We saw just over a week ago that jihadist sentiments were rising in the Middle East. Now we see that they're rising in Algeria also. In both cases the Salafists gain adherents by presenting themselves as the representatives of true and pure Islam. The Algerian authorities, "supposedly committed to secularism," appear to be aware of this, as religious affairs minister Bouabdellah Ghlamallah has "promised to create a national council to ensure that religious rulings, or fatwas, from clerics conform with Algerian law."
Note, in other words, that Bouabdellah Ghlamallah did not promise to ensure that fatawa would conform with Islamic law, or with Moderate Islam, or with the True, Peaceful, Tolerant Tenets of Islam. One would think that if the latter two existed, or if Islamic law itself were not fundamentally at variance with secular law in many particulars, he would have worded his statement differently.
In any case, I applaud his statement. Why can't we have an American official saying that he will ensure that fatawa from Islamic clerics in the U.S. conform to American law? This doesn't mean that political dissent would be outlawed, or that religious institutions would be made into puppets of the state and barred from disagreeing with whatever the state dictated. But it would mean that they would not be able to flout the laws of the state, and that their dissent would have to be conducted through the political process, not through subversion.
For example, last year Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR noted, according to AP, that "a minority of Muslims take second wives, and that Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States." At least as AP reported what he said, he didn't seem to say anything "Islamic scholars" recommending that Muslims in America obey American law. Why couldn't, then, an American official say that the rulings of Islamic clerics in the U.S. should conform to American law?
One key aspect of the answer, of course, is that while in Algeria Bouabdellah Ghlamallah can be realistic about Islamic teaching and its relationship to the Algerian state, because the population is Muslim and most people know full well what Islam teaches, in the U.S. few people know what Islam teaches, and a dogmatic unreality is enforced by both liberal and conservative spokesman, such that fictions about Islam are virtually all that get an airing in the public square when it comes to this issue. So if an American official said what Ghlamallah said, he would immediately be excoriated as a racist, Islamophobic bigot.
Yet Islamic teaching does not change from Algeria to the U.S. -- or if anyone says that it does, it would be kind of him to provide some evidence.
"Salafism, a Conservative Strain of Islam, Gains Ground in Algeria," from AP, November 2 (thanks to E):
[...] Algeria is worried about Salafism, an extreme branch of Islam that is a concern for authorities across North Africa. Imported from Saudi Arabia and backed by Saudi oil money, Salafism has gained a significant following not only in Algeria but in neighboring Morocco, and has grown dramatically across the Middle East in recent years.The latest alarm came when authorities in a Sahara Desert town, Biskra, rounded up people who failed to fast during the holy month of Ramadan and sentenced six of them to four years each in prison.
The arrests caused an outcry — and El Watan's headline — because Algeria has traditionally taken a more relaxed attitude to religious observance than places like Saudi Arabia. No law in Algeria explicitly bars people from drinking, smoking or otherwise breaking the daytime fast during the holy month, which this year fell in September.
The Biskra arrests were carried out in the namound and grow into another potential threat to its power. While Salafism is not always violent, in Algeria some Salafist groups have indeed turned to jihad — or holy war. The Algerian Salafi Group for Call and Combat has allied itself with Al Qaeda and is blamed for bombings and other attacks.
Algeria's government, supposedly committed to secularism, is fighting back. The Biskra verdicts were so exceptional that they embarrassed authorities in the capital and resulted in a government rebuke. The men were quickly released on appeal.
The religious affairs minister, Bouabdellah Ghlamallah, told the LibertDe newspaper that police were right to admonish the men but not to prosecute. "It's a problem between these men and God," he said. He also promised to create a national council to ensure that religious rulings, or fatwas, from clerics conform with Algerian law.
The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said in September it would reinforce controls on mosques so that "foreign rites are not inappropriately imported." LibertDe reported that 53 imams were banned from preaching in government-controlled mosques and 42 mosques were closed last year for following such rites. Local imams were also required to highlight the danger of being recruited into terrorist groups....
"Local imams were also required to highlight the danger of being recruited into terrorist groups...."
The imams are still laughing at this one...
Your post seems to imply "Algerian law" is secular.
Unfortunately, according to none other than the US state department, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90207.htm, that's not the full story.
Algerian law might be less onerous than full Sharia: E.g., "Shari'a, as interpreted in the country, does not recognize conversion from Islam to any other religion; however, conversion is not illegal under civil law."
