The development of First Amendment free-speech jurisprudence during the 20th century begins during and just after World War , with the famous dissents of the of Holmes and Brandeis in Gitlow, and in Abrams, and then the formulation of the "clear and present danger" test by Holmes, writing for the majority in Schenck.
Much later, that test, which had undergone modification in Whitney (1927), was further whittled away, and a kind of "balancing test" substituted for that etiolated "clear and present danger" doctrine. Since Dennis other tests have been proposed, and adopted by the Court, notably that of the majority opinion in Brandenburg, in which it was decided that there had to be a "threat of imminent lawless violence" from speech for it to be banned.
Since Brandenburg there have been still other modifications. But it is clear that whatever threat to the American polity might have been represented by that handful of anti-war socialists throwing a few pamphlets out of a tenement window in Abrams, or by the organized Communist Party of California in Whitney, that threat was nothing. The Communists never had a chance of "overthrowing the government." The threat from the ideology of Islam is more widespread, durable, and persistent. It will last as long as Islam lasts. And the way in which that "overthrow of the government" is meant to be achieved is not through some kind of violent revolution, with those Muslim masses marching on Washington, but rather through a slow but systematic challenge to every single aspect of the legal and political institutions, and even social understandings, of the Infidel nation-state. These challenges will continue until little by little, guttatim, those institutions surrender by degrees to conform better to the demands of Islam.
The duty of Jihad to spread Islam is not one that need be fulfilled only, or even mainly, through violence. Where Muslims are as yet too weak, and violence would undoubtedly fail, then other means, where available, are to be employed. The Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest can, in the eyes of those who take the long view (not that long, by the way), steadily remove all the obstacles to Islam, so that it will inevitably take over.
Are we so sure it cannot happen? Many intelligent observers note that there were, for example, 15,000 Muslims in the Netherlands in 1970 and now there are one million. And in the Netherlands the most popular political figure, Pim Fortuyn, was assassinated a few years ago, as was a well-known public figure bearing one of the most famous Dutch names. Today it is members of the Dutch Parliament who must be protected from Muslims, and so must many of those who speak out forcefully against Islam all over Western Europe.
There are all kinds of indications that there is no way for the people of the West to preserve their own civilization, and no good reason to do so -- including the recent banning of a march "against the islamization of Europe" in Brussels, and the statements of various leaders in individual countries, and among the highest levels of the E.U. bureaucracy, who apparently believe that demography is destiny, and that mere head-counting will have to decide the fate of Europe. They seem to believe that Europeans must not take any measures to defend themselves, even measures deemed perfectly appropriate when used by the government of the advanced and tolerant state of Czechoslovakia back in 1946. All this is not discussed. All this is held to be beyond the pale. It makes no sense in Europe, and it makes no sense here in the United States, with our fates, too, tied to those of the civilization and people of Western Europe.
In the Dennis case, the Supreme Court referred to an opinion of that great American jurist Learned Hand, of the Second Circuit. Learned Hand, dealing with free-speech cases in which the relevant test to be applied was that of "clear and present danger," offered his own calculus.
From the majority opinion in Dennis:
“Chief Judge Learned Hand, writing for the majority below, interpreted the phrase as follows: 'In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the ''evil,'' discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger.' 183 F.2d at 212. We adopt this statement of the rule. As articulated by Chief Judge Hand, it is as succinct and inclusive as any other we might devise at this time. It takes into consideration those factors which we deem relevant, and relates their significances. More we cannot expect from words.''
Constitutional jurisprudence has gone beyond Dennis, of course. The "clear and present danger" test no longer exists, having been superseded by, inter alia, Brandenburg, and by later decisions.
But the new domestic threats are linked to constant replenishment from abroad of the coffers and the personnel of those who would use violence against the indigenous Infidels of this country. They are linked as well to that steady stillicide of demands and threats meant to wear away the resolve of Infidels to preserve their own institutions, and to employ against them their own solicitousness for individual liberties and for pluralism, by those who believe in neither but would do away, if they ever came to dominate, with both. This will necessarily lead to the making of new law in the area of free speech.
What form will it take? It is hard to guess. But the calculus of Learned Hand is not a bad place to start to rethink the matter. Instead of “is the threat ‘imminent’" (as in Brandenburg), what should be focused on is the magnitude of the threat, multiplied by its likelihood. And in judging the likelihood, the judges will have a right and a duty to look at history, even recent history, to see what has happened elsewhere where Muslims have steadily gained the demographic upper hand, and the kinds of changes that they have managed to make as a result.
So remember that formula by bushy-eyebrowed Learned Hand: “In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the ‘evil,’ discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger.”
The gravity of the evil, discounted by its improbability.
What is the "gravity of the evil" in this case?
And what is the "improbability" of that "evil" coming to pass?
Constitutional law is going to be exciting in the next few years -- alas.
Given that, from the beginning of the republic, judges have been inventing new rights (mainly for themselves), and new reasons to encroach on state power, and so on and on, in other words, since the Constitution is little more than a dead letter these days, it may just be that in the interest of the preservation of the nation the court(s) just might say, "Enough! Islam is hereby declared to be not a religion but a code of conquest and spoil, and is hereby no longer protected as a religion in these United States. In short, judicial activism could perhaps be employed in the defense of the nation, and the Bill of Rights may come to be seen as someting other than a suicide pact.
Ya think? Nah, nevermind. Sorry.
This is a great topic. The "free exercise" of Islam is already "restricted" by many laws of congress despite the free exercise (establishment) clause of the constitution. For example, our murder laws make no exception for apostates or those who insult the prophet. We should make a list of all the Islamic laws that clearly conflict with other constitutional rights.
One policy would be to establish a right to financial reparations from Islam for damage from the free exercise of Islam. Sort of like those from the catholic church for errant priests only adapted to the teachings of the prophet. If after 9/11 the US had seized $200B from implicated Islamic countries, what would have been the effect?
"There are all kinds of indications that there is no way for the people of the West to preserve their own civilization, and no good reason to do so..."
Haven't we been and won't we continue to be the cause of our own destruction?
The threat posed by Communism was a European threat, born in and of Europe. That made it easier to fight. It was what we were used to: European countries and cultures fighting one another as they had for centuries.
The only reason Islam can threaten us now is because we are willing to allow it. And why is that? Could it be that globalism and the perceived need to right past wrongs have weakened our own foundations? Islam didn't do this to us. We did it ourselves.
In the US the civil rights movement was a fight for equal justice and treatment before the law and it gave way to a group rights mentality. Immigration laws that had served to maintain the European cultural predominance in America gave way to come one, come all. Our history as "a nation of immigrants" suddenly meant we couldn't require newcomers to learn the predominant language. Today's Muslims use this history to their advantage. Any resistance is deemed to be bigotry. The political correctness movement helps it along. American history was deemed "European history" and not relevant to the newest Americans. We went from the melting pot to the salad bowl and now we are the beautiful mosaic.
It is now considered a violation of human rights to deny people the right to move freely across national borders. Sovereignty is almost quaint. From the European Union to NAFTA and the proposed North American Union, the move to erase national boundaries in all or many areas and to create a global village plays right into the hands of the Muslim umma. Globalization is supposed to ease commerce and prevent war (countries that are vested in each other's economies don't fight one another) but it has another side to it.
