TO WIN THIS BATTLE, Americans (and preferably Europeans too) need to recapture a bit of civilizational confidence.

Splendid!

Posted by: ZionistYoungster at October 6, 2006 10:38 AM

Spread the word!
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/gadsden/-/pv_design_prod/pg_1/p_storeid.25445536/pNo_25445536/id_14392155/opt_/fpt_/c_360/

http://www.usflag.org/history/gadsden.html

Posted by: Carolyn2 at October 6, 2006 10:52 AM

If this is not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth then there is no truth at all.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at October 6, 2006 10:56 AM

http://gen.culpepper.com/historical/flag.htm#Dont_Tread_on_Me

Posted by: Carolyn2 at October 6, 2006 10:57 AM

Carolyn2 - I fly the Naval Jack on my boat, off the deck of my house along with the regular flag and have the naval jack posted on the back of my car.

I will continue to fly the Navy Jack until the end of this war, in the same way as the ships in the U.S. Navy will by order of the Secretary of the Navy.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at October 6, 2006 11:11 AM

A_Plague_on_Both_Houses,
I wear the T shirts and have the Culpepper bumper sticker on my car.
I hope to see a lot more.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at October 6, 2006 11:15 AM

We've got a long way to go Carolyn2. Most people around here still have stickers for select soccer clubs and little boys urinating on words....good news is some of the words are 'Bin Laden'and 'Terrorists'.

We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at October 6, 2006 11:26 AM

Another thing Carolyn2, my wife had some of her old friends down to the lake a month back and they saw my Navy Jack. They asked my wife about it and she told them why I fly it. They see it more as a 'hobby' of mine than anything. We've got a long way to go.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at October 6, 2006 11:29 AM

Crocker is quite right about America being an Empire, and quite right about the virtue of reinvigorating it. However, Western Imperialism began to be institutionally and ideologically deconstructed by the mid-20th century, and what America inherited was not the bold and outright Imperialism of yore, but rather a paradoxical version that had to function in contradictory terms of a growing sociopolitical anti-Imperialism. This development of anti-Imperialism has been coincident with the larger more amorphous development of PC, which is larger and more amorphous than the Leftism that gave it its birth, since it now affects, and infects, a majority of those on the Right.

Nevertheless, America as the vanguard of the West has a spectacularly tentacular influence over the entire globe on economic, political and cultural levels unprecedented even during the heyday of Western Colonialism, with a military power also unprecedented. This influence is, and should be acknowledged as, imperialistic. And it should be recognized as the most beneficent and progressive imperialism in all world history. Unfortunately, PC in many ways is, ironically, more powerful than the American imperialism that is its nutritious incubator; and this PC enshrines and foments a socipolitically dominant counter-ideology that we are now seeing is the single most significant hindrance to our collective learning curve about that single most significant threat to our Empire -- Problem of Islam.

Posted by: remote_control at October 6, 2006 11:50 AM

Robert, it would be nice if you provided the readers of your site a way to start new threads on subjects of their choosing (still related to jihad issues, of course)-something like a bulletin board / usenet newsgroup.

Posted by: george_rem at October 6, 2006 11:50 AM

"The pressure today, after the collapse of the European empires and the not coincidental rise of moral relativism and multiculturalism, is the reverse."

The break of the British Empire is only one (and maybe minor) factor in the picture. Probably the most traumatic collapse of a pre-1914 Empire was that of the Ottoman Empire. The consequences of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire appears similar in consequences to the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe which caused centuries of instability there before nation states (England, France, Spain etc.) came to be the political form that replaced the Roman Empire. It was not until the mid 19th century that Germany and Italy finally reached the nation state status. The whole process (the development of nation states) took anywhere from 1,000 to 1,400 years to play itself out in Europe.

The recent collapse of the Soviet Empire has added to the mess as former Soviet Republics have entered the stage along with the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The whole Islamic region is now a cauldron of violence and barbarism or semi-barbarism similar to Europe for a thousand years after the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 AD.

Imperialism is the rule of one people over another. Because America is a pluralistic society made up of hundreds of different ethic groups, we don't feel comfortable with Imperialism. We had to be dragged into World War 1 and we were the last major power involved in World War 2. In fact, we did not put armies on the ground in Europe till late 1943 (nearly four years after the start of WW2).

America was forced into an Imperial role after the defeat of Germany and Japan and our occupation was benign and ended many old rivalries in Europe and brought Japan out of a medieval rule by a Shinto Emperor and his court. However, the looming and menacing threat of the Soviet Empire after WW2 required a world wide armed presence of America, including in the Mideast. We achieved the containment and finally saw the end of the USSR through multilateral (basically pluralistic) world wide alliances.

However, that which was once protected (Mideast) from the Soviet threat has now become a world wide threat. I believe it is time to take that policy developed in the Truman Administration (containment of the USSR) and apply it to the former Ottoman Empire, the entire Mideast and the former Soviet Republics. Containment must mean what it did with the Soviets: multilateral alliances (Russia, China, etc.) to keep Islamic violence within its natural area until the Islamic world sorts out the consequences of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the collapse of the former USSR.

The chaos of the region may last last for centuries or it may only last a few decades. But a political solution must come from within the Islamic world as the rest of the world becomes independent of the regions energy and contains its violence.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 11:55 AM

Eastern/Central Europeans are afraid of Muslims I visited my old country in central-eastern Europe last summer. The country is a member of the EU and NATO and very democratic. In the last 10 years, the number of Muslims that have settled in that country has exploded. Most of them are young Arabs who came there to study and ended up buying real estate and small bussiness (restaurants etc) and being granted citizenship. Entire neighborhoods are now Arab.

Now the bad news: in the days following 9/11, these Arabs had big, noisy street parties in their parts of the town. The police was called, but they couldnt do anything--no law was broken. What's worse, regular people are afraid of these Arabs-rumor has it that Arabs are dealing in drugs and firearms and capable of murdering anyone who crosses them. People hate them, but they'fear them.

