It is absurd to think that Muslim hearts and minds can be won. They can be rented, not bought, and rented only for the shortest of periods. Meanwhile, the rent -- that is the further transfer of wealth from the Camp of the Infidels to the Camp of Islam -- only helps to pay for mosques, madrasas, worldwide campaigns of Da'wa, and armies of Western hirelings who conduct public relations and disinformation efforts on behalf of Saudi Arabia, the Arabs and Muslims more generally, and Islam itself.
Sixty billion dollars has been given by successive American governments to Egypt. Egypt today has still failed to honor any of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords (save for that not to engage in open warfare, a commitment that it keeps for the same reason that Syria does not attack Israel -- because of the likely consequences). Tens of billions have over many decades gone from the American government to Pakistan, a country whose military actively encouraged A. Q. Khan in his theft from Western laboratories of nuclear secrets and his subsequent effort to share those secrets with, inter alios, North Korea and Iran.
That same Pakistan was not deterred by Western aid from nurturing the Taliban, and then helping its fighters to take over Afghanistan, giving them diplomatic and other kinds of support. Nor has it been deterred from today, Janus-faced, continuing to protect or support the Taliban members in Pakistan.
The billions sent by European countries and the United States to the "Palestinian" Authority has been used to fill the private coffers of Arafat and then of his widow and his associates, and to allow them to live in luxury in apartments bought outside the area, and also to the subventions to a dozen different groups of armed men, so-called "security services," all of which are dedicated to attacking Israel in any way they can, whatever jostling for money and power among themselves they may also engage in.
Where is the evidence that more such payments will help, since there is not the slightest evidence that the payment of a disguised Jizyah does anything except encourage Muslim attitudes that this Infidel aid must be given, is given as a duty? And what is even more sinister, the Infidel donors behave as if this is indeed the case -- that they cannot stop such payments for fear of the reaction of the Muslim donees.
This is madness from top to bottom. That some in the government think this way, even for a second, shows how little they comprehend of Islam, of its unambiguous tenets and the natural attitudes that flow from them, in any society suffused with Islam. This involves ignorance of so much history -- some 1350 years of it, and over such a wide swath of different territories once held by so many different peoples, all of them conquered and subjugated and forced to endure the status of dhimmi. That lasted up until the last half of the 19th century, when Western power forced a change upon a most reluctant Ottoman Empire. In Muslim countries today, the reversion to persecution of non-Muslims has everywhere led to a great reduction in their numbers -- in the Arab countries (both Jews and Christians have left), and in Pakistan and Bangladesh (where it is primarily Hindus whose percentage of the population has gone down to about a fifth, in Bangladesh, and a tenth, in Pakistan, of what it was at Partition).
Then there is the slow demographic conquest of Malaysia, where Muslims now lord it over Hindus and Chinese, and force the local indigenous tribes to accept Islam wherever possible. And the persecution of Christians in the Moluccas, and East Timor, and of Hindus in all the islands where they continue to live except possibly Bali, and sometimes even there, shows that even in supposedly "moderate" Indonesia the mistreatment of non-Muslims continues.
It is not right that those whose ignorance explains their policy prescriptions should be listened to with respect, or should be listened to at all. They have no right to make the rest of us, to make the entire Western world, suffer because they cannot spare the time, or lack the intelligence, to study and to comprehend Islam as a total system.
They should be mocked out of whatever offices, and whatever power or unearned authority, they may currently be said to possess.
An article by Sharon Behn of The Washington Times - June 28, 2006:
BAGHDAD—Haircut, shave can mean life or death in Baghdad. In a country where people are killed because their names mark them as Shi'ites or Sunnis, having the wrong haircut can be lethal, too. So for barber Abu Saif, staying in business requires keeping up with the latest religious edicts.
"Being completely clean-shaven is not right," Mr. Saif explains as he draws his razor down a customer's cheek, then sweeps it back up toward his upper lip. He takes time over the cut—a perfect upside-down question mark shave around the cheek that is most popular with Baghdad's religious Shi'ites. "The 'Marine' cut, or shaven head, is forbidden. It is considered to be something of the foreigners," said Mr. Saif, 52, who has been cutting hair and shaving beards in his small Mansour barber shop since he was a boy of 12.
Above all, he said, Iraqi barbers have given up "threading"—a practice common in the Middle East and Asia that involves removing facial hair with two threads tied together, rather than with a razor.
