Eric Mudasi's World View

If you think the usage of Allah in Malaysia is a problem?

2009-02-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a bigger problem for Non Muslims all over the world. Here’s Christopher Hitchens on the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s latest attempts to use the United Nations to criminalize “blasphemy” (read: criticism of Islam) around the world.

The war within

2009-02-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

Destroying Western Civilization. The Third Holy War in the United States of America, attempting to change into an Amerikastan. This is a must watch documentary. The covert and underhanded means to place the black flag of Islam in the White House. A thirty minutes documentary by a Muslim American named Jasser, exposing radical Islam's agenda in the states.

Geert Wilders and the Fight for Europe

2009-02-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

Britain has just witnessed the spectacle of a duly elected parliamentarian from another EU country, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, being denied entry to the country because he constituted “a threat to public policy.” Wilders, after being detained briefly at Heathrow, was sent back to Holland — where he has further legal troubles. Three weeks earlier, a Dutch appeals court had ordered prosecutors to begin criminal proceedings against Wilders for “inciting hatred and discrimination” and “insulting Muslim worshippers” through his public statements and his 2008 film, Fitna. The order to proceed with the criminal prosecution resulted from pressure put on European states and on the UN Human Rights Council by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC’s aim is to punish and suppress any alleged Islamophobia, around the world but particularly in Europe, and it has been a leader in creating the conditions that made the U.K.’s Wilders ban possible.

The OIC is one of the largest intergovernmental organizations in the world. It encompasses 56 Muslim states plus the Palestinian Authority. Spread over four continents, it claims to speak in the name of the ummah (the universal Muslim community), which numbers about 1.3 billion. The OIC’s mission is to unite all Muslims worldwide by rooting them in the Koran and the Sunnah — the core of traditional Islamic civilization and values. It aims at strengthening solidarity and cooperation among all its members, in order to protect the interests of Muslims everywhere and to galvanize the ummah into a unified body. More.....

Founder of Muslim TV channel arrested for beheading his wife received CAIR award

2009-02-11T23:29:00.000-08:00

The irony of this horrific story is that he launched the TV channel to counter violent images of Muslims.

(Buffalo News) Friends expressed shock on Friday that the founder of a Muslim TV channel — which he launched in order to counter violent images of Muslims — has been arrested in his wife’s brutal slaying.Detectives have charged Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder after his wife was found beheaded Thursday at the offices of the cable channel, Bridges TV, in the Village of Orchard Park.

For the moment, the photo of the murderer can be found at CAIR's website, but probably not for long.

More...

England's Muslim Spleen

2009-02-11T22:27:00.000-08:00

WHY did the British government choose to prohibit the controversial Dutch politicians, Geert Wilders, from entering Britain? Sadly, it was far more than just a cynical political calculation.

It was that, of course. Wilders is a hate figure to Muslims in Britain and worldwide because of his 15-minute film, "Fitna," which blames Islam itself for terrorist crimes by Muslim fanatics from the London subway bombings to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. And Britain's Labor government is imploding in the opinion polls because of the financial crisis it helped to cause. So banning Wilders was its way of winning much-needed Muslim votes in key election districts.

Yet this is only a partial explanation. British governments have rarely used their arbitrary power to keep dangerous foreigners out of the country. Indeed, London has become known as Londonistan precisely because the Brits let Middle Eastern extremists establish and run their organizations there. More.....

Geert Wilders is barred from entering the United Kingdom

2009-02-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

It has come to this: If you are an Islamic radical, trained to carry out terrorist atrocities in al-Qaeda’s jihad against the United Kingdom, the British will welcome you with open arms. Not content with that, Great Britain will lobby insistently for your release from custody so that you may freely roam British streets—and the halls of Westminster.

If, by contrast, you are a duly elected representative in the democratic government of a country to which England is bound in the European Union, and you speak about the undeniable—though mulishly denied—nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror, Great Britain will slam her door in your face.

That is the lesson in the appalling saga of Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament and Exhibit Umpty-Umpth illustrating the depths of capitulation to which the West has sunk in its half-hearted bid for cultural survival.

Below: Pat Condell on Britain's capitulation to Islam

On Tuesday, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith took time out of her busy schedule of protecting from extradition Britain’s expanding roster of resident terrorists to warn Wilders that he was not welcome in the country—notwithstanding that the vision of Europe as a “union” is supposed to mean that Europeans may travel freely within it. Quite apart from the fact that Wilders is a government official of the Netherlands, he was not visiting the U.K. on a lark. He was the invited guest of Malcolm Pearson, a member of the House of Lords. Lord Pearson and Baroness Caroline Cox (a human-rights activist who has worked tirelessly on behalf of enslaved and oppressed Christians and Muslims in Sudan) had asked Wilders to screen his short, controversial film, Fitna. Continue here to Britain's capitulation....

A bit of a clarification on his views about the religious apartheid kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

2008-10-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

Pat Condell, an outspoken atheist and veteran stand-up comic, uploaded the clip called "Welcome to Saudi Britain" to the popular video-sharing website following claims that judgements made under Islamic law are now legally binding. In the four-minute clip he denounces the "patriarchal bigotry" of Muslim men and the "corrupt" regime of Saudi Arabia. He refers to women wearing burqas as "letterbox ladies" and ridicules a Muslim warehouse worker who is suing Tesco for making him carry crates of alcohol.

In this he compares Saudi Arabian Islam to Nazism

Condell also pours scorn on the "social engineering" and "doublethink" of the Labour Government and urges viewers to sign a Downing Street petition against the adoption of Sharia in Britain, which has received more than 4,000 signatures.

"YouTube has clear policies that prohibit inappropriate content on the site, such as pornography, gratuitous violence or hate speech. Our community understands the rules and polices the site for inappropriate material. When users feel content is inappropriate they can flag it and our staff then review it as quickly as possible to see if it violates our Terms of Use. If users repeatedly break these rules we disable their accounts."

But fans of Condell, a veteran of Britain's alternative comedy circuit who has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and who regularly appeared on the BBC Radio 1 show Loose Talk in the 1990s, are now putting copies of the video elsewhere on YouTube. Visitors to the website have condemned YouTube for censoring the film, while the National Secular Society has written to it in protest.

The NSS said: "As usual, he does not mince his words, but he is not saying anything that is untrue. His main thrust is one of outrage on behalf of those Muslim women who will suffer because they are forced to have their marital problems solved in a male-dominated Sharia court." Condell made the video after it was reported that ministers had "quietly sanctioned" Sharia courts to make legally binding rulings on cases such as those involving divorce.

However the Government insisted the panels were only using long-standing laws on arbitration, and legal experts said divorce cases ruled on by Sharia tribunal would still need to go through civil courts. Dhimmi Watch

Pat Condell: Welcome to Saudi Britain

2008-09-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

The crusty old atheist has another good rant, on the British government’s appalling decision to give sharia courts the power of law. From the Little Green Footballs.

YouTube has deleted Pat Condell’s latest video, for “terms of use violation.” Which apparently means, “criticism of Saudi Arabia.” So here it is again. From the Little Green Footballs.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants to criminalize Christianity at the U.N.

2008-07-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Laurie Roth Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Since 1999, the OIC has been pushing with the U.N the ‘Defamation of Islam’ campaign. The OIC isn’t a small fry committee trying to be heard in the U.N., but is being pushed by the 57, Muslim nation members in it and reflects the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which is only reflected by Sharia law. That is how they want human rights defined and filtered through, Sharia law.

What is it the OIC exactly wants and is pushing through the U.N.? Its actually quite clear when reading through even a little of this rubbish. On the surface they say they want to cover the defamation of all religions, but amazingly only one religion is mentioned by name as persecuted of sorts, Islam. According to Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com, the text states they have “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

They refer to that nasty mental illness that so many of us have, Islamaphobia, when we happen to in our hate and illness notice the forced sexual mutilations, beheadings, forced conversions, honor killings growing in America, buildings continuing to blow up, body parts continuing to fly past our windows and ongoing threats. Take more medication you mentally ill, hateful people. Don’t you know that real, international, religious freedom must submit to the wonder and edification of Shari Law?

The way this anti protection of religion and freedom piece of rot reads would only criminalize Christianity and push the execution of more Christians who are already being sentenced to prison and death for reading the wrong material, mentioning a verse to a Muslim or doing practically anything that might engage a real discussion in a Muslim country with a Muslim.

Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com, says it like it is in pointing out that this religious defamation idea is being used as a shield and a sword. “In Islamic countries, blasphemy laws are used as a shield to protect the dominant religion, but even more dangerously, they are used to silence minority religious believers and prevent Muslims from converting to other faiths, which is still a capital crime in many Islamic countries.”

Justice Scalia from our own Supreme Court recently reminded us of a few things of importance: “America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. On Septemeber 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing, 2,749 at the Twin Towers, in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and 40 in Pennsylvania.”

Lets call this what it is. This aggressive effort of the OIC to slam this through the U.N and get the defamation piece approved by the U.N. itself is nothing but a declaration of War against freedom of speech internationally and Christianity. This is hidden in fancy, protective words, it would only protect MORE persecution, targeting and murder of more Christians and suck out even any soft ray of freedom a Muslim in a country might want to even discuss or compare their faith with any other. This will be brought up later this year at the U.N. again. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will give an expected report on the measure put together by the OIC in Pakistan last year and passed in a vote 108-51.

Lets talk more about the OIC’s special glasses of protection they want to cram down our mentally ill, freedom loving throats. All freedom and religious protection must go through Shari law. Lets see, beatings for wives and women, yes; Execution of gays, yes; crucifixion of robbers, yes; beheadings of Christians who preach the gospel, of course; execution for any convert from Islam to Christianity…..on and on it goes and reads. Gee, don’t you feel enlightened, inspired and eager to have the U.N. pass this Defamation of Islam Act? Have you figured it out yet that this is nothing but a bold maneuver of the Islamic countries to destroy Islam’s enemies and conquer the world, using violence, threats and killings as usual, but with an added flare, the most powerful International legal body officially behind them, the U.N.

If this passes with the money, power and push of the 57 members of the Islamic countries and friends, and the anti-semitic, anti-Christian and anti American U.N., get ready for an unprecedented blood bath world wide from the Religion of peace. Normal witnessing and sharing by a Christian pastor or missionary will be a crime, insulting and defaming Islam. That will mean a massive prison sentence or death sentence.

When are we all going to wake up and smell the sick tasting coffee? We are in a world war with Radical Islam. It isn’t Islamaphobia that we are struggling with! It isn’t hate for Muslims and their right to choose and express a different faith we are struggling with! It is that Sharia Law represents the complete opposite to our freedom of speech, constitution and the bill of rights! It is barbaric and condones beatings, torture and killings as a matter of course. OK, no more shy talk…..IT IS EVIL and the opposite of religious and personal freedom. It still blows my mind that Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has even suggested that Sharia Law should be implemented and allowed in Britain due to how many Islamics have immigrated and developed there. He also puts his other fat foot in his mouth when he criticizes Christianities’ history of violence and its harsh punishments….bla bla. After all, everything to make peace with the big dogs who control oil and want to kill you. Kiss up. Don’t tell the truth or defend the truth!

