Instead, he should be calling on Gaddafi to apologize for the double standard of his call for Muslims to undertake economic jihad against Switzerland for banning minarets when non-Muslim religious practice is restricted far more severely than cosmetic issues all over the Islamic world.
"US apologises over Gaddafi comments," from the BBC, March 9 (thanks to Pamela):
The US state department has apologised for comments made about Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's call for jihad against Switzerland.Department spokesman PJ Crowley, who made the dismissive comments, said they did not reflect US policy and were not intended to offend.
Col Gaddafi had criticised a Swiss vote against the building of minarets and urged Muslims to boycott the country.
Mr Crowley described it as "lots of words, not necessarily a lot of sense." [...]
"I regret that my comments have become an obstacle to further progress in our bilateral relationship," Mr Crowley said.
Last week, Libya's National Oil Corporation warned US oil firms of possible "repercussions" over Mr Crowley's reaction.
The Libyan ambassador to the US sought to clarify Col Gaddafi's remarks saying the Libyan leader meant an economic boycott not "an armed attack".
"I should have focused solely on our concern about the term jihad, which has since been clarified by the Libyan government," Mr Crowley added.
As if the clarification, which was that economic jihad should be waged rather than violent jihad, makes Libya's action acceptable.
"I understand my personal comments were perceived as a personal attack on the president," he said."These comments do not reflect US policy and were not intended to offend. I apologise if they were taken that way."
Once again oil trumps any criticism of these tyrants and demagogues behavior whether it be Libya or Saudia Arabia we continue to bow to their demands no matter how egregious their actions are. DISGUSTING!!!
"Mr Crowley described it [Qaddafy's call for Jihad against Switzerland, the ostensible reason being the vote to ban minarets, the real reason being the Swiss expulsion of Qaddafy's son last year because of his mistreatment of his servants] as 'lots of words, not necessarily a lot of sense.'"
Hate-filled rhetoric. Of course the Obama Administration was right to quickly apologize. It could do no other.
But a more intelligent administration would never have apologized, but would have used the occasion of this declaration of Jihad to try to educate the public about what Jihad is, and why an understanding of it matters.
This Administration, like the last one, has failed completely to grasp the texts and tenets of Islam. No one in it appears to think he has a responsibility to go beyond consulting Muslims themselves, or such obvious apologists as John Esposito, on what Islam teaches or, rather, inculcates. None of them has time to read. They have no time to read the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira with appropriate guides (so, for example, that they will grasp the nature of "naskh" or abrogation as a basic principle of interpretation). No one has time to read Joseph Schacht, or C. Snouck Hurgronje, or Arthur Jeffrey, or Henri Lammens, or any of many dozens of great Western scholars of Islam who wrote and studied before the Great Inhibition set in, and Muslims and their non-Muslim collaborators and well-funded apologists managed to take over, appointment by appointment, so many of the academic departments, and even had created for them, with Arab money, whole "centers of Islamic studies" at Georgetown (Esposito's fiefdom), at Exeter, at Durham, and elsewhere in the academic archipelago. No one has time to read, apparently, the many thoughtful and articulate books by those who, having been born into, and raised up within, societies suffused with Islam, have in the mental freedom of the West exercised that freedom, and started to think for themselves, and to analyze the hold of Islam on the minds of men. Yet there is not the slightest hint that anyone in the Obama Administration thinks he has a responsibility to read Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Magdi Allam -- why, I'll bet most of these names are completely unknown to many of those making policy, while to the Musliims and non-Muslim apologists for Islam, these names are all too well known, and they are determined to make sure that no one reads those texts, no one reads those great Western scholars, no one reads those apostates from Islam who are, all of them, carefully dismissed through the time-honored method of mere name-calling, for it would be far too dangerous if the unwary who are now so easily manipulated were ever to read this material, and to allow it to give them a grasp of what the ideology of Islam, the Total Belief-System of Islam, is all about. That must be prevented at all costs.
