Our friend and ally is in a bit of hot water. From Ahmed Rashid in the Telegraph, with thanks to DFS:
Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.Nato's report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban's military capability and states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.
Commanders from Britain, the US, Denmark, Canada and Holland are frustrated that even after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met George W Bush and Tony Blair last week, Western leaders are declining to call Mr Musharraf's bluff."It is time for an 'either you are with us or against us' delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level," said one Nato commander.
Why yes, I would say it's about five years late for that. But better late than never.
High time that this rebuke is delivered. Pakistan must think we all believe that the Taliban has trees that grow weapons since they would NEVER supply them.
I wonder if we will see a Pakistani press note on this soon: "The NATO top brass has started talking like the Indians, blaming the Pakistani ISI for everything. As all the world should know by now, Kashmiri and Taliban fighters are all "local boys" fighting to free their respective lands of outsiders, specially the Infidels, who have no business venturing into places Jihad claims for itself".
Dim dawning of approximate tentations. That's how it would be put in the Nighttown Episode. But where's Mr. James Joyce when you need him?
The generals are barking up the wrong tree.
NATO troops will continue to die, for, Pakistan is our 'ally'.
Tell me some thing new , its so funny this is never know to the top politicians but know to everyone else
Assalamau Laikum all,
A lot of Pak soldiers were dying needlessly fighting the Taliban. Pragmaitc signings of a treaty with the Taliban means less Pak Soldiers dying.
Nato's problems are exactly that...Nato's.
Is it the fault of Pak if your blond boys don't want to come and re-inforce the helpless and trapped nato troops there already?...NO
This sounds like sour grapes to me...nato boys are dying...so Pak boys should die too...eh Why?
We have seen in times of History where the blond kaffur is unwilling to fight for his faith...the Byzantine emperor Manuel II came to Europe for help...it was refused...the same thing is happening here!.
The blame is not so much with Pak...but with Western governments refusing to backup Nato....I'm sorry but Nato is dying...politically and otherwise...get your blond boys off thier couch potates and sort out the Taliban...and stop blaming Pak.
As an Indian I see this news with a 'We told you so' moment. For 50yrs we have been grappling with this artifical nation of Pakistan born in pure hatred for the 'infidels'. Of course we as Indians have not done a good job of facing it even after fighting three major and one minor war. However the least that was expected by Indians out of the so called civilized NATO/US alliances is sympathy on what we in India are facing. Instead we get US declaring Pak its most important ally and delivering them aid and F-16's. NATO now has a preview of what US will face when US of A finally has to bomb and fight in Pakistan(Mushraff won't live forever and you know who will come after him).
RT
From Rediff.com
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/06pak.htm
Pak admits having helped insurgency in J&K
Sridhar Krishnaswami in Washington
October 06, 2006 17:47 IST
Pakistan has admitted that it might have helped insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir at "some time" but claimed it is now "trying our best" to prevent infiltration of militants into India.
"Jihad, insurgency or whatever you want to call it in Kashmir...Yes, Pakistan may have helped the jihad at some time but it was not started by us and now we are trying our best to stop people from crossing," Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States Mahmud Ali Durrani said.
He was delivering a lecture at the South Asia Programme of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. When asked what Pakistan was doing to stop terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiyba from crossing into Kashmir, he said, "To the best of my knowledge Lakshar-e-Taiba is a banned organisation. They are no more in Pakistan," Durrani said.
However, even two years ago, the LeT had money collection boxes in the markets of Rawalpindi, he said. "There were these hundreds and thousands of these boxes. That is finished and Lashkar-e-Taiba does not have the luxury of those funds... and the organisation has been banned," the Pakistani envoy claimed.
"We are trying our best. We have put military as well as intelligence assets in areas from where people went. There is no serious cross border movement today in Kashmir," Durrani claimed.
He said there were "vast areas" in which both India and Pakistan had responsibilities. "Both parties have responsibilities. If we can't hypothetically stop every guy from crossing over, the other side has responsibility too. So it is a joint issue. It has been addressed," he said.
Asked how Pakistan was dealing with what was being taught in the 'madrassas', Durrani maintained that every madrassa does not teach violence but they do preach a "very narrow vision of Islam."
The government is fighting to change the syllabus of such schools focussing on reforms that goes beyond just teaching of religion to including instruction in other subjects like maths and English, he said adding that they are being "closely watched" by security forces.
Durrani brushed aside as "grossly overstated" the notion that in the event of another military coup, 'jihadists' and extremists will come to the fore and, hence, the fear of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of such elements. "The nuclear weapons are very safe," he said.
On Musharraf's plans to quit as army chief, Durrani said "I think he's going to surprise us."
On the proposed legislation to amend the rigid 'Hudood' law, which puts onus on women to prove offences like rape, he said President Pervez Musharraf was trying to win over religious parties instead of bulldozing the legislation.
In his opening presentation, Durrani said that terrorism, irrespective of the motive, "is unacceptable" to Pakistan and that the country "is committed to fighting" it "in all its form".
Surely it would be better for the US goverment to cancel the sale of F16's and other military hardware and instead have the money spent on reforming and building up the school system ?
AI
the pakis should be given the question, you either work with on the war on terror or your blown up to the stone age. that could be good talking points with the pakis.
before they are brought up to the stone age, no more
paki allowed into Western countries. have closer ties with India, no more sales of anything involved with military. let them buy secound rate russian crap. if the pakis want to lift themselves out of their cesspools they will know the answer. you just have to look at improvement with India when decmocracy and capitalism are used by the people.
I read somewhere that when Afghanistan was invaded the US military allowed the ISI boys among the Taliban to go safely back to Pakistan. The Taliban was created, coached and armed by the ISI, so I wouldn't be surprised that Pakistan is now here hunting with the dogs and running with the hare.
If there is one country that deserves the "Axis of Evil" title, that country is Pakistan. In my eyes Pakistan is far more dangerous than North Korea for the world at large.