So the populace is intimidated, the police canto do anything, and the Arabs do as they please. I've written Europe off.

Posted by: george_rem at October 6, 2006 12:06 PM

These words "Don't tread on me" have been thought of time and time again over the past several years when I think of the threats against the values that form the foundations of the western world and in particular for me; the United states of America.

There are some that like to say that America has lost its way when it comes to moral values that our for-fathers stood for; I completely disagree! There are more good, and decent people in this country then there are the indecent among us. The indecent probably end up being noticed more than those who live their lives with decency toward their fellow men. For those that think America has lost it way when it comes to values, take a little time and look around to see who you are hanging around with and be sure you are not simply reflecting a negative attitude because of the inviroment that you find youself living in.

America and its values are worth defending without question.

Posted by: Mackie at October 6, 2006 12:07 PM

To my above comment: I would add that the first place in the region to develop true nation state status (a secular state with common language, common ethnic coherence, and a popular democracy) has been Israel. This resulted from the relocation of Jewish people in the region and from Jewish people coming to the region fleeing or surviving Hitler. This is ironic. But Israel points the way to the political system that will bring not only peace but prosperity to the region (including the former Soviet Republics). Israel is the blueprint to follow for the Muslim countries in the region.

The Muslims will either see that or plunge into a suicidal chaos as the world looks on in horror. However, one day, Israel may be looked upon as a blessing in the region if its political system is copied. We should pray to God for that. Sometimes "God writes straight with crooked lines". Let's hope the Muslim world sees Israel as the answer to the problem in the region, and not the problem in the region.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 12:16 PM

Mr. Crocker III agreed. I would like to call it ideals imperialism to emphasize what we stand for (freedom, liberty, and the future of mankind,) but not to take away from the traditional imperialism.

Let me also add that moral relativism, which is the tactic Muslims and Muslim apologists use to justify Islam, is another way of saying that you have no country, no constitution, and no enforceable rights. These are weapons people! Used by the Muhammad monarchy!

Posted by: ofcourse at October 6, 2006 12:18 PM

Re a containment policy:

Containment (as per the Truman and subsequent administrations) not only meant regional alliances to cordon off the USSR. It also meant severe restrictions on any immigration from the Soviet Union and its Empire. Containment means containment in every way.

The foreign policy model to follow is that which was applied to the USSR-and that meant intervention in Communist states. The attempt to apply the kind of policy that was applied to Germany and Japan after WW2 in the region is not the model to follow as per US and non-Muslim world interest.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 12:46 PM

I meant: The foreign policy model to follow is that which was applied to the USSR-and that meant NO intervention in Communist states.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 12:48 PM

During the height of their Empire, the British did not have a large population of Muslims living in the British Isles.

Posted by: MP at October 6, 2006 12:49 PM

"...the West lacks confidence that it has a civilization worth promoting over, or even defending against, the Islamists."

I'd like to be able to blame the secular progressive multiculturalists (SPMs) for this state of affairs - they've actively encouraged it. It's not that the majority of us don't believe our civilization is worth defending and promoting, but that the shrill voices of the SPMs have been allowed control the debate for too long.

As Edmund Burke said a long time ago, "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." For too long, we (I'm speaking collectively) have sat on the sidelines, avoiding the sometimes withering invectives that accompany taking a firm position on something important. If we continue to do nothing, or do too little, our grandchildren will live under Sharia.

The threat Islam presents to the West is real and growing, and there is not an organized resistance to it. Sure, we are currently fighting a couple of wars in the Middle East and the Europeans are starting to awaken to the awful state of affairs that confronts them. But, we in North America seem to have gone back to sleep after 9/11.

Until we have "first cleansed our inward vessel," we will not be able to effectively confront the Islamists that seek to destroy our civilization. We must become politically active. We must wrestle control of the debate over Islam from the SPMs. We must unite our countries against this threat. We must elect political leaders who will take this threat seriously. And, as Mr. Crocker argues, Muslims within our borders must accept and learn to peacefully coexist with our culture and laws.

The Islamists know we are fractured and divided, which is painfully obvious when watching what they say and do. Only after we can speak with a unified voice to the Muslim world can we begin to effectively confront the Islamists. We must be willing to back up our words with action (we can only have peace if we are strong).

Posted by: Bad_Attitude_Infidel at October 6, 2006 1:10 PM

Mackie-

I agree with you. Americans are the most disciplined workers in the world and we are all specialists in one form or other and this has created a division of labor that has made us wealthy. We generally love freedom and despise both the crack-pots that abuse freedom (via licence) or the crackpots that want to control human behavior (Muslims are similar to USSR Communists in this regard). The vast majority of Americans know that rights and responsibilty are together the alternative to license or totalitarian systems. We want both licence and totalitarianism reigned in and contained because both are lethal to freedom.

The late Charles Kuralt pointed out that 2/3 of Americans could not trace their ancestry back before 1890 in America. He said that in the early 90's and the figure is probably 75% now. People have come here for the freedom and have fled clerical and political controls that kill creativity. We know the enemies of freedom are licence and totalitarianism-and we don't want either to prevail here.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 1:15 PM

Re: Message to jihadists: don't tread on me

Final comment: Much of my thoughts on this matter have been strongly influenced by JihadWatch. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the collapse of the former USSR have created a condition in the region similar to that after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Current US policy seems more like that applied to Germany and Japan after WW2. It is an imperial policy for that reason.

However, the policy will fail for two reasons: 1) A system of nation states (secular, ethnically homogeneous, and with a common language) is absent in the region (except for Israel). 2)and Islam prevents a secular state.

We need a new foreign policy on the lines of that which contained a very aggressive USSR. It has to be multilateral (forget about the UN) and similar to the alliance systems that contained the USSR. It will have to include Russia and China. It must be a strict policy of containing violence in the region, becoming independent of fuel in the region, and require no military intervention in the region (as done with Eastern Europe during the cold war). Containment must also involve severe restrictions on immigration from the region until it becomes politically stable. That may take a century.