Read more about this nightmare push by the OIC at the U.N. and what you can do to sign a petition against this at www.aclj.org. Stand up for REAL freedom of speech worldwide. If someone of ANY faith believes in what they follow, they should be allowed to debate their theology, discuss it and share it. If it is so right on, attract people because they are drawn to its compelling love and truth, not forced to follow it, stay with it or die. I have taken insults, questions and attacks for decades against my Christian faith. That is fine. I don’t wish to kill people because they feel differently. Let me share why I believe and what my theology is based on in love, if we disagree, fine.

Radical Islam will not stop until it takes over our legal system, our cultures, our moral framework, the U.N., our school curriculums and our lives if necessary. I say a big fat NO to Radical Islam. Come and Kiss My Grits! Canada Free Press

The Quran against Christians

2008-06-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

Contrary to ALL the misinformation we receive from the followers of Muhammad, the Quran considers Christians as KUFFAR and UNBELIEVERS and hence arch enemies. The word Christian and Christians is mentioned 14 times in the Koran. Mentioned 3 times positively, 7 times negatively and 4 times are neutral.

By the way Islam, Koran or Mohammad are not mentioned in the Christian Bible, neither is the word Jerusalem in the Koran. Listen to the above audio which shows hatred and quotes from Chapter 4:157 which obliterates the whole of the Christian faith.

Is Islam a religion of peace?

2008-06-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher talks with panel guests about Islam and how it is not a religion of peace. Specifically highlighted here is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel. She has very strong views on Islam and its treatment of muslim women.

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult.

2008-06-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components. Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well. Here's how it works.As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:

United States -- Muslim 0.6%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1.8%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 15%

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%
At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace. Here there's supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.

'Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, 'The Haj'

It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts nor schools nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate.

Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

Constantinople (Istanbul), a Christian city fell just 555 years ago.

2008-06-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

You Must Remember This By Clifford D. May, May 29, 2008 12:00 AM

There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 — just 555 short years ago — troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople. Mehmed the Conqueror — as he would be known from that day forward — rode triumphantly into the city on a white horse. Soon, churches would be converted into mosques. Constantinople would become Istanbul.

“For the West this was a dark moment,” writes historian Efraim Karsh in his masterful book, Islamic Imperialism. “For Islam it was a cause for celebration. For nearly a millennium Constantinople had been the foremost barrier — physically and ideologically — to Islam’s sustained drive for world conquest and the object of desire of numerous Muslim rulers.” Mehmed cast himself as not just as a master builder of the Ottoman Empire, but also as the caliph — the supreme spiritual and temporal ruler of all the world’s Muslims, chosen to “act as Allah’s Sword ‘blazing forth the way of Islam from the East to West.’ ” He would go on to conquer Greece, Serbia, the Balkans south of the Danube and the Crimean peninsula. His grandson and great grandson would extend the caliphate to include the Levant, Egypt, the Arabian Hijaz including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Iraq, North Africa, and most of Hungary.

The desire to conquer the world — or even just one’s neighbors — is hardly an Islamic invention. Genghis Khan is not a name: It’s a title. It means “universal ruler.” The man history knows as Genghis Khan believed it was his divinely ordained mission to lead the Mongols to global domination. And he loved his work. “Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies,” he said, “to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters.”

Upon entering the city of Bukhara in 1220 he proclaimed: “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” Genghis Khan was a pagan, a shamanist, as was his descendant, Hulagu, who in 1258 conquered Baghdad — among the world’s most sophisticated cities at the time — and executed the reigning caliph.

A few years ago, Osama bin Laden, on one of his audio tapes, compared Colin Powell and Dick Cheney to Hulagu, saying they had inflicted more damage upon Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War than had the Mongol king. Bin Laden may take some consolation in the fact that Hulagu’s son, and many other members of the ruling Mongol elite, eventually embraced Islam. (Whether the same will be true of the heirs of Powell and Cheney only time will tell.) For centuries, the world was spun by what Nietzsche called the “will to power.” Africa and the Americas were conquered by European Christians. Napoleon was crowned emperor by the Pope. Tojo fought to expand Japan’s empire. Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin conquered in the name of totalitarian ideologies.

In recent years, however, the West has rejected not just Genghis Khan’s perspective on the joys of conquering, but the very idea of empire building, at least through martial means. Indeed, so thorough has this rejection been that many Americans and Europeans can no longer imagine anyone continuing to harbor such ambitions. On that basis, they further assume that violence and terrorism — from the attacks of 9/11 to the missiles raining on Israel to the suicide-bombings in the marketplaces of Iraq — must be a response to oppression or occupation or some other “legitimate grievance.” History suggests otherwise. So, too, do the leaders of the various modern militant Islamist movements.

“We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared, “and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.” “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something,” said Hussein Massawi, a former leader of Hezbollah. “We are fighting to eliminate you.”

“Rome will become an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe,” Yunis al-Astal, a Muslim cleric and Hamas parliamentarian has pledged. “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad.” Mehmed the Conqueror would understand, though his defenders would say he was never quite as radical as are the Islamic warriors of the contemporary era.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

National Review

The Moslem Claim to Jerusalem is False

2008-04-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

There were no mosques in Jerusalem in 632CE when the Prophet Mohammed died... Jerusalem was [then] a Christian city. The Moslem "claim" to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the "Furthest Mosque": "Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque." But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "Furthest Mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.

Cupolas on Temple Mount. Note overall disrepair and lack of use

In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed's death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style.
The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd - who ruled from 705-715 - reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque." So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque. In full.....

Redefining Anti-Semitism By Anne Bayefsky

2008-04-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Geneva — Tuesday was Day 2 of the United Nations hatefest known as the “first substantive session of the Durban Review Preparatory Committee,” now taking place in Geneva. Delegates rolled up their sleeves, and the Jewish and Western-bashing exercise entered a new phase.

The Egyptian representative gave a good summary of most everything wrong with Durban II. He claimed the conference and its preparatory process should focus on criminalizing “racial profiling,” “racism in the media,” “the challenges posed by Islamophobia since the events on 9/11,” and “instrumentalization of democratic processes for racist applications.” In short, racism is an evil Western plot to victimize Muslims, who can only be protected by the undermining of democracy, freedom, and law enforcement.

The Ambassador of Sri Lanka was more philosophical. In his words, “the relationship between racial discrimination and freedom of expression is a complex and dialectical one; more freedom of expression is not an antidote to racial discrimination.”

The Algerian Ambassador took the U.N. Durban II platform to claim “anti-semitism . . . targets . . . Arabs who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community.” Defining anti-Semitism this way has become a key component of the Durban II strategy, since once the concept has been Islamicized, Muslim states are happy to shout about taking it very seriously, confident that Western UN-ophiles still won’t catch on to their game.

While the European Union attendees stayed in their seats, the assault on democracy carried on. Algeria said “freedom of expression spread[s] hatred and violence and lead[s] to the burning of mosques in ‘advanced’ countries.” Syria ranted about “the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of democracy” and the “killers” that “are countries that advocate democracy . . . and give [a] free hand to perpetrate massacres.”

U.N. “expert” Doudou Diene from Senegal — whose name has been bandied about as a possible successor to the current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who retires in June — worried about “groups that have instrumentalized the freedom of expression” and the so-called “ideological freedom of expression.” According to Diene, “we should no longer use freedom of expression as the ideological tool [it is] . . . today.” The “Danish caricatures” cannot be tolerated in the name of freedom of expression “anymore.”

Though the United States is boycotting the forum, American taxpayers will be surprised to learn that — if the U.N. gets its way — they are still paying for it. The U.N. Secretariat revealed a new end-run around the U.S. promise not to fund Durban II. The secretariat announced that they had cut their original $7 million price tag for the preparatory side of Durban II in half. The other half will be “absorbed in existing resources” — a euphemism for using funds already in U.N. coffers, 22 percent of which are from American taxes. Washington is now faced with ensuring that this brazen attempt to avoid official American policy does not succeed.

And the EU is faced with the impossible task of keeping a straight face while speechifying that Durban II is good for human rights.

— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.

Benedict, Tantawi, and the Jews By Andrew G. Bostom

2008-04-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

The Pope implores that a new relationship be forged between the Church and Israel out of the tragic ashes of the Holocaust, based upon overcoming “every kind of anti-Judaism,” and engaging in sincere, meaningful dialogue. As Pope Benedict, this commitment and its constructive impact were re-affirmed in a Passover greeting to the Jewish community, issued officially during his visit to Washington, D.C. last Thursday.

In contrast to the pope, consider Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. For more than a thousand years, since its founding in 792 A.D., Al-Azhar, has served as the academic shrine — much as Mecca is the religious shrine — of the global Sunni Muslim community (Sunnis are about 90 percent of Muslims).

Tantawi’s Ph.D. thesis, Banu Israil fi al-Quran wa-al-Sunnah (Jews in the Koran and the Traditions), was published in 1968-69. In 1980 he became the head of the Tafsir (Koranic Commentary) Department of the University of Medina, Saudi Arabia — a position he held until 1984. Tantawi became Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1986, and a decade later he took his current post as Grand Imam.

My forthcoming book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism includes extensive, first-time English translations of Jews in the Koran and the Traditions. In the 700-page treatise, Tantawi wrote these words:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness. . . . Only a minority of the Jews keep their word [Koranic citations here]. . . . All Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

These are the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a pope. Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam, as his statements on “dialogue” with Jews (“I still believe in everything written in that dissertation”), the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs,” and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews make clear.

Unfortunately, Tantawi’s anti-Semitic formulations are well-grounded in classical, mainstream Islamic theology. The Koranic depiction of the Jews — their traits deemed both infallible and timeless — highlights, in verse 2:61 (repeated in verse 3:112), the centrality of the Jews “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God’s anger.” Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78 describe the Jews’ transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or apes alone (2:65 / 7:166), having been “cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Moreover, forcing Jews, in particular, to pay the Koranic poll tax “tribute” (as per verse 9:29), “readily,” while “being brought low,” is consistent with their overall humiliation and abasement in accord with Koran 2:61, and its directly related verses. In full....

Holy War: The Year the Muslims Took Rome

2008-04-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

ROMA, January 5, 2006 – A book published recently in the United States lifts the veil on a crucial aspect of Islam, one which too many understand poorly and know too little about: jihad, the holy war. It is an aspect that meets with widespread silence, as if it were a taboo. Even among Christians, there are wide gaps on this topic in the general awareness of Church history.

