Hitler had little chance of conquering the world starting only with Japan and Italy. He managed to cause quite a ruckus.

The New York Times isn't as good as a stopped clock.

Posted by: Beagle at December 16, 2005 12:52 AM

The Caliphate idea appeals to many Muslims in dozens of nations. Arguably, this is a larger problem than three small, albeit somewhat more industrialized nations, starting WWII. Given A.Q. Khan's tech transfers to several Arab nations around Israel, among others, I think the threat is very significant. The NYT is my touchstone. If they say it, I don't believe it.

Posted by: Beagle at December 16, 2005 12:58 AM

So, the warning is sent out:
THEY WILL *TRY* TO REESTABLISH THE CALIPHATE
The response is that:
YES, BUT THEY CANNOT *SUCCESSFULLY* REESTABLISH THE CALIPHATE

Could that be compared to a warning that:
THEY WILL *TRY* TO KILL YOU
With the response:
YES, BUT THEY WON'T *SUCCESSFULLY* KILL ME

The threat alone is reason for all people to be concerned.

Posted by: Jim at December 16, 2005 2:07 AM

Establishing the new Caliphate is, of course, merely one common Islamic goal that 'al Qaeda' espouses, a goal that even the president of the Muslim Council of Britain is not willing to renounce.

Other Islamic principles and goals that bind the vast majority of Muslims to so-called 'al Qaeda' include the sharp division of the world into deserving believers and damned Infidels, the rightly subjugation of Infidels by believers, the obligation for da'wa, the call to Islam, to revert the world to Islam, the obligation to 'fight', 'strive hard against', and 'terrorize' Infidels who oppose the Prophet (the obligation to heed the call to jihad), the glorification of martrydom, i.e. belief in blissful, heavenly rewards for those who die in battle in the service of Allah, the moral, political and social deficiency of Infidels, the untrustworthiness of Infidels, etc.

The mainstay of the ideology of 'al Qaeda' is not extremist, but simply core Islamic teachings derived directly from the Qur'an and Sunnah. The only issues I can see that differentiate the so-called 'extremists', i.e. Islamic mujahideen actively engaging in organized, violent jihad against Infidels, concern interpreting facts and the question of the most effective way to achieve the domination of Islam: e.g. are the Infidels at genuinely at war with Islam or are they merely living in a restive ignorance subconsciously waiting for opportunities to revert (and therefore in some sense 'innocent' of opposing Islam)? and such like. These sorts of questions raise strategic issues, e.g. should one engage in da'wa and nonviolent forms of jihad or violent jihad, the effort to brutally extinguish opposition to Islam? These kinds of question merely concern strategy and do not demonstrate ideological divisions. And, of course, the line between these ways of thought is clouded by irrational nature of the belief system itself; one moment bin Laden is a hero, the next a demon, and it all makes perfect sense.

Al Qaeda, the base, is the base of Islam, the core of Islam: to fight in the way of Allah to achieve victory over the non-believers. Hence Islam was born, and hence Islam strives to grow and dominate in our times.

Posted by: JTF at December 16, 2005 3:01 AM

Elizabeth Bumiller sounds the NYT's answer to Madeleine Bunting. They even write in the same way - smug, condescending and dismissive of those who worry about something as obviously harmless as Islam:

The word getting the workout from the nation's top guns these days is "caliphate"

News to me. You hardly ever hear this word. It's generally 'terrorists' or 'extremists', terms that have nothing to do with Islam.

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland...

A professor for peace and development? What next? A professor for love and tolerance? Degrees in happiness?

Meanwhile in the UK the government has realised that Islam is nothing to worry about. From The Telegraph:

Plans to shut down extremist mosques as part of the fight against terrorism were abandoned by the Government yesterday....

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Mosques are being mis-identified and stereotyped as incubators of violent extremism, while the social reality is that they serve as centres of moderation."

That's all right then.

Posted by: Interested at December 16, 2005 5:05 AM

People laughed at Hitler when he wrote Mein Kampf
- at the time he had less followers than Bin Ladin! All that is needed today is a few Terrorists armed with suitcase bombs connecting with a nuclear reactor...

