THE BITTER LAMENT OF MUSLIM WOMEN

By Jahanara Begum

"Allah Amader Kandte Dao!" Allah, Please let us weep in peace! —Jahanara Begum

Please, Allah, leave us alone to cry and weep in peace. From behind the veil, beyond public gaze we want to cry till we cannot cry any more. This is the only right you have left to us Muslim women, throughout the Islamic world, where your laws are meticulously followed. The world beyond is undergoing so many changes, so many evolutions over the ages; year after year, new discoveries are being made both in the sciences and philosophies, in the rest of the world, improving upon old ideas and beliefs.

But we are tied forever to the rigid and immutable shackles of your laws, Allah. No one ever came forward for our emancipation. Unique is our society! Men like Raja Ram Mohun Roy or Swami Vivekananda are not born in this society. No Sharat Chandra comes forward in this society to write an account of the volumes of tears that flow from our eyes. Educated Muslim men like Badruddin Tyebji, Hamid Dalwai and others like them have written on measures to stop the killing of cows but have failed to utter a single word of sympathy for us, Muslim women.

Abdut Jabbar can write a big fat volume on the eunuchs—and on the castrated in different Muslim societies—but he has nothing to say in our behalf. Syed Mustafa Siraj was at least honest when he said that the Hindus can fearlessly write on the injustices and other inadequacies of their social system, but we, the Muslims, are afraid to criticize the defects of the Islamic society.

Nargis Sattar has started to write a few articles on the subject of Islamic marriage laws and we were so hopeful. But that hope too, once again, has been taken away from us. More than a hundred female lawyers had demanded women’s emancipation in the streets of Lahore in Islamic Pakistan. The ‘heroic’ Pakistani policemen attacked the female lawyers with sticks and batons.

A Muslim female member of the ADMK party of India had raised the subject of the emancipation of India’s Muslim women in the nation’s parliament—but then, all the progressive members of parliament remained silent on the issue, for no one wanted to offend the fundamentalist mullahs and lose the Muslim votes.

Oh Allah! the political leaders and their supporters in this land are very peculiar. They are just like the eunuchs who used to live among the innumerable young and beautiful women of the harems. All the lust, passion and sexual desires that overtook them, were of no avail for after all, they were eunuchs and so quite helpless. Our political leaders are exactly like those eunuchs. These leaders talk in high-sounding, noble words such as ‘freedom’, ‘non-discrimination’, ‘secularism’ and many other beautiful words.

But alas, they do not have the means to apply a single such word to the day-to-day life of our Muslim society. And so, the crying and weeping of the Muslim women go on unchecked; from one age to another. Their tears are symbolized by the waters that cover three quarters of this planet.

What a horrible, inhuman and illogical existence we have! Leaving his hundreds of concubines behind, the octogenarian Sheikh from Arabia comes to India to ‘marry’ a Muslim teenager. The news is flashed in all papers but behold, not a single political leader even registers a protest. Not a single mullah or maulvi declares ‘jihad’ or holy war on such goings-on. On the other hand, the mullah presides over these "Muta Marriages" that last for only a short fixed time.

What an unbearable existence for us to live and survive among co-wives! Innumerable children, unhealthy surroundings, poverty and lack of education have made a mockery of our social lives. Even goats and cows live better than us. The frequent fights among the co-wives, the pulling at one another’s hair are so degrading! And then, God forbicl, if the miyan or husband gets into the fray, then we get beaten like a beast until we cannot take it anymore. And after the beating, to make it even more degrading, the miyan takes his other wife into the bedroom and shuts the door into our face.

If there is the slightest shortcoming in the wife’s attention to the physical needs of the miyan or husband, then woe be to her. She goes on suffering forever from an acute uncertainty, and intense anxiety. The sword of ‘Talaq’ or divorce could come down on her any moment. The slightest inattention eoulo provoke a divorce.

All is in the hands of the Muslim husband. Just the pronouncement of the word ‘Talaq’ three times can move the earth from under the feet of the Muslim wife. The consequence? Cheap labour or prostitution. The little children suffer from lack of mother’s love, a sense of awesome insecurity and an unhealthy environment. If the children manage to survive then the society is burdened with more beggars and criminals.

Admittedly such occurrences do take place in other societies as well, but then they are much fewer in number and, what is more important, in other societies such a state of affairs is not allowed to persist in the name of their ‘religion’, while in our society the mullahs preach such treatment to us women in the name of ‘Islam’.

The motto among us is: ‘Breed and profit’—take over the land by increased birth rate. And we, the married Muslim women, have to bear all the burden of the entire operation. That is why no one ever finds a married Muslim woman who is not nursing her own baby or is not pregnant. They are with a child all the time. They die young.

We observe the lives of Hindu women who live near or around us. What a sense of purity, security and trust surrounds their family lives! Where is the hope of chastity, of purity in our lives? If the Muslim husband comes to regret divorcing his wife, if it happens at all, he still can do nothing to redress the situation. Allah, your laws of the ‘shariat’ prevent re-marriage with the ex-husband. The mullah will get into the act, get the woman ‘married’ to someone else and she has to consummate the ‘marriage’ for three days and three nights, and then, and then only, she can re-become ‘pure and virgin’.

If the new husband ‘divorces’ the woman obligingly, then only the previous and now repentant husband can ‘re-marry’ her. On the other hand, if the bride happens to be a good woman, the new husband may not wish to divorce her and then trouble starts between the two men. Fighting breaks out culminating in murders in many cases.

Such is our life, Allah! Who should we go to with our sorrows and complaints? If we rebel, then we are physically beaten and punished in accordance with the laws laid down by you. If we complain, then we are accused of being hypocrites or ‘munafiq’. In every other religion, respect is accorded to chastity, self-control and purity. But not so, in your religion. Oh Allah, the only privilege that we have is to cry our hearts out.

There are many ‘educated’ Muslims who are not unaware of all this. But they do not protest for they too are out to have fun at our expense. Those Muslims who are truly liberated, abandon us and do not want to concern themselves with our problems. It was with us in mind that Kazi Abdul Oclud once said that in the last 1400 years, Islam has not been able to light even a small candle eradicating darkness from human civilization.

Abu Syed Ayub spent his entire active life singing Tagore songs. He married the Hindu woman Gouri Dutta and lived a free and healthy life like any other Hindu. Mohamnled Ali Karim Chagla did the same. Vice President Hidayetullah, political leaders like Sikandar Bakht, Dr. Jeelany, Syed Mujtaba Ali too, did the same; in fact any one from our society that has gone up in civilized life away from our miseries, pains and problems moved closer to the society of the Hindus. (We are not sure about Ghagla, but Humayun Kabir and Sadiqu Ali married Hindu ladies. –Publisher). Only we the abandoned ones are left behind in the dark prison controlled by the mullahs and the maulvis.

We just cry here in an endless pain. No writer or reporter writes a story on us or makes an attempt to fathom the depth of our sorrow. The Government of India gave us the right to vote but denied us a healthy and peaceful married life by perpetuating the ‘Muslim Personal Marriage Code’. The ‘Hindu Code Bill’ liberated the Hindu women but we still remain the victims of polygamous practices. No remedy has been provided to prevent frivolous divorces in our Islamic society.

Once upon a time we used to trust the Marxists on this score. The Muslim women of Tazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan have found their freedom in Soviet Russia. No Sheikh from Arabia can buy them. These women do not spend their lives among innumerable children, unending pregnancies and degrading fights among co-wives. They have meaningful lives to lead. The mullahs do not have control over them.

But here in our land, even the Marxists are under the thumb of the mullahs. A Marxist like Mansur Habibullah went to Mecca, became a ‘Haji’ just to please the mullahs. And everyone knows that in his personal life, Habibullah does not care about this religion. His life is like that of a logical Hindu.

And so we were saying Allah, you have not given us the slightest opportunity to have a little peace, a little happiness. Your lack of concern for us is eternal. In the middle ages, nawabs and sultans used to keep thousands of women in their harems. Most of our days and nights then were spent in weeping. Some spent their time in laying plots and some in profligacy and unnatural practices. We were the fuel for the lusts of these sultans. Interminable fights have taken place among brothers, between father and son and among the nawabs themselves for us women.

The chariot of civilization, slowly but surely, has crossed many paths. Radical changes have taken place in other societies and other lands. Even the burning of the ‘suttee’, a terrible Hindu practice, has been eradicated by social progress. The marriage of very old men with very young brides that used to take place among some Hindus, following the ‘Kaulinya’ system—has also been abandoned in time. Many bad social customs and practices have disappeared in other societies. Even in our Islamic society some good changes have taken place—but then these changes have always been to the advantage of Muslim males only.

There is a villaye near Basra in Iraq. That village was well-known for supplying eunuchs for the nawabs’ harems. Nearly 60% of the young lads who were castrated there used to die. This butchery has ceased today. There are many Muslims like Idi Amin who have numerous wives but the eunuchs are no more there to watch over the women. But for us, nothing has changed. The men of our society are completely without concern for their women. By granting a few property rights they seem to think that a lot has been done for us Muslim women. What good are these property rights when our marriages are scarred with an unending chain of divorces and re-marriages?

The Muslim law has, on the other hand, given rise to a lot more persecution of Muslim women. If a divorced Muslim woman files a suit for her property and alimony rights, then the Muslim court moves very slowly indeed. In the meantime, the husband can get remarried without any hindrance from our Islamic laws. The law of the land that helps women of all other communities under similar circumstances is of no use to us Muslim women because we are supposed to go by the laws of Islam only and nothing else.