An example? Many recall what happened in Rome, at St. Peter’s Basilica, the night of Christmas Day of the year 800. After the Mass, pope Leo III solemnly placed upon the head of Charlemagne the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. That night, the basilica of St. Peter gleamed with breathtaking brilliance. A few years earlier, Leo III’s predecessor, pope Hadrian I, had covered the entire floor of the sanctuary with plates of silver; he had covered the walls with gold plates and enclosed it all with a balustrade of gold weighing 1,328 pounds. He had remade the sanctuary gates with silver, and had placed on the iconostasis six images also made of silver, representing Christ, Mary, the archangels Gabriel and Michael, and saints Andrew and John. Finally, in order to make this splendor visible to all, he had ordered the assembly of a candelabrum in the form of a huge cross, on which 1,365 candles burned.

But less than half a century later, none of this remained. And what happened remains generally unknown among Christians today. What happened is that in 846 some Muslim Arabs arrived in a fleet at the mouth of the Tiber, made their way to Rome, sacked the city, and carried away from the basilica of St. Peter all of the gold and silver it contained.

And this was not just an incidental attack. In 827 the Arabs had conquered Sicily, which they kept under their dominion for two and a half centuries. Rome was under serious threat from nearby. In 847, the year after the assault, the newly elected pope Leo IV began the construction of walls around the entire perimeter of the Vatican, 12 meters high and equipped with 44 towers. He completed the project in six years. These are the “Leonine” walls, and significant traces of them still remain. But very few today know that these walls were erected to defend the see of Peter from an Islamic jihad. And many of those who do know this remain silent out of discretion. “Bridges, not walls” is the fashionable slogan today. The source in full ....

CRIMINALIZING CHRISTIANITY

2008-04-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

How America's founding religion is becoming illegal.Attacks on Christmas dominate today's headlines – judges banning nativity scenes, retailers renaming Christmas trees "Holiday trees," schools forbidding children from singing Christmas carols and even banning the colors red and green!

It almost sounds funny, but only if you're not aware of the powerful, malevolent currents beneath the "grinch-who-stole-Christmas" stories. As WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower reveals in its spine-straightening December issue, a lot more than Christmas is at stake – Christianity itself is being undermined and attacked with increasing frequency and venom. In full...

"Oh I See"

2008-04-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

IF there is an outfit less relevant than the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to today?s issues and problems, I have not heard of it.

True, the South Asian club (Saarc) must count as a close second, but at least it has the potential to develop into something meaningful once the poisonous Indo-Pak rivalry subsides. The OIC, on the other hand, is like a person all dressed up for a party, with nowhere to go.

As I write this, our newspapers are full of the earnest entreaties for tolerance and harmony emanating from the OIC?s ?extraordinary session? in Makkah. Speaker after speaker has denounced violence and urged unity. Kings and dictators have followed each other to the rostrum to denounce terrorism in the name of Islam. In full.....

On the Fitna Fury

2008-03-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

It will be good to listen to Pat Condell, like he says Islam is peaceful and that the Republic of North Korea is a democracy ! Here’s Pat Condell on the Islamic world’s reaction to the dreaded 15-minute film of blasphemy

What is the Koran ?

2008-03-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a "sensitive business" . IN 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, in Yemen, laborers working in a loft between the structure's inner and outer roofs stumbled across a remarkable gravesite, although they did not realize it at the time. Their ignorance was excusable: mosques do not normally house graves, and this site contained no tombstones, no human remains, no funereal jewelry. It contained nothing more, in fact, than an unappealing mash of old parchment and paper documents -- damaged books and individual pages of Arabic text, fused together by centuries of rain and dampness, gnawed into over the years by rats and insects. Intent on completing the task at hand, the laborers gathered up the manuscripts, pressed them into some twenty potato sacks, and set them aside on the staircase of one of the mosque's minarets, where they were locked away -- and where they would probably have been forgotten once again, were it not for Qadhi Isma'il al-Akwa', then the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, who realized the potential importance of the find.

Al-Akwa' sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholar, who in turn persuaded the German government to organize and fund a restoration project. Soon after the project began, it became clear that the hoard was a fabulous example of what is sometimes referred to as a "paper grave" -- in this case the resting place for, among other things, tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different parchment codices of the Koran, the Muslim holy scripture. In some pious Muslim circles it is held that worn-out or damaged copies of the Koran must be removed from circulation; hence the idea of a grave, which both preserves the sanctity of the texts being laid to rest and ensures that only complete and unblemished editions of the scripture will be read.

A page from perhaps the world's
oldest extant Koran, from before
750 A.D. Ultraviolet light reveals
even earlier Koranic writing
underneath. Photograph by
Gerd-R. Puin.

Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries -- they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.

From the Yemeni Hoard: probably a ninth- or tenth-century Koran. Photograph by Gerd-R. Puin.

The mainly secular effort to reinterpret the Koran -- in part based on textual evidence such as that provided by the Yemeni fragments -- is disturbing and offensive to many Muslims, just as attempts to reinterpret the Bible and the life of Jesus are disturbing and offensive to many conservative Christians. Nevertheless, there are scholars, Muslims among them, who feel that such an effort, which amounts essentially to placing the Koran in history, will provide fuel for an Islamic revival of sorts -- a reappropriation of tradition, a going forward by looking back. Thus far confined to scholarly argument, this sort of thinking can be nonetheless very powerful and -- as the histories of the Renaissance and the Reformation demonstrate -- can lead to major social change. The Koran, after all, is currently the world's most ideologically influential text. In full.......

Five questions non-Muslims would like answered

2008-03-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.

Here are five of them:

1) Why are you so quiet?

Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week's protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam? This is true even of the millions of Muslims living in free Western societies. What are non-Muslims of goodwill supposed to conclude? When the Israeli government did not stop a Lebanese massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, great crowds of Israeli Jews gathered to protest their country's moral failing. Why has there been no comparable public demonstration by Palestinians or other Muslims to morally condemn Palestinian or other Muslim-committed terror?

(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?

If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.

(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?

According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?

(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?

Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims — in the name of Islam — murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in "honor killings." And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.

(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan's Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.

Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a "Christian terrorist." As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.

As a member of the media for nearly 25 years, I have a long record of reaching out to Muslims. Muslim leaders have invited me to speak at major mosques. In addition, I have studied Arabic and Islam, have visited most Arab and many other Muslim countries and conducted interfaith dialogues with Muslims in the United Arab Emirates as well as in the U.S. Politically, I have supported creation of a Palestinian state and supported (mistakenly, I now believe) the Oslo accords.

Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, "Yes, we have real problems in Islam." Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better — for you and for the world — than dismissing us as anti-Muslim.

We await your response. Source : Dennis Prager at the LA Times.

Here is Fitna

2008-02-16T20:09:00.000-08:00

The film is accurate. Will Muslims rage against the truth?

1. Quranic text. "Behead them, burn them"

2. This text affirmed and preached today. Imams preaching "Behead them, burn them."

3. This text acted upon. Literally. Images of actual infidels beheaded. Burned.

4. Often further affirmation of the literal meaning of the text from 'the street'. "Yes if converted to christianity should be killed. Yes, if my mother committed adultery I would kill her..."

Nile Gardiner on U.K. Conservatives & Radical Islam on National Review Online

2007-10-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

Rewriting British History

Any revised compulsory history syllabus needs to give full recognition to the massive contribution that Islam has made to the development of Western civilisation. Historically the recognition of this contribution has been suppressed because in the past control of the educational system rested with the Christian churches which saw Islam as a competitor.

It is extremely difficult to see how such extreme remarks fit with a political party that stands for the rule of law, the defence of the West against rogue regimes, the centrality of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and support for key allies such as Israel.

The support which the Conservative Muslim Forum gives to the Iranian dictatorship, at a time when British soldiers are still dying at the hands of Iranian backed militias in southern Iraq, should draw public outrage in the U.K. There is no mention of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism, its systematic violation of human rights, or its threats to wipe Israel “off the map.” In addition, the CMF’s defense of the rights of preachers of hate to come to Britain to spread their seditious and anti-democratic message to young impressionable Muslims, plays directly into the hands of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, who use such imams to recruit young Britons to their cause. Read the whole thing from the National Review

The open letter from 138 Muslim scholars to the Pope and the leaders of other Christian churches.

2007-10-12T04:57:00.000-07:00

The open letter from 138 Muslim scholars to the Pope and the leaders of other Christian churches on the subject of peace between the faiths has got the British establishment purring with pleasure. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London have fallen on their knees and given thanks. The Times raved:

Rarely, indeed, has the Muslim world spoken out so clearly on the need for global peace or addressed Christianity in such terms of respect and acceptance of common beliefs… it will make it harder for those who thrive on a narrow, militant interpretation of Islam to pose as the true guardians of the faith.

The Telegraph gushed:

In an age when Islamic extremism, with its call for lethal revolution, appears to be making the running, it is deeply encouraging to hear a large group of Muslim leaders advocating peaceful coexistence with Christians.

At least one cleric gets it. In the Times the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the one Anglican who understands the threat from Islamism, noted that the letter required Christians to adopt the Muslim belief in the oneness of God.

‘One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted. This document seems to be on the verge of doing that.’

We therefore invite Christians to consider Muslims not against and thus with them, in accordance with Jesus Christ’s words here.

In other words, the implication is that Christians are unjustifiably aggressive towards Muslims, and this is because they have failed to understand their own Scripture. And so when it says

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill,

it’s really a variation of the ancient adage: submit or die. Melanie Philiphs

Consider, for instance, the notorious Sword Verse:

Fight those who do not believe in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and his Messenger have forbidden — such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book [i.e., Christians and Jews] – until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled (9:29).

How exactly one reconciles this passage with the more irenic ones the authors commend is a question left unasked and unanswered. Yet that is precisely the question arising from the authors’ doom-laden vision of the consequences of interreligious conflict: In full

Islamophobia

2007-08-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have recently been reading Paul Scott’s series of novels about the last years of British India. It’s hard not to notice that the British rulers of India, especially the military men, rather favored Muslims over Hindus. You get the same impression from Kipling’s stories, and from George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books. There was a perception that Hinduism was a bit snivelly, pacifistic, commercial, and lower-middle-class. This is very unfair to Hinduism, whose most sacred text, after all, is a battlefield conversation, and whose military castes could, at the height of their vigor, have given any samurai or ghazi a run for his money. (And that’s not even to mention the fightingest Hindus of all.) The perception was plainly there, though.

It was much fortified in later years by Gandhi, with his doctrine of non-violence, his spindly frame, his fussiness about diet and sex, his high-pitched voice and his clerkish glasses. (Gandhi’s War Medal — for organizing a battlefield ambulance corps in the Boer War — was conveniently forgotten.) Hindus were wimpy; Islam was a fighting faith, a manly faith.I think what worked against Hinduism here was the caste system. Sure, there were fighting Hindus, but they were a caste, a well-defined fragment of the population. The other castes prayed, ruled, made money, or cleaned out the head, but they weren’t expected to bother much about fighting.

