In a statement regarding the Minneapolis Shari’a taxicab dispute that recently came to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs from the Muslim Brotherhood, "Dr. Habib described the cabbies’ position as 'absurd' and added 'Muslims must respect and comply with the laws and regulations of the countries they live in and be a good example for their fellow citizens.'"
This is akin to the about-face of the imam Hilali in Australia who, having been secretly taped at his mosque making his now-famous remarks about women dressed in non-Muslim fashion as "meat" who deserved whatever they got from inflamed Muslim men (apparently likened, in the somewhat clumsy metaphor, to the beasts that are attracted to that "meat"), and after indignation had been expressed too loudly and consistently to be ignored, pretended he had meant no such thing and apologized for any malentendu. He did the same thing a few years ago after praising the 9.11 attacks as “God’s work.”
And now we have the Muslim Brotherhood telling us the usual nonsense about Muslims who "must respect and comply with the laws and regulations of the countries they live in." But that is not what Muslim websites say. What Muslim websites tell those who ask if they must obey the Infidel laws of Infidel nation-states is that they need do so only now, when Muslims do not yet rule, and only to the extent that those laws do not conflict with the laws of Islam.
Go to any of a hundred Muslim websites. Check out the various Ask Mr. Fatwas and Ask the Imam. Go to www.islamonline.net. Have fun. Find out what Muslims are told to do, and why, and why it is all, in the end, utterly phony. It is phony because they must do whatever they have to do only temporarily, so as to avoid arousing Infidel counter-measures. They must behave this way only until such time as it is too late for those Infidels and their countries (countries carefully left unspecified by Muslims -- for who cares if it is the United States, or Canada, or France or England -- they're all just part of the Lands of the Infidels, part of Dar al-Harb) to awaken to what is happening and defend themselves and their societies.
How much nonsense do Muslim spokesmen and apologists of every kind think that they can continue to get away with, when any Infidel, at a click, can go to any number of Muslim websites and see exactly what is being dispensed as advice to Muslim Believers? How much of this stuff do they think they can permanently hide from the view of Infidels, when at the same time they keep disseminating it far and wide to Muslims?
The jig is up. Or will be. It's a race -- will Infidels rouse themselves from a deep dream of pseudo-peace and "understanding" in time to save not merely themselves but the legacy of the past that they hold in trust -- the legacy that creates, and was created by, that civilization we call "Western"? Or will Muslims practicing taqiyya, and their non-Muslim collaborators win out in the end? Those collaborators, by the way, are an assortment of the bought-and-paid for, the antisemites who, but only because they can do damage to Jews and to Israel, end up making excuses for Islam. Then there is the largest group of all, the merely weak-minded or the merely uninformed, who are too lazy to inform themselves. Of those there are a great many.
Who will win the race? Some Muslims are worried about this, and some are not. Some understand the problem of trying at the same time to disseminate to Muslims in the West the true, the real doctrine, and at the very same time trying to hide that same true, real doctrine from Infidels who might have the gall to eavesdrop upon Muslim-Muslim communications, even when those communications are easily retrieved on Internet sites (even if often in Arabic or Urdu or other relevant languages) or delivered in mosques -- where agents of the Infidel nation-state now dare to observe, and even secretly record, these sinister khutbas.
They worry only about insuring that a sufficient number of Infidels are kept for a sufficient period sufficiently in the dark. So far they are doing fairly well. The Infidels have not yet disappointed them.
But many of those Infidels, and for the same reasons, disappoint us. Stamina, thick skins, self-assurance required.
How's this for the deep dream of peace and pseudo-understanding:
From Israel-Commentary.org, Oct. 2006:
"U.S. State Department Honors Islam in month in which American soldiers stationed in Iraq suffered the most deaths!
By Bill Wilson, KIN Senior Analyst
WASH—Oct 24—KIN--While Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq are killing U.S. soldiers and Muslims in Israel are killing Israelis and Muslims in Europe are killing Europeans and Muslims in Iran are saying the United States and Israel must be destroyed, is it an ironic twist that in the ornate halls of the United States Department of State Muslims are being honored as a peaceful religion?
Featured last week on the front page of the State Department’s website were the remarks of Karen Hughes, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, saying “Islam is a part of America and as a government official I am honored to represent it.”
