The New English Review Symposium 2009 Booklet - Understanding the Jihad in Israel, Europe and America
Geert Wilders: Why I Am In America Fighting For Free Speech
Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline by Theodore Dalrymple
In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas by Theodore Dalrymple
Defending The West: by Ibn Warraq
Nations, Language and Citizenship: by Norman Berdichevsky
Romancing Opiates by Theodore Dalrymple
Which Koran? by Ibn Warraq
Our Culture, What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple
What The Koran Really Says by Ibn Warraq
Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple
The Origins of the Koran by Ibn Warraq
Why I Am Not Muslim by Ibn Warraq
Spanish Vignettes: An Offbeat Look Into Spain's Culture, Society & History by Norman Berdichevsky
Leaving Islam Edited by Ibn Warraq
The Danish-German Border Dispute, 1815-2001: Aspects of Cultural and Demographic Politics by Norman Berdichevsky
Friday, 19 March 2010
Obama versus Israel: needlessly isolating a valued ally in the Middle East
Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post , “Obama’s war on Israel” and Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times,
, “Diplomatic storms spread fears of fallout: Assailing friends, ignoring adversaries”,have raised serious questions about why President Obama is needlessly punishing Israel, a valued ally in the Middle East. The Obama effort against Israel appears as a thoughtless attempt to score a pyrrhic foreign policy victory in the fractured Middle East. It comes just prior to AIPAC’s annual Washington Policy Conference where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu after scolding him for allegedly embarrassing Vice President Biden during the latter’s recent visit to Israel. It also comes after a fruitless journey to Moscow by Secretary Clinton seeking support from Russian President Medvedev for UN Security Council sanctions against the Iranian nuclear enrichment program. Instead the Russians announced the 1000 Megawatt nuclear power facility at Bushehr will shortly go on-line. It is doubtful that either Russia or China will support sanctions. This leaves Israel pondering what support it can expect from the Obama Administration against the annihilationist threat from a nuclear Iran. There is significant skepticism in Israel about Obama’s intentions. A recent Haaretz Dialog poll indicated that 27% of Israelis consider Obama as anti-Semitic.
Earlier this week Rabbi Jon Hausman and I did a two hour recorded interview, the first hour will air Saturday, March 20th, on a south Florida radio program, "The Joe Citizen Show". The radio program segment will deal with the specific issues that both Caroline Glick and Joel Mowbray have raised in their Jerusalem Post and Washington Times commentary.
Here are some facts we discussed during the recorded interview:
the disputed Ramat Shlomo project is already sited on a bare hill in north Jerusalem, so there is no displacement of Arab homes;
the alleged 'incendiary ' announcement concerned Interior Ministry l approval of the fourth stage of a seven stage approval process for the Ramat Shlomo project for poor orthodox Jews;
Israel has sovereignty over all of the unified city of Jerusalem ratified in July 1967;
Israel has also built housing for Arabs in Jerusalem;
In October 2009 Secretary of State Clinton congratulated PM Netanyahu on a freeze in West Bank construction, which did not apply to Jerusalem.
the re-dedication of the Hurva ("ruined" in Hebrew) synagogue last Monday triggered the "Days of Rage" called for by the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement (an affiliate of Hamas inside Israel) that incited continuing Arab protests and attacks in East Jerusalem. They said the Hurva synagogue re-dedication was evidence of Israeli attempts to take control of the Al Aqsa Mosque. PA negotiator Abu Alaaa added more fuel to the fire by calling for a "Third Intifada". The Hurva Synagogue is not even close to the Al Aksa Mosque, but in the Cardo in the Jewish sector of the Old City;
Further, excavation of the Hurva synagogue site have uncovered artifacts going back to the 8th Century BCE;
The Hurva synagogue was destroyed by Arabs in an 18th century fire, rededicated in 1864, and blown up in 1948 when Jordanian legionnaires occupied the Old City of Jerusalem and the current rebuilding took over ten years to complete.
Was this diplomatic brouhaha between allies with an alleged ‘special relationship’ needless? We think it was. In our view, the tough language from both Secretary Clinton and David Axelrod, senior political advisor to President Obama, last weekend over the alleged 'insult' to Vice President Biden was unwarranted.
There is further evidence of possible changes in attitude by the Obama Administration reflected in the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Petraeus, CENTCOM commander, conveyed the view that the lack of resolution of the Arab Israeli situation was a major cause for instability in the Middle East. Here is what Petraeus said:
The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the [Middle East] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.
Achieving a two-state solution is obviously in America's strategic interest as well, because it would remove one of the major sources of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim world. The vast majority of Muslims reject al Qaeda and its murderous methods, for example, but they share its harsh views about U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution won't solve all of our problems in the region, of course, but it would make a lot of them easier to address. It's clear that the U.S. military, which now has a lot of experience in the region, thinks so too. As CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus told the Armed Services Committee earlier today.
Moreover, the Obama Administration has yet to enact crippling sanctions against Iran's nuclear project given legislation passed by both Houses of Congress. Especially important are sanctions against foreign deliveries of refined petroleum products. Iran imports 2/5th of these crucial items from abroad.
Further, there are reports about alleged diversion of so-called bunker buster bombs from delivery to Israel, as requested and agreed to over two years ago, to US air bases on the British-leased island of Diego Rivera in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, after shutting down the F-22 Raptor production program that Israel, Australia and Japan had asked to be continued, the Pentagon has recently indicated delays in production of F-35 Joint Strike fighters. This may result in curtailing replacement deliveries to the IAF for aging F-15b aircraft in the Israeli air fleet.
Notwithstanding the current diplomatic kerfuffle spawned by the Obama Administration, PM Netanyahu will meet Netanyahu with Special Envoy former Sen. George Mitchell in Israel on Sunday. He is scheduled to meet with Secretary Clinton on Monday. He will be speaking that evening at the AIPAC Washington Policy conference. Secretary Clinton will also be speaking there on behalf of the Obama Administration. PM Netanyahu will meet President Obama on Tuesday, since the latter has deferred his scheduled trip to Asia until June as the press of passing Health Care Reform legislation mounts. We shall see what eventuates from these meetings.
Ironically, we have had contretemps of this type before in the special relationship between Israel and the US. Back in 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, III, tried to force Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir to make concessions at the Madrid conference by withholding $10 Billion in loan guarantees to build much needed housing for the great bow wave of Russian immigration to Israel. The construction of such immigrant housing in settlements on the West Bank was the issue. Strange how things don’t seem to change.
Ask yourself when the 'special relationship' between Israel and the US began? Try July, 1967 under the late President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, who came from a Christian Zionist background in Texas, as a young Congressman saved an estimated 400 to 500 Jews from the Holocaust. He was a natural friend of Israel. The all important UN Security Council Res. 242 (adopted with US support in November 1967) included language about 'territories' stipulating that Israel should have the right to “secure and defensible borders” in any negotiated agreements.
What prevents this latest impasse between the US and Israel from becoming a stalemate is the significant support for Israel by Americans. A recent Gallup poll indicated that American support for Israel was at an all time high- 63 percent. A new poll commissioned by The Israel Project further indicated that Americans would resoundingly take the side of Israel in a conflict with the Palestinians by an 8 to 1 margin.
President Obama and Secretary Clinton, who are purported to be master politicians, should take these figures to heart and stop isolating the only democratic ally in the Middle East that shares American Judeo Christian values. Lest they forget Israel is the literal canary in the mines of Jihadist Islam. The late President Johnson knew that. Obama and Clinton should. The question is do they?
One of Tariq Ramadan's rhetorical weapons is the constant assertion -- in many of his appearances -- that "it's over." Listen and you will hear it often. He means: it's too late, get used to us, adopt, We're here, and we cannot be dislodged, and that's that. No one should for one minute accept this. The mistakes made during two or three decades, and that could overturn three thousand years of history in Europe, can be reversed, can be overcome.
It is not over. It is just now that people are educating themselves and waking up. Tariq Ramadan does not wants that to even be considered as a possiblilty. But the halting of any growth in, and the reversal of the size of, the Muslim presence in Europe, is exactly what people are coming to understand has to be achieved. And achieved with or without the understanding, help, and support of the benighted American government, at least as presently constituted.