"And what is the "improbability" of that "evil" coming to pass?"
--posted by Hugh
I think we see "the evil coming to pass" every day right before our very eyes.
The question is: when will the evil become so unavoidably obvious that even the most myopic of infidels cannot avoid seeing it?
Not "if" but "when"
From above
There are all kinds of indications that there is no way for the people of the West to preserve their own civilization, and no good reason to do so -- including the recent banning of a march "against the islamization of Europe" in Brussels, and the statements of various leaders in individual countries, and among the highest levels of the E.U. bureaucracy, who apparently believe that demography is destiny…”
It may not be as bad as it currently looks for the future of Europe, which is crucial for the future of the USA (for just one point of cruciality, just think of all those European nuclear missiles). A well-respected military analyst and author, Ralph Peters, is sure that Eurasia is a myth. I don’t know if he’s right but take a look at “The Eurabia Myth”:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11262006/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_eurabia_myth_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm?page=0
What do you think, Robert, Hugh?
If you’ve already seen & commented, please send link.
lol @ "improbability of that evil coming to pass"...
like betting on what hindsight will be before it happens...aka, assuming something WON'T happen, based on "bean-counting" from desk jockeys.
Uh, HUH...no different than many who endorsed such naievete` on 9/10/01...then, they ASSumed that the "improbability of an evil (like 9/11) coming to pass" wasn't even in the cards...
...but it was...and turned "improbability" equation on its ear...
...because of this ASSumption.
"ASSumption is the mother of all f***ups."...and the 9/10 crowd continues to ASSume a great deal, even amidst it biting them in the @$$.
Our Constitution is not a suicide pact.
"These challenges will continue until little by little, guttatim, those institutions surrender by degrees to conform better to the demands of Islam. "
....witness just today, congress passing resolution without a nay vote to recognize Islamic Ramadan.....witness the footbaths being installed....witness the Islamic courses being forced upon the children...witness the numerous lawsuits being advanced by Muslims...witness the various school activities such as dress as muslim day, eat muslim food day, recite qur'anic passages in school for a passing grade...witness the forced removal of bibles, CHristian prayer, the American flag, the display of the Constitution and Bill of Rights...witness the new observed Muslim holidays on the school calendar...witness the continuous onslaught of Muslim demands....
...and no one says no....
...it is time to change this...we can begin by banning Muslim immigration...
Those wishing to find out a little more about Learned Hand, can click on this link:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/10521
Hand was a great civil libertarian. When you think of Holmes and Brandeis, you then think of Learned Hand. And when you think of Learned Hand, you think of three writers on Free Speech, Meiklehohn of Amherst, and Robert McCloskey of Harvard College (not Harvard Law), and Alexander Bickel of Yale Law School. These are the people to repair to, and not those who have usurped their places, just as similar people, without the wisdom or sense of this older generation, from an older order of things, and a different kind and level of both training and education, have seized control of the A.C.L.U. and made it the force for disorder, legal and moral, that is has become today.
A little time travel in American law is on order: Holmes, Brandeis, Meiklejohn, McCloskey, Bickel. Accept no up-to-date and with-it and fashionable substitutes.
"If after 9/11 the US had seized $200B from implicated Islamic countries, what would have been the effect?
Posted by: justask "
THe money would be frozen and the Muslims would have continued to pursue their JIHAD. In Fact, the world has frozen millions (maybe even billions--the figures are not released) of Muslim dollars, it has not slowed anything down.....
...In fact, all the Muslims have achieved is to speed up the Jihad and possibly to accelerate their own demise by bringing to the attention of the world of their goals of Dar al Islam and no Non Muslims and their violence has served to bring attention to the goals of Islam....
Freezing money accomplishes only temporary setbacks...Islamic states continue to provide ample funds to continue the Jihad....and to provide bullets, bombs, and suicide bombers...
From PMK:
"We went from the melting pot to the salad bowl and now we are the beautiful mosaic."
Wouldn't be great if we were a salad bowl or beautiful mosaic? Unfortunately, it looks more like a pressure cooker. The general population is in cooker, political correctness is the lid with Islam and the Left providing the heat. Then there are our politicians from both parties, who see themselves not just as cooks, but veritable chefs of the New World Order. They continue to leave the heat on while insisting that the lid be kept clamped down tight.
Of course, at some point, the lid will fail and release the super heated contents of the cooker. The chefs will be killed or horribly scarred when the lid blows off and most of the population will become vapor. When this happens, who's left to clean the kitchen?
FM -
The author of that piece sounds, unfortunately, very much oblivious to (or simply ignores) a few obvious points:
- How did Muslims come to be in the Iberian peninsula for 'over 800 years'? They certainly weren't natives...
- Muslim doctors and professionals don't suddenly become separated from their beliefs (see UK dentist forcing a female patient to wear the hijab), and if anything are more able to further the cause of spreading Islam and Islamic law because of their greater economic status.
- Muslims don't WANT to integrate into these societies, and it isn't the European or American populations preventing them from doing so. In Europe, they aren't herded into 'ghettos' by some evil group, they're there because they are lazy and want to feed off the free crap the socialistic European goverments are all too happy to hand out. The goal of the Muslim community isn't to assimilate and become part of the local culture, it is to subvert the local culture and institute Islamic law into the laws of whatever land they are in, INCLUDING the USA.
These aren't hidden goals, you can watch/listen/read enormous amounts of materials by Muslims stating these goals outright. There's a lot more points I could make, but most of them are covered by Robert's PIG on Islam and the Crusades.
If I were one to put labels on someone, I would say the author is an Islamic apologist...but I prefer to just let the facts speak for themselves.
exsgtbrown
Right. Freezing is not enough. Reparations should involve legal channels to take frozen accounts into the US treasury and to seize assets like oil fields if necessary or cut off aid to Egypt, military parts to Saudis, divert oil tankers, etc. Currently all of these are politically impossible.
We are trying what worked in WWII. Depose and rebuild. What worked against Nazis might not work with Islam but I think its the best of the politically tenable options at the moment.
This discussion seems pointless. The political will will only come with a dirty bomb or some other tragedy. Then we won't need Learned Hand to figure out how to change the law. Until then the masses will happily watch football and listen to music.
There is a related First Amendment issue at stake, involving our own free speech rights, which need to be exercised in order to alert others to the danger and prevent the creep of sharia and Islamic domination. There is more than one way for us to lose our First Amendment rights.
For example, we have already seen what happened with the cartoon rage controversy. Whoever makes a public statement deemed insulting to Islam places his or her safety at risk, due to the response we all know can result. It is difficult for the individual to stand up against the mob, and it is also difficult for the individual to stand up against someone who is willing to inflict violence. So, good people say nothing, write nothing, and do not peaceably assemble in opposition to violent threats of Islamic domination. The effective exercise of free speech is lost without so much as a court ruling as a result.
Second, laws can be passed prohibiting "hate speech" (such as laws in Europe) and prohibiting symbolic speech (e.g. desecration of a Koran). The idea behind these encroachments on free speech is that if you insult Islam, you will cause a riot. The gravity of evil can be great, and there can be a clear and present danger of violence (led by emissaries of the "religion of peace.") Therefore, the exercise of such speech is prohibited in order to keep peace. Since the adherents of other religions will not riot if their religion is insulted, such laws can end up having an unequal application. We end up with situations such as the squelching of the Brussels demonstration against the Islamization of Europe, or the U.S. felony prosecution of the Koran-flushing incident.
