| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald wonders why recent revelations about Saudi textbooks actually surprise some people:
In the three decades plus since the quadrupling of oil prices, the 10 Arab or Muslim member-states of OPEC (which is to say, all the members of OPEC, save Venezuela) have received about $9-10 trillion dollars. The figure I have previously used of $5-6 trillion was too low. For more on this, google "OPEC" and "annual revenues" and do your own calculations.Some of that money could all along have been saved, through the recapture of oligopolistic rents, simply by taxing ourselves. At any point, Saudi Arabia has an "ideal" price -- i.e., the price at which the value of its reserves, by its own calculation, is maximized. This is based on the energy market, at present and in the future, including the development of other oil fields, or of alternative sources of energy, or of elasticity of demand. Whatever that "ideal" price X, at any one time, the addition by the consuming nations of a tax Y will force the Saudis either to lower their own prices (up to the full amount of "Y" if they wish to keep their ideal price "X" for consumers), or to see the market shift away from oil too rapidly.
This was not understood back in 1973, when much could have been done (a few trillion dollars saved -- think what that could have done for Social Security, education, alternative energy, for a start). The fact that it was not done reflects the Saudi success in buying up the services of a small army of apologists, including ex-ambassadors and C.I.A. agents. Attention has been paid to Edwin Wilson and Fran Terpil, who were involved with Khaddafy; no attention has been paid to Raymond Close, who "retired" early in 1977 from being Station Chief in Saudi Arabia to go into business with some Saudis, and who has been dutifully involved in all sorts of activities, including BCCI, and has been working as an "international business consultant" ever since -- dutifully giving the Saudi take on everything. The Saudis have also paid journalists and of course well-connected political figures and hangers-on. (The Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton should not be overlooked). These people, like others all over the Western world, took in some tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.Meanwhile, several trillion dollars might have been recaptured from OPEC if Saudi Arabia had been seen, accurately, not as a friend but as a mortal enemy of Infidels --whatever plausible Prince "we-are-all-men-of-the-world-have-some-port-have-a-Havana-cigar" Bandar assured successive American governments. And of course no one bothered to ask about Saudi Arabia's funding of mosques and madrasas all over the world, with their close connection -- see the Freedom House Report -- to inculcation of hatred toward all Infidels. After all, that bought-and-paid-for army of apologists was there to parrot the Saudi view, and to tell us again and again that Saudi Arabia is America’s “staunch ally” -- beginning as always with that picture of Ibn Saud and Roosevelt meeting on a ship.
One would not have expected any alarms about Saudi money (nearly $100 billion worldwide) going to fund mosques, madrasas, and hate literature (with Infidels being the hated) to come from the likes of Raymond Close, or James Akins, or the late John C. West, or West's friend Crawford Cook, or the entire host of Saudi hirelings (direct or indirect). Nor would we have expected any alarms to come from those who have simply been given gigantic honoraria for this or that "speech" to an Arab audience in Kuwait or the U.A.E., or at an Arab-funded lecture series at places such as Tufts. George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton have both pocketed large sums from the latter. Few can 'scape whipping -- or should.
As part of the 9/11 report, Congress ought to have investigated the role of Saudi money in creating these apologists, in putting so many on the payroll, and in buying up and controlling academic centers for "Islamic Studies" -- or at least setting up individual chairs. The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Both conveniently at Georgetown, in Washington. The Saudi funding for a chair (or was it a "center"?) in Islamic Studies, establishedat the University of Arkansas when Clinton was president. The money for Presidential libraries: Bush, Carter, Clinton. The money for King Abdul Aziz Chairs hither and yon. The $20 million just given to Esposito's operation, and then to Harvard. The support for Professor Frank Vogel, recipient of Saudi largesse at Harvard Law School as "The Guardian of the Two Noble Cities Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law" --- a little "adjunct" sum to supplement his regular chair's emoluments. And so many others, at Exeter and Durham in England, for centers, departments, individual chairs, all keeping the discussion of Islam carefully within the MESA Nostra bounds, so that were a potential Joseph Schacht or a Snouck Hurgronje or an Arthur Jeffrey to come along as a student, he would not be nurtured but stymied, his scholarly investigation limited (no following in the footsteps of Bat Ye'or for further work on treatment of non-Muslims under Islam, no discussion of the immutability of Islam when "reform" is all the rage, no investigation of the doctrine of Jihad as it is understood at al-Azhar, or the seminaries of Qom, or by the good doctors of Saudi Islamic universities. Whether the money is used to create a "center" or to go to a pre-existing department, or merely to fund an individual "scholar" who will keep things under control it all amounts to the same thing. And it's worked. MESA Nostra rules. The great scholars of Islam who lived between 1880 and 1960 have been replaced by -- something else. Here and there an individual carries on, but that is despite all the odds, and certainly not at the "great" universities where the situation is the worst. The Saudis, for more than 3 decades, have been getting their money's worth.
And they still are.