Opposition to what are so tendentiously called "the settlements" is not about the "settlements" at all. It is about whether Israel is going to be allowed to decide for itself the minimum conditions of its own survival, or whether others -- apparently to include an Administration so deeply unlearned in the history of the area, and in the claims, and rights, of the Jews to build these "settlements" (simply Jewish villages and towns) on land that was always intended for Jewish settlement by the League of Nations in its Mandate for Palestine. That was one among many mandates created after World War I, several of which led to the creation of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq -- that is, three of the now-22 members of the Arab League. Other mandates were intended to make provision for some of the many other non-Arab or non-Muslim peoples -- but the Kurdish state and the Armenian state as originally envisioned were still-born, and the Jews received not all of historic Palestine, but only Western Palestine, while again the Arabs took the lion's share for themselves.
It is not the "settlements" that are at stake, but whether or not Israel will control the small sliver of territory, the "West Bank," without which the Jordan Valley, and the historic invasion route from the east, cannot be controlled. For if Jewish settlements are stopped, if the decision is taken out of Israel's hands, and if its claims are de-legitimized, it is just part of a deliberate, unending, and most cunning attempt by Muslim Arabs to push Israel back, so as to whittle away at it, and step by step to weaken Israel and demoralize its population. This has been written about and spoken about so much in the Arab media that it is inexcusable for those who make policy to continue to have failed to notice it.
This would be done in stages. Mahmoud Abbas is the leading proponent, at present, of this Two-Stage Solution. That is what he means when he says "we choose peace as a strategic option." Not "peace" tout court, but "peace as a strategic option." First, by opposing the Jewish claim to have any natural expansion in what are so wrongly called "settlements," this would condemn Jews, but not Arabs, to keeping their population from increasing in the "West Bank." That would inevitably lead to their shriveling. It would start the process of forcing Israel to yield, to give up those Jewish villages and towns, to give up their rightful claim that was already shrunken by 77% when Great Britain created, back in 1922, the Emirate of Transjordan out of Eastern Palestine. Eastern Palestine was originally intended for inclusion in the Mandate for Palestine.
If Israel cannot allow even for natural growth in its "settlements" -- meaning apparently no babies are to be born beyond the replacement level, while the Arabs in the "West Bank" and in pre-1967 borders of Israel, like the Muslims living everywhere, are permitted to have eight and ten and twelve children per family, we know the result. And if Israel's settlements are paralyzed, and painted even in the Untied States -- never mind the U.N. -- as illegitimate, the pressure on Israel, which is already immense, would likely force the Israelis, despite their own need to survive, to give up the "West Bank" that offers them the only strategic depth they possess. Israel without the "West Bank" is nine miles wide, from Kalkilya to the sea. It can be cut in two with ease by the fabulously well-armed, and overwhelmingly more numerous Arabs. Unless Israel is prepared at once to use nuclear weapons, it can be overrun. And not only must Israel continue to control the Jordan Valley and the historic invasion routes from the East, but it must also control the aquifers under the "West Bank" that are so vital.
The "West Bank" was always supposed to be part of Mandatory Palestine. It should legally be regarded, as the late Dean of Yale Law School Eugene Rostow noted, and as the Australian jurist Julius Stone so convincingly showed in his exhaustive book-length legal study, as an "unallocated part of the Mandate." Its legal status was unaffected, that is, by the Jordanian seizure and rule from 1949 to 1967. So when the Americans suggest, or more outrageously, "demand," that Israel stop "settlement activity," they are saying that the Mandate for Palestine is null and void.
They are saying, these people who have the presumption to tell the permanently-imperiled Jews of Israel what to do, that those Jews do not have a right to the small sliver of land that constitutes Western Palestine. They are saying that we must accept the camouflaged Jihad, the one that since the Six-Day War has presented that Jihad against Israel as a campaign for the "legitimate rights" of the hastily invented "Palestinian people" (never mentioned by the Arabs before that Six-Day War, not by any Arab diplomat, or political figure, or "intellectual" -- the phrase "Palestinian Arabs" or just "Arabs" or "Arabs of Palestine" -- never the "Palestinian people" -- was what one heard). It was a neat trick, and pursued quite determinedly. And much of the world has accepted this nonsense.
But now the world's Infidels are beginning to realize that Islam itself is a problem for them. Much to their regret, the peoples of Western Europe, for various reasons, but everywhere with a civilisational nonchalance or negligence that is lamented now by all of them, they allowed, over the past forty years, large numbers of Muslims into their midst. They also allowed many other immigrants. But none of those immigrants, save for the Muslims, bring with them, in their mental baggage, not merely an alien creed, but an alien and a permanently hostile creed.
For Islam is based on the idea of a state of permanent war existing between Muslims and Unbelievers. Muslims have a duty, sometimes collective and sometimes individual, to participate in the struggle or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam. It is this that the most intelligent and farseeing Infidels are coming to recognize. And as more and more of them do, the monstrous mistreatment, based on vicious or ignorant misreporting, of the Arab Muslim war made on Israel, and Israel's attempts to survive despite that unending war conducted by all possible means, will be recognized. Then, the former sympathy for Israel, that it enjoyed before 1967 and the attempt to paint it as a might aggressor, will return, at least to the minds of the informed men of good will.
If Israel is forced into limiting the natural growth of its villages and towns in that part of Mandatory Palestine that the Jordanians seized and held until 1967, it will then have troops there and no civilians. And then the claim will be made that Israel is merely a "military occupier" because of its having been forced to remove its civilians, who stand for those legal, historic, and moral claims. The world is ununderstanding of, and unsympathetic to, Israel's plight as the victim of a Lesser Jihad that has been quite openly recognized as such, called as such, by Arabs and Muslims when they address other Arabs and Muslims, but not so described when they are smilingly presenting the Arab case to the West. To the West the would-be destroyers of Israel present a case of pretend victimization. Yet they have done nothing to construct a "Palestinian" state in Gaza, and exist in order only to destroy what the Jews so incredibly, with such hardship and heartbreak, created out of the "ruin" and "desolation" described by every 19th century Western traveler who visited the Holy Land.
Without those Jewish villages and towns, those so-called "settlements," Israel would be more easily depicted as having no claim other than that of military occupier to this absurdly-named (by the Jordanians) "West Bank" -- that is, parts of Judea and Samaria, as it was called by everyone in the Western world until the Jordanians renamed it, like the Romans changing Judea to Palestine and Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina. Its legal, moral, historic claims would be forgotten. My god, they are quite forgotten by many people, even in Washington, already. That must not happen.
Above all, there must be, for the moral sanity of Washington, and this country and the entire West, some preservation of what can only be called a sense of justice, of equity. At a time of continued squandering of men, money, and materiel, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, the confusion about Islam and ignorance of it that causes that squandering (which is entirely unnecessary if the well-prepared are listened to) also reveals itself in the temptation of appeasement. And as with Chamberlain and Daladier in Munich in 1938, our current leaders in the Western world, not knowing what to do about Islam, and willfully refusing to find out more about the matter, possibly for fear of what they might find out, are willing to appease, and the coin they offer is the safety and security of a tiny country.
By sacrificing that county, by listening to the demands of the Nazis or of the Arab Muslims, the Western powers -- then Great Britain and France, today the United States -- hopes that that will make things somehow better. It won't. The Sudetenland did not sate Hitler's appetite, but whetted it, and showed him the pusillanimity of France and Great Britain. Forcing Israel, step by step, back within the 1949 Armistice Lines, the "lines of Auschwitz," as Mahmoud Abbas and the Slow Jihadists (King Abdullah of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, tutti quanti) want it, will lead only to Israel’s destruction.
Justice. Equity. A sense of history, and of the most persecuted tribe in human history, the Jews. A sense of proportion, knowing that the Arabs are the most richly endowed, with land and natural wealth, of any people on earth. And yet, everywhere they deny to all others within the lands they rule, to all non-Muslims and non-Arabs, any hint not only of independence or autonomy, but even of something like equality with the ruling Muslim Arabs.
