In "But is 'Islam' at war with us?," Frank J. Gaffney Jr. in The Washington Times (August 12) asks some pointed questions about what the United States is doing, if anything, to protect free citizens from the encroachment of Sharia.
Last week, John Brennan, the assistant to President Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism approvingly recalled a key point in the speech Mr. Obama delivered in Cairo in June: "America is not and never will be at war with Islam." Unfortunately, that statement ignores the fact that the decision as to whether the United States is at war with anybody is not entirely up to our leadership or people. The real question: Is Islam at war with us?Certainly, hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over are not seeking to wage war against the United States, or other non-Muslim states. America has, as Mr. Brennan noted in his remarks before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, a powerful interest in not making all those who practice Islam into our enemies.
Yet it would be a grave mistake to construe the problem we face as Mr. Brennan proceeded to do in his speech at CSIS: "We are at war with al Qaeda which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al Qaeda's murderous agenda." He described that agenda as seeking "to replace sovereign nations with a global caliphate."
Unfortunately, that is the stated goal of all those who adhere to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah -- a number that includes many millions of people the world over. Mr. Brennan's speech made no reference to this wellspring of jihadism.
Of course, not all those who embrace Shariah are prepared to use terror against us. Shariah requires, though, that if its adherents do not actually engage in violent jihad, they must support it through financial or other means. After all, according to Shariah, the purpose of jihad is to bring about the triumph of Islam over the entire world. Shariah commands that the faithful must use violence where possible to advance that objective, and nonviolent means where not.
By failing to recognize this justification and catalyst for the threat we face, Mr. Obama and his administration effectively foreclose the possibility of countering it effectively. Worse yet, in their understandable desire not to give gratuitous offense to Muslims, the U.S. government has repeatedly deferred to those who are most easily and most vocally offended.
Specifically, the latter -- notably, the putatively nonviolent, but virulently Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its myriad front organizations -- have come to dictate what our officials can and cannot say about the danger posed not just by al Qaeda and its "violent extremist allies," but by all those who embrace the teachings, traditions, institutions and dictates of what authoritative Islam defines as "mainstream": Shariah....
At the time when this article was first posted for our consideration, we were using IntenseDebate for the comments and it was going crazy.
However: I kept such comments as appeared.
The first up was an offtopic remark on Islam and science, presented by 'Eastview' to a Mohammedtroll named Ibnsana who had foolishly made a remark on that subject.
Eastview stated:
'Well, I had a comment all ready to go, but the session timed out and when I relogged back in all the comments had disappeared! But I'll toss the comment in anyway and hope it finds the right target.'
"There is not one science fact that goes against what Islam says." -- ibnsana,,,
To which Eastview replied - You have a pretty restricted and unsophisticated view of science, ibnsana, that reflects essentially no education in science whatsoever. There are plenty of science facts that go against Islam's fairy tale version of the world. You should not go around making statements about that which you obviously know very little. Apparently your radius of information only extends far enough to encompass enough like-minded and similarly ill-educated people to feed and reinforce your prejudices.
A little test, just from physics, a rather substantial part of "science" - Could you please point me to where in the Qur'an it mentions the concepts underlying:
1. Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, either Special or General
2. Clerk Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory, which explains light and radio waves
3. Either Erwin Schroedinger's or Werner Heisenberg's formulations of Quantum Mechanics, which account for the structure of matter
4. Richard Feynmann's Theory of Quantum Electrodynamics, which accounts for how electric and magnetic fields interact with matter
5. Ludwig Boltzmann's Statistical Mechanics, on which the laws of thermodynamics rest
6. The Standard Model of particle physics, which accounts for all the known types of elementary particles (electrons, protons, neutrons, etc.)
The things listed above describe the physical foundations of all other sciences, like chemistry and biology. I'm sure that others here could expand on this to include facts from some of these other disciplines, like biology, and I'll even be generous and include some of the social sciences like sociology and psychology.