It was Abdul Rauf who wrote in the Bengali newspaper ‘Jugaantar’ describing the sorrows of Muslim women all over the country but, alas, there was no reaction. A few letters appeared in the press supporting the article and that was all.

But our Muslim leaders are very sensitive when it is a question of their own vested interest. Muzaffar Hussain wrote from north India that the Hindi movie ‘Talaq, talaq, talaq’ was renamed ‘Nikaah’ on the advice of the mullahs. The mullahs said that to mention the name of the film to their wives, the Muslim husbands would have to pronounce the magic word three times which would automatically end their marriages. These are funny men who are afraid to pronounce the word ‘Talaq’ but would do nothing to eradicate the dreadful practice of frivolous divorces. Such a great number of Muslim women lead a helpless and miserable life due to this abominable practice of ‘Talaq’. But then none of the ‘pious’ Muslims worry about it.

The Islamic soldiers of Pakistan’s Yahya Khan gang-raped hundreds of thousands of women in Bangladesh. More than two hundred thousand women became pregnant. A great number of these women later became insane. Only Mujibur Rahman tried to help a little, but the rest of the Islamic world maintained a complete silence. Khomeini’s Iran is currently killing hundreds of women. Their fault is that they do not support his rule. So, in the name of Islam, these women are being butchered. Vishnu Upadhyay has written about the incidents in the newspaper ‘Aaj Kal’ but then no one says a word—the Muslin world is still silent. In any other society, if a woman is raped, the papers cry out in her support, raising a storm of protest in the community. Islam means peace.

To watch silently the persecution of women is perhaps this peace. Such lack of concern for women has prevented all improvement in our condition. No blessing or show of kindness from our angels has been bestowed upon us and so, Allah, we are telling you once again about our sadness. You are the master of this world and universe. You are the one we are addressing our complaints to. You have denied us a happy life. If we happen to be one of many wives of a rich Muslim then we spend our lives in jealousy, rivalry and unending pregnancies. If on the other hand, we belong to a poor husband then there is back-breaking hard work for all day and one pregnancy after another as well. Wherever we go, the sword of ‘Talaq’ or divorce always hangs over our heads.

The uncertainty and insecurity of our lives affect not only ourselves but our children as well. They have no better choice and get into begging and street crimes. You have seen the crowds of Muslim women and their numerous children roaming around the Howrah station of Calcutta. That they are Muslims can be guessed by the presence of the bearded mullahs that hang around these women. The only concern of the mullahs is to ensure that these women remain Muslims. They are not concerned with their health, well-being, safety and simple humanness.

And so, there is nothing for a Muslim woman to look forward to. There is a lot of tears to shed though. A lot of weeping that has no remedy. And so we are crying out to you, Oh Allah, you have given us one and only one privilege and that is to weep. Please therefore let us weep in peace and leave us alone.

FREEDOM WITH STRENGTH

"Whatever are we to do in the face of Islamic terrorism?" says Alice through the looking glass.

Of course, there are freedoms that can be sacrificed in the name of security. If one blindly follows intellectual papers written at the end of the 18th century without consideration, one will fall behind in a rapidly changing world. Tough times require tough decisions and sacrifices. Some people sound like a spoiled children who don't want a toy taken away.

It's easy for Americans in our geographically comfortable position to sometimes criticize Europeans for whom they choose to ally themselves. Look at whom we have claimed as allies over the years and currently. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia just to name two.

European countries have known the terrors and futility of war and so it is understandable that they will try every thing they can to avoid it, even if it means appeasement to what many consider the Islamic enemy. Europeans feel the sensible thing is to keep their neighbors happy for as long as is reasonably possible. They don't do this because they are cowards. They do this because they have seen death, starvation and the complete destruction of their cities for centuries upon. America is still a young nation and full of brash overconfident fools. Until the US has had to endure foreign troops marching through its own cities hoisting opposition flags, we will never understand the deep and lasting cultural effect war has on nations.

Europeans are hesitant of confrontation for now but they are not cowards.

A THOUSAND AND ONE EURABIAN NIGHTS

European essayist Fjordman turns in another brilliant analysis:

At the EU Observer, Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that in every EU member state at present the majority of laws come from Brussels. Why do national politicians and representatives accept this situation?

He suggests a plausible explanation:

"At national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does.

"National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned. Individual ministers on the other hand obtain an intoxicating increase in personal power, as they are transformed from members of the executive arm of government at national level, subordinate to a national legislature, into EU-wide legislators at the supranational."

EU ministers see themselves as political architects of a superpower in the making. By participating in the EU, they can also free themselves from scrutiny of their actions by elected national parliaments.

According to Coughlan, "the great bulk of European laws are never debated at council of minister level, but are formally rubber-stamped if agreement has been reached further down amongst the civil servants on the 300 council sub-committees or the 3,000 or so committees that are attached to the commission."

EU integration represents "a gradual coup by government executives against legislatures, and by politicians against the citizens who elect them." This process is now sucking the reality of power from "traditional government institutions, while leaving these still formally intact. They still keep their old names — parliament, government, supreme court — so that their citizens do not get too alarmed, but their classical functions have been transformed."

Tony Blair, in one of his final interviews as British PM, stated that "The British people are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice about Europe, they don't expect their government necessarily to share it or act upon it." In other words: The British people should be sensible enough to know that their government will ignore their wishes and interests if it deems this appropriate, as it frequently has in its immigration policies.

The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d'état. Ideas such as "promoting peace" are used as a pretext for this, a bone to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab. It works because the national parliaments still appear to be functioning as before.

This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the EU: It is increasingly dictatorial, but it is a stealth dictatorship, whose most dangerous elements are largely invisible in everyday life. What the average person sees is that the EU makes it easier for him to travel to other countries without a passport, and use the same Euro currency from Arctic Lapland in Finland to Spain's Canary Islands off the African coast.

This appears convenient, and on some level it is. But it comes at the price of hollowing out the power of elected institutions and placing it into the hands of an unelected oligarchy conspiring to usurp ever more power and rearrange the lives of half a billion people without their consent. That's a steep price to pay for a common currency. But people do not clearly see this is their daily lives, and seeing is believing. The enemy that clearly identifies himself as such is sometimes less dangerous than the enemy who is diffused and vague, since you cannot easily mobilize against him.

Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.

Glossocracy can be traced back at least to the slogan of the French Revolution in 1789, "Freedom, equality, brotherhood." As it turned out, this meant mass terror, martial law and authoritarian rule. The more meaningless the word, the more useful it is for glossocrats. This is why the notion of Multiculturalism has been so useful, since it sounds vaguely positive, but ambiguous and could be used to cover up vast changes implemented with little public debate. The impulse behind Political Correctness consists of twisting the language we use, enforcing new words or changing the meaning of old ones, turning them into "weapons of crowd control" by demonizing those who fail to comply with the new definitions. The European Union, a French-led enterprise, is currently the world's pre-eminent and most unadulterated glossocracy.

According to Boot, a dictator whose power is based on bullets is afraid of bullets. A glossocrat whose power is based on words is afraid of words. The EU has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to use "non-offensive" phrases when talking about terrorism. The word Jihad should preferably not be used at all, or should be explained as a misunderstood term meaning peaceful struggle against oneself. These recommendations are being implemented. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in an attempt to avoid offending Muslims, in the summer of 2007 banned his ministers from mentioning "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath, following attempted terror attacks staged by Muslims - including several medical doctors - in Glasgow and London.

To quote Paul Fregosi's book Jihad in the West: "The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East for more than 1300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land. Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world. The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the Jihad."

At the same time as the memory of 1300 years of almost continuous Jihad warfare and Islamic aggression is gradually being erased from Western school textbooks, "Islamophobia" is being promoted as a serious challenge. By substituting "Jihad" with "Islamophobia," emphasis is moved from Europeans defending themselves against Islamic violence to innocent Muslims suffering from prejudice and racism. An alternate word thus creates an alternate reality.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, apparently afraid of what he perceives as growing opposition to the EU project, thinks Eurosceptics are "psychological terrorists." So, European leaders won't use the word "terrorist" about Muslims supporting suicide bombers, but they have finally found somebody deserving the label: Europeans who oppose the EU.

In a frank moment, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's PM, once described the EU's "system" in this way: "We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back." In The Economist, columnist Charlemagne writes: "What Mr Juncker and those who think like him are trying to do is, in essence, to drown opposition to European federation in a mass of technical detail, to bore people into submission. As a strategy, it has gone a long way. The greatest single transfer of sovereignty from Europe's nations to the European Union took place, in 1985, as part of the project to create a single European market. Even [British Conservative PM] Margaret Thatcher, not usually slow to spot a trick, later claimed that she had not fully appreciated the ramifications of what she was then signing up to."

In 2005 (and again in 2006), the EU's financial watchdog refused to approve the EU's accounts for the 11th year in a row because they were so full of fraud. The European Court of Auditors refused to give a statement of assurance on the EU's $160.3 billion budget for 2004. "The vast majority of the payment budget was again materially affected by errors of legality and regularity," it said. It specifically refused to approve the budgets for the EU's foreign policy and aid programs, many of which are geared towards Arab and Muslim countries. Half of the project budgets approved by the European Commission were inadequately monitored.

This story of fraudulence was largely ignored by the media. The EU Commission is the government of half a billion people from Hungary to Britain and from Finland to Spain, yet it can release accounts with massive flaws for over a decade straight. Such a lack of oversight would have been unthinkable in the USA. The EU gets away with it because it appears distant in people's everyday life and is not subject to any real checks and balances.

