Nidra Poller has sent me this superb "Reaction to 'Islam-Haters: An Enemy Within' by Ralph Peters":
A strange reversal operates from beginning to end of Ralph Peters’ diatribe against an anonymous horde of “Islam-haters” who, because they are not named, cannot defend themselves. They are faceless and speechless: their statements are not quoted, their books are not cited, no one knows where they come from, where they can be seen and heard. Are their arguments really as crude as Peters makes them out to be? Are their intentions correctly described, or grossly misrepresented? How can we know, since these evil people do not really exist except in their own right, but only as targets of a vehement refutation?Following the trail of accusations thrown at the “Islam-haters,” we get the dizzying impression that Peters went into an adjectival free fall:
…a rotten core of American extremistsThe most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism…
…when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman…
The message between the lines: Muslims are Untermenschen…
I'll never sign up for your "Protocols of the Elders of Mecca." You're just the Ku Klux Klan with higher-thread-count sheets.
But those who warn of Muslims in general are heirs of the creeps who once told us Jews can never be real Americans and JFK will serve the Vatican.
Sorry, all you bigots: You'll never get the Wannsee Conference, Part II, at Lake Tahoe.
…our inveterate haters, those whose personal disappointments have left them with a need to blame others (sounds like al Qaeda to me . . . ),
Some of the bigots out there might like to try to kill a billion Muslims, but I'm not signing up for their genocidal daydreams.
And yet the op-ed begins with this telling statement:
ISLAMIST fanatics attacked us and yearn to destroy us. The Muslim civilization of the Middle East has failed comprehensively and will continue to generate violence. The only way to deal with faith-poisoned terrorists is to kill them.What, then, separates Ralph Peters from the “enemy within”? Nothing more than a categorical belief that Middle East Muslims have hijacked a religion that is practiced with exquisite finesse in reasonably civilized places like Dakar or Dearborn. Peters can call for killing “faith poisoned terrorists,” but anyone who would dare to suggest that jihad is a central tenet of Islam no matter where it is practiced is a genocidal Nazi- KKK - al-Qaeda murderer. According to Ralph Peters’ logic, if a Muslim in Dearborn should suddenly go on a rampage and behead a Christian neighbor, it would be a sort of geographical error, totally unrelated to the teachings of Islam.
There is a word for this kind of reversal: it’s called perversity. If we take “Islam-haters” at their word, then we must do the same for Islam’s words, which do in fact raise legitimate questions, all the more pressing since 9/11 when airplanes, not a religion, were hijacked and used as weapons of mass destruction. A new generation of scholars and critics is judging Islam by its words and deeds. The insights of these thinkers are not only valuable, they may be life-saving. None of them call for genocide of Muslims, not between the lines, not in the lines.
If a tiny minority of the world’s billion and a half Muslims actually sets out to exterminate millions of infidels and impose the religion of Allah on the rare survivors, it is more than enough to imperil civilization. Furthermore, as Peters readily admits, they have already made a good start on such a project.
Where did Peters find the Islam-haters who want to do a final solution on the Muslims? Are they an infinitesimal minority of non-Muslims, located in e-mails or on websites? Are they a few threads of nondescript unknowns? Peters doesn’t name names. But precisely by leaving the Islam-haters nameless he allows his readers to imagine they might be X or Y or Z or any one of the reputable scholars accused of Islamophobia by CAIR or some such American Muslim association or, as recently occurred, invited by bin Laden and his American sidekick to convert to Islam…
…or die. Yes, convert or die. That is the full invitation.
Now, tell me, does that invitation come from plain ordinary Islam, or from hijacked Islam, or from Middle Eastern Islam?
And what is the appropriate response?
Re Bush’s plan to permit more Muslim exchange students because only Muslims have hijacked Islam hate us. Is he nuts!!!!
Knowing that Western technology was at the heart of power, the Japanese sent hundreds of top students abroad for education.
Fire in the sky : the air war in the South Pacific
Bergerud, Eric M.
[T]here is this hadith, in which Muhammad says: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim" (Muslim 19.4366).