Posted by: Morgane at December 16, 2005 6:41 AM

a threat that is exponentially beyond anything that Osama bin Laden can deliver."

for now

until their demographics reach a large enough percentage

Posted by: Borg at December 16, 2005 7:03 AM

The other facet of Esposito's premise that is so misleading is that he limits the aspirations for the Caliphate to Osama and Al Qaeda. I would guess that tens if not hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who may not agree with the methods of Al Qaeda still aspire to someday establish the global Caliphate.

Posted by: Cornelius at December 16, 2005 7:07 AM

I would guess that tens if not hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who may not agree with the methods of Al Qaeda still aspire to someday establish the global Caliphate.

Of course they do. That's what Islam says, after all. Many Muslims may not have such aspirations, but that is because they don't know what Islam teaches rather than because they have thought about it and rejected it.

But perhaps I'm wrong about this, and we are about to see huge numbers of moderate Muslims denounce any aspirations to a global Caliphate. Just as, after the July 7 bombings, hundreds of thousands of Muslims took to the streets of London to protest the actions of the tiny minority of extremists in their midst. (I was making a pot of tea when this happened, so I missed it.)

Posted by: Interested at December 16, 2005 7:25 AM

"The NYT is my touchstone. If they say it, I don't believe it.

Posted by: Beagle at December 16, 2005 12:58 AM "

A gold star for you today!

Posted by: waterdragon52 at December 16, 2005 8:41 AM

Who will be the Caliph?

Looks like a job where you could live in great luxury and decadence.

Posted by: rocky at December 16, 2005 8:41 AM

If someone threatens to kill you: believe him. If Muslims threaten to enforce the core principles of their religion --- believe them. If certain more zealous Muslims threaten to re-establish a Muslim institution, the Caliphate, believe that they will try, using any means possible, at the expense of millions, or even billions if necessary. Don't take for granted that this is not possible.

Posted by: epg at December 16, 2005 8:42 AM

l know why the liberals hate Rumsfeld so much, he know what he says, and has no trouble saying it!
wish more of GOP were like him!!

Posted by: Lulu at December 16, 2005 8:55 AM

There are many ways that the Administration and The New Duranty Times might have expressed the truth about the menace.

In the case of the Administration, it could easily have avoided the criticisms that it would obviously get, by being careful to add in certain phrases, such as: "Many though not all adherents of Islam believe in the notion of Jihad to spread Islam, until it covers the globe. Among that group, a smaller group openly discusses the need for a single, world-wide caliphate. This goal may seem fantastic to many of us. But there is no reason to find solace in dismissing it. The goal is not plucked from the air. It has deep roots in, it naturally flowers from, the soil of that ideology of incessant Jihad [yes, if you still can't bring yourself to mention, as I read the other day, what can now be called the "I-word," then move down the alphabet a letter and use the "J-word"] is rooted in the ideology, an ideology which, in fact, has its original origins in the justification and promotion of military conquest. Over more than a millennium in time, and over a very wide area in space, taht doctrine has animated warriors. It now animates more than warriors on the battlefield, for other weapons of Jihad, other instruments, have been discovered, and used most effectively.

We make a mistake if we think only in terms of "terror" -- [one more place for the now "taking-responsibility-for-his-mistakes" Bush to announce to the world that it was a mistake to start using that misleading phrase "war on terror"]--we must think of all the instruments of Jihad. These include the use of the "wealth" weapon -- the huge and continuing revenues from OPEC have made possible the spread of the doctrine of Jihad, by establishing outposts where that doctrine is taught [when asked, say -- in "those mosques and madrasas where such things, we have discovered, are being taught, and even outside those mosques and madrasas, where the propaganda of Jihad is spread"]. And the second major instrument of Jihad in what is called Dar al-Harb, the Domain of War, where non-Muslims still live, unsubjugated to Islam, is Da'wa, or "propaganda to spread Islam and, of course, it is believed,many of the new converts will help promote and believe in Jihad. And then there is just the simple matter of exploiting the generosity and trustingness of many countries, where people unaware of the doctrine of Jihad allowed into their countries both the inoffensive believers in Islam -- i.e. those who have no believe whatsoever in Jihad [!] and many, however, who do. And unfortunately, these growing numbers appear to contain a large number of the latter, while the former have been either silent, or have given, insome cases, worrying signs of being, when put to the test, more loyal to the umma al-islamiyyya, the Community of Believers.