But it's far from secular:
Kamala
No, in fact I quoted the AP article saying that Algerian law "supposedly" upholds secularism.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
I'd much rather have the current government in Algeria than the one the Salafists hope to replace it with. And that goes for Tunisia, Morocco, and yes even the Jordanian monarchy, given its delicate balancing act between pacifying its own radicalized Palestinian population and maintaining its cooperation with Israel and the West.
But such a position is apparently too nuanced for some of the commentators here who insist that all Muslims are the same and that its useless to try and differentiate from among them. Cutting assistance to these regimes - as many here advocate - would NOT be in the best interests of the USA or the West.
Robert, I stand corrected.
Still, interesting that even Algeria's 98% version of Sharia isn't good enough for the Salafists.
What do you think of the notion, circulating on the internet, that Obama was actually born in Kenya, making him ineligible for the Presidency?
A poster to this site questioned “Why won’t Obama release his birth certificate?”
Well someone told me this is a copy of his birth certificate.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
Click on the link “Certification.”
Would anyone like to comment on it’s authenticity?
Do American birth certificates ever mention religion?
Muslims worrying about more Shari'a... Fancy that!
Odyessus,
A birth certificate is a legal document, so my guess would be no, they don't mention religion (at least, not in the US, where there is supposed to be a separation between church and state.)
Even if they did, they could give the religion of the mother, and of the father (most of the time), but it wouldn't be at all ethical to put down a religious designation for a newborn, who might choose any religion, or no religion, in the future.
I could be wrong, of course ;)
Anyone can forge a document like Obama's birth certificate, but if it is legitimate the Hospital should also have a record of it. If the Hospital can back this up it's end of discussion. Isn't it?
The semblance of sense that some Algerians, of the French-speaking elite, can exhibit, in very small numbers, is due to the influence of the French, in two ways.
First, there are the continuing effects, however diminished by Arab Muslim Lords of Misrule (the FLN effectively continues in power, with military-allied corrupt rulers, similar to the stratokleptocrats who have ruled Egypt since the Coup of the Colonels undid Farouk and the ancien regime, of French rule and French civilising tendencies. It was France, that entered Algeria to put permanently paid to the Muslims who attacked Christian shipping and kidnapped and enslaved Christian seamen, in 1830, that over 132 years, until 1962, brought hospitals, higher education (and even schools), laid-out cities with beautiful boulevards, instead of the rabbit-warrens of the Pepe-le-Moko casbahs), modern agricultural methods, and so much else, to Algeria (as they did, beginning later and ending earlier, and on a much smaller scale, in Tunisia and Morocco). And they brought the French language, and with it the ideas embedded in the French texts.
Now that the French are gone, and the hideousness of Muslim rule has been imposed, and so many Algerian Arabs have been permitted to move to, and live in France, at least some of them, particularly women, have been able to compare the advanced society that non-Muslims can create, with the dullness and cruelty of the one that remains in Algeria, which has descended since 1962 steadily into darkness and, if it did not have the French connetion, and the manna from natural gas and oil deposits, would become, as would Morocco without a semi-enlightened Sherifian monarchy prepared to use force against "Islamists," and as would Tunisia if Ben Ali were not as ruthless as Bourguiba had been against those threatening a "secular" state constraints on Islam are enforced by police-state methods.
There are some Algerians who accurately depict the awfulness of their own country, but they too often attribute that awfulness to a monstrous state instead of asking a further question: what is it about Islam that makes people naturally submissive to such a state, what is it that causes them not to question but to obey, what is it that prevents subjects from turning into citizens, in every Islamic country?
And then there are the Berbers, whose own national consciousness has been rising because of decades of Arab oppression. The protests and riots in Tizi-Ouzou more than a decade ago received no attention in the Western world, save for a handful of articles in the French press. The ban imposed by an Arab-dominated government on Amazigh or Tamazight,the Berber language, forbidden in the schools and even for use at home, finally has been undone, but it is among the Berbers that the most advanced, and secular elements are to be found. Kateb Yacine, the celebrated writer and a Berber, refused to write in Arabic, though he knew it perfectly, regarding it as the language of the oppressor; he wrote only in French.
