Just a five-minute walk from Ground Zero, the Pace University "mindcrimes" controversy continues. LGF linked to this Democracy Project post earlier today:

Hate Crime Arrest for Desecration of a Koran

Democracy Project director Winfield Myers alerted me to the news about the recent arrest of a man for desecrating the Koran at Pace University as it was picked up by LGF:

NEW YORK (AP) A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said. Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said.

I have been involved over the past year battling the censorship and outrages of the film police at Pace, where the administrators caved in to Muslim Student Association’s pressure and threatened police action against Hillel if they showed the film Obsession. This brings us back to the starting point of this drama last year when a Koran was found in a toilet, as reported in the news at the time:

NEW YORK (AP) - A lower Manhattan college is investigating how a paperback copy of the Quran from the campus library ended up in a public toilet, school officials said Tuesday. The discovery at Pace University was among three separate incidents in the past two weeks involving vandalism with racial or religious overtones. In the other two, racial slurs were scrawled on a student’s car parked at a satellite campus in Westchester County and on a bathroom wall at the downtown campus.

These incidents fueled the MSA to pressure the administration to shut down the Pace Hillel events. After these incidents the Council on American-Islamic Relations jumped into the act holding a town meeting at Pace University to combat “Islamophobia.” The administration appeased them by changing the designation of the Koran incident from “vandalism” to “hate crime” and referred it to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit. This has presently resulted in the arrest of Stanislav Shmulevich to the cheers of CAIR and it's not known whether or not he's a student and no further evidence in the arrest has been offered at this point. Justice has been served in the eyes of those who are determined to see Sharia law prevail.

The other incidents “with racial or religious overtones” at Pace University were swastikas painted on a bathroom wall and on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the desecration of a Menorah on campus and other vicious antisemitic attacks which never rose to the level of hate crime, nor should they so along as burning the American flag is free speech and the photograph Piss Christ was the winner of "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. However, this demonstrates clear evidence of a double standard lurking at Pace, throughout academia and trickling down throughout the body politic where Muslims and certain identity groups get preferential treatment while others are spurned.

As this news story unfolds, Stanislav Shmulevich, whether a student of Pace or not, should seek legal representation to overturn this outrageous violation of his constitutional rights. There is no right in a democracy not to be offended although the threats and bullying tactics of CAIR and MSA have forced the hand of Pace administrators and New York’s Police Department to do their sinister bidding.

— Phil Orenstein  | Jul. 29, 2007 | 5:54 PM

Amiri Baraka is listed in today's NY Sun calendar under "POETRY—Literary Giants."  He'll be giving a reading at Central Park SummerStage thanks to the City Parks Foundation.

One of Baraka's more infamous poems is "Somebody Blew Up America."

The Anti-Defamation League's excoriation of both poem and poet is here.

His "essay" in response to the ADL is here.

Personally, I'd rather eat a toe cheese sandwich on moldy bread than be at a Baraka performance.

Gordon Brown will use his first formal talks with George Bush to urge a massive cultural offensive against Islamic extremism.

He is set to urge America to learn from the Cold War and mount a battle of ideas rather than rely on military might alone.--from this news item

This "massive cultural offensive" is, because it is based on a deep misunderstanding of the nature of Islam and ignorance of the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, going to be futile, and sinisterly, dangerously, time-wasting, attention-squandering, futile. Lots of government money will be thrown the way of the Khaled Abou el Fadls and Fawaz Gergeses and a Mustafa Akyol or two, and the farce of "Islamic reform" -- oh, there will be plenty to go round, for solemn conferences and the starting up of "institutes" on "European Islam" and "American Islam" and "the challenge of pluralism in a changing world" and so on. God, sign me up. I want some of that money for myself. Oh, I forgot. There is no chance that any of that money available to Bright Young Muslim Reformers and Their Friends (even now Noah Feldman is figuring out how he can thrust himself forward, and become the head of something or other).

Yet again, Islam -- the Islam that any defector from Islam can tell you about, or any truth-telling Muslim (they tend to be the thickest or truest of true believers, disbelieving only in the need to sweeten the message for Infidels), that is -- any Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Ali Sina or Ibn Warraq, or indeed practically any of the others who signed that St. Petersburg Declaration, or for that matter any Western scholar of the old, truth-telling, unassailable school, the school of Snouck Hurgronje, Lammens, Vajda, Schacht, and a hundred others, now carefully being hidden from students by the ernsts and espositos who craft those syllabi as artfully and cunningly as they can.

There is a propaganda war to be conducted. But it would require learning about, and taking careful note of, the main features of Islam:

First, its division of the world between Believer and Infidel and its inculcation of hostility, and teaching that a permanent state of war exists, between Believer and Infidel, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.

Second, the inculcation of the duty of Jihad, at times collective and at other times also individual, a Jihad that may, but need not, be conducted by military means, but can also be conducted by the use of the money weapon, by propaganda ("pen, tongue"), by campaigns of Da'wa, by demographic conquest.

Third, the various ways in which Islam limits political freedom and favors despotism, opposing in its essence the very notion of the free individual, who must instead be a willing slave of Allah, and of the will expressed by Allah in the Qur'an (and glossed for most Muslims by the Hadith and Sira).

Fourth, the way in which Islam, with its inshallah-fatalism, limits economic development. Were it not for the accident of geology, that manna from under the earth, no Muslim society would be rich, and without the Jizyah of foreign aid, the oil-poor Muslim states would be even worse off.

Fifth, the way in which the habit of mental submission, encouraged by Islam at every step -- do not question Allah, do not question the behavior of Muhammad, the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, also naturally has other effects -- such as preventing the development of any tradition, or practice, of free and skeptical inquiry without which the enterprise of science, and indeed of ameliorating the variable and miserable condition of man, cannot conceivably take place.

Sixth, Islam stunts not only mental growth, but moral growth. In the permanently fixed mistreatment of women and all non-Muslims, it fixes the Muslim believer on a permanent lower plane of morality.

There is more. But not to be picked up, one supposes, by those who presume to rule us and who think they know best how to "deal with Islam."

God, they don't.

#19321: The famous greek paper cup has been around

since 1963. Currently, over 180,000,000 per year are

carried out of New York delis full of hot coffee.

Jason Nisse writes in The Telegraph about Password Hell, and tells us why a dongle may not be the answer.

On an average day I need to remember umpteen different chunks of otherwise useless information. I turn on my mobile phone - it needs a password. I get to work and my computer needs a password. At a former job, my computer needed two passwords, one of which had to be changed every month and could not have any characters in common with the previous month's password.

Like many people in Britain, I have two bank accounts. One needs a five-digit number and a password; the other a six-digit number and a memorable place name. I have an online savings account that needs a different password from the password for my bank account.

I could also check my credit card account, but that needs a different password entirely. The same is true for my mortgage account and my mobile phone bill. Some of these passwords have numbers in them, some don't. Some have to have capital letters, some don't work if you use capital letters.

Even if you never use a computer, you can be hit by the password overload. Look in your wallet. You probably have four or five credit and debit cards. In these days of chip and pin, these are virtually useless if you do not have the magic four-digit numbers.

The banks tell you not to have the same number for all your cards. Give me a break. Am I going to carry five different random four-digit numbers in my head? After all, I'm not Good Will Hunting...

Some of the high street banks are starting to offer customers a "dongle", which is a portable password device that plugs into your computer. This is essentially an electronic version of writing the password down on a piece of paper, though it is supposedly secure from hackers.

The problem is that dongles cost money and if the one your bank gives you doesn't let you store other websites' passwords, you could end up carrying a dozen dongles in your pocket.

And it wouldn't do go go fumbling around in your pocket only to whip out a dud dongle. I have two basic passwords for everything; one is a word, and one a set of digits. All my other passwords are variants of these two. This seems to work, whatever the experts say. And I have no need of a dongle.

A reader commenting on this piece makes the point that if a password is too complicated, any gain in security will be lost as the user will be unable to remember it and will write it down.

I've just had a thought. To make your password easy to remember, simply change your name to match it. From now on, I wish to be known as rJg_90xf.

The word  "crisrixian" is nothing more than the invented insect of an hour, prompted by a temporary need to describe the tribe of those who are deeply, even at times worshipfully, attentive to the words of Bob Dylan. It has no other uses, save one joking appearance to identify the author of "Keats and Embarrassment," who is distinctly unblushing, even when asking Samuel Beckett to autograph a briefcase's worth of his books, one after the other -- and Beckett kindly complied. But that's about it. Not meant for general circulation.

But "polypragmonic" -- from "polypragmosyne" -- might, according to Mary's definition, fit. Or "vectensian." Or several others that appear with similar unwonted frequency.