So while the ultimate goal of the "world-wide caliphate" may seem to be a fantastic one, in working for that goal, there are also many grim successes. The establishment of mosques and madrasas all over the Western world, and the "radicalization" which has been achieved by bringing the full texts of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira to people who at one point, pious but illiterate worshippers, might have been kept largely in the dark about the canonical texts, and that useful ignorance has been replaced, more and more, by a disturbing knowledge -- a knowledge of the full teachings of Islam that, far from being a source of relief to us, the non-Muslims, must be cause for alarm."

The New Duranty Times must ask itself: does it have any idea who John Esposito is, where his sums of money come from (what is the role of the Sabbagh family, the rich contractors in Lebanon, one of whom was the dedicatee of one of Espositio's books), what he is famous for in his decades-long misstatments about Islam, his constant dismissal of any threat, his essential role as a hireling (indirectly, not directly) and an apologist? Who decided that he couuld be considered a reliable authority at The New Duranty Times? And what of the statements that his associates John Voll (the one who after 9/11/2001 expressed one worry and one worry only--what it would mean for the image of Islam) and Yvonne Haddad, whose description of Islam bears no relation to what St. Clair Tisdall, Arthur Jeffery, Armand Abel, Snouck Hurgronje, and many dozens of other Western scholars of Islam, from all countries and backgrounds, who had only one thing in common -- which is, that they could undertake their studies, and publish their work, in the period when Arab and Muslim money, and the army of apologists, non-Muslim as well as Muslim, had not yet spread out, and wormed their way into positions of influence (each helping to come in after him another like him, which is why MESA Nostra, once with only a handful of Muslim members, now is more than 50% Muslim).

And why has The New Duranty Times gone out of its way to publish those as guides to Islam who have repeatedly failed to address the very matters that Schacht, Fattal, Snouck Hurgronje, and the others addressed -- and have no way to answer the great scholars of the past, and instead would have us never learn their names, and never read their work, and never thoroughly assimilate the nature, the tenets, the atittudes, the atmospherics, the psychology, the history, of Islam? Whoever is choosing those outside articles is choosing in a highly tendentious manner -- as if deliberately intent not on helping to instruct on the nature of Islam, but in helping to mislead on the nature of Islam. There was Roy Mottaheddeh, who knows better, misdescribing "Jihad" for its readers in the fall of 2001. There has been the self-promoter and acaemic careerist Noah Feldman, author of the tellingly-named "After Jihad." (In Feldman's case, part of that promotion and self-promotion is helped by his being a self-described "conservativfe Jew" who studies Islam, and the combination, for the novelty-seekers, unaware that this has not been a novelty since Ignaz Goldziher, seem mightily impressed that this must be a guarantee of the absence of apologetics; their calculation is a vulgar one, and mistaken).

The next time anyone wishes to take a piece by John Esposito, the recipient of Arab largesse for his "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding," they should study carefully his past books, not merely the many coffee-table ones (with lots of ravishing pictures of mosques and turbanned Turks and suchlike to get us, even before we consult the bland texts, to be in a good mood about Islam and "Islamic civilization"). They should ask why he gives titles to his books that already do much of the work of pooh-poohing of worries about Islam.

Think, for example, of that book "The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?" and ask yourself if you have to read the book or do you already know from the title that the author will come down squarely for the notion that it is all a silly "myth" based on misunderstanding. Or take that other title "Unholy War" about the "terrorists." By playing on the word "unholy" in two senses, Esposito smuggles in the idea that this is not a "holy war" -- i.e. a war justified, sanctioned, demanded by Islam, but entirely something unrelated to, unprompted by Islam. But every single word uttered by the various terrorists, from Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri to yesterday's claims by assorted Hezbollah members, to the man who killed Van Gogh, refers to the duties of Islam, and never -- not once -- misquootes the Qur'an or the Hadith, and certainly does not act in a spirit different from that which, in the Sira, Muhammad the military ruler who, in so many of the details of his life, watching the decapittation of the prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, greeting with pleasure the news of the murder of Asma bint Marwan, the woman who had mocked him, attacking the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, shows his ruthlessness that, alas, is both put into context be defensive Muslims ("that was then") and at the time, is held up as a model -- uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil -- for all time, for all good Muslims. Which is it to be?