In Islam, by contrast, every man, however he makes his living, is a soldier of the faith. This resonated with British military men. To this day, if you show up at a recruiting station to join the British army, the NCO will tell you: “Yes, you may get trained for something useful. You may become a cook, a driver, an engineer. There are great opportunities. But first we’ll make a soldier out of you.” In an Anglo-Saxon army, everyone — from the guy in the landing-craft to the rearmost of the REMFs — is a fighting man, who knows how to use a weapon and keep it clean. Islam’s a lot like that. I think that was the appeal to India’s British rulers.A fighting faith is of course a proud faith, and nothing pumps poison into the bloodstream like pride brought low.

Inside every Muslim today there is a voice whispering: “Our faith is so pure and true, our civilizations lasted so long and ruled so many, our God was so potent: yet here we are in the modern world, backward and poor except where accidents of nature have blessed us, our rulers corrupt, our culture mocked or ignored, our people squabbling among themselves, or fleeing the homelands to work as taxi drivers and menials in the great glittering cities of the infidels, those homelands themselves part-stolen by the wretched Jews. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong! Grrrrr!!!”

That’s the Islam we’re up against. I don’t myself believe we can do much to reform it. Muslims have to do that for themselves. Any helping hand we reach out will be spat upon. While they sort out their problems, though, I do think we should keep Islam at arm’s length, for our own safety. Keep ’em out; fence ’em off; send Muslim visitors home; keep a wary eye on Muslim citizens. Leave them the consolations of their faith, though; stop trying to convince me that there is no good at all in that faith; and, if you’re the praying type, pray that the good will prevail at last. Continue to the full article here.....

——————————**Note on the word “Islamophobia”: Roger Kimball tells me this is the wrong word. A phobia (says Roger) is an irrational fear of something. Fear of Islam is perfectly rational! I leave you to discuss this among yourselves.John Derbyshire on Islam on National Review Online

There are no Jewish suicide bombers in London, Madrid, or Bali.

2007-08-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

Who recently said: “These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War (1). Why? Only to build Israel.” Some holdover Nazi? Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as “bacteria” — controlled China, India, and Japan, and ran the United States.

Who alleged: “The Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs.”

A conspiracy nut?

Actually, it was former Democratic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota. He denounced Israel on a Hezbollah-owned television station, adding: “I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel. . . . It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.”

And finally, who claimed at a United Nations-sponsored conference that democratic Israel was “much worse” than the former apartheid South Africa, and that it “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming”?

A radical environmentalist wacko?

Again, no. It was Clare Short, a member of the British parliament. She was a secretary for international development under Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A new virulent strain of the old anti-Semitism is spreading worldwide. This hate — of a magnitude not seen in over 70 years — is not just espoused by Iran’s loony president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or radical jihadists.

The latest anti-Semitism is also now mouthed by world leaders and sophisticated politicians and academics. Their loathing often masquerades as “anti-Zionism” or “legitimate” criticism of Israel. But the venom exclusively reserved for the Jewish state betrays their existential hatred.

Israel is always lambasted for entering homes in the West Bank to look for Hamas terrorists and using too much force. But last week the world snoozed when the Lebanese army bombarded and then crushed the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, which harbored Islamic terrorists.

The world has long objected to Jewish settlers buying up land in the West Bank. Yet Hezbollah, flush with Iranian money, is now purchasing large tracts in southern Lebanon for military purposes and purging them of non-Shiites.

Here at home, “neoconservative” has become synonymous with a supposed Jewish cabal of Washington insiders who hijacked U.S. policy to take us to war for Israel’s interest. That our state department is at the mercy of a Jewish lobby is the theme of a recent high-profile book by professors at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Yet when the United States bombed European and Christian Serbia to help Balkan Muslims, few critics alleged that American Muslims had unduly swayed President Clinton. And such charges of improper ethnic influence are rarely leveled to explain the billions in American aid given to non-democratic Egypt, Jordan, or the Palestinians — or the Saudi oil money that pours into American universities.

The world likewise displays such a double standard. It seems to care little about the principle of so-called occupied land — whether in Cyprus or Tibet — unless Israel is the accused. Mass murdering in Cambodia, the Congo, Rwanda, and Darfur has earned far fewer United Nations’ resolutions of condemnation than supposed atrocities committed by Israel. A number of British academics are sponsoring a boycott of Israeli scholars but leave alone those from autocratic Iran, China, and Cuba.

There are various explanations for the new anti-Semitism. For many abroad, attacking Jews and Israel is an indirect way of damning its main ally, the United States — by implying that Americans are not entirely evil, just hoodwinked by those sneaky and far more evil Jews.

At home, there are obvious pragmatic considerations. Some Americans may find it makes more sense to damn a few million Israelis without oil than it does to offend Israel’s adversaries in the Middle East, who number in the hundreds of millions and control nearly half the world’s petroleum reserves.

Cowardice explains a lot. Libeling Israel won’t earn someone a fatwa or a death sentence in the manner comparable criticism of Islam might. There are no Jewish suicide bombers in London, Madrid, or Bali.

This new face of anti-Semitism is so insidious because it is so well disguised, advanced by self-proclaimed diplomats and academics — and now embraced by the supposedly sophisticated left on university campuses.

When national, collective or personal aspirations are not met, it is far easier to blame someone or something rather than to look within for the source of the failure and frustration. More recently, someone must be blamed for getting terrorists (with oil and its profits behind them) mad at us.

That someone is — no surprise — once again Jews. Victor Davis Hanson on Antisemitism on National Review Online

IRAQ & THE ARAB SUICIDE CULT

2007-05-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

IN GAZA'S SHADOW
June 14, 2007 -- WONDER what Iraq would look like if we left to morrow? Take a look at Gaza today. Then imagine a situation a thousand times worse. We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently. We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel "gave back" the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other. The barbarity in Gaza has become so grotesque that not even the media's apologists for terror can ignore it (especially since Islamist fanatics began to target journalists).

Over the weekend, Hamas gangbangers-for-Allah grabbed a Fatah functionary and dropped him from the roof of a high-rise to check out the law of gravity (the only law that still obtains in Gaza). Tit-for-tat, Fatah gunmen grabbed a Hamas capo and gave him the same treatment. Thereafter, cooler heads prevailed and both sides returned to their everyday routines of kidnapping, torturing and assassinating each other's leaders, gunning down teachers and doctors and, of course, murdering women, children and stray pedestrians. Educated Palestinians flee, if they can. Civilians cower, wondering where the next rocket-propelled grenade will hit. And, amid the carnage, students risk death to take their final exams so they can qualify to study abroad - and get out. The indiscriminate violence is the Palestinian version of democracy: Every citizen gets a chance to be killed.

And there's humor in Hell: The Islamist madmen behind Hamas call Fatah fighters "the American Jew Army." We've come a long way, boychick, when fellow Arabs anoint the late Yasser Arafat's thugs as tools of the Great Satan and the Lesser Satan. In Iraq, terrorists returned to Samarra to finish the job of destroying the Golden Mosque - the 2006 bombing of which ignited months of gruesome Shia-Sunni violence. Under attack from fellow Sunnis disgusted with their excesses, al Qaeda-in-Iraq sought to get the Shia fired up again to force a return to Sunni unity. Meanwhile, back home, the get-out-now crowd pretends that, if only we pull out our troops, Iraqis will magically settle their internal grievances (presumably, the way the Palestinians have).

The left doesn't care how many Iraqis die, as long as President Bush can be humiliated. Four years ago, the neocons fantasized about a post-Saddam Age of Aquarius. Now the Murthacrats insist that, once we bail out, Atlantis will rise from the Tigris and Euphrates. The willful naivete is identical. The only differences are the timing and who gets blamed. Look at Gaza, at the orgy of self-destructive savagery, the macho idiocy, the junkyard-dog religion and the murder-suicide cult sweeping Arab civilization. Then note that, barring a few fringe players, only two sides are fighting in the Gaza Strip. In Iraq, we have foreign terrorists fighting everybody, Sunni Arabs fighting Shia, Shia fighting Shia, Sunni fighting Sunni, Christians and other minorities persecuted by Sunni and Shia, Kurds struggling to preserve their patch of civilization, with American troops and our allies in the middle . . . on a quiet day.

Of course, not only the Arabs are to blame: We went to Baghdad with a fantasy instead of a plan; Israel tried to compromise with genocidal killers; media commissars abetted terrorists, and our generals placed more emphasis on ducking blame than on defeating our enemies. But for all that, it's the Arabs who failed themselves, again and again and again. When Lebanon tried to achieve a semblance of democracy, Syria embarked on a killing spree that, to this day, has had no tangible consequences for the Assad regime. When elections came to the Palestinian territories, the Palestinians voted for terrorists. When elections came to Iraq, the Iraqis voted for ethnic separatists or demagogues. And while Prince Bandar reportedly was raking in billion-dollar bribes between tennis matches with U.S. pols, our Saudi "pals" were spending their oil wealth to ensure that no Muslims will ever live under a tolerant government that regards women as human. Is there any good news at all?

Yes. Earlier this week, Capitol Hill saw a small miracle: A U.S. Army general told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. As fine an officer as we've got in uniform, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey refused to pander to anyone. Instead, he laid out the grim situation in Iraq and detailed the minimum commitment required for any hope of even a flawed success. Dempsey placed integrity, our country and our troops above self-interest. He described the padded payrolls in Iraq's national police, the sectarianism of local police forces and the long-term effort needed to get the Iraqi army on its feet and fit to fight (think years, not months). Security requirements demand 50,000 more Iraqi soldiers and cops-this year alone. The general even pointed out that some Iraqis are nostalgic for the order of Saddam's regime: We failed to deliver the No. 1 good, security.

The testimony was sobering, to say the least. And therein lies reason for hope. After years of obfuscation and outright lies from the Rumsfeld-era generals, our troops are finally led by officers who realize we're at war-and that winning is more important than promotions. We're stuck in Iraq, and it sucks. But were we to leave in haste, far more blood than oil would flow in the Persian Gulf. The disaster in Gaza's just a rehearsal for the Arab-suicide drama awaiting its opening night in Iraq.

Ralph Peters' new book, "Wars of Blood and Faith," hits stores July 25. Ralph Peters in the New York Post

The Religion of Perpetual Outrage strikes again

2007-04-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

Behead All Those Who Insult Islam - This is the enemy. Jihadi’s Guide to Etiquette Rule 11: Never leave home without your matches, effigy-hanging sticks and death threat placards. You never know when they’ll come in handy.

In Pakistan, dutiful followers of the jihadi guide have found a new pretext this week for an anti-Western bonfire party: the knighting of author Salman Rushdie in Britain. Muslim groups are burning Queen Elizabeth and Rushdie in effigy. The Union Jack is in flames. The Religion of Perpetual Outrage strikes again.

It’s not just some obscure spokesman for a “tiny minority” objecting to Rushdie’s knighthood and leading the renewed calls for Rushdie’s death and Britain’s submission. Pakistan’s religious-affairs minister, Mohammed ljaz ul-Haq, bellowed: “If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?” He says he was misunderstood, but the message is as loud and clear as the inscriptions on the infamous placards British Muslims waved around during last year’s conflagration over the Danish cartoons: “Behead all those who insult Islam. Slay those who insult Islam. Butcher those who mock Islam.”