"Polypragmosyne" exists in Greek, and I have already given -- possibly at another retrievable place --  the reference to the article about it in the anthology by Michael Crawford and David Whitehead, "Archaic and Classical Greece." But while the concept, the "busybodiness," comes up elsewhere -- for example in William Arrowsmith's discussion of Aristophanes appended to his own translation of "The Birds" (it might be found in a back issue of "Arion"), a feat even more remarkable than the version by John Hookham Frere -- I don't think anyone has Englished "polypragmosyne" -- and certainly not presented it in the adjectival form "polypragmonic" -- as I have. Unless other evidence is presented, I claim the English (non-tolfraedic -- another possible "signature word" ) coinage.

"Vectensian" for god's sake is simple, and everyone on the Isle of Wight knows what the word means. It comes from the Latin (recall, please, the section on "Romans in Britain" in the history syllabus -- or has that too fallen out?) "Vectensum." Well, no, in fact the toponym supplied by the steady Romans when they shook the world was "Vectis," but we may wilfully substitute the more pleasing, because sturdier-sounding,  "Vectensum." An ebay bidder uses the name "Vectensian." There is a species of sea life -- the star sea anemone, an experimental work-horse harnessed for scientific farrowing like mighty Drosophila before it, the taxonomic Latin for which preserves the fact that its first described examples were found enjoying the habitat of brackish pools on the Isle of Wight: Nematostella vectensis. Two years ago I bought a volume of Vectensian verse, bought it, in fact, for its title:  "Vectensian Verse." The high point, naturally, of that liber vectensis was the contribution by John Keats who, in his temporary villeggiatura on the Isle of Wight, an island not then even the tiniest bit akin to the English equivalent of Martha's Vineyard or Ile de Re, wrote verse that some local loyalists might therefore insist on calling  "vectensian." I wouldn't, except that the adjective is irresistible. I don't remember what it was he wrote there. Possibly part of "Endymion."

So, while "vectensian" is not mine,  I like the word, I like its sound. Lugdunum. Mediolanum. And Vectensum. Long live the Roman Empire, or what's left of it.

Rod Liddle again:

Flying saucers have been spotted circling the night sky above Stratford-upon-Avon. A collection of bright lights hovered over the town and began darting back and forth.

This phenomenon was spotted at 10.36pm outside the One Elm pub, by some people who had been drinking all evening inside the One Elm pub. The light show continued until just after last orders. No official explanation has been forthcoming but we may, using the information above, grope towards a sort of unofficial explanation at least.

Or maybe not, because on Friday Nasa revealed its astronauts occasionally set off in rockets pissed out of their skulls. So we have another possible explanation: that a bunch of inebriated astronauts had messed up the controls of their craft and mistaken Warwickshire for a celestial body, maybe Saturn’s arid, chilly moon Hyperion, or an undiscovered planet.

So what’s it to be? A bunch of paralytic people in the sky looking down and saying to one another: “What the hell’s that?” Or a bunch of paralytic people on the ground looking up and saying: “What the hell’s that?” Or neither? Or both?

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times:

Shambo, the sacred Hindu bull, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday night and reincarnated the next morning, quite possibly as a member of the Welsh assembly or indeed a spiteful Welsh farmer. The gods have always had a sense of irony.

There were fervent protests across the Hindu world but the Skanda Vale sect, which both harboured and revered Shambo, was rather more sanguine. One monk said: “This will simply add to the drama of his life cycle and he will come back again.” In which case, what was all the fuss about?

I still find it difficult to understand what threat Shambo posed to anyone or anything, despite the probability that it was afflicted with bovine tuberculosis. It did not lead the life of an ordinary bull, few of which get to live in a temple surrounded by chanting human supplicants...

Our agriculture officials wear hobnailed boots and carry a humane killer, as we might recall from the last outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Nothing, these days, is permitted to transgress health and safety rules and regulations, in agriculture as elsewhere - certainly not anything so recherché as common sense. It does not matter any more how remote the threat to public health may be, nor how palpably absurd and injurious the stipulations imposed....

But I wonder too if the members of the assembly would have dared to make their decision if it were Muslims rather than Hindus who chose to revere cattle? And what would have happened if they did? [....if they had -M. J.]  By now there would be priests set alight from Jakarta to Rabat, effigies burnt, fatwas issued. Cardiff airport would be missing an international departure gate.

The assembly would probably have come up with a compromise: okay, the bull lives but it has to wear a burqa when it goes out. I suppose Britain’s Hindus can console themselves with the thought that having their sensibilities trampled on suggests they are a community with whom the rest of us feel at ease and can thus victimise with impunity.

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom writes:

Twenty-three year old Stanislav Shmulevich awaits arraignment on hate crime charges for “criminal mischief and aggravated harassment,” accused of having hurled Korans into toilets at Pace University’s Manhattan campus, 10 months ago. This past October 13, according to police, a teacher discovered a paperback Koran in a second-floor bathroom toilet, while on November 21, a student found another submerged Koran in the same bathroom.

The now disproven  Guantanamo Bay Koran flushing incident of May, 2005—reported errantly by Michael Isikoff, a veteran Newsweek journalist—was a distressingly stupid spectacle, accompanied by a tragic outcome—the loss of human life. Rioting which originated in Afghanistan, spread throughout much of the Muslim world, from Gaza to Indonesia. Rancorous Muslim mobs shouting “Protect our Holy Book!” burned down government buildings and ransacked the offices of relief organizations in several Afghan provinces. This senseless violence caused at least 15 deaths, and injured scores of others.

Another false accusation of Koran desecration by non-Muslim infidels—with even more horrifying consequences—a brutal pogrom against the defenseless dhimmi Jews of Shiraz, Iran—took place in October, 1910. David Littman has provided the full translation of an Alliance Israélite Universale report of the 1910 Shiraz pogrom which was precipitated, in large part, by a mendacious allegation against the Jewish community: desecrating copies of the Koran by placing them in cesspools (latrines).

…about three weeks ago, some scavengers were busy cleaning out the cesspools of a Jewish house when they brought to light an old book, a few pages of which were unsoiled and which was recognized as a Koran…On the first day of the festival of Succoth, some Jews were returning home from synagogue in the morning when they noticed at the entrance of their house a veiled Muslim woman holding a parcel under her arm. As soon as she saw them approaching, she hurriedly threw her parcel into the cesspool…then she ran away. The parcel was hastily pulled out. Once again, it was a Koran…not sure, in effect, that other Korans had not been thrown, likewise as the first ones, into Jewish houses without the knowledge of their inhabitants…it was  [deemed] prudent for this dignitary [the leading Muslim religious leader of the city] to be informed, in case one of these books should be discovered and seized on as a pretext to molest the Jews. [emphasis added]

This appeal was to no avail, and in the ensuing carnage and destruction,

Not a single one of the Jewish quarter’s 260 houses was spared. [emphasis added] Soldiery, …sayyids [descendants of the prophet and/or Muslim dignitaries], even women and children, driven and excited, less by religious fanaticism than by a frenetic need to plunder and appropriate the Jews’ possessions, engaged in a tremendous rush for the spoils. At one point, about a hundred men from the Kashgaīs tribe, who were in town to sell some livestock, joined the first assailants, thereby completing the work of destruction. 

But these fanatics weren’t satisfied to rob the Jews of their possessions. They engaged in all sorts of violence against their persons. As soon as their quarter was stormed, the Jews fled in all directions, some to the houses of Muslim friends, others to the British Consulate, on to the terraces, and even into mosques. A few remained to try and defend their property. They paid for it with their lives or a serious injury. Twelve of them were killed in this way in the mêlée. Another fifteen were stabbed or hit with bludgeons or bullets from rifles or revolvers; they are in an alarming condition. A further forty sustained light injuries. An unlucky woman was wearing gold rings in her ears. A soldier ordered her to surrender them. She made haste to comply and had taken off one of the rings and was trying to remove the other when the impatient fanatic found it more expeditious to tear off the ear lobe together with the ring. Another woman was wearing around her neck a big silk braid to which was attached a small silver case containing some amulets…[an assailant] tried to snatch it from her and, seeing that the braid held, cut it with his knife, making at the same time a deep gash in the flesh of the unfortunate Jewess. How many more such atrocious scenes have occurred, of which I have not yet heard!

In short the outcome of yesterday’s events is as follows: 12 people dead and about 50 more or less seriously injured, whilst the five to six thousand people comprising Shiraz community now possess nothing in the world but the few tatters they were wearing when their quarter was invaded. [emphasis added]

While there appears to be solid evidence that Stanislav Shmulevich did in fact subject a Koran (or Korans) to “toilet trauma”—including a surveillance photo of the defendant leaving a Pace University meditation room where Korans were stored, and his reported “admitting statements” to police—“Muslim activists”, i.e., the ubiquitous unindicted co-conspirators of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), admonished the university to “crack down on hate crimes” following the original incidents. But as Robert Spencer observed, aptly,

No one, of course, is calling upon those “Muslim activists” to take a strong stand against those Muslims who are justifying violence on the basis of the Koran and thereby [may] lead people [like Stanislav Shmulevich] to come to despise the book.