Remember that all these "bad things" about Saudi textbooks that we are suddenly getting glimpses of, all that indoctrination in hatred of Infidels, was always there -- it did not suddenly enter the curriculum. It is we who simply, over a longer period, knew nothing about it.
Why didn't we? Who kept us from knowing? Where was the C.I.A.? The American ambassadors? The journalists? Why was it not understood in 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or October 1973 when OPEC prices were quadrupled, that much of the money would inevitably be spent on those mosques, those madrasas, that Da'wa, demography, and dhimmitude?
Why?
Posted by Robert at May 26, 2006 8:31 PM
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The solution to getting back our money, is to invade that desert and take the bloody oil. That is what I would do. And at the same time, keep the oil out of Chinese and European hands. If America confiscated the oil fields, the price per barrel should be about $10.
In this crazy world, I think that the US has to have no respect for sovereign nations. Sovereign nations that plot sedition, are exempt from being protected by internationally accepted ideas of right and wrong.
Besides, in a clash of civilizations, might is right. Do what is needed. Take the oil and let islam starve. It would be kill two birds with one stone. What can islam do about it? Nothing. Because of their backward ways and lazy populations, they have not been able to create an armed forces capable of protecting their assets. That should be their undoing. They should, as a result, forfeit their assets if they are not able to protect them.
Take the oil fields and ship the crude back home at bargain prices.
Posted by: somethingaboutislam![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 26, 2006 9:03 PM
"The solution to getting back our money, is to invade that desert and take the bloody oil."
That would be nice in a perfect world, but China would not stand for it. They'd attack Taiwan or have North Korea invade the South and we would be in a real shooting war with the old Marxist.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at May 26, 2006 9:36 PM
Robert asks, "Who kept us from knowing? Where was the C.I.A.? The American ambassadors? The journalists?"
Robert, is this a rhetorical question??? If not, I'm surprised at you. You should know the answer to that. During the Cold War, even more importantly than oil, the Saudi royal family was viewed as a friend, staunchly anti-Communist and a bulwark against Soviet expansionism in that area. And you don't diss your allies in public. Just like during World War II, when we were allied with the Soviet Union, we suddenly found all kinds of good things to say about Russia and stopped all negativity about Soviet behavior in the Baltics, Finland, or the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
During the Cold War, all that mattered was which side each regime was on: pro-U.S., pro-Soviet, or neutral. And if there were these other loons yelling "Jihad!", that was entirely peripheral unless they could be turned by the U.S. against the USSR (or vice versa).
Which is exactly what we did. Only after the Cold War ended did we find out the full scope of the CIA's program to fund and stir up Islamist radicalism as a counterweight to Soviet Communism.
The CIA's funding of the Afghan rebels against the Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan, is well known. But even today, not many people know about the secret CIA program to foment Islamist radicalism inside the former Soviet republics themselves, as a way to destabilize the USSR altogether. That program was the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to then President Jimmy Carter. It was a program of great scope, in which Israel provided weapons and Algeria and Sudan provided the actual jihadists and the proper, let us say, "religious motivations." For full details, go here:
So why should anyone have expected the CIA or our government to warn us about jihadists? Our government was actually funding its *OWN* top-secret Islamist jihad against the USSR. The jihadists were our secret, CIA-funded allies against Communism, not to be criticized but to be encouraged.
at May 26, 2006 9:38 PM
Short course in the history of Western Amnesia about Islam:
1) Muslims perceived as a major threat: 8th century - 17th century
2) Muslims receding into the background as minor players in geopolitics -- 18th century to the mid-20th century
3) Muslims seen as quaint, exotic, relatively harmless oddities from another era -- 19th century to the early 1970s
4) Muslims seen by majority as increasingly irritable and demanding (and by a tiny minority as a genuine threat to the West) -- 1970s to present.
5) In the meantime, the West has the luxury to undergo an irresponsibly radical reversal in thought about its colonial role, its own values, its own superiority vis-a-vis the savages it tried to help for centuries (and continues to help) -- 1890s to the present (increasing in irrationality with each passing decade).
GRAND TOTAL: The fabulous invalid of 2006: the West.
Posted by: Television at May 26, 2006 10:14 PM
Thomas, who should care if China invades Taiwan? That doesn't make China any more powerful. For China, Taiwan is just about national pride, nothing more. Besides, they will invade Taiwan anyway.
America takes the saudi oil, and starves China of its oil supply. Then America, in addition to having cheap oil, and have starved islam and terrorims, will also have the Chinese, our future enemies, by the short and curlies.
It is a beautiful situation no matter how you slice it. Machivellian geopoltiics.
Posted by: somethingaboutislam at May 26, 2006 10:27 PM
Television, I like your historical timeline.
Indeed, the muslim threat receeded after the 1670 attack on Vienna, and was in remission until now. In fact, the difference in relative powers between the west and islam is greater now than ever. The only reason why the threat is beginning again is that the west is laying down and inviting the muslims to take over. That is new. Never before has the west done that. Never before has any society done that.
When a society does that, then of course, any ragtag bunch of unwashed, bearded misfits in pajamas can harm you.