Arabness, Uruba, always and everywhere reinforces Islam, and indeed, the phenomenon of the "islamocrhistian" (search this site for further discussion) is limited to Arabs. Christian Pakistanis, Christian Indonesians, do not further the Islamic agenda. Christians who speak Arabic, or use Arabic, and even have Arab names, but are keenly aware that their presence predates the Arab invasion -- the Maronites in Lebanon, the Copts in Egypt, the Assyrians in Iraq -- either do not succumb to the "islamochristian" temptation, or if they do so while in the Middle East, internalizing an attitude prompted by fear of the Muslim sea in which they must, while in the Middle East and always be keenly aware of, and worried about, swim, can sometimes work through, and jettison, that "islamochristian" attitude. The most obvious manifestation of the "islamocrhistian" phenomenon is to be found among the shock troops in the Jihad against Israel, that is the local Arabs renamed after the Six-Day War as the "Palestinians" -- think of Michel Sabbah, Naim Ateek, Hanan Ashrawi.
It is not possible for Arabs to acknowledge that Islam is and always has been a vehicle for Arab supremacism. But Berbers can do so, and do so readily, for the evidence is all around them, and they have been victims of that supremacism.
In Algeria, the main force for secularism comes from the example of France (and even, among the tiniest and most advanced, an intelligent nostalgia for Algeria under the French, that can never be spoken of), and the back-and-forthing of Arabs by ferry between Marseilles and Algeria, while dangerous to France, is also dangerous, in another way, to the power of unchained Islam, for some -- a small some or sum -- of those who have experienced freedom in France may influence the ruling elite in Algeria who may be silently concluding, without Ataturkian rhetoric, that they will have to tame Islam, even if they do not openly state it that way. For if they do not, then Islam, on the march, will destroy them, and what's left of Algeria (see the novels of "Yasmina Khadra").
No Arab or Muslim rulers would at this point dare to allow themselves to recognize, much less express to others, their recognition that political failures (a despotism that comes naturally to Islam, where men are "slaves to Allah" trained in the habit of mental, and other kinds, of submission) and where inshallah-fatalism limits productive economic activity. No Arab or Muslim rulers dare to recognize the social, moral, and intellectual failures of their societies that are directly attributable to Islam.
And they will not do so, until such time as they are forced to, because many of the world's non-Muslims will have come to understand that connection, and without screaming it from the rooftops, will be quietly firm and indomitable in that understanding, that conviction -- which is not only the best thing that non-Muslims can do to save themselves but, in the end, to help those who, through no fault of their own, were born into Islam and somehow would like to find a way to tame this force, as Ataturk did, and then to work to create a layer of society that is determinedly secular, as happened, over 80 years, in Turkey, though that secular class is always in danger and must always be vigilant.
If Sarkozy could sit still for a minute, and think clearly, and if his associates -- Kouchner and company -- could do the same, and try to learn about Islam without being bewtiched by a charming Muslimah working on their staffs, they would realize that this recognition, of what Islam does and what its effects naturally are, and how it explains the vast civilisational gulf between the two littorals, north and south, of the Mediterranean, that mer blanche du midi, which deux-rivistes (which google) appear to believe is merely a minor matter, but is not. For the Total Belief-System of Islam, and its hold over the minds of men, explain what makes Europe Europe, and what makes the Maghreb -- the Maghreb. The division is not merely a matter of a sea, that can be crossed by mental ferries.
Sarkozy and others who believe in "integration" of Muslims into France never explain how this can happen, if the texts and tenets of Islam are immutable, and continue to have the same effects on the minds of adherents as they have had, demonstrably, over the past 1350 years. They don't want to face it, because there are now millions of Muslims in France. But they have to do so. The problem will only worsen. And they can console themselves with the thought that what they are doing is also the very best thing they could be doing, the kindest thing, the most liberating thing, for those born into Islam, and seemingly stuck, as slaves of Allah, or in the case of Muslim women, slaves of the slaves of
Allah, with no hope within Islam itself for rescue.
The rescue does not come from boots on the ground.
The resuce comes from changes in the minds of men, and in the first place, changes in the minds of non-Muslims who finally, at long last, grasp the nature of Islam.
OT:
Odysseus,
The birth certificate may be a certified copy of information contained in an original. But, do I think this one itself is the original?
No way.
According to this, Obama was born in 1961. I was born in 1964. My own birth certificate isn't nearly so neat and clean. It was filled out by someone using a typewriter, and carbon paper.