The Jews, like the Copts, like the Maronites, like the Kurds, like the black Africans of the Sudan like the Berbers, like so many other non-Arab and non-Muslim peoples, have through the centuries been ill-treated by those Arab Muslims all over the Middle East and North Africa. They deserve what they asked for, and the intelligent leaders who had to deal with the remnants of the Ottoman Empire knew they deserved what they asked for: the right to buy land, and to construct a country, and to be the inheritors, from the Ottoman state, of those lands owned by that state. That was all they asked for, and that was what they got. Now the Arabs, determined to deny that Infidel nation-state any existence, are divided between those who, like the Fast Jihadists of Hamas, want to go in for the kill at once, and those who, like the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, see the wisdom of patiently de-constructing Israel, step by step, with help from the confused (morally and geopolitically) Americans and Europeans.
Finally, there is the failure of so many to study how Muslims regard treaties made with Infidels. They do not adhere, as some may blandly assume, to the principle that seems to Westerners so obvious, but that in fact had to be arrived at, and then accepted, as it has been all over the West. That principle is the one known as Pacta Sunt Servanda, or, Treaties are to be obeyed. That is a principle of Western law, but not of Islamic law. In Islam, the model for all treaties made with Infidels is that agreement, that "hudna," or ten-year truce, made by Muhammad with the Meccans in 628 A.D. It was a treaty that, eighteen months later, feeling his side to be stronger, Muhammad violated on a pretext. He has been hailed for this splendid act of cunning, this illustration of his oft-repeated claim that "war is deception." Since Muslims are always in a state of war with any non-Muslims who resist the dominance of Islam, war-making includes the making of treaties to lull the enemy, or to buy time in order to build up one's forces, or to pursue war, that is the Jihad, by means other than qitaal or combat, or in combination with qitaal or combat.
None of this is fabricated. One has only to read the many Muslim commentators on Islam. Read the non-Muslim commentators. Read Joseph Schacht. Read Antoine Fattal. Read Bassam Tibi. Read Majid Khadduri. Find out what they have to say about Hudiabiyya, and its continuing to be the guiding model for all subsequent treaty-making with non-Muslims.
Merely being "pro-Israel" is not enough, if you do not bother to learn about the nature of the war being made on Israel, and on the entire Infidel world. For if you are one of those who thinks that "being Jewish" or "having a Likud father" or "being as pro-Israel as they come” (shades of Rahm Emanuel) allows you to endorse, or seem to endorse, policies that endanger Israel's survival because they are based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Arab Muslim treaty-making, and of the nature of the war -- a war without end, but one that is manageable, that can be contained, through invocation of "Darura" or necessity -- then you have another think coming.
Fitzgerald: Building That Bridge Over The River Kwai, Or, Why Are We In Afghanistan?
From Jihad Watch (February 28, 2009)
Fitzgerald: Building That Bridge Over The River Kwai, Or, Why Are We In Afghanistan?
The very idea that because Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, Afghanistan has a special, irreplaceable importance in the "war against terrorism," is false.
In the first place, the fact that Al Qaeda found Afghanistan under the Taliban (a Taliban nurtured by an American-supported Pakistan, and recognized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) useful does not mean that Al Qaeda can only regroup in Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks in London were not hatched by those trained in Afghanistan, but by people living in, raised in, Great Britain. Those who bombed the Atocha station in Madrid were not from Afghanistan. Those who killed Pim Fortuyn (a weak-minded Dutchman put up to it by Muslims) and Theo van Gogh were not trained in Afghanistan. The Chechens who seized the theatre in Moscow, or the school in Beslan, were not trained in Afghanistan. Anywhere there are Muslims, ready to participate in Jihad through violence, they will be able to find sufficient weaponry and bombs. Afghanistan is being endowed with a significance it does not possess.
In the second place, the very idea that Americans and other NATO troops must be sent in large numbers to pacify Afghanistan, a vast country, remote from Western bases, difficult to get in and out of (just look at the sums demanded by Kyrgyzstan for the continued use of an airbase), and that requires the collaboration of another meretricious Muslim state that is actually far more hideous and dangerous than Afghanistan itself, Pakistan, is nonsense. Afghanistan, or rather the various ethnic groups within it, can be controlled, or at least the threat coming from them can be managed from afar. The very idea that the only choice is ever-increasing numbers of American troops, and ever more billions poured into Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth, on the theory that Muslim hearts, if they are not with the Taliban, are therefore accessible and winnable, is absurd.
Here and there, just as in Iraq, some locals will prefer to use the Americans, and to temporarily curry favor with them out of self-interest -- that is, out of a desire for American weaponry, supplies, and money. In Afghanistan, local groups and even individual warlords, and Karzai himself, have proven adept at leading the Americans by the nose for quite a while, just as the Pakistani military has managed to do for decades, and as the Al-Saud have done in presenting themselves as not the most dangerous enemies of Infidels, but as "America's staunch ally."
The United States has squandered at least two trillion dollars in Iraq. What is the result? Possibly, a state, and an army, that consists mainly of Muslim Arabs (the Kurds are slowly being squeezed out, and Maliki's "outreach to the Sunni Arabs" will be, predictably, at the expense of the non-Arab Kurds), one that possibly will not be quite as ostentatiously aggressive as was the state run by that obviously hideous despot Saddam Hussein. But so what? How does this improve the Infidel position in the world? What has been accomplished, or could possibly be accomplished, to weaken the hold of Islam on the minds of men in Afghanistan? Nothing at all.
We, the Infidel Americans, have managed or may have managed to hold Iraq together a bit longer by doing everything we could to prevent the fissures, sectarian and ethnic, from leading to open and large-scale hostilities. And we, those American Infidels, were further kindly allowed by the local Arabs and Muslims to spend nearly two trillion dollars on this effort at a time when it is now recognized that economic warfare, and economic damage, is a key weapon in the jihadist arsenal. This remains true whether that damage is inflicted from without or self-inflicted by the assumption of responsibilities that make no geopolitical sense. And every dollar spent on Iraq, on Egypt, on Pakistan, on Afghanistan, on Jordan, on the "Palestinians," represents a transfer of wealth from Infidels to Muslims, one that goes beyond the trillions in unmerited oil revenues the Arabs and Muslims have received.
We have spent that money, and have received, and will receive, no gratitude in return. When Iraq dissolves inevitably into the warring tribes and groups, who will be blamed? America. Americans. And so much of what we spend there, by the way, is on goods (such as oil shipments from Kuwait) and services (contractors, from ditto), that enrich Kuwaitis and Qataris and Bahrainis (when our ships are in), so that we are propping up all of these statelets and peoples who are not and cannot ever be our friends, but who in the end will use and abuse us every which way. And they will do this while we spend time trying to figure out what makes them tick, when what makes them tick are the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics, of Islam.
Tarbaby Iraq is about to be followed by Tarbaby Afghanistan. The military men involved focus on the immediate task at hand. They do not have time to study, or so they think, the texts, the ideology, of Islam. They do not have time, or do not have the inclination, to think beyond the immediate theatres of war -- war understood only in the military sense, or at least in the sense of either making war or "winning hearts and minds" of combatants -- in Iraq and now Afghanistan. Do you think General Petraeus, General Odierno, General McKiernan, has stopped to consider what is happening in Western Europe? Do you think they understand that there many ways to conduct Jihad, and that deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (already showing its effects on the fear displayed by many in the political and media elites of Western Europe, determined to appease Muslims and meet their demands on so many levels), is a much greater threat to the United States and to the civilization of the West than any conceivable outcome in remote and impoverished Afghanistan, or in Iraq?
Local entanglements of course inevitably engender human sympathies -- sympathies, say, by the American officers for this or that local gunga-dinnish figure, who seems -- and in a certain sense may be -- appealing. But policy should not be based on that kind of sentimentality, and on a handful of local exceptions. We need to weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad. And we need to do this without unduly squandering men, money, materiel, and morale. Propping up Afghanistan has to come to an end. Instead, officials should be soberly, coldly, even ruthlessly, deciding to manage the situation from afar, through help given to now this, and now to that, local group whose interests temporarily coincide with ours. They should be stopping all this wasteful "construction" that earns no gratitude, and merely rescues Muslims from the obvious consequences of inshallah-fatalism.