1) Non-intervention 2) multilateral containment 3) energy independence, and 4) severe restriction of immigration will protect the non-Muslim world from the conditions there that must be sorted out as they were in Europe after the break-up of the Roman Empire.

We need a President Truman and not so much a President Bush in this. Current policy has to change.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 1:59 PM

DAMN STRAIGHT!

Posted by: squire at October 6, 2006 2:02 PM

Great but don't ship arms to Fatah/Abbas, they'll just use it to kill Jews as in May.

Posted by: akak at October 6, 2006 2:22 PM

Bonedigger those are great stories, it really shows those idoit muslim never had a chance to meet real free women, and that is probably what scares the crap out of them, and why they want to make sure their cult controls women! l would love it if we could do a Scotty beam me up with one of those clowns to NYC town square, it would really freak out that clown for sure!

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at October 6, 2006 2:26 PM

"The key to this was that while the British were happy to leave traditional arrangements (tribal leaders, religious affiliations, and so on) standing, they insisted that Muslims accommodate themselves to British law, custom, government, and civilization"

Mr. Whoever you are, this is the key that the current policy makers have taken from the British Empire of which you mention from your shallow studies. The allied forces are fighting, and dying, to enforce a sharia democracy in iraq and afghanistan. They are dying to prevent the shia killing the sunni and vice versa ; all the time for the sake of a "light unto muslim nations".

Just for the sake of curiosity, what history books have your read ?

Posted by: arjun.sevak at October 6, 2006 2:48 PM

The only way Crocker's piece could have been improved upon, was if he closed it with a single sentence in a new paragraph: "So let's all cut the crap, and get on with it...!"

Posted by: Dan at October 6, 2006 3:07 PM

Frank:

I really enjoy your thoughts and insight on containment; a very good history for my young mind.

I guess my question though is how do you contain a nuclear armed Iran? It seems to be a problem if Israel is the only hopeful model for positive change in the region. Iran has minced no words about what it would like to do to Israel. If the U.S. were to disengage from Middle Eastern foreign policy, there appears to be two outcomes in the not-so-long run. 1)Either stand-by and let Israel be annihilated by Iran or 2)wait for Israel to strike Iran pre-emptively (possibly nuclear) finally taking out the current regime, as well as taking out all current nuclear facilities(and of course Israel would probably receive harsh repudiation from Europe, Russia, China etc. for "abhorrent" pre-emptive action in the name of state defense).

I think of the U.S. statement yesterday in regards to how "the U.S. will not live with a nuclear armed North Korea". Well, Israel CANNOT live with a nuclear armed Iran.

Also, I question on how soon we can actually be energy independent from the region. We still heavily rely on Middle Eastern oil to power our economy, as does the rest of the world and that probably won't change in the near future.

I'm just thinking out loud. I think containment could be good idea in theory, if it weren't for that damn oil and the lives of millions of Israelis!

Posted by: YankeeinNederland at October 6, 2006 3:15 PM

Frank,

"The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the collapse of the former USSR have created a condition in the region similar to that after the collapse of the Roman Empire."

There's one gigantic difference between the two eras you are comparing: when the Roman Empire slowly collapsed -- and for many centuries afterwards --, there was no overwhelmingly superior and sophisticated civilization surrounding it from all sides.

Posted by: remote_control at October 6, 2006 3:26 PM

Yankee in Nederland:

Allow Israel to make pre-emptive strikes against Iran, and the U.S. will have to tell Iran's neighbors and allies that in no uncertain terms if they join the fray they will feel the full weight of our wrath.

Iran will stop selling oil, so will Venezuela, and gas prices will triple. The U.S. Navy will have to break any blockade in M.E. waters so that other oil shippers can get through. The U.S. should open the Alaska Pipeline, and work double time finding alternative fuel sources.

And we'll need a President who will be able to convey that message forcefully. Now that's the problem.

Posted by: atheling at October 6, 2006 3:33 PM

Am quite prepared to remind the islamists that their ideology and practise is crap, and our open society is both more intelligent, but also more powerful.

Hear ye Ibrahim.

Now, if only we could lose the left, in govt. and in the media, who are quite irrational and disgusting and deserve to live in the crapistans of the world with their "noble" savages.

Posted by: dgene at October 6, 2006 3:42 PM

Frank, indeed we need a President Truman and as well, England could use a Sir Winston Churchill. Goodridence to the bushes and blairs that insist on sitting on their hands and turn their heads as their governments are GIVEN away. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to hurl.

Posted by: mustang65 at October 6, 2006 4:36 PM

Frank, indeed we need a President Truman and as well, England could use a Sir Winston Churchill. Goodridence to the bushes and blairs that insist on sitting on their hands and turn their heads as their governments are GIVEN away. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to hurl.

Posted by: mustang65 at October 6, 2006 4:38 PM

Please read this, its very informative about "the clash of civilizations".

Islam and globalisation
Until late last month, when Salman Rushdie added his name to those of a few other like-minded souls and signed a statement attacking Muslims for having been outraged by a set of Danish cartoons depicting their prophet with satirical ridicule, something seemed amiss in that whole global uproar, writes Hamid Dabashi*

With Salman Rushdie's signature at the bottom of a statement declaring a global proclamation against "Islamic totalitarianism", in the aftermath of the Danish cartoon row, we have entered a new phase in what might be termed "Islam and globanalisation" -- a twilight zone of uncertainty where we are all at the mercy of fastidious knowledge produced about bugbears of nightmarish proportions, in this particular case what Rushdie and his associates curiously call "Islam".

"After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism", Salman Rushdie and his colleagues have declared, "the world now faces a new global threat: Islamism." How so, and by what authority? One looks in vain in the list of the statement's twelve signatories allied with Rushdie for someone with the remotest sense of demonstrable knowledge about this goblin of their perturbed imagination that they keep calling "Islam" -- and yet they do declare and designate this "Islam" as a global threat, next and akin to "fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism". The world is now at the mercy of such proclamations -- and Rushdie's name does carry, what Kent detected and declared in Lear and called, "authority". By what authority, how, when, what, and "who gave thee this authority" to declare such things -- no one dares to ask.