Beyond the free speech issue, we also need to recognize that the recognition of Islam as a "religion" together with the continuation of civil rights laws preventing discrimination on those grounds creates a huge handicap as well. Could we have won WWII if Nazism, or emperor-worship were recognized religions in the U.S., and if our doors were open to immigration from Germany and Japan, and the creation of unmonitored "places of worship" funded by our enemies? Could we have won the Cold War if communism had a similar protected status? Do we need to allow Muslims to have equal access jobs involving the keeping of vital national security secrets? We really need to end the protected status of Islam if we want to get serious about the war Islam has declared on the West. We need to be able to discriminate in order to protect ourselves.
Every peasant for millenniums has intuitively known that risk and danger involve the product of the gravity of the evil and its probability. Learned Hand puts it well but that doesn't change people's evaluation of risk. The loony left repeatedly denies the terrorist risk, ignores the demographic risk, and denies Islam's nature. My experience is that these people cannot be taught. The politics will only be changed by fear.
I posted this at greenspiece.blogspot.com in May. It seems apropos here.
A deference undeserved
The Virginia Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, was adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776 as part of that state’s first constitution. Its author is considered to be George Mason, but James Madison, at that time a delegate from Orange County and a member of the committee charged with the drafting of a declaration of rights, is known to be the author of Article 16:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason or conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
This final version adopted by the convention, however, was not Madison’s original draft of the article concerning religion. That, numbered 18 and collected in the Library of America edition of his writings, reads:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, that all men are equally entitled to enjoy the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate, Unless the preservation of equal liberty and the existence of the State are manifestly endangered; And that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.”
The redaction of the italicized words, and the subsequent omission of any similar qualifier from the First Amendment, have doubtless forestalled much mischief throughout the history of the republic. But today, “the preservation of equal liberty” is manifestly endangered by the free exercise of a religion – the one whose “general basic principles,” as Bat Ye’or notes in “Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide,” are, according to the text it holds to be the “eternal, uncreated word” of the Almighty:
“... the pre-eminence of Islam over all other religions (9:33); Islam is the true religion of Allah (3:17) and it should reign over all mankind (34:27); the umma forms the party of Allah and is perfect (3:106), having been chosen above all peoples on earth it alone is qualified to rule, and thus elected by Allah to guide the world (35:37). The pursuit of jihad, until this goal will be achieved, is an obligation (8:40).”
The “eternal, uncreated” Qur’an, moreover, exhorts Muslims to “Fight those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth among the People of the Scripture, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). The 14th century commentator Ibn Kathir, whose views yet carry weight in the Muslim world, interprets “subdued” as “disgraced, humiliated, and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced, and humiliated.” (Tasfir Ibn Kathir [Riyadh 2000], cited in “The Legacy of Jihad,” ed. Andrew Bostom, New York: Prometheus Books, 2005).
In view of this decidedly unegalitarian attitude – reconfirmed ad nauseam in Islamic texts and consistently evinced throughout 14 centuries of Islamic comportment toward the world – one could well wish that Madison’s original qualifier or something along its lines had been included in the First Amendment, that the menace posed by a totalitarian religious ideology might receive a condign measure of restraint from those charged with the “preservation of equal liberty” in America. Unhappily, no such restraint is in sight – in fact quite the reverse, as witness the program I describe here.
"A well-respected military analyst and author, Ralph Peters, is sure that Eurasia is a myth. I don’t know if he’s right but take a look at 'The Eurabia Myth'..."
-- from a posting above
"Well-respected" by whom, and for what? One cannot simply attach an epithet, and expect others to salaam-salaam. Peters is sometimes sensible, sometimes wild, even ludicrously so. He has had a hard time of it with Islam, makes all kinds of pronouncements. I think he has been delicately dismembered by Andrew Bostom, but possibly also at this website. He says one thing, and then another thing, and they don't always make sense. For a long time he was a great supporter of the idiocy in Iraq. He still can't quite understand what the Americans should want to be the outcome -- clearly, a weakening of the Camp of Islam -- and still can't figure out, insists upon overlooking, the obvious way to achieve this, by exploiting (that is, by doing nothing to prevent) the sectarian and ethnic fissures that Iraq presents us with on a platter.
From justask:
"We are trying what worked in WWII. Depose and rebuild. What worked against Nazis might not work with Islam but I think its the best of the politically tenable options at the moment."
But it's a half hearted attempt. In WWII we made an intense, all or nothing effort to kick hell out of our enemy's military, morale, industry, economy, and ultimately the population who provided the support for the aforementioned. Once we prevailed, we disassembled and specified the new structure of their societies, including the structure of the government, schools, and economy. Any armed insurrection in the conquered countries was dealt with promptly and harshly, and "Mein Kampf" was not allowed to form the basis for the new government. We held a tight reign on those countries until the changes took root.
The current effort is a vague shadow of the WWII effort. We are depending on rationality in an area of the world where precious little of it exists… and we continue to dream that moderation can defeat extremism. It seems self-evident that this technique is a pipe dream, if for no other reason than the definitions of "moderate" and "extreme". Moderates are, after all, moderate.
In this conflict we have killed only the enemy's machines, not his will. Precision weapons applied only to leaders will not do this, allowing Koranic and Sharia references in constitutions will not do this.
The time when difficult, unpleasant choices will have to be made is approaching fast, and we must consider them soberly. We need to grow up, and insist that our leaders do likewise.
Texan,
I think most Europeans know that the Muslims don’t really want to integrate but rather to dominate eventually, but what Peters is saying is that when push come to shove and the indigent (&proud) Europeans see their precious Europe really about to become something very non-European by those they tolerated to clean up their park grounds, they will react as violently & decisively as historically they have acted when they feel really threatened by aliens, or ”the other”.
RalphInfidel
I mostly agree. I think the reason for the half heartedness is that with WWII Americans believed they faced an existential threat. With Islam Americans do not believe that. We see mostly incompetent terrorists. The cost of Iraq in $/GDP is tiny. The cost of lives in Iraq plus Afghan over 3 years is one tenth of a single year's highway deaths.
I sort of agree with FM that Europeans will play their moral superiority, multicultural game until suddenly fear will switch them to doing "what they do best" in the words of Captain Jack Sparrow. :)
It is all so sad because this could be solved legally with a draconian reparations policy. But the Europeans are choosing inquisition by default. I think we would find that most Muslims love money more than death. Human nature should not be discounted.
(Should have been part of my last post.)
If we're going to fight a war, let's do it like we mean it:
White Guilt and the Western Past
Why is America so delicate with the enemy?
BY SHELBY STEELE
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008318
Or, let's stay out of their way as proposed by Robert & Hugh, and hope they keep busy killing each other. Either way, at some point it looks like Islam's "Convert, Submit, or Die" philosophy will force us to give the same options to Muslims en masse.