The EU Commission, frequently diffused through a complicated web of innocent-sounding organizations, create agreements with Arabs and then quietly implement them as federal EU policy. This is accomplished because billions of Euros are floating around in a system with little outside control, and with a few powerful individuals and groups pulling the strings. Europeans are thus financing their continent's merger with, in reality colonization by, the Muslim world without their knowledge and without their consent. It must be the first time in human history where an entire continent is being culturally eradicated with bureaucratic precision. This represents perhaps the greatest betrayal in the history of Western civilization, yet is still largely ignored by the mainstream media in most Western nations.

EU Commissioner Margot Wallström in 2005 argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Her fellow Commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the EU Constitution. They gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of NATO or the United States.

This is preposterous. The European Union in fact has a lot more in common with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany - and the Soviet Union - than the supposedly evil nation states it seeks to replace, especially its tendency to suppress freedom of speech, indoctrinate school children with blatantly false information and impose decisions upon its subjects without their consent.

A conference on Racism, Xenophobia and the Media in Vienna in May 2006 was coordinated by the EU. By the end of 2006, the network of media practitioners involved in the Euro-Arab Dialogue had grown to over 500 (pdf). These included people, media and organizations from all 37 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. European and Arab journalists produced dozens of recommendations on how to enhance their cooperation and promote "mutual understanding" between their cultures and religions in the media.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (read: Eurabian affairs), addressed the assembly of journalists. According to her, "we do not believe the media should be regulated from outside, but rather that you find ways to regulate yourselves. (...) 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, and I am determined that by then we will have made significant improvements in the level of mutual respect and understanding our communities have for one another. In the months and years to come we must reach beyond the elites to the man and woman on the street. That is a vital part of the fight against racism and xenophobia. And you will be the key to achieving that."

This document is available on the Internet, but I doubt most Europeans have heard about it. Ferrero-Waldner also stated that "Freedom of expression is not the freedom to insult or offend. Hate speech is always abhorrent." The EU has in numerous agreements with Muslim countries made it clear that Islamophobia is a form of racism.

The EU in 2007 made incitement to racism and xenophobia a crime across the 27-nation bloc. Under the new law, offenders will face up to three years in jail for "public incitement to violence or hatred, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin." The term "inciting hatred" against "religion" could be used to silence critics of Islam and Muslim immigration, especially since the Council of Europe has earlier decided to view Islamophobia as equal to anti-Semitism. At the same time as the EU is signing agreements enhancing the cooperation with, including immigration of, Arabs and Muslims, it is banning opposition to this and is co-opting the media into toeing the party line and promoting the official, Eurabian ideology. The European Union thus increasingly exhibits many of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state, a pan-European dictatorship.

As Robert Spencer commented at Jihad Watch, "Soon Eurabia will resemble the old Soviet Union, in which dissidents furtively distributed samizdat literature and faced stiff penalties if the authorities discovered what they were doing. Europeans who care about what is happening to them will have to travel West, buy books that tell the truth about Islamic jihad, and distribute them at home away from the watchful eye of EU bureaucrats."

The Eurabian networks were created against a backdrop of Arab Jihad terrorism. A series of hijackings and attacks, many of them approved by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who later received the Nobel Peace Prize from my country, were carried out in the 1970s. Arafat was awarded for this by being allowed to address the United Nations general assembly. During the Palestinian hijacking of Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro in 1985, American plans for a rescue were thwarted by the Italian government whose "foreign policy required it to maintain very close relations with the Arab states and the PLO," according to Philip Heymann, former US deputy attorney-general.

As Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says: "The international community responded to terrorism between 1968 and 2001 by rewarding and legitimising it, rather than punishing and condemning it. Seen in this light, it is no wonder we had to suffer the horrors of September 11, 2001. Those who bestowed these benefits on the Palestinians following their terrorism, especially our European allies and the UN, made September 11
unavoidable."

I must take issue with Mr. Dershowitz here: I have heard Americans state that Muslims should like the United States, since Americans have tended to side with Muslims in many conflicts around the world during the past decades. That is actually true, and it is not something Americans should brag about. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was grossly mishandled by Western leaders, ranging from US President Jimmy Carter to French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, as well as Western left-leaning intellectuals and media. Likewise, the reactions to the death threats made by the same regime a decade later against Salman Rushdie met with a muted response. The Oslo Peace Process in the 1990s as well as the Balkan wars, where the United States and NATO actively intervened on behalf of Muslims, firmly established the impression in Muslim minds of a decadent civilization no longer willing or able to defend itself.

It was clearly perceived Western weakness, not aggression, which led to the terror attacks of 9/11, and Americans themselves made significant contributions to this. Even otherwise good presidents such as Ronald Reagan never fully understood how to deal with Muslims. Still, even though Americans made contributions to this problem, too, which they did, it is undeniable that Western appeasement of Muslims started with Western European surrender to Arab physical and financial (oil embargo) terrorism in the 1970s and became institutionalized through the Euro-Arab Dialogue. This appeasement contributed to the resurgence of Jihad that now spans several continents.

The European Union is by its advocates presented as an organization devoted to promoting "peace." The EU never had anything to do with peace; it was and is a naked power grab by European elites who have used it to wage a cultural and demographic war against the very peoples and nations they were supposed to represent. Their appeasement of Muslims not only constitutes a threat to the survival of Europe, which it certainly does, it has destabilized the situation far beyond the borders of Europe. The Euro-Arab cooperation thus represents a threat to world peace. And since this cooperation has become a deeply entrenched feature of the EU, this leads to only one possible conclusion: The European Union must be dismantled as soon as possible.

PS: Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech, he called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed: "The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas."

The organization Stop Islamisation Of Europe(SIOE) has received permission to stage a demonstration in Brussels against the Islamization of Europe this September 11th. Whether there will be one million demonstrators is doubtful, but it should be possible to gather enough people to get noticed. Citizens of Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italy or any other EU member state concerned with Islamic inroads in their country should turn up and protest.

Since the Islamization of Europe is actively and deliberately championed by the EU on a daily basis, fighting Islamization is in my view inseparable from fighting the EU itself. At the very least, demonstrators should carry banners advocating abolishing the Euro-Arab Dialogue, dismantling the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures as well as all other instruments for Euro-Mediterranean and Eurabian cooperation. The EU should ban all direct or indirect aid to the Palestinians and distribute this to the defense of our civilizational cousin Israel, it should cease promoting a blatantly false view of Islamic Jihad during 1300 years in European schools and it should immediately halt all talks with Turkey regarding EU membership. Enough is enough.

DETERRANCE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Okay, all that other stuff failed. Carrots and honey only brought us more vicious rabbit holes and nasty bee stings. Why not let bygones be bygones, shift gears, and come back running with something else, say like, the Big Stick Theory? The continuing saga of a nation without clarity, a people without leadership, the damage that surely must be done, and emphatically shall be done, one way or the other, in this campaign to set the record straight about man, and god, and law, is once again nailed to the door of our awakening in an article written by the impetuously comprehensive Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch.

Read it, comprehend it, pass it along:

And what is the deterrence going to be, and how will that deterrence be made known? Surely any further attack on Americans has to be answered not by means of what is essentially a glorified police action, attempting to round up only those immediately involved, those who trained and supported them. Retaliation must he very large, and must do equal damage to the Camp of Islam. The Al-Saud, the Al-Thani, the Al-Sabah, the Al-Maktoum, and all the others must be made aware that their economic and other interests will be damaged, damaged far more severely than we have so far been damaged, and that such damage will be inflicted in all kinds of ways, including a halt to the availability of goods and services, the seizure of enemy-owned assets (just as such assets were seized during World War II), and that will include the privately-owned real estate of various Saudi princelings (could that be why Prince Bandar is selling off his Aspen estate for $135 million, the estate for which he had blown to bits the top of a mountain to improve his view") and whatever can be reached by American and other NATO allies. The days of visiting the West for medical care and education should come to an end—wouldn't you, if you were told you could no longer go to any Western doctors, begin to worry, begin to think about modifying your behavior so that you could see the best oncologists and cardiologists and bring your children to Western doctors instead of Arab ones? You would.

And that's a start. Other measures could include seizing the very large, and very conveniently placed, oilfields of Saudi Arabia, holding whatever oil revenues are obtained piously "in trust," after first deducting the amount of economic damage that Saudi support, over the past 30 years—support for mosques and madrasas where the most fanatical Wahhabi propaganda has been available and been distributed, support for campaigns of Da'wa targetted at the psychically and economically marginal, campaigns to buy up Western hirelings in all the capitals of the West, and much more—amounting to nearly $100 billion in the past 30 years—has caused, for there is a direct relationship between the Saudis and the spread of the most virulent form of Islam.

Deterrence, to be effective, must be understood on all sides. The Western world has not made clear to the rulers and peoples of Muslim states, nor to Muslims now living in the Bilad al-kufr and working night and day at their Taqiyya-and-Tu-Quoque in order to prevent Infidels from learning just a bit too much about Islam, and about the history of Islamic conquest over 1350 years, that all kinds of measures can be, and will be, taken. The Western publics are far far ahead of their governments, and the deep unhappiness with both parties in this country, with the hallucinating Bush bringing "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" and the Democrats who oppose the war but apparently not for the right reasons—that is, in order to more intelligently constrain Islam that can be achieved best by leaving, not staying in, Iraq.