No, The New Duranty Times, as far as I know, has in the more than four years that have passed since 9/11/2001, never tried to explain, never asked any of its journalists to study (and not with the likes of John Esposito) what is contained in the Qur'an, and given that much of that work (possibly 20%) is incomprehensible even to scholars of classical Arabic, and that the doctrine of abrogation (naskh) applies to determine, in the case of the many internal contradictions, which passages supersede others, and given as well that the "clear meaning" of a half-dozen passages that are often used by Muslims possess, for those same Muslims, a meaning quite different from that which non-Muslims might, in their untutored innocence, take those phrases to naturally mean, then mere hasty reading of the Qur'an will not do.

The Administration might have tried to tell the truth about Islam without invoking the notion of a "world-wide caliphate." One need not necessarily require striving for a "world-wide caliphate" to explain the decapitation of Christian schoolgirls and the thousands of churches burned, and other Christians murdered, in Indonesia, or in Pakistan. One need not find striving for a "world-wide caliphate" to be behind the murders of Buddhist villagers in Thailand, the refusal to accept the authority of Thais, the attacks on helpless Hindus in Kashmir, in Bangladesh, in Kashmir. "Striving for a world-wide caliphate" is not necessary to explain the attacks by Muslim Arabs on non-Muslim blacks in the southern Sudan, and non-Arab Muslims in Darfur. The "world-wide caliphate" is not necessary to explain the hostility toward Infidels, even those who rescued them, by Iraqis, or the attacks by Muslim mobs on Copts in Egypt. The "world-wide caliphate" is not necessary to explain the menace of islamization within Europe itself, and the undeniable fact that everywhere that there are now large populations of Muslims -- in France, in England, in Spain, in Holland, in Australia, and elsewhere -- the results have everywhere, for the indigenous non-Muslims and their nation-states, been the same: greater unpleasantness in daily life, much greater expense (the costs of monitoring, while at the same time attmepting to please, and somehow to "integrate," peooples who are taught not to "integrate," not even to be friends with, Christians or Jews or other Infidels, and certainly not to offer genuine loyalty to the Infidel nation-state), and greater physical insecurity.

This is a serious matter. These are all serious matters. The easy way out is to fix on a phrase about a world-wide caliphate -- never in the history of Islam, not even in the days of the Ottomans -- was there a single "caliphate" that actually ruled over the entire Dar al-Islam -- and then by mocking that seemingly unattainable notiion, to thereby avoid the duty, the responsibility, the necessity of analyzing what, as part of, as preceding, the establishment of that "world-wide caliphate" it may be too easy for the espositos of this world to dismiss, along the way, would necessary have to happen, and is happening: the undoing, in as many ways as possible, of Infidel lands and Infidel peoples, in order to spread Islam, and the rule of Muslims. That is taking place within Dar al-Islam, where over the past century, with ever-greater mistreatment of non-Muslims (Armenians and Greeks in Turkey; Christians in Algeria; Copts in Egypt; Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan; Christians in Indonesia; Jews everywhere in Muslim lands). And the explosion in Muslim populations in Dar al-Harb, lands which are clearly seen in Muslim doctrine as lands in enemy (for Infidels are the Enemy) hands that can be, should be, must be, and will be, taken over by Islam and ruled, ultimately, by Muslims.

This is not a false notion. It may be a fantastic one for The New Duranty Times, and for all those who so strongly wish to believe whatever it is makes them feel better -- why bother oneself with reality if that reality is terribly unpleasant and, what's more, would if understood require something of you? Better to pretend it isn't, better to commission or accept articles by the sinister feelgoods of MESA Nostra.

On one thing we can agree with The New Duranty Times, that just published Esposito. That is: John Esposito deserves a hearing. The hearing he deserves, however, is in the context of a full-scale Congressional investigation into the "experts on Islam" who, directly or indirectly, have for decades been receiving Arab money, sometimes from Lebanon (the Sabbagh family) to get started, sometimes with infusiions of other money (the Saudi injection of another $20 million into Esposito's operation). In investigating scandals involving doctors who misprescibe or overprescribe certain drugs because, it turns out, some of them are rewarded by drug companies, no one hesistates to expose that nexus, that cupidic connection.