RalphInfidel
Yes, stay out of their way like the Christians of Constantinople in 1453 or Vienna of 1683 or pirates of 1802. Muslim petrol dollars have precluded that option. Now Russia has a good motive to goad Iran into closing Hormuz. I don't think Robert and Hugh are really proposing that are they? I'm sure they would limit immigration and unleash incitement laws. I wish they would say more about solutions. That's why I wanted to discuss free exercise law details. But the vitriolic fog is pretty thick around here.
justask,
"Yes, stay out of their way like the Christians of Constantinople in 1453 or Vienna of 1683 or pirates of 1802."
…or like 9/11. It's hard to stay out of their way when they come looking for trouble. You're right, my characterization of Robert's & Hugh's position as "staying out of their way" is oversimplified; I meant it only insofar as military action in the Middle East is concerned. They are without a doubt among the most rational and vocal defenders of Western Civilization.
I also agree, as you said earlier, that "Human nature should not be discounted." And the consequences of human nature are what I read into the Ralph Peters' article being discussed on this thread. I think Peters believes that at some point human nature in the West will take over, and:
After years of hearing that Islam is a religion of peace while seeing evidence to the contrary all around us.
After endless jihadist attacks that we are told to absorb without coming to any prejudicial conclusions about Islam or Muslims.
After years of bending over backwards to understand, appease, and ingratiate ourselves with Muslims.
After most Muslims will not condemn and fight against jihadist violence.
After the blatant efforts of Islamic imperialism inside our own countries.
After many Muslim leaders publicly support violent jihad against us.
After Muslims riot in the streets by the hundreds of thousands over cartoons.
After seeing signs proclaiming "Islam will rule the Earth" and "Freedom goto Hell".
After we are constantly told by the jihadists that they "love death more than we love life".
After years of all this, a "final solution" may seem reasonable, particularly in Europe.
At some point the West may say, "OK, we're gonna give you what you love most, because we've come to love your death even more than you do!!"
When that point comes and the lid on the cultural pressure cooker blows, the only thing capable of moderating our response is our own (the West's) self control. And by then self control is likely to be in short supply, because we're using it all up now.
That's what I read into Ralph Peters' article.
RalphInfidel
Precisely. And future generations will bemoan that we didn't act sooner and avoid more pain. Europeans will self-flagellate for their atrocities. History repeats. Islam is self destructing before our eyes.
The Courts really need to issue rulings put befor them concerning what aspects of Shira Law are Un-Constitutional.
One cannot be compelled to break the Law because of a Religous obligation. Neither can the Law be superceeded by Religous decree. It is not the right of the Individual to upsurp the Law nor encourage others to do so.
If Groups Protest the actions of others. Then the Others have the right to counter Protest just as Vigerously, if not more so.
I find it hard to see where there was ever the time in American History, Where so many have been Muzzeled from telling so few, NO.
The evil would have a lot more gravity here if we hadn't gotten off on the wrong foot with the War on Terror misnomer. Identifying Islam itself as an enemy would go a long way to helping squelch it. As it is, we're in a muddle, trying to help the "real" Muslims defeat the fake ones, who are actually the real ones.
Hard to defeat evil when you can't define it.
And what do our judges know about Islam, Sharia Law, dhimmitude, history of jihad, etc? To what extent have any of them read Spencer, Bostom, Warraq, Bat Ye'Or, Fallaci, etc. To what extent have Esposito and Armstrong been influencing their education on Islam? A scary thought, but look at the State Department and the entire Beltway for that matter. They have undoubtedly also poisoned the Supreme Court.
The judges curled up for half a year on their carbon dioxide studies watching Gore's Inconvenient Truth and reading about computer model projections (GIGO), without consulting factual history of global warming. I need no further proof of this assertion than their own ruling, which is founded on thin air.
I am not hopeful that this Supreme Court will come down on the side of the American people with respect to the clear and present danger of the evil of Islam. Their left-wing prism for a world view guarantees calamitous rulings on this issue.
As for Peter's article, he seems to be unacquainted with the current moral collapse of Europe. Beyond that their EU elites and their individual governments have betrayed them to Islam. 1984 is just around the corner for these folks, but it will be according to Sharia Law. They seem to know it, and are resigned to it. Look at the dhimmi words their leaders mouth off without any criticism from their publics. Not encouraging.
"As it is, we're in a muddle, trying to help the "real" Muslims defeat the fake ones, who are actually the real ones.
Hard to defeat evil when you can't define it.
Posted by: jewdog "
...and until we see some improvement in Muslim attitudes and temperance...we should ban Muslim Immigration...
Hugh,
I’m surprised at your rebuking of my description of Ralph Peters as “well respected”. “By whom and for what?”, you insultingly ask.
I think one can say of a retired Lieutenant Colonel, author of twenty-two fiction & non-fiction books, columnist for the New York Post & USA Today and contributing editor at Arm Forces Journal that he is “well respected” (web search or see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Peters ). Does’t mean everyone loves & agrees with him but his credentials as a pundit or analysist and his resume in general, I would say, far surpasses yours.
I don’t necessarily agree with him on all issues (like the war in Iraq) but I invited you & Robert Spenser to critique specifically his interesting thesis about Eurabia given in http://www.nypost.com/seven/11262006/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_eurabia_myth_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm?page=0
Instead all you presented was a brief character assassination & dismissal. That was just lame, Hugh.
PS: IMO his latest book “Wars of Blood and Faith” is excellent.
When I parried your adjective -- that epithet "well-respected" that you simply placed, without more, in front of the name "Ralph Peters" -- with those interrogatives "by whom?" and "for what?" I was indeed taking issue with the whole notion, as currently offered, of "authority." I have known professors of English who were incapable of writing a simple English sentence and knew very little of the corpus of English literature. I have seen professors of French who cannot speak French, and whose notion of what constitutes "French literature" bears no relation to what a well-educated French person would offer. And so on, all through much of academic life.
And I have seen, on the nightly news, all kinds of on-retainer "experts" on this or that, some of whom are the most oleaginous apologists (see Fawaz Gerges), or portentous summarizers of the absolutely obvious (see Anthony Cordesman), or mililtary analysts who for some reason are called upon as "experts" on a place called "Iraq" (see O'Hanlon), not to mention kristols and kagans by the dozen.
I don't like to be told, by the press, or by anyone, that so-and-so is "well-respected." Is Jimmy Carter "well-respected" as an "international humanitarian"? Well, he thinks he is, and no doubt there are others who agree with him. Is Desmond Tutu, another of the self-described "Elders" who has gone to Darfur with Carter, a "great man"? He thinks he is. There are so many of these people. Is this or that magnate, who gives away a teeny-tiny bit of his fortune, to be hailed for his "generosity"?
And what about all those "experts on Islam"? Do you doubt that before the name "John Esposito" some will put the adjective "well-respected"? Or "the respected scholar of Islam, Noah Feldman, author of 'After Jihad'." You tell me if you think the adjectives there are misplaced. And you tell me if you think the telling of an audience that so-and-so is great, respected, or connected to a "prestigious university" (which prestige, like fairy dust, supposedly rubs off on all those who manage to teach at it, whether they are professors of elementary particle physics, or professors of hip-hop studies -- the latter, incidentally, being the new hire announced by the new President of Harvard, undoing, deplorably, what the deplorable -- in other ways -- Summers at least managed, during his brief tenure, to prevent).