BTW, if you decide to answer, you can save you and me some nasty words if you would avoid spewing "it's only a theory" crap. If you wonder why I would say this, before replying go to a dictionary and look up the word "theory" and ponder the meaning of how it is used in science, and how this differs from popular usage.
Good luck!
(Oh, and also BTW, all the people listed above were either Christians or Jews. Not a single Muslim, zero, zilch, zip, nada, among them.)
Now for the rest of the comments originally made to the posted article, or at least, those that I copied and kept.
HUGH re-posted a long article of his, from April 2009
- Fitzgerald: Obama Says We Are Not At War With Islam, From Which We Can Conclude That Islam Is.....?
'Barack Obama has now assured the world’s Muslims that the United States “Is Not At War With Islam.” Apparently this declaration is supposed somehow to magically change things. Muslims will see us differently. And the deep source of their hostility, the inculcated opposition to all Infidels who appear resistant to the spread and dominance of Islam, or the attempt to spread Islam and have it dominate, is somehow to undergo a sea change. But how exactly will an assurance made by a young President who, self-assured himself, is altogether shaky on the subject of Islam, manage to change the immutable texts and tenets, that is, the ideology, of Islam?
'We are told, the Turks have just been told, the whole world has been told, by Barack Obama, with stunning presumption, that the United States (and presumably the rest of the West) is "not at war with Islam. " But, still worse, the peoples of the West, and the rest of the Infidel world, continue to not be informed by the members of their political and media elites. Therefore they fail to grasp in sufficient numbers that Islam is a belief-system that inculcates views in its adherents -- many of whom, almost all of whom, do take their Islam seriously -- that the division of humanity that matters is not between the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, or any other division save that between Muslim and Infidel. And the former have a duty to remove, everywhere in the world, whatever obstacles that the Infidels have created to the spread and then the dominance of Islam.
'Such obstacles may be military in nature, or they may consist of legal and political institutions that embody and help to sustain a different view of humanity from that which Islam mandates. For example, the individual liberties guaranteed by the American Constitution flatly contradict, in letter and spirit, the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a. Barack Obama, who lectured for years at the University of Chicago in Constitutional Law, and takes pride in his grasp of and respect for the Constitution, appears not to have given thought to what the Shari'a is all about.
'For Obama, knowledge of Islam, of its texts and its tenets and its history, has not been important. His knowledge of this most-literal and book-centered, of ideologies is not that acquired through reading, but rather, through his “experience” of Islam, as supplemented by the Assumptions of the Age, especially that which tells us that All Religions Are The Same, We All Want The Same Thing, and People Are The Same The Whole World Over. “Diversity” yes, as long as that “diversity” is understood to mean, in the end, a fundamental Sameness that is not to be questioned. He, Barack Obama, "knows" about Islam because from the ages of 6 to 10 he lived in Indonesia, just the way that Paul Wolfowitz "knew" about Islam and hence became so enthusiastic for the Iraq venture. Wolfowitz did not grasp the essential folly of thinking that a Muslim state could become "democratic" and even a model for other Muslim states, a veritable Light Unto the Muslim Nations.
'The premise and the assumptions behind Obama's remarks indicate his willingness to ignore the nature of Islam, or to feel he has no obligation to study the matter or, at the very least, to consult the studies of the greatest Western scholars of Islam. The greatest Western scholars of Islam are not the espositos and armstrongs and MESA-NOSTRA apologists, but Joseph Schacht, and C. Snouck Hurgronje, and Arthur Jeffrey, and Henri Lammens, and many dozens of others who wrote before the Age of Apology and Inhibition set in, round about 1970, all over the Western world. Obama has not read the Muslim texts and their Muslim commentators -- when those commentators are writing not apologetics for Infidels, but the Muslim understanding for Muslim audiences. And finally, he has so far failed to consult the great defectors from Islam -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, and many others, not all of them household names, who are even more valuable, in their knowledge from inside the world of Islam, than the defectors from the NKVD, or KGB, were during the long period of the Cold War.