When it comes to so-called "scholars of Islam," where the fates of nations are involved, we so far have been delicately dancing around the little matter of who has been getting what Arab and Muslim funding, and who has been doing what, in return. It would not be hard to assign Congressional investigators to look into Esposito's operation, and into, as well, into what he, and his carefully-chosen collaborators, have been presenting, to gullible governemnt officials (he was some kind of official adviser, one has read, during the Clinton Administration), and just as bad, to the gullible public.

Let there be something similar to the Army-McCarthy Hearings. A full investigation into "What do we know about Islam, and When Did We Know It." Bring Esposito in, and read aloud from his writings for the television cameras. Ask about his original and present and future sources of funding. Read aloud from the works of Voll and Haddad. Find out about what they make, and with whom they have contact, and what they think about, for example, the islamization of Europe, or the doctrine of Jihad, or Muhammad as a model of behavior.

Or perhaps, before that full-scale Congressional investigation, James V. Schall and others at Georgetown could request that the Adminstration or at least the alumni of that school, demand a full-scale inquiry into Esposito's operation. And then, possibly, an investigative journalist or two could produce a television program on "Who's Been Teaching Us About Jihad" and find out why so many Americans are still so ignorant about a matter that should preoccupy them, or at least preoccupy those who worry about the future.

Yes, let Esposito have his national exposure, preferably before an investigative committee of Congress. Let his views be offered, analyzed, written about, and those who made it all possible, also be presented -- as an example -- to the public.

It would do everyone good. It would clear the air.

Posted by: Hugh at December 16, 2005 8:59 AM

The NYT is a shit rag that is one of the problems in this country, not one of the solutions.

Posted by: DCWatson at December 16, 2005 9:05 AM

John Esposito, wasn't he a hockey player?

Posted by: DCWatson at December 16, 2005 9:06 AM

The argument over how serious the jihad is about restoring the Caliphate is one I deal with nearly every day. In a specific context, say, why are the foreigners coming to Iraq to kill Americans, I tend to downplay the "restore the caliphate" motive. They are doing their duty to repel an infidel invader, not re-launch the caliphate. But don't doubt for a minute that the caliphate isn't central to the motives of UBL, the Taliban, AMZ, Zawahiri, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT)--pretty much every identifiable Islamic group actively involved in Jihad. Even groups focused on local battles, such as those in the South Central Asia region, or in Southeast Asia, see themselves as part of a larger effort that will result in the restoration of the caliphate.

Why does the caliphate resonate among muslims? Because, as many have already noted, it is the prescribed, best form of Sharia, the one most perfectly realized in Mohammed's time and in the time immediately after his death, before Islam began its crazing into all its factions and parties. It is a utopian vision to muslims, a "no place" that never was as they imagine it, and yet the "good place" they all are taught to long for. All muslims know that they are fallen far, far from the heights of the original followers of the prophet, they are repeatedly taught the prophet predicted how low and downtrodden the ummah would become the more time passed, due to the ummah's falling away from true Islam. So low have they fallen, that even now they have no caliph, having lost it in the last century to the hated Ataturk, and they are broken into numerous artificial states that divide muslims and makes easier the task of the infidel to trample the muslims underfoot. This drives the mujahideen, since they believe they will complete Muhammad's prophecy by being the generation (much like Lenin's vanguard) that will galvanize the Ummah, defeat the infidel and subdue him once and for all, and prepare the way for the mahdi. And for those of you who wonder who deeply this mythology animates UBL, I remind you that the precursor of the mahdi is prophesied to come from Yemen, be a tall, white-bearded man, who walks with a staff. Sounds pretty much like UBL in every image you've seen of him in the past four years.

For those of you who look forward to applying to the post of Caliph in UBL's newly restored caliphate, I remind you that the position is currently filled by Mullah Omar, wherever he is. Regrets.