Western governments, led by the Americans, should start consulting with one another on this collective threat (surely the recent elections should mean that NATO will have to meet without Turkey, no longer a fit member of an organization that will have to direct its main efforts at constraining Islam) of the world-wide Jihad, and on the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest within the Bilad al-kufr, especially in the hitherto negiligently compliant states of Western Europe. One wants the Muslim would-be terrorists, and those who support them, to be made aware of what, beyond physical destruction to certain Muslim lands, will take place, what damage will be done to the interests of Muslims in Paris and London, in Dearborn and Falls Church, what will be done with some—not all—of the oilfields, what will be done with reachable Arab and Muslim assets in the West, what will be done to close down Muslim insetitutions all over the West that inevitably offer support and encouragement for the Jihad.

The leaders of the Soviet Union knew what would happen if they did thus and so. The Muslims have been led to believe that very little will happen—oh, hundreds of billions may be spent, in vain attempts to cure Muslim "poverty" (see Afghanistan) and to "reconstruct" an entire country (see Iraq), and to bring Western ways, and the pollyannish panacea of "free elections" which are the main way that "freedom" can be brought, in Bush's view, to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East. But the Iraqi body politic has already clearly rejected the attempt to successfully transplant the organ of Western freedom. Time to try something that makes sense.

The reason the Arab states do not attack Israel at the moment is because of the deterrent effect of the IDF, and what the IDF can do. That's it. It has nothing to do with the Camp David Accords, nothing to do with a change of heart—how could Muslims, if they were true believers, ever accept an Infidel state such as Israel, on land once part of Dar al-Islam, a state that furthermore is in the middle of that so-called "Arab world"? It is simply impossible, not thinkable. Deterrence, however, is not unthinkable—it exists, and it works.

The same can and should be done by the American and other Western governments. They have to start dropping all kinds of hints, as to the damage that can be inflicted on Muslim interests, everywhere. And they might do best to talk about reducing the Money Weapon (or inflicting economic damage in turn on the Muslim states), closing down campaigns of Da'wa and countering the effect of past campaigns, and recognizing demographic conquest as a key instrument of Jihad, historically and at present, and not only calling a complete halt to Muslim immigration into the West, but reversing it, by means that are not only perfectly justifiable when one is fighting such a comlicated war of self-defense in which, in a move without precedent in history, large numbers of people who are by unshakeable faith unalterably opposed to the continued dominance, in our own, Infidel lands of our own legal and political institutions, our own solicitousness for the individual rather than the collective, and for freedoms that are the product of centuries of thought and statecraft, have been allowed by the millions to settle within our lands, in a collective fit of ignorance and historical amnesia. In such circumstances, those who sense their own responsibiity, even in the midst of such present decadence, to preserve a civilizational heritage that can be undone by mere numbers, will take what measures are necessary, and will do well to learn of how often, in the past, even the most tolerant and advanced regimes—such as that in Czechoslovakia in 1946—undertook measures (the Benes Decree) that no one at the time, and no one respectable since, has criticized, much less deplored.

MODERATE ISLAM IS NO ISLAM

A single voice of reason, Amil Imani, writing for the American Thinker today, has said it best:

We humans are torn each day by conflict, sometimes in our profession, other times in our family, sometimes in our country and in the world at large. Human beings are unique. We are driven to search for meaning of things. We want to make sense out of things and find a purpose to continue.

I believe that there is an unfathomable Being who is the Fashioner of this universe, including us. We refer to this Being as God, He, and so forth, in a futile attempt to encapsulate this Being into our extremely finite minds.

I also believe that this Being is not a dot commer. He doesn't sit around and wait to fill orders or requests. Neither does He interfere in the details of our lives. What He has done and does, to my understanding, is to establish certain rules and parameters that give each one of us a tremendous leeway on how to play the game of life.

Each one of us, according to these rules and parameters, receives a "hand" for playing the game. It really doesn't matter what kind of hand we start with, it matters how well we play the hand we are dealt. Do we enlist ourselves in the service of good and combat evil, or do we just squander away our time?

I believe that prayers are primarily for giving us comfort, for calming us down, for helping us take the steps needed to mend our ways, to do all we can to be worthy humans. Also to clear our hearts and heads from the dross of daily worldly entanglement, to help put matters in proper perspective, to live at peace with both our gifts as well as our limitations, to aid us in entertaining good thoughts, uttering good speech and doing good deeds.

When prayers are said with the above mindset, they are already answered prayers. Death is inevitable. It is the journey that invariably follows birth, sooner or later. Let us hope that we all do justice to our gift of humanness in this life and wing to the next with minimal sense of shame and shortcoming.

I believe we all have a purpose in life. We all are here for a reason and we can't leave before our time is up. We have to put in the time. Putting in the time is the right of passage, right? They asked Abdu'l-Baha, son of the founder and second leader of the Bahá'í Faith, about the idea of committing suicide or wanting to hasten one's death, since many writings praise the next life so much that some want to get on with it and get there. He said that the next life is immensely glorious. But, committing suicide and going there is like going to a magnificent banquet uninvited. I like the metaphor. Right now, we are here and must do what we must and put up with whatever comes our way, both good and not so good. So let us stay put and keep on earning the ticket.

Many people have asked me why I have put my life in harm's way by tangling with Islam and why I do what I do. Born in a Muslim family and having witnessed first-hand the horrors and indignity that Islamofascism visits on people it subjugates, I have taken it upon myself to do my part in defeating this ideology of oppression, hate and violence. Islam is wrapped in deception as a spiritual dogma or religion and is more dangerous than Nazism, Communism and Fascism.

My writings aim to help people decide if they want to rank with the Islamists or if they want to truly live as free men. The truth shall set you free, it is said, but first it will shatter the cozy, sweet world you live in.

Nowadays we hear from the non-Muslim world about the moderate version of Islam and moderate Muslims. In my view, being a Muslim and not being radical is simply not possible. Freedom lets a person make choices and be up-front about it. And that's where I part with those who would prefer to be sheep and have sheepdogs hem them in.

Many non-Muslims are obviously very well-meaning with regard to Islam, but they are also extremely naïve and ignorant of the facts. They seem to think that Islam is just another religion of love and peace and Muslims should be given full freedom to practice their religion. Do they also believe that thieves, misogynists, rapists, child-molesters and any and all manner of practicing evils should be given complete carte blanche to carry on with what they value and believe? These well-meaning poeple are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.

There is no such thing as moderate Islam. There is no such thing as secular Islam or a secular Muslim. It's the nature of the faith to deny any separation of religion and the state or religion and society. There are numerous sects within Islam. One and all are extremes and not in the least amenable to change. Keep in mind that Islam claims that it is the perfect eternal faith for mankind. Splits have occurred and will continue to occur in Islam. Yet, reformation has not happened in nearly 1400 years and is not going to happen. Islam is carved in granite, just the way it is. No change. Allah's book is sealed.

There are indeed some Muslims who are moderate in the way they practice their religion. These people, for the most part, are culturally Muslims. They don't practice Islam the way it is mandated. They pick and choose. Therefore, "moderate Islam," is no Islam at all. It is not possible.

The Islamists have created fear not only in a non-Islamic world, but in the hearts and minds of those who consider themselves to be Muslims. The Islamists wage their war under the name of Islam. They receive immense direct and indirect support from the rank-and-file of ordinary Muslims. It is this passive support of so-called moderate Muslims that keeps the Islamists alive. And it is the Islamists who are intent on showing no mercy to any and all who do not share their ideology, be they Muslims or not. Millions of Iranians who were born into a faith they did not choose, a faith that was inflicted upon them by invaders of a foreign culture, a faith that forbids them to leave or revert to their pre-Islamic heritage and other Iraian religions, they remain Muslims in name only.

However, someone like the fanatic Ahmadinejad is a true Muslim who was instilled from his upbringing with Islamic superstitions, prejudices and hatreds. He was indoctrinated, from the moment of his birth, by an extensive ruthless in-power cadre of self-serving mullahs and imams who intended to maintain their stranglehold on the rank and file of the faithful-their very source of support and livelihood.

The fanatic Ahmadinejad is every bit as bloodthirsty as Hitler. Every jihadist is. But, he is not a Hitler. Not yet. He is far from having control of the Iranian State, including its armed forces. Even his popularity among the very poor is sinking for not being able to deliver what he had promised. Hence, the thing to do is to increase greatly any and all non-violent pressures on the present Islamic regime in Iran. Despite the current tug-of-war in Washington, we hope to believe people in U.S. government have studied all the possible effective actions and now it is time to put them into full effect without any delay. It is also time for the rabid self-serving Bush-bashers to start fighting the real enemy.

The majority of Iranians are against the mullahs' rule and many are staunchly pro-West and pro-America. However, a minority supports the mullahs for a variety of reasons, such as jobs, influence and simply for money. And a much smaller minority composed of the people we call the 3Fs—fools, fanatics and frauds, do support the Mullahs. Further, the mullahs have severely dis-empowered the opposition by systematic harassing, jailing and killing.

The mullahs' days are, however, numbered and we will witness the rule of the true Iranians, the majority of whom are worthy human beings. No totalitarian rule can survive without a segment of the population, for one reason or another, supporting it. Yet, time is not on the side of the mullahs. By their mismanagement, thievery and oppression of the masses, they have created explosive internal conditions. Any significant support of the presently splintered Iranian opposition will be the tipping point-a tipping point that would assuredly topple the mullahs.