Peters has a shtick. It is the "Military Man As Intellectual." Reporters interviewing him are inevitably treated to a view of all those German and Russian books in his library, and then they dutifully report this, being duly impressed, They fail to realize, as does their audience, that such being impressed merely demonstrates an unwitting condescension toward members of the military, as if it is quite amazing, worth reporting, that someone who was a career officer in the army could have such books, and presumably read them, in that German, in that Russian. What condescension toward the American military. I'm not having it.
Peter's' comments on Islam and Iraq have been a farrago of confusion. Here, I'll do just what you asked: I'll post below the thing he wrote, in 2006, pooh-poohing all those fearful cassandras, from Bat Ye'or on, whose numbers include Bernard Lewis, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Pavel Kohout, and Philippe de Villiers, and Ibn Warraq, and the late Oriana Fallaci, and a great many others who, "well-respected" or not, know a good deal more about Europe, and about Islam, and about Islam in Europe, than Ralph Peters, the sudden scholar of Islam and Eurabia.
I won't bother to criticize the article of his upon which you request comment. I find it best, in cases of obvious idiocy, to let the thing stand without comment. It's a technique used by the Austrian writer Karl Kraus, in his one-man (from 1911 to 1936) journal, "Die Fackel." Sometimes, No Comment Necessary is the best comment. But I'll put up what a writer in Belgium, Paul Belien, wrote in response to that crazed piece by Peters.
So look at the posting below -- and indeed, let everyone have a look, at what Ralph Peters wrote -- he's the dismissive one, he's the complacent one one -- about all those who are alarmed, and with reason, with the demographic conquest of Western Europe by the forces of Islam. Just look, and see what you think, what in that article gives good grounds for that complacency and that dismissiveness, instead of the foreboding and alarm everyone of sense should by now be feeling.
THE 'EURABIA' MYTH
By RALPH PETERS
November 26, 2006 -- A RASH of pop prophets tell us that Muslims in Europe are reproducing so fast and European societies are so weak and listless that, before you know it, the continent will become "Eurabia," with all those topless gals on the Riviera wearing veils.
Well, maybe not.
The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to ghettos take over their societies and extend the caliphate from the Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong.
The endangered species isn't the "peace loving" European lolling in his or her welfare state, but the continent's Muslims immigrants - and their multi-generation descendents - who were foolish enough to imagine that Europeans would share their toys.
In fact, Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds.
Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.
THE historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.
And Europeans won't even need to re-write "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" with an Islamist theme - real Muslims zealots provide Europe's bigots with all the propaganda they need. Al Qaeda and its wannabe fans are the worst thing that could have happened to Europe's Muslims. Europe hasn't broken free of its historical addictions - we're going to see Europe's history reprised on meth.
The year 1492 wasn't just big for Columbus. It's also when Spain expelled its culturally magnificent Jewish community en masse - to be followed shortly by the Moors, Muslims who had been on the Iberian Peninsula for more than 800 years.
Jews got the boot elsewhere in Europe, too - if they weren't just killed on the spot. When Shakespeare wrote "The Merchant of Venice," it's a safe bet he'd never met a Jew. The Chosen People were long-gone from Jolly Olde England.
From the French expulsion of the Huguenots right down to the last century's massive ethnic cleansings, Europeans have never been shy about showing "foreigners and subversives" the door.
And Europe's Muslims don't even have roots, by historical standards. For the Europeans, they're just the detritus of colonial history. When Europeans feel sufficiently provoked and threatened - a few serious terrorist attacks could do it - Europe's Muslims will be lucky just to be deported.
Sound impossible? Have the Europeans become too soft for that sort of thing? Has narcotic socialism destroyed their ability to hate? Is their atheism a prelude to total surrender to faith-intoxicated Muslim jihadis?
The answer to all of the above questions is a booming "No!" The Europeans have enjoyed a comfy ride for the last 60 years - but the very fact that they don't want it to stop increases their rage and sense of being besieged by Muslim minorities they've long refused to assimilate (and which no longer want to assimilate).
WE don't need to gloss over the many Muslim acts of barbarism down the centuries to recognize that the Europeans are just better at the extermination process. From the massacre of all Muslims and Jews (and quite a few Eastern Christians) when the Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099 to the massacre of all the Jews in Buda (not yet attached to Pest across the Danube) when the "liberating" Habsburg armies retook the citadel at the end of the 17th century, Europeans have just been better organized for genocide.
It's the difference between the messy Turkish execution of the Armenian genocide and the industrial efficiency of the Holocaust. Hey, when you love your work, you get good at it.
Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. When a third of French voters have demonstrated their willingness to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal.
I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims. After all, we were the only ones to do anything about the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans. And even though we botched it, our effort in Iraq was meant to give the Middle East's Muslims a last chance to escape their self-inflicted misery.
AND we're lucky. The United States attracts the quality. American Muslims have a higher income level than our national average. We hear about the handful of rabble-rousers, but more of our fellow Americans who happen to be Muslims are doctors, professors and entrepreneurs.
And the American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American.
But European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take over the continent that's exported more death than any other?
All the copy-cat predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe not only ignore history and Europe's ineradicable viciousness, but do a serious disservice by exacerbating fear and hatred. And when it comes to hatred, trust me: The Europeans don't need our help.
The jobless and hopeless kids in the suburbs may burn a couple of cars, but we'll always have Paris."
Here is one response, by a European -- Paul Belien -- who has seen the development of Eurabia from a ringside seat in Brussels, the capital of the E.U.
"Ralph Peters’ latest book “Never Quit the Fight” proposes a map of how America should redraw the borders in the Middle East. This enraged many Muslims.
Perhaps, having enraged Middle East Muslims, Peters, a retired US Army intelligence officer, thought it was about time to restore the balance and enrage non-Muslim Europeans.
Last Sunday he published an op-ed piece in the New York Post, entitled The ‘Eurabia’ Myth: Muslims Take Over Europe? Sorry, There’s No Chance.
Peters’ argument is that Muslim immigrants will never be able to conquer Europe because the Europeans are “world-champion haters” who will never let “impoverished Muslim immigrants” take over their societies. On the contrary, Peters asserts, the “continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing” will “over-react with stunning ferocity.” Europeans, Peters reminds us, “are just better [than Muslims] at the extermination process. […] It’s the difference between the messy Turkish execution of the Armenian genocide and the industrial efficiency of the Holocaust. Hey, when you love your work, you get good at it.”
Hence, “Europe’s Muslims will be lucky just to be deported,” Peters says. Fortunately for these Muslims, however, Peters is more than willing to deploy the U.S. Army in Europe “to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe’s Muslims.” He even invites a good number of them to settle in America since the United States has such a good track record with Muslim immigrants, who “have a higher income level than our national average.”
Ralph Peters’ diatribe against the Europeans reminds me of those anti-American Europeans who accuse Americans of being the “world-champions of genocide.” To prove their point they invariably refer to the plight of the American Indians, once the rulers from the Redwood Forest to the New York Island, now exterminated and confined to reservations. Though the number of people voicing such opinions is growing in Europe I do not take their vicious arguments seriously. I do not take Peters’ vicious anti-Europeanism seriously either, though I have noticed that this type of American anti-Europeanism is growing as well.