Posted by: longtime lurker at December 16, 2005 9:13 AM

Hugh, in the time it took me to scribble three little paragraphs, you issued that wonderful rejoinder to the president, which I will have to print and read carefully after I have snipped it and emailed it to many (reckless, aren't I?). But you do address what has bothered me most about the administration, that it has dropped the ball on educating the American public, and with it the English-speaking world, which is a good half of it at this point, on the true nature of the threat that is facing us. Like many, I would like to believe that the administration is playing a canny game by not directly discussing the "I" word, nor much the "J" word, but I am not in the least convinced. Whatever else President Bush is or is not, he is not a statesman. That Churchillian effort of throwing light on the threat, explaining the threat, clarifying the danger the threat presents to us, the encouragement to confront the threat now before it is greater and more lethal--all of this has been nearly completely absent from the President's speeches since the late months of 2001. Pray someone in the White House sees what you have written, and says to himself, "Hey, this isn't a bad idea." Pray, o pray.

Posted by: longtime lurker at December 16, 2005 9:25 AM

Could anyone pour more condescension in an article such as Bumiller's, especially since its main proposition--a Califate would very hard to achieve, therefore it's not a threat--is as idiotic as you could ever hear?
I only hope she isn't teaching some hapless freshmen what they call these days "critical thinking."

Posted by: ovidius_naso at December 16, 2005 9:57 AM

Ever since Ataturk abolished the office of Caliphate back in 1924 and the last Khalif retired to France as a painter, many (if not most) Muslims have wanted its restoration in some form. The only question is finding the right man for the job. The primary debate whether he has to be a descendent of Muhammed or whether any Muslim is eligible. In India, from the 1920s till WWII, there was a strong Khalifate movement and the Deobandi school of Islam that spawned the Taliban is one of its spiritual heirs. The was a pan-Islamic Conference on restoring the Caliphate held in Cairo (I think in 1926, but I might have the date wrong) but no one could agree on who was the best candidate. The West probably should have pushed for one of the Hashemites to become Caliph but the Saudi Wahabis were against it. Besides, I really doubt that many Muslims would have accepted a moderate and pro-western Hashemite like the late King Hussein of Jordan or his son Abdullah as their worldwide religious leader. Today's advocates of Khalifat are Salafists who fantasize about restoring the rule of Islam as it existed under Omar and Uthman.

Unfortunately, this view has growing appeal among Muslims throughout the world and all they are waiting for is the seizure of a territory in which this seed can flower. That is why the historic cities of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo are so important to the Salifists. These were the seats of the universally recognized Caliphs. The Ottomans held the office by an alleged adoption but they never had the religious status of the Umayyads, the Abbasids, or even the Fatimids. To the radicals of today, even these regimes were weak and un-Islamic so they always hearken back to the "Four Rightly Guided Caliphs" who followed Muhammed.

Of course, the Shia reject the very idea of a Caliph and place any restoration in eschatological terms. Unfortunately, after Khomeini, Sunni style Salafism has been imported into Shi'ism and fused with the eschatological chiliasm that is at the Shia core. That can seen clearly in the extremist and even suicidal statements of the current Iranian president. Let's hope that this fusion is temporary and the Wahabbi element among Sunni Salafists push Islam back to its historic Sunni/Shia ideological war. It is better for all of us that Muslim fight Muslim rather than be united in Jihad against the rest of the world.

Posted by: Provoslavni at December 16, 2005 10:17 AM

It's very simple: realizing a global Caliphate may be a fantasy, but the pursuit of fantasies in history has caused untold mayhem and misery and mass-murder.

Hitler's dream of a Fourth Reich was also a fantasy; and to try to get there, he murdered millions, enslaved thousands, and dragged the West into a horrible war in which millions more died.

In the 1930s, the West could have prevented the tragic concatenation of events from unfolding that would cause those millions of deaths, had it not been for the appeasers of the time. Will we prevent potential millions from dying in our future, or will we continue to be self-paralyzed by our PC culture, a culture for which it is utterly unthinkable to, for example, hold Congressional hearings on Islam as Hugh so rightly suggests?

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at December 16, 2005 10:50 AM

DC Watson:

Don't think so - he may have been Phil's dumber brother (and I'm not referring to Tony, the goaltender).

