Jihad Watch has lately been visited by another in a long series of provocateurs whose mission seems to be to tie up commenters in irrelevancies and red herrings. Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has a few remarks on this subject:
Many people come to Jihadwatch to read items garnered from the world’s press, television, satellite channels, about that most misreported, and underreported, of matters: those aspects of the ideology of Islam which make it a menace and a threat to all non-Muslims. Pieties about the “three abrahamic faiths” and the supposed benign links between the “three great monotheisms” obscure the fact that Islam is, in large part, a geopolitical program. The word “religion” tends to automatically confer a degree of respect, and sympathy, and to foster a continued, and dangerous, unwariness, in the minds of adherents of other religions.
It is this website that, along with others, brings together articles from disparate sources, that show how the impulse toward Jihad is demonstrated throughout the world, in both the dar al-Islam (the lands where Islam rules, and Muslims predominate) and in dar al-harb, the lands where Infidels remain, as yet unsubjugated). It further offers examples of what may be called “dhimmitude,” that is an attitude of abasement and appeasement, that in Muslim states was the lot of all non-Muslims (those that remained alive), but which can be observed, fascinatingly, in countries still under Infidel control, but where some Infidels, out of ignorance, sentimentality, or more sinister impulses, including hostility toward their own societies and countries, manage to display, even when not forced to, that same attitude of supine compliance with Muslim demands, and Muslim views, that are such an unattractive feature, for example, of the upper reaches of the E.U. bureaucracy. What began as a venal attempt to curry favor, so as to be able to “recycle petrodollars,” has become a habit of mind. Western media, used to doing the Arab bidding in their presentation of the Arab Jihad against Israel, have extended that behavior in their coverage — or non-coverage — of Islamic behavior directed at targets other than Israel.
This site bring informations about both Jihad and Dhimmitude. Simply by presenting varied items of news, and laying bare, in the occasional accompanying commentary, the ways in which dhimmitude can be expressed, and furthermore, the ways in which Jihad remains the central, most persistent and significant aspect of Islam, one which has to be thoroughly understood and that understanding assimilated — given the failure of so many to undertake the most elementary study of Islam and of Muslim history themselves, content rather to mouth platitudes, if no longer about “peace” and “tolerance,” then new platitudes about the need for a “dialogue of civilizations” that is simply the old nonsense and apologetics in new garb.
In addition, those who blog at each thread often supplement, with their own analyses or other links, or pasted-in quotations, some of them quite apposite in what they find in obscure places, often eke out, in amazing ways, the raw news items.
Manners maketh man. Polite posters, what might be called coquettishly, or etiquettishly, Emily-Post-ers, try to keep to the matter at hand, as best they can. They derive profit and pleasure from the observations of others, and try in turn to offer profit and pleasure. One hopes that those who do not visit will, in the future, by googling, wander through the cyber-archives which do not date and ought to be consulted — paper-writing students, please note — along with the day”s fresh offerings. It is a good way to learn about Qur’an and Hadith and Sira, to find out what Taqiyya is and to be shown examples of such Taqiyya in practice. It is a good way to learn about Muhammad’s own behavior (the execution of the Bani Qurayza, the attack on the Khaybar Oasis, etc.), and about his significance, therefore, as the “perfect man” and permanent model to be emulated, through time and space.
One discovers here repeated mention of scholars of dhimmitude, such as the pioneering Bat Ye”or, about such articulate ex-Muslims as Ibn Warraq, about such websites as www.secularislam.org, and www.faithfreedom.org, and www.dhimmitude.org and www.nojihad.com. The United States, one is constantly reminded, is not the only Infidel target, but merely the most powerful and resolute among those targets. One is reminded that Christians and Jews are not the only non-Muslims who must be defeated and subjugated; worse fates are to be meted out, at least theoretically, to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Confucians, and of course all atheists and agnostics.
One learns of the emphasis in Islam on the collective, and the severe limits placed on individual autonomy, and especially on freedom of conscience and belief. One learns that for a good Muslim, loyalty can never be offered the Infidel nation-state; that is a logical impossibility; it can only be offered to fellow Muslims, to the umma al-islamiyya. Some Muslims may choose to ignore this requirement; they are being, from the Muslim point of view, bad Muslims. From the Infidel point of view, they are less troubling.
