When I started warning last winter that Islamic supremacists were in the best position to take advantage of the uprisings in Tunisia (and Egypt), most people were drinking the mainstream media Kool-Aid about a new birth of democracy and freedom. One commenter here at Jihad Watch asserted that "these revolts are spontaneous outbursts against the ruling elite. There is not one shred of evidence of any Islamist involvement." Another's scorn was intense: "You are taking advantage of the ignorance of your readers to spoon feed them this nonsense about jihad in tunisia [sic] while the Tunisian people are clamoring for democracy and freedom."
These comments are indicative of a tendency: Islamic supremacists generally charge their opponents with "ignorance" and treat them with arrogance and contempt, even when those upon whom they are heaping contempt are correct, and even when the Islamic supremacists know that they are correct.
And so on this yet again: I tried to tell you.
"Tunisia Islamists set for big election gains," from AP, October 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):
(AP) TUNIS, Tunisia — As the land that launched the Arab Spring heads into historic elections next week, all eyes are on the long-repressed Islamists — and whether a big victory for them will irrevocably change this North African nation and inspire similar conservative movements around the region.Many fear that despite vows to uphold democracy, Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda Party is bent on imposing a theocracy that would roll back hard-won secularism and women's rights. Others see an opportunity to bring a moderate form of political Islam into the Arab world — one styled after the successful ruling party in thriving Turkey.
The Ennahda Party was brutally crushed by overthrown dictator Ben Ali in the 1990s, a policy tacitly approved by Western powers wary of militant Islam. Now, in the Oct. 23 election, it is set to become the largest party in the assembly that will write the nation's new constitution — largely because it is the best-organized force in the country.
Unlike many Islamist groups in the region, Ennahda has explicitly pledged to champion democratic values and women's rights, but its secular critics warn the party has a secret agenda to impose hardline Islam.
These fears have been inflamed by the appearance of new ultraconservative groups known as Salafists that have attacked movie theaters and TV stations for showing material they say denigrates Islam.
"Ultraconservatives" don't generally attack movie theaters and TV stations for showing material they say denigrates Islam.
Once in power, many warn, Ennahda would swiftly seek to put its Islamist stamp on this tourist-friendly nation of 10 million. Tunisia's post-independence 1956 personal status code was unique in the Middle East and outlawed polygamy, mandated the woman's approval to get married and set limits on the man's power to divorce. It also declared men and women to be equal in terms of rights and citizenship.In January, Tunisians stunned the world with a monthlong popular uprising that overthrew a seemingly entrenched dictator, inspiring similar revolutions across the Middle East....
"We finally get to see whether an Islamic party outside Turkey can be democratic," said Alexander.
Finally!
Which president lost Tunisia???
and Egypt?
and Libya?
and Yemen?
and...?
Enforce separation of Mosque and State for a peaceful world.
"We finally get to see whether an Islamic party outside Turkey can be democratic..." -- from the story.
Given that Turkey is increasingly sliding away from secularism and toward Islamism, this is perhaps not the best comparison to make.
A better statement would be, we get to see whether ANY Islamic party, in any country in the world, is capable of genuine democracy -- or will it fail yet again?
And so on this yet again: I tried to tell you.
And we never doubted you!
Off topic perhaps?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfqv8PA8Cdo
"Hundreds of Thousands in Tunisia streets call for Islamic law to overrule secular law"
You can see from 32 sec. to 39. sec a protester waving an Islamic flag, the same style as the al-Qaeda flag I might add...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JffadsuM6GE
A similar event moments before the second, people shouting "the people want the Islamic State"!
I think it's also noteworthy, in fact the entire channel "fazzamin" on youtube has a lot of good content.
Ah yes, the Arab Spring becomes Sharia Fall.
Lovely.
Indeed, but what if it's already too late, the one's who brought down Mubarak, ben Ali etc. were not the leftists, they have no backbone... It certainly wasn't the non-existent Christians and Jews either.
