Give them what they want, Musharraf suggested, and they will stop murdering you. Yet would not such an outcome actually reinforce the idea, so recently reinforced in Gaza, that terrorism works?
From Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told U.S. Jewish leaders on Saturday that granting the Palestinians statehood would help stop Islamic terrorism and lead to full diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Israel.Speaking to the American Jewish Congress at a groundbreaking dinner that opened with the sharing of bread and Koranic prayers, Musharraf said his Muslim country had ``no direct conflict or dispute with Israel'' but that Pakistanis had deep sympathy for Palestinian aspirations for a separate state.
``Israel must come to terms with geopolitical realities and allow justice to prevail for the Palestinians,'' he said, describing a Palestinian settlement as the key to security for Israel and an end to Middle East terrorism.
``As the peace process progresses toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we will take further steps toward normalization and cooperation, looking to full diplomatic relations,'' Musharraf said to lengthy applause....
Pakistan has been one of Israel's harshest critics in the Muslim world. But Musharraf said the strife since the creation of Israel in 1948 was an ``aberration in the long history of Muslim-Jewish cooperation and coexistence.''
For details about that cooperation and coexistence, see Islam and Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or.
Islam, Judaism and Christianity shared prophets and spiritual practices, but were now needlessly ``pitted against each other'' -- a situation it would take courage to reverse, he said. His remarks received several standing ovations from the audience of about 350 people.Musharraf said suggestions that Islam rejected tolerance and promoted terrorism amounted to a ``hate campaign'' against the faith. But he acknowledged that most people involved in terrorism, and most who suffered from it, were Muslims.
Come on, Pervez. If what you are saying is true, Osama and Co. are leaders of that "hate campaign." For it is they, not non-Muslims, who are preaching intolerance, hatred and violence and justifying it all in the name of Islam.
Right the Jewish leaders would be nuts to believe in Musharaff who recently had to face a barrage in his own country over `illicit` overtures to jews.
Even that canadian twit Martin has lashed out at Musharaff who is now desperate to get `good` coverage. He`s got a lot of fun waiting for him in Puckyland:
Pakistan is under fire for what human rights groups say is rampant violence against women. In one recent high-profile case, a woman who said she had been gang-raped fled to Britain and then sought permission to move to Canada.
Martin said he had raised the matter with Musharraf during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations.
"I stated unequivocally that comments such as that are not acceptable and that violence against women is also a blight that besmirches all humanity," Martin told a news conference at the United Nations.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/09/15/canadas_martin_blasts_rape_comments_by_musharraf/
More on it at:
http://www.drudge.com/news/73447/musharraf-women-seek-rape-riches
The Many Mocking Masks of Master Musharraf
`In Washington and London, Musharraf presents himself as the face of enlightenment; in Pakistan there is another face. The Bush administration, Musharraf's chief backer, should realize that its friend in the war on terror came to power in a coup, continues to hold office without facing Pakistani voters, refuses to schedule a vote, and bans women from running in mixed-gender races. Those who stand for the values of human rights and democracy that the Bush administration calls universal are seen as the enemy within and are beaten on the streets.`
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200506/P1_ali.htm
I notice Musharraf has done little to stop Islamists from bursting into churches and murdering the congregation. But what else can you expect from a country of backward savages with a 36% literacy rate.
My question is: So how come it took until Sept of 2005 for Mussarif to start making nice to Israel? What has occurred recently? I actually don't know.
As we all know, the Israelis did nothing to stop the "Palestinians" from establishing an independent government in the Gaza and the West Bank between '48 and '67. And neither did they impede the PA from establishing a responsible goverment over the Territories since '94. But that isn't what the "Palestinians" want, even if they were to take control of all the lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It would just become another dysfunctional Middle Eastern cesspoll... ...without any oil wealth.