As described by the late Indian scholar Sita Ram Goel, Koranic sanctioning of violence and hatred was the subject of a formal Petition filed in the Calcutta High Court on March 29, 1985.  The plaintiffs maintained that the Koran, in violation of the Indian Penal Code, incited violence, disturbed the public tranquility, promoted feelings of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities, and insulted other religions or the religious beliefs of other communities in India.  Their request for proscription of the Koran included three “annexures” documenting such Koranic injunctions, and divided into the following three categories: 

• verses which preached cruelty, incited violence and disturbed public tranquility (i.e., 2:193; 8:39; 2:216; 9:41; 9:123; 66:9; 9:73; 8:65; 8:66; 47:4—15; 8:12; 69:30—33; 8:15—18; 25:52; 9:39; 9:111; 3: 169—171; 4:100; 48:29; 49:15; 2:154; 3:157—158; 8:59—60; 9:2—3; 9:29; 8:67; 4:84; 29:6; 29:69; 61:9—13; 9:36; 9:5; 9:14; 9:20—22; 4:95—96; 8:72—74; 3:142)
• verses which promoted, on grounds of religion, feelings of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities in India (i.e., 4:101; 60:4; 58:23; 9:7; 8:13—14; 8:55; 25:55; 5:72; 9:23; 9:28; 3:28; 3:118; 4:144; 5:14; 5:64; 5:18; 5:51)
• verses which insulted other religions as well as the religious beliefs of other communities in India (i.e., 5:17; 4:157; 5:116—118; 98:6; 68:8—13; 38:55—57; 22:19—21; 22:56—57; 5:36; 15:2; 72:14—15;41:33; 4:125; 25:27—29; 26:96—99; 3:85; 8:38; 31:13; 29:41—42; 37:22—25; 37:26—32; 25:17—19; 7:173; 21:66—67; 21:98—100; 16:20—21; 6:22—23; 6:40—41; 6:148; 2;221; 24:3)

The Indian plaintiff’s “Calcutta Koran Petition” was ultimately dismissed on a legal technicality June 21, 1985, but the intervening 22-years make clear that such Koranic motifs continue to pervade Muslim discourse across the globe, from major jihad terror organizations (like Hamas, Hizbollah, and Al Qaeda), to the leading Sunni and Shi’ite institutions of religious training, and even within the public school systems (both religious madrassas, and even more “secular” learning environments) of Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries. Perhaps the most salient and disturbing illustration of these ominous trends is found in the writings and pronouncements of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who wrote in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred (Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Qur’an and the Traditions], originally published in the 1970s, and then re-issued in 1986/87):

[The] Qur’an describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah (2:61/3:112), corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places (3:69/3:78), consuming the people’s wealth frivolously (9:30), refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do (4:156/4:151/3:110), and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness (2:96)…only a minority of the Jews keep their word (2:78/3:24)….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not. (Qur’an 3:113)

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope—the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, Sunnis representing some 85% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs”, the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews, or “dialogue” with Jews (just below), make clear.  

…anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward.  My stance stems from Allah’s book [the Qur’an], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews…[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah.  I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., from above, in Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna]

Western discourse must move well beyond condemnation of clumsy acts of disapproval, such as Koran flushing, and their aggressive prosecution under pressure by Muslim avatars of real hatred, and abettors of murderous jihad terrorism, such as CAIR—to more fundamental and unnerving questions: What role do Koranic injunctions themselves—eternal and beyond criticism (least of all by non-Muslims)—play in inciting “criminal mischief and aggravated mischief”, and much more heinous crimes against humanity, including jihad genocide, and the destruction of non-Muslim religious, cultural, and political institutions?

Boy, it ain't easy to stay ahead in the Chicken Little business.  No sooner do I post a comment about how we are at last, really and truly, after 50-odd years of predictions, running out of oil, than Niall Ferguson rolls up to tell us we are at last, really and truly, after 200-odd years of predictions (i.e. since Rev. Malthus) running out of FOOD.

This arms deal, $20 billion to Saudi Arabia, is supposedly prompted by "fear of Iran." But this is nonsense. It is a sign of complete mental exhaustion and utter confusion by those who presume, obstinately still ignoring the nature of Islam, incapable of thinking in world-historical terms and only of this particular time and only about the Middle East (the main threat is not in the Middle East, the main threat comes from the Money Weapon that supports Da'wa and demographic conquest by providing the wherewithal for mosques, and madrasas, and Islamic propaganda, aided by Muslims and non-Muslim Western hirelings and unpaid ideological collaborators prompted either by anti-Americanism or antisemitism -- to disarm European opposition to a burgeoning Muslim presence). 

That Money Weapon comes from Saudi Arabia and the rich Arab sheikdoms and sheiklets, and it is these which are about to be offered advanced weaponry, in an act of supreme folly for which the most absurd and transparent rationales will be, are being, offered (does anyone think that the Saudi regime will really be threatened by Iran's armed forces?) Isn't the threat only one of disturbances by local Shi'a in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, and possibly Yemen? What would rockets and missiles, with the latest technology, do about that threat? And isn't it true that the Saudis themselves will not be capable of using such weapons, but that a free-floating international group of Sunni warriors (possibly even Iraqis) can manage to master some of the technology, and that it is folly to pretend that Israel will not be the immediate victim of - and certainly have to spend much of its time worrying about, war-planning for the use of such weapons by freelance jihadists (and will the same Administration, or others, really expect Israel, given the forces now to be supplied with every conceivable modern weapon -- Egypt to its west, and Saudi Arabia and all of those smaller Gulf states to its south and east, and who knows how long it would be for Jordan, or assorted "Palestinian" groups, their appetite only to be whetted by further Israeli territorial surrenders, in or out of Jordan, or Syria, its regime to be "won" away from the Iranian Shi'a "axis,"-- to quietly acquiesce?) The Saudis will plausibly --- oh, whatever Saudi Arabia says immediately becomes plausible in the minds of policymakers in Washington, who have been throughly corrupted and brainwashed by decades of Aramco propaganda followed by decades of money being handed out right and left, directly and indirectly finding its way to the pockets of the well-connected, of both parties -- and not only from the egregious smiler Prince Bandar (who apparently barges into top-secret war-planning sessions with impunity, and Saudi generals even now are self-assuredly walking the halls of the Pentagon -- and have been for the past year or more, no doubt discussing that "arms sale") -- make the case that these arms are needed for self-defense and to shore up opposition to Iran.

Saudi Arabia, or rather the Al-Saud, may or may not worry about local Shi'a threats. But there is no conceivable threat of Iran crossing all of Iraq, and the western desert of Iraq, into Saudi Arabia (Saudi volunteers now go to Syria in order to enter Iraq). It's a false worry, and the Administration, incapable of coming to grips with the problem of Islam, incapable of seeing Saudi Arabia not as an "ally" but as an enemy, an enemy in the end far more dangerous, if the menace is understood to be not local but world-wide, to Infidels, than Iran is or every could be.

Iran is a threat to Saudi Arabia only because of the local Shi'a populations. Fine. Let those populations be a source of permanent anxiety to the Al-Saud, to the Al-Sabah, to the Al-Khalifa, and all the others. We don't need, we shouldn't even desire, stability in those countries. We want the Saudis to feel under threat, preferably the kind of threat that involves other Muslims. We do not want them to manipulate us-- my, how easy it is for them -- into supplying weaponry which only a fool would pretend will always be in "safe hands."

First, there is always the possibility of the Al-Saud falling in Saudi Arabia, and something even worse coming along. Second, there is always the possibility of elements within the Saudi military managing to gain control of some of this weaponry and passing it off to others, outside Saudi Arabia. Third, there is the question of technical knowhow, and of what China, a country now courting Saudi Arabia, learning about American weapons foolishly being given to a country such as Saudi Arabia. Does anyone think the Saudis would hesitate a minute to allow the Chinese to inspect such weapons if they thought it served their purposes? Or if could weaken the Camp of Infidels, and the Americans at its head? Oh, but Americans will be there, to make sure it doesn't happen? Really? So it is inconceivable that overnight the Saudis could order the American military advisers and overseers out, the way Khaddafy ordered them out, and took over Wheelus Air Base in Benghazi, after his coup in 1969? Just not possible? And isn't it possible that those American advisers, or some of them, might under the inducement of fabulous sums, manage to become Muslims, and to enter the service of the Saudi government, perhaps secretly, perhaps overtly, sharing weapons-systems secrets on maintenance and use? None of that, really, is conceivable?