"We, writers, journalists, intellectuals", announce Salman Rushdie and his associates, "call for resistance to religious totalitarianism." They can of course call for whatever they wish -- but we are also entitled to ask "writers, journalists, intellectuals" of what particular and combined learning and erudition, knowledge and audacity, about the ghostly apparition that has disturbed their slumber. And why should the world attend and heed such proclamations? Is this thing they call "Islam" the faith of millions of people around the globe, or the bugbear of a band of neocon artists? It's hard to tell.

The case of the Danish cartoon row, in the furious rapidity of world events already an old issue, might be considered as perhaps the best example of how a boisterous banality now governs the principal mode producing public knowledge and thus perceiving Islam and its contemporary historical whereabouts. The row has a history, and the domain of its import implicates Europe in its entirety. It is not just the Danish paper Jyllands- Posten that initially commissioned and published these cartoons. Editors of newspapers and magazines throughout Europe, in print and on the Internet, jubilantly joined their Danish counterparts in massively distributing these cartoons and thus registering their European solidarity in the matter. One such incident after another adds fury and momentum to the way an increasingly globalised audience, Muslim and non-Muslim, conceives and disposes of "Islam".

Selected scenes from scattered Muslim reactions to the publication of these cartoons, pictorially staged and carefully choreographed by the leading European press to sustain their historical record of showing Muslims in the worst possible angle ever seen through a camera have been systematically characterised as yet another sign of a fundamental discrepancy between (this the most enduring binary opposition manufactured by Orientalists in the course of their prolonged services to colonial modernity) "Islam and the West": clean-shaven, civilised white men properly attired in business suits posited against poor, enraged, and furious Muslims.

That some Muslims around the world are outraged and multitudes of them have gone out on a rampage is yet another example of how they misread the domestic affairs of Europeans and Americans and take them for a global assault on themselves. The primary and principal target of these cartoons, with the denigration of Muslims they entail, is in fact labour immigrants of Muslim descent suffering the racism of their host country in one shade, shape, and form or another. A similar misreading was exactly the case when Samuel Huntington issued his own proclamation a few years ago, positing Muslims and Islam as the principal threat to what he still insists on calling, "Western Civilization." On that occasion too, Muslims around the world took Huntington's prognostication to heart and thought he was talking to them, while he, along with a band of like-minded neocon artists like Francis Fukuyama and Alan Bloom, was in fact deeply troubled by massive demographic changes within the United States. By proposing that "Islam" posited a civilisational threat to "the West," Huntington and Co sought to silence massive bodies of old and new, Arab and Muslim, immigrants to the United States demanding a pride of place in terms domestic to their cultural heritage and moral authority.

That the immediate target of the Danish cartoonists was not a remote abstraction called "Islam", but an immediate leviathan appearing in the shape of immigrant communities of Muslim background in their own midst there is no doubt. What remains a puzzle is why leading European opinion-makers, led by a group of yuppie racist journalists, continue to be in a dire need of reminding themselves that they are God's gift to humanity and that Jews and Muslims, the flipped sides of the same coin, or by extension Africans, Asians, or Latin Americans, have no place among them. It is here, and in the immediate vicinity of that question, that lapsed Muslims like Salman Rushdie become handy.

The leading European press (but by no means all) is now having an all-out orgy with its journalistic ethnic cleansing -- and the bravura cannot be entirely explained by the fact that certain kinds of Europeans, carrying their Christianity up their sleeves or else brandishing their "Laïcité" like a saber of unmerciful certainty, do not wish to see any Jews or Muslims, Africans, Asians, or Latinos, among them. With some bizarre sense of irony, the colonial history of Europe, having plundered the globe many times over, has now brought millions of Muslims from Asia and Africa home to roost -- and it would seem that some white Christian Europeans are frightened out of their wits. Oriana Fallaci is now chief among European soothsayers demanding the ethnic cleansing of her Europe. Between Fallaci and Berlusconi, the legacy of Mussolini's fascism is no history -- and Rushdie's "Islam" no substitution.

In the midst of this row -- militant Muslims and racist Europeans at each other's throat -- one cannot but wonder, with a modicum of reason, what is behind the quarrel. What we are dealing with here is the intersection of medieval signs and modern sensitivities, both brought to bear on a brutalised malignancy that resembles two belligerent and silly school children going at each other. To put things in perspective, one can of course begin with the inhibition of figurative representation in Islamic doctrinal disposition -- a fact very much compromised by the range of Persian, Indian and Turkish miniature paintings, and by the effervescence of figurative royal paintings in the 18th and 19th centuries throughout much of the Muslim world.

Against the doctrinal inhibition of figurative painting, such paintings do in fact abound in Islamic art. This inhibition assumes a particularly curious turn when it comes to the figural representation of Prophet Muhammad that it might be quite instructive to know at this point. When the late Syrian filmmaker Moustapha Akkad, tragically killed in the course of a suicidal violence in Amman late last year, made a feature film on the career of Prophet Muhammad, The Message (1976), he opted, out of respect for Muslim sensitivity, not to show the face or figure of the Prophet and simply suggested his presence.

The evident presence of this doctrinal inhibition does not mean that pious Muslims the world over do not look for and produce pictorial representations of their holy men, including their Prophet. The Shias, in particular, have absolutely no qualms whatsoever having the images of Prophet Muhammad and their Imams depicted -- painted on a canvas or woven into a decorative carpet -- and sold in the markets of Najaf, Mashhad, Qom, or Beirut. Pious and believing Muslims buy these pictures and hang them proudly and reverentially in their homes or in public without any hesitation.