Isn't Islam basically all about propaganda, spin-doctoring, PR, "image" and psychological manipulation anyway? When one really wonders where the largest threat and intolerance exists consider this:
"Adherents of militant Islam account for some 15-20 percent of the Muslim world, according to Daniel Pipes, an expert on the subject. This means that more than 150 million people are part of the problem. To make matters worse, they hide among the moderates. They don't wear uniforms and rarely identify themselves." http://www.meforum.org/article/168
Tiny minority of extremists world map
Musharraf is a "spin doctor", when he is in the West he says and does things that are acceptable to the West. I dont think anyone is fooled by him. He needs & gets large amount of aid from the west, so he is mouthing platitudes when he is over here as that is what the west wants to hear.
The Pakies at home do not support him, he was not elected as the President. The popular party in Pakistan is a Fundamentalist Islamic group who abhor any dealings with Israel or the west. They want Sharia law & to be governed by the Islamists.
Musharraf is the man who pardoned the famous nuclear proliferator Kahn; we still do not know the amount of damage this evil scientist did to humanity, by selling nuclear techonolgy to rogue states like North Korea, Iran and Libiya.
Also, most of the world's well know terrorists are in hiding in his country including a major portion of the now defunct Taliban.
Musharraf needs to do more (if he is real) to eliminate the Islamic terror organizatons in his country. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are twin brothers - the best spin doctors in the world. They have the Western leaders fooled.
Sparrow:My question is: So how come it took until Sept of 2005 for Mussarif to start making nice to Israel? What has occurred recently? I actually don't know.
The only reason behind this is to throw a spoke in Indo-Israeli relations.
"Musharraf said suggestions that Islam rejected tolerance and promoted terrorism amounted to a ``hate campaign'' against the faith. But he acknowledged that most people involved in terrorism, and most who suffered from it, were Muslims."
That's what good Muslims say when they are pretending to be bad Muslims to the Infidels.
Sure. I'll join the dhimmwhitude. Just get me an ass, er, a donkey to sit on.
One wonders what lines elicited those "standing ovations." He did not offer to recognize Israel. He did not suggest that Israel had a perfect right to exist and that its legal, moral, historic claim to a certain small territory -- that which it has now been reduced to, if nothing further is surrendered -- is overwhelming. He did not suggest that Islam itself contained doctrines about Infidels that needed to be changed, and that Infidels, quite reaonsably worried about those doctrines, should quite reasonably expect Muslims to show, in accepting Israel and its existence, and in ceasing to push the claims of the recently-invented "Palestinian people," should demonstrate clearly that they had decided to change -- not temporarily, for tactical reasons, but permanently.
Or Musharraf could have tried something different. He could have said that many non-Arab Mulsims were beginning to realize that the Arabs used islamization as a means of arabization, an arabization that caused people (that caused Musharaff's own ancestors) to slough off their identity and assume Arab names, to bow toward Arabia, to study Arabic or at least to memorize verses in Arabic, to take as their model for all time an Arab man living in 7th century Arabia, and along with him other Arab men, who were his early followers (the Companions), and that it was time for this arabization to be exposed and halted. And one way to demonstrate independence of non-Arab Muslims, cultural and political, would be for them to support the Kurds in their political demands, to support the Berbers in their demands which at the moment remain at the level of linguistic and cultural freedom, and of all other non-Arabs (as the blacks in Darfur) subject to Arab imperialism.
And the best way to demonstrate that independence from the Arabs, Musharraf might have said, would be for the non-Arab Muslims to refuse to continue to spend their political and other capital parroting the Arab Muslim demands for the destruction of Israel, by degrees or quickly.
But of course he said nothing like that. He was merely out to win over what he clearly regards --he said it himelf a few days ago -- as a powerful lobby -- "the Jews" -- whom he would therefore try to win over. Apparently this ploy, obvious as it was, openly stated as it was, nonetheless, for some of those vulgar calpperclawers giving him not one but several standing ovations, it was all just great. No questions asked.
How easily pleased, how dangerously and easily pleased, how dangerously and ignorantly and easily pleased, some people prove to be.