And if Saudi Arabia, Qatar (the supporter of Al-Jazeera, an organ of enemy propaganda every bit as much as Radio Berlin or Radio Tokyo were), Kuwait, the Emirates are all to receive American weaponry (you can hear it now, can't you: the bleating voices in unison telling Congress "but if we don't sell them they will turn to the Chinese") and the members of Congress not being able to see right through that hollow threat, for in the end the only force that the rich Arabs can rely on --until the Chinese navy starts patrolling the Straits of Hormuz, which is not happening in the next 5-10 years at least -- is the United States.

The American government should do nothing to curry favor with Saudi Arabia. What it should be doing is on every occasion reading the Saudis the riot act.

And the one thing that the Saudis must do has nothing to do with cosmetic visits by the Arab League to Israel. No, Saudi Arabs cannot be expected to give up their ardent desire, a desire shared by almost all Arab Muslims -- to eliminate the Infidel state of Israel, (and, by the way, it is silly to expect that change of heart, but equally silly not to see through their transparent attempts to occasionally hint or pretend, purely for Western leaders, that they might, just might, accept a rump state, Israel in the 1949 Armistice Lines, without control of the Judean Heights or of aquifers on which Israel depends, thus the people of Israel being forced to live, in a dhimmi-state that will exist in a condition of permanent, maximum, utterly intolerable vulnerability, and slowly but surely emptied out of its threatened Jewish population, unable to stand living in such a situation).

When it comes to Israel, the right course is not to urge the Arabs to "change." They may pretend for the sake of furthering the Slow Jihad, but that has nothing to do with their unchangeable goals. Instead, the Americans (and the Europeans, if they could figure out that the menace to them and to Israel is not a different, but the same menace, prompted by the same texts, tenets, attitudes), should work to ensure that Israel remains, in its control of necessary territory (territory to which, it needs to be constantly repeated, it has legal, historic, and moral title, beginning with the precise terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, and what underlay that Mandate, and with the larger question of how non-Muslim minorities in Dar al-Islam are to be treated, are to be permitted some form of escape or liberation from their Muslim overlords and dhimmi condition, without simply becoming exiles permanently deprived of the right to their own homeland).

But there is something we can ask of the Saudis, or rather several things. One is that we make clear that in the end it is not the weaponry we sell (or, one hopes, do not sell) them, that will determine whether or not the "threat from Iran" grows -- while they at times seem to be deliberately exaggerating their worry over this "threat from Iran" (the Americans, you see, wouldn't understand or sympathize if the Saudis told the truth, and explained that what they are really worried about are internal problems with local Shi'a whom the Saudis have so mistreated, and intend to continue to mistreat, for they know of no other way to deal with those they consider not to be full Muslims, or non-Arab Muslims -- a word of condemnation about Darfur, not to mention the 1.8 million black Africans who died in the southern Sudan at Arab Muslim hands, from Saudi Arabia? Don't be silly) -- but what matters is how America and the wider Infidel world deals with Iran.

By agreeing to sell these weapons, the American administration continues to base policy on what should by now have been understood to be a misunderstanding about Islam, about Saudi Arabia, and about the extent of the world-wide threat. When it comes to the campaigns of Da'wa and demographic conquest in the West, it is not Iran but Saudi Arabia that is the enemy. The Americans should not be signalling, with this weapons sale, that they have learned nothing and that they continue to regard Saudi Arabia as an "ally" or "staunch ally" (it never was, it never will be, for it cannot be --how can a state built on, that prides itself on, Islam ever conceivably be a true friend to Infidels?) It makes no sense. It shows a colossal, willful, dangerous misunderstanding still of Islam. And those who continue to hold such views are endangering the rest of us, the very people whom those in Washington are supposed to instruct and protect. But clearly, some of them cannot learn new tricks, new things, simply will not see Islam steadily and whole, will not take the time to study, with comprehension, the texts, nor the history of Jihad-conquest and mistreatment, everywhere, of the non-Muslims who were conquered.

And most fantastic of all is the inability to see the problem not merely as "terrorism" but as Jihad, Jihad conducted by means of various instruments. And if Jihad is the problem, if Islam is the problem, then the question in Iraq is not how to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" but, rather, how to use the situation in Iraq for the benefit of Americans and other Infidels, how, that is, to weaken the Camp of Islam.

And in Iraq, the answer should be, but apparently (to judge by the inability so far of others, the prominent ones, to recognize, and grasp, what has been written so often here) will not be, to allow the natural fissures within the camp of Islam to widen. The fissures, sectarian (Sunni and Shi'a) and ethnic (Arab and Kurd) in Iraq long predated the American invasion. It was criminally negligent for American policy makers not to see how the re-emergence of pre-existing sectarian and ethnic fissures, held in check only through the iron fist and state terror and intermittent mass murder employed by Saddam Hussein, was inevitable. And those Americans continue to overlook what should be obvious (this has been discussed at this website and JW since early 2004, with hundreds of postings devoted to this very subject, in an attempt to din it into the minds of visitors, in the hope that it would percolate outward, upward, downward, a tous azimuths) but must be told yet again that the fissures, the first one dating back to the first century of Islam, and the second -- the Arab mistreatment, including murder, of the Muslim but non-Arab Kurds, also dating back to early Islam --should be used, or simply allowed to exist, for our own purposes, for whatever its universalist pretensions, Islam was in fact then, and has remained ever since, a vehicle for Arab imperialism, linguistic, cultural, and political supremacism.

By allowing such fissures to be vividly on display in Iraq (and there is no chance, none, of the Sunnis ever acquiescing in their loss of Baghdad, loss of power in Iraq, to the "Rafidite dogs" the Sh'a; and no chance, none, of the Shi'a ever forgiving the Sunnis or not wishing now to keep the power that, by their numbers -- more than 60% of the population -- they are entitled to if head-counting, or purple-thumb counting, is to be the "democratic" basis of their government) the Americans will have not created a situation, but simply have stopped squandering resources trying to prevent what they should not be trying to prevent, but rather welcome.

And if the Kurds achieve more than local autonomy, and obtain an independent state, that will not only cause unsettlement among Iran's Kurds and other non-Persian minorities (and be far more effective in limiting Iran's mischief-making than all that weaponry that is supposed to be sold to the Saudis) but also do the same in Syria. There are ways for the Americans, the sole support of the Kurds, to extract a promises from the Kurds that whatever they do in Iran or Syria, they will make no territorial demands on Turkey; at the same time, the Americans should obtain from the Turkish army, which uses American weaponry, a promise not to act against Kurdistan, and in return the Americans will support, rather than deplore, any possible army action to protect Kemalism against the slow creeping islamization which only secular Turks, not naive outsiders, can sense the full danger of, and which they may need to act against, but will need the assurance of American (and European) understanding and approval. Kurdish independence, or the mere resisting by the Kurds of Arabs insistent on keeping the Kurds under Arab control, would be a useful example for the Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims, useful in raising, and emphasizing, and making the subject of great and constant official and unofficial attention, the question of Islam as a vehicle of Arab imperialism.

This topic needs to be stressed -- stressed in Indonesia, and in sub-Saharan Africa, and among the Berbers (in Algeria, Morocco, and in France), for 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arabs, and many of them, the most advanced intellectuals, keenly feel and deeply resent the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs, and wish to distance their own Islam (see the Pakistani lawyer who, leading the demonstrations against Musharraf, dares to state - a bit too optimistically, I'm afraid -- that "South Asian Islam" is not like "Arab Islam" and "Pakistan" is "not Saudi Arabia, not Kuwait"). The mere public expression of such a sentiment begins to get us closer to the theme that needs expression: Arab Supremacism Within Islam. For this will not only make it harder for the Arabs to dictate the most militant line to other Muslims, but may make some of that 80% of the world's Muslims more willing to consider that Islam has not done them any good, that they are not obligated to remain in thrall to the Arab-supremacist ideology of Islam. Once this theme is brought forth and raised at every forum, it will be hard for the Arabs, and non-Arabs alike, to deny the truth of this Arab supremacism. And if the Kurds can become the first non-Arab Muslims to successfully throw off the Arab yoke, this will be an important achievement for both non-Arab Muslims and for Infidels.

The second fissure, that between Sunnis and Shi'a, is to be found nowhere else with the forces so evenly matched. Everywhere else in Dar al-Islam, the Sunnis greatly outnumber (save in tiny Bahrain) the Shi'a, that they have not dared to win power. The only exception is Iran, where the situation is reversed. Within Islam the Shi'a constitute only 15% of the population, yet right now the Shi'a constitute 50% of the population around the Persian Gulf, with all of its oil and gas deposits. What that means is that the fight there is much more evenly matched, and that is a good thing, for our stake is not in stability but in constant strife within the Camp of Islam. Because of Islam itself, which encourages an aggressive and violent attitude, a worldview of Victor and Vanquished (not the Western world of intelligent compromise), a world where one makes agreements only in order to break them at the earliest opportunity, a world where every game is zero-sum and one is more interested in denying people of another tribe or group benefits, than in receiving them oneself. American soldiers who while in Iraq dealt with various aspects of "rebuilding" have recounted to me (and to others) the behavior, the incredible selfishness, the lack of any sense of a nation or much of anything larger than their own group, exhibited by all kinds of Iraqis. No, there will be no peace based on sweet-reasonableness for the Shi'a and Sunnis in Iraq. And co-religionists on both sides will send in money, matériel, volunteers.