We are in new terrority now.
at May 26, 2006 10:36 PM
l think sometimes we go too negative, islam is becoming more known to the so called "ignorant masses" as an evil entity. it is only the high born educated elites, and politicians the worst being Carter peanut president, Clinton amd Algore etc. who believe islam is not to blame. even Bush calls it wrongly a religion of peace, he does not beleive isalmofacists are inocents vitims of the west. l do believe it will get worse before it gets better. the good news is that when people have a choice they will leave islam, just read about the Kurds not using sharia, and apposates. its a start, but we cannt ignore islam like the governemnt did in the nineties. its in your face, and the more people know aboutit, the more they do not turst islam and our politicians and lawyers for that matter.
Posted by: Lulu at May 26, 2006 10:58 PM
You may be right Lulu, but it is the government that controls the nation. If they are ignorant, then that ignorance will destroy us, just as if we, the people, were ignorant. So for the people to wisen up, which I doubt they will, is not enough.
Carter, I don't believe he can be ignorant of islam. Carter is just ideologically driven to hate America, and by extension, to sympathize with America's enemies. Carter knows the score. He saw 9/11 happen. He saw the beheading videos. He just sympathizes with the enemy. He is a traitor. He should be in jail for sedition. And I supported Carter in 1980. Before he went ideologically far left.
Posted by: somethingaboutislam at May 26, 2006 11:08 PM
"ny ragtag bunch of unwashed, bearded misfits in pajamas can harm you"
-- particularly when their spokesmen and women get shaves and haircuts.
at May 27, 2006 12:54 AM
HUGH: "...the 10 Arab or Muslim member-states of OPEC (which is to say, all the members of OPEC, save Venezuela)"
Actually, Ecuador and (I believe) Gabon round out the OPEC 13.
HUGH: "Why was it not understood in 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or October 1973 when OPEC prices were quadrupled, that much of the money would inevitably be spent on those mosques, those madrasas, that Da'wa, demography, and dhimmitude?"
Because we had bigger fish to fry, or so we thought.
Fighting the Cold War truly did inhibit our manueverability in the Muslim world. But the negligence begins in spades in the 90s, the post-Cold War world, when the declaration of war against us could not have been more explicit. We had the first WTC attack (94), the Dahrain bombing (95), the Riyadh bombing (96), the African Embassy bombings (98), and the Cole attack (2000).
Yet, none of this seemed to make an impression on the powers-that-be because of the priorities of the man in the White House at the time. I suppose it wasn't the first time that a good blow-job trumped national security.
Whatever sins we committed in the 70s and 80s vis-a-vis looking the other way at Muslim perfidy, they can be seen within the broader geo-political challenge of combating Soviet imperialism. The 90s was the lost decade, when the academy and the media was surrendered to speech codes, Europe was swamped with large-scale Muslim immigrantion, and America was attacked again and again by Islamists without effective response.
We weren't a "paper tiger" as Mao used to enjoy calling us; the last 5 years have revealed in bold detail the extent of our capabilities. Our problem was simple: we didn't have an adult in the White House.
In many respects, we still don't.
Posted by: Cornelius
at May 27, 2006 12:58 AM
Cornelius writes: "Whatever sins we committed in the 70s and 80s vis-a-vis looking the other way at Muslim perfidy, they can be seen within the broader geo-political challenge of combating Soviet imperialism."
Sorry. We did not just "look the other way." The U.S. Government actively funded, armed, and organized, Islamist jihadists to attack Soviet regimes, not just the Communist puppet government in Afghanistan but the regimes of the Soviet oil republics (the "stans"). We knew damn well that these jihadists were not democrats, but fundamentalist Muslim fanatics. Did we think that they would just retire and sit on their rocking chairs after they had helped us by terrorizing the Soviet republics?
So the question was this: Once the Cold War was over, how was the U.S. to put the Islamist genie back in the bottle that it had largely unleashed itself as a weapon of the Cold War? At what point were we supposed to turn around 180 degrees and start opposing the very forces that we had earlier nurtured?
The problem was that even after the Cold War ended, the continuing threat from Saddam kept the U.S. on the side of Saudi Arabia and kept us from calling out the Saudis on their duplicity in playing footsy with anti-Western forces. (Like I said before, you never diss an ally in public.) After Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Saudi royal family did us a tremendous favor (we thought) by allowing us to station U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, even allowing U.S. "infidel" forces to use Saudi Arabia as a staging area to attack Saddam's forces in Iraq and Kuwait.
But this had two negative consequences. First, a fellow named Osama bin Laden got very upset about seeing U.S. "infidel" soldiers walking around on Saudi (Muslim) territory, and resolved to do something about it. Second, while the U.S. kicked Saddam's forces out of Kuwait in 1991, Saddam remained a deadly threat, both to us and to Saudi Arabia (we thought), and that kept the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as geopolitical allies right up until 2003. And we soft-pedaled our concerns about our "friend and ally," the Saudi royal family.