RT, I feel your pain brother. As an American, I have waited for years for my stupid government to realize that the Cold War is over, and for these dated cold war policies and convoluted alliances to end. Yet look who occupies the highest echelons of our government: Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney. Nothing but cold war experts and holdovers. To many of us, it defies imagination that Bush can speak of spreading and supporting democracy, while he supplies the Islamic dictatorship of Pakistan with weapons to use against our democratic brethren in India.
Naseem,i have carefully read your post and i really can sense the intelligence you exude, but what beat me is that you can still the defend islam, at this point i realise that yours is a truely spiritual problem(please no insult intended)like we say christian circle you might need deliverance from the spirit of islam, its a difficult demon but if you allow the LORD JESUS CHRIST just a moment he will sort it out in a jiffy.
but again ahmediya which you are, represent the most progressive islam because the believe jesus was crusified and Mohammed was not the last prophet, this make them an islamic cult, that is why in west africa, indonesia and the rest of Shia/sunni muslim world they are killed rather consistently
And yet you defend islam, yours is truely spiritual.
islam is a cult, a satanic cult. i had to leave
Only a fool can miss that Pakistan is at the root of internationa terror. Consider this:
- First WTC bombing by a Pakistani.
- Taleban supported by Pakistan.
- Nuclear secrets stolen by "Dr." from Pakistan.
- Nuclear thief pardoned by Pakistan.
- 9/11 funding by Pakistan.
- 9/11 master-mind from Pakistan.
- Indian Airlines flight IC 814 hijacked by Pakistan.
- Omar Sheikh, a released after hijacking, goes to Pakistan.
- Daniel Pearl butchered in Pakistan.
- Indian Parliament, attacked by Pakistan.
- 7/11 bombings by people from Pakistan.
.... need one go on?
So whats new ?
India has been at the receiving end of terrorism emanting from Pakistan for decades, while the West has turned a blind eye. Now the West coddles Pakistan as an ally in the war on terrorism !
What a hypocritical situation, that the west can embrace an terror enabling state just because of it's short term strategic interests.
"What a hypocritical situation, that the west can embrace an terror enabling state just because of it's short term strategic interests."
That hypocritical situation applies to Saudi Arabia as well.
What happened to "You are either with us or against us"?
I consider myself a moderate who could vote for either a moderate Democrat or a moderate Republican. However, I think the Dems were right that we should have focused on Afghanistan and the Taliban and stayed out of Iraq. Since this website is a major megaphone to GOP conservatives, please think about that. :-)
Unfortunately, neither party seems willing to challenge our 'allies' Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I guess the feeling is that a few bad friends in the Muslim world are better than no friends. I don't agree. Not only is it futile to try to play with double-crossers, but we end up getting corrupted ourselves, especially with oil money sloshing around.
Every accomodation with a muzlim country is a pact with the devil. No more.
As a kid, I alway wondered why America developed into such a nuclear behemoth.
Here I am grown up and it's all as clear to me as a showdown with the school bully.
The West thinks of Pakistan and Taliban as separate entities. The truth is that they are one in idealogy, one in fundamentalism and one in terrorism. Pakistan is Taliban and Taliban is Pakistan. This being the case, how can Pakistan co-operate in the fight against Taliban ?
All evidence to date suggests that Pakistan hates the West and the ideals of freedom and democracy it stands for. It hates India for the same reason; its not just a Hindu-Islam issue.
Assalamau Laikum americaningermany
You say "What do you have against blonds? Do I detect just a hint of racism there?"
I have nothing against blonds and there is no racism here. In Pak though blonds are seen the the epitome of the kaffur. It is the standard bearer of Kaffur, very few blonds are muslim and few very muslims are blond.
You say "Get your blond boys off their couch potatoes (whatever that means).Are you talking about my kids?"
absolutely, I am...all blond kids. In Pak when you talk about fighting the Amerekie...you think about fighting against blond soldiers...whether it's true or not.
Note however that blonds also appeal though. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Amerekie numerous incidents took place of alleged "ethnic profiling" and intense scrutiny of "Middle East-looking persons".
Bin Laden's network however had Balkan branches in the Balkans as early as 1993 in search of blond Moslems to counteract this.
Indeed an unknown number of "Afghan Islamic Fighters" joined the Bosnian military and many would eventually blend into the Bosnian society under NATO's nose.
In "due course", they could provide blond looking recruits and sleeper agents.
Also note that at Uni, (My son told me that) many muslims will try to get a blond girlfriend...and try to get her/them pregnant at the 1st opportunity...and pray to Allah for a blond boy.
Yes, the blond will have an increasing influence in Islamic thinking in the future...and I predict that.. blondies will be the greatest of western womens converting to Islam.
...kinda cool to see blonde muslims...though sadly I have not met one yet...get that hair dyed
...or prepare them for Islam ...!
The greatest scandal of this administration is the fact that it continues to ignore the threat of Pakistan, a county with nukes that is one coup away from becoming a nuke-armed terrorist-controlled state. I hope the White House has a solid plan for quickly deploying 250,000 troops onto Pakistan soil to secure all of the Pak nukes the minute that coup occurs.
Naseem, prepare for the aftermath of Musharraf's removal. The indians are coming. The Nato blonde boys will be coming. Your country will follow Musharraf into the grave in a manner of speaking.
We will not allow a mullacracy to assume control of the nuclear armaments. We will ask the Indians to meet us in the middle when we walk over from the Afghani side. If you're in Lahore you should fortify a safe place when you know the time to be imminent. At the first report of Musharraf's removal you should get all things ready.
How can leaders of our country remain totally oblivious of the above fact, when our generals are saying this....I mean I agree with president bush that its a fine line (when it comes to politics)... but damn it -- musharraff (the bastard) is taking full advantage of this. NATO officers said that the taliban had or fired atleast $5 Million dollars worth of ammuniton round in the latest operation. I mean common where the hell do they get all that shit from....ISI is Taliban and should be called as such!!
From a few years ago....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340165
"The ‘airlift of evil’
Why did we let Pakistan pull ‘volunteers’ out of Kunduz?
