That quote can be found here, with about 3:30 remaining in the ABC News video (If the direct link should fail to work, click on "Exclusive Interview with Gov. Sarah Palin," from here). The fact that she is willing to acknowledge the Islamic aspect is at least a departure from the lexicon of the current administration. However, her reference to the Tiny Minority of Extremists unfortunately reaffirms that counter-terror policy, whether directed by either party, will continue to be grounded in fundamental misconceptions about the nature of the conflict.
The most obvious misconception, which is a near article of faith in public policy, is that there is nothing in Islam itself -- in its texts, tradition, and teachings -- to support what jihadists have done and continue to do. The second is that such activity must be violent in order to advance the jihadist agenda, which is, ultimately, to impose Islamic law. Together, those two notions contribute to a third: that only a minuscule number of Muslims worldwide would like to see Islamic law replace secular governments, believe that violence is justified to that end, or believe those on the receiving end of various jihadist atrocities somehow had it coming. The occasional set of polls casts doubt on just how tiny the Tiny Minority of Extremists is, but what truly drives the point home is the daily stream of news items in which violence is committed in the name of Islam, and the unwillingness on the part of Muslim advocacy groups in the West to repudiate the ideology driving that violence (and not just in generalities for Western public consumption).
But the Tiny Minority remains as dogma for both parties; if nothing else, the fact that neither party fully grasps the nature of the threat facing the West should underscore the fact that the issue ultimately transcends partisan politics: Jihadist activities will still be an issue long after this presidential election, and the next one. And, to borrow a much-used (and parodied) slogan, then, where combating the global jihad is concerned, we're still left for the time being without the promise of "change we can believe in."
I heard Bolton last night on the same subject, and he said the same thing.
Hopeless. We lost the plot.
A while ago Gingrich was making all the right noises, but who would vote for him?
Looks like WE are the 'tiny minority of extremists...'
But I'll come along for the ride, because I am not a whore for the Arabs. I don't wanna see mosques, hijabs and coffee-filters on every street-corner.
I like the first and the second amendment (although I am not American and I don't live in the US) and nothing, nothing in the world replaces the right to the pursuit of happiness, (which most people don't even understand) but for which I envy you Americans.
Don't lose it. don't give it away. These things are non negotiable.
The simple truth is that American government today, like the British government during the Mandatory period, can not afford to incur the wrath of the oil-producing Arab world by telling truth and doing what's right.
Until that changes, the tip-toeing will continue.
I'd like to know which mosque sponsored the 9/11 memorial Bolton and Palin each were invited to.
You know, for all the talk about the omnipresent overwhelming majority of 'moderate' muslims there is precious little evidence of their existence.
If such a population exists, one would witness the "overwhelming majority" of mosques representing the "overwhelming majority" of moderate muslims populating this nation each sponsoring annual 9/11 memorials - openly denouncing the violence of the lesser jihad perpetrated by devout koranists.
Where is the transcript of the script to such sermons?
As for politicians continuing to maintain this twilight zone fantasy - ENOUGH.
Lan Astaslem. I WILL NOT SUBMIT to ISLAM. I WILL NOT SUBMIT TO or accept any further POLITICAL B.S.
It's up to you, Alaskan jihadwatchers - for the sake of the entire free non-Muslim world, and even for those countries that are not free, but are still better off than they would ever be in the seven hells of Sharia.
Educate her!
I have a feeling she just might be educable.
Here's a few ideas.
To fill her in on the way Islam treats non-Muslims: somebody: send her all the links, from this site, pertaining to the case of Anila and Saba in Pakistan, Catholic little girls snatched by Muslim pimps/ slavetakers...and, coolly, arrogantly, KEPT with the connivance of the authorities. She has daughters. Grab her by the emotions.
Make her realize: THIS IS WHAT ISLAM DOES if you are so unlucky as to be a non-Muslim minority in a Muslim-majority country - Muslims will feel perfectly entitled to snatch your minor daughters, rape them, abuse them, brainwash them, 'convert' them, and never give them back.
(Throw in some stories about the abduction, rape and 'conversion' of Coptic Christian girls in Egypt, and similar abuses practised against Christian Assyrian girls in Iraq).
Tell her about Aisha, and Khomeini lowering the age of consent, and WHY it is that so many girls in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, are married off at 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 - and bedded, too, according to the sacralised example of the 'prophet', and have first babies at 11 and 12 and 13, and often die doing so. Tell her: THIS is what 'sharia' is.
Give her the text of the Cairo Declaration, and the text of the UDHR, and point out to her that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights [sic] in Islam, NEVER repudiates slavery. Give her a hint about Islam's horrific history of mass enslavement of black Africans, Hindu Indians, white Europeans, and Jews (Yemen).