Only after Saddam was gone, and we no longer had a common geopolitical interest with the Saudi royal family, have we been able to even consider detaching ourselves from Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Steven L. at May 27, 2006 1:35 AM
"We knew damn well that these jihadists were not democrats, but fundamentalist Muslim fanatics."
Yes, but we also thought they were quaint, exotic savages clinging to an obsolete culture that couldn't possibly do any serious harm to the modern world. We underestimated their infinitely patient, incorrigibly Noachic fanaticism and their irremediably barbaric ethos. Most of the West still underestimates these things about the enemy. Most of the West still doesn't see the enemy.
Posted by: Television at May 27, 2006 2:02 AM
Stakes in the heart of the Oil Jihadis:
solar,
hydrogen,
ethanol,
bio-diesel,
methane/methanol,
hybrid electric/bio-diesel-ethanol,
wind,
geothermal,
tidal,
bio-mass,
oil shale,
and fusion, eventually.
Hydrogen, methanol, biodiesel and solar being the most promising in the short run.
I'm sure the Saudis are wondering how to prevent them, but the infidels are not only clever, they also like their high-powered tools, toys and their interstellar dreams.
Let the Mohammedans have their oily rock in Mekkah.
We will one day raise a toast of unearthly champagne, grown on Mars, and mock the Islamically-eunuched's inability to enjoy this life and this endless opportunity.
You can't see the stars when you're bowing.
Posted by: profitsbeard at May 27, 2006 2:20 AM
Hugh's ending question is at least partly rhetorical, and he answered it himself in the first part of his piece: the hate in Islamic textbooks was missed in part because so many scholars and officials have been on the Saudi payroll and have thus been reluctant to point out anything that might displease the Saudis. Especially since for a long time, to many there seemed no great danger to the West, no reason to raise alarms. As other posters have mentioned, the West was also preoccupied with defending against the huge threat posed by the Soviets.
The hate in school books was also overlooked because WMD did not, until 9/11/01, fully enter the public mind as something potentially wieldable by small groups. It would be understatement to say that the hugely lethal power of increasingly accessible and advanced technologies emerging in the new millennium has amplified concerns. It is becoming crystal clear to larger and larger numbers of people that hate in Saudi schools matters to us, half a world away.
The fact that we are near the brink of war with Iran, whose president has been announcing, under the thinnest of rhetorical veils, his intent to destroy Israel with a nuclear detonation, also is of course making people pay more attention to the Muslim world.
Posted by: traeh at May 27, 2006 3:44 AM
Somethingaboutislam,
Your first post. If only.
at May 27, 2006 6:39 AM
"'...the 10 Arab or Muslim member-states of OPEC (which is to say, all the members of OPEC, save Venezuela)'" [quoting from the piece]
Actually, Ecuador and (I believe) Gabon round out the OPEC 13.
Ecuador and (I believe) Gabon round out the OPEC 13."
-- from a posting above
Your attempt to correct misfires. Ecuador and Gabon quit OPEC some time ago. There remain eleven member countries of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. They are: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Venezuela is not a Muslim state. Chavez, however, appears to side with Muslim policies, for like the most extreme haters of America, he sees Islam as a vehicle for opposing America. As for Nigeria, I did not stop to explain that, while Nigeria's population is split between Muslims and Christians and animists, the army is Muslim-run, the policies are Muslim-determined, and Muslims continue to dominate that country despite the Christians being much more advanced and industrious. The Christians tried before to secede, from 1967-1969; no Western power helped them; Muslims helped the Muslim north, with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages at will; only two countries dared to recognize Biafra -- Israel and Ghana. The rest of the Western world did not wish to help Christians against what Col. Ojukwu described as the "Jihad" against them (see the Ahiara Declaration).
So that's it.
at May 27, 2006 10:45 AM
The solution to getting back our money, is to invade that desert and take the bloody oil.
~ posted above
Top oil consumers, barrels per day, year of 2004
1. USA 20,700,000
2. China 6,500,000
3. Japan 5,400,000
4. Germany 2,600,000
US crude oil imports, barrels per day, March 2006
1. Canada 1,716,000
2. Mexico 1,697,000
3. Saudi Arabia 1,322,000
4. Venezuela 1,183,000
Who to invade, decisions, decisions?
Posted by: BurgerBoy at May 27, 2006 12:36 PM
There's something called the "myth of omnipotence" in psychology -- My lay understanding of this concept has it that an infant, in order to cope with the terrors of its initial existence, must develop a sense that the world is controlled by the ideations of the infant's mind. Therefore -- crying makes the mother appear -- agitating makes the dirty diaper go away... This, I'm told, is a necessary part of human development. But as is so often the case, something which forms initially as a necessary defense mechanism, can later become a great liability. Everyone knows (or should know) that the mere thinking of thoughts is hardly the impetus for real events in the world. Later in life, if someone still adheres to the premise of the "myth of omnipotence", it becomes a problem. I have heard this labelled "magical thinking", which seems appropriate.