Hughes, dressed in traditional Islamic garb, attended a ceremony marking the end of Ramadan. Muslims fast during Ramadan and break the fast with what they call Iftar dinners. Hughes continued, “Many of our government agencies have hosted Iftar dinners. The President celebrated an Iftar at the White House and I had the honor of meeting accomplished Muslim women and men from all over the world at our own Department of State Iftar. American Embassies throughout the world also opened their doors to welcome Muslims and to publicly celebrate the holy month of Ramadan together.”
President Bush issued a statement from the White House, marking the end of Ramadan. He said in part, “Islam is a great faith that has transcended racial and ethnic divisions and brought hope and comfort to many people.”
Comment is supererogatory.
"Stamina, thick skins, self-assurance required". -Hugh
That is so true, and a lot of very talented folks don't see that. If people don't have such qualities, they must develop them via deliberate thought and behavior that over time becomes habit. A large part of success in life is learning to ignore negative influences and politely but firmly not backing down as we move toward goals.
Addendum to my previous post: I neglected to credit View from the Right (amnation.com) for that article in Israel-Commentary. Scroll down to section entitled "Caliphette Hughes."
The late president Reagan was someone who is worth a study in that regard. It was amazing how he ignored his critics. He just ignored obstacles.
Bush's error is not his paying too much attention to his critics. It's his misidentifying the enemy. His motive for distinguishing between peaceful Muslims and the "terrorist minority who have hijacked their religion" is to justify his war on the former while avoiding censure for condemning a religion. That distinction is false because it fosters the illusion that if we destroy the gangs of murderers we'll be safe. We might recall the "Fifth Column" in the Spanish Civil War, the civilian infiltrators behind the Republic's lines. Bush doesn't realize that the "peaceful" front is far more lethal in the long run. Karen Hughes's antics and the embassies' receptions for Muslims, etc., further the work of the Fifth Column.
"Bush's error is not his paying too much attention to his critics".- Frieda
I think that's half true, Frieda. He pays too much attention to critics who are motivated by malice and who have an agenda that will make him back down via intimidation but he doesn't heed critics who mean him well. He has to be "thick skinned" to the former and listen carefully to the latter, sharply differentiate between people of good-will and those who have ill-will. There is a proverb in the Bible that says, "criticism from a friend is better than kisses from an enemy". Kisses from a friend are also better than criticism from an enemy. I'm not sure the president reads people all that well (look what he said about Putin, looking into his eyes, etc.). That's not good judgement about people. That's part of the problem of why Bush listens to the wrong people. That's the way I see it. He's a decent fellow with somewhat lousy judgement about people.
President Bush should have looked at Putin's big paws and thought they probably strangled people when he was in the KGB. Putin is one cold fish. That guy has killed people with his bare hands.
That is so true, and a lot of very talented folks don't see that.
This war, what should be, must be, termed the Islamic War, is an ideological war.
V.I. Lenin, a genius in his own right, never conceived such a powerhouse as Islam. A Russian Jew, Lenin was only vaguely aware of Islam, which in 1917 was in a state of repose.
This new war is a war of words, a war of ideas, a war of tactics and strategy, a political war, a street-fighting war, an endless war that has always been fought and will continue to be fought on broad land battle fronts.
Eventually, as the Moslems take over Europe, the Islamic War will move to the seas, and undertake oceanic engagements. The importance of nuclear-tipped submarines, missile frigates, and aircraft carriers will take on paramount importance.
Sooner or later, The Paki Moslem Admiral who currently oversees the British Navy from Portsmouth, with all its nukes, will directly oppose his counterpart in Mystic, Connecticut, problably a submariner US Navy Admiral war who may or may not be watching Oprah and reading Esposito.
But, as always, the Islamic war, the Jihad terror war, will be fought person-by-person, address-by-address, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, region-by-region, country-by-country, as it has always been.
No cultural system is prepared for this operational attack system. Not even the great Hindus, who as I write have the submissive Congress Party in power.
No one. So, I ask you, where is the fist foothold against this 1,382 yr old assault?