'It is bad to state -- why say anything at all? -- that America is "not at war with Islam." We are, after all, at the beginning, not at the successful end, of a contest that is not merely a "Long War" (the Bush Administration's curious formulation) but a war without end, though not necessarily a war through military means. The Muslim understanding of Muslim texts is clear, and both Muslim scholars -- has Obama read them? -- and the Western scholars of Islam know that Islam is a faith that insists that its adherents have a duty to participate, directly or indirectly, in the “Jihad” or “struggle” to push back the borders of the Dar al-Islam until they are coterminous with the world itself. Muslims must identify all those obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, and work to remove those obstacles. Such obstacles could be an army. It could be an Infidel nation-state, especially gnawing if that nation-state is on land once possessed by Muslims. Israel, India, the Balkans, the Iberian Peninsula, and Sicily were all once under Muslim rule, and therefore they are at the top of the To-Do List of Muslims, though it could happen through demographic conquest that lands never before under Muslim rule should succumb to it before, say, one of the parts of the world on that To-Do List succumbs to Islam. This is all part of the duty of “Jihad” --- because it is Islam itself that calls for a "struggle" or Jihad against all Infidels, a struggle that may take the form of open warfare, that is, qitaal, or what for many Muslims is merely a justified variant (because the Infidels are militarily stronger) of qitaal, what we in the Infidel world have no difficulty defining as "terrorism," but can also employ many other instruments -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest -- in order to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam.
'There is no sign that Barack Obama has studied the texts or tenets of Islam. Nor is there any sign that those texts or tenets have been studied by those who think they have so ingeniously been "reaching out" to the world's Muslims -- as they continue, by doing so, to ignore their responsibility to instruct their own people (not necessarily directly, for sometimes oblique methods will do) in what Islamic texts inculcate, what the tenets of Islam are, and what attitudes naturally arise among those who grow up in states, or societies, or communities suffused with Islam. And even if one wishes to argue that "moderate" Muslims do not fully subscribe to those tenets, or do not always exhibit the attitudes that a Muslim exhibits when he takes his Islam not diluted or nuanced by time and history, including the effect of proximity to large numbers of non-Muslims (as in the Balkans, or in Kazakhstan, or to a much lesser extent, in Lebanon and Indonesia), at least those who govern us all over the Western world, have a duty to inform and instruct us. And they have a duty not to inform or instruct us in pieties that do not reflect reality, but are deliberately intended to mask that reality, in the hope of somehow confusing Muslims themselves as to what Islam inculcates, and what it requires of its adherents. This is a vain attempt, and a dangerous one, for the only people likely to be confused are non-Muslims, and perhaps even the utterers -- such as Obama, or Blair, or Bush -- of such preposterousnesses themselves. Since Obama is much more intelligent than Bush, and less, one hopes, of a sentimentalist, his misstatements are even less forgivable.
'One has a duty to inform the people you claim to be able to protect as to what those tenets are. Certainly nothing should be done to further confuse people, or to delay the day of recognition that, among the more vigilant and intelligent, has already come, even if sometimes such knowledge, and the misgivings about Islam that it naturally engenders, has not always and everywhere been expressed with full-throated, well-justified alarm. This confusion delays the recognition that Islam is based on a division of the world between Muslim and Infidel, and an insistence that a state of permanent war exists between the two, and always will, until such time as Muslims fulfill their duty of "struggle" or Jihad so as to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam everywhere. It is most accurate to say that Islam is always making war, often through means other than the military (as in Western Europe), sometimes even unrecognized or imperceptible (especially when Muslims are keenly aware of their weakness vis-a-vis Infidels), sometimes quite open and aggressive (when they feel that Infidels are weak, and susceptible to Muslim demands and pressure and even outright military aggression).
'Most fail to realize that whether Barack Obama declares that “we are not at war with Islam” once, or twice, or a hundred times, the grim fact remains what it has been for 1350 years, everywhere that Muslims have gone, and have behaved as their belief-system so clearly dictates: "Islam is at war with us."
[Posted by Hugh at April 13, 2009]
NAPALM then said - all muslim roads lead to ..........jihad. You could look it up.
