The jihadi's are losing? Doesn't seem like it.

Saudi funded madrassas (in opakistan for e.g.) have mass produced hordes of mindless semi-educated zombies who are neither employed nor employable.

Hence the state of pakistan needs to constantly find them avenues of employment - more mosques and madrassas where they can serve as clergy - the only real role they're 'qualified' to play, btw - ramp up jehadi supply to stoke fires in Kashmir, Central Asia, Xinjiang, Chechenya and Afghanistan etc.

Immediately after 9-11, among Bush's first comments on the tragedy was one word 'crusade' that has now been picked up and out by a new worthy James carroll lambasting Bush's sinister conspiracy to re-launch the crusades against the Islamic world (Oh, if wishes were horses....)
Read it all here:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI08Aa02.html

Posted by: voletti at September 8, 2004 9:16 AM

Kepel, like Olivier Roy, the other great French "expert" on Islam who for years has failed to understand Islam, is fighting for his professional life. He has a record of absurdities, including constantly poohpoohing any problem with Islam. And since he (and Roy, and others) were listened to, and nothing was done to impede, or reverse, the immigration of Muslims into France, he cannot bear to admit that he was wrong.

So now, yet again, he focuses only on "qital" -- the violent jihad. But there are all sorts of instruments of jihad, and it is possible that terrorism will come to a halt and, again, the deadly weapon of demography will be employed, and any attempts to deal with that will be met with howls of protest -- how, how, how can anyone suggest that Islam itself, that those who call themselves Muslims, might in and of themselves be a threat, either because they now are open adherents of beliefs that threaten all non-Muslims, or are not open adherents but practitioners of taqiyya/kitman who are simply biding their time, keeping the "image" of Islam polished, engaging in interfaith dialogues and suchlike but fully aware of what Qur'an and hadith and sira inculcate, or they have little or no idea of the real doctrines of Islam, but nonetheless, take great pride in being Muslims (without knowing what that means), and owe their loyalty, the blindest of loyalties because they hardly know to what they are being loyal, to Islam, and to fellow Muslims, to the umma al-islamiyya. And finally, there is the "Manchurian Candidate" or "Mike Hawash" problem -- the Muslim who for years, decades even, seems perfectly stable and integrated into Western society, and then is set off by something, and becomes, or "reverts" (to use a classic Muslim term) to "real" Islam, and heads off, as Mike Hawash did, to join a Muslim army to fight his fellow Americans, abandoning his American wife, his three children, and his $360,000/year salary as a successful Intel engineer.

And as we, Infidels, have no way to know who is a real Believer, and who may for some reason become a real Believer, we have a duty -- not only to ourselves, but more importantly, to the civilization of free and skeptical inquiry we have inherited, a civilization where not one of its important figures (take a list of the 1000 most important writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, philosophers, statesmen, all over the West -- then circle those who you think could have been produced in the Islamic world, or could have been tolerated in the Islamic world for even one minute. Go ahead, once you have read this post, just try it.)

Those who tell us -- the Diane Ecks, the John("Islamic Terror -- Myth or Reality?") Espositos, and all the rest, should thank their lucky stars they are that most coddled of creatures, tenured professors, rather than locked up as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. But they are transparently, at this point, idiotic, and can be mocked, and should be. And university administrations that do not watch such people and do everything possible to limit their baleful and indeed dangerous influence (many of them are no different, in their effect, from the creatures described by John Roy Carlson in "Under Cover" about apologists for the Axis powers -- though self-assured stupidity, expressing itself briskly, is often the fons et origo of their behavior, not always cupidity or deliberate wickedness). But their ingratitude to Western civilization, and the ingratitude of all those who are not enraged by the threat, for example, of an Islamic demographic conquest (and of course Ramadan's Da'wa or Call to Islam) of Europe, ought to be ashamed. They are not being asked to be heroes. They are simply being asked to learn fully about Islamic tenets, and to help inform others, and to realize what a threat -- an intellectual and moral threat -- Islam is to human potential, and human freedom. There is no place -- not the Middle East, not North Africa, not India -- that was not made intellectually poorer, in the end (though there were a few centuries where, with the Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians still, in a sense, not yet completely islamized, something could still be achieved) by the conquest of Islam. And that is what will happen in Europe if the likes of Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, who keep writing and talking about "jihad" as a mere matter of terrorism. It isn't. The problem is far greater and far more serious. And it is time, as the English poet Henry Reed put it, to have Naming of Parts. Time to call things by their real name.

Posted by: Hugh at September 8, 2004 9:44 AM

Interesting post. I disagree with the quoted author's conclusion at the end that the US and Russia are unwise to pursue the military option against Islamic fundamentalists. A carrot and stick approach is needed. Muslim societies must see both the rewards for rejecting Islamic fundamentalist dogma, and they must also understand the repercussions that could befall them if they fail to reform or cast out the terrorist ideology that is driving them headlong into what would be a disastrous (for the Muslim world) all-out confrontation with the West.

Posted by: LemonJoose at September 8, 2004 11:34 AM

Voletti,
I keep reassuring people, like you, who are starting to get worried about jihad, and a common misconception is that a lot of newcomers to the anti-jihad world seem to think that muslims are at some kind of advantage just because of their number :Over a billion, apparently, although this number is often disputed.Then of cause there's the fact that there are the different kinds of muslims- sunnis and shi'ite, which also segregates them, as well as arabic muslims having a superiority complex over other races of muslim, further segregating it, and causing conflict within it's ranks.
Then it's only logical to realise that the more muslims there are that follow the violent jihad ideology, the more violence will take place in islams name, quickening the pace of the people that are daily opening their eyes to this human scourge. 9/11 was damaging to them, now they have Russia on their case, which is bad news for them, and at the same time the more open-minded liberals are opening their eyes as well as setting the record straight for less intelligent, more ill-informed lefties (as they have week by week anyhow, but the brutal massacre of kids is enough to run anyones palette of tolerance dry).