The logic of events will in the end require this realization. But how long will it take? Another few years? It ought to have been understood long ago, and would have been, if those making policy had understood, had allowed themselves to study, the meaning, and the menace, of Islam.
In the end, if Obama wishes to staunch the flow of American lives and money, he will have to pull out of Afghanistan and adopt what is suggested here. But he can protect himself from criticism on the right only by adopting, as well, the rationale offered here: pull out of Afghanistan not because Islam, and Muslims, are no threat, but precisely because they are. And resolve never to help them out of their problems, but to allow their political, economic, social, intellectual and moral failures to be on obvious display, not least to themselves. If Infidels, or a sufficient number of them, grasp the connection between the nature of Islam and the failures of Muslim states and societies, then Muslims themselves will have to begin at least to attempt to answer the argument that insists upon that connection. And in so doing, the most advanced Muslims will have to admit, to themselves if not to Infidels, that in fact Islam does explain those failures.
It explains the natural tendency toward despotism of Muslim lands, for the political theory of Islam is not one that pays attention to the will expressed by the people, but rather to the will expressed by Allah. Islam does explain, through its inshallah-fatalism, the economic paralysis, does explain the mistreatment of women and of all non-Muslims, does explain Islam as a vehicle for Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, does explain the stunting of mental growth among those who are taught to regard themselves as merely "slaves of Allah" in a collectivist Total Belief-System, and discouraged from the kind of free and skeptical inquiry without which no progress in anything can be achieved. Infidels cannot undo all this by rescuing Iraqis, or Afghanis, from the consequences of Islam itself.
They may do so, just possibly, by removing themselves from Muslim countries, keeping Muslims from acquiring the kind of weaponry that can inflict great damage, and halting Muslim immigration to non-Muslim lands while working to reverse as much as possible the aggressive Muslim presence already achieved in those lands, through a fit of criminal negligence by our ignorant-of-Islam elites. This is the way, the only way, to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. Winning hearts and minds cannot be done, and those who think they can do so with armies, expensively maintained in the wilds of Afghanistan, are committing folly upon folly.
In their inattention to the real context, and their monomaniacal attention to the immediate task at hand -- the wrong task, undertaken for the wrong reasons -- they all remind one of Alec Guinness, as Colonel Bogey, building that bridge, urging his men to do more and more and more, and forgetting, in his mad attention to that bridge, that he is actually building it for the Japanese, helping them in their war effort. And that is exactly what some, both in the military and in the civilian part of our government, appear to be doing: overlooking the larger picture, the only picture that counts.
What's Behind Opposition To Those Settlements (In Portuguese)
A oposição aos que são tendenciosamente chamados de “assentamentos” não tem nada a ver com os “assentamentos” propriamente ditos. Tem a ver com a questão de Israel ter ou não o direito de decidir por si mesmo sobre as condições mínimas de sua própria sobrevivência, ou se outros decidirão em seu lugar – aparentemente incluindo um governo [americano] profundamente ignorante da história da região e das reivindicações e direitos dos judeus para edificar esses “assentamentos” (simplesmente vilarejos e pequenas cidades judaicas) em áreas já destinadas a assentamentos judaicos pela Liga das Nações em seu Mandato da Palestina. Este foi um dentre muitos mandatos criados após a Primeira Guerra Mundial, vários dos quais levaram à criação do Líbano, da Síria, e do Iraque – isto é, três dos agora 22 membros da Liga Árabe. Outros mandatos foram destinados a dar provisão para alguns dos muitos outros povos não-árabes ou não-muçulmanos – mas o Estado Curdo e o Estado Armênio, como originalmente previstos, acabaram natimortos. Os judeus, por sua vez, não receberam toda a Palestina Histórica, mas apenas a Palestina Ocidental, enquanto que novamente os árabes ficaram com a parte do leão para eles mesmos.
Não são os “assentamentos” que estão em jogo, mas se Israel irá ou não controlar a estreita fatia de território, a “Margem Ocidental”, sem a qual o vale do Jordão e as rotas de invasão históricas a partir do leste não podem ser controlados. Pois, se os assentamentos judaicos forem impedidos de existir, se a decisão for tirada das mãos de Israel, e se suas reivindicações forem deslegitimadas, isso será apenas parte de uma tentativa deliberada, interminável e profundamente astuciosa dos árabes muçulmanos de empurrarem Israel para trás, para fazê-lo desaparecer do mapa, enfraquecendo-o passo a passo e desmoralizando sua população. Isso já foi escrito tantas vezes e dito tantas vezes na mídia árabe que é indesculpável que aqueles que determinam as políticas continuem fingindo não percebê-lo.
Esse processso seria conduzido em estágios. Mahmoud Abbas (o presidente da Autoridade Palestina) é, no momento, o proponente principal dessa Solução em Duas Etapas. É o que ele quer dizer quando fala: “Nós escolhemos a paz como uma opção estratégica”. Não simplesmente “a paz”, mas “a paz como uma opção estratégica”. Primeiro, a oposição às reivindicações dos judeus de qualquer expansão natural nos que são tão erroneamente denominados “assentamentos” condenaria os judeus, mas não os árabes, a impedirem sua população de crescer na “Margem Ocidental”. Tal fato levaria inevitavelmente ao encolhimento do número de judeus. Daria início ao processo de forçar Israel a ceder, a abrir mão daqueles vilarejos e pequenas cidades, a desistir de sua reivindicação de direito, que já foi reduzida em 77% quando a Grã-Bretanha criou, nos idos de 1922, o Emirado da Transjordânia a partir da Palestina Oriental. Inicialmente a Palestina Oriental era para ser incluída no Mandato da Palestina.
Se Israel não pode permitir sequer o crescimento natural em seus “assentamentos” – o que aparentemente significa que nenhum bebê deve nascer além do nível da mera substituição dos habitantes que falecerem, enquanto os árabes da “Margem Ocidental” e nas fronteiras pré-1967 de Israel, assim como os muçulmanos que vivem em qualquer lugar, têm permissão para ter oito, dez ou doze filhos por família, sabemos qual será o resultado. E se os assentamentos de Israel forem paralisados, e retratados mesmo nos Estados Unidos – quanto mais nas Nações Unidas – como ilegítimos, a pressão sobre Israel, que já é imensa, provavelmente forçaria os israelenses, a despeito de sua própria necessidade de sobrevivência, a desistirem da “Margem Ocidental”, que lhes oferece a única profundidade estratégica que eles possuem. Israel, sem a “Margem Ocidental”, tem nove milhas de largura [pouco mais que catorze quilômetros], desde Kalkilya até o mar. Com facilidade poderá ser cortado em duas partes pelos árabes, que são muito bem armados e assustadoramente mais numerosos. A menos que Israel esteja preparado para usar armas nucleares nesse momento, o país pode ser atropelado. Israel não deve apenas continuar a controlar o vale do Jordão e as rotas de invasão históricas a partir do leste, mas deve também controlar os aqüíferos debaixo da “Margem Ocidental”, pois estes lhe são absolutamente vitais.
Sempre se supôs que a “Margem Ocidental” fizesse parte da Palestina Mandatória. Ela deve ser considerada legalmente como uma “parte não demarcada do Mandato”, como observou Eugene Rostow, o já falecido reitor da Faculdade de Direito de Yale, e como mostrou tão convincentemente o jurista australiano Julius Stone em seu estudo legal exaustivo, extenso como um livro. Seu status legal não foi afetado pelo confisco e domínio jordanianos de 1949 a 1967. Portanto, quando os americanos sugerem, ou de forma mais ultrajante, “exigem”, que Israel pare sua “edificação de assentamentos”, eles estão dizendo que o Mandato da Palestina é nulo e sem efeito.
Essas pessoas, que têm a pretensão de dizer aos judeus de Israel, que estão permanentemente enfrentando perigos, o que eles deveriam fazer, estão afirmando que esses judeus não têm direito à estreita faixa de terra que constitui a Palestina Ocidental. Elas estão dizendo que temos que aceitar a jihad camuflada, aquela que, desde a Guerra dos Seis Dias, tem apresentado a jihad contra Israel como uma campanha pelos “direitos legítimos” do “povo palestino”, inventado às pressas (nunca mencionado pelos árabes antes da Guerra dos Seis Dias, nem por qualquer diplomata árabe, ou figura política, ou “intelectual” – a expressão “árabes palestinos” ou apenas “árabes” ou “árabes da Palestina” – nunca o “povo palestino” – era o que se ouvia). Esse foi um truque óbvio, seguido com muita determinação. E grande parte do mundo aceitou esse contra-senso.