By Michael Moran
MSNBC
NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2001 - The United States took the unprecedented step this week of demanding that foreign airlines provide information on passengers boarding planes for America. Yet in the past week, a half dozen or more Pakistani air force cargo planes landed in the Taliban-held city of Kunduz and evacuated to Pakistan hundreds of non-Afghan soldiers who fought alongside the Taliban and even al-Qaida against the United States. What’s wrong with this picture?
"
As data Michael Moran also says...
"SEE NO EVIL
Western reporters actually in Kunduz in the days after it fell this week found much to dispel that doubt. Reports first appeared in the Indian press, quoting intelligence sources who cited unusual radar contacts and an airlift of Pakistani troops out of the city. Their presence among the “enemy” may shock some readers, but not those who have paid attention to Afghanistan. Pakistan had hundreds of military advisers in Afghanistan before Sept. 11 helping the Taliban fight the Northern Alliance. Hundreds more former soldiers actively joined Taliban regiments, and many Pakistani volunteers were among the non-Afghan legions of al-Qaida.
Last Saturday, The New York Times picked up the scent, quoting Northern Alliance soldiers in a Page 1 story describing a two-day airlift by Pakistani aircraft, complete with witnesses describing groups of armed men awaiting evacuation at the airfield, then still in Taliban hands.
Another report, this in the Times of London, quotes an alliance soldier angrily denouncing the flights, which he reasonably assumed were conducted with America’s blessing.
“We had decided to kill all of them, and we are not happy with America for letting the planes come,” said the soldier, Mahmud Shah.
IN DENIAL
The credibility gap between these reports from the field and the “no comments” from the U.S. administration are large enough to drive a Marine Expeditionary Unit through. Calls by MSNBC.com and NBC News to U.S. military and intelligence officials shed no light on the evacuation reports, though they clearly were a hot topic of conversation. “Oh, you mean ‘Operation Evil Airlift’?” one military source joked. “Look, I can’t confirm anything about those reports. As far as I know, they just aren’t happening.” Three other military and defense sources simply denied any knowledge.
Something is up. It certainly appears to any reasonable observer that aircraft of some kind or another were taking off and landing in Kunduz’s final hours in Taliban hands. Among the many questions that grow out of this reality:
Was the passenger manifest on these aircraft limited to Pakistani military and intelligence men, or did it include some of the more prominent zealots Pakistan contributed to the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaida?
What kind of deal was struck between the United States and Pakistan to allow this?
What safeguards did the United States demand to ensure the evacuated Pakistanis did not include men who will come back to haunt us?
What was done with the civilian volunteers once they arrived home in Pakistan? Where they arrested? Debriefed? Taken to safe houses? Or a state banquet?
"
Oh! well - I'm sure we now understand, why the Taliban has managed to resurrect itself...
Personally as one of the Infidels from India, I am fed up with the Indian Govt's inaction against Pakistan and fully support and will take part in a total all-out war to smash the PA to smithereens.
Even if this leads to a nuclear exchange it will be better to seeing people getting blasted by IEDs / bombs and living in fear.
I believe that fellow Indians have had enough of this bull**** and wish to end this once and for all. Beware PURELAND, your time has come!
Vishnu (an atheist)
From the Land of God(s), India
Naseem-
You constantly convince me that Islam is NOT a real religion.
You post endlessly and passionately about your religion but NOT ONCE have I detected the least trace of the sublime or the spiritual in your endless nauseating chatter.
There is not the slightest suggestion of spirituality or inner peace or wisdom in one word you have ever said.
Listen to yourself. Just listen to this weird chattering about 'blonde people' and kaffirs and all the diarrehea coming out of your passionately self-righteous brain.
I am convinced that Pak leader is full of it after listening to him call every name brought up in an interview as basicially a liar. No class. About as impressive a communicator as Ralph Peters.
If the incursions continue on the same scale because of the limp wristed "peace" agreement his precious sovereignty will not see further light of day.
I would prefer Papa Smirk to stick with his "with us or against us" rhetoric in action and deed.
More on the report and something about rockets discovered pointing at Parliment here:
http://inbrief.threatswatch.org/2006/10/nato-pakistani-intelligence-ai/
It's about time we call out the Pak-Rats, and their leader Musharef, for what they are; dirty lying bastard pigs. They are our enemy as much as Al-Queda is.
Naseem,
"so Pak boys should die too..."
Yes, they should die too. The fight against terror is global, and your leader said that this third world wasteland of Pakistan would be an ally in the fight against terrorism, which would mean that Paki soldiers may die as a result.
It is time for the US to unload the full force of its arsenal... we can't let these followers of the false prophet Mohammed play us any longer.
Just think, the leader of a terrorist nation Pakistan, threatened with terror, all from the party of Islam.
Why do they continue on the path of death and satan? What is the love based on?
These five years are just the begining. Very soon what appears shocking now, would be a common knowledge to everyone, still the things will go on in the same way, interrupted with the brief crackdown just to bring cosmetic appeal. Pakistan is very clever and good at betrayal, they have been practicing it for more than half a century with India. The very creator of the nation were the people who betrayed their own ancestors and thousands of years of history and culture. If any of the westerner is still under any illusion that Paksitan would be cooperating in the long run, they are highly underestimating the power of commitment a Muslim had towards Ummah and total indifference (if not hatred) towards those who do not share the faith. I think this is just the begining of realization, how difficult it is to tackle the people who are so irrationally committed to some religious ideology that they are ready to die in thousands without thinking for a second. It is made more difficult by the various economic and democratic constraints within which free world has to operate. If you just consider the Western History, it seems that forces of freedom, reason and liberty triumph finally. But history also tells that Islam has been spreading steadily, converting many free and liberal societies in to Talibanised world. It is the real conflict. To assume that freedom, reason and humanity will prevail by default would be a great blunder.
That's not new, right?
There are many Pashtuns in Pakistan, and they are ethnically and linguistically related to the Pashtuns of Afghanistan. They believe that they are the descendents of the lost tribes of Israel, believe that their founding princess (Afghana) was descended from King Saul.