Pakistan’s parliamentarian affairs minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi piled on: “I demand the British government immediately withdraw the title as it is creating religious hatred.” On Monday, Pakistan’s parliament passed a unanimous resolution “deploring the honor as an open insult to the feelings of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.” Mufti Muhammad Basheer-u-Din, Grand Mufti of Kashmir, didn’t mince words: “Because of his blasphemy, Salman Rushdie remains an apostate and aggressor on Islam and punishment for such offences is death.” Lord Ahmed, the first British Muslim member of the House of Lords, blamed Rushdie for violence past and violence to come: “This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. . . . Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far.”

Sort of?!

Yes, you see, it’s always the fault of the accused insulter. Never the fault of the sword-wielders, fatwa-issuers, fire-setters, and blood-lusters.

It’s always the fault of the Western “extremists.” Never the fault of the “moderate” followers of jihad.

The deaf and blind will dismiss this latest episode of manufactured Muslim outrage as a marginal outburst. But Rushdie, the target of death threats dating back to 1988 over his book The Satanic Verses, has seen enough performances of Jihad Theater to take proper precautions. He has requested police protection after an Iranian group put a $150,000 bounty on his head. Forouz Rajaee-Far, secretary general of the Headquarters for Honoring the Martyrs of Islam World Movement, offered the prize because, after all, “it is an obligation for all Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie even if he repents from the bottom of his heart and becomes the pious man of the time.”

What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say? Their website has a special “incitement watch” and “action alerts” section for its (dwindling number of) members — but as of Tuesday afternoon, not a peep about the incitement of hatred and violence against Rushdie. They’ll eventually pay lip service to The Religion of Peace, but do not forget Rule No. 5 in the jihadi’s guide to etiquette: “You can lie if you do this for jihad.”

Pakistani government officials are bleating about the need for “interfaith understanding” and sensitivity. In Washington for meetings with the Bush administration, Pakistan’s foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri cooed: “When we talk of a globalized world, we have to be sensitive to each other’s concerns.”

As anyone with their eyes open through Rushdie’s ordeal, the deadly Mohammed cartoons riots, the calls for beheading the pope, Oriana Fallaci, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and defiant, ex-Muslim apostates around the world knows: “Sensitivity” in the jihadi world is a one-way, dead-end street. Michelle Malkin in the National Review

Islamic Apologetics Karen Armstrong tells us to ignore history and doctrine, focus on platitudes about peace and love.

2007-04-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

By Raymond Ibrahim

Islamic apologist extraordinaire Karen Armstrong is at it again. In an article entitled “Balancing the Prophet” published by the Financial Times, the self-proclaimed “freelance monotheist” engages in what can only be considered second-rate sophistry.

The false statements begin in her opening paragraph:
Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure.… The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy.

This is just an obvious error of fact. Armstrong and others try as a routine to tie European sentiments toward Islam to the Crusades, but in fact, “people in the west” had something of a “dim” view of Mohammed half a millenium before the Crusades. As early as the 8th century — just a few generations after Mohammed — Byzantine chronicler Theophanes wrote in his Chrongraphia:

He [Mohammed] taught those who gave ear to him that the one slaying the enemy — or being slain by the enemy — entered into paradise [e.g., Koran 9:111]. And he said paradise was carnal and sensual — orgies of eating, drinking, and women. Also, there was a river of wine … and the woman were of another sort, and the duration of sex greatly prolonged and its pleasure long-enduring [e.g., 56: 7-40, 78:31, 55:70-77]. And all sorts of other nonsense.

It wasn’t only during the Crusades — when, as Armstrong would have it, popes desperately needed to demonize Mohammed and Islam in order to rally support for the Crusades — that Westerners began to see him as a “sinister figure.” Many in the West have seen him as that from the very start. So, claims of Mohammed being a “lecherous pervert” were not due to any “ill-conceived envy” on the part of 12th-century popes trying to “impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy.” (Indeed, this last notion posited by Armstrong — an ex-nun — appears to be more telling of her own “ill-conceived envy” against the Church.) Despite the oft-repeated mantra that the West is “ignorant” of Islam — dear to apologists like Armstrong — this passage reveals that, from the start, Westerners were in fact aware of some aspects of the Koran.

Having distorted history, she next goes on to distort Islamic theology:

Until the 1950s, no major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it was justified by the current political emergency [emphasis added].

Even better than a “major Muslim thinker,” Allah himself proclaims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger [i.e., uphold sharia], nor embrace the true faith, [even if they are] from among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued” (Koran 9:29). Mohammed confirms: “I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight against mankind until they testify that none but Allah is to be worshipped and that Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger” (Bukhari B2N24; next to the Koran, the second most authoritative text in Islam).

This and countless other Koranic verses and oral traditions of Mohammed, not to mention the course of conquest the first “rightly-guided” caliphs followed, have given Islam’s jurists and theologians cause throughout the ages to reach the consensus — binding on the entire Muslim community — that whenever the Muslim world is militarily capable, it must go on the offensive until it subsumes the entire world. Moreover, this world-view was postulated well before Armstrong’s blame-all — the Crusades — ever took place.

Qutb and Mawdudi were certainly not, as she puts it, “the first major Muslim thinkers to do so.” Their claim to fame is that they were great articulators of jihad who awoke the umma to its obligation — an obligation, however, which was formulated by the great sheikhs of Islam (such as revered scholars Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim of the 13th century) who, in their turn, based it on the words of the Koran and Mohammed. But Armstrong is right in that they did stress jihad due to the “current political emergency” — but not in the way she means (i.e., “self defense”): In their lifetime the Ottoman empire — which, until its last moribund centuries, waged one jihad after another, terrorizing and conquering many of its Christian neighbors — fell and there was no longer a central Muslim sultanate, or “caliphate,” to maintain even a semblance of Islamic power, authority, and expansion. This needed — and still needs — to be rectified under Islam’s worldview.

In fact, Qutb was a staunch opponent of those apologists of Islam in his day who were — just like Armstrong — trying to reinterpret jihad into a defensive movement. Nearly half a century ago, Qutb wrote:

As to persons who attempt to defend the concept of Islamic jihad by interpreting it in the narrow sense of the current concept of defensive war… they lack understanding of the nature of Islam and its primary aim… Can anyone say that if Abu Bakr, Omar, or Uthman [the “rightly-guided” caliphs] had been satisfied that the Roman or Persian powers were not going to attack the Arabian penninsula [in the 7th century], that they would not have striven to spread the message of Islam throughout the world?

During the reign of the “rightly-guided” caliphs, Islam burst forth from Arabia as far west as Spain, as far east as Afghanistan through the sword alone.

Armstrong then spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing author Robert Spencer and his new book The Truth about Muhammad:

The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the Book: ‘Say to them: We believe what you believe; your God and our God is one [29:46]’.

But is Armstrong not herself being a bit disingenuous by assuring the people of the West — primarily Christian — that the Koran’s notion of God “insists on continuity” with theirs? What about the other koranic verses: “Infidels are those who say Allah is one of three… [i.e., the Christian Trinity; ]” (5:73). “Infidels are those who say Allah is the Christ [Jesus], son of Mary” (5:17). The divinity of Christ — anathema to Islam — is fundamental to the Christian view of God. Surely Armstrong has not forgotten this from her days at the convent.

Moreover, if writers like Spencer are guilty of quoting Koranic verses “that are hostile to Jews and Christians” that may well be due to Islam’s pivotal doctrine of abrogation — verses revealed later in Mohammed’s career (all the violent and intolerant ones such as 5:73, 5:17, 9:5, and 9:29) supercede and annul any contradictory verses revealed earlier, such as Armstrong’s 29:46 and most of the other peaceful ones which apologists try to make the cornerstone of Islam.

Finally, if books like Spencer’s focus on the violent side of Islam without devoting enough attention to Islam’s more “positive” aspects — is that not only natural? Let us be perfectly clear: Most people in the West interested in learning more about Islam had their interest piqued by the 9/11 attacks, perpetrated by a Muslim group — al Qaeda — who insists that Islam informed its actions. Westerners are primarily interested in how Islam affects them, as non-Muslims. So it should be understandable if books written about Islam in the West focus more on that which concerns it — jihad — than on Islam’s more peaceful side.

Armstrong’s lament that “there is widespread ignorance of Islam in the west,” and that we should rectify this by developing a more “balanced” and “nuanced” understanding of the Koran is as ridiculous as asking Muslims living in Palestine and Iraq to overlook the “Crusader” presence there and instead consult the Bible itself to see how many portions of it accord with peace and justice. (Indeed, such a proposition is worse than ridiculous, since the Bible comes nowhere near to theologically justifying violence against the “Other” in perpetuity as found in the Koran.

In the final analysis, Armstrong’s historical and theological “discrepancies” (to be polite) are baffling — particularly her many oneline sentences that simply defy historical fact: “Muhammad was not a belligerent warrior.” “The idea that Islam should conquer the world was alien to the Koran…” “Muhammad did not shun non-Muslims as ‘unbelievers’ but from the beginning co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good.” “Islam was not a closed system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations between the different groups must be egalitarian.”

Still, in the end one can sympathize with Armstrong’s closing sentence: “Until we all learn to approach one another with generosity and respect, we cannot hope for peace.” But we should also hasten to add the more important virtues of honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness. Raymond Ibrahim

200 Million Minority.....Islam’s apologists completely miss the point.

2007-03-27T00:39:00.000-07:00

By Raymond Ibrahim

For three consecutive days, April 10-12, Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Muslim activist who was denied a U.S. visa for questionable activities (such as making “charitable” donations to the terrorist organization Hamas, which regularly commissions suicide-attacks), was invited by Georgetown University to give a one-way talk live via satellite — a move which many, including several Georgetown faculty, protested.

The Washington Post reports that Ramadan’s overarching theme was that “Islam and democracy are not incompatible in their tenets of equality and freedom for all and that tensions between them have arisen because of historic problems — such as European colonialism, political manipulation by Middle Eastern autocrats and the influence of minority Islamic groups he described as ‘literalists.’” As to the question of Islam and violence, the Georgetown Voice reports he asserted that, “[Terrorism] is not only non-Islamic, it’s anti-Islamic.” And when discussing the presence of Muslims in the West, he bemoaned the fact that “We are obsessed with the few [radical Muslims] and not seeing the many [moderate Muslims].” Continue to source...

Spinning Lies

2007-02-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

In reference to Mazeni Alwi's article
Mazeni is dishonest in that he says that "Christians of Jerusalem decided to give in to the Muslim army", they were attacked and it was the culminating point. With the help of the local Jews who welcomed the Muslims as liberators, the Muslims had subjugated the remainder of Palestine but had not been able to capture Jerusalem. Beginning in July 637, the Muslims began a siege of Jerusalem which lasted for five (hardly bloodless) months before Jerusalem fell in February 638. Arabs did not sack the city, and the Arab soldiers were apparently kept in tight control by their leaders. No destruction was permitted. This was indeed a triumph of civilized control, if imperialism, colonization, and bloody conquest can ever be said to be "civilized." It was at this conquest that many significant hallmarks of Muslim colonialism began.