Mas, agora, os infiéis do mundo estão começando a perceber que o próprio islamismo é um problema para eles. Para o grande pesar deles mesmos, os povos da Europa Ocidental, por vários motivos, mas sempre com uma indiferença ou negligência civilizacional que hoje é lamentada por todos eles, permitiram, pelos últimos quarenta anos, a vinda de inúmeros muçulmanos para habitarem entre eles. Também permitiram a vinda de muitos outros imigrantes. Mas nenhum daqueles imigrantes, exceto os muçulmanos, trouxe consigo, em sua bagagem mental, não meramente um credo estranho, mas um credo estranho e permanentemente hostil.
Pois o islamismo se baseia na idéia de um estado de guerra permanente entre muçulmanos e incrédulos. Os muçulmanos têm o dever, às vezes coletivo e às vezes individual, de participar da luta, ou da jihad, para remover todos os obstáculos que possam impedir o alastramento e depois a dominação do islamismo. É isto que os infiéis mais inteligentes e que enxergam mais longe estão começando a reconhecer. E, à medida que mais e mais deles reconhecem tal fato, serão também percebidas as monstruosas deturpações, baseadas em relatos enganosos, por ódio ou ignorância, a respeito da guerra dos muçulmanos árabes contra Israel, e as tentativas de Israel sobreviver a despeito da interminável guerra realizada por todos os meios possíveis. Então, a anterior simpatia por Israel, de que o país gozava antes de 1967 e das tentativas de descrevê-lo como um violento agressor, retornará, pelo menos às mentes dos homens bem-informados e de boa vontade.
Se Israel for forçado a limitar o crescimento natural de seus vilarejos e pequenas cidades naquela parte da Palestina Mandatória que os jordanianos tomaram e mantiveram até 1967, terá tropas ali e não civis. Daí, a afirmação será que Israel é meramente um “ocupador militar”, por ter sido forçado a remover seus civis, que representam aquelas reivindicações legais, históricas e morais. O mundo não entende e não se solidariza com o empenho de Israel como a vítima de uma Jihad Menor, que foi abertamente reconhecida como tal e denominada assim por árabes e muçulmanos quando se dirigem a outros árabes e muçulmanos, mas não descrita assim quando estão sorridentemente apresentando a questão árabe ao Ocidente. Para o Ocidente, os que planejam destruir Israel apresentam um caso de pretensa vitimização. Mesmo assim, eles não fizeram nada para construir um Estado Palestino em Gaza, e existem com a única finalidade de destruir o que os judeus, tão incrivelmente, com tantas dificuldades e pesares, criaram a partir da “ruína” e da “desolação” descritas por todos os viajantes ocidentais do século XIX que visitaram a Terra Santa.
Sem aqueles vilarejos e pequenas cidades judaicos, os chamados “assentamentos”, Israel seria mais facilmente representado como não tendo reivindicação nenhuma a não ser a da ocupação militar do que é absurdamente denominado (pelos jordanianos) de “Margem Ocidental” – isto é, partes da Judéia e de Samaria, como era chamada essa porção de terra por todos no mundo ocidental até que os jordanianos lhe deram outro nome, assim como os romanos mudaram a Judéia para Palestina e Jerusalém para Aelia Capitolina. Suas reivindicações legais, morais e históricas seriam esquecidas. Meu Deus, elas já foram esquecidas por muitas pessoas, até mesmo em Washington. Isso não poderia acontecer.
Acima de tudo, deve haver, para a sanidade moral de Washington, dos EUA e de todo o Ocidente, algum tipo de preservação do que pode apenas ser chamado de senso de justiça, ou de igualdade. Em época de contínuo esbanjamento de homens, dinheiro e materiais no Iraque, no Afeganistão, no Paquistão, a confusão sobre o islamismo e a ignorância dele, que causam tal desperdício (totalmente desnecessário se os mais preparados fossem ouvidos), também se revela na tentação do apaziguamento. E, assim como foi com Chamberlain e Daladier, em 1938 em Munique, nossos atuais líderes do mundo ocidental, não sabendo o que fazer sobre o islamismo, e recusando-se conscientemente a verificar mais profundamente o assunto, possivelmente por medo do que poderão encontrar, estão dispostos a conciliar, e a moeda que eles oferecem é a segurança e a seguridade de um país minúsculo.
Ao sacrificar esse país, por ouvirem as exigências dos nazistas ou dos muçulmanos árabes, as potências ocidentais – naquela época a Grã-Bretanha e a França, e hoje os Estados Unidos – esperam tornar as coisas melhores de certa forma. Não tornarão. Os Sudetos não saciaram o apetite de Hitler, pelo contrário, o aguçaram, e mostraram-lhe a pusilanimidade da França e da Grã-Bretanha. Forçar Israel a retroceder passo a passo para as Linhas do Armistício de 1949, as “linhas de Auschwitz”, como querem Mahmoud Abbas e os jihadistas vagarosos (rei Abdullah, da Jordânia, rei Abdullah, da Arábia Saudita, e todos os demais), apenas levará à destruição de Israel.
Justiça. Igualdade. Um sentido de história, e da tribo mais perseguida na história humana, os judeus. Um sentido de proporcionalidade, sabendo que os árabes são mais ricamente dotados, com terras e bens naturais, que qualquer outro povo na terra. Mesmo assim, em todas as terras que controlam, eles negam aos demais habitantes, a todos os não-muçulmanos e não-árabes, qualquer alusão não apenas a independência ou a autonomia, mas até mesmo a algo como igualdade com os árabes muçulmanos no comando.
Os judeus, como os coptas, como os maronitas, como os curdos, como os negros africanos do Sudão, como os berberes, como tantos outros povos não-árabes e não-muçulmanos, ao longo dos anos têm sido maltratados por esses muçulmanos árabes em todo o Oriente Médio e no Norte da África. Eles merecem o que pediram, e os líderes inteligentes que tiveram que tratar com os remanescentes do Império Otomano sabiam que eles mereciam o que pediam: o direito de comprar terras do Estado Otomano, e de edificar um país, e de serem os herdeiros daquelas terras pertencentes àquele Estado. Isso era tudo o que pediam, e foi o que ganharam. Agora os árabes, determinados a negar a existência àquela nação-estado infiel, estão divididos entre os que, como os jihadistas rápidos do Hamas, querem ir para a matança imediatamente, e os que, como os jihadistas vagarosos do Fatah, vêem a sabedoria de desconstruírem Israel pacientemente, passo a passo, com a ajuda dos americanos e dos europeus (moral e geopoliticamente) confusos.
Finalmente, existe a falha de tantos não estudarem a forma como os muçulmanos consideram os tratados feitos com os infiéis. Eles não seguem, como alguns podem brandamente pressupor, o princípio que parece tão óbvio aos ocidentais, mas que, de fato, teria que ser alcançado e depois aceito como foi em todo o Ocidente, a saber, aquele princípio que é conhecido como Pacta Sunt Servanda, ou seja, “tratados são feitos para serem obedecidos”. Este é um princípio da lei ocidental, mas não da lei islâmica. No islamismo, o modelo para todos os pactos feitos com infiéis é aquele acordo, aquele “hudna”, ou aquela trégua de dez anos, feita por Maomé com os habitantes de Meca em 628 d.C. Esse pacto, dezoito meses depois de ter sido firmado, foi violado por Maomé sob um pretexto, quando sentiu que seu lado estava mais forte. Ele tem sido aclamado por esse esplêndido ato de astúcia, essa ilustração de sua freqüentemente repetida afirmação de que “guerra é engano”. Como os muçulmanos estão sempre em estado de guerra com quaisquer não-muçulmanos que resistam à dominação do islamismo, guerrear inclui fazer pactos para aquietar o inimigo, ou ganhar tempo para edificar suas forças, ou exercer a guerra, isto é, a jihad, por outros meios que não sejam o qitaal ou o combate, ou em combinação com o qitaal ou o combate.