Just so -- the peculiar notion that the Mujahadeen are an invention of the CIA strikes me as magical thinking. The underlying premise is quite faulty. It also belies a certain paternalistic bias which doesn't seem capable of recognizing the actions of non-Western players through anything but a Western lens.
I would agree that Western involvement in the various strains of Islamic Jihad may have encouraged or nurtured the momentum of those various Jihadi entities -- but the notion that Jihad is some kind of Cold War artifact is so obviously wrong -- I marvel whenever I see this particular argument.
Muslim Jihad may have periods of quiescence, and it can be argued that external non-Muslim forces (such as CIA sponsorship during the Cold War) may be partially responsible for triggering the resurgence of the Jihadi impulse -- but the idea that the USA is somehow the originator of the Jihadi impulse is absurd and harmful. Absurd because Muslims invented Jihad when Muhammad encapsulated his barbarous war ethic in their filth stained 'religion' of Islam. Dangerous because:
A. It's magical thinking -- and as such prevents one from comprehending the contours of the battlefield, and the nature of the enemy, and
B. It subtly reinforces the deeply entrenched notion (and tactic) among Muslims that all ills flow from outside the House of Islam.
Muslims -- and Muslims ONLY are responsible for the crimes that Islam commits. We may help exacerbate their crimes through our ignorance -- but WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE IN ANY WAY FOR ISLAMIC JIHAD.
Posted by: jsla at May 27, 2006 1:19 PM
BurgerBoy, Saudia Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world. They have the largest proven oil reserves. They export almost 10 million barrels per day, only some of that going to the US, as you correctly quote. So imagine if ALL of that oil, all 10 million barrels per day was going to the US - FOR FREE?
The US consumes about 20 million barrels per day according to 2004 stats. By taking the Saudi oil, the US would only have to buy an additional 10 million barrels, rather than the 20 million barrels per day it is buying now.
What a winfall that would be, in addition to keeping the oil out of Chinese hands. Because sooner or later, we will have to go to war with China. China is on the warpath. Indeed, China is hoping that the coming war with islam will weaken the US and the West in general, softening us up for a take over.
By invading Saudia Arabia, we can do ourselves a favor economically, starve the terrorists, kick islam in the face, and slow down the chinese economy to boot - an economy which is gearing up for a confrontation with the west. China's arms purchases are accelerating rapidly. Why? What have they got in mind? A tiny dinky island? No. They are ramping up for the Big One.
Posted by: somethingaboutislam at May 27, 2006 3:15 PM
Thanks for setting me straight on OPEC.
Still digesting your contention that the Nigerian Civil War was a jihad.
The help given the Federal government by Nasser is not in-and-of-itself convincing; Egypt in the late 60s was anything but a model of Islamism. Major help also came from Britain and the Soviets...hardly jihad inc.
The Federal President (Gowan) was a Christian. There were sr. officers then in the Nigerian military who were Christians (including Obesanjo). Many Christian Yoruba fought on the Federal side.
I'm sure you know more about this particular chapter in world history than I do. I'm determined to read up on it.
Posted by: Cornelius at May 27, 2006 6:22 PM
jsla said
I would agree that Western involvement in the various strains of Islamic Jihad may have encouraged or nurtured the momentum of those various Jihadi entities -- but the notion that Jihad is some kind of Cold War artifact is so obviously wrong
I have to agree with jsla. The CIA may have helped steer the jihadists towards the Soviets in Afghanistan, but did not create the jihadists or the jihad. The jihad predates the Cold War, or even the existence of the U.S. or Soviet Union. It has been at a relatively slow simmer for centuries, but the huge influx of petro-dollars has turned up the kettle to a full boil. I have no doubt that Saudi funding of the jihad far outweighs whatever the CIA provided.
Posted by: special_guest at May 27, 2006 6:24 PM
somethingaboutislam
2003 figures show we import 11.1 million barrels a day, the means we produce the other 8.9 million barrels domestically, so in your scenario all oil would thus be domestic, we would import nothing to the demise of Canada and Mexico .
Infidels in the Arabian peninsula, I do like the idea, just not for oil reasons.
at May 27, 2006 6:58 PM
somethingaboutislam
Some oil reserve estimates, in billions of barrels
Canada 178.792
Mexico 12.882
USA 21.371
North American total 213.045
Saudi Arabia 266.810
Iran 132.460
Iraq 115.000
Kuwait 104.000
U.A.E 97.800
Middle total 743.411
Canada sure has a chunk of oil, albeit a bit more costly then Saudi oil. Instead of going after Saudi oil, I say just take Iraqi oil and in a few years Iranian oil as payment for fix’n the place.
Posted by: BurgerBoy at May 27, 2006 7:34 PM
"Still digesting your contention that the Nigerian Civil War was a jihad."