And that is not to be deplored. That is to be welcomed.

What is not to be welcomed, what is to be deplored, is this massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It allows the Saudis to think that they can continue to treat us as they have, offering the thinnest veneer of support, all the time working malevolently, both the government and rich individual Saudis, to spread Islam and to weaken the civilization of the West, in Western Europe and North America. The Saudis are protected from Iran not by the weapons some foolishly think they should be sold but by American naval and other military forces. The way to “recycle petrodollars’ intelligently is not to sell Saudi Arabia the most advanced weapons that will make hellishly difficult the defense planning of permanently-imperilled Israel, the survival of which should be of major concern to all intelligent members of the Western world, and not only because of the complete moral collapse that permitting Israel to live in a permanent condition of such imperilment would cause, but what the weakening or ultimate disappearance of Israel (Pim Fortuyn’s last book was called “Israel, Fifty Years….And Then?”) would mean for Muslim triumphalism. For they sense not, as some fondly think would happen, that “good, we got rid of Israel and now we can be true friends of the Infidels without that business getting in the way” but rather, what would of course happen – “we finally did get rid of Israel, because we were patient and used all the instruments of Jihad with great cleverness. And we shall do the same with France and Germany and Spain and Italy and the Netherlands and Great Britain and Denmark and Belgium and Norway and Sweden. Yes, truly, after a centuries-long slumber Islam is On the March.”

No Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia (nor to any Arab Muslim regime), and certainly not to hostile treacherous malevolent Egypt, discovered by the Americans –have you forgotten? – to have been deeply involved in joint weapons development projects with the Iraqis. The Mubarak Family-and-Friends Regime, receiving more than $60 billion in American aid so far, has not fulfilled a single one of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords to end “hostile propaganda toward Israel and to encourage peaceful relations. Instead, Egypt has in its press and on television, become a world center of antisemitism, not least with a recent television series based on “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” As for the continued unpunished, and often officially-sanctioned, mistreatment of the original Egyptians, the Copts – is that behavior, too, to be rewarded rather than punished/? Are those who make policy simply terrified of cutting off aid to Egypt – that is, do they regard such aid as essential and to be continued, “lest the Egyptians react badly” – that is, lest Muslims who have chosen to regard the aid from Infidels as a tribute that is theirs by right, not to be interrupted, have chosen to regard it with the classic attitude of Muslims receiving the Jizyah from Infidels? Are we too, the donors, going to continue, when the rich Arabs have taken in ten trillion dollars since 1973 and Saudi Arabia alone now pockets nearly a billion dollars a day in entirely unmerited, undeserved oil revenues – to support the Egyptians and other Arabs, and not demand that they go with their requests for such aid to the rich Arabs, and especially to the Saudis?

What is wrong with those who make policy not only about the Middle East, but about Islam? Again and again they have shown themselves to be out of their depth. Carter and Brzezinski and the egregious Gary Sick (the “Iran expert” did nothing to support the Shah, and indeed Carter seemed to welcome as a fellow “man of faith” the Ayatollah Khomeini (and Carter hasn’t looked back since). Generations of policymakers chose to believe Aramco propaganda, a tale that, as J. B. Kelly once wrote (see “Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies” written in 1979), “the ghost of Scheherezade could not have bettered.” Even if the general ignorance of Islam needed a kick to come to an end, that kick was provided on September 11, 20001. The leaders and those in the media who have a responsibility to learn, ought to have been spending every available moment, not chopping wood outside Waco (Bush), or luxuriating in one of Berlusconi’s villas (Blair), nor reading the biography of some Great Man, but rather in learning about Islam, about its texts and tenets (and not from the armstrongs and espositos and tariq-ramadans and david-fontes), and about doctrines that are not muddied or ambiguous but clear, and based on immutable texts, and interpretive methods (“naskh” or “abrogation”) that only make the message for us, the Infidels, more aggressive, hostile and menacing.

In Islam, adherents are taught, are inculcated in the belief, that the world is divided uncompromisingly between Believers and Infidels, between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. A state of permanent war, though not necessarily open warfare, exists between Believers (Muslims) and Infidels (non-Muslims). Every available means must be used to further the cause of Islam, to engage in Jihad so that Islam dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule. The instruments need not be those of “terrorism” or even of combat or “qital”, but can be whatever comes to hand. At present “terrorism” is not the only or main instrument of Jihad; far more important than what Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri manage to do, is what the Saudis and other rich Arabs, either as individuals or through semi-private Islamic foundations, and through governments, institutions and their government, do in deploying the Money Weapon to support other Muslims, those living within Western Europe and North America, by paying for mosques, madrasas, propaganda, academic centers for the “study” of Islam or the Middle East, publications (Aramco World and other glossies sent to every library in the lands of the Infidels), full-page ads or whole supplements trumpeting the wonders of beneficent Saudi Arabia or the Emirates or Kuwait and their wise, Muslim rulers, and the marvels of Islam as demonstrated by, inter alia, skyscraper luxury hotels in Doha, and Qur’anic calligraphy in a museum in Kuwait. And then there are such groups as CAIR in every land, pushing and pushing the Muslim demands, the Muslim agenda to dismantle, step by step, whatever “obstacles” to the spread of Islam may exist, in the legal and political institutions, and social arrangements and understandings, of the local Infidels who are seen as only temporarily, and most illegitimately, in control of lands that are still part – but not forever, and not necessarily even for very long – of Dar al-Harb.

And finally, there are those well-financed and relentless campaigns of Da’wa, concentrating for the moment on the literally captive audiences that can be found in prisons (especially among blacks and other minorities to whom the appeal is made that Islam is an instrument of “social justice” – just look at the distribution of wealth and power in Muslim lands to disabuse yourself of that idea), and outside prisons, among all those who are disaffected, the psychically marginal (the John Walker Lindhs and Richard Reids and even the odd, Shi’a –loving Spiritual Searcher who stops his own private Spiritual Search bus at the stop marked “Islam” and descends, and the bus takes off, and he can never get back on again), and the economically marginal (aw-shucks good-country-people out of Nawfalk, Virgina Mahdi Bray et al.).

They have their war on the Infidels, their Jihad, down to a science. And we? What do we have? We have an Administration whose members have refused, simply refused, to learn about Islam and about Jihad conducted in Western Europe through means other than “terror.” We have an Administration that made plans to build a $600 million embassy complex, on the idiotic assumption, for which there was not the slightest evidence, that the Americans would remain welcome, as Mr. Big Brother, for decades to come in Iraq, for they never foresaw, those brilliant planners, what should have been obvious and was to those who took the trouble to learn about Islam, and to learn about the history of Iraq: that the Sunni-Shi’a split was deep, enduring, permanent, and that once Saddam Hussein was gone, the murderous humpty-dumpty who had a great fall (from the gallows) would not be around to put either himself, or the country, together again, with the glue that he provided of state terror and mass murder.

Yes, they have their war on us. And we? What do we have, what are we doing? What we are doing, after having spent $880 billion on Iraq, on trying to make the silk purse of Western, advanced democracy out of the immutable sow’s ear of Islam, that is having spent more on this colossal misadventure, a misadventure that was entirely avoidable had both those in power who have continued the war in Iraq, and those who deplore the war in Iraq but for all the wrong, rather than the right and convincing and unanswerable reasons that exist, to deplore that war, or rather to deplore continued American involvement in Iraq after February 2004 at the latest.

This is what we have. We have the proposal to give $13 billion in weaponry to our non-ally, permanently hostile Egypt (will that win us friends in Egypt? Will it win us “Egyptian cooperation”? “Cooperation” about what? About Sudan? About ending the Lesser Jihad against Israel, whether conducted by the Slow Jihadists of Fatah or the Fast Jihadists of Hamas?) What exactly will such support do? We have the proposal to sell $20 billion in advanced weaponry, to Saudi Arabia, the most malevolent and powerful supporter of the world-wide Jihad.