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2006/09/013050print.html
I seem to recollect that out of the wreckage of the First World War there arose a proto-Rodney King movement that believed that there would be no more war if we all got to know one another better. I don’t know how much such sentiments played in the arming of Japan in the first two decades after WWI but Japan’s deadly military machine would not have been possible without the transfer of western technologies and knowledge. Yamamoto’s love of poker and Bourbon did not prevent the dirty bastard from attacking Pearl Harbor.
Drawing lessons for our current conflict from WWII is difficult at best. In WWII our enemies were malignant states. The solution was to destroy the malignant states and build the foundations of representative democracies on the rubble.
Though we face threats from malignant states today, Iran, Syria, Pakistan et. al., the font of the peril comes from a malignant theology whose central tenet is submission. All to many Muslims are prepare to follow the example of the founder of their religion and terrorize unbelievers into submission. We ignore at our peril the terrifying truth that five years after 9/11 there is no meaningful opposition from Muslim religious leaders to Muslims attempting to terrorize us into submission .
We must bend every sinew of national power to defeat the evil that is Islam resurgent. If an individual Muslim wants to enjoy the fruits of our 21st century technologies and prosperity they must renounce and repudiate the malignant tenets of their theology that offer us nothing but submission or death. Rather than attempting to mollycoddle Muslims they must be made to feel our approbation for the malignant tenets of their creed.
We will know when the vast majority of Muslims are prepared to live in peace with unbelievers when Muslim religious leaders invite men of good will, from all creeds, to gather in Mecca to pray God for peace on earth, good will for ALL men.
Until then not one more Muslim allowed in America for any reason.
Ralph127:
Your comment belongs here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/013042.php
Poller makes some good points (although none that haven't been made many times on this site), but I question one detail: she says there are a billion and a half Muslims. I've seen mentions of "more than a billion," one and a third billion, and 1.2 billion. Those are huge differences, and the fact that every one of these estimates is a round number means they're all mere hunches. They're never accompanied by source citations. Would someone please stop this potentially dangerous game and supply authoritative numbers?
Whether there is 1 billion or 1.2 billion or 1.5 billion muslims; it still equates to the same thing..a whole freaking lot of trouble.
JanuaryMan says: "Whether there is 1 billion or 1.2 billion or 1.5 billion muslims; it still equates to the same thing..a whole freaking lot of trouble."
The difference between a billion and 1.5 billion is more than the population of the United States. I don't think it's a good idea to have only a vague notion of the size of the enemy army (even though most are on inactive status).
Considering how muslims love death more than life, teach their children to hate, and are whipped up into a frenzy with such ease the term untermenschen is quite fitting I'd suggest...
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/08/Tampabay/Faith_s_friction.shtml
their are a lot of crazy people out their
Here's a funny thing about being an "Islam hater": I've never wanted to see one Muslim death. Never have, never will. I don't want the genocide of Muslims, but I want the deicide of "Allah".
I want to live to see a day were Muslims bow their heads in humiliation for following this wretched, ancient fiction and fight nevermore. Muslims, the "special kids" of our time do not deserve ANY respect for their faith. The clear lack of morality and reverence for human life in light of constant jihad violence is proves they deserve no respect for their faith.
The ultimate failure of any dogmatic and religious faith is the action of murder in the name of a "creator" without proof of it's existence. Islam is an ultimate failure.
Muslims deserve no pass against rational criticism. Belief in "Allah" gives them no immunity to our public doubt. If Muslims and their dhimmi apologists have a problem with this, maybe they should actually stand up against global Islamic violence, denounce it and proove it with action.
Mr.Peters, I'm proud to be an ideological enemy of this mythological "faith". I've done my research - how about you?
"I seem to recollect that out of the wreckage of the First World War there arose a proto-Rodney King movement that believed that there would be no more war if we all got to know one another better."