The "deep dream of peace" is that of Leigh Hunt's Abou Ben Adhem. Contrary to Edward Said, much of the literature (see Washington Irving, see Chateaubriand, see Sir Walter Scott) and art (see Delacroix, see Eugene Fromentin, see a thousand Frenchmen setting up their easels from Cairo to Marrakech) of the Western world, from the time of Napoleon's entry into Egypt in 1798 and the almost immediate fashion, in furniture, for Egyptian motifs, the popular response of the West to the Ottoman and Arab East was not one of hostility (whipped-up by the "stereotypes" of the so-called "Orientalists") but rather, sympathetic interest in the exotic, which then graded into the sensual (Flaubert and Maxine Du Camp in Cairo), and then into the sexual. For before there was the Latin lover (in full-bodied Latin-Americna form, as with Porfirio Rubirosa, or the suaver Italian, including Vittorio da Sica in "The Earrings of Madame De..." and Vittorio Gassman in all kinds of things)there was Rudolph Valentino as the Sheikh of Araby. And along with the sweet singers of the mystery and majesty of the Arab desert and the noble Bedu -- think of Freya Stark and a cast of dozens of English female travellers, each more intrepid and Virago-publishing-house worthy than the next.
And then there was also the Arab as a sympathetic comic fellow. You find, for example, in the History of Hasty-Pudding Theatricals that between 1890 and 1930 the subject given most attention were those loveable comic fellows, the Arabs.
And the same is true in popular songs -- see the old anthologies of Sigmund Spaeth, and all the songs about funnily-named Arabs or Turks who do battle with the Roosian "Ivan Skaminsky Skamar." Lots of fun, no sense of menace in those pre-OPEC, pre-Da'wa, pre-mosques-and-minarets everywhere in the Western world days.
And so to come by a commomdius vicus home to the original point of this meandering post: home to Leigh Hunt, and the phrase which I deliberately droppped in and which a poster above repeated. That is, the delightful and fictional Abou Ben Adhem. Leigh Hunt wished his creature a large family:
"Abou Ben Adhem -- may his tribe increase
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace."
But that was then.
This is now.
Re Karen Hughes and her Islamic garb. I keep getting her confused with the other Karen, the "historian" who always has nice things to say about Islam. Is there something about the name Karen that turns women into such sycophantic dhimmis?
Waleed Aly, a perceived 'moderate' of the MCA who dislikes the label 'moderate' since it sounds like something of a 'lesser kind of intelligence'- stated that Hilali is 'hurting the cause of Islam'-
he didn't say what that cause is...
Any Jihad watchers are smelling something fishy here?
Alarmed Pig Farmer: No, Lenin was not a Jew.
Frank: You're right, Bush does listen to the wrong advisers. But the choice of whom to listen to is his. He chose Condoleezza Rice, and Karen Hughes (whom he has known since long before he became President), and the various pro-Muslim "experts" who have taught him to say over and over and over and over again, "Islam means peace." How come there's such a perfect consistency in the outlook of all the people he's CHOSEN to advise him and speak for him? Because deep-down he shares their view of the world. That may sound odd, given his evangelical Christian faith. But that faith doesn't influence his attitude toward his Saudi prince buddies, or his assumption that everyone yearns for and is capable of handling freedom and democracy.
Lenin a "Russian Jew"? This is the kind of statement which, when made, worries -- both if it is true (it isn't) and if it is false (it is). And I allow myself to believe that we all know why.
"...the popular response of the West to the Ottoman and Arab East was not one of hostility (whipped-up by the "stereotypes" of the so-called "Orientalists") but rather, sympathetic interest in the exotic..."
Further widenining Hugh's chronological poles, we have in 1704 Antoine Galland with his first translation into a Western language (French) of those quasi-Islamic fables The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, which became enormously popular for at least two centuries after that; and in 1965 Elvis Presley and the sensually pantherine Fran Jeffries (playing a harem girl "Aisha") in Harum Scarum (not to mention the beginning of the series I Dream of Jeannie).
Cox & Forkum have a terrific cartoon on the subject: http://www.coxandforkum.com/
Comment is supererogatory.
Posted by: Frieda
Frieda.. I, too saw this on the White House website and I think this is truly SCRAY! Either Bush and the rest of his administration are THAT stupid OR - they are that evil and selling us all down the river. Neither reason for why they are doing all this is a very comforting one.
I am waiting for Hannukkah and Christmas Festivities in Mecca - until then I see no reason for any islamic activity over here.
These people are not only useless, which is bad enough in itself.. useless and a drain on society. Worse, they are evil and they are committed to installing their version of the Law in our lands. I have been to their websites and I suggest Mr. Bush get into readintg what's on there.
