An "Islamic decree" issued calling for death for Karzai. From Reuters:
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas have issued an Islamic decree calling for President Hamid Karzai to be killed for serving American and British "infidels".The decree, or fatwa, came in a 12-page, Pashto-language booklet distributed in the Afghan south. It reiterated a call for jihad, or religious war, against infidels and their slaves.
"It should be remembered that there is no difference between infidels and their agents and jihad against them has become incumbent," the fatwa said.
The document, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters at the weekend, was written by three Taliban Muslim scholars and approved buy a council of about 100, a Taliban spokesman said.
"Jihad against all the slaves of Americans and the British including Hamid Karzai has become incumbent and they deserve to be killed," it said.
Is this one more of those countries where Infidel efforts, and vast amounts of Infidel money, will somehow change the minds of people about Islam, change what Islam is, change its use as the natural vehicle for expressing all discontent, change the way almost all of the people -- not the handful of those who educated in the West came to see more of what was wrong with Islam, but the others -- view the universe. How? In what way?
True, a very small number of those who started out as relatively secular, from the ruling classes or old elites -- Chalabi and Karzai come to mind, having lived in the West and observed it, will bring back to Iraq, or Afghanistan, their own inward version of ataturkian secularism, but find it impossible to impose it, or have it well up from below, because until Muslims in sufficient numbers begin to attribute their own failures and miseries and political, economic, social, and intellectual state to Islam itself, it will always be a case of sweeping back the Muslim tide. This is a lesson that the generous, wilfully ignorant, and essentially misconceiving Infidels, including above all those in the government of the United States, have to learn.
The best thing Infidels can wish on Muslim societies, the thing that if we were truthful we would wish for them, is for those societies to become less Muslim, with the role of Islam as a political and social force as constrained as possible. And perhaps, even, with freedom of conscience -- i.e. freedom to leave Islam -- no longer punished. But none of this will occur as long as the peoples and polities of Dar al-Islam continue to be propped up in every way, including, most obviously, the infusions of Infidel foreign aid, a kind of jizyah that appears to be voluntary but has become, in the attitudes of both Infidel donors and Muslim recipients, a duty, a kind of payment that "must be made or else." And that, of course, is exactly what the jizyah in Islam is: a payment that Infidels "must make or else." Simply calling it "foreign aid" does not disguise the fact of its being, in essence, a jizyah payment.
It is hard for good-hearted, generous, ignorant, naive Westerners to understand that the problem with Muslim countries, their political, economic, social, and intellectual disarray, is permanent, as long as Islam retains its hold on the minds of Muslims and cannot be seen, as Ataturk saw it, as a force to be constrained and channeled. And those same good-hearted, generous, ignorant, naive Westerners are ill-prepared to recognize the threat that Islam, in the form of Da'wa and demographic conquest, poses to their own society. The lack of imagination of both leaders -- I mean "those taking a leadership role" -- and those led in the West, the inability to imagine what can most certainly happen, takes us back to yesteryear, to the 1930s.
It shouldn't. One should figure things out in advance. One should plan. One should head off disaster, not primly dismiss its possibility.
you have a very small loud minority getting the aid and comfort of al jejeer, and they can't do much.. l say stay the course, keep the taliban out! need patience.
Lulu, you're spot-on as usual.
Some of our commentators are so ideological that to them, all Muslims are the enemy and distinguishing between them is folley. I think there is huge difference between Karzai and the Taliban.
Cornelius-
Will Karzai come to the aid of the imprisoned magazine editor? Will he attempt to save this man from being killed for questioning Islam?
And if he doesn't, how is he any different then the Taliban?
I certainly hope he does Treehugger.
What did we all expect after the ouster of the Taliban? That Afghanistan would instantaneously abandon 1400 years of tradition? At least now there is a chance for progress.
In many parts of Afghanistan, the Burkha has been replaced with the veil.
Women are working outside the home. Girls are attending school.
The Bhuddist antiquities at Bimayin (sic?) are being rebuilt.
Most importantly, terrorist groups like Al Queda are no longer given sanctuary in Afghanistan, where they can train and plan attacks like 9-11.
I'd say it is very evident that Karzai is substantially different than the Taliban.
There can't seriously be people who actually think Afghanistan would be better under Taliban rule then under Karzai? I remember seeing images from Kabul right after the Taliban were run out of town of children with ballons, music playing and men shaving off their beards. The first person to vote in Afghanistan's first election was a 19 year old woman and girls are now going to school.It's not perfect, but are there people who really don't think that's progress?
It's my understanding that the "Arabs" (also known as "foreigners") gave money to the former Taliban government in order to have safe haven for their terrorist movement. I remember reading that part of the rationale for the US giving money to the new Afghan government would be that it would be in an amount that AQ could not match. The US also has a military presence in Afghanistan which I think is an improvement over AQ terrorist training camps.
Cornelius and Roxane,
Good points all.
However, I think there should be some international pressure to help the Afghanis move into the 21st century.
treehugger there will need to be years of international aid to countries like Afganistan, when there is a vacuum it only leads to takeover by rogue regimes such as the taliban. l know a lot of mistakes were made, and prol more will be made, but bringing in some Western values of democracy will keep that hope of freedom for these people. when women are allowed to be educated, and the general population are educated without the powerful immans,
changes will come. look at how many years the US has been in Europe after WW2 and Japan as well as S.Korea. you have to take it seriously when arab scum like Bin Laden know that Western influence will destroy the cult of islam. now if only the US can step on the saudi a little harder...
Muslims don't need to be part of a formal Jihad to murder Christians - the Koran gives any musbot that right when the good muslim sees that that these people have been sufficiently exposed to the great Truth of Allah, the war God, which even the Pope has called "the true God",i.e., Jesus Christ, and not responded by embracing the protection of this true God. And, if they do not, on their own, in what ever privit or public Army they may be in, carry out this Jihad, they will be taken to the lowest Hell and given the most painful tortures forever and ever, by the only true God. One of the ways they know this, is that the Pope has said that they worship the "true God". If they do, the only thing left for us to do is to proove that the Koran is corrupt and often does not have the true words of the only true God (i.e., Jesus Christ) in it. But there is a problem here - anyone who tries to say that is likely to be killed because thats what the Koran can be understood to command. So, what are we commentators being called to do? Die? My point? Well, we should not blame organized groups for these atroscites. We can only blame the Koran. Nothing else is necessary to cause murder - just the Koran, it needs to be reintrpreted!