The question then is why when a Danish newspaper depicts Prophet Muhammad in a ludicrous manner, or previously when a Pakistani author goes on a fictive rampage denigrating the sacrosanct moments of a people's history, some Muslims, particularly those suffering the terror of tyrannical rulers at home or else the indignities of labour migration abroad, are outraged. Career opportunist novelists or talent-less cartoonists, trying to make up for their lack of creative talent with scandalous marketing ruses, are of course entirely, unconditionally, and ipso facto entitled to make any fool out of themselves, for such acts of juvenile superciliousness are entirely within their civil and human rights, and no one is even in a position to grant or deny them such inalienable rights. But whence the anger, and whereby the fury?

This obviously is a clear case of the context and not just the text -- when you have a representation of a prophet with headgear that looks like a bomb and a nose straight out of the old European racist apothecary boxes, and lay him out thick against the background of a systematic record of white supremacist, masculinist, and European racism against Jews and Muslims, then you have a different story on your hand.

The current anti-Muslim plague, running loose throughout Europe and the United States, banks on the white Christian repertoire of anti- Semitism that has now shifted its focal attention away from the Jews and re-directed itself towards Muslims. Under the guise of the freedom of expression, and positing their racist prejudices in colourful colonial Enlightenment shades, prominent European opinion-makers, as fully evident in their leading newspapers and magazines, are letting loose their racist bigotry in ways unprecedented since the horrid records of European pogroms that ultimately led to the Jewish Holocaust, as is exemplified in the Prophet Muhammed cartoon row or the front covers of The Economist and most other right-wing papers and magazines up in arms against "gypsies" swamping "their lands", loudly declaring that "9 out of 10 asylum seekers are conmen," and that they ought to be "kicked out".

With a combination of mental laziness and a jaundiced visual imagination, these European newspapers are in fact regurgitating the selfsame anti-Jewish insignia definitive to their history and applying them to Muslims all over again. Contorted faces, prominent noses, frightful dispositions, angry demeanours, and grotesque postures have been and continue to be definitive to the way old-fashioned European racism sees Jews and Muslims alike. The self-inflicted surgical bodily mutilation of middle class Muslims -- ranging from plastic surgery of the most grotesque sorts to removal of bodily hair to colouring their hair blonde and wearing colorful contact lenses -- is the mirror image of the very same aesthetic hegemony of white Europeans.

What we are witnessing over the cartoons that the Danish Jyllands-Posten has commissioned and published, however, is not limited to a mere recycling of European anti-Semitism. There is a contemporary anxiety that feeds that pathological knee jerk. Placing headgear in the form of a bomb (a ticking bomb as Alan Dershowitz and Michael Ignatieff would say in the United States) on the head of Prophet Muhammad is the functional equivalent of placing a sign of a German concentration camp (the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei," for example), or a sign of the massacre of Native Americans, or a reference to the My Lai massacre of 1968 in Vietnam, or a picture of Lynndie England in Abu Ghraib, over the head of Christ in a Crucifix. It is a matter of combining medieval icons and modern barbarities, fusing the two in order to implicate the sacrosanct icons of a people in their entirety in those acts of barbarity. Using the figure of Prophet Muhammad with a suggestion of terrorism, as it is defined by the US and its European allies (while they are systematically going around the world and torturing, maiming and murdering people on the assumption that they might be Dershowitz-Ignatieff ticking bombs), effectively implicates some 1.5 billion people of Muslim background around the world in such acts of degenerate violence -- itself the continued reverberation of an entire history of European (and now American) colonial plundering of the globe.

Marking this event, two diametrically opposed reactions to the cartoon row now mirror and complement each other: first is the inexcusable anti-Semitic response of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, either denying the Jewish Holocaust, and thus belittling the unending suffering it has caused Jewish people the world over, or else encouraging anti-Semitic tirades in his homeland; and second a band of neocon artists, led by the functional equivalent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Salman Rushdie, branding a figment of their own turgid imagination "Islamism" and calling it "totalitarianism." While in Iran, the legitimate and absolutely necessary criticism of the apartheid state of Israel has now degenerated into anti-Semitism, in Europe and the United States, a band of equally ignoramus career opportunists are denouncing what they call "Islamism", a pathologically nervous hiding, and thus all the more revealing, of their own collective hatred of a people and their received notions of sanctity.

Initially published in Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly and one of the European papers to reprint the caricatures, the Rushdie and Co declaration warns that "after having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global threat: Islamism." Thus in the esteemed estimation of these signatories, the imminent threat to humanity is not the environmental catastrophe posed by the gargantuan waste and abuse of natural resources by the US and the entire industrial calamity it represents; not the manifestations of obscene wealth, on the one hand, and unfathomable poverty, on the other, in the heart of Europe and the United States (remember hurricane Katrina); not the fact that according to the UN some 870 million people go to sleep hungry every night around the globe while the military budget of the United States between the year 2000 and 2008 is estimated at 32 and eleven zeroes in front of that figure; not the unconscionable destitution of innocent people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, all created and conditioned by the globalised capitalism over which presides the US and Western Europe; not the prevalent racism, sexism, and a whole gamut of transcultural manifestations of endemic patriarchy, economic inequality, social injustice, and gender apartheid; not the systematic eradication of civil liberties in the heartlands of their cherished "West"; not the widespread network of torture chambers in Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, Guantànamo Bay, and a whole subterranean labyrinth of CIA-run dungeons in Europe -- no, none of these frightful facts, in the opinion of Salman Rushdie and his comrades, poses any threat to the globe, when compared to a handful of pitiful, scattered, and pathetic Muslim reactions, all out of fear, frustration, and despair, to the Danish caricature of their prophet.

This has of course been a long season of migration to the lucrative right, and not just sanity but sheer literacy has lost to self-promotion, conducted on the broken backs of poverty- stricken people. For while the varied forms of totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism (all vintage European inventions) were state-sponsored ideologies that wreaked havoc first and foremost on citizens caught in the snare of their lunacy, what they call "Islamism" (out of sheer historical illiteracy of what has happened in and to Islam over the last 200 years) is a US-sponsored propaganda gadget manufactured to generate and sustain an illusory enemy to justify warmongering and global domination.