Nada disso é inventado. Basta ler os muitos comentaristas muçulmanos sobre o islamismo. Leia também os comentaristas não-islâmicos. Leia Joseph Schacht, leia Antoine Fattal. Leia Bassam Tibi, leia Majid Khadduri. Verifique o que eles têm a dizer sobre Hudiabiyya (o tratado firmado por Maomé em 628 d.C.) e sua continuidade como o modelo principal para todos os pactos subseqüentes com não-muçulmanos.
Não é suficiente ser meramente “pró-Israel” se você não se importar em aprender sobre a natureza da guerra que está sendo travada contra Israel, e contra todo o mundo infiel. Pois, se você é um daqueles que pensa que o fato de “ser judeu” ou “ter um pai do Likud” ou “ser pró-Israel até o pescoço” (sombras de Rahm Emanuel, o chefe de Gabinete de Obama) lhe permite apoiar, ou parecer apoiar, as políticas que ameaçam a sobrevivência de Israel porque são baseadas em uma compreensão errada da natureza dos tratados com árabes-muçulmanos, e da natureza da guerra – uma guerra sem fim, mas que é administrável, que pode ser contida, através da invocação da “Darura” ou necessidade – então você está redondamente enganado e será surpreendido. (Hugh Fitzgerald, www.jihadwatch.org - http://www.beth-shalom.com.br)
This famous remark by Pascal is the basis for what we now call counterfactual history. And counterfactual history is not only for the historians, or teachers, or students. It is the basis for a song, Le nez de Cléopâtre, sung by Ray Ventura and his orchestra, back in 1938, a song I put up here last August.
The recent riots in Marseilles, Toulon, and elsewhere in southern France, by Muslim Arabs, wishing to take advantage of whatever flimsy excuse offered itself -- and the win of Algeria over Senegal at Blida constituted such a flimsy excuse -- to engage in a show of force and aggression, with the usual vandalism of cars and smash-and-grab operations with shop-windows, put me in mind of a line in that song.
Prompted by the impulse that Pascal's famous counterfactual produces -- "Le nez de Cléopâtre : s'il eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé" -- the singers suggest others: if Romeo had not met Juliet, if all roads hadn't led to Rome, if La Gioconde had not smiled, if Francois Premier had bought himself a bicycle, If someone could understand the verses of Paul Valéry, and so on. I don't know what the reference to Francois Premier and the "bicyclette" is all about, but there is another line I don't understand, and it occurs at 1.03, when the singing waiter appears at the left of the screen and moves across it. His second line is: "Si les musulmanes n'avaient plus l'accent de Toulon."
What might that mean? I conclude that in France, in 1938, the Arabs of North Africa one was likely to encounter, all sounded as if they came from Toulon. This might well be, One assumes that many of the French who settled in North Africa came from the south, and carried with them their local accents. Toulon, a major port, the port from which ships left for, and came back from, Africa, might have had an outsize effect on the character of French in North Africa. And, too, the few Arabs or maghrebins who were then in France might have settled, in numbers, mainly in Toulon and Marseilles.
Listen to that song again. I wonder if that line would be sung quite so cheerfully today.
In 1378. Sayim Al-Dahr, a Sufi Sheik in Egypt, having observed peasants bringing offerings to the Sphinx, and considering such acts idolatry, and thus a violation of Islam, destroyed part of its face with explosives.
If we consider the Islamic texts, their content and the devotion that so many Muslims - including in America - attach to them; if we consider the tragic upshot of these teachings in terms of our current world’s security, is it not a duty for each one of us to view Islam not frivolously but in a most serious manner?
There was an episode during the current Presidential election that greatly disturbed me. It was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s interview on “Meet the Press.” For me this interview was a defining moment. He expressed his displeasure at some of his colleagues’ accusations that Obama might be a Muslim, and stated: “And what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim?”
Mr. Powell’s admonition at others who dare questioning Muslims, or Islam and its implications, in particular, people like me, who suffered immensely precisely because there is “something wrong with being a Muslim,” would indeed be disheartened. If Powell doesn’t understand what may be the dire consequences for being a Muslim, then who should understand? The man, who once held the post of American Secretary of State, asserts categorically that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, even though the country he led has been suffering immensely from Muslim terrorism and has paid a high price because of it.
I appreciate that Powell, who has been nurtured by the American moral code, refuses to judge people on the basis of their religious affiliation. That is his right. But he does not have the right to nonchalantly disregard people’s apprehensions of Muslims, especially at those of us who have lived in Muslim countries. We have risked our lives to escape from them, and are now risking our lives again to speak up against the harm they cause, induced by Islamic theology and culture.
In order to understand my perspective one would have to be a woman, living in Syria, my birthplace, or any other Arab Muslim country.
Since immigrating to the United States more than five presidential elections ago, I always regarded American politics as a luxury that did not concern me. Living in the US was enough to satisfy me emotionally, physically and intellectually. Anything beyond that was more than I required.
I came to regard America’s might as much greater than any president that happened to be in power - Democratic or Republican. Hence, I assumed that any person, who attained the rank of presidential candidate, regardless of party affiliation, was capable of safely leading this great nation. Because of that, I never took the trouble to inquire which candidate was more worthy of victory; for me it was a mere toss-up.
However, the events of September 11th, 2001 stripped away my confidence. I began wondering how well Americans understand Political Islam - the underlying cause of this and other heinous attacks and how willing are we to probe into its ideology or comprehend its objectives. The events surrounding the most recent election have increased my doubts and my concerns for this country, which I love with all my heart.
So what is the problem? During and after the recent election, my fear for America was that Obama’s victory could breathe fresh life into the further rise of Islamism, including Islamic terrorism.
Why?
Islamists’ psychology is worlds apart from that of Westerners. They believe in absolute terms in their divine mission to submit the world to Islam. They are engaged in a constant search for divine meaning and inspiration - even in mundane matters.
First, there was Senator Obama’s Muslim background. It is well known that Mr. Obama was born to a Muslim father, spent part of his early life in Indonesia - a Muslim country - and attended a Muslim school there. Almost every day my inbox was flooded with e-mail rumors about Obama which reflected many American citizens’ fears regarding the Democratic candidate’s Muslim background.
But Mr. Obama reassured us that he is a Christian and that was enough to dispel the doubts I might have had about him being a Muslim. I let go of my fear for America should Obama win. For now, I regained my confidence in him.
However, Salafists interpret even daily events in a way that may not necessarily appear significant to Westerners. In this context some Islamists go so far as viewing the Islamic background of Obama as a heaven-sent confirmation of the first step in realizing the dream of submitting the West to Islam. The mere fact that American president bears a Muslim name like Hussein is enough to assure them that Islam is marching into America and has already infiltrated the White House.
Once, I was browsing through a website in Arabic and came across a news item announcing that the American actress Halle Berry gave birth to a daughter whom she named Nahla; an Arabic name meaning “bee”. I then read readers’ comments on this piece of news. A considerable number of them were jubilant, since they regarded this report as a God’s sign that Islam had begun to advance into America, because the word nahla is mentioned in the Koran.
As for Mr. Powell, does he understand that Islam is not just a religion but a political doctrine that seeks to impose itself on non-Muslims even by force? If he does, why should people not be doubtful?
This is not an Islamophobic prejudice I present. Muslims, like any other national group, can be either good or bad, and the best among them do not act in accordance with Islam’s political ideology, either because they are not familiar with it, or because they have deliberately progressed beyond it. But how are we to scrutinize the good from the bad when a high level political official like Mr. Powell undermines the questioning of any concerns related to this issue?
Certainly, Mr. Powell knows that Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, is most revered among Muslims. Does Mr. Powell realize that it is incumbent upon every devout Muslim male to emulate Muhammed’s ways? If so, has Mr. Powell studied the life of Muhammad as it is recounted in the original Arabic sources, as I learned it in my schooldays?
One particular part of the prophet’s historical account I studied in third grade at primary school. We read with pride how Muhammad beheaded eight hundred Jews from the Bani Quraiza tribe in one night, then took their wives and children hostage and spent that same night with a Jewish woman Safia, whose husband, father and brother he had just killed. This wretched story is only a drop in the ocean of numerous Arabic narratives written about Muhammad’s misconduct.