-- from a posting above
Not my contention, but the claim made by every single supporter of Biafra then and now. From Col. Ojukwu, the noblest of the participants in that war, to the Biafran websites today (the cause is hardly dead, and Biafra may yet be achieved), everyone understood that the Muslims of the north were intent, through their domination of the army, to domiante the Christians. What, after all, set that war off? It was the massacres, all over the north, of Chrsitian southerners -- entirely unprovoked. And what has been the history of modern Nigeria, if not the appropriation by the Muslim north of both the revenues thrown off by the oil, which is entirely in the south, and of much of the other wealth created by the more industrious, entrepreneurial, and modern Ibo and other Christian peoples? That is what "Nigeria" -- a construct of British colonials -- in fact was from the beginning, and things have only gotten worse.
As for the notion that Egypt was not "Islamist" when it extended aid (those murderous pilots) to the Muslims of the north in their attempts to murder as many southerners as they could, in order to suppress the Biafran cause, that makes no sense. Egypt was and is Muslim. Do you think
Egypt's regime today is any more "Islamist" than it was then? Of course not. But that did not stop Egypt from exercising every diplomatic wile it could in order to prevent, as it has manated to help prevent, effective outside intervention in Darfur. And similarly, the Egyptians helped the Sudanese for twenty years avoid sanctions, or even much attention, as they killed and deliberately starved to death nearly 2 million black non-Muslims in the southern Sudan. "Islamism" is not necessary; Islam itself is sufficient to explain the behavior of Egypt, and its solidarity with the Sudan when what is involved is killing mere non-Muslims or non-Arab Muslims.
Here are two of my postings from June 30, 2004 which are relevant to the matter at hand; you can find the whole thread by googling "Jihad Watch" and "Posted by Hugh" and "Biafra" and "Ahiara Declaration" and "Col. Ojukwu":
#1.
"Ethiopia is a country which, in the past thirty years, has repeatedly known major famine. We have all seen the pictures. Yet the headwaters of the Nile begin in Ethiopia, and intelligent irrigation projects could save many lives in Ethiopia.
Yet Egypt has been threatening, and screaming, that Ethiopia's plans are outrageous. And if the threats and screams do not work, then the Egyptians try smiles, and wiles, and offers to cooperate, if only -- oh, if only the Egyptians are given a veto over what Ethiopia does, and how much water it diverts.
Never mind that it the Ethiopians who for years have suffered, and that Egypt looks benignly on the massacres of the blacks in the southern Sudan, because it wishes to extend Arab Muslim power down to where it will immediately threaten what has always been seen, in Islam and in the West, as the celebrated Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. Securing the Sudan is one element; threatening Ethiopia, from Eritrea and Somalia, and from the Arabs of Egypt and the Sudan from the north, and as well, from within the country, with a very aggressive program of da'wa (conversion) which can always become subversion.
Ethiopia, in Islam, was once accorded special status because 82 families of followers of Muhammad supposedly found temporary refuge there from the Meccans. Gratitude to the the Christian Negus of Ethiopia entitled the country to a kind of special status, as dar al-sulh, a kind of halfway house between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. But that gratitude, and that special consideration, however minor it may have been, is not demonstrated in the slightest by Egypt's proprietary and exclusivist claims on the Nile waters.
If Ethiopia wishes to divert waters to feed people who have lacked, until now, the wherewithal and the technical assistance to use those waters for irrigation, that should be encouraged by the entire Infidel world. Egypt's threats, Egypt's wiles, should be seen in the proper context. The Arabs everywhere in North Africa essentially treat the black Africans with contempt. In deed, in Darfur, the Arabs have tried to wipe out black Africans -- as there is ample testimony from survivors -- even if they are Muslim.
In the Biafra War, a war brought on by the Jihad against the Christian Ibo and other Christian peoples of southern Nigeria by the Hausa and Fulani Muslims of the north (Islam itself was spread most recently in the 1804 Jihad declared by Othman Dan Fodio), and by the desperate attempt of the Ibo (Igbo) people to free themselves from Muslim aggression, tens of thousands of civilians were murdered --- by the Egyptian pilots who repeatedly bombed and strafed them (meanwhile, the only two countries in the world to recognize Biafra were Ghana and Israel; the rest of the Infidel world turned its back, pretending to believe that it was more important to "keep the largest black African country whole" even if this meant the appropropriation by the Muslims who controlled the army, of southern oil wealth, and repeated aggression against the Christians of Nigeria -- an aggression that continues to this day, in the steady spread of sharia, in the attacks on Christian peoples (usually the press only reports the Christian attempts at retaliation, not all that goes before -- and furthermore, describes this as "communal violence" rather than Muslim aggression which the Christians must ward off).
It is not surprising that Egypt should attmempt to arrogate to itself the water of the Nile, and deny, even in its nascent stage, the attempt of the oldest free black African country, and a country so celebrated for its long history of Christianity that, when Western Christendom imagined a Christian realm, beyond Islam, that represented an ally that might be counted on for succor and protection, they placed the Kingdom of Prester John first in India -- and then in Ethiopia.