Mr. Obama's certificate, as given in the Snopes link above is a crisp clean, perfect sheet of paper. I'm not buying that it's an artifact from 1961. It was obviously made using a computer--the uniformity and the sans sarif style of the font(s) used, and the perfectly (too perfectly for 1961) legible quality of the text indicates, to me, that this is a job off a laser/inkjet printer.
At the bottom of the sheet, on the left side, there is a series of numbers: OHSM 1.1 (Rev.11/01). The "Rev. 11/01" is a dead giveaway. (Also the word "laser" is used.)
"Revision September 2001", is how it reads, in plain English.
Documents do get lost. It happens all the time. The information could be correct, but I'd be happy to bet my next paycheck that this is not an original.
What about this then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Union
The rescue does not come from boots on the ground.
Hugh l disagree with you on this point, it was boots on the ground that saved Europe from muslims. JW posted in October'08 and had showed Charles the Hammer and his men taking on muslims and driving them out of France. Unfortunately we need to drive them out with boots on the ground to get the mind working against islamists. without safety of the body, the mind has no chance for what ever changes you desire.
One word...Colonialism.
The Mediterranean Union is the seedling of Eurabia, pr126.
Abscedere, he went to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago to protect his COLB from getting out. No way is that real. Pam Gellar had a guy inspect it on the pixel level and it's completely different from any legitimate COLB issued from the same place around the same time. They weren't even careful. It really had to have been put together by someone who didn't even know his way around Photoshop and who had very bad eyesight. And it's going to the Supreme Court.
Cornelius, I don't think that many of us assume that all Muslims are al the same, but they all seem to be moving in the same direction. Islamization depends on many things, like the extent to which a population is willing to Arabize (Indonesia and Bosnia being one end of the scale, and Pakistan being the other), how long Islam has been a force within a nation/population (the same scale applies), and the type of leadership, since Saddam's Iraqis and Turks are somewhat less Islamized than, say Algerians. Islamization is, however, inevitable in Muslim populations. It always ends up the same. There may be short fits of secularism, like the French in Algeria, but then another wave of Islamization hits, and it's back to square one. It's like a marathon, with Burma at the starting line and Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan near the finish line. They're all headed the same way and the destination is always the same. Some may find a shortcut (usually achieved by the presence of Arabs, as in the case of Northern Sudan) and they may all travel at different paces, but at the end of the day they all get there, so any differences are just a manifestation of where in the race they happen to be. The goal and the means are the same. They just didn't all start the race at the same time. It's Islam. It doesn't allow for much variation. Reality allows for different degrees of implementation.
It's like Hugh just summed-up in his right-on rhetorical question: ...what is it about Islam that makes people naturally submissive to such a state, what is it that causes them not to question but to obey, what is it that prevents subjects from turning into citizens, in every Islamic country?
It's not the nation that makes the difference. Muslims never have any allegiance to their country, and most of the differences between countries are, if anything, more attributable to tribal differences, since Muslims never civilize. It's how willing the population is to Islamize, which is often hampered by the presence of infidels or a depenedence on infidel money, that keep a society from rocketing themselves 5000 years in time like Iran in 1979, and how long Islam has been a force.
I also have to take issue with your characterization of Jordan as semi-civilized. It's ridiculously corrupt, inhumane, and despotic and any semblance of civility is only the result of (1) fraudulent Princess-Rania (the highest-priced parasitic sex-slave baby factory/tapeworm/mutilated, undead corpse alive) PR, (2) the fact that it is a young nation, but it's a nation which has chosen to rocket itself back a good couple hundred years over the last 10 years or so, and (3) by contrast with the "Palestinians" and Hezbollah in Lebanon. I also don't know where you got the idea that there's a thriving Palestinian population there. Jordan built their wall decades ago. Jordan's the nation who slaughtered 8000 Palestinians during Black September. They have gotten any kinder as the Palestinians have radicalized. Despotic leaders do not take kindly to unemployed, uneducated barbarians who are obsessed with intifada. Palestinians who try to break into Jordan get shot on sight just like they do when they try to enter the Sinai. Jordan is a nearly desolate nation but they keep that border tightly sealed. And their attempts to extort Geert Wilders and Danish papers in kangaroo courts and their outright promotion of honor killing through apathy only serve to demonstrate how backward, Medieval, and hopeless they are.