Moreover, according to Islam’s most revered jurists, a true Muslim must believe in Islam as both religion and a political entity. A committed Salafi Muslim does not recognize the American constitution. His willingness to live under that constitution is, as far as he is concerned, nothing more than an unavoidable step on the way to that constitution’s replacement by Islamic Sharia law.
The Koran states: “Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their numbers. Allah does not guide the wrongdoers” (5:51). Is it legitimate for Christians and Jews to be concerned about this tenet?
American government officials must spend funds to interpret Arabic texts word for word, without distortion or falsification. Among other illuminating tenets they may find, is the concept of taqqia (literally, “caution, prudence, dissimulation”). It allows a Muslim to conceal his true cherished beliefs when he feels that non-Muslims around him have the upper hand, while at the same time working secretly to achieve his “noble” objective, so that he can attack them when the time is ripe.
Did Mr. Powell ever contemplate that what he heard from countless Muslims he met throughout his career was not necessarily what they truly meant?
I always considered Mr. Powell one of the giants of American politics. To me he was as majestic as the American eagle. But in that moment, sadly, I saw the eagle topple from its lofty peak and tumble down in front of me like a little sparrow; and with it tumbled many of my convictions.
After the events of September 11th, I watched a press conference with an American general whose name I can no longer recall. In the course of the conference, he shared that he had read the Koran twice. One of the reporters asked him, “What conclusion did you reach after you had read it?” He bowed his head for a moment before replying, “We have to defend ourselves.”
It is clear to me and many others who have lived in Islamic countries that a military man - a general - understood our perilous situation better than Mr. Powell - a politician - who held a high level government position. Had Mr. Powell done any thorough research into the study of Islam, as the general did, he may also have come to the conclusion that his question, “What’s wrong with being a Muslim?” was indeed unwarranted.
Two Muslim brothers who dubbed themselves the “Blackburn Resistance” and filmed each other crawling through the undergrowth in a Lancashire park have been jailed for terrorism offences. The men were said to have gathered a stockpile of weapons as they studied guerilla warfare ahead of a possible mission to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Abbas Iqbal, 24, a former butcher, was sentenced to two years in jail for dissemination of terrorist material and one year for preparation for acts of terrorism. His brother Ilyas, 23, a shop security guard, was sentenced to 18 months for possession of a document likely to be useful for terrorism. He had attended the College of Islamic Guidance and Knowledge in Blackburn, where shoe bomber Sajid Badat was also a student.
A third man Muhammed Ali Ahmad, 26, a white convert born Paul Cryer who worked part-time in a chemist shop, was cleared of preparing an act of terrorism.
The park training video was contained on a mobile phone storage card belonging to Abbas Iqbal that was found in his suitcase when he was arrested at Manchester Airport in August 2008 on his way to northern Europe where he was to work as an Islamic teacher. Along with his brother, he was said to have put together a “promotional collage” in the style of al-Qaeda to encourage others to commit acts of terrorism.
The film showed Ilyas Iqbal and Muhammed Ahmad dressed in camouflage clothing, 'leopard crawling' across the middle of Corporation Park in Blackburn, in broad daylight. It included chanting and a voice stating: "They are fighting against oppression, they are The Blackburn Resistance.”
Video clips of the men dressed in camouflage clothing and firing weapons while shouting "Allahu Akbar" [god is great] in the backyard of the Iqbal family home in Blackburn were also found on the storage card.
In the living room of the house police found a stockpile of armoury in a weapons cabinet including numerous air rifles, knives, machetes, a sword, a crossbow, various ammunition, books on weaponry and handwritten notes on "Attack planning" and "Urban combat",
A video cassette contained footage of Abbas demonstrating fighting moves in a garden and indoors pulling a large knife from his robes, making a stabbing and flashing motion and saying: "Size of that if you want to cut somebody. Then tear them open."
A desktop computer in the living room contained video footage showing speakers calling for holy war, images of Osama Bin-Laden and children holding guns and clips of three beheadings of prisoners and solders being shot in the back of the head.
Ilyas Iqbal had told the jury he had developed a keen interest in military history from early childhood after watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Predator and his brother said he had seen the film 600 times.
I didn’t think the line “If it bleeds I can kill it” was in the Koran. Or am I getting muddled up with Terminator?
Details revealed of plan to kill Jyllands-Posten employees and throw their heads out of office window
More details of the terror plot against Jyllands-Posten newspaper have emerged after suspect David Headley pleaded guilty in a US court yesterday as part of a plea bargain agreement.
It was already known that the plot involved driving a truck bomb into the premises of the newspaper as well as hunting down the paper’s culture editor and one of the cartoonists responsible for the controversial Mohammed cartoons in 2005.
According to documents publicly revealed yesterday, Headley’s terror contact with the Pakistani group allegedly wanted him to behead newspaper employee hostages and throw their heads from the office windows to create ‘the biggest possible’ response from Danish authorities.
Rice identifies the mistake made in Iraq: Small projects should have been favored over big ones
Worthy of the sort of keen analysis that CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Professor Stephen M. Walt provided here, in which they express the opinion that the solution to the conflicts in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan lies in a "two-state solution" in Israel, Condoleeza Rice explains what went wrong in Iraq, and why. From AP:
HONG KONG – Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she would "many times over liberate" Iraq again, but she regretted the Bush administration failed to work closer with Iraqis to rebuild the war-torn country.
Rice, speaking at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said she believed history would eventually vindicate many of the decisions made during the presidency of George W. Bush.
"I would many times over liberate Iraq again from Saddam Hussein," Rice said. "I think he was a danger to the Middle East."
Notice she did NOT say that he was an imminent danger to the U.S. or U.K. Saddam Hussein WAS a danger: to Iran, to Saudi Arabia, and her other Muslim neighbors. Those neighbors have paid no price to have Saddam Hussein removed; and look at the benefits enjoyed by Iran in particular by his removal. In contrast, the Coalition has paid heavily, in blood and lucre, to remove Saddam and to try to rebuild Iraqi society, and have gained the emnity not only of the Muslim world, but the entire world.
However, she suggested the U.S. government failed to understand "how broken Iraq was as a society" and should have focused its rebuilding efforts outside of Baghdad, the capital.
So, here are the lessons learned from her years of dealing with Iraq, and her time of reflection after leaving office:
"We tried to rebuild Iraq from Baghdad out, and we really should have rebuilt Iraq from outside Baghdad in," she said.
"We should have worked with the tribes, worked in the provinces," she said, adding that smaller projects should have been favored over big ones.
"That's something that in retrospect that we finally got right" several years after the 2003 invasion. "And it's one reason I think Iraq has a chance."
A council's "lamentable capitulation" to an aggressive campaign to "capture" a secular primary school for the Muslim faith caused the headteacher to suffer a devastating mental breakdown, according to a top judge. Ruling that headteacher Erica Connor, was entitled £400,000 damages, the Court of Appeal criticised criticised Surrey County Council for failing to protect her.
Mrs Connor, 57, left the New Monument primary school in Woking in 2006 because of stress after she was accused of Islamophobia. Regular readers may recall we posted about the case here and here at the time.
In March last year, a deputy High Court judge ruled that the council had failed in its duty to to intervene when the actions of the schools governors created problems. He awarded her £407,700 damages. An appeal against that decision was yesterday rejected with judges saying the council had been unwilling to tackle the issue because of the sensitivities involved.
At the court of Appeal, Lord Justice Sedley, who was sitting with Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Thomas, said the council had faced an "unenviable task" in trying to respond to rampant ethnic and religious tensions at The New Monument School, in Woking, Surrey, where more than 80% of the pupils are from an Islamic background.
But in its attempts to "temporise and compromise" with those intent on transforming it into an Islamic faith school, he said the council failed in its duty to protect Mrs Connor from the fallout, and that "very plainly" caused her breakdown.
(At the hearing in the lower court) Judge John Leighton-Williams QC said that, by late 2003, the school's governing body had become "dysfunctional" and it was "quite clear" that the conduct of two of the governors - Mr Martin and Mr Saleem - was responsible for that.