Those in Western Europe who claim to have the interests of the Third World at heart really have to be put to the test. They sided with the Muslims in Biafra. They have not moved a finger to aid the Christian blacks in the southern Sudan, and have done nothing to denounce the Arab Muslim genocide against them, that has lasted more than 20 years. They seem not to know much, and care nothing about, the continued enslavement of blacks, by Muslim Arabs, in Mali and in Mauritania. They do not take the side of the government of Tanzania, trying to deal with Arab revanchism in Pemba and Zanzibar.
And what will they say about Ethiopia, and its need for water. ONe suspects, because this phony left, including the Anglican clergy who have never gone to the aid of the African Anglicans under attack by Islam, will say nothing -- or even denounce Israel yet again (for they have no sympathy, and no understanding, of Israel's endless plight as the subject of a relentless Jihad against it, a tiny Infidel sovereignty in an Arab Muslim sea) for "troublemaking" in Ethiopia.
Really, it is important for the American government to do something dramatic -- for nothing will come from Europe, not even from, or especially not from -- the co-religionists of the black African Christians under assault -- in Africa.
I have repeatedly suggested in these postings that a small force could seize the southern Sudan, and secure it until the local black population, Christian and animist, Dinka and Nuer and others, can vote on their own independence. Why should they not? And why should the sinister regime in Khartoum, which keeps denying it has anything to do with the Janjaweed in Darfur, be heeded in the slightest?
Or is the American government, too, hellbent on ignoring what is happening to black Christians throughout Africa, and doing nothing to help or protect them against Muslim depredation and aggression and threats?
Ethiopia is one test. Nigeria is another test. And the Sudan is yet another. Let us see.
Posted by: Hugh at June 30, 2004 07:58 PM
#2.
Egypt's intervention was "not a strictly Muslim thing"? The Biafrans certainly thought it was, from top to bottom, and they still do. One Biafran website discusses how the Muslim Northerners "found accomplices in Egyptian pilots. The ruthless and heartless pilots started doing the bidding of their Nigerian employers, bombing everything in sight, dispossessing mothers of their children and robbing children of their parents through deadly air assaults" and descirbes other "atrocities the Egyptian pilots were visiting on civilians all over Biafra." Other websites run by Biafrans show "the motivated Biafra soldiers working hard to save their innocent children, women, the aged and their entire land from Islamic jihad."
Apparently the Biafrans thought what they were enduring was a continuation of the long process of islamization that was first unleashed in 11804, and gathered force after independence, when the British were no longer around to hold the Muslim north back, which tried violence, forced conversion of Christians in the north (who were then supposed to return to the south and convert their fellows), bribery, and all manner of means.
In the end, the Biafrans were defeated, and a million people, most of them Christian civilians, strafed by the Egyptians, murdered by the Muslim forces in the army, were killed. The West was utterly indifferent; it was one of the most disgraceful performances in the modern world, and it had to do with unwillingness to have the Nigerian oil flow interrupted, or to in any way offend the Muslim states, including those involved in direct support for the northern Muslims, Egypt, Algeria, and the Sudan.
In the famous 1969 Ahiara Declaration, the leader of Biafra, Col. Ojukwu, said that the Biafrans were fighting white economic imperialism (the whites who did not want, under any conditions, to upset political applecarts because all they cared about was that oil from the south should flow uninterruptedly, whatever happened to the Ibo or other Christians), and he also repeatedly emphasized (read the whole speech--it is online) that the Biafran secession was a resisstance to "the Arab-Muslim expansionism which has menaced and ravaged the African continent for twelve centuries."
Remember how the war started: with the simultaenous killing, all over Nigeria, of 50,000 Christian Ibo, murdered "like cattle."
Let me quote just a bit from that Ahiara Declaration, before going on: Col. Ojukwu noted that
"we are the latest victims of a wicked collusion between the three traditional scourges of the black men, racism, Arab-Muslim expansionism and white economic imperialism." The "racism" he located in the insistence of the outside world that tribes and peoples be yoked together, permanently, in countries defined purely by borders drawn by colonial powers, and that racism explained the indifference as well to the right of true "independence and basic human rights" for black peoples. "In the thinking of many white powers a good, progressive and efficient government is good only for whites" and "our view [that we needed a progressive state with "social and ecoomic justice"] was considered dangerous and pernicious."
And then he went on to add:
"Our Biafran ancestors remained immune from the Islamic contagion....We came to stand out as a non-Muslim island in a raging Islamic sea. Throughout the period of the ill-fated Nigerian experiemnt, the Muslims hoped to infiltrate Biafra by peaceful means and quiet propaganda, but failed. Then the late Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto tried, by political and economic blackmail and terrorism, to convert Biafrans settled in Northern Nigeria to Islam. His hope was that these Biafrans of dispersion would then carry Islam to Biafra, and by so doing give the religion political control of the area. The crises, which agitated the so-called independent Nigeria from 1962, gave these aggressive proselytisers the chance to try converting us by force.