Posted by: johnb at December 16, 2005 11:08 AM

Look, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have made it abundantly clear in their videotaped speeches about wanting to establish a worldwide caliphate with Iraq being the center of operations for bringing about this new caliphate. It's amazing how the MSM who air these videotapes on their networks or print excerpts in their newspapers, continues to whitewash the serverity of the situation. As for Joe Esposito and CAIR who continues to blow smoke up our rear ends about Islam, their glory will soon come to an end. The riots in Paris,Copenhagen and recently Syndey are prompting people to question whether Islam is truly a religion of peace.

It is sad that the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Madrid and London didn't spur western governments into seeking the truth about Islam. It took fighting with the Mohammedans in their own backyards to openly discuss "radical Islam" and not Islamic radicals.

Posted by: WineDrinkingInfidel at December 16, 2005 11:19 AM

Terrorists' goal of a caliphate receiving attention in high places

Comment: Multiculturalists are poo-pooing the
idea that the terrorists' main goal is to establish a caliphate because this strays from their script that terrorists are created by conditions of poverty and by living under repressive governments, even though plenty of terrorists have been created in the West where those conditions do not apply exactly. The liberals, whose livelihood often depends to some extent on Muslims petro-dollars (e.g., Saudi endowment funds, largess, political contributions, employment), also want to maintain that Islam is a religion of peace(tm) because that's what their bosses back in Riyadh pay them to say, but the idea of caliphate mitigates against that notion:

21st-Century Warnings of a Threat Rooted in the 7th
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/politics/12letter.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134750862-/v9AArqeowpMbearO+S38A

Related:
Pipes, Daniel. The Caliphate, 12 Dec 2005
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/548

Pipes, Daniel. What Do the Terrorists Want? [A Caliphate], 26 July 2005
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2798

Posted by: markjames at December 16, 2005 11:53 AM

Hugh:

Surely you aren't suggesting that the good professor is a whore whose writing would be influenced by his patrons would you?

/sarcasm

Posted by: waterdragon52 at December 16, 2005 12:43 PM

Actually, when I was even more ignorant than I am now, I read articles by Khaled Abou El Fadl, the fabled moderate muslim. One of them, though, was very enlightening as he complained how Saudi money poisoned all wells of Islamic scholarship. He thought Al Azhar had been completely suborned by the Wahhabists, citing examples of esteemed professors there who had combatted Wahhabism, then got a one year "fellowship" to Mecca, and a stipend equal to ten to twenty years' of their Al Azhar pay. Think of them as MacArthur "genius" grants. One by one, these professors first stopped reviling Wahhabism, then began actively supporting it. The Saudis do the same throughout the ummah, bringing small-town imams to the Hijaz for "religious education," and tying those bonds. Our favorite looney (well, there are several) from Malaysia, Mahathir, actively closed madrassas and expelled Saudis, because they threatened to create a rival gang to the authority of UMNO.

But still, to suggest that one so estimable as John Esposito has been bought? How ungracious.

Posted by: longtime lurker at December 16, 2005 1:23 PM

It is clear where Esposito's loyalties are.

Now we should analyze why and how a person lacking the most elementary patriotism can be given so much credit in a country, while the real patriots, concerned about the integrity and the future security of the same country are considered a 'fringe minority' or a bunch of loonies.

Just in case, Hugh is doing the right thing, documenting everything Esposito does, so that one day in the future he may have to face his responsibilities for his treacherous actions.

Posted by: rocky at December 16, 2005 1:24 PM

Congressional investigation of direct and indirect Arab hirelings, especially those in academic life: "All we are asking/Is give it a chance." (To the tune of you-know-what).

Posted by: Hugh at December 16, 2005 4:04 PM

ONe thing I don't get with the NYT is that it's owner, Arthur Sulzberger, is a Jew.

And a the idea of a Jew siding with or covering up for the Islamists is, well to put it mildly, mindboggling.

Posted by: Nariz at December 16, 2005 4:17 PM

l heard that Saddam had ideas of being the Caliphate, he had obtained or tried to a relic to a pass emperor or leader of Irag from before the time of Jesus. it was on a radio show, l think the history researcher was a brit "John Henry"... this was a few years ago.