While visiting the US recently I met a conservative professor who told me almost literally the same thing as Peters. He, too, said that Europeans were ineradicably vicious, that hating others is in their blood and that they can never be cured of their mass-murdering impulse. He, too, said that, rather than taking native European immigrants in, America should open its doors to Muslims, because those people “can at least be respected while Europeans can only be despised.” He even added that the biggest mistake the U.S. made during WWII was to nuke Japan instead of Europe.
I can understand why these conservatives have come to despise Europe. They despise it because it refused to assist the U.S. in Iraq and because it refuses to stand with Israel. They know well enough, however, that the reason why European governments, such as that of France, do not stand up against radical Muslim regimes in the Middle East, such as Iran’s, is because these governments fear the large minorities of Muslims within their own borders. In short, they despise Europe because it has lost the will to fight for its own survival. Nevertheless, they blame Europe for exactly the opposite reason.
Their contempt has turned to hatred, which is understandable because it is all too human, but it is nevertheless utterly wrong.
Those who despise Europeans for having lost their willingness to fight back against Muslim arrogance are now accusing them of wanting to exterminate the Muslims. Those who have come to hate the Europeans are now saying that Europeans are “exacerbating fear and hatred.” They claim that Europeans are contemplating a second holocaust – this time with the Muslims as their victims.
In their hatred for Europe some conservatives even seem to have begun to embrace the Muslims. Peters is prepared to invite the latter to come to America, thus welcoming to the U.S. the cause of Europe’s disease today. It is said that hatred makes people blind, and Peters’ article in America’s most conservative newspaper is the best example of this.
As a European who loves America I belong to a minority. I edit an online magazine The Brussels Journal which tries to rally the small band of pro-American Europeans and warn America not to make the fatal mistakes we have made in Europe.
I can assure you that “Eurabia” is real enough. We have received threats from extremist muslims, we have been harassed by the authorities. I was present when earlier this year a group of scholars met in The Hague to discuss Eurabia. I saw how they had to do so anonymously, under assumed names and under police protection.
Eurabia is not a myth. Eurabia is all too real.
We see how the inner cities and suburbs in various European countries are degenerating into “no go” areas, where people get killed, where the police no longer venture and where radical Muslims hold sway. The French authorities have published a list of 751 “sensitive urban areas,” which are no longer under the control of the authorities and which have become, as Daniel Pipes remarked, the “Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.” Almost 5 million people, or 8% of the French population, live in these “sensitive urban areas.” But, apparently, there is hope, because here is Ralph Peters in The New York Post, offering to have the U.S. intervene and evacuate the inhabitants to America!
Americans do not realize how dramatic the situation is in Europe today. The Europeans are running. Instead of fighting they are leaving. They are leaving the cities for the countryside. In my home town of Antwerp 5,000 immigrants move in every year while 4,000 Antwerpians move out. Many Dutch are leaving their highly urbanized country for places such as rural Norway. Some are leaving Europe altogether.
The Netherlands and Germany have more emigrants than immigrants today, and in other countries, such as Belgium, Britain and Sweden the number of emigrants is rising. These people are not driven by hatred, they are driven by despair and the hope for a better future which they realize their Eurabian home countries are no longer able to provide."
[Paul Belien is editor of The Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.]
Why all this elitist verbosity? The Eurabia threat is real. Human nature is also real and the civilized veneer that mitigates human nature can shift quickly. The fear that causes that shift is building in Europe.
Regarding Ralph Peters -
I was hoping for a real critique of his hypothesis with historical evidence or at least plausible social-political theory but all we got was basically more fuming & character assassination. Am I supposed to think Peters is wrong because he’s just a Europe hater and wants to describe Europeans as bunch of nascent genocidal neo-Nazis so we can hate them too? It’s all about Peter’s hatred of Europe? I don’t see how his alleged hating of Europeans for being wimps before Muslims is consistent with his hypothesis that Europe will ultimately prevail forcefully over them.
Paul Belien writes that
”I was present when earlier this year a group of scholars met in The Hague to discuss Eurabia. I saw how they had to do so anonymously, under assumed names and under police protection.
Yes, there are cowardly scholars in Europe (like everywhere else) and even cowardly politicians doing cowardly things everywhere, and yes Muslims have their enclaves in Europe where they might make their own 7th century world but Peters is not talking about scholars or about the current crop of politicians & policy makers – they can come & go – but about future European leaders roused into power by the angry European finally fed up with the threat to Europe and European way of life by violent sharia-loving Muslims who at bottom are hardly European. I myself have been one of those believers in Eurabia and the eventual domination of Islam in Europe but Peters has given me second thoughts.
As evidence of his hypothesis Peters points out that a third of French voters (!) have demonstrated their willingness to vote for extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front. There is undoubtedly a large seething undergrowth of anti-Muslim anger going on. Furthermore, his description of Europe’s history of violent intolerance, genocide and forced expulsions cannot be denied. The recent 20th century had a number of incredibly bloody horror shows of such.
Yeah, Peters’ language is hard hitting (he’s a military man) and some of his speculations about the US possible saving Muslims may be over the top but that’s all beside the point.
I’m sure of one thing: there is no emotion & engine of action stronger that HATE. Neither Love, nor religious fever nor sense of morality can hold a candle to it, and when two groups of humans hate each other the only real question is which group has the more raw physical power. The Muslims surely hate, as their Koran instructs them to hate the stubborn infidel (“lowest of creatures” 98:6) but they don’t really have the power and when their foolish arrogance & bravado make enough Europeans hate, I mean really hate them for their threats & terrorism tearing at the fabric of Europe – well I’m not sure that Peters is wrong.
"was hoping for a real critique of his [Peters'] hypothesis with historical evidence or at least plausible social-political theory..."
-- from a posting above
Which "hypothesis" is it for which you hoped to find a "real critique"? His "hypthesis" that the development of a powerful Muslim community within the states of Western Europe, inexorably increasing both absolutely and relative to the non-Muslim indigenes" is false, and no one need worry?
What would constitute, for you, a "real critique"? How about numbers? Would numbers do? Does it impress you that in 1970 there were 15,000 Muslims in the Netherlands and now, in the same Netherlands, where two prominent opponents of Islam have been killed, and six others, including two members of Parliament, are under permanent and heavy guard because they have been threatened, there are one million Muslims? You can go on-line and find the same kinds of astonishing rise in the Muslim populations, of Great Britain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Belgium. Do it yourself, find out yourself.
And what would constitute, for you, a "real critique" of the other "hypothesis" (wild ravings, really) of Ralph Peters, that "Europeans" are all so cruel and so vicious, that eventually they will throw off their current mask and proceed to terrorize and kill the Muslims in their midst -- which, Peters hastens to add, is why we in the United States should welcome many of those Muslims here, for their own safety and presumably, for our benefit as well. What that benefit might be he does not say.
I don't think this kind of thing, at this kind of level, is worth bothering with. But Belien is not the only one to have dispatched Peters. And if you want to see Peters at its worst, see his attacks on Spencer, Bostom, and others.
The most comprehensive reply to those charges -- which give you some sense of what an idiot Peters is - is by Andrew Bostom. It is called "Ralph Peters Unhinged."
Here is that Bostom piece on Ralph Peters, for ready reference for all those who have been following this thread's little contretemps.