The conquered Christian and Jewish people were made to pay a tribute to the colonialist Muslims.The Muslims conquered Jerusalem. It was never a Muslim city before this. It was a Jewish city first and then a Christian one during the era of the Eastern Roman Empire also known as the Byzantine Empire. This is how it should be described. In 624, Mohammed led a raid for booty and plunder against a Meccan caravan, killing 70 Meccans for mere material gain. Between 630 A.D. and the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., Muslims -- on at least one occasion led by Mohammed -- had conquered the bulk of western Arabia and southern Palestine through approximately a dozen separate invasions and bloody conquests. These conquests were in large part Holy wars. After Mohammed's death in 632, the new Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr, launched Islam into almost 1,500 years of continual imperialist, colonialist, bloody conquest and subjugation of others through invasion and war, a role Islam continues to this very day.

The following are examples of colonialist laws to which colonized Christians and Jews were made subject to over the years:

Christians and Jews could not bear arms -- Muslims could;
Christians and Jews could not ride horses -- Muslims could;
Christians and Jews had to get permission to build -- Muslims did not;
Christians and Jews had to pay certain taxes which Muslims did not;
Christians could not proselytize -- Muslims could;
Christians and Jews had to bow to their Muslim masters when they paid their taxes; and Christians and Jews had to live under the law set forth in the Koran, not under either their own religious or secular law.

Palestine was the first Western non-Arab area invaded in the Muslim imperialist, colonialist, bloody conquest and subjugation of others. At the time, Palestine was under the rule of the so-called Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Istanbul by Greek speaking people, and was Eastern Orthodox Catholic. The Eastern Orthodox rule was despotic and the Eastern Roman Empire was in serious decline. The Eastern Orthodox rulers were despots, and in Palestine had subjugated the large population of local Jews and Monophysite Christians. Because the Orthodox were imperialist, colonialist, and bloody, and majored in religious persecution to boot, the Muslim imperialist, colonialist, bloody conquest and subjugation of Palestine, and then Egypt, was made easier. Because of Orthodox weakness and the relative speed of the conquest of Palestine and Israel, many have often seen this Muslim, imperialist, colonialist bloody conquest described by Muslim and PC writers as "peaceful" or "bloodless." This statement is simply not true, exactly as Mazeni paints a rosy picture as though it is so nice to be conquered. The Muslim imperialist, colonialist, bloody conquest and subjugation of Palestine began with a battle, the August 20, 636, battle of Yarmk (it is believed that 75,000 soldiers took part -- hardly bloodless).

On Europe here is a take of Islam in Europe today. Consider: In Manchester, England, a radical Muslim who does not even speak English has been elected to the city council, where he needs an interpreter. Consider: According to the German media, secret Shari'a courts appear to be meting out "justice" in Italy. In that country's north a man known to Muslims as a sex fiend recently showed up with a hand missing. It had obviously been amputated as punishment. Italian doctors report treating Muslim women who had evidently been lashed. Consider: In France about 70,000 young women, chiefly Muslim, are being subjected to forced marriages every year, according to the country's High Council for Integration. Every year, too, 35,000 girls are either circumcised or under threat of circumcision. Islam in Europe is like oil and water they do not mix.

In Australia the Mufti of Australia blames rape on the victims. Besieged Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali believes his comments have been misinterpreted in the same way the Pope was misunderstood in a sermon on Islam. When actually the Mufti says ill things about the Christians and the Jews, like these comments, "Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast?"Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time. For eternity. They are the worst in God's creation."

Pope Benedict quoted an Emperor of ancient Byzantine, whereas in this case, the Mufti quotes himself.

There is no necessity to spin tales about Islam or condemn the Pope who was telling it like what it was. Of course the Pope does not believe in the Koran, he is a a Christian ! These are some of what he believes :

1. Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Matthew 7:15-20 Signs of the End of the Age

2. At that time many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Matthew 24:10-11 Signs of the End of the Age

3. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 Paul and the False Apostles

4. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as their will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Sovereign Lord who brought them - bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. 2 Peter 2:1-3

5. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is coming into the world. 1 John 4:1-3 Test the Spirits

Yes, Mazeni, the above were foretold 600 years before Islam.....and if I be an Islamphobe so be it. After all, 'Islamophobia' is just another of those catch-all, smear-the-messenger fantasies dreamed up to close down debate and stifle free speech.

References :
A . American Thinker
B. Newsmax
C. New Advent
D. The Age
E. CBN News
F. Ayesha Ahmed
G. The Australian
H. Faith Freedom International

What Do Muslims Want? - By Raymond Ibrahim

2007-02-24T07:29:00.000-08:00

All humans generally live according to some set of priorities. A person may make a priority of health, of pleasure, of study, of almost anything, really. But it is practically a law of nature that a person must make a priority of something. Even those who lead unstructured existences unconsciously live according to some set of unarticulated priorities, if only according to something so basic as the primal need for food, drink, and shelter. For many people, religious practice — striving to obey God’s commandments — is a high priority, the highest, even. Yet this priority can come into conflict with the character of the society in which one lives. This is undoubtedly the case for devout Muslims who voluntarily relocate to Western nations. This invariably will compromise what many of them profess to be their ultimate priority: living in accordance to the divine laws of Allah (i.e., sharia — most of which is derived from the words and deeds of seventh-century Mohammad).

Some of these Muslims arrive in the West and don’t want to compromise. Consider some recent news stories:

A few Muslim cashiers working at Target stores in Minneapolis are refusing to scan customer purchases that may contain pork. Instead of swiping the products themselves — which is their job — they are inconveniencing the customers or fellow employees by having them do it.

Muslim cab drivers have long been discriminating against customers carrying or suspected of carrying alcohol. Officials at the St. Paul International Airport estimate that, on average, alcohol-bearing customers seeking cab rides are denied 77 times per month. Some blind customers have also been turned down on account of their seeing-eye dogs.

Muslims in Seattle have requested (and been granted) regularly scheduled hours for their exclusive use of public pools; an all-Muslim-girls basketball team at a Chicago university demanded that men be barred from attending their matches; some 200 Muslim women signed a petition at a Michigan fitness center demanding separate workout times for men and women, or at least the erection of a screen divider between the men’s and women’s section (which was granted).

All of these issues revolve around the Muslim desire to live according to Allah’s laws — which, among other things, ban contact with pigs, dogs, and alcohol, and have rigid social guidelines, especially concerning interaction between the sexes. From a religious point of view, the anti-social behavior of these Muslims can be, if not excused, then certainly understood. They are doing only what their religion commands them to do. And their refusal to compromise on these points demonstrates that adherence to the commandments of Islam is a priority of the utmost importance to them.

However, if living in strict accordance to sharia is the first priority of some Muslims, one wonders: Why have they voluntarily come and immersed themselves in infidel countries that do not recognize sharia law and, indeed, allow many things that run counter to it, such as the selling and consumption of alcohol and pork and the liberal intermingling of the sexes? Most of the Muslim countries that Muslims abandon for the West are much more conducive to the Muslim lifestyle and uphold many if not all aspects of sharia law. Yet, each year, thousands of supposedly “ultra-devout” Muslims forsake these countries and, of their own free will, come and surround themselves with wine-imbibing, swine-eating libertines. Why?

It is for the same reason that everyone else comes to the West — for the “good life.” They come in order to be prosperous and to enjoy opportunities, security, and equality the likes of which they could never have in their own countries (ruled quite often — no surprise — according to sharia). The vast majority of Muslims emigrating from the Islamic world do not leave due to necessity — say, oppression or starvation. No, they come to the infidel West solely to prosper materially.

But why are Muslims of the “ultra-pious” variety seeking after material comfort in the first place — especially when doing so will almost certainly undermine their professed desire to live strictly according to the sharia? Coming to live in a democratic country composed of some 300 million infidels is bound to affect any Muslim’s observance of sharia. These pious Muslims risk coming into daily contact with, not only pork, alcohol, and dogs, but all sorts of other defilements: flamboyant homosexuals, scantily clad women (who are often in positions of authority!), gamblers and usurers, to name a few. Are they not concerned that they, or especially their children, might become contaminated by the licentious and seductive practices of the infidel West? If their priority is truly to strictly follow sharia, should they not remain in their Muslim countries of origin, which, if not as prosperous as the West, are definitely more conducive to the Muslim lifestyle?

Or, could it be that, despite all the ruckus (and subsequent headlines) made by these Muslims, living in accordance to Allah and his sharia is not their first priority, after all? At least, not to the degree that they would be unwilling to put this priority at substantial risk for the sake of living the good life, in a strictly secular and materialistic sense.

Furthermore, if common sense does not dissuade them from relocating to the West, the very sharia they claim to want to closely observe should. For instance, if pork and alcohol are condemned (e.g., Koran 5:4; 2:219), voluntarily living among infidels, idolaters, and atheists is looked on no better. The Koran declares: “O you who believe! Take neither Jews nor Christians as friends…whoever among you turns to them is one of them” (5:51).

There are countless verses and traditions, in fact, that make it clear that Muslims are to be in a constant state of animosity toward non-Muslims, waging war through tongue and teeth in order to spread Islam, and, when finally in a position of superiority, discriminating against those who refuse to convert (see, for example, 3:28, 5:73, 5:17, 9:5, 9:25, etc). When the Meccans persisted in their unbelief, refusing to accept the prophet-hood — and subsequent authority — of Mohammad, he finally abandoned his kinsfolk with these parting words, which some Muslims believe still define the proper relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims: “We [Muslims] disown you [non-Muslims] and what you worship besides Allah. We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — until you believe in Allah alone!” (60:40).

So why are some Muslims making public scenes here in the United States over scanning bacon or transporting customers with sealed bottles of wine in their luggage while at the same time freely choosing to live with — and of course benefit from — those whom they are commanded to hate and wage war upon, or at the very least, disavow and be clean of?

“Straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel” has long been a sure sign of hypocrisy. All Muslims who freely migrate to the West must understand that they can’t have it both ways — that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. They must choose between either strictly upholding the laws and customs of 7th-century Arabia (in which case they should remain in their “sharia friendly” countries of origin) or, if prosperity and comfort is their first choice, let them relocate to the West, but prepare to assimilate — that is, compromise — to some degree. It’s a simple question of priorities. Raymond Ibrahim is editor of the upcoming The Al Qaeda Reader

Stand up for Denmark! - Why are we not defending our ally? By Christopher Hitchens

2007-01-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

Stand up for Denmark! Why are we not defending our ally ? Put the case that we knew of a highly paranoid religious cult organization with a secretive leader. Now put the case that this cult, if criticized in the press, would take immediate revenge by kidnapping a child. Put the case that, if the secretive leader were also to be lampooned, two further children would be killed at random. Would the press be guilty of "self-censorship" if it declined to publish anything that would inflame the said cult? Well, yes it would be guilty, but very few people would insist on the full exertion of the First Amendment right. However, the consequences for the cult and its leader would be severe as well. All civilized people would regard it as hateful and dangerous, and steps would be taken to circumscribe its influence, and to ensure that no precedent was set. In full....Stand up for Denmark! - Why are we not defending our ally? By Christopher Hitchens

The oppression of Christians in a Failed Stae.