Somebody else: send her Andrew Bostom's essay on 'Genocidal Shiite Jew-Hatred', which sufficiently explains why Ahmadinejad is saying and doing what he is saying and doing.
Send her a copy of Mr Spencer's 'Islam Unveiled' and 'Onward Muslim Soldiers'. Or just a printout of Mr Fitzgerald's mini-essay, 'Basic Jihad'. Make sure she's told about taqiyya, and kitman, Treaty of Hudaybiyya, No Permanent Peace with Infidels, etc.
If she could just acquire the target, so to speak, then...beware the American Soccer Mom, O jihadis.
More proof that nothing will change in the next administration, regardless of who occupies the White House.
I thought the same thing, dumbledoresarmy; she might "get it" if she studied Islam & its history.
But she would not be the elected president; only vice-president. And how much influence would she have after helping McCain get to the White House? After all, most VPs are part of the furniture after elections.
Or are people hoping for McCain's demise shortly into his presidency?
Do not worry for Palin: she knows about Islam!
But, she must stay not too far from political correctness in order to win the elections.
Coaltaxopeuh - links please
Don't be fooled by her choice of words. During her interview with Charles Gibson, she was only saying what came first to her not because of any properly chosen words.
Charles Gibson asked her about the Bush doctrine and she didn't know what it was. She was asked three times whether it was America's right to invade Pakistan and she didn't answer the question.
Maybe she should stick to being a hockey mom.
Blue
More proof that nothing will change in the next administration, regardless of who occupies the White House.
Posted by: PMK
hear hear.
"There is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme, and they are violent, and they do not believe in American ideals"
She did not say the rest actually does believe in American values. In her position, the statement is a step in the right direction.
I, too, was disappointed to hear Sarah Palin parrot this line, which was obviously only one of many standard responses stuffed into her head by McCain handlers. But, given the circumstances, it was the correct response. Her basic wiring is correct regarding Islam, even if that part of her circuitry might have been temporarily shorted out by the huge overload of information she has been force-fed over the past week. Think of this interview as an artillery ranging shot for her. The first one may not have been a bulls eye, but the important thing will be to observe if the ranging improves over the next few rounds.
There's that 'Tiny Minority' again. No one can say just how tiny it is, but I expect it is very tiny, maybe three or four at the most.
They just move very fast and do a lot of damage.
I am at a loss to explain why the other billion or so muslims seem helpless to reign these three in.
They give Islam a bad name and give kufrs the impression there is something about Islam that is mis-understandable, and not then perfect.
The Tiny Minority must be stopped. Islams future as the religion of peace depends on it.
Now if we could only find those guys...
The Tiny Minority must be stopped. Islams future as the religion of peace depends on it.
And Muslims are the only ones who can find them and stop them. The ball is in their court.
If they're going to use the excuse that they're afraid of retribution then what right do they have to expect US to do their job for them?
I used to see a picture of a UFO with "moderate muslim" written on it over at LGF, {it read "I want to believe"}. I can't find it now. It was a photoshop of the X Files picture.
Anyway, it would be appropriate to post here.
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/blog/iwanttobelieve.jpg
dumbledoresarmy,
Why don't we just copy and send Palin one of your tirades before we send her any articles from JW?
That way she'll know just what kind of constituents follow these types of stories and therfore how she would best act on behalf of her nation.
You would do America a great service thereby.
peace
I would not call 99.99% a "small percentage".
An other dhimmi in the big white wigwam?
Abdullah Mikhail,
Rather than take "gadfly" potshots at posters, I would like to see you explain the polls linked in Marisol's post, as well as (and especially) this one.
concerned citizen,
Sorry about the “gadfly potshot”…I can give a point for that. All is forgiven?
Now on to the surveys, to shoot from the hip?
Sampling error, for the first major problem.
In order to get any substantive result in a survey you need an adequate sample. That sample is only 0.0000384615384615385% of the very conservative figure of 1.3 billion Muslims.
The second one, the time frame the survey was taken over is too long. A child of seven at the start was a teenager before the survey ended.
Spread those 50,000 people out over that long time frame and think about it. A lot of opinions change over time, and in this day and age, rapidly based upon current topics.
The third, the survey itself? What were the questions and how were they framed?
Now the fourth point, media spin. It doesn’t matter what the survey really says, it’s how they spin it:
“But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.”
A billion Muslims were not surveyed. See how that media spin just took place?
Now let’s put the shoe on the other foot, and consider a survey of Americans.
What will they say about Islam? Survey 50,000 and see what you come up with. We both know how the media in this country paints. How damning will that outcome be?
It’s all relative.
How was your week?