I don't believe for a minute that he is playing Taqquiya to them because why would he HAVE to? showing strength has always worked best when dealing with them. Israel is a great example of that. Look how emboldened the enemy has become because Israel pervented its own armed forces from doing the job as it should be done - with overwhelming force! The enmy we all face sees the unwillingness to go all the way as wekaness and it emboldens them further.
Bush is either a blithering idioty or a sellout. or both. So are all the other western governments. I tend to think they are selling us out because they can't ALL be that stupid.
Yes the race is on!! But the West must not only wake up --they must wake up and take action. Europe must reproduce and have children or muslims will prevail in a bloodless battle of demographics.
http://www.realclearreligion.com
Germaninamerica: "I don't believe for a minute that he is playing Taqquiya to them because why would he HAVE to?"
I agree. I think the administration people have a different outlook on the world: they think in supranational terms. They're strenuously in favor of vague slogans such as worldwide democracy and freedom, and seem to think it's immoral to fight in the cause of our national interest. Maybe Bush has been too much influenced by the 20th-century PC propaganda that depicted nationalism as a Bad Thing. See, e.g., his weakness on the immigration issue; he appears to believe that the best map of the western hemisphere would show no national boundaries between Point Barrow and Tierra del Fuego. (He signed the fence bill only because he had to.)
He should have learned from Europe, which took a giant step toward civilizational suicide by founding the EU and forcing member nations to adopt one currency and system of weights and measures. England, Germany, France, Sweden, etc., are putting their national cultures into a blender and will some day wonder why the result will be a gray mush. Why should the Muslim immigrants want to assimilate into national entities that the natives are ashamed of?
We haven't gone as far down that path as Europe has, but when our government goes out of its way to celebrate and praise only supranational ideologies and values (e.g., Islam), and to play down our uniquely American customs and history, it's heading in the same direction.
I might feel somewhat reassured if I thought that Bush was playing taqiya, but I fear he's horribly sincere.
"Bush is either a blithering idiot or a sellout. Or both. So are all the other western governments. I tend to think they are selling us out because they can't ALL be that stupid."
-- from a posting above
Many of them can be. Others are careerists. Inertia, the party line, the limited possibilities that are on offer, the joke of talking about "thinking outside the box" that emanastes from those who have locked themselves inside that very box, and without a clue as to how to unlock it.
And also, mere busyness and hectic vacancy of meetings, and meetings, and meetings, with "colleagues" on "teams" -- so that those who are team-players are kept on, and those who have the dangerous habit of thinking for themselves and possibly also greatly disliking the very idea of "teams" and of bureacratic scrambling and in-fighting, and the latter category surely includes those who will see things from outside that damn box, see things afresh based on the deliberate acquisition of knowledge of new things. If forced to rely on the assorted three or five page or even one-page executive summaries of things, always prepared by others who, being lowly aides, are unlikely to present informatin that will not fit the received wisdom or the declared policies of the Very Important Person, in brief authority, for whom those grandly-named Executive Summaries are prepared for all those too busy to think, to busy to apprehend -- well, the whole thing is a nightmare, designed to encourage limited possibilities, and to require the adoption of this or that variant of received opinion.
And what is more, those in charge not only lack knowledge and intelligence of the level required, but lack imagination. They have done without it their whole lives, so why should it be different when they rise, or claw, their ay to the top? Not raised on either history or literature, in sufficient doses, to encourage imagination, not having been raised in an environment where skepticism was continuously encouraged, how could they arrive at their own views or begin to question all the things that need questioning?
And so, for example, dealing with the Sudan, no one seems to have realized that this is a perfect place to take a stand, to shore up Christians in the Sudan and elsewhere in Black Africa, and to emphasize both for non-Muslims and Muslims the Arab persecution and murder of non-Muslim Arabs, as a way of raising the matter of Islam as a vehicle for Arab imperialism, of Islam as the Arab national religion. Can't do it, can't imagine seizing the southern Sudan and Darfur, can't imagine the photographs of those crowds of grateful black Africans surrounding the American soldiers, can't foresee the electrifying effect on Christians, besieged or feeling themselves besieged, in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast and Togo, all the way to Ethiopia and Kenya and Tanzania. Can't imagine, can't begin to imagine, what effect this would have on the sinister forces in the Arab League and Arab states who are secretly backing the govenment of Sudan to the hilt. And then, if that handful of soldiers and those planes destroy the Sudanese military capacity, and simply announce that they will remain to organize a referendum or perhaps two, in Darfur and the southern Sudan, to see what the people there wish, whether they wish to remain part of Sudan -- who can object? Kofi Annan? Javier Solana? Miguel Moratinos? The Arab League? On what grounds will they object? That the U.N. was rescuing those black Africans? That everything was going swimmingly? That the Arabs of the northern Sudan have a right to murder or starve to death the black Africans of Darfur anjd of the southern Sudan, and to appropriate, for its own murderous uses, the oil that lies under what is still, for now, but need not be forever,the soil of southern Sudan?
