Fitzgerald: Stop payment

Stop the goddam Jizyah. If you can't stop the half-trillion that has gone to prevent sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq that we should welcome and even encourage, then for god's sake at least take a stand on the Jizyah -- the Jizyah to Pakistan, creator and supporter and now meretricious protector of the Taliban and of many other Islamic groups dangerous to India and to the Infidels everywhere. Stop the Jizyah to Egypt, Egypt the sinister kleptocracy, the world center of antisemitism and anti-Americanism. Stop the Jizyah to Jordan, whose "plucky little kinglet" (son of the "plucky little king") is, thanks to Noor and Rana and plummy-voiced Prince Hassan, such a perennial crowd-pleaser. But what a crock, what a thin veneer, what a facade of rationality on a country quivering with anti-American and anti-Infidel hate. And stop, above all stop the Jizyah to that favorite cause of Western leaders wishing to avoid the matter of Islam, wishing to postpone the day of reckoning, wishing not to think about the arms of NATO or the lands of NATO falling into the wrong hands and becoming controlled by the Camp of Islam. And so, in their failure and ignorance and wish to avoid confronting reality, they always rush to give toys and good things to eat to the "Palestinians" and to reinforce, in their own minds, the dreamy belief that "if only" Israel and the "Palestinians" can come to an agreement, everything will simmer down. Oh, sure they can come to an agreement -- an agreement that will be broken, and must be broken, on the model of Muhammad's Treaty with the Meccans at Hudaibiyyah, just as soon as the Arab Muslims feel strong enough to go in for the kill.) They can come to an agreement, and then this little blip during which "extremists" seemed to have found an audience will end, and things will continue as before.

And as for the islamization of Western Europe through Da'wa and demographic conquest -- fugeddaboutit.

This is the level of thought that prevails in the chanceries of the West. The Americans are hardly the worst. But if the Bush Administration persists in this and other follies, it must be stopped by the sane and well-informed members of Congress, Republican and Democratic.

One waits for Tom Tancredo and others to declare their opposition, and to put that opposition in the terms used here: Stop the Jizyah. And explain why American aid to Muslim peoples and polities has become a kind of Jizyah, and why it must end. It must end so that the Americans and other Westerners break the habit of submission, of feeling that somehow they owe this to the "Palestinians," or to Egypt, or to Pakistan, or to Jordan. And it must end in order to break or disabuse the recipients from their confidence that they have this Jizyah coming to them, and the Western Infidels would not dare to permanently cut them off.

And finally, the Jizyah paid by Western governments should end so that the poorer Arabs and Muslims are forced to demand money from the rich Arabs, who are drowning in unearned wealth, so that they, those Saudis, those denizens of Kuwait and the U.A.E. and Qatar, with their tiny populations and hundreds of billions of dollars, will have to show or explain why they are not showing that famous solidarity and loyalty to fellow members of the world-wide Umma al-islamiyya. And since they will never provide what the "Palestinians" consider their due, or if it is provided the "Palestinians" will come back for more, all kinds of unhappiness and resentments will develop. For “Palestinians” do not have the habit of work, but only of warfare, and besides, Gaza and the West Bank are essentially unviable economically. The people there, though no one will say it aloud, can only continue to exist on a permanent dole. When they come back for more this will begin to grate on those Saudis, those Qataris, those Kuwaitis, and all the others.

And that is a Good Thing. Because along with the Sectarian and Ethnic Fissures on display in Iraq, the third great fissure within the Camp of Islam is Economic, between the fabulously rich oil states and peoples, and those without the manna of oil and gas. The economies of the latter states are as wretched as would be those of the Muslim oil states if those states did not possess that oil, that gas, those trillions in unearned and unmerited oil wealth.