A band of supercilious journalists publish a number of cartoons in Denmark and scores of Muslims are killed while protesting in the US-occupied Afghanistan, its neighbouring Pakistan, a client-state of the selfsame US, and then in other parts of the Muslim world. Where, and at what level of a rudimentary political literacy, does Islamic "totalitarianism" enter this scene? The only country in the world that carries the epithet of an "Islamic Republic" -- mirroring in its religious disposition the Jewish State, the US Christian Empire that supports it, and the Hindu Fundamentalism that aspires to its apartheid racism -- is Iran, where the theocratic tyranny of a band of useless medieval jurists is systematically and valiantly contested by its own citizens. Whence and where did Islam become a "totalitarian" state apparatus like fascism, Stalinism, and Nazism? There is not a single so-called "Muslim country" the inhabitants of which are not actively engaging and challenging the most sacrosanct principles of their faith. Just in their modern history, and over the last two hundred years, Muslims themselves have turned their collective faith upside down questioning the most definitive aspects of their faith. In facing and opposing the unfathomable barbarity of European colonialism, Muslims have left not a single stone unturned in their own religious doctrines and dogmas -- they did not and have no need to wait for a band of illiterate opportunists to tell them what is wrong with their faith and what they need to do. Nothing of that noble and continued history -- of a people launched against themselves -- is now a matter of global public knowledge, and yet the premise of everything said and conceived of Islam is precisely what illiterate prognosticators like Salman Rushdie and Co have deigned to tell their European and American clientele.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims the world over swallow their pride, turn their face from this ghastly European racism and go about their daily lives. Small bands of militant Muslims, angered by insults they think targeted against people they hold holy, go on a rampage and scores of them are beaten and even killed by the police in their respective countries. The very same press that started this horrid row takes pictures of these mobs and juxtaposes them against clean-shaven white European statesmen in their business suits and soft-spoken newspeak -- thus triggering the hurried reaction of these "writers, journalists, intellectuals", as they call themselves, self- promoting career opportunists as they are. Where did "totalitarianism" come into play? "Totalitarianism", let it be remembered, is a state ideology, presiding over a massive military machinery, the way Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini did -- all of them European, all of them white, all of them male, and yes, all of them Christian by birth and breeding.

To the everlasting shame of not just the signatories of this logically flawed and categorically racist document, signed and sealed by Salman Rushdie, but of every European who has remained silent or compliant in the course of the cartoon row, the principal target of this horrid act of racism remains not a stilted abstraction called "Islam", nor indeed millions of Muslims living outside the European racist imaginary. The principal target of these cartoons was (and is) an Afghan woman teacher in Denmark, a Pakistani child on her way to school in Norway, an Algerian busboy hiding from the police in France, a Moroccan street sweeper on his way to work in Italy, an Iranian cab driver negotiating his way in a city in Holland, a Turkish illegal immigrant scared to open her mouth in Germany, an Egyptian student fearing for her future in Spain, a Syrian restaurant-owner wondering if he will have a customer somewhere in Sweden, and then millions of others like them suffering the indignities of desperate labour migrations into Europe and weathering the monumental manifestations of European racism on a daily and regular basis. Now enter Salman Rushdie and Co, putting their ignoble names to a document that seals their approval of global injustice and racism towards 1.5 billion people, imagining themselves the beneficiaries of a European Enlightenment that in its very philosophical inception denied them and their homelands and cultures entry even into the category of "human" and considered their entire pedigree beneath contempt.

Today signs of a horrid collective racism are becoming evident in post-war European cities and towns dangerously and conveniently forgetting the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust -- when white European racist Christians sought systematically to eradicate an entire people on the single premise that they were Jews. Leading European newspapers have reprinted the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad not out of a ludicrous sign of solidarity with their yuppie and illiterate Danish colleagues, but to frighten millions of European Muslims into submission, shame, fear, and intimidation. Millions of Muslim children across Europe now go to school frightened, ashamed, feeling a false sense of guilt, and thus petrified out of their collective consciousness. What these newspapers are effectively doing is to make it impossible for Muslims to oppose violence and barbarity of all sorts, particularly those done in their name, in any way other than denouncing their collective faith, dying their hair blonde, bleaching their faces white, and thus metamorphosing into a walking denigration of themselves. Those children are the principal targets of every ghastly newspaper in Europe that reprinted those cartoons -- to make sure that they are bullied in their schools and neighbourhoods, discriminated against in their future job markets, growing up ashamed of their culture and character, and obedient to a globalised and whitewashed Eurocentricity with which the classical European anti-Semitism now wishes to mark its history.

"Islam and globanalisation", or giving European and American space to Muslim names to denounce their own Islamic phantasms, is a new phase in the social manufacturing of domination -- using nominal Muslims against Islamic abstractions. This -- pitting lapsed Muslims against Islamic sensibilities -- is ultimately an exercise in futility. The fate of the globe, Europe included, is written elsewhere, somewhere between the lines of massive labour migration, on one side, and the global reconfiguration of the capital that systematically seeks to abuse it, on the other. The culture war this has occasioned in the meantime is a murderous nightmare for many, a lucrative pastime for some, a headache for others, and yet at the end an entirely negligible footnote to history.

* The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (Second Edition, Transactions, 2006), and Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (Verso, 2001), the founder of "Dreams of a Nation: A Palestinian Film Project", and the editor of Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema (Verso, 2006). His forthcoming book, Iran: A People Interrupted , is scheduled for publication this year by the New Press.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 4:45 PM

bigbird-

"Totalitarianism", let it be remembered, is a state ideology, presiding over a massive military machinery, the way Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini did -- all of them European, all of them white, all of them male, and yes, all of them Christian by birth and breeding.

You forgot Mao. I wonder why.