That’s what we have. That’s what Bush, and Rice, and Hadley, and Elliott Abrams, and the State Department, tutti quanti, have come up with as a brilliant way to “keep the Saudis closer” and make sure that they stay “our friends” and not a threat (but they are, they will always be a threat to non-Muslims). And, it is more than hinted, “if we don’t sell them the weapons” others – bad China, bad Russia -- will. This is the permanent rhetorical trump card and is utterly phony. For China or Russia have both been stout defenders of Iran’s nuclear project. And neither China nor Russia shows any signs of sending a fleet – of possessing a fleet capable – of remaining in and around the Persian Gulf, should the case really arise, to defend, if not the Al-Saud and Al-Thani and Al-Maktoum and Al-Sahab and Al-Khalifa, then the oilfields (which would not be hard to seize, far easier in fact to seize those right on the western side of the Persian – sorry, Arabian – Gulf – and to offload the oil onto tankers, the revenues being held in “escrow” (with a little something taken off the top to reimburse us – say, one hundred billion a year to start) for the cost of protecting not “our oil” but oil that oil-consumers everywhere rely on.

A new attitude toward Saudi Arabia needs to be displayed so that the Saudis stop funding the Jihad in Western Europe and North America. Offering to sell $20 billion dollars in the most advanced American weaponry is not the way to do it.

"Bosnian Muslims celebrate 600 years of Islam in their nation Saturday with a concert of spiritual music, a prayer for peace, and a gentle reminder to Europe: not all of the continent's Muslims are of immigrant origin."--- from this news article

The statement is wildly misleading. It may not necessarily be part of a studied campaign, but prompted by ignorance and innocence on the part of the locals, now defensive about Islam. That is, local Bosnian Muslims may not realize what Islam, in its essence, is like, may not realize how it was that their ancestors, mostly Serbians, succumbed, some at once, some slowly over time, as so many non-Muslim populations subjected to rule by Muslims did, to a mix of torment and blandishments (those "tax cuts" -- i.e., as Muslims exempt from the Jizyah, just as they were also free from having their young sons snatched from them, as non-Muslims in the Balkans had to endure the Ottoman devshirme). They may, these local Bosnians, have allowed themselves to believe that their version of Islam -- which is essentially the result not only of living among non-Muslims, but of having lived among non-Muslims for a century without the Ottoman Turks to back them up, that is without being able any longer to be part of a system in which Muslims could, and did, dominate and rule, and this has modified their behavior -- the same thing can be observed among some Muslims in Lebanon and in India -- so that they are not quite as militant in esse (though that is changing with the effect of the Muslim Arabs who have come to Bosnia over the past decade -- not all have been identified and removed) and because, in posse if not always in esse, it is Islam, its message semaphored and magnified by all the Western technology that Muslim propagandists engaged in their own war have appropriated, and exploited, to carry the message of Islam to three distinct groups: fervent Muslims who need to be persuaded to enroll in violent Jihad themselves; Muslims who are deemed insufficiently Muslim because of local conditions and histories (such as those in the Balkans) who need to become full-fledged Muslims in their observances and attitudes; Infidels, who need to hear the Call to Islam, that is be subject to Da'wa over the airwaves.

Many Bosnian Muslims choose not to recognize their own history, the disturbing facts, the steady pressure, that caused their own ancestors to become Muslims. Similarly, few Pakistanis or Indian Muslims dare to investigate at all the treatment of Hindus under Islam, a treatment that included the mass-murder of 60 to 70 million Hindus under Muslim rule, and the destruction of tens of thousands of Hindu temples and temple-complexes, and of Indian ways that left it, in Naipaul's phrase, a "wounded civilization" (with the Hindus helped to rediscover their own history by the supposedly imperialistic British -- see the forthcoming "The Defense of the West" by Ibn Warraq). They have, some of them, constructed a dream-world.

But they, and their intended audience, should know that the only reason there are Muslims in the Balkans is not because the message of Islam is just so...so convincing, so right, but because the Ottomans conquered the Balkans, and remained there, and inflicted on the Christian (and other non-Muslim) population the series of economic, political, and social disabilities, including the Jizyah (that "tax cut"), and the devshirme, that caused, over time, many to become Muslims.

Some Bosnian Muslims, the kind we like to call "moderate," would like to think that their practice, or rather, to a certain extent non-practice, of Islam is "the real thing." It isn't. The "real Islam," the Islam that explains the Bosnian S. S. Battalion (that was enthusiastically raised for Hitler by the Mufi of Jerusalem, Amin el Husseini), the recent destruction by local Muslims, in Bosnia and even more in Kosovo, of ancient Orthodox monasteries and churches, and the under-reported, steady stream of violence and murder directed at Serbian villagers (for every thousand articles on the atrocities of Serbians in the time of Milosevich, there is one about the atrocities not committed but rather suffered by, Serbian civilians subject to ways and means of killing that need not be dwelt on here).

The intent of the Muslims taking part in this farce is to show something that is untrue. It is an attempt, that is, to pretend that Islam came, somehow, perhaps spontaneously, to the Balkans, when in fact it was brought by Turkish warriors, engaged in the mass killing of all who resisted them and, once the Jihad-conquest of Christian lands and peoples was accomplished, the subjugation of such peoples to the rules of the game -- that is, to the Shari'a-rules that mandated a permanent state of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity --was complete.

Do these Muslims behind this celebration think that they can keep their own history, and the history of Islam, away from the prying eyes, the hearts and minds, of Infidels indefinitely? They can't. And the more some of them attempt to ignore the texts and tenets of Islam, and to suggest that their unobservant brand of Islam (itself becoming, under Arab influence, less common in the Balkans every day) represents some kind of "Islam" that unwary Infidels should put their faith and hope for the future in (think back, to what the Balkans were like for Christians in 1700, or 1800, or 1850). Perhaps now is the time to go back to the history books, to read about southern and central Europe (and the eastern Mediterranean), as it was being conquered by the Muslims. Think, for example, of what happened at Famagusta, when the Ottomans conquered it during the Cyprus War, in 1573. Or what happened, after all, in Greece. Think of the Bulgarian Wars, and what Gladstone wrote about the massacres of the innocent by "the Turk" in the 1870s, that so aroused European public opinion - not then captured by agents or collaborators of Islam, as is the case in too many newspapers, radio and television stations, today, so hellbent on miscomprehending and apologizing for the forces of Jihad, and incapable of even recognizing Jihad when it stands in front of them (think of Israel and the Lesser Jihad which is and always will be waged against it).

Islam, the texts of Islam, and the tenets of Islam, remain the bedrock reality with which non-Muslims must contend. They cannot allow themselves to forget either those texts and tenets, or the long history of Jihad-conquest and subjugation of every kind of non-Muslim, that means far more than this or that tiny group of most unrepresentative Muslims -- unrepresentative in time (for Muslims in the Balkans have had a century without Turkish enforcers, and have had to accommodate themselves to their more powerful non-Muslim neighborhood)--who, however, can at any point, if given the chance (and that is already being seen) change into more orthodox and observant Muslims -- that is to say, change from being "bad" to "good" Muslims which, for Infidels, is a change that is always dangerous, always "bad" rather than "good."

No, not all of Europe's Muslims are recent immigrants, because unlike the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula to the west, pushed back during the 500 years of the Reconquista, Islam in the eastern and southern part of Europe came later, thanks to the Osmanlis -- who were in Europe even before the final fall of Constantinople, for nearly a thousand years the first city of Christendom -- came later and lasted longer, and it was only in the 19th century that the Greeks, and then the Bulgarians, achieved their independence from Ottoman Muslim rule, and the Balkans as well.

What the history of the Balkans shows is what the history of Islam shows: under the pressure of enduring the status of dhimmis, non-Muslims over time will convert to Islam. And that is how islamization of local Serbs (and Croats) took place. Some succumbed, others didn't. The descendants of those who succumbed are what we call those Bosnian Muslims today who, oblivious of their own history, including the history of their own families and the conditions under which they must have converted to the conqueror's faith, and yet embarrassed by the image of Islam -- as well they might be -- are choosing to engage in an ahistorical celebration of something that we might all better deplore.

And the real model for the Bosnian Muslims is not the propagandist above, with the soothing Sufi music, and the scanting of just how those Muslims came to be.

No, the real model is the great movie director, the thoroughly intelligent and winning Emir Kusturica, who was born into Islam and who recently, in a public ceremony, was baptized in the Serbian Church. It was not so much a religious as a politico-cultural gesture, for as he said at the time, why should he, Emir Kusturica, pretend to be a Muslim when it was something forced by conditions on his ancestors 250 years ago? Why indeed?

Why should not Bosnian Muslims, now made aware of what Islam is all about, and not wishing to go down with the sinking ship of Arabs and Iranians, do a little "return to their roots" and throw off the lendings of the Turks? They could start, if they wished, by reading around in the literature of Jihad as it applied to the Balkans, and also to read Ivo Andric on the effect of Turkish rule on the culture of the Balkans, and especially on the Serbs.

One is not obligated, to forever stick with an Islam forced on one's ancestors -- not in the Balkans, and for that matter not in Pakistan.