For some, the punishment for doing so was death. "I put a poster in the window of my shop, that I apologized for threading and I said we were not doing that anymore," Mr. Saif said. "This is terrorism. One day they attack bakers, the next day they attack barbers." The shape of a beard or haircut often marks its wearer as Shi'ite or Sunni, ensuring support in some neighborhoods but putting him at risk in others.
Religious Sunnis, for example, do not remove any neck hair, and fundamental Wahhabis never shave or trim their beards, but will cut down their mustaches to almost nothing -- "zero to one" on the razor notch, Mr. Saif said. The customer in his chair, a Shi'ite named Abu Sara, wears his hair short and has his beard trimmed every three weeks to a tight one-week growth.
A few people have changed their cuts to match ethnicities or religious leanings other than their own, he said. Mr. Saif dismisses them as cowards: "I know some are doing that, but as Shi'ites we don't need that 1 percent." Young men who are not religiously minded have their own models.
"They get their ideas from actors on television, or some famous Iraqi singers or Brazilian soccer players," said Mr. Saif, who has about 20 customers a day. "Some cut most of their hair short then leave it long in front. Others wear their hair long but slicked back with a lot of gel."
Even boys come into the barber shop asking for specific cuts, he said, sometimes adding gel and perfume. Weddings are big days at the local barber shops. A "wedding cut" includes a facial massage, eyebrow thinning, a good haircut, an extra-fine trimming of the beard and removal of unsightly ear hair.
"When I got married, I had curly hair, so I used a heating iron to straighten it out. After the wedding, my hair went back to normal and my wife was so surprised," Mr. Saif said with a laugh.
But the war and constant conflict have taken a toll on the typical barber-shop banter, he said. Customers still comment on social and political matters, and still ask for marriage advice, but politics have become a dangerous topic.
Mr. Saif recalls an argument with one of his customers over Saddam Hussein's trial, and said one of his clients took offense to another's comments after one of Baghdad's daily bombings.
"One of the customers informed on him, and then one of his friends came over and warned him not to speak like that anymore," he said.
Devout Islam. Minutiae of conduct punishable by death.
In my Judeo-Christian civilization human life is ideally sacred, a mysterious holy mystery from the 'hands of God'.
Deprived of the awesome and sacred gift of free will, Islamic man becomes basically an inhuman puppet.
Full of unrestrainted passions, ignorance and doctrinally certified insanities.
It's like the Crips and the Bloods.
na na na na na! allah likes my haircut better than yours.
You can't rehabilitate retards.
"It is absurd to think that Muslim hearts and minds can be won" from above
that reminds me on recent joke:
q: what muslim and the sperm have in common?
a: they both have 1:1000000 chance to became a man.
Watch Islam What the west needs to know and you may give up voting forever.Washington is going to burn down and the sooner the better.
I'm waiting on my copy to get here from Amazon, its supposed to be here today.
Well... the catch 22 is- mock them out, yes. But-who then shall replace them? Unfortunately we have no good choices, and therein lies the rub...
TurboTR - I would suggest continually replacing them until such time as one elected leader 'gets it'. Voting them out if they show no aptitude and no understanding will put out a very strong message and eventually the right sorts will figure out what the people are asking for.
What a waste of money. And yet the governmnent complains it needs even more tax money! With all that money wasted on these cesspools wh probably could have funded any number of projects to get off oil by now. Hugh is right- they should be put out of office. Only shamed rather than mocked.
Until recently the most stunning revelation of how easily public opinion can be manipulated by our enemies without and within, was the speed with which Israel had been turned upside down from a tiny nation struggling to survive against hordes of barbarians intent on its destruction- to A Paraih state of Nazi like qualities denied its right of Existence.
My thoughts after the demonisation was done and accepted by so many of the western elites were:
If this can be done to Israel, what is stopping it from being done to Western civilisation also?
How easy is it to manipulate public opinion into trashing centuries of its own cultural evolution in the west, so as to disable its will to defend itself?
What good is our sophisticated weaponry if our governments are unable to use it in self defence because of manipulated public outrage.
Did the Vandals conquer Rome because they had superior weaponry to the Romans?
A_Palague ...
The problem with that is our electoral cycles of 2 and 4 years. Within any cycle there could be a monster strike that would dumbfound the incumbents, and we would wake up with massive casualties and sharia law not far after that.
I think we (USA) need a force outside of government that can mobilize and take over if Washington becomes moribund. The Islamists have such forces here now(e.g., Hamas) and we should assume they are ready.
We also must be ready...but we are not.