Ruling Surrey County Council liable for Mrs Connor's suffering, the judge said council officers had shown "excessive tolerance" towards the two governors and a "lack of timely intervention" had resulted in the governing body being "torn apart".
(In the Appeal Court) Lord Justice Laws added that Surrey had had to make "sensitive and difficult decisions", but agreed that the root of Mrs Connor's breakdown was "the council's lamentable capitulation to aggression".
The Scottish government has committed itself to investigating the steep decline in numbers within the Jewish community amid growing concerns about antisemitism north of the border. Although there were 18,000 Jews in Scotland in the 1950s, there are now only around 10,000.
The move follows a meeting this month between the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC) and the Scottish government's head of community safety, Richard Foggo. The initiative coincides with the publication of the first pictures of the desecration of Jewish graves at Glenduffhill Cemetery in Glasgow, which took place during the Gaza conflict last January.
Slogans sprayed on walls around the cemetery and on the headstones themselves pledged support for Hamas and the Scottish Nationalist Party and called for Jews to leave Scotland. One chilling slogan spread across three headstones simply read "Kill The Jews". As I have said here before, Scottish antipathy towards the English has always informed their alliances. In the past this was usually with the French but recently the SNP has sought common cause with Islam. Elsewhere in the JC is reported a spat between Osama Saeed of the SNP and Anas Sawar of the Labour party on the subject of the Hamas connection.
A report this month for the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, by Mr Borowki and former ScoJec chair Kenneth Collins, noted: "There has been historically little antisemitism in Scotland, and in particular good relations with the churches. Recently there has been a significant increase, much of it associated with events in the Middle East."
During regular meetings across Scotland, SCoJec found a growing desire to talk about antisemitism. The organisation was surprised to find the issue raised even at a gathering of the tiny Jewish population of the small town of Lochghilphead in Argyllshire, called originally to talk about the position of women in Jewish life.
One of the reasons that the pictures of the desecration have only now been released is that senior figures in the Scottish Jewish community did not want to spark copycat attacks. Some people even questioned whether the desecration should have been raised with the First Minister at all.
Some experts do not believe prejudice has played a significant role in the declining population. Harvey Kaplan, director of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, cited multiple causes. “ . . . Teenagers go away to study and don't come back, and older people move to where their children and grandchildren live."
Mark Gardner of the CST, himself from Glasgow, said the decline in numbers was undeniable but that it was not a place that was hostile to Jews who did choose to settle in Scotland. The litmus test, he said, was the atmosphere at Scotland's universities. "You just don't have the unpleasant stuff on campus that you get in Manchester, Leeds or London."
There is nothing inevitable about the demise of Scotland's Jewish community. However, the problem is captured well in the conclusion of the Collins-Borowski essay for the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs: "The key issue for Jews in Scotland is the maintenance of Jewish identity in an open society where, until recently, antisemitism has hardly featured. With few younger Jewish activists around, the problems of providing a Jewish environment for the Scottish Jews who remain will become acute."
MARJAH, Afghanistan – Crouched on packed earth at a barricaded Marine encampment, the village elders issued their complaint: U.S. troops had killed an innocent 14-year-old boy. Secretly, the Marines didn't believe them. No matter. They apologized, called the death a tragedy and promised to offer a condolence payment to the boy's family.
It's all part of a strategy that sometimes involves swallowing their pride in an effort to persuade wavering Afghans to turn away from the Taliban.
Since U.S., Afghan and NATO forces wrested Marjah from the Taliban, they've been going to extraordinary lengths to cultivate townspeople who had lived under insurgent control for years. That's a tall order in a place where many Taliban fighters still hiding here are from Marjah — supported or at least tolerated by the surrounding communities.
Winning over the population, including former Taliban fighters, is considered more important than hunting down insurgents. The strategy is expected to serve as a model for a bigger operation planned for later this year around Kandahar, the largest city in the south.
In order to make the locals happy, the Marines use money everywhere it seems like it can buy a little goodwill. Shopkeepers are paid for locks broken in the fighting and farmers for damage to their fields when helicopters land.
Marines have disbursed more than a quarter million dollars in battle-damage payments in central Marjah alone, said Maj. David Fennell, head of a group of civil affairs Marines handling the disbursements.
They're also trying to be careful about where they tread. The Marines moved a new battalion base out of an abandoned high school when residents complained they were living in a building that they should be for students.
Then they decided to shrink the new base to accommodate locals who were worried about its walls cutting off a footpath. When residents decided they wanted enough room for a vehicle to get through, they agreed to reduce the size of the base some more.
And sometimes the strategy involves accepting the word of village elders, some of whom may be Taliban sympathizers themselves, to keep the peace.
That's what unfolded Monday night as three Marine snipers hid knee-deep in water in a ditch, watching for militants at a spot where they'd found two bombs in the past week. The snipers saw people moving around a building believed to be an insurgent hideout. Then someone released dogs that charged them. [That jihadis would train and use dogs is very surprising to me]
In the middle of this, the snipers saw a male with a shovel and a yellow jug — the type insurgents use for bombs — on the roadside. They shot and killed him, then started taking rifle fire from a nearby building. The Marines rushed out of the area and made it back to their base.
Tuesday morning the elders arrived to complain. They identified the person who was shot as a boy trying to collect water for his mother.
Officers of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment apologized, describing the death as a tragedy and offering a condolence payment to the boy's family.
Not that they believed the elders.
"The kid looked taller than me. He appeared, not to be a kid," said Sgt. Ben Parker, a 24-year-old from Atlanta who was one of the three snipers and stands 5-foot-8 inches.
[...]
Sgt. Parker says he doesn't mind his commanders going out and apologizing for a shooting. He and the officers are sure they killed an insurgent.
"We haven't had any bombs in that spot since," Parker said.
...if antisemitism still exists in modern U.S. society, take a look at the user comments in any story remotely related to Israel, Judaism, Jews, or the Holocaust.
For example, how about the story of a Holocaust survivor who remembers Anne Franks telling stories to other young children-prisoners while they were being held at Bergen-Belsen?
By antisemitism, I don't mean criticism of Israeli foreign or domestic policy, or criticism of Israeli political leaders. I don't mean simply rooting for the "Palestinians".
I'm talking about foaming at the mouth rants about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I'm talking about claims of "The Jews" controlling the media, the banks, and the U.S. government. I'm talking about referring to Jews as "Jesus killers" or "Hebes".
I'm talking about hundreds of such comments. Page after page after page.
No, these comments are not an accurate representation of the beliefs of the average U.S. citizen. But they also cannot be dismissed as a few lone crackpots.
Illumina has sequenced actress Glenn Close’s complete genome to provide insight to her family’s history of mental illness.
Illumina has sequenced the complete genome of award-winning actress Glenn Close, making her the first woman to announce to the public that she has had her DNA sequenced.
Using Illumina’s Genome Analyzer technology, Close’s DNA was sequenced, to a depth greater than 30×, to provide information on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variation. According to Illumina, over 95% of the genome was reported, including over 12 million genotype labels on previously documented SNPs.
“We are excited to work with Glenn Close to produce the first named female sequence,” Jay Flatley, president and CEO of Illumina, said in a press release. “We are entering a new era in genomic health where information from an individual’s genome will increasingly inform lifestyle decisions and ultimately assist with health management.”
Close, who is best known for her role in the 1987 movie “Fatal Attraction,” decided to have her genome sequenced because her family has a history of mental illness. She says she believes it could be due to “genetic underpinnings.”
Close is a co-creator of BringChange2Mind, a non-profit organization that provides support and information to those with a mental illness and their families. The organization aims to erase the stigma attached to mental illnesses by providing easy access to information about mental illnesses.
“As human sequencing becomes increasingly routine, my hope is that researchers will unravel the genetic aspects of mental illnesses to bring greater awareness about the disease,” said Close.
To solve these genetic mysteries, Illumina is developing a social community among those who have had their genomes sequenced. Participants can exchange information and extract their personal genome sequence data to better understand their identity. In addition to this service, the company is also launching a network of partners, which will include physicians and genetic counselors, to discuss the sequencing process, order the service, collect DNA samples, and deliver final sequencing data to consumers.
Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post , 