2007-01-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

This is happening in Pakiland.A Christian was accused of blasphemy by a Muslim neighbour who had a bone to pick with him. This sparked off a sequence of events which have been well covered in the press by news items and in several columns. The point is that violence occurred because of the fact that our theocratic thugs insist that these laws remain in place and have prevailed upon the General to toe their line. Early in November, churches in the Sangla Hill area were desecrated and destroyed, Christian students were beaten up, and one Pir Mohammad Afzal Qadiri, Markazi Ameer Alam-i-Tanzeem Ahl-e-Sunnat (unworthy of this impressive sounding name and title) not only condoned the attack by his fellow Muslims upon the Christian churches and properties, but urged those of his faith to unite and eliminate Christians for the honour and integrity of Islam.In full......

Banned UN Speech:

2007-01-02T06:24:00.000-08:00

The UN Human Wrongs Council
The UN’s Human Rights Council has long been a sick joke, an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. To see a most graphic demonstration of its interpretation of human rights, just look at this to see what happened when Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, told it a few home truths. This is what he said:

Mr. President,
Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided? Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal. One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something. It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.
So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights. So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims. But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?
Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights. They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights. You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? With terrible lies, it is being turned into a nightmare. Thank you, Mr. President.

And this is what the Council president, Luis Alfonso de Alba, said in reply:

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you’d kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.

The UN’s first instinct in defence of human rights — suppress the truth in support of tyranny. Melanie Philliphs.

Achilles' Heel - August 28, 2006 - The New York Sun

2006-12-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

Achilles' Heel - August 28, 2006 - The New York Sun

Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza: "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."

Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah." More........

The Wisdom of Benedict XVI

2006-11-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

The leader of the world's most ancient institution, one with an unbroken continuity that spans over two millennia, and a memory to match, took a stand with his report of the dialogue between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II and an "educated Persian". That dialogue occurred in year 1391. There is a context, which only ignoramuses could suspect the pope of not having taken into full account: in those years, the Ottoman Turks crushed and overran the Serbian kingdom, the Muslim warlord Tamerlane broke the back of the Persian empire and occupied it, the empire of Bulgaria was destroyed by the Ottomans and incorporated into their empire.

The Muslim jihad was threatening the whole of Christendom, and was devastating Muslim lands as well, such as the anciently civilized Persia. To broaden the perspective, add that in short order, the Islamicized Mongols were to besiege Moscow, crush a Hungarian-German army in Central Europe, occupy Bosnia, besiege, sack, and slaughter New Delhi, and take Syria — even before the 14the century expired. more....

America’s Earliest Terrorists Were From Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

2006-11-17T05:05:00.000-08:00

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators. Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy’s call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense — resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.

Barbary Pirates being boarded.

As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Unfortunately, many of the easy lessons to be plucked from this experience have yet to be fully learned. The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib (“Land of Sunset”), denoting Islam’s territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed’s armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.

Americans paying tribute to Arab Pirates known as the Barbary Pirates

The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815. Although there is much in the history of America’s wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current “war on terror,” one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy. These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Sound familiar?

The candor of that Tripolitan ambassador is admirable in its way, but it certainly foreshadows the equally forthright declarations of, say, the Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s and the Sunni Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, not to mention the many pronouncements of their various minions, admirers, and followers. Note that America’s Barbary experience took place well before colonialism entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging the U.S. into the fray, and long before the founding of the state of Israel. America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to “radical” or “fundamentalist” Muslims.

Which is not to say that such obligations lead inevitably to physical conflict, at least not in principle. After all peaceful proselytizing among various religious groups continues apace throughout the world, but within the teachings of Islam, and the history of Muslims, this is a well-established militant thread.

The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.

To Muslims in the heyday of Barbary piracy, there were, at least in principle, only two forces at play in the world: the Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. The House of Islam meant Muslim governance and the unrivaled authority of the sharia, Islam’s complex system of holy law. The House of War was simply everything that fell outside of the House of Islam — that area of the globe not under Muslim authority, where the infidel ruled. For Muslims, these two houses were perpetually at war — at least until mankind should finally embrace Allah and his teachings as revealed through his prophet, Mohammed.

The point of jihad is not to convert by force, but to remove the obstacles to the infidels’ conversion so that they shall either convert or become a dhimmi (a non-Muslim who accepts Islamic dominion) and pay the jizya, or poll tax. The goal is to bring all of the Dar al-Harb into the peace of the Dar al-Islam, and to eradicate unbelief. The Koran also promises rewards to those who fight in the jihad, plunder and glory in this world and the delights of paradise in the next.

Although the piratical activities of Barbary genuinely degenerated over the centuries from pure considerations of the glory of jihad to less grandiose visions of booty and state revenues, it is important to remember that the religious foundations of the institution of piracy remained central.

Even after it became commonplace for the pirate captains or their crew to be renegade Europeans, it was essential that these former Christians “turn Turk” and convert to Islam before they could be accorded the honor of engagement in al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea.

In fact, the peoples of Barbary continued to consider the pirates as holy warriors even after the Barbary rulers began to allow non-religious commitments to command their strategic use of piracy. The changes that the religious institution of piracy underwent were natural, if pathological. Just as the concept of jihad is invoked by Muslim terrorists today to legitimize suicide bombings of noncombatants for political gain, so too al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea, served as the cornerstone of the Barbary states’ interaction with Christendom.

In times of conflict, America tends to focus on personalities over ideas or movements, trying to play the man, not the board — as if capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, for example, would instantly end the present conflict. But such thinking loses sight of the fact that ideas have consequences. If one believes that God commands something, this belief is not likely to dissipate just because the person who elucidated it has been silenced. Islam, as a faith, is as essential a feature of the terrorist threat today as it was of the Barbary piracy over two centuries ago.

The Barbary pirates were not a “radical” or “fundamentalist” sect that had twisted religious doctrine for power and politics, or that came to recast aspects of their faith out of some form of insanity. They were simply a North African warrior caste involved in an armed jihad — a mainstream Muslim doctrine. This is how the Muslims understood Barbary piracy and armed jihad at the time, and, indeed, how the physical jihad has been understood since Mohammed revealed it as the prophecy of Allah.

Obviously, and thankfully, not every Muslim is obligated, or even really inclined, to take up this jihad. Indeed, many Muslims are loath to personally embrace this physical struggle. But that does not mean they are all opposed to such a struggle any more than the choice of many Westerners not to join the police force or the armed services means they do not support those institutions.

Whether “insurgents” are fighting in Iraq or “rebels” and “militants” are skirmishing in Chechnya or Hamas “activists” are detonating themselves in Israel, Westerners seem unwilling to bring attention to the most salient feature of all these groups: They claim to be acting in the name of Islam.

It is very easy to chalk it all up to regional squabbles, economic depression, racism, or post-colonial nationalistic self-determinism. Such explanations undoubtedly enter into part of the equation — they are already part of the propaganda that clouds contemporary analysis. But as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to learn back in 1786, the situation becomes a lot clearer when you listen to the stated intentions and motivations of the terrorists and take them at face value.

— Joshua E. London is the author of Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation (John Wiley & Sons, September 2005); for more about the book visit www.victoryintripoli.com.

Books on Barbary (Arab) Pirates

To the intolerance of Muslims, the West responds with tolerance.Tolerance is a one-way street.

2006-10-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

By Raymond Ibrahim

Previous to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 30 visit to the Hagia Sophia complex in Constantinople, Muslims and Turks variously expressed apprehension and rage. Turkey’s independent paper Vatan put it thus: “The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims.” A sign of the cross, apparently, would be interpreted as a signal for a crusade.

Built in Constantinople in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia — Greek for “Holy Wisdom” — was Christendom’s greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople was finally sacked by Turks in the jihad of 1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, this millennium-old church — as well as thousands of other churches in the then Byzantine Empire — was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. As part of Ataturk’s reforms aimed at modernizing Turkey, the Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum in 1935.

In protestation of Benedict’s visit, a gang of Turks stormed and occupied Hagia Sophia on November 22, exclaiming “Allahu Akbar!” and warning “Pope! don’t make a mistake; don’t wear out our patience.” On the day of the pope’s visit, another throng of Islamists waved banners saying “Pope get out of Turkey” while chanting “Aya Sofya [Hagia Sophia] is Turkish and will remain Turkish.” And of course, al Qaeda in Iraq got in on the action by denouncing Benedict’s visit in an Internet statement. One of the pope’s expressed purposes for visiting Turkey was to promote inter-religious dialogue and denounce violence in the name of God. Continued here...

Because They Hate - A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America

2006-10-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

Bolton - It was his success in defense of American and democratic interests that doomed him.

2006-09-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

The only winners from the resignation of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton are the foes of the United States. Ambassador Bolton did a courageous job communicating and protecting American values in the belly of a beast where those values are at risk each and every day. His commitment to real and effective reform was unshakable. His honesty, integrity, and hard work produced substantial results on a multiplicity of levels in only 18 months on the job. He spearheaded the adoption of a first legally binding Security Council resolution sanctioning North Korea for its nuclear-weapons program; passage of a first ever Security Council resolution addressing the Iranian nuclear program; consensus-building among democratic states that resulted in 50 donor countries, responsible for 88 percent of the U.N. regular budget, taking a common position on management reform.

Furthermore, he:

had the foresight to refuse to lend credibility to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which as he predicted, has become a mockery of reform undeserving of American support;

raised the profile of the genocide in Darfur and insisted on Security Council action;

led the campaign against corruption at the U.N. secretariat, including the reduction of the gift ceiling for United Nations officials from $10,000 to $200;

defended a free and democratic government of Israel from the relentless onslaught of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attacks launched across the U.N. system.

Ultimately, it was his success in defense of American and democratic interests that doomed him. No one was more vociferous in campaigning against his nomination than the defenders of the status quo — Secretary General Kofi Annan, his deputy Mark Malloch-Brown, and their financial backers, George Soros and Ted Turner’s U.N. Foundation. One can be sure they will have broken out the champagne, along with the Russians, Chinese, Sudanese, and the remainder of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — all those who have a vested interest in ensuring a neverending cycle of U.S. money in, support for terrorism and nuclear proliferation out. The reverberations of the departure of John Bolton will be felt for a long time to come.

— Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and at Touro College Law Center. She is also editor of www.EyeontheUN.org. National Review

Dwindling Christian Population Of Bethlehem

2006-09-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

The shop owned by Aziz al Soos on the edge of Bethlehem is a modest, single-storey place lost among terraces of restaurants, ironmongers and general stores, but it has one special characteristic. It sells pork.

Fifty-year-old Mr al Soos is the third generation of his family to farm and butcher pigs. His grandfather started the business, selling pork to British troops stationed in Palestine during the 1930s, and its current status as the only pork butchery in the territories makes it a valuable place to gauge the plight of the Holy Land's dwindling Christian minority.

The issue will be in the headlines later this week, when Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, lead a joint delegation to Bethlehem to express solidarity with their beleaguered brethren.
No member of the local Muslim majority would dare enter Mr al Soos's shop, allowing him to be candid in his assessment as he thwacked a cleaver into a wooden chopping board covered with gore.

"It's not as if there is a single thing like this cleaver that cuts us Christians down," he said as he bagged up pork chops for a regular Christian customer. "It's more like a slow, steady pressure, which is slowly killing us off." In the run-up to Christmas, the once large Catholic community could have been expected to buy large amounts of pork for meals and celebrations. This year, he estimated, business was down by two thirds compared with a decade ago.

Bernard Bassil, 50, a water engineer and regular customer at the butchery, likened it to a slow, steady suffocation. "With the problems from the economy where Palestinians don't get any money from the government, there are no jobs to go round. And we know that, if a job becomes available, it will go to a Muslim, not a Christian." He said tension between the Christian minority and Muslim majority is a daily feature of life. It rarely flares into violence or spectacular acts of cruelty, but it steadily corrodes the quality of life enjoyed by Christians.

"My son, Nazar, when he was just 13, used to come home from school and the Muslim boys of his age from the local refugee camp would run after him shouting 'Nazarene, Nazarene', which is a derogatory local term for Christian. Once they caught up and threatened to beat him unless he said Allah was his god and Mohammed his only prophet. We had to move house, but now my son has left university and cannot get a job, so every day he says we must leave."

In his office overlooking Manger Square in the centre of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh, the town's mayor, said for decades local Christians have been voting with their feet.

"Before 1948, Christians were 90 per cent of the population of the town, but now they are just 35 per cent and that is not just because of the larger birth rate among Muslim families. It is because some families have decided that finding a new life elsewhere is the answer to tougher living conditions," he said.

"And it is easy to see why they want to leave. You just have to look at the Separation Barrier around Bethlehem, built by the Israelis, which has turned the town into a large prison." Visiting Bethlehem today from Jerusalem — just six miles away — is no longer straightforward. You have to pass through a 30ft wall built, so Israel says, to stop suicide bombers and negotiate your way past armed soldiers and concrete barriers.

Incongruously, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has hung a large banner on the wall next to the main crossing point with the message "Peace Be With You". Graffiti on the Palestinian side of the wall is more insulting about Israel.

The election of the Hamas government this year raised fears of a fundamentalist crackdown on local Christians, but that has not happened. Perhaps the worst thing the government has done has been to break its promise to provide the mayor's office with £30,000 for Christmas decorations for central Bethlehem.

But the election added to fears among local Christians that nobody will listen to their complaints about drip-drip discrimination, condemning their community to continue its downward spiral.

The mayor had a rather long-winded explanation for what it will take to end the decline, saying: "If there is peace, and I mean real peace not just between Israelis and Palestinians but between Palestinian factions, then the Christians will come back."

One of the Christian customers at Mr al Soos's pork shop was more pithy. "It will take another miracle," she said. The source....

The Gym Jihad

2006-07-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

By Janet LeBy
FrontPageMagazine.com December 7, 2006

A Muslim woman in Dearborn, Mich., lodged a complaint Tuesday against Fitness USA for an alleged civil rights violation involving a fellow gym patron. According to Jodi Berry, executive director of Fitness USA, Wardeh Sultan was praying in front of another member’s locker when the member wanted access to her belongings inside the locker. The inconvenienced patron tried to interrupt Ms. Sultan, but she remained prostrate in front of the locker and an altercation ensued. A manager was called into the locker room to intervene.

Ms. Sultan later complained that the Fitness USA management was unconcerned about the humiliation she suffered when her prayers were interrupted. She stated that the gym personnel were insensitive, rejected her complaints and did not satisfactorily intervene on her behalf. Ms. Sultan further reported that the manager told her, “You have to respect her (the other patron), but she does not have to respect your god.”

The incident is yet another example of special treatment Muslims are increasingly demanding nationwide. Last April, at the Lincoln Park, Mich. Fitness USA location, 200 Muslim women signed a petition demanding separate workout times for men and women, or, at minimum, installation of a divider between the men’s and women’s gym sections. A screen was eventually erected to obstruct the view of the women’s facilities. Another Fitness USA facility recently revised a dress code to allow Muslim women to wear more modest dress while exercising.

Other examples abound. Last week, six imams demonstrated against U.S. Airways for alleged discrimination against Muslims and their religious practices after they were detained and questioned because they had been praying in the Minneapolis airport, loudly invoking Allah’s name and uttering anti-American statements. Recently, Muslim cabdrivers refused to carry passengers possessing alcoholic beverages or accompanied by seeing-eye dogs. Last year, city public swimming pools in Seattle, responding to pressure from Muslims, instituted regularly scheduled hours for exclusive use by Muslims, including a “Muslim Sister Swim.” In June in a Chicago suburb, a Muslim girls basketball team, whose players compete wearing long, blue gowns and hijabs, requested that in competitions with non-Muslims schools, no men or boys be allowed to watch the games.

What is behind this rash of demands for tolerance and accompanying allegations of discrimination by Muslims? Could this be part of an agenda contrived to intimidate non-Muslims into enacting special concessions and privileges for Muslims that subtlety alter American society step by step? Is this the beginning of a militant movement or a cultural jihad toward incremental demands with the ultimate goal of Islamicizing the U.S. and imposing Sharia law?

At the same time, Muslims are alleging with greater frequency and vitriol that a growing intolerance of Islam exists and that the rights of Muslims to speak and worship freely are under attack by Americans. Muslim leaders such as Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, insist that Muslims have a right to petition for special accommodation based on their religious beliefs as mandated by the First Amendment. In truth, no requirement exists, either in state or federal statutes, requiring that such petitions be addressed or behavior adjusted accordingly. Further, the locations in question are publicly owned businesses providing services to the general public under behavioral and societal norms accepted by the majority of Americans. These are not private clubs exclusive to Muslim patrons and nothing prevents Muslims from creating their own private clubs to accommodate their needs. If a religion prohibits males and females from swimming together, its practitioners shouldn’t swim in public pools. If devout Muslim girls must play basketball in burkas away from the gaze of boys and men, competitions may be arranged exclusively with Muslims schools.

In the case of gym patrons, how far will the requests go before non-Muslim women are subservient to the whims and demands of Muslims? If a Muslim woman decides to spontaneously pray between the bench press and the treadmill are non-Muslims expected to alter their circuit in order not to disturb her? What if Muslims decide that they are uncomfortable with the immodest attire of non-Muslims exercising around them? Will they eventually demand that all gym participants dress according to a standard that they establish as appropriate? Once a Muslim-approved standard of dress is observed in the gym, would it be extended to cover shopping malls, post offices, other community locations and eventually an entire region?

As for praying in public places, such as fitness centers and airport terminals, to what extent should this be accommodated by American society? Do Muslims really believe that a gym locker room is a desirable and appropriate place for prayer? Can’t they schedule their day to attend the gym between calls to prayer or pray silently or in their cars? Most airports have non-denominational chapels for all religions. Aren’t these spaces more appropriate for vocal and physical attitudes of prayer than a busy terminal filled with passengers? In a post 9-11 world, it is unrealistic to expect that loud proclamations of Islamic faithfulness mixed with condemnations of U.S. policy will not raise suspicion and cause alarm. The tragedy of 9-11 has forever changed the air travel experience and certain behaviors are already constrained in the interest of American security. Is vocal and extreme religious behavior exempt?

Countless others have immigrated to the United States without demanding that we change our society to meet their religious requirements. It’s unfathomable that an orthodox Jewish taxi driver would deny passage to a person eating a ham sandwich or a Jehovah’s Witness would deny service to a passenger carrying a bottle of wine. We have already re-engineered assembly lines (Tyson Foods and Dell Computer) and overturned a city noise ordinance to allow for Muslim calls to prayer. Squiggle graphics on Burger King ice cream cones were discontinued as they allegedly resembled the Arabic spelling of Allah. Under threat of a lawsuit, Nike recalled a sneaker with a heel design that was also similar to the Arabic configuration for Allah and built three playgrounds in U.S. Islamic communities designated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Where will this intimidation and shakedown of Americans and American institutions end? Will racism and bigotry accusations shame us into capitulating and abandoning our vigilance and security precautions? Will we be lured into curtailing our surveillance procedures, weakening the Patriot Act and enacting religious intolerance legislation focusing on Muslims? Muslim charges of victimization and discrimination have already paved the way for a variety of special treatment and dispensations. How many changes must we see on the American landscape and how far must Americans be pushed for concessions before we collectively say, “Enough?” Front Page Magazine

How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs

2005-03-05T00:25:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION : THERE is a certain analogy between civilization and an infectious disease. Both pass from one community to another by contact, and whenever either breaks out, one of our first thoughts is, Where did the infection come from? In both alike there is the unanswered question, Where did it first originate? Do all outbreaks trace back to one primary source, or have there been several independent starting points?

In reading the autobiography of that distinguished Orientalist Sir Denison Ross, there is a letter received from some inquirer which contains the sentence remarking what a good thing it would be if we could find out "how, and in what form, the Greek and Latin writers found their way to the ken of the Arab or Persian or Turkish student" (Sir Denison Ross, Both Ends of the Candle, n. d., p. 286). The author of the book makes no comment on this letter, but it may be noted that the way in which Greek literature passed to the Arabs and Persians, thence to the Turks, is not so unexplored as the letter suggests, and it may be traced with tolerable certainty, as it is hoped will appear in the following pages. No doubt it is a commonplace English convention which causes the writer to group Greek and Latin writers together: it does not appear that Latin writers ever did pass to the Arabs or other Orientals, the transmission of ancient culture was concerned with Greek alone, and the Greek writers who influenced the oriental world were not the poets, historians, or orators, but exclusively the scientists who wrote on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy, the type of scientific thought which does not always come foremost when we speak about classical literature. In the days when the Arabs inherited the culture of ancient Greece, Greek thought was chiefly interested in science, Athens was replaced by Alexandria, and Hellenism had an entirely "modem "outlook. This was an attitude with which Alexandria and its scholars were directly connected, but it was by no means confined to Alexandria. It was a logical outcome of the influence of Aristotle who before all else was a patient observer of nature, and was in fact the founder of modern science. It had its germs in older thought, no doubt, in the speculations of quite early philosophers about the origin and world and its inhabitants, animals as well as men, but it was Aristotle who introduced what may be called the scientific method. The source and more.....