And so, at all costs, we pursue expensive and silly strategies -- if that word can be used at all -- in Muslim lands, to make life better for Muslims, to lavish money and weapons and every good thing on the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, so that they can have "freedom" (i.e., a most primitive form of democracy, one without guarantees of free speech or free exercise of conscience, or any of the other rights that are flatly contradicted by the letter and spirit of the Shari'a), and have "prosperity" (brought by tens or hundreds of billions of American dollars, even though it is Islam itself that explains the poverty of Muslim lands that do not possess the oil-and-gas deposits that generate huge revenues that require no work, and no entrepreneurial flair, on the part of those receiving those revenues), and national "unity" (when the ethnic and sectarian divisions within Muslim states, and the economic divisions among Muslim states, would do much, if allowed to widen naturally, to divide, demoralize, and thus weaken, the Camp of Islam).
We've got people running things, who presume to protect and instruct us, who are not nearly as intelligent, nor nearly as well-informed, as they should be. It's the problem that Harry Markopoulos discovered when he kept trying to warn the SEC about Bernard Madoff: they just wouldn't listen, because they just didn't understand. The people who are making these decisions, about how the Americans should do this in Iraq, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, and should transfer this amount of money (and now let's have some for Yemen, let's have some for Somalia), and should, on the other hand, not do what it should do with the nuclear project of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are entitled to as little respect as we now give to the members of the SEC who ignored the warnings of Harry Markopoulos.
Qaddafy's remark was worth commenting on, It was partly a product of his own megalomania and mental bizarrerie, and partly, however, an expression of widely-shared views, including the desire of Muslim lands to wreak vengeance on the Swiss Infidels for daring, in a referendum, to recognize the true significance of minarets ("the minarets are our bayonets" Erdogan famously noted) erected triumphantly in non-Muslim lands.
A colossal dereliction of duty,and one that has led to an entirely unnecessary squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, civilian and military, while the main theatre of war -- Western Europe -- goes unremarked, practically unnoticed, by our ill-informed, un-cunning, un-imaginative, essentially thick-headed rulers, some of whom are messianic sentimentalists, some of whom are merely sentimentalists, some of whom cannot bring themselves to understand the importance of ideology (because they think that something called nowadays, faute de mieux, a "religion," must command automatic respect and if more than a billion people believe it, surely must have much to commend it). The texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics -- these are things those who dispose of trillions of dollars, and who make decisions that effect the lives of soldiers, and of those of us who are not soldiers too, remain blandly ignorant. Whereof they do not know, they go ahead and speak, and speak, and hold important meetings, and deliver themselves of such things as that appalling Cairo speech about Islam and how wonderful it is, and how important Muslims have been in American history, a speech that will live forever in rhetorical infamy.
They've just got to show, to give some sign, anything, of being a little better informed, and a little more intelligent.
Just to comment on what Hugh wrote regarding reading materials - I worked in the US for two years and frequented the Barnes and Nobels etc, you could not find a book, and in some cases could not even order a book that said anything negative about Islam/Muslims (I am referring to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish etc). When I came home I went to our local Chapters/Indigo/Coles and found the same thing. There were countless books bashing Christianity and Judaism BUT nothing on Islam. To this day I find that fascinating - how are people to become informed? In this case I knew of the books and still had difficulty finding them.I found them and more at Amazon.com, but for the person that just may be looking to get more information and browses - chances are good you'll find nothing.
We have a politician in the family and he was totally clueless as to what Islam taught, and a profound belief that it was only a "few" radical Muslims who took the religion of Peace and distorted it. I gave him a copy of the Third Jihad, and when the 12 year old beheaded the suspected collaborator my good uncle had an epiphany.
This is America?
Apologizing to Islamic mass-murdering Barbarians? Isn't Gaddafi a despotic mass-murderer? I know he's a Barbarian.
And this Crowley person's remarks are not even a big deal! They're nothing!
I suppose we'll be apologizing to the Barbarians for breathing next.