In conclusion, our best hope for humanity and civilization to survive is to firmly resist Islamofascism in all its forms. As an Iranian-American, I have experienced first-hand the Islamic tyranny as well as the blessings of liberty. I find it my solemn duty to do all I can to battle Islamofascism, the most dehumanizing active threat of our time.

FEW GOOD CHOICES IN LIFE

The following remarks were written by a contributor to Jihad Watch who was reacting to an article by syndicated columnist Diane West who recently confronted Senator Arlen Spector on the Iraq War, who in turn had ducked the hard questions of why our soldiers were being handicapped in this war by suggesting that the American people weren't prepared to accept civilian casualties.

On the contrary, the number of civilian casualties in Iraq is absolutely huge. And on top of the near daily bombings that take out dozens at a time and horribly wound hundreds more, we've got Iraqis getting their heads drilled and Iraqis getting crucified—all this at the hands of other Iraqis and foreign jihadis. And not only are we tolerating it but other Muslims are tolerating it too. I haven't noticed too many Muslims marching in the streets demanding an end to the civilian casualties being racked up by Muslims and demanding an end to Syrian and Iranian interference in Iraq, which is further adding to the Iraqi civilian bodycount.

So clearly its not a matter of tolerating civilian casualties. It's evidentally a matter of our squeemishness in CAUSING those casualties. And I suspect that as a politician, what Specter has in mind here, is the issue of his own re-election and the pressures brought to bear by squeamish voters, rather than the larger moral issue of how many civilian casualties are factually occurring. Apparently, as long as we aren't causing the casualties, then no matter how large the number, everyone can go to bed with a clean conscience.

Even those who want us to pull the troops out have to know that there is going to be a major blood bath when we do. But I guess they are going by the same moral calculus—as long as we aren't the ones shedding the blood, then we can all sleep at night and all those civilian casualties don't matter.

This strikes me as the outcome of a world that has demonized the use of western power to such an extent that the west is simply unwilling to do what needs to be done because they have internalized the constant drumbeat of criticism leveled against them—and against them almost alone. It’s the world where the abu Ghraib panties on the head story gets something like 30 straight days of NYT front-page coverage and where people re-enact in protests that picture of an Iraqi detainee in a hooded garment hooked up to FAKE electric wires, while ignoring the REAL electric wires and the REAL head and hand drillings, not to mention the REAL crucifixions and beheadings, perpetrated by our enemies.

Obviously, though, power loathes a vacuum so once the west is emasculated by the squeamish and the America-haters, another power will step in to take its place. And in order to step in, it will have to be far more ruthless than the west is—which is what we're seeing in Iraq. A ruthless enemy that intentionally causes thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties. Just because we aren't willing to cause the casualties doesn't mean no one else will be willing to cause them in pursuit of global power.

I suppose some would say that it’s all the same then. Violence is violence, no matter what its ends, as if all human systems of governance are the same and modern western liberal democracy is no better or worse than 7th century Islamic theocracy. All those people who died on the way in the struggle from Point A to point B, were all mistaken. Standing on the slave auction block and watching your wife and children sold off into slavery, never to see them again, is not fundamentally different from driving home after work (where you’re a corporate slave don’t you know!) to your peaceful Houston suburb, where your wife and kids and dog greet you at the door. It’s obviously all the same.

We should have started shooting the looters and those attempting to run coalition checkpoints from day 1. I may have been personally squeemish about it but I trusted my government and military to understand what needs to be done. It turns out that they were all as squeemish as little old me. Frankly, that's kind of scary!

I hope the lesson is learned from our failure to establish early on our willingness to show a certain degree of ruthlessness, and that if we won't do it—then someone else is certainly willing to step up and do the job that Americans won’t do!

The fact is that our squeemishness and absurd PC "rules of engagement" have cost far more civilian lives in Iraq than if we had been just a little more ruthless. And if that lesson hasn't been learned by a sufficient chunk of the population, then, as Diana West implies, we really have no business going to war anymore and the world should be prepared to accept the consequences of a far more ruthless power replacing the US, with all that implies.

You don't always get good choices in life. Quite often it's simply a choice between bad and worse.

I'm waiting and watching to see what the world as a whole is going to choose.

—Caroline

OUR WOMEN WARRIORS OF THE WEST

Posted originally at Jihad Watch by Bevc...

I am reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book INFIDEL currently. I too have noticed that where resistance to Islamic Jihad and Islamic ideology is strongest, it is women raising the call to arms. These include the late, great Oriana Fallaci, Ann Coulter, Diana West, Melanie Phillips, Debbie Schlussel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, countless "Persian" dissident women exiles. They seem to know what we are facing and talk in terms of IDEOLOGY while the men still talk in terms of countries.

The home health nurse's aide caring for my elderly Dad is a Catholic man from the Phillipines. One night I began pontificating about the nimrods in Congress, State Dept and the White House not understanding the world wide nature of Jihad. He was truly astounded to meet an American who KNEW of the islamic terror attacks on his country much less one that CARED about it.

Now I am just an actress and you know how sneeringly people speak of us stupid actors, so one wonders how it is that I can connect the dots throughout the attacks on Dar Al Harb and the other more elite "Harbies" cannot or dare not. Even if one has not accessed Mr. Spencer's wonderfully informative website, there are others on the web and in print trying to sound the alarm. To borrow a phrase from Patrick Henry: "Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle?"

RACE MATTERS TO MUSLIMS

This is an excerpt from The Illustrated Pig blog found here.

The color of one's skin has suddenly become relevant to religion. Muslim activists have been trying to convince our African American citizens that Islam is the religion of the black man, that Islam is African and that Mohammed was black. Needless to say, Muslims only make these claims to blacks; among whites they take a different approach!

Knowing that these are well thought-out falsifications, intended only to draw blacks towards Islam, If we are to accept or reject Islam, it should be based on Islam's own merits, rather than color or origin.

The claim that "there is no racism in Islam, we are all one…" is a blatant lie. From the very inception of Islam, and for its entire history, Muslims have made up the largest numbers of slave traders and engaged in the greatest slave trading campaigns in history. Even today, slavery continues in many parts of the Muslim world. Just about the only places in the world today where you will still find slavery practised are in the Muslim world.

Muhammad was a slave owner, and he traded in slaves. Throughout the Hadith, Black people are referred to as slaves. In fact, in the Arabic language it is impossible to distinguish between a Black person and a slave.

Even in modern times, in Saudi Arabia the homeland of Islam, the common word for "black" is "Abd" meaning slave. The same word used for a slave is the word for a Black man. In the Hadith Muhammad is quoted as referring to Black people as "raisin heads."

Mohammed referred to blacks as slaves. He even owned several black slaves. Bilal, Abu Hurairah, Usama Ebn Zayyed, and a "Ghullaam" (youth) named Rabbah, were among Mohammed's slaves.

Just take a look at how the White Arab (muslims) are treating your black brothers in Dafur, or see how your black brothers are treated in Egypt or Saudia. You are a disgrace to the black man, if you have forgotten it was the white Muslim Arabs that captured your fore-fathers and sold them to the slave traders.

Are you a Muslim because of your hate towards spooks, if so, you should remember that Muslims where raping Africa long before spooks arrived. By saying that Islam is the religion of the black man, Muslim activists are only showing their true color of hate and racism.

Don't let this deceive you.

Muslims don't care for your skin color, they are only using that to gain control over you. For if Muslims really care for blacks, why are black Muslims kidnapping their black Christian brothers these days in Sudan, butchering the weak and selling the healthy as slaves.

Tabari II:21
"Ham [Africans] begat all those who are black and curly-haired, while Japheth [Turks] begat all those who are full-faced with small eyes, and Shem [Arabs] begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair. Noah prayed that the hair of Ham's descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his descendants met Shem's, the latter would enslave them."

The difference between Islam and the teachings of Jesus Christ is great. The choice is clear, the choice is yours.

Tabari II:11
"Shem, the son of Noah was the father of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks; Ham was the father of the Black Africans; and Japheth was the father of the Turks and of Gog and Magog who were cousins of the Turks. Noah prayed that the prophets and apostles would be descended from Shem and kings would be from Japheth. He prayed that the African's color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks."

(John 8:32)
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

________________

As has been stated before by many others far more fluent in the tongues of debate than I, Islam is the engine of Arab supremacy and Arab imperialism. A ruthless totalitarian political machine. This is Islam over the ages. Fourteen hundred years of using the same method of operations in an all-out war against all those who are not in servitude to this machine, however inept or feeble it has occasionally become in certain periods.

Illustrated Pig has its facts confirmed with Muslim aggression spotted all over the planet today. Malcolm X was wrong. He was misled. He didn't have all the facts. And he was killed for some of these facts by a group called the Nation of Islam founded in the 1920s by a man known as W.D. Fard, a group that has been marginalized and its members called "false" Muslims by nearly every theocratic Imam who even bothers speaking out on the topic.

Africans of any faith should take heed.

QUANTUM INFIDEL HAS A PLAN

Rules of engagement for Iraq the way our grandfathers might have carried them out:

(wishful thinking)

1) Either destroy ALL or take complete control of ALL state media until the end of occupation. Iraqi history channel, Iraqi Discovery and learning channels, cartoons, no holds barred debates on social issues - 24/7. International news blackout 24/7 - the people of Iraq need to focus on their homeland.

2) Target and and immediately execute any and all Iraqi "leaders" fomenting further armed conflict with occupying American forces. Militant Imams - no such thing.