While we are on the subject of racism: It is interesting that in your rant you never mention Darfur and the Arab-Semite-Caucasian encouragement or participation in the genocide of black Africans there. The Arab-Semite-Caucasians and the Aryans (Iran means Aryan) would love to do the same thing to Israel (even though they too are Semite-Caucasians). In both Darfur and Israel the justification for killing is Islam.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 5:18 PM

You got something wrong. The Janjaweed are a native Sudanese and BLACK militia. Stop confusing the word Arab with ethnicity. Its mainly a cultural term. An Egyptian may call himself an Arab, but that doesnt make him ethnically close to a Syrian. I would hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Semites, even though some may have Middle Eastern genes, they are foremost European. Why dont you turn you silly little rant around and ask why those so called Semites are turning on their own brothers, starving occupying and killing them?You dont seem to have a problem with that.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 5:33 PM

The real lesson to be learned from the British experience with Muslims in their empire was:
when a jihadist group sets up a camp and training facilty in an inaccesible corner of the north-west frontier don't just go in there and kill most of them - exterminate every last one. Throughout the nineteenth century such a group existed, with a network of supporters throughout northern India, who supplied them with both financial aid and new recruits after the last lot had been killed by the Brits. Enough always survived to provide cadres and pass on the Wahhabi / Deobandi (the two are more closely related than is immediately apparent) jihadi torch to the next generation.
Despite the trouble they caused, we always regarded these people as marginal fanatics: there is in fact a direct, unbroken line of descent from them to the present day fundamentalists who have become dominant in pakistan, especially the ISI, today. The are are many uncanny resemblances between these nineteenth century jihadists and bin Laden's al Qaeda.

see Charles Allen's article:'The Hidden roots of Wahhabism in British India'

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj05-2/allen.html

Posted by: wallyUK at October 6, 2006 5:42 PM

attheling:

Good points. We absolutely should be looking to be doing double duty on alternative energy sources. I actually think the government has done well on this. But, yes we should be drilling the crap out of ANWR and expanding offshore drilling in the Gulf. The quicker we can wean ourselves from OPEC oil; we will indeed be able to step out of a lot of the M.E. turmoil. Yes and to find a president with that kind of fortitude. Will it happen? I think that most of us who frequent Jihad Watch really sense what's at stake for the world in 08' and a democratic win would be devastating. But is there a Republican that can do better than G.W. in foreign policy? I hope so.

Posted by: YankeeinNederland at October 6, 2006 5:43 PM

Bigbird-You also all wet re Islam and totalitarianism. Note below.

"When we speak of democracy in Islam it is not democracy in the government but in the cultural and social aspects of life. Islam is totalitarian—there is no denying about it. It is the Koran that we should turn to. It is the dictatorship of the Koranic laws that we want—and that we will have—but not through non-violence and Gandhian truth."-Raja Sahib Mahmudabad, chief lieutenant of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (quoted in Hasan, 1997: 57-8)

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:WyXuuFyg1xAJ:www.sasnet.lu.se/ishtiaqtext.html+%E2%80%9CWhen+we+speak+of+democracy+in+Islam+it+is+not+democracy+in+the+government+but+in+the+cultural+and+social+aspects+of+life.%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 5:57 PM

Bigbird-

I'm going to rename you Daffy Duck. I hearby pour water on your ruffled feathers and rename you.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:03 PM

Bigbird on racial purity-

"I would hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Semites, even though some may have Middle Eastern genes, they are foremost European."-Bigbird

You are a lot like Hitler here, but he looked at the issue from the other side: he considered them foremost Semites.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:14 PM

You are a lot like Hitler here, but he looked at the issue from the other side: he considered them foremost Semites.

Is that all you have to say, compare me to Hitler because I dont see the immediate connection between an Iraqie and a Russian Jew? Do you think Jesus had blue eyes, white skin and blond hair, or do you think he spoke Swedish and dressed in Jeans? Who do you think is ethnically closer to him, an Ashkenazie Jew, or the Semitic people currently inhabiting Syria,Lebanon and "Palestine", most of whom are undeniably descended from Jews and Christians
Get a grip on yourself man.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 6:26 PM

bigbird

who gives a turd if you "hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Semites."

birdbrain, they showed in recent genetic studies that the entire Ashkenazic line of European Jews were descended from just four semitic mothers from the Middle East. Sorry I don't have the link.

I have to agree with Frank, you're sounding like Hitler.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at October 6, 2006 6:41 PM

Ruffled feathers-

I am comparing you to Hitler because you look at the issue like Hitler, but only from the other side. ("I would hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Semites, even though some may have Middle Eastern genes, they are foremost European."-Bigbird.) You are making the pronouncement on racial purity-like Hitler.

BTW, how come you didn't address Raja Sahib re the toltolitarian nature of Islam?

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:45 PM

No, they didnt birdbrain. They show that about 50 percent of the Ashkenazi population has similar chromosonal mutations as Syrian,Palestinians and Lebanese, mutations not found in the other European populations and these 50 percent like descended from four females. Still these 50 percent are heavily European.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 6:47 PM

I didnt bring race into it.You did.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 6:48 PM

Ynkedoodl2-

Bigbird is a Nazi racist. She's instructing us on who is racially pure and who is not.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:49 PM

Bigbird-

"I didnt bring race into it.You did."

Bigbird has dropped a big turd. Much of your post is about race. Read it. Don't you read your own posts?

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:51 PM

Frank, give it up please.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 6:53 PM

I had an Aunt Jenny (from Ireland) who looked like Bigbird. When we were kids we used to call her "Bigbird" and man she got very angry. She was slightly over 6'. Jenette McDonald, I hope tis not revenge...sorry, Aunt Jenny...

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 6:55 PM

I am not a female,so no need to worry.

Posted by: bigbird at October 6, 2006 6:58 PM

Mr. Bigbird-

I'm sorry you are not female. But I'm happy Aunt Jenny is not taking revenge. BTW, you have not addressed Raja Sahib re Islam as totalitarian.

Posted by: Frank at October 6, 2006 7:08 PM

The author's opinion about deriving ideas from the British empire are misleading.
First, today there is vast and rapid flow of information, even visually, from one small corner to every part of the world. And in those days, and since even before Britishers became the world power, there have been constant religious battles by Jihadists.

