17538
Academic Rock Star:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17449
A Prof tangles the Truth:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17540
Liberal bias in the classroom:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ct20050330.shtml
You are right on there Daffersd. The British public (and the European public in general) are fast asleep when it comes to the threat posed to our civilization by the rapid growth of the Islamic population.
Go to www.blogger.com and start a website. It's very easy to do. Then send your details to all of the most popular UK bloggers. They'll post your link. You could easily get thousands of hits within 3 months.