Posted by: Lulu at December 16, 2005 4:17 PM

Nariz:

Arthur is only following a well established family tradition. His dad and uncle(s) tended to bury information about the Holocaust as it unfolded to the back pages if they reported on it at all.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at December 16, 2005 4:24 PM

The current New Yorker has a piece on Sulzberger. Not so much about Walter Duranty, or the atrocious failure to cover, at a time (the nineteen thirties) when some of the Times's readers in New York might have rescued relatives, the Nazi anti-Jewish campaign which then blossomed into full-fledged genocide. But about the spoiled brat, the whimsical fellow who is master (because owner, not out of any intrinsic merit) of all he surveys. Read about the so-called "Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom" meeting with the Times's timid staff, where those present were "encouraged" to speak their mind. With that tiny toy moose on the table.

Sure of himself without much reason, the scion of a comfortable Harmonie Club crowd --"Our Crows" -- not about to endanger itself by being too concerned with issues that might seem just a little "too Jewish." His family's paper failed on all three of the greatest issues of the day, the ones requiring the greatest clarity the deepest historical knowlege, so that the future could be predicted (for much of it can be predicted if one knows enough). It failed in not conveying the full horror of the Bolsheviks, of the collectivization, of the various giant projects that used slave labor (Belomorestroi, Dneprstroi), or for that matter the purge trials of the 1930s starring the forensic skills of Andrey Vyshinsky and others). It failed to convey to its readers what Hitler had in mind, what his followers were already doing in the 1930s, to the Jews of Europe. In those same 1930s, many readers of that paper might, had they been properly informed by the Sulzberger paper, and sufficiently alerted to the peril, could have worked with greater fury to rescue relatives, to alert them who, back in Europe, isolated from the larger world, might have had less of a chance to find out what was going on than a reader of The New York Times, if that reader had had the chance to read the truth, and not coverage that minimized the anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs of the Nazis only in order to shore up the Harmonie-Club position of the Sulzbergers themselves, who did not want (see the book by Laurie Leff) to appear to be "too Jewish" and were willing to tamper with the news, to do almost anything, to insure that the charge would not stick -- and how much blood is on their hands, how many were not enabled to escape, through the work of relatives in America who themselves did not realize until it was too late what Hitler was all about -- one can only guess.

And now, for the Trifecta, the failure so far of the Times to instruct its readers satisfactorily, or at all, about Islam, its nature, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics, and the permanent menace of the adherents of this belief-system to Infidels, precisely to the extent that they take that belief-system seriously.

Quite a record for the Times. Three times it was called, and three times it failed. But it was not the Times, but its readers, and the rest of us, who paid the price for its failure. Still largely unacknowledged, while it insolently continues to misinform, despite some of the very good reporting from Iraq, by omitting any discussion of Islam or the world-wide problem of creeping, or not so creeping, islamization.

Posted by: Hugh at December 17, 2005 6:36 AM

On the bright side: I have an old friend, he's been more or less a Leftist for the past 30 years. Just after the London bombings, he visited me from Tokyo (where he has made his new home for the last decade), and we talked about Islam for a total of at least six hours of solid, intense discussion.

Here's the point: my friend is a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist, has been for 30 years, and he told me he gets all his information from the mainstream media -- he never heard of jihadwatch or any of the other Islam-critical books I mentioned to him.

And yet -- here's the climax folk -- my friend was in complete, absolute agreement with me about how nefarious the problem of Islam is for the world. Not only that, he had many interesting and cogent thoughts about the problem that echoed those of readers and writers here at jihadwatch.

So there is hope.

And, you see, it's not so much the communication of information -- or lack of it -- that is the problem: it's the PC mindset. When the PC mindset infects a person -- and it infects millions of ordinary people as well as elites --, no amount of pertinent information against Islam will do much good.

For some ineffable reason, my Leftist friend is able to cast off the scales of PC and see the problem for what it is -- even with the scant crumbs of data which the mainstream media has let fall his way.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at December 17, 2005 1:36 PM

Now I feel better about voting for Esposito as American dhimmi 2005 (even though he only got 6% of the vote). I was hesitant to vote for him as he hadn't prominently made the news this year (the literalist in me). This article dispels that reservation (along with Georgetown accepting so much Saudi money - wonder who played a prominent role in THAT decision?).

Posted by: Caroline at December 17, 2005 8:14 PM

Speaking of Hitler, The German's released another terrorist, just like Munich.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-eur/2005/dec/21/122109334.html

Posted by: kevin at December 21, 2005 4:36 PM