September 11, 2006
Ralph Peters Unhinged
By Andrew G. Bostom
Columnist, novelist, and retired United States Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has earned a reputation as an often insightful and provocative analyst of military affairs and geopolitics. But of late, he has taken to villifying those who examine the theology and practice of Jihad in Islam.
Writing what can only be characterized as an unhinged column in the September 7, 2006 New York Post, military analyst Ralph Peters lashed out at those he labeled 'Islam haters'. In a breathless series of vicious calumnies (summarized here), Peters claimed that those he lacked the courage to name, were: 'an enemy within', represent 'the most repugnant trend' in the current debate on Islam, are more 'destructive' than the anti—American left, are members of an ugly 'domestic insurgency' among 'right—wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism', believe that 'all Muslims are evil and subhuman', believe 'that Muslims are Untermenschen', are promoting 'the Protocols of the Elders of Mecca', are 'just the Ku Klux Klan with higher—thread—count sheets', are 'heirs of the creeps who once told us Jews can never be real Americans and JFK will serve the Vatican', are 'inveterate haters ... whose personal disappointments have left them with a need to blame others (sounds like al Qaeda to me...)', and are 'bigots [who] might like to try to kill a billion Muslims'.
Robert Spencer has posted an eloquent rebuttal to Mr. Peters article at Jihad Watch. My response focuses on Peters follow—up appearance to discuss his calumniating article on the Friday, September, 8, 2006 Laura Ingraham Show. This morning (9/11's fifth anniversary) he is back on the attack, in a symposium at Front Page Magazine, provoking the moderator to respond,
"With all due respect Mr. Peters, you are creating fictitious arguments and stances that no one of importance and real influence believes in and that no one here believes in —— and then you are knocking them down."
During his interview with Ms. Ingraham, Peters held up Indonesia 'the world's most populous Muslim country' as a paragon of moderate Islam. This is the same Indonesia that in the mid—1960s, Sukarno fatwa in hand, waged a murderous jihad against its own Chinese non—Muslim population which killed at least 100,000 ethnic Chinese. In the 1980s a frankly genocidal jihad was waged by the Indonesian government against the Christians of East Timor, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. For at least the past decade, there have been intermittent Indonesian jihadist pogroms against the Christians of the Moluccas which have also killed thousands.
The current Indonesian government released the jihadist leader Bashir after a trivial sentence despite his role in the Bali bombings. As MEMRI reports, this popular Muslim thug wants Indonesia to become, officially, a theocratic 'Allah—cracy'. Moreover, during a recent state sanctioned visit to Indonesia, Iranian President Ahmadinejad was welcomed by throngs of adoring Muslim Indonesian college students.
And for five centuries ongoing, Aceh has been a hotbed of irredentist jihadism. Here is what the great Dutch scholar Hurgronje (who lived in Aceh and was a sympathetic, but thoroughly honest student of Acehnese culture) wrote at the beginning of the 20th century (1906) about Aceh:
From Mohammedanism (which for centuries she [i.e., Aceh] is reputed to have accepted) she really only learnt a large number of dogmas relating to hatred of the infidel without any of their mitigating concomitants; so the Acehnese made a regular business of piracy and man—hunting at the expense of the neighboring non—Mohammedan countries and islands, and considered that they were justified in any act of treachery or violence to European (and latterly to American) traders who came in search of pepper, the staple product of the country. Complaints of robbery and murder on board ships trading in Acehnese parts thus grew to be chronic
Lastly, with regard to Indonesia, in present day Aceh, where Sharia Law officially prevails, this past week Muslim mobs razed a church in response to a forged (i.e., by a Muslim) advertisement inviting Muslims to a Christian revival service. Here is a published account of what transpired:
Witnesses said there were over 100 [Muslim] men present, many of them carrying swords. The mob poured gasoline over the building and set fire to it; they also attempted to burn a second building that was used as a church kindergarten. Some of the attackers came looking for Saragih and Netty at their home, which is nearby. The couple escaped into the nearby jungle and stayed hidden in the undergrowth. Many thought the couple had been consumed in the flames of the church buildings, but a friend found them at around 4 a.m. Christians in a neighboring province have provided shelter for Saragih [the pastor of the Mission Church which was attacked] and his wife, following reports that local police and Muslim leaders are still searching for the couple. It is uncertain when — or if — they will be free to return home.
But it was Mr. Peter's confabulatory response to an e—mail question asking him about the number of fatwas issued to condemn the forced conversion of kidnapped Fox News reporters Centanni and Wiig, that was most revealing. Peter's stated, that he didn't know of any such fatwas issued, specifically, but he was certain there must have been many.
I have written about the forced conversions of Centanni and Wiig, and the day before Mr. Peters appeared on the Laura Ingraham Show, my essay describing the burgeoning problem of violent Muslim Jew hatred in Western Europe was published. It is ironic (and depressing) that what I called for (Vatican II style reforms of Islam itself) is reiterated by Mr. Peters himself , in a slightly different (and less specific, less informed) idiom,
'The long overdue liberal reformation within the Islamic world can only be carried out by Muslims themselves".
Yet for expressing the same sentiments as Peters', his repugnant innuendo labels unnamed others as hatemongering bigots, fomenting genocide.
Finally, I have two questions for Mr. Peters regarding the obscene immoral equivalence he made in a February 2006 essay published in the Weekly Standard, which gives the appearance of glorifying jihad terrorists. Peters wrote,
We write off the suicide bomber as a criminal, a wanton butcher, a terrorist. Yet, within his spiritual universe, he's more heroic than the American soldier who throws himself atop a grenade to spare his comrades: He isn't merely protecting other men, but defending his god.
1) Who is Peters to say that the American soldier's act of true self—sacrifice isn't 'defending his god' by Loving His Neighbor?
2) Is saving comrades really comparable to killing and maiming innocents, the latter in pursuit of an imagined heavenly harem of compliant Muslim virgins?
Peters' comparison of jihad terrorists and American soldiers in this thoughtless essay is dangerously unhinged—about as unhinged as the crude innuendos in his New York Post piece, which the Council on American—Islamic Relations enjoyed enough to include in its 'American Muslim New Briefs' of 9/8/06.
[Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad.]
And here is the piece on Ralph Peters that Robert Spencer put up:
Ralph Peters flailing in a fog of confusion
Ralph Peters, retired military officer and author of several books on this present conflict, has published an op-ed in the New York Post entitled "Islam-Haters: An Enemy Within," which is one of the most confused and irresponsible pieces I have ever seen in an American newspaper -- and with the likes of S. I. Rosenbaum and Jim Ritter working the news beats, that's saying a lot.
Peters is exercised about "a rotten core of American extremists" -- right-wingers, of course, who are worse than Leftist appeasers because they insist that "Islam can never reform." If you "read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman."
Zowie! Who are these awful, Hitlerian bigots? Peters never tells us. Nor does he give us even a shred of an example of how they imply (nudge nudge wink wink) in ways that are clear to discerning fellows like Ralph Peters, that "all Muslims are evil and subhuman."