No, they can't think in those terms, any more than they dare to worry about, and make plans to halt, as a national security measure, the growing Muslim presence in Western Europe. Even if they do not quite realize what the idea of the "West" means -- though they prate of it quite enough -- they should be able to understand what might happen if Muslims in Europe were to acquire control over even a small part of the armories of the NATO countries. But do you hear anything about planning for this? A hint about worries over demographic conquest and unhindered campaigns of Da'wa in Europe, or here? Any hint that there is a real, as opposed to a non-existent, policy on energy designed to drive down OPEC revenues that are the "wealth weapon" that is such an important part of the Jihad? Not from Condoleeza Rice. Not from George Bush. Not from all their aides and sous-chefs, cooking up a storm.
Yet they make policy. Yet they presume to instruct us. Yet they presume to rule.
As a radio show host in Minneapolis might say about Habib's comments: "B as in B, S as in S".
Islamania's heart and its mouth are totally unconnected.
I think many of our elites, particularly key elites, have more sincerely held beliefs than Hugh's characterization of them implies: more than mere mental laziness, social busy-ness, and moral cupidity, they have sincere beliefs about politics and geopolitics, and one major (albeit extraordinarly complex and difficult) solution would be to get them to change those beliefs.
You're preaching to the choir. Our elites have other interests. Our freedom doesn't concern them in the least. People who see the danger signs, Robert first and foremost, are denounced as religious bigots for even harboring such thoughts.
Very soon the jig WILL be up, but it will be ours, not theirs. No matter how thick our skins, we can't fight alone. We'll leave this world knowing we did our best, but it was all for naught. Not enough people view freedom as something to fight for.
Check out Sunday's opinionjournal.com (Iranian Moolah). The Iranian middle class have been bought by liquor and satellite dishes. They don't care all that much about radical Islam and they're willing to put up with the mullahs as long as they get their creature comforts. Are we all that different?
From a previous post on another thread, which was primarily a recommendation for our Euro cousins. But it is also valid here, more so day by day:
" Here are two solutions:
(1) Europe needs a Robespierre again to decapitate the elites ...figuratively of course, providing they go peacefully; otherwise...get rid of them. And after he is done with that, he can go on and liberate the media from its leftist masters.
(2) The Islamists love sharia law. Give them a good dose of it to enjoy at the receiving end. Give all Muslims in Western countries dhimmi status and make them pay a very larger jizza tax, one that is progressively higher the bigger the family. Make them "feel subdued" in the language of the hadith. Impose all the dhimmi rules on them. Make them want out! But unlike the fate of the dhimmi in Muslim countries, give them a way out. A one-way slow boat back to the desert and never be allowed to return..."
Americans face a similar problem with respect to our leadership. As in Europe, we see that the leadership and our foreign ministries are in the hands of the enemy, either through ignorance, stupidity, or as outright traitors.
This points increasingly towards the need for revolutionary removal of existing governments and installation of governments responsive to the people. The Ukranians set a great recent example, and the Poles and Hungarians before that. It does not have to be bloody. Such revolutions would be far easier to implement in Europe, country by country, first dumping the elites, then the EU, and then implementing "reverse-dhimmi laws" on the Muzzys as described above. Doing this in America will be far more difficult. However, if the European peoples were to launch into it, it would help wake up America - right now America is 95% asleep on the Islamic crisis, and no one in authority is alerting the country to the danger. Au contraire, we have George, Condi, and Karen in some never-never land, and there is no hope of a change for 2 years, unless there were a bloody revolution, and that is not in the cards, unless the Muzzys do something really stupid "in the cause of Allah".