What's that? A school in Pakistan turning out jihadists? Stop the presses! "FATA colleges breeding ground for militants," from the Daily Times, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
PESHAWAR: NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman has said that education would help ‘change the mindset’ of people living in the tribal areas of NWFP. His comments referred to the tribal belt on the border with Afghanistan where ‘jihadi feelings’ refuse to die down.The United States is also making efforts to emphasise the importance of education in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the hope that it will deliver the desired results.
US National Security Advisor Steve Hadley inaugurated the USAID-funded school in Khyber Agency last year underlining America’s efforts to change the tribesmen’s mindset.
However, the Government Degree College in Mir Ali town of North Waziristan is a breeding ground for anti-American feelings with students supporting local Taliban fighters, sources told Daily Times on Tuesday.
More than 15 students of the college were killed in fighting the US forces in Afghanistan and in military action in North Waziristan, a fourth year student of the college told Daily Times.
The last student of the college to be killed in action was Abdul Wasit when a house was bombed near Mir Ali on December 1 in which Al Qaeda’s top commander, Abu Hamza Rabia was also reportedly killed. “Pro-jihad feelings are high among students,” the student said. “Young students in particular are inspired by jihad and they praise the activities of local militants against Pakistani security forces and Americans in Afghanistan.” The number of pro-jihad students is on the rise, the student said.
“Students in favour of jihad and local are about 60 or 70 but what is disturbing is that this minority is dominating the majority,” he added....
A senior teacher at the college said that at least one in four families had lost a member to ‘jihad’ and the youth were inspired by the tribesmen against forces fighting the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“The tribal youth are the biggest casualty of the war on terror in FATA. As you know the best education one can get is at home and there is no tribal family without pro-jihadi sentiments,” the teacher told Daily Times.
Waziristan. I feel like putting on my old medals from the Afghan Wars, or estivating in a Hill Town or--well, maybe just taking down a volume of Kipling might be less taxing.
Waziristan, where the Waziris and the Mahsudis imitate the Hatfields and McCoys, and Pakistan itself is kept at arm's length. And isn't Waziristan hard by Kafiristan, now called Nuristan. And wasn't it called Kafiristan, so named because the wild tribes in the northwest frontier managed to remain untamed, unconquered, not merely by the British but more importantly by Islam, until the very end of the 19th century? Too bad they didn't keep it that way. managed to remain Islam-less in those northwestern frontier wilds almost up to the 20th century.
Jihad, jihad, jihad. How does Bush, how does Rice, how does Dominique de Villepin, how does the Light Horse of L.S.E., as Philip Larkin wrote, propose to deal with the doctrine of Jihad? End poverty all over the Muslim world? Vaste programme, monsieur. Bring democracy, all over the Muslim world. Ditto.
What about doing something else? What about having everyone sit down and start reading the canonical texts of Islam, and understanding the interpretative tool of naskh, or abrogation, and supplementing the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira with the Qur'anic commentators and jurisconsults (start perhaps with "Islam Unveiled" and "Onward Muslim Soldiers" and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and then, having read and re-read those guides, proceed perhaps to studies of the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam, for some 1350 years, as set out in "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude" and "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam," all by Bat Ye'or, and then, for a little something different, time out for Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and his anthology of testimonies by ex-Muslims, "Leaving Islam," and then, if you still have time, read that useful anthology "The Legacy of Jihad."
And then think. Think very clearly. Do not simply wail "But what can we do? There are so many of them. There are over a billion. It can't possibly be true. We can't allow ourselves to believe that it could possibly be true" do something else. Get a grip. And start thinking.
P.S. Use your imagination. Be clever. Figure out ways to divide and demoralize the forces of Jihad within dar al-Islam, and to minimize the potential menace within Dar al-Harb. Dare to think things that you think or used to think, or think you should think, are simply unthinkable.
And if you think of a hundred ways to proceed (several dozen can be found, if you care to look, right here at JW), eventually you may end up pondering Czechoslovakia, and the Sudeten Germans, and what those tolerant, wise statesmen of modern Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk (the son of the founder of modern Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk senior) and Eduard Benes, decided that it was reasonable for them to do, and did.
Reminds me of something in my college Intro to Psychology text about "group polarization," defined as "the enhancement of a group's prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group."
I think that's how the Taliban arose from the madrassahs, and I'd bet it's the same deal here. As the senior teacher said, "there is no tribal family without pro-jihadi sentiments." Not only is there the critical mass of young students trying to look mature and politically savvy, but surely this is also egged on by activist professors, just like we have here in the West.
If no conflicting point of view can be offered, then, duh: The same old stuff is only going to get more entrenched, only now with expropriated scholarly authority over intellectually unseasoned students looking for a guru-figure to identify themselves with.
There is only one thing to be done with such zombies :
get them fighting among themselves over doctrinal divisions within their hypnotic commands (AKA Koranic/hadithic tenets).
Sow discord with plausible-enough rumors and psy-ops campaigns because this kind of simpleton /true believer can always be thrown off course by feeding their irrationality even greater helpings of made-up Muslo-mindf*ck. Via ("recently discovered in the caves of Tora Bora!") pseudo-Meccan-Medinan sayings and brilliantly faked "historical facts about the prophet and his TRUE teachings".
Start little whisper campaigns "on the Muslim street" that "the leaders of the jihad are secretly watching porno, eating pork and drinking whiskey in their safe hideouts" while Average Abdul suicide bombers -and taliban-wannabes in the field- are dying like sacrificial sheep.
Or tidbits like: "Osama is a raging transvestite who loves wearing oversized crushed velvet diapers!"; "Zarqawi likes to suck the toes of babies while reading the Koran!"; and: "The Muslim Brotherhood is really an early Zionist construct devised by Freud and Einstein during a drinking bout in Vienna!", et al.
The naive Muslim masses are prone to panic and stampede over laughable idiocies ("Koran flushing" anyone?) so we should be taking full advantage of this fatal gullibility and inherent blindness and prod them into instability whenever and wherever possible.
Off-balance enemies are easier to topple.
The jihadists are trying to find ways to do the same to our side (but are being outdone by our own U.S. Press and about a third of our elected Representatives, ironically), so we need to return the attack a thousandfold.
SMASH IMPERIALISTIC ISLAM!
"US National Security advisor Steve Hadley inaugurated the USAID-funded school..." Mr. Hadley should be investigated, as well as USAID. After handing over what was probably millions of dollars to start up a college, was there NO oversight of this new bastion of higher education? Compliments of US taxpayers, young men (were any women enrolled in the college?) can receive a free college education and then while on winter break or spring break, these same students can spend their free time trying to kill another group of young men, soldiers from America. I think that this is one of those stories that could also appear in Dhimmi Watch.
"Mr. Hadley should be investigated, as well as USAID."
-- from a posting above
The level of Mr. Hadley's comprehension of Islam can be gauged from an Op/Ed article he wrote (or at least signed) a few months ago in The New Duranty Times. Even for a National Security Adviser in this administration, that does not know where to put its hands and feet when it comes to Islam (not that those who hate the Administration are any more coherent), it was quite a performance.