Crowley's apology will be quoted someday in the 21st century version of "Those Who Traded with Hitler."
green eyed witch:
I respectfully disagree with you on not being able to find books critical of Islam. Was it possible that you lived in a too politically correct community instead of one who supports our first amendment? I live within a mile of a Barnes and Noble and have never had trouble either finding such books on their shelves or being easily able to order them through Barnes and Nobel when it comes to the authors you noted as well as Robert Spencer and many more.
Why is this surprising?
The Admin will be the LAST part of America to finally wake up to the evils of PC living. The rest of us are slowly coming around.
Meanwhile the shades are drawn, and who knows what goes on on the Hill, and in the White House???
Islamist friendly folks seem to be operating with impunity there, even meetng with Obama to select Muslims to work at the White House in numbers FAR larger than their representation in the US population:
http://hereticscrusade.blogspot.com/2010/03/muslim-staffers-in-congress-organize.html
"Gaddafi weighs up options in light of Switzerland's no entry sign"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/10/libya-switzerland-gaddafi-feud
The problem is partly that of censorship -- you can see it in bookstores in university towns (e.g., Cambridge, Berkeley), in the sections marked "Islam" or "Middle East." Yes, books are available on-line, but suppose you are unaware of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Magdi Allam, Nonie Darwish? How would you know? You go to a bookstore. You see Karen Armstrong's little guide to Islam. Or you see books -- so many! -- and some published by Oxford University Press, which you naively assume is a guarantor of quality, and so you pick up such things, and take them home, and read them, and if you are not careful -- and if you don't know anything to begin with you won't be careful -- you will be misinformed, step by cunning step and it may be hard for you later on to make sense of things because of that initial self-misinforming.
.
The other day, in a library, I saw a man checking out a DVD about Islam and, glancing at what was on the DVD's cover, I could see at once it was one of those sinisterly-sweet "Introduction to Islam" affairs, full of plenty of pictures of pretty mosques, and colorful varicolored pilgrims making the Hajj, and lots about Ramadan and Iftar dinners, and how Muslims believe in an immedidate encounter with God, and how Muhammad was a "peacemaker" and "unified warring tribes" and also how he gave women in Arabia "rights they never had before" and so on. Not all of it is completely untrue, but all of it, together, gives an impression, in what it so carefully leaves out, and the way things are presented, that is completely and dangerously false.
But there is something else. Many people no longer read. Look at Maureen Dowd in today's Times, writing from Saudi Arabia, and saying how she wanted to go to Mecca, or Medina, or at least to visit a mosque in order, she says, "to find out about Islam." If she wants to find out about Islam the best thing she can do is to buy, or borrow, books by the real Western scholars (not the espositos and armstrongs), especially those who wrote more than 50 years ago, when there was far greater freedom and less fear either of losing Arab financial support or of losing one's job or of losing one's life), and reading the work of those who know Islam and Muslims intimately, from the inside, but in the freedom of the West have left Islam, have apostasized, and who feel themselves free to tell the truth. Maureen Dowd, or anyone else, could by reading Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Magdi Allam, Nonie Darwish -- or even reading some writers on-line, even perhaps at this and a few other websites -- find out a lot, find out far more than a visit, apparently for Maureen Dowd tantalizing because it is forbidden -- to a mosque, or even to the Great Mosque in Mecca.
Read, Maureen, read. Don't settle for less.
And that goes for millions of others. For chrissake, as Holden would say, use your head.
Mackie
It certainly applies to bookstores in South Africa. There are no books on Islam, pro or anti, at all. Not even on their computer listings except for one store about a year ago which had just one Karen Armstrong book on the shelves. It's probably still there.
Reply to Mackie:
There were several Chain bookstores that I frequented, Barnes and Nobel being the biggest, I am not familiar with all the big chain bookstores in the US and for the life of me I can't remember the other big one that I went to, and the others may have been just state wide. I worked from Minnesota to Wisconsin then into Illinois. That was my experience in each bookstore I went into - the book that I could not even order from a Barnes and Nobel was by Walid Shoebat - Gods War on Terror, there was at least one more but at the moment the title escapes me.