3) Immediately execute all previous leaders of the Iraqi regime in order to make the point clear that THIS IS PENALTY FOR SHINNING YOUR ASS AT THE U.S.

4) Target and wipe out any and every group rising against US military occupation. Our soldiers demand either respect or fear.

5) Total Population disarmament. 20 years hard time in a prison of our choice for anyone in possession of automatic firearms. Immediate execution for possession of outlawed ingredients or completed explosives.

6) Always return fire, whithering firepower if possible irrespective of it origin...that includes Mosques. If Insurgents want to launch attacks from them, they can die in them.

7) New government or not, that choice to assemble one is up to the people of Iraq, they need no hand holding and will get none.

8) If a new government is formed. Islam insofar as it is a personal faith is to be left in peace to the ordinary people of the land but not one note of it will be in a constitution by and for the ordinary people of Iraq. Sorry but under U.S. occupation, it's a simple request and that's the way it's gonna be.

9) Maybe our childrens children will be friends one day but we will never be. Mind your own business, drill and sell your own oil and try to spread it's wealth back into rebuilding your own country. Bear in mind that we will wipe out the Iraqi nation if attacks on American soil originate from Iraq.

10) The rest of the pacifist world can go to hell, have a nice day.

Maybe, just maybe we would not even be in Iraq if some of these points were followed...whadayathink there Sen. Specter?

__________________

The previous article, or Ten Point Plan, was originally posted by a Jihad Watcher named Quantum Infidel. My response is simple.

Man, that's one hellava war plan you've got there. Unfortunately, haven't you heard, America prefers to allow its sworn enemies to run around like crybabies (with bombs strapped to their asses), so our soldiers can hug, kiss, and heap phoney praises on the bugga boo boo, when they're not handing out lollipops, and building schools that last a whole week before they are blown up again by these same native insurgents now on the mend.

PATTON SPEAKS OUT AGAINST APATHY

Here's a video for those of you not afraid to question your beliefs, gut feelings, inclinations, suspicions, whims, ignorances, biases, fairy tales, and whey... [Click here]

DEMOCRATS IN THE CHEESE AGAIN

This is as silly as it gets. Originally reported by Audrey Hudson in the Washington Times:

Democrats are trying to pull a provision from a homeland security bill that will protect the public from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack, according to House Republican leadership aides. The legislation, which moves to a House and Senate conference committee this afternoon, will implement final recommendations from the 911 Commission.

Rep. Pete King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Steve Pearce, New Mexico Republican, sponsored the bill after a group of Muslim imams filed a lawsuit against U.S. Airways and unknown or “John Doe” passengers after they were removed for suspicious behavior aboard Flight 300 from Minneapolis to Phoenix on Nov. 20 before their removal.

“Democrats are trying to find any technical excuse to keep immunity out of the language of the bill to protect citizens, who in good faith, report suspicious activity to police or law enforcement,” Mr. King said in an interview last night.

“This is a slap in the face of good citizens who do their patriotic duty and come forward, and it caves in to radical Islamists,” Mr. King said, adding, “I don't see how you can have a homeland security bill without protecting people who come forward to report suspicious activity.”

Exactly. I see somebody in the Congress is still playing a full deck. The US government, however, once again displays its disabling politically-correct schizophrenia. Schizophrenia, often called 'split personality'. This division of mind where common sanity is disturbingly ruptured is what one gets when one part of government tells you to do something, and another part tells you that you will get arrested if you do.

The government has been telling us to "be alert', and to report suspicious activity. That makes sense. Adds up. Clears the air. Keeps us strong. Not to do this could mean death by the cunning distortions of those suffering with sudden jihad syndrome, or worse. Remember, drill work is important. But reality without warning is far more critical. Because on the flip side of this government-fostered mania is another form of sheer madness.

When we are told that should proceed in our daily lives and are indeed diligent by reporting any such suspicious behavior, we may face charges or lawsuits as a result of this diligence, the mind is paralyzed, and the whole process of thinking and reacting to situations is numbed, and evidentually simply ceases. Frankly, it is not the government's business to tell us that we can't protect ourselves, but must instead, sit in silence while our lives are perceived to be at risk.

I am disgusted and embarrassed by the level of thought put forth by most of our leadership, and many of my fellow Americans too pre-occupied in their own narrow pursuits of happiness to recognize the dangers we now face as Americans, as Westerners, as good-hearted fools merely toying at the idea of paradise, of democracy, of core values, and peace of mind.

Dammit. Who are these wanton cheese-scarfing imposters running in and out of our government corridors? Will the true American patriots please stand up?

DOT REQUESTS COMMENTS OVER UNSAFE MEXICAN TRUCKS

The Department of Transportation is requesting public comments on its proposal to open the southern border to unsafe Mexican trucks reports FAXDC. Here is YOUR chance to have your voice heard. Fax and Email Congress today!

Pressure Congress to take action now! Tell Washington today that we need to protect our sovereignty because Bush won't.
Already The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Bush administration can skip a lengthy environmental study and open U.S. roadways to Mexican trucks as soon as it wishes. The high court ruled against labor and environmental organizations that have long fought expansion of Mexican trucking within the borders of the United States.

The Supreme Court VOTES out America:

1. The BUSH administration can skip a lengthy environmental study and open U.S. roadways to Mexican trucks as soon as it wishes.

2. The BUSH administration has authority to open the border.

3. Federal agency responsible for truck safety has no say in the matter.

The plan raises several serious concerns, including:

- The impact on homeland security initiatives. Will the drivers be checked against the terror watch list or will our borders be open to anyone with a Mexican driver’s license?

- Will the drivers be required to carry a Mexican passport as U.S. citizens are required to present their passports when entering the country from Mexico or Canada?

- The DOT has been disingenuous about this pilot program, indicating only a few weeks ago that it was not pursuing this pilot program. What else are they lying about?

- Enforcement of hours of service in Mexico, false log books and fatigued drivers entering the U.S.

- The application of U.S. standards to Mexican drivers including the requirement that U.S. drivers have a Commercial Drivers License, undergo regular physicals and meet minimum age requirements.

- The integrity of drug and alcohol testing. Though testing will be done in U.S. labs, it is unclear who will oversee the collection of random samples creating a system ripe for abuse.

- Enforcement of U.S. wage and hour laws.

- DOT’s assertion that all trucks will be inspected by U.S. officials in Mexico and at the U.S. border when less than ten percent of all Mexican trucks entering the commercial zone are inspected now.

MEXICAN TRUCKS ON OUR HIGHWAYS

Does Mexico influence American Policy? The answer seems to be yes, but why?

As with the Dubai Ports debacle, President Bush is willing to risk our national security by giving unfettered access to America’s transportation infrastructure to foreign companies and their government sponsors. They are playing of game of Russian Roulette on America’s highways. Mexico refuses to meet their end of the bargain, yet President Bush rewards them with open access to American highways. It is the American public who will pay the consequences. We can not let these time-bomb trucks on our highways to threaten the lives of Americans and destroy our middle class.

Tell Washington today that we need to protect our sovereignty.

Despite the Bush administration's desire to open the border to Mexican trucks, its own Transportation Department's Inspector General Office reported last year that safety concerns have not been addressed and the border should stay closed.

Issues preventing implementation included the inability to reach an agreement with Mexico to permit on-site safety reviews by U.S. inspectors, the inability of the Mexican government to perform the new criminal history record checks for Mexican drivers who haul hazardous materials, the need to improve the system for monitoring Mexican driver records in the U.S. and the lack of operational weigh-in-motion scales at the 10 busiest crossings.

What is happening? Somebody or some force is rapidly taking over the world. Is this the way to do it?

WINDS OF WAR: IS ISLAMIZATION THE NEW FINLANDIZATION?

Our national poet from Minnesota, who carved out a career slicing and dicing up both the Left and the Right, and anybody else who didn't quite get the whole picture, once sang, "It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

So let's go to the videotape. Is a new form of the old Soviet technique of "Findlandization" becoming the same powerful threat in the West it once was seen to be in the previous confrontation of East versus West, of Communism versus Capitalism? Read more of this intriguing but very real possibility here in a captivating article shining a light onto Norman Podhoretz's new book World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.

THE NATURE OF ISLAM

Adding a new blogger to the roll, we at TBA salute the comprehensive work of Islamic Expansion And Decline. Here is an excerpt refuting a peculiar piece of information the average Islamic zealot himself, even if aware of his own historical underpinnings, nevertheless will refuse to accept not only as reality unblemished by myth, but as also directly related to his own religion's serious constrictions on free and inquisitive thought which have led to such "outbreaks" of greater knowledge, the sciences, and finer works of art:

Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization
Islam’s “golden age” and “splendors” is a topic of incessant fascination. It would, of course, be more accurate to speak of Islam’s “golden ages” since there were a number of such intellectual and artistic flowerings. The high civilizations of Abbasid Baghdad and of Moorish Spain, as well as the magnificence of the Ottoman and Mogul courts are well-known.