Of course, not naming his opponents gives Peters a free pass to flail away, throwing everything but Der Stuermer and the kitchen sink at his shadowy opponents, and allowing himself the coward's retreat of being able to deny, if challenged by anyone, that he had him in mind. Well, I'm going to ask anyway. You talkin' to me, Ralph? You talkin' to me? I guess you must not be talking to me, since the people who have you so wrought up have sent you emails, and I have never sent you anything. But I nevertheless think it necessary to try to clear some of the fog of confusion you have billowed out here, since some -- only some -- of the points your villains make sound like some things I have said. Sort of. And more importantly, since some people will be taken in by your piece, as nutso as it is, and be thereby diverted from some important truths.
September 7, 2006 -- ISLAMIST fanatics attacked us and yearn to destroy us. The Muslim civilization of the Middle East has failed comprehensively and will continue to generate violence. The only way to deal with faith-poisoned terrorists is to kill them. And the world's only hope for long-term peace is for moderate Muslims - by far the majority around the globe - to recapture their own faith.
Peters' Assumption #1: the Islam of moderate Muslims is the genuine Islam, and all they need to do is "recapture" their faith. In fact it is not for Peters or any other non-Muslim to say what genuine Islam consists of, and there is no Pope of Islam to rule on what is Islamic orthodoxy and what isn't. What we can do is look at the teachings of the various sects and schools of law -- which I have done, and have found that all mainstream Sunni and Shi'ite sects and madhahib (schools of jurisprudence) teach that it is the responsibility of the umma to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Sharia. Can Peters point to a sect or school that ever existed in any period of Islamic history that represents the Islam that moderates must "recapture"? Perhaps the Mutazilites? If so, can he explain how a modern revival of such a movement would escape the charges of Islamic heterodoxy that scuttled it in the first place?
But a rotten core of American extremists is out to make it harder for them.
The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn't the irresponsible nonsense on the left - destructive though that is. The really ugly "domestic insurgency" is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.
How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith's primary agenda - and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.
Here is Peters is setting up straw men, blurring distinctions and drawing unnecessary conclusions. I have never said that "Islam can never reform or that violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith's primary agenda," and I certainly have never stated or implied in any way that "all Muslims are evil and subhuman." I have said, of course, that Islamic reform will be extraordinarily difficult, because of the closing of the gates of ijtihad, the understanding of the nature of the Qur'an, and other issues. I have also pointed out, as I said above, that violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is an element of the teaching of all Islamic sects (except the Ahmadiyya, who are persecuted as heretics as a result). This is simply a question of fact. Its truth or falsehood can be established by anyone who examines the teachings of the sects and madhahib. I invite all to do so -- and if you do, you will see that I am stating this accurately. Does this constitute the "primary agenda" of Islam? No. At some times and among some groups it has been central, but at other times and among others it has been for certain periods of time deemphasized almost to non-existence.
Above all, does the existence of this doctrine mean that "all Muslims are evil and subhuman"? That's just ridiculous. The existence of any religious doctrine, even if someone thinks it is false and wicked, doesn't make all those who hold it evil and subhuman. Those who are killing the innocent, or helping those who are killing the innocent, are certainly evil, if not subhuman. But within Islam, as within every belief tradition, there is a spectrum of knowledge and fervor.
I have never said or implied that all Muslims are evil or subhuman because of the doctrines of Islam, and neither has anyone else with even the smallest amount of awareness of human nature. If Peters is referring to me or anyone else who has published on Islam and terror -- Trifkovic, Bostom, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye'or, or anyone else -- he would be hard-pressed to substantiate this outlandish charge from anything any of us has actually said or written.
I've received no end of e-mails and letters seeking to "enlighten" me about the insidious nature of Islam. Convinced that I'm naive because I defend American Muslims and refuse to "see" that Islam is 100 percent evil, the writers warn that I'm a foolish "dhimmi," blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam.
Here again, he is just setting up a straw man. Let him document from any of the writers I named above any of these statements, or name these evil people he's talking about.
Web sites list no end of extracts from historical documents and Islamic jurisprudence "proving" that holy war against Christians and Jews is the alpha and omega of the Muslim faith. The message between the lines: Muslims are Untermenschen.
Web sites, eh? Yes, I have here at Jihad Watch on many occasions provided extracts from "historical documents" like the Qur'an and the approved hadith collections, as well as from Islamic jurisprudence, "proving" that holy war against Christians and Jews is part of (not the "alpha and omega of") the Islamic faith. You talkin' to me, Ralph? If so, come out from that hiding place and show me where I ever implied that "Muslims are Untermenschen." Or show me that I have misused these texts, since you appear to believe that Islam doesn't really teach these things. I'll be right here, at director@jihadwatch.org.
We've been here before, folks. Bigotry is bigotry - even when disguised as patriotism. And, invariably, the haters fantasizing about a merciless Crusade never bothered to serve in our military (Hey, guys, there's still time to join. Lay your backsides on the line - and send your kids!).
It's time for our own fanatics to look in the mirror. Hard. (And stop sending me your trash. I'll never sign up for your "Protocols of the Elders of Mecca." You're just the Ku Klux Klan with higher-thread-count sheets.)
As for the books and Web sites listing all those passages encouraging violence against the infidel, well, we could fill entire libraries with bloody-minded texts from the Christian past. And as a believing Christian, I must acknowledge that there's nothing in the Koran as merciless as God's behavior in the Book of Joshua.
Sure, Ralph. That's why there's a global terrorist movement of Christians committing violent acts and justifying them by quoting the Book of Joshua.
Peters' Assumption #2: Christianity and Islam are equally violent in their core texts (or maybe Christianity is more violent) and equally capable of inspiring violent fanaticism. This, of course, is a deeply held belief among many, many people. And like Peters, many of those people apparently believe that it would be a species of bigotry to suggest that Islam is more likely to inspire violence than Christianity. But here again, this is simply a question of fact. The Bible contains no open-ended, universal command to make war against and subjugate unbelievers, a la Qur'an 9:29. Muhammad commanded his followers to wage war against unbelievers who refused to convert to Islam, and to subjugate them as dhimmis (Sahih Muslim 4294). When did Jesus ever say anything like that?
Another trait common among those warning us that Islam is innately evil is that few have spent any time in the Muslim world. Well, I have. While the Middle East leaves me ever more despairing of its future, elsewhere, from Senegal to Sulawesi, from Delhi to Dearborn, I've seen no end of vibrant, humane, hopeful currents in the Muslim faith.
Well, Ralph, I've spent time in the Muslim world too. And everywhere I see cultural Islam in retreat and jihad advancing -- even in Dearborn, which I didn't realize until you just told me was part of the Muslim world. But anyway, there are reasons for the resurgence of the jihad ideology -- notably, the ability of jihadists to point to the Qur'an and Sunnah to justify their positions. But I expect you would just call them "bigotry."
As I have said many times, I am all for encouraging and working with moderate Muslims. But for their moderation to be effective, they have to confront, repudiate, and help other Muslims to repudiate the elements of Islam that are giving rise to violent fanaticism. Most self-proclaimed moderates instead simply deny those elements exist, while the mujahedin continue to use those same elements to recruit new members. And now Ralph Peters, in his fog of confusion, has just contributed to that destructive denial.
[Posted by Robert at September 8, 2006]
Hugh,
why is it that when you mentioned all this, it made me correlate the "gravity of evil" topic and your take with that of a black hole in space?
No idea what made me think of that, bu somehow it seems to make some sense...just wondered.
Keep it coming...