"It is now evident why the fanatic Arab-Muslim states like Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan have come out openly and massively to support and aid Nigeria in her present war of genocide against us. These states see militant Arabism as a powerful instrument for attaining power in the world. Biafra is one of the few African states untainted by Islam. Therefore, to militant Arabism, Biafra is a stubling block to their plan for controlling the whole continent.l The control is fast becoming manifest in the Organization of African Unity. On the question of the MIddle East, the Sudanese crisis, in the war between Nigeria and Biafra, militant Arabism has succeeded in imposing its point of vieww through blackmail and bluster.
"It has threatened African leaders and governments with inciting their Muslim minorities to rebellion if the governments adopted an independent line on these questions. In this way an O.A. U. that has not felt itself able to discuss the genocide in the Sudan and Biafra, an O.A.U. that has again and again advertised its ineptitude as a peace maker, has rushed into open condemnation of Israel over the MIddle East dispute. Indeed, in recent times, by its perforrmance, the O.A.U. might well be an organization of Arab unity."
And, one might add, the U.N. might as well be such too -- in its utter ineffectiveness in dealing with the Jihad, some thirty-four years later, still being conducted against the Sudanese blacks.
Anyone who wishes to refresh his memory, or to learn more about the Jihad against the Biafrans (a Jihad that continues, with special vigor, now that the Sharia is being imposed in state after northern state), should simply google at the same time "Biafra" and "Jihad." You will find much material, including speeches, memoirs of those who lived through that war, the works of historians, and much else.
Of course, the Muslim war against black Christians used many means. One was simple bribery. How many despots -- was it Omar Bongo of Gabon, or Bokoassa, or Idi Amin, or all three, who converted to Islam because of financial inducements from Khaddafy and others (the same Arab money, of course, led to the turning away from Israel after the 1967 war, and the severing of diplomatic relations, even though the Israeli aid program in Black Africa had been one of the most spectacularly successful programs particularly in small-scale agricultural development, that had ever been attempted).
The American government can attempt to publicize the Jihad against Christians in Nigeria, and the Sudan, and in Ethiopia (for the dispute over the Nile waters will, inevitably, be the occasion for Egypt to rally Muslim forces, including those within Ethiopia that will naturally side with their fellow Muslims in Egypt rather than with what will be seen as "Christian" Ethiopia). It can come to their aid, in any number of ways. Or it can do what it did over Biafra -- nothing, and let a million people be killed. Or what it did in the Sudan -- nothing, and let 2 million people be killed.
One hopes that the Black Caucus, that the NAACP, that all those who have been so interested in the welfare of Black Africans, will not cease to defend thse Black Africans against genocide directed at them because they are Christians, and reject the imposed mental strait-jacket of what is rightly seen as an Arab religion that, as Col. Ojukwu sensed, constrains human potential."
Posted by Hugh at June 30, 2004 10:47 PM
Go to the websites with the word "Biafra" in them. Read around about the history of that war for indepedence from the Jihadists of the north, read about that once and future cause -- whose time is coming round again. And this time one hopes the Western powers will not ignore or betray the Christians in the south, as they did before.
at May 27, 2006 8:18 PM
l will ask the question, why are the Europeans, US, afraid of going to AFrica and stop the killing in Dafur, and other places of Sudan? l am trying to get a book called "White Guilt" actually written by an African American. this maybe the answer.
Posted by: Lulu at May 28, 2006 9:38 AM
Hugh-
Didn't madman Idi Amin die in a comfy chair in Saudi relatively recently?
Just checked, and here it is:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2003/08/16/amin030816.html
Our valiant allies the "princes" of of the tides of Arabia.
(And doesn't "wahhabi" sound like the onomatopoeia for a college kid giving a 'technicolor yawn'?)
Have a good Memorial Weekend!
Posted by: profitsbeard at May 28, 2006 2:49 PM
Profitsbeard -- You remind me -- as a child I remember terrifying stories about "madman" Idid Amin -- supposedly insane, I think, mainly because his freezer was filled with heads. Now, of course we can agree that this sounds crazy -- but did we dismiss this "psychopath" too easily?
I now comprehend that there was probably a direct Muslim link between his insane-seeming partiality for heads (sans body) in the cooler.
It is so difficult, I think, for many fair minded unfettered Westerners to credit stories about the true nature of Islam.
Surely a "religion" such as Islam can't mandate the subjugation and extermination of non-believers!?!??
Surely there couldn't possibly be a doctrine which calls for the systematic terrorization and subsequent domination of all non-believers in Islam!?!?!??
Surely a maniac in the middle of Uganda who keeps heads in his freezer and murders with glee MUST BE INSANE. There's no possibility such a person could actually be the devoutest of believers in Islam!?!?! Surely such a person must be a psychopath -- suffering from tertiary syphillis or something -- such a monster could not possibly be devout, or a Muslim!?!?!?
Our collective lack of imagination -- the fact that we have little context for such a thing -- this has seriously weakened our defense and hampered our appropriate response against such plunderers and murderers as the Muslims be.
Labelling Idi Amin a madman lets Islam off the hook. He was, in retrospect, one of Islam's more ardent and faithful servants, it would appear...
Posted by: jsla at May 29, 2006 2:18 PM
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