Visitors to this site know that Jihad-conquest exists independently of any particular foreign policy or behavior. It exists independently of where Muslims live, or how much money they have, or how much education they have, or the degree of their exposure to the Western world. It exists independently of the degree of despotism they experience in the Muslim countries, or the degree of material and other success they find in the Infidel lands. For it is a matter of ideology — of what is contained in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, which is to say, the entire belief-system of Islam.
It is here, at this website, that one learns about the many crushing burdens — economic, political, social — which, under the Sharia, are to be imposed on all dhimmis, a word which refers to those Infidels (chiefly Christians and Jews) who, though may be permitted to live, and not forced to immediately convert, are made subject to a regime of such enforced and permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity that vast areas of the Middle East and North Africa, once entirely populated by non-Muslims, have now become almost entirely Muslim. The same is true for large areas of black Africa, and in Asia — the numbers of Muslims rises, and the non-Muslims slowly, under oppression soft or hard, if not killed or exiled, decrease inexorably in numbers.
Why is it so important to understand dhimmitude? It is potentially the future for much of the Western world, beginning with Europe. One has to awaken first oneself, and then others, from this deep sleep of unreason. The canonical texts of Islam are fixed forever. They do not change. They are not subject to interpretation, for the “gates of ijtihad” (interpretation) closed a thousand years ago. The publicized efforts of some Bright Young Muslim Things who tell us that they can take care of all that, they”ll do all the necessary re-interpreting, merely prolong the complacence, and delay the right reckoning.
A great deal of information can be derived from the daily mental bread, the panem quotidianum, that is offered up, every morning, by some early-rising bakers at Jihadwatch. One hopes that more and more visitors will come, to discover that the apologetics in which so many indulge in the so-called major media, need not be parroted, nor accepted, and can be made subject to withering cross examination by Robert Spencer, and by others who, self-deputized to help the marshal with the gang that just rode into town, decided — even now, while many terrified townsfolk still hide behind their doors — to awkwardly put on their badges, and lend a hand.
This whole matter is neither elementary particle physics, nor classical Greek prosody. It requires only that texts be understood, that trustworthy scholars be discovered and read, that the rhetorical tricks of apologists for Islam be analyzed and understood. It requires that bowdlerized versions of the Qur’an be mocked, that the inconsistencies within the Qur’an be recognized, and the way that Muslims themselves resolve those inconsistencies be clearly understood.
No one who comes repeatedly to Jihadwatch will suffer any of that confusion and mental désarroi that so many suffer from, and which derive from the failure of the press, of our leaders, of all those whose duty it is to instruct us, to forthrightly discuss Islam.
That is what Jihadwatch is for. That is what it attempts to do. That is its value.
It is not meant for people to be inveigled into trading insults with what are called “Trolls” — that is, those who appear at various threads only in order to distract, to waste precious time (and space on the thread), to bring out the silliest in everyone. Why collaborate with those who do not wish this site well? Whether hater of America, or anti-Semite, or fanatical Jihadist, the troll dangles the tempting bait of his, or her, own unhinged personality before would-be posters. It would be better not to take that bait.
But this distracts attention from other, more serious, matters. There is no real way to answer such people. Were you to pass on the street someone ranting similar stuff, the spittle streaming from the sides of his mouth and his eyes gleaming, would you not quicken your step, and simply leave him to his rant? Why should cyberspace be any different? It is flatly untrue that everyone possesses some core of logic, some ability to reason things out, to consider evidence presented by others. Evidence, logic, and so on have no meaning for such people. Either they are captives of a Total Explanation of the Universe, or they have, in order to make sense of the universe, mentally enslaved themselves to some Total Explanation that is their own creation. In their fantasy world, they keep rounding up the usual scapegoats as suspects, and there is no need for them to conduct a trial in the courthouse of their own minds: those scapegoats are always guilty as charged — America, the West, “the Jews,” etc.. It is silly to believe that all mankind shares a certain good sense, a shared residue of common humanity. All God’s chillum, the Family of Man, that sort of sentimental thing. It doesn’t and we don’t.
Those who are unhinged, and who enjoy playing trolls — these trolling players, or strolling players, strutting their very poor stuff upon their own miserable stage — need not occupy any of us at this website, whether we are groundlings or sitting with the gods. These are outpatients from the Laughing Academy. It is impolite for sane people to stare; they should walk briskly by, and quicken their step.