I agree with Hugh, not enough people read, and when they do - what is it that they are reading. I work in a predominately male industry and was approached by a company to take a job in Saudi Arabia; I told them that I would not be accepted there, that I would have no authority due to their laws/customs. The gentleman was shocked when I said that I would most probably have to be veiled and I could not drive and that I highly doubted any man there outside of the expat. community would listen to anything I said. This was an educated man, a man who had at least some exposure to the culture and it just never dawned on him that expat women would be treated that way in a work environment. Like him, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions that think that those laws would not apply to us; yet if you did a modicum of reading, you would learn that and much, much more.
The fact that I can tell people about this website, has for me, been a God send. It's not just me anymore - they can read the articles, read other peoples opinions - and hopefully, finally understand that there is a threat to our way of life.
Borders Books in various countries (UK, USA, Oz, NZ) started with a hiss and a roar after 9/1 1 with piles of books on Islam in the Religion section. But more recently I have noticed the Islam section is now small and shrinking, stock hardly moving, and mainly comprising the Armstrong Esposito Ramadan rubbish, infrequently updated, gathering dust. In some stores it is smaller than the Judaism section, and is now way smaller than Buddhism, and especially Dalai Lama material. Christianity has stayed steady.
The way people buy books is changing as well as what they buy. The Middle East section is a separate issue.
Mr Crowley described it as "lots of words, not necessarily a lot of sense."
..................
In a sane world, if Mr. Crowley were to apologize at all, it would be for the weakness of his words, not for daring to utter them in the first place.
Islam is hostile to the publication/display of any book which is critical of Islam (hardly any such books are allowed on display in British bookshops, including ones on university campuses).
"How one book ignited a culture war"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
Terminix does not apologize to termites and cockroaches before, during, or after extermination. Why should any particular one (e.g., Gaddafi) be entitled to such special treatment? Say, Gaddi, how'r all the kids?
NVUH
Hugh, if you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have known about Ms. Dowd's nonsense, finishing with that utterly appalling I was surprised when the movie said that the Kaaba was built by “Abraham, the father of the Jews” — a reminder that the faiths have a lot to learn from each other. It would merely have been entertainment for its sheer absurdity and lack of connection with reality if there weren't way too many people blindly falling for what's peddled in Ms. Dowd's prose; falling for nothing more than a product of her utter lack of knowledge of what mahoundianism, as an intolerant form of bedouin fascism, truly is.
If she had the will to read anything that could help her write with true knowledge of the topic of mahoundianism, perhaps she could also read that other book you've recommended, The Rise of Early Modern Science - China, Islam and the West, perhaps to better understand yet another side of why Dar al-mahoundianism lives permanently drowned in poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, misogyny, backwardness, baseless fears caused by foolish superstitions, a collective and all-pervasive lack of initiative for anything on the part of the so-called "troo-beeleevares™" that crawl all over the dunes and caves of that place; not to mention the usual failures of all sorts, among other perennial ills which are a consequence solely of devotion and obedience to mahound and its imaginary alter-ego allah.
"I live within a mile of a Barnes and Noble and have never had trouble either finding such books on their shelves or being easily able to order them through Barnes and Noble when it comes to the authors you noted as well as Robert Spencer and many more."
Agreed. I have bought all my Spencer books at my near-by Barnes & Noble, and of course I've ordered various anti-Islam books on amazon because it was convenient. Such as Wafa Sultan's book.
(Uncle Sam gets down on his hands and knees and starts sucking off QaDaffi.)
"YAY FOR OIL!"
Sigh.... when the **** can we stop using the oil and just throw up the middle finger to every last terrorist asshole out there?