The campaign above is possibly prompted by local Muslims embarrassed about the "Islam" of the immigrants, and who hope to promote this transparent "Islam-has-always-been-here, Islam-is-part-of-Europe" campaign that is being conducted, by others more sinister and powerful (e.g. Tariq Ramadan) in Europe to help persuade uncomfortable Infidels that their unsettling and disturbing experience with local Muslims, in France, in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, is not the main story. No, the main story is that Muslims have always "been part of Europe" (a foreign part, a part due only to conquest and the effects of conquest), and that soft Sufi mystical chants will folkloristically, summer-of-love-woodstockistically, drown out the chants, and calls to war against the permanent enemy of Islam, the Infidels, chants that come from minarets, and in mosques, and in madrasas, all over not only Dar al-Islam, but now from deep within Dar al-Harb as well.

The classic television prison comedy Porridge, written by and starring the late, great Ronnie Barker, came out in the Seventies, when censorship was stricter than it is now. As with so many comedies, notably Round the Horne, the constraints of censorship liberated the comic imagination. Unable to say the F-word, prisoners told each other to "naff-off", a phrase which has since passed into mainstream English. Much was unspoken and oblique, but nothing was lost.

In one episode, anti-hero Fletcher schemes to get his cellmate out of the way so he can be alone. His attempts to be alone are constantly and amusingly frustrated by a stream of demanding visitors. We all know why he wants to be alone. Nobody needs to spell it out.

Of all the extra-curricular activities that go on in prison, there is one in particular to which the authorities generally, and rightly, turn a blind eye. Indeed it was thought at one time to give you a blind eye, but that's another story. "Better out than in" is not a maxim I would generally employ in connection with prisoners, but as applied in this context - for avoidance of greater harm - it makes sense.

This sensible strategy was not enough for a female sheriff office's deputy by the unlikely name of Coryus Veal, who "witnessed" an act of self-indulgence in a prison cell in Broward County. (Now that's a name to conjure with if ever there was one.) The "offender" was twenty-year-old Terry Lee Alexander, who was sentenced to a further sixty days in jail, on top of the ten-year term he is currently serving for armed robbery. Jurors determined that a prison cell was a "limited access public place" and therefore that the prisoner had committed an act of indecent exposure.

I am hard-pressed to see the necessity for this. The attitude of the "witness" is astonishing - she was not forced to look, especially if it rubbed her up the wrong way. Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves, and peeping Toms - or Thomasinas - see no good. 

The prisoner's lawyer caused some consternation and sniggers when she asked the seventeen prospective jurors who among them had never indulged in this practice. We are told that "no hands went up". I wonder why that was.

Update: Having probed around a little I have discovered that in the UK a prison cell is deemed a private place. The matter arose in connection with the smoking ban. Smoking is banned in public places in Britain, but not in prison cells.

Fill in the blanks:

A ..... is just a ....., but a cigarette is a smoke.

The solution to this dilemma for non-Muslims and Muslims alike is for special, Muslim-only airlines, and all other airlines to be Muslim-free. That should keep the non-Muslims from contaminating, with their free and easy ways, Muslim rules, Muslim purity. And we, the world's non-Muslims, would be better able to control our own security. Of course some Muslims would attempt to sneak on board the airlines of non-Muslims, but at least with almost all of them banned, it would be easier to find and stop the few who tried to get aboard, for whatever reason. And Muslims can be more relaxed, with the kind of atmosphere they prefer -- women segregated, the domestic servants, essentially slaves, stuck one on top of another in a few rows in the back and fed the usual subsistence meals, while the men cavort in the front. Only problem: will non-Muslim call girls still be allowed aboard those private planes that assorted rulers (choose among the Al-Thani, Al-Maktoum, Al-Saud, Al-Sabah, Al-Whathave you) own and use -- those luxuriously-outfitted 747 "private planes" we hear so much about -- or will they, too, be off-limits?

I vote for placing those planes off-limits to all non-Muslims. That includes the pilots. Let only Muslim pilots fly Muslims.

This will also have consequences for the safety of the Muslim flying public, of course. Better them than us. The problem, after all, was caused entirely by followers of Islam. Let the inconvenienced be the Muslims, therefore, not the non-Muslims, and let those inconvenienced Muslims take their complaints to the source of their woes: Muslim terrorists, acting reasonably upon the texts of Islam.

Mahmoud Abbas, smarting from Fatah's defeat in Gaza by Hamas, is now cleverly out for a full-court "peace" press. He knows Bush has only eighteen months left, with the mess in Iraq (a mess whatever the American administration now does) -- and Bush the sentimentalist is apparently incapable of welcoming the internecine strife, or at least divisions, sectarian and ethnic, that were made inevitable by the removal of Saddam Hussein's iron grip, and that if allowed to fester, can only divide and demoralize and thereby weaken the Camp of Islam.

But Bush and Rice and Company are desperate for a "victory." And whenever a "victory" is needed, it's Peace Process Time in the Middle East. That's always good for all kinds of sentimentality, and exaggerated false hopes, and studied inattention to the dismal facts, including the central fact -- the unavoidable fact, the absolutely critical fact -- of Islam, and the impossibility of Arab Muslims ever, ever conceivably accepting the permanence of the Infidel (and what's still worse, Jewish) state of Israel. Peace treaties between Muslims and non-Muslims are always Truce Treaties, to be broken at the earliest opportunity. The refusal of American and Israeli leaders to read and find out about Muslim views on war and peace, to pretend that Majid Khadduri and everyone else who has studied the Law of War and Peace in Islam never wrote -- has Rice ever read, has the State Department ever circulated, the description by Khadduri of such treaty-making? Has Bush, has Cheney, have any of them read about, grasped the significance of, the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyyah that Muhammad made with the Meccans in 628 A.D., then broke that treaty just as soon as he could (in 630 A.D.), following his own prescription that "war is deception"?

Only a fool, a willful ignoramus, at this point, could seriously believe that if Israel makes further concessions these concessions will lead to, could possibly lead to, a permanent peace. It isn't possible. Only deterrence keeps the peace between Israel and all those conducting, by qital (combat), by terrorism, by economic pressure (the money weapon) of boycotts, by demographic pressure (those huge Arab families, so rapidly and deliberately outbreeding the Jews). It is only "Darura," that is the principle of Necessity, that can conceivably keep the peace.

Right now it is Necessity, Darura, that causes Mahmoud Abbas, that corrupt collaborator with Yassir Arafat, who nonetheless has been doing his best to imitate a mild-mannered casper-milquetoast of an accountant, to want so very quickly -- while a foolish and desperate Olmert, and a desperate and foolish Bush, for their own personal reasons wish to arrive at an agreement, any damn agreement, and why the sensible heads of those in Israel and America, the people who understand or can be made to understand the principles of Muslim treaty-making, and the clear doctrines of Islam on this score (it is a fantastic idea to believe that Israel yielding more territory to the Arabs can do anything at all, save whet their appetites -- after so many mistakes, in Iraq and elsewhere, mistakes that are always about the texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, the biggest mistake of all, the one that has been repeatedly made, by successive Israeli governments, may be -- unless the informed and the unswayable come to the fore -- about to make a mistake that will be the mere insect of an hour, giving Bush his little "victory" and Olmert his, but in fact endangering, possibly mortally, for all time to come, the people and state of Israel.

The Israelis do not deserve that. They do not deserve a government, or so-called "friends" elsewhere, willing to force a "two-state solution" that makes no sense, that flies directly in the face of the commands and demands of Islam.

Abbas, and the Slow Jihadists of Fatah want that Infidel aid in the biggest way, and want as well, as a first step, as much of the West Bank as they can get -- and with such permanently hopeful and uncomprehending naifs as now rule Israel, with Olmert at the helm, and his second-in-command Haim Ramon (such an enthusiast for the destruction of Israeli villages in Gaza, some built decades before the State of Israel came into existence), and finally, the terminally confused Tsipi Livni, he knows that the next year, when these people are still (unaccountably) in office, and when Bush will be desperate for a "victory," and when all the Arabs have tacitly agreed to be as outwardly full of sweet reason as they can, until the Muslim populations have another few years to be fruitful and multiply all over Western Europe (oh, they know exactly what they are doing, as they play for time, stall for time, in reaction to the shock of discovering that many in the United States, and even in Western Europe, are beginning -- despite the army of Western hirelings and the careful infiltration and takeover of so many "sources of information" such as academic centers and departments devoted ostensibly to the study of Islam and the Middle East. Right now the Saudis, for example -- see recent issues of "Aramco World" (always a good indicator), see the letters campaign from supposedly aw-shucks downhome American-as-apple-pie Muslims, see the barrage of Op/Eds, from Tariq Ramadan's serpentine hiss on up, or down, telling us that "European Islam" or "American Islam" will be so very different from the other kind -- the kind one sees all over the Lands of Islam, and always has seen -- without of course anyone ever satisfactorily explaining just how this "European Islam" or this "American Islam," based as it will be on the same immutable texts of Islam, those studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo, by the Islamic scholars of Saudi Arabia, by those mullahs and ayatollahs now running the Islamic Republic of Iran -- the texts that are the same,whatever the emphasis, read and memorized by Muslims everywhere, over the past 1350 years.