The new Jordanian guy in my department, not surprisingly, fell right in with the Egyptian barbarians with whom he lives in student housing for pedophiles and with whom he attends HAMAS-front MSU meetings to become more radicalized. I haven't known many Jordanians in my day, but I knew two who were older and who left Jordan nearly 20 years ago. They integrated into American society in a way this guy never will. I waited tables with them. Nobody who comes out of modern Jordan could ever successfully get along with infidels all day with that characteristic Islamic wall of narcissism that precludes genuine interaction with human beings who possess souls like all Islamized Muslims possess. Jordan wasn't always as awful as it is now. I just don't understand your putting them on a pedestal whereby they're any better than Egypt or Libya. No, they're not Iran or Saudi Arabia, but they're not Albania or Turkey either. They're just as hopelessly Islamized as all the other Islamic hellholes who don't have a single ally of ours to their credit.
Aren't jihadi sentiments rising all over the world?
JDAM: "I also don't know where you got the idea that there's a thriving Palestinian population there."
RESPONSE: You're showing your ignorance here. Jordan is 70% Palestinian. The balance are Bedouins, from which the monarch sprang.
JDAM: "I also have to take issue with your characterization of Jordan as semi-civilized."
RESPONSE: Though the general population suffers all the pathologies of a typical Arab/Muslim society, the leadership is - in my opinion - comparatively enlightened; the Jordanians have a functional parliament, they maintain diplomatic and trade ties with Israel, and they cooperate closely with Western intelligence agencies.
This accounts for something.
JDAM: "It's not the nation that makes the difference. Muslims never have any allegiance to their country, and most of the differences between countries are, if anything, more attributable to tribal differences, since Muslims never civilize."
RESPONSE: On the contrary, Morocco for instance, based on the enlightenment of its leadership, has undertaken an extensive effort to empower its Berber minority with language rights and other concessions; the policy couldn't contrast more with the treatment of Berbers in neighboring Algeria and Libya.
Correction...in Morocco, the Berbers outnumber Arabs. But the policy is the point.
Barack's name being Islamic encourages jihadists all over the world. It is THE topic of the week. Please read about it here:
http://culturismnews.blogspot.com/
Thanks!!! Go WEST!!!
Actually, Cornelius, that was a very good point you made about the Berbers in Morocco. I would argue, however, that most of them are only nominally Muslim, but still quite Arabized. This is of course impossible to prove, but I would imagine that they would be acutely aware of the fact that Islam is nothing more than Arab supremacism and that it is therefore inherently anti-them, particularly with its overt language policy, and being well-aware of what Arabization did to the Egyptian Copts. I know that Arabs in Algeria and Morocco are quite open about their desire for Berber genocide. Living with Arab supremacists and being so close to the Gulf, I would also imagine, would make them more aware of the reality of Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacy than, say, the Pakis. I know this to be the case with the Berbers in Western Asia, many of whom aren't even nominally Muslim.
But the Palestinian population in Jordan is another issue. Yes, there were many Palestininans there when Jordan was founded and many immigrated after its founding, and there was a huge influx of Palestinians into Jordan after the 6 Day War in 1967, but that all ceased with Black September. It was a full-on civil war against the Palestinians, who seem to have learned their lesson. These days Jordan doesn't allow Palestinians in, just like Egypt, for the same reasons why we find Palestinians to be intolerable: because they are psychopaths who elected a terror organization to run their land in order to ensure that they will remain "refugees" as long as possible so that they can continue to live as parasites indefinitely because they don't want to be a legitimate nation. They want to be psychopathic parasites who make a career out of playing the victim card in order to get a handout so that they never have to work and can be "disenfranchised" forever. They want to be what they are and they want to bring any land they may migrate to down to their level. Come to think of it, the Palestinians and the way the rest of the Muslim world deals with them makes a far better case for your original point than does Jordan.
Thank you for that florid ("mental ferries" indeed; wonderful phrase!), informative post, Hugh.
Yes ZenaWarriorPrincess, boots on the ground will most likely be unavoidable and necessary, when the rubber meets the road, and the rubber will meet the road because the Muslims will force it, sooner or later. Wouldn't it be better if we pro-acted and put boots on the ground before they forced it? Nah, let's just wait until after a million or two or three million of us get mass murdered by Muslims and after a few more millions of them are entrenched among us before we act, eh?