Brennan, don't let the facts get in the way of U.S. surrender to sharia.
Here, now, the remaining remarks by myself and others, as made on IntenseDebate, for this article.
DUMBLEDORESARMY said - 'Comment to article, 'But is Islam at war with us?'.
'I clicked on the link and 'read it all'. I observe that Rep Sue Myrick, North Caroline Republican, is still soldiering on. And the nature of the clear and present danger posed by the ideology of Islam and its jihad doctrine has just been brought home to the good Representative - for as the article states
"As it happens, Ms. Myrick's district is not far from where Daniel Patrick Boyd and other purported "homegrown" jihadists were reportedly plotting attacks abroad, and possibly here. What is more, the financial sector so prominent in the Charlotte area she represents is also a prime target of one of the most insidious forms of what author Robert Spencer calls "stealth" jihad: Shariah-compliant finance."
Further thought: The article includes mention of how Rep Myrick organised a meeting between 'moderate' Muslims who (seemingly) "do not embrace the seditious tenets of shariah", and representatives of law enforcement agencies, who were surprised to meet such nice Muslims.
Somebody please give Rep Myrick a copy of Raymond Ibrahim's article from Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst, entitled 'Islam's Doctrines of Deception'. How does one know whether any given smiling Muslim disavowing any interest in pushing sharia, is sincere, or not?"
ICESTAR said - "In a word yes, Islam is at war with us. It has been at war with Dar al Harb for 1350 years. How many Muslim invasions, rockets,etc need to be lobbed on us before people wake up?"
NOPCHERE said - "But is 'Islam' at war with us?" (Article)
The theology of a religion is defined by it's True Believers. The True Believers of Islam conform to Sharia and this puts them at "war" with all non-Muslims. The only real question is how much energy they may be putting into the "war".
I believe that they will wage as much war with us as their perceived victories will allow them in a practical sense. They will go as far as they can go with us. They will fight and intimidate us as far as we will allow and they will not stop until we stop them.
They have and will always be the agressors until they perceive a total Muslim world.
'Then, if that ever happens, it is most likely that they will continue to fight with each other in an effort toward the True Believers' perceived model of "perfect" Islam which will assure an infinite continuation in fighting until the last Muslim is standing. Just review Islamic behaviour for the last 1400 years. The conclusion is obvious.
For them, it is a fight to the death. Our leaders are fools to believe otherwise."
HEISI said - "America has, as Mr. Brennan noted in his remarks before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, a powerful interest in not making all those who practice Islam into our enemies"
'By following Islam, they are our enemys, and they who truly follow Islam know this. It is only as complex as reading the Qur'an. Islam itself is the enemy of all humans,follower or not, and in one way or another it seeks to destroy us as a species.
Islam's threat to our world is larger than Al Qeada will ever be."
I will add just one more thing.
In January 2009 a poster named 'Ethoman', on this very comments floor, made a posting (to someone else, a poster called 'Sceptic') which, although made in relation to the Battle of Gaza, has a much broader relevance.
I will, therefore, re-post it. It is arresting in its brevity and power.
"I think the more you learn the more you will come to realize Israel is at war with Muslims, and just what that means beyond the surface.
'I remember at the beginning of the current Iraqi affair, a Hindu said to me,
“You are at war with Muslims now, you will not be able to simply go home like you did in Vietnam."
You will come to learn that there are only two outcomes in war with Muslims. Either they die, or you die.”
'I was completely shocked by that statement, floored, it was a cathartic moment. I was just like you [‘SCEPTIC’] before I heard that.
'We in the west can learn a lot about what is in store for the us from Hindus, you should check for yourself to see what they have to say.
'Anyways it was that statement, which sent me on my journey to study Islam many years ago.
There is no end for Jews in Israel other than death, or victory…'
Posted by: ethoman at January 6, 2009 1:36 PM
Thus Ethoman.
And one might as well re-phrase the final sentence as, 'There is no end for America, or for all other Infidels in the world, other than death, or victory'.