And Muslims believe al-Mahdi will come to set up his Islamic Caliphate and he looks like a Bani Israel (children of Israel). Some Muslims believe that this does not mean the Jews, but a descendent from among the lost tribes of Israel (i.e., Afghan, Pakistani Pashtun). He is said to come from Khorasan region.
Islam's Much Awaited World Leader -- Al-Mahdi.
So, you can expect the Pakistanis to help the Taliban. That region is something Muslims and apocalypse watchers are watching.
AJack quoted an msnbc story filed in 2001:
Asked more directly, did Bin Laden and Zawahiri fly out of Afghanistan to the northern provinces of Pakistan on a Pakistani military plane?
One can debate whether the jihadist sympathies reach into the top echelons (although is has become exceedingly irrelevant what Musharraf really believes at this point), but there is plenty of support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda among the Pakistani intelligence and military. If not on religious/ideological grounds, then simple bribery.
Annotation to list from above by Alert See Complete 9-11 Timeline for more.
-c. 1988/89 Armitage promises F16's to Pakistan.
-1990 Pakistan has over 16 billion USD foreign debt
- US drops Pakistan in early 90's and starts to impose sanctions. Pakistan army and ISI resent this. Musharraf's book makes that clear.
- First WTC bombing by a Pakistani. 1993
- Taleban supported by Pakistan. 1993-94 to date
- Nuclear secrets stolen by "Dr." from Pakistan. 75 to date
-May 98 nuclear test Pakistan
- Aug 98 al Qaeda attacks US embbassies.
- Musharraf authorizes attack on India in 1999 pretending to be terrorists.
- Omar Sheikh, released after hijacking, goes to Pakistan.
- Clinton visits Pakistan spring 2000. Tells them to refinance their debt and drop sanctions they must
give up their nukes?
-Poverty rate in Pakistan doubles from 18 percent to 34 percent over 1990's.
-Pakistan foreign debt 38 billion dollars by 2000.
- General Ahmed of ISI visits DC in 2000. He is told Pakistan has to give up nuke program and stop
terrorism support to refinance debt and drop sanctions?
-Attack on USS Cole in 2000
-May 2001 meetings Tenet in Pakistan. He tells them of terror warnings and asks their help? He tells them to give up their nukes to roll over their debt?
-Aug 2001 Porter Goss and Bob Graham go to Pakistan. They tell them to give up their nukes and terrorism to refinance their debt?
-Sep 4 2001 Ahmed comes to DC and is told Pakistan
has to give up its nukes and support of terrorism to refinance its 38 billion dollar debt?
- on 9-11 Pakistan owes 38 billion USD foreign debt. Pakistan's Central Bank governor writes in his book that this was unsustainable. Pakistan had a huge deficit in its current account.
- 9/11 funding by Pakistan.
-9-13 Armitage meets with Ahmed to ask for support, Ahmed asks for money? Armitage and Ahmed have heated exchange. Pakistan agrees to US demands, US lets its debt be refinanced drops sanctions and Pakistan keeps its nukes
- Nuclear thief pardoned by Pakistan.
- 9/11 master-mind from Pakistan.
- Indian Airlines flight IC 814 hijacked by Pakistan.
- Nov 2001 Pakistan forces London Times journalist Christina Lamb to leave Pakistan for investigating ISI ties to 9-11. Note this was govt act, not some person on street.
- Daniel Pearl butchered in Pakistan. early 2002 while investigating Pakistan ISI ties to 9-11.
Omar Sheikh met him at his hotel room.
- Indian Parliament, attacked by Pakistan.
- 7/11 bombings by people from Pakistan.
Oh one other point on the timeline. General Ahmed came to DC on Sep 4, 2001 when their debt was unsustainable according to Husain their central banker. Some of the hijackers were staying near University of Maryland at the time. Ahmed could have given them the final go ahead after asking for money again and being told they had to give up their nukes, if it happened that way, which is speculative.
So its possible that Ahmed came to DC one last time to get refinancing of their debt without giving up their nukes and when that failed he met with the terrorists near U Maryland and gave the final authorization. Then he stayed on and agreed to help US fight terrorism but keeping their nukes.
This is only a hypothetical scenario.
Just think, the leader of a terrorist nation Pakistan, threatened with terror, all from the party of Islam.
Why do they continue on the path of death and satan? What is the love based on?
Posted by: Islofob IS-1 on October 6, 2006 02:04 PM
Hate to sound like a conspiracy-theorist, but given Musharraf's undeniable past support to the jehadists isn't it entirely possible that that these 'threats' to Mush's life are just craftily stage-managed to make Mush appear to the West as a 'moderate' fighting for his life against the jehadists?
Please read this, its very informative about "the clash of civilizations".
Islam and globalisation
Until late last month, when Salman Rushdie added his name to those of a few other like-minded souls and signed a statement attacking Muslims for having been outraged by a set of Danish cartoons depicting their prophet with satirical ridicule, something seemed amiss in that whole global uproar, writes Hamid Dabashi*
With Salman Rushdie's signature at the bottom of a statement declaring a global proclamation against "Islamic totalitarianism", in the aftermath of the Danish cartoon row, we have entered a new phase in what might be termed "Islam and globanalisation" -- a twilight zone of uncertainty where we are all at the mercy of fastidious knowledge produced about bugbears of nightmarish proportions, in this particular case what Rushdie and his associates curiously call "Islam".
"After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism", Salman Rushdie and his colleagues have declared, "the world now faces a new global threat: Islamism." How so, and by what authority? One looks in vain in the list of the statement's twelve signatories allied with Rushdie for someone with the remotest sense of demonstrable knowledge about this goblin of their perturbed imagination that they keep calling "Islam" -- and yet they do declare and designate this "Islam" as a global threat, next and akin to "fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism". The world is now at the mercy of such proclamations -- and Rushdie's name does carry, what Kent detected and declared in Lear and called, "authority". By what authority, how, when, what, and "who gave thee this authority" to declare such things -- no one dares to ask.
