"...most of the terrorists come from a small number of wealthy Arab countries, from immigrant communities in the West or from southeast Asia. Few are from poor Islamic countries such as Afghanistan."

When you are poor, and illiterate, two things happen:

1) you have a hardscrabble existence, and have to spend your time earning your daily bread. The Arabs with time on their hands, because of the unearned OPEC wealth, are the most dangerous --- for it is they who can ponder Islam, can nurse their grievances. Why aren't we on top of the world? we have all this money -- shouldn't we use it to promote Islam to its rightful place which is everywhere "to dominate and not to be dominated"?

2) while calling yourself a Muslim, you may have remained largely ignorant of the specifics of Qur'an and Sunnah though, of course, you are aware that you must abhor Infidels and all their ways, because.....well, because they are Infidels, and you are a Muslim, and the world is divided into Two Teams, and you are on the Muslim Team, and must at the very least dislike those on the Infidel Team, and never be grateful to them no matter what they do.

But until the full force of modern technology explodes in his society -- he may remain, for a while, immune to the full virulence of Islam. A virus which can remain dormant when its carrier has to spend his waking minutes farming, or fighting with other tribes, or smuggling, or chewing khat, or dozing over a hubble-bubble pipe, or playing games in a coffeehouse, is less likely to be a threat.

That dormant virus may not remain permantly dormant, however, for Infidel inventions (audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet) can be exploited to emphasise the teachings of Islam beyond what a tiny village mosque might offer.

And from now on, that djinn or genie can't be put back in any bottle, not even in a bottle labelled with the name of a nostrum offered by mountebanks who not only try to hornswoggle the crowds, but themselves apparently believe in their own diluted placebo:

"Step Right Up, Absolutely Free, For a Decade or Two Only -- Get Your Democracy Here -- Good For What Ails You. Cures Everything Under the Sun. Satisfaction Guaranteed, Or You Get to Keep Even More of Our Money. Don't Hesitate. Step Right Up."

Posted by: Hugh at April 3, 2005 9:50 AM

Great Post Hugh, as usual.

As regards the myth that Democracy is the cure for what ails the Arab world. I think Robert covered that pretty well in Onward Muslim Soldiers. (Maybe we should send a copy to President Bush, oops forget it he only reads third grade books about goats, and admits that he is not curious).

It seems that the most radical Muslims (like Sayyid Qutb) became radicalized after visiting the US and Europe (and discovering that western women weren't interested in them,there is a strong sexual element or component in radical religous movements, rejection is hard to take for some men).

On the other hand it seems that the fellaheen, the impoverished lower class is much more preoccupied with getting by and keeping food in his belly.

However our jizyah payments to the Saudis and OPEC for crude oil and gas, provides the necessary income that gives them the free time to ponder, study and vent their spleen, not on their own failed ideology - Muslim responsibility is like sand and scrambled eggs, but to project that failure onto the jews and the wests.

This reminds me of the leveling nature of Communism and the Jacobites of the French Revolution, of Mao Tse Tung's let a thousand flowers bloom.

Eliminate the evidence of one's own failures and incompetency, but wiping out those and the means to achieve and excell.

Muslims can't be happy, until the whole world is a s miserable as they. (This concept is not restricted to Muslims either). They don't want to climb out of their misery, they just want to drag everyone else into the cesspool of misery.

There's a pathology there of misery loves company, that change is frightening and to be resisted, even if it means wallowing the rest of eternity in a puddle of mud, that is the essence of entrenched and self blinded conservativism.

Posted by: Giaour at April 3, 2005 3:37 PM

I have known and worked with both poor and well to do Muslims, and I can say that the poor ones practice their religion through prayer alone, while those with money and spare time, tend to study their murder cult closely. I have asked both classes of the mortal enemy if they maintain an Islamic library, and only the latter have answered to the affirmative. I learned from this that: only the Islamofascist elements are authentic Muslims, who live according to the perverse prescriptions of the murderous pedophile who created their vulgar terror ideology. Poor Muslims are extremely vulnerable to terror incitement, which issues from the cult's extremist elite. It is essential that anti-Muslims ignore the doormat spews from the oil-patch side of the Bush government, and conduct independent, impartial and proper studies of the terror cult. Reject the following Muslim centrist vomit:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html
And learn something of the depth of Muslim perversity by studying actual definitive Muslim texts, like the following pro-genocide exemplary from ibn Ishaq's 8th century biography of Mohammed:

ACCOUNT OF THE GENOCIDE OF A JEWISH TRIBE (BANU QURAIZAY) BY MUHAMMED, ERSATZ "PROPHET" OF ISLAM

Sa'd (the "qadi", or judge, who carried out Mohammed's kangaroo court judgment against innocent people) asked, 'Do you covenant by allah that you accept the judgment I pronounce on them?' They (jihadis) said, 'Yes' and he said, 'And it is incumbent on the one who is here?' (looking) in the direction of the apostle, (but) not mentioning him out of respect, and the apostle answered, 'Yes.' Sa'd said, 'Then I give judgement that the men should be killed, the property divided, and the women and children taken as captives.'"

"...then they (condemned innocent Jews) surrendered, and the apostle confined them in Medina in the quarter of d Mu'adh from Alqama b Waqqas al-Laythi that the apostle said to Sa'd 'You hav given the judgement of allah above the seven heavens.' Then the apostle went to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches...there were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900. As they were bring taken out in batches to the apostle, they asked Ka'b what he thought would be done with them. He replied, 'Will you never understand? Don't you see that the summoner never stops and those who are taken away do not return? By Allah, it is death!' This went on until the apostle made an end to them..."

"Aisha (the phony prophet's 6 year old sex utensil) said: 'Only one of their women was killed. She was actually with me and was talking with me an laughing immoderately as the prophet was beheading Jews in the market of Medina, when suddenly an unseen voice called her name, 'Good heavens,' I cried, 'What is the matter?' 'I am to be killed,' she replied. 'What for?' I asked. 'Because of something I did,' she answered. She was taken away and beheaded. Aisha used to say, 'I shall never forget my wonder at her good spirits and her loud laughter when all the time she knew she was going to be killed.'"
("Life of the Messenger of God," ibn-Ishaq)

Posted by: smokem at April 3, 2005 6:48 PM

smokem-

The Koran and Hadiths (especially) DO read like the self-congratulatory informal writings of the Nazis in in the field 1941 and 1942, before the war began to turn against them.

Haughty, smug, gloating, shameless, sadistic, amazed at their own 'luck', with a giddy feeling that "God MUST be on our side" because the battles have all been relatively-easily won and that history was going in their favor. Czechoslovakia was thrown to the 'aryan' wolves by the cowardly fools in France and England - as a sop to Cerberus that failed- and then the Nazis took Austria, Poland, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, etc, etc.

Islam was on a similar blitzkreig from 600 A.D. until stopped by Charles Martel, then again in Spain in 1492, and finally during the later Ottoman effort which met a similar fate in the 18th century.

Now, the Islamicists resent this fact outloud: "How dare the infidels halt our conquest of the world."

And so they are plotting -via the internet and faxes and cruder methods- to correct this delay of the Muslim-ification of the Earth. Using the nihilistic intellectual class's cunning, just as the communists and Nazis did, to further the original aims of the Only War: the triumph of Allah over all.

Our schools need to teach the historical roots and brave meaning of the 'inalienable' Rights of Humans.

Or we won't know how to respond to the cynical sophistries of the Islamic elite.

Posted by: BigSleep at April 3, 2005 8:44 PM