The main factor to consider though is the undisputable fact that, with the notable exeption of Turkey, most of the islamic population of the world are way below the poverty line : i.e-third worlders ( their refusal to withdraw from their religion and the sharia is undoubtedly a primary factor in this).
Now many muslims believe they are creating an invinsable army or allah worshippers, that will be too overwhelming to stop, but their misjudgement of the modern world and modern technology is one of the major thorns in their ass.
Many are so worried about an apocolypse, or doomsday scenario comming in the form of a "great terror from the east" (in the words of Nostrodamus, who eerily predicted this as well as every single major war and event since his death).But I think ultimately the doom will befall the disciples of evil (muslims).
At the rate their population is expanding they are only inviting great suffering from diseases/epidemic/virus and famine, which certainly isn't going to make them anymore of a threat to the US, Europe,Russia,Israel,India or China (and even if it did these aformentioned infidel enemies of allah would still outnumber them by over 2billion, and out class them in every conceivable way whether it be technologically, intellectually, or strategically.

Be aware I'm not claiming to see the future I'm just making a prediction based on my own perceptions of the modern world.
Can't help thinking I've missed something out.
Oh well; if it comes to me ,I'll get back to you.

Posted by: Rikki at September 8, 2004 11:37 AM

LemonJoose...

I completely agree.

Posted by: jawa at September 8, 2004 11:44 AM

Methinks I read a contradiction in the article, perhaps too why LemonJoose stated his/her comment.
exhibit A:
They have lost their Afghan stronghold, and U.S.-led coalition troops have pursued the war on terror to Iraq, occupying Baghdad, erstwhile capital of the Muslim caliphate.
For the ulema, the Islamic scholars, this is a catastrophe. Instead of making inroads into enemy territory, jihad has backfired and led to what they call fitna — a war within Islam, pitting Shiite against Sunni, Arab against Kurd, Muslim against Muslim — and brought nothing but chaos.
exhibit B:
Instead, by concentrating on the military option, Russia and the U.S. are missing an opportunity to mobilize Muslim civil society against Islamist terrorism and dry out the social swamps from which it springs.,

Posted by: daughter of patriots at September 8, 2004 3:07 PM

The "social swamps"? What "social swamps" are those, and how will they be "drained"? The problem remains the texts of Islam, the actual words, and phrases, in Qur'an, the real stories in the Hadith, the deeds and sayings of Muhammad-- as Muslim believe them to be true -- in the authentic or sahih recensions of Bukhari, Muslim and a few others. Could it be that in a civilisation of one book, unius libri, with virtually nothing else to repair to or consult, much less an alternative vision of the universe, that the "social swamp" is really an intellectual one? Gilles Kepel is no Abel, Vajda, Bousquet, Dufourcq; rather, he is the thoroughly modern, bland, and shallow "scholar" of a kind that American universities now not only produce, but offer lifetime tenure to. His previous books show just how blandly incomprehending he is of permanent features of Islamic doctrine; perhaps, not a believer in anything much himself, he lacks the imaginative sympathy necessary to put oneself into the mind of such a believer. He can't do it. So he writes about a "social swamp." This is not a case of draining swamps, of Pogo and Albert the Alligator. No, it is a much larger question, involving a belief-system that regards its Believers as members of an army, who cannot leave (be apostates), and whose sole loyalty must be to other members of that army, the umma al-islammiyya. Failure of the governments of Western Europe, and most obviously of France, have caused, and will cause, great and avoidable pain, expense, and danger to the non-Muslim citizens of France, the inheritors of its civilization. Kepel is too dense to understand. But just look around at how history and literature are now taught in the universities of the West. He is hardly alone.

Posted by: Hugh at September 8, 2004 3:29 PM

"No, it is a much larger question, involving a belief-system that regards its Believers as members of an army, who cannot leave (be apostates), and whose sole loyalty must be to other members of that army, the umma al-islammiyya."

So ........... true!!

The last part of the above sentence "sole loyalty ..." explains the attitude of the moslems, irregardless of whether or not they were western educated or maddrassah educated. This loyalty made them blind to other peoples rights, blind to what their religion is doing to others.

As an example, in Indonesia, the largest moslem country in the world, who are supposed to be 'moderate', they blame the deaths in Beslan on Putin. They don't want to hear about the atrocities committed by the terrorists in Beslan, they accuse you of being anti muslim instead.

They don't want to hear about the government closing down churches - this happened (again) just this week-end. They speculate the reason for this was , of course, due to the fault of the christians, ie. they did not follow the law.

It is a mindset, taught by their religion. The only way to change it is from within, from within the moslem themselves. But I don't see how someone could tell 'a slave of the muslim god', that the very thing his god told him as written in the book, is wrong? And since they emulate the live of their sex crazed and blood thirsty muhammad, how could you tell these slaves of god not to do those detestable things muhammad did in his lifetime? After all didn't god tell his slaves that muhammad was his messenger?

With regard to the Austr. embassy bombing, right now the population is just trying to find out whether their relavites, friends are ok. Wait a day or two and there's bound to be someone whose going to say it is the work of the infidel.

Posted by: jasmine at September 9, 2004 4:58 AM