"We, writers, journalists, intellectuals", announce Salman Rushdie and his associates, "call for resistance to religious totalitarianism." They can of course call for whatever they wish -- but we are also entitled to ask "writers, journalists, intellectuals" of what particular and combined learning and erudition, knowledge and audacity, about the ghostly apparition that has disturbed their slumber. And why should the world attend and heed such proclamations? Is this thing they call "Islam" the faith of millions of people around the globe, or the bugbear of a band of neocon artists? It's hard to tell.
The case of the Danish cartoon row, in the furious rapidity of world events already an old issue, might be considered as perhaps the best example of how a boisterous banality now governs the principal mode producing public knowledge and thus perceiving Islam and its contemporary historical whereabouts. The row has a history, and the domain of its import implicates Europe in its entirety. It is not just the Danish paper Jyllands- Posten that initially commissioned and published these cartoons. Editors of newspapers and magazines throughout Europe, in print and on the Internet, jubilantly joined their Danish counterparts in massively distributing these cartoons and thus registering their European solidarity in the matter. One such incident after another adds fury and momentum to the way an increasingly globalised audience, Muslim and non-Muslim, conceives and disposes of "Islam".
Selected scenes from scattered Muslim reactions to the publication of these cartoons, pictorially staged and carefully choreographed by the leading European press to sustain their historical record of showing Muslims in the worst possible angle ever seen through a camera have been systematically characterised as yet another sign of a fundamental discrepancy between (this the most enduring binary opposition manufactured by Orientalists in the course of their prolonged services to colonial modernity) "Islam and the West": clean-shaven, civilised white men properly attired in business suits posited against poor, enraged, and furious Muslims.
That some Muslims around the world are outraged and multitudes of them have gone out on a rampage is yet another example of how they misread the domestic affairs of Europeans and Americans and take them for a global assault on themselves. The primary and principal target of these cartoons, with the denigration of Muslims they entail, is in fact labour immigrants of Muslim descent suffering the racism of their host country in one shade, shape, and form or another. A similar misreading was exactly the case when Samuel Huntington issued his own proclamation a few years ago, positing Muslims and Islam as the principal threat to what he still insists on calling, "Western Civilization." On that occasion too, Muslims around the world took Huntington's prognostication to heart and thought he was talking to them, while he, along with a band of like-minded neocon artists like Francis Fukuyama and Alan Bloom, was in fact deeply troubled by massive demographic changes within the United States. By proposing that "Islam" posited a civilisational threat to "the West," Huntington and Co sought to silence massive bodies of old and new, Arab and Muslim, immigrants to the United States demanding a pride of place in terms domestic to their cultural heritage and moral authority.
That the immediate target of the Danish cartoonists was not a remote abstraction called "Islam", but an immediate leviathan appearing in the shape of immigrant communities of Muslim background in their own midst there is no doubt. What remains a puzzle is why leading European opinion-makers, led by a group of yuppie racist journalists, continue to be in a dire need of reminding themselves that they are God's gift to humanity and that Jews and Muslims, the flipped sides of the same coin, or by extension Africans, Asians, or Latin Americans, have no place among them. It is here, and in the immediate vicinity of that question, that lapsed Muslims like Salman Rushdie become handy.
The leading European press (but by no means all) is now having an all-out orgy with its journalistic ethnic cleansing -- and the bravura cannot be entirely explained by the fact that certain kinds of Europeans, carrying their Christianity up their sleeves or else brandishing their "Laïcité" like a saber of unmerciful certainty, do not wish to see any Jews or Muslims, Africans, Asians, or Latinos, among them. With some bizarre sense of irony, the colonial history of Europe, having plundered the globe many times over, has now brought millions of Muslims from Asia and Africa home to roost -- and it would seem that some white Christian Europeans are frightened out of their wits. Oriana Fallaci is now chief among European soothsayers demanding the ethnic cleansing of her Europe. Between Fallaci and Berlusconi, the legacy of Mussolini's fascism is no history -- and Rushdie's "Islam" no substitution.
In the midst of this row -- militant Muslims and racist Europeans at each other's throat -- one cannot but wonder, with a modicum of reason, what is behind the quarrel. What we are dealing with here is the intersection of medieval signs and modern sensitivities, both brought to bear on a brutalised malignancy that resembles two belligerent and silly school children going at each other. To put things in perspective, one can of course begin with the inhibition of figurative representation in Islamic doctrinal disposition -- a fact very much compromised by the range of Persian, Indian and Turkish miniature paintings, and by the effervescence of figurative royal paintings in the 18th and 19th centuries throughout much of the Muslim world.
Against the doctrinal inhibition of figurative painting, such paintings do in fact abound in Islamic art. This inhibition assumes a particularly curious turn when it comes to the figural representation of Prophet Muhammad that it might be quite instructive to know at this point. When the late Syrian filmmaker Moustapha Akkad, tragically killed in the course of a suicidal violence in Amman late last year, made a feature film on the career of Prophet Muhammad, The Message (1976), he opted, out of respect for Muslim sensitivity, not to show the face or figure of the Prophet and simply suggested his presence.
The evident presence of this doctrinal inhibition does not mean that pious Muslims the world over do not look for and produce pictorial representations of their holy men, including their Prophet. The Shias, in particular, have absolutely no qualms whatsoever having the images of Prophet Muhammad and their Imams depicted -- painted on a canvas or woven into a decorative carpet -- and sold in the markets of Najaf, Mashhad, Qom, or Beirut. Pious and believing Muslims buy these pictures and hang them proudly and reverentially in their homes or in public without any hesitation.
The question then is why when a Danish newspaper depicts Prophet Muhammad in a ludicrous manner, or previously when a Pakistani author goes on a fictive rampage denigrating the sacrosanct moments of a people's history, some Muslims, particularly those suffering the terror of tyrannical rulers at home or else the indignities of labour migration abroad, are outraged. Career opportunist novelists or talent-less cartoonists, trying to make up for their lack of creative talent with scandalous marketing ruses, are of course entirely, unconditionally, and ipso facto entitled to make any fool out of themselves, for such acts of juvenile superciliousness are entirely within their civil and human rights, and no one is even in a position to grant or deny them such inalienable rights. But whence the anger, and whereby the fury?