They are right now, temporarily, engaged in an act of smiles and wiles. And Mahmoud Abbas is no different. His goal remains, as of course it must remain, the disappearance of an Infidel sovereign state in the midst of Dar al-Islam. If he has to lie, briefly, to get it, of course he will. And even if, for some reason, he was not meretricious, but had had a conversion on the non-road to Damascus, it would mean nothing. Other Muslims, who do take their Islam seriously, would not follow him.

The decisions to be taken by the likes of Olmert and Bush are momentous. They may decide whether the Jewish state, built by the Jewish people who had to wait 200 years to rebuild the Jewish commonwealth, will live or die. If it dies, they will get no second chance. And the world's Christians, too, will be unlikely to have free access to Jerusalem, and the hearts and minds of Muslims will not have been "won" but rather, will swell with an ominous triumphalism that will be dangerous for what of the non-Muslim West remains.

The "Two-state solution" is a folly based on folly. Clearer minds and purer hearts are needed, in the government of Israel, and in the government of the United States.

If you put "crisrixian" into Google, it asks: "Do you mean Christian?" You probably don't, but it isn't for me to say. "Crisrixian" is Hugh's "signature word", not mine, and can be seen in action here. 

What is a signature word? Ben McIntyre explains, and argues that everyone should have one:

"ALMOST EVERY DAY I GO FOR A RUN down the bemerded pavements of North London,” Boris Johnson declared, announcing his candidature for London Mayor. Bemerded? We knew that he must mean fouled by dogs, but the word brought the reader up short for a moment, just as Johnson intended.

The word “bemerded” does not appear in the OED. Run it through Google and you get just 264 hits, most of them related to Boris himself, and the inquiry “Did you mean: bearded?” “Bemerded” appears in a translation of Rabelais, in a play by the weird occultist Aleister Crowley and a recent article by Christopher Hitchens. It has appeared in The Times only once in 222 years, as far as I can ascertain digitally, in a theatre review by Irving Wardle in 1989. Will Self managed to use it in 2001 when discussing the possible links between childlessness and avant-garde anomie: “It is hard to maintain the ultimate futility and purposeless of existence when you’re confronting a packet of wet ones and bemerded little bum.” That familiar old Nietzsche and the Nappies theory.

But mostly “bemerded” is a word that Boris has made his own. He has used it to describe the streets of Brussels, the streets of England, the streets of Islington and the Oxford cell floor where he spent the night after an evening boozing with the Bullingdon Club. And he was going to get it into his first official statement as mayoral candidate by hook or by crook. Rightly, for bemerded is his signature word, being at once slightly risqué in an antique way, gently self-mocking, and also rather clever.

Everyone should have a signature word.

[...]

"Part of the enjoyment of collecting unusual words is going on to use them in everyday conversation,” writes Christopher Foyle, in the introduction to Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words. A philavery is “an idiosyncratic collection of uncommon and pleasing words”, and few are better placed to be philaverists (I think I may have made that one up) than Foyle, the third generation of his family to operate Foyle’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road.

Foyle’s collection is splendidly bizarre, running from “abacinate”, meaning “to blind someone by putting red hot metal before their eyes” (the only recorded use of which is the lyrics of the 1986 song Angel of Death by the American thrash metal band Slayer) to “zoonist”, “someone who believes that nature as whole or natural objects are living beings”.

[...]

There is a tendency in public discourse to avoid uncommon words, for fear that they will sound pretentious. George Orwell’s prescription on writing simply has evolved into a refusal to write anything beyond the ken of the spell-checker, while politicians stick firmly to the well-trodden paths of vocabulary.

But before we hail Boris as the first political philaverist of modern times, let us pay tribute to John Prescott, who did not merely use words nobody else understood, but invented an entire language of his own.

Both in public and in private, I avoid the word "discourse", which for me is tainted with postmodernism and structuralism. I'm not sure whether it is a crisrixian word. I assume crisrixian refers to Christopher Ricks, who I think was at Cambridge at the time of McCabegate and who, as far as I know, is not a fan of structuralism and related nonsense. But I can't honestly say I know what it means, and Hugh will certainly not explain it.

As for my own signature word, as far as I know I'm the only person to use "binthood" in my discussion of the "dozy binthood" of western muslimahs. I hesitate to claim to have invented this term for fear of being googlethwarted. 

To find the limerick that begins "A geneticist living in Delft" you must "inquiringly take down from the shelf" Gershon Legman's study-cum-compilation of "The Limerick." And to find the one that  ends "And my god, it's a quarter to four" you must "read through Legman's ample lore."

As for the girl who was once from  Pawtucket (her name turned out to be Lulu), she's now billing herself-- as I recently discovered -- as being from from Nantucket, and is at present summering there with an equally shameless hedge-fund operator and tout. But keep all this under your hat. Because when Lulu's back in town, I'm going to make it a point to see her in all the old familiar places, and I don't want word of my intentions to be made known to anyone, and least of all to jealous Mr. Putzenkahl. So don't -- please don't -- tell Lulu.

Barry Rubin sends this in:

This comes from Ben Smith at The Politico where the video is posted of John Edwards delivering this diatribe about reporters (and other mysterious theys) who like to point out Edwards' vacuousness and who use his haircut obsession as an example:

This stuff's not an accident. Nobody in this room should think this is an accident. You know, I'm out there speaking up for universal healthcare, ending this war in Iraq, speaking up for the poor. They want to shut me up. That's what this is about. "Let's distract from people who don't have health care coverage. Let's distract from people who can't feed their children.... Let's talk about this silly frivolous nothing stuff so that America won't pay attention."

They will never silence me. Never.

If we don't stand up to these people, if we don't fight em, if we don't beat them, they're going to continue to control this country. They're going to control the media. They're going to control what's being said. They do not want to hear us talking about health care for everybody.

*UPDATE: The person who posted the video to MyDD, Tracy Joan Russo, is actually an Edwards staffer who does blogger outreach. So the campaign must think this is a winning message. Also: A reader points out that there's a boom microphone in the shot; again, this is a message being delivered, not an inadvertently-captured departure.

Such pictures as this one in Newsweek are akin to the performances of the Muslim women, usually Pakistanis, who come to elementary schools to "talk about Islam." They bring pretty postcards of mosques, a prayer rug that can be turned Meccawards, and are eager to share information about "family-centered" Islam. Everything concentrates on the trivial (for Infidels) rituals of worship: Shehada, zakat, salat, hajj, and especially Ramadan, which allows for all kinds of wide-eyed wonder at the depth of feeling which Muslims must have to stick to a daytime fast, for a whole month, and then of course the discussion can be all about not only what good things there are to eat at the break-fast Iftar dinner, but how various are those things because, you see, "Islam is not monolithic."

Add to this a few phrases about how Islam is one of the "three great abrahamic faiths," that Jesus and Moses are "revered in Islam" (well, not quite, but respected, as long as they are understood to be the Muslim Jesus, and the Muslim Moses, part of a long line of prophets who were not quite the real thing, until the real thing, Muhammad, came along). There may also be a quoting of 5.32 without 5.33 (Bush has done it, Blair has done it, every Muslim apologist and non-Muslim apologist for Islam has done it), and of course, the usual "there is no compulsion in religion" without any discussion of what that phrase must mean, given that under Muslim rule the treatment of non-Muslims is one of official humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, such that over time many, to escape this fate, converted to Islam -- in other words, were forcibly converted not by the sword, but by the need for more secure, less unpleasant and imperilled lives, that is the lives of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.

The picture above does not tell us what is in the mind of the hijabbed girl, nor in the minds of her family members. How does she think of her non-Muslim classmates? What does she think when she studies -- does she study? -- the American Constitution, or the history of the United States, and finds out the principles of the legal and political institutions that Americans have formed, and that for several hundred years have been formed them.

This is what those pictures, or that Show-and-Tell about Ramadan (a heartwarming subject for all those "Islam in America" stories in the press and radio and television), do not tell: what is in the mental baggage, what is being transmitted, what is deeply believed in.

And if that were known -- and it could be known, simply by reading and re-reading those texts, and studying, and re-studying, the history, remarkably consistent whatever variants in food and dress (that's what "Islam is not monolithic" mainly comes down to) may exist among Believers, in the treatment of non-Muslims.

That is what is wrong with the press coverage -- that above, and that in Newsweek, and that in The Bandar Beacon, and everywhere.

Attention is paid to the outward show and the smooth, transparently (to those who know something) misleading apologetics.

A permanent problem.