That Obama certificate looks about as authentic as a 3-dollar bill or a 5-leaf clover.
It's interesting to observe:
Either there's Sharia in force, in which case there's no freedom, or there's an authoritarian government to guard against Sharia.
However you look at it, Islam means that it's lose-lose as far as freedom goes.
THREE TYPES OF MUSLIMS
1- those that act violently with jihad to defat all non muslims
2- the passive jihadist who supports through intel chatity and birth also lawsuits
3- the birth jihadist haveing as many babies as possible to out number the infidels
then the wanna be muslims who dont want to kill off all the non muslims and by imams and quran there not muslims that should be killed and theres alot less of them then anyone wants to admit
"that florid..."
http://newenglishreview.org/blog_search.cfm
As a martial law sort of measure, I concur with RS' sentiment of "Why can't we have an American official saying that he will ensure that fatawa from Islamic clerics in the U.S. conform to American law?". By all means, let's do it. Mohammedan sedition and treason is toxic.
But I can't endorse it unhesitatingly as normal peacetime legislation.
America's legal tradition encompasses and protects much anti-government preaching, especially from the pulpit.
Consider, abortion is everywhere legal and protected by law, but in churches across the country this is condemned as suborning or at least tolerating murder.
Now, before you go there, this is not some idiotic comparison of Christianity and mohammedanism, or of the church and the mosque or anything else of that nature. I don't think such comparisons have any meaningful substance to them.
What I am saying is that there is a difference between wartime and peacetime legal standards. And we have to get serious about the fact that we are in a war.
We might want to consider criminalizing incitement to criminal acts of various sorts -- possibly under the war powers, possibly using the logic behind the criminality of incitement to riot.
(We will however, have to take a second look at our idiotic doctrine that anything "religious" gets a pass, as if all religious doctrines were benign).
We did, I believe, act against the Bund during WWII without impairing American freedom. And it's time for something similar.
We have to identify mohammedanism, or various of its doctrines, as hostile to American freedom and the well being of the free world, in much the way we did with communism and nazism, and act accordingly.
Unfortunately, while we gave communism hell overseas, we didn't handle it all that well here at home. The commies control most of the schoolrooms, most of the big media corporations and the larger part of Hollywood.
If we don't clear our minds, we are likely to screw this one up as badly or worse.
And if B. Hussein wins the election, fuggedaboudit!
We're going to be in terrible shape before the public ever notices that their pants are on fire.
Odyessus,
Mine doesn't mention religion. It gives my parents' name, age, race, birthplace and my mother's address. It also names the hospital and is signed by the attending physician.
This was in NY but who knows what Hawaii puts on their BC?
Muzzl'em,
The hospital probably does have a record of it but they can't release it without Obama's ok. Since it has been sealed, odds are not even inquiring eyes in the Medical Records Department could even get a peek, so you won't have a leak of the info. It's probably under lock and key.
Bad link for the newenglishreview.org blog under "that florid", Hugh. It leads right back here to this post. Would you repost, please? Thanks...
http://newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/17804
Sorry.
JDAMN,
My friend, I don't think you quite understand what I'm trying to tell you about the Palestinian populace in Jordan; they are not from "Palestine", they are Jordanian.
Remember that Jordan is an artificial creation; the legacy of Britain's colonial boundaries. The people of Jordan are composed of two groups; the Bedouins (of whom the Hashemites come from) who are the minority and are largely desert dwellers (at least until the last generation or two)...and the townspeople who are the majority and consider themselves Palestinians, the Arabized descendants of the ancient Philistines.
Yes, I'm well aware the PLO was expelled from Jordan in 1970, as were many refugees from the British mandate of Palestine who had settled in Jordan after the birth of Israel and were subsequently resettled in Lebanon (with disastrous results for the Lebanese). But my point is, the Jordanian people themselves (at least the 70% who are not of Bedouin stock), consider themselves Palestinians. That's why many Israelis, particularly those reluctant to give up the West Bank, consider JORDAN to be the real "Palestinian state".
Thanks, Hugh. Agree with Mary Jackson; ha!
I actually agree with you everything you wrote, Cornelius. I just still fail to see how you put Joordan on a pedestal whereby they're remotely civilized or un-Islamized because I think they're only slightly better than Saudi Arabia, and that's only because they have no oil.