Peace
The posted article must be read in conjunction with, for example, these other two articles, that sum up something like the current 'state of play' vis a vis the Combat Jihadists, in France and Britain.
First article here, on France:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022653.php
PARIS, Sept 11 (Reuters) –
“France has arrested 55 militant Islamists this year and the country's prisons have become a favourite recruiting ground for such groups, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in an interview published on Thursday.
"While some Islamists are still travelling to Iraq, Pakistani and Afghan networks have strengthened, and "training and indoctrination sites" are now concentrated in that area, Alliot-Marie said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.
"I can reveal that 89 Islamist activists were arrested in France in 2007, and that 55 others have been arrested on our soil since the start of the year," she said.”
That's just ONE and a half year's 'catch'. And if not caught, any one of those activists could have become a mass murderer.
Now, the 'state of play' in Britain as summarised by Melanie Philips. The numbers are facts. The content of the jihadi videos, is fact, not fiction.
UK.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022651.php#comments
London —
"Earlier this week, a British jury convicted three British Islamists of conspiracy to murder, acquitted one, and failed to convict four more. This resulted from the investigation of the 2006 summer plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners between Britain and the U.S. by detonating explosives packed in soft-drink bottles…
{if not caught, these people would have killed thousands; so even the 'tiny minority' can cause a LOT of damage - dda}.
"MI5 say there are at least 2,000 known Islamic terrorism supporters in Britain — and maybe double that number — and that a dirty bomb in Britain is not a matter of “if” but “when”…
"More than 20 Islamist terror plots in Britain have now been thwarted; more than 1,000 people have been arrested under terrorism laws, and more than 200 of them convicted…
"The “martyrdom” videos recorded by those involved in the airline plot spoke of causing violence and death in the same breath as having been chosen by Allah, of scattering the body parts of non-believers, and of their disgust at the decadence of British society.
"To ignore the fact that such utterances are straight out of the lexicon of imams and sheikhs throughout the Muslim world who have declared holy war against unbelievers everywhere is beyond perverse...".
Abdullah Mikail can spin, spin, spin, all he likes.
But the Muslim texts plus the history tell me that classical Islam is an ideology that promotes a highly aggressive and indeed murderous attitude in a significant number of its followers.
And the Muslim population is the 'sea' in which the jihadists swim.
Furthermore, the harsh fact of the matter is that in every country where Muslims are in a majority, and control the levers of power, the non-Muslims in that country are neither free nor safe - indeed, rather the opposite, they are exposed to all kinds of acts of aggression, ranging from institutional discrimination and on-the-street bullying and harassment, right up to full-scale genocidal mass murder.
The Muslims in those Muslim-majority countries read exactly the same Qur'an-Sira-Hadith and say exactly the same prayers as the Muslims in Western countries.
I suspect that the only thing that stops many in the Muslim populations in, say, Australia or the USA from behaving as badly and aggressively toward their non-Muslims neighbours as they might do in Egypt or Pakistan or Iran or Sudan, is the fact that they are not yet in a majority - i.e. not yet strong enough to do what they would like to do, and get away with it. So their 'peacefulness' is a phase, a strategy, a tactic to deceive and disarm the kafir.
Certainly there are leading Muslims who say this quite openly, one of them being Pakistani Muslim judge Taqi Osmani, as reported in this article from the Times Online: September 8, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2409833.ece
Our followers ‘must live in peace until strong enough to wage jihad’.
Justice Muhammad Taqi Usmani argues [in his book 'Islam and Modernism'] that Muslims should live peacefully in countries such as Britain, where they have the freedom to practise Islam, only until they gain enough power to engage in battle."
Abdullah,
My week was good, I hope you are well, also.
I've provided the following link to stimulate the discussion of the statistical methods and analysis of particularly the UK poll. It includes the actual questions and responses. Due to DDA being quite critical of my attempts to "get a radar fix on you" (i.e. characterize you views by encouraging you to dialogue) in our last exchange, I will allow you to debate him on this point. My only comment at this point is I found your response to my query speculative and rather specious, but otherwise I'm pleased to see you return.
http://www.yougov.com/uk/archives/pdf/Muslim%20students%20results%2008%2002%2014.pdf
I have every bit of confidence that Sarah Palin's (and her husband's) brain is "wired for understanding Islam", as Eastview said in an earlier post. Right now she is focused on making a good first impression in spite of her MSM adversaries. This is no small task.
Pew Research Center on American perceptions of religions (including Islam):
http://people-press.org/report/358/public-expresses-mixed-views-of-islam-mormonism
Pew Research study of Muslim Americans, May, 2007:
http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf
(Attention p.53-54 opinions of al-Qaeda and suicide bombing)