Actually, promoting 'democracy' in the Mid East was first Bush's idea, butressed by Natan Sharansky. It's a good theory if one is talking about civilized countries like Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, China, et al. It's a horrible idea when one is talking about countries of Muslims.
What's lost this group of regimes - Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and maybe Syria as well is not so much the decision to promote democracy, but rather, a failure to recognize what might be the best solution for all these countries. The best one, as Hugh pointed out so many times on this site, would have been encouraging internecine conflicts in all these countries (particularly in Syria, where either a pro-Hizbullah Baath or a Muslim brotherhood regime would be dangerous) or failing to recognize that, support pro-US dictatorships in every country (but that's an expensive proposition, and not likely to last forever, as happened in Egypt.)
another blow for the much touted democratic movement throughout the asian desert and north africa.
pffft. i wonder how the tunisian space program is going, too.
For all of the centuries since militant Islam began encroaching forcefully and expansively, it has never eliminated all of the murderous factions emerging simultaneously and divisively within its own oppressive house.
In later centuries Colonialism came along hand-drawing on map tables its various artificial borders creating "countries" straddling these same ever-long entrenched multi-fractious tribal, ethnic and cultic areas.
Then came two World Wars, the devastated economies of Europe twice reviving (with lots of American cash....let it be everlastingly remembered....along with our many American lives lost in European and Pacific Island combat....let it be everlasting recalled...); then the Europeans giving up on Colonialism as too expensive to maintain by financially exhausted European Colonial Offices. On top of all that.....currently we witness the EU's struggling national Ponzi's shifting gold bars and credits and what-not across borders "bailing" here and there.....So, what's been a constant throughout all of this tumult?
The multi-fractious tribal, ethnic and cultic areas within murderous militant Islam, that's what. Borders be damned.
So why, oh, why do we Americans persist in thinking we can change these Islamic infected areas with our comparatively very new idea of our alien "Democracy" which violates the most basic long held tenets of cancerous Islam? and, applied to such artificial "countries"?
It's here that I want to push the idea of financial isolation and containment of Islam, and our efforts at division and creating such unrest within Islamic areas that Islam will be consumed within itself while fighting itself; and we Westerners can re-assert our control over these Islamist enclaves established within European cities, and emerging here in America with the mosque centered madrassas implanting their seeds in vulnerable adolescent males.
So, applying some of the same conditions causing the collapse of Colonialism towards the weakening of Islamic controled areas, along with our using the subversive, clandestine tactics and strategy successfully used so far by Islam...... against Islam......we turn the tables.
"We finally get to see whether an Islamic party outside Turkey can be democratic," said Alexander.
And the answer is "No, it can't be." And in Turkey itself democracy is about to come to an end.
And remember that many of these countries -- Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia -- had the benefit of many decades (in the case of Algeria, over a century) of rule by constitutional and largely democratic European regimes. An intelligent and civilized people would have learned something from that. But not the Moslems.
When I started warning last winter that Islamic supremacists were in the best position to take advantage of the uprisings in Tunisia (and Egypt), most people were drinking the mainstream media Kool-Aid about a new birth of democracy and freedom. One commenter here at Jihad Watch asserted that "these revolts are spontaneous outbursts against the ruling elite. There is not one shred of evidence of any Islamist involvement." Another's scorn was intense: "You are taking advantage of the ignorance of your readers to spoon feed them this nonsense about jihad in tunisia [sic] while the Tunisian people are clamoring for democracy and freedom."
These comments are indicative of a tendency: Islamic supremacists generally charge their opponents with "ignorance" and treat them with arrogance and contempt, even when those upon whom they are heaping contempt are correct, and even when the Islamic supremacists know that they are correct.
...............................
So true—and, alas, it is not merely Islamic supremacists who do this, but also clueless dhimmis, as well.
Some where being deliberately misleading with their denials, and some where desperately clinging to the idea that the "Arab Spring" was, really, all about democracy, and how that would prove all those bad old "Islamophobes" how wrong they were.
Sadly, I *still* know people parroting this line.