The movie she saw is a propaganda film that has been making the rounds of various museums of science and suchlike, and someone has been paying for full-page ads to advertise this movie about Islam and the Arabs (I can't remember its exact title, perhaps something as simple as "Arabia"). That she does not know that the Abraham of Islam is not the same as the Abraham of Judaism or Christianity, but is merely usefully invoked for those simpletons to whom a pitch about "the three abrahamic faiths" can be made and usually shuts down thought (so does the equally misleading, because somehow comforting, phrase "three great monotheisms"), disturbs. That she reports saying to some Al-Saud prince (I forget which one, but no one -- no one -- can keep his head when surrounded by such luxury, and given so many tangible expressions of "Saudi respect" to bring home in a suitcase), that the 9/11 hijackers had betrayed Islam (how the hell does she know, if as she admits she knows nothing about Islam and was hoping to visit a mosque in order, as she puts it, to understand Islam better, as if that would somehow do it), and he nodded in agreeement. Good God. Her whole piece was at that jejune level. But she's a genius, I suppose, compared to Tom "I, I, I, while I was having dinner with...I, I, I, I for one, I" Friedman, or that heart-on-his-sleeve Nicholas "I'm Such A Caring Observer Of the World's Misery And Consequently Morally Superior To Almost Everyone" Kristof. God, what a galere.
Two points: 1) On the real books about Islam. I have found that they are often found in the political section. I most often go to books a million and can pretty much find most the favorites. 2) About the state departments apology. Its just more of Obama's kissing up to the Muslims.
Hugh - as usual, your posts are well written and thoughtful. As for this:
"We've got people running things, who presume to protect and instruct us, who are not nearly as intelligent, nor nearly as well-informed, as they should be."
Steve Coughlin thinks this situation is so grave that he terms it an "epistemic collapse." I have met and briefed some of our senior military leaders and many are unaware of the writings of, for example: Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, et. al. They are also unaware of Geert Wilders and the Orwellian Dutch legal proceedings against him.
The lack of intellectual curiously is shocking enough; I have now come to the conclusion that it is dereliction of duty.
Ignorance is a powerful mover of events. Many who work in the State Department and Maureen Dowd in particular are clear evidence of this. The worst and most dangerous kind of ignorance is that put forward by so-called "well educated people,"--------like many in the State Department and Maureen Dowd in particular.
This is alarming: bookstore censorship? There appear to be two basic experiences, that Islam-critical books are available and that they are not. Here in NE FL, Islam-critical books are available at the larger bookstores. I will soon travel to Boston, and will check in that college town. The best way to test for censorship would be to get information about bookstores in different parts of the USA and abroad. Any takers?
Government employees are trained to know when and how to speak. They can't speak their mind or out of emotion but only use a very diplomatic tongue in all cases. Why ? Because billions of dollars in commerce and profits are riding on what a peon in the government might say to "offend" the godly great oil companies(or any major mega corporation) and their trading "partner". Of course, unless the peon wants to get demoted to a gas station attendant in the same said oil company's "dangerous neighborhood" branch as a midnight shift employee, he will always apologize and make amends.
This is the way the so called Free Market Capitalism horse rides - always, enjoy the ride folks! Now let me go the bathroom and vomit!
Puke!!!!!
Good idea.
Why don't we *all* do it, in all our countries?
Just check out the bookstores in our local mall or shopping strip and see what's on offer if the average Joe or Jill strolls in from the street having a sort of vague idea that they might like to find out something more about Islam. Then report back and compare notes.
Check the 'Religion', 'Politics' and 'Middle East/ Asia' sections and see where things are put.
(Not *everybody* goes straight to google, even today).
I do have one heartening incident to report.
At the local Angus and Robertson's (A & R's are the iconic Australian bookstore, they have been around for some 100 years) a month ago they had a display showing what they claimed to be the current 'top 100' books in Australia. Not sure how they'd determined this - top 100 books customers were buying in their stores? Some other criterion?
But, anyway, there was Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" amongst the top 100.
Another data point: our local mall has a Borders. That's where I bought my copy of Oriana Fallaci's "The Rage and the Pride" and Spencer's "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance", and where I also got Brigitte Gabriel's "Because They Hate" and Ayaan Hirsi Ali "The Caged Virgin".
I ought to congratulate them.
Re the comments above about availability of boos that are critical of Islam...
Before I bought Spencer's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam about 4 years ago, I called a major bookstore in a major city near where I live (in Canada), and asked if they had the book in stock. The sales rep I talked to on the phone actually tried to talk me out of buying the book, and complained about this "rude book," before he even checked whether or not they had it in stock. After some arguing with this guy, he finally answered me that they did have it in stock, though not on display, and that I could purchase it there.