-- from a posting above
Not exactly proto-Rodney King -- in those days few in the ruling elites would have understood a phrase such as "why can't we all get along" because there was much less sentimentalism about "peoples" and "people" and how "we" (the Plain People of Ireland, and the World) got along with one another; what mattered were the policies of governments, and the governments of the major countries, in August 1928, decided that it would be a fine thing to condemn “recourse to war for the solution of international controversies" and their pact essentially was intended, after the hideous waste of the Great Wear (World War I) to outlaw war.
And so they did, those representatives of the major powers. The Kellogg-Briand Pact it came to be known (formally, the Pact of Paris) and the signatories renounced war as an "instrument of national policy." Among the signatories were not only the United States, Great Britain, and France, but also Germany, Italy under Mussolini, and Imperial Japan.
Within five years, Hitler came to power in Germany through a vote ("all people""all people want democracy"; "all people want freedom" also sprach The Great Hallucinator). One might have thought that would spell trouble, for now it was not Weimar Germany, but Germany under Hitler, and Hitler had spelled out in his writings and in his many voluble speeches, exactly what he was all about, what his goals were. But fortunately, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, by which war had been outlawed, was already in place and there was nothing Hitler and the Nazis could do about it.
And so war was avoided, and there was no problem, and things turned out just fine.
One postcript:
Frank Kellogg was later followed, as Secretary of State, by Henry Stimson, who shut down the code-breaking efforts of the United States because "gentlemen do not read one another's mail." You see, we were all "gentlemen" in those St. Grottlesex days, just as we are today. Admiral Yamamoto was a gentleman (Groton, class of 1904), and the Nazis were gentlemen (Putzi Hanfstaengl, Harvard, class of 1909), they were all gentlemen.
Remember that, along with the much-used line of Mr. Justice Jackson, that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," the next time eyes are rolled over the tappping of phones of Muslim "gentlemen" who have done nothing to deserve our suspicion, or so very little.
[Postscript to the postcript: Yamamoto did not attend Groton. The rest is all true.]
Concluding sorta-kinda-most-unscientific postcript:
Though Briand's name is forever linked to that of naive Frank Kellogg, Briand was not quite as naive as his connection to that Kellogg-Briand Pact, as the 1928 Pact of Paris was informally known (because of the discussions between the two that had taken place the previous year,in 1927, then embodied in the 1928 pact which representatives of more than sixty states ultimately signed, and the commitments were ratified by their respective governments). That Briand was not a true or blind believer in the treaty with which his name has become assocaited, and that he was aware of the need to use force in some situations, and certainly would have done so for the likes of Hitler (Briand died in 1932, so did not know of Hitler), comes from his former aide, the poet and diplomat Alexis Leger, in art St. John Perse. I cannot recall exactly where, in what writing by Leger, I read this to-me unexpected, but entirely convincing, defense.
I'd LOVE to give this "Islamic" request to Mr. Peters: 'SHUT UP OR ELSE!!!'
Some people may feel the same way about Mr. Peters that they feel about Islam. And they may be in the right to do so.
We wonder if Mr. Peters has ever considered selling automobile insurance? Perhaps that is something he could manage to do competently. That, I am beginning to suspect, may be the ONLY thing he can do competently.
What if Ralph Peters and all the others who hold out the prospect of Islamic Reformation under the elusive 'moderates' are completely wrong? What if no such thing is in the cards for the West (or for Islam for that matter)? What then? How should this question be discussed in our free not-yet-destroyed society?
What happens when an open movable society collides with a huge and immovable one? What happens to the pliant changeable society, the society which allows and encourages dissent and welcomes all kinds of variety when the immovable society interjects itself into the mix?
Yes, cultural variety exists within Islam -- but if one boils Muslim cultures down to their basic constituent, the acrid residue of a rigid Arabic Islam is all that remains -- reduced to basics, the variety in Islam is really a difference without a distinction: the harshest of father figures in Muhammad and in Allah -- the focus on domination and subjugation -- the brutal primacy of the tribal Arab culture is revealed -- names have been changed to destroy the souls of the innocent -- history is erased, supplanted with a fantastic web of Islamic lies and confabulations.... genocidal erasures of dissent, variety, thought, religion, people, souls, consciences.