This obviously is a clear case of the context and not just the text -- when you have a representation of a prophet with headgear that looks like a bomb and a nose straight out of the old European racist apothecary boxes, and lay him out thick against the background of a systematic record of white supremacist, masculinist, and European racism against Jews and Muslims, then you have a different story on your hand.
The current anti-Muslim plague, running loose throughout Europe and the United States, banks on the white Christian repertoire of anti- Semitism that has now shifted its focal attention away from the Jews and re-directed itself towards Muslims. Under the guise of the freedom of expression, and positing their racist prejudices in colourful colonial Enlightenment shades, prominent European opinion-makers, as fully evident in their leading newspapers and magazines, are letting loose their racist bigotry in ways unprecedented since the horrid records of European pogroms that ultimately led to the Jewish Holocaust, as is exemplified in the Prophet Muhammed cartoon row or the front covers of The Economist and most other right-wing papers and magazines up in arms against "gypsies" swamping "their lands", loudly declaring that "9 out of 10 asylum seekers are conmen," and that they ought to be "kicked out".
With a combination of mental laziness and a jaundiced visual imagination, these European newspapers are in fact regurgitating the selfsame anti-Jewish insignia definitive to their history and applying them to Muslims all over again. Contorted faces, prominent noses, frightful dispositions, angry demeanours, and grotesque postures have been and continue to be definitive to the way old-fashioned European racism sees Jews and Muslims alike. The self-inflicted surgical bodily mutilation of middle class Muslims -- ranging from plastic surgery of the most grotesque sorts to removal of bodily hair to colouring their hair blonde and wearing colorful contact lenses -- is the mirror image of the very same aesthetic hegemony of white Europeans.
What we are witnessing over the cartoons that the Danish Jyllands-Posten has commissioned and published, however, is not limited to a mere recycling of European anti-Semitism. There is a contemporary anxiety that feeds that pathological knee jerk. Placing headgear in the form of a bomb (a ticking bomb as Alan Dershowitz and Michael Ignatieff would say in the United States) on the head of Prophet Muhammad is the functional equivalent of placing a sign of a German concentration camp (the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei," for example), or a sign of the massacre of Native Americans, or a reference to the My Lai massacre of 1968 in Vietnam, or a picture of Lynndie England in Abu Ghraib, over the head of Christ in a Crucifix. It is a matter of combining medieval icons and modern barbarities, fusing the two in order to implicate the sacrosanct icons of a people in their entirety in those acts of barbarity. Using the figure of Prophet Muhammad with a suggestion of terrorism, as it is defined by the US and its European allies (while they are systematically going around the world and torturing, maiming and murdering people on the assumption that they might be Dershowitz-Ignatieff ticking bombs), effectively implicates some 1.5 billion people of Muslim background around the world in such acts of degenerate violence -- itself the continued reverberation of an entire history of European (and now American) colonial plundering of the globe.
Marking this event, two diametrically opposed reactions to the cartoon row now mirror and complement each other: first is the inexcusable anti-Semitic response of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, either denying the Jewish Holocaust, and thus belittling the unending suffering it has caused Jewish people the world over, or else encouraging anti-Semitic tirades in his homeland; and second a band of neocon artists, led by the functional equivalent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Salman Rushdie, branding a figment of their own turgid imagination "Islamism" and calling it "totalitarianism." While in Iran, the legitimate and absolutely necessary criticism of the apartheid state of Israel has now degenerated into anti-Semitism, in Europe and the United States, a band of equally ignoramus career opportunists are denouncing what they call "Islamism", a pathologically nervous hiding, and thus all the more revealing, of their own collective hatred of a people and their received notions of sanctity.
Initially published in Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly and one of the European papers to reprint the caricatures, the Rushdie and Co declaration warns that "after having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global threat: Islamism." Thus in the esteemed estimation of these signatories, the imminent threat to humanity is not the environmental catastrophe posed by the gargantuan waste and abuse of natural resources by the US and the entire industrial calamity it represents; not the manifestations of obscene wealth, on the one hand, and unfathomable poverty, on the other, in the heart of Europe and the United States (remember hurricane Katrina); not the fact that according to the UN some 870 million people go to sleep hungry every night around the globe while the military budget of the United States between the year 2000 and 2008 is estimated at 32 and eleven zeroes in front of that figure; not the unconscionable destitution of innocent people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, all created and conditioned by the globalised capitalism over which presides the US and Western Europe; not the prevalent racism, sexism, and a whole gamut of transcultural manifestations of endemic patriarchy, economic inequality, social injustice, and gender apartheid; not the systematic eradication of civil liberties in the heartlands of their cherished "West"; not the widespread network of torture chambers in Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, Guantànamo Bay, and a whole subterranean labyrinth of CIA-run dungeons in Europe -- no, none of these frightful facts, in the opinion of Salman Rushdie and his comrades, poses any threat to the globe, when compared to a handful of pitiful, scattered, and pathetic Muslim reactions, all out of fear, frustration, and despair, to the Danish caricature of their prophet.
This has of course been a long season of migration to the lucrative right, and not just sanity but sheer literacy has lost to self-promotion, conducted on the broken backs of poverty- stricken people. For while the varied forms of totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism (all vintage European inventions) were state-sponsored ideologies that wreaked havoc first and foremost on citizens caught in the snare of their lunacy, what they call "Islamism" (out of sheer historical illiteracy of what has happened in and to Islam over the last 200 years) is a US-sponsored propaganda gadget manufactured to generate and sustain an illusory enemy to justify warmongering and global domination.