However, the Muslim efflorescence, like the financial underpinning for the Muslim military campaigns, depended on the wealth expropriated from, and on the continuing economic exploitation of, conquered non-Muslim populations. In addition, it must be acknowledged that the Muslim invaders were not, in general, total barbarians; they were not Huns or Mongols or Vandals. They valued the level of civilization that they encountered in their invasions and maintained a cultivated and often comfortable existence. However, one thing about the historical record is noteworthy; the various golden ages of Islamic civilization always occur early in the first few centuries in which a new territory is occupied. Wherever the various Muslim vanguards invaded, the vast majority of the population was non-Muslim. It would take many years for this population to be converted and assimilated. These non-Muslims or recent converts are the ones who carried on the work which many historians are prone to attribute to "Islamic" civilization. Thus, a distinction must be drawn between the so-called high Islamic civilization and the religion of Islam. Eventually as the process of Islamization proceeds the non-Islamic component of the population becomes a small minority and stagnation sets in. This process is evident in the first centuries of the Arab conquests where the process of Arabization and conversion to Islam took a few centuries to complete; this was the "Arab" golden age, a product of unconverted or recently converted Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. In Spain the golden age lasted longer, perhaps because the process of Islamization was never as complete in Moorish Spain as in the Arab East.

It is remarkable how closely this pattern was repeated in the subsequent expansions of Islam as a consequence of the Turkish and Mogul conquests. The initial splendors of the Seljuk and Ottoman empires were the result of unconverted or recently converted subjects. When the Islamization of the newly conquered territories was complete intellectual stagnation once again set in. Similarly, an initial flowering as an extension of the ancient Hindu culture followed the Mogul conquest of India.

It must, however, be granted that Islamic civilization did serve a valuable purpose as a bridge between the West and the ancient civilizations of India and China. This resulted in the transmission of science and technology from China and mathematics from India. It must also be noted that, as will be shown below, the so-called Arabic numerals are really Hindu in origin; algebra is a combination of Indian, Greek and pre-Islamic Mesopotamian mathematics. And while it is true that Muslim rulers did enable some of the knowledge of the classical world to be preserved, the importance of this work has been greatly exaggerated. In addition, the actual work of transcribing and preserving this classical knowledge was done by non-Muslims or by recent converts.

Plunder and Economic Exploitation
The first Muslim invaders were always invariably motivated by the desire for loot and, as we have seen in Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem, the lust for concubines. The Prophet himself “skillfully couched his worldly objectives in divine terms” and this “fusion of the sacred and the profitable was endorsed by future generations of Islamic leaders.”[1] Thus, Islamic scripture contains explicit promise of, and religious sanction for, plunder from infidels:

Read it all.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

More pickings from the vine of Islamic fruits:

"The only thing Islam has ever "contributed" to the world, is Islam, which is only a "contribution" if you're a Muslim male. Every contribution to world history claimed by Muslims is either marginal (calligraphy) or the claim is false (algebra)."

If you want a laugh, pick up a copy of the current issue of DISCOVER magazine. The cover story is titled "Science and Islam."

In the article a fellow from Cairo named Zahioul El-Naggar explains in the typical supremacist manner that "what people call the scientific method—is really the Islamic method." There is more in the article about how all the technology the West has developed is based on an Islamic foundation, and therefore all credit, of course, is really due to them. This is like a wolf pissing on a tree to mark his territory and then bragging to all the other wolves about what a beautiful tree he created.

There is in the DISCOVER article a somewhat informative discussion about how Islamic "scientists" limit themselves by what is found in the Qu'ran, but the article fails to mention the hidden, understood purpose of those Islamic scientists—not to benefit humanity generally, but rather to scientifically support jihad—the spreading Islam over the globe.

This immutable Qu'ranic agenda leads to another metaphor, one used here before. One can say that Islam is like the "Borg civilization" from Star Trek. Creating nothing on its own, Islam has only one purpose—serving its own collective self. It subjugates the populations of advanced, thriving civilizations, expunging their individual identities and demolishing their cultures, and then it applies any pilfered sience and technology to one and only one purpose—the further spread of Islam.

This is the meaning of jihad—total war against the "other." This is the perpetual promise of Islam. Positively demonic.

RUNNING THE TABLE WITH SINCERITY

When ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise. Our leaders would rather pretend that Islam is nothing but a misunderstood faith because to do otherwise would require facing up to the danger it represents to Western societies.

“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!

There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”

“Islam grew with blood...The great prophet of Islam in one hand carried the Koran and in the other a sword—Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.”

—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

“Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man. Islam doesn’t look for a nation to be in a better condition than another nation. Islam doesn’t care about the land or who owns the land. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power that gets in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy. In order to fulfill that goal, Islam can use every power available every way it can be used to bring worldwide revolution. This is Jihad.”

—Sayeed Abdul A'la Maududi, ‘Jihad in Islam’

“Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near.”

—Belgium-based imam in 1994. “De Morgen”, Oct. 5, 1994. Cited in Koenraad Elst, "The Rushdie Rules", Middle East Quarterly, June 1998.

“The Quran should be America's highest authority”. “Islam is not in America to be equal to any other religion but to be dominant.”

—Omar Ahmad, CAIR's (Council on American-Islamic Relations) chairman of the board.

"Jihad and the rifle alone. NO negotiations, NO conferences and NO dialogue."

—Sheikh Abdullah Azzam (Osama bin Laden’s late mentor.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Found posted by a fellow known as Wellington:

"As Menachem Begin said, Saudi Arabia is not a country, it's a family (and a horrible family at that). This story about the percentage of terrorists in Iraq who are Saudi Arabian, functions as just one more reason why America must move to almost complete energy independence. We need to explore in ANWAR. (And please spare me the environmental concerns. Anwar is the size of West Virginia and less than 1% or it would have to be drilled, and then with the most sophisticated drilling equipment the world has ever seen.) We need to build more refineries (none built here for thirty years). We need to go nuclear. We need to explore for oil off our coasts, in Colorado and wherever there might be large amounts. We need to be innovative and diligent in the search for new sources of energy (through the private sector; government will just screw things up here). And, oh yes, as an aside, we need to ban further Muslim immigration so the damn dysfunctional, murderous bastards don't bring their lethal stupidities over here."

SMITE AT THEIR NECKS

BASILAN, Philippines—Islamic militants killed 14 Philippine marines searching for a kidnapped Italian priest during a major gunbattle, and later beheaded 10 of them, the military said on Wednesday.

The troops were ambushed on the southern island of Basilan by a joint force from the Philippines’ main Islamic rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, a marine spokesman said. Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan said 14 marines were killed in the eight-hour clash, increasing an earlier death toll after more bodies were recovered. Ten had been discovered beheaded, he said in Manila.

“All 10 marines earlier reported missing have been found dead,” Caculitan told reporters, without explaining a discrepancy in earlier numbers.

“All were beheaded,” he added. So when we read:

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks..." from the Qur'an 47:4, we must comprehend its meaning.

That's a direct order from God in the minds of all Muslims. To every believer, the Qur'an is dictation taken word for word from Almighty God. The Jihadists ask the "moderate Muslims": what don't you understand about a direct order from God? This is the point that Robert Spencer over at Jihad Watch is making over and over again. The "moderate" Muslims don't have a leg to stand on with the Jihadists because the Qur'an is allegedly dictation from God.

Further, the Qur'an's later chronological verses—give direct orders that mandate violence against Unbelievers. Many Muslims try to hustle Unbelievers by quoting earlier "peaceful" verses in the Qur'an but they know such "peaceful verses" have been abrogated by later passages that mandate violence and the submission of Unbelievers. Using this well-accepted tenet of chronological abrogation, the last command in the Qu'ran is bad news for Unbelievers.

Everyone with a hint of concern for themselves, their families, their culture, must face this very harsh reality now or there will be no progress in resolving this conflict. A cat's a cat and that's that.

LEBANESE ARMY FIGHTING THE JIHADISTS

An excerpt from the Spirit of 1683 found on Jihad Watch:

And our so-called 'men of the cloth' were just as bad. But the wicked got what they wanted from a West that is easily duped because it chooses to be easily duped, and this is so because it chooses to be violently anti-semitic. The spirit of Nazism has been resurrected in 21st Century Europe, and has sadly been exported to the US.

Another aspect of this was the marches in dozens of Western cities. Tens of thousands of brain-dead Leftist and Islamist rabble-rousers carried banners showing solidarity with Hezbollah. Contrast this with the size of the rally in Glasgow last week, which had a few hundred attendees, with half of them carrying "Stop The War" placards—and half being non-Muslim. Of course, the Left pretend to be against racism and for civil liberties if their banners are to be believed but salivate over the worst racists and vilest regimes on the planet. What a depressing picture this creates of a Britain that seems to care more about the lives of Hezbollah terrorists than of London pubgoers and Glaswegian holidaymakers.

And today there is a different battle going on in Lebanon—between the Lebanese Army and terrorists in a refugee camp. The protestors, who only a year ago slandered Israel on our streets are strangely absent. There's no Green Helmet Man around today, nor a Red Cross ambulance in sight. No bellowing has been heard from the obnoxious Galloway and his ilk. Our press and media remain strangely silent. The so-called 'peace activists' have suddenly decided Lebanon isn't the place for them. What a stunning lack of morals from a bunch as deficient in guts as they are in ideals.

BACKLASH FROM WITHIN MUSLIM COMMUNITY

The recent terrorist outbursts in Great Britain and Scotland have generated a strange backlash that those backlash-fearing spoon-benders at CAIR must surely not have anticipated:

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed: How Can One Explain the Fact That a Doctor Could Plan to Kill Innocent People?

In a July 5, 2007 article in the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily, Al-Arabiya TV director 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed wrote of his shock at learning that doctors were implicated in the attack plot:

"Not all doctors are angels, though theirs is the most respected and most needed of professions… But still, our expectations were not so low as [to think] that some of them would stoop to the level of murder and terrorism. This is a more violent shock than anything in the past.