What if, in the end -- Islam proves to be an immovable object (as it appears to be), and our society, by its very nature, is one which is designed to be pliant and receptive and movable? What happens then?
What I knew on 9/11 moments after everything was reduced to rubble was this: An implacable and immovable culture of hatred was attacking us and attempting to destroy our changeable culture in the West. On that day, and for the first time in my life, I became aware that we were mortally threatened by such a primitive immovable enemy -- one who only offered terror, hatred, backwardness, despair and submission.
It's easy to tear down. Islam's strength comes from that truism. It's easy to slaughter the human soul through violence and intimidation. As much as we like to believe that the human spirit is enduring, and thaty we will always prevail -- history proves this isn't so. The human spirit can be crushed -- just ask generations and billions of Chinese and Russian and Muslims. The spirit can sometimes show miraculous strength, but it doesn't always triumph over evil -- it is vulnerable.
So what if Mr. Peters and his huge cohort of believers in the Miraculous Reformation of Islam are COMPLETELY wrong?
I don't think we will lose this titanic battle with Islam -- but I think we are already forced into make a decision about surviving that we do not wish to make. Today the expulsion of Muslims from the West seems unthinkable. I only hope, when the day comes that it is widely viewed as the least odious pathway, it isn't already too late to implement, or that the damage done by Islam will not already be so great as to render that too a difference without a distinction. There's nothing genocidal about such an idea. There's nothing racist about it either. It recognizes the best path the we have before us is the exact path we probably will not take -- Why? Because of people like Ralph Peters in the West, and because of the growing horde of Muslims who suspect we never will do it.
"If a tiny minority of the world’s billion and a half Muslims actually sets out to exterminate millions of infidels and impose the religion of Allah on the rare survivors, it is more than enough to imperil civilization."
It is not merely that the tiny minority out of 1.3 billion would still be a lot of Muslim terrorists.
It's not just the sheer numbers that make this imperilling. Three other factors about the numbers must be remembered:
1) geographical dispersion around the globe
2) relative camouflage among non-violent Muslims
3) maximum murders of innocents at sudden unforeseen times motivated by a pathological ideology.
If the tiny minority of terrorists were all in one place (like Northern Ireland with the IRA, or northeastern Spain with the Basques, or Sri Lanka with the Tamil Tigers, etc.), and if they were clearly distinguishable from the masses of "moderate" Muslims who helped us by persistently ratting out their bad apples, and if the motivating ideology were not so pathologically hateful, this would be more like the containable criminal problem Ralph Peters thinks it is.
If like me, you think we've given Muslims & Arabs enough chances and you're fed up and think it's time to call a murderous ideology a murderous ideology and remove the threat of terrorism from the free, peace-loving world, sign the petition:
http://timesup911.blogspot.com
can i submit a hypothesis to be refuted by anyone that wants to:
This guy is receiving big bucks from deep pockets say in Saudi Arabia.
Please say it ain't so....
Peters, based on his NY Post article and what he said yesterday in FrontPageMagazine's symposium, is totally unhinged. As an exanple, when in doubt of your argument - throw in Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Now JF and PR may be wacky but they are not dangerous as I am not aware of any of their acolytes exploding themselves in a discotheque or pizzeria. Peters seems to make his case based on his experiences living for a while in Indonesia. Well go into any Jakarta mosque carrying a copy of the New Testament and see how well you are treated.
Ripper -- regarding Indonesia -- I think you are RIGHT. I have written here before about my own personal experiences there prior to 9/11 -- the place felt like a simmering cauldron about to blow at any minute. I experienced heavily armed military everywhere I went, even on Bali. Though I spent only a month travelling about, I ignorantly went all over the place, not just limiting myself to the tourist areas. My driver was able to get me into all kinds of interesting situations, and, in retrospect, I'm eternally grateful that I'm still alive to tell about it. Since it was prior to 9/11, I had no idea what I was doing there, I didn't even grasp that their Islam was the same religion as that of the Arabs, though I completely wondered about all the Abduls and Muhammads I met. Their last names are usually not Arabized. I saw the beauty of Indonesia, but I also got some clear glimpses of something far darker that the tourist guides don't tell you about.