A band of supercilious journalists publish a number of cartoons in Denmark and scores of Muslims are killed while protesting in the US-occupied Afghanistan, its neighbouring Pakistan, a client-state of the selfsame US, and then in other parts of the Muslim world. Where, and at what level of a rudimentary political literacy, does Islamic "totalitarianism" enter this scene? The only country in the world that carries the epithet of an "Islamic Republic" -- mirroring in its religious disposition the Jewish State, the US Christian Empire that supports it, and the Hindu Fundamentalism that aspires to its apartheid racism -- is Iran, where the theocratic tyranny of a band of useless medieval jurists is systematically and valiantly contested by its own citizens. Whence and where did Islam become a "totalitarian" state apparatus like fascism, Stalinism, and Nazism? There is not a single so-called "Muslim country" the inhabitants of which are not actively engaging and challenging the most sacrosanct principles of their faith. Just in their modern history, and over the last two hundred years, Muslims themselves have turned their collective faith upside down questioning the most definitive aspects of their faith. In facing and opposing the unfathomable barbarity of European colonialism, Muslims have left not a single stone unturned in their own religious doctrines and dogmas -- they did not and have no need to wait for a band of illiterate opportunists to tell them what is wrong with their faith and what they need to do. Nothing of that noble and continued history -- of a people launched against themselves -- is now a matter of global public knowledge, and yet the premise of everything said and conceived of Islam is precisely what illiterate prognosticators like Salman Rushdie and Co have deigned to tell their European and American clientele.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims the world over swallow their pride, turn their face from this ghastly European racism and go about their daily lives. Small bands of militant Muslims, angered by insults they think targeted against people they hold holy, go on a rampage and scores of them are beaten and even killed by the police in their respective countries. The very same press that started this horrid row takes pictures of these mobs and juxtaposes them against clean-shaven white European statesmen in their business suits and soft-spoken newspeak -- thus triggering the hurried reaction of these "writers, journalists, intellectuals", as they call themselves, self- promoting career opportunists as they are. Where did "totalitarianism" come into play? "Totalitarianism", let it be remembered, is a state ideology, presiding over a massive military machinery, the way Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini did -- all of them European, all of them white, all of them male, and yes, all of them Christian by birth and breeding.
To the everlasting shame of not just the signatories of this logically flawed and categorically racist document, signed and sealed by Salman Rushdie, but of every European who has remained silent or compliant in the course of the cartoon row, the principal target of this horrid act of racism remains not a stilted abstraction called "Islam", nor indeed millions of Muslims living outside the European racist imaginary. The principal target of these cartoons was (and is) an Afghan woman teacher in Denmark, a Pakistani child on her way to school in Norway, an Algerian busboy hiding from the police in France, a Moroccan street sweeper on his way to work in Italy, an Iranian cab driver negotiating his way in a city in Holland, a Turkish illegal immigrant scared to open her mouth in Germany, an Egyptian student fearing for her future in Spain, a Syrian restaurant-owner wondering if he will have a customer somewhere in Sweden, and then millions of others like them suffering the indignities of desperate labour migrations into Europe and weathering the monumental manifestations of European racism on a daily and regular basis. Now enter Salman Rushdie and Co, putting their ignoble names to a document that seals their approval of global injustice and racism towards 1.5 billion people, imagining themselves the beneficiaries of a European Enlightenment that in its very philosophical inception denied them and their homelands and cultures entry even into the category of "human" and considered their entire pedigree beneath contempt.
Today signs of a horrid collective racism are becoming evident in post-war European cities and towns dangerously and conveniently forgetting the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust -- when white European racist Christians sought systematically to eradicate an entire people on the single premise that they were Jews. Leading European newspapers have reprinted the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad not out of a ludicrous sign of solidarity with their yuppie and illiterate Danish colleagues, but to frighten millions of European Muslims into submission, shame, fear, and intimidation. Millions of Muslim children across Europe now go to school frightened, ashamed, feeling a false sense of guilt, and thus petrified out of their collective consciousness. What these newspapers are effectively doing is to make it impossible for Muslims to oppose violence and barbarity of all sorts, particularly those done in their name, in any way other than denouncing their collective faith, dying their hair blonde, bleaching their faces white, and thus metamorphosing into a walking denigration of themselves. Those children are the principal targets of every ghastly newspaper in Europe that reprinted those cartoons -- to make sure that they are bullied in their schools and neighbourhoods, discriminated against in their future job markets, growing up ashamed of their culture and character, and obedient to a globalised and whitewashed Eurocentricity with which the classical European anti-Semitism now wishes to mark its history.
"Islam and globanalisation", or giving European and American space to Muslim names to denounce their own Islamic phantasms, is a new phase in the social manufacturing of domination -- using nominal Muslims against Islamic abstractions. This -- pitting lapsed Muslims against Islamic sensibilities -- is ultimately an exercise in futility. The fate of the globe, Europe included, is written elsewhere, somewhere between the lines of massive labour migration, on one side, and the global reconfiguration of the capital that systematically seeks to abuse it, on the other. The culture war this has occasioned in the meantime is a murderous nightmare for many, a lucrative pastime for some, a headache for others, and yet at the end an entirely negligible footnote to history.
* The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (Second Edition, Transactions, 2006), and Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (Verso, 2001), the founder of "Dreams of a Nation: A Palestinian Film Project", and the editor of Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema (Verso, 2006). His forthcoming book, Iran: A People Interrupted , is scheduled for publication this year by the New Press.
I think that last posting from Naseem was a classic.Isn't it a delight to think that there are Muslim boys in our universities trying to get hold of blonde grlfriends and then get them pregnant at the first opportunity. What respect for women, what a sense of fellowship with the rest of the humn race, what an enlightened attitude towards relationships between the sexes. What a neanderthal.
bigbird, the article by Hagop Kevorkian was one big collosal waste of bandwidth.
Thank you, bigbird, for cut-and-pasting that big steaming pile of taqiyaah.
Yes, how dare common mortal men, with no sanction from Allah, name an enemy that is killing tens-of-thousands (see Darfur) per year? Under what right do they openly speak their thoughts?
There they go again, viewing themselves as the victims of a genocide on the scale of the Jewish Holocaust (which, there is a good chance this writer would cast doubt on the existence of, regardless of his using it in his essay, logical consistency being an encumbrance). Never mind that it was the "Palestinian" Mufti and the rest of the Muslim lands that allied themselves with Hitler and the Nazis (do we need to link to the photos and videos again?), and even offered expertise on the mechanics of the operation of the death camps.