Posted by: pagan at October 6, 2006 7:34 PM

bigbird:

What bafflegab bullcrap.

Your phony juxtaposition of muslims with real victims is reprehensible and obscene.

Your hatred of the West is both unseemly and morally corrupt.

We are the good guys; there is no equivalence here; we are better than the muslims for reasons of morality and good sense.

To blacken us with your phony victimization and 180 degree reversal of just who is being challenged shows a mind corrupted by leftism and stupidity.

Sod off.

Posted by: dgene at October 6, 2006 8:29 PM

bigbird Nazi that’s some rant by a good writer. Who is the Western intellectual bribed to produce the magnificent Islamic propaganda? All the points made in the article are from brainwashers in the Middle East. This is the Muslim intellectual fodder, pure and simple. Your article makes the case very well why the West should not tolerate your people. This is how they view Westerners and Western accomplishments people. Muslims are not to tolerate, no matter where they are or what they receive. Their guiders always make sure of it.

bigbird maybe you can enlighten us why the Christians and Jews of the Middle East were so oppressed, discriminated against, and slaughtered by the Muslims. Maybe you can shed light on why most of the conflicts in the world involve Islam in one way or another. Maybe you can explain to us why the blacks of Darfur are being killed, or what brought them to this stage. Or maybe you can even tell us how all the despicable teachings of Islam are compatible with Western values: http://www.prophetofdoom.net/

After you provide the answers for the above, then maybe we can discuss how the West has been so ungenerous and ungrateful to you.

While you ponder the above, please do so in the comfort of your beloved lands of Syria, Iraq, and yes, even Iran. Ta ta racist fool.

Posted by: ofcourse at October 6, 2006 9:02 PM

It's apparent from the writings of Professor Kevorkian that Columbia University of New York is a less than worthless academic enterprise, at least in its Iranian Studies Department.

Islam is not a race, and opposing Islamic depredations is not racist.

Muslim economic and cultural backwardness today has nothing to do with what the West did or didn't do historically. In the last three decades, the Muslims have been beneficiaries of the biggest transfer of wealth in history. And how is that wealth used? According to Islamic teaching, it is used for two purposes--1)it is distributed as "loot" and "booty" to powerful Islamic lords, and 2) it is used to fund jihad (including violence, subversion, and propaganda) against the infidel world, across the globe, from the Philippines and Thailand, to Indonesia, to India, to Israel, to Chechyna, to South America, Europe, and the USA--against Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, and all other non-Muslim faiths and belief systems.

Muslim backwardness is a direct result of Muslims' living with Islamic supremacist aspirations coupled with the fatalistic mental straightjacket of Mohammedan ideology, which is indeed totalitarian in every way. Muslims are not victims of racisim--they are victims of Islam. For everywhere behaving like spoiled children (shameless children wielding guns and machetes), they deserve only contempt from the free world. Let there be many more cartoons.

Posted by: Stendec at October 7, 2006 12:37 AM

Dear Big Bird,

yada,yada,yada.

Thank you so much for posting such a LONG disss-urtation on the matters at hand. I have just hit "print" as my own big bird was in desperate need to have his cage re-lined.

Posted by: guide inside at October 7, 2006 12:45 AM

Islam: There is no irony in religion.

Second best selling book in the most "modern" Islamic country, Turkey:

Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf

http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=586842#586842

Posted by: ofcourse at October 7, 2006 12:57 AM

"Yet so many of our little Trolls love to come on here and start throwing accusations of "bigotry" and "racism" around."-Yank

YankinGermany-

It's done to divert the issue. It's ANSWER style crap. I often note that so many of the Arab Jihad crowd look like Jewish guys (Nasralla, e.g.) and even Arafat could be pictured with a yamaka on his head, or Olmert or Sharon pictured with a headscarf on their heads. The issue is not race or ethnicity. It is Islam. Both Hitler and his ally, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini), saw the Jews of Europe as Semites. Both wanted them killed. Hitler said "there are good Semites and bad Semites". He considered the Grand Mufti a good Semite.

The race droppings of Mr. Bigbird are crap.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:-AgZRElrKp4J:www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php+Grand+Mufti+of+Jerusalem,+hitler&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Posted by: Frank at October 7, 2006 6:46 AM

Yank-

People who make such charges know that it is difficult , if not impossible, to prove a negative. The charge of racism is meant to make the accused prove they are not "racist". However, it is easier to prove something than there is nothing.

Bigbird thinks like Hitler. For example, Bigbird makes a blanket statement (without evidence) that Jews from Europe are not in the main to be considered Semites and that only some have Middle Eastern Genes ("I would hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Semites, even though some may have Middle Eastern genes, they are foremost European."). Hitler's argument would run: "I would hesitate before calling the 60 percent of Ashkenazie Jews as Germans, even though some may have German genes, they are foremost Semite-Jews." Both are making assertions re the "racial" and "ethnic" purity of the Jews of Europe. Bigbird thus justifies Arab rejection of European Jews who fled to Israel on the same basis ("ethnic purity') as Hitler justified German rejection of German and European Jews.

Posted by: Frank at October 7, 2006 7:45 AM

Bigbird's chrges of "racism" are meant to make the charged one prove that the charge is not true. It's done in the manner of charging that Ashkenazie Jews are not in the main Semites based on some (unproved) assertion that only some of the genes of Ashkenazie Jews are Semite. In either case, an argument's premise (without proof)is assumed to be true simply because it is pronounced by Bigbird.

Posted by: Frank at October 7, 2006 8:00 AM

americaningermany-

You are a smart fellow.

Though I'm predominantly Irish (I was born in the USA), I have a one English grandmother (Evelyn Chadwick) who was born in the east end of London. In any case, we are both American, than our lucky stars, Yank.

P.S. My Irish grandmother told me that Evelyn had a filthy mouth. She called her a "Cockney English".-LOL

Posted by: Frank at October 7, 2006 9:42 AM