"The shock was not [just] the news of planned bombings in Britain, since [all] corners of the world are filled with news of violence. The shock that jolted everyone was that the suspected criminals were doctors and [individuals] from the health sector…

"How can those who give justifications [for these actions] explain the fact that a doctor could plan to kill innocent people who [just] wanted to travel with their children, or passers-by in a crowded square?

"These people are sick, even if the walls of their clinics are decorated with medical diplomas.

"I can say, sadly, that they have done more harm to their people than any of the [other] groups that Al-Qaeda, and the countries that fund it, have chosen in order to carry out impure missions…

"[Al-Qaeda and its sponsors] have not left the Muslims any area where they can be free of them. They have succeeded in presenting Islam as an evil religion that even uses doctors to kill innocent people - despite the fact that they spent years studying and training in order to save people's lives, without regard to their religion, race, or gender.

"If someone were to try to defame the image of the Arabs and the meaning of Islam, they could not succeed as much as those who, year after year, specialized in presenting a bad example, [as though] to emphasize that this is not a problem of poverty or personal lack…"

Mustapha Hammouche: Misery and Ignorance Are Not the Main Cause of Terrorism; Islamism is a Point of Moral Rupture

On July 4, 2007, Mustapha Hammouche wrote in his column in the liberal Algerian daily Liberte: "That the failed attacks in London and Glasgow were the act of doctors was unsettling, especially to those of the Hippocratic profession… [But] as long as… politicians busy themselves with tracing the reassuring limits of the danger instead of considering the extent of the menace, terrorism will continue to progress and to surprise us.

"While we admitted that chemistry and electronics had rendered invaluable services to terrorism, we were surprised a few days ago to discover the 'terrorism of doctors.' We are thus doomed to shake the dust off such moral evidence as that which Rabelais taught us nearly five centuries ago: 'Science without conscience is nothing but the ruin of the soul.'

"If we hadn't forgotten that Al-Qaeda's second-in-command is a doctor, the news would not have surprised us to this degree…

"The illusion that knowledge should be a sufficient bulwark against terrorism corresponds to that other mistake that manifests itself from time to time: that of believing that misery is the primary catalyst for terrorism. Misfortune certainly does often furnish the cannon fodder required by this ideology, but Islamist terrorism has had no lack of operatives from educated or wealthy backgrounds.

"A few decoys, put in place by the fundamentalist scheme, seem to be difficult to get rid of. This is the case with the idea that ignorance and poverty - because they weaken individuals and communities - constitute the sole ferment for terrorism.
"On the contrary: In Muslim countries, it is official education… that helps fanaticize the youth from among whom the sponsors of terrorism draw their ranks. They recruit among graduates in preaching, among engineers, and also among doctors…

"The persistent quest [to find] a non-violent Islamist lies at the origin of the invention of a 'moderate' Islamism. This attitude can be explained by the fearful refusal to confront Islamism, in its global and bellicose reality. The authorities always start out by fighting while in retreat, trying to disarm Islamism by promoting [its] purportedly 'moderate' spokesmen.

"Since the transition to an ideology of death is not always immediately accompanied by action, this tactic can deceive for a while. But the Islamist undertaking is, in reality, a point of moral rupture that has nothing to do with a simple political conversion…"

Kurdish Journalist Tariq Hemo: The Western Countries Are Reaping the Harvest of Overly Liberal Immigration Policies

In a July 5 article on the liberal Elaph website, Tariq Hemo, a Kurdish journalist living in Germany, criticized Europe's immigration policies for being too liberal:

"…The Western countries are currently reaping, in these terrorists, what they sowed when they flung their doors open wide to every malevolent fundamentalist and failed in putting in place a mechanism for managing and controlling immigration in an appropriate manner…

"The West's generosity in allowing the organizations of political Islam to penetrate into Islamic societies [in Europe], spread among their youth, and enlist them in order to achieve their own ends and realize their agendas, was a mistake, and was the prelude that led to the appearance of these disastrous consequences now. He who sows the wind reaps the storm…

"The forces of political Islam that were chased out of the East… have control over a wide swath of Islamic societies in Europe. Things that are forbidden and are lines that cannot be crossed in Arab countries, and lead to the one who says them… being [kicked out] way beyond the sun, are permitted here in the West: fiery sermons and takfiri pamphlets, meetings that openly discuss overturning governments and hanging the rulers, the conditions of carrying out the death penalty against an apostate, and imposing the jizya [poll-tax] on the dhimmis…

"[Religious] reform and putting things right is a great and serious task, and the Arabs and Muslims cannot undertake this alone. It is necessary that help be given to all of the liberal reformist forces in the Arab and Islamic worlds in order for this project to succeed…"

Khudayr Taher: Europe and America Should Deport All Muslims - Including Myself

Khudayr Taher, an Iraqi Shi'ite writer living in the U.S. and a regular contributor to the liberal Elaph website, had a quite illiberal suggestion - he asked why Europe and America shouldn't deport their Muslim populations. He wrote:

"Countries have the right to defend themselves and assure their citizens' safety from terrorism. Likewise, it is clear that the source of the terrorist crimes in Europe and America is the Muslims who live in these countries.

"The security services cannot know people's intentions and sort out who is the noble immigrant and who is a terrorist criminal. [But] wherever there are Muslims, their presence has produced crimes of terrorism and murder.

"Among those Muslims in Europe and America who do not practice terrorism, most of them do not have loyalty and sincere attachment to these countries that have offered them all of the means of life in dignity - housing, studies, work, and citizenship…

"The legitimate question is this: Since the security services cannot sort out the good immigrant from the bad terrorist… why don't these countries deport all Muslims, of all races, from Europe and America, and [thus] find rest from the danger of terrorism, and protect their peoples?

"I, as an Arab Muslim immigrant, sincerely call on the countries of Europe and America to deport all Muslims from their territories - including myself, despite my love and my sincere attachment to the U.S…

THE ADVANTAGE OF COMMON SENSE

A lesson on the advantage of common sense when waging a war built on propaganda. Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. Many are accused of this form of warfare, few are those who actually succeed from it. From Bruce Thorton in his book—Greek Ways:

Common sense tells us that Khomeini and the other modern jihadists know their own faith and its doctrines, and are speaking squarely in that tradition, as can be documented from the Koran, Hadiths, and subsequent Muslim theologians, jurists, and other commentators (see Andrew Bostom’s invaluable anthology, The Legacy of Jihad). All these sources tell us that jihad indeed is the imperative to follow the example of the prophet Mohammed, who said in his farewell address: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’”

Modern jihadists, then, aren’t “heretics” or “fanatics” who have “highjacked” the “religion of peace” in order to compensate for their neurotic “humiliation” at Muslim backwardness. Bin Laden and his lieutenant Aymin Al Zawahiri have issued many writings that define their terrorist war as a traditional jihad, backing up their argument with numerous references to Islamic theology and jurisprudence. In a few weeks The Al Qaeda Reader will be published, Library of Congress researcher Raymond Ibrahim’s translation of the most significant Al Qaeda treatises, many of which have not appeared before in English.

This promises to be one of the most important books since 9/11, a critical resource for accurately understanding the motives of Al Qaeda. These writings, especially those intended for Muslims, ground the war against the West squarely in the Islamic tradition of jihad: “Zawahiri’s writings,” Ibrahim notes, “especially are grounded in Islam’s roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran, the Sunna of Muhammad, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema [past and present commentators and interpreters of Islamic belief and practice].”

Even the killing of women and children is argued for on the basis of that same tradition, which provides traction for rationalizations based on Islamic military weakness, sophistic definitions of “innocence,” and the oft-repeated injunction to kill all infidels. This interpretation may be erroneous, but the mere fact that it can be argued for at all, and accepted by many Muslims, is itself significant. And such an interpretation is possible because there already exists the doctrine of jihad, which glorifies and justifies violence against non-believers. This helps to answer the obvious question why other ex-colonial peoples supposedly “humiliated” by their failure to keep up with the powerful West have not resorted to terrorist violence.

Again, it beggars belief that a Zawahiri or a Khomeini is distorting his faith’s traditions and dogmas, particularly when millions of Muslims world-wide agree with those traditional interpretations. Are we to think those millions don’t know their own religion? That they are dupes of manipulators and distorters? Or is it rather the case that they know very well their faith and see Bin Laden et al. as traditionalists attempting to restore to Islam the doctrinal purity that fueled Islam’s remarkable conquests? Perhaps this agreement with the so-called “Islamists” explains the dearth of protests against these presumed “distortions” on the part of all those “moderate” Muslims we keep hearing about.

No, it is we who are the dupes of distorters, all those apologists, propagandists, and Western useful idiots who obscure the truth of Islam and its history. And they are successful: Washington Times columnist Diana West, writing on July 6 about Robert Spencer’s important web-site jihadwatch.org, reports that “very ominously, Mr. Spencer's Web site is being blocked by assorted organizations which, according to his readers, continue to provide access to assorted pro-jihad sites. Mr. Spencer reports he's ‘never received word of so many organizations banning this site all at once.’ These include the City of Chicago, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, GE IT, JPMorgan Chase, Defense Finance and Accounting Services and now, a federal employee in Dallas informs him, the federal government.” Why? “Some Internet providers deem the factually based, meticulous analysis on display at jihadwatch.org to be ‘hate speech.’”

This is the pass that we have come to: facts about the motives of an enemy sworn to our destruction are censored as “hate speech.” This betrayal of the truth demonstrates perfectly the West’s self-loathing failure of nerve that confirms the enemy’s belief in his spiritual superiority—and his ultimate victory.