Again, the cause of Islamic violence is found, and again, it is the infidels that are the cause of their own murders. The infidel newspapers that dare to report Islamic violence are therefore the cause of Islamic violence. Not the Qur'an, which exhorts Muslims to commit Islamic violence, "slay them wherever you find them", and so on.
No possibility that the "obscene wealth" and "unfathomable poverty" might be somehow related to work ethics, or the inshallah fatalism that "Allah will provide".
And here's the solution: the U.S. should dismantle its defensive army and donate even more of its resources to the poor, sleepy, hungry Muslims. Because...because...we owe them so much...because...well we just should.
I could barely force myself to continue wading through this pile of excrement.
And he's a professor at Columbia University. A "moderate". How nice.
And now I see that bigbird has cross-posted this gigantic dungheap post on every thread.
I need to go take a bath after wading through it.
bigbird-
That was brilliant, eloquent, stunning...
you do have an amazing gift for language - a kind of classical simplicity of expression, an ability to weigh and choose just the right word for exactly the effect you wish. I am impressed.
Oh, by the way what planet or parallel universe were you talking about? It didn't seem remotely familiar to any world I live in.
I didnt write this.I wish I had the brilliance to write it. And by the way, its the world of healthy people, not homicidal half mad losers, ranting,raving and whining about some weird conspiracy in the planning,aiming to take their house, vacation, credit card, dog and all the nice things that go along with the American dream.In others words, we heard it all before.
Very good dicussion above including Alert's timeline that was expanded further before the big post above.
General Ahmed of Pakistan's ISI was in DC meeting with US govt from Sep 4 onwards. Did they tell him that they were doing drills on 9-11 that involved US aircraft being diverted towards the West? Could he have passed that on to the hijackers so they chose 9-11 as the day US military jets were diverted in this other operation?
Or was this mentioned to him by Porter Goss or Bob Graham when they visited Pakistan in August 2001? Or when Tenet visited Pakistan in May 2001?
These are just questions not assertions.
Tickets already bought in late August time frame so that is too late for anything told to Ahmed after 9-4-01 to be used for that. Its probably not likely even info on August 2001 trip would have been in time to get to the hijackers.
That hypocritical situation applies to Saudi Arabia as well.
What happened to "You are either with us or against us"?
Posted by: Mr Ape Pig at October 6, 2006 10:28 AM
Absolutely on the mark, Mr. Apr Pig! If Pakistan is the mother, Saudi Arabia, with all the material and logistical provisions, is the father of internatioal terror. Any wonder, war on terror (if it was 'terrorists', Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would be right in the firing line) is going nowhere (except wasting infidel tax-dollars)?
Unfortunately, neither party seems willing to challenge our 'allies' Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Benjamin at October 6, 2006 10:37 AM
No! I mean, yes, you are right about not challanging the mother, Pakistan, and father, Saudi Arabia, of lnternational terror, but even before that, Bush bares responsibility of making these terorrist rogues 'friends and allies' against terror. After all, it is a known fact that both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are joing architects of 9/11. The only reason Bush made these enemies 'friends and allies', is because he is timidm in addition to, corrupt (and slow). Bush should have been atleaset challanged, if not stopped from making this criminal blunder.
So its possible that Ahmed came to DC one last time to get refinancing of their debt without giving up their nukes and when that failed he met with the terrorists near U Maryland and gave the final authorization. Then he stayed on and agreed to help US fight terrorism but keeping their nukes.
This is only a hypothetical scenario.
Posted by: Old Atlantic at October 6, 2006 03:12 PM
Interesting theory, Old Atlantic, and not out of the rhelm of possibilities. Infact, given the chess moves that Omar Sheikh specialized at, more likely than not. Also, thanks for the detaild timeline. You have a sharp mind!
oh naseem where do I start LOL. Fisrt of all I do not know what University your cave dwelling youth attend, but by the 6th grade i apparently knew more about genetics than your cromag son and his friends do. See blond hair is a ressesive gene when matched with brown or black hair. Uless the individual with dark hair carries a hidden blond gene it is impossible to create a blond person from the coupling. See the mother will always give a blond gene, the jihadi son will usually give only brown or black genes, thus the product will always be that of the jihadi. If the jihadi had a parent that was blond (unlikely)and he had dark hair it is possible to create an offsping with dark hair with the coupling of a blond since he could give either blond or dark. Tell this to your cromag friends. Secoundly blond boys are from countries that expect them to behave like gentlemen in war, while fighting savages like you and your cohort. Untill these these countries let the blond boys fight with thier gloves off they should stay at home, because these coutries should feel the wrath of thier enemies, so they will let thier sons fight without fear of prosecution not only from thier enemies, but by thier governments.
We all know how the brown babies cry when the blond sons fight rough ie: Serbia they cry for the other blond sons to fight the battle they can not win.
Just to illustrate that Pakistan is a part of the problem, not the solution, one needs to go back to the days after 9/11 when US 'warned' Pakistan about an impending attack on Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda. The warning helped 'muslim brother' Osama leave Afgnainsitan, to you-guessed-it, Pakistan.
Like I said before, only a fool can miss that Pakistan is at the root of international terror.
Naseem -
You can't be serious! You stated, "I predict that blondies will be the greatest of western womens converting to Islam."
Because???????????
I'm blonde, Naseem, but I will never convert to this cult. Islam is an empty religion and void of true love and peace which was founded by a false prophet, Mohammad.
Please read ismail's post.
I wish you all would ignore Naseem, that attention seeker.
AJack posted something really to ponder upon and it has gone ignored because all of this blonde stuff.
Taliban is the Creation of Pakistani Intelligence Agency ISI so there is no difference between Pakistan & Taliban. Moreover Taliban were the Pigs who were educated in the pakistani Madrassas(Terrorist creating wombs).
So Taliban is Pakistan & Pakistan is Taliban.
NATO found it out now BUT the Indians we saying it through ages.
Why we are not allying with Such a good Country like India which holds Democracy & Secularisim as its bonding principals.
Ditch Pakistan and Support India by all means to get RID of this SHITHOLE called PUKISTAN.