A while later I went in to get the book, where they did not keep it on the shelf at all, but rather kept it in storage and had it ready for me, under a check-out counter out of view. After purchasing the book, I went to the Islam section, and of course there were no copies of the book there. I also checked other sections that might have it, like bestsellers and politics. No copies of the book on display. Nor were there any books critical of Islam in the Islam section.
In my experience, it is usually necessary to order a book that is critical of Islam, because the stores generally don't have them in stock. For example, I was not able to find any bookstore which carried Ibn Warraq's 'Why I am not a Muslim. In addition, stores may not carry books that present Islam graphically in a bad light, such as the Sira and the hadiths. (I had to order the Sira). Shouldn't the Sira and major Hadith collections be present in the Islam section of any bookstore? Why aren't they?
Another thing to check is libraries. School libraries, high school libraries, university libraries, town and city libraries.
Since not everything is available to read for free, online, and not everything is in print to buy, either new or used, and not everybody has the ready cash to buy books.
The public library in my hometown, for example, stocks Bat Yeor's 'Eurabia'. It also stocks Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel', and both V S Naipaul's books about travel in Islamic countries. And it stocks Yaacov Lozowick's "Right to Exist" which disposes of quite a few of the main Arab Muslim Big Lies about Israel. I didn't know about Lozowick when I saw his book on the library shelf; I was looking for something else entirely, in an entirely different subject area, but the title caught my eye as I strolled past, so I pulled it off the shelf, had a quick look, decided it looked interesting, and borrowed it.
At least one university library in my hometown has two of the books by C Snouk Hurgronje, that Mr Fitzgerald has frequently referred to. The law division of the same library has Joseph Schacht's 'Introduction to Islamic Law'. But that university library contains no Bat Yeor.
To my knowledge, Jacques Ellul's brilliant little book about Israel 'Un Chretien Pour Israel', which is out of print, is publicly available in Australia in exactly *one* copy in exactly *one* university library.
So here goes, jihadwatchers.
How about, during the three weeks that remain until Easter, all of us regular posters take a squiz at our favourite book shops and the municipal and/ or academic libraries we normally frequent (and our children's primary or high school libraries, if we get the chance), and see what kinds of books about Islam are readily available, there to catch the attention of the casual or as yet only-partially-aware browser?
We take notes and then we compare notes.
Should be interesting to get a bit of a picture of how, say, Canada compares to the UK to the USA to Australia to India and assorted European countries, in terms of what sorts of on-paper works about Islam the average person is likely to come across without having to make an extraordinary effort.
Gaddafi, who clearly called for violent attacks against Switzerland, should have been at risk of assassination by agents of non-Muslim governments, not a recipient of President Obama's State Department's apologies.
One example of why Islam leads eventually to the loss of basic human rights, especially for non-Muslims: In Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical of hadith collections, Muhammad said, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."
Dumbledores,
Yes, university and major urban center libraries should have valuable books on Islam, including those not written from the mainstream whitewashed apologetic perspective. Some major universities, such as Duke, have extensive collections.
A while back I checked my former university's library and found some good titles there, including Bat Ye'or's books, and Patricia Crone's God's Rule. (Note that the medium-sized university in question does not have an Islamic studies program; other larger universities that do have Islamic studies programs would likely have much more Islamic material in their libraries). I also came across some soft Islamist material by CAIR-Canada, advising educators and journalists how to cover Islam, containing all the usual propagandist talking points (Islam means peace, only talk to experts on Islam who are Muslims, etc.). I also came across some outright jihadist and sharia-supporting books published by Islamic presses. One such book's author argued, citing numerous Quranic verses, ahadith, and Islamic fiqh, in favour of the traditional Islamic death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy. (I suspect that the librarians had no clue what this book actually contained. To all appearances it had never been opened before nor signed out). Most of the books, though, in the sections pertaining to Islam, were of the standard mainstream apologetic perspective.