I live near a family which is now ex-State Department who were located in Indonesia for nearly 2 decades. They finally gave up on it, and are in the process of moving back to the US permanently, quitting their jobs at State in the process. They cite two factors for this - according to them:
1.) There is a rising tide of very scary Islamic 'radicalism' in Indonesia today which made them fear for their lives on many occaisions, and
2.) US State Department placates Indonesia however and whereever they can, imagining this to be the best way to secure 'US interests'. According to these two ex-Diplomats, State will cravenly bend to local demands, no matter how outrageous.
They have told me a couple harrowing tales of butchery happening right outside their living compound, and cite spiraling examples of atrocities, some of which are clearly Islamic in nature such as beheadings, hand choppings, lynchings and frenzied rioting and mayhem, etc.
Indonesia cany appear like a vertiable Shangi La to the isolated wealthy and privileged... You can live like a Pasha there, cheaply and lavishly. Mr. Peters may have fallen into this rarified trap -- Perhaps he was only shown the best Indonesia had to offer at the time, and his experience may have been grand. To the extent that he extrapolates this past experience to the rest of the Muslim world, or to the extent that he imagines this bucolic idyll is a permanent fixture of Islam in Indonesia is foolish and myopic. It hardly qualifies him as an expert on Islam, as he seems to think in his recent ravings.
There's plenty of fodder for the 'imperialism' and 'corruption' crowd to feast on and to affix blame for Indonesia's checkered past, but that place has always been a place full of beautiful but explosive volcanos, piracy, genocide, and social mayhem. I'm sure those things have nothing to do with Islam though, just like all the bombings and beheadings which go on every day there.
"Mr. Peters may have fallen into this rarified trap -- Perhaps he was only shown the best Indonesia had to offer at the time, and his experience may have been grand. To the extent that he extrapolates this past experience to the rest of the Muslim world, or to the extent that he imagines this bucolic idyll is a permanent fixture of Islam in Indonesia is foolish and myopic."
-- from a poster above
And someone else learned all about Islam, or learned what he did learn, from his stint, being shown "the best Indonesia has to offer" in his own "rarefied" existence there, during which
"his experience" was undoubtedly "grand." And "to the extent that he" extrapolated from " this past experience to the rest of the Muslim world, or to the extent that he imagine[d] this bucolic idyll" as "a permanent fixture of Islam in Indonesia" he turns out to be "foolish and myopic" is -- by now perhaps you have guessed --
Paul Wolfowitz, who spent several years as the American Ambassador in Jakarta, and who really thought that he was "seeing Indonesia" and learning about "Islam" during his cosseted stay, where the locals carefully told him exactly what they were sure he wanted to hear, beginning with those promising to form closer ties to Israel.
Wolfowitz's comments on what would happen in Iraq are worth studying, for they show someone who hardly begins to know what he does not know, has no sense of history, of culture, and their effect on people. One more hard-headed, tough-minded "realist" or "idealist" whose "realism" is false, whose "idealism" based on a diseased sympathy.
But don't worry. Wolfowitz has received his comeuppance. Yes, he has been punished for his faults and fatuousness. He's been made president of the World Bank. He shouldn't be able to do too much damage there.
I'm stunned that such a man - brave and intelligent, can believe there have been no terror attacks in America since 9/11. I heard him say on Michael Savage today that we have been safe from terror in the US since 9/11! When people like this are in denial, I start to sweat.
Muslim men drive their cars into human beings twice across the country ... walk into the Jewish Federation in Washington and open fire on Jews, I say -- merely coincidence?
The new al Qaeda head (I may be mistaken on location)Abu Ayyub al-Masri in Iraq said: "kill at least one American in the next two weeks using a sniper rifle, explosive or "whatever the battle may require..."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/07/iraq.main/index.html
I know these crimes I mentioned, these attacks happened prior to this statement. However that doesn't mean they were incidents divorced from jihadist Islaam in Amer'ikka.
My humble opinion.
I respected